by Sharon
"I'll listen to her heart again if you promise not to accuse me of trying to feel her up," came a man's voice.
Philip's soft laugh answered the voice. "Never. I know they wean you off all those inconvenient desires in medical school."
"That's a myth and a half." A chair sighed under shifting weight. "If you could see the luscious body I just left unsatisfied..."
"Really? Then you did finish things before I called?"
The first man responded with quiet appreciative laughter and threw something—a pillow.
Jennifer felt the bedclothes shift over her and the robe—she realized she was wearing a robe now—gently rearranged. The hard circle of the stethoscope pressed beneath her breast. She opened her eyes again, gazing beyond dark curls at the stuffed owl on the mantel. This time, though, it seemed to have its head turned to the side. She closed her eyes with an inward moan.
"Beautiful heartbeat," said the voice from the dark curls. "I kiss my fingers to it. Come and listen. You'll feel much better." The stethoscope rattled as it came away from his ears. "What did I tell you? She's young and healthy. She probably won't even catch a cold on you."
The bed shifted; a graceful hip curved against hers. After a moment, the metal disc was removed and her robe was carefully closed, the blankets pulled up around her neck. She blinked her eyes open and focused on Philip Brooks. Pale light haloed the corn silk hair. The sparkling blue eyes held her in a thorough study.
"Jenny?"
"I just happened to be in the neighborhood," she rasped weakly. "So I thought I'd drop by and freeze to death on your front lawn."
She just had time to see the smile enter his eyes before she had to close her own in exhausted effort. She felt him bring his index finger slowly down her cheek, his touch skimming like a breath.
"They've redone Oz in Victorian," she breathed.
"Believe it or not, love, this is my bedroom. And this is the one way I never imagined getting you into it."
All she had left was a tiny whisper. "At least I was carried over the threshold." She opened her eyes one last time because she couldn't resist seeing whether she made him smile again. But her gaze, weak and random, fell instead on the mantel—and registered the fact that the stuffed owl was gone. Had she been seeing things?
"Philip..." she began, trying to tell him about it, though she could feel a trickle of weary tears on her cheeks.
His lips removed the light moisture. "Don't worry about anything, Jenny." His hand touched her hair. "I'm taking care of you. Sleep."
Behind her closed eyelids, she could sense the room falling suddenly into darkness, but his hand still stroked her hair.
CHAPTER 7
She woke again to an unearthly glow. White sunlight blazed through the shutters in long narrow beams, bouncing like smoky spears from every surface. Warmth permeated the air with the sweet lavendery scent of age. As she inhaled and stretched the beguiling mixture seemed to reach deeply inside her, healing parts of her that had always felt unfledged and cold and lonely. She was in Philip's bedroom.
Last night's memories returned in liquid pictures, as though she were seeing their undulating reflection in a puddle. She had been cold, then horribly cold—and then cared for.
Philip's bedroom. Looking around her, she tried to absorb some sense of him from the things around her. She had never seen a room like this, except roped off with velvet cord in a museum. The colors, melting together with archaic elegance, could have been drawn from an Alma-Tadema canvas. From a yellow celling sank a frieze and cornice of violet and gold. Harmonizing violet and yellow silk covered the walls. The somber gold draperies matched the upholstery of a lounge and an easy chair with a footstool. Taste had evolved in ninety years and it surprised her that no one had ever redecorated this pretty room. To the unaccustomed modern eye, it seemed strange and yet pleasing, romantic. She lifted her hand to touch the exquisitely carved butternut headboard above her, enjoying the milky smooth texture of the polished wood.
Pain returned as she sat up, brief burning spasms in her muscles that died into stiffness. She noticed her clothes, intimately draped on the lounge seat in a ray of sunlight.
Her pink blouse on top of the pile heaved suddenly as the earth might under a burgeoning volcano and a small face with furious yellow eyes erupted from between her blouse buttons.
She screamed. It came out as a throttled unsatisfying squeak so she screamed again.
