Which was a conversation stopper if ever she’d heard one.
As she gulped back the scathing retort she’d planned, she felt shaky still, but now with a strange new excitement. And secret, shameful pleasure. He thinks I’m pretty?
It occurred to her that it must be a beautiful day-one of those utterly gorgeous autumn days when the sky is a brilliant, aching blue, and the breeze smells of just-cut hay, and the sun feels good on your skin. Where it touched the back of C.J.’s neck his skin felt hot and velvety, with deep solid muscle running underneath. She discovered that, without her ordering it, her fingers had begun to stroke it like the sunbaked hide of a healthy animal.
Her own skin felt hot, too, wherever he touched it: his arms across her back and under her thighs, his belly against her hip, his chest pressed to her side. She felt his muscles flexing, nerves vibrating, blood pumping through his veins. Wrestling with a powerful urge to smile, she drew in a breath and let it out in careful bits, like a miser doling out pennies, and lifted her face to the warmth.
Light stabbed her; it was as if she’d come from total darkness to look straight into the sun. She gave a cry, jerked reflexively and hid her face against C.J.’s chest.
Her cry of pain struck deep into C.J.’s heart, broke through into virgin strata where nothing had ever touched him before. Tenderness, and other emotions he couldn’t name from wellsprings he hadn’t known he possessed, came bubbling up through all the layers of ego and protective bravado and shook the very foundations of his masculine soul. His voice quivered with it when he mumbled, “Almost there. Hang in there, darlin’…” And he found that his lips were pressed against her hair.
Furious with himself-and, irrationally, with her-he thought, How could I have been so stupid? How could I not have known I’d fall in love with her? It seemed so obvious to him now, he wondered if everyone had seen it but him, and he felt foolish, like one of those embarrassing moments where everybody jumps out from behind the furniture and yells, “Surprise!”
Bubba and Blondie came bounding out to meet him when he turned into the yard, Bubba panting and grinning as if to say, “What took you guys so long?” and Blondie jumping up and down in giddy delight and trying her best to slobber all over Caitlyn’s face, evidently thinking this was some cool new game, or maybe that Caitlyn was a pet he’d brought home for her to play with.
“Down, dummy,” he snarled, secretly glad to have something on which to vent his chagrin. Caitlyn was quaking in his arms, her face damp against his chest. And he could feel his arms beginning to quiver; his whole body seemed to be going weak with the need to hold her…comfort her. Growling and swearing, he danced his way through the canine welcoming committee, and on will alone, surged up the steps and across the front porch.
There was a suspenseful moment while he balanced Caitlyn on his knee, wrestled open the screen and then pirouetted himself and her through both doors. There in the cool, quiet dimness of the front hallway, he paused to catch his breath.
“You can put me down now,” she said. Her voice, muffled in his sweat-damp shirt, sounded quavery and indistinct.
“Uh-uh.” Grim-jawed, he eyed the staircase. She was right; he was going to give himself a heart attack. “Almost there,” he muttered, gathering himself for the final assault.
How, he didn’t quite know, but somehow he made it to the top of the stairs and was quick-stepping down the hallway. The door to the room that had once been his was open. He swept triumphantly through it. His heart filled his throat, his legs shook and his arms felt like lead, but he managed to cross the room and deposit his burden, with a grunt of effort, on the pink bedspread decorated with little yellow butterflies.
And it was only then that he discovered she was laughing.
For a while he couldn’t say anything, which was probably just as well; his thoughts and emotions weren’t up to forming coherent phrases. Surprise, chagrin, bewilderment, relief, enchantment-those were only the ones he could put a name to.
He was glad she wasn’t crying, glad she didn’t seem to be in pain. He didn’t know what could be the cause of her mirth, but watching her, he decided he didn’t care what was causing it, because he’d never laid eyes on anything that gave him more joy. He realized he’d never seen her laugh, hadn’t had any reason to think he would for a long, long time to come, not like this.
