Man From Tennessee

by Jennifer Greene

  As she stepped into the hall with her hands full, the towel she’d been wearing slipped, and by the time she’d taken three more steps it had evidently decided it was happiest in the floor. Automatically her eyes darted up, but there wasn’t a soul in the house, since Kern had left more than an hour before in the truck. With an irritated sigh she set everything on the floor, wandered determinedly back to Kern’s room and drew out an old, frayed long-sleeved shirt of his from the back of the closet. The yellow fabric fit predictably, an exercise in drowning. All that identified her feminine status disappeared, and it took five impatient rolls of each cuff just to rediscover her hands.

  Adding a hairbrush to the pile on the floor, she snatched it all back up and carted it downstairs. Beyond the bedroom where Julia had stayed was Kern’s office study. Beyond that was a utility room, with washing machine and dryer and lemon-painted wall-to-ceiling cupboards for storage. Trisha put the washer setting on cool and gentle, pretreated the stains on the jeans and then leaned back as the machine filled, absently working the brush through her hair. A large low window made it a pleasant room to be in, utility status or not. Budding azaleas burgeoned over the windowsills; the mossy lawn just outside was lush and emerald, sloping gently to the woods. A pair of woodpeckers were busy trying to peck insects from the bark of a huge old mountain maple, and a red squirrel was perched paws-up in the middle of the lawn, scolding the world in general about nothing in particular. Trisha smiled in amusement; “boomers,” the locals labeled the squirrels, for they never ceased their chattering.

  From the distance in the woods she caught the soft reflection of a pair of eyes. A white-tailed deer stepped one foot from the safety of cover to the open, civilized carpet of lawn, changed his mind and bolted with that coltish awkward leap that was a blend of grace and timidity so common in the breed. The red squirrel suddenly hopped after him-at last finding someone to listen? Chuckling, Trisha stretched lazily and took her coffee cup for a refill to the kitchen. It was at least twenty minutes before she needed to do anything else.

  Her barefoot step was quick and quiet past Kern’s office, and then she backed up unconsciously with a startled frown. The room was new to her, and she’d made a point of not intruding near it since she’d been there. Teak paneling and a dark Oriental carpet reminded her very much of Kern’s office in Detroit, shut off from sights and sounds, the way he liked to work.

  The room was divided by function, the north side yielding an old-fashioned wood stove, a careless array of books and magazines, a lounge chair. But the south side was all business, right down to the computer equipment and file cabinets. The sophisticated equipment was very different from the easy mountain living style of the rest of the house, but surprised Trisha not at all. She knew that Kern kept an active interest in the complex corporation he had inherited from his father. She remembered all too well that his reputation in the business world had been ruthless. He had a perception and skill for maneuvering people and events that left competitors behind; nothing had ever stood in the way of what he wanted…

  Her frown deepened as she studied the man she was so certain had not been in the house. A man alone-too much alone, she had seen that in him five years ago-and with a disquieting sense of déjà vu she suddenly saw the same man. Facing away from her, he was seated at the desk in the middle of the room, his fingers laced behind his neck and his head bowed. The room was so silent she could hear the ticking of the clock, but it was the silence in the man that troubled her, the look of tension and preoccupied weariness, the look of trouble…

  She hesitated. “Kern?” she asked softly.

  His head jerked toward her and she glimpsed…what?-frustration? pain?-before he quickly masked his features, his hands dropping and his shoulders automatically squaring back.

  “I was doing some wash,” she told him, explaining her presence awkwardly, “and was just going to get a cup of coffee. If you want one…”

  “Thanks.”

  When she returned from the kitchen with a small tray, he was standing, leaning back against the desk. The one hand still worrying the tension at the back of his neck dropped the minute he saw her.

  “There’s two aspirins on the tray for the headache,” she said calmly.

  “I don’t have a headache.”

  “Of course you don’t.” She handed him a mug, which he took, and then held out the aspirins in the open palm of her hand.

