by Radclyffe
Alice’s brows drew down. “You’re really going to stay long enough to make the move worthwhile?”
“Since you canceled my tour, I’m free—travel-wise at least—for the rest of the summer. I’ve got to get a jump on the new books, and I feel like it’s going to come easily here.” She played the work card without the slightest twinge of guilt. Alice would never argue with anything that helped her work, and in this case, it was true. “It’s perfect, really. What better way to stay motivated than to be immersed in the environment? I’ll be killing two birds with one stone. Handling Elizabeth’s estate, which is going to be a little more complicated than I anticipated, and cranking out the first book.”
“Three birds. You’ll be resting too.” Alice stretched and wiggled her bare toes, flashing the bright red polish on her pedicured nails. “Because God knows, you’re not going to be busy with much of a social life around here.”
“Uh-huh.” She wasn’t about to tell Alice the social life around here was a lot more exciting than anything she’d experienced in the big city, or that she didn’t have any trouble at all thinking of just who she’d chose for company. She hadn’t stopped thinking about Gard since the moment Gard had walked out on her. She didn’t make a habit of casual encounters, but intimate company wasn’t all that difficult to come by when she needed it. And damn it, she really needed it now.
No sexual foray in memory, not even the great marathon sex with Brin, came close to the intensity of the interrupted kiss with Gard. The woman turned her on like no one she’d ever been with. She bet she could come right now with barely a stroke, a theory she would have loved to test if Alice hadn’t been three feet away. She couldn’t remember the last time a woman had gotten her so excited she’d had to take matters into her own hands. She usually had far better control than that.
Of course, maybe Gard affected her so strongly because Gard pulled back first, catching her when she’d already let down her defenses. When she’d ached to have Gard take her. Gard had wanted her, she’d seen the desire in her eyes. But something held her back, and that something nagged at Jenna like a splinter just under the surface of her skin. She could see it, could feel the constant little stabs of pain, could hear the constant taunts of do it, do it, do it. She wanted to dig beneath the surface and find out what caused a woman like Gard—handsome, smart, accomplished—to resist something as simple as a kiss. What was that all about?
“Where did you just go?” Alice sat up, her expression moving from curious to suspicious. “What’s going on?”
Jenna considered making something up. She wasn’t in the mood for an argument with Alice. She was still too unsettled after the near miss with Gard. But lying wasn’t her style. And this was Alice, after all. “The social opportunities around here are just fine.”
“You’re stalling.”
Jenna laughed. “I am. I, uh, kind of made a move on Gard tonight.”
“Jenna!” Alice looked like she was going to take flight. “I told you not her. Why, why, why can’t you ever do anything I say?”
“You’re kidding, right? You’ve got to be kidding. I always listen to you.” Jenna was laughing so hard at the absurdity of Alice’s statement she could hardly catch her breath. “I’m like a good little soldier. You give me my schedule, I follow it to a T. You tell me you want a manuscript yesterday, I deliver the day before yesterday. I’m sorry my love life isn’t quite as easy to arrange as my writing schedule.”
“What did you do? Please God, tell me you didn’t sleep with her.”
Suddenly serious, Jenna said, “And if I had?”
“Just tell me. Did you?”
“No, but I wanted to.”
“Okay. Clearly, compromise is needed.”
Jenna shook her head, but before she could say that her personal life was not something she was going to let Alice manage, Alice interrupted.
“Here’s the deal. Go ahead and sleep with her, because I have a feeling you’re going to no matter what I say. But it stays here. Kind of like Vegas. What happens in” —she frowned— “Bumfuck, Vermont, stays in Bumfuck, Vermont.”
“Agreed,” Jenna said, because that was her plan as well. “If we sleep together, it ends when I leave.”
“You mean it?”
“Absolutely,” Jenna said with certainty. After all, what other alternative was there?
