Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  For a moment, Chantry thought she’d refuse. She drew herself up, shot him a harsh glare and held her little dog more tightly in her arms, looking very much the same as she always had: icy and unapproachable. Frigid. Philip Sheridan probably had to wear wool underwear to bed to keep from freezing to death from her lying next to him.

  “You’re making a grave error,” Mrs. Sheridan said, and he wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or her daughter, not that it mattered. As long as she left. As long as they all left.

  Cinda looked at him, and must have read in his face what was on his mind. A faint smile briefly tipped one corner of her mouth. “Sorry to have bothered you. And thank you for saving Tinky.”

  Tinky had to be the dog. He shook his head. “Tinky needs to avoid barbecues. Or chicken bones, anyway.”

  “Mother spoils her. Not that she’d feed her a chicken bone, but . . . well, thanks for saving her. I . . . we’ve had her a long time.”

  He just looked at her, watched as Mrs. Sheridan stormed out, head held high and the dog clutched tightly to her chest. Herky hung back, looking a bit bewildered but game enough to stay in case he was needed. Cinda looked uncertain, so he helped her out.

  “No problem. You probably need to get back to your party.”

  “It’s not really a party. Just my parents and a few other people. Friends. Relatives.”

  Right. Paolo and Chris, he was willing to bet. And he was also willing to bet Tansy wasn’t on the guest list either.

  “You’re welcome to come up and join us,” Cinda said after a moment, though she said it like she knew he wouldn’t. He shook his head.

  “I’m a lot happier here, thanks.”

  “All right. Well. Good night then.” She left with another quick smile, leaving in a wake of soft perfume that lingered in the room.

  Herky turned back to look at him. “I hope I didn’t mess things up for you, Chantry. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did the right thing, Herky.”

  When he closed the door, he cleaned the dog pee from the floor and took another shower. Life here could use some dull moments.

  CHAPTER 37

  August started off hot and wet. Mold grew on stones, trees, and anything else that stood in one place too long. Chantry half-expected to find green fur growing on his feet if he didn’t move often enough. Stepping outside was like stepping into a sauna. A familiar heat, remembered no matter what part of the world he’d been in, rivaled only by Iraq.

  It was the perfect time for the central air unit in the carriage house to go out.

  Cinda appeared on his doorstep late in the afternoon, alerted by Herky, no doubt. She looked disgusted. “Damn contractors. I should have called Sears or some other reputable company rather than let my grandfather’s contractors install central air for me. I knew better. This is my own fault.”

  Chantry handed her a cold beer. “A little hard on yourself, aren’t you?”

  “Not as hard as I intend to be on Larry Thompson. I hate it when supposed professionals do a half-ass job.”

  Amused, Chantry watched as she walked through the stuffy room toward the open doors leading to the terrace. It was a toss-up where it was hotter, outside or in, but with dusk coming on, the mosquitoes outside would be ferocious. That didn’t stop him from grabbing another beer and following her.

  “Alcohol isn’t the best thing to drink in the heat, you know,” she said, eying him from where she’d sat in one of the Adirondack chairs. She put her feet up on the matching stool. “It only makes you hotter.”

  Like he wasn’t getting hot enough already just watching her, the length of her bare legs a tempting sight, her cut-off shorts paint splotched but looking damn classy anyway. Cinda was like that. She could make a flour sack look good.

  She lifted her beer in a brief salute, then drank half of it in just a few swallows. “I called a repairman. He’ll be here in the morning. Herky can let him in for you.”

  “That works.”

  “I can pro-rate the rent if you want to stay in a motel or somewhere else until it’s fixed.” She ran her tongue over her upper lip to wipe away beer foam, and looked toward the expanse of lawn that was a deep, rich green even in the August heat. “Or you could stay up at my house if you want.”

  “Right. You, me, and Paolo. I can just see that. No thanks.”

  Her eyes shifted back to him. “I told you, he’s just a family friend.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Stubborn ass.”

