by Flora Kidd
‘God knows,’ he said. ‘I guess you’ll have to stay here for the night. You can’t go out into that blizzard if you can’t walk properly. You might fall down again and not be able to get up. Or you might get lost, and then there’d be hell to pay.’
‘But my sister,’ she argued. ‘She’s going to be so anxious when I don’t return to the Inn.’
‘Didn’t you tell her which way you’d be walking?’
‘No, I didn’t.’ She chewed at her lip. ‘But she might guess. To the lighthouse and then back through the woods to Pickering Lane used to be one of our walks when we stayed in Northport with our parents. And Martin Jonson never objected to us using the path through the woods. He never sued anyone for trespassing.’
‘Okay, I get the message,’ he retorted. ‘But he had advantages I don’t have. He’d lived here all his life. I’m a stranger. Also he could see properly. Did you ever meet him?’
‘Several times. He always used to speak to us when we met him the woods. He was a nice old gentleman, very polite.’
‘And I’m not,’ he conceded with a grin. ‘How you love to score points!’
‘Is it true?’ she asked. ‘Are you really a relative of his?’
‘It’s true, strange as it may seem to you,’ he drawled. ‘My grandfather, another Adam Jonson, was Martin’s younger brother. Adam was a wild one, a bit of a rebel. He stole Martin’s girl-friend and eloped with her. She was my grandmother. The story goes that Martin was so hurt that he never married. But you must be uncomfortable sprawled on the floor the way you are. Here, let me help you up.’
He stood up straight and reached down both hands to her. Lenore grasped them and pulled herself up on to her feet. The movement brought her very close to him again, but when she would have freed her hands from his grasp, his fingers tightened. She looked up at him quickly and defensively. The dark glasses looked down at her.
The silent moment seemed to twang with electrifying awareness. Lenore had a strange feeling that she had stood with him or someone like him in this hallway before, had held hands with him, had looked up at him and had waited with the same pulse-quickening anticipation for his next move.
‘Are you like your grandfather, the other Adam Jonson?’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know—I never met him,’ he replied. ‘Why do you ask?’
Some sixth sense was warning her to step back, to pull her hands from his, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t move. She was caught and held in some kind of spell. She was spellbound by this blond ruffian, by the warm grasp of his hands, by the movement of his shapely lips as they parted. In the next instant they were touching hers.
Finding no resistance in her, his lips moved experimentally, exploring the softness of hers. Mistakenly believing she was sufficiently worldly-wise to let him kiss her and remain unmoved, Lenore was unprepared for what happened next. Response surged through her, springing up from the deep well of emotions that had been frozen over since she had parted from Herzel, and answering instinctively the desperate hunger expressed by Adam’s hard warm lips.
Impulsively she lifted her hands to his face to caress the lean scarred cheeks. She stroked her lips, warm and generous, quivering with passion, against his. She swayed against him and his arms went around her, strong as iron, locking her softness against his hardness. For a few sense-inflaming, mind-reeling moments they seemed to be fused together by the heat of mutual physical desire that blazed up between them and, like wildfire, destroyed all the defences each of them had built up over the years to protect themselves against such an assault.
The kiss ended as abruptly as it had begun. Adam lifted his mouth from hers and his arms dropped to his sides. Her hands slid away from his cheeks, yet still the spell held and they continued to stare at each other in a bemused silence, oblivious to the reality of the dimly lit hallway, the dog sitting and watching them, the creaks and groans of the old house as it withstood the battering of the spring storm.
It was Adam who broke the spell with a violent repudiating gesture of one hand. He broke the silence too, uttering a crisp ear-tingling oath which made Lenore flinch back from him.
‘I knew something like this would happen if I let you into my house,’ he growled. ‘I’ve been too long without a woman, and the scents of your skin and hair, the feel of you, went to my head. Turned me on.’ He laughed shortly, mirthlessly, his head going back, his lips curving tautly over his teeth. ‘I suppose I should be glad that you did,’ he added dryly. ‘Proves I’m still normal in that area. I was beginning to wonder!’
As understanding of what he was saying dawned on Lenore; alarm jangled along her nerves and the last of the spell faded, completely destroyed by his harsh statement of the reality of the situation.