That one did the trick. She heard a door open and running footsteps filled the corridor. Philip shot into the room, his long-boned feet bare, his soft cotton jeans teasing the outline of his marvelous legs. His hair was tousled from the passage of the blue-flecked wool sweater he was dragging on.
"Jennifer? What happened?"
His blue eyes were focusing on her with thrilling anxiety, and she wanted just to stare and stare into them. A band of lean, rock-hard stomach still showed above his pants, and his hands pulled absently at the sweater, covering the golden flesh. She swallowed and pointed.
"An owl!"
It seemed reasonable to expect a decent show of alarm. But showing no alarm at all, Philip strode across the room to the owl, whose head had swiveled sideways to look at him.
"Did you scare her, you bad old bird?" he reproached. "I told you I didn't want you in here."
The bad old bird gave him back a stern look and hopped to the chair arm, then took off to the top of a lofty butternut highboy with a bit of pink cloth in one claw. Standing on one leg, it held out the claw to solemnly inspect the bit of material.
"My underpants," she gasped.
"C'mon, Chaucer. Fork 'em over," Philip said, standing below the indifferent owl, looking up in exasperation. He turned back to her with a wry look that apologized. "I think he's infatuated."
"With my underpants, maybe. You mean you know this bird? Why do you call him Chaucer?"
"He loves Chaucer." He pulled a green-bound volume from a bookcase over his desk and opened it to show her a fan of shredded pages. "Not only is he fond of medieval literature, he's also acquiring a taste for modern fiction." He showed her a ragged copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls. She began to grin as a lone page drifted desolately to the floor. "An eclectic appetite. His best job was on the first copy of my late great dissertation. He sees himself as quite the editor."
She was registering the fact of his dissertation as Chaucer bobbed and poked his head through the leg opening of her underpants, straightening to strut deadpan across the top of the highboy, the underpants draped around his tiny feathery body like a loosely wrapped toga.
She dropped her head between her bent knees, giving a spurt of laughter, her hand falling protectively over her head. She heard Philip speak to the owl.
"I haven't seen such a display of uncouth manners since the lecture I gave at the women's club when you regurgitated a pellet into the chairperson's teacup." There was a second's delay, and then a muffled howl of laughter breached the bedclothes. He turned to see her shaking, her shoulders heaving, her fists banging in soft thumps on the back of her head.
"I thought..." Her words dissolved into more laughter. She fought for breath. "I thought... Philip, Mrs. Buckner, the women's club president, was in the library yesterday and I heard her telling Annette that you had given this wonderful program at the club. She was praising your expertise to the skies and saying what an education it had been for her. She said she'd learned more about animal nature in that half hour than she had in the previous ten years." More groaning laughter. "I was so stupid. I thought she was talking about your stage act, and I thought humph! what kind of a town is this anyway?"
He watched her emerge from the vise of her knees, her face deep pink, her eyes shining with hidden tears that were not from the laughter. He wanted to go to her and kiss her. The terry robe was hanging open and he wanted to draw it slowly down over her arms—but it was too soon. Yesterday he had learned where his impatience could push her.
She rubbed her face with her palms, trying to cal
m the hot jumpiness inside. Her eyes were wet and irritated. She could feel her own idiotically wide smile pushing at her cheeks, but there was nothing she could do about it. It felt fused to her face; indelible. "You have an owl for a pet."
"I have an owl for a pest. I don't believe in people keeping wild animals in their homes so you see I'm a big hypocrite. Laws protect wildlife from that. But I have a license to keep Chaucer. He's disabled. One of his claws doesn't have much of a grip to it, and he'd have a hard time picking up as much prey as he'd need in the wild."
Gazing at the top of the highboy, she was falling in love with the pixieish creature who was tearing her underpants into a thousand pieces. Her gaze flew back to Philip, hitching his desk chair to the bed beside her, sitting backward on it with his arms crossed on the top, his chin at rest on his forearms. Vivid blue eyes gazed back inquiringly into hers.
A stinging lightness rose in her stomach. Her chest held an excited flutter. She was aware suddenly that her body underneath the robe was naked, a sensation that was not unpleasant, but embarrassing. His steady regard was polite, unhurried, yet she found herself stalling as though he had just put her under some vague pressure.
