Man From Tennessee

by Jennifer Greene

  “Now don’t get sassy.” His eyes flickered over her, a grin slashed above the ebony beard. “If you’re nice to me, I might just sign you up for lessons.”

  “Talk, talk, talk.” The wind was whirling her hair so helter-skelter in the open Jeep that she put both hands up impatiently, capturing a tousled knot at the top of her head.

  He braked the Jeep and they both climbed out. “Hold it.” Kern leaned folded arms over the side of the vehicle, an expression on his face that she couldn’t quite fathom, but the teasing look was gone. “Were you just talking about wanting to fly?”

  Trisha let her hair fall in a tumble to her shoulders, reaching in for her purse on the floor of the Jeep. “No. I’ve always wanted to fly,” she admitted. “But it’s just a dream, Kern, the way opening a crafts shop for me was once a dream I had here.”

  “You never told me you wanted to do that.”

  She shrugged, tossing back her hair, aiming for the house. “There’s irony somewhere. The dream was the selling of authentic Cherokee designs and the back-country quilting patterns; the reality’s been in dealing with plain old polyester on a mannequin.” She turned to smile at Kern as she opened the door to the house. “The ride was fun. Thank you very much.”

  She waited. Kern hadn’t accepted being dismissed with civilized politeness before. He had always taken advantage of the few moments they had had alone. And the hall was empty, dark and quiet. But he just stood there, waiting for her to go inside, his eyes resting on hers with the awareness of a hawk’s. Suddenly embarrassed, Trisha hurried past him. He’s got you waiting for him to seduce you, she thought irritably. Less forgivable to her was knowing that she’d been standing there, not only anticipating but counting on it.

  Chapter Seven

  “Lord, no! I just got my feet up after traipsing around all day. If you two would just leave, I could kindly treat myself to a forbidden glass of Cognac, close out all the disgusting fresh air in this house, and write some letters.” Julia repeated it just in case either Kern or Trisha had missed the point. “I do not want to go on some little mystery excursion anywhere at eight o’clock at night.”

  Trisha sighed, staring glumly at a fixed point between Julia and the waiting Kern. The impulse, really, was to curl up in a chair and simply fall asleep. After a long day of shopping to decorate Julia’s room, she had been too tired to more than peck at dinner, and she hadn’t taken off the outfit she’d worn all day: a slim olive skirt slit attractively to show off her legs, an ivory silk blouse with a crisp V-neck and long sleeves. It was attractive on her but swelteringly hot. Hot, tired and vaguely restless, she was in one of those moods where she really didn’t know what she wanted.

  A few minutes later she was out in the darkness with Kern, not at all certain why she had agreed to come. He’d simply spoken of an hour’s outing and something he thought she’d be interested in, not worth worrying about if she wasn’t. His indifference had doubled her sense of restlessness inside. For two days now the black-shirted, charcoal-jeaned man at her side had radiated such quiet that Trisha was beginning to feel like the stranger she was supposed to be in his house.

  Lord, you’re mixed up, she told herself with silent disgust as they drove through the night. Tree shadows were impossibly still on the road, not a stirring of life. Mountain nights promised to be cool, but this one was tepid, clinging, the breezes too tired and hot to try. The full moon was gone and the next seemed too lazy to come out.

  He stopped the car in less than twenty minutes. Instinct told Trisha that as the crow flew, they couldn’t be more than a hop and a skip from his own home. The log cabin in front of them radiated warmth from within, an old rambling structure with the scent of horses wafting from a nearby building. A yard light beaconed on the gravel drive of the rustic mountain home.

  Trisha stepped from the car, knowing instinctively she should have changed into jeans. Rarely accustomed to being moody for long, she could not seem to shake the feeling that tonight she just wasn’t going to do anything right.

  Kern threw an arm on her shoulder as they approached the three-stepped porch. She debated shrugging off the arm or cuddling closer. By the time the door opened, she was still mulling over decisions she just wasn’t in the mood to make that day.

