by Debra Dixon
Starting anything with Joshua would be a mistake, she told herself firmly. She was so close to getting her life neatly arranged. She’d finally stopped wanting to be held in someone’s arms at night. She couldn’t let her emotions get all tangled up again. Especially not in a relationship with a man who could affect her like this before he ever touched her.
Faintly, she heard herself say, “We should go in.”
“Yeah. We should,” Joshua echoed as he backed into the house and reached for her hand to draw her after him. If they went in, maybe he could avoid the inevitable, maybe he could get through the day unscathed. He managed to ignore the way the red dress shifted and flowed over her curves as she passed him, but the disappointed look on her face did him in. “Ah, what the hell!”
Victoria got only a glimpse of a big mahogany-colored couch, hardwood floors, watercolor paintings of Plains Indians, and lots of open space before Joshua kicked the door shut and pulled her hard against him, letting go of her hand as if he were certain she’d stay in his arms of her own volition. He murmured, “This morning I promised myself I wasn’t going to do this.”
Then his lips came down on hers, giving her what she’d wanted since that first day in the cabin. He was tall and hard, drawing her up against the wall of his chest. Everything about him was deliberate, from the way he nibbled at her lips to the way he adjusted his body to cradle hers. As if he’d been thinking about this kiss for a long time.
Victoria melted into the sensation of being savored. She put common sense on hold and forgot everything but the feel of muscle beneath her fingers as they crept up his chest and around his neck. Three years was a long time to wait to be kissed again.
For Joshua, the contact of their lips had signaled the point of no return. Her mouth was soft and yielding beneath his, allowing him to take his time. At the touch of his tongue against the seam of her lips she opened her mouth slightly. With no more invitation than that, he swept his tongue into the moist, welcoming warmth.
Everything about the kiss was an exploration, because he didn’t know what she was feeling. He didn’t have a window into her emotions to tell him what she wanted. All he had to guide him was the physical response of her body to his, the way her tongue twined with his, the way a tiny movement of her hips urged him silently onward. When Joshua realized his hand was straying to the first of the buttons that had driven him crazy all day, he finally broke the kiss.
Joshua touched his forehead to hers and allowed himself to catch his breath. Kissing Victoria was like running a marathon, and he needed his second wind. So did she, because she drew in a extended breath and exhaled slowly. Long, pregnant seconds passed as neither of them moved. Joshua finally cleared his throat and stepped back.
With tiny movements Victoria squared her shoulders and smoothed her dress. As incredible as that kiss was, she knew better than to let a man know he had the power to shake her right down to her toes. What was that television commercial? Never let them see you sweat. Silently she added—or need, or want.
When she felt she could trust her voice not to come out in a rasp, she said, “I guess we had to … to get that out of our systems.”
“You don’t honestly think we got it out of our systems?” Joshua asked with a scowl. “I know it’s not out of mine. The question is, what are we going to do about it?”
“Nothing.”
“We tried that. It didn’t work.”
“Why do we have to do anything? Can’t we chalk it up to curiosity and forget it? It’s over and done with. We can go back to being friends.”
“Or we can go forward to being more than friends.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Victoria shook her head vigorously, causing the tendrils around her face to brush against her jaw.
“Neither is letting the tension between us get so thick you could cut it with a knife. I’m afraid that what we’ve got here, love, is an ongoing chemistry experiment.”
“Which is more than likely going to blow up in our faces if we don’t get smart. You’re busy being retired from whatever it was that you did, and I have a practice to run. Let it go, Joshua.”
“Not ‘it,’ ” Joshua corrected her softly. “You. Let you go. That’s what you’d really like. Then you wouldn’t have to worry.”
“About what?”
“About me. Takes two to tango, Vicky. You’re afraid that if I lead, you’ll follow.”
“That is ridiculous macho double-talk. The only thing I’m afraid of is being sidetracked when I need to be concentrating on my patients.”
“I don’t think so.” Joshua refreshed her memory. “Tell me you didn’t want me to kiss you in the cabin the first day we met. Tell me you weren’t disappointed tonight when I let the moment on the porch slide by without doing anything. Tell me you didn’t want that kiss every bit as much as I did.” When she opened her mouth to deny it, he cautioned her, “Be honest, Victoria.”
She pressed her lips together. Taking a deep breath, she admitted, “I’m as curious as the next person.”
“Curious? Curious is a little weak, Vicky. I think we both knew it was inevitable. The only question was how long we could hold out.”
“We?” Victoria raised her eyebrows and her voice. “I was holding out just fine. You were the one who couldn’t hold out.”
“Was that your idea of holding out?” Joshua retorted.
“Your male ego is obviously embellishing what happened between us.”
“My imagination’s pretty good, but it’s not good enough to imagine that sexy little hip push you did when you were belly to belly with me.”
For the second time since he’d known her, Joshua watched Victoria go quiet as the spark of anger vanished from her gray eyes; he watched her pull all the emotions off her face and tuck them back inside, where they belonged, although the faint stain of a blush remained. He was beginning to recognize her emotional control as a defense. Whenever the discussion got too heated, whenever too much was at stake, she got quiet; she got control.
