by Cait London
Rose threw up her hands. For the first time in her life, she’d wanted to fly from her safe anchors and Stefan had just rejected her attempt at seduction. “Well, you have me there!”
Because tears were burning her lids, she hurried into the bathroom. She tried for composure and failed. Finally, emotionally drained, she opened the door to find Stefan leaning against the wall. His expression was grim, lines of fatigue showing in his face. “Rose?”
With as much dignity as she could manage, Rose walked to the bed and lay down stiffly. After a moment, she curled on her side, tears flowing down her cheeks. She was exhausted from nights of wondering about Stefan, if he’d had a lover since they’d kissed, if he’d missed her, if she could trust her heart again. Some hidden place inside her had wanted him to make love to her quickly, to ease that empty, aching void, if only momentarily. She’d offered herself to him, and he’d refused. So much for her appeal to men, even ones proclaiming to need her in their bed. Nothing was safe anymore, not with Stefan. She’d rest and then she’d face reality. “I’m just tired. I’ll rest a moment and then I’ll be on my way.”
The large bed sagged slightly and she heard Stefan’s deep, ragged sigh behind her. “You’re tired, too. It’s okay. Lie down. I won’t jump you,” she murmured.
His big, warm body curled around hers, spoon-fashion. He nuzzled her hair and smoothed it away from her nape. “You’re too tired. You could stay. You could fly back later,” he whispered against her throat.
“Is that an invitation?” she asked, already beginning to slide into sleep. Stefan pulled her back against him, his hand cupping her breast. The gesture seemed so natural that Rose placed her hand over his. “Yes, I missed you,” she whispered sleepily, drained by travel and emotion.
“Mmm,” Stefan murmured as if deeply pleased. He gathered her closer and gently pulled her hips back against him, his hand sweeping over her stomach and lower on her thighs, then returning upward over her hip to recapture her breast. “That is a good sign. Are you staying?”
“No. I’m going back to Waterville where it’s safe and I know the rules. Make certain I don’t miss my flight at nine. I’ve got to open the store in the morning. Dad has taken up a morning exercise routine and it’s really good for him.” Then Rose gave herself to the gentle caress of his hands. Later, she would remember turning to Stefan. She would remember his indrawn breath when she flung her arms around him, her leg wrapping around his long ones and his body trembling as he drew her against him. She’d hovered there for a heartbeat, thinking of how sweetly he held her when he could have taken her so easily. The rocking of his body was not that of desire, but rather of a companion giving comfort. She would remember feeling safe with Stefan.
Hours later, Stefan watched Rose board her plane, the night wind whipping at her hair, the floodlights outlining her willowy, tall body. In their goodbye, she’d held him close and tight, her body shaking. She held him as if he were an anchor in a changing, dangerous sea. Rose’s fatigue had opened an insight to why she feared a relationship. She hadn’t wanted marriage, not deep down inside, where the scars still bled. Rose smiled and laughed and warmed hearts, but she feared loving too deeply. He wondered if she knew how she had cried out in her sleep, “Mommy, you said you loved me. Why did you leave?”
The second week of July, Stefan clamped his lips closed against comments about Estelle’s driving. She had picked him up at the airport in Kansas City, and had driven him straight to the rolling green hills surrounding Waterville. The long drive helped him adjust to the change from city to country, to the slower pace of small, rural towns. Slower loving, slower kisses with Rose, Stefan thought.
“I’ve signed up for the fall semester at the local college,” Estelle was saying. “If you and Grandmother move back to Chicago, I can stay in a dorm or rent an apartment. And Rose said if that is the case, I can always come home and stay with her when I can. Do you know that as loving as she is, she doesn’t have one pet? Not one. She’s got a houseful of plants and talks to them like they were alive, but she doesn’t want a pet. How do you figure that?”
“I imagine she feels she’s too busy at the store,” Stefan said, studying the tall oaks that would turn fiery in the autumn. He sensed that Rose didn’t want the attachment for fear of losing something…someone that she loved. Her nightmare had been revealing; Rose basically didn’t trust life—or Stefan.
