Man From Tennessee

by Jennifer Greene

  And Kern was standing right there, with potential purchases over his arm and a salesgirl hovering with hopeful enthusiasm just behind him. “Now don’t get snippy,” he said the moment he saw the expression on her face. “One pair of jeans may very well do for the morning, but afternoons are hot; you may need something to swim in, and since it’s my money I don’t see why you should care anyway.”

  But it was precisely because it was his money that she did care. Why he even wanted to buy her the mound of clothes didn’t really register. The feeling of owing him for one outfit already grated, and the pile of fabric was almost enough to induce a ridiculous sense of panic that she couldn’t quite explain. Worse than that was the inalterable feeling that he wanted her to bicker, wanted her to show that she was afraid of…what? Staying? Her lips pressed in a tight smile, Trisha handed the slacks and blouse she had chosen to the waiting salesgirl and turned smoothly to his pile.

  “It’s very nice of you, Kern, I’m sure.” Her tone said that she thought differently, as she took the bright orange outfit from his arm and laid it on the counter. “That’s really a color for a brunette. This one, the manufacturer specializes in short waists and I’m long-waisted, I’m afraid. I like this one, I really do, but I’ve never been able to wear that style blouse…” The pile on the counter kept mounting. Her polite, cheerful tone never altered until she came to the last of the clothes and then she faltered, a blush stealing onto her cheeks as she picked up the lemon open-weave bikini with two fingers and tossed it on top of the pile.

  “You always look good in yellow.” His eyes dared her to name her excuse. With a glance intended to wither steel, she stalked out of the store.

  He met her outside all too soon with her bag in his hand. His full-throated chuckle vibrated between them as he grabbed her arm and they raced again through the rain to the car. “You’re still a prude, Tish,” he teased as she slammed the door on her side.

  She pulled out in traffic in the direction of the restaurant he’d named, her chin stiffly in the air. “That isn’t fair. The only reason I don’t wear that kind of thing is because I don’t have the figure for it.”

  “And that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Sexy’s the way the whole shape’s put together, not just a pair of pendulous breasts-”

  “I don’t believe this conversation!”

  “I don’t believe you just went through a red light.”

  Her eyes flickered anxiously to the rearview mirror, and he burst into laughter when she shot back daggers at him. It was the first red light she had ever run in her life.

  “I wouldn’t have wanted you to wear it in public anyway,” he consoled.

  “If I had wanted to wear something like that, I would have worn it whether or not you or anyone else approved,” she said snappishly.

  “I see. You’re going to argue no matter what I say.” He sighed. “And I suppose the next thing you’re probably thinking to do is to go back to the shop to get it. Just to prove I’m wrong.”

  He had an unforgivable understanding of her exact frame of mind. Belatedly she realized that Kern had not worried about the entire pile of clothes. It was that little lemon confection at the bottom that he had staged to unsettle her. Or was it to find out if she really was the same prudish, self-conscious little nitwit she used to be? Somehow, it mattered that he believed she had changed, really changed. It was a question of pride.

  “You misunderstand, Kern,” she said more calmly. “I have no real objections to the suit-only to wearing something like it in a public place, like the swimming hole by the camp where there are so many strangers. Of course if you consider that prudish, I have to admit…” She shrugged carelessly, and followed his motioning hand to the parking-lot entrance near the restaurant.

  “But one-on-one is just fine, is that it, Tish?”

  His voice told of his displeasure, and for no reason as far as she could surmise. She sighed, giving up. She did not understand the man or his attitude. But she was exceedingly hungry.

  The restaurant was new to her. Huge from the outside, from within it was divided into at least half a dozen smaller dining rooms. Neither of them was dressed formally, but Kern chose to lead them to a small, hushed room in the back. Blood-red linen tablecloths and flickering candles graced each table. The menus were impressively two-feet long, and Trisha promptly hid behind hers.

