by Diana Palmer
“Damn,” he muttered huskily, and abruptly pulled the tape out and concentrated on his driving.
Tish watched him, feeling the leashed fury that she couldn’t understand, as he lit a cigarette and drew on it, sending clouds of smoke into the space between them.
Another two minutes and he pulled up sharply inside the white and green-trimmed garage and cut the engine. He got out, helped her out, and slammed the door behind her, his muscular arms trapping her against it as they imprisoned her there.
“You’re wondering why I didn’t stop along the way, aren’t you?” he growled harshly. His hands went to her flushed cheeks to hold her face in a vicelike grip while he studied her with blazing eyes. “It’s because I’m thirty-five years old, and you’re twenty,” he told her roughly. “And if that doesn’t explain it, I’m not going to.”
He dropped a brief, rough kiss on her stunned mouth and strode away, leaving her there with a heavy heart.
The restraint stayed between them in the days that followed. The old times, the good times, were forgotten along with the laughing banter that had characterized their relationship.
Russell kept out of her way with a vengeance, and she went to equal lengths to avoid him. It was noticed by the other members of the family but never discussed. Tish began to look forward to college with a fatalistic pleasure. At least there she wouldn’t have to see him every day. And maybe, just maybe, it would quit hurting so much.
It hardly seemed like Mindy and Baker had left when they came back, and the household was caught up in the business of getting ready for Christmas. It put a sparkle in Tish’s sad eyes as she and Mindy and Eileen planned Christmas for Lisa.
“What about a saddle for her pony?” Eileen suggested.
“No, she needs some dresses,” Mindy said.
“Maybe some stuffed animals,” Tish pondered. “And how about her governess? Should we get her anything, since she’s only here in the daytime?”
“I guess Miss Asher might like some handkerchiefs,” Eileen said. “She likes the frilly ones….”
“I still want a party, regardless of Russell’s arguments,” Mindy said firmly, tossing her curly blond head. “The noise can’t bother the livestock, they’re too far away from the house. Anyway, Tish deserves a going-away party. I don’t know how we’d have managed without her.”
Tish blushed. “You’d have done fine.”
“I don’t think so. Make up a list, dear, and let’s get the invitations out this week,” Mindy told Tish. “Now, about the tree…”
“Not me,” Eileen said quickly. “Not again. I’m not following Russell and Tish through sixteen Christmas-tree lots in the rain so she can veto twenty trees and go back to the first one to buy it.”
Tish stiffened. “I do not drag anyone through sixteen…”
“Oh, hell, yes, you do,” Russell said as he came through the doorway with Baker. “Every year. But not,” he added, “this year. Lisa’s going to pick out the tree.”
It was worse than being hit. It was as if he was deliberately telling her she had no more place in family tradition.
She got up from the table and hugged Baker on her way out of the kitchen. “You’re looking good,” she told him with a forced smile. “Feeling okay?”
“Feeling fine.” He eyed her carefully. “Except that I’ve got a damned heartless son who doesn’t care what his temper hits,” he added with a hard glare in Russell’s direction.
“Baker, please, it’s Christmas,” Tish said softly. “I’ve got to call Nan. I’ll see you later.”
She went out quickly and headed up the stairs with tears blurring her vision.
“Daddy and I are going to get a tree!” Lisa burst into her room with flying hair, her face flushed with excitement. “Want to come…Tish, what’s the matter?” she asked when she saw the darkness in the older girl’s eyes.
“Matter?” Tish pulled her mask up and smiled. “Nothing in this world!” She leaned over and kissed the small face. “Nothing at all, precious. Get a nice tree, now, and don’t drag Papa over every lot in town before you make up your mind, all right?”
“Is that what you used to do?” Lisa asked as she sat beside Tish on the pretty coverlet on the bed.
Tish smiled, remembering. “I sure did. I was a brat,” she admitted. “I did it on purpose because I enjoyed being with him so much.”
