Wintergreen

by Jennifer Greene

  The crowd started boarding, all in a rush. His eyes captured hers. Captured, held, scolded her for moving, rejoiced that he had found her, and…loved her. He motioned, but she suddenly couldn’t move. For some insane reason, there were tears in her eyes, and a lump so thick in the back of her throat that she couldn’t breathe.

  “Misha?” This time it was Matthew who bumped into people without noticing. Concern etched sharp lines around his eyes as he hurried toward her, his hand instinctively reaching up to touch her cheek. “Darling, what’s wrong? We’ve only got another minute to get on-”

  “I can’t marry you, Matthew. I’m sorry. I can’t go on that plane. I can’t. I…can’t…” It was all in desperate, choked whispers. Not because of the crowd. She didn’t even see the crowd. She only saw Matthew’s face. The smile set suddenly in steel, shock, bewilderment, the haunting chill of stark pain, that special loving light in his eyes dimmed.

  “Misha. If it’s leaving Johnny, you know he fell in love with Mr. Rudowsky. And Freda’s just next door…” She could tell that he knew it wasn’t anything to do with Johnny. She’d never seen a man’s face go totally ashen, and her heart lurched. Splintered. “You don’t mean it, dammit. Misha. I love you. I know damn well you love me.”

  “Last call for flight three-oh-three to Toronto and Montreal.”

  “I love you, Matthew. But I can’t marry you. I won’t. It’s just…wrong. I should have known-”

  Matthew cast a distraught glance at the stewardess, who was motioning them toward the plane. It was past time. The cubbyhole of a lobby had emptied of everyone else. There were only the two of them. And a plane that wouldn’t wait. Matthew grasped her shoulders and tugged. “Dammit. You’re coming on that plane with me. We’ll talk there. This is no time-”

  “No,” she said desperately. “Matthew. I mean it. I’m not going.”

  “Mr. Whitaker, I’m sorry, but-”

  He motioned the pretty stewardess away, his eyes never leaving Lorna’s. Boring into hers. “I’m going to marry you, Misha.”

  She shook her head wildly. “Go,” she whispered. “You were planning on this vacation anyway, Matthew. Take it. Get away. You’ll see I’m right.”

  She couldn’t stand the look in his eyes any longer. She couldn’t stand herself. When she glimpsed the small sign for the women’s room across the hall, she headed toward it. She heard his shout, but she had already taken off at a run.

  The heel of her hand jammed against the door and just that quickly she was through. Inside, away from him. She leaned back against the white-tiled wall, gasping, aching for breath…

  Through eyes blurred by tears, she suddenly realized there was a woman gaping at her. She was not alone in the restroom. The other woman was older, with a sparkle of white hair shining with a blue rinse; she was dressed all in powder blue. “You just have to leave a loved one behind, too, honey?”

  “I…” Lorna saw that the other woman, too, had tears in her eyes. “Yes.” Go away, please.

  The lady talked. How hard it was to let her husband get on the plane, how she hated separations. Lorna didn’t hear. She wrenched herself away from the wall and pretended to get a brush and lipstick out of her purse. Tears kept flowing out of her eyes. Big, fat tears, agonizingly slow. They wouldn’t stop. She pretended she could see herself in the mirror and applied powder over the tears, which didn’t have any effect at all. The woman finally left, and Lorna stopped trying.

  She leaned both hands on the sink and closed her eyes, willing herself not to be sick, waiting for the flood of tears to cease, terrified they were never going to. A thousand things flashed through her mind. She could not walk through the airport crying hysterically. She had no way to get home. She had no desire to go home. There was nowhere to go. Her reading glasses were on the way to Quebec. She had no tissues. When she traveled with Johnny, she never forgot tissues. For herself, she never considered that she would have to mop up the Great Salt Lake. Could anyone actually die of heartache? Her whole body was shaking violently…

  Don’t hurt him, Mr. Whitaker had charged her.