She lay on her back with one arm covering her eyes and the other clutching her stomach as she writhed in paroxysms of mirth that did rather resemble pain. Ah, but her laughter… It was a contagious cackle; it was howls and peals of pure delight, uninhibited as a child’s.
It came to him from out of all his confusion that what he wanted more than anything in the world was to share it with her. To collapse beside her on that frothy pink bed and roll and howl and snuffle with her until, with arms around each other and bellies aching and tears flowing, the laughter began to die and become gradually…with little hiccuping, settling sighs…the beginning of something else…a discovering…a different kind of intimacy…a different kind of sharing.
Why didn’t he? He didn’t believe he had the right. Maybe someday he would, but not now…not yet. There were things he had to do first. Things he had to put right.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny,” he said mildly, when he had his breath back.
Oh, Caitlyn thought, if only I could tell you! Oh, C.J., I’m going to see again!
There was so much joy inside her-too much to be contained, so much that she’d had to let it out somehow or explode. But more than anything in the world, she wanted to share the joy with someone- No, with him! Just him.
But she couldn’t-not yet. There was something she had to do. Now that her vision was coming back she knew the time had come…time to set the trap for Vasily. In spite of Jake’s reservations, Caitlyn knew she was the only one who could lure that evil man into the open. She was also sure that C.J., with his overdeveloped sense of responsibility, would try to keep her from doing it.
No, she couldn’t let him know her eyesight was returning, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to go right this minute. Her happiness was like effervescence inside her-she felt buoyant, infused with sparkling bubbles of energy, like champagne. She wanted to share her laughter and her joy with him, even if she couldn’t tell him the reason for it. She wanted him to lie down with her and hold her in his arms and laugh with her and little by little merge his laughter with hers until it stopped being laughter and became…something else entirely. A different kind of sharing. The deepest, most perfect kind of sharing.
She wanted him to make love to her.
“I’m sorry.” Her laughter, already dying, came fitfully now. From behind the shield of the arm covering her eyes-she must not let him see their response to the light-she murmured, “I’m not laughing at you-really I’m not. It must be just…some kind of reaction.” That much, at least, was true. “You have to admit, the whole thing was pretty ridiculous, me going off in a-an emotional huff, turning my ankle and falling into a creek-”
“Ridiculous isn’t what I’d call it,” C.J. said in a distant and disgruntled tone. “Stupid is more like it. No tellin’ what coulda happened to you out there. What did you think you were doing, anyway?”
What had she been thinking? It was hard, now, to remember the depths of her grief just a few short hours ago. It had been such a roller-coaster day.
She heaved a sigh and sat up. This wasn’t going the way she wanted it to. She wiped her face with her hands, then left them to cover her eyes while she tried to think what to say next, wondered what she could say or do to make him know how much she wanted him to come closer. It wouldn’t have been easy for her under the best of circumstances; she’d spent most of her life discouraging men’s attentions and she didn’t know how to seduce.
If I could just look at him. If only I could see his face. She’d never realized before what a vital tool eyes were in the art of seduction. Without them she was hopelessly handicapped. How could she speak to him
with her eyes or read the response in his? How was it possible to flirt without fluttering lashes and come-hither looks? What about all those references to eyes in language and literature, poetry and song? Like: “Drink to me only with thine eyes and I will pledge with mine.”
Overfilled with emotions she couldn’t express, she smiled and shook her head in wordless apology. “What happened to my wildflowers?” she asked through her spread fingers.
He made a breathy sound she couldn’t interpret, the kind that went with a gesture she couldn’t see. “I think they’re on the porch. They were looking pretty sad. Wildflowers don’t hold up all that well after you pick ’em, you know.”
“Well,” she said, lowering her hands to her drawn-up knee and tilting her face away from him, “I guess I’ll have to pick some more.” She closed her eyes and remembered the feel of his body behind her…of his arms stretched alongside hers…the sun’s heat and the dusty smell of pollen. The smell of him. The room around her seemed to fill with his clean, masculine essence.