A sound at the door caught her ear, and she turned to see Russell standing there, listening, a look of fathomless intensity in his dark eyes. She averted her face.
“Get going, Lisa, and remember what I told you,” Tish said with a smile.
“I will. Bye, Tish.”
“Wait for me downstairs, Lisa Marie,” Russell said quietly, not taking his eyes from Tish.
“Yes, Papa.”
Russell stepped into the room with his hands deep in his pockets, a red turtle-neck sweater emphasizing his darkness. “I never knew,” he said softly, “that you did it because you enjoyed my company. That isn’t the case these days, is it, Tish? You can’t get out of my way fast enough now.”
She studied her oval nails with their coat of clear polish. “Even a puppy won’t come around if it’s whipped enough,” she said dejectedly.
There was a long, static silence between them. “Remind me to explain it to you before you leave,” he said huskily. “It’s simple enough.”
“Hatred usually is.”
“Is that what you think, little one?” he asked quietly.
She felt herself cringing. It was a kind of anguish to be near him now, to look at him, listen to him.
“Oh, God, I wish Christmas were over,” she whispered miserably. “I wish I were back on campus. I wish I’d never come!”
She got up and went to the window, keeping her back to him. “Please go away, Russell,” she said steadily, her voice almost trembling.
There was a pause, a hesitation. “Tish…” he said softly.
“Please, just go!” Her voice broke. “Please! All you…do lately…is go out of your way to…to hurt me! Damn you…!”
He took a sharp, deep breath, as if he’d suddenly been hit. For several seconds he didn’t move. Then, finally, she heard the door open and close. And the tears poured out of her in a healing flood.
Nine
The tree was lovely. A big, husky Scotch pine with a perfect shape. Russell put it up in the living room and Lisa helped Eileen decorate it. Tish kept her distance, doggedly working in the kitchen with Mattie and Mindy to bake cakes.
“He’s hurting, you know,” Mindy said mysteriously as they cut out cookies.
“Russell?” Tish paused with her hands dusty from the flour and stared at the older woman.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed what lengths he’ll go to keep away from you. This afternoon was just another ploy. He’s so afraid you’ll see it,” she murmured.
“See what?” Tish burst out.
Mindy smiled. “You’ll have to open your eyes, my darling, and see for yourself. It isn’t my place to tell you. Let’s finish up. We’ve got to start decorating for the party, too.”
Tish only nodded. Mindy, she decided was as balmy as the rest of the family seemed to be getting. Even Baker was walking around like a cat with feathers sticking out of its mouth.
The presents were opened on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, with all the family gathered around the sparkling, colorful tree in the living room and Christmas music from the stereo filling the air.
Eileen snapped one photo after another with her camera as Lisa excitedly opened her presents.
“Oh, Papa, look!” Lisa breathed as she opened one suspicious box with holes in it and pulled out a snow white Persian kitten. “Tish, thank you, thank you!” she exploded, and threw one arm around Tish’s neck to hug her while she clutched the kitten gently in the other. “How did you know?” she asked delightedly.
“Remember those worms we dug to take fishing?” Tish asked very seriously. “Well, one of them told me.”<
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“Oh, you silly thing.” Lisa laughed.
“What are you going to call her?” Tish asked.
“How about Fluffy?” the little girl asked.
“You have to admit, it’s highly original,” Eileen chimed in, “just the kind of name Tish would have picked.”
“I’m going to remember you in my will,” Tish threatened.
“Leave me your collection of shrunken heads,” Eileen begged. “I’ve wanted it for such a long time!”
Baker and Mindy laughed at the banter, but Russell was quiet and withdrawn. A soft light came into his eyes for an instant when he unwrapped the present Tish had given him and found a rare old flintlock pistol to add to his antique firearms collection. He thanked her politely, centering his attention on the gun.
