She looked down, studying her thumbnail. “And it’s true that you weren’t …”
“Caroline.” Her head came up at his soft beckoning. “Do you want to know if I was with her at the same time I was seeing you?” Her eyes brimmed with emotion as she stared back at him. “No,” he said with soft emphasis. “I wasn’t with anyone else that summer.”
“Did you really tell Ro … your father … that you wanted to marry me?”
“Yes. I told him I’d met the girl I wanted to marry.”
Their eyes locked and held and it was a long while before her head fell forward and she turned away. “The baby, Alyssa?”
The corners of Rink’s lips lifted in a brief smile before his face became sad. “She was a great little girl.”
At his mellow tone, Caroline faced him again. “You loved her,” she said with no inquiring inflection.
Unashamed he looked up. “Yeah,” he said, laughing softly. “Crazy, isn’t it? But once she was born, I wanted to keep her.”
Caroline’s heart wrenched with love for him. She sat down beside him on the couch. “I’m not prying, Rink. But if you want to talk about it, I’ll listen.”
His eyes roamed her face. “You always were good at listening. Tell me, did you sit at my father’s feet and listen as he poured his heart out to you?”
She uttered a strangled cry as she leaped to her feet. He caught her wrist and checked her retreat. “I’m sorry. Sit down.” When she strained to pull her arm free, he gave it a swift, light jerk that brought her back down on the sofa. “I said I was sorry. That was uncalled-for, but habits are hard to break. If you want to know about my ill-fated marriage, I’ll tell you. You know about all the other garbage in my life, you’d just as well know about that, too.”
“I said I wasn’t prying.”
“And I believe you,” he snapped. “Okay?” When she bobbed her head once in terse agreement, he released her hand. “Marilee didn’t love me any more than I did her. Roscoe was right about that. She only claimed the baby was mine to keep her family from disowning her. Anyway, when we left here, which she hadn’t bargained for, we went to Atlanta. I had to find work because I wouldn’t take a cent from my father. The marriage deteriorated, but I loved Alyssa. As soon as she was born her real father showed up and he and Marilee picked up where they had left off.”
“You didn’t mind?”
“Hell no. I couldn’t wait to get her off my hands. But I worried about the baby. Marilee wasn’t the most conscientious of mothers. When she filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty, I didn’t contest it, but she wasn’t done yet. She demanded an outlandish settlement. At one point I was actually supporting her and her lousy boyfriend. To make a long story short, I had to work day and night for years to buy her out of my life. I hated losing Alyssa, but Marilee insisted on having custody of her.”
“Did Alyssa ever know that you weren’t her father?” Caroline couldn’t bear the thought of the little girl pining away for a father who never saw her.
“Oh, yes,” he said with disgust. “Alyssa was about three when the divorce became final. She was crying, clinging to me while Marilee pulled her out of my arms. They were coming back to Winstonville and I was staying in Atlanta. Alyssa was calling me Daddy, crying that she wanted Daddy. Marilee told her that if she wanted her daddy she’d have to go to Winstonville to find him because I wasn’t her daddy.”
“Oh, Rink,” she murmured, shivering at the thought of such a terrible scene.
“She’s eleven now and I hear she’s as wild as a March hare, the scourge of Winstonville Junior High.” He shook his head sadly. “It’s a shame, because she was such a sweet little girl. As you know, she’s had a succession of ‘stepfathers.’ I doubt if she even remembers me.”
After a long silence Caroline said, “Had Air Dixie started by this time?”
“Not quite. I had gotten my pilot’s license my first semester at college. By the time I moved to Atlanta I had gotten in enough flying time to hire on as a charter pilot I kept logging hours, upgrading my classification to fly larger airplanes. I met my partner and we started thinking about a charter service of our own. When one went bankrupt and was selling cheap, we managed to scrape enough together to make a down payment on it. We began doing so much business we paid off our loan years ahead of time and couldn’t keep up with our demand. We bought a larger plane, then another, then another.”
