by Thea Devine
Later that morning, however, she heard that Eddie might have to go away for long-term treatment
By two o’clock, Carrie was really ready to go home. It wasn’t that the day had been onerous. It was just that she felt edgy, fragile and needed to be home.
What she didn’t need was Truck coming to pick her up.
“When did you say those tires would be coming in for my cycle?”
“Any day now,” Truck said, depressing the power locks as she belted herself into the front seat of the van.
“I think it’s time I got a car.”
“Good idea.”
“I think it’s time you got a life,” she added irritably.
“I have one, thank you, and I like it very much.”
“You like your house getting shot up?”
“No. But I like you in my house,” Truck retorted.
“Don’t count on it,” Carrie muttered. God, he was relentless. He just never gave up, and she swore she wouldn’t let him wear her down. But he’d been getting mighty close to it these past couple of nights, and all because he had left her alone.
“Stop hiding, Carrie.”
“What is this, your mantra?”
“No, it’s your motto.”
“I hate you.”
“I’m still not leaving you tonight.”
“Of course you are. You are not staying tonight.”
“I am.”
“Listen, you play a mean Kevin Costner but Eddie is history now and so are you.”
“Burying your head in the sand, Carrie?”
“I’m not even going to talk to you.”
“Hiding, Carrie.”
“My lips are sealed,” she muttered.
“Sensory deprivation.”
“Stop it!”
“No, you did that, Carrie, all by yourself. To both of us. You sure you don’t want to rescind it?”
“I’m sure I’m never getting in this van with you again,” she said furiously.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of anything if I were you,” he murmured as he turned onto the Pond Road.
“You can let me off at the top of the road.”
“No, I’d be a sorry bodyguard if I let you walk down that dirt road in your best clothes. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”
Carrie made choking sound. “I’ll forget you said that.”
Truck jammed on the brakes. “I haven’t forgotten a thing.”
Me neither.
She stared at him, feeling that subversive little pinprick of desire. There wasn’t a pore in her body that didn’t want to melt into his arms at this moment
This thing between them was getting scarier and scarier. She didn’t want to need him or want him, and she did—she did.
She couldn’t.
She bolted out of the van before he cut the engine.
HE STILL HAD some finish work to complete under the house and in the bathroom. It was enough to keep him occupied until dinnertime, at which point he found Carrie in the kitchen frying chicken.
“You can have some, but I’d rather you went home to Old Man.”
“That’s funny. Old Man would prefer I stay here with you.” He went into the bathroom to wash his hands, and Carrie felt a little curlicue of awareness slither through her. There was something about a man in the bathroom, and the way he lathered up his arms and face and...
Stop it!
Carrie made a salad and dished out the chicken and sat down across the counter from him. Too domestic. Too scary.
He was talking to Old Man on the cell phone. “Jeannie’s back there, a little shaken up. Eddie got a flesh wound last night, and they’re putting him under psychiatric evaluation. Jeannie told him she’ll be filing the separation papers this week.”
Carrie had been expecting that news, but it shocked her all the same.
“And the business. They’re going to make some arrangement for Jeannie to take over the business. She may close it down until she gets her real-estate license. Shell keep the house.”
“Brad did a good job of keeping the details contained,” Carrie said.
“Yes, he did. But some of it will come out. It won’t hurt Jeannie though.”
“Well, she’s in pain now,” Carrie said pointedly.
“It’s a terrible thing, to be in love, to risk loving, and then to have everything fall apart. You’re right, Carrie. It’s better to just keep your distance. It’s better to withdraw. Hibernate. It’s better to be alone and lonely.”
She jacked herself away from the counter. “You do not have all the answers.”
“You don’t understand, Carrie. I am the answer.”
That sent her storming from the house. Without a jacket, and into the cold night air. She heard him in the dark behind her, gathering twigs and branches to feed the fire in the stove, the hunter providing for his mate.
She had to stop thinking like this.
Truck thought he was so wily, giving her time, giving her the latitude to come to terms with her fierce need for independence and her ferocious need for him.
But Carrie had tamed that overwhelming desire. And it was a tightrope walk. The failure of Jeannie’s marriage had nothing to do with her. She had always known that, really. But she infinitely preferred the idea of the phantom lover to a relationship that would pervade all areas of her life.
Her life was fine right now, thank you. She was content with the little space she’d made for herself here. She liked the tempo, the work, the people. She liked the town, and reconnecting with Jeannie.
She didn’t need promises, guarantees, happy-ever-afters.
But she needed something.
I need a phantom lover...
Instantly, she banished the thought. That way was trouble. She would have become dependent on it, she would have craved more.
Well, guess what, Carrie. You do want more. You’ve just been submerging that need the way you always do when things get too close to the bone.
No, she thought It hadn’t gotten that far with Truck.
It’s better to be alone and lonely....
