City Girl

by Judy Griffith Gill

  Liss felt as if her head were full of thick wool. She was dimly aware that the low, sensual sound she heard when Kirk’s mouth closed over her nipple emerged from her own throat. Clenching her hands in his hair, she shuddered at the sweet, pulling sensations of his suckling. When he lifted his head to mutter gutturally, “Woman, what are you doing to me?” she didn’t have an answer.

  All she could do was clasp her arms around his neck and offer her lips for his kisses again. His hands curved around her breasts, making her ache with a need for more and more. She slid slowly, seductively against his hardness, until he gasped and held her completely still, breathing raggedly against her neck.

  “What am I going to do about you?” he asked moments later, lifting her off his lap and setting her beside him. He held her face between his hands as he stared—or maybe glared, she thought—at her, looking as tortured as one of his carvings, and as hard. “You’re scaring me, driving me crazy, and I can’t find a way to make you stop.”

  Her stop? It was up to her to stop? Did he think it scared her any less? She wrenched herself free and got unsteadily to her feet, clutching her blouse to her chest. “If you want me to stop, then don’t start things,” she said angrily.

  He stood and snatched her back into his arms, pressing her head to his chest and running a rough, unsteady hand over her bare back.

  She wanted never to leave his arms, but before she could give in to the lethargy creeping over her, she pushed him away. “No. Let me go!”

  “Ah, Liss, don’t be mad at me.” He pulled her back against him. “I can’t let you go now.” He strained her closer, closer, then sank down onto the thick pile of straw beside mama cat’s nest as his legs gave way. “I want you so bad!”

  Liss wanted him no less, but how could it be? There were too many questions echoing in her mind, too many doubts in her heart. Was she in love with him? No! She couldn’t be. There hadn’t been enough time. For the same reason, he couldn’t be in love with her, and a relationship based on expediency was not right for her. She met his ardent gaze with a troubled one. Cakes and kisses? Supper and sex? What did he want of her?

  “Liss . . . I know what you’re thinking, sweetheart.” He buried his face in her hair and rocked her back and forth. “I keep thinking of the same thing, but remember, Mrs. Healey . . . nobody, has to know what happens between us in private. Make love with me, Liss. I need you so much!”

  The straw prickled at the back of her neck as he laid her down, and with a cry, she wrenched herself free. Leaping up, she turned her back and pulled her sweater on over her head before facing him again, her blouse and bra balled up in one fist. “What you’re saying is you want a nice little roll in the hay!”

  He shot to his feet. “No! Dammit, you make it sound so cheap and tawdry, and what I feel isn’t like that at all.”

  “No?” She kicked at the pile of straw. “What is it you feel, Kirk?”

  “Frustrated as hell!” he said, pounding a fist into the other hand. “What do you want me to say, Liss? I don’t know what I feel. What do you feel?”

  “I don’t know either, but I do know that I’m not looking for casual sex. Now, excuse me, please. It’s time to pick up the boys.”

  When she got back, Kirk had gone out, and he didn’t return before she finally fell asleep that night—if he returned at all. He was there when she went downstairs Saturday morning, though, cooking oatmeal for the boys, who were eager for their next riding lesson. “I’ll take them over,” he said. “I know you have the backdrops to do.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She could be as cool and offhand as he.

  * * * *

  “Mind if I watch?” Kirk’s voice shattered the stillness of the barn and startled Liss. She whirled around.

  “I thought you were with the boys!”

  “They’re with Kristy. She’s heading into town after their lesson, so she’ll drop them off on her way. I came back to see if you needed any help, and to tell you I’m sorry for getting out of line yesterday. Forgive me?”

  It would be so easy to say no, she thought, to tell him to get lost But she had to be fair. “Yesterday was a . . . mutual thing.”

  “But I’m the one who asked for too much.”

  She shrugged. “Not without encouragement. Now, can we drop the subject? There’s no point in rehashing it.”

  He watched her for a moment or two, his eyes narrowed as if he were assessing whether she meant what she said. “Okay,” he said at last. “Now, how can I help?”