He’d worked long hours getting the new restaurant incorporated into Donatien’s chain. It was uniquely decorated, while its dishes retained the fine quality of his other restaurants. He had spent a whole day with the disgruntled chef, smoothing his ruffled pride. Rose with her ability to make people comfortable could have done it in ten minutes. Stefan was exhausted, but now he was coming home to his fields and barn and life away from chef-stealing businesses. His daughter was blooming, her tales of country life running from one into another. “I will cook dinner for your friends,” he offered. “You can watch movies at our home. I think your grandmother and I will probably stay on the farm. I may have to return to the city, now and then, for business, but from her calls, she is quite happy.”
Estelle looked at Stefan, her hair flying away from her face as she gripped the steering wheel of her small red compact truck. “Daddy, you don’t need to cook for my friends. Please…I mean, there is no reason to go to so much work. After all, you’ve got Rose to think of now. You need to cook for her.”
Stefan reeled from Estelle’s statement. He had called Rose, but the telephone lines between them were frustrating and he regretted sounding so curt. He sensed that if she were in his arms, he could be more relaxed. “What do you mean, I have ‘Rose to think of now?’ Has she said something?”
Estelle lifted an eyebrow. “She misses you and you know it.”
Stefan’s exhausted senses awakened, surging to life. He barely noticed Mrs. Wilkins’s smiling face and waving hand. He returned the wave automatically. “Glad you’re back, sonny!” she called. “Come over to my house anytime. Never seen Rose in such a stew.”
But Stefan was too wrapped in Estelle’s “Rose-comment” to be stunned by the older woman’s sudden enthusiasm for him. “She said that?”
“A woman can tell, Daddy. It’s how she looked after her visit with you, as if she wasn’t quite certain. Rose is always certain of everything. And the way she talks about you like this—‘arrogant, macho, beast, hard-to-get, low-down, hunk, righteous, uptight, crappie-stealing, gorgeous.’ When I asked if she’d heard from you, she glared at me. So I know that something is cooking between you two. You know, you could call and talk a little, you know, sexy—if you know how—to her. I hope you didn’t talk in that stiff way—that business way that you use when you’re deeply touched.”
Estelle reached to tug his tie. “I love you, Daddy, but please don’t try to cook for my friends.”
The third week of July, Waterville buzzed about the watermelon-eating and the seed-spitting contests, and about Rose making mistakes at the paint store. She wasn’t in a good mood, the gossips said, and Stefan Donatien was the reason. For his part, Stefan was picking carefully through his decision to wait for Rose’s heart. Business at night and day farmwork helped relieve his body’s tension, but his mind ran on to sweeter things—like how she lay beside him, all fragrant and soft and cuddly. Like how, in her sleep, she’d turned to him, thrown her arms around him, snuggled her face against his throat and had latched one long leg over his as if preventing him from escaping. The incredible tenderness he’d felt for her at that moment had stunned him. He’d lain very still for a moment, her easy breath sweeping across his throat and then it was only natural for him to give her comfort, to rock her. The pleasure was in giving to Rose when she needed him.
Stefan cherished that memory while he considered how to make his next move. He wanted it to be well-planned, so that his words flowed smoothly for her.
He didn’t have to make that move, because the next day he was alone, on top of the barn. He worked to s
traighten the old copper rooster weather vane. Below him, Rose’s pickup shot like a bullet over the curved road shaded with oaks. She had given him just one week before she came calling. It had taken all of his strength not to see her, to touch her, to call her, but Rose didn’t trust him now—not enough to openly share her nightmares with him. That slight bruise had hurt—that she didn’t trust him. With trust as a missing ingredient in their relationship, the future would always be threatened.
Now, with Rose’s pickup skidding to a stop in his driveway, Stefan shook his head. Behind the windshield, her expression was similar to his mother’s, when she decided to clean house and let nothing stop her. He was without the protection of his mother’s smoothing grace and his daughter’s lighthearted conversation. Estelle was at work at the hamburger drive-in and Yvette was at a church social. Later, she would stay with the widow Harris for “girl talk” and Estelle would stay overnight with her friends. Everyone in his home had a social life but himself, Stefan brooded, and admitted that his body was already humming at the sight of Rose.