*
“A beer—Dogfish Head if you’ve got it,” Gard said to the bartender in the roadhouse one county over. She didn’t drink where she worked, unless she was meeting Rina for a quick beer and burger in the evening. If she showed up at one of the taverns in Little Falls at one in the morning, everyone would know about it by breakfast. One of the simple realities of small-town living. So she’d driven close to an hour for a little anonymity. She needed to burn off some energy or she’d be up pacing around half the night again. All she could see was the hazy want in Jenna’s eyes. Her clit still pounded with frustrated arousal. Maybe a beer would dull the desire.
“Here you go.” The bartender slid a sweating bottle across the counter to her. Two wet trails like fat snail tracks followed the bottle’s path. She pushed a five back. “Thanks.”
The bar was one big room divided into a small seating section with tables and chairs at one end, a couple of booths across from the bar where she sat, and a pool table tucked into an alcove just to the left of the door. She and three men in long-sleeved green work shirts and canvas pants occupied the bar, each with an empty stool between them, defining their territory and their isolation. She drained her beer and asked for another. This one she sipped, knowing it had to be her last.
Lust curled inside her, gnawing at her flesh while the memory of Jenna’s mouth seared the surface of her brain. She had sworn off women because of Susannah, but she hadn’t wallowed with a broken heart. She hadn’t been interested in getting to know anyone beyond the casual conversation that would lead to a night or two of sex, and she hadn’t even had that in a couple of years. She knew more about Jenna Hardy than she’d known about the women she’d slept with, and the disruption of the pattern she’d grown comfortable with disturbed her. Jenna disturbed her. She was beautiful and sexy and smart. Who wouldn’t want to sleep with her? Hell, she did want to sleep with her, was practically sick with wanting her. But Jenna pulled up her shields and retreated from intimacy just as she did, and that was damn scary. She knew a little bit about why people put up barriers, and if Jenna had unhealed wounds, she didn’t want to expose them. She didn’t want to know about them or care about them or risk making them worse. She didn’t want the responsibility, and she sure as hell didn’t want the pain.
She looked down and saw that her bottle was empty and now she had no excuse to stay. She reached for her keys on the bartop and stopped when a feminine hand settled on her wrist. A young blonde, maybe twenty-five, slid onto the stool next to her and leaned against Gard’s shoulder.
“Get you another one?”
“No, thanks. I’ve hit my limit,” Gard said.
“Not a big drinker.”
“No. Can I get you something?”
“Coke?”
“Two Cokes,” Gard called to the bartender. She didn’t know the young woman, and she didn’t look or sound like a local. She was wearing tapered blood-red pants that ended mid-calf, a skimpy white spandex top, and low-heeled sandals. The men at the bar paid them no attention. “Are you staying around here?”
“I’m organizing summer conferences at Bennington College. I was just on my way back from a weekend in Boston. That’s where I live.”
“How did you end up in here?”
“I was starting to get a little sleepy so I thought I better stop.” She lowered her voice. “You were the safest-looking one in here. I hope you don’t mind.”
Gard laughed. “I think they’re all pretty safe, but I definitely don’t mind. I’m Gard Davis.”
“Madison Elliott. My friends call me Madison.”
Gard laughed again. “Nice to me
et you, Madison.”
Madison looked pointedly at Gard’s left hand when Gard handed some bills to the bartender. Madison’s thigh pressed a little more firmly against hers.
“If you’re too tired to drive,” Gard said, “I can take you to Bennington. You can have someone drive you back here tomorrow to pick up your car. It should be safe enough in the parking lot, and I know the county sheriff. She can have someone check on it. If you like.”
“You’d do that? Drive me to Bennington tonight?”
“Sure. I’m used to being up at all hours. And we wouldn’t want you to get in an accident.”
“You could stay with me—I’ve got my own room—and drive me back here tomorrow.” Madison drank some Coke and pushed the glass away. She caught Gard’s gaze, held it unblinking. “If you like.”
