Now and Forever

by Diana Palmer

  As Tish got out of the jeep, ignoring Russell’s watchful gaze, the sound of feminine voices burst out of the house.

  “You’re back, you’re really back!” A small, plump whirlwind with short black hair came bounding out the front porch and down the steps, almost knocking Tish down as she was caught around the neck by small hands and soundly hugged.

  “Lena!” she murmured, hugging the younger girl. “Oh, I missed you so!”

  “No kidding? With that blond-haired, blue-eyed dreamboat you told me about sitting at your feet, and you missed me? Come on, Tish!” Eileen laughed, a flash of perfect white teeth in a face dominated by big dark eyes. “But I sure have missed you. You don’t know what a beast Russell’s been to live with lately!”

  “Surely, you jest,” Tish teased, with a hard glance at the towering man beside the jeep that told him it was no joke to her.

  “That one didn’t fly over my head, baby,” Russell cautioned with a sharp smile. “Careful.”

  “They’re at it again, I see,” Nan Coleman sighed from the porch, eyeing Russell and Tish. “Fighting, and Tish hasn’t been home an hour.”

  “Forty-five minutes,” she replied, laughing as she went to hug the dainty brunette on the steps. She looked into curious green eyes. “I came right over. How are you, Nan?”

  “Bored to tears,” the shorter woman wailed, cutting her eyes provocatively to Russell. “All the handsome men in the country are busy with harvest.”

  “I thought I made up for that before harvest,” Russell said, his voice deep and sensuous as he smiled, his eyes holding Nan’s until she blushed.

  Tish felt a sudden emptiness inside her and turned quickly to Eileen. “I brought you a present from the coast,” she said, with a lightness in her voice that was a direct contrast to the dead weight of her heart. “A coral necklace.”

  “When did you find the time to shop?” Eileen laughed.

  “I managed a few minutes away from Frank.”

  “Tell me about him,” Nan said, taking her arm. “I’ve never known you to get serious about a man. He must be special.”

  “Nan will bring us home, Russell,” Eileen called over her shoulder. “Tell Mattie we’ll be back before supper, okay?”

  “Okay, brat,” he told his sister.

  Nan stopped and turned. “Oh, Russ, I’m having a party for Tish next Saturday night, kind of a homecoming get-together. You’ll come, too?”

  He lifted a dark eyebrow, but his eyes danced. “I might.”

  “He may not come for you,” Eileen told Nan, “but he’ll come for his ‘baby,’” she added with a mischievous wink at Tish.

  “I’m not anybody’s baby,” Tish said quietly. “I’m almost twenty-one, Eileen.”

  “Makes no difference,” Nan said from her five years advantage. “Paternal fondness doesn’t recognize age, does it, Russell?”

  His dark eyes swept over Tish’s face, and she fought a blush at the intensity of it. He climbed into the jeep.

  “Will you come?” Nan persisted.

  “Maybe.” He turned the jeep and drove away without a backward glance.

  “Maybe!” Nan groaned, standing with her hands on her small hips as she watched him roar away in a cloud of dust. “That,” she said, “is the most exasperating man God ever made! Just when you think you’ve got him in the palm of your little hand, he flies away, right through your fingers.”

  “You knew better,” Eileen teased. “Russell belongs to Lisa, and no woman stands a chance against her.”

  Tish started to ask about Lisa—there was something familiar about the name, as if she’d heard it before at Currie Hall—but Nan was already talking again.

  “…never seen him so restless,” she was saying as they went inside.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” Eileen sighed. “He’s been like a caged tiger for the past couple of weeks. It’s the crops, I guess. This had been a rotten year for farming.”

  “Tell me about it,” Nan laughed. “You ought to hear Dad when he gets the market reports. But let’s not talk about crops. I want to hear all about Tish’s trip.”

  “I want to hear all about Frank Tyler,” Eileen said, dropping down beside Tish on the Early American sofa in the parlor while Nan went for iced tea. “What does he do?”

  “He’s an electronics engineer. His family owns an electronics company, and he’s a vice-president,” she said.

