Man From Tennessee (11 page)

She bent to set the tray in the dishwasher, and when she stood back up Kern was there. His wrists rested loosely on her shoulders, pinning her at arm’s length. His shoulders were wide enough to effectively block out Julia, kitchen, everything but Kern in front of her. One finger reached up to lazily smooth the hair from her cheek. “Trisha just wants to make sure you’re happy, Mother. That’s all Tish is interested in. You’ll have to convince her you wouldn’t feel deserted if she left you for a couple of hours.”

The teasing tone was boyish; the look in his eyes was strictly a man’s. There was seduction in his eyes, and when she stooped down below his arms to escape from him, there was Julia again. Keeping the lady happy was how she justified being here.

“I would
not
feel deserted for a couple of hours.” Julia almost snorted. “You’d think I was some sort of invalid!”

Trisha sighed and gave her mother-in-law a smile. “Well, then—of course I’ll go,” she managed to say finally, before turning back to Kern in defeat.

Matthew Redding landed on an open stretch of land near Kern’s camp. A thin, well-weathered man in his forties, he wore coveralls and a smile that didn’t know how to quit. “Mr. Lowery, you didn’t mention we were taking a passenger!”

So much for Kern’s plans for ever taking Julia. “I’m Trisha, Matt,” she said, extending her hand. “Let’s keep it on informal terms.”

“And we sure will do that, honey. We’re going to be on close terms real quick. The old bird’s set up for two—three in a pinch. And a pinch is what I call first-name terms!”

Laughing, Trisha vaulted up into the bubblelike cubicle, eyeing the control panel with an amateur’s enthusiastic interest. Kern folded in on her right as Matt settled in at the controls, the pilot turning to her with an impish grin. “You really don’t mind it cozy?”

“No problem. I love these things!”

“No nerves about flying in one of them?”

“No.” Trisha shook her head exuberantly. “I’ve clocked in a few hours in a little single-engine Cessna, but never a copter. I’m really curious to know the difference.”

“You
what?
”

It was a delight to shock those all-knowing gray eyes for once. Kern’s arm stretched across the back of the seat to make more room for all of them, also making it all but impossible for her to settle anywhere comfortably but in the curve of his shoulder. Which she did, facing Matt. Her annoyance at being roped into the venture had all but disappeared. “It was nothing, really. Instead of a vacation last year, I spent the money on a few flying lessons. Didn’t get enough for a pilot’s license by any means, just got a taste—or should I say a tease? I’ve always wanted to fly,” she admitted wistfully.

“Good,” Kern murmured next to her ear. “You can finish your lessons here and take over the copter. Then I can send this old reprobate back to Detroit where he belongs.”

“This is yours?”

Kern nodded, motioning impatiently to his wrist, as if to say that the temporary impairment had forced him into hiring the pilot in the interim. The noise of the whirling propellers promptly deafened all other sounds. They were off the ground in a moment, heading directly over the treetops. Matthew handled the controls as if the bird were a well-loved toy that thrived on being played with, his turns sharply angled and his ups and downs deliberate. Trisha found herself laughing at the sudden roller-coaster sensations in her stomach, and Matt’s grin was sheer showing off.

But it was not a sightseeing trip they were on, regardless of what Kern had said, and it didn’t take long for Trisha to realize it. It was a swift pace to one spot, a hover, and then a repeat of the same. The men attempted no verbal communication over the rhythmical whirr of the helicopter blades.

Once they were off Kern’s land, Trisha lost track of landmarks, and distances were deceivingly different by air than by road. The day was cloudy, the sun occasionally casting a lemony haze on stretches of forest as they passed. From the miles of lush green forest there was suddenly a narrow patch of barrenness illuminated by sunlight, where a few stalky pine trunks were bleakly standing. There the earth was grayish rather than the rich brown that would have been natural. Ash. Trisha felt a lurch of horror at the fire’s devastation, but already they were moving on.