She saved his present to her until last and unwrapped it with nervous hands. She laid aside the tissue paper and found a perfect black opal in a silver setting. It was something she’d wanted for a long time. She took it out and held it in her long fingers and knew that once she put it on, she’d never take it off again. Tears misted her eyes when she realized that he’d known without even being told how much she’d wanted it.
“Thank you, Russell,” she murmured.
He spared her a glance. “I’m glad you like it, baby.”
She slipped away to her room early, while everyone else was still wrapped up in the excitement of Lisa’s enthusiasm at her first family Christmas. She closed the door behind her and pressed the opal to her lips. With reverence, she clasped it around her neck and watched the lights in it dance in her mirror. It was a long time before she slept.
The party was held on New Year’s Eve, and it was a less than jubilant occasion for Tish, knowing that she’d leave the next day for college. It would be lonely in the dorm, but maybe her friend Lillian would arrive early, too. She tried not to think about it, smoothing her long white gown over her thin figure as she joined the throng in the living room.
The music from the stereo was loud, and ice clinked merrily in crystal glasses. Nan was there, and Belle Tyler and, of course, Frank. Russell didn’t like that, and he couldn’t have been more obvious about it, the way he was ignoring Frank.
Tish sighed into her weak drink, which was mostly water and ice, as she stood by herself against the wall and watched the guests. Things between her and Russell were so strained that it was an effort to be in the same room with him. Although tonight his eyes were on her most of the time. She met them across the room and saw them smoldering, quiet….
She’d rather have been in the kitchen with Mattie, or out on the porch, snuggled in her coat watching the night sky, accompanied only by the lonely sound of the wind. She’d rather have been anywhere, in fact, but here, where she had to watch Belle Tyler clinging to Russell’s arm as if it were the only safe harbor in a sea of people.
The noise and confusion grew worse by the minute. That, and Belle, finally bothered her so much that she started easing toward the door to make her escape.
Before she got past the arched doorway, she bumped into something big and warm and solid, and, looking up, she found Russell standing between her and freedom.
“Running out?” he asked with a quiet smile. “They’ll be blowing the noisemakers in about…” he looked at the black watch imbedded in the fine hairs on his wrist “…forty more seconds.”
“I…that is, the noise,” she faltered. “I just wanted to get away from it.”
“From the noise, Tish,” he asked deliberately, “or from the sight of Tyler’s sister wrapping herself around me?”
Her eyes flashed gray fire up at him. “If you think I’m jealous of you…”
But before she could finish the tirade, the unmistakable strains of “Auld Lang Syne” filled the room and everything except Russell’s dark face and eyes disappeared. He caught her small waist with two big hands and jerked her against him.
“Be still, Tish,” he said when she tried to draw back. “It’s the witching hour, and you’re going to help me get that blonde off my back. I’m going to kiss you, Miss Peacock,” he murmured as he drew her even closer. His breath was warm and whiskey-scented against her forehead, her eyes, as he looked down into her stunned, pink face. “I’m going to taste that soft mouth until I make you tremble in front of God and Belle Tyler and the rest of them.”
“Oh, Russell, you mustn’t,” she whispered shakily. The words he was saying made her weak, made her breath rustle in her throat.
“Why not, honey?” he whispered. His big hand tangled in her loosened hair, drawing her head back against his broad shoulder. “We’ve kissed like this before, remember? That night I came home from Jacksonville we were burning each other alive when Eileen walked in on us…”
“They’re…they’re staring,” she whispered, red-faced. Sensation after sensation was washing over her slender body as it rested fully against his.
“Let them stare,” he murmured, his voice deep and slow and husky with emotion. “Kiss me, Tish…come into the fire and see how it burns.”
His mouth opened on hers. His strong arms drew her against the big, warm body, and she gave herself up to the flames that burned and burned and burned….
He drew back a breath, his eyes fathomless, strange, dark with a hunger that was unmistakable. “Let’s go.”
“Go…where?” she whispered as he took her arm and led her out of the room into the foyer.
