When he finally answered her wordless demand, she thought she'd die with the pleasure of it. Her whole being concentrated in her breasts as he gave each his whole attention. A sense of waiting germinated in her belly, until she heard herself chanting, over and over, "Now. Now. Now."
"Not yet," he growled, laying one last kiss on her wet nipple. He rose onto his elbow, leaving her lying boneless beside him. "Why does this always happen?" he said, and stroked one lone finger down the valley between her breasts.
She felt it tremble, as if he was holding himself under tight control.
A line of goose bumps followed his touch and grew into shivers all over her body.
"I don't know," she whispered, unable to find the strength to be louder. "I was furious with you. I-I still am, but..."
"Yeah. But." He rolled over onto his back, not quite touching her. Lifting one arm as if it weighed a ton, he laid it over his eyes. After a long silence, he said, "It's almost as if there's some...some force, pushing us together..."
"I know. It's like a switch gets turned on. Or something." Sally was suddenly aware that the sun was almost gone, and the grass beneath her was cold and damp. Her shivers increased and became real. She sat up and pulled her sweatshirt down, not bothering to refasten her bra. "I wanted you the first time I saw you," she confessed.
"You had on those shapeless sweats and your hair needed washing." His mouth twitched. "I thought you were a dumpy middle-aged lady."
Before she could be insulted, he finally smiled and she forgave him almost everything.
"I figured I wanted you because I hadn't been with a woman for a long time. But it's more than that."
"And I thought it was because I haven't... Well, I've been divorced more than six years." She heard the wistfulness in her voice. She and Jeff had had many problems, but sex had never been one of them. She had missed that part of her marriage more than any other, but never enough to seek just any available man as a substitute.
Never before, anyway.
"I don't want to get involved," she said, and wondered if he would understand how little of her there was to share. Taking care of her parents had stripped her emotionally until she was dry and empty.
He lowered his arm and rolled onto his side again, facing her. With compelling green eyes he caught and held her gaze. "Neither do I, but that doesn't stop the wanting."
She closed her eyes because she knew the desire flaming in his would burn her to the core.
The next instant they opened involuntarily when he said, "So. How about it, Sally Carruthers? Do you want to see just how it could be, this passion we seem to excite in each other?"
She looked at him. Looked at his bright red hair, his eyes burning with an emerald flame. She let her gaze drift over his wide shoulders and deep chest, along the hard strength of his thighs and back to the ridge of flesh that still, incredibly, distorted his trousers.
I want to. I want to make love with this man and see what I've been missing. For she knew that making love with Gus Loring would be more than she'd ever known before, more than she could ever know again.
INTERVAL
Success! Yet energy usage extravagant!
Endurance indicated. Passion must continue, result in progeny...
Individual Carruthers ephemeral...
Perpetual energy accumulation dependent on recurring progeny...
ELEVEN
"I want to..." she admitted.
"But."
"Exactly. But." She knew her smile was as wry as his. "All we've done since we met is climb all over each other or snarl." She reached toward him, wanting the security of his touch, but pulled her hand back. His touch gave her more than security, and she didn't need that kind of confusion right now. "There's so much I don't know about you."
It was as if shutters closed over his eyes. "What you see is what you get." All warmth was gone from his voice. "A delivery man. A mechanic."
"An Easterner." It wasn't really a question. Few people in this part of Oregon spoke with that fast, clipped style.
"Ayup," he said. "Once."
"What brought you to Oregon?"
He was silent for a long moment.
"Just lucky, I guess." With a single movement, he rolled to his feet. "Come on. You're going to catch your death, sitting on the damp ground." He pulled her up but didn't relinquish her hand once she was on her feet. Instead, he lifted it to his mouth and nibbled gently on her knuckles. "What happened to me before I came to Oregon hasn't anything to do with us. Can you trust me enough to believe that?"
