“Too new, too unfamiliar. I’ve only lived in it for a couple of months. The place isn’t broken in yet. I’m counting on you to help me.”
“Does that mean what I think it does?” she asked as they entered a room dominated by a massive canopy bed created from bleached logs.
“What do you think it means?” He smiled down at her.
“That no other woman has…been in this bed, in this room with you.”
“That’s what it means,” he said softly, taking off her vest and beginning on the buttons of her blouse. “Maybe that’s one reason this house doesn’t have a soul yet. Maybe you can help give it one.”
“You’re putting so much importance on everything, and I don’t know if—”
“Shh. Yes, you do.” He took away her blouse and gathered her into his arms. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have looked so happy when you found out that I’ve never had another woman in this room. You know what we’re about to share is special, and you don’t want thoughts of me with someone else spoiling the way you feel tonight.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she murmured, gazing into his dark eyes.
“And let me tell you the way I feel about tonight,” he said, combing his fingers through her hair. “Strange as this sounds, I feel like a bridegroom.”
Joy flowed through her, joy she had no business feeling. “Maybe it’s all that talk about Charlie and Gladys.”
“No. Charlie and Gladys have nothing to do with the way my heart’s jumping around right now. Or the way my hand trembles when I touch you, or the light-headedness when I imagine lying beside you in that bed, or the anticipation of becoming part of you, at last.” He caressed her nape with gentle fingers. “You know what some people would say about all that?”
She wanted, yet feared his next statement. “That you’re coming down with something?” she joked in an attempt to forestall it.
He gazed at her silently for a moment. “All right,” he said, swinging her up in his arms and carrying her to the massive bed. “We’ll try this conversation again in a little while. I can see that you need more convincing.”
“My shoes,” she protested as he dropped her, running shoes and all, on the gray-and-blue patterned spread.
“I’ll bet you know how to take off your shoes. That is, if you want to take them off.” He set about undressing himself all the while watching her as she lay, bemused and uncertain, in the middle of his big bed. “Then again, maybe you want to try this with your shoes on. If you want to talk about new and different, that would be a first for me. Personally, if you want my advice, I’d take off the shoes, and the jeans, and the underwear. Less trouble that way, less danger of tearing something in the throes of passion.”
She gazed at him in fascination as he stripped down to his briefs and reached for the waistband to pull those off, too. She knew from the bulge against the white cotton that he was fully aroused, and yet he talked to her as calmly as if he didn’t much care whether she took her clothes off or not.
“This is my choice,” he said, pulling off the briefs. “What’s yours?”
He was so finely made that her throat went dry just from looking at him. The ache within her grew fierce. Slowly she nudged her shoes off and kicked them to the floor.
“That’s a start,” he said, approaching the bed. “What about the rest?”
She noticed the tremor that passed over him as she unfastened her jeans and pushed them over her hips. When she shoved them to the bottom of the bed, she heard him draw in his breath. Arching her back, she unhooked her bra, and soon that joined the crumpled jeans. Her panties were last, and she took her time. The hunger in his eyes was worth every drawn-out second.
At last she was as naked as he. “That’s my choice,” she said, and waited.
He swallowed. “You’re more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
She knew from his eyes that this wasn’t a line; he meant every word. He was truly bewitched by her. The astonishing part was her willingness to believe that she was, for him, more beautiful than he could have imagined. His adoration did amazing things for her, awakened longings she’d never known before. “Now come to me,” she said, hearing a new and sensuous note of command in her voice.
“With pleasure.” He lay beside her, and it was she who reached out first, to explore and conquer, to seduce, although seduction was only a game, not a necessity. He closed his eyes as she ran nimble fingers over his chest, his thighs. When kisses followed, he warned her to go easy.
“But I’m having such a good time,” she whispered. As she built his desire, hers grew. When she reached the part of him so perfectly designed to give her satisfaction, an uncontrollable ache claimed her. She wanted, wanted more than she ever remembered wanting. She stroked him, and he gasped and stilled her hand. Loving her power, she placed a kiss there as he moaned her name.
He buried his fingers in her hair. “You have to stop,” he said, struggling with each breath and pulling her gently away. “Let me get—” He rolled to the side of the bed and opened the drawer of the nightstand.
“Now,” he said, a moment later, moving between her thighs. “Now, Jill Amory, the woman who thinks she doesn’t know her own mind. Let’s find out if this makes any difference.”
Her vision blurred as she gazed up at him and waited with pounding heart. He came to her in one swift movement, a bolt sliding home. She knew then. She’d always known, really, from the first glimpse of him. She’d known how he’d feel, locked within her, how he would penetrate her heart as surely as he penetrated her body.
“Yes,” he murmured, kissing her, withdrawing just enough to push forward again and remind her how well they fitted. “And now for the rest.” He grasped her hips as if to teach her the rhythm, but quickly the pupil became the teacher and she set the pace. Leader became follower as he moved faster in time with her urgent whispers.
So easy, she thought, so easy when it’s right. She felt spinning colors within her, sensations that became white-hot, glowing like a ball of molten glass on a blower’s pipe. She asked and he gave, gave until the whirling glass bloomed, and finally, shattered in a torrent of happy tears. Her sobs blended with his cry of release; her pliant body absorbed his shudders.