  “Oh,” Eileen said.

  “But he’s wonderful,” Tish protested, crestfallen at her adopted sister’s reaction. “Good looking, talented; he doesn’t even have to work, he just enjoys doing it.”

  “So does Russell,” Eileen said. “Fourteen and sixteen hours a day sometimes.”

  “Eileen, I’m not comparing them,” Tish said pointedly. “We both know Russell’s a breed apart from any other man. But I like Frank very much. I think you’ll like him, too.”

  “Can he ride?” Eileen asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does he hunt or fish?”

  Tish cleared her throat. “What are you going to wear to Nan’s party, Lena?” she asked, hoping to divert the younger girl.

  “A gag, if she doesn’t shut up,” Nan laughed, bringing in a tray with three frosty glasses of iced tea on it.

  “Amen,” Tish said with a smile. She took a glass and drank thirstily. “Just what have you got against Frank, seeing you don’t even know him?” Tish asked Eileen.

  The teenager’s full lips pouted. “He’s an outsider.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, you sound just like Russell,” Nan said, shaking her head. “Even though he was championing civil rights before it was even popular, he has that one abiding prejudice.”

  “Me, too,” Eileen said ungrammatically. “They don’t belong. They come in and buy up land as if they’re buying up a heritage with it, and they think owning one acre gives them the right to rebuild their neighbors in their own images.”

  “Hark, hear the voice of wisdom calling yonder,” Tish said, cupping her hand over her ear. She ducked as Eileen, laughing, drew back her glass as if to throw it. “Lena, you’re impossible,” Tish smiled.

  “Russ says it’s my middle name,” Eileen agreed. “Oh, Tish, make him let me go to the party with Gus. He’ll do it if you ask him.”

  “Huh?”

  “Gus. Gus Hamack. You remember him, he had red hair and two teeth missing and I used to take him apples to school,” Eileen prodded her memory. She smiled. “Of course, he has all his teeth now, and he’s over six feet and just gorgeous! He’s at Jeremiah Blakeley college studying to be a soil conservationist, and Russ lets him work here every other quarter so he can pay his tuition. Please, Tish?”

  “We’ll see,” Tish replied uncertainly, her heart freezing just at the thought of facing another battle with Russell.

  “I’m going to wear something real slinky,” Eileen went on as if the whole matter was settled. She leaned toward Tish with excitement burning like brown coals in her eyes. “I’ll show it to you when we get home. It’s blue and clingy, and off the shoulder, and if I wear a heavy wrap I may get out of the house before Russell makes me change.”

  Tish shook her head in defeat. “Now I know what I’ve missed most,” she laughed.

  It was late afternoon when Nan dropped Tish and Eileen off at Currie Hall. Mattie insisted on fixing her usual gigantic supper, even though the girls protested a lack of appetite. Tish wore a casual light blue shirt-waist dress to the table, a carryover from childhood when Russell refused to allow a pair of feminine legs in pants to sit near him. Schooled as her nerves were, though, they still shivered when she caught Russell’s mocking gaze as she sat down next to Eileen.

  “Has Dwight Haley already left?” Eileen asked while they ate.

  Russell nodded. “He had to get back to Dallas. He bought your Angus bull,” he told the young girl with a half smile.

  “Big Ben?” Eileen wailed. “Gosh, Russ, I raised him from a nubbin, and he was the only Angus fo
r miles and miles. Everybody’s got Herefords,” she grumbled.

  “That’s why you haven’t got Big Ben anymore,” he replied cooly, sipping his coffee and grimacing at the scalding temperature. He set the cup down. “I couldn’t risk having him get in with my breeding stock. I’ll let you have one of the Hereford calves to pet.”

  “Sure, Russ, you’ll let me have it to pet until it gets 200 pounds on it,” she groaned, “and then one night I’ll find out I’m eating it for supper. That’s cruel.”

  “Cruelty can be a kindness, kitten,” he said abstractedly as he glanced at Tish, who quickly dropped her gaze to a mound of mashed potatoes and gravy.