  Nine years flashed in front of her mind in seconds. The guilt that had been so much a part of her life. The fact that she had been wrongly accused of adultery had shaped so much of those years. She had never trusted another man until Matthew. She had chased away any hint of commitment on the part of any man who had dared try. Never again was she going to put herself in a position where she could be tried and judged without a sentence.

  She knew all that. She couldn’t imagine how she had successfully lied to herself for so long.

  Guilt was the key. Feeling guilty, when she had convinced herself she was innocent. Only Matthew had loved her, and she had fallen in love with him, facing up to the real truth. She had felt guilty over Richard, because she was guilty.

  Not of adultery. But in her own heart, of worse. She had pledged to love, honor and cherish Richard for the rest of her life, and she had been very, very sure she was doing the right thing. But less than a year later, she was out of love. Less than a year later, she cared very little for him, could not seem to love, to respect, to cherish him. Richard had never done anything terrible to her, yet she had hated it when he so much as touched her…

  And for nine years, she had buried those feelings, refused to admit that she was incapable of lasting love. Getting a man’s love, yes. But holding it, loving for the long term…No one could have made more of a mess of her life than she had nine years ago. And now she loved Matthew just too damned much…

  Her eyes were on fire. Mindlessly, she plucked paper towels from the dispenser, soaked them in cold water and held them against her eyes, leaning over the sink. The most horrible sounds were coming from her throat! She was terrified someone was going to walk in. If she pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, she would stop crying.

  “That’s enough, Misha.”

  She jerked up, shocked. Matthew could not conceivably be in the women’s restroom. Yet he took the matted paper towels out of her hands, brushed them one more time against her eyes, then pressed her face to his shoulder and folded his arms around her like a vise.

  “No more,” he said furiously. “Dammit, Misha, you’ll make yourself sick crying like that. Stop it. Right now.”

  “Matthew…” She could smell the soap he used, the unique smell that was Matthew. His whole body was rigidly tense; his shoulders wouldn’t give…but the fingers that brushed back her hair were infinitely gentle. He cupped her face in his hands and forced her to look at him through tear-blurred eyes.

  “Why do you judge yourself so damned harshly for being human, Misha? So the long term is scary as hell. You and I are going to make it. We’re going to laugh through the good times and fight through the bad times, and we’re going to make it work, Misha. Because what we have is worth fighting for.”

  He searched through her purse. He knew nothing about putting powder on cheeks, nothing about hairstyles. She could tell by the way he used a brush.

  “Matthew-”

  “You think you’re the only one who’s ever had a failure in the past, Misha. You’re the only one who passed sentence on yourself, honey. No one else has. No one else could. We’re all in the same boat. All people…trying hard. You want a promise, Misha? All right, then. I promise that you’re going to love me until you’re ninety-four and I’m a hundred and three. And you are never again, never, going to cause me to hold up a plane with two hundred and seventy-four people aboard. I mean that.”

  She glanced up. He was furious. Not unsure, not less loving, not less compassionate, but almost angry enough to shake her. Something jelled inside her. All the pain that had ached through her… No, it wasn’t simply going to go away. But love was bursting inside her, completely different from what she’d once thought love felt like. It really wasn’t the same; she had been very stupid to think she was the same young girl she had once been. And suddenly she found it impossible to believe that she wouldn’t love Matthew when
she was ninety-four.

  “Ready?” he demanded harshly.

  “Ready,” she agreed. All her love was in her eyes. And suddenly laughter, too-to match his.

  One arm plunged into the deep, sudsy water. Lorna felt fingertips marching down her thighs, over her knees and calves. Finally, they lingered on her toes, and Matthew’s arm came up dripping. “Still cold,” he pronounced.

  “Matthew, this water is at cauldron temperature.”

  “Your toes were cold.”

  Lorna gave in and sank farther down into the luxurious warmth, leaning her turbaned head back against the porcelain tub. Matthew was perched on the edge, wearing a huge white towel, alternately sipping Caribou, a drink that was popular among the Québecois, and checking her body temperature. Since she warmed spontaneously to his touch, there had really been no need for a bath at all, even if they had spent most of the day in subzero temperatures; but there was no telling Matthew that. He was not in a reasonable mood.

