A Distant Summer

by Karen Toller Whittenburg

  But now she had to tell Tucker, and suddenly that seemed much worse than anything she had ever had to do. To say the words, knowing the shock, the hurt, the frustration he would feel.

  The conflict churned inside her and would not be soothed. Why had she gone to that courtroom to see him? Why had she opened a door that should have remained forever closed?

  Kristina reached for a brush and began pulling it through her hair. The bristles were rough against her scalp, but the woman in the mirror displayed no sympathy. The eyes that stared back at Kris were clear and steady without a hint of uncertainty. The brushstrokes slowed and then ceased altogether.

  It was time to stop making excuses. She had brought about the situation that faced her now, just as she had created the situation all those years before. She had lied to Tucker by the very silence which she had used to protect him. But hadn’t she really been trying to protect herself? Wasn’t it possible that she had gone to the courtroom that day not out of simple curiosity but for a much more complex reason? Had she wanted to see him, touch him, love him because he was the only link she had to her child?

  Abruptly she turned her back and closed her eyes to the thought. It wasn’t something she wanted to consider, but it had to be acknowledged. Before she faced Tucker with the truth, she had to confront her own motivations, her own feelings. She had to know beyond a doubt that her love for him was pure and honest, an emotion separate from the past.

  “Kristina?”

  Tucker called to her from the other room, and her heartbeat quickened with a gentle wonder. She knew in that moment, in the husky thrill that rippled through her, no amount of self-examination would change the fact of her love. Whatever her subconscious reasons for seeking him out after so many years, he was a part of her life now. She loved him now.

  With hairbrush still in her hand, she made a slow turn and offered one final excuse to the mirror. A few more days won’t make any difference. I’ll tell him.

  Soon.

  “Kris?” His call came again.

  “Coming.” She tucked the brush into the drawer, aware suddenly that time—once her trusted friend—was pressing in on her, weighing her down with its passing.

  “Soon.” She whispered the promise aloud and then deliberately avoided her reflection as she left the room and went to be with Tucker.

  * * * *

  “Gary said we could have the cabin for the weekend.” Tucker dropped the information into the darkness and felt Kristina go tense beside him on the bed.

  “Oh. That would be nice, but I have so much to do at the office.”

  “Gary also said you could have the weekend off.”

  “Oh.” Her hesitation was almost tangible. “Well, in that case wouldn’t you rather go to Hot Springs or some other wild, exotic resort?”

  Tucker shifted onto his side and bolstered his slightly elevated position with the pillow. “I’d rather be alone with you. That’s why I suggested the cabin. It’s quiet, and we’ll have an opportunity to talk away from newspaper deadlines, neighbors who drop by, and phones that ring at the most inconvenient times.”

  “What’s the matter, Dr. McCain? Is small-town life getting to you?”

  There was a teasing lilt to her voice, and he could see the faint curve of her lips, but there wasn’t a smile in her eyes. Even though her expression was hidden from him by the twilight, he knew there wasn’t a smile. For days now her gaze had been a confusing shadowy gray. “The only thing that gets to me is you. I thought surely you’d caught on to that by now.” He lightly stroked the bare skin on her stomach. “How much convincing do you need?”

  “Lots.” Placing a palm against his cheek, she leaned up and kissed him. His arms went around her shoulders to give support, and the banked embers of desire sparked a low, throbbing heat deep within him. And then, too soon, she was pulling away, her lips lingering with a soft, less than satisfying apology. “But no more tonight. I’ve got to be at the office early in the morning. Tomorrow noon is — ”

  “Deadline,” he interrupted, holding back his sigh of frustration. “I know.”

  “Tucker, I’m sorry. But now that school’s in session again and construction is under way on the new hospital, there’re a lot of community activities that have to run in the Gazette, We’ve been so busy I’m surprised Gary would even consider giving me the weekend off. You must have twisted his arm pretty hard.”

  “I figured the time alone with you would make the effort worthwhile. I didn’t think it would be quite so difficult to convince you.”

