“No, what I had in mind was my making love to you.”
“What would you have done if I hadn’t driven up here today? Would you have come to Atlanta?”
“I don’t think so. Why? Do you intend to stay in Atlanta from now on?” She squinted at him shrewdly. “I’m still not going to sell you Ruby.”
He tapped her rear lightly, in rebuke. “I don’t care whether you do or not. You’re so suspicious.”
“I know. Forgive me.”
“So you won’t come to Atlanta to make love to me,” he noted quietly.
“No. But I’ll be here whenever you have time for me, Matt.”
He looked at her solemnly. “I’ll make time. Lots of time.”
There was an intimacy to their conversation. He was holding her, running his hands over her body in a soft, reassuring caress. Callie couldn’t seem to stop her fingers from stroking, teasing, touching as she rubbed him, then rubbed herself with the part of his body she was slowly bringing back to life.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell you that when a man reaches thirty-five he’s past the peak of his sexual ability?” Matt asked gruffly. “I mean, two times in less than thirty minutes is a commendable showing. Three times in less than thirty minutes is purely showing off.”
“Doesn’t bother William,” Callie answered saucily, “and he’s the equivalent of forty years old in human terms, if my figures are correct. Tom Hicks’s lady goat got out last week, and William was extremely … attentive. I told Tom that William would do the honorable thing and marry her, but Tom said he likes baby goats, so I needn’t feel bad.”
Matt chuckled. “I refuse to be compared to William on this score,” he informed her. “You greedy woman.” Matt rolled over on his back and pulled her on top of him. “I’ll do the honorable thing by you,” he said solemnly.
She nodded and leaned over, teasing him by brushing the mat of his chest hair with her nipples. “And I suppose what I feel beneath me is you, showing off?”
It was and he did. It was much later before Matt remembered the potatoes he’d put into the oven to bake. It was even later when he threw them to William, who had waited patiently outside the kitchen door for hours.
“Sorry, William,” Matt told him. “We didn’t mean to forget about you. We’ve been preoccupied.”
Matt could have sworn that the goat had a grin of approval on his whiskered face.
Six
“Caroline, did you know that you make little mewing sounds while you’re sleeping? I’ve been lying here listening to you and watching your eyelashes flutter.”
She’d known he was awake, watching her. She’d been awake herself for several minutes, enjoying the knowledge that he was studying her. She’d felt him pull the sheet down very, very slowly, so that one of her nipples was exposed. Callie stretched, sensually aware that the movement completed the unveiling he’d waited for.
“Are you going to show off again, Matthew? I’d have thought you’d still be sleeping, after last night.” Laughing, she curled away from him as he tickled her. Her breasts tingled madly under his admiring gaze.
“It’s that apple juice you fed me yesterday,” he assured her. “It gives me energy. William tipped me off to its potent powers.”
“Oh? I never knew William had a secret source of virility.”
“Why else do you think he let me get the encyclopedia salesman out of the apple tree? He wasn’t taking any chances with his aphrodisiacs.”
They both chuckled. Callie looked up into Matt’s dark brown eyes and read the love she saw there. Had she encouraged heartache by taking this man into her life? With a sigh of contentment Callie pushed the doubt from her mind.
“What’s wrong, Caroline Melissa Carmichael? I saw that frown.”
“Nothing,” she told him quickly. “Caroline Melissa, that’s what my mother called me. I like it. How’d you find out my full name?”
“I peeked at the family Bible on the shelf by the fireplace one day. Caroline Melissa was your grandmother McKinnon’s name as well, I noticed.”
“Grandmother Caroline made this.” Callie touched the blanket that barely covered his muscled thighs. She pointed to a frail-looking piece of crocheting encased in a frame on the wall. “Great-grandmother Caroline made that. Actually, I’m the fourth Caroline in the family. It’s an old, well-loved name.”
“An enchanting name.” He sighed. “Ah, the past is where a man can find treasures worth keeping. You love the past as much as I do, Caroline Melissa. We’re very much alike.”
“And am I a treasure worth keeping?”
