Man From Tennessee
Read Man From Tennessee Online
Authors: Jennifer Greene
Man From Tennessee
By Jennifer Greene
After a whirlwind courtship, Kern Lowery whisked his young bride away to the mountains of Tennessee to start a new life. Unfortunately, Trisha’s sheltered Grosse Pointe upbringing didn’t prepare her for marriage or the hardships of country living, so she left with barely a goodbye.
Five years later, an accident brings Trisha back to Tennessee. No longer the shy, helpless girl she was, she keeps her composure when she comes face-to-face with the stranger she is still technically married to. Inside, however, her emotions are a riot of passion—and fear. Fear of failing for the man she loves once again…
Previously published.
53,000 words
Dear Reader,
This is a special “anniversary” book for me. It wasn’t the first book I wrote—but it was the first book that was published.
I never dreamed I could make it as a writer back then…and had even less idea how many readers would find me through my stories.
Romances have many universal themes, but this story is about one of my favorites. We’ve all made mistakes. We all likely had a first love…and maybe that wasn’t the man we ended up with. Or the man we even wanted to end up with. But it’s one of those eternal daydreams…the chance to do over a mistake. The chance to win the guy who got away. The chance to remember how you felt, when you first discovered love, when you first fell hard and deep, when you couldn’t eat or sleep or WAIT until you were with your love again.
No one gets that “feeling” every second of their lives. But the best of our romances give us all the chance to remember the wonder of it.
This is the book that started my career…and I’ve been extra thrilled that Carina is enabling readers to see it for the first time—or to revisit an old fantasy. Life has changed a lot since then. So have our books. But some of the themes in our books are exactly the same, and always will be…because love really is one of the true wonders in all our lives.
Hope you like the book! And keep in touch, either on Facebook or through my website (www.jennifergreene.com).
Jennifer Greene
Trisha hadn’t noticed when the rolling emerald hills of Kentucky had become the Tennessee mountains. Her attention was on the hairpin-curved road. Then suddenly she remembered the crisp spring air and the sweet scents of pine and wildflowers in bloom. And the fleeting mists that drifted between the mountain peaks. She recalled the peace, privacy and silence that were the gifts of the mountains. Silently she wished she hadn’t remembered.
“Patricia!”
Trisha glanced swiftly at her mother-in-law. “Oh, you’re awake. Are you feeling better, darling?”
“I would probably feel perfectly fine if I thought I could get your attention for two and a half seconds,” Julia said petulantly. “You’ve been as quiet as a tomb for two days. Obviously you’re still irritated with me.”
For a few seconds Trisha’s sapphire eyes met Julia’s. A strong, independent spirit shone clearly in her mother-in-law’s steel-blue eyes. Julia was a matriarch from a bygone era who could and would put anyone in his place, given the opportunity. But she didn’t have to use her formidable will against Trisha and they both knew it.
“There was no one else I could ask, Patricia. Besides, it isn’t as if I ever asked much of you.”
“I’m not arguing with you, darling,” Trisha said wearily. “We’re nearly there, so please just…let it be.”
“You couldn’t possibly be afraid to see Kern again, could you?”
Trisha’s fingers tensed on the wheel.
“The last time he saw you, you were a waif. And now? Well, breeding will out, I’ve always said. You’ve got aristocrat in your bones—”
“Thank you,” Trisha interrupted dryly. “But what that has to do with anything is beyond me.” She checked her tone abruptly. Julia looked wretched. The steel-blue eyes were surrounded by flesh that was too gray and wrinkles that were too pronounced. The car was cool, yet there was moisture on Julia’s forehead and her hands were limp. Her lip color was a bluish purple. “Sweetheart,” Trisha said quietly, “you want to see Kern, and we’re going to see him. We’ll be there in an hour. Now I want you to relax and stop worrying. There’s no reason—”
“So you keep saying. But there is reason. I told you. If he told me he had a concussion and broken ribs, God knows what really happened! He is my son, Patricia, even if we don’t get along—”
“As in brick wall meeting brick wall,” Trisha murmured under her breath.
Julia’s jaw stiffened, her fingers plucking irritably at the expensive silk material of her skirt. “You could try to see it from my point of view. If he were your son, Patricia, and you knew he was in trouble—”
“The day Kern has trouble he can’t handle you can count on the earth caving in, Julia. If anyone should be doing any worrying in the Lowery family, it’s him for you, not the other way around.” There was really no point in arguing. One didn’t argue with Julia. One either gave in promptly and with good grace, or one donned earmuffs and said no at persistent five-minute intervals, never giving an inch. There had been no stopping Julia once Kern evidently let slip on the telephone that he had been in an accident some weeks before. Knowing her son didn’t want her there was fuel enough for Julia to go to him. And knowing that Trisha had no desire to see her husband after five long years—well, Julia had the gift of being immovably single-minded at times. And with her health as it was, Trisha knew she had no choice.