  Her laugh was a bare ripple of sound. “Don’t be silly. There’s nothing I’d like better than spending the weekend alone with you.”

  “Good, because we’re leaving early Saturday morning. Now....” He bent to tease her lips with a kiss that promised a thousand delights and then withheld all but one. Her arms went around his neck as she sought to capture more, but he lifted his head and smiled at her expressive sigh. “Go to sleep, Kris. You need your rest.”

  “Damn you, Tucker,” she whispered. “That wasn’t fair.”

  “Plan your revenge for Saturday.” He lay back against the pillow, wishing he felt as lighthearted about the coming weekend as his tone implied.

  “You can count on that.” There was a pause, and then, beneath the sheet, he felt her fingers seeking a hiding place within the warmth of his hand. “You are counting on it, aren’t you, Tucker?”

  “Actually I was thinking about how much fishing I could work into two days.”

  “In that case I’ll be sure to pack my tackle and lures.”

  “You can forget the lures. One good tackle ought to do it.”

  Silence came, holding within it the essence of laughter, the communion of shared thoughts. Yet there was a shadow — a shadow that eluded his understanding no matter how he tried to grasp it.

  “Tucker?” she whispered, her voice blending with the soft stirrings of the night. “Thank you.”

  His hand tightened over hers. “For what?”

  “For planning this weekend. For the past few days and the wonderful long nights. For making me see that there’s more to life than surviving.” She hesitated, and her tone dropped to a husky low. “I’m glad you came to Maple Ridge, and no matter what.... Well, I just wanted you to know that I am glad you came.”

  His first impulse was to ask her what in hell she was trying to do to him with her half-finished comments of “no matter what.” It wasn’t the first time she’d begun a sentence only to let it fade into a riddle that he couldn’t fathom. His second impulse, more tempting than the first, was to get out of bed and have a riddle-solving drink of Ruth’s home brew.

  He did neither. He simply held Kris’s hand and wondered why he felt apprehensive. More to the point, he wondered why she felt apprehensive about him. He couldn’t understand that at all, but he knew it was true because he recognized the subtle nervousness that belied her outward calm.

  Did she think she would awaken one morning and find him gone? Was that the source of her uncertainty? Or was she afraid of trusting the emotion, the commitment that as yet remained unspoken? He might have told her how he felt days ago if only she hadn’t shied from even the slightest reference to a serious discussion. It was almost as if the subject of love and marriage were forbidden to them, yet in the past week he hadn’t come close to discovering why.

  He was counting on this weekend and the quiet surroundings of the cabin to help him discover the answers. Kristina loved him. He couldn’t be wrong about that. There was such a gentle look in her eyes when she thought he didn’t see, and her response to his lovemaking was real.

  No, he wasn’t wrong.

  But he sensed a sort of desperation in her love for him, as if she were afraid it would vanish while she watched.

  Tucker shifted onto his side again and stared thoughtfully at the moonlit sheen of her hair against the pillowcase. A weekend trip was the only plan he’d been able to devise that might ease the tension and allow him to reassur
e her.

  He studied the faint flicker of her eyelashes as she drifted toward sleep, and his throat grew tight with emotion. Soon she would hear all the words he’d kept inside his heart. Soon the shadow of doubt in her eyes would be gone.

  Soon.

  * * * *

  The heat hazed the sky to a shimmery blue. A matched set of cottonball clouds hung motionlessly, displaying a supreme indifference to the world at large. The air felt hot enough to bake bread, and the sun beat a relentless warmth into the lazy current of the water.

  The fish weren’t biting, but Tucker didn’t seem to mind. He sat on the grassy bank, his back propped against the trunk of a sturdy oak, one hand holding the fishing rod, the other hand making sketchy circles of pleasure along Kris’s bare leg. She lay very still beside him, enjoying the sensations of his nearness, his touch, the shade of the tree, and the cooling breeze that drifted from the water every now and again. She hadn’t felt so relaxed in months, years maybe, and it was nice, very nice.