Victoria brushed past him, intending to leave. “If you’re still helping me, I need to go to the area around Logan’s Hollow on Thursday. I’ll have some more names to follow up.”
“What about the phone?” Joshua asked casually as she swept over the threshold in a dignified retreat. “I thought you wanted to call your office for messages.”
Instantly, she stopped, and cursed under her breath. When she didn’t say anything else, he guessed she was trying to decide how badly she wanted to check her messages. Must have been pretty badly, because she turned around.
“I’d rather not wait until tomorrow to check the machine. I don’t have patients yet technically, but the hospital might have called.”
“Then come in. Just don’t expect me to ignore temptation should opportunity present itself.”
“It won’t present itself,” Victoria promised with a confidence she didn’t feel.
“Give me a minute. I’ll arrange something.”
Exasperated, Victoria walked back into the house. “Don’t bother. I’m not in the market for a … relationship.”
“Who said anything about a relationship?” he asked, and walked back into the living room.
Fuming, Victoria followed him. “Wake up, Joshua. You might be hiding out from the world up here, but even you should know these are the nineties. Free love has been replaced by safe sex. Monogamy is in; casual sex is out.”
Chuckling, Joshua grabbed the phone from a shelf on a wall-to-wall bookcase which was filled with carved stone bowls and pottery cups that were artfully arranged. He held the phone out to her. When she reached for it, he didn’t let go. He said, “I knew the first time I saw you that there wouldn’t be anything casual about sex with you.”
God, she hated the way he could make her cheeks heat up and jumble her thoughts so she couldn’t think of anything to say, witty or otherwise. He stood there, holding on to the phone and looking perfectly innocent, as though he were responding to a comm
ent she’d made about the weather instead of sex. To avoid engaging in a tug-of-war over the phone, she had no choice but to wait until he let go.
“You know what amazes me?” he asked. “As long as you’re talking about sex in the abstract, you don’t bat an eye. But you blush like hell when it gets up close and personal. How long since you’ve been out on a date, Victoria?”
“I’ve had more important things to do with my time,” she said, managing to find her voice again.
“Like sticking your nose in textbooks.” He let go of the phone. “Answer the question. Have you been out on an honest-to-God, dinner-and-a-movie date since the divorce?”
Victoria studied the keypad of the telephone for a moment and decided that if they were going to play twenty questions, she was going to ask her fair share, too, when it was her turn. She tapped the phone against her thigh and said, “No, I haven’t been out on a date in a while. I’ll even tell you why, since my story is short and utterly predictable. It was a bad marriage, and I’m not eager to jump back in the saddle.”
“So I’m paying for someone else’s mistakes?”
“How do you know it wasn’t all my fault?” she asked.
He shot her an irritated glare for sidestepping the original question. With one finger under her chin, he tilted her face up. “Was your marriage important to you?”
A prickly feeling ran up her spine, and Victoria had the strangest feeling that if she weren’t careful, Joshua would see right into her soul. “Yes, it was.”
“I believe you, because I saw you today, dealing with people, dealing with something that mattered to you. You’re not the kind of woman who’d let her marriage slip through her fingers for lack of effort.” Backing away, Joshua ordered, “Answer the question, Vicky. Am I paying for his mistakes or not?”
Victoria let out the breath she’d been holding. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Better safe than sorry is my new motto. What about you, Joshua? Why aren’t you involved with someone? Or are you?”
For a heartbeat, Joshua thought about answering truthfully and telling her that he was involved with too many people, most of them dead. But he couldn’t tell her without explaining, and he didn’t want to explain yet.
“You’re as close to an involvement as I’ve gotten in a long time. I came up here to start over, to get a little peace and quiet.”
“Then kissing me doesn’t make a whole lot of sense!”
“Some things just happen, love. Whether we’re ready for them or not. You surprised the hell out of me. The last complication I wanted was a woman. Then there you were, right smack in the middle of my bed. I figured the guy upstairs was trying to tell me something. What do you think it was?”
“I wouldn’t begin to guess.” Victoria decided it was time to end the questions, so she waved the phone in silent explanation that she needed to make the call. She punched in the number for her office. “Could I have some paper and a pencil?”
“On the end table behind you.”
While Victoria waited for her machine to pick up and then replay the messages, she noticed the Indian arrowheads in shadowboxes on Joshua’s walls. “Did you find all these yourself? There must be—”
“Over two hundred. I found most of them when I was a kid.”
“They’re beautiful,” she mused as she stared at the largest of the boxes, which contained the head of a tomahawk flanked by arrowheads so pristine, they didn’t look like they’d ever been used. “They’re all so different.”
“Different time periods. Different cultures. Different game to be hunted. Different skills.”
Victoria wanted to ask more, but her messages started to play, and she had to forget about the shadowboxes. After a few minutes of writing she pulled the phone away from her ear and asked, “How do I hang this thing up?”
“Here. I’ll do it.”
When he reached for the receiver, he saw Victoria catch her breath. Joshua clicked the phone off and dropped into a large leather recliner that swallowed even him. “You can relax, Victoria. Now that I know the rules, I won’t cross the line again until you invite me.”
