by Jacobs, Ann
She recalled Jared’s interest in the project and thought maybe she should ask him to help. But she couldn’t. Letting him share her dream would bring them too close. Too personal. If she weren’t careful she could care way too much, so much that losing him would tear her apart. With Jared, it wasn’t only death that could snatch him away. It was life. His life in Atlanta, hers here.
He could easily get bored at any time with the slow pace of life on Big Bear Mountain. He could leave her, as surely as Bill had checked out to heaven. She dared not risk hurting that much again, but she had a funny feeling she’d already stepped across the line. She’d given too much of herself to him already by taking the pleasure he offered—pleasure she’d only dreamed about before last night.
Too bad her church was so poor. She glanced at the small building as she drove by. Grateful for the small pledge of support the pastor had made, she wished she could get similar pledges from a few businessmen in Dahlonega and Blairsville. If she could, the bank might be willing to lend its support. Everybody seemed to think the co-op was a good idea, but not many people to put their money on the line until she’d proven it could support itself.
A vicious circle, one without end. When Althea stopped the car in Jared’s driveway, she shoved her dream of helping mountain women to the back of her mind. Pushing her worries aside would have been much more difficult if not for the tingling anticipation she felt when she thought of spending another night in his arms.
▪ ▪ ▪
“Come on, we are going to get fried rainbow trout at this place I spotted on the highway south of Blairsville.” When he came to meet her at her car, Jared sounded as excited as a little boy.
Althea had to suppress a laugh. This was a facet of the man that she hadn't experienced before. “You don't mean Uncle Ed's, do you?”
“I think that's the name of the place. It's a long, narrow building on the west side of the road not too far from town.” He opened the door for her and practically dragged her out of her Pathfinder to his car.
She chuckled when he gunned the engine and pretended to speed down the mountain road. “I take it Uncle Ed has found another customer. He does make the best fried rainbow trout around here. They catch a lot of the ones they serve, in the Nottely River that runs right behind the restaurant.”
“Do they serve hush puppies?”
“Oh yeah. They're hot and greasy, with lots of onion.”
“Just the way I like them.” Jared turned onto the highway and set a steady pace. “What is that place over there?”
Althea turned in the direction he indicated and saw four perfectly round ponds nestled close together in a valley. “They are trout ponds. A good many farmers around here farm trout. They harvest them and sell them to packing houses and restaurants.”
“Good business, if everybody goes nuts for trout the way I do.” He pulled into the parking lot at Uncle Ed's Place, got out and hurried around the car to open her door. “I'm looking forward to this,” he told her as they waited at the door for a table overlooking the river.
When she glanced around she saw several people she knew. It felt strange, being here with Jared for everybody to see. She and Bill had eaten here a couple times every month, and afterward they’d lingered over big glasses of sweet iced tea to visit with their friends.
“There's somebody over there waving at you.” Jared whispered close to her ear, and then gestured toward a table in the corner.
“That's Trina Wells, the woman who pieced your quilt.” Trina was also one of the most efficient bearers of gossip in a fifty-mile radius. Any hope that her presence here would be ignored died when Althea met Trina's attentive gaze. She turned to Jared again. “Trina's husband's name is Joe.”
“I don't remember them. But then I don't recall a lot of people I must've known I was a kid.” Jared put a hand at Althea's waist, and they followed the waitress to a corner table.
Althea thought she sensed regret in Jared’s simple statement. After they'd ordered dinner she pointed out other people she knew. Jared recalled only a few of them, and he didn't appear to recognize anybody except by name.
He seemed impressed at the number of folks who stopped to say hello. “Do you come here often?”
Since almost half the diners had already stopped by their table by the time their food arrived. Althea guessed Jared had good reason to assume she hung out here all the time. “I used to,” she told him, smiling at him as he sipped from a big plastic glass of sweet tea.
“With the man you were going to marry?”
“Yes. He loved Uncle Ed's fried trout.” Althea waited for that familiar grief to overwhelm her. When it didn't, she shared the memory with Jared. “We used to come here all the time. I used to tease Bill and complain that this was the only place he knew to take me.” The feeling that washed over her was sad and sweet, no longer painful.
“So now everybody's coming around, checking out your new man?” Jared grinned then took a big bite of fish and popped the hush puppy in his mouth.
She returned his smile. “I guess they are.”
“How do you think I'm going to measure up?”
Althea tried to push aside the thought that half the people she'd grown up with would soon be deluging her with warnings about city slickers, while the other half would be offering advice as to how best to catch the big fish they'd seen nibbling on her hook. “You measure up just fine. You don't have anything to worry about.”
“Good. Eat your dinner before it gets cold.” With that, Jared followed his own advice and dug into the food on his plate until it was gone.
Although she tried, Althea was only able to eat about half of her trout. She never had been able to enjoy eating while other folks were staring at her. By the time they went outside to find three teenagers drooling over Jared's Mercedes in the parking lot, at least fifteen more people she knew had come over to remind her of old times here. Times she had tried hard to banish from her memory.
“Let's go home.”
She'd never heard three words she agreed with more.