  “ ‘By the shore of Gitche Gumee,/By the shining Big-Sea-Water,/Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,/ Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.’ ” Kris ended her burst of inspiration with a laugh. “You didn’t think I knew any poetry, did you, Tucker?”

  “Is this a trick question?”

  “Just rhetoric for an idle mind.”

  “Yours or mine?”

  She stared directly overhead at a patch of heaven framed by twisted branches and green leaves. “You’re zapping my energy with your questions, Tucker. How can you expect me to remember the rest of the poem if you insist on interrupting my concentration?”

  “The idle mind obviously is yours.” He took his hand from her knee and shifted his weight. “Mine is busy considering the possibility of a swim.” He pointed toward a widening in the creek boundaries. “Gary told me there were places out here deep enough for swimming.”

  Kris looked at the inviting pool of dark water. “The correct Maple Ridge terminology is swimmin’ hole. But I believe you’re beginning to think like a native.”

  “Poetry always brings out the savage in me.” He leaned forward with indolent grace, and the fishing pole dropped uselessly to the ground. “What’s the Maple Ridge terminology for ‘swimming in the nude’?”

  “Now how would I know a thing like that?”

  “You mean you don’t?”

  She eased herself back to her original recumbent position. “I believe it’s called skinny dipping. But I’ve never had an occasion to try it.”

  “Then it’s about time you learned.” He bent toward her, and she moistened her lips in welcome, but his attention seemed to be focused somewhat lower. Kris watched the lines that fanned with subtle appeal from the corners of his eyes as he unbuttoned her blouse. His hands felt delightfully wicked against her skin.

  His steady progress was halted, however, by the shirttail knot she’d tied beneath her breasts. The neckline parted to reveal a creamy vee of gently sloping curves, but his fingers couldn’t separate the tangled ends of the blouse. Finally, he met her gaze in defeat. “I’m beginning to understand why you’ve never tried skinny dipping, Kristina. It would be easier to toss you in the creek fully clothed.”

  She smiled and easily worked the knot free. “But you wouldn’t do that, would you, Tucker?”

  “Just try quoting another line from ‘Hiawatha.’ ”

  Her hands reached for him, and the blouse fell open to bare her breasts to his gaze. A reckless longing guided her fingers to press into his shoulders and encourage him to come closer. “How would you feel about Shakespeare? I remember a few lines from — ”

  He stole the rest of her sentence with a kiss, and a sudden magic filtered into the late-afternoon sunlight; the magic of intimacy shared amid a world that stirred quietly with constant wonder; the magic of heartbeats blending. It was a perfect moment. And Kris could not hold it close enough.

  When Tucker lifted his head, she would not let him go, and he couldn’t see any future in struggling against such a lovely captor. He shifted and stretched his length beside her, drawing her into the comfortable circle of his arms. Braced on his side, he could indulge the longing to look at her, to touch her at will, to lose his reason in her gentle fragrance.

  Her hair was a wispy halo of disorder; her eyes were an uncompromising gray but misted with moisture. He saw a teardrop form and shimmer uncertainly at the corner of her eye. He watched as she tried to dislodge the drop with a blink of her dark lashes. And then, with tender reverence, he bent to catch the mysterious tear on his lips and prevent its fall.

  “Kristina.” He breathed her name and tasted the salty trace of her emotion on his tongue.

  Her palm came to rest against his cheek; her fingertips brushed a feathery pattern at his temple. At another time or another place he might have questioned the reason for her solitary tear. But somehow Tucker didn’t feel it needed explanation. The place, the moment filled his heart with understanding, and he knew why beauty was always in search of a poet. Language was inadequate at times. Words were meaningless in describing a moment that brimmed the edges of forever, yet Tucker yearned to try.

  “I love you, Kris,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  For a seemingly endless second he thought she was going to cry, but then, slowly, like the first sweet notes of a ballad, she smiled. It was a smile that made him ache inside, and he thought that if he never drew another breath, he would be content.