Gard collected her change. “Let me drive you home.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Oh my God,” Alice moaned, staring at her breakfast plate as if it might leap off the table and bite her in the neck. “If I keep eating like this, I’m going to have to hire a moving van to get me back to Manhattan.”
“I told you not to order the Trucker’s Special.” Jenna started in on her own more modest plate of eggs and ham.
The diner was full at shortly after seven a.m. She and Alice weren’t the only women, but they were the only ones among the long-distance truckers, contractors, and farmers who didn’t look like they were about to put in a very hard day of physical labor. She tried not to search for Gard each time the door opened, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d gone to sleep with the memory of Gard’s mouth on hers and the sensation of the hard muscles in Gard’s shoulders flexing under her fingers. Gard’s strength was exciting, but it was the look on her face—barely restrained hunger—that had her tossing and turning half the night. Now every time the door whooshed open and someone who wasn’t Gard walked in, a wave of disappointment rippled through her. Foolish, probably, but the anticipation itself, a kind of sweet agony, was new and different. She’d never longed for a woman, not like this.
Alice leaned across the table conspiratorially. “It’s not safe for you to stay up here alone. You’re supposed to be taking a sabbatical for your health. This place is going to kill you.”
“Dramatic much?” Jenna smiled.
“You say that now. Give it a couple of weeks.” Alice narrowed her eyes in warning, but didn’t seem deterred from attacking the mountain of food on her plate.
Eating absently, Jenna checked e-mail on her iPhone. Just as she was about to fire off a response to a query from one of her readers asking when her next book was due out, she heard a female voice whisper, “So did you hear the latest about Gard Davis?”
Jenna almost turned her head toward the two waitresses leaning on the breakfast counter directly across from her booth, but managed to keep her eyes on her phone while she eavesdropped shamelessly.
“No, what?” the other waitress said.
“I heard from Shirley that Jerry Benson said that Gard was out to Ramiro’s way over in West Dover last night.”
“Well hell, a body ought to be able to drink wherever they want. What of it?”
“Seems odd she’d go almost an hour away when we have a perfectly good tavern right down the street, don’t you think?” the first cigarette-roughened voice shot back.
“I guess maybe she wanted a little privacy, which sure is hard to get around here.”
“Well, I’d say you’re right, considering she left the place with some young girl.”
The second woman scoffed. “What do you mean left?”
Jenna’s stomach took a wild dive.
“I mean left, as in drove off with her in her truck. Left the girl’s car right there in the parking lot.”
“Left the car, huh?” The second woman sounded curious now. “Who was the girl?”
“Jerry didn’t know her. Said she looked like a city girl.” The waitress made city girl seem unsavory. “Maybe Gard’s got a girlfriend she keeps someplace else. You know you never see her with anyone.”
“Maybe unlike some people, she doesn’t care to parade her private life all over the streets.”
“Oh, are you ever gonna let me forget that time Jimmy Williams and I got a little frisky in the back of his pickup truck?”
“Frisky?” the second woman exclaimed. “You two were buck naked and half the town saw you.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” The cigarette smoker laughed, her tone suddenly years lighter. “And I’d do it again too. He had the biggest damn—”
“Shh,” the other woman chided. “Not in front of the customers.”
Chuckling, the two women disappeared into the kitchen, reemerging a few seconds later with trays laden with enough food per plate for a family of four. Jenna wasn’t hungry any longer and pushed her plate aside. She reached for her coffee, pleased her hand was steady because the rest of her wasn’t.
“I gather you heard that,” Alice said with unusual nonchalance.
“Rather hard not to.” Jenna hated the annoyance in her voice, and of course Alice would pick up on it and know she was bothered. Damn it. So what if Gard blew her off because she had a date waiting somewhere else? They hadn’t planned anything. Dinner had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. The kiss had been completely unexpected, and she had been the one to start it, after all. Even if Gard had been interested, she wasn’t the type to stand someone up. Oh, hell, none of that mattered. Gard was a completely free agent. Just like she was.
