Pillow Talk

by Hailey North

  Okay, Parker, admit it, you want her. And bad. He glanced back at Meg. She'd been awfully quiet all afternoon. "Penny for your thoughts."

  A flash of her usual spirit crossed her face. "Does anyone really say that?"

  He nodded, what he knew must be a goofy grin on his face.

  "Okay, then," she said, "I'm just absorbing the moment. What's it like here in the summer?"

  Had she been thinking about his skinny-dipping comment? He hoped so. "I wish I could say it's equally beautiful in the middle of July but actually it's hot and humid and the air is abuzz with mosquitoes."

  She looked surprised. "But you said you loved coming here in the summer."

  "The bad stuff fades in your memory, doesn't it?" He grinned. "What's a ten-year-old care about a few dozen insect bites? Imagine Gus and Teddy. If they're that happy with one fish apiece, they'd go nuts over a basketful."

  She laughed. "Do you still spend summers here?"

  "Only a few days here and there. But now I plan to spend a lot more time."

  "Now?"

  "Sure. I can't let Gus and Teddy grow up without bucketsful of fish."

  "Teddy?"

  Her voice carried an edge to it. He'd gone and done it again. Organizing her life like a bossy Ponthier. "I mean, if you'd want me to invite Teddy, I'd bring him, too.”

  "Oh." Either his answer or the question or both made her sad. He felt the weight of her sorrow. Her step slowed.

  He matched his pace to hers. Before he could say anything else, Ellen and Samantha ran back to them. "What's next?" Ellen asked, clearly expecting to be entertained further.

  "Sugarcane harvesting," Parker said. "Most of it's finished by now but there's still a field left to be cut."

  "Oh." She considered for a moment as they walked. "That's okay," she said, "as long as it doesn't flop when it's cut."

  "Absolutely no flopping," Parker said seriously.

  They'd reached the edge of the back garden. Parker spotted Mr. Solomon next to his pickup truck and waved him over. He introduced Meg and the children. Samantha held up Barbie and Ken to be introduced, too.

  Mr. Solomon's sun-lined face crinkled even more around his eyes. He had at least a dozen grandchildren. "Mr. Ken and Miss Barbie, too. Well, now, I'm honored to meet you both."

  Samantha glowed. Parker assumed most adults ignored her penchant for treating her dolls like friends in tow. He pretty much had until Meg taught him about make-believe.

  Make-believe.

  "Meg, would it be all right with you—if Mr. Solomon had time, that is—if he showed the kids the sugarcane harvesting while I give you a tour of the house?" He held his breath, willing none of the children to proclaim they'd rather see the house than a bunch of plants.

  Meg gazed back at Parker. He read her message. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to be alone with him as badly as he wanted her in his arms again.

  "Mr. Solomon's a very careful driver and most strict chaperone," he said.

  The older man nodded. "That is true." He scratched at a piece of lint on his spotless overalls. "Father of five and grandfather of eleven," he added, throwing a thoughtful and speculative look in Parker's direction.

  A look Parker didn't miss. He'd introduced her only as Meg, omitting a last name. Earlier when Parker had collected the paraphernalia to go along with the fishing rods, the caretaker had expressed his sympathy for Jules's death. Either news of his marriage hadn't reached Sugar Bridge or Solomon, who'd had little use for Jules in recent years, paid it little heed.

  "The crew's in the field about five miles down the road," Solomon added.

  "Say, yes, Mom." Ellen had one hand on the handle of Solomon's pickup.

  Meg raised her brows. She didn't have to say a word; her forbidding expression said it all.

  Parker felt like glaring at the girl himself. He didn't want the private tour he had planned for Meg spoiled, but he did understand the need for discipline.

  Teddy kicked Ellen. "Can't you ever remember to say please? Don't spoil it for the rest of us."

  "I'm sorry, Mom. Please may we go? I'm sure it's much more educational than catching fish."

  Gus made a face. "Girls."