She looked deep into his eyes. Not sure whether she was responding to the desire she read there or to the loneliness, she said, "Yes, Gus Loring, I trust you."
He turned her hand in his and kissed the palm, sending tremors throughout her body. "I can't offer you any promises, except that I'll try not to hurt you."
Hot breath warmed the wetted center of her hand.
"Right now, that's enough," she said, and was glad he wasn't asking for any sort of commitment.
I am glad. I really am. I've too much on my plate right now to get into a relationship.
"Where, then?" His expression told her he wasn't a patient man. "And when?"
"Here?"
As soon as she said it, she saw his refusal, and Sally wouldn't...couldn't go to his apartment. Not where anyone walking or driving down Main Street would see her entering the narrow stairway between the drugstore and the beauty shop. While she had no intention of hiding her feelings for him, her neighbors were entirely too interested in minding everyone else's business.
"I don't know, then." Suddenly the gist of their conversation felt all wrong to her. "Listen to us," she said, disgusted with herself. With him. "This isn't what I want. I won't make love with you just to scratch an itch."
"Why not?" He dropped her hand and stepped back.
She tried to read him again, but the lowering sun had cast them into shadow.
"I warned you, Sally Carruthers. I'm not making any promises. If you come to my bed, that's all it will be. Just to scratch an itch."
"Then I won't be there, Gus. I want at least friendship."
Friendship? He'd never be able to be friends with Sally Carruthers, Gus realized. The sparks between them would burn away any friendship before it could develop. What they had was passion, pure and simple, and she was kidding herself if she thought otherwise.
"You want me," he said, daring her to disagree.
"Yes," she admitted. "Yes, I want you. I ache with wanting you. I dream of you at night and wonder what your hands, your body would feel like against my skin." Her mouth twisted in a grimace of pain. "But unless we can go beyond simple lust, I can't have you."
"What do you want, then? You agreed we needed no promises, no commitments." He realized he was still holding her hand when she tried to pull it free. "Tell me!"
She led him around the corner of the house, to the front steps. "Sit down. Let's talk about this."
"There's nothing to talk about," he growled, wondering how he could sit. Her effect on him was strong and lasting.
"Then let's talk about us," she said, seemingly not put off by his growl. "What do you do for fun?"
He looked sideways at her. They were in the shadow of the house, since it faced east, and he really couldn't make out her expression. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a young fellow hacking at the shaggy hedge with long-bladed shears. A good thing they'd had second thoughts. For now, anyway.
"Read." He shrugged. "Watch TV." What did he do for fun? He wasn't sure, since it had been a long time since he'd really had fun.
"What do you read?"
Damn, she was persistent.
"Road and Track," he said. "Time and National Geographic."
She was leaning back on the steps, her elbows propping her. His hands itched in memory of the soft wealth of her breasts, thrown into prominence by her position.
"And what TV shows do you watch?"
"Whatever's on." Ag
ain he shrugged. He honestly couldn't remember the last show he watched, although the TV had been on just last night. "Old movies. Sitcoms."
"Damn it, Gus! Don't just answer my questions! Tell me about yourself. Who is Gus Loring? What made you the way you are?"
"Enough!" He grabbed her upper arms and jerked her to him. "You want to know who I am? Okay. I'll tell you."
He shoved her back until she was at arms' length, but he didn't release her.
With enormous eyes—great blue-gray eyes that seemed to glow with an inner luminescence—she stared at him, her lips slightly parted.
"I killed my wife." Pain flooded his entire being.
Her eyes went even wider with shock.
Gus stood and turned his back on her. Forcing the words through a throat grown impossibly tight, he said, "Is there anything else you want to know about me?"
She didn't answer.
He walked away, down the sidewalk and into the road.
Stunned, Sally let him go. She couldn't lie to him and say his confession hadn't shaken her. Hadn't frightened her.
She knew, as she watched him disappear into the twilight, shoulders bowed in defeat, that he must have had a very good reason for whatever he did. Even killing his wife.
