by Gina Wilkins
Then he couldn't think at all but could only close his eyes and let instinct drive him, shuddering as she lifted to meet each deep, desperate thrust. He'd wanted to take it slowly this first time after their separation, to savor each moment, but his needs had flared out of his control. He struggled fiercely to ensure that Spring found her own pleasure before he gave in to the need for release, deeply satisfied when she convulsed beneath him, crying out brokenly. Only then did he let go, her name leaving his lips in a gasp as he went rigid for a long, pulsing moment, then collapsed heavily on top of her.
Almost immediately he rolled to his side to relieve her of his weight. But he refused to let her go. He'd never willingly let her go again.
Spring took a deep breath and then another, willing her heartbeat to slow, her thoughts to clear. She found it almost hard to believe that she was lying on her living-room floor, that it was a Monday evening after a fairly typical day at her office. All comprehension of time and place had left her while Clay had made love with her, and now she was forced to entirely reorient herself. She hadn't really been to paradise.
Or had she? Had Clay really told her he loved her?
She wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly. "I can't believe you're actually here. I'm afraid I'll wake up and you'll be gone again."
"No, sweetheart. I'm here. I can't believe I stayed away so long."
She wanted to ask why he had, but she didn't know if she was ready yet to spoil the mood by bringing up that stupid fight they'd had. Instead, she toyed lazily with one of the few golden curls scattered across his chest and asked, "Why did you tell Andi and Kelsey that your name was Mr. Crowe?"
He chuckled, his hand moving in idle patterns on her shoulder. "I thought you'd figure that out. Crow is the entree on my menu for tonight's dinner." He sobered abruptly. "I'm sorry, Spring. For everything that happened between us that last night in California. I was spoiling for a fight when I saw you that night, and I all but leaped on the first difference of opinion that came up."
"All right, I accept your apology. And I'm sorry, too."
He shook his head against the carpet, then pushed himself upright, helping her up to sit beside him, her long legs tucked beside her. "No, Spring. Don't just shrug it off. We need to talk about it so you'll understand what happened."
She sighed. "I guess you're right. I just hate to bring it up now, after everything has been so nice."
"We're not going to argue again. I promise. I just want to explain."
She reached for her blouse. "All right. I suppose it is time for us to talk. Past time."
He reached out to still her hand. "What are you doing?"
"I'm getting dressed."
"No, don't. You're beautiful exactly the way you are."
She flushed, squirming a bit under his lambent regard. "I feel strange sitting here without any clothes on."
"You'll get used to it." He grinned, deliberately distracting her from her modest self-consciousness. "Surely you're not still accusing me of being dressed funny? This time my ego really would be hurt."
She laughed, as he'd intended, and shook her head. "You are a beautiful man. Clay McEntire. A perfect specimen. Well, almost perfect. There's that scar on your stomach. But even that looks good on you. What caused it?" she asked because she was genuinely curious about the thin white line that was a bit too crooked to be caused by a surgeon's blade and because she was still trying to delay their talk about the quarrel.
"A switchblade," he answered calmly, and somehow she knew that the talk had already begun.
"You were knifed?" she whispered in horror. "By one of your kids?"
He shook his head. "In a fight, when I was sixteen. I was carrying a knife, too, Spring. I just wasn't as good with mine as the other guy was with his."
"Oh, Clay." She reached out to touch his cheek. He was so beautiful, so wholesome and happy looking that she tended to forget the darker side of his past.
He caught her hand in his, kissed it, then lowered it to his bare thigh. "I've told you about my past, Spring. It wasn't so nice. My parents were cold, demanding people, and I could never live up to their expectations. Appearances meant everything to them and very little to me. I wanted so much to love them, as every child wants to love his parents, but their continuous emotional rejection made me angry. I took my rage out on them and everyone else around me, even myself. And that's why I was mad at you that night in California."