  "You'll behave and do as Mr. Solomon says?"

  They all nodded. Even Jem barked, which made Parker smile.

  Meg turned to him. "Could he take the van so they don't have to ride in the back of the pickup?"

  Groans issued from the kids.

  "Anything you say," Parker responded, winking at Solomon.

  The smile she gave him made him glad he could indeed give her whatever she desired. He tossed the keys to Solomon, thanked him, and listened as Meg reminded the kids to behave.

  They piled into the van and drove off, the bucket of fish forgotten. Parker collected it as he and Meg walked toward the house. He'd dump ice over the fish. To Meg he said, "They'll be fine with Solomon."

  "Did he raise you here the way Horton raised you in New Orleans?"

  Parker nodded. "Pretty much. Teensy hated it out here—almost as much as my father did. Grandfather would stay when he could but he was usually busy."

  "Working?"

  He nodded and as they were headed to the house via the brick pathways and shrubbery separating the outbuildings from the main house, he changed the subject. "That back building is the original kitchen. It was set well away from the house for fire prevention and cooling purposes."

  "Makes me appreciate my microwave," Meg said. "They had to carry the food all this way?"

  "The house dates from 1837. In the antebellum or pre-Civil War days, slaves would have done that. Afterwards"—he shrugged—"for a few years there was scarcely enough food to worry about whether it was hot or cold. When fortunes picked up again, so did technology."

  He thought she was looking at him a little strangely and understood why when she said, "It's odd to hear someone say slaves so matter of factly."

  "It was just that—a fact of life, a reality of the labor system of the old south. Though in 1809 transporting slaves into Louisiana from other countries was made illegal."

  "That long before the civil war?"

  "Well, they could still be bought and sold across state lines."

  "Oh." She looked around, taking in her surroundings. "That certainly seems a long time ago."

  "A different world, to be sure, but I do think we're a product of our history, the sum total of our family traditions.”

  Meg was silent.

  He could have slapped himself for his thoughtlessness. What a thing to say to a woman who knew nothing about her parentage let alone the almost two hundred years of tradition he represented. "I'm sorry,” he said. "What a klutz I am."

  "No, it's okay," she said, lifting her eyes to his. "It's just such a different world view. It's actually fascinating, but it does make me feel as if somehow I've been traveling through life missing something powerful and elemental."

  They stopped at the back of the breezeway beneath the second-floor balconies, which were supported by columns arranged around the entire first floor level of the house.

  "And," Meg went on, "I think I'm a little envious, too."

  He sat the bucket of fish down. "Remember what Samantha offered Gus the other night?"

  Her eyes widened. She nodded.

  "Same offer. I'll share my heritage." As he said the words, he wasn't sure himself what he meant. The words were ambiguous. Just how much was he willing to share?

  His words might be ambiguous, but his feelings were not.

  He leaned closer, tipping her lips to meet his kiss.

  After a long, sweet plundering kiss, he lifted his head. He could have sworn he detected a glimmer of moisture in her eyes before she pulled his mouth back to hers.

  When she finally broke free of the hungry kiss she whispered, "Is there a Mrs. Solomon loitering about the house?"

  He shook his head.

  "Good," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist.

  "Let me throw some ice
on these fish," he said, cursing his own sense of responsibility. But he wasn't going to be the one to tell Gus his catch had spoiled.

  "Hurry," she said, in a throaty voice he scarcely recognized as Meg's, "or you'll have to ice me down, too."

  Twenty-one

  Ice me down? Where had that brazen comment come from? Meg had amazed herself. But she wanted to experience loving Parker again before she walked out of his life. Now that she'd been offered the opportunity she was going to—as Ellen would say—go for it.

  Yet she stood rooted to the porch. Parker had left the door open when he whisked inside for the ice. Rather than follow him, she asked herself if she weren't having some sort of mid-life crisis about a decade early.