Chapter Twelve
The after-dinner drive to Big Bear Mountain with Althea at his side, and the walk they took afterward along a path paralleling the stream, lent a feeling of permanence — a sense of rightness to the summer evening.
Twilight hadn’t yet darkened the shaded path. Jared knelt and picked up a chunk of rocky pyrite the heavy runoff had deposited at the edge of the path. “It’s fool’s gold,” he said, handing the nugget to Althea.
When she turned it over in her hand, looking at the gold flecks, she looked up at him. “It looks real enough to me.”
He wondered if the feelings he had for her were the real thing, not an illusion. He hoped he was chasing his future but feared he was following the dream as elusive as the one that had claimed his dad so long ago. “You can't always tell something by the way it looks.”
Althea smile seemed wistful. “I guess not.”
She'd been quiet tonight. Too quiet. “You have something weighing on your mind. Want to tell me what it is?”
“Just a friend in her problems her husband left her and their four kids with not a penny to their names. I bought a couple of quilts from her this afternoon.”
“Is there anything else we can do to help her out?” Jared remembered how he’d felt when he was twelve years old, knowing his father was gone and he and his mom were all alone and broke. The fact that his dad had died, not run off, hadn't made any difference in the way losing its breadwinner had affected his family.
She looked up at him, her expression troubled. “I don't know what we could do beyond buying her quilts. And I already did that. She's a proud lady, she wouldn't accept outright charity. I don't blame her. All she has left to hold on to is her pride.”
Seeing how the tears glittered in her pale eyes, he couldn't help but see how her friend's plight distressed her. The smile she managed looked forced. “We'd better go back inside. I need to get some quilting done tonight.
”
Pride. Until Jared had come home, he had practically forgotten about mountain folks and their stiff-necked pride. Harriet's warning rang in his head, making him rethink the wisdom of telling Althea how he planned to make her dream of a craft co-op come true. He'd wait awhile, not take a chance that the realtor might have been right about how Althea would react. At least, he'd wait until he could put a deed to the land in her hands.
Birds chirped in the trees overhead. In the distance Jared heard some creature’s plaintive call. “Do you really want to work on that quilt tonight?” he asked, his arm around her as they climbed the steep incline that led to his front porch. “I can think of a lot more pleasant ways to spend a lazy summer night.”
It warmed his heart when Althea looked up at him and gave his hand a squeeze. “I can think of more pleasant things, too, but I promised you I'd finish the quilt by September. I always keep my promises.”
When her soft lips tempted him too much he took her in his arms and held her beneath the twilight sky, under the towering branches of trees that had started growing on the mountainside centuries before they were born. Trees that would still be there long after they were dead and gone.
For a long time they stood there, their bodies aligned, their lips fused together, tongues exploring. They were lovers in a cocoon, insignificant in the total scheme of nature but an entire world to each other. At least that’s the way he felt.
Did she share his wonder? Did she sense a connection between them that went deeper than mutual lust? He hoped so, so much that when Althea pulled back he felt he’d lost part of himself.
▪ ▪ ▪
Jared made Althea want things she’d promised herself she would never risk again. Love. Commitment. Promises for a lifetime. Promises fate had a way of breaking.
While he'd held her earlier, she had let herself go for a little while. She'd savored the safety and the protection of his strong arms and the heat of his body. Now, as she made tiny stitches in the quilt he'd use to warm up from the winter cold, she watched him look up from his laptop and stare out the window into the night.
He turned to her and smiled, then set the computer on the table. With agile grace that reminded her of a stalking panther, he got up and crossed the room. Like a supplicant, he knelt at her feet on the deep green, gold and ivory braided rug that reminded her of the color of his eyes.
“Go on with your quilting, sweetheart. I'm just going to make you feel good.” His husky words washed over her like honey.
He took off her sandals and massaged one foot and ankle and then the other. Slowly, then faster and harder, his fingers moved in a rhythm she would always associate with making love. With Jared.
His lips followed the path where his hands had worked their magic. Up her calves and past the hem of her long, loose skirt. The rasp of his fingers on the backside of her knees set off a jolt of need. Her insides turned to liquid fire. Trying hard to keep her mind on her quilting, she focused on stitching around one patchwork block.
“Slide this way a little, sweetheart.” He sounded hoarse. Congested, the way she felt inside. When he put his big hands at her hip bones, they scalded her with their heat as he coaxed her to the edge of the chair. “Raise up for me.”
When she did, he slid her plain cotton panties down and off. He raked his thumbs across her belly, through the soft hair on her trembling mound and lower. With agile fingers he teased the sensitive flesh on her upper thighs until she opened to him.
She watched him position her skirt high on her thighs and gaze between her legs, knowing he must be seeing the moisture there. Not even she had ever looked at herself so closely. Embarrassed but also incredibly aroused, she spread her legs wider to give him better access.
“You’re beautiful here, too. Wet and warm and irresistible. Mine. I’ve got to taste you.” She watched his head disappear beneath her skirt as he opened her wide with his thumbs and flicked her tingling flesh with his tongue. Then he closed his lips over her, and thrust his tongue deep inside her.