“Definitely worth keeping,” he promised softly as he kissed her just above her left eyebrow. “I’ve dreamed about you for weeks. I’d wake up and think I was making love to you.”
“Ah, flattery. We mountain women love it.”
“Do you love me?” he asked.
Callie moved so she could look into his eyes. “Perhaps I do. I don’t know if I can say the words yet.…”
“Ssssh. Wait until the time is right, then.” He nodded, his eyes shining. “It goes without saying that I love you.”
She moved slightly, inching closer, and continued to study him.
His throat ached, and he couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell her how profoundly she had changed his life. Her nose was patterned with light freckles, and Matt touched them with his fingertip, while his lips skimmed down her face and sampled her waiting mouth. Her lips were soft and giving, and when his fingers slid between her legs he felt her grow warm and moist.
“My dreams were just a poor imitation of the real thing, Caroline. As an expert on collectibles, I should have known that the original would be infinitely more pleasing than my imagination’s copy.”
She laughed at his whimsical words. “Maybe you’re not the expert you claim to be, Matthew.”
“Maybe.” He released the nipples he was rubbing between his fingertips, and slid over her. He warned ominously, “Maybe you’d better hold me tight. I think I need more research.”
Matt knew now what his conservative life had been missing. The woman beneath him was giving, giving without reserve, the same way she lived her life. She loved him with a naturalness that went beyond simple passion and desire. This was more read than anything he’d ever known, and he never wanted to move away from her.
Blending into each other so completely that they couldn’t tell where he ended and she began, they loved each other until the sun poured brightly through a window and warmed their tired bodies.
William, stomping persistently on the back step, finally brought Callie out to the kitchen. Matt trailed behind her, running his hands through his rumpled hair.
“He’s waiting for his coffee and toast,” Callie explained as she filled a percolator with water. “You make the toast while I take a shower. Then it’s your turn. Now that we’re on such intimate terms, you can use the indoor shower.”
“Real plumbing! Hot water!”
“Old plumbing,” she corrected. “Lukewarm water.”
“I don’t want you to leave,” he said abruptly, and took her hand. “Stay here.”
She laughed. “I’m just going to the shower, Matthew. It’s only thirty feet away.”
“Too far,” he protested. But Matt let go of her hand and smiled to hide his deeper emotions. He didn’t want to scare her with demonstrations of the tender possessiveness he felt. So he resorted to the easy, flippant banter she enjoyed. “I’d like to take a shower with you.” He paused. “Just for research purposes, of course.”
“Any more research, Holland, and I won’t get my baskets to Helen this weekend.”
“Helen? We don’t need to see anybody else right now. Let her wait until next weekend.”
She smiled. “The town of Helen. Good grief, I thought you said you moved here from Maryland fifteen years ago. Haven’t you ever heard of Helen?”
He looked defensive. “I used to be a workaholic. I didn’t get out of Atlanta much.”
Callie kissed his cheek in symp
athy. “When did you change your bad ways?”
His eyes were somber. “When I met you.”
She was speechless for a moment, shocked by the sincerity of his words. Then she cleared her throat and said, “Well, Helen is a tourist town, and it’s sponsoring a craft show in two weeks. I’m going to take a load of baskets and wreaths up for the shops to sell. I go several times a year.”
“Fine,” He looked cheerful again as he turned to the refrigerator to remove a plate of creamy butter. “I’ve never been to Helen. It ought to be fun.”
“Matt, don’t you have a business to get back to?”
“It’s Friday, and I’m taking the day off. For this weekend, Caroline, you’re my only business.” He drew his finger across the butter, then slipped his finger into her mouth. After a startled second in which her stomach seemed to drop to her toes, she licked the butter away and sucked gently on the end of his finger. He watched every move she made, his eyes half shut. Then he whispered, “My business and my pleasure. My very great pleasure.”
He slid his finger across her lips and smiled. Callie felt her knees wobble. “In that case,” she teased weakly, “let’s not forget to take the apple juice with us.”
