“Where are the others?” he asked.
“On their way down, I guess,” she said smiling. “I left blankets to lay on the ground in the kitchen. Could you go get them?”
Thomas ducked below the stone arch into the cool, dim main kitchen at the back of the house. It was used only for large parties and required a staff of at least eight to run efficiently. The smaller family kitchen was behind that, and he heard the intercom buzz then a voice crackle over it. He walked in to find Cook listening intently to Allison’s voice.
“…so please tell my sister that I don’t dare take Cray out today. We’ll take a rain check on the picnic.”
Thomas scowled. “What’s this about?”
Cook jumped and spun away from the intercom on the wall to face him. “Mein Gott!”
“Entschuldigung,” he apologized. “I didn’t meant to startle you, Frau Seubel. I take it there’s been a change in plans?”
“The little prince isn’t well,” she explained in German. “An upset tummy, says the queen.”
“And Jacob and the baby?”
She observed him as if he were mad. “You expect the king to go on a picnic without his wife?”
“You’re right. How silly of me.” He observed the toes of his shoes. “Then I guess it’s off.”
Cook sighed. “All that lovely food. Why don’t you and Frau Fields go on your own?” she suggested.
Thomas stared at her. Why don’t we go on our own?
After the obvious answer crossed his mind as a vivid playback of the last time they’d been together, he settled his shoulders and chewed his bottom lip in concentration. Why not indeed? Two mature adults should be capable of sharing a simple meal together. One way or another, he would feel obliged to keep Diane company in lieu of the family excursion.
He turned on his heel and burst into the sunshine to find Diane comfortably ensconced in the third seat of the limo, leaving plenty of room for the four absent members of their party. Leaning through the open window, he gave her a lopsided smile. “Looks like we’re faced with a dilemma.”
“What’s that?”
“Cray is under the weather. Nothing serious, but that means he and Allison won’t be coming. And Jacob won’t take time out from his work without her to coax him.”
“So, it’s just us?” She looked away from him and across the garden.
“We can either cancel, too, or go ahead as planned.”
She studied the azure sky and pouted. “I was so looking forward to the afternoon. But I suppose another day…”
“Not necessarily,” Thomas said, and her head snapped around.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Why shouldn’t the two of us go ahead with our picnic? We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Friends who have admitted there’s a load of steam bubbling under the surface,” she reminded him.
“Steam can be controlled.”
She was shaking her head, her hazel eyes sparking with green, skeptical. “Maybe in a public place, but out there in—”
“I have faith in both of us,” he assured her. “Listen, I know you want to go. It’s been nearly two weeks since we made our pact, and we’ve stuck to it.”
“Fine,” she said after a small hesitation. “But I’m moving up to the front seat with you. I feel ridiculous riding alone in the back of this monstrosity.”
They drove through some of the most spectacular scenery Diane had ever seen. The grass in the valley was so lush and green she doubted it ever browned out in the summer. A river splashed through the center of the valley, branching into tiny rivulets, providing a natural irrigation system. Edelweiss, lingonberry bushes and sweet lavender grew in abundance. They drove down one side of the mountain, through the town, then up a rise on the other side of the dell. Thomas pulled the car off the road at a spot overlooking the entire valley with the castle’s turrets shining in the distance.
“It doesn’t look real,” Diane said. “It’s like an illustration out of a book of fairy tales.”
“Not too many castles in Connecticut, hmm?”
She smiled. “Only a few.” Flinging open her door she jumped out.
Thomas watched her for a moment, content for the time being to simply be near her.
“Well, come on!” she shouted. “I’m starving. Let’s unload this food.”
Together they pulled tightly wrapped paper packets of German sausages, pungent cheeses, two kinds of breads and a seven-layer cake with mocha cream, which Thomas told her was called Doboschtorte. They arranged their feast around them on the blanket. Diane broke off a chunk of crusty bread for herself and one for Thomas. They ate in silence, and he turned his face up into the sunshine and thought he had never been happier.
“This is wonderful,” she said at last, dusting crumbs from her lap as she licked the last traces of rich whipped cream from her fingertips. “I can’t remember feeling this relaxed in years.”
“You’ve had the sole responsibility for three children and running a household,” Thomas commented. “I expect you didn’t get many days off.”
“No,” she admitted with a careless shrug. “I guess I didn’t. But I’ve never resented time spent with or for my children.”
He studied her strong profile, softened by the summer sun. She was far more appealing to him, without makeup and in yellow gingham, than any spa-buffed contessa decked out in jewels.
“It’s nice, though, just for a change…not having to prepare every meal, do two loads of laundry every day, scrub crayon off the wall or sop up spilled orange juice.”
“I would imagine.” He chuckled.
She lay back on the blanket, and her dark hair spread beneath her head and neck, framing her sun-blushed face. “Thomas, have you ever thought about being a father?”
The question took him by surprise. “No. Well, yes, but not for long.” He laughed nervously.
“Why? I’ve seen you with Cray and Christina. You’re so gentle and sweet with them. I think you’d make a wonderful father.”