‘Then let me go, let me leave!’ she cried out wildly, and would have lurched past him towards the front door, but he caught hold of her by the shoulders with his big hands and held her still in front of him, and again she felt as lacking in bone and muscle as a doll stuffed with straw.
‘I can’t let you go—not now. You’ll have to stay,’ he grated through set teeth. He released her suddenly and she staggered back against the door frame, clutching at the sturdy oak with her hands, clinging to it as a wrecked sailor clings to a spar in storm-tossed seas, feeling as if she was indeed being tossed about on the tempest of Adam’s anger and frustration.
‘God!’ he growled, one hand going to his head. ‘Don’t look at me like that! I’m not going to hurt you. What happened just now . . . was a temporary aberration.’ Thrusting his hands into his pants pockets, he made a visible effort to control his fury.
‘Go and lie on the sofa again,’ he suggested more quietly. ‘You’ll have to rest your leg.’ He drew a sharp hissing breath and added, ‘But you’ll have to get there under your own steam, I’m sure as hell not going to carry you again. Go on, get moving!’ He jerked his head towards the firelit room.
‘I . . . I . . .’ was all she could croak as she clung to the door frame and continued to stare at him with wide eyes.
‘Go on!’ he roared at her. ‘You can’t stand here all night.’
‘Yes, I ... I will do what you say,’ she whispered, ‘but please would you put a light on in there? I ... I don’t want to walk into anything and bang my knee again. And . . . and please don’t shout at me any more. I ... I can’t bear to be shouted at.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He sounded thoroughly exasperated, but he went into the room and flicked a switch on the wall. ‘There you are,’ he said, coming back to her. ‘Now you can see. Go and rest your leg and calm down. There’s nothing to be nervous about. I’ve told you, I’m not going to touch you again. I’m going to the kitchen to fix us something to eat—it’s way past supper time.’
He turned away from her, gave an order to the dog, which went to lie in front of the front door, then went across the hall and through another door that she guessed led to the kitchen.
Limping back into the big room, she was aware that two lights were on, a standard lamp behind the sofa and a lamp on the table beside the winged chair. Reaching the sofa, she sat down slowly, stretching her right leg before her. She took off her hat and mitts again, then unzipped her jacket and took that off. She put everything in a neat pile on one of the wide arms of the sofa, then easing herself into the comer by the other arm, she leaned back against it and swung her legs up.
Now she was alone reaction to what had happened in the hallway was beginning to set in. Her breath expelling in a long shaky sigh, she closed her eyes. For a kiss between complete strangers it had been a shattering experience. Her cheeks grew hot at the memory of it, and blood was a bittersweet taste on her tongue. Opening her eyes, she touched her lower lip with a finger, than studied the fingertip. Yes, her lips had been cut by the sharpness of straight white teeth.
A temporary aberration on his part, Adam had called his behaviour, and she understood only too well what he had meant. A sexually experienced man who had just regained his full phy
sical strength after having been seriously injured, he had been shaken momentarily out of his usual control by close contact with her.
But what about her own behaviour? Why had she kissed him back? Why had she lost control too? What had happened to those moral standards by which she had governed her personal life so far, one of the most important being never to kiss or make love with a man she wasn’t in love with? She was supposed to be in love with Herzel, wasn’t she, and she had told Blythe that she would never fall in love with a man again, after being rejected by him.
And she hadn’t. She hadn’t fallen in love with Adam Jonson. She couldn’t have—there hadn’t been time. And anyway, most of what she knew about him she didn’t like. He was a rude ruffian, a bully, who probably thought of himself as superior to women and who was sorry for himself because he could no longer project a macho image now that he knew his eyesight would never improve. Physically strong and attractive, following a potentially dangerous career as a TV foreign news cameraman, he had probably wowed many women in his time; the sort of women who liked being overwhelmed by brute force. Well, she wasn’t one of them.
Then why had she kissed him back? Another ‘temporary aberration’? A primitive need in her answering an equally primitive need in him? She groaned in dismay at the discovery that she could feel sexually attracted to a man she hardly knew and didn’t love.
