Authors: Jennifer Greene
“So this is your fire tower,” she breathed at the last step.
“Honey, stop clutching the ladder like a lifeline,” he said mildly. “Just step up onto the platform. Honestly, you’ll be safe.”
“It doesn’t have sides,” she observed.
“There are at least eight square feet of solid floor up there, and I’ll be your sides.” His palm, most possessively, patted her rear end encouragingly.
She crawled up onto the platform, pride never having been her strong point. The view, truthfully, was spectacular. Misted mountains climbed to the north and west, with a sterling-silver ball of a moon just rising over them. Beyond the woods, rolling wheat fields sprawled to the south and east, like a blanket stretched out in soft velvet folds. The stars were out, even though it wasn’t pitch-dark yet, and they were so close she felt she could touch them. As it happened, all she wanted to do was grab Mitch’s jacket.
Her fingers clutched, and she heard his soft chuckle. “We can go right back down, you little liar. If I’d had any idea you were this scared of heights—”
“I’m
not,
” she insisted, and added demurely, “Where exactly is that wine we were carrying? I could use some Dutch courage.”
“Coming. I zipped the bottle up inside my jacket.” Without releasing his firm grip on her wrist, Mitch sat in the center of the wooden floor, tugging Kay into the space between his thighs. She didn’t argue. With both arms around her, he managed to wrestle the wine from the bag and to get the cork out with a pocketknife corkscrew.
“You’re a regular Boy Scout,” she remarked.
“You can stop shaking anytime. There is no possible way I would let you fall.”
Ignorant man. She
was
terrified of falling, but for the moment she was tingling simply from the feel of his thighs tucked around hers. His body was big, powerfully constructed and unbelievably warm. That heat was in direct contrast to the coolness of his wind-chilled cheek as he leaned forward to pour the Beaujolais into two plastic cups.
Kay relaxed, feeling tucked up and enfolded like a gift-wrapped present. His touch was casual, meant to warm and reassure, not to turn her on. It was delightful to meet a man who didn’t spend all his time negotiating his way into bed. He actually showed old-fashioned symptoms of feeling pleasure just at being with her, no strings attached.
Relaxed or not, Kay felt as though all the blood had drained from her head and settled lower…somewhere near where his thighs touched hers. Wanton fantasies were singing in her bloodstream, and the lyrics were “You’d be so nice to come home to…” She accepted a cup of wine with laudable calm. “You’ve been here before?” she questioned.
“As a kid. It obviously hasn’t been used in ages, but fifteen years ago the tower was always manned during dry summers. In fall and winter, it was deserted, making a terrific place to go just to…think.”
“Nonsense.” She took a sip of wine, loving the feel of the warm liquid soothing her throat.
“Pardon?”
“Don’t give me that ‘think’ stuff. You were a teenager when you came here. So you had a girl with you. And
that’s
why you came here. For the privacy.”
There was silence behind her, and then his palm brushed her hair to one side. Very straight, very white teeth took an unexpected but gentle nip out of the nape of her neck. “Nancy White,” he murmured.
“Ah-ha!” Kay said triumphantly.
“Her father was a minister. Nancy was so darned willing…and her father was so darned mean,” Mitch said morosely. “Darned near got me kicked out of school.”
“How old did you say you were?”
“Fifteen.”
“And you never got past first base?”
“Second,” he corrected immediately.
Kay chuckled.
“I didn’t always come here with a girl,” he insisted. His voice turned quiet, pensive. “It was one of the few private places I knew.”
“And beautiful,” she said softly. With her head resting in the curve of his shoulder, she was perfectly content. “I love it, Mitch. This is a thousand times better than going out for a drink and dinner.”
“Pardon?”
“Come on, Mitch. We’re both of an age. Just being with someone is the best way to get acquainted. The traditional date is a terrible way to get to know someone. It’s always the same old thing. You dress up and act stiff and talk about what school you went to and whether you like shellfish.”
Mitch choked on a swallow of wine.
Kay grinned. “Don’t you agree with me? The man’s always had it the hardest. Getting up the courage to ask for a date, then laying out the cash for a meal and wine, and finally having to worry about timing the first kiss. Unless you’ve been happily attached for a long time, you have to be sick of that routine. Admit it.”
She tilted her head back and caught a peculiar expression on Mitch’s face. “It can get boring,” he agreed.
“And how can a fire tower ever be boring?” she added contentedly.
“Particularly when the lady plans to stay up here for the next four years rather than risk the climb down.”
“Let’s not get sarcastic.”