More of the lush fairy-tale green appeared, and the crystal of a stream one could see winding for miles. The splash of a waterfall was half hidden in trees, and just beyond was a heath, thick with flowers—purple-white, then the flame of azalea; perhaps a hundred acres of rhododendron alone. And then the barrenness again—a long ragged oblong patch this time. The fire had been a season ago, she was told, and now green was trying to make its way through the odd-colored soil in erratic patterns of new life.

“You want to see what happened ten days ago?” Matt shouted to Kern. “It’s down to your right.”

Unconsciously she pressed closer to Kern to see. She felt his hand smoothing back her hair and raised stricken eyes to his. This had been their land, once. Kern’s eyes met hers, inducing an unconscious tremor that pulsed through her body. His hand stopped its stroking and his fingers rested at the nape of her neck as they both looked out where Matt was hovering.

The bleak scene below was not large, a tribute to how rapidly the forest rangers reacted to a fire. Thousands of acres that might have been affected were not. Still, all Trisha could think of was a match being set on Kern’s land and what the land meant to him.

Matt headed back. “Fraser firs sure lookin’ better on your side of the ridge than on the Smokies side,” he called over her to Kern.

“Too soon to tell. The agriculture people will be here next week. We’ll see what they say,” Kern answered.

“There hasn’t been a fire for over a week.”

“Yes, but it’s too damned dry.”

“When are you going to take your turn at the controls, Trisha?” Matt turned to her with a teasing grin.

“As long as you’ve got crash helmets to put on…”

When they landed, Trisha wandered off to the Jeep to wait while the men talked for a few more minutes. The whirring sound of the propellers was still in her ears, and she felt a strange mixture of exhilaration and disquiet from the ride. It was not easy to forget what she’d seen.

Kern finally strode from behind her, patting her fanny as if to tell her to get a move on and get in. She moved so quickly to get into the Jeep that he laughed at her. “Well, bright eyes. Bringing up secrets from the deep, are we? Looking for a pilot’s job in the mountains?”

“Certainly,” she quipped back as he started the engine. “Barring a minor matter of a license and experience, of course.”

“Of course. Once upon a time I piloted a single-engine Cessna myself, but the license doesn’t extend to copters, and it seems I just haven’t found the time to go after it. But—fires, this aphid thing in the Fraser firs, marauding bears and wild boars, a missing camper on occasion—it occurred to me last winter that a copter’s a fast way of keeping control—”

“And a most intriguing little toy,” Trisha suggested innocently. “As Julia would say, the only difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys.”

“Now don’t get sassy.” His eyes flickered over her, a grin slashed above the ebony beard. “If you’re nice to me, I might just sign you up for lessons.”

“Talk, talk, talk.” The wind was whirling her hair so helter-skelter in the open Jeep that she put both hands up impatiently, capturing a tousled knot at the top of her head.

He braked the Jeep and they both climbed out. “Hold it.” Kern leaned folded arms over the side of the vehicle, an expression on his face that she couldn’t quite fathom, but the teasing look was gone. “Were you just talking about wanting to fly?”

Trisha let her hair fall in a tumble to her shoulders, reaching in for her purse on the floor of the Jeep. “No. I’ve always wanted to fly,” she admitted. “But it’s just a dream, Kern, the way opening a crafts shop for me was once a dream I had here.”

“You never told me you wanted to do that.”

She shrugged, tossing back her hair, aiming for the house. “There’s irony somewhere. The dream was the selling of authentic Cherokee designs and the back-country quilting patterns; the reality’s been in dealing with plain old polyester on a mannequin.” She turned to smile at Kern as she opened the door to the house. “The ride was fun. Thank you very much.”

She waited. Kern hadn’t accepted being dismissed with civilized politeness before. He had always taken advantage of the few moments they had had alone. And the hall was empty, dark and quiet. But he just stood there, waiting for her to go inside, his eyes resting on hers with the awareness of a hawk’s. Suddenly embarrassed, Trisha hurried past him.
He’s got you waiting for him to seduce you,
she thought irritably. Less forgivable to her was knowing that she’d been standing there, not only anticipating but counting on it.