With the back of one hand against one hot cheek she closed her eyes and groaned again. But not only were her cheeks hot, her whole body seemed to be burning. Burning with shame? Because he must have noticed her response. He must have. Oh, if only she could leave without having to see him again! With one kiss he had managed to break through her poise, smashing it as if it had been an eggshell and exposing her for what she was, a woman who liked to love but who needed, oh, how desperately, to be loved in return.
She opened her eyes and looked towards the doorway, thinking she might leave while he was in the kitchen. But the idea had hardly flitted through her mind before she rejected it. She would never get past the dog. And then . . . did she really want to go out into the whirling snow to flounder about and fall, lose her way? No, she didn’t want to leave this warm, peaceful haven, even if it was inhabited by a half-crazy, partly blind tough guy. She would have to stay the night and hope that Blythe would not be too anxious and that eventually, maybe tomorrow when the storm had blown itself out, someone would come looking for her and take her back to the Inn.
CHAPTER THREE
WALKING slowly and carefully, carrying a tray laden with two steaming soup bowls and a basket of bread rolls, Adam Jonson came back into the room. While he approached the long table in front of the sofa Lenore sat up, swung her legs off the sofa and shuffled newspapers and magazines together to one end of the table, making room for the tray.
Adam set the tray down in the space she had provided and turning away took hold of the winged chair and drew it close to the other side of the table then sat down to face her.
‘Bertha Smith’s own special fish chowder and her home-baked rolls are all I can offer,’ he said coolly. ‘Help yourself.’ He picked up the basket of rolls and held it towards her.
‘Thank you. Thank you very much,’ she whispered as she took one of the hot golden-brown crusty rolls, amazed that he should have gone to so much trouble for her. The tray was set with a white linen cloth on which stainless steel knives and spoons of the best quality gleamed. The soup bowls were thick heat-resistant blue pottery. No man had ever waited on her like this. Herzel had never done. In fact she doubted if Herzel could have produced a meal, even one as simple as this. ‘Thank you,’ she said again in awe-struck tones, ‘for . . . for going to so much trouble.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he replied automatically, then added fiercely, dark glasses glaring at her, ‘No, I take that back—you’re not welcome here. Why couldn’t you have walked somewhere else this afternoon? Why the hell did you have to come this way? Why didn’t you fall down on someone else’s land and ask to use his phone? The hell you’re welcome here! Now, what’s the matter? Don’t you like chowder?’
‘Yes, I do. It . . . it’s you I don’t like,’ she flared. ‘And, and ... if ... if you weren’t partly blind, I’d ... I’d hit you for being so rude to me, for swearing at me and for . . . for . . .’ she broke off, almost choking on the anger that was gusting through her. Never, never had she been so angry. But then never in the whole of her gently-nurtured life had she been so abused. Always she had been surrounded by and had moved among polite, sensitive people, none of whom had ever spoken harshly to her or to each other; her parents, Blythe, other relatives, school friends, fellow musicians, Herzel. None of them had ever expressed violent emotions violently as this man did, presumably because they didn’t experience violent emotions . . .
‘For kissing you?’ The jeering abrasive voice cut through her chaotic rambling thoughts.
‘Yes, that too,’ she retorted, with dignity, picking up a spoon and dipping it into the thick, creamy chowder in which succulent pieces of lobster floated, exotically pink in the whiteness surrounding them.
‘If you feel like hitting me never let my infirmity stop you,’ he continued mockingly, tearing a roll apart with lean fingers. ‘It isn’t healthy to bottle up deeply felt emotions.’
‘Is that why you let fly all the time?’ she queried tauntingly.
‘Right.’ His quick grin came and went. He bit into the roll with sharp white teeth, chewed for a moment, then said in a completely different tone, softly and with just a suggestion of laughter shaking his voice, ‘I’m not going to apologise, you know.’
‘For what?’
‘For my behaviour. In particular for kissing you. I enjoyed kissing you, and your way of kissing me back made it an experience to remember, to mull over during sleepless nights. You’re certainly no innocent when it comes to kissing—you’ve been around.’
Lenore’s cheeks flamed. There was a roaring in her ears. Before she realised it her right hand flicked out across the space between her and him and her fingers smacked sharply against his left cheek.