“Callie, of course we’ll use my van,” Matt argued, pointing toward the sleek red vehicle he’d driven up in from Atlanta the day before. “You can’t possibly carry this load of vines in the Fiesta. They’ll blow away, or come unfastened halfway there. Besides,” he added in genuine horror, “suppose something happened to the Fiesta. You never know what can happen around a bunch of tourists.”
“Matt, I have hauled these vines, as you call them, before. I put half of them in the trunk and the other half on the back seat and cover them with a quilt.”
“No, no. You could make some real money at this enterprise if you’d be more efficient. Use the van and you can take more to sell, and get the merchandise there in better condition, I’d bet. Not all mashed and rumpled, the way everything must be when it comes out of the trunk or the back seat.”
“I don’t sell ‘merchandise,’ I sell craftwork,” she said with a twinge of annoyance. “And I like to drive the convertible because I like to feel the wind on my face. I don’t care if it’s an inefficient way to travel.”
Unaware of her changing mood, Matt rubbed his chin and looked at the sky, lost in speculation. “You know,” he said, “I think you need a second vehicle for your work. A good van or a truck, maybe even a station wagon. Then we could put the Fiesta up on blocks.”
“Why?” she asked in amazement.
“So it wouldn’t get damaged. You really shouldn’t be driving such a valuable antique, anyway. It’s as if—” he spread his hands in a gesture of supplication, “as if you were using a Ming vase to pot geraniums. Sacrilege.”
Callie put her hands on her hips. When she spoke, her voice was full of warning. “Did you go to bed with me just so you could rearrange my life? Did I give you permission? I always drive the Fiesta to Helen. I drive the Fiesta everywhere.”
Stunned, he looked at her silently. Then a sheepish expression touched his face.
“But, Caroline”—he looped his arms around her waist, pulling her and an armful of wreaths closer—“you don’t usually have me along to take up space and occupy your mind. Please,” he said coaxingly, “let’s use the van. No point in letting the thing just sit here. Besides,” he added with a wicked gleam in his eyes, “it’s almost like having your own private house along the road—very private.”
“Matthew, you scoundrel.” Callie felt all her annoyance evaporate at his touch. His body communicated in a way that transcended petty issues, and she felt herself surrendering to his plan. “Okay, Holland. In the spirit of my personal philosophy—which is to try new ways of doing things as often as possible—you’re on.” He smiled, and she smiled back. “I had a van before I came to Sweet Valley and Gramps gave me Ruby,” she noted.
“I didn’t mean to be pushy,” he told her. He shook his head, touched his lips briefly to hers, and added, “When I get carried away, just kick me in the shins and remind me that you’re a free spirit.”
‘It’s a deal.” Though she continued to smile at him, Callie felt a knot of worry begin to build under her rib cage. Would Matt keep trying to organize her life in ways he thought were better than hers? Was she in for trouble from this wealthy, superorganized businessman?
“What happened to your van?” he asked.
She slid out of his embrace and started picking up baskets. “John Henry reconditioned it, and I sold it to Lacey. She needed it to haul her clowns. Before she got the van, she used to pack the poor devils into her Toyota, ten or twelve at a time.”
‘What are they, midgets?” Matt asked, puzzled. “That sounds pretty damned uncomfortable, if you ask me. Was she their manager or something?”
Callie burst into laughter. “She makes them, silly. They’re cotton and silk and satin. Lacey follows the craft-show circuit. She’s probably on her way back from Florida about now.”
“Whew. Can’t imagine why anyone would want that kind of vagabond life. Sounds exhausting.”
Matt’s words kept running through Callie’s mind as they loaded the van. There’d been a time when she’d led the same kind of vagabond life, before she came to the valley. First with Tyler, and then, after the divorce, on the craft-show circuit.
Keeping on the move had seemed the best way to close out the past. Now the past didn’t seem so important, because Matt filled the present with so much happiness.
They piled the center section of the van with baskets and wreaths, and both of them avoided mentioning the fact that they were keeping the back section—the section with the TV and the plush couch—empty. After they finished loading her crafts, Matt threw a small canvas sports bag under the van’s cocktail table. Callie placed her own small bag beside it.