She felt a nascent ache rising right from the center of her body, and she shivered. Her mother had died, alone and lonely, while Old Man waited patiently down the road.
I am the answer...
Actually, I thought it was love...
THEN SOMETIME in the night, Carrie awakened, her body prickling to be touched, to be stroked, to be filled. She clamped down on the feeling ruthlessly. But it had a life of its own. It billowed inside her, insistent, vital, erotic, necessary.
And no phantom lover to assuage the need...
Maybe—
She slipped out from under the cozy warmth of her down comforter. It was dead cold in the room, cold enough to bank the most sensual fire. And she needed that to cool her heated body, her burning imagination.
She needed...warmth...
She wrapped herself in her robe and opened the bedroom door.
Truck stood on the threshold, one arm braced against the door frame, his heat, his desire almost palpable.
Her body turned liquid. She wanted...
Everything.
And she knew what that meant. She understood the cost, because he would take nothing less now.
In his eyes, she read... All or nothing. You take me, you take the phantom, you take the man.
“Yes or no, Carrie?” His voice was hoarse, barely above a breath as he gave her the choice.
Truck knew so much about her. He knew everything. He had never been her phantom lover. He had always been real. She was the one who lived in a fantasy.
But this—if she said yes—he would make this real and nourish it in the sun, this ache, this need...
“Yes,” she whispered. Yes...
Yes...
His mouth over hers, testing hers, sinking into hers. This, this she had yearned for. On and on as they moved into the warmth of the outer room, and sank onto the floor, his kisses lush, wet, enfolding, arousing.
>
Kiss me forever, don’t do one other thing—
His urgent hands stroking her, his heat enveloping her soft bare skin.
Truck was a man who couldn’t wait. He took her hands and raised them over her head, and he drove into her with a voracious hunger.
Him, him, it was all him, his hot elemental force pinning her to the floor in primal rhythm as old as the sun. Hot as the sun. Her sun, her center, convulsing her, fracturing her with the incandescent light of completion.
He soared beside her, a mythic hero with melting wings. And then he fell through the incendiary heat and back down to earth.
EVERYTHING CHANGED.
This was what it was like, having a full-time lover, who came home and couldn’t wait to take you to bed, who loved you in the morning, at night, sometimes even during the day.
Carrie was busy, so busy. The Hunter Cove Arts Council drive to expand its show had heated up. The Trilakes Committee decided it wanted a bigger promotional piece, maybe a magazine like the state of Massachussetts had been publishing every summer.
She continued to do the ads for Longford’s, to manage the office and mind the store.
And over and above that, she was having fun. She and Truck went everywhere, from dinner out, to the fall stock-car races and the annual county fair.
They went out with Jeannie, Tom, Brad Hillis and his wife. Or they all came over to visit Old Man.
Eddie was gone, having paid his fines in lieu of days served, and signed all the separation and division-of-property papers, having agreed to a quick divorce.
Jeannie had started the real estate courses at night school.
The weather was cooling down appreciably, the leaves falling, and tourists were bussing all over New England to get a taste of fall.
There was something so cozy about just lying naked with your lover under a warm down cover on a lazy Friday afternoon.
My lover, real and all there...
Amazing how being with him, wanting him, made her aroused all over again. Once a day sometimes just wasn’t enough.
Lying in her bed together in the late afternoon of a crisp quiet autumn day, Carrie felt his hands on her breasts, feeling them in just that way.
Yes. She started to boil. There was something about the movement of his hands, that way... She stretched languidly, like a cat, the ripple of her body issuing an invitation no man could mistake.
He cupped her body against him, covering her breasts with one hand and sliding the other downward between her legs. And he held her there, tightly and purposefully, his mouth at her ear.
“Ready?” A breath of a question.
“Almost—”
“What about now?” as he moved both hands to stroke her.
“I could be...”
“And now...?” Pressing her, demanding some response.
She caught her breath, her hips surged toward his expert fingers—
And the phone rang.
“Don’t answer it.”
“No.”
Insistent.
“Let the machine.” His tongue flicked against her ear.
This is Carrie Spencer. Leave your message after the tone...
“Carrie? Carrie?” An urgent voice, one she recognized instantly. She pushed Truck’s hand away, and levered up on one elbow to listen. “Carrie, listen. Something big is coming up. International client. New image. Big money. I need you yesterday, even on a freelancebasis. We’ll pay all expenses, and more. Call me.”
Carrie drew in a deep shuddery breath. “Oh my God. Oh...my...God—”
“So who exactly was that?” Truck sat up and looked over at her.
I have to compose myself. I have to get a grip.
She blew out a breath. “That was Elliott, my former partner in crime at the agency. I guess...I guess they need some help.”
It wasn’t so simple suddenly. She was thinking she could fly to Boston and shuttle to New York. Meet with Elliott. See where she would go from there. The first contact didn’t necessarily mean she had the job. But oh, she felt more charged up than she had in months.