Did lovers do this? Embarrassed, she knew she probably ought to stop him, but she couldn’t. What he was doing felt incredibly good. Pressure mounted low in her belly, so fierce it made her drop her needle and grasp the chair arms to keep herself from floating away on a cloud of sensation. She went numb, as though every nerve in her body had suddenly settled between her legs.
Feelings so intense they hurt, yet so delicious she wanted them to go on forever, radiated through her body. They taunted her as he intensified the pressure then paused to flick his tongue over her intimate flesh.
Sweat beaded on her forehead. She gasped for breath. “Too much. No. Don’t. Don’t—don’t stop.” What did she want? She didn’t know. Then she came in a mighty jumble of sensations so intense they overwhelmed her.
“More?” Her hiked-up skirt muffled the question he voiced against her flesh. His hot breath tightened her still-throbbing flesh and kept her consciousness centered between her legs. How could he stay so calm?
“I’ll die if you don’t stop.”
When he laughed the vibrations rippled through her. “What a way to go, though.” He plunged his tongue deep inside her then lifted his head. Still on his knees, he looked up at her. His expression belied the calmness in his voice. That look of stark need on his hard, lean face made her ache to satisfy it.
She cupped his cheeks between her palms and rubbed her thumbs over his warm, moist lips. The raspy feel of his beard stubble against her palms was just one more thing she loved about this man.
Bending down, she repeated what he’d said to her. “Let me make you feel good, Jared.”
Did he tense up at her whispered suggestion or did she just imagine she’d felt his facial muscles tighten beneath her fingers?
“It’s time for us to go to bed.” He stood and scooped her up in his arms in one fluid motion.
Chapter Thirteen
God, how Jared craved her touch. More than anything, he wanted to let go. He yearned to feel Althea’s hands and mouth on him, to let her touch him the way he’d just touched her. Her gaze scorched his flesh, making him impossibly hard, hotter than he’d ever been before. He watched her undress, then shrugged out of his shirt before shoving his jeans and boxers down in one jerky motion.
Damn! He toed off the loafers he’d forgotten he had on and stepped out of the material bunched up around his ankles. Althea sat on the bed, her arms outstretched toward him.
Two steps, maybe three, that’s all it would take for him to be in her arms. Under her spell. He dared not lose control, not completely. He had the sinking feeling he’d become jelly in her hands if he gave in and put responsibility for his pleasure in her soft, capable hands.
He’d never let anybody have that much control over him. He didn’t think he could open up that much, risk the self-control that had helped him turn an idea and a few thousand dollars into a fortune. He’d worked too damn hard, come too far, to give himself up so easily.
She smiled at him. He took one step forward then met her gaze. He’d never known there could be fire in ice, but there was. Her pale eyes glowed, burned his flesh from head to toe when she raked him with a gaze of crystal fire.
He couldn’t resist her. Never before had he cared so much, and never had he had so much to lose by holding himself aloof. Since he was twelve years old, he had never missed anybody he lost—not even Marcie.
But he’d miss Althea if she ever left him. He’d never cared as much for anyone as he was coming to care for her. He took one more step and sank shamelessly onto the bed, into her waiting arms.
She stroked his shoulders, his chest, his belly. Her gentle explorations stoked the fire inside him, and his skin tingled in the wake of her touch. His heart pounded out a quickening cadence. His nose twitched, full of the scent of musk and woman and his own arousal.
Somewhere in the distance a timber wolf howled his mating call, a sound not too different from the groan he heard escape from his own tight throat when she
took him in her soft hands. She weighed his length and thickness and then stroked him with a touch that was gentle yet arousing. Her breath tickled his belly. In a futile effort to hold onto a semblance of self control, he clenched his abdominal muscles.
When she touched him with her tongue, he nearly exploded. Steeling himself, he endured the exquisite torment of her hot, wet mouth for what seemed like hours but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Before he lost it completely, he flipped her over and took command.
Possession. The salt-tinged taste and satiny feel of Jared’s arousal was still fresh on her tongue when Althea wrapped her legs around his lean, hard-muscled flanks. She welcomed him when he plunged inside her so hard and deep it seemed as though they’d merged into one body. One heart.
Surrender. He demanded, she complied. He sank deeper with each hard thrust. The fire that simmered low in her belly grew hotter. When he withdrew, she clenched her inner muscles as though she could hold him there.
He possessed her now. He held her with a sexual magnet she couldn’t deny. He ravaged her mouth and stole her breath. Tiny explosions flared deep inside her. They intensified, strengthened, centered where their bodies were joined in a powerful burst of pleasure that overwhelmed her.
So this was what orgasm felt like.
Caught up as she was in sensations beyond her wildest dreams, Althea barely heard Jared’s triumphant shout. For a long time she lay in the cradle of his arms, sated and content.
▪ ▪ ▪
The next day Althea waited on customers as though she were a zombie. Her energy depleted and her mind full of remembered sensations, she tried in vain to persuade herself that what she felt with Jared was only physical. She tried to focus only on his hard, lean body and the rasp of his beard stubble on her most sensitive flesh…the contrast between his rigid, pulsing flesh and the velvety skin that gloved it. He was satin over steel, and it felt incredible when he was buried deep inside her.