He studied the way she slammed her pickup door and headed for the house, before she saw him up on the old barn’s roof. “I want to talk with you,” she called as she started toward him. Her tone said she was not happy; her frown said lightning bolts were about to strike. Stefan could almost hear the rumble of thunder. He could feel the excitement that Rose always created, simmering inside him.
He descended the ladder and Rose stopped in front of him. Her eyes widened as she looked at him, her gaze tracing his hair, his cheeks and lips and throat and bare chest and all the way down his legs. “You’re all sweaty,” she whispered in a husky, sensual way that dried his throat.
Stefan couldn’t move. Every part of him wanted to snare her close and feed upon her, to carry her into the barn and— But that was not his intention on his way to understand Rose’s needs. “Of course. If you wish, you may wait while I shower. Then we can talk.”
He added a shrug to appear casual, when his senses were racing. “Then perhaps I could cook for you. It is almost time for dinner and my family will be away for the night. It would be very nice to talk with you.”
“A shower?” she repeated in a tone that unnerved him. “Yes, I think I’d like that.”
In the shower, working hurriedly, Stefan reconsidered her words. Of course, she meant that he needed a shower; he had obviously misinterpreted her statement. He quickly ran through his planned talk with her—about how he knew that trust was difficult for her, but that he would cherish her and never do anything to make her feel less than safe. He would tell her he understood about her fears and how she had talked in her sleep; he would tell how he knew that her pain from her mother’s desertion was unresolved and sometimes pain had no easy closure.
Then he weighed not discussing her mother and Rose’s fears of safety and stepped from the shower, drying and wrapping a towel around his waist. How could he explain to her that on a primitive level, he sensed she was the other part of his heart, his body? If she was wary of a deep relationship, a commitment to a love, that might frighten her even more.
Crossing the hallway from the bathroom to his bedroom, he saw Rose standing in the living room. And then she turned to find him in the hallway and he stopped, pinned by Rose’s sultry expression, the way she seemed to soften as she studied him through the shadows. He made no effort to hide the hardening of his body, though he feared the obvious beneath his towel might shock her. In that moment, as natural as sunrise and spring rain and the dark secret night, they were nothing but a man and a woman, without the years of complications between them.
“I hadn’t planned on you, or feeling like this,” Rose whispered so quietly it rocked his soul. “I’m terrified, but I want you.”
“I do not see this as a problem, because I want you, too,” he answered slowly, but with all his heart.
“What shall we do?”
“I think we should explore all possibilities, ma chérie.”
Seven
Rose’s heart pounded as Stefan walked down the hallway to her, a tall man whose shoulders filled the narrow space. He moved sleekly, gracefully toward her, the dim light skimming over his powerful body. In a suit, he looked hard and chiseled and cold, but with only a towel around his narrow hips, he bore a primitive warrior look as if his time had come to take what he wanted.
Rose couldn’t move, pinned by the sight, his muscles flowing beneath that dark skin, that wedge of hair on his chest, droplets gleaming there. He came to stand near her, framing her face with his large, rough hands. In his eyes, she saw a reflection of her desire; it sparkled in the beads of water on his shoulders, in his waving hair. He lowered his head to hers, placing his lips exactly so on hers. Then he studied her so closely she thought he could see the fears and shadows she didn’t want exposed. “I didn’t expect you in my life, either,” he whispered. “Are you certain you want to make love with me?”
“If you’re feeling up to it,” she returned unevenly, shivering as she controlled her need to wrap her arms around him.
His smile was soft and tender, his gaze searching her face. “It has been so long since I’ve first wanted you. That first need to make love to you has grown with each day. In my lifetime, I have never wanted another woman like I want you.”
She hovered between the fear and the need for Stefan. “No inconvenience then?”