How had they gotten onto this bloody subject? He leaned on one elbow and looked past Diane to the mountains, chill and distant, emotionless. At least mountains never changed. You knew what to expect of them. They simply existed, solid, dependable, year after year. People were different. People led you to believe they would be there forever, to protect and love you. Then one day they were gone…or they pushed you out of their life.
“Don’t, Diane,” he whispered hoarsely.
She turned on her side to face him, her eyes shining, urgent with questions and concerns he didn’t want to hear. “Have you ever tried to find your mother? To ask her why she left?”
He glared at her, demanding without words that she stop. She was treading on forbidden ground. One look at his stormy expression and she should have known that.
“Thomas, please. I’m not trying to pry. It may be she felt she had no choice. Maybe she regrets what she did and would have come back for you if she hadn’t felt so ashamed.”
“Stop!” he growled.
Shocked, she blinked at him, opened her mouth tentatively, then closed her lips in a firm line.
“The past doesn’t matter. It’s over. Done!” he snapped, sitting up stiffly.
Diane looked up at his anguished profile. He was such a strong man, physically, and he put up an impressively fierce and dispassionate front. Anyone who didn’t know him would believe he was immune to tender emotions. But she saw through the veneer he’d so carefully applied, layer by layer over the years, to protect himself from love that could destroy when it was taken away. Inside he was as vulnerable as she, perhaps more so.
Diane wished she could offer him some comfort, some small hope and understanding that love didn’t have to be a prelude to rejection and heartache. Why she knew these things, she couldn’t have said. Her own marriage certainly hadn’t been a good example of a loving relationship. But she believed in her heart that for every person who yearned to love, there was a perf
ect partner who offered love in return, someone who completed that person. With luck, two people fated to be together would find each other. There were no guarantees, of course. But she believed in possibilities.
“Thomas,” she breathed, laying her hand on his arm.
He tensed under her gently curled fingers. His eyes went suddenly flat, dull. “Don’t.” Diane could feel him withdrawing from her. She could sense his pain and wanted to heal him. His isolation tore at her heart.
“You said yourself, the past is over. What you choose for yourself is up to you. Your parents’ mistakes can’t determine your future.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered darkly.
She leaned toward him, her lips inches from his ear. “Then explain it to me. Tell me why you—”
He was up off the blanket and striding away from her across the meadow before the last word faded from her lips. His entire body was rigid with fury. His broad shoulders hunched, his fists swinging at his sides, his neck muscles bulged and she could feel the power that wanted to lash out, barely checked in his large frame.
What had she done?
Quickly she leaped to her feet and raced after him, the tall grass lashing at her bare legs. The ground was uneven. Her feet were bare and hit hidden furrows, and her ankle twisted. Down she went with a strangled gasp in a graceless tangle.
Her first thought was for her injured foot, but she immediately realized nothing serious had happened in the fall. Feeling foolish, she was about to pull herself up off the ground when something blocked the sun. She looked up at the source of the shadow, at Thomas. His hand reached down toward her. His expression was no longer dangerous, at least not in an angry way.
“Come,” he said, gripping her wrist to pull her to her feet.
She opened her mouth to speak. He shook his head and brought her fingers to his lips. It was the tenderest of gestures she could imagine from such a bear of a man.
“I suppose we’ve both known pain,” she murmured. “Different kinds.”
He looked down at her with an intensity that sent shivers through her, and she wished she could read his thoughts. He neither denied nor affirmed her statement, but she knew somehow in her heart that she was right. He was tormented, and he wouldn’t admit why…perhaps not even to himself. She felt sure it was something more than his own parents’ inability to give him the love he’d needed as a child.
“Do you think two people in pain might find a way to heal one another?” she whispered.
“Without causing more damage?” His voice was a tight rasp.
She smiled. “That would be the goal.” Her fingers reached up around his neck to flick through the shorter hairs at his nape. She could feel him leaning toward her almost imperceptibly. “Thomas.”
“Yes?”
“Kiss me. Please.”
He closed his eyes, and the muscles in his face worked, strained, locked.
“Kiss me,” she whispered again.
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“If I do—” he opened his eyes and looked down at her again, and she knew she’d never seen real passion in a man’s eyes until that moment “—if I do, I will have to make love to you, Diane. I will have no choice.”
“Then make love to me. Here. Now.”
She sensed as she said the words that she’d turned her life in a new and unalterable direction. She had stepped out of the shelter of her old and predictable existence into a world beyond the rules. A tidy Cape Cod on a tree-lined street, household tasks, children with scraped knees and hungry tummies, bills to be paid—all faded away, to be replaced by her own needs, so long ignored.
With a soaring heart she stood, weak-kneed as Thomas bent to kiss her. His warm lips settled over hers. His arms wrapped around her and closed protectively about her shoulders, sealing out the real world, promising bliss as he pressed her cheek to his chest.
No one had passed through or within sight of the meadow while they’d eaten, and as they walked back to their blanket holding hands, she trusted that Thomas knew no one would disturb them. He kissed her deeply, savoring her as if to later remember this time. He brought her down among the blades of tall grass, and they were screened by nature from even the distant world.