“Lord, no! I just got my feet up after traipsing around all day. If you two would just leave, I could kindly treat myself to a forbidden glass of Cognac, close out all the disgusting fresh air in this house, and write some letters.” Julia repeated it just in case either Kern or Trisha had missed the point. “I do
not
want to go on some little mystery excursion anywhere at eight o’clock at night.”

Trisha sighed, staring glumly at a fixed point between Julia and the waiting Kern. The impulse, really, was to curl up in a chair and simply fall asleep. After a long day of shopping to decorate Julia’s room, she had been too tired to more than peck at dinner, and she hadn’t taken off the outfit she’d worn all day: a slim olive skirt slit attractively to show off her legs, an ivory silk blouse with a crisp V-neck and long sleeves. It was attractive on her but swelteringly hot. Hot, tired and vaguely restless, she was in one of those moods where she really didn’t know what she wanted.

A few minutes later she was out in the darkness with Kern, not at all certain why she had agreed to come. He’d simply spoken of an hour’s outing and something he thought she’d be interested in, not worth worrying about if she wasn’t. His indifference had doubled her sense of restlessness inside. For two days now the black-shirted, charcoal-jeaned man at her side had radiated such quiet that Trisha was beginning to feel like the stranger she was supposed to be in his house.

Lord, you’re mixed up,
she told herself with silent disgust as they drove through the night. Tree shadows were impossibly still on the road, not a stirring of life. Mountain nights promised to be cool, but this one was tepid, clinging, the breezes too tired and hot to try. The full moon was gone and the next seemed too lazy to come out.

He stopped the car in less than twenty minutes. Instinct told Trisha that as the crow flew, they couldn’t be more than a hop and a skip from his own home. The log cabin in front of them radiated warmth from within, an old rambling structure with the scent of horses wafting from a nearby building. A yard light beaconed on the gravel drive of the rustic mountain home.

Trisha stepped from the car, knowing instinctively she should have changed into jeans. Rarely accustomed to being moody for long, she could not seem to shake the feeling that tonight she just wasn’t going to do anything right.

Kern threw an arm on her shoulder as they approached the three-stepped porch. She debated shrugging off the arm or cuddling closer. By the time the door opened, she was still mulling over decisions she just wasn’t in the mood to make that day.

Rhea stood in the doorway with the lamplight behind her. “Well! Why didn’t you say you were coming?” she scolded Kern. “Hello, Trisha.” A free and easy welcome to Kern, a guarded one to Trisha; any sensitive ear would have heard it. The lady wore skin-tight white jeans and a loose black T-shirt that scooped seductively over voluptuous breasts. “Come in!”

“I want you to show Tish what’s in your back room, Rhea. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course not, just glad for the visit. Make yourselves comfortable while I get us something to drink.”

The main room of the cabin was outfitted with overstuffed chairs, all designed to curl up in. A piece of needlework had been set aside in one of them, a pattern Trisha frankly coveted. Warm lights brightened the fur rug on the floor and the handmade crewelwork on the wall. Rhea brought tall drinks of gin and tonic, and Trisha gratefully accepted one. Make herself comfortable in Rhea’s home? She’d never credited Kern with sadism before.

For a half hour the devil leaned back in one of those comfortable chairs, an ankle resting on his other leg’s knee, swirling the drink in his hand, looking both lazy and completely comfortable. Perched a distance from both of them on the edge of an old-fashioned love seat, Trisha finished two glasses of the liquid rapidly. She was feeling distinctly unnerved and smiling like mad as the other two had an easy conversation. Rhea stood with her back to the rough-hewn walls and her long braided hair swayed as she moved. The black lustrous eyes rarely left Kern’s although there was no question that she was polite, even overtly friendly to Trisha.

When the first pitcher of drinks was done, Rhea strode back into the kitchen to make another.

“Come closer,” Kern suggested when Rhea was out of sight. “You’re hiding over there in that corner like a kitten just brought home.” He patted the arm of his chair, but there was a wealth of awareness in his eyes for the awkwardness she knew she was showing. “You’ll like her if you give her half a chance, Tish.”

“I like her now,” Trisha responded politely. “Are we going home soon?”