  For a few minutes they were both quiet, and in spite of herself Trisha found that she was relaxing. Perhaps it was the pent-up sigh from the other side of the table that signaled a truce, and finally Kern spoke from behind his menu. “Are we going polite or are we going for fingers, Tish?”

  She could not help a smile as she peered around the menu. “Fingers.”

  “Fine.” He closed the menu, took hers from her, and set them aside. “You’re having frog legs and I’m having lobster. There’s really no need to look at the rest of the list.” He paused, a small flame in his eyes from the reflection of the candle. “I’m already picturing you in one of those big bibs…”

  “And I’m picturing you with your beard, managing lobster dripping with butter,” she quipped back.

  They both ate without a lot of talk, devouring their favorite delicacies as if starved. A small decanter of white wine was placed between them and was nearly empty by the time they finished. There was the sound of laughter and muted conversation from the other rooms, but the small dining area they claimed was virtually empty except for the two of them. When the bibs and bones and shells and debris from their meal were removed, the dark-coated waiter served coffee, and they both leaned back in their chairs, replete to the point of a lazy kind of tiredness.

  “Ready?” Kern asked finally, and she nodded. His arm brushed the small of her back as they walked from the restaurant, and when they reached the car Kern slipped into the driver’s seat. Taking control, she thought fleetingly, the way Kern found it hard not to take control of a setting. At the moment it just didn’t matter. She was too full, feeling perfectly lazy, to let anything matter. She slipped down in the passenger seat, resting her head against the back, half closing her eyes as he started the engine. The torrential rain had finally stopped and night had descended on the valley. They were through the flashing neon lights of the town in minutes and back on the mountain road that invoked an intense, peaceful quiet.

  “I haven’t seen you wear the sling since yesterday,” she commented idly.

  Kern smiled ruefully. “Ted told me the wrist would have healed a week ago if I’d just done what he told me. The sling was a penance that afternoon for overdoing it. Bothered by my driving, Tish?”

  “Of course not,” she said sleepily. “You drove the truck earlier, Kern. Besides, you wouldn’t take the wheel if you couldn’t handle it.”

  He glanced at her. “Blind trust used to be your specialty,” he chided.

  She looked back at him, and then away, silent the rest of the half-hour drive. Blind trust had been the instinct from the moment she met him, she couldn’t deny it. Though, thank God, she wasn’t naive any longer. But that trust, she realized, was still there. She did trust Kern and his integrity. She couldn’t really say the same for anyone else she’d ever known in her life.

  On the way up the long drive to his place, Kern turned the car midway, taking a narrow gravel road she was unfamiliar with. “Where?” she asked.

  “To walk off a bit of dinner, if you don’t mind.”

  “I…no.” She stepped out of the car stiffly, aware of Kern and the fact that they were alone. Somehow in all the worry over Julia she had failed to remind herself that staying at his place meant staying alone with him for the two nights.

  “This way.”

  He helped her over a rocky patch, and then his hand fell away, leaving her to set her own pace ahead of him. Trees rustled on her left, but the path followed a stream on the right, a gurgling rush of silver in the moonlight, a sprinkling of stars overhead reflected in the water. Wildflowers crouched low all around the banks,
a sweet, potent, night-rich scent after the rain.

  They walked without talking. The darkness made for a meandering pace, but it was not pitch black. The rain had cooled the sultry heat of the day, just a faint warm breeze rippling the stream. When she tired of walking, she wandered to a low flat rock that jutted over the water and perched on it with her legs crossed, bending to look in the stream.

  Kern stopped just behind her, leaning back against the rough-barked surface of a hickory tree in the shadow. She glanced back once, all too aware of him, but he seemed no more inclined to talk than she did. Every limb gradually relaxed as she simply stared out over the water, absorbing the scene. The restfulness was so different from the city life she’d adjusted to-the life she had convinced herself was all and exactly what she wanted. But the convincing had taken a long time.

  Finally she stood back up and dusted off her pants. She looked again to Kern. He hadn’t moved. His eyes had a gleam in the dusty shadows beneath the tree. She felt uneasy.