“Are you offering a truce?”
“I guess so. You haven’t left me much choice.” Joshua thought he saw some of the tension leave her as she put down the pencil and tore off the top sheet of paper on which she’d written her notes. As she folded the sheet, he suggested, “Sit down. Tell me what you think about the house. You’re my first visitor.”
“Do you want my honest opinion?”
“No. I want you to lie and say it’s a great house.”
“But it is.” Victoria admired the long wall of windows on the far side of the room which looked out over the mountains. Unfortunately, the forested peaks were fading from view as night fell. “The scenery is remarkable, and the furniture is simply amazing. It’s so … big.”
“I had to have that sofa made to order.”
Glancing at a piece of furniture that could have passed for a cruise ship, Victoria asked, “Why?”
“What good is a nap if you can’t get comfortable because your feet are dangling over the edge?”
Victoria laughed. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t have that problem. My feet barely make it to the end of the sofa.”
He remembered how he’d pulled her up to meet his kiss, how small she’d felt in his arms. “Yours may not, but mine definitely hang over.”
“You shouldn’t have to worry about that anymore.” Victoria sat in the corner of the long sofa and crossed her legs.
He looked at her expectantly, prompting her with the lift of his eyebrows.
“Stop looking at me like that. I gave you my opinion. It’s a great house. Really. I love rich earth tones. I think the Carol Grigg watercolors are incredible, especially the big one behind you of the Indian woman leading the horse. What’s it called?”
“She Walks with Horses.” Joshua held his hand up in the Boy Scout oath. They both grinned.
“Appropriate. I’ve always admired her work. She has this gift for capturing the past and making you feel the moment with those moody shades of plum and blue—”
“I’m glad you like my taste in art,” Joshua interrupted. “Now tell me what you really think about my house.”
Victoria sighed. “Friend to friend? Real truth?”
“Real truth. I’m a big boy. I can take it.”
“This house looks like it’s waiting for someone to move in. Everything’s too perfect, too new.” She carefully folded her hands on her crossed knee and waited for his reaction.
“Tell me what you mean,” he said, scooting to the edge of his seat.
“I grew up in houses like this. Mess it up a little, for God’s sake. It’s beautiful, but it’s got no personality. I like a place you can walk into and feel vibrations from the memories. You should be able to sit in an easy chair and get a sense of what kind of person molded it. There’s nothing of anybody here.”
She missed the stunned look on Joshua’s face at her comment because she got up and walked over to the shelves of cups and bowls, picking up a piece of the reproduction pottery. “Take these, for instance. They’re lined up and lighted like museum pieces.”
An odd smile turned up Joshua’s mouth, and he stood to take the fat goblet from her. “That’s because they are.”
All the color drained from Victoria’s face as she gently handed it to him. For a moment a memory flashed and then faded too quickly for her to grasp. Joshua returned the piece to the shelf.
“I’m so sorry.” She stepped away from him. “I am so sorry. I thought a decorator found these to go with along with the arrowhead collection.”
“No. They’re mine.”
“Is archaeology a hobby of yours?” Victoria asked, and tilted her head in interest. “Are you one of those amateur diggers?”
“Not really.” Technically, that was true. It had been his occupation, not his avocation. He changed the subject before she could ask him where he’d gotten the artifacts. “Would you l
ike to stay for dinner?”
“Oh, no.” She checked her watch. “I should get ready for tomorrow. I’ve got my first appointments at the Bodewell clinic.”
“There you go again. Doing what you should,” he teased with a warm smile. “Maybe another time?”
“Yeah, that would be nice,” Victoria said even though she knew spending time with Joshua wasn’t a good idea. She said good night at the door and waved once when she pulled away in the truck.
Standing in the doorway, Joshua watched her go until her taillights had disappeared. What she’d said about his house was true. Except for books, the arrowheads, and the collection, everything was new. Brand new. He hadn’t thought anyone but him would notice how sterile it was. But Victoria had. She’d seen it the moment she walked inside.
Maybe that was why she didn’t trust him. Maybe she was worried that his house was a reflection of an empty soul. Regardless of the attraction between them, she wasn’t ready to take another chance. She didn’t trust him because she didn’t know who he was; he could show her. She was warm, caring, intelligent, and nursing a bruised heart. She didn’t want anything from him except friendship; well, that was a lot less than people usually expected of him. She was willing to be friends, but not lovers.
Joshua smiled. He could work with that.
Finally, the cabin felt like home. Victoria surveyed her efforts of the past two weeks. A chenille bedspread with a white background and climbing-rose floral design perked up the bedroom area. New throws which picked up the mauve and green of the bedspread covered the armchair and couch. The kitchen table had a plastic coaster under one leg to stabilize it, but Victoria didn’t think it was noticeable.
Her pride and joy, however, was the new phone on the wrought iron bedside table. She’d waited what seemed like forever to have the lines run to the cabin, and she was itching to try it out.
“Who can I call?” she asked the empty cabin.
She didn’t want to call home and have her mother ask her yet again if she was really happy. That left friends, but she didn’t have any friends. At least not within this area code. She had patients and colleagues, but no real friends yet.