"You said you were a biologist," she said.
"A wildlife biologist. I'm surprised you remember that."
His eyes had begun to make her cheeks hot. She started to say "thank you for last night" but there was something a bit awkward and suggestive about that phrase, so she tried, "I'm going to cherish every moment. I've always wanted to be rescued. Thanks for thawing me out."
A half smile. A long searching glance. "That we've just begun to work on." He noticed her hand lying at her side, the restless fingers pinching up the bedclothes into an array of little pyramids.
"My luck. I go to give myself to a man and end up with my car imbedded in a snowbank, and half frozen to death." The words came blurting out.
His reply was immediate. "Is that why you came? To give yourself to me?"
"I thought those were your terms."
Her gaze, trying to stay with his, kept sliding somewhere to the vicinity of his elbow. The blankets at her side looked like a landscape of the Nile Valley. There was a sudden desperate need inside him to make this easier for her, easier than her fierce sensitivity would allow, easier than the inconvenient sense of urgency in his own body seemed to dictate.
"I take back my terms."
"Too late. I'm here." She had wanted the words to sound calm. They came out a little too quickly, too loudly. She felt exhausted and elated at one time. There. It was out. The lot cast, the die tossed. You've heard of the girl who can't say no? she thought. Well, she just said yes. Help! Staring distractedly at the relaxed suppleness of his wrist where it emerged from the blue sweater, she tried to brazen it out. "You've already had the opportunity to undress me once."
Fresh oxygen stretched the waiting flame he had been attempting to contain. "It seemed like a good idea to get some practice in ahead of time."
She observed that he had beautiful wrist bones. "So. How did I look?"
"Pardon me?"
She made a soft ahem. "I asked you: how did I look?"
Jennifer Hamilton, the world may never see your like again. How had she looked? He tried to dredge up some kind of a, picture but all that came to him was a recollection of wounded brown eyes that seemed not to know him and chilled, blue-white flesh. Looking at her body when it became pink and healthy from his lovemaking, that would mean something; how it looked meant nothing at all. It was her. Her body. The only one he wanted. Details of size and shape were immaterial. However, that would hardly make a poetic declaration. He could feel the anxiety behind her defensive bravado reaching out to him, twisting his heart. She needed to know that he found her physically attractive, and God knew he did, whether it was significant to him or not. So, even though he had no clear recollection of the tantalizing form under his blankets, he said, "You're lovely. Very, very lovely. Centerfold material."
"You don't think my thighs are a little..." Her fingers produced and destroyed several more pyramids. "You know, fat?" Her gaze stuck in a fascinated way on the corner of his mouth that was working hard not to turn upward. "Well, I mean, when it's summer, and I'm wearing shorts, when I'm sitting on park benches my thighs sort of spread out and I think, gee, maybe I should sit on the edge of the bench so they won't"—she gulped—"do that." She watched the edges of his mouth give up the struggle. His eyes had become warm, the irises clear and brilliant. This is very cathartic, she thought. He might as well know right away what an idiot I am.
"Maybe I should take another look," he suggested playfully. His hand came to the edge of the blanket and curled around it, his fingers electric on the upper swell of her breast.
Instinctively she held the blanket in place, though it was not what she wanted. Nerves. His hand left the blanket; a finger touched with sweet brevity on her lips. Then the hand rested on her thigh, massaged her in a slow circle, smoothed gently over the slight roundness between her legs, caressed the other thigh. Her throat had become tight and arid and she realized that her thighs were clenched together. She almost wept when the hand left her.
"Great thighs," he said.
"Do you think my nipples are a funny color?" she asked quickly, hoping he'd explore them too.
At first he'd thought she was a mere one in a thousand. Now he saw she was probably one in a million. Her nipples he hadn't forgotten. Kissing her like a kid in the front seat of his car, he had learned their erect contour against his flesh and his palm registered the memory with a slight shock in the spot that had touched her. His hand curved unconsciously, recalling how perfectly her breast had nestled there. He realized what he was doing and shoved the hand in his pocket. Oh, Lord, he thought, I hope I don't attack her.
