two-feet long, and Trisha promptly hid behind hers.
For a few minutes they were both quiet, and in spite of herself Trisha found that she was relaxing. Perhaps it was the pent-up sigh from the other side of the table that signaled a truce, and finally Kern spoke from behind his menu. “Are we going polite or are we going for fingers, Tish?”
She could not help a smile as she peered around the menu. “Fingers.”
“Fine.” He closed the menu, took hers from her, and set them aside. “You’re having frog legs and I’m having lobster. There’s really no need to look at the rest of the list.” He paused, a small flame in his eyes from the reflection of the candle. “I’m already picturing you in one of those big bibs…”
“And I’m picturing you with your beard, managing lobster dripping with butter,” she quipped back.
They both ate without a lot of talk, devouring their favorite delicacies as if starved. A small decanter of white wine was placed between them and was nearly empty by the time they finished. There was the sound of laughter and muted conversation from the other rooms, but the small dining area they claimed was virtually empty except for the two of them. When the bibs and bones and shells and debris from their meal were removed, the dark-coated waiter served coffee, and they both leaned back in their chairs, replete to the point of a lazy kind of tiredness.
“Ready?” Kern asked finally, and she nodded. His arm brushed the small of her back as they walked from the restaurant, and when they reached the car Kern slipped into the driver’s seat. Taking control, she thought fleetingly, the way Kern found it hard not to take control of a setting. At the moment it just didn’t matter. She was too full, feeling perfectly lazy, to let anything matter. She slipped down in the passenger seat, resting her head against the back, half closing her eyes as he started the engine. The torrential rain had finally stopped and night had descended on the valley. They were through the flashing neon lights of the town in minutes and back on the mountain road that invoked an intense, peaceful quiet.
“I haven’t seen you wear the sling since yesterday,” she commented idly.
Kern smiled ruefully. “Ted told me the wrist would have healed a week ago if I’d just done what he told me. The sling was a penance that afternoon for overdoing it. Bothered by my driving, Tish?”
“Of course not,” she said sleepily. “You drove the truck earlier, Kern. Besides, you wouldn’t take the wheel if you couldn’t handle it.”
He glanced at her. “Blind trust used to be your specialty,” he chided.
She looked back at him, and then away, silent the rest of the half-hour drive. Blind trust had been the instinct from the moment she met him, she couldn’t deny it. Though, thank God, she wasn’t naive any longer. But that trust, she realized, was still there. She did trust Kern and his integrity. She couldn’t really say the same for anyone else she’d ever known in her life.
On the way up the long drive to his place, Kern turned the car midway, taking a narrow gravel road she was unfamiliar with. “Where?” she asked.
“To walk off a bit of dinner, if you don’t mind.”
“I…no.” She stepped out of the car stiffly, aware of Kern and the fact that they were alone. Somehow in all the worry over Julia she had failed to remind herself that staying at his place meant staying
“This way.”
He helped her over a rocky patch, and then his hand fell away, leaving her to set her own pace ahead of him. Trees rustled on her left, but the path followed a stream on the right, a gurgling rush of silver in the moonlight, a sprinkling of stars overhead reflected in the water. Wildflowers crouched low all around the banks, a sweet, potent, night-rich scent after the rain.
They walked without talking. The darkness made for a meandering pace, but it was not pitch black. The rain had cooled the sultry heat of the day, just a faint warm breeze rippling the stream. When she tired of walking, she wandered to a low flat rock that jutted over the water and perched on it with her legs crossed, bending to look in the stream.
Kern stopped just behind her, leaning back against the rough-barked surface of a hickory tree in the shadow. She glanced back once, all too aware of him, but he seemed no more inclined to talk than she did. Every limb gradually relaxed as she simply stared out over the water, absorbing the scene. The restfulness was so different from the city life she’d adjusted to-the life she had convinced herself was all and exactly what she wanted. But the convincing had taken a long time.
Finally she stood back up and dusted off her pants. She looked again to Kern. He hadn’t moved. His eyes had a gleam in the dusty shadows beneath the tree. She felt uneasy.
“You accused me of playing with you before.”
She nodded, pushing her hair back where the breeze was trying to curl it to her cheeks.
“I knew we’d see each other again sometime, Tish. For the first year after you left, I probably would have slammed the door in your face if you had come back.” He stepped out from the shadows toward her, and she dug her hands in her pockets. “It took a long time to accept failure. I blamed you first and then me…and then no one. There was certainly no way to take back those six months, was there?”
She shook her head, and he added quietly, “You were very young, Tish. I knew sooner or later I would want to know what you would be like when you grew up.”
She took a breath, still staring at him. “I kept expecting you to ask for a divorce.”
“I want children. If I’d found someone along the way I’d wanted to have children with, I would have gotten a divorce. Until then, it didn’t really matter.”
He might as well have said that she didn’t matter, beyond sheer curiosity as to what had happened to her. She felt an unexpected curl of pain in her stomach.
“And you have grown up, Tish.”
His tone was soft, and she shook her head when he started toward her. She knew why he was coming, what he wanted, but the mesmerizing hold in his eyes was difficult to look away from. Her hands trembled just from the brush of those eyes on her soft skin.
“I’m not asking or even suggesting fresh starts, Tish. I don’t even know who you are anymore, but I know damn well there’s something that you’re not leaving here again without… You can feel it…I can feel it every time I come near you.”
“No. There’s nothing, Kern, there’s…” She put her hands in front of her as if that would be enough to push him away. A shudder whispered through her from fingers to toes as his lips molded hers, gently, insistently persuasive. His fingers caressed her face and throat, like they had done the first time when she had fallen in love with him. His tongue flicked across her teeth and her lips parted for him, her eyes closed half in dread, half in anticipation. The leashed lovemaking was Kern’s sweetness, but unleashed there were old nightmares…
“Put your arms around my neck, Tish,” he whispered. “You did it last night.”
“No. Please, Kern. This is all wrong…”
“Just for a moment,” he coaxed. He drew her slim hands up himself, placing them around his neck, and his lips softly brushed her eyes closed again, brushed a sweet seductive warmth down the side of her face and neck. Her fingers crumpled in the rough thick texture of his hair. The need to hold on was there. She felt his strength beneath her fingertips, his flesh so warm, so responsive to her lightest touch. The earthy male scent of him enfolded her like a sweet drug she could not escape from, suddenly uncertain if she even wanted to. The panic that should have been mounting didn’t. She felt her breasts stiffen against his heartbeat, felt her thighs yield to the pressure of his own. So fierce was the growing awareness that she suddenly felt desperate for air but he would give her none. Her throat arched back as his mouth pressed on hers, a pressure that ached bruisingly against her lips, a pressure that echoed in the tightening spasms at the pit of her stomach.
She knew better. Kern had not spoken of a renewal of their marriage and there was no way she would ever surrender again to that old feeling of being on trial, risk that sense of inadequacy as a woman that had almost destroyed her. But for a sweet shivering moment that seemed exactly the point. It was over with Kern, so there was really nothing left to lose.
She molded her body to Kern’s, pressing her soft thighs to his sinewy hardness, as her tongue parried with his. Her hands kneaded the nape of his neck, his shoulders, the long, endlessly long stretch of his back to his waist. Kern matched fire with fire, his lips leaving hers only for breath before his teeth grazed her neck as if he were hungry for her taste. His bandaged wrist chafed the tender skin of her ribs under her blouse, summoning other fires. A work-roughened palm was impatient with the slip of bra, until it found the silky pale orb of flesh beneath, until the