"But, Clay, I hadn't rejected you," she protested, her forehead creasing with a frown as she tried to understand. "Just the opposite, in fact. We'd made love."
He captured her other hand, leaning forward as he gripped her fingers in his. "Don't you see, sweetheart? I was anticipating your rejection. I was angry with you before the fact because I was so certain it was going to happen. Stupid, I know, but don't forget that I'd had several years of experience with rejection and it's not always easy to put the past behind me. You kept talking about returning home, and I knew how much it would hurt me when you left, so I took the initiative, I guess, and hurt you before you could hurt me."
"You were so angry with me for agreeing with Tony's parents."
"Another scar from the past," he confessed. "I was dragged home by the cops a couple of times when I'd had enough and decided to leave. It's a humiliating and pride-destroying experience, especially if you get a couple of thick-skulled cops who couldn't care less about kids and get their kicks by treating them like dirt. I work very closely with the police at times now, and I've developed a great deal of respect for most of them, but I'll never forget how it felt."
"And that's why you identified so closely with Tony."
"Yes. But you were entitled to your opinion, Spring. I could have told you how I felt and why, instead of shouting at you for expressing your own thoughts. I'm sorry."
"I was scared, too, Clay," she admitted quietly, her eyes dropping to their clasped hands. "You seemed so happy with your life, and I didn't think I fit in. I'm not adventurous and impulsive and outgoing, like Summer and your other friends. And I'm not exotic and beautiful, like the women in your past. I was becoming so deeply involved with you, but I thought you only wanted a fling with me because of a fleeting attraction. Your odd behavior the night we quarreled only seemed to confirm that suspicion."
Clay sighed deeply and raised her hands to his mouth, pressing his lips to her knuckles before lowering them again. "My beautiful, fascinating Spring. Why are you so determined to put yourself down? What makes you think that you're so uninteresting, and what will it take for me to convince you that you're dead wrong?"
She shrugged a little, embarrassed. "I guess my behavior is shaped by my past, just like yours. I'm so used to being compared to my extroverted, exuberant younger sisters. When we were little, Summer was always clowning around, performing, making people laugh with her impersonations and her songs and dances. And Autumn was a scrapper, a beautiful redheaded tomboy who impressed everyone with her fiery personality and her athletic prowess. I was known as the quiet one, the studious one, the shy one. My mother was always talking about the mischief Summer and Autumn got into, telling her friends the latest thing one or the other had done, like she was complaining but secretly amused by them. When she mentioned me, it was only to say what a good girl I was.
"I'm not saying she didn't love me as much as she loved my sisters," she added hastily. "I'm sure she did. And she was—is very proud of me. But I just got used to being on the sidelines, unable to compete for attention the way my sisters did. It wasn't bad. I liked being out of the limelight. I wasn't comfortable with too much attention."
"Poor love," Clay crooned, smiling tenderly at her. "It must have been as hard for you to always live up to the label of good girl as it was for me to live up to the label of bad boy."
She smiled faintly and bit her lip. "Oh, I used to rebel sometimes, in my own quiet, unobtrusive ways. I'd play practical jokes and never tell anyone who did them. People used to blame them on Summer and Aut
umn and think it was all hilariously funny. Or I'd unexpectedly accept a dare when no one thought I would. I broke my arm once climbing a tree that everyone knew was rotten, just because Tommy Trenton dared me to. My family was shocked, but I was secretly quite proud of that cast."
"Just like I dared you to dress funky the night we went to the play at my school," he remembered with an appreciative grin.
"Mmm. And I've lived the life of a modern single woman since I left home," she added thoughtfully. "There haven't been many men in my life, but I doubt that my mother would have approved of all my actions. She's probably quite convinced that Autumn and I are still virgins simply because we're not married yet and that Summer was an innocent bride. She's very old-fashioned in that way."
Clay chuckled. "You don't think you're underestimating your mother a bit?"
"Oh, no." Spring laughed softly and shook her head. "No matter what she might suspect, she'd never admit it, even to herself. She prefers blissful ignorance—like all mothers, I suppose."