He chuckled, and Kay loved the sound. Mitch sent her protective messages, whether he knew it or not. Never mind that at times he could suddenly turn reserved, and never mind that his lightest touch sent exciting ideas tumbling through her head. He sent out definite vibrations that told her just being with her was precious to him, and not that his sole interest was in bedding her.
“Do you have to be back at a certain time?” he asked.
“Not till nine-thirty. Poker,” she murmured irritably.
“Poker,” he echoed.
“The guys come over to play poker most Friday nights. Usually, they like five at the table, particularly when one of the group remembers to buy napkins and potato chips. As in the sole feminine participant. Me.”
“You like the game.”
“Generally, I beat the pants off them,” she admitted.
“And just who are…the guys?”
He folded his arms around her ribs and she snuggled back, setting down her wine, aware of his slight stiffening but assuming it was due to his change of position.
“Stix is one. He’s sort of a big brother—my first date way back when, but that never went far. He’s called Stix because he’s tall and skinny.”
“I guessed that.”
“John works for the health department.”
“You also dated him.”
She shrugged. “For a few months. Actually, Barker…”
Mitch didn’t want to know. She was comfortable with men; he already knew that. She was comfortable talking about sex; he already knew that, too. And undoubtedly she ended her affairs amicably, because she would have started them with honesty and terminated them that way as well. That was fine. Commendable.
But he had a sudden image of her, flushed with laughter, her hair disheveled and her lips parted, surrounded by a houseful of men who’d known her far too well…
“Hey,” she murmured.
He had tucked his long arm under her knees and swung her around into his lap. “You know, I like to play poker,” he said quietly. “In fact, as a kid, I could bluff as well as a Las Vegas hustler.”
She stiffened at the first pressure of his lips on hers, not in rejection but in surprise. She hadn’t minded hearing about his Nancy White; it was years before. And she hadn’t hesitated to mention her poker game; the men were friends, not ex-lovers. Actually, she’d tried to tell him subtly that it wasn’t a date that took up her Friday nights.
All the same, jealousy was in that first pressure of his mouth on hers. It wasn’t merely a kiss; it was also a claim.
When she closed her eyes, colors seemed to splash on her closed eyelids. The vibrant red of a summer sunset, the pale yellow of the early morning sun, the silky blue of a mountain lake. Between her coat and his were folds of material preventing intimacy. All she could really feel was the pressure of his lips, so warm, so precious.
The afternoon hadn’t been what she’d expected. His showing up, the woods, his fire tower… Maybe it was all a little crazy, but from the first time she’d met him she’d felt odd vibrations. Mitch wasn’t an average man.
Oddly, she felt a little afraid of him. Of the powerful feelings he induced in her, so fast, so unexpectedly. She also had a great faith in her judgment as a woman. Every instinct told her this was a man she could trust when all the chips were down. And there weren’t many such men running around.
Her mouth gave back tit for tat. With fingers spread, she slowly touched his jacket and climbed up to the collar, finally to the warm skin of his neck. With that touch of her fingertip to his skin, the kiss changed; his mouth turned soft and sensitive.
His tongue swirled, probing her parted teeth, then stole inside, suddenly tentative. Her tongue touched his, welcoming gently.
The wind nipped at both of them; darkness surrounded them like a hush. When his arms tightened around her, she slipped her hands inside his jacket, wanting to touch this man as she’d never really wanted to touch another. He was so…different. Kisses…darn it, at twenty-seven, she’d had dozens of kisses. The men she dated used kisses as preludes to the next step, but Mitch didn’t
use
a kiss at all. He savored it.
Her lips felt loved, stroked by his own. He tasted and tested and kept coming back for more. There was a smile between the two of them, when they both ran out of breath like teenagers. There was a smile, and then it vanished, because Mitch’s lips clearly hadn’t yet had enough.
Her legs curled up, and her fingers splayed in his thick hair as she exulted in his quick intake of air. As he supported her head with one hand, his other hand reached for the buttons of her coat. His breath fanned her throat as he managed the first button, then the second.
His lips nuzzled at the flesh he’d uncovered, above her sweater. He rubbed his cheek against her soft skin, and when his lips crushed hers again his hands were suddenly in a terrible, almost awkward rush to loosen the last buttons. She almost smiled, but couldn’t.
Her breasts ached inside her sweater. She’d waited years to feel the caress of those big hands. No one had ever touched her the way she knew Mitch was going to. Loving had always come as naturally to her as breathing, from expressions of simple affection when she was a child to demonstrations of sexual feeling for the two men who had been special in her adult life. In between, there had always been levels of physical contact that had felt right at the time to her judgment.