"Your nipples match your lips." He brought his hand from his pocket to brush his fingers over her mouth, barely touching. "The shade of roses at twilight. So. As I've officially approved your thighs and nipples and you've presumably seen enough of me to know what you're getting, will you stay with me?"
His hand cooled her cheek, his thumb lazily stroking the rise of her cheekbone. Her respiratory machinery seemed to be operating on a broken current.
"If I... that is, if we... together—" She took a steadying breath. "I mean, if we were together, it wouldn't be your first time, would it? I mean, obviously. Right?"
Touched and rather taken aback by the question, he answered gently, "No. It wouldn't."
"Is this different? Different from the other times?"
"Altogether different." He wasn't sure if she believed him. Words would never be enough. The kaleidoscope of emotions in her face was too complicated to be dissected simply. How could there be such longing in eyes that had a tendency to stare at him like he was about to hurt her? He wanted to cleanse those eyes of fear. He was almost overcome by the urge to slide his terry robe off her shoulders and make her naked. But that wasn't going to convince her that this was different. Instead he made himself stand and smile briskly at her. "Well. Breakfast. Your clothes are still on the damp side. Want to borrow something of mine?"
She looked a little less terrified walking down the staircase beside him belted into a clean pair of his jeans, her unbound breasts swaying against the cotton fabric under his long-sleeved T-shirt. Two pairs of wool socks held on his running shoes. Knowing that she couldn't possibly have on any underpants was hard on his libido so he labored to perish the thought. She was moving stiffly, sore from the stresses of hypothermia on her muscles, but her expression was bright and engaging as she gazed in wordless awe around her.
"Nice little place you've got here," she said, as though it made her uncomfortable.
"It's a bear to heat. Maybe you should have a sweater too. Are you cold?"
She wasn't, not really, but something in his eyes made a shiver scamper up her spine and she hugged herself. His arm came around her, tucking her against his body as they walked.
"You could have a fresh
egg for breakfast. I'll take you to see my chicken."
Shyly, she put her hand up to take hold of his fingers. "You have chickens instead of etchings?"
"One chicken."
After a sweep of breathtaking, empty rooms, they were in a large sunny pantry lined with fresh newspapers. Philip got down on one knee in a pool of flaxen sunlight. In front of him was a short square house with protruding straw and he looked as if he were about to propose to it.
"Henrietta..." His voice was musical, coaxing. His tongue clicked beguilingly.
A beak emerged from the doorway, and the bright bead of an eye, and then a small brown hen plunged out at a fast strut and ran comically across the floor to Philip. He slapped his thigh several times and she hopped up there, clucking contentedly as he stroked her feathers and cooed blandishments at her.
" 'Morning, Henrietta. What have you been up to, hmmm?" The hen put back her head and luxuriated in having her neck scratched. "Did you lay an egg for Jenny? Good girl... Clever girl His hand slid over the polished feathers on her back. "The wildlife rehabilitation people in Milwaukee found her in a crowded city park when she was a tiny ball of fluff, and thought maybe she was a bobwhite. They brought her to me hoping I'd be able to rear her so she could be returned to the wild. Of course, with my great store of book-learning, I told them no way is this a bobwhite; this is a quail. I don't know quite how she grew up to be a chicken. Do you, sweetie? Why'd you grow into a chicken?"
Since the last two sentences had regressed to a coo, Jennifer assumed the questions were directed at the hen rather than at her. As she watched his enchanting, if slightly besotted, attentions to the small bird, an unsettled feeling grew within her. She loved him. She loved this man. She was afraid at first to experience the emotion, and held the knowledge at an intellectual level, resisting it, fighting to keep it from impacting her senses. Then the walls weakened and collapsed, and it flooded into her, each sensation sure and strong. What had made him like this, as gracious, as appealing inside as he was outside? The sensations kept flowing powerfully as though they were fed by some deep spring. She became desperate in her need to feel the tactile richness of his lips against her, to touch his hair and let it stream through her fingers like gold webbing.