"You'll probably be the same way with our...with your children." Clay stumbled over the Freudian slip, then sobered immediately. "About the future, Spring..."
Still dazed by the thought of having children with him, Spring tensed, a bit nervous about what he was going to say. "What...what about it?"
"Let's delay it awhile, shall we? What we have together is still so new, so wonderfully mind-boggling, that I'd like to savor it before we move on to the next step. We have a lot of decisions to make, a lot to discuss, and I fully intend to do so soon, but how about if we take a couple of weeks just to get to know each other better?"
That sounded fine to her—on one condition. "Are you staying here during those couple of weeks?"
"If you'll have me," he replied with a winsome smile. "I'm taking a vacation. It's my turn."
"I'll have you," she told him, a bit too fervently, she thought immediately. She backtracked a little. "I can't take off work, though. My appointment calendar's full, and I can't take off again so soon."
"That's okay. I didn't expect you to."
"What will you do with yourself during working hours?" she asked, concerned that he would be bored.
"I could stand around your office and watch you work," he suggested teasingly. "No? In that case, I'll play tourist. I've never been to Arkansas. Maybe I'll find some barefoot hillbillies, if I look hard enough."
Spring scowled ferociously at him. "Are you daring to insult my state?"
He released her hands to hold both of his up, palm outward, in a gesture of conciliation. "Of course not! I was only teasing."
"Good. You just might be surprised at what you find in Arkansas," she told him smugly.
"I've already found something in Arkansas that's the best thing I've ever discovered. You."
She melted. "Thank you."
"This time together will also give you a chance to see what it's like to live with me," Clay pointed out, only half-teasingly. "I'm not your most normal guy, you know. And I do tend to get moody occasionally. Not very often, you understand. But I don't leave my dirty socks lying around," he added with a bit of boyish boasting.
"You don't wear socks, Clay," Spring informed him sweetly.
"That's right, I don't." He looked abashed for a moment, then grinned. "Maybe I should buy some and not leave them lying around."
"I don't think that will be necessary. I'm sure we can find another virtue in you if we look hard enough."
He seemed to consider that for a moment, then shot her a challenging look. "You're too far away. If you're going to find a virtue in me, you're going to have to look closely."
"Is that right?" Her brow lifted at the dare, as he'd known it would. "You know, the light in here is a bit dim. There's a better light in the bathroom."
He looked intrigued. "The bathroom?"
"Mmm. I thought I'd take a shower. I worked up quite a sweat today—at work," she added saucily. Then, remembering another challenge he'd once made her, she tilted her head and looked at him through her lashes. "I'd be happy to wash your back, Clay."
He, too, remembered telling her that one day she would offer to wash his back. His eyes gleamed with pleasure as he stood and held out his hand to her. "Only if you'll allow me to return the favor."
"I think that can be arranged."
The shower took a very long time. The water had run quite cold by the time it finally ended. By then they had soaped each other from head to toe, Spring had discovered two more tiny scars on Clay's body, and he'd gleefully located a shallow, round, nine-month-old chicken-pox scar on her left breast, just to the side of her turgid pink nipple. Twisting the chilly water off, he covered the small imperfection with his mouth, which led to a painstaking exploration of the rest of her body, supposedly to find other reminders of the childhood disease she'd contracted so recently. He didn't find any, but by the time he'd concluded his search, neither of them remembered what he'd been looking for.
After they'd languorously dried each other with huge, fluffy towels, Spring took Clay's hand and led him into her bedroom, reminding him that she was supposed to be looking for his virtues. With a boldness that was new to her—and delightful to him—she made love to him. Slowly. Thoroughly. Imaginatively. He loved every minute of it, and he managed to tell her so in broken gasps and strangled groans.