  He took them, glaring at her, a marvelously ferocious scowl between bushy black brows that was thoroughly wasted as he popped the aspirins and washed them down with coffee. And then it was her turn to be irritated; weariness erased itself from his eyes as he lazily surveyed her figure from top to toe. The long slender legs, barefoot, the flapping yellow shirt at her thighs-he seemed to know she wore nothing beneath. Perhaps it was written on her breasts, she thought irritably, because that was where he seemed to be staring, suddenly the image of a perfectly relaxed man.

  “You’re deteriorating sadly, Tish,” Kern said dryly. “Every day you’re here you seem to be going less and less formal. From designer labels to jeans, and now to a ten-year-old shirt and barefoot. By tomorrow I fully expect you to be running around here stark-”

  “I told you I was doing a wash. I had no idea you were back in the house.”

  He cocked his head back, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll be damned if you don’t manage to look like a princess even dressed like that, Tish. Every time I see that chin of yours go up and that haughty little nose of yours, I see the lady in her ivory tower. Inviolate, untouchable, pure. How is it you still project the same image?”

  Once the mocking tone would have hurt, and badly; now Trisha just shook her head scoldingly at him, refusing to be drawn. “Do you want me to burst into tears because you’re being so nasty or feel complimented at the princess image?”

  “Damned if I know.”

  Her delicate eyebrows arched in teasing disbelief. “There must be monsoons if Mr. Lowery is suffering from indecision. At least a tornado. No?”

  “God, you’ve gotten sassy,” he commented with mixed exasperation and humor, motioning to the papers he had strewn on his desk. “You’re also way off base, although there are times my mother does seem to have World War III potential in her. Or else for unknown reasons she’s simply trying to drive me out of my mind.”

  Chuckling, Trisha perched on the arm of his lounge chair. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “No? She used to be a damned good businesswoman, but a couple of years ago I asked her if she wanted me to handle her investments. It was around the time she started looking not very well to me, or at least not as well as I thought she should look. I was trying to lift the burdens a little, because she has quite an independent income from her mother’s family, apart from the Lowery’s…”

  “And,” Trisha prompted.

  He threw up his hands in mock disgust. “There should be nothing to it, damn it. If I can keep control of a seven-figure business with quarterly visits and good management, it should be chicken feed to handle this bit on the side. Instead, my mother’s been acting like she’s on a leash for every con man this side of the Mississippi! I find myself a landlord of two run-down little apartment houses in Detroit, hassling sewer laws. There’s some idiotic little bakery in Hamtramck she bought up for God knows what reason. She’s set up some foundation for art-student scholarships-there’s three-hundred little applications here to decide from. This one volunteered her portfolio ahead of time; as far as I know she’s an expert at drawing squiggly lines…”

  Trisha smiled, the proud tilt he’d accused her features of having now softening in empathy. Julia’s cause took no deep thought to understand. “Perhaps it’s her way of forcing you to make more and more trips up north, Kern.”

  His fingers laced behind his neck again as he stared at her. “All right,” he admitted thoughtfully, “but it still doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. We had a major war when I moved here, but that’s long over with; she
knows I’m settled here. And if she’s lonely I’ve invited her here dozens of times. It’s not as if we’re close-though I’ve tried since my father died. God knows, the apron strings were cut when I was approximately five; mother’s a long way from being a clinging personality…”

  “You’re right,” Trisha agreed gently, “but she is growing older, Kern, and perhaps she’s afraid of that. Alone, not quite well, and she doesn’t…bend well. Maybe she doesn’t know how to. She can’t very well just come out and say she needs you, Kern.”