The road curled like a lariat and suddenly loped out straight, with a waterfall to the left and on the right the froth of a stream that rushed over gilt-edged rocks. The countryside was virgin primitive, lushly sensual at first glance, soft in color and scent and sound. It was all part of a dream she’d wanted to share with Kern once. Instead, Trisha thought fleetingly, there had been the harsh reality of living in it.
“He won’t even recognize you,” Julia murmured. “You’ll be like two strangers meeting again. That’s
really
why you’re still irritated with me, Trisha, because you’re afraid it will be awkward for you. But you can handle it…” Her voice trailed off at Trisha’s startled expression. “Perhaps we’ll just let that subject be.”
“Perhaps we will!”
Trisha needed no reminder of how much she’d changed in the past five years. The cream silk pantsuit was sophisticated, designed to make the most of her slender figure and ivory skin. Her face was lovely in a fragile, ethereal way. Deep-set eyes were almond shaped, the color of sapphire, and her dark gold hair was thick, swept back to curl on her shoulders. There was no sign at all of the girl she had been five years before, no bundle of nerves, no edge of tears, no telltale sign even to Julia that in any way she dreaded having to meet Kern after all this time. She looked the sophisticated twenty-five-year-old from Grosse Pointe that she was. No one would ever mistake her for a mountain girl.
“I’ve barely seen a house in an hour,” Julia remarked suddenly.
“And we probably won’t, darling, until we reach Kern’s. But you’ll find Grosse Pointe prices at Gatlinburg, I promise you, and that’s only half an hour past Kern’s. It’s a lovely little town.” It was a town set in the valley at the entrance to the Smoky Mountains. She remembered it well. Her palms were damp on the steering wheel, Trisha discovered, and she was disgusted with herself. She was miles, centuries away from the Trisha she had been at twenty, frightened of her own shadow, carting the word
love
around as if it had a halo that came with it. She had been a bit of fluff just asking to be crushed.
“How much longer?” Julia accused her wearily. “You said we’d be there.”
Trisha shot her mother-in-law a sharp, worried glance. “And we will be. Just a few more minutes, that’s all. Please relax, darling.”
The road twisted past the campgrounds Kern had built. There were campers and trailers parked, although it was early yet, the end of May. Up past the shaded campgrounds the road curled and swirled like a black ribbon with a meandering silver stream on the right. Above were the forest acres bedded with trillium and rhododendron, the scent overpowering on one stretch of the drive. And last was Kern’s place…
No.
Like a knot of cold steel inside, Trisha felt a sudden panic tighten and chill. His kingdom. His corner that captured the real soul of the mountain country, where a century before a man might have died if he hadn’t had the character to survive. She hadn’t, she knew. But now she realized it wasn’t really a fear of seeing Kern again that had filled her with dread. It was just the old sensation of feeling on trial—and failing…
Trisha shut off the engine and exhaled deeply. The house was completely different. It had been a skeleton when she left. Now the two rambling levels fit into the mountainside perfectly, as he had promised they would. The glass windows were scaled to perfection so that nothing marred Kern’s view of the mountains beyond. Century-old mountain maples shaded three sides. Azaleas and ferns, which naturally decorated the woods beyond, bordered the stone walk to the front door. The natural peace and privacy of the place spoke of Kern in a thousand ways.
“Perhaps,” Julia said quietly, “we could just start back right now. Right this minute.”
“You’re not serious.” Trisha turned away from the memory-invoking landscape.
“Perhaps I was wrong, Patricia,” her mother-in-law admitted with unaccustomed humility, a gray sheen of weariness painted on her complexion. “You never told me what it was like, and Kern’s always been the one to visit me. I didn’t know. There isn’t a theater or a decent restaurant, no industry, no…darling, this is a wilderness! This is no place for you. If I’d known…”
For a moment Trisha was surprised that Julia felt no appreciation for the lush beautiful countryside, and then she reminded herself swiftly that they were both city women. Her desire for cosmopolitan comforts was just as strong as Julia’s. “You should have seen it five years ago,” Trisha responded lightly. “I did warn you you wouldn’t want to stay, darling. There are no servants, no garden clubs, no formal dinner hour. The idea of your actually coming here to help Kern, when we both know you haven’t been face-to-face with a frying pan in thirty years…”
“You won’t just leave me here,” Julia insisted weakly.
“I’ll do just as I said. Come on, Julia. I’ll have you comfortable in no time; then you’ll forget all about the long drive. When you’re settled in, I’ll go down to a motel in Gatlinburg. All you have to do is call whenever you want to go home.”