  “How would you like it if I sold one of your old Apps without telling you first?” Eileen was still grumbling.

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how much you got for him.” Russell grinned.

  “Oh, Russ,” Eileen said, capitulating with a smile.

  Tish watched the byplay between brother and sister while she savored the taste of her steak and onions. Russell was so good to look at, she thought. Had that arrogant tilt of his head always been so attractive, and why hadn’t she ever noticed the way his dark hair curled just a little at the ends where it lay against his muscular neck? Her eyes traveled to his profile, chiseled and commanding in that dark face, his nose straight, his brow jutting, his jaw square and stubborn…

  His head turned suddenly, his dark eyes narrowing, glittering, under a black scowl when he caught her eyes on him. She quickly dropped her gaze to her plate and hated the sudden heat in her cheeks.

  Pushing back her far-from-empty plate, she rose. “I’m going to sit on the porch for a while,” she said, leaving before anyone could ask why she hadn’t finished her supper.

  She almost ran for the sanctuary of the long, wide porch, vaguely aware of the soft, deep laughter behind her.

  She plopped down in the comfortable porch swing and rocked it into motion, listening to the sound of hounds baying mournfully in the distance, the sound of crickets closer at hand. Her heart was slamming at her ribs from that fiery encounter with Russell’s eyes. She crossed her arms across her breasts, feeling a sudden sweet chill with the memory. Frank has blond hair, she told herself, and blue eyes, and I can have him if I want him.

  “Tish!” Eileen called suddenly, breaking in on the solitude with all the tact of an atom bomb.

  “Over here, Lena!”

  The younger girl scurried around the corner and sat down on the edge of the settee. “Russ’s coming out,” she said quickly. “You won’t forget to ask him about Gus, will you?”

  The question made her blood run hot. She knew, quite suddenly, that she didn’t want to be alone with him. “Stay here,” she told Eileen, “we’ll ask him together.”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Eileen protested, jumping up. “He’d eat me alive if he knew I asked you. Please, Tish, I’ll do you a favor someday. Please?”

  She gave in. It was impossible not to, with those great, dark eyes pleading eloquently in the warm light of the window beside the swing.

  “All right, I’ll ask him.”

  Impulsively, Eileen bent and hugged her. “You’re the best sister anyone could want, even if you aren’t really my sister. Thanks!”

  She turned and ran toward the door, almost colliding with Russell, and gasped. “Gosh, Russ, do you have to stalk people?” she exclaimed. “You’re as big as a house!”

  “Two more helpings of apple cobbler,” he reminded the young girls, his voice deep and slow, “and that description may fit you, too.”

  “I was only planning on having one,” she argued. “Well, I’m going up to my room. Tomorrow’s a school day, and I’ve still got homework to do.”

  “No TV until it’s done,” Russell called after her.

  “Yes, Sir!” Eileen called cheekily, and ran for her life.

  Russell eased his tall frame into the settee and leaned back to light a cigarette. He was away from the window and all Tish could see of him was the red tip of the cigarette as her eyes slowly became accustomed to the dark.

  “The answer is no,” he told her.

  “To what?” she replied, hoping her voice sounded calm.

  “Whatever Lena tried to bribe you into asking me. Something to do with Gus, no doubt,” he said as he rocked the settee into motion.

  “She wants to go with him to Nan’s party. I promised her I’d ask you,” she explained.

  “But you haven’t asked me, have you, baby?” he demanded, his tone cutting. “You’d drown before you’d ask me for a life jacket.”

  “We both know you’d throw me an anchor,” she replied, pushing the swing into restless motion with one sandaled foot.

  “I’d come in after you like a shot, and you damned well know it.” He sighed, and she caught the smell of smoke as it wafted toward her in the darkness. “I didn’t mean to go for your throat this afternoon, Tish. What I said was in the nature of a warning, not a declaration of war. You’re only going to be here for two months. I want it to be as pleasant for you as I can make it.”

  It was an apology. At least, she corrected herself, it was the closest he’d ever come to one. He accused her of being proud, but he wrote the book on pride.