  “You can’t help.”

  “Then may I watch, or will it bother you?” Dammit, she thought, she’d missed his companionship the previous evening. She’d missed the camaraderie that had been building between them. She’d missed him. With a silent sigh, she turned to smile at him. “Sure. Stick around and watch. It won’t bother me at all. When I was in college, I used to paint in Stanley Park, with a wandering audience of thousands. If I could forget they were there, I’ll soon forget you’re here. Just one rule. No talking to me.”

  “Okay. Terms accepted.” As she glanced at him over her shoulder, curious about the laughter in his tone, he added, “Somebody has to make sure the city-girl artist doesn’t do anything outrageous.”

  How different it was, she mused as she turned back to the panel, dealing with a man who didn’t see her talents as unfair competition to his own. But then, why would he? Their talents lay in totally opposite directions. She sighed as she remembered the previous day, what her admiring his carvings had led to.

  Get to work, she ordered herself. Stop thinking about him! Picking up a brush, she stared at the blank whitewashed panels, then began painting the outlines of tall buildings for the city scene. Her broad strokes soon created windows and doors and ledges and snowy rooftops. With a light brush she sketched in the shapes of people standing on the sidewalk, looking down from windows, hanging wreaths, shaking rugs. She painted cars of a different era, and old-fashioned street lamps. She’d almost made good her promise to forget Kirk was there when he began a rhythmic clip-clop sound with the heel and toe of one boot on the wood floor of the barn floor, and from Liss’s brush emerged the sketch of a horse and wagon.

  She realized what she was doing and clenched her teeth, but finished it anyway and began on a striped barber pole. Through the window of the shop the traditional barbershop quartet was visible, songbooks in hand. Finished, she went on to a chubby butcher, who stood in the doorway of his meat store, his apron stretched over his big tummy, his shirt sleeves held up with black-and-red-striped bands. Behind her, Kirk shifted positions and stretched, yawning loudly.

  To her annoyance, the butcher finished up with one hand covering his mouth. He was yawning. Several minutes later, as she was refining the characters in the upper-story windows of the buildings, Kirk began humming a recognizable tune. Liss found herself painting large silver bells across the front of a building. That was all right, she assured herself, because, after all, the thrust of this particular piece of scenery was the Christmas song about silver bells. Still, it irritated her to have him force her hand this way.

  Kirk got off his stool and walked up behind her, peering at one of the people she’d painted earlier. “That fat one shaking the mop looks like you-know-who.”

  “Really?” Liss said, forgetting she’d told him not to talk to her. She took a step back to see if he was right, and ran into the wall of his chest. At once, his arms came around her, and she felt his breath on the side of her face as her own escaped her in a whoosh.

  “Have you forgotten yet that I’m here?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said, wishing she could slow her racing heart. “At least I had, until you spoke.”

  He turned her in his arms and she could see the laughter in his eyes. “Liar.”

  “Well, I’ve been trying to.”

  He sobered. “I know the feeling. I’ve been doing the same thing, Liss. It hasn’t worked.”

  “Don’t, Kirk. It’s easier if we don’t
give in to this.”

  “No,” he said. “It gets harder and harder. I see you and I want to kiss you. I watch you at work and I want to make you stop and pay attention to me. I lie in bed at night thinking about you only three doors away. I’m slowly going out of my mind because everything about you calls out to me with every breath I take and I have to . . .” His lips brushed over hers, lightly, teasingly. “Kiss you again . . .” Her eyes fluttered closed as he nuzzled under her ear. “Right now . . .”

  “Stop it,” she said weakly, wanting it never to stop. She liked the feel of his lips, firm and cool as they swept over hers, with a hint of the heat she knew was inside. She shivered with the desire to claim what he offered. He captured her face between his hands and kissed her long and hard and hot, and she melted into him, accepting the heat, offering her own, lifting her arms to his shoulders, pressing herself to his body, straining to get closer, closer, warmer. . .

