Midway through a very quiet afternoon, Garrick wasn’t concentrating on Latin. He was still thinking of the woman curled in the opposite corner of the sofa. Her legs were tucked beneath her and the book remained open on her lap, but her head had fallen into the crook of the sofa’s winged back, and she was sleeping. Silently. Sweetly.
He felt sorry for her. The trip she’d made yesterday—first the drive from New York, then the harrowing hike to his cabin—had exhausted her. He felt a moment’s renewed anger toward Victoria for having put her through that ordeal, then realized that Victoria was probably as ignorant of mud season as any other nonnative. Now that he thought of it, she had only been up to the cabin in the best of weather—late spring, summer, early fall.
They’d met for the first time during one of those summer trips, and even then, barely knowing her, he’d asked her why she came at all. She was obviously a city person. She didn’t hunt, didn’t hike, didn’t plant vegetables in a garden behind the cabin. He remembered her response as clearly as if she’d made it yesterday. She had looked him in the eye and told him that the cabin made her feel closer to Arthur. No apology. No bid for sympathy. Just an honest, heartfelt statement of fact that had established the basis of strength and sincerity on which their relationship had bloomed.
Of course, she hadn’t been particularly honest in sending Leah to stay in a cabin that didn’t exist. He had no doubt, though, that she’d been well-meaning in her desire to get Leah and him together. What puzzled him, irked him, was that she should have known better. He’d fought her in the past. He thought he’d told her enough about himself and his feelings to make himself clear. Why would she think things had changed?
Once upon a time he’d been a city man. He’d lived high and wild. The only things he’d feared in the world had been obscurity and anonymity. Ironically, that very fear had driven him higher and wilder, until he’d destroyed his career and very nearly himself in the process. That was when he’d retreated from the world and sought haven in New Hampshire.
Now he feared everything he’d once prized so dearly. He feared fame because it was fleeting. He feared glory because it was shallow. He feared aggressive crowds because they brought out the worst in human nature, the need for supremacy and domination even on the most mundane of levels.
He’d had it up to his eyeballs with competition. Even after being away from it for four years, he remembered with vile clarity that feeling of itching under the skin, of not being able to sit still and relax for fear someone would overtake him. He couldn’t bear the thought of having to be quicker, cruder, more cutthroat than the next. He didn’t want to have to worry about how he looked or how he smelled. He didn’t want to have to see those younger, more eager actors waiting smugly in the wings for him to falter. And he didn’t want the women, clinging like spiders, feeding off him until a sweeter fly came along.
Oh, yes, he knew what he didn’t want. He’d made a deliberate intellectual decision when he’d left California. The world of glitz and glamour was behind him, as was the way of life that had had him clawing his way up a swaying ladder. The life he lived here was free of all that. It was simple. It was clean. It was comfortable. It was what he did want.
Why, then, did he feel threatened by Leah’s presence?
He blinked and realized that she was waking. Rolling slightly, she stretched one leg until the sole of her foot touched his thigh. He felt its warmth and the slight pressure behind it. He saw the way one hand dropped limply to her belly. He watched her turn her head, as though trying to identify the nature of her pillow, then open her eyes with the realization of where she was.
She looked at him. He didn’t blink. Slowly, carefully, she drew back her leg and, pushing herself into a seated position, picked up her book and lowered her eyes.
Leah did pose a threat to him, but it wasn’t the immediate one of disturbing his peace. She was peaceful herself, quiet, undemanding. No, the threat wasn’t a physical one. It was deeply emotional. He looked at her and saw human warmth and companionship—which were the very two things his life lacked. He’d thought he could live without them. Now, for the first time, he wondered.
Leah, too, was pensive. Silently setting her book aside, she went to the window. Rain fell as hard as ever from an endless cloud mass that was heavy and gray. She figured that the rain would last at least through the rest of the day. But even when it stopped—if she’d interpreted Garrick correctly—she wouldn’t be immediately on her way. There was the mud to contend with, and if this was mud season, it was possible she’d be here for a while.
Propping her elbows on the window sash, she cupped her chin in her palms and stared out. She could have done worse, she’d told him, and indeed it was so. Garrick Rodenhiser was an easy cabin mate. She was reading, much as she did at home. If she had her dictionaries and thesauruses with her, she could be working much as she did at home. If his pattern of activity on this day was any indication, they could each do their own thing without bothering the other.
The only problem was that he made her think of things she didn’t think of when she was at home. He made her think of things she hadn’t thought about for years.
Nine years, to be exact. She’d been twenty-four and a graduate student in English when she’d met and married Richard Gates. She’d had dreams then of love and happiness, and she’d been sure that Richard shared them. He was twenty-six when they married and was getting settled in the business world. Or so she’d thought. All too quickly she’d learned that there was nothing “settled” about Richard’s view of business. He was on his way to the top, he said, and to get there meant a certain amount of scrambling. It meant temporarily sacrificing a leisurely home life, he said. It meant long days at the office and business trips and parties. Somewhere along the way, love and happiness had been forgotten.
