Wintergreen

by Jennifer Greene

  She could not seem to turn around and face him. Matthew didn’t appear to care. His cheek nudged aside her hair so that his lips could find her soft skin. There, where the nape of her neck burned. Her throat, the hollow in her shoulder…she was not the kind of woman to go to bed with a man because of a simple attraction. She was not some wanton to whom vows of love meant nothing. She’d never been driven by libido in her life. It was terribly important that Matthew understand that, that he respect her, that he trust her…

  “The minute I saw you,” he murmured, “I wanted to hold you, Misha. To touch you, to feel your touch. I wanted to hear your laughter. I wanted to watch you listening to music. I wanted to scold you for wearing sandals in the coldest weather. I wanted you beside me in the night…”

  “Matthew…” She closed her eyes, arching her head back as his lips continued to tease and savor at the side of her throat. He leaned against the back of the couch, pulling her into the cradle of his thighs, his lips finding ample territory to explore in the flesh laid bare by the scoop neck of her sweater. Collarbone and throat, the silky hollow just below her ear, the fragile cords of her neck.

  She suddenly felt as weak as a kitten, and strangely reluctant to open her eyes. Despair shot through her, mingled with desire. For Johnny’s sake, for her own, she knew she could not leave Matthew believing as he did. It mattered so much! She tried to think, and couldn’t. Her blood was singing in her veins, a song of blues and rhythm that was all she seemed to hear. She felt enfolded in velvet-encased iron, her back cradled against his chest, her bottom cradled into his thighs, his arms around her. His hands caressed the cashmere covering her abdomen, over and over, as restless as his lips at her throat. “Misha…”

  It was like a low call from the back of his throat, a sweet whisper to follow him, his music, his magic. His hands slid up and crossed to knead the aching swells of her breasts. Her heart beat so loudly that she knew he could hear it. She opened her eyes and saw the shadows the fire was casting on the wall, saw his dark head bent over her. Her own head arched back in the curve of his shoulder as his hands moved over her body. She could smell cherry wood and leather and the dry wine from his lips, could smell Matthew…

  “Misha,” he murmured again, and turned her, his lips sealing in a message of sweet, driving hunger. Her hands clutched his hair, forcing the kiss to deepen. She hurt. Deep in her loins she felt the most unbearable pain, so consuming it frightened her.

  He pulled the sweater loose from the waistband of her skirt, and the touch of his warm palm on her abdomen seared, sent a shiver through her body. He seemed to love that shiver. She could feel the change in his breathing and the increase in fevered pressure on her mouth, in the dominating way he drew her closer, possessively wrapping his arms around her. He wanted her trembling. And it was so easy to give him what he wanted.

  He unfastened the button on the waist of her skirt. The fabric slid lazily down her silk-clad hips. Her arms were already raised to his neck, and he easily slipped off the sweater. For just a moment, the black cashmere blinded her, going over her head, and for just that moment she groped for a fraction of sanity. “No,” she protested.

  Matthew draped the sweater over the back of the couch and savored the look of her. The black slip was simple, lace-free, a smooth satiny fabric that molded itself to her figure. His eyes met hers, all black and fierce fire. “Nothing on earth could stop me from making love to you, Misha,” he whispered. “Nothing except you.”

  She took a breath, her heart beating frantically, and stared at him. His hands were slowly moving up and down her sides, absorbing the feel and look of silk against her skin. Those hands were suddenly lazy, waiting. And Lorna had thousands of vocabulary words in four languages to choose from at the tip of her tongue. Nyet. Non. Nein. Please, Matthew…

  Slowly, his hands shifted down from her waist, resting possessively on the curve of her hips. “Unbutton my shirt, Misha,” he whispered.

  The buttons trembled beneath her fingers. “Matthew. Listen…” Would he settle for a brilliant discussion of world politics? Because somewhere in her head she knew this wasn’t right. It was too fast, too overwhelming, too unsettled… Yet another corner of her mind told her that nothing could be more right. No one else had made her feel like this. She’d said no to men for years because she had felt it wasn’t right. And Matthew was no stranger. Once friend…now lover. And when her hands climbed up the warm flesh of his chest, she could anticipate his shudder even before she felt it.