"My God!" she said when she heard her own thoughts, "I must be insane." There could never be an excuse for murder. Never.
Yet in the next instant, she understood the reason behind her outrageous thought. Gus Loring had asked her to trust him, and she did. For some reason, she trusted him enough to believe that he couldn't possibly have killed anyone, especially not his wife.
* * * *
Sally let the weekend go by. Sunday and Monday were Juana's days off, so she was too busy to do much more than care for Pop. Even though bedfast, he took enormously more attention than he had before his stroke. He was also calmer, although she wasn't sure that was necessarily a plus. He lay in his bed like a vegetable most of the time, his breathing shallow, his skin sallow and waxy.
This was what he would look like in his coffin, she realized. And while part of her—the selfish part—wished he would just go, and be done with an existence that couldn't matter to him anymore, the daughter who loved him hated seeing the vegetable her beloved father had become.
The following Tuesday she made sure she was in the Bite-A-Wee Cafe at noon, perched on a high stool in the kitchen, where she could see but not be easily seen. Sure enough, Gus came in about ten after twelve, taking the empty place between Arne and Roy. She sipped her iced tea and watched him, thinking how thick and strong the walls he'd built about him were.
He nodded to his neighbors, accepted the sports pages when Arne offered them, nodded when Georgina suggested the special. Then he buried himself behind the newspaper and ignored the conversation going on around him.
Sally listened. Most of the exchanges had to do with the May Fest. Who was working in which booth. Whose children or grandchildren were dancing. And especially, what the odds were that Ben Kemp would manage to pull something crazy before the day was over.
"Well, now, he's gonna be stuck on that throne most of the morning," Arne said, while picking his teeth, "but I'll give you dollars to doughnuts he's into some kind of mischief before sundown."
"Go on, now, Arne," Georgina said. "Benny wouldn't be half so ornery if you old fogies didn't expect him to be."
"My Rhoda says he's been just as meek as pie lately," Kate Garcia said. "Maybe he's outgrowing his wildness."
"I wouldn't put my money on it," Bob Larkin scoffed. Since Bob was well known to bet on anything and everything, it wasn't hard to see what he believed.
Gus seemed oblivious to the debate.
"Hey, d'ja hear Bill Holmes bought the old Anderson place?" Keith Rasmussen said. The apple grower wasn't one of the regulars in the café, but he dropped in every week or two.
"Bill Holmes?"
"Well, I'll be!"
"When'd that happen?"
"Hush up, everybody," Georgina called out. "Let the man talk." She grabbed a fresh carafe of coffee and began refilling cups.
The Anderson place had been sitting empty since Marvin's widow, Bertha, passed away the previous fall. There were no children. Their son had died in Viet Nam and their daughter in an auto accident a few years later. The only heirs were distant cousins who hadn't wanted an unprofitable truck farm in a dying little town in Oregon. The household goods had been sold at auction and the house, with its surrounding twenty acres, put on the market. No one in Whiterock had thought it would sell.
Sally strained her ears to hear what Keith had to say. So, Bill was coming home. She couldn't imagine why.
In the middle of the speculation about whether Bill would continue in his job as a heavy equipment manufacturer's rep or would find something that would keep him home nights—it was generally believed that his new young wife Mandy was a good reason for him to do the latter—Gus got up and left.
Sally had been listening so hard she almost missed his departure. She jumped off the stool and rushed after him. Surprised comments followed her, but she didn't care.
"Wait," she called once she was on the street. "Wait, Gus!"
He slowed but didn't stop. Neither did he turn around.
Sally caught up with him and had to walk around him so she could look at him.
"Do you still want me to go to the May Fest with you?" She'd thought a lot about everything that had happened during their last encounter and had decided the next move was up to her.
She was making it.
Gus stared at her, standing slightly breathless and flushed. How had he ever thought her plain?