Kern burst into laughter as Rhea came back in. Trisha stood up to accept her third drink, already regretting that she hadn’t had dinner but not willing to stop. But it was hot. There was a thirst inside her that simply wouldn’t be sated.

“Come with me,” Rhea invited. “I’ll show you my special back room.”

It was certainly a better choice than behaving like an idiot in front of Kern. The first two gin and tonics were working and the third she clung to like a security blanket, following the tall woman down a long, narrow hall.

“When my husband died, I got into this,” Rhea said quietly. “For six months I barely left this room. Kern mentioned yesterday that you used to be interested in this sort of thing…”

The “little something he thought she’d be interested in” was a quilting frame, and momentarily Trisha rallied. The frame took up most of the room, and she had an immediate picture of history, of mountain women seated around the diamond-star pattern, buzzing of their lives and loves a hundred years before. A long low trunk stood in one corner, and Rhea opened it, taking out a dozen finished quilts. Some had well-known designs and others were obviously Rhea’s own.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” Trisha offered quietly. She heard what wasn’t said, that six months of shutting herself away with painstaking work must have been the only way Rhea knew to deal with her grief.

Compassion touched Trisha for the other woman. It had nothing to do with Kern. “I’ve never seen some of these patterns except in books. I’ve got one I made at home, Rhea, but I could never match your skill with a needle.”

“I thought at first about selling them, but somehow at the time I just put them away and sort of forgot about them.”

Trisha fingered the lovely work. “I don’t know how you could sell them. They’re more like heirlooms.”

Rhea half smiled. “Not these. These I’d like to get off my hands, to tell you the truth. They remind me of a very bad time. Kern told me yesterday that you had something to do with marketing clothes. If you have any ideas…”

The confession she’d made to Kern flashed back to Trisha, of the shop of mountain crafts she’d once wanted to have. It was a passing comment at that moment, but he had heard. As a buyer she had a flair for marketing, far more than direct skill with a needle herself. And the old dream? In her mind she could already see a shop and feel the joy of being her own boss. Rhea would know others who wanted their crafts sold… Trisha looked up, about to say something to Rhea, and then stopped herself, finishing her drink instead. How many times did she have to remind herself that her time in the mountains was short-lived? It must be the alcohol that made her want to suggest something to Rhea as if they could be friends.

They lingered for a time in the room, talking the neutral subject of crafts. Words flowed with surprising easiness, though surely they were both equally aware of a second layer of tension in the room. Finally Rhea stood up to leave.

“Kern was good to me when my husband died,” she mentioned a little awkwardly. “I was holed up here for one whole winter and might have been here still if he hadn’t pushed me back into the outside world. People think a lot of him in this area.”

“I know,” Trisha said quietly.

Still Rhea hesitated in the doorway. “I didn’t know he was married before. And I don’t know why the two of you were separated. Nor do I want to; it’s none of my business. But I would like to ask you…” Rhea hesitated. “I would like to ask you if you’re staying here or going north.” Those liquid dark eyes bored into hers, clear and still. “I’ve always spoken plain English,” she said quietly. “I won’t lie to you. Kern’s never offered me anything but friendship, and I would never come between husband and wife. But if you are returning…”

That the woman was being fair nagged at Trisha like a headache. Her earlier impressions of Rhea were already dropping like hot cakes. It was a great deal easier to rack up dislike for a sultry femme fatale. Instead Rhea was simply a very quiet woman, radiating integrity, requesting an honest answer to an honest question that Trisha didn’t know how to give her. Yes, she was going north again. No, she didn’t want Rhea anywhere near her husband. “Perhaps we could talk another time,” Trisha said awkwardly, miserably remembering the morning she’d all but thrown Rhea out of Kern’s kitchen.

For a few more minutes they congregated in Rhea’s kitchen, a cozy little room made more so by the three bodies trying to move in it. Rhea fixed some sort of snack that she and Kern devoured and Trisha pretended to. Food just wasn’t going to get past the lump in her throat, but the alcohol kept trying to, and one of them seemed to have stuck yet another drink in her hand.

“I almost forgot, Kern,” Rhea said. “You mentioned you’d look at Satin for me the next time you were over. The vet was just here, but the closer she comes to foaling…”

“Of course.”