  “Misha…”

  The lazy sensuality in his eyes was replaced by something yet more compelling. She was still absorbing that look in his eyes as he lowered her to the carpet, a long powerful leg stealing between hers, pressing intimate flesh against intimate flesh. She closed her eyes as he removed her slip and unclasped her bra. He buried her low, guttural murmur in her throat with his lips on hers, draining her mouth of sound. The feeling of her bare breasts crushed to his chest touched off a summons in her soul, a burst of desire so consuming…

  The fire was such a bright orange, licking flames up the flue. Matthew’s flesh took on the silk sheen of moisture; the fire was reflected in his eyes, which seemed to blacken to ebony at her fevered touch. She could not touch enough, as she watched the sheen of his teak skin, seeing the shadows of both of them in the movements of love, seeing the flames burn higher. Lovingly, they finished undressing one another, and she clasped his naked body to hers.

  He whispered her name over and over as she took him inside her, trembling with that intimate intrusion, murmuring a sudden startled cry. She was someone else, a stranger, bursting with an aching, restless need so intense that she felt lost, frightened. For so long, she had trusted no one; for so long she had allowed no one to come close; never had she felt so vulnerable. She wanted Matthew so desperately. Too much. Love me, Matthew. Make it all right…

  His hand brushed back her hair, over and over. “Easy,” he murmured. “I’m going nowhere without you, love. Nowhere. You know better. You’re going with me. Trust me…”

  She barely heard the words, with his lips in her hair, but she could feel in his body language what he was trying to say. The tension had come from nowhere. A butterfly fleeing the sound of the wind; a wild creature that bolted from fear of being captured. And Matthew remained cleaved to her, his body part of her own. His warm weight absorbed her trembling; his hands moved slowly, with infinite tenderness; his lips made slow, patient, infinite promises. She could have sworn he understood her better than she understood herself. A long time ago, she had been deserted in a time of need she would never forget; in fierce, wild passion, she had forgotten that. Her soul hadn’t, not at the time when she was at her most vulnerable, when there could be no fulfillment without trust.

  “Matthew…”

  His touch, so tender, kindled fresh fire. His murmured words kindled more; the scent of him, the feel of his skin, the promise in his eyes… The complicated problems in her life suddenly seemed so simple. Every instinct told her he loved her. Every instinct responded to that promise. With touch, with love, with flame, she responded, and he gave back in kind. It was double what they had started out with. He had taken a wild, fiercely abandoned woman to a very special place, where no one could ever have heard such music, where no one could ever have been made so free.

  Sleepily, she curled next to him. Matthew pressed kiss after kiss on her temples, in her hair, both of them exhausted in the aftermath of loving. “So warm, Misha, so incredibly lovely.” His finger gently nudged up her chin so he could look at her again. “You glow, did you know that? All giving…”

  She shook her head, flushing faintly.

  He smiled, just as faintly, bemused at her shyness.

  “Can I tell you what a beautiful body you have?” he murmured teasingly.

  She shook her head again.

  “What an incredible lover you are? What I felt like when I was inside you? I never wanted to leave you, sweet. I never wanted it to end. It was a
s if I’d always known how it could be and I couldn’t stand to let go of you…”

  She snuggled her cheek in the crook of his shoulder, her arms still loosely around his neck. He kissed her again, rubbing his face against her cheek until she smiled, feeling ticklish, forgetting her shyness.

  “On the other hand…” He nudged up her chin again so he could look in her eyes. “I’m not too pleased at getting quite so carried away. There are four couches in this house and three beds, Misha. Would you like to tell me how we ended up on the carpet?”

