The room was divided by function, the north side yielding an old-fashioned wood stove, a careless array of books and magazines, a lounge chair. But the south side was all business, right down to the computer equipment and file cabinets. The sophisticated equipment was very different from the easy mountain living style of the rest of the house, but surprised Trisha not at all. She knew that Kern kept an active interest in the complex corporation he had inherited from his father. She remembered all too well that his reputation in the business world had been ruthless. He had a perception and skill for maneuvering people and events that left competitors behind; nothing had ever stood in the way of what he wanted…
Her frown deepened as she studied the man she was so certain had not been in the house. A man alone-too much alone, she had seen that in him five years ago-and with a disquieting sense of deja vu she suddenly saw the same man. Facing away from her, he was seated at the desk in the middle of the room, his fingers laced behind his neck and his head bowed. The room was so silent she could hear the ticking of the clock, but it was the silence in the man that troubled her, the look of tension and preoccupied weariness, the look of trouble…
She hesitated. “Kern?” she asked softly.
His head jerked toward her and she glimpsed…what?-frustration? pain?-before he quickly masked his features, his hands dropping and his shoulders automatically squaring back.
“I was doing some wash,” she told him, explaining her presence awkwardly, “and was just going to get a cup of coffee. If you want one…”
“Thanks.”
When she returned from the kitchen with a small tray, he was standing, leaning back against the desk. The one hand still worrying the tension at the back of his neck dropped the minute he saw her.
“There’s two aspirins on the tray for the headache,” she said calmly.
“I don’t have a headache.”
“Of course you don’t.” She handed him a mug, which he took, and then held out the aspirins in the open palm of her hand.
He took them, glaring at her, a marvelously ferocious scowl between bushy black brows that was thoroughly wasted as he popped the aspirins and washed them down with coffee. And then it was her turn to be irritated; weariness erased itself from his eyes as he lazily surveyed her figure from top to toe. The long slender legs, barefoot, the flapping yellow shirt at her thighs-he seemed to know she wore nothing beneath. Perhaps it was written on her breasts, she thought irritably, because that was where he seemed to be staring, suddenly the image of a perfectly relaxed man.
“You’re deteriorating sadly, Tish,” Kern said dryly. “Every day you’re here you seem to be going less and less formal. From designer labels to jeans, and now to a ten-year-old shirt and barefoot. By tomorrow I fully expect you to be running around here stark-”
“I told you I was doing a wash. I had no idea you were back in the house.”
He cocked his head back, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll be damned if you don’t manage to look like a princess even dressed like that, Tish. Every time I see that chin of yours go up and that haughty little nose of yours, I see the lady in her ivory tower. Inviolate, untouchable, pure. How is it you still project the same image?”
Once the mocking tone would have hurt, and badly; now Trisha just shook her head scoldingly at him, refusing to be drawn. “Do you want me to burst into tears because you’re being so nasty or feel complimented at the princess image?”
“Damned if I know.”
Her delicate eyebrows arched in teasing disbelief. “There must be monsoons if Mr. Lowery is suffering from indecision. At least a tornado. No?”
“God, you’ve gotten sassy,” he commented with mixed exasperation and humor, motioning to the papers he had strewn on his desk. “You’re also way off base, although there are times my mother does seem to have World War III potential in her. Or else for unknown reasons she’s simply trying to drive me out of my mind.”
Chuckling, Trisha perched on the arm of his lounge chair. “It can’t be that bad.”
“No? She used to be a damned good businesswoman, but a couple of years ago I asked her if she wanted me to handle her investments. It was around the time she started looking not very well to me, or at least not as well as I thought she should look. I was trying to lift the burdens a little, because she has quite an independent income from her mother’s family, apart from the Lowery’s…”
“And,” Trisha prompted.
He threw up his hands in mock disgust. “There should be nothing to it, damn it. If I can keep control of a seven-figure business with quarterly visits and good management, it should be chicken feed to handle this bit on the side. Instead, my mother’s been acting like she’s on a leash for every con man this side of the Mississippi! I find myself a landlord of two run-down little apartment houses in Detroit, hassling sewer laws. There’s some idiotic little bakery in Hamtramck she bought up for God knows what reason. She’s set up some foundation for art-student scholarships-there’s three-hundred little applications here to decide from. This one volunteered her portfolio ahead of time; as far as I know she’s an expert at drawing squiggly lines…”
Trisha smiled, the proud tilt he’d accused her features of having now softening in empathy. Julia’s cause took no deep thought to understand. “Perhaps it’s her way of forcing you to make more and more trips up north, Kern.”
His fingers laced behind his neck again as he stared at her. “All right,” he admitted thoughtfully, “but it still doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. We had a major war when I moved here, but that’s long over with; she knows I’m settled here. And if she’s lonely I’ve invited her here dozens of times. It’s not as if we’re close-though I’ve tried since my father died. God knows, the apron strings were cut when I was approximately five; mother’s a long way from being a clinging personality…”
“You’re right,” Trisha agreed gently, “but she is growing older, Kern, and perhaps she’s afraid of that. Alone, not quite well, and she doesn’t…bend well. Maybe she doesn’t know how to. She can’t very well just come out and say she needs you, Kern.”
Her voice trailed, the train of thought gone as she caught his expression intent upon her. His eyes were glinting something she never expected to see from Kern, the simplest sort of gentle warmth without even a hint of a sexual overtone. Had they ever shared a problem before? A warm glow kindled inside her, an awareness that she could almost believe in new beginnings…
“Kern?” said a vibrant voice from the doorway. “I knocked but when you didn’t answer I just came in. I knew you’d have the work ready for me…”
Trisha stood up, nodding a polite hello to Rhea with shoulders promptly squared as though she were wearing her best evening gown. Kern had not mistaken her pride of bearing and it had to be in capital letters at the moment. Rhea had foregone mountain wear in favor of a stark white skirt and a matching jacket, a tasteful, not inexpensive outfit that did the most for a long stretch of darkly tanned legs. The long hair had been roped and coiled, and though the lady could not really claim classic beauty, there was an unmatchable pair of rich lustrous eyes fastened on Kern.
“And I should have known you’d come early for it,” Kern said warmly, his hand extended in greeting to Rhea’s. The hand was clasped, held.
“I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to dinner the other night,” Rhea ventured hesitantly to Trisha, her expression politely impassive as she noted the huge yellow Shirt, half-dried hair, bare feet. “We had a wonderful time. Perhaps another occasion…”
Trisha smiled vaguely, snatching up the tray of dead coffee cups as she ventured for the door. “You two are busy. I’ll see you again at four, Kern, when we go to pick up your mother.” It took an effort to close the door behind her with the awkward tray, but she managed it.
And then she closed her eyes for a full thirty seconds. Kern’s warmth, his hand extended, the woman’s sexual vibrations, their so-easily-read ambiance…jealousy was a simple word. The sudden shakiness in Trisha’s limbs was more than that, a despair in having to acknowledge how much she
Hell, she murmured to herself as she clattered the cups in the dishwasher and tiptoed past the closed door to retrieve her wash. It was time to pull herself back together. Just the idea of Kern comparing the two of them was
