The Cabin
Page 29
Jack smiled at her look of pleasure mixed with shock at the ring. "Sam says you'd only be worth five million if you weren't so tight."
"That's a logic all Sam's own. I'd like to dig into his finances—"
"No, you wouldn't. He gives away most of his paycheck." Jack nodded at her. "Keep going. There's more."
She found the scrap of silk he'd picked up at a pricey store and held it up.
"Maggie and Ellen insisted a pretty, romantic silk nightgown was a must."
"This isn't a romantic nightie." Susanna cleared her throat, and he saw this woman he'd loved for so long blush and smile, almost as if she were nineteen. "Jack, this is a sexy negligee."
"Well," he said, unrepentant, "at least it's silk."
She balled it up in her hands, gathered up her goodies and retreated to the bathroom. She didn't stay gone long. When she returned, she smelled of lavender and had on her little scrap of a nightgown, and Jack knew the night was lost. There'd be no candlelit dinner as he'd promised the girls, no champagne, no chocolates. He wouldn't last.
"Susanna…"
"One thing about this pretty, romantic silk nightie," she said, sliding onto him in front of the fire. "It's easy to get off."
But amazingly, he took his time, starting there in front of the fire, exploring every inch of her with his mouth, his tongue, his hands, as if for the first time, until she was liquid and he thought he'd explode. Then he swept her up and carried her into the bedroom, but when he laid her on the bed, she said, "Enough of this torture," and started on his shirt and pants, finally pulling him onto her, into her. "I love you, Jack…I love you so much."
"I want you back," he whispered. "I never want to lose you again."
"You never lost me."
He kissed her long and hard, moving slowly, deeply inside her. "No more secrets."
"No more," she said. "Never again."
They'd have three days of this. Talking and loving, recuperating from the long months of their ordeal…but by his calculations, he had one more secret to drag out of her.
* * *
Susanna sat out on her patio in San Antonio on a warm mid-April afternoon, drinking a margarita, easy on the salt. She'd made a pitcher. Jack would be home soon, but right now, she was alone. The south Texas sunset was incredible. It was Maggie and Ellen's April vacation, their last vacation as high school students, and they'd flown down with Gran, who'd insisted on taking a commercial flight because she didn't trust small planes. To prove her point, she recited the details she'd read of small plane crashes she'd heard about in the past few years. One was at least twenty years old.
Jack hadn't let that go and teased her unmercifully.
"And I thought you were Iris Dunning, Adirondack Mountains guide, a legend in your own time."
But Gran had held her own. "I don't like guns, and I don't like small planes."
"I'll bet you could take on a bear with nothing but a jackknife."
"I could," she said, sniffing at him, "but that was a long time ago."
She was in Austin now with the twins, visiting her son and daughter-in-law. Jared Tucker had flown in from Philadelphia, and there were discussions of what to do with the Herrington property on Blackwater Lake. Kevin and his older half brother wanted to create a nature preserve and name it after their father and Iris. Gran was opposed. In Jared's name was fine, but she wasn't having anything named after her while she was still alive.
Susanna knew her grandmother was secretly pleased. This visit, the talk of a nature preserve—they were a way for her to integrate the young woman she'd been on Blackwater Lake with the woman she'd become, the woman she was now. They weren't separate. She hadn't just landed into Boston sixty years ago and started from nowhere. She'd carried on. That was the way Maggie and Ellen put it. Carrying on. As if they took some measure of comfort—of inspiration—from what their great-grandmother had done after the tragedies she'd faced on Blackwater Lake.
Jack walked out onto the patio, still dressed for work, tall against the golden sunset. She saw his badge and smiled, thinking that all that was important in their lives was still intact. "It feels good to be home," she told him. "Once the girls graduate, it'll be permanent."
He sipped the beer he'd brought out with him. "Will it?"
She sat up straight, reading his expression, that familiar note in his voice. "You already know, don't you?"
"I have spies everywhere."
She'd spent the day looking at historic houses in downtown San Antonio. "You're a born-and-bred Texan. You've always said you'd like to restore an old Texas house." She stretched out her legs, enjoying the April warmth. Boston was still a little cool for her tastes. "Andrew Thorne's an architect, you know, and Tess said he'd be happy to look at anything we might want to buy, provided it's not too close to when she has the baby."
"That's nice of them."
He seemed to mean it, but he obviously had something else on his mind. Something else he was after. Susanna sipped her margarita. It was her second, and she probably should have had something to eat first. She was beginning to think Jack might have the advantage on her. That she'd missed something after all.
"What else did you do today?" he asked smoothly.
"Damn," she breathed. "You know that, too?"
His dark eyes settled on her, but he said nothing.
He was enjoying this, she thought. But so was she. She'd managed to keep from admitting this one last secret through their three days in the cabin. "I took your plane for a little spin this afternoon." She got up and walked over to him, her world spinning just a little, but not from the margaritas. It was Jack—it was always Jack. She eased onto his lap. "It's better if I confess
while you're wearing your badge, isn't it? More official." "Susanna…" "My last secret. I have my pilot's license." She smiled
as she lowered her mouth to his. "But you knew that already, didn't you?" His mouth met hers, and he laughed. "I always know."
* * * THE END * * *
ISBN: 978-1-4268-2890-4
THE CABIN
Copyright © 2002 by Carla Neggers.
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