  “If you mean me, yeah. Or just not in a big hurry to be part of a threesome.”

  “I’m assuming you don’t mean that in a sexual way.” She took another sip of beer, this time more slowly, watching him. The top three buttons of her white sleeveless shirt were undone. Blue paint smears splotched it in places. He looked away.

  “Should I?”

  “If you’re asking are Paolo and I lovers, the answer is still no. Honestly, Chantry, I don’t know what to think about you half the time.”

  “And the other half?”

  Their eyes locked. She took in a deep breath, and then exhaled. “And the other half, I remember a hot May afternoon, sand, water, and the way I felt when we made love.”

  That took him by surprise, like a blow to the solar plexus. For a minute he didn’t say anything; then he looked down at his beer bottle. “That was a long time ago.”

  “Not so long that I’ve forgotten a single moment. It was the most important thing I’d ever done in my life.”

  “We were young and foolish.”

  “Trite, but true.”

  He smiled at that. “Yeah.”

  Silence fell. There were things he wanted to say, should say, but the words never had come easy for him and wouldn’t come now. He’d held everything at bay so long, not let himself think about Cinda like that for very long. He knew better. Knew the risk was too great if he let himself think about how he’d felt then. How he still felt.

  A slight whirring sound distracted him, and he looked toward the yard to see that the automatic sprinklers had switched on. Water sprayed in corkscrew spirals over parched blades of grass. Fading light glittered on the drops, and the air suddenly smelled damp and sweet.

  “Chantry.”

  The siren call of his name on her lips drew his attention back to her. She’d leaned forward in the chair, intense and somehow vulnerable. It was the last that made him shake his head. “I should never have done that to you.”

  “To me?” Her laugh was short and brittle. “Maybe I’m being naïve, but I thought that you’d done that with me, not to me.”

  “Semantics. The results were the same. Disaster.”

  “And that makes it all bad? Even the memory?”

  “No.” He looked directly at her. “It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. Or since then. But that doesn’t change what happened later. Or the fact that your parents were right in keeping me away from you.”

  “Now who’s being too hard on themselves?” She sat back in the chair. Balancing the beer bottle on her knee, she watched him through lowered lashes, and he thought of all the times she’d done that as a girl, that peculiarly female trick that was half-irritating, half-alluring. It was flirtatious and speculative at the same time, and always made him wonder if he was about to be kissed or kicked.

  “But maybe you’re right,” she said after a short silence. “It was best that we not spend too much time together back then.”

  Kicked, not kissed. Fine. Not unexpected. Probably best.

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. The swish of sprinklers sounded almost like rain. She got up from the chair and crossed the patio to stand right in front of him where he leaned on the edge of a wrought iron table. He wished he had on more clothes, something other than cut off sweat pants that didn’t hide his arousal. He wished she wasn’t standing so close and didn’t smell so good, and that he hadn’t noticed the tiny beads of perspiration that made the bare skin of her throat and the tops of
her breasts glisten. He wished he wouldn’t remember how he’d thought of that day at Sardis dam too many times to count . . .

  “We’re not those kids any longer, Chantry,” she said softly. “We’re all grown up now. My parents don’t run my life. I do. And I do what I want to do.”

  Tension settled between them. His hand tightened on his beer bottle. Stomach muscles tightened and his blood ran south. Dammit. He was going to embarrass himself.

  “So just what is it you want to do?” he asked abruptly.

  She didn’t answer. She took the beer from his hand and set it on the table along with hers, then leaned into him, all soft curves and sweet-smelling skin. Loose hair that had escaped from some kind of slinky thing atop her head brushed against his jaw, and then she kissed him.

  It was just like he remembered. Potent. Like no one else he’d ever kissed before or since. Maybe because he felt something besides just a need to be with someone. There was something else here, something he didn’t want to put a name to even if he dared. That would be taking a risk. But when in hell had his life been anything else? One risk after another. One mistake after another. Grabbing for a brass ring always just out of his reach, chasing rainbows that always faded into mist before he could catch them.

