nipple tightened and swelled and strained beneath it.
Something burst inside Trisha, a Pandora’s box of desire and need suddenly freed. She could not touch him enough. Her hands roamed feverishly beneath his shirt, up and down his sides and back, instinctively careful of the scar.
“Lord, I want you, Tish. I’ve always wanted you,” he murmured huskily.
She felt like crying. The wildness inside her would not stop building. She wanted to possess him and to be taken as she had never wanted to be taken before, not caring for past, present, future, not caring about the night or the rocky terrain or the dampness.
It was all so easy. Kern was urging her down, his hands and eyes compelling her to lie beneath him. But his eyes left hers for just that moment, closing when he tried to bend where his ribs would not yet allow him to bend, his right wrist taking weight it was not yet ready to take. In the moonlight she saw his face contort in sudden unwilling pain, and she froze.
The next thing she knew she was running. Stumbling on the rock-rough ground, tears blinding her, she made her hands try to put together blouse and bra and hair. Her chest was heaving in the chill night air. Shame, pride, memories…the internal ache was as sharp as a knife edge in her side when she finally reached the car and stopped, leaning weakly on the hood. She felt like fragments inside. From wanton to cold made no sense. Not to respond when he had loved her, to go on fire when there was only chemistry and no future. To completely forget that the man was hurt and in no shape for violent lovemaking, to forget every ounce of self-respect that had put her back together in those long years…
“Get in,” Kern ordered.
His shirt was flapping open. His eyes like icy coals as he opened the car door, he snatched at her arm and all but shoved her across to the passenger seat. The door slammed like a reverberating echo in her ear and Trisha huddled in the seat, eyes suddenly dry. His tall figure crossing in front of the car reflected a cold hard fury that frightened her. When he got inside he just looked at her tousled features long and hard and then started the engine.
They were at his place in minutes. The single light left on in the kitchen made a lonely circle of welcome on the grass outside. Trisha reached quickly for the door handle, but Kern’s arm shot across, pinning her.
“Tell me you intended to leave, just when-” he said harshly.
She shook her head mutely, and his grip imperceptively lightened.
“I told you I wondered what would happen when you grew up, Tish. Now I wonder how many men were part of that transition. You never took fire like that before. How many?” He grated. “How many men have you slept with in the past five years?”
She was frightened still, his eyes intense, smoldering anger inches from hers. She knew he wouldn’t believe the truth. It struck her as almost hysterically funny to think of telling him after what just happened that she had almost led a nun’s life, that she had accepted finally that she was simply emotionless in bed. She didn’t understand yet why she had responded to him after all these years. And, if it weren’t for the mortifying confusion and embarrassment she felt inside, the bitter scald of tears held barely in check, she would not believe she had indeed responded.
“Never mind.” His jaw was taut, but the longer he looked at her fragile feminine features contorted by anguish, the more the flame of rage in his eyes lessened. “We’re not done, Tish. It’s going to happen, and you damn well know it as well as I do. With us there’s only one ending or beginning, because of the way it was.”
She breathed out no.
He wasn’t listening. “You run this time and I’ll find you. Don’t even try it.”
She opened the car door and escaped. The kitchen door was unlocked and she ran through, past the living room and hall, up the stairs. In seconds she was leaning against the closed door of her bedroom, fighting to stop the flow of hot tears.
Sex was all he had been talking about, not love. He felt no love after all this time?
She moved forward, removing her clothes in the darkness. The urge was to pack and flee. The urge was to forget Julia. But unfortunately she simply could not forget. Her pulse finally calmed. She was not running again. It was time for action, time to get them both out of their limbo of a marriage. Five years past time.
But she could never face going to bed with Kern again. Even after tonight, she didn’t trust herself. She would freeze and fail him. The last time, she had put herself back together. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it again. Not again…
Chapter Five
Trisha did not wake until nine, a late hour in this household, so she was not surprised to find the house empty and no sign of Kern when she went downstairs. Dressed in the new jeans and shirt, with a battered pair of tennis shoes she’d remembered to throw into her suitcase, she gulped down half a cup of coffee and carted a sweet roll outside with her.
She was determined to work herself into a better frame of mind. Last night she had slept long and hard, but dreams had haunted her. Kern’s lovemaking had been rapturously consummated in one dream; yet in another he had thrown the name of tease at her, which churned like pain inside. In a third dream he had repeated over and over, “There’s only one way it can end for us, Tish. In bed. I can get you out of my system so easily if I see once and for all how cold and ungiving a woman you are!”
Daylight had come as a relief. She felt a need to do something physical to distract her from the increasing confusion she felt around Kern. Brushing crumbs off her hands from the roll, she shoved them in her back pockets and walked.
Kern’s land was a unique blend of landscapes. At the highest level was the spruce and fir forest, dense and abundant with berries at this time of the year, trillium sometimes blanketing a long stretch of forest floor. Some of the most spectacular waterfalls were above those areas he kept private, one of which she knew was uniquely special to any place on earth, yet it was not where she headed.
Below the fir-tipped peaks was the kind of land the campers came for, the cove-hardwood forest the region was famous for. It was magical to walk through. The huge tree trunks, some so wide four or five men couldn’t span their arms around them, stretched to the sky, forming leafy umbrellas high above her head. Yellow poplar, oak, basswood, hemlock-she remembered only a few of the names. Sunlight dappled down in long dusty streaks, shining on dogwood and rhododendron and an incredible number of wildflowers that only flourished in this protected area. Soft mosses covering the rich dark earth felt spongy beneath her feet.
An unusual wistfulness touched her expression as she walked. The city was her life now. She had roots established and a frenetically paced job that usually suited her well. But unwillingly, she could too easily remember that it wasn’t a cement-and-computer world where she’d wanted to raise her children, but here, with nature’s values and nature’s laws.
A hot whispering breeze brushed against her checks as she continued on, trailing a sprawling pattern of delicate white mountain laurel that bordered the path. Half an hour later she glimpsed the roof of Kern’s horse barn, and a wry smile touched her lips. Out of simple curiosity she headed that way. It was very dark inside, and the smells seemed doubly pervasive because of it. Trisha loved the smell of leather that was well cared for and recently polished, fresh hay and the scent of the horses themselves.
She noticed that two stalls were empty and suspected that either Kern or Jack had rented the horses out to campers. One horse stomped his feet at the sound of the stranger entering; another let out a plaintive whinny, bored after yesterday’s rain and inactivity. She stroked the silky necks as she ambled by. Four of the horses she’d never seen before, but of course Kern would have expanded his stock in five years.
“Would you ride with me?”
Trisha whirled, startled by the sudden tiny voice that seemed to come from nowhere. “Hello,” she offered cheerfully to the pigtailed little blonde dejectedly leaning against the stable door. She recognized the child from breakfast the day before. “It’s Georgia, isn’t it?”
The child nodded. “Would you go for a little ride with me?” she requested again. “My mom’s sick, and my dad promised but now he can’t. I can ride real good, but no one will let me go alone.”
