Tonight she pulled it up and used combs to hold it off her ears while curls cascaded down her back, and she thought about that rainy day. It was raining again, but the room was rosy and glowing. She and Jarrod hadn't talked any more about the uncontrolled lust that had overtaken them in the rain. Except for her telling him that she wasn't pregnant, they had silently agreed to drop the subject and go on. He hadn't pressured her into anything. They slept each night in the same bed and by morning were always entangled in each other's arms, as if some magnet drew them across the sheets until they were touching and holding each other.
Some nights Catherine woke to Jarrod's kisses, and other nights the kisses and lovemaking began before they reached the bed.
He was killing her with kindness. And she was loving it. She found notes under her pillow in the morning, or he had flowers delivered to her desk. He'd arrive for an impromptu dinner or they'd take long, quiet walks along the coast with only the wind and the gulls for company.
And the nights. The magnificent, magical, marvelous nights when they made love. She'd never known anything could be this wondrous, fantastic, extraordinary. Yet each night when they turned out the lights the amazement happened again.
Catherine looked down at the note in her hand. I love the red dress. It's got all the right moves. Inside and out. She'd found this note taped to the bathroom mirror the morning after their dinner at Legacy's. The tiny message said so much. She remembered Jarrod removing that red dress. He'd taken an excruciating amount of time to pull the zipper to its base, kissing her skin from neck to waist as each section of cloth revealed another square of skin. By the time he had it all the way down, she thought she'd burn up from re-entry into an unexpected atmosphere.
Catherine looked at herself in the mirror. The face staring back at her was vastly different from the one that had looked at her a month ago. The night they danced. The night Jarrod made everything right. Now Catherine longed to see him, wake to find him next to her, hold him in her sleep and laugh with him. She loved the laughter.
She heard him in the downstairs hall. Catherine returned the card to the box in her drawer where she kept all the cards and notes he'd left her, the origami couple and a pressed rose. She closed it. Her heart lifted and she left the bedroom almost at a run. He was later tonight than usual. Something was keeping him at the office, and he'd taken to bringing work home, but he didn't spend all his time working. She couldn't complain about his treatment of her. He'd promised her on their honeymoon that he would be attentive, and he was.
At the bottom of the steps, he swept her into his arms and swung her around. "What's going on?" she asked, feeling the room spin.
"I have a wonderful idea."
He kissed her quickly as he did every night when he came in. Then, in a routine she'd come to expect, he kissed her again. This time with meaning and passion, pulling her against the full length of his body, threading his fingers into her hair and holding her like some precious object he cherished. It was a heady kiss, and she didn't fail to answer it with a frantic weakness that had her clinging to him.
"What's your wonderful idea?" Catherine asked on the breathless cloud where she floated when Jarrod lifted his head.
He loosened his tie as they headed for the kitchen. Jenny and Christian were gone and their meal was warm and waiting.
"I have to go to Maine tomorrow."
Catherine stopped in the middle of taking plates down.
"We've never been apart." She said it before she realized it. "Not overnight," she finished.
Jarrod took the plates from her and set them on the counter. She was still holding them in the air, as if she'd lost her ability to talk and work at the same time. He took silverware from the drawer.
"How long will you be gone?" She turned to get glasses, hoping he didn't hear the note of dismay in her voice.
"Three days, but—" He stopped, as if there should be a drumroll. "Come up Friday? We'll spend the weekend. Make it a mini-second honeymoon."
Today was Tuesday. He'd be gone Wednesday and Thursday night. She'd see him Friday. Two nights sounded like an eternity. She didn't want to be separated from him for that long. Yet Catherine smiled.
"I think it's a wonderful idea too."
***
Catherine tossed and turned Wednesday and Thursday nights. She missed Jarrod. The house felt strange without him. He'd only lived there for a little over a month, yet his presence was everywhere, especially in the huge bed they shared. And the drawers where he'd brought his clothes back.