  Her voice trailed, the train of thought gone as she caught his expression intent upon her. His eyes were glinting something she never expected to see from Kern, the simplest sort of gentle warmth without even a hint of a sexual overtone. Had they ever shared a problem before? A warm glow kindled inside her, an awareness that she could almost believe in new beginnings…

  “Kern?” said a vibrant voice from the doorway. “I knocked but when you didn’t answer I just came in. I knew you’d have the work ready for me…”

  Trisha stood up, nodding a polite hello to Rhea with shoulders promptly squared as though she were wearing her best evening gown. Kern had not mistaken her pride of bearing and it had to be in capital letters at the moment. Rhea had foregone mountain wear in favor of a stark white skirt and a matching jacket, a tasteful, not inexpensive outfit that did the most for a long stretch of darkly tanned legs. The long hair had been roped and coiled, and though the lady could not really claim classic beauty, there was an unmatchable pair of rich lustrous eyes fastened on Kern.

  “And I should have known you’d come early for it,” Kern said warmly, his hand extended in greeting to Rhea’s. The hand was clasped, held.

  “I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to dinner the other night,” Rhea ventured hesitantly to Trisha, her expression politely impassive as she noted the huge yellow Shirt, half-dried hair, bare feet. “We had a wonderful time. Perhaps another occasion…”

  Trisha smiled vaguely, snatching up the tray of dead coffee cups as she ventured for the door. “You two are busy. I’ll see you again at four, Kern, when we go to pick up your mother.” It took an effort to close the door behind her with the awkward tray, but she managed it.

  And then she closed her eyes for a full thirty seconds. Kern’s warmth, his hand extended, the woman’s sexual vibrations, their so-easily-read ambiance…jealousy was a simple word. The sudden shakiness in Trisha’s limbs was more than that, a despair in having to acknowledge how much she did care. Kern had accepted her back in his household easily, but she had no illusions as to his feelings for the long term. She was there because of his mother. She could be his bed partner if she wished it, but there was no question that he wasn’t offering more. Why should he, after what had happened between them? One inhibited, skinny woman with a bad track record, next to Rhea, one of Rubens’s treasures?

  Hell, she murmured to herself as she clattered the cups in the dishwasher and tiptoed past the closed door to retrieve her wash. It was time to pull herself back together. Just the idea of Kern comparing the two of them was enough to make her shore up walls of pride against her crumbling confidence. Put competition in a sexual arena and all those tentative hopeful murmurings in the back of her mind were soundly buried.

  At four Trisha was waiting for Kern in the driveway, the keys to the Mercedes restlessly swaying in her fingers. The mauve pantsuit shivered over her slim figure in the breeze, a subtle color that brought out the ivory in her complexion. Gone was the sunburned nose and windswept hair; in place was a mask of expert makeup and a sophisticated loose froth of curls, brushed back to show off a haughty profile. Trisha of Grosse Pointe was back and only the small pulse at the delicate V of her throat revealed any emotion at the sight of Kern’s suited figure finally emerging from the house.

  “You’re late,” she said curtly, as she opened the door to the driver’s side and promptly slipped in.

  More slowly Kern followed, eyes narrowed just slightly at her unexpected chill tone. By agreement they were taking the Mercedes over Kern’s truck or Jeep since they felt there would be more comfort and space for Julia. Yet there seemed no space at all once Kern folded in his long legs. In a dark suit Kern carried with him the brusque snapping sort of assurance she remembered from when she’d first met him, but these days the fabric seemed to strain at his shoulders as if the veneer of civilized man was only paper-thin. Hawklike features surveyed her new outfit, unfairly noting first the vulnerable V of her open throat before judging the aristocratic set of her profile. “You obviously had the urge to go shopping,” he commented lazily. “If you needed money-”

  “I managed,” she said pleasantly, as she started the car and put her gold sandal intimately to the accelerator. She was about to become very good friends with speed. The chant in her mind all day had been to get Julia and get out before there was trouble-and as for the cost of the outfit, Julia would more than willingly subsidize the trip home, a thought that never seemed to have occurred before.

  “Well, however you ‘managed,’” Kern echoed deliberately, “the effect is cool and expensive, Tish. Lovely.”