  He closed his eyes and kissed her back.

  It was hot. Sweet. Made him think of things he knew he shouldn’t but did anyway. Then she opened her mouth and touched his tongue with hers and he stopped thinking, let instinct take over. Let everything go but here and now.

  Somehow they were back on the chair, her in his lap, his hand up the tail of her shirt and touching her. Cinda leaned into him, breasts against his chest, and he felt his rib shift. The pain caught him unprepared and he sucked in a sharp breath. She pulled back, looked down at him, a hand hovering over his bare chest.

  “I forgot . . . you’re still hurt, aren’t you,” she said, and he shook his head, need for her far overriding the pain of his ribs.

  “No. Just . . . sore. It’ll go away.”

  “Maybe we should wait,” she said against his mouth when he put his hand behind her head to pull her back for another kiss.

  “For what? Me to explode? Hunh uh.”

  She slid her hand down under the tied waist of his sweatpants and his muscles contracted so sharp and hard he couldn’t breathe for a minute. Pressing her forehead against his, she touched him, voice soft as she reminded him of the time when they were kids in the gazebo, how she’d wanted to be with him then, and she wanted to be with him now.

  Before he knew it they were in his bedroom. It was stuffy, heat stirred only by the whirring blades of the ceiling fan, darkness broken by bars of light from an outside vapor lamp coming through the wooden shutters. They undressed each other quickly. Maturity had added luscious curves to Cinda’s body, but left him scarred. Her fingers found each healed injury even in the dark, and when she kissed the ugly scars that had earned him a medal he closed his eyes and groaned.

  “Cinda . . . oh, God.”

  “It must have been awful.” She lifted her head, eyes a faint gleam in the shadows. “I can’t imagine what you endured.”

  He didn’t want to talk about old wounds. He didn’t want to think about past hurts or anything but Cinda. Right now, she was all that mattered. He rolled over to pin her beneath him, kissed her until there were no more words, nothing but each other.

  Maybe it was the heat that woke him. Then he knew it was a noise outside, in the alleyway that ran alongside the carriage house. Somebody messing with my damned car again, he thought, and got up from the bed without waking Cinda. He flipped a sheet over her bare body, her back and long legs that gleamed a soft ivory in shadows illuminated only by reflected light from the security lamp outside his window.

  Bare feet made no sound when he went into the kitchen and den area; a lamp was still on in the den. A small pool of light kept it from being too dark to see. He leaned over the sink to look out the window into the alley, but saw only the eight foot hedgerow that edged the narrow drive. The noise had been . . . furtive. Like someone skulking around, and a dull thud. Raccoons, maybe, or stray dogs. Those were pretty prevalent. But he went to the door anyway and stood in the cool air on the narrow step for a few moments before deciding that whatever it was, no damage had been done.

  When he stepped back inside and closed the door, he turned to see Cinda in the kitchen. She smiled drowsily. “Looking for a way out?”

  “Not in this lifetime.” Damn, she looked good, standing there wearing only his unbuttoned shirt. It skimmed her body without hiding much. She must have gotten it from the chair where he’d left it after undressing earlier. A bad habit, throwing his clothes on a chair instead of putting them away after work, but right now he considered it a plus.

  “What’s out there?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Must have been a raccoon or stray dog.”

  “Garbage bandits.”

  “Yeah.” He saw her gaze drop, and remembered he wasn’t wearing anything. She arched a brow.

  “My my, the night air seems to agree with you.”

  Damned if he was going to pretend embarrassment. Not now. “It’s not the night air as much as it is what you’re wearing. Or not wearing.”

  “Hm.” She glided toward him. “Intriguing. Cause and effect. Pavlovian response.”

  “Just like ringing a bell.”

  “Then,” she murmured, sliding her hand behind his neck and lifting to her toes to graze his jaw with her mouth, “ring my bell, soldier.”

  “Always happy to cooperate . . .”