With Mitch, there wasn’t a judgment but an emotion. Everything and anything was right. It had to be. He tasted so sweet, her suddenly not-so-shy man. So hungry! His whole body was tense with urgency, his heart beating with it, his hand trembling with it. Yet it wasn’t the rough kisses that swayed her, but the gentle ones. The ones where he slowed down and made sure she knew the exquisite taste and texture of his mouth and his skin, the scent of him, the pleasure in her that shone in his eyes.
His loving promised a giving so intense, a potential for sharing so infinite that she really no longer cared if they were better than a hundred feet above the ground on a cold night on a hard platform without a cushion in sight. Her body surged toward his when she felt his hand slide beneath her coat.
His fingers rested just below her breasts, just below soft white flesh that swelled, waiting. All he had to do was move his hand an inch. His fingers roamed over her ribs, making her murmur with wanting.
The side of his thumb edged half an inch. Her nipples stiffened and heated up like hot pebbles, shamelessly pouting for him. He lifted his hand…
Mitch took one last nibble at her bottom lip and then drew back, clutching the lapel of her coat as he closed it. His breath was rasping in his lungs as though he’d just sucked in fire. “Your men,” he said raggedly.
“Pardon?”
“You have a poker game.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.” And if she thought he was going to leave her at the door to a group of other men, she was sadly mistaken.
Maybe he had a latent streak of masochism, but he needed to at least see his competition.
Kay crunched down noisily on a potato chip and saw five pairs of eyes turn irritably in her direction. She swallowed hastily.
“Do you by any miracle have just a little more of that dip in the refrigerator?” Stix asked.
“What’s it worth to you?”
“At least all my love for the rest of your life.”
“I
know
that. I meant in money.”
Stix aimed a slap at her backside but missed. Chuckling, Kay fetched a fresh bowl of dip from the refrigerator and perched back up on her stool. Stix instantly scooped up a tablespoon of the stuff on a quarter-sized chip and popped it into his voracious mouth, mumbling, “Raise two.”
Mitch smiled, as if the raise had pleased him. “See your two and raise another.” His eyes flicked first to Stix and then to Kay before his attention returned to the cards.
Sucking on a salted cashew nut, Kay watched with fascination as Mitch raked in yet another stack of chips.
Having lost her stake of five dollars—her max—to him earlier in the game, she was delighted to sit back and let the others suffer. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was nearing midnight. She still hadn’t figured out how Mitch had ended up at the poker game with her. He’d seen the four men waiting for her at the door when he brought her home, and the next thing she knew he’d blended into the group as if born there.
The table was set up in the living room. Soda and beer cans littered the side tables; chips and dip and napkins and bowls of cashews were clustered among the cards. John was the only smoker in the group, and his thin haze of smoke wandered around the room.
John chain-smoked when he had a good hand. Stix munched when
he
had a good hand. Barker fidgeted, and their resident CPA, Hailey, from three blocks down, pulled his mustache. Kay had always found him remarkably easy to beat.
Mitch did nothing to give himself away. He just won. No big deal, but he definitely kept drawing in the lion’s share of the chips.
And he listened. The man might have a zipper for a mouth as far as his own secrets, but he was remarkably adept at prying information from others. What they did for a living, how long they’d been married, how long they hadn’t been married…and how Mitch got them going, she had no idea, but the guys had been relating a disgusting selection of escapades from their—and her—younger days. One senior prom night that ended with skinny-dipping in Coeur D’Alene Lake. One perfectly innocent afternoon of fishing in the Sawtooth Mountains that turned into four days, thanks to a flash flood that washed out the roads…
“Kay always had the best ideas,” Barker told Mitch, still laughing. “Whenever the guys wanted any excitement…”
He left the sentence hanging. Thanks so much, Barker, Kay thought darkly. She stuck another cashew nut in her mouth. You’d think she’d spent her entire life in high-spirited antics, but that just wasn’t true. Working herself through college hadn’t been a lark, nor was making a life for herself alone. And earlier, there’d been some very dark years, when the family had been afraid Jana wasn’t going to make it, when her mother had come close to falling apart and it had been up to Kay to keep up the family’s morale.
Given a choice between a funny story and a tragic one she’d choose the funny one any day, but the picture of Capering Kay was hardly accurate. Her poker cohorts knew that; she was used to their ceaseless teasing, and she wouldn’t have cared at all if it hadn’t been for Mitch.
On the one hand, he kept feeding the guys their cue lines, obviously encouraging their most risqué tales. On the other hand, Mitch gave away nothing about himself. He played his emotions as close to the chest as he played his cards.
Finally, Stix stretched and yawned. “I give up,” he said lazily.