  That roused her, her lips irrepressibly curling up at the corners. “You’re a disgrace as a sophisticated bachelor,” she said gravely. “What good are all the recessed lights and the elegant couches if you’re really a teenager with a libido that gets ahead of you? Honestly, Matthew. What happened to all that formidable control, the authoritative decision-maker…”

  “It’s all your fault,” he growled.

  “Yours.”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t think. It was your fault I couldn’t think.”

  “That’s your business, thinking. Brilliantly outthinking criminals.”

  “No, I outthink prosecuting attorneys.”

  He chuckled and leaned over her, placing a languid kiss exactly between her third and fourth rib. “What’s criminal, Misha, is what you do to me. How you took fire…”

  And she had, she thought fleetingly. But it had never been like that before. Never had she associated lovemaking with such intense passion, such abandoned fire, such desperate need, such perfect synchrony. She’d learned the rules with Richard a very long time ago, but had never played the game. At nineteen, she had known nothing about loving. She remembered suddenly how much she had lost then, and realized with frightening awareness how much more she could lose now.

  She was falling in love with Matthew, and that made her more vulnerable than she had ever been in her life.

  It was four in the morning; the fire had died; the air grew cool on her skin; and all she wanted to do was sleep. Instead, she admitted to herself that it was past time to go home.

  Chapter 6

  “Mom!”

  Lorna’s eyes flew open, focused vaguely and rejected the harsh winter sunlight beaming down on her bed; then she closed them again.

  “Mom! Aren’t you even going to thank me for letting you sleep in until eight o’clock?”

  Eight o’clock? When she hadn’t gotten to bed until five? Her eyes stayed closed against the virtuous appeal in her son’s voice. Johnny hesitated.

  “I tell you what. I’ll make us both breakfast-”

  Resolutely, she pushed the covers off her body, freezing-cold air replacing her warm cocoon and forcing wakefulness on her. The last time Johnny had volunteered to prepare breakfast Lorna had spent four hours cleaning up. “I’ll make it,” she said groggily. “You want pancakes or bacon and eggs?”

  “French toast.”

  Naturally. She stumbled over to the closet, shrugged on a robe and slippers, and joined her son in the kitchen. She put butter in the skillet to melt while she dipped the thick pieces of French bread in beaten egg, her head feeling distinctly like steel wool. Old steel wool. Johnny’s usual Saturday-morning exuberance was enough to make her wince. There was something about a weekend that always seemed to bring out the restlessness in a child. Cartoons were blaring from a television set in the other room; a fleet of matchbox cars stood in a line on the kitchen table; and for some unknown reason Johnny was tossing a football up in the air as if the snow weren’t three inches thick outside.

  “Freda says if you want me off your hands for the day, she’s willing to take the two of us over to the Science Institute. There’s a thing there about whales. Then maybe she’ll take us Christmas shopping. Can I go?”

  “Sure.” Lorna smiled at him as she set his plate on the table. “Only not like that.”

  “Like what?”

  She explained patiently. “Your socks don’t match, that sweatshirt has three holes in it and your jeans are patched. Why don’t you put on your gray pants.”

  He made a face as if she’d suggested he take castor oil. She sat down across from him and took a life-giving gulp of coffee. She was actually waking up, more the pity.

  Matthew was miles away, undoubtedly sleeping in the expensive condominium where he must have taken his share of women to sleep with him over the years. Women who didn’t have to wake him up in the middle of the night to take them home to their offspring. The evening of music and laughter and lovemaking seemed a year ago, a precious dream.

  Reality was a cramped orange-and-almond kitchen, a towhead son with a cowlick, a houseful of toys to clean up and a translating job to do this morning. Guilt was raging in her head like an out-of-control fever, alternating with shame, as she poured herself a second cup of coffee. How could she have forgotten Johnny? How could she have slept with Matthew, the first evening they’d spent together, acting just as loose as he’d thought she was when she was nineteen? Was that any way to build trust? Matthew had nothing to lose in an affair, while she had everything to lose. Her self-respect, for example. Johnny could be pulled into the middle…

  “What are you so quiet for?” Johnny demanded, with his mouth full of food. “Were you out late last night?”