  He forgot about the noise, raccoons, and anything but Cinda. It was the best damn night he’d had yet.

  Morning always seemed to come too early, but for once, he didn’t regret not getting enough sleep. Cinda got up and showered, and he had coffee ready for her when she came into the kitchen. Her hair was damp and loose around her face. She took the cup with a smile.

  “I like the service here. I’d recommend it to anyone.”

  “Visitors by invitation only. Sugar?”

  “Just cream. Thanks. Got a long day ahead of you?”

  “Not too long. Clinic work, then some field visits. Doc stays busy.”

  She looked at him over the rim of her cup, sipping cautiously. “There’s enough work here for both of you then.”

  “Yeah. Guess so.” He wasn’t sure he wanted to get into that topic. It sounded too—permanent. “What’s on your agenda?”

  “Putting the finishing touches on a model home in the new subdivision. Making sure your air conditioning is repaired. Picking Paolo and Mother up at the airport.”

  That surprised him. “Paolo and your mother?”

  A faint smile twisted her mouth. “Yep. I take it you didn’t guess the obvious.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Paolo and my mother—come on, Chantry, I thought only my father could be this oblivious.”

  No, apparently not. He’d been so sure Savona was there for Cinda, he hadn’t even considered Mrs. Sheridan. His silence amused Cinda, and she laughed.

  “Struck dumb, are we? Sorry. They’ve been lovers for years. I just assumed you’d figured it out. The rest of my family has. Except Daddy. But maybe he just doesn’t want to see. After all, he has his own . . . interests.”

  “I’m not sure I want you to explain that.”

  “Probably not. Don’t look so shocked, Chantry. You’ve been around enough to know how people are. My parents are as screwed up as Hollywood celebrities. My father likes young men and my mother likes younger men. Interesting, don’t you think, that they both found similar interests at last?”

  He didn’t know what to say. It didn’t shock him that Philip Sheridan would want to escape his wife, but it seemed unlikely his alternative lifestyle would escape gossip in Cane Creek.

  “Does your grandfather know?”

  “About Paolo, yes. About Daddy, no. Not that he probably doesn’t suspect him of having affairs. But you
know my grandfather. Anything my mother does is just fine with him. Whatever she wants, she gets. If it’s a fling with a younger man, then that’s fine with him, as long as she’s discreet. Which is why I have to pick them up at the airport. They’ve gone on a business trip to British Columbia. Some lodge up there.”

  “And I used to picture your family like one of those on TV, a perfect family that sat down to dinner together every night.”

  “We were. A perfect illusion.” She sounded bitter, and he looked at her until she met his eyes and shrugged. “Sorry to destroy your fantasy. No one’s perfect, I guess.”

  “You didn’t destroy my fantasy. You’re the only fantasy I still care about.”

  He shouldn’t have said that. He wished he could take back the words but they were out there. Cinda’s eyes widened, and her lips parted a little.

  “Chantry . . . do you think we have a chance? I know childhood crushes rarely last, but I’ve never forgotten you. Never wanted . . . we’re adults now.”

  Feeling awkward, he shoved a hand through his hair and shrugged. “Maybe we need to take it slow and easy, see how things go. You know your grandfather will do his best to break us up, never mind what your mother will say or do.”

  “I know. But as I said—we’re adults now. I’m no longer that child who can be told what to do. I have my own money, my own life, and I made sure of that a long time ago. I don’t have to depend on anyone for anything.” She put down her coffee cup and moved closer, looking up at him with something like uncertainty in her eyes. “I’ve always had everything I needed and wanted, Chantry, except for one thing. Only you can give that to me, but I don’t know if you have it to give anymore.”

  He had to be honest. He couldn’t lie or give her false assurances, say what he knew she wanted to hear when he wasn’t sure it was true. So he just nodded. “I don’t know either, Cinda. I think I do. You’re all I’ve ever thought about that way, but it’s been a long time since I let myself go there. It’s—”