Pressing her cheek to his bare chest, she stroked his back lower and lower until her hands slid beneath the waistband of his boxers.
Jilly had said she didn’t believe in ghosts any more than she believed in love. Now she’d admitted the possibility of one then stuck her hand down his pants. Evan wasn’t exactly sure, but that sounded like love to him.
He opened his mouth to ask, and her hand closed around his erection.
Huh. That felt a lot like love, too.
JILLY HAD GONE TO HER room, planning to change before dinner. She couldn’t quite recall everything that had stained the sky-blue crop top she wore, and she didn’t really want to. But she couldn’t sit across the dinner table from Evan wearing a shirt that sported more bodily fluids than the floor of an emergency room at rush hour.
She’d just knelt to root through the box of clothes when Henry, who must have been hiding in an attempt to get away from Mario, hissed and shot out from under the covers, disappearing down the steps. The front screen door banged open, then closed. The room suddenly seemed several degrees chillier than it had when she’d walked in, and she could swear she smelled cinnamon again.
“Miss Dixie?” she’d whispered, and crossed herself. Amazing how three years in a Catholic boarding school in France came back when you needed it the most.
Jilly had gotten to her feet and turned around. As usual, nothing was there. The window was closed. The room should be sweltering. There was no reason to feel chilled or smell traces of a long dead perfume, but she did.
At the edge of her vision, in the corner at the far side of the room, she detected a shadow. Jilly focused on the dimness, and when it seemed to darken, solidify, almost become a shape, she ran.
Right now she wanted to chase the memory away, forget the breeze, negate the smell. Maybe if Evan touched her as she’d been wanting him to, the cold that lived deep inside of her would disappear.
Jilly went on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his. Her tongue swept his lips, plunged inside and did a seductive dance. She tightened her grip, and he leaped in her palm as the friction between her body and his increased.
He cursed and pulled her hand away. “Are you sure about this?”
“More sure than I’ve ever been about anything.”
She drew him toward his sleeping bag, then tugged him with her to the floor. He didn’t resist, joining her on the soft, shiny material and returning his mouth to hers.
His hard, rough, skilled hands were everywhere, making her shiver, but not from the cold. If all she’d had to do was panic to get Evan to kiss her so deliciously, she’d have done it the instant she met him.
Why he’d changed his mind about having sex with her, she had no idea, and she wasn’t going to ask. She was going to enjoy the moment. Something she’d done far too little of in her life.
The door slammed and they both started. Evan lifted his head and frowned. “Weird.”
Jilly yanked his mouth back to hers. His lips were both hard and soft. Warm, sweet, skilled. She’d kissed a dozen men, at least, but she’d never kissed one who kissed like Evan.
Though they’d agreed not to do this, that didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about it. From the way she’d caught him watching her every now and again, he’d thought about it, too.
“Touch me,” he murmured against her mouth. “Any way that you like.”
She wanted to do things to him she’d only read about. She wanted him to do things to her she’d only dreamed of.
“Your hair.” She ran her fingers through the long strands that seemed to encompass every imaginable shade of brown. “I want to feel it.” He tilted his head. “All over me.”
His lips lifted. “I can do that.”
“I bet you can do anything.”
His smile faded. She didn’t know what she’d said, but she’d spoiled the moment. Since she didn’t want him to think, to examine, to stop, she shoved his loose shirt from his shoulders and tasted his chest with her tongue. The flavor of his skin only made her want to taste more.
She eased him onto his back and skimmed her lips over his ribs, across his belly. His erection leaped against her neck. She wanted to taste that, too. Boldly she freed him and took him into her mouth.
Her hair was a curtain that shaded her from the world. She could do anything behind that curtain, and she did.
His heat warmed the chill inside her. The pulse of him against her tongue brought desire to life. His moans called to a part of her that had never existed until now.
Suddenly he grabbed her forearms and dragged her up his body. Their mouths met, and he eased her onto her back again. His length fitted against her in just the right way. Her eyes widened at the sensations a mere flex of his hips sent throughout her ignorant body.
He was completely naked, she still wore all her clothes, yet she was on the verge of something mind-altering, if she could just…
Well, she wasn’t quite sure.
His mouth moved away, and she whimpered.
“Shh, I’ll make it better soon. I promise,” he murmured.
His hand slipped under her shirt, and his quick, clever fingers unsnapped her bra with one practiced twist. His palm smoothed along her side, her ribs, her belly.
She wanted him to touch all of her without hindrance, so she grabbed the edge of the garment and whipped it over her head. The stained top flew into a corner along with her bra.
Evan raised himself on one elbow. His face reverent, he traced a fingertip over the blue veins in her breasts.
Instead of filling his hands with their weight, and his mouth with their tips, he leaned down and let his hair cascade all over her. She caught her breath at the sensation and went still.
Evan treated her as though she was a precious gift and made her feel like one, too.
While he learned her likes and dislikes, she learned them, as well. Sex had never been about her. But with Evan, that was no longer the truth. With him, sex was about them both.