  “I came in early, actually,” Lorna answered. Which was, of course, the truth. Early this morning.

  “Was he nice to you?”

  Lorna stood up and took her son’s empty plate to the counter. “Very nice. We heard some music,” she said flatly. Please leave it, sweetheart.

  Johnny studied her covertly as he swiped at his mouth with a napkin. She could visualize the slight frown on his forehead even if she wasn’t directly looking at him. Oversensitive as he was, she knew Johnny sensed that something differentiated Matthew from the other men she had dated. He just didn’t quite know what to do about it. “How come you let me call him Matthew?” he asked finally. “Everyone else, it’s supposed to be Mister this or Mister that.”

  She forced herself to look directly at her son. “His last name is Whitaker, Johnny. Didn’t I mention it?” His jaw dropped, with a host of questions all ready. She thought, I can’t handle this. “It isn’t as common a name as Smith, but it’s not uncommon either. It just happens we all share the last name.” If he asked her directly if they were related, she would probably cry. Though she didn’t feel ready to tell him the whole truth, she could not conceive of telling her son a blatant lie. See what you got into, she told her conscience.

  “You gonna see him again?” Johnny asked.

  “I may.”

  He sighed, scowling at her petulantly. Lorna usually had more laughter and conversation for him; she enjoyed her son. He got up from the kitchen chair to go back into his bedroom to change for his outing, but he hesitated, fidgeting in the doorway. “Did he like me, Mom?” he asked carefully. “I mean, from the time he had dinner with us.”

  Her heart wrenched, tying itself up in knots. “Did I get my morning hug, urchin?” she asked suddenly, and claimed it, wrapping her arms around her son and holding him tightly, until he squirmed. He grinned up at her.

  “You two don’t know each other well enough to like or dislike each other, Johnny,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing to worry about. You come first with me, got that? Nothing and no one is ever going to make a difference for us. Now go change your clothes before Freda gets here.”

  At one that afternoon Lorna was driving on a winding country road called Pontiac Trail. Sunlight glinted off the snowy landscape, creating a glare that made it difficult to read the numbers on the mailboxes. Directions weren’t Lorna’s strong point at the best of times, but on her third pass she located 2257 and turned into the narrow gravel drive.

  She stopped the car a hundred yards farther on, rather surprised at the stables and brand-new A-frame in front of her. From the crisp, cultured voice of the man she’d spoken to on the phone, she’d rather idly expected an ivy-covered cottage and an Engl
ish garden-covered with snow.

  Stepping from the car, she automatically checked to make sure her chignon was in place and her coat neat, then snatched up her small briefcase and headed toward the door. It opened just as she raised her hand to push the bell. “Mrs. Whitaker? I was beginning to worry about you.”

  “Make it Lorna, please, and I’m terribly sorry I’m late. It’s not that I didn’t start out in plenty of time-”

  “It doesn’t matter. Let me get you a cup of coffee. I’d like to talk to you for a minute before you meet my mother.”

  “Fine.”

  He took her coat, escorted her to a pine-paneled contemporary living room and brought coffee a moment later. Lorna studied the man absently while he poured her a cup of the dark brew. His name was Stan Valicheck. He looked to be in his early forties, a spare, neat man, wearing loose corduroy pants in the European style and a navy blue crewneck sweater. He had kind eyes, something Lorna always noticed first in a person, and their brown color almost exactly matched the shade of his hair.

  “My mother used to know your father-that’s why I looked you up, Lorna. I think I told you that on the phone…”

  Lorna nodded, aware she was being thoroughly assessed. He seemed to approve of her simple cranberry wool slacks and matching sweater; she could tell that he liked the neat chignon. She guessed he was single from the speculation in his eyes, but there was nothing offensive about his perusal. He moved easily, as if he’d never had a trace of nerves in his life.

  He sat down across from her. “For three years, my mother’s been working on this book, about her childhood in Russia. I just let her be-it gave her something to do. She’s been lonely in this country, what with the language barrier.”