  Rhea stood in the doorway with the lamplight behind her. “Well! Why didn’t you say you were coming?” she scolded Kern. “Hello, Trisha.” A free and easy welcome to Kern, a guarded one to Trisha; any sensitive ear would have heard it. The lady wore skin-tight white jeans and a loose black T-shirt that scooped seductively over voluptuous breasts. “Come in!”

  “I want you to show Tish what’s in your back room, Rhea. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Of course not, just glad for the visit. Make yourselves comfortable while I get us something to drink.”

  The main room of the cabin was outfitted with overstuffed chairs, all designed to curl up in. A piece of needlework had been set aside in one of them, a pattern Trisha frankly coveted. Warm lights brightened the fur rug on the floor and the handmade crewelwork on the wall. Rhea brought tall drinks of gin and tonic, and Trisha gratefully accepted one. Make herself comfortable in Rhea’s home? She’d never credited Kern with sadism before.

  For a half hour the devil leaned back in one of those comfortable chairs, an ankle resting on his other leg’s knee, swirling the drink in his hand, looking both lazy and completely comfortable. Perched a distance from both of them on the edge of an old-fashioned love seat, Trisha finished two glasses of the liquid rapidly. She was feeling distinctly unnerved and smiling like mad as the other two had an easy conversation. Rhea stood with her back to the rough-hewn walls and her long braided hair swayed as she moved. The black lustrous eyes rarely left Kern’s although there was no question that she was polite, even overtly friendly to Trisha.

  When the first pitcher of drinks was done, Rhea strode back into the kitchen to make another.

  “Come closer,” Kern suggested when Rhea was out of sight. “You’re hiding over there in that corner like a kitten just brought home.” He patted the arm of his chair, but there was a wealth of awareness in his eyes for the awkwardness she knew she was showing. “You’ll like her if you give her half a chance, Tish.”

  “I like her now,” Trisha responded politely. “Are we going home soon?”

  Kern burst into laughter as Rhea came back in. Trisha stood up to accept her third drink, already regretting that she hadn’t had dinner but not willing to stop. But it was hot. There was a thirst inside her that simply wouldn’t be sated.

  “Come with me,” Rhea invited. “I’ll show you my special back room.”

  It was certainly a better choice than behaving like an idiot in front of Kern. The first two gin and tonics were working and the third she clung to like a security blanket, following the tall woman down a long, narrow hall.

  “When my husband died, I got into this,” Rhea said quietly. “For six months I barely left this room. Kern mentioned yesterday that you used to be interested in this sort of thing…”

  The “little something he thought she’d be interested in” was a quilting frame, and momentarily Trisha rallied. The frame took up most of the room, and she had an immediate picture of history, of mountain women seated around the diamond-star pattern, buzzing of their lives and loves a hundred years before. A long low trunk stood in one corner, and Rhea opened it, taking out a dozen finished quilts. Some had well-known designs and others were obviously Rhea’s own.

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” Trisha offered quietly. She heard what wasn’t said, that six months of shutting herself away with painstaking work must have been the only way Rhea knew to deal with her grief.

  Compassion touched Trisha for the other woman. It had nothing to do with Kern. “I’ve never seen some of these patterns except in books. I’ve got one I made at home, Rhea, but I could never match your skill with a needle.”

  “I thought at first about selling them, but somehow at the time I jus
t put them away and sort of forgot about them.”

  Trisha fingered the lovely work. “I don’t know how you could sell them. They’re more like heirlooms.”

  Rhea half smiled. “Not these. These I’d like to get off my hands, to tell you the truth. They remind me of a very bad time. Kern told me yesterday that you had something to do with marketing clothes. If you have any ideas…”

  The confession she’d made to Kern flashed back to Trisha, of the shop of mountain crafts she’d once wanted to have. It was a passing comment at that moment, but he had heard. As a buyer she had a flair for marketing, far more than direct skill with a needle herself. And the old dream? In her mind she could already see a shop and feel the joy of being her own boss. Rhea would know others who wanted their crafts sold… Trisha looked up, about to say something to Rhea, and then stopped herself, finishing her drink instead. How many times did she have to remind herself that her time in the mountains was short-lived? It must be the alcohol that made her want to suggest something to Rhea as if they could be friends.