While he kissed her, touched her and let her do the same to him, the sun left the sky and the moon rose. Silver spilled through the trees and across the floor, bathing them in speckled light. She traced a flickering shadow across his stomach with her lips, and his skin rippled.
She lifted her head, watching the muscles contract beneath her touch. “You’re ticklish?”
“Guess so.”
“You didn’t know?”
“I’ve never felt like this before.”
His words came too close to an imaginary line, so she slid up his body and took him inside. He gasped as she fitted them together, held on tight as she started to move. His blue eyes shone brightly in the moonlight, holding hers and saying things she didn’t want to hear.
She closed her own eyes and reached for that mythical something everyone was always talking about. But once again, it was nowhere to be found.
Suddenly she was falling. Her eyes flew open as she landed on her back in the tangle of sleeping bag and blankets. Evan, face intense, muscles bulging beneath skin shaded both bronze and silver, murmured, “Tell me what you like.”
She didn’t know, had never been asked.
“Teach me.” She tangled her fingers in his hair and drew him closer. “Love me.”
“I will.” He kissed her, mumbling something against her lips that sounded suspiciously like, “I do.”
Which was just sex talk. It didn’t mean any more than her plea for love. She’d been talking about love in the carnal sense, nothing more.
“Don’t think.” He kissed her brow, then the corner of her eye. “You think too much.”
She’d never been accused of that, but in this case he was probably right. She wanted sex for the sake of sex. She needed to stop worrying about her inadequacies and the future. Sex was about the moment. Something she’d never been able to live in very well.
Sighing, she arched, and he slid against her in amazing and new ways. His hair brushed her neck, and bright lights flashed in her head. She had an instant
to wonder if there was a storm on the way, and then she couldn’t think anymore as her body tightened, clenched and soared far away from every thought.
When she could think again, she started to laugh. No wonder people spent half their lives trying to recreate this feeling.
Evan lifted his head from her shoulder. She bit her lip, but she couldn’t stop snickering. She’d just learned a secret. One everyone else had already known.
“You do know that laughing at a time like this is the quickest way to hurt a guy?”
“I—I’m sorry, it’s just, I’ve always wondered, but I never…knew.”
“Never?”
She shook her head, and his amusement gave way to concern. He touched her face, pushed her hair from her forehead. “That’s not right, Jilly.”
She stared into his eyes and murmured, “It is now.”
They lay together as the moon moved across the sky and the shadows moved across the floor. He held her hand, played with her fingers, then her hair. The lazy motions, as if they had all the time in the world just to be together, were both relaxing and arousing.
Sometime in the night, he showed her again everything she’d been missing. The second time was even better than the first and when he fell asleep, his legs still entwined with hers, Jilly stared at the ceiling.
This was sex. Great sex, but just sex, and she couldn’t let the soft, mushy sensation just below her heart and above her belly turn into something solid and real.
But as she drifted toward sleep, a sound that had been missing ever since she’d come here, a sound that allowed her to sleep and not to dream, penetrated her drowsy consciousness. In Evan’s room she could hear the creek, and the rush of the water over the stones reminded her of the surf on the beach.
She fell asleep for the first time in a long time feeling as if she’d come home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MORNING ARRIVED and with it Evan’s sanity. He hadn’t used protection. He hadn’t even thought about it. He’d been too busy getting Jilly naked and getting inside of her.
He should be panicked, terrified, but he wasn’t. He was head over hills crazy for Jilly, and if he’d gotten her pregnant, well, he’d do the right thing, which was what he wanted to do, anyway.
She lay in his bed, such as it was, hair blazing across the pillows. Light filtered through the window. Soon the sun would be up, and the brothers would arrive. If there wasn’t coffee and breakfast on the table, they’d come searching for him. Evan didn’t want anyone walking in here this morning.
He’d lived in a small town all his life, and he knew what would happen. Gossip. Innuendo. Whispers.
Though Jilly was a grown woman and he was a grown man, he still didn’t want anyone talking about the best thing that had ever happened to him as if it were another fling in a long line of them. He’d been there already and done that enough.
Evan woke her with a kiss and a cuddle. She smiled, stretched and opened her eyes. Evan wanted to make love to her all over again, but first he had something to say.
“I’m sorry.”
Her face clouded, and he wanted to kick himself. For a man who’d been here dozens of times before he ought to be better at the morning after.
“Not about this,” he blurted. “Not about us. But I never asked you about protection and I—”
“I’m on the pill.”
He breathed easier. Even though the image of her carrying his child, walking through the pasture barefoot, with her hair cascading down, did funny things to his insides, he wanted to do something right just once in his life.
She stared at him expectantly. There was more to modern sex than the mere fear of pregnancy.
“I’ve never been with anyone without a condom,” he assured her.
“Careful boy,” she murmured.
“I’m not a stupid man.”
“I never said you were.” She patted his face and annoyance surfaced.
“This isn’t a reenactment of The Graduate. You’re much better looking than Mrs. Robinson.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere. I was thinking more along the lines of Summer of ’42.”