Later, he stroked her hair and dried her tears with a caressing thumb. “I think we’re creating the soul of this house,” he murmured.
“I think so, too.” Her answer vibrated with emotion. “Spence, I’m not a cry-baby. Really I’m not.”
“Does that mean what I think it means?” he asked with a smile.
“What do you think it means?”
“That Aaron doesn’t make you cry.”
“That’s right. He doesn’t. Didn’t,” she corrected. “And in case you didn’t know, that’s over.”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“So I have to finish this trip on schedule, if for no other reason than to go back and tell Aaron the truth.”
He smoothed her cheek and gazed into her eyes. “What is the truth?”
“That I’m not in love with him.”
“That’s not enough truth. He’ll imagine that you still might be, given time.”
“All the time in the world wouldn’t make a difference.”
“Why not, Jill?” he probed.
“Because he’s never made me feel like this.” She paused. “I have to tell him about you, don’t I?”
“If you want him to understand, yes, you do.”
“I guess Aaron was the detour.”
He sighed contentedly. “I’m glad you found the right road,” he said, and kissed her until, in a whirlwind of renewed passion, she forgot all about Aaron.
JILL SLEPT SOUNDLY the next morning. Spence shaved, made coffee and poured orange juice without her realizing he was out of bed. He interpreted her deep slumber as a sign that she felt secure here with him. Today he’d convince her to spend the next ten days here, instead of in her van at the campground. If he had only ten days, he’d make the most of them.
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Picking up the juice glasses, he carried them into the bedroom. He was about to set one on the nightstand beside her when she opened her eyes.
She squirmed to a sitting position, pulling the sheet over her breasts. “Hi,” she said, hastily combing her tangled hair with her fingers as he sat on the bed and put his glass beside hers. Her green eyes, soft with sleep, mesmerized him, and every time she moved he caught the tantalizing scent of a woman well loved. His body’s response was swift.
“Goodness, you’re fresh as a daisy, shaved and everything,” she said, tucking the sheet primly around her. He smiled at her modesty, considering the direction of his thoughts. “I must be a wreck,” she chattered. “I didn’t even hear you get up. I was out like a light. Usually I’m up with the dawn. Usually—”
“A wreck?” he interrupted, unable to keep his hands off her. He drew the sheet from her breasts. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wasn’t kidding,” she said, reaching for another part of the sheet and trying without success to cover herself. “I need to take a shower, and brush my hair, and—”
“You need to be kissed again,” he said, cupping her breast and nibbling her bottom lip. She wasn’t used to waking up with a man, he concluded, or else she was used to waking up with the wrong man, some prude who thought sex should be sanitized.
“No, really,” she said, pushing gently at his chest. “Won’t this be more fun if I’m all clean, and my makeup isn’t smudged?”
“You’ve been watching too many television commercials,” he murmured, nuzzling the hollow of her throat. Damn, but she smelled good, and she tasted even better—salty and musky and all woman.
“I can’t possibly be very glamorous to you in broad daylight, Spence. Let me—”
“You don’t know, do you?” he said, lifting his head to gaze into her green eyes. “There’s not a beauty salon in the world that can duplicate the pure sex appeal you have at this minute.” He dug his fingers into her hair. “This is tangled because I tangled it, while we were rolling around together on this bed last night.” His tone grew hoarse. “I love to look at it, to see you like this, wild and free, with all the evidence of what we’ve shared—to touch, to smell, to taste.”
She stared at him in disbelief.
“You think I’m making that up?” He untied his bathrobe and took her hand. “That’s what you’ve done to me,” he said, holding her hand against his rigid flesh. “And I’m not letting you get all squeaky clean and spoil everything. I want you, Jill, every inch of you, just as you are.”
She trembled and closed her fingers around him. “I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.” Gently he removed her hand and took off his bathrobe.
“You’re so different from…”
He smiled at her and eased her back on the sheets. “Good,” he whispered.
He sensed her shyness and took his time, starting with the creamy skin of her throat and shoulders, the inside of her elbows, her wrists. He sucked on each finger and heard the uneven note in her breathing. She was getting there. By the time he reached her nipples they were wine-dark and waiting, rosebuds on snow. He took each one until he was dizzy with the pleasure and her skin was slick with her own moisture.
He heard her faint whimper of desire and chanced the next step, through the soft valley of her rib cage, over her flat belly. He prayed he’d done his work well enough as he kissed the damp curls above his destination. When she tensed, he feathered the inside of her thighs with his tongue and mouth while she moved restlessly beneath him. Ah, so sweet, he thought. If she only knew.
Impatience overcame him and he grasped her hips. She moaned, knowing what he was about, but he didn’t stop, couldn’t stop, once he’d tasted her. And then came her moment of surrender, when she opened to him with an abandon that dazzled him. Now he knew her, to the depths of her being. She’d trusted him with her darkest secrets, and he would never forsake her. Never.
