by Fay Robinson
She’d dressed him in one of Bret’s T-shirts while she washed his jeans and shirt, tying the bottom so it wouldn’t drag on the floor. He looked like one of Snow White’s dwarves.
“Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho,” she said, tweaking his nose.
He laughed and pulled on hers. “Mo.”
“That’s me. Old Mo. Are you hungry, sweetie?” He nodded again. “Okay, you watch your show and I’ll fix us something good to eat.”
She put his tape in and adjusted the volume while Henry settled on the couch. Bret was still taking his shower, so she headed to the kitchen sink to wash the handful of tomatoes he’d picked. She made sandwiches and got out some of the peanut-butter cookies she’d baked that Bret liked so much.
When he came up behind her and asked what she was fixing, she told him ham-and-tomato sandwiches. She turned and handed him a cookie. “Where’s your crutch?”
“I left it in the bathroom.”
He wore only gym shorts and he was still damp from the shower. She tried to look away, but all that taut glistening skin wouldn’t let her.
She watched with fascination as a bead of water at his throat started to roll slowly downward through the hair at the center of his chest.
“You’re still wet.”
“Uh-uh,” he said nonchalantly, taking a bite of cookie. He didn’t understand what he was doing to her, how that damn bead of moisture was torturing her.
She reached out with her finger, meaning only to wipe it away, but the skin was warm and too inviting. An invisible force drew her. And it was much stronger than her will.
Lightly she placed her palm on the spot, feeling not only his strong chest but the beating heart below. For an eternity she didn’t move it, couldn’t move it, but then it moved of its own volition across the width of his chest…once…twice…many times in an almost loving caress, the fingertips grazing the skin and the springy hair that covered it.
“Go put on a shirt, or I’m likely to do something crazy,” she told him.
“I’m about to beat you to it.”
His left hand covered hers on his chest. His right reached behind her neck to slowly pull her body forward and her mouth to his. The kiss was gentle, the lightest brush of his lips to test her willingness. He tasted faintly of peanut-butter cookie and smelled of her father’s favorite aftershave lotion. Innocuous unromantic things in any other man. In this man, they were endearing and strangely erotic.
He touched his lips to hers again, but no gentleness guided him this time. The kiss was long and hot, and melted her reservations one by one. Before long, she couldn’t remember that she had reservations. She forgot about the book, about James, about everything but how wonderful it felt to be kissed so thoroughly.
“Mmm.” The sound escaped her throat to fuel the fire.
His hands moved to her back to bring her closer. He trembled, telling her of his struggle for control, and it was more flattering than all the honeyed words men had used on her over the years.
This man needed no words to express his feelings. His body spoke eloquently. The labored breathing, the fingers that had worked their way under her shirt to caress her fevered skin—they said he wanted her. The repeated assaults on her mouth said he enjoyed kissing her as much as she enjoyed kissing him.
He was a paradise of hard angles and muscle, and she let her hand roam freely over his supple skin, something—she admitted to herself now—she’d wanted to do from the first time she’d seen him.
His hand was also moving, touching her hair, her throat, her breasts. She could imagine him touching her even more intimately, fingers stroking, tongues seeking moistened places.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she whispered.
“I know, but heaven help me, Katie, I want it.”
The nickname pierced her heart as it always did when anyone used it, and she shut her eyes to fight back the emotion that suddenly overwhelmed her. James’s voice from so long ago filled her head.
Kathryn. That’s an awfully formal name, isn’t it? How about…Katie? That fits you.
“Kate.” Her eyes popped open. “What’s wrong? I thought you wanted this, wanted me.”
“I do, but it’s wrong.”
She began to pull out of his embrace, but he stopped her.
“How can it be wrong when it feels so good?”
“Because it is. We both know it is. My work is important to me, and I don’t want to jeopardize it or lose my objectivity, but I feel that happening. And you…I’m sure I’m the last person in the world you imagined getting involved with. My being here has turned into such a mistake.”
“What are you saying?”
“That maybe we should do our interviews another way. Over the telephone. Through written questions. Tapes. When I came here, I never expected to like you or be physically attracted to you. I’m considering going home.”
“No,” he said sharply. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“But—”
“No!”
“Bet play me!” Henry demanded from the doorway, interrupting. “Bet no play Mo.”
Bret turned her loose and groaned. “This conversation isn’t over,” he told her under his breath.
“Yes, it is.”
She watched him as he made his way slowly—too slowly—into the living room to watch cartoons with Henry. He was obviously hurting and didn’t want to admit it. When she went in to tell them lunch was on the table, she found Bret lying on the couch with Henry on his chest, both of them asleep. The TV blared and she turned down the volume.
She gazed at the two of them with an odd feeling of joy and pain. They were both so innocent in sleep, so appealing. She patted Henry’s back and brushed a lock of hair off Bret’s forehead. He opened his eyes and looked at her sleepily.
“Promise you won’t go back to Chicago,” he said, hardly able to keep his eyes open. “We can work this out.” He took her hand.
