A Woman Like Annie

by Inglath Cooper

  “I think you’re in danger of toppling. Don’t you want to put your arms around my neck?”

  “Ah, no. This is good,” she said, wobbling even as she made the declaration.

  “Annie.”

  “Yes?”

  “Put your arms around my neck.”

  She did so, with great reluctance.

  “I don’t bite,” he said.

  So did silence mean she disagreed? He had a feeling she wished she’d risked the snakes.

  He was beginning to have his own doubts about the wisdom of his gallantry. If a piggyback ride could have a theme song, this one would have been Prelude to Torture. What had he been thinking? Traipsing through the woods with Annie wrapped around his waist, and the last thing, the last thing, he wanted to do was pull out his I-Spy hat.

  He wanted to put her down and let the front side of his body get to know her as well as his lucky back was getting to know her. The legs currently clinging to him were lean, but soft in that woman’s way, and his mind set up its own scenario with her wrapped around him in another position altogether.

  Too long, Corbin. You have been out of the real world for too long.

  Just when sweat began to break out on his forehead—and it wasn’t from overexertion—the edge of the woods came into sight. Twenty feet or so, and they were on the grass bordering the edge of the factory.

  “Okay,” Annie said, sounding breathless. “That’s good. I can walk now.”

  Jack released her, and she slid to the ground. “Is your back all right?”

  “Fine,” he said, deciding it was a good thing she hadn’t asked about the rest of him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IF ANNIE HAD TO swing from tree limbs to get back to the car, there was absolutely no way she would be getting on Jack’s back again. Amazing that something so silly and fun for Tommy and the boys Jack had been carting around the other night could be for her one of the most sensual experiences she’d ever known.

  Or maybe that just said something about the droughtlike conditions of her own love life.

  True enough, she had no love life, which certainly put it up for drought status. But in all honesty? It wouldn’t have mattered.

  Jack was the most physically appealing man she’d ever known. His shoulders strong and wide. His torso defined with muscle. And he’d carted her through those woods as if he hadn’t even known she was on his back.

  Except, of course, for the stranglehold she’d had around his neck. Once she’d agreed to hold on, she’d been afraid to let go. Her fear of what might be on the forest floor beneath them was real. While that fear might have legitimized her hold on him, it did not explain the way her skin suddenly felt a thousand times more sensitive, or the distinct wave of weakness flowing through muscle and bone.

  No, it did not explain that.

  Clarice, Annie. Think about Clarice. Your sister.

  There was a perfectly good explanation for her feelings. Just the very normal response of a woman whose husband had left her for a younger, sportier model. More than likely, she would have the same reaction to any man paying her more than casual attention.

  Oh yeah, then why have you not even looked at another man this past year?

  Point made.

  But that didn’t mean she had to give it the benefit of analysis.

  “I was thinking we could find a spot on the other side of the loading dock doors,” Jack said, drawing her attention back to the reason they were here. “There are a couple of big trees up there. I don’t think anyone would spot us if we stay in the shadows.”

  Her expression must have put voice to her worry.

  “No woods. Just a couple big trees. And besides, did I forget to mention I exude a special snake repellent?”

  She smiled. “You don’t smell anything like mothballs.”

  “Glad to know it,” he said.

  She laughed.

  At the edge of the parking lot, he reached for her hand, tugboated her across the ink-dark asphalt and up a short hill to the twin oaks he’d declared snake-free.

  “Think we’ll be concealed enough?” he asked, turning to look at her without letting go of her hand.

  Annie struggled to concentrate on the question. Her focus had centered on the feelings emanating out from the juncture of their entwined fingers. “The perfect spot,” she said, throwing a glance back at the loading dock doors, then opening her fingers and releasing her hand from his.

  He looked at her, a few things going unsaid between them but clearly understood, nonetheless. They weren’t touching, stood a good two feet apart, and yet a connection remained, beckoned more.

  Annie backed up and stepped on a fallen limb. The resounding crack jolted her forward where she righted herself a scant couple of inches from his chest. She had to look up, up, to see the half smile on his face. He knew the effect he had on her.

  And it amused him. Amused him!

  She stepped back again, this time with tentative enough steps that she managed to put a couple of yards between them without embarrassing herself.

  “Might as well make ourselves comfortable,” he said, leaning against the oak and sliding to the ground, patting the spot beside him.

  It would have looked ridiculous, opting for the trunk of the tree five feet from the one he’d chosen. Smart maybe, but obvious. So she gave her indifference a pep talk and joined him on the ground. She crossed her legs and folded her arms across her chest like a turtle retreating into its shell, no vulnerable parts showing.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked, aiming her tone at seriousness.

  “Wait.”

  “And what do we do if they come?”

  “Hadn’t decided on that yet.”

  “You’re not going to confront them tonight, are you?” Annie’s eyes widened while a whole batch of less-than-comforting scenarios marched themselves out in 3-D, complete with gunshot sound effects.

  “Depends on how many of them there are.”

  “Jack!” Her one-word protest echoed disbelief.