  They both heard the sound of a car’s tires crunching on the dry snow. With a deep sigh of reluctance, he set her back from him.” Here comes Kristy with the kids,” he said. Liss shoved her shaking hands into her pockets and turned back to the set. “Oh, rats, and I’m not even nearly half finished!”

  “I’ll keep the boys occupied for the rest of the day so you can keep working.” He glanced at the backdrops. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you have enough free time to have those ready by Monday night.”

  * * * *

  The backdrops were ready by Monday morning, and as Liss took her place in the audience that night, she gazed at her work with a critical eye. One of the three camels in the wise-men scene looked decidedly drunken, she thought, although when Kirk took the aisle seat beside her, he assured her they were all the most beautiful camels ever.

  She laughed at the delightful slipups of the tiny actors, cringed at the crashes from behind the curtains as Kirk and another man turned the scenery between acts, and gratefully accepted compliments on her work. She smiled, thinking how lucky she and her sons were to have landed in such a warmly welcoming community, and she knew deep happiness as the concert drew toward its close. She sat back, watching the children file onstage to take their places for the final songs in front of her city scene. The smallest, Liss’s two included, sat cross-legged at the very edge of the makeshift stage in front of the larger children.

  As the first soft chord of a carol rose from the piano offstage and childish voices sang the words of “It Came upon a Midnight Clear,” her throat tightened. They looked so angelic, all of them, but her two most of all, their dark eyes wide and innocent beneath their straight bangs, pink mouths moving in song. She knew she could pick out their voices over all the others, and her heart swelled to massive proportions, filled with love and pride and joy. They are so beautiful! she thought, and thanked God for them.

  Kirk’s hand tightened convulsively on hers, almost painfully. She glanced sideways at him, then stared, watching as first one, then another, silver teardrop rolled slowly down his face. As if he heard her silent gasp, he looked at her and grinned crookedly. Leaning close, he wiped his face on the shoulder of her red wool dress, then whispered, “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

  “Well, I did,” she whispered back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s simply that . . . I . . . Oh, hell, I feel so damned proud of those two little guys! Look at them up there! They’re wonderful. How can you stand it?”

  Someone behind them said, “Shh,” as Liss gazed wonderingly at him. Kirk was proud of her boys? He shared her feelings? She felt as if he’d handed her the most valuable gift of her life. It was no wonder she loved him so much, she thought, then swiftly straightened, snatching her gaze from his face and staring blindly ahead. She did? She loved him? Oh, yes! She didn’t know how it could be, because only a few days ago she’d assured herself that love couldn’t happen that fast, but it had. In less than three weeks, she had fallen in love with this man.

  She wanted to stand up and shout it to the audience, to the world. She wanted to cuddle against Kirk and whisper it to him alone. She wanted to go away somewhere quiet all by herself and let the reality of it seep through every pore of her being, until it didn’t feel so big and so frightening and so wonderful. The more she thought about it, though, the bigger and more frightening and more wonderful it became, and she thought she might explode right where she sat.

  As the lights came up, she realized Kirk’s gaze was locked with hers. Slowly she focused on him. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I’m fine.” Her voice sounded rusty, as if she hadn’t used it in years.

  He lifted a lock of hair back from her face. “You sure? You’re pale.”

  She smiled and gently linked her fingers with his, hoping he wouldn’t ask why she trembled. “I’m sure.”

  * * * *

  “Mom! Mommy! Look what we have!”

  The boys’ calls brought Liss whirling from where she stood at the stove stirring the thick, rich chicken stew she’d made for dinner the day after the concert.

  Ryan and Jason raced through the back door ahead of Kirk—the three of them had left on a mysterious mission more than an hour ago—and when he staggered in under the weight of an enormous evergreen tree, Liss’s jaw dropped. “Isn’t it huge?” Ryan said, his eyes dancing.

  Liss gulped. “I’ll say!”