She took Friday off, wanting to leave early, but had to keep her doctor's appointment. She saw the gynecologist, and in her purse was a prescription for birth control pills. She didn't have time to fill it.
Jarrod had driven the Jeep. She had only enough time to make the train. She would meet Jarrod at the hotel. A car waited for her at the train station in Portland and drove her away from the coast to the tiny town of Standish. Jarrod's things were there when she arrived, but he was still working. The hotel turned out to be a small country house he'd taken for the weekend.
The eighteenth-century building, set behind a fence in the shadow of huge trees, took on the charm of a Christmas card. It was made totally of stone, various shades of gray and white, and tucked into the setting as if some architect had designed it. She could see Jarrod in this scene. Humor aside, he saw the world for its beauty, a type that couldn't be formed with cement and bricks, but with time and care.
The house had two floors, three small bedrooms and no closets. The furnishings were replicas from the past, made more comfortable for guests. Warm fires burned in all the rooms, although the house had central heating. Catherine loved it.
She suddenly remembered being very small. She smelled bread, her grandmother's bread. They baked it from scratch, and her grandmother would let her help. Catherine could see herself, five years old, covered from neck to foot with a long apron and flour in her hair, on her cheeks and chin, her shoes, the floor and the apron. She sniffed, hoping she could really smell it again, and had an urge to bake.
She heard the front door open.
"Hey, Lucy. It's Ricky. I'm home."
Catherine didn't know where the tears came from, but they were in her eyes. Her feet moved of their own accord. She ran toward Jarrod, throwing herself at him, realizing how much she had missed him. He looked wonderful, better than wonderful. He lifted her off the floor and squeezed her tight.
"You missed me," he told her. She wouldn't have denied it if he'd asked. "Good."
His mouth settled on hers, his tongue mingling with the salt of happy tears spilling from her eyes. Catherine kissed him as if the last two days had been two centuries. She had missed him terribly, and she let her kiss tell him. She pushed his coat down his arms so she could feel the warmth of him, know that he was there, real, solid, and that she was holding him. She kissed him with the knowledge that something inside her had been pent up. Then, with a snap, the floodgates were torn from their hinges, and nothing short of a tsunami wave could reverse the emotion driving her.
"I was going to wait," Jarrod said, his voice dark as night. "I was going to take you to dinner," he breathed against her mouth. "Order champagne, buy you flowers." Each phrase traded kiss for kiss. "But I'll be damned if I can wait another moment."
In seconds, he was hustling her out of the turtleneck sweater she wore and pulling her jeans down. There could be no waiting between them. They had been separated for two days and two long nights. Each second had taken hours to pass, each minute, days.
Catherine was down to her lace panties and Jarrod to a skimpy pair of black silky briefs before they took in air.
"You wore those to work?" she asked.
"Yeah,'' he said." And it was hell knowing you were going to be here when I got back."
He pulled her back into his arms. His aroused body pressed against hers. Catherine put her hands on his sides, under his arms, both to steady herself and to hold on to the sensation of
raw sexuality that lit through her like a sudden fire-burst. She ran her hand deliberately down Jarrod's side, feeling the tight muscles, until she came to the tops of the briefs. The fabric was slippery as water. She caressed his buttocks and felt his reaction press deeper into her body.
Jarrod's kiss deepened. The raw, feverish hunger in him pushed her back. Her hands went inside the fabric, moving up to touch hot, scalding, naked skin. Her blood gushed through her. She pulled the fabric from the hem down, sliding her hands around his body. His fingers bit into her shoulders. She ignored the pain. She felt his knees bend and heard the almost painful cry come from his throat.
Her hands continued around him, pulling as she went in a slow, determined pattern, as if they were on a road with only one entrance and no exit. There was no turning back. Her fingers closed over him, touching skin so rigid she could feel her own body flow in anticipation. Catherine rubbed her thumb over the tight skin of his penis. She looked at his eyes, saw them widen in rapturous pleasure, the pupils dilate to the size of saucers, saw the clear reflection of herself in his soul. The vision was like a narcotic, an instant high.