“And it went from there.”
“Yes.”
The lamplight formed a halo around them. Her dark hair fell to her shoulders and blended with the black dress she wore. Only her face and throat shone creamy and pale in the golden light. Her eyes were shadowed but luminous as they gazed back into his.
“Caroline?” he asked softly.
Her heart began to thrum behind her breasts. It was disgraceful to feel the way she did on the day of her husband’s funeral, but she knew that if Rink made one overt move, she would flow toward him and there would be nothing she could do to stop herself. She still loved him, had never stopped. But she no longer worshiped him as an adolescent does an idol. She loved him as a woman loves a man. Despite his temper, his intolerance of human weakness, his fury over her relationship with Roscoe, she loved him.
“Yes, Rink?”
“Did you ever think of me when you were making love with my father?”
He couldn’t have hurt her more if he had plunged a dagger into her heart. She cried out in agony and bolted off the sofa. “You bastard! Don’t ever say anything like that to me again.”
He came off the couch to stand facing her. His proud chin jutted forward. “I want to know. Didn’t it prick your conscience just a little to marry my father when we had come so close to being lovers ourselves?”
“I was willing to be your lover, remember. You weren’t willing to be mine. You weren’t willing to take the risk.”
“That’s right I wouldn’t risk hurting you.”
“I wanted you to hurt me.” She spoke with so much emotion it sounded like a sob.
He gnashed his teeth and his voice lowered to a rumble. “I wanted to hurt you that way, yes. I wanted to be the first, to give you that instant of pain that would make you mine forever.” He came a step closer, seething with pent-up emotions. “But I had some misplaced sense of nobility. More the fool, I wanted you to be set apart from the other girls I’d been with.”
“And there were many, weren’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Before and since.”
“Yes.”
“Then how can you blame me for marrying Roscoe?”
“Because you said you loved me! ”
“Did you love all those other women, Rink? Did you?” He turned away abruptly but not before she saw the guilt on his face. “You weren’t here, Rink. You were married to someone else. For all I knew I had only been a casual plaything for you to while away those lazy summer hours with. You could have written, called, anything. I doubted that you even remembered me except perhaps because I was so unsophisticated compared to the women you were used to.”
“You know why I couldn’t contact you. I didn’t want to involve you in that mess with Marilee. By the time it was over you were in college and I was informed that you were married. I gave up the hope of ever seeing you again. Then the next thing I know you’re sharing my father’s bed!”
She covered her face with her hands. She could feel his resentment coming toward her in incessant waves. Her hands fell from her face and she bravely met his angry eyes. “We can’t go on this way, Rink,” she said softly. “We’re destroying each other.”
His shoulders sagged and again his hair was punished by raking fingers. “I know. I’ll be leaving in the morning.”
Her heart dropped to her feet like a lead weight. She hadn’t intended to run him off, she had merely wanted to make peace between them. “You don’t have to leave. I will. This is your house. My residence was temporary. I knew that after Roscoe’s death I wouldn’t b
elong here.”
“If you left and I stayed, how would that look to everybody? It would look like I had run off my daddy’s widow. No. I’ll return to Atlanta tomorrow.”
“But the reading of the will and the cotton gin …”She groped for a plausible reason for him to stay. It was hopeless between them, but she couldn’t stand for him to leave her again. Not yet. Later, but not now.
“I’ll come back for the reading of the will. We’ll decide then on the living arrangements. I’ll feel better knowing you’re here with Laura Jane. As for the gin”— he smiled sardonically—“carry on as you did under Roscoe’s supervision.”
The bleak look on her face vexed him. He took the steps necessary to bring them together. He wrapped his arms around her and hauled her against him. Her head fell back as he bent low over her face.
“Don’t look at me like that. Do you think I want to leave? My home? My house? Laura Jane and Haney?” His voice dropped significantly. “You?” He pulled her closer and moaned as her body molded to his. “Damn you. Damn you, Caroline.”