“Yeah, I guess you will.” His voice was low and growly. She felt the mattress sag with his weight, and her heart soared. “How’s your ankle?”
She braced her hands behind her and clutched at the bedspread for support as he lifted her ankle into his lap. “Stiff.” She couldn’t feel her lips move. Her heart hammered; she trembled inside. I wonder, she thought, if he can feel it, all the way down there.
She hadn’t known how much she wanted him to touch her. Touch her other places. Everywhere. Her skin broke out in shivery prickles in anticipation of his touch. And her mind called up all the touch memories of him stored in its meager archives to compensate her for the touch she knew in her heart was not going to happen. At least…not today. Would it ever?
The surprising wiry strength of his body pressing down on hers as she lay across the center console of his truck. The unexpected silkiness of the hair on his forearms, folded in implacable barrier against her pleas.
Those same strong arms across her back and under her thighs, carrying her, and his chest and hard, masculine belly against her side. The steady thump of his heartbeat just out of step with hers.
The brush of his silky-soft hair and beard-prickly cheek against hers as he picked her up after the dogs had knocked her on her fanny. Her hand nested in the crook of his elbow.
The cold, hard press of his lips stunning hers to silence. His arm holding her tightly against him as they walked together, bodies chilled and wet on the outside, furnace-hot underneath.
The unexpected gentleness of his hands as they cradled her injured foot, and then…and then. The terrible tenderness…the devastating sensuality, the deliberate eroticism of that kiss.
She couldn’t help it; she shuddered.
“Still hurtin’ you, I guess,” C.J. said in a strangled voice as he shifted her foot off of his lap. Caitlyn held her breath, and the bed creaked a small protest as he left it. “I’m gonna go get some ice to put on that.”
She heard his footsteps cross the room and the door whisper open…then softly close.
Alone, she turned toward the window, took a deep breath…and fearfully opened her eyes. The breath left her body in a long, shivering sigh. Yes-it was still there. The miracle. A window-shaped rectangle of light in her darkness.
C.J. was standing in front of the open refrigerator door when his mother came back from church. He had a plastic zipper bag of ice cubes in his hand and was regarding it sourly, trying to decide which part of his anatomy was in need of it most.
“You trying to cool off the whole house?” his mother asked, as she had no doubt asked each of her children, countless times before.
He closed the door and turned to her, hefting the ice bag in his hand. “This is for Caitlyn. She turned her ankle.”
His mother’s brows rose. “Oh? How did that happen?”
“Stepped in a hole. Out in Parker’s woods.”
“Out in the-” She set her pocketbook down on the table with a thump. “You didn’t let her go there alone, did you? Calvin-”
“Momma, it’s not like it was my-”
“Calvin James, don’t you make excuses to me. You were sitting on the front porch nursing your pride, is what you were doing. You know you had no business letting her run off, not with those evil men still out there looking for her.”
“I know,” C.J. said with a gusty sigh. He juggled the ice bag from one hand to the other as he added dryly, “For what it’s worth, I think she’s learned her lesson. I don’t believe she’s going to be doing that again anytime soon.”
“Well, I should hope not,” said his mother. And with a nod toward the ice bag in his hand, “You planning to take that up to her before it melts?”
“I was sort of hoping you’d do it, since you’re here,” he muttered, and added in a darkening tone, “I think she’s had ’bout enough of me for a while.”
“What, have you two been quarreling?”
C.J. shot a fired-up look at his mother before he realized she was teasing him. He swallowed his retort with a gulp and said, “Naw, it’s nothing like that, I just think I’m gettin’ on her nerves, is all. She’s doing so well by herself, you know, it’s not like she needs me baby-sittin’ her all the time.”
“Well now, that’s true.”
“That’s why I was thinking…” He set the ice bag down on the countertop and looked at it for a moment, then turned around and leaned his spine on the edge of the counter and folded his arms over the pulse that was tapping away in his belly. Trying to look casual about what seemed to him the momentous announcement he was about to make. “I was thinking, if you and Jess are gonna be around the next few days, I might call up Jimmy Joe and see if he’s got a load for me.”