  The Meg she knew, the woman who packed lunches and oversaw homework and mediated quarrels and wore five-year old dresses so the kids could have new shoes, wasn't the woman poised on the back terrace of a Louisiana plantation house.

  A woman about to make love for the second time to a man she'd known less than a week.

  Parker reappeared carrying two fancy ice buckets. He tossed the contents over the fish, set the containers down, and held out his hands to her. "Now," he said, "we can concentrate on us."

  Us.

  What a sweet-sounding word. Meg smiled and, raising one of his hands to her lips, kissed the line of his knuckles. For today she'd indulge. For today she'd swap make-believe for reality.

  Hand in hand they crossed through a cheery kitchen, a walk-through pantry, and into a long hallway as wide as any of the rooms at Ponthier Place. The ceilings stretched way above her head and the chandeliers that hung down were ornamented by decorative plasterwork.

  They traversed the length of the hall, passing two different arrangements of a table and two chairs. Each table held a beautiful display of fresh flowers.

  "What beautiful bouquets. Are you sure there's no Mrs. Solomon?"

  Parker dropped her hand and put his arm around her, pulling her close. "Now that's a sexist assumption."

  "Oh." Meg considered that. "You are right."

  "Solomon's the green thumb. There's a greenhouse that he rules over."

  Meg leaned over and breathed in the scent of the roses. "So good. So alive," she said.

  "You like roses?"

  She nodded, stepping back from the table.

  "Especially pink and yellow. Not red, though. Red are so self-important."

  Parker laughed. "Then no red roses for you." He pulled two of the yellow roses from the vase. "If I were still ten, Solomon would have my hide for this, but I think he'll forgive me this time."

  Rather than handing them to her, he carried them in his hand. Almost to the front door, he stopped and turned Meg to face a mirror twice as large as the one in the library at Ponthier Place.

  She immediately blushed.

  Parker whispered, "No need to feel self-conscious. You are the most perfect woman I've ever known."

  Meg shook her head. "Oh, no. You've got that all wrong." Even make-believe couldn't go that far.

  Parker stroked the soft petals of a rose against her cheek.

  Meg felt the touch on her body as she watched him performing the gentle action in the mirror. The combined effect heightened her already yearning senses. She started to twist around, her need to press full length against his body driving her.

  "No hurry," Parker said, reaching for the top button of her long-sleeved shirt, then trailing the rose down the side of her neck.

  "But I feel like hurrying," Meg said, surprising herself at her own bluntness.

  Parker grinned. "Good, but you don't need to. I told Solomon not to come back for at least an hour." He slipped the second button free. "Now let me show you another room."

  Giving in to his game of slow seduction, Meg gazed at him in the mirror. She savored the hungry look in his darkened eyes. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Reaching her hands behind her, still watching him in the mirror, she ran her hands down the front of his thighs, then slowly worked them up just until her fingers rested out of reach of his arousal.

  She circled her derriere against him and whispered, "Two can tease, you know."

  He caught her and turned her, pressing her against him exactly the way she wanted him to. He possessed her mouth with his and this time she let her hands rise to cradle him. Even through the fabric of his jeans she felt the heat of him.

  Freeing her mouth, she knelt and pressed her lips against the bulge in his jeans.

  He groaned. Or moaned. Or called her name. She wasn't sure which, but she knew she reveled in his reaction. She wanted to give him everything today, hold nothing of herself back.

  "Meg," he finally said, "I think we ought to do the rest of the tour later."

  "What happened to nice and slow?" She asked, her eyes opened wide, batting her lashes to play with him.

  "Can't do it," he said. He tugged gently on her shoulders and she eased her body back to a standing position, kissing his abdomen and chest as he lifted her.

  A wide staircase rose from the central hall. Parker steered her towards it, an arm around her holding her close. He'd managed not to drop the roses, Meg noticed.

  "The master bedroom is downstairs, as it was in plantation days," Parker said as they mounted the stairs. "Typically there were bedrooms for the younger children, and when the boys reached about age twelve they slept in an outside house called the garconnierre."

