Wintergreen

that. I loved last night…Misha…” He paused again, and a thread of humor suddenly entered his voice. “You wouldn’t like to help me with this conversation, would you?”

Helplessly, she heard a low throaty chuckle escape her throat, matched by his.

“Say ‘hello, Matthew,’” he ordered into the phone.

“Hello, Matthew,” she obeyed softly.

“I’m going to come and see you when I can get free next week. We’ll walk, Misha. Out in the snow. Nowhere near carpets and firelight. Do you hear me?”

She heard him. And she dreamed all night of making love on the carpet in front of the fire.

Chapter 7

The oak office chair had never quite felt comfortable to Lorna; she usually padded it with a pillow. Two if she was typing. At the moment, she was sitting on it crosswise, her legs slung over one arm, a blue pencil between her teeth and a red one stuck behind her ear.

It had been snowing outside since early that morning, though she’d barely noticed. Yellow legal-pad pages had been skimming off her lap and onto the gnarled walnut desk since first light. At one, she’d stopped reluctantly to eat a sandwich; it was now a little after two.

By working Sunday and the past three nights on her regular work, she’d made time for Anna’s manuscript. She was in love with it. With the red pencil she kept track of grammatical problems she would have to resolve in translating from Russian to English, while she used the blue pencil to mark passages where she had questions about the meaning. She would have to ask Anna Valicheck to explain those to her. There were dozens of marks, red and blue, throughout the yellow pages.

Lorna stopped her reading, shoved her reading glasses to the top of her head and rubbed her tired eyes. She badly needed a break but was too engrossed in the story to take one. Blinking hard, she stared restlessly out at the huge flakes of snow falling on the windowsill, then just as absently focused her gaze on the small hole in her thick gray socks. The matching gray wool slacks were old, baggy and maybe a little too well loved over the years. The oversized red flannel shirt fit loosely over her breasts. It was her favorite outfit for a dig-in winter workday. She stretched lazily to get the kinks out of her taut muscles, and heard the doorbell ring.

Frowning impatiently at the interruption, she padded around the desk to the front hall. Opening the door, she had to blink hard against the sudden brilliant glare of snow brightness, and felt the sharp edge of a cardboard box jab into her stomach for her trouble.

“It’s falling, Misha, watch it!”

“Matthew!” The box tumbled to the floor while she was staring at him. Somewhere above several other white cardboard boxes were his disarming dark eyes and a special mischievous smile that took her breath away. Snow glinted in his hair, was already layered on the shoulders of his coat. “What on earth-”

“We’re going for a walk. I told you,” he reminded her, coming inside and closing the door behind him, “but then, knowing you, I realized what a foolish idea that was. The snow’s six inches deep, and I’ve never seen you in anything but bare feet or ridiculously flimsy sandals.”

He straightened up after setting the boxes on the carpet. For a moment, Lorna almost thought he was nervous, the way he was chattering, but being Matthew…well, he just couldn’t be. She was the one whipping the glasses off her head, groping to extricate the red pencil from her hair. And suddenly Matthew was laughing, finding the blue pencil still stuck in her ponytail, releasing her hair from the taut rubber band, running his hands through the chestnut waves. “Before we go for a walk,” he teased, “maybe I’d better see a birth certificate. I don’t want to be arrested for statutory rape.”

“Matthew, I don’t want to tell you that you’re out of your mind,” she said, “but this is not exactly the day for a walk.”

“No,” he agreed. Before she realized what was happening, he’d gently tugged her hair back, tilting her face up to his. His lips swept over hers roughly, their texture freezing-cold and unbelievably soft. Ever so tenderly his palms cupped her face, lingering there. “It’s a day for curling up on a carpet in front of a fire,” he said huskily, and then his voice hardened. “We’re going for a walk. Hustle up and open the boxes.”

Inside she felt like melted butter, but she made a monumental effort not to show it. “It’s the middle of the afternoon. Aren’t you supposed to be working?” She remembered, I’m supposed to be working. Only a few moments earlier, she recalled, she’d been delightfully, wholeheartedly absorbed in Anna’s memoirs.

“See?” He bent down to toss the lid off one box, dredging up one heavily fur-lined boot. “I would have bought size six and a half, since that’s what you used to say you wore. But I got a seven and a half so there was a chance they’d fit.” He chuckled at the instant crimson flush on her cheeks, then trailed a soft white angora scarf around her neck, and reached in the third box for a matching angora hat. He put it on her head and tucked in her hair without the least concern for style.

His fingers, Lorna realized, were trembling. She stood, frozen, as he fitted a pair of fur-lined gloves on her hands. The gifts bewildered her; Matthew’s whirlwind arrival bewildered her. Even more disconcerting was the way he kept avoiding her eyes. When he turned, she saw that his profile was dark and intense… Matthew was nervous. Did he honestly believe she would turn him away?

“Matthew…”

But there was no trace of anxiety on his face when he finally looked at her. Just a slash of a smile and a rather bossy chin. “Come on, Misha. Put on the boots so you can fib and tell me how big they are.”

She did. “They’re huge,” she announced. Just the tiniest bit snug in one toe.

“We’ll leave that,” he said dryly. “Now I suppose it’s too much to expect that you own a warm coat.”

She was bundled up like a mummy before he was satisfied. They walked toward the university campus. Matthew kept his gloved hands in his pockets, never touching her. The snow continued to fall steadily, big pure flakes that coated their clothes and occasionally lingered on their eyelashes, their faces. Lorna could feel her cheeks turn crimson, and welcomed the crisp, cold air in her lungs.

“Are you cold?” he asked her once.

She shook her head, and they didn’t talk after that. The campus was crowded with kids milling around between classes, battling the snowy walks. They all looked alike, with their army jackets and jeans, ruddy cheeks and armloads of books. She and Matthew always appeared to be walking against the tide, no matter which direction they took. Everyone else seemed to be chattering and laughing, while she and Matthew just shared an occasional glance or spontaneous smile.

In the corner of the campus was an arboretum. In spring and summer, the wooded glen was lush and green, with a long, sloping meadow where students usually had to reserve spots for their blankets. Matthew lifted her over a snowbank. Breathing in deeply, she looked around as he vaulted up behind her. The meadow was a long, low carpet of white diamonds, without a single footprint to mar the treasure of a landscape. Stark black tree trunks rose in little secluded coves… It was like entering another world. If there were cars only a block away, she couldn’t hear them. They were no longer part of the city; there were no people, no other sounds.

Still they walked, until they reached a stand of trees. There, Matthew finally stopped, leaning back against a fat black walnut tree, his head resting against the bark. He wore no hat; his hair was damp, and his face had reddened with the cold, and his beautiful eyes were looking into hers.

She leaned back against an opposite tree and studied him, saying nothing. He had made her feel this way at the nightclub, and he was doing it now. Somehow just being with him gave her the feeling that there were only the two of them in the world. They were the only two who had really heard the seductive jazz, the only two who really took a walk together, the only two who really made love. Obviously, no one else had ever done these things. Poor world, she felt like saying.

She couldn’t imagine how this could be the same man she had known nine years ago. He had touched her life then, but never colored it. Whereas now…

“We’ve got to talk, Misha,” he said softly.

She nodded, starting to come toward him. “We have to talk,” she agreed. “Tell me what you were really supposed to be doing this afternoon?”