Evan frowned. “I didn’t see that movie.”
“Probably before your time.”
“You aren’t that much older than me.”
“Funny, I feel ancient.”
“And I feel…” He tried to describe the lightness in his chest, that sense of possibility that had been with him from the moment he’d woken all tangled up in her. “Well, almost like a virgin again.”
She laughed. “I haven’t been a virgin since…well, marriage door number one.”
“Number one? How many times have you been married?”
She didn’t want to tell him, he saw it in her eyes. If they were ever going to move beyond partnership and friendship, something he very much wanted to do, she needed to trust him.
“Jilly, I don’t care about what happened before. I only care about what happens from now on.”
She searched his face and her unease faded. “Four,” she said.
“You’ve been married four times?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve never had an orgasm.”
“Is that all you can think about?”
Well, it seemed like a pretty important point from his end. Four marriages and bad sex in every one. Why on earth had she ever opened marriage door number two? Would he be able to convince her to open door number five, with him? He’d better take this slow or he’d spook her back to California.
“All I can think about right now is breakfast,” he murmured.
Jilly sat up. He yanked her back. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I can’t make breakfast like this.”
He let his gaze wander from the top of her tousled head to the covers pooling around her naked waist. She had spectacular breasts. Round, full, real. Not that he’d ever seen any fake ones in Illinois. Those things were expensive.
Jilly tugged the blanket up to her neck. He reached out slowly, and pulled it back down. Then he let his fingers trail over her neck, her collarbone, the swell of perfect pale skin.
“Let me show you what I mean by breakfast.”
JILLY’S HEAD WAS STILL spinning as she made her way to the creek to wash up. She liked what Evan meant by breakfast.
Wading into the stream, she relished the cool lapping of water against her skin. One night, one morning in his arms and all she could think about was Evan.
Which wasn’t exactly true. She’d been thinking about little else but him since she’d gotten here. Except now she knew what she’d been missing—for most of her life.
She’d just rubbed soap all over her body and into her hair when something swam past her hip. Used to the brush of fish in the creek, she didn’t care at first. However, when that same something bumped her more solidly than a fish ever could, she opened her eyes.
An alligator floated in the water right in front of her belly.
“Fergus!” she admonished. “You could have given me heart failure.”
He opened his toothless mouth, then shut it again. His unblinking eyes remained fixed on hers.
“What are you doing here? You’ve got your own pond.”
Fergus bumped her again. He certainly was acting strange. Even for an alligator.
Uneasy, Jilly washed off the soap and rinsed her hair. She climbed out of the creek, made use of her towel, then got dressed. The alligator followed.
“Is something the matter with Addie?” she guessed.
He blinked once. She wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no, but she wasn’t taking any chances. Jilly lit out for Addie’s at a run.
The weeks spent barefoot, the days spent working with people and animals, had strengthened her. She could run a long way and not become breathless; her feet were as hard as the weathered boards of the inn. She reached the cabin in minutes.
The place appeared deserted. Of course, it was early yet. Folks shouldn’t be knocking
on Addie’s door until at least 7:00 a.m. Since most of her critters—except for Fergus, who was attached to Addie something fierce—had taken up residence with Jilly, the lack of movement wasn’t unusual. Nevertheless, Jilly was worried.
She knocked on the door. No one answered. Hesitantly, she turned the knob.
“Addie?” she called into the darkened interior.
Again, she received no answer, so she went inside. The cabin was dark, the windows still shuttered from the night. The sun didn’t penetrate the shadowy corners of the room.
Jilly hovered in the doorway, waiting for her eyes to adjust. When they did, she saw a lump on the mattress. An Addie-size lump that wasn’t moving.
She let out a muffled cry as she hurried over and dropped to her knees next to the bed. Reaching out, her fingers trembled. What would she do if Addie was dead?
But when she touched the lump, it moved, groaned, then cursed. “What’re ye doin’ here, girl?”
Relief flooded Jilly. “I thought you were dead.”
Addie turned, and Jilly caught her breath. Pale and drawn, the old woman appeared even older. Her eyes burned with fever, her skin was dry and her lips were cracked. Her long hair was unbound, tangled and sweaty.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m dyin’.”
“You are not!”
“Just ’cause ye wish it don’t make it true.”
“You were fine yesterday.”
“Not really.” Addie took Jilly’s hand. Her fingers felt like a bagful of bones; her skin scraped against Jilly’s like sandpaper. “I been holdin’ on until ye came.”
“Th-that’s crazy. You can’t just die right now.”
“No?” Addie smiled softly. “Ye don’t know much about dyin’ then.”
Jilly had never been so panicked in her life. Addie was her best friend, her first friend, her only friend. How could she leave like this?
“You…can’t.”
“I can. But you’re right, I’m not goin’ quite yet. I been waitin’ years for ye to show up in South Fork.”
“I don’t understand. Did Henry tell you about me?”
“I never talked to Henry. His lawyer—weaselly fellow, but ain’t they all—took care of the sale of the inn.”
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