“Come here to peace and quiet every night, do you?” he asked dryly as he obeyed her instructions.
“I manage.”
“You’re the sole support for all three of you?”
She flashed him a withering glance, then returned to the dishes in the sink. “I manage,” she repeated. “Angela will be out of school in June.” She rinsed the dishes, stacked them in the drainer and wiped her hands hurriedly on a dishcloth, then bent over in front of the refrigerator to take out the casserole she’d made that morning. Belatedly, she remembered that her grandfather had promised Buck dinner, and she looked up at him guiltily. That whole thing was absurd, of course, but Buck seemed as conscious of the casserole she was holding as she was. “I’m sure you really don’t want to stay for dinner,” she told him, hoping she didn’t sound rude. “I’ll be happy to offer you coffee, and then I’ll call a taxi—”
“I really would appreciate a meal,” he contradicted her pleasantly.
Which was just it. He looked…hungry. The whistle on the tea kettle sputtered just as she stepped forward to put the casserole in the oven, and both she and Buck suddenly tried to fill the same space at the same time. She felt a rock-hard thigh against hers, then the most incredible sensation of a large, possessive hand on the curve of her hip, steadying her. Loren gave a small jump backward, feeling heat rush through her veins instead of blood. He was just so…virile…
“Loren,” he said gently, “take off your coat.”
He pulled the kettle from the offending stove, the noise ceasing immediately. She looked down at herself with a flush and started unbuttoning, but then stopped as she remembered the casserole and put it in the oven.
So take off your coat, she told herself. What is wrong with you? But she knew what was wrong. It was the powder-blue sweater and skirt, which clung like sin to the slim curves of her hips and showed off a frankly sensational pair of legs. The outfit had rated her a dozen catcalls in the plant all day—which had made her laugh. This man made her feel differently… Why should the thought that he might find her diminutive figure to his liking disturb her so? Obviously, she was suffering a momentary bout of insanity.
She came back from putting away her coat without looking at him, poured the coffee into mugs and transferred them to the table.
“Your hands are shaking. How often does that happen—the scene in the bar?”
Her chin lifted. “I manage.” She didn’t add that she’d had enough questions from a man whom she’d met in a derelict saloon, or that she was furious that he’d noticed her trembling hands. Well, that bar was shudder material; it inevitably caught up with her.
Buck sipped his coffee standing, glancing out at the yard and around the room. “You want me to look at your hot-water heater?”
“Pardon? Oh, no, of course not. I can man—”
It didn’t seem wise to finish as she caught those eyes fixed on her like dark jade. She could have sworn she heard a low warning growl in his throat. “I know. You can manage,” he bit off. “In the meantime, you’re going to sit down and put your feet up and do absolutely nothing for a few minutes while I go down to the basement and look at that heater. Aren’t you?”
“I—Yes.” Evidently. She sat absolutely still for several minutes, staring at the open basement door through which he’d disappeared. One would almost think he was genuinely concerned about her, when of course there was no reason to be. Or perhaps he just had a fetish about hot-water heaters?
“I closed the door to Joan’s room,” he said blandly when he came back up. “Told her to take the evening off. The hot-water heater needs a new coil; it’ll have to wait until morning.” He held up a sort of coiled rectangle, corroded with white limey deposits.
She resisted the urge to tell him that if he were five feet one inch and ninety-nine pounds he, too, might have invented some protection. Instead, she said pleasantly, “Good. Joan’s overworked.”
“I’ll just bet she is,” he agreed. “This is too big a house for one person to take care of.”
And if he weren’t so big, she’d hit him. She was about to say that she managed very well, but decided against it. He smiled approvingly, as if he’d read her mind.
Angela strolled in as Loren was serving dinner for herself and Buck. In a brilliant red peasant blouse and skin-tight black pants, she looked ready to seduce from a street corner. Her blond hair cascaded to her shoulders in waves as she pirouetted prettily. “Like the blouse?” she asked, seemingly to both of them at once.