She suddenly felt a strange awkwardness about going. Making love with Matt at the cabin seemed warm, natural, harmless. But this trip to Helen had become an intimate weekend venture that seemed full of dangerous commitments. And other problems. How would Matt react to the cheap little inn where she usually stayed on these jaunts?
“Well stop by the garage and tell John Henry where we’re going,” Matt said as he opened the passenger door and motioned for Callie to get in.
“We will?” Callie’s concern over John Henry’s reaction was mirrored in the panic on her face, and found an outlet in her next statement. “I’ll drive, Matt. This is my trip, and I’m more familiar with the route.”
“No way. This is my van, Caroline, and I’m a disgustingly macho man when it comes to driving. I’ve studied the map, and I won’t get lost. I know where I’m going. I always do. I’m organized, remember? Get in!”
“Do you have a map? Have you got enough gas? Tires okay? It’s a long, rough drive.” She walked around the van, scrutinizing it. Then she felt Matt’s hand on her arm. He tugged her to the passenger door. Callie glanced at his face and saw it was set in hard lines.
“Yes. Yes. And yes. Quit treating me like a dumb city bumpkin,” he ordered. He opened the door and jerked his head brusquely. “Get your fanny in.”
She’d nettled him, and it gave her a grim sense of victory. She didn’t really want to drive the van, but she needed to let him know that he wasn’t in charge, no matter what he thought. Callie smothered a sharp retort and stepped up into the plush velvet interior. She wouldn’t argue.
It was Matt’s van, after all. And it wasn’t his driving that was worrying her, it was their new status as a couple. She began to feel claustrophobic.
From the time Matt threw William an extra ration of hay and closed the gate behind them, until they reached John Henry’s garage in dusty, tiny Sweet Valley, Callie quietly attempted to assess her unsettled emotions.
“ ’Morning, folks,” John Henry said wryly. He shifted a match stem from one side of his mouth to the other, and Callie noticed that it didn’t move a bit after that. John Henry couldn’t
hide his intense curiosity as long as that matchstick acted as a barometer, she thought with grim amusement.
“Stopped by last night, but nobody came to the door,” he told them. “Figured you folks must have been busy, or something.”
Callie felt her face flame, and she looked into the back of the van, pretending to check the baskets packed behind her seat. Busy? Heavens, they’d probably been napping in each other’s arms when John Henry came by. She wanted to hide under the seat. She felt as if her grandfather were standing right beside John Henry, peering at her with a knowing expression.
Matt climbed down from the van and slapped John Henry’s back jovially. Callie had to admire him; he was completely composed. “Sorry we missed you, John Henry. We owe you a dinner.”
“We” owed him a dinner. Callie repeated those words in her mind. Matt was closing in, telling the world that they were together for good now. He wanted John Henry to know, that was obvious.
“Where y’all headed?” John Henry asked politely.
Matt answered before Callie had a chance. “We’re delivering a load of Callie’s wares to Helen for a festival that’s coming up.”
“John Henry.” Unwilling to let Matt do all the talking for the two of them, Callie searched for something to say to reclaim her identity. “If Lacey comes by here looking for me, tell her to let herself in the cabin. She knows where the key is. She might not show up, but then again, she might. It’s about time for her to be working the fairs around here.”
“Fine. I’ll tell her. I’ve been meaning to talk to her about a few things anyway,” he said absently as he studied Callie’s face.
“Now, John Henry, you keep your interfering hands off Lacey’s life,” Callie ordered with a firm nod. “She isn’t at all interested in your theories about matchmaking and men.”
John Henry winked at her. “You and Matt gonna take in the sights of Helen, are you?”
“We’re planning on it,” Matt answered first. Callie sighed in defeat. He gave Callie an “okay, you win” look, got a gauge, and began checking the van’s tires. “Well be back Sunday,” he called to John Henry.
Too Hot to Handle: A Loveswept Classic Romance Page 9