  Her lips parted in the instant before she claimed his vow. Delicate hands cupped his neck to press him into the fullness of her kiss, and he burned with the sudden fiery intensity of his passion for her.

  Kristina gave in to the kaleidoscope of sensations swirling through her and pushed up the hem of his shirt so she could feel him against her bare breasts. Her body clung to his, sculpting thigh to thigh and angles to curves, fitting silken skin to smooth, hard flesh. A sigh of deep contentment wound from her throat as he covered her breast with flicks of his warm, moist tongue.

  The weight of her clothing seemed suddenly unbearable, and she struggled to rid herself of its cloying burden. She pushed at the waist of her shorts but tried to maintain a close contact with Tucker’s every touch. When he stopped to help her, she knew a pleasurable relief and bribed her impatience with the promise of helping him undress in return.

  A cooling breeze caressed her as she raised her hips to allow her clothing to be stripped away. Wanton thoughts drew her restless fingers to the fastening of Tucker’s jeans, and soon she was trailing her hand over his legs.

  Finally, free of any covering save the streaks of filtered sunlight, they moved again to the bed of grass and the haven of loving arms. Passion built and ebbed, bringing him to her again and again until the tide of sensual delight crested, leaving her trembling and weak but newly strong.

  “I love you, Tucker.” She voiced the words that she had waited a lifetime to say and could no longer restrain. With the husky endearment he murmured against her ear, she held him tightly, her heart throbbing with a thousand wistful dreams. Kristina wanted to cry with the sweetness of her emotion. It was as if he had filled her life with beauty, as if she had negotiated the terms of her surrender and at last made peace with the past.

  Whatever might come to her in the future, she would not regret the hours spent with him. She loved him. Enough to tell him the truth. Enough to bear the sadness of a pain she’d held within her for too long and now must share with him. But in the midst of that knowledge was the peace of knowing that because he had loved her, she could face her greatest fear ... and survive.

  She lay for an eternal moment, savoring the sounds of his breathing, the rise and fall of his chest beneath her hand, knowing that time had caught up to her fantasy and that soon she could find herself holding only a memory.

  She was still, waiting for him to break the silence.

  “Kristina,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Will you marry me?”

  Chapter Nine

  The shade of the o
ak tree seemed suddenly the most beautiful spot in the world. Kris thought everything around her took on a new clarity, a new dimension as she savored Tucker’s words.

  Will you marry me?

  Surely this was the memory she would treasure most through all the years to come. From now on summer would remind her of this day, this hour, of being loved by the man she loved.

  But then wouldn’t everything from now on remind her of him?

  Sighing, Kris moved away from the contentment of his embrace and sat up. “No.”

  There was a second of suspended silence before she heard his soft “What?”

  “No, Tucker.” How could it sound so effortless when her throat was so dry?

  He was reaching for her; she felt his touch on her shoulder and quickly shifted away. She couldn’t think when he was so near. Standing abruptly, she began to retrieve her scattered clothes, feeling his gaze on her every movement.

  “Kristina?”

  Her courage almost deserted her when she heard his achingly confused whisper. She began to pull on her clothes, trying not to look at him, but painfully aware that he was watching her and that he didn’t understand. “You don’t mean that,” he said in a voice edged with humor, but trimmed in fear.

  She glanced at him, saw the cautious blue of his eyes, and quickly looked away. “I’m ... sorry.” She had to say more, she had to tell him, yet the beginning words wouldn’t come. The simple act of buttoning her blouse seemed to demand her complete attention.

  Tucker got to his feet and bent to pick up his jeans from the ground, but he continued to stare at Kris as if he thought his gaze alone could fathom the deepest mystery of her emotions. Silently watching her, he dressed, and she trembled with the conflict churning within her. Her hands combed through the sunlit disorder of her hair, rested for a moment at the waistband of her shorts, then slipped inside the front pockets.

  “Now, let’s talk.” His voice was crisp with determination; his stance encouraged no argument. “I asked you to marry me, Kris.”