  "To keep them out of mischief?"

  He grinned. "Or so they could get away with it without disturbing the rest of the house?"

  "Maybe we should go there," Meg murmured.

  "Too far away." He caught her even closer. They'd reached the top floor. "In modern times we've converted some rooms to guest rooms. I'll show you my favorite."

  His favorite was a spacious room with tall windows that opened like doors onto the upper balcony that ran the length of the house. They paused in front of the windows overlooking the lane of spreading oaks.

  "That's the Mississippi you see beyond the trees," Parker said, returning to where he'd left off on the buttons of her shirt.

  "So beautiful," Meg murmured.

  "So beautiful," Parker echoed, tugging her shirt free of the waistband of her jeans and sliding it from her body.

  "I don't know about that," Meg said. Even in the fading December sunlight, this room was much more well-lit than the darkened library where they'd made love the other evening. Plus when things had gotten really intimate they'd been under the covers of the children's tent with only the bobbing shadows of the flashlight.

  Parker lay the roses on a table and held her lightly by the shoulders. "Meg, you are one beautiful woman. I think maybe you don't give yourself enough credit."

  "No?" She knew she sounded hopeful. She wanted to believe him because he made her feel so beautiful.

  "No." Parker brushed a kiss across her lips. "The other night you taught me about make-believe. Today I'm offering to teach you just how beautiful you are."

  She considered his offer. It was no more preposterous than the fact that the two of them were about to bare their bodies to one another and share the most intimate gifts two people could give to one another. "For today," she said.

  "I'll take what I can get," Parker said, stripping off his sweatshirt and wondering what had happened to the arrogant man who could have his way with any woman of his acquaintance. Here he was, practically begging Meg to let him prove to her how beautiful a woman she was.

  The women he was used to accepted their beauty as a given, his appreciation as their due. God, but she had turned his world upside down.

  He smiled at her and reached for the buckle of her belt. With Meg, he liked his world so much better.

  She guided his hands, then placed both their hands on his belt. Easing it free, she tugged at the zipper of his jeans. She knelt and untied his shoes. He kicked them off and she did the same with hers. Then together, they both stripped free of their jeans and underwear.

  Naked, standing
together in front of the broad windows, they gazed at one another. "You are the most generous-hearted woman I know," Parker said. He picked up one of the roses and offered it to her.

  The other he carried as he led her across the room to the four poster bed.

  Meg watched as Parker pulled back the yellow and white coverlet. Her earlier boldness had almost deserted her when they'd stood naked in front of one another but Parker's admiring gaze had bolstered her confidence.

  Parker plucked several petals from the rose he held and scattered them over the sheets. "A bed fit for a beautiful princess," he said, "a beautiful princess who taught me the value of make-believe."

  Meg slipped onto the bed, half-sitting, half-lying against the mound of pillows. Parker sat on the edge of the bed facing her. He trailed the rose over her lips, then said, "The way you smile along with life is a beautiful thing."

  Running the silky petals up to her forehead, he said, "And your mind, so lively and sharp, makes you even more beautiful."

  "Keep going like this and you'll embarrass me," Meg said.

  He shook his head. "I promised to teach you how beautiful you are."

  She felt the touch of the rose on her earlobe and breathed in the scent. "You listen to people. And you don't just listen with your ears"—he lifted the rose and placed it over her heart—"you listen from here."

  Meg held out her arms to Parker. "Shh, you're making me feel all funny inside, telling me these things."

  "Funny good or funny bad?"

  "Oh, good."

  He smiled and circled the rose around her pubic hair. "And your sensuality, Meg, is unmatched."

  "It is?" She wanted to believe him but she'd always thought of herself as one who held back from expressing the full strength of her desires. Or perhaps she'd just never been with the right man before.

  He kissed the spot where the rose had touched and she sighed and dropped back more fully against the pillows, her legs parting and opening her body to Parker's exploration.