For a fleeting moment she wondered if the way he was touching her now was the way he had touched all women before her. But something told her this was not so. His hands trembled against her flesh as if he was breaking new ground, as if the experience was as virgin to him as it was to her.
Diane looked up at Thomas, framed both sides of his wide face with her cool palms. She wanted to tell him how thankful she was for this moment but was terrified a single word from her lips would break the spell. He fumbled with the buttons down the front of her sundress, and she waited, patiently breathing in the male scent of him, kissing him softly across his forehead, his chin, the corners of his lips, believing in nothing but these precious minutes.
Because the sundress had its own bra, she wore nothing but cotton panties beneath it. As the bodice separated down the front, her breasts spilled out and warmed in the sun. Thomas’s hands caressed them, lavishing equal attention on each, then he drew back and solemnly observed the effect. She didn’t have to look to know her nipples were dark saucers, peaked hard from his touch. She tingled, burned, hungered for more.
Diane arched her back, thrusting herself toward him in invitation. She ached to feel his mouth close over her tingling breasts. How often had she fantasized about him kissing her there and so many other forbidden places? As if he knew, he lowered his head and brushed his lips across her raised nipples. Cupping her breasts in his two strong hands, he brought his mouth down over one, drew her between his sharp, white teeth, slid his tongue in fiery circles until she shuddered and whimpered in delight.
His kisses nestled between her breasts, and she clutched him to her. He worked his way down over the velvet plane of her stomach to her navel. There he paused to tease with his tongue and glance up at her, questioningly. His eyes were as black as the darkest night; she could feel his heart pounding against her thighs through the heaving wall of his chest.
“I want all of you,” he whispered hoarsely.
“And I need you,” she told him urgently.
He nodded even as his hands moved slowly to her hips and drew her panties down her long legs and gently placed them on the grass. He easily parted her legs but slid down her outstretched body rather than up. She gasped in surprise as he lowered his head and repeated his plunging kisses of her lips, this time relishing far more intimate feminine terrain. Diane cried out in shocked approval, threading her fingers through his hair, rejoicing in the flames that licked her from deep within. He stroked her with his tongue and the firm pads of his thumbs until she thought she’d go mad with the pleasure of it.
Diane let herself go, completely.
The world was no more than a swirl of colors. Trees, grass, clouds all spun around her as waves of sensation washed over and through her, lifting her so high she no longer felt the earth beneath her. She was one with the sky, with eternity, with life itself.
At last she lay limp in the sweet grass, her body humming, her thighs honeyed with her own ecstasy, her head dizzy with release. Surely no other woman ever felt this deliciously spent. And no other man knew how to make his lover feel this—
“Not yet, darling,” Thomas whispered as she squinted up into the sun at him.
“Wha—?”
“We’re just getting started.”
“We’re what?” Her glance dropped lower. “Oh—my goodness!” Although he still wore his shirt, he had unzipped and slid down his jeans along with anything he might have worn underneath. He was in perfect proportion with the rest of his proud, six-foot, five-inch body. Shyly, she reached out to touch him. He was full and firm and beautiful. And hers.
Of all her fantasies, her most cherished was to be loved wildly and freely by such a man as this. Even if it never happe
ned again, she’d know for the rest of her life that she had once belonged to Thomas just as he belonged to her. Now, as she gazed on the physical evidence of his eagerness for her, she chuckled, and their eyes met as she communicated to him that she was in no way laughing at him. She was laughing because it felt just plain marvelous to laugh and anticipate sharing her body with him again, in another wonderful way.
She opened herself to him. He moved between her thighs, gauging her expression, a fierce possessiveness rising in his eyes as he found her and plunged his full length within her in one sharp thrust that sent her reeling and clutching at his shoulders. She was glad, so very glad that he wasn’t being overly gentle, because she wanted the savage in him, wanted him unrestricted by manners, the past, and all that had held him away from her since the day they’d met.
Everything Thomas had sternly told himself he must not do, he did.
He understood, even as he buried himself fiercely within her, that he was sabotaging the plan he’d formed as he’d driven Diane to their picnic site. He saw each error as he made it, and he cursed himself for being weak. But he simply hadn’t been able to stop himself. He’d told himself he wouldn’t lay a hand on the woman…but he’d so wanted to taste her lips, and he had. That had been what had set him off, because in taking her up on her invitation for a kiss, he then needed to taste her everywhere. And once he’d witnessed her delicious reaction to his making love to her with his hands and mouth, he was hopelessly the victim of his own hunger.
It was as if, now that he’d given her pleasure, he could deny himself nothing. And she was so very welcoming, so very eager to please.
Only after he’d entered her did a distant corner of his mind register a warning. Never would he have chanced relations with another woman without protection, but this day had come as a complete surprise to him and he hadn’t been prepared. As he felt himself slide neatly, slickly, delectably inside her—flesh against flesh—he cursed himself for not caring about anything but this moment. Besides, he was safe for her: he had always been careful before this and he would reassure her when it was over. As for Diane, he knew she didn’t sleep around, and her husband had been gone from her bed for nearly a year. If she’d been aware of a reason why they shouldn’t be intimate, she would have told him.
The Earl Takes A Bride (Elbia Series Book 2) Page 8