She took Jarrod's hand and they settled to the floor. The fire burned in the hearth and inside her. A handmade quilt lay across the sofa back in case the room was too cold. Catherine wouldn't need it. Jarrod covered her body, and he was all the heat she would need. She lay down and he stretched out next to her, taking her in his arms and kissing her again. His hand worked a slow, zigzag line down her sides, across her breasts, over her stomach to the small bud between her legs.
"You're so hot," he said.
"I'm on fire," she answered him between kisses. Jarrod moved quickly. He covered her. His body, huge and powerful in its wonder and excitement, drove smoothly and deeply into her. Catherine gasped at the pleasant torment of his entry. Her body contracted, holding him inside her, releasing a fraction to allow him to withdraw before gasping and taking him back in again. She was losing it. She knew she was, and she knew she had no control. Nor did she want control. The creature who lived inside her was out. That creature was aggressive, wanton, a hussy. Pushing Jarrod over, her hair flying out of its confines as she sat over him, her legs parallel to his, her body aligned with his. She gave, she took, she gave, she took.
***
Catherine thought of nothing but the man with her, giving him the pleasure he deserved, giving him what she had to give. Jarrod caught her waist and rose up with her to the rhythm she created. They danced through time, through the beat of blood drums, through the awesome tune of the mating dance, through the fever of attraction, need, arousal, satisfaction. In her blood was a new kind of power and in her arms was the only man who could call for it, speak to the drums, understand the language and answer it.
And Catherine heard the answer. She didn't know from which of them it came, but the scream reached the ceiling and she collapsed. Jarrod rolled her over, still joined in the most intimate way.
"I'm sorry it was so fast, Catherine. You don't know what you do to me."
"What I do to you? My God, Jarrod, what you do to me!" She took a breath. "I can't describe it. I wish I could make you understand." She buried her face in his chest, kissing him there.
"I understand," he groaned.
"With you it's like I'm. . .whole." It was the only word she could think of to explain how she felt. He completed her. He filled all the crevices in her that needed filling, even those she didn't know existed. Jarrod seemed to find them and complement them.
She was still thinking it half an hour later. Jarrod had dragged the quilt over them and fallen asleep. She watched him, wondering why she wasn't asleep too. After her previous two nights of tossing and turning, she should be dead on her feet, but instead she was giddy with satisfaction. She wondered how and when it had happened. When had she stopped looking at Jarrod as the practical joker and started seeing him as a lover? Why were his kisses so powerful to her that the thought of them made her breasts point in his direction?
She didn't understand it. He'd spent five years in England and she'd only thought of him on his birthday and when something triggered the memory of one of his embarrassing jokes. Yet here she was, lying next to him, married to him, even if it was temporarily, and all she could think of was running her hands down his face, under the covers, down his chest, waking him and making love again.
Catherine knew better than to call it having sex. The room was filled with the electric smell of their lovemaking. That was what they had done. She'd had sex before, been engaged to someone else, but no one had made her feel as complete as Jarrod.
***
The kitchen in Stone House, the name Catherine had given it, was a mixture of ages and times. The old stove was a wood burner. There was a pantry filled with dry goods and a locker with churned butter and cured meats. The worktable looked as if it had been there since the stones were set. Its surface was deeply contoured from use by many working hands.
Catherine had never cooked on a wood stove. She'd only ever seen one in a movie. She had no idea how to regulate the oven, how much wood to use or even if adding more wood would produce more heat. She could start a fire in a fireplace and, if pressed, could start a campfire with only rocks and twigs. But this house made her think of baking bread, and she would master that. There was something about the rustic nature of the house that brought out the cook in her. At home, Jenny cooked all her meals except lunch. She hadn't cooked in a long while. When she'd lived in New York, she mainly ate out or picked up carry-out on her way back to her tiny apartment.
