Silver and Spice

annoyingly, was making the incident seem unimportant. Despite her reluctance, a small smile tugged at the corner of her lips-never mind her aching head, or a few choice lingering embarrassing memories from the night before. She leaned back, her hair falling in a loose curtain around her shoulders. She’d had no energy to put up the silky tresses, and though she’d managed to tuck a trim cranberry blouse into a gray flannel skirt, she hadn’t managed shoes yet. All of which was beginning to add up to irrefutable evidence that she was changing radically.

It was Jake’s fault. She knew when she’d committed a federal crime in her own eyes. It was his eyes that jumbled everything up. Outside the window, fog was settling on the highway, swirling in light gray wisps around the cars. In spite of herself, that small smile kept on coming.

Jake, catching her smile, inadvertently started chuckling. A few moments later, so did Anne. He brought out the worst, the absolute worst, in her…but there was no denying Jake was the only man on earth she didn’t mind seeing her in that condition.

“Your hips were trying to defy gravity when you really got into the rhythm of the song,” Jake told her.

“Isn’t the weather nice?”

“And if there’s anything else you don’t remember about the evening, I do believe Benjy took a few snapshots… I could get a print or two for you, honey. Maybe blow it up?”

“It’s going to be colder than a stone tonight,” she said flatly.

“I wouldn’t count on that,” he murmured.

“Pardon?”

“I said I have a definite cure for your headache, Anne. Just stay strapped in the seat belt for a few more minutes.”

Shopping for clothes was his cure for a headache. For miles, the highway out of Wallace held little more than a rugged turnoff for a small mining town here and there, yet suddenly Anne had the sensation of going down, and just as suddenly clouds were put in their proper place. Above her. Not below.

Still, the flash of a long, low blue lake to the left startled her. “Coeur d’Alene Lake,” Jake told her, “but we’ll get back to the water in a little bit, Anne. First, some civilization for a change.”

The city of Coeur d’Alene was a mixture of old and new. A bustling logging industry was centered at one end, and schools and homes and shopping centers nestled high over the lake at the other. Anne found herself staring at Jake as he pulled into a parking lot in front of a row of shops. He certainly hadn’t gone out of his way to let her know this kind of gracious living was even remotely close by. Yes, he’d mentioned that he stayed here, but she just assumed the lake meant more camping-out territory. Instead, the schools looked new, and the homes were attractively nestled in hillsides. Trees shaded the streets, and the lake was dotted with graceful sails. Feeling inexplicably lighthearted, Anne fell in step beside Jake as they walked toward the stores. “It’s a lovely town,” she commented.

“I told you you’d like it. It will be a wonderful place to raise children.” He qualified that statement immediately, “Illegitimate children.”

Her fingertips suddenly went cold. He hadn’t mentioned marriage for days, and now she was afraid he wouldn’t let go of the subject again. She stared in rapt fascination at a raw silk suit in the store window ahead of them. The thing’s strange stripes of muted orange and purple horrified her. “What do you think?” she asked Jake.

“About your having my children, on any terms you like?”

“I’d like to buy a pair of jeans, but there’s no need for you to go inside with me if you don’t want to,” she said firmly. “I promise you I won’t be long…”

She pushed through the revolving door of the next shop. Western wear was its theme. Jeans and cords were piled high on tables, surrounded by buxom mannequins in plaid or flannel shirts. Rapidly, Anne fingered through the nearest pile of cords, paying no attention to size. A shakiness seemed to have infiltrated her nervous system. Don’t push it, Jake…

“Tell me you don’t want children,” Jake said determinedly from the doorway. Both saleswomen looked up, and so did another wandering customer. Anne flushed. Jake was standing with his hands loosely on his hips, shoulders flung back, staring directly at her as if no one else existed in the world. There was nothing for it but to cross the room to seize him and drag him back to the pile of jeans…granted that he was willing.

“I have never once told you that I wanted children,” she clipped out in a furious whisper.

“But you do.”

Through a miracle of fate, she found the size eights. “Every woman who wants children doesn’t make a good mother, Jake. Some people probably think they’ll be perfectly wonderful, and other women turn out-”

“Like your mother,” Jake said flatly. He held up a pair of lobster-red jeans. Anne shook her head with exasperation, but Jake went on, “So that’s what scares you. Honey, you couldn’t be any less like her. How long have you been fretting about that one? You’ll be an outstanding mother, Anne. You’ll be there whenever your kids need you, with a cool head and a warm heart, willing to listen, involved and interested…”

She felt something catch in her throat. “I’ve never had any experience with little ones.” He lifted up a pair of turquoise jeans. Anne took his busy hands out of the clothes pile and put them back on his hips, trying to ignore the curious stares they were getting from other people in the store.

“What does experience have to do with anything? I figure by the fiftieth time, if only by chance, you’ll get the diapers on straight. Does that kind of thing really matter, anyway? I’ve never heard that psychologists with Ph.Ds in child development raise the happiest children.”

Anne gathered up a pair of soft gold cords, then brown ones. Jake reached the shirt racks before she did. “Well?” he demanded.

She draped two shirts over her growing pile, matching flannel plaids to blend with the jeans. “I don’t know why we’re talking about this.”

“Because we have to talk about things that scare you,” Jake said reasonably.

Only he wasn’t looking reasonable. He had that wolfish look again, the sheer male determination stamped in the stark silver of his eyes. Anne was well aware that he really didn’t care if anyone else was in the store. Or the universe. “Jake, I’m going to try these things on,” she said uncomfortably. “I won’t be long-”

“I love you, Anne. Would you kindly stop panicking for two and a half seconds?”

One saleswoman put her elbows on the counter and leaned forward to listen, clearly enthralled. She looked from Jake to Anne, evidently expecting a comeback the way she would expect the return of a Ping-Pong ball.

Color stalked up Anne’s cheeks. “I love you, too,” she whispered back to Jake. “That has nothing to do with anything!”

She pivoted in search of the dressing room, and escaped promptly behind a coarse white drapery. In seconds, she had stripped off her gray wool skirt and cranberry blouse. Mirrors reflected her oyster satin camisole on three sides; she fumbled for the gold cords and started pulling them on. Before she had them snapped at the waist, the drapes parted, and Jake let himself inside, ignoring her startled gasp.

“Did you mean it?”

“Jake, you’re going to get us kicked out of this store!”

“Nonsense, there’s almost no one else out there. The saleswomen understood. Did you mean it?”

“Did I mean what?” She snatched up a camel and brown flannel shirt and pulled it on, ten thumbs struggling with the pearl buttons.

“That you love me?”

Her hair got caught in everything, the hair that she had neglected to coil up sensibly that morning. “Conflicting lifestyles and potential divorce are the issues, Jake, and you know it. Not loving. You know I’ve always loved you-”

“No.” Jake turned suddenly quiet, ominously quiet, although he shoved aside her hands, efficiently brushed back her hair and dealt with the buttons himself. “You haven’t always loved me. You accused me of acting only on sexual vibrations, but that, sweetheart, was a description of you. It was fun in the beginning, Anne. I enjoyed playing the aggressor who came back to storm the fortress and win the lady again-but it was you who let the physical chemistry block out a thousand other feelings…feelings that mattered. I waited a long time for you to see more, for you to see the man I am. I had a role in your life, but only as lover, Anne-because you didn’t want more.”

“That’s not true. You always took off-”

“And I always asked you to come with me.”