Truck knew it too. He watched it happen, watched her shut him right out and jettison everything they’d shared in the past three months because she’d made her decision even before Elliott stopped speaking, and she never even thought about talking it over with him.
“You’re going,” he said flatly.
“I have to.” No hesitation. No consideration. No thinking about it, even. It was almost as if she had been waiting for this—the call to vindication, absolution, and the resurrection of her dreams.
Truck wondered what he’d expected: that the power of his love, his determination, and their connected past would bind her to him forever?
The warrior princess never quit, and he, better than anyone, should have known that. He should have been more aware that the siren lure of New York had always been in the air, and she’d never stopped listening for it.
“Truck—” She put out a conciliating hand, but she knew there was nothing she could say, nothing she could do. She had always known that someday she would have to leave him behind.
New York is calling.
And I have to go....
12
CARRIE SHRUGGED into her leather coat as Jeannie picked up her bags to load them into her car.
“You’re crazy, you know that?”
“I have to go,” Carrie said, and she meant it. She hadn’t known how much she meant it until the call came. The mystical call.
“You’re killing Truck”
“Yeah, well, he’ll survive.” There she was, the old Carrie, pushing everything aside, every consideration. Every want, need, desire. Everyone. The career was the thing, the stepping stone to superstardom.
“Listen, you called this guy a weasel, Carrie. You said he was ruthless, a shark. What do you think he really wants?”
“You know,” Carrie said as she locked up the house, “I actually thought about that. It isn’t that he just snapped his fingers and I come running. This is a desperation move, he’s pulling whoever he can from any quarter. So if I keep my head, and keep him out of my way, I have a chance to make my mark.”
“But do you really want to?” Jeannie asked. “What’s it going to get you in the long run?”
Carrie paused as she opened the car door. “I don’t want to think about that just yet because I don’t really know.”
And maybe that was the most troubling question about her decision to leave. She was throwing away too much for an indefinable gain.
Well, she thought, she’d deal with that later. And anyway, she’d done as much as she could here...at least for now.
Carrie shoved every feeling about Truck to the deep recesses of her mind. She knew how to do it, too. It was like focusing a bright beam of light straight ahead, and letting it fill your sightline so that everything else receded into shadow.
That was Truck, her phantom lover once more, creating enough memories to keep her warm for a lifetime.
He hadn’t come to say goodbye.
Once Truck had understood her mind was made up, he’d gotten out of bed, had packed his few clothes and without another word, he’d left her.
And she hadn’t even cried.
That told her something: that nothing in Paradise could hold her. And she’d always been ready to go.
THERE WAS NOTHING like New York in the early fall, with the cool crisp air, and everyone moving with a sense of purpose and always, it seemed, with someplace to go.
Carrie walked from her hotel, arranged for by the company, to the offices of Global Vision International located at Third Avenue and 52nd Street.
Nothing had changed. The lobby of the building was built top to bottom of marble.
When Carrie stepped into Global’s familiar chrome-and-mirror reception area, she felt as if she was stepping back in time. She gave her name to the receptionist and settled herself in one of the cushy brown leather sofas that lined the mirrored walls.
And back there, in the corner office that had once been hers, Elliott was waiting for word she’d arrived.
His secretary came to get her.
She was pleasantly surprised by how many people waved to her, remembered her as they made their way through the maze of cubbyholes and desks.
“Carrie.” Elliott came forward to meet her, his hand extended. Elliott hadn’t changed either except that he was heavier. But he’d always been stocky with a professional air about him and a comfortable face, lined and lived in, that belied his sharp wit, intuition, off-the-wall humor and outrageous ideas. “God, I’m glad you’re here. Come on in. Roxanne, get coffee.”
“Right.”
“Sit,” he said, motioning her to a leather sofa in the far corner of the room. “This is great.”
“Is it?” she asked curiously.
“Look, we were a great team. And I need teamwork for this project. This is huge. We’ve got a whole floor sectioned off and we’re working in the utmost secrecy. I’m afraid you’re going to have to sign a hundred papers pledging not to talk, but—” he waved his hand “—that’s nothing compared to the prestige this account will bring if we win it. This is the first go-round to the golden ring. So, are you game?”
She’d gotten smarter, she thought. She couldn’t be bowled over by Elliott’s tactics anymore. She couldn’t even see what she had ever loved in him. His quick mind? His golden tongue? He could sell ice to an Eskimo; and he’d sold her a bill of goods.
But not this time. “Let’s talk money. I don’t live here anymore. How badly does Global want the account? What are they prepared to spend?”
“They want it, I want you, and we’re both prepared to deal.” He named a figure.
Carrie didn’t blink. “That’s nice. That’s real nice. But I need a place to live, I need meals, I need transportation.”