  “Can’t just let them get away.”

  “You’re almost enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  “It’s the cowboys and Indians thing,” he said, his dark eyes crinkled at the edges.

  “Except they’ll probably arrive with a covered wagon full of shotguns, and we don’t have a single tomahawk.”

  Jack laughed, and the sound of it sent a thrill of something deeply satisfying right through Annie’s heart. It pleased her, making him laugh. Something so simple, and yet reaffirming, a check mark, audible proof of approval.

  Sound played out in the night around them. Leaves crunching somewhere behind. A deer, maybe? A tractor from the dairy farm bordering the C.M. land. Cows calling out to one another, their moos plaintive and questioning.

  Annie focused on the loading dock parking lot in front of them, knowing, however, that Jack’s gaze was on her. Her skin felt it, stung in the places it touched her. Like marbles on a hardwood floor, anticipation scattered through her, decimating any strands of logic she might have been clinging to. Did he want to kiss her? Was that the source of the almost tangible awareness hanging between them like thunder clouds full to bursting?

  And she wished, deeply, for the answer to be yes.

  “Annie?”

  “What?” Her voice was so low she barely heard herself.

  “I’d really like to kiss you.”

  Gladness grappled for footing, elbowed reason out of the way. “Are you asking permission?”

  “I’m asking permission.”

  The request should have required, at the least, a little consideration on her part. Some mulling of consequence.

  “Permission granted,” she said, her voice again little more than a whisper.

  Across the leaves he slid. Close enough, he angled his head, but made no further move to fulfill the request. Just studied her, long and hard. Annie had never been looked at in quite that way before. As if he were seeking to know her, really know
her, take in some part of her she had never allowed anyone else to access. Under his appraisal, some part of her opened, wilted, weakened, and out leaked admission of her own need for this, yearning so real, so bone-deep she had no hope of hiding it.

  “Annie.” His voice sliding across her name confirmed it. He knew.

  Her eyes closed, and he kissed her. A soft introduction of kisses that brought from her small sounds of wanting she wasn’t aware she made. And then his arms circled her, pulled her straight against him, tight and hard, enclosed her in an embrace that said a dozen things about where it might go from there.

  Annie melted into him, like chocolate put to heat, like snow under sun.

  His hand went to her cheek, a brush of a touch, the pad of his thumb rough in the way of hands that are used, not pampered. The kiss, starting out with the reserve of introduction, changed tone, deepened, angled for something more intimate, found it in her willingness. Annie opened to him, realizing, only in doing so, that she’d lived the last year of her life curled around herself like an early spring flower bracing against one last reach of winter, and here it was at last, a true change in season, warmth, soft breezes, blue skies, a May afternoon.

  And wasn’t this what a kiss was supposed to be? Saying a thousand different things at once, that it had been thought about, hoped for, long before it ever became reality.

  Everything about it felt like a first, first bicycle solo—look, no hands!—first lick of a double scoop ice cream cone on a July day. First kiss. At its edges, relief that it was as good in reality as it had been in anticipation. And at the edges of Annie’s heart, amazement, that she could incite such feelings in this man.

  “Annie,” he said again, and her name, plain as it was, on his lips sounded like that of a temptress, someone far more capable of seduction, of allure, than she had ever imagined herself to be. And at the look in his eyes, weighted as it was with impossible-to-deny wanting, she felt capable of those things, a woman in whom this man saw something no other man had ever seen in her, she had never seen in herself.

  Her hands unbraced themselves from his chest, sought anchorage around his neck, and they changed leads, Annie kissing him now, making vulnerable a part of herself she had kept under lock and key for a long time, her husband’s infidelity having diluted her own sense of appeal to the opposite sex.

  Here, in this moment, she felt invulnerable, buoyed by the affirmation in his touch. What pleasure there was in the notion of being wanted, of feeling its existence in touch and embrace.

  He let her lead, took for the moment the more passive role while she explored the appealing planes of his face, angle of jaw, breadth of shoulder. And when shyness, reserve, slowed her steps, he took the lead again, whirling her round a room of dizzying proportion, covering its vastness with perfectly attuned rhythm, timing. So in sync were they that it felt to Annie as if they’d been here before, danced this floor in some distant time, or had simply awaited its arrival for so long that its patterns were imprinted on heart’s memory.

  A truck growled up the road beside the factory, its descent in gears bringing them both back to the reason they were here. Lights flickered their way, and Annie craned for a glimpse of the gate at the factory’s entrance.

  “It’s turning in,” she said.

  “Looks like it,” Jack agreed.

  There was disappointment in both their voices. The truck’s appearance toppling the walls temporarily erected to the rest of the world. Reality was back, and with it, a wish for resolution of what they’d started, mingled with certainty that had it not appeared, they might have found exactly that.

  Awkwardness, not unexpected, caught Annie in its grip. She was not a casual woman, and her life was not filled with scenes of this sort.

  “Can I say something I probably shouldn’t?” Jack asked.

  Annie nodded. Words suddenly seemed to require effort beyond her capability.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that since the first night we met when you walked into that diner looking ten kinds of flustered.”

