She didn’t wait for an answer, but led him around the pile of rubble to a stand of small trees behind the house site. The fruit trees stood out from the trees he’d been seeing over and over up here on the ridge, for they weren’t burned. They were a mass of blossom in the moonlight, on a bed of deep, green grass.
‘The orchard’s deciduous,’ she said simply. ‘Not native. They were so green in the summer that they didn’t burn. The grass under them was dry and it burned but the trees themselves didn’t catch. So now we have cherry blossom, and apple blossom, and peach. Micki and I had a big log swing hanging on the peach. One day I’ll hang that swing again.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I hope.’
‘You’d want to live here again?’
‘It’s my community,’ she said simply. ‘My home. Rusty thinks so, too.’
But Rusty wasn’t looking around him. He was pressed against Jake’s leg. He was forming a new allegiance, Tori thought.
Confused, she pulled away a little, and walked further into the orchard. A low-hanging cherry branch brushed her hair and blossoms drifted around her. She put her fingers out and caught them, and suddenly she found herself smiling. Rusty had limped over to the base of the oldest tree-the peach. The grass here was thickest. He wriggled down, burrowing his nose in the long grass, and gave a sigh of pure contentment.
It felt good. More, it felt great. For the first time in six months she felt free. The ghosts of her family were all around her, a gentle, loving presence that would do nothing to hold her back.
And Jake was here. Suddenly it seemed right that he was.
‘You’re beautiful,’ Jake said softly, wonderingly, and she smiled at him and shook the branch a little, letting loose another cascade.
‘Beautiful’s how I feel right now,’ she said simply. ‘Thank you.’
‘There’s nothing to thank me for.’ He stepped closer and plucked blossom from her hair. ‘You’re facing your demons all by yourself.’
‘No,’ she said gravely. ‘How can I? Don’t you know that all by yourself is a really bad idea. I sense you’re a loner, Jake Hunter, but loneliness isn’t for now. Not for tonight.’
And then, because she didn’t know why-the night, the warmth, the smell of blossom, the sight of Rusty wriggling contentedly in the grass that was once his favourite place, the feel of this man’s hand brushing her cheek as he lifted blossoms away-for some a reason she would never understand, she stood on her tiptoes and she kissed him.
Loneliness isn’t for now…
For Jake, too, this day had been huge. He’d come to this country to put his property on the market and depart, cutting the links to a father he held in dislike, even contempt.
But things had changed. His view of the past, taught to him by a bitter woman, had been challenged by an unbiased witness and had been found wanting.
There were emotions in his head that matched Tori’s, and now Tori’s tragedy was layered on top of his. He couldn’t figure out what he was feeling.
But he didn’t have to figure it out. Tori was doing it for him. Her mouth was on his, her body was pressed against him, and all he could feel was her sweetness, her gentleness, the beauty of this night.
He wanted her.
And as if she’d read his thoughts…
‘I want you,’ she whispered.
His hands tightened involuntarily on her waist and he was pulling her against him with a hold that was entirely proprietary, entirely sure of what he wanted. Tori.
Quite simply she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever met. She was in battered jeans and trainers, an ancient windcheater; her curls were all over the place, her eyes were huge in her too pale face.
She was gorgeous and he wanted her.
This was some sort of magnetic attraction he’d never met before, some primitive link, some compulsion he didn’t fully understand.
Who was he kidding? He did understand it. He wanted her, as simple as that. Something tonight had pulled him to her in a way he didn’t understand, but he wasn’t questioning it. It was the way her hands held his, the way she looked up at him in the moonlight, the way she tugged him closer, closer, so he could no longer see her face, so all he could do was feel the beating of her heart.
They both knew where this was going. They both knew how right this moment was. But…
‘I don’t have a condom on me,’ he said, in a voice so hoarse he hardly recognised it. ‘We can’t-’
‘I’m protected from pregnancy,’ she managed, breathless. ‘So…unless we’re talking multiple partners, we’re okay. Toby and I…we tested.’
‘I’m safe,’ he growled, but sense prevailed enough for him to haul away from her long enough to rake his fingers through his hair. Knowing he should put her away from him. Knowing he must. ‘Tori, you don’t know me. You shouldn’t trust me. You shouldn’t want to.’
‘I know. It’s crazy, stupid, risky, crazy…’
‘You already said crazy.’
‘That means it’s double crazy.’
‘So we stop? We go sensibly back to the lodge?’ He said it trying to keep his voice flat, inflexionless, as though she ought to agree to the sensible option. He was giving her the sensible option.
But who wanted to be sensible? Not Tori.
Sensible was for tomorrow.
She took a deep breath, her eyes not leaving his. She tugged her ancient windcheater up and over her head and she tossed it aside.
Her figure was perfect-and more.
Her bra was beautiful, made of exquisite lace, so white it was almost luminous in the moonlight. Her breasts were framed by the sweetly curving lace; they were soft mounds of perfection and they took his breath away. All of her took his breath away.
She’d kicked off her shoes. Now she pushed the zip and stepped out of her jeans as if it was the most natural movement in the world.
Her panties matched her bra.
He’d forgotten how to breathe.
‘Not all the welfare bins held hand-me-downs,’ she said, totally unselfconscious, grinning at the look on his face. ‘A gorgeous Swiss lingerie company sent a care box. You like?’
Did he like? He was speechless. She was standing barefoot on the grass under the blossom tree, smiling up at him, all imp, in the most beautiful lingerie he’d ever seen. In the most beautiful body he’d ever seen. The contrast to the woman he’d met-how many hours ago?-was stunning.
‘You’re beautiful,’ he said, and it was totally inadequate.
‘My undies are beautiful,’ she corrected him, and he tilted her chin and gazed straight into her eyes and he shook his head.
‘Your medicine’s in the States,’ she whispered, and she met his gaze directly, clear and true. Knowing, as he did, that this was far too soon for any decision to be made as to a future. ‘This is no five-minute date, Jake, but neither is it any kind of commitment. This is seduction, need, call it what you will, but it’s for tonight. It’s your need and mine, for tonight and tonight only.
‘I trust you,’ she said steadily-and she knew she was right. For this night, trust had returned with a vengeance. She thought suddenly of Jake’s father, of the elderly doctor she’d known and loved, and she knew that no matter how little he’d known him, Jake truly was his son.
Jake… A stranger, yet not.
Here, now, he was hers.
‘I’m as sure as anything I’ve ever known,’ she whispered. ‘My body wants you. I want you.’ And she fumbled with the catch to her bra.