Loren studied her sister. Angela wasn’t beautiful, but without question she exuded a special brand of sensuality. A dangerous brand. Loren worried about her sister on an every-five-minute basis, but her tactfully phrased admonitions only seemed to fuel Angela’s rebellion. At any rate, this evening was hardly the time for another lecture. “It’s new, isn’t it? Where are you going, honey?” she asked.
“Just to a movie. What do you think?” she asked Buck.
“That depends on whether you like your David or are just going out with him to attract other men,” Buck answered smoothly.
“Pardon?” Used to immediate and unqualified approval from all males, Angela suddenly looked the very young woman she was.
“It’s a lovely blouse,” Buck assured her, “but when I care about the woman I’m with, I’d rather she didn’t attract other male attention—at least deliberately. I’d rather have her to myself. But then maybe this David is nothing important to you.”
Angela suddenly looked stricken, a measure of how important David actually was to her, and she glanced down at the blouse and pants again. “Why, I wouldn’t… You don’t think he’d suspect I was trying to come on to someone else, do you?” she asked Buck seriously.
“I don’t believe you’re having this conversation with a total stranger,” Loren said helplessly.
“But that’s just the point,” Angela said defensively, turning again to Buck. “So you really think…”
Two changes of clothes later, Loren was astonished to see her sister leave in a plain navy blue sweater that dated two years back and actually had a measure of breathing space in it. David Brown was let in, greeted and the pair left as Loren and Buck were finishing dinner.
“I hope the young man has honorable intentions,” Buck said dryly as the car lights splashed across the kitchen window and then disappeared. It was, to Loren’s surprise, already dark.
“By some miracle,” Loren said wryly, “David’s a winner. His dad owns a hardware store, and David’s taking a year of business courses at a local college before joining him. Not to say that I’m naive enough to think David’s devotion to my sister is based on an appreciation of her mental abilities. Angela’s most eloquent communications tend to be, shall we say, nonverbal?”
Buck nodded, leaning back comfortably with one of his feet cocked on the rung of a chair, sipping coffee. “And you? Are you equally eloquent with your…anatomy?”
“No, of course n—” The answer came out so easily that she blinked. “Now you just listen here!”
“You’re certainly safe as church this evening then,” he interrupted her blandly. There was a sea of humor in his narrowed green eyes as she sputtered for the appropriate put-down. “You’re old enough,” he said dryly, “and you’ve got the looks. Or is that what terminated that short-term marriage of yours?”
“How on earth did you even know I was—”
“Gramps,” he said helpfully. “On that long ramble between the bar booth and the back of the van.”
“For your information, Mr. Busybody, seven years ago I separated from my husband of six months because he didn’t like to work and I did, and the only thing that held us together that long was our sex life. Is there anything else you wanted to know?” Loren snapped furiously.
“Actually…”
“Actually, I think it’s past time you were headed home.”
“Actually, I think it’s time you checked on your grandfather.”
When exactly had that craggy half-sm
ile altered to something else? Suddenly, there was naked appraisal in his eyes when she stood up, as if he were just now letting her know that he had noticed every detail of the powder-blue outfit. And suddenly he had grooves on his forehead she hadn’t noticed before, an iron chin of assurance… Telling this man he had a lot of nerve would be like bouncing a marshmallow off a steel wall. She felt an unfamiliar instinct of danger, suddenly aware not only that he had managed to find out almost everything about her in a very short time, but that she was not entirely immune to his humor, to his lazy way of taking charge, to the…look of him. “Listen,” she said firmly, “I am going to check on my grandfather, but when I come back—”
“I’ll call the taxi as soon as you return,” he assured her, and she stared at him momentarily before stalking out of the room and heading upstairs.
Her fingers massaged an ache at the back of her neck as she walked. This Black Friday was beginning to take its toll on her. She leaned against the doorway to her grandfather’s room, the hall light casting a soft halo on his sleeping shadow. Exhaustion hit her at once, like the bullet of a sniper.