Trisha stretched as she got out of the car and took a second look around. It must have rained that morning. The forest smells were pervasive, the green hues sharp and glistening. She moved to Julia’s side of the car, trying to deny the fresh pull on her senses that the country invoked. “It will all look different once you’ve had a rest…”
Julia was several inches taller than Trisha, and stiff from the long drive. Trisha slipped an arm around her waist to help her.
“I don’t feel up to dealing with Kern,” Julia admitted. “I should have called him. You were right, Trisha. He’s going to be very angry, but I knew he wouldn’t want me to come…”
“There is nothing at all for you to worry about. I’ll deal with Kern,” Trisha assured her, hearing the little comment echo back with a tinge of irony. She hadn’t been able to handle Kern five years ago.
Inside the house a cool breeze fluttered at the draperies. Trisha remembered the bare boards and bare walls in the huge living room. It was nothing like that now. The thick luxurious carpet was pine green, and the long low pair of couches and chairs were a complementary leaf-green shade. A gnarled tree root had been varnished and covered with a round glass top to form a coffee table. Native limestone climbed the south wall in a massive fireplace that dominated the room. Filled bookcases reached the ceiling. The room was perfect, and that fact irritated her in a completely irrational way.
“Kern?” Trisha called out. She moved with the weary Julia past the living room to a small room beyond.
“I really don’t feel well.”
“I know you don’t.” The room was a good-sized rectangle with a charming little alcove, bare but adequate with a twin bed and an oak chest of drawers. “This will do for now, Julia. The point is just to get you comfortable.” She dealt first with Julia’s purse, then loosened the zipper of the silk dress and leaned over to take off the older woman’s shoes. As she was kneeling on the hardwood floor, she felt Kern behind her.
“Mother? What on earth are you doing here? And who…”
He never finished the sentence. Trisha turned her face up to his and relished the few moments when he still didn’t recognize her. The last time she had seen Kern she had been in torn jeans and one of his cast-off shirts, looking twelve and feeling ninety, with hair unwashed and exhaustion in purple swirls under her eyes. Suddenly she remembered it very well.
She remembered how Kern had looked at the time, too. He had worn jeans and a red flannel shirt, and he looked perfect in them because Kern had looked damned-well perfect all the time.
He did not look perfect now.
Her eyes scanned the familiar territory. His face was strong and square, with ragged eyebrows and a jutting chin that was covered with more than the beginnings of a curling, bristly beard. The soot-black hair was thick and still inclined to resist the taming of a brush. His hawk eyes had the same piercing quality, the color and sheen of old pewter. The overall image was the same: power and pride. He claimed several inches above six feet and there was no stinting on the frame. His height, the beard and the single hand on a hip all added up to the most primitive sort of man.
But it was the new territory that shocked Trisha to total stillness. A wretchedly jagged scar was far too close to his right eye, and still so red that the stitches could not have been long removed. The hollows beneath his eyes spoke of weariness and his right wrist was swathed in cream, the bandage held in place with a sling. Perhaps in some ridiculously irrational way Trisha had never really believed that he had been hurt. To her, Kern had always been like his mountain—immovable, unhurtable, unbeatable. She had never been able to picture him as vulnerable, as she had once been so very vulnerable.
“Lord, I’m sorry, Kern,” she said, then turned from him and finished with Julia’s shoes, disbelieving the odd tearlike sensation in her eyes. She had never wished him ill. “This is awkward for you. I’m sorry. I hadn’t really planned on your having to see me at all, but your mother wasn’t well…” She cast a quick look at her mother-in-law and registered that Julia was for unknown reasons looking speculative at her and not her son. “Julia was so worried about you that there was no stopping her, and rather than have her drive on her own, I just didn’t see any choice…”
Talk, Julia,
she felt like saying.
Carry the ball for
me for just one minute!
But Julia was content to have her dress slipped off by Trisha’s efficient fingers and be settled beneath the sheet with a light blanket.
“She claims to have a perfect bill of health from the doctor she saw last Friday,” Trisha said to the unmoving form behind her, as she carelessly swirled back a strand of gold that had slipped from her chignon. “I’ll just get her some tea…if you don’t mind?” She turned back to Kern, with a poised half smile on her lips that apologized for the intrusion but nothing more. She knew how to hide nerves these days, knew how to hide how unsettled she really felt being so close to him again.
Their eyes met for just one moment. If he was stunned at finally recognizing her, it didn’t show. From the top of her gold crown to the gold-tipped sandals on her feet, his eyes swept over the very real changes in Trisha’s looks. There was no smile. She couldn’t read his expression, but there was an instant when a spark of emotion older than time flared in his eyes and she could feel her control slipping. The appraisal was frankly sexual. There had never been anyone but Kern who had the appalling skill of making her skin feel touched with a simple look. She drew in her breath and repeated, “If you don’t mind, Kern? If you would prefer that I just leave…”
“What I’d like is a cup of coffee myself,” he said finally.
“Fine. I have to admit you look—” She stopped uncomfortably.