  “Thank you.” She saw his foot applying an imaginary brake as she rounded a curve too fast. Well, if he would just stop staring at her… “I had a terrific time shopping this afternoon,” she said finally. “I saw a bundle of designs I could bring back home to my job; a few days of rest in the mountains and I feel invigorated all over again, full of plans and ideas.”

  “Anxious to go back to work, are you?” Almost too easily he was falling for the conversational gambit.

  “Very much. This week I took a leave for Julia, but the three weeks after was vacation that I could probably reschedule for anytime.”

  “Had enough of mountain life in a few short days? It didn’t take you long.”

  “Certainly not six months this time.”

  It hit home. The silence between them was abrupt, so tangible it could have been sliced. For a ridiculous instant Trisha felt the urge to cry, and then her rational mind smoothed out as her driving did. She had cut her losses and run five years before, not as an act of cowardice but of self-preservation. This felt no different. The man beside her had disturbed, had already carved through old defenses she’d believed were invulnerable.

  Half an hour later they were both seated in Ted Bassett’s office. The doctor was standing with his hands dug into the pockets of his white lab coat, unsmiling, his blue eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. “I wish I could tell you something definite,” he said frankly. “Your mother just isn’t a simple diagnosis, Kern. You already know about the heart murmur and that she had hypertensive blood pressure. People can have both conditions and live for years with proper medications. I can quote you the range of statistics if you want-”

  “Forget that sort of thing,” Kern said abruptly. “All I want to know is exactly where she stands.”

  “And that’s just what I’m trying to tell you. Professionally, all I can suggest is that you ensure she takes her pills, gets the proper rest and maintains regular medical care. But…”

  Trisha’s frown of concern mirrored Kern’s.

  “But,” Ted repeated gravely, “my gut instinct tells me she’s stroke material. I’m not trying to alarm you. There’s no real medical reason to justify that, but if you two know of anything at all that’s worrying her…”

  A short while later the two of them were out in the corridor. Trisha’s sandaled heels clattered on the hospital tiles, her face as stark as the nurse’s caps they passed. Kern, nearly a full head taller than she was, radiated a firm stride that halted abruptly several feet from Julia’s closed door.

  Trisha paused as well, glancing back at the sudden “don’t-argue-with-me” slashed on his features. “I’m going to talk mother into staying here,” he said flatly.

  Her eyebrows rose as she shook her head. “Don’t be silly, Kern. The only thing to do is take her home, around the things that she loves, the things she’s familiar
with-”

  “You’re the one who wants to go home, Tish. So you made a point of telling me earlier. But we both know what mother’s worried about.”

  “What are you talking about?” Trisha asked him curtly, her eyes darting nervously at a passing patient who was plainly overhearing their conversation.

  “The pair of us-that’s what she’s worried about. And since you’re in such an all-fired hurry to get home, just go. Mother isn’t leaving my sight.”

  Trisha drew in her breath at his unexpected bluntness. She felt slapped with guilt, knowing that what he said about the source of Julia’s worry was true, and his cold “just go” put a sting to that slap. He really couldn’t care less if she stayed or not… “I’m not leaving her here with you, Kern,” she whispered furiously. “She hasn’t cooked a can of beans in thirty years, and I don’t see bridge clubs populating the mountains! What’s she supposed to do with her time-watch you go out the door each day for ten hours? She happens to be the only mother I’ve got, too, and if only because I’m another woman, I’m the best one to take care of her.”

  “She’s not leaving here.”

  “Would you just be reasonable-”

  “I said, she’s not leaving here, Trisha.” He took three strides forward and raised an arm as if he were going to open Julia’s door, as if the matter were already settled. Trisha grabbed at his sleeve to stop him, too angry and upset to even consider her words.

  “Then I’m staying, too, Kern! At least until I see that she’ll be happy. You can’t possibly object when you know I could help her…”