She’d completed her degree but had given up thought of teaching, of course. A working wife hadn’t fit into Richard’s concept of the corporate life-style. Out of sheer desperation, she’d begun to create crosswords, then had found that she did it well, that she loved it and that there was a ready market for what she composed. Having a career that was part-time and flexible eased some of the frustration she felt.
Perhaps it would have been different if the babies she’d carried had lived. Somehow she doubted it. Richard would have continued on with the work he adored, the business trips and the parties. And why not? He was good at it. There was a charismatic quality to him that drew people right and left. Even aside from the issue of children, she and Richard were in different leagues.
Now, though, she was thinking of love and happiness. She was thinking of the life she’d lived in New York since the divorce. It had seemed fine and comfortable and rewarding … until now.
Garrick affected her. He made her think that there had been something wrong with that single life in New York because it was … single. Seeing him, sitting with him, being touched by those hazel and silver eyes, she sensed what she’d missed. He made her feel lonely. He made her ache for something more than what she’d had.
Was it because she was in a strange place? Was it because her life had been turned upside down? Was it because she didn’t know where she was going from here?
He made her think of the future. Yes, she’d probably go back to New York, search for and find another apartment. She’d work; she’d visit friends; she’d go to restaurants and museums and parks. She’d do what she’d always found so comfortable. Why, then, did there seem a certain emptiness to it?
With a sigh of confusion, she returned to the sofa and her book, though she read precious little in the hours that passed. From time to time she felt Garrick’s eyes on her. From time to time she looked at him. His presence was both comfort and torment.
He made her feel less alone because he was there, because he’d help her, she knew, if something happened. He made her feel more alone because he was there, because the power of his quiet presence reminded her of everything she’d once wanted and
needed.
Garrick went out again late in the afternoon. This time Leah had no clue to his purpose. She wandered around the cabin while he was gone, feeling a restlessness that she couldn’t explain any more than she could those other feelings she’d glimpsed.
When he returned, he started making dinner. Once again he refused her offer of help. They ate in silence, occasionally glancing at each other, always looking away when their eyes met. After they’d finished, they returned to the fire. This time, despite the fact that she was without resource books, Leah worked with pad and pencil, sketching out simple puzzles. Garrick whittled.
She wondered where he’d learned to whittle, how he did it, what he was making—but she didn’t ask.
He wondered where she started a puzzle, how she got the words to mesh, what she did at an impasse—but he didn’t ask.
By ten o’clock she was feeling tired and frustrated and distinctly out of sorts. Crumpling up a piece of paper, on which she’d created nothing worth saving, she tossed it into the dying fire, then took a shower, put on the long underwear that seemed as good a pair of pajamas as any and climbed onto the same side of the bed where she’d slept the night before.
By ten-thirty, Garrick was feeling tired and frustrated and distinctly out of sorts. Flipping his piece of wood, out of which he’d whittled nothing worth saving, into the nearly dead fire, he turned off the lights, stripped down to his underwear and climbed onto his own side of the bed.
He lay on his back, wide-awake. He thought of L.A. and the day, several months before he’d left, that he’d finally tracked down his agent. Timothy Wilder had been avoiding him. Phone calls had gone unanswered; each time Garrick had shown up at his office, Wilder had been “out.” But Garrick had finally located him on the set of a TV movie, where another of Wilder’s clients was at work. It hadn’t done Garrick any good. Wilder had barely acknowledged him. The director and crew, many of whom he’d worked with in the past, couldn’t have been bothered asking how he was. Wilder’s client, the star of the show, hadn’t given him so much as a glance. And the woman who, six months before, had sworn she adored Garrick, turned her back and walked away. He’d never felt so alone in his life.
Leah, too, lay on her back, wide-awake. She thought of one of the last parties she’d gone to as Richard’s wife. It had been a gala charity function, and she’d taken great care to look smashing. Richard hadn’t noticed. Nor had any of the others present. For a time, Richard had towed her from group to group, but then he’d left her to exchange inanities with an eighty-year-old matron. She’d never felt so alone in her life.
Garrick shifted his legs, his gaze on the darkened rafters overhead. He thought of the days following his accident, the three long weeks he’d lain in the hospital. No one had visited. No one had sent cards or flowers. No one had called to cheer him up. Though he fully blamed himself for his downfall and knew that he didn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy, what he would have liked, could have used, was a little solace. A little understanding. A little encouragement. The fact that it never materialized was the final sorrow.
Leah, too, shifted slightly. She thought of the hours she’d lain in the hospital following the loss of her second child. Richard had made the obligatory visits, but she’d come to dread them, for he clearly saw her as a failure. She’d felt like one, too, and though the doctors assured her that there was nothing more she could have possibly done, she’d been distraught. Had her parents been alive, they’d have been by her side. Had she had her own friends, ones who’d cared for her more than they’d cared for appearances, she mightn’t have felt so utterly empty. But her parents were dead, and her “friends” were Richard’s. Sorrow had been her sole companion.
Garrick took a deep, faintly shuddering breath. He felt Leah beside him, heard the slight irregularity of her own breathing. Slowly, cautiously, he turned his head on the pillow.