“Well,” said his mother, picking up her pocketbook and the bag of ice, “I think you should.”
“I can’t sit around and do nothing forever,” he argued, trailing after her into the hallway. “I’ve got bills to pay.”
“Son, you are absolutely right,” his mother said cheerfully as she started up the stairs. “After all, as you said, Caitlyn’s a grown woman, she doesn’t need a baby-sitter, and you’re a grown man with responsibilities, you should get back to work. Go right on-and don’t you worry about Miss Caty. Jessie and I’ll look after her. She’ll be just fine.”
“Well…okay, then,” C.J. breathed to his mother’s back as she reached the top of the stairs and disappeared from sight.
He hesitated, then shook his head and turned around and walked back into the kitchen where he spent another minute or two frowning at the place on the countertop where the ice bag had been. He had the disoriented, slightly foolish feeling he remembered getting when he’d swung with everything he had at a pitch and missed it by a mile. He knew he must have missed something by a mile; he just didn’t have any idea what it was.
Since the answer didn’t appear to be jumping up at him from out of the Formica, he muttered, “Okay then,” under his breath and wandered on outside.
It’s the best thing, he told himself, shifting his shoulders and trying to make himself believe he was happy with the decision he’d made. After today’s revelations it was going to be pure hell being around Caitlyn and constantly having to remind himself he wasn’t the kind of man to take advantage of a woman in her state of vulnerability. At least, he hoped he wasn’t. When he thought about kissing her back there in the woods, and realizing how long he’d been wanting to do that, and that he wanted to keep on doing it for a long time to come, and everything else that just naturally came after it, he broke out in chills and his stomach turned upside down. He hadn’t brought her here for that…had he?
No, dammit.
Angrily he checked his wristwatch and broke into a run. But he discovered that his legs were weak and his heart rate was already way up there, and after a couple hundred yards he stopped and walked home instead.
“Caty, honey, Jake wants to know if you’re sure you’re ready to do this. Are you sure it’s
not too soon?” Eve’s voice on the telephone was full of concern.
In the alcove between the kitchen and dining room where Betty Starr kept her household business clutter-and the household’s only telephone-Caitlyn hitched the chair closer to the desk and said with determined brightness, “I’m okay, really. The headaches are much better. I’m feeling really strong.”
She wasn’t; she’d never felt more fragile. She, who’d always been so confident, so self-assured, now couldn’t trust her own feelings…her own judgment. Ground she’d thought solid under her feet had shifted. She’d never experienced an earthquake, but she thought she now understood why they made people panic and animals stampede.
“The swelling’s almost gone. I look fairly normal-so they tell me. I can’t see any kind of detail yet, just light and dark shapes…silhouettes, sort of. It just started today, after all. But the doctors told me once it started to come back it might happen pretty quickly. That’s why I thought-”
“Caitlyn, that’s such incredible news,” Eve breathed. “You must be six feet off the floor. I’m so happy for you-Jake is, too. And I’ll bet C.J.’s about the happiest man in Georgia.”
Caitlyn planted an elbow amidst the litter of grocery lists and junk mail, receipts, bills and correspondence that covered the desktop and rested her forehead in her hand. The house was empty-Jess working late and Betty gone to a Sunday evening potluck supper at her church-and its quietness seemed a growing pressure in her ears. Like the way it feels to dive into the deep end of the pool, she thought. And that’s what I’m doing-going off the deep end.
But it was too late to turn back now; she’d made her decision for better or worse. Tomorrow Eve would put the first part of the FBI’s plan in motion. In two or three days it should all be over. For better or worse.
“He doesn’t know,” she mumbled, carefully massaging the tender places around healing scar tissue. “I haven’t told him.” Eyes closed, she waited out the shocked silence on the other end of the line.
Shooting Starr Page 18