His head jerked back a little. Horrified by what she had done—never before had she hit anyone— Lenore snatched her hand back and shifted uneasily on the sofa, away from him, afraid he might retaliate in kind. But he only laughed.
‘Now I know I was wrong in implying that you’ve slept around,’ he drawled. ‘You’re no easy lady. But you’re not innocent either when it comes to kissing and making love. You’re not married—at least you don’t wear a ring. I didn’t feel one when I was holding your hands. Are you divorced?’
‘No, I’m not. Oh, this is a silly conversation. Why should I tell you anything about myself?’ she retorted.
‘No reason why you should,’ he replied equably. ‘But if you don’t I’ll just have to go on making guesses, won’t I? So you live at the Northport Inn. Are you in business with your sister?’
‘No. I’m just staying with her for a while.’ ‘Unemployed?’
‘Temporarily. I’m a musician—I play the clarinet. I’ve been playing with a symphony orchestra for the past three years, but this past month I came down with pneumonia, so I came here to recuperate.’
‘You should have gone south to Florida or the Bahamas, somewhere where the sun shines,’ he commented.
‘I couldn’t afford to go anywhere like that,’ she replied evasively. ‘Besides, I wanted to be somewhere quiet, where I knew there wouldn’t be lots of people. I’ve always found Maine a good place to relax in. Why did you come here? Why didn’t you go somewhere warmer to recuperate?’ ‘I came here because I had nowhere else to go when I left hospital—that is, nowhere where I was wanted.’ His lips curled in a bitter grimace. ‘And like you, I wanted to be alone too.’
‘It took you a long time to come here. Martin Jonson died eight years ago, the last time I spent a vacation here with my parents.’
‘It was a while before the executor of the will caught up with me to tell me I’d inherite
d the place.’ Adam gave one of his short laughs. ‘No one was more surprised than I was when I came back to the States from an assignment in the Middle East to find that a great-uncle I’d never even heard of had left his house and a large annuity of seventy thousand dollars to me because I’m apparently the only descendant of his brother and the woman he loved. That was about four years ago. I was going to come and see the place then, but was sent abroad again.’ He paused, frowning. ‘After being shattered by that hand-grenade I was in hospital for two years,’ he added slowly. ‘When I came out this seemed to be a good place to hole up in, lick my wounds and get my act together before going back to the crazy world of filming the more violent aspects of human behaviour. But I thought that by now I’d be able to see properly.’ He hit the arm of the chair with a fist. ‘Dammit, I should be able to see by now!’ he grated through set teeth.
Picking up his spoon, he continued to eat his chowder. Lenore watched him, noting how he didn’t spill a drop and aware of a longing building up inside her to reach out and comfort him in some way; to do things for him; to help him overcome his handicap.
‘Six months,’ he muttered, still speaking tautly. ‘Six months, the specialists said when I left the hospital. That’s what it would take, they said, for me to be able to see again. Six months of quiet and rest. Well, it’s been quiet enough here—too quiet, sometimes. And I’ve rested—my God, how I’ve rested! I’ve never been so inactive in my life. Yet still I can’t see well enough to walk through the village without walking into something or someone like . . . like I walked into you.’ Throwing down the spoon in his empty chowder bowl, he flung himself back in his chair. ‘So it looks as if I’m going to be here for the rest of my life, rotting away, a useless hulk....’
‘No, oh, no,’ she protested. ‘It doesn’t have to be like that. You’ll find something useful to do.’ ‘What, for instance?’ he asked dryly. ‘What would you do if for some reason you weren’t able to play your clarinet any more? What would you do if you’d lost your hearing and couldn’t make music?’ ‘Naturally I’d be upset for a long time, but I wouldn’t let myself rot. I’d find something to do. I’d probably take up some sort of visual art.’ Lenore looked around the room, at the sheen on green velvet curtains hanging at long windows, at the gleam of the golden wood of antique furniture and finally at the magnificent rosewood grand piano that stood at the far end of the wide long room, behind Adam and beyond the doorway. ‘I guess that piano is the one Martin Jonson used to play,’ she mused aloud.