Simultaneously, the other players tossed their cards on the table. “I didn’t realize how late it was,” Hailey said with a frown. “Mitch, you’ve got to join us on another Friday. Really enjoyed it.”
There was a rush for coats. Hailey left first, once he’d found his glasses. John, after a kiss on Kay’s cheek, was the next to go. Barker went so far as to take his beer cans to the kitchen, then delivered his good-night kiss. Stix lingered a little longer, giving Mitch a sidelong glance as he tugged on his ancient cord jacket. “You want help cleaning up?” he asked Kay.
To her credit, she didn’t faint from shock. “You’ve discovered dishes don’t miraculously wash themselves?”
“Samantha’s taught me a thing or two. Don’t get sassy. I could help take down the table.”
“We can take care of it,” Mitch drawled from the hall doorway.
Still, Stix lingered a bit longer, taking endless care with every one of his coat buttons, eyeing Kay with a protective gleam that made no sense.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He glanced at Mitch. “Coming?”
Mitch moved forward with a half smile, his hand firmly extended for Stix to shake, exactly as he had done with the other men. “Appreciated the chance to get in a night of poker. I hadn’t done it in a long time.”
“Anytime…” The two talked for a minute before Mitch dropped back, and Kay stepped forward with a perplexed expression.
Stix’s genial grin was gone. Suddenly, all six feet six inches of him exuded irritability. Stix was normally so laid back that Kay was baffled by the change in him. She stretched up on tiptoe for her good-night kiss. Her lips met a very stiff cheek; Stix glared at her and then departed, as the others had, into a very dark, very late night outside.
Kay turned back to find that Mitch had disappeared…and the card table was half cleared of debris. She snatched up the bowl of potato chips and two soda cans, carting both into the kitchen. There she spotted Mitch, who flashed her one quick, enigmatic smile on his way back to the living room.
It was like playing tag. When she headed back to the living room, Mitch was striding toward the kitchen again. The entire house was restored to equilibrium in minutes.
When she finally caught up with him, he was in the hall, pulling on his coat at the door. Kay stared at him from the kitchen doorway, astonished that he’d bothered to stay all this time…and was now leaving.
“They’re good men,” he said flatly.
“Old friends,” she agreed, bewildered.
He crooked his finger in a beckoning gesture.
Now
there
was the man she thought she’d spent the afternoon with. Chuckling, she went toward him. The wicked gleam was back in his eyes. It seemed he could turn it on and off at will, like a light. When there were no other people around, that light definitely glowed warmly. “Do you want a cup of coffee?” she asked him.
“All I want is to tell you something.”
“So tell me.”
“You’re too far away.”
Leaning back against the open doorway, he drew her arms around his waist until they were snuggled length to length. The web instantly woven around her was invisible, private and utterly male. The intimacy increased deliciously when his lips pressed into her hair. “You’re an affectionate lady,” he whispered.
“
That’s
what you wanted to tell me?” She tried to convince herself that she didn’t want him to stay. How could she possibly want him to stay? It was far too soon.
His lips nuzzled farther, his chin brushing back her hair so his mouth could center on the soft skin just below her ear. “No,” he murmured. “I just wanted to tell you that I wish I’d known you a long time ago. From the beginning. From before you were a woman, from the very moment you became a woman…”
She tilted her head back, touched by the earnest note in his voice. Mitch dipped down, placing a light kiss on her forehead, then on her nose, then on her chin. Her lips felt forsaken. “You don’t really wish that,” she told him with a sleepy half smile. “The young Kay was chubby, Mitch. And she had miles to go before she learned what she really valued in life.”
“Her…experiences had to be that extensive, did they?” His smile was lazy.
Kay slid her arms out from under his jacket and wrapped them around his neck. “You bet they did,” she whispered wryly. “I had more to learn than most.”
He chuckled, yet his dark eyes settled intently on hers before he leaned down to rub his cheek against hers, his arms suddenly restless over her sweatered back. “How long has Stix had a thing for you?”
“Hmm?” She’d been a teenager the last time she’d necked in a hallway. The sense of doing something that was forbidden had enhanced the moment then. One mustn’t, one shouldn’t, one would get caught. There was no danger of getting caught now, but there was still a lush sense of danger. Or was it anticipation? “Stix? You’re crazy, Mitch.” She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat and felt his pulse jump. “Stix is just a self-adopted big brother,” she said absently.
“He mentioned your ill-fated engagement.”
What were they talking about? She pressed her cheek against his jacket and closed her eyes, loving the sensation of being held. “I won’t tell you my war stories unless you confess yours,” she warned him.