He caressed her as long as the pounding need in his groin allowed, but at last he kissed his way back to her mouth. Made crazy by the scent and taste of passion, he fumbled in the nightstand drawer. The simple process took forever, but at last he was free to lose himself in her. She needed very little to slip over the top, he only a fraction more. The impact was so powerful that it nearly left him unconscious.
He slumped against her, and words of commitment tumbled out of him in breathless confusion. He didn’t care. She might as well hear what she’d be a fool not to know. No matter whether she stayed or left, no matter whether the St. Valentine’s myth was true or not, one thing was sure. He loved her.
10
JILL DECIDED not to acknowledge the frenzied words of love Spence whispered to her that morning. Perhaps he could admit his feelings, plan for a future, but she couldn’t, not yet.
They spent the day touring the city and planning where the buses would stop. No snow was predicted for several days, so they agreed on an outdoor buffet served in Garden of the Gods Park. Walking hand in hand through the park, admiring red rock formations laced with snow, they congratulated themselves on the novelty of their plan.
By evening Spence had convinced Jill to cancel her reservation at the campsite and spend the next ten days with him. She didn’t need much convincing. The prospect of ten more nights in the roomy canopy bed making love to Spence beat the heck out of sleeping alone in her cramped little fold-down bed in the van.
On Monday she rode to the mall with Spence. He’d asked her to spend the day personally contacting all the tenants who hadn’t yet responded to the bus tour invitation. Jill found it hard to believe, but only a few days into Tippy’s new regimen the mall had changed from the happy place she’d first experienced.
The trolley ran nearly empty and its bell seemed more demanding than cheerful. With no melodrama sending delighted audiences back into the mall every two hours, the smile level of shoppers was definitely down in Jill’s opinion. Shop clerks weren’t smiling much, either. Tippy was slowly killing something really lovely.
In the middle of Jill’s collection of acceptances and a few refusals for the bus tour, the Senior Striders rounded a bend and bore down on her. She waved as she recognized Robert and Gladys pumping in the lead. George wasn’t far behind, and there was Bernie using his walking stick as if he were polling himself forward on a raft. Charlie, as usual, brought up the rear.
Jill decided to join Charlie for a turn around the mall. She had a bone to pick with him about his wedding plans. Fortunately Gladys was far enough ahead she wouldn’t be able to hear what they discussed.
“Why, hello, my dear,” Charlie said breathlessly as she fell in beside him. “Decided to take a bit of exercise, did you?”
“I decided to ask you what this wedding date is all about, Charlie.” She hoisted her shoulder purse over her head so her arms were free to swing as she matched his pace. “It couldn’t have anything to do with keeping me here until February fourteenth, now could it?”
He gazed at her in pink-faced innocence. “Only if you agree to serve as Gladys’s maid of honor.”
“You know I’d feel terrible turning down a request like that.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“Charlie,” she said, lowering her voice, “I would hate to think that you asked Gladys to marry you just because—”
“Absolutely not!” Indignation propelled Charlie forward and Jill had to step up her pace to keep even with him. “I would never toy with a woman’s affections in that manner. The very idea.”
“Charlie, I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said, finding herself short of breath, too. These Senior Striders were definitely in shape. “But your decision seemed so convenient.”
He slowed down and beamed at her. “Yes, wasn’t it?” he said, puffing out the words. “When I thought of asking Gladys, I realized that you would have to stay for the wedding. The entire plan is absolutely perfect, unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I’
m overstepping my bounds with this marriage.”
“I don’t understand.” Jill’s breathing grew more labored as they whizzed down the upper level of the mall. Few electric carts shared the space with them today. People either wouldn’t or couldn’t make the necessary purchases in order to use them. “Why would this marriage be overstepping anything?”
“Well, it was simply never considered in my case.” Charlie exhaled through his mouth and continued with his explanation. “It would be a first. I’m not certain the world is ready to deal with a Mrs. Charlie Hartman. Gladys can adapt, I believe, and she’s already told me she’s willing to travel, but then again… There’s a precedent, of course, with Mrs. Claus.”
“Charlie, you’re making no sense,” Jill said, panting. “Sometimes I worry about your mental stability when you talk like this. Who is Mrs. Claus?”
“The wife of an associate,” Charlie said, taking out his handkerchief and mopping his brow as they churned along.
“Are you part of some secret organization?” Jill asked, alarmed by his terminology. “Charlie, what haven’t you told us?”
He glanced at her. “Do I have your word that you’ll remain in Colorado Springs long enough to take part in the marriage ceremony?”
“Yes.”
“Then I suppose you can be told.”
“Told what?”
“Charlie Hartman is only a…convenient alias.”
Jill slammed to a stop. “Alias?”
“Yes.” Charlie kept going. “Actually, my official title is…St. Valentine.”
“What?” she screeched.
Several heads swiveled in the pack of Senior Striders, but the group kept marching forward.
“Charlie Hartman, you come back here and explain yourself!” Jill demanded.
Without breaking his rhythm, Charlie made a graceful U-turn and propelled himself back to her. “Do we have a problem?” he inquired, breathing hard.
“Not we, Charlie, you. Here you are about to be married, and you’re saying things that will land you in a padded cell long before the ceremony, believe me.”
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