  They lingered for a time in the room, talking the neutral subject of crafts. Words flowed with surprising easiness, though surely they were both equally aware of a second layer of tension in the room. Finally Rhea stood up to leave.

  “Kern was good to me when my husband died,” she mentioned a little awkwardly. “I was holed up here for one whole winter and might have been here still if he hadn’t pushed me back into the outside world. People think a lot of him in this area.”

  “I know,” Trisha said quietly.

  Still Rhea hesitated in the doorway. “I didn’t know he was married before. And I don’t know why the two of you were separated. Nor do I want to; it’s none of my business. But I would like to ask you…” Rhea hesitated. “I would like to ask you if you’re staying here or going north.” Those liquid dark eyes bored into hers, clear and still. “I’ve always spoken plain English,” she said quietly. “I won’t lie to you. Kern’s never offered me anything but friendship, and I would never come between husband and wife. But if you are returning…”

  That the woman was being fair nagged at Trisha like a headache. Her earlier impressions of Rhea were already dropping like hot cakes. It was a great deal easier to rack up dislike for a sultry femme fatale. Instead Rhea was simply a very quiet woman, radiating integrity, requesting an honest answer to an honest question that Trisha didn’t know how to give her. Yes, she was going north again. No, she didn’t want Rhea anywhere near her husband. “Perhaps we could talk another time,” Trisha said awkwardly, miserably remembering the morning she’d all but thrown Rhea out of Kern’s kitchen.

  For a few more minutes they congregated in Rhea’s kitchen, a cozy little room made more so by the three bodies trying to move in it. Rhea fixed some sort of snack that she and Kern devoured and Trisha pretended to. Food just wasn’t going to get past the lump in her throat, but the alcohol kept trying to, and one of them seemed to have stuck yet another drink in her hand.

  “I almost forgot, Kern,” Rhea said. “You mentioned you’d look at Satin for me the next time you were over. The vet was just here, but the closer she comes to foaling…”

  “Of course.”

  “I know it’s late,” Rhea said apologetically to Trisha.

  “I don’t mind,” Trisha assured her. “I’ll just stay and wait on the back porch.” She followed them out, smoothing her skirt behind her as she perched on the top step, leaning wearily against the porch railing. The porch was weaving beneath her after the last drink she’d had, but the sky above was salted with clear-cut stars. The other two walked off into the yard, two distinct black heads, silhouetted as a pair by the yard light.

  It struck her later that she only saw one. The one she loved. The shape of his head and the way he walked, the way his jeans fit, his hands. She watched until he disappeared into the building. Then something akin to fear braced through her system when she could no longer see him. The idea of no longer being able to see him when she left and how she had wasted the time five years ago, too blind to see who he was and what he was offering her so freely then, swept into her mind. She closed her eyes, troubled, weary, unforgivably dizzy.

  The two of them strode back from the horse barn just a short time later. Kern had his hand on Rhea’s shoulder, offering her a goodbye as they neared the porch. Trisha stood up so quickly her head reeled. It seemed there were two Rheas she politely thanked before gratefully heading for the car. Something caught on her sandaled toe and she tripped, righting herself promptly, a stain of embarrassed color shadowing her cheeks. “Clumsy,” she murmured to Kern.

  “Is that the problem,” he responded dryly. A not ungentle hand folded around her slim shoulders, curling her easily in the hollow of his body. Her hand slipped around his waist, the clean male scent of him suddenly far more intoxicating to her senses than anything she had had to drink. He opened the car door, encouraging her inside.

  “Wait a minute, I…” She touched her head dizzily. “I think I forgot my purse.”

  “It’s next to you.” He was chuckling at her as he closed the door. He opened his own and slid in, surveying her from head to toe with another chuckle. “Lord, are you tipsy, Tish!”