“You don’t have to tell me anything, ever. Do you mind that I’m curious about you?” His fingertips brushed back her hair so soothingly that she leaned her cheek into his palm.
She shook her head. “Of course not. Secrets are sad things. My war stories aren’t anything extraordinary, Mitch—I was engaged, twice. The first time I was seventeen, and the engagement lasted all of three days.”
“What happened?”
“We both used the ring as an excuse to do what we wanted to do. We soon decided sex wasn’t all it was cracked up to be—at least not for us—and we had the sense to call it off before anyone could be disastrously hurt,” she said wryly.
“Except,” Mitch said softly, “that you were disastrously hurt.”
Her eyes flickered up, brilliant and luminous. “No one,” she admitted, “could possibly hurt as much or as hard as a seventeen-year-old. Surely you’ve been there?” She had a sudden image of Mitch at seventeen, boyish and brazen and sexual…and then a second image, of the girl in his arms who
must
have been there. A little green glob settled in the pit of her stomach. “You’re not sharing war stories,” she reminded him, but her heart told her promptly that she didn’t want to know.
“We’re not through with yours yet. You said you were engaged twice.”
“The second one was named Mason.” When she looked up, his eyes had darkened, and looked oddly warm. Tell-me-your-secrets warm.
“So what was he like?” Mitch said softly.
She shrugged, tucking her cheek into his chest. “Mason I loved,” she said simply. “No excuses, no apologies…and no lingering feelings. Love, unfortunately, isn’t all it takes to make a relationship.”
“No?” he murmured.
She half smiled. His arm enclosed her and she felt sealed up, protected, enveloped. His lips were pressing into her hair again. “I’d known Mason for such a long time. His laughter could light up a room. You would have liked him—everyone liked him. But to Mason, people were like wine. Wonderful to get high on, but once the bottle was empty he moved on. It took me a while to catch on. People who really celebrate life don’t have to use other people to do it. Anyway…that was three years ago. And you know something?”
Mitch’s thumbs slowly traced the line of her cheekbones. “Tell me.”
“You have to make a choice,” she said simply. “You can choose to be defensive, to protect yourself against all the people-users, to guard yourself against feeling too much. That’s the safe way. I’ve
been
there, Mitch, but life’s too darn rich, too darn short, too special. I feel sorry for the people like that.
They’re missing it all…and you’d think I’d had four glasses of wine, the way I’ve been rambling on.” She cocked her head back at him with an impish grin. “
Your
turn. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some coffee? And in the meantime you can start telling me about when you were engaged, married, or otherwise entangled. Don’t let me be the only one hanging out the dirty linen. Which was it?”
He hesitated. “Actually, none of the above,” he said curtly.
“Not even the coffee?” She arched a teasing eyebrow.
He placed a swift, firm kiss on her mouth. His forefinger followed, tracing the shape of her lower lip, then the upper one. Abruptly, she forgot the thread of their conversation.
“Don’t you change,” he said roughly. “You’re real. Real, Kay. Honest, giving, soft. You don’t seem to realize how easy it would be for a man to love you. Really love you.”
And with that, he was gone.
***
Mitch got out of the car at his house, glanced at the dark, unwelcoming windows and decided to take a walk. A bitter wind nipped at his face and throat.
The streets were deserted. Cars were parked and windows were lamp-less at the late hour. Shadows shifted in the wind.
With his head bent low, Mitch jammed his hands in his pockets and just kept going. Kay had loved two men. Two was not an unmanageable number. He was surprised there hadn’t been more. Maybe there had been. In this day and age, she could well have had a dozen lovers.
Every damn man at the table could have been one of them. They all loved her. And she didn’t even seem to
see.
Mitch felt like a fool. It wasn’t a sensation he’d felt often, and he definitely didn’t enjoy it. She’d had, and still had, her choice of lovers. For that matter, he knew exactly what she needed in a lover. A giver. A man who ever so carefully nurtured that sensual sweetness of hers. A man who would protect and treasure her vulnerable heart. A man experienced in pleasure, who’d take her fast past anything she’d felt with those fiancés of hers. A man who knew just what flesh to touch, what words to say, what timing would send her so high…
He walked. And kept on walking. Frustration lay like a dead weight inside him. He resented those lost thirteen years as he’d never resented anything before.
***
Kay stood in the open doorway a long time, even after Mitch’s car had disappeared from sight. Finally, shivering, she closed the door.
Talk about bewitched, bothered and bewildered… She could have written the song.
Trying to convince herself she was exhausted, she changed into a lavender–and-white striped nightgown, washed her face, brushed her teeth and turned off the light a few minutes later.