His mouth came down hard and demanding on hers, but she was waiting for it. Her lips opened and invited him inside. His tongue burrowed into the hot sweetness of her mouth. He kissed her long and deeply, his head tilting first to one side then another to taste all of her. His hands closed about her face as his mouth fused intimately with hers.
Then he broke it off with a suddenness that made her dizzy. His voice was gruff, torn from a throat constricted with the pain of wanting. “Damn you for belonging to him first.”
A heartbeat later she was alone.
“Laura Jane?” Steve knelt down in the hay and touched her shoulder. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hmmm?” She stirred in hear sleep and rolled from her side onto her back. “Steve?” she murmured. Her eyes blinked lazily, then came slumberously awake. “Is it morning?” she asked softly, stretching languidly, arching her back and lifting her breasts toward him.
“Barely morning,” he said, tearing his eyes away from her chest “What are you doing in here?”
She sat up and shook hay from her hair. Faint sunlight shone into the stable onto her bare shoulders. The air was still night-cool, but the hay on which she had slept was warm and pungent. Horses in the various stalls were nickering, hungry for their morning ration of oats. Dust motes floated in the air, catching the sun’s first rays.
Laura Jane’s sleepy eyes focused on Steve. She smiled and touched his cheek, which was pink and shiny after his recent shave. “Last night Caroline and Rink argued. I could hear them shouting all the way in my room. Haney was already asleep so I couldn’t go to her. I had to get out of the house. Why are Caroline and Rink always so angry with each other? I don’t understand it, Steve.”
She leaned forward, laying her head on his chest and wrapping her arms around his waist. “Anyway, I came out here. The door to your apartment was closed and all the lights were out I knew you were already asleep, too, and didn’t want to bother you. I curled up here in the empty stall and went to sleep. I felt better just being close to you.”
She snuggled closer to him and his insides were pitched into chaos. He had cursed Rink Lancaster and his threats after the scene in the yard. Did Lancaster actually think he meant any harm to come to Laura Jane? Couldn’t that bullheaded brother of hers see that he loved this woman/child, that to him she embodied everything that was pure and good in a world he had thought rancid with hate and killing and blood and war?
He had sworn last night never to be alone with her again, never to touch her. Because to be caught at it would mean that he would have to leave for good. That he couldn’t have borne.
Now, however, he knew that he would not be able to heed Lancaster’s warnings. The nearness of Laura Jane’s soft body was blotting them from his mind. Without his planning it or weighing the consequences of such a move, his arms closed tightly about her.
“I’m sure they were both upset by your father’s funeral. They’ll iron out their differences. It’s natural for a household to undergo some stress when someone in it dies.”
I love them both so much. I want them to be friends.”
He laid his cheek against her hair. His large, scarred hands smoothed her back. She had on a soft cotton nightgown with a daintily smocked bodice across her breasts. Thin straps tied it onto her shoulders. The light robe she had covered herself with had been cast aside when she sat up. Her skin was warm and soft.
“When things settle down, they’ll be friends. They won’t argue anymore. I promise.”
She lifted her head from his chest to look at him. Her brown eyes were trusting and loving. “You’re so good, Steve. Why can’t everybody be as good as you are?”
“I wasn’t good,” he said thoughtfully, trailing a finger down her cheek. “Not until I met you. Whatever goodness I have, you gave to me.”
“I love you, Steve.”
His eyes closed with internal anguish and he drew her close, pressing her head under his throat “Don’t say that, Laura Jane.”
“I want to. Because I do love you. I think if you love somebody you should tell them, don’t you?”
“I suppose so, yes,” he whispered. The dike behind which his emotions were damned was cracking up. The pressure was getting to be too much. He would have to find an outlet for them and when he did, God help him.
She pulled back and stared at him compellingly. Lashes as long and luxurious as a feather brush surrounded the eyes that had cured a man as hard and cynical as he of all callousness. She stated back at him expectantly and the choice was taken from him. He had to speak the words aloud.