  He had not really been in a reasonable mood for the past three days. Quebec’s winter festival was different than anything Lorna had experienced. This morning, for example, they’d taken a calèche ride around the city, bundled in fur robes as their carriage toured the old Lower Town. Narrow cobbled streets were lined by century-old houses in the European tradition. Near the Château Frontenac where they were staying, the land plunged more than three hundred feet down to a rolling St. Lawrence River. Lorna, with her love of history and languages, could not have had a better time.

  After that they’d watched the ice sculptors, finishing the last of their masterpieces before the contest and parade, working with hatchets and water pails. Ten-foot-deep chunks of snow became massive demons and fairies, animals and children. The sun shone down on a city turned into diamonds, the prisms of ice breathtaking, reflecting one off the other like a million precious stones. The crowds were delighted, sipping Caribou, as Lorna and Matthew were, to warm themselves. There was still time to see a canoe race through a river made dangerous by floating ice, and only when exhausted and freezing did they finally return to the château in the early evening.

  And as far as freezing… Lorna really wasn’t cold. Matthew had proved himself unreasonable about keeping her warm over the past few days. The white fur boots had cost him a fortune. Then there had been the outfit to match, then a dress in scarlet cashmere that she didn’t need. The French dressmaker had wooed him from her window… So had a man who did charcoal portraits… So had a young woman who designed jewelry. If Lorna had had any idea before of what a spendthrift Matthew was turning out to be…

  And the bath. He’d upended a half bottle of L’air du Temps in the water while she was undressing. Her entire perfume supply for the trip, barring the three vials he’d purchased that were too expensive to use. And until now, Lorna had thought that champagne was strictly for Christmas and weddings. She reached over to pour another glassful from the bottle opened solely for her, then leaned back, regarding Matthew through thick lashes, feeling deliciously decadent and thoroughly aroused.

  His dark brown eyes had a sensual snap of fire in them tonight. Three drops of moisture glistened on his brow; a few more were still nestled in the furry mat on his chest from his recent shower. He’d just used a lime-scented shaving cream, and the faint smell lingered in the small, warm room; her fingers longed to test just how soft those cheeks were after shaving. They looked honey-soft. The towel draped around his middle would take less than a small tug to free.

  His chest hair intrigued her; the mat was short and oddly bristly, and she couldn’t understand why she found the feel of it so exciting. Perhaps because it was shaped like an arrow, a vertical line of it dividing his ribs, and around his stomach rather feathering out. Definitely an arrow, pointing down…

  “Misha.”

  She glanced up innocently.

  “We’re here to ensure that you get warm. When you came in you were damn well blue.” His stern voice lacked something in the way of authority; his eyes were dancing.

  “I’m getting warm, Matthew.” His unreasonable concern touched her, just as all his spoiling had touched her. She knew what he was trying to prove to her. It wasn’t necessary. She lifted her toe to flick open the drain.

  “Misha-”

  She coiled her legs under her, and in one graceful movement stood up, water shimmering down over the natural hills and valleys of a very definitely feminine form. Lorna’s instinct would have been to reach for a towel. Misha’s was not. Her breasts were absolutely beautiful. Matthew’s eyes told her that. He liked the way they tilted up; he liked their firmness; he liked their small, firm nipples. He liked the slight curve of her stomach, the rounded hips…

  He wrapped a towel around her very quickly, not chancing her catching cold. In another way, he guaranteed her not catching cold, because the moment his fingertips touched warm satin flesh, all that formidable control seemed to leave him. She was snatched up to just that warmth she had been impatient for.

  The chest hair rubbing against her bare breasts was as exciting as she remembered. Rough and soft, fierce and sweet. Lime and champagne and perfume; she was going to make her first fortune bottling that combination. More compelling yet was Matthew’s own scent, surrounding her just as his arms surrounded her, just as his lips crushed hers, inviting her into their own private cocoon. Inviting? Insisting!