The cabin was dark. He couldn’t see her. But he heard a soft swish when her head turned toward his.
They lay that way for long moments. Tension strummed between them, a wire of need, vibrating, pulling. Each held back, held back, fought the magnetism drawing them together until, at last, it became too great.
It wasn’t a question of one moving first. In a simultaneous turning, their bodies came together as their minds had already done. Their arms wound around each other. Their legs tangled.
And they clung to each other. Silently. Soulfully.
4
LEAH CLOSED HER EYES and greedily immersed herself in Garrick’s strength. He was warm and alive, and the way he held her confirmed his own need for the closeness she so badly craved. His face was buried in her hair. His arms trembled as they crushed her to him, but not for a minute did she mind the pressure. Instead her own arms tightened around his neck, and she sighed softly in relief.
And pleasure. His body was a marvel. It was long and firm, accommodating itself to fit her perfectly. Richard had never accommodated himself to fit her either physically or emotionally. The fact that Garrick, who owed her nothing, should do so with such sweetness was a wonder she couldn’t begin to analyze.
Not that she tried very hard. She was too busy absorbing the comfort he offered to think of much of anything except prolonging it. One of her legs slid deeper between his. Her fingers wound into his hair and held.
Garrick, too, was inundated with gratifying sensations. He felt Leah from head to toe and drank in her softness as though he’d lived through a drought. In a sense he had. From birth. His parents had been wonderful people, but they’d both been professionals, engrossed in their careers, and they’d had neither time nor warmth to give to their son. Had he been born with the need for physical closeness? Had he been born a toucher? If so, it explained why he’d turned to women from the time he’d had something to offer. Only that hadn’t fully satisfied him, either, because even at fourteen he’d been ambitious. He’d been always angling for something bigger and better, never taking stock of what he had, never quite appreciating it.
Until now. Holding Leah Gates in his arms, he felt a measure of fullness that he’d never experienced before. He moved his hands along her spine. He rubbed his thigh against her hip. He inhaled, heightening the pressure of his chest against her breasts.
She needed him. The soft, purring sounds she made from time to time told him so. She needed him, but not because he would be a notch in her belt, or because he could further her career, or because he had money. She didn’t know who he was and where he’d been, yet she still needed him. For him.
The moan that rumbled from his chest was one of sheer gratitude.
For a long, long time, they lay wrapped in each other’s arms. Their closeness was a healing balm, blotting out memories of past pain and sorrow. Nothing existed but the present, and it was so soothing that neither would have thought to disturb it.
Ironically, what disturbed it was the very solace it brought. For with the edge taken off emptiness came a new awareness. It struck Leah gradually—a pleasantly male and musky scent filtering into her nostrils, the thick silk of hair sifting through her fingers, the swell of muscles flexing beneath her arm. On his part, Garrick grew conscious of a clean, womanly fragrance, the gentleness of the curves that his palms rounded, the heat that beckoned daringly close to his loins.
He hadn’t been thinking of sex when he’d taken Leah in his arms. He’d simply wanted to hold her and be held back. He’d wanted, for however fleeting the moments, to binge on the nearness of another human being. But his body was insistent. His heart had begun to beat louder, his blood to course faster, his muscles to grow tighter. He’d never been hit by anything as unexpectedly—or as desperately.
He might have restrained himself if Leah hadn’t begun, in wordless ways, to tell him how she wanted him, too. Her hands had slipped down his back and were furrowing beneath his thermal top, gliding upward along his flesh. Her breathing was more shallow. Her breasts swelled against him. He might have called all that simply an extension of the act of
holding had it not been for the faint but definitely perceptible arching of her hips.
Or was the arching his? His lower body, with a will of its own, was pressing into her heat, then undulating slowly, then needing even more. He, too, was exploring beneath thermal, only his hands had forayed below Leah’s waist and were clenching the firm flare of her bottom, holding her closer, increasing the friction, adding to a hunger that was already explosive.
He had to have her. He had to bury himself in her depths, because he needed that closeness, too, and he was frightened that he’d lose it if he waited.
With hands that shook, he pushed her bottoms to her knees. She squirmed free of them while he lowered his own. Her thigh was already lifting over his when he began his penetration, and by the time he was fully sheathed, she was digging her fingers into his back and sighing softly against his neck.
It was fast and mutual. He stroked deeply and with growing speed. She matched each stroke in pace and ardor. He gasped and quivered. She gulped and shivered. Then they surged against each other a final time, and their bodies erupted into simultaneous spasms. Totally earth-shattering. Endlessly fulfilling. Warm and wet and wonderful.
Garrick’s heart thundered long after. His breath came in ragged pants that would have embarrassed him had not Leah been equally as winded. He thought about withdrawing, then thought again, reluctant to leave her when he felt so incredibly contained and content. So he stayed where he was until he began to fear that he was hurting her. But when he made to move away, she clutched him tighter.
“Don’t go!” she whispered.
Crossed Hearts (Matchmaker Trilogy) Page 7