She nodded reluctantly. “Okay, I promise.” He closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep with a smile of relief on his face.
Carefully she disentangled her fingers from his and draped his arm across Henry. Watching them made something break loose inside her, something that had been held prisoner for too many years, and she broke down and cried, tears falling faster than she could wipe them away.
No, she wouldn’t leave. She’d been afraid Bret would somehow make a place for himself in her heart if she stayed much longer, but staying made no difference now.
It was already too late.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“NO, DAMMIT, that’s not the way it happened! Why won’t you listen to me?” Bret couldn’t believe this. He’d never met a more pigheaded, singularly focused woman in his life. “Look,” he said, trying once again. “James wasn’t really sick. He only pretended to be.”
Kate threw her pen on the table. “You must have it mixed up with some other time. I have statements from the organizers of the charity event saying he had the flu and was in bed and that’s why he didn’t attend like he promised.”
“Oh, he was in bed, all right. He picked himself up a couple of groupies and spent the night with them.”
Her face practically turned purple as she fought not to lose her temper, although why any of it mattered now, he didn’t know. She’d been like a she-cat today with her claws extended, and every time he said something about the mighty James Hayes she didn’t like, she raked him. His ego was in shreds.
“Do you want to know what I think?” she asked.
No, he didn’t. Not really. But he was stupid enough to say, “What do you think?”
“That deep down you’re jealous of him and don’t even realize it. I think it’s skewed your perspective.”
He dropped his head to the kitchen table and banged it a couple of times. Why, why, did she have to argue with him on every blasted point? Not once today had she simply accepted something he’d told her.
Destroying her image of her hero had seemed such a practical plan when he�
��d conceived it, but it had backfired on him. He hadn’t counted on the depth of her admiration for James Hayes or how much it would rankle him whenever she jumped to James’s defense.
“I was not jealous of him,” he mumbled to the tablecloth, which appeared to be the only thing in the room that was listening.
“Don’t be ashamed of it. He was brilliant and handsome. Anyone with a brother like that would be crazy not to feel some jealousy.”
He raised his head. “Handsome? He was a string bean and so clumsy he used to fall over his own feet. He was not handsome!”
“See, there you go again. Every time I say anything nice about him, you contradict me.”
“No, you’ve got it backward. Every time I try to tell you the truth about him, you refuse to believe it. You’re the one with the skewed perspective. Why are you so determined to turn him into a martyr?”
“I’m not, but I also don’t believe he was the pitiful excuse for a human being you make him out to be. Drunk all the time. Staying up every night making love with two and three women. He couldn’t possibly have written such exquisite music if he was living that kind of life.”
“Well, maybe he didn’t write as much of it as everybody thinks.”
That statement was the most absurd thing he’d come up with yet, but he was a desperate man running out of ideas. Nothing else was working. Maybe a little shock treatment would.
Her initial reaction was disbelief, but in her expression he also saw a hint of curiosity. He took advantage of it. “Haven’t you ever heard the rumors that Webb Anderson wrote most of the band’s songs those last few years and James took credit for them?”
“I’ve heard the rumors. Are you telling me they’re true?”
He shrugged, deciding to play it cool. “I don’t really know, but I got an indication from James that he and Webb weren’t getting along. They argued a lot. Especially in those last months. And a couple of times their arguments came to blows.”
“They actually fought?”
“Yeah. And I know that’s true because I saw it with my own eyes.”
She frowned. “When was that, exactly? Let me pull up a file.” She typed something into the portable computer in front of her, and he groaned to himself. He didn’t know which he was more frightened of—Kate’s brain or that stupid computer.
“Okay,” she said. “Where and when did this happen?”
He pretended to think. “I’m not sure.”
“Well, give me a guess. Was it in the six months before James died?”
He shook his head, looking pensive.
“In the last twelve months?”
“Probably.”
She scrolled through the file. “Okay, I’ve called up the chronology of his life. Tell me where this fight took place, and let’s see if we can use that to figure out the date.”
Oh, hell! “You have a chronology? Like a day-by-day list of where he was his whole life?”
“Well, not every day, no, but from his teenage years on I can narrow any event down to about a two-or three-month span.”
“Where did you get all that stuff?”
“Various places. Interviews, newspaper clippings. I’ve spent more than ten years gathering this information.”
“Ten years? You can’t have been working on this book for ten years!” He couldn’t hide his disbelief.
“Well, no, not technically. But I guess, in the back of my mind, I always knew I’d write a book about him one day, so it became a habit to clip articles I saw and to save information I ran across. When I became proficient enough to write the story, I was already years ahead of where I would’ve been in my research. That’s why I think I’m uniquely qualified to write this book. Nobody on earth knows as much about him as I do.”
Now he was the one frowning. “What do you mean, when you became proficient enough? You won a Pulitzer, for God’s sake. I’d guess that makes you pretty proficient.”
She shrugged modestly. “Yes, but thankfully, writing is something you get better at the more you do it. I’m still young compared to most of the writers in my field, but as I’ve gotten older my writing has matured. Until I gained that maturity, I didn’t want to write James’s story because—”
“I know, because you admired him,” he finished with disdain.