“I love you, too, Laura Jane.”
Smiling, she launched herself at him, throwing her childishly thin arms around his neck and hugging him hard. “Oh, Steve. I love you. I love you.” She covered his face with kisses as soft and fleeting as the beat of butterflies’ wings. “I love you.” She came to his mouth and hesitated, remembering Caroline’s words of caution.
He inhaled her breath, felt the trembling excitement in her body so close to his. He was like a drowning man going down for the third and final time. What the hell? he asked himself. Lancaster couldn’t do anything to him that hadn’t already been done. When one has faced death a hundred times, one comes to mock it, dare it.
And besides all that, he loved this woman.
His mouth met hers gently and held. The tiny tremors that shimmied from her breasts up to her throat matched the flutterings in his own body. The way he felt about her was like nothing in his life before. He was well acquainted with women, but not this kind of woman, not one who was loving and trusting, innocent and eager, sincere and unselfish.
Quite naturally her lips parted beneath his and he groaned. His tongue tentatively ventured between her lips, tested, tasted. She pressed her mouth more firmly against his and edged closer until he felt her breasts and their small pointed nipples against his chest. His embrace became stronger as his tongue deflowered her mouth.
They swirled together in an orgy of discovery. It was as significant a learning experience for Steve as it was for Laura Jane. Together they fell back onto the hay. He laid his good leg over her thighs and her slender legs twined around it.
“Laura Jane.” He sighed into her neck. Valiantly he tried to get a grip on his rioting sexual impulses, but her breast was beneath his hand and it was firm and ripe with passion. The peak responded with such enthusiasm that he couldn’t keep from loving it with his fingertips.
“Steve, Steve,” she panted. “Oh, Steve, make love with me, Steve.”
His head jerked up and he looked down into her shining face. “I can’t” he said softly. “Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yes.” Her fingers moved adoringly over the blunt features of his face. “I know about what men and women do together. I want us to do it.”
“We can’t.”
She wet her lips and her eyes filled with uncertainty. “You don’t love me?”
“I do. That’s why I can’t. I couldn’t do that with you unless you were my wife.”
“Oh.” She was vastly disappointed. Her eyes went to his mouth. Her fingers touched it “Do we have to stop kissing?”
Smiling, he bent down and brushed his mouth against hers. “Not yet,” he whispered. “Not yet.”
“Good morning.” Caroline entered the kitchen and headed straight for the coffee maker. She poured herself a generous cupful. As she carried it to the table, she avoided looking directly at Rink, who was already there.
“I’m calling the doctor this morning,” Haney said, stirring the scrambled eggs in the skillet
“Doctor? Why?”
“You look terrible, that’s why,” the housekeeper said without compunction. “I know you didn’t sleep well. Look at those circles under your eyes. Can’t you see them, Rink? You need a sleeping pill or tranquilizer or something.”
“No I don’t,” Caroline said, sitting down across from Rink. Even though he had been included in the conversation, she didn’t look at him and he remained silent.
“Don’t be so brave,” Haney said chastisingly. “No one is handing out prizes for the most courageous widow of the year. No one would blame you if you broke down and got all mat grief out of your system. It’s natural to grieve when you lose your husband.”
At that point Caroline hazarded a glance at Rink. He was staring at her over the top of his coffee mug. She was the first to look away. “I don’t need a doctor.”
Haney sighed, not bothering to hide her exasperation. “Well, eat a good breakfast, at least.” She piled the eggs onto a plate and set it in front of Caroline. “Go on and start. I’ll go up and wake Laura Jane later. I thought it best to let her sleep.”
“She’s not sleeping,” Caroline said, stirring cream into her coffee. “I stopped by her room before I came down.” She had wanted the girl to accompany her downstairs, to act as a shield against Rink’s mood, whatever it might be this morning. “She wasn’t there.”
Bitter Sweet Rain Page 13