  “You accused me of playing with you before.”

  She nodded, pushing her hair back where the breeze was trying to curl it to her cheeks.

  “I knew we’d see each other again sometime, Tish. For the first year after you left, I probably would have slammed the door in your face if you had come back.” He stepped out from the shadows toward her, and she dug her hands in her pockets. “It took a long time to accept failure. I blamed you first and then me…and then no one. There was certainly no way to take back those six months, was there?”

  She shook her head, and he added quietly, “You were very young, Tish. I knew sooner or later I would want to know what you would be like when you grew up.”

  She took a breath, still staring at him. “I kept expecting you to ask for a divorce.”

  “I want children. If I’d found someone along the way I’d wanted to have children with, I would have gotten a divorce. Until then, it didn’t really matter.”

  He might as well have said that she didn’t matter, beyond sheer curiosity as to what had happened to her. She felt an unexpected curl of pain in her stomach.

  “And you have grown up, Tish.”

  His tone was soft, and she shook her head when he started toward her. She knew why he was coming, what he wanted, but the mesmerizing hold in his eyes was difficult to look away from. Her hands trembled just from the brush of those eyes on her soft skin.

  “I’m not asking or even suggesting fresh starts, Tish. I don’t even know who you are anymore, but I know damn well there’s something that you’re not leaving here again without… You can feel it…I can feel it every time I come near you.”

  “No. There’s nothing, Kern, there’s…” She put her hands in front of her as if that would be enough to push him away. A shudder whispered through her from fingers to toes as his lips molded hers, gently, insistently persuasive. His fingers caressed her face and throat, like they had done the first time when she had fallen in love with him. His tongue flicked across her teeth and her lips parted for him, her eyes closed half in dread, half in anticipation. The leashed lovemaking was Kern’s sweetness, but unleashed there were old nightmares…

  “Put your arms around my neck, Tish,” he whispered. “You did it last night.”

  “No. Please, Kern. This is all wrong…”

  “Just for a moment,” he coaxed. He drew her slim hands up himself, placing them around his neck, and his lips softly brushed her eyes closed again, brushed a sweet seductive warmth down the side of her face and neck. Her fingers crumpled in the rough thick texture of his hair. The need to hold on was there. She felt his strength beneath her fingertips, his flesh so warm, so responsive to her lightest touch. The earthy male scent of him enfolded her like a sweet drug she could not escape from, suddenly uncertain if she even wanted to. The panic that should have been mounting didn’t. She felt her breasts stiffen against his heartbeat, felt her thighs yield to the pressure of his own. So fierce was the growing awareness that she suddenly felt desperate for air but he would give her none. Her throat arched back as his mouth pressed on hers, a pressure that ached bruisingly against her lips, a pressure that echoed in the tightening spasms at the pit of her stomach.

  She knew better. Kern had not spoken of a renewal of their marriage and there was no way she would ever surrender again to that old feeling of being on trial, risk that sense of inadequacy as a woman that had almost destroyed her. But for a sweet shivering moment that seemed exactly the point. It was over with Kern, so there was really nothing left to lose.

  She molded her body to Kern’s, pressing her soft thighs to his sinewy hardness, as her tongue parried with his. Her hands kneaded the nape of his neck, his shoulders, the long, endlessly long stretch of his back to his waist. Kern matched fire with fire, his lips leaving hers only for breath before his teeth grazed her neck as if he were hungry for her taste. His bandaged wrist chafed the tender skin of her ribs under her blouse, summoning other fires. A work-roughened palm was impatient with the slip of bra, until it found the silky pale orb of flesh beneath, until the nipple tightened and swelled and strained beneath it.

  Something burst inside Trisha, a Pandora’s box of desire and need suddenly freed. She could not touch him enough. Her hands roamed feverishly beneath his shirt, up and down his sides and back, instinctively careful of the scar.