She and Jarrod had spent most of the day trying to make up for the time they had lost while apart. They'd made love more times than she could count. In the late afternoon they'd gone upstairs, where they'd made love in the eighteenth-century bed with its high headboard. Jarrod still slept soundly there.
Catherine was downstairs finding something to eat when the thought of baking bread came back to her. She wasn't clever enough to compose the notes that Jarrod left on her pillow, and she had no roses for him to find when he woke. While cooking wasn't one of her talents, baking was something she enjoyed, thanks to the hours she'd spent in the kitchen with her grandmother.
Surprised to find she remembered the ingredients she needed to make bread and that they were all there, including yeast that was still fresh, she went to work. An hour later, the kitchen was warm and cozy and the bread was covered for the first rise. While she'd found a cookbook that dated back to her grandmother's teens and used it to supplement her memory, she had flour and wet spots all over the work stand.
Catherine cleaned her mess, feeling satisfied with the result. She made herself a cup of coffee, added logs to the fire in the main room of the house and the huge hearth in the kitchen. Embers snapped and exploded between her and the firewall, spangling the air with fiery stars. Across from the center table in the kitchen was an overstaffed sofa that changed the kitchen into a family room, a place for guests to sit and have coffee while they talked to the cook. Catherine curled up on the sofa with her coffee cup and looked out the window onto the snowy yard. This was the time for storytelling.
When her grandmother was alive and they got to this point in the baking process, they would make hot chocolate and talk. Her grandmother would tell her stories from her childhood on the island, before it was fully developed. Catherine would pour out her problems and ask her adolescent questions. Her grandmother always listened. She never laughed or made Catherine feel young and awkward.
She smiled at the memory of the thin woman with her gray hair and a hug that could solve all the problems of the world. She wondered what her grandmother would make of her and Jarrod. Catherine sipped her coffee. A glow passed over her as if her grandmother had touched her, as if she approved of them.
Outside the yard was white. Snow covered the ground from the door to the small pond that ended the property. Catherine leaned closer to the window. A deer foraged near the pond. She froze, as surely as if she wa
s outside and had turned around to find herself lined up with the animal. She watched as another one joined the first. They came closer to the house, making footprints in the clean snow. Catherine watched them with the wonder of a five-year-old on her first trip to the zoo. She rarely saw deer where she lived. There were plenty of trees around her, but development, new houses and condominiums had forced the wildlife farther and farther into the woods.
Catherine was only six years old when she'd seen her first deer. Her grandmother was driving and she was in the backseat, barely able to see through the side window. Jarrod was nine and sat in the front passenger seat. He was tall for his age, although Catherine didn't know it then. He looked like a giant to her. And a mean giant at that. She smiled at the thought of him now. He was still a giant, but he could be gentle. She knew how gentle. She glanced up, taking her eyes away from the window and the deer outside, as if she could see Jarrod through the thick walls of Stone House.
It was winter then, too. There had been snow, but it had been cleared to the side of the road. The sun was shining brightly, reflecting off the fields of white. She had to squint to keep her eyes open. Her grandmother had been taking them shopping. She and Jarrod were going to buy Christmas presents for their parents.
There weren't many houses along that road then, only a few here and there set back from the pavement. Now there was a development there, with all the same gray siding and covered chimneys to make them maintenance-free. She could see one house in the distance. It had been decorated with twinkling lights that outlined the entire structure. The lights were on even in the bright sun. Catherine remembered thinking it was Santa's house. In the yard was a sleigh. Her mind remembered it as life-sized. Sitting on the seat was a Santa Claus with a bag of brightly colored boxes.
They were almost past it when she saw the deer. They came running out of the woods, three of them. Catherine screamed, thinking they were Santa Claus's reindeer. They rounded the house and headed toward the sleigh. Her grandmother stopped the car. She watched them running through the yard until they disappeared into a different part of the woods. No matter how much Jarrod told her they weren't Dasher and Dancer and Comet, Catherine knew better.
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