  “It showed, huh?”

  “A little,” he said, and his smile was amused, but in the way of a man who thinks something is adorable, not ridiculous.

  And then she refocused on the first part of what he’d said. He’d been thinking about kissing her since then? Annie’s gaze dropped to her lap. What did she do with that? If she’d been conjuring up her own set of hopeful what-ifs, it would never have occurred to her to start with that.

  “And one other thing,” he said, reaching out to tip her chin up, forcing her to look at him.

  “What?”

  “It was worth the wait.”

  Annie wished for a quick wit, for flippancy. But felt neither amused nor flippant. Instead, she felt sobered and respectful of her own reaction to what they had just let happen between them. And joyful, yes, that most intensely, to know that this man to whom she could no longer deny her attraction wanted her. Wanted her.

  Her own reply, should she have been able to find one, lost its opportunity when the truck turned in at the factory entrance. The gate was closed. Someone got out of the passenger door, a very tall man it appeared from here, and opened it. The truck pulled through, and he closed it again, then climbed back in.

  “Let’s get down,” Jack said and stretched out on his belly.

  Annie did the same, twigs snapping beneath her and what felt like an acorn pressing into her thigh.

  They watched, silent now, while the truck made a U-turn and then backed up, the loud beep-beep of reverse ceasing when it eased to a stop against the thick black bumpers beneath one of the loading dock doors.

  Both men got out. One pointed something at the door—a remote control, maybe?—and it opened.

  “Do you know who they are?” Annie whispered.

  “I can’t get a clear look at their faces. They look familiar to you?”

  “Not yet.”

  A minute or two ticked by. One of the men hoisted himself onto the dock entrance, disappeared inside, and then lights flared on. He appeared again, saying something to the man still standing beside the truck. From this distance, they couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the light struck his face, and Annie gasped.

  “Early Gunter,” Jack whispered.

  “But he’s your security guard. Maybe they’re here for something else.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But what?”

  Good question. It was after ten o’clock on a week-night, and they’d just driven in here with an unmarked moving-van-type truck. It was hard not to draw conclusions. “I know Early well. And his family, too.”

  Jack sighed, that alone conveying his dismay. “You know, I was really hoping I was wrong on this.”

  “Me, too. In fact, I was sure you would be. But I would never have believed Early capable of stealing.”

  For the next forty-five minutes, they remained where they were, stretched out flat on the ground, watching while Early and the other man whom they had not been able to identify, carried product out of the warehouse and loaded it onto the truck. When they’d finished, they turned off the lights, closed the loading dock door, jumped back inside the cab and roared off.

  “We’ve got to see where they’re going with that,” Jack said.

  “You mean follow them?”

  “Might not get another chance,” he said.

  As soon as they had closed the gate and started pulling away, he got to his feet and helped Annie up beside him. “Come on,” he said. “You game?”

  “Sure,” she said and then remembered the return trip back through the woods and the snakes that were all surely in hibernation by now.

  “Pony Express is still in service,” he said, clearly reading her mind.

  She held up a hand. “No, no, really. A little desensitization will be good for me.”

  “Sure you want to start your desensitizing tonight?”

  “No time like the present.”

  She wasn’t fooling him. She could see it on
his face, plain and clear. He knew exactly why she wasn’t hoisting herself onto his back again. That was okay, though. There were some things imminently more dangerous to a girl’s well-being than snakes.

  THEY FOLLOWED THE TRUCK from a discreet distance for an hour and a half, down Route 220 South with its winding curves, across the Virginia border and into North Carolina.

  Annie had made the trip through the woods like a hurdler in training, her feet so high off the ground her knees nearly hit chin level. Jack had led the way, and she was grateful for the simple fact that he hadn’t looked back to see how ridiculous she looked.

  Now, his expression grew more grim with every passing mile. Annie felt the direness of the situation, too; this was a man she knew, whose family she knew, chatted with in the post office, the grocery store. How could he drain the lifeblood from the company that had provided him a job for so many years?

  “They’re going to the first warehouse we went to, aren’t they?”

  “Looks that way.” Jack’s response sounded as if it had been dipped in concrete.

  “Are you going to confront them?”

  He shook his head. “No point in that. I’d like to get some pictures.”

  “What about calling the police?”

  “I don’t want to do that just yet.”

  “But they could catch them in the act of unloading.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You don’t want to turn them in, do you?”

  He ran a hand down his face, forehead to chin. “I don’t hardly remember that place without Early being there. My father hired him because he had honest eyes. I’m having trouble believing he’s in this alone.”

  “You think someone else at the factory is involved?”

  “If I were betting, that’d be my guess.”

  “Any idea who?”

  “Just hunches.”

  Annie didn’t ask for names. She didn’t really want to know them. It was disheartening to learn that people could be something so different from what they appeared to the rest of the world to be.

  Just as they’d suspected, the truck took the exit they’d taken before, following the turns to the warehouse where they’d nearly gotten caught by the security guard.