  “Lord, I want you, Tish. I’ve always wanted you,” he murmured huskily.

  She felt like crying. The wildness inside her would not stop building. She wanted to possess him and to be taken as she had never wanted to be taken before, not caring for past, present, future, not caring about the night or the rocky terrain or the dampness.

  It was all so easy. Kern was urging her down, his hands and eyes compelling her to lie beneath him. But his eyes left hers for just that moment, closing when he tried to bend where his ribs would not yet allow him to bend, his right wrist taking weight it was not yet ready to take. In the moonlight she saw his face contort in sudden unwilling pain, and she froze.

  The next thing she knew she was running. Stumbling on the rock-rough ground, tears blinding her, she made her hands try to put together blouse and bra and hair. Her chest was heaving in the chill night air. Shame, pride, memories…the internal ache was as sharp as a knife edge in her side when she finally reached the car and stopped, leaning weakly on the hood. She felt like fragments inside. From wanton to cold made no sense. Not to respond when he had loved her, to go on fire when there was only chemistry and no future. To completely forget that the man was hurt and in no shape for violent lovemaking, to forget every ounce of self-respect that had put her back together in those long years…

  “Get in,” Kern ordered.

  His shirt was flapping open. His eyes like icy coals as he opened the car door, he snatched at her arm and all but shoved her across to the passenger seat. The door slammed like a reverberating echo in her ear and Trisha huddled in the seat, eyes suddenly dry. His tall figure crossing in front of the car reflected a cold hard fury that frightened her. When he got inside he just looked at her tousled features long and hard and then started the engine.

  They were at his place in minutes. The single light left on in the kitchen made a lonely circle of welcome on the grass outside. Trisha reached quickly for the door handle, but Kern’s arm shot across, pinning her.

  “Tell me you intended to leave, just when-” he said harshly.

  She shook her head mutely, and his grip imperceptively lightened.

  “I told you I wondered what would happen when you grew up, Tish. Now I wonder how many men were part of that transition. You never took fire like that before. How many?” He grated. “How many men have you slept with in the past five years?”

  She was frightened still, his eyes intense, smoldering anger inches from hers. She knew he wouldn’t believe the truth. It struck her as almost hysterically funny to think of telling him after what just happened that she had almost led a nun’s life, that she had accepted finally that she was simply emot
ionless in bed. She didn’t understand yet why she had responded to him after all these years. And, if it weren’t for the mortifying confusion and embarrassment she felt inside, the bitter scald of tears held barely in check, she would not believe she had indeed responded.

  “Never mind.” His jaw was taut, but the longer he looked at her fragile feminine features contorted by anguish, the more the flame of rage in his eyes lessened. “We’re not done, Tish. It’s going to happen, and you damn well know it as well as I do. With us there’s only one ending or beginning, because of the way it was.”

  She breathed out no.

  He wasn’t listening. “You run this time and I’ll find you. Don’t even try it.”

  She opened the car door and escaped. The kitchen door was unlocked and she ran through, past the living room and hall, up the stairs. In seconds she was leaning against the closed door of her bedroom, fighting to stop the flow of hot tears.

  Sex was all he had been talking about, not love. He felt no love after all this time? Why should he was the silent cry inside.

  She moved forward, removing her clothes in the darkness. The urge was to pack and flee. The urge was to forget Julia. But unfortunately she simply could not forget. Her pulse finally calmed. She was not running again. It was time for action, time to get them both out of their limbo of a marriage. Five years past time.

  But she could never face going to bed with Kern again. Even after tonight, she didn’t trust herself. She would freeze and fail him. The last time, she had put herself back together. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it again. Not again…

  Chapter Five

  Trisha did not wake until nine, a late hour in this household, so she was not surprised to find the house empty and no sign of Kern when she went downstairs. Dressed in the new jeans and shirt, with a battered pair of tennis shoes she’d remembered to throw into her suitcase, she gulped down half a cup of coffee and carted a sweet roll outside with her.