  “I’ve never in my life had too much drink,” she informed him with dignity, and promptly leaned her head back against the seat so the car would stop spinning. Gold strands of hair fanned the seat back. Her skirt seemed to have slipped up to her thigh. Her shoes had slipped to the car floor. Humiliation was intense for being such a total fool as to over drink-no less for everything she seemed to have done or said the entire evening-but glancing down at herself there just seemed so very many little things to try to correct…

  He leaned over before starting the engine, brushing her soft lips with his own, so gently, so sweetly that she melted against him, eyes closed, her fingertips just barely caressing his neck. “And aren’t you human,” he murmured against her. “The civilized veneer keeps disappearing, Tish…” He pulled back, starting the engine, and then as if on second thought pulled her deliberately closer to him, her head encouraged to lean against his shoulder and her feet tucked under her on the seat.

  There were no lights and no sign of other cars on the black road home. Just the two of them on a quiet night, a warm sensuous mist drawing down into the valleys, drifting in the rich perfume of wildflowers and forest freshness. The shelter of darkness soothed the grating unhappiness inside her; she was where she wanted to be, next to him, touching, alone. She was too weary and too light-headed to raise any defenses.

  The car stopped in front of his house. The lights were off from within; Julia had gone to bed hours before. Kern opened the car door and held out his hands. She took them, uncurling from the car seat to reach immediately for him, her cheek to his chest and her arms folded around his waist before the dizziness could upset all of her equilibrium again. “Kern…I want you to make love with me.”

  He drew in his breath, his hands tenderly smoothing back the hair from her face, smoke-colored eyes searching her features. “You were jealous, Tish,” he murmured. “Do you think I don’t know that? Come on now, it’s late…”

  “I am jealous,” she agreed just as softly. “That isn’t why, Kern. And it isn’t the alcohol, although maybe that makes it easier to say it. What you do with Rhea in the future, or what we did in the past…I’m only talking now, Kern. I’m not asking for more and it’s not easy to say…”

  He kissed her, softly and lingeringly, the beard brushing against her cheek in sensual roughness. She curled her arms around his neck, wanting him closer, craving him closer. His lips were still molded to hers when she felt the sweep of his arms beneath her thighs, the solid ground lifted from beneath her.

  He kissed her again, striding into the house. The side of her head was cradled to Kern’s shoulder. She could hear and feel his thumping heartbeat as if it were part of her. He was part of her.

  Rhea was perhaps the better mate for Kern. Trisha was not fighting
that, or the past. The only thing that seemed to matter was that she take the only chance she might have, that the moment not be allowed to slip through her fingers like shifting sand. She had love to give him at this moment, a love that ached for the scar on his forehead and his laughter, for the land he cherished and even the problems it brought him. And for the feel of his body covering hers. It was a moment she had to take and she knew that it was right; inside was such a vibrant surge of need that she could not deny it…

  He laid her gently on the bed, sitting next to her, not turning on the light. The room was warm and dark. The covers that he’d dragged down first left silk-cool sheets, her hair tousled against them. Shadows in the room showed a face grave above her, strangely silent, watching.

  His hands moved. With frustrating slowness he unbuttoned her blouse, resisting her hands when she tried to help him. So she lay still, her eyes never leaving his. The blouse was slipped from her shoulders and dropped. The skirt had a side button and zipper; he found them, shivering the skirt down over her hips and releasing it to the floor as well.

  Coolness feathered over her skin, a coolness she had not felt through the long sultry day and evening of too many clothes. His eyes warmed that odd little chill, shining black in the night-darkened room. Her body was silvery light by contrast, slim supple limbs, the sensual hill and valley of woman, her eyes open to his. She was vulnerable-more emotionally vulnerable than she’d ever been with him before.

  He raised her up to undo the bra. Her body was faintly trembling, a dew of moisture like satin coating her flesh. Her blood was on fire, waiting. The briefs covered so little, yet they were the most difficult to take off. His palms chased them slowly down her thighs and calves, intimate, erotic. She was burning. The aching inside seared; the effort to lay still was monumental.

  “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, Tish,” he murmured huskily. “I want you like something-clawing inside of me. I always have. Your skin is so soft…”