She gave him a look that said he was acting jealous again. “Yes, and because I didn’t want to write this book and not have it be my best work.”
He picked up the diskette next to her laptop and studied it. “Do you have my whole life captured on one of these little things, too?” Thinking of what might be on there made him sick to his stomach.
“Some of it. The parts that are important to James’s story.”
“He always comes first with you, doesn’t he?” The minute the words were out, Bret regretted them. He tossed the disk back on the table and rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Forget I said that.”
“What’s with you today? You’re so ill-tempered, even for you.”
“I am not ill-tempered, dammit.” He sighed at her amused expression. “Okay, so I’m a little ill-tempered.”
“Is your leg bothering you?”
“No.”
“Then what is it?”
“Nothing’s wrong that getting out of this house wouldn’t cure. I’m not used to being shut up. I need fresh air.” He looked over her head and stared longingly out the window. The day was beautiful and they’d wasted it inside. “I know it’s going to be dark soon, but how about we move this interview outside? We can pack some sandwiches and go down to the pond for an hour. I’ve got to get out of this house.”
“Will that improve your nasty disposition?”
“Yeah, a hundred percent.”
“Then, by all means, lead the way.”
THE POND WASN’T BIG, but it provided him with some excellent catfish and the perfect place to be lazy when he felt like it. He didn’t sneak off and fish often, but the lure of it on a warm day was sometimes more than he could resist. After all, it was why he’d bought the place.
He’d stood in the driveway all those years ago, looked at the pond and imagined himself on the bank with a cane pole in his hand. He’d immediately called the agent listed on the For Sale sign and made what was probably too generous an offer for the farm, given the fact that he’d never been inside the house or walked over the property. Plus, he’d only intended to use it temporarily.
As it turned out, he’d abandoned his plans to build a house on his ancestors’ land, and this farm had become his permanent home. The house was small, but solidly built and in good shape. The pond and a nice-size stream in the back pasture provided plenty of water for the stock.
He had a beautiful place and he was proud of it. But something was missing from his life and that, regardless of what he’d told Kate, was why he’d felt ill today. He’d gotten a taste of how much better things would be if he had a woman—this particular woman—around all the time. Thinking about that, about Kate going home when her interviews were over, made him feel low. Knowing he’d probably never see her again—and would be crazy to try—left him feeling downright depressed.
He was falling in love with a woman he couldn’t have.
The sun was slowly inching its way toward the horizon, coloring the sky and water crimson, settling a peacefulness over the land that bolstered his sagging spirits. The night insects hadn’t yet begun their sweet symphony. Only an occasional splash disturbed the quiet. Even Sallie was enjoying the outing. Slowly becoming less fearful of Kate, she’d stretched out on her side a few feet away from them to take a nap.
“The lightning bugs are out,” he said, relaxing on the quilt they’d spread out.
“Lightning bugs?” Kate asked, not looking up.
She was lying on her stomach next to him, going over the notes she’d made at the house. He let his gaze wander leisurely over her shoulders and across the soft curve of her backside. He’d already noticed how the shorts hugged her slender body, how they o
utlined the feminine parts of her.
He’d always appreciated nice breasts or a good set of legs on a woman. This one had both, along with a perfect little ass that put a tightness in his groin every time he looked at it.
“Lightning bugs,” he repeated, gently closing his hand over one as it blinked in front of his face. “See?” He scooted next to her and opened his hand. The tiny beetle fluttered, then flew away.
“That’s a firefly,” she said casually, returning to her notes. “Family Lampyridae. Genera Photernus and Photuris.”
“No, city girl, that’s a lightning bug,” he insisted, to get some attention.
“Firefly.”
“Lightning bug.”
“Firefly.” She turned her head and looked into his face. When he grinned, she slapped him playfully on the shoulder. “Why are you baiting me?”
“Because you’re ignoring me and I don’t like it.” He took the notebook out of her hand and threw it over his head.
“Bret!” She tried to get up to go after it, but he grabbed her ankle and pulled her back down.
“Leave it. We’ll find it later.”
“But we still have a hundred things to discuss today. And we never did settle that question about the arguments between James and Webb. We need to pin down that date.”
“I’ll answer all your questions later.”
“You keep saying that, but you always find some way to avoid answering the tough ones. And I’m beginning to wonder why.”
“Maybe I’m becoming so attached to you I’m trying to string this out so you’ll stay longer.”
His teasing held a certain amount of truth, and because she knew it, it flustered her. “You’re being silly now.” She tried to cover her uneasiness by sitting to gather the plastic wrap and the remains of their sandwiches.
“I’m not trying to avoid your questions, Kate. But I like spending time with you when the conversation doesn’t revolve around my brother. Other topics are a lot more interesting.”
“Such as?”
“My place. What do you think of it?”
She looked out over the placid water at the horses grazing quietly on the tender grass across from them. “I think it’s beautiful. Aubrey told me you’ve worked hard fixing it up. Did you really dig every hole for the fence posts by hand?”