  She was dry before he nestled her on top of the comforters and pillows. All her life she would associate the Château Frontenac with pale rose brocade and cream, with a mattress too soft and a comforter of down. So much softness, so much pale romance in the old hotel…while Matthew next to her contrasted to that. No part of him was soft. He was sure and male and vital, a primitive, lusty lover.

  He didn’t believe in inhibitions. All her life she believed a woman had a right to a few inhibitions. He was totally unreasonable…

  “How I love the feel of you, Misha…”

  She shivered violently. The contrast from languid, sensual warm bath to cool silken sheets was a minuscule excuse for that, nothing of any consequence. Matthew was working, very hard, to make sure she became warm again, beginning with the one small nub of a nipple he had between his teeth, dark and smooth, swollen and pouting for him.

  He propped himself up long enough to study her breasts in lazy detail. “The other one has been neglected,” he pointed out to her.

  She flushed. There really was something disgraceful about the way her body responded to his touch. He worked on the other breast, while she practiced clenching and unclenching her hands on his shoulders. Then she spread her small fingers and stroked in slow circles down his sides to his hips, trying to pull him to her.

  He was still angry with her over the scene at the airport. She could tell by the way he had made love to her over the past three days. Where she had the fierce need to be taken, he had languorously taken his time. He nibbled when she wanted him to bite. When she wanted to touch, he had selfishly given her all the pleasure. She wanted to drive him out of his mind with wanting. He had driven her out of her mind. Deliberately.

  It did seem to even out at the end. She loved him far too much to let him always have his own way. She traced the muscles in his thigh with her fingers, applying pressure as she slowly worked the tense sinews. He groaned, most unhappy with her. His lips chased back up from her breast and captured her own lips again, scolding, paying her back with a tongue that flicked inside the warm softness of her mouth and drank from her sweetness.

  Those hands of his! He never stopped. Palms cradled her bottom and pressed her to his hips. He was utterly possessive, and he knew exactly what she wanted. One would think he owned her hips. One would think it was his privilege to mold them exactly as he wanted, as if he actually believed he had some sort of sensual power over her…

  No, he hadn’t understood how she could have panicked at the airport. He was so sure that by spoiling her he could convince her of what they had. He was so wrong, her Matthew. He didn’t have to spoil
her into loving him. Perfection wasn’t the key. He was a bear first thing in the morning; he had yet to discover how impossible she could be on the first day of her period. She didn’t know exactly what had driven out the fear that love couldn’t last, that her ability to love wouldn’t last. Part of it was being with him, day and night, knowing what a complex man he was, knowing she could never uncover all the layers… Seeing the light in his eyes when he looked at her, never wanting that to be extinguished. Knowing he loved her. Really loved her. Not an image, but the woman with disheveled hair in the morning who loved sandals and Christmas and, yes, who occasionally needed privacy, whose temper flared up when she was tired, who absolutely resented not being mechanical… She loved him the same way. The champagne and the candles mattered, but they were the frosting. She knew Matthew. She knew the way he looked in the morning, and how he hated standing in lines, how he despised bullies, injustice and cold roast beef.

  It would last. They had love; they had trust; they had respect for each other. They knew each other as people. They knew each other’s faults, as well as strengths.

  And her heart lifted, defying gravity, when he touched her. She wasn’t interested in gravity. Her blood sang when his hands stroked her hair, when his dark eyes bore into hers, cloudy with passion, glittering with need. Dammit, you asked for this. I wanted it to last all night…

  From some distant world, she heard a ringing sound. His lips had captured hers, and their bodies were clinging, reluctant for the slightest separation. She arched toward him, an abandoned insistence that she simply wasn’t going to take much more play. Since he was determined to marry her, she had certain rights… Her eyes were glazed and silvery gray.

  Matthew was smiling as she heard the ringing again.

  “Misha. You’re going to have to answer it,” he whispered. “I won’t be responsible for anything I might say right now…” He was positively gloating that she had to wait longer.