William Shephard was sleeping the sleep of the innocent. His wife had no longer died on a Friday fourteen years ago. His son and daughter-in-law hadn’t been killed in a yachting accident. The family business sustained for nearly a century had not disintegrated in his hands. He was curled up like a child, and as Loren looked at him, she felt a pit of pain inside trying to burst. Gramps was seventy-four, and she loved him, and she was totally powerless to help him.
Her eyes closed, and the days ahead stretched out in wretched weariness in her mind. Two weeks of double work were coming up at the plant, and every day of the fortnight was filled to the brim with other people’s troubles. The scene at that horrid bar still grated on her nerves; how she hated the sleaziness of the place, all the men’s eyes on her… Her failures suddenly pressed in on her—her marriage, for one, Gramps, for another; and surely somehow she should have managed to control Angela, force to her sister to accept some badly needed discipline…Then there was the house. Everything seemed to be going at once, and there was just no way her salary could be stretched far enough to meet every need…
She could manage, she’d told Buck. Well, she had and she could; nothing was going to get her down. Nevertheless…
She walked slowly back down the stairs and pushed open the revolving door to the kitchen. Buck was leaning back against the counter, his hands shoved lazily in his pockets. He projected an easy, careless strength, a ton more than any one person needed, and not only brute power, but also a mental steel that just seemed to come with the man. She suddenly coveted that strength desperately and could feel something inside of her start to slip that she just never let slip…
“I want you to go now.” She intended to sound very firm, to use the dismissive tone for which she was famous at work. Instead, even to her own ears, her voice sounded hoarse and even pleading.
He was across the room in two seconds. “The hell you do,” he growled.
Chapter Three
Loren couldn’t imagine how it happened. She never cried, and once the tears started, she was horrified when they wouldn’t stop. Her throat clogged up, and her eyes simply kept flooding…she was just so exhausted; it had been such a wretched, wretched day. Suddenly, Buck was there, encouraging her face to his chest, offering a comfort like riches in his silence and the gentle strength of his arms. He scooped her into his arms, found his way by some streak of fate to her favorite rocker in the library, and cradled her to his lap in that dark room, and rocked. One long arm circled her close, his fingers resting on the slim curl of her hip; the other hand very slowly smoothed back her hair, over and over.
“I feel so ridiculous,” she burbled miserably.
“There’s nothing ridiculous about crying,” he said gently. “You’re unhappy, Loren. Good Lord, I don’t know how you handle all of it—”
“I am not unhappy!” she thundered between sobs.
“All right. You are not unhappy,” he echoed patiently.
With some effort, he dredged up a handkerchief from his back pocket, first mopping her face and then holding it over her nose. “Blow,” he ordered.
She was mortified. “I do not have to blow my nose!”
“Of course you do.”
“You’ve been driving me crazy from the minute I set eyes on you!” she accused him and, snatching the handkerchief away from him, blew her nose. “You think I regularly invite strangers home? It’s all your fault. You…confused me. And I never cry. Certainly never on some—”
“Stranger’s lap?” he supplied readily.
“You may find all of this very funny—”
“Loren, it’s obviously not a rational day for you. You might as well give in to your feelings…”
She tensed like a coil when his head came down. Their lips met at an awkward angle, a whispery tease of softness in the dark. His fingers twined in her hair, encouraging her neck back, and the next kiss was less sweet, with a coaxing hunger as his mouth covered hers, his hand on the smooth arch of her throat. She was very still, an instinct of danger rushing through her bloodstream, an awareness of how potent the blend of darkness, the man, the moment and the weakness inside her was. His lips lifted, brushed hers again more lightly. “You’re no virgin, Loren,” he said hoarsely. “Give me your mouth. You know what I want, give it to me.”
Though gently spoken, the order startled her. In her world, she was the one who gave gently spoken orders. While she was figuring out what it felt like to have her own game turned against her, his mouth fastened on hers, arching her neck back, his tongue searing inside her parted lips. The dizziness was so unexpected that she reached up to grasp his head, his hair vibrantly alive in her splayed hands, the texture so rich it curled around her fingers. One of his hands roamed from her thigh to the soft roundness of her hip, molding her closer to him.