  Jason touched its prickly branches as Kirk dragged it into the kitchen and tried to stand it erect. It was too tall even for the nine-and-a-half-foot ceiling of the old ranch house. He settled for angling it against the wall and held it with one hand while he tugged off his boots and jacket with the other. Snow drifted from its needles and fell with soft plops from the crooks of its branches

  “Smell it, Mommy!” Jason buried his face in the branches, eyes aglow. “It’s for Christmas. We finded it wiff Kirk. Ryan and I picked it out and Kirk cut it down wiff an ax and we towed it home behind the snowmobile. It bounced and turned over and over. I wanted to ride on it but Kirk said no.”

  Liss hugged her youngest, then sniffed the tree. Its scent had quickly permeated the entire kitchen. “Mmm,” she said in genuine appreciation. “It’s a wonderful tree.” She unzipped Jason’s jacket and tugged it from his arms, then helped him out of the bottom half of his snowsuit. “You all look like snowmen with bright red noses.”

  Ryan turned his jacket half inside out getting rid of it, then, little brother in tow, went back to the utility room to hang it up and neatly put boots away. Even now, Santa might be watching.

  “Do you really like it?” Kirk asked when they were alone.

  “It’s a beautiful tree,” she said, and he smiled at her, as pleased as a child himself. Grinning, she added, “The question is, where are we going to put it? In the middle of the calving barn?”

  Kirk chuckled. He stepped out from behind the huge tree and closer to her, much closer. “They really wanted one about twenty feet tall.”

  “This one isn’t?” she asked weakly, looking up at top of the tree bent against the high ceiling.

  The two of them shared a smile that set Liss’s heart thundering. The long look he gave her left her breathless, filled with questions, and pulsing with tension that coiled in her belly and weakened her knees.

  “Come here,” he said roughly, sliding his hand around the back of her neck. He drew her into the shelter of the tree’s limbs, hiding the two of them from the children, who were playing with the dog in the entry. “Every time you look at me like that, I want to kiss the living daylights out of you, city girl.”

  Liss couldn’t reply. She could only look at him, probably making those silent promises again, she thought, judging by the way his eyes glittered, and draw in deep breaths laden with the scent of fresh-cut evergreen, resin, and Kirk. Why did the term “city girl” sound so much like an endearment now, when at first he’d used it as an insult? And why did his calling her that make her go all mushy and hot inside? Because she loved him, she thought. She loved him so much
. Oh, Lord, what was she going to do if he got tired of her and wanted her out of his life, started treating her the way he treated Gina? She’d leave. She’d have to leave. To her horror, tears flooded into her eyes before she could control her emotions.

  “Hey!” Alarm filled Kirk’s face. “What’s this?” She blinked and the tears rolled down her face. With a self-conscious laugh, she brushed them away. “Nothing. No, really,” she added when he gave her a questioning scowl. “I’m simply feeling . . . sentimental.” Quickly she fled back to the stove, leaving him standing there with the tree, the width of the room between them—and a long list of unspoken wishes.

  They were still looking at each other from their separate corners when Mrs. Healey entered from the other side of the kitchen. Liss turned at the sound of a disgruntled snort.

  “What is that thing doing in here?” Mrs. Healey demanded, thumping her cane on the floor. “Ambrose never had a tree in this house.”

  “Too bad,” Kirk said, thumping the trunk of the tree right back at her with a much more impressive thud. “Because we are.”

  “You aren’t putting it in the living room, I can tell you that much, young man! Needles in the carpet, tinsel dropping, and ornaments breaking if you so much as look at them. That big dog of yours could wipe out the entire thing with one sweep of his tail, and the whole mess will dry out and become a fire hazard. It’s foolishness, that’s what it is, and has nothing to do with the real spirit of Christmas.”

  “Bah, humbug,” Kirk said. He lifted the monster tree onto his shoulder and, with Liss, Ryan, and Jason following, crowded past Mrs. Healey and led the way to the playroom. “Right after dinner, we’ll decorate it, okay?” he said as he leaned the tree against the wall. The boys nodded, their eyes alight with excitement.