He stared at her a long time, trying to understand where she was coming from. Finally he said, "Didn't you hear what I told you? I killed my wife."
"Yes, well, I'm sure you had a very good reason to," she said primly. And smiled.
"Lady, you are crazier than a loon," He felt an almost irresistible urge to smile back.
"That's why I'm here," she agreed. "Now, are you going to answer me?"
Gus had no choice. One way or another, he had to get this woman out of his system. Until he did, he would have no peace. He couldn't even run again as long as she held him here.
If only he knew what she wanted from him. After his confession, she should detest him, hate him, fear him.
Instead, she'd asked him for a date.
"Yes," he said, bowing to the inevitable. "I'd like that." As soon as he said the words, he knew they were the truest ones he'd ever spoken.
"Good," she said, her smile brilliant and heart-stopping. "Be at my house at nine Saturday morning."
And without another word, she turned and walked away, her walk free and swinging.
* * * *
"Are you sure you don't mind missing the May Fest, Juana?"
"I'd rather have tomorrow off to spoil Lupe's babies, Sally. I'm too old to sit on the ground and eat junk food."
"Well, if you're sure." Sally stopped protesting, admitting to herself she was almost as excited as she used to be on Christmas morning. She would have the entire day with Gus.
They would have the night as well.
Feeling young and carefree, she walked along the hall to the front door and peeked out to see if he had arrived. The morning sun woke rainbows in the prisms she had hung in the narrow windows on either side of the door. She touched one and then the other, giving them a slight spin, and the shattered light flittered around the bright front hall like insubstantial butterflies.
Too excited to wait, she went outside and stood on the porch, breathing deeply. Lilacs, in purple and while masses all over town, perfumed the air. She caught a faint hint of cinnamon, probably from the bitterbrush that scattered its pale yellow bloom across the hillside behind the barn. And something else was there, too, a subtle mixture of mold and damp earth and new, green shoots.
She spread her arms wide, feeling as if she wanted to embrace the day. This morning the world felt new and full of promise.
She could almost feel that someday her life would be her own again.
"Good morning."
Sally started.
"Oh!" She laughed. "I was so wrapped up in nature I didn't even see you coming." How could any woman with life in her body fail to see his masculine beauty.
The high desert sun had given his normally pale skin a gentle golden tan, until his faint freckles had all but disappeared. For a moment, she had the fanciful notion he was sculpted of an exotic alloy of gold and copper and silver, with the green fire of his construction still burning in his eyes. Then he moved, and she knew that no cold metal could ever have the beauty of warm flesh and hot blood.
He wore a short-sleeved knit shirt of russet, tan slacks that hugged his tight buttocks and hid nothing of his strong thighs. Even the dark brown Docksiders on his feet spoke of something other than the deliveryman or mechanic he claimed to be. She almost asked him what he'd done in the East, but the memory of how he'd closed up earlier stopped the words before they could spill from her mouth.
Today she wouldn't worry about the past or the future. She would relish each moment as it came, with no expectations, no regrets.
He stood at the bottom of the steps, looking up at her. "You look like springtime itself." His voice was soft, just a little more than a whisper.
For the first time, Gus realized what a change spring had brought to Whiterock. It wasn't the lilacs, blooming in great masses all over town, or the apple orchards, whose pink-clad branches he could see from his apartment's window. It was Sally. She reminded him of a daffodil this morning, lifting her face to the sun. He held out his hand. "Let's go."
She came down the steps, smiling. Slipping her hand into his, she said, "I hope you haven't eaten breakfast."
"I meant to, but the café was closed."
"Of course, it was. Georgina and Jack let the town feed them one day a year."
"Jack?"
"Jack Maye, Georgina's cook. You mean you've never met him, after all the meals he's cooked for you?" She took his hand as they strolled along Fifth Avenue. When she waved at someone in the house on the corner, Gus looked in that direction. A gruff bark warned him to be cautious.
Improbable Solution Page 10