She didn’t shy away until he moved up, caressing her ribcage. One of her slim hands tried to cover his then, tried to push him away. She was sensitive about her small breasts and always had been. And there was another reason she shied instinctively…
His hand didn’t seem to understand denial. It soothed and gentled and coaxed and teased all the surrounding flesh, and finally closed in on what it wanted at the same time that a helpless little murmur escaped from her throat. Her breast, so tender and vulnerable, seemed to swell in an effort to fit his huge hand. Like lightning, she felt suddenly let loose, the pressure of her mouth matching his as her fingers tightened in his hair, a tension she knew he could feel in her thighs.
He knew. He was not the kind of man to worry about silver when he’d found gold. He coveted that response, kneading her soft breast until she was trembling, until her back arched for the touch of him and there seemed nothing but sweet wildness in her veins. He was too smart, her stranger. If he’d go back to caressing her thigh, she could go back to feeling like warm melted butter. As it was, she felt on fire, and he was deliberately fanning those flames, obviously taking pleasure from her pleasure…
There was moisture on his forehead when he stood up and slowly lowered her to her feet. When she was steady, he severed all contact abruptly, breathing heavily as he left the room.
Loren stood still in the darkness. She felt like hot honey inside, and the sensation left her bemused and a little ashamed. Buck was back in a moment, holding two coats, and they put them on in silence.
It was freezing outside, black-cat dark, moonless. Tree limbs stretched stark and naked to the sky, the ground was still layered with snow except for the drive itself. She expected…she didn’t know what. Some comment from him, something awkward.
It just wasn’t that way. They walked in the silence, pulse rates forced to normal, breathing deeply of the frigid air. Even before she was cold, he had enfolded her just beneath his shoulder, snuggling her warm and close, but there was no longer any danger in his closeness.
“You’re so damned small,”
he complained.
She smiled up at him. It was all going to feel very wrong at some point, but it didn’t just yet. His arms felt like a gift.
“It won’t always be this way, you know,” he said finally. “Your grandfather, apart from his obvious problem, he isn’t well, is he?”
“No,” she admitted.
“And your sister will grow up. I look at her and thank God I’m not eighteen anymore. We offer up our weaknesses on a platter at that age; life’s way of ensuring we learn from experience, perhaps. You can’t test the waters for her, Loren, not the waters she needs to test.” He kissed her softly on the forehead and then stopped, burrowing her coat collar up around her neck before his arm circled her again.
“I hate money,” she murmured absently.
“Pardon?”
“You’re out of work, Buck, you can surely understand how hard it is to not have enough money. But we used to have too much of it in this family. Gramps stopped trying when he lost it. And Angela—only new clothes and stereos make her feel secure. My parents were killed on a boat that cost more than I make in ten years. Money…it sours people, confuses them…you can’t know,” she said bitterly. “My husband, too, was destroyed by it. Hal had more money than he knew what to do with. I tried to make our marriage work, but there just wasn’t anything there. It was always solve every problem with money…” She hesitated. “You’re different, Buck. I’m not trying to make something out of what happened in the library, so don’t…worry. I’m not a clinger; I know you’re about to walk out of my life, and that’s fine. But I’d like to tell you…”
“Loren—”
The gravelly voice sounded disturbed, but she thought she understood. “No. I don’t want to embarrass you. But you’re real, Buck. You’re not corrupted by that moneyed world… Sometimes I feel like a character in a Tennessee Williams play, trying to keep up this house when I know I can’t, caring for Gramps and Angela—”
“Stop it, Loren.”
She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth softly, barely noticing the sudden rigidity in his shoulders. “You haven’t got money, and I love you for that. I don’t want a love affair, and I haven’t the time or energy for it if I did. Just thank you, Buck. I needed your particular brand of man this evening, and you came through better than anyone I’ve known in a very long time.”
Kisses From Heaven Page 3