He didn’t bother with an answer. Unlocking the door to his den with a key, he opened it and drew her inside, not even pausing to turn on the overhead light as he locked the door behind them.
“What…what will they think, the way we…” Tish faltered unsteadily.
He lifted her completely off the floor in his hard arms and carried her to the soft, white shag rug in front of the fireplace. He laid her down on it gently, almost reverently, and stretched out beside her, pausing just long enough to shed his jacket and his tie and loosen the top buttons of his shirt.
“Don’t talk to me, Lutecia,” he said in a dark, tight whisper.
“What…what are you…” she protested weakly, her palms pressed ineffectively against the broad, hard chest above her.
“I brought you in here to say goodbye,” he said with self-contempt in every line of his face. “I want the taste of your mouth under mine, the softness of that sweet, young body against me for a few minutes before you walk out of my life,” he breathed softly. “My God, can’t you see how it is with me…how it’s been this whole year? Don’t you know that I’ve damned near had to tie my hands behind me to keep them off you?” He drew a long, harsh breath. “Tonight, I don’t care. I want these few minutes with you…just a few minutes out of two lifetimes to say goodbye in a much more satisfactory way than with words…let me show you, baby…” he breathed as his mouth touched hers.
Her hands trembled against his chest as he kissed her slowly, gently, his lips playing with hers in silence. Her heart pounded, ached, at this miracle of feeling that swept over her, the joy of being close, being loved by that hard, skillful mouth…
“Here,” he murmured, drawing her fingers to the buttons of his shirt. “Unfasten it.”
She obeyed him hesitantly, her hands fumbling with the stubborn buttons in silence until she had it open halfway down his chest, until she could feel the crisp hair that covered the warm, smooth muscles.
She looked up at him with awe in her whole expression, touching him, feeling the sensuous masculinity at her fingertips as she touched him.
His dark eyes searched hers. “Never, Tish?” he asked, his voice caressing as he read the newness of the action in her eyes.
She managed to shake her head, the pounding of her heart making her tongue-tied.
His lips touched her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her cheeks in a soft, sweet tasting that made ripples of pleasure all the way to her toes. No man had ever been so exquisitely gentle with her.
“I haven’t made love like this since I was sixteen,” he murmured
against her hair.
“But…I mean, isn’t this usually…” she tried to put the question into words foggily.
He chuckled tenderly. “If you were any other woman, I’d have half your clothes off by now,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Russell Currie!” she gasped.
“Relax,” he whispered, amusement making his voice sound like silk. “Just relax. It’s not going that far with us. I can’t risk it. A few kisses, little saint, that’s all I want. It would make vacations here unbearable if we went any further, and you know it.”
“Would it?”
He took her face in his big hands and held it while his mouth explored hers in a long, slow, hungry kiss that never seemed to end. The tenderness in it brought tears to her eyes when she opened them and looked up at him.
“Russ,” she whispered brokenly, drowning in the anguish of leaving him, of loving him. “Oh, Russ, I love you so much, so very much! I…”
He pressed a long, hard finger against her lips and something in his eyes flashed like brown lightning. “Don’t say it,” he said tightly. “Not like that!”
“But, I do, I…” she whispered feverishly.
He dragged himself away from her and stood up, pausing to light a cigarette as he stared down into the flames. “I know,” he said finally. “I’ve known for a long time. It’s one reason I’ve kept ripping at your temper, little girl. I told you once before there was no future in it, and I wasn’t kidding.”
She stared down at the softness of the shag rug, clutching it with her fingers as she felt her pride fall away. “I didn’t know about Lisa, if that’s why…”
“Good God, I knew that!” he exploded. “I knew it the moment you saw her. Nothing you said could have disguised that look in your eyes. No, Tish, it’s not Lisa. Not directly anyway.” His eyes swept over her where she lay on the rug, and he tore them away with a muffled curse. “Will you please, for God’s sake, sit up?” he growled.