  “For what it’s worth, Russell,” she said quietly, “I don’t know how to seduce a man. And I really wasn’t flirting. I…I thought I was teasing, like I used to when I was a little girl, remember? It was that…last summer, too, I didn’t…”

  “Are you that naive, Tish?” he asked suddenly, solemnly. “Two years at a northern college, dating all kinds of men…”

  “I never dated anyone,” she replied, “except Frank. I know…what men expect from women these days, and I can’t…I won’t…Frank doesn’t ask…” Her voice trailed away to a whisper of embarrassment.

  “Are you trying, in your stumbling way, to tell me that you’re still a virgin?” Russell asked softly.

  “That’s none of your business,” she returned, her voice sharp because of the embarrassment she felt.

  “It’s more my business than you’ll ever know,” he replied, his voice deep and slow and quiet in the darkness. The settee creaked softly as he shifted his weight. “Has he made love to you?”

  “If you’re going to get insulting, I’m going in,” she said, and started to rise.

  “Insulting?” His tone was incredulous. “My God, did I put that saintly streak in you? If I did, I beg your pardon, I meant to give you a healthy attitude toward sex.”

  She blushed to her toenails. “Russell…!”

  Soft, deep laughter drifted with the muted sounds of crickets and dogs. “Saint Joan,” he taunted. “All you need are the robes.”

  She swallowed, her lips trembling with unreasonable anger. “What did you expect, Russell, that the typical sharecropper’s daughter would run true to form and turn up pregnant?”

  “Damn you, shut up!” She stiffened at the tone of his voice. It was dangerous; she hadn’t heard him like this in a very long time. Tears welled in her eyes and ran silently down her cheeks.

  “By God, one day you’ll push me too far,” he said in a tight voice.

  Her eyes closed to blot out the shadowy form so close against the wall. She could hear her own heartbeat, and she was a little girl again, cringing from Russell’s fiery temper like a whipped pup.

  “Pouting, little girl?” he asked shortly.

  Without a word, she got out of the swing and stood up, moving past him slowly, blindly, the tears cold as they trickled down into the corners of her mouth.

  She felt his big hand catch her wrist, but she didn’t look down.

  “Tish?” he asked, his voice low and almost tender now, the anger gone.

  “W…what?” she choked rebelliously.

  His hand abruptly loosed her wrist. Lean, hard fingers caught her hips, pulling her unceremoniously down onto his hard thighs. He whipped her against him, one hard arm curving to hold her while the other hand
tilted her chin up to his glittery eyes. His merciless fingers traced the tears along her silken cheeks to the soft, proud pout of her mouth.

  “Don’t you ever,” he emphasized softly, deliberately, “ever throw that at me again. Do you understand me, Tish?”

  She didn’t, but it was easier to nod than to risk another attack. She’d never seen him so angry, and she didn’t even understand what she’d said that caused it. A sob shook her.

  He held her face against his shoulder while he looked down at her. She could barely see his eyes, but she could feel his gaze as if he’d touched her. Against her side, she could feel the thunder of his heartbeat, strong and sure and heavy. His chest rose and fell quickly, and she sat very still, not daring to breathe for an instant. Against her cool face, his big hand was warm and strangely comforting. She could feel his breath against her temple, smell the tobacco and exotic cologne that clung to his body. Something about the contact made her strangely weak, and almost involuntarily she began to remember that eternity of seconds in the beach house.

  She stiffened, feeling again the anger and fury and pain he’d inflicted on her.

  His fingers traced the path of the tears down to her mouth. “You needn’t start freezing on me,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “P…please let me up,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be afraid of me,” he returned, his voice as soft and sensuous now as it had been harsh earlier. “I used to hold you like this when you were just eight years old, and we’d listen to the hounds baying in the distance and talk about fishing. Remember?”

  Her taut muscles began to relax just a little. “You didn’t yell at me so much then,” she said accusingly.

  His lips brushed her forehead. “You didn’t set off my temper so often, either. Will you relax, for God’s sake, all I can feel are bones!”