“None at all. In fact, it will be a pleasure,” he returned softly. With that, Stefan gently lifted her in his arms. It seemed so natural to settle against him, to place her head on his shoulder. His heart pounded heavily, safely, as he carried her up the stairs. She hadn’t realized how powerful he was, how hot his skin was beneath her lips, how strong that vein in his throat pounded as he carried her into a large room, starkly masculine and uncluttered.
The setting sun slid through the windows, laying gentle stripes across the heavy wooden furniture, books stacked on the night table beside the sturdy, big bed. Browns and tans mixed with the sheen of the wooden floor, broken only by a rectangular cream rug. On the tall, old dresser, bold with its antique metal knobs and pulls, lay his trappings for business—his expensive gold watch, a flat wallet, his compact cellular phone. Framed pictures of his family stood nearby. On the outside door of the closet hung two suits, a gray and a black, a tie hung round the hanger of a pristine white shirt. Nearby were his dress shoes, the Italian leather polished, almost mirrorlike. His work books, with leather lace, stood by worn running shoes. Jeans, pressed with a crease were folded over the back of a big chair, and a stack of folded T-shirts rested neatly on the seat.
Holding her, Stefan breathed quietly, his body tense. She sensed that this was important to him, bringing her to his bed, a ritual that was both beautiful and terrifying. There in the dark planes of his face, he shielded his emotions, as though giving her time to deny what had begun.
Rose closed her eyes, taking in the moment, dissecting it. Long ago, she dreamed of a man carrying her just like this, of making her feel feminine and desired. She smoothed his damp shoulder, admiring the beauty of the powerful planes, the tense cords and muscles shifting beneath that wonderful tanned skin. The soft light of evening spread gently into the room, filling her heart with peace. Somehow, a part of her always knew that Stefan would be very courtly, very gentle with her.
He placed her on her feet and traced her flushed face with his fingertip, tilting her chin up for another intense study as he waited for her to tell him this was what she wanted, to let her decide. Rose stood very still, then let her hands speak for her, smoothing his shoulders, his throat and latching in his hair. “Yes,” she whispered, drawing him down for her kiss.
She hadn’t expected the heat, the sudden storm as Stefan trembled and opened her lips with his, his intimate kiss searching and pleasuring. She heard the tear of cloth and knew that he was as eager as she, and that pleasured her more. The seductress rose in her, slipping from her lifetime hiding place, as she skimmed his body with her hands,
over that flat stomach and lower and up to flatten on those sliding muscles of his back. They quivered to her caress, exciting her because she knew that his body was susceptible to her touch, reacting almost as if the leashes of his control were slipping. The temptation to tear away those tethers circled her, for she had never played at lovemaking, and in comparison, her one experience had seemed sterile and without emotion, a mechanical disaster that left her unsatisfied.
She sensed deep inside, where all her fears lay quivering, that Stefan would not use her quickly and for his pleasure alone. He was too thorough, too thoughtful and considerate. She gently nipped his lip and enjoyed his suddenly indrawn breath, the shock and the surprise heightening the passion between them. Her blouse and bra came away, carelessly tossed by Stefan onto a chair. He eased her body against his, looking down to where her breasts nestled against his chest. He had that same fierce look she remembered, as if he would struggle against his own primitive desires to please her, yet the sight of her breasts, small and pale against him, seemed to intensify his need.
His hands were at her stomach now, shaking, hurrying to unbutton the snaps of her denim shorts. They slid from her and Stefan’s touch roamed her bottom, before sliding inside, tugging away her briefs. And there in the cool, dark room, he held her away from him as he roughly stripped the towel between them, and slowly, so slowly fitted her body to his. The brand of his desire nudged her, and Rose stood still as the shocking warmth spread within her, the softening and opening.
“Rose….” he whispered unevenly as his hands caressed and seduced and prowled intimately lower. The clean sheets on his bed smelled like sunshine and wind as he settled her upon it. Lying beside her, Stefan tugged her against him, and Rose quickly caught him with her arms and legs.
He momentarily stiffened with the gentle attack, then began to smile. It was a confident, devastating, tender smile that warmed and softened his face. “That’s it. Hold me, Rose.”