“I know it’s late,” Rhea said apologetically to Trisha.

“I don’t mind,” Trisha assured her. “I’ll just stay and wait on the back porch.” She followed them out, smoothing her skirt behind her as she perched on the top step, leaning wearily against the porch railing. The porch was weaving beneath her after the last drink she’d had, but the sky above was salted with clear-cut stars. The other two walked off into the yard, two distinct black heads, silhouetted as a pair by the yard light.

It struck her later that she only saw one. The one she loved. The shape of his head and the way he walked, the way his jeans fit, his hands. She watched until he disappeared into the building. Then something akin to fear braced through her system when she could no longer see him. The idea of no longer being able to see him when she left and how she had wasted the time five years ago, too blind to see who he was and what he was offering her so freely then, swept into her mind. She closed her eyes, troubled, weary, unforgivably dizzy.

The two of them strode back from the horse barn just a short time later. Kern had his hand on Rhea’s shoulder, offering her a goodbye as they neared the porch. Trisha stood up so quickly her head reeled. It seemed there were two Rheas she politely thanked before gratefully heading for the car. Something caught on her sandaled toe and she tripped, righting herself promptly, a stain of embarrassed color shadowing her cheeks. “Clumsy,” she murmured to Kern.

“Is that the problem,” he responded dryly. A not ungentle hand folded around her slim shoulders, curling her easily in the hollow of his body. Her hand slipped around his waist, the clean male scent of him suddenly far more intoxicating to her senses than anything she had had to drink. He opened the car door, encouraging her inside.

“Wait a minute, I…” She touched her head dizzily. “I think I forgot my purse.”

“It’s next to you.” He was chuckling at her as he closed the door. He opened his own and slid in, surveying her from head to toe with another chuckle. “Lord, are you tipsy, Tish!”

“I’ve never in my life had too much drink,” she informed him with dignity, and promptly leaned her head back against the seat so the car would stop spinning. Gold strands of hair fanned the seat back. Her skirt seemed to have slipped up to her thigh. Her shoes had slipped to the car floor. Humiliation was intense for being such a total fool as to over drink—no less for everything she seemed to have done or said the entire evening—but glancing down at herself there just seemed so very many little things to try to correct…

He leaned over before starting the engine, brushing her soft lips with his own, so gently, so sweetly that she melted against him, eyes closed, her fingertips just barely caressing his neck. “And aren’t you human,” he murmured against her. “The civilized veneer keeps disappearing, Tish…” He pulled back, starting the engine, and then as if on second thought pulled her deliberately closer to him, her head encouraged to lean against his shoulder and her feet tucked under her on the seat.

There were no lights and no sign of other cars on the black road home. Just the two of them on a quiet night, a warm sensuous mist drawing down into the valleys, drifting in the rich perfume of wildflowers and forest freshness. The shelter of darkness soothed the grating unhappiness inside her; she was where she wanted to be, next to him, touching, alone. She was too weary and too light-headed to raise any defenses.

The car stopped in front of his house. The lights were off from within; Julia had gone to bed hours before. Kern opened the car door and held out his hands. She took them, uncurling from the car seat to reach immediately for him, her cheek to his chest and her arms folded around his waist before the dizziness could upset all of her equilibrium again. “Kern…I want you to make love with me.”

He drew in his breath, his hands tenderly smoothing back the hair from her face, smoke-colored eyes searching her features. “You were jealous, Tish,” he murmured. “Do you think I don’t know that? Come on now, it’s late…”

“I am jealous,” she agreed just as softly. “That isn’t why, Kern. And it isn’t the alcohol, although maybe that makes it easier to say it. What you do with Rhea in the future, or what we did in the past…I’m only talking now, Kern. I’m not asking for more and it’s not easy to say…”

He kissed her, softly and lingeringly, the beard brushing against her cheek in sensual roughness. She curled her arms around his neck, wanting him closer, craving him closer. His lips were still molded to hers when she felt the sweep of his arms beneath her thighs, the solid ground lifted from beneath her.