Afterward they both fell asleep, exhausted but deeply content. They hadn't eaten dinner, but they'd satisfied their hunger in other ways. Sometime during the night they raided the refrigerator for sandwiches, then made love again. Clay went back to sleep almost immediately. Spring lay awake for a short time, wondering about the future they'd been reluctant to discuss, but then she decided to adopt Clay's live-for-the-moment attitude and she, too, fell asleep, cradled close in his arms.
* * *
So that Clay could use her car, Spring called Kelsey the next morning and asked for a ride. She left for work with her hair a bit mussed, her lips slightly swollen, and with just barely enough time to get to her office before her first appointment. But her violet eyes sparkled with love, her cheeks glowed with happiness and she couldn't seem to stop smiling. If she still worried about the future, she managed to hide it—even from herself. She was in love, and Clay was here, and she intended to relish every moment.
"I would say that you had a very...interesting night," Kelsey commented after taking one look at her friend's face.
Blushing rosily, Spring straightened her breeze-tossed hair, which she'd left down that morning. "It was...nice."
"Nice." Kelsey sounded a lot like Summer when she repeated the word with disdain. "Sure."
"Okay, it was fabulous. What do you want, play-byplay reporting?"
Grinning, Kelsey nodded avidly.
Spring laughed and shook her head. "Forget it. I wouldn't have time, anyway. Mr. Abernathy is due at the office in less than fifteen minutes."
"Hey, you're the one who was five minutes late coming down to the parking lot."
Spring blushed again. "I know."
"Did he ask you to marry him?"
"Mr. Abernathy?" Spring inquired, being deliberately obtuse.
Kelsey sighed gustily. "No. Clay Crowe McEntire. Did he ask you?"
"No, Kelsey."
"Did he tell you that he loves you?"
Spring hesitated, then shrugged. "In a way."
"In a way? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Kelsey, really. I don't have time for this, and I'm not sure that I'd want to go into it if I did. It's awfully personal."
Kelsey smiled ruefully and nodded her dark head. "I know. It's just that I can't help worrying about you a little. I can't forget the way you looked on your birthday when you opened that gift from him. You were so devastated. This man has such power to hurt you."
Spring moistened her lips and tucked a strand of hair behind the earpiece of her glasses. "Kelsey, I know you're only concerned because you care about me, but I really don't want to talk about this just now, okay? Clay and I agreed
to spend some time together before we discuss the future, and I think it was a good idea. I don't want to rush into anything at this point, nor do I want to spoil my enjoyment of being with him by worrying about what may or may not happen."
"I understand," Kelsey told her, though her dark eyes were still concerned. "Be happy, Spring. You deserve it." She parked the car in her parking space, then hesitated and turned to her friend, smiling as if she were worried that she might have put a damper on Spring's good spirits. "By the way, if you get tired of having the guy around, I'd be willing to put up with him for a few hours."
Spring laughed. "I'll just bet you would. Sorry, Kel, no chance. I'm hanging on to this one."
"I don't blame you."
"Thanks for the concern, Kelsey," Spring added quickly before climbing out of the small car. She was anxious to stay busy, knowing that the time until she was with Clay again would pass too slowly if she gave herself a chance to think about it.
She'd half expected Clay to call her sometime during the day, but he didn't. Nor did he show up at lunch-time. She wondered what he was doing with himself. She wondered if he'd like what he saw of her home state. And, finally, she wondered what was going to happen between them. It seemed that no amount of determination on her part could stop her from worrying about the future when she found herself with half an hour between appointments late that afternoon, due to a last-minute cancellation. She loved her city, her state and the practice she'd built, but she loved Clay so much more. If he asked—as she suspected that he would—could she leave the rest behind for him?
It wouldn't be easy, starting over. It scared her witless to think about it. Maybe she'd be content just to be Clay's wife—assuming he asked her to marry him, she added hastily, staring sightlessly at a patient's file. She could keep his home for him, have his children, wait patiently in his lovely house until he finished with his job and his volunteer work. It wouldn't be so bad.