Jenna carefully lined her fork and knife up on either side of the plate, drank her coffee, and wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. She met Alice’s appraising stare with what she hoped was unconcerned cool. “You should be pleased.”
“Not if it hurts your feelings.”
Jenna sighed. “I told you if anything should happen between us, it won’t go anywhere. And I’m fine.”
“All right then.” Alice took another bite of pancakes and pushed her plate away with a groan. “At least it didn’t sound like it was the sheriff.”
“Huh. So you do have designs on the local constable.”
“If the circumstances were different, I certainly might. I don’t know how one goes about getting a date around here, though.”
“I imagine it’s the same as any other place,” Jenna said dryly. “People still eat, so why not ask her out to dinner?”
Alice snorted. “Out where? Oscar’s? With the whole town watching?”
“There are lots of upscale bed-and-breakfast places around here. Some of them have got to have nice restaurants. You ought to be able to find a swanky place to take her.”
“You’re pushing the sheriff pretty hard, aren’t you? Trying to eliminate the competition for the vet?”
Jenna thought back to the conversation she’d just heard about Gard and her date. “If I were out to squash the competition, I’d have quite a big job.”
*
Gard spotted the red Audi parked in front of Oscar’s and told herself to drive on by. Jenna might not even be inside. Alice could be in there alone, having breakfast by herself. Even if Jenna was there, she’d be with Alice and Gard would be interrupting. Besides, she couldn’t think of a single plausible excuse to stop, other than she just wanted to see her. And hell, that crazy impulse was reason enough to keep on going. She had a dozen calls to make.
None of them were urgent, though.
Just the same, her schedule might be light but she had mountains of paperwork to plow through after rounds. While she catalogued reasons to keep driving, her truck seemed to be navigating all by itself. Her Ford bumped off the road into Oscar’s and parked, completely on its own. She sat with the engine idling, her hands on the wheel, wondering what she would say when she saw Jenna again. The kiss was amazing, but not nearly enough? I want to sit and watch the sun go down with you beside me. I want to see the sunrise with you in my arms and make love to you before the world wakes up. I’m sorry I left—I wanted to stay.
&
nbsp; Jesus Christ—she’d sound like a lunatic.
The dilemma was solved for her when Alice and Jenna came through the revolving door and headed for her. She’d parked next to the Audi. Not wanting to appear like some kind of stalker, just sitting in the lot, she shut off the engine and jumped out of the truck. Jenna made her way between the two vehicles toward the passenger door of the Audi. Gard had to jam her ass against her truck to make enough room for Jenna to get by because Jenna acted as if she weren’t even standing there.
“Morning.” Gard sucked in a breath as Jenna pulled open the car door. Jenna looked great in tight faded jeans and a navy top that was just clingy enough to show the curve of her breasts. Gard’s mouth went dry.
“Good morning,” Jenna said with a decided chill. She slid into the convertible and closed the door. Loudly.
Gard frowned. Where had the woman with the hot eyes gone? The freeze in Jenna’s gaze this morning was so icy she felt cold to the bone. Maybe Jenna regretted the kiss. Or more likely she was insulted by Gard putting her hands all over her and then walking out. She couldn’t blame her. She’d been sending mixed signals, and wasn’t proud of it.
Placing both hands on the open window ledge of the convertible, Gard leaned over as Jenna jerked her seat belt across her body and shoved it into the clasp. Alice, behind the wheel, started the engine, stared straight ahead, and did a pretty good job of pretending that she didn’t see Gard.
“I don’t blame you for being mad,” Gard murmured. “But—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” Jenna said tightly. “And I’m not mad. I don’t do mad where women are concerned.”
“Okay, but—”
“I’m sorry I put you in an awkward position last night. My mistake.”
“You didn’t—I—”
“Let’s just forget it happened. We got our signals crossed, no harm done.” Jenna gave her an empty smile that was worse than a slap. “I’ve got a lot to do this morning, and I need to be going.”