Moonlight and Shadows (7 page)

The unmistakable sound of his hammer halted
her in mid-flip. Now what was he doing? she wondered, lifting her
head in irritation and letting the page fall back into place. She
swiveled her chair around to listen, and her irritation increased.
His hammer kept up a steady beat. He’d missed the letter.

After a minute the hammering stopped. Lila
held her breath, waiting for the sound of tool gathering and door
closing. She waited and waited for a span of eternity before her
patience broke.

She pushed out of her chair and headed for
the door. That was the worst thing about living alone, she thought.
You had to do everything yourself. Now, instead of the quiet
civility of a letter, she’d have to confront him with his
termination. She’d be darned if she apologize
in person for the near slap, though. He could
read that part later.

Her steps carried her resolutely to the
kitchen, where the intensifying aroma of hot pizza and a weakening
will made her falter. She was too hungry for confrontation, or so
she told herself, and began to turn around.

The barely audible sound of swearing stopped
her. She took a few more steps toward the open doorway and stood in
the middle of the kitchen, craning her neck to the left to see into
the office.

As she’d thought, he was reading the letter
and didn’t look any too pleased with it. He was sitting in profile
to her, huddled over the space heater on a stool he’d obviously
just knocked together out of the scrap pile. A trouble light
dangled from an open beam, casting him in a halo of
illumination—him, the pizza, and the letter that held his utmost
attention. He was staring at the piece of paper like a man
searching for something he’d never find.

She took two more steps forward, watching in
growing curiosity as he set a half-eaten piece of pizza back in the
box and used his free hand to follow along with the words she’d
written. Her brow furrowed, and she took another step. His action
struck a strange chord in her memory. It seemed out of place,
somehow wrong—until he began to whisper.

Shock stopped her in her tracks. She knew
exactly where she’d seen a similar scene. It had been during one of
her education practicums for her bachelor degree. She’d taught in a
junior high school, the eighth grade, and a few of the children had
been behind in their reading skills. The slowest of them had
resorted to mouthing syllables and using his fingers to guide his
eyes across the page.

Jack Hudson had the same problem. He
couldn’t read.

The conclusion had no sooner registered in
Lila’s mind than Jack looked up and caught her staring at him. She
blushed, and worse, she thought he did too.

Silence stretched between them, thickening
the air with embarrassment and, on her part, guilt. She’d written
the letter out of cowardice and had ended up putting both of them
in a terribly awkward position. When would she learn to face her
problems head-on?

Illiteracy.
The word popped into her
mind and her blush deepened. She felt ashamed for him and knew she
had no right. Illiteracy conjured up conditions like poverty,
below-average intelligence, and laziness—none of which applied to
the Jack Hudson she knew.

She didn’t know what to do. Turning around
and leaving would be incredibly rude, unbearably cowardly, and
would get her nowhere. He might or might not figure out that she’d
meant him to be the one to leave. But staring at him didn’t seem to
be doing them any good either.

“Pizza?” he asked, reaching for the box on
the heater, his voice gruff.

“What?” she choked out.

He cleared his throat and looked up at her.
“Pizza. I brought a large one, in case you hadn’t had your dinner
yet.”

“Oh.”

“Have you?”

“What?”

“Had your dinner?”

“No.” The truth was out before she thought
to lie.

“Good.” A grin teased the corner of his
mouth. “I hate to eat alone.”

She didn’t know what motivated her
more—relief from the overbearing tension, the opportunity to ignore
what she’d just seen, the pizza, or the temptation of his smile.
Whichever it was, she practically stumbled over herself jumping at
his offer. “Should I get a couple of plates?”

“That’d be great. I brought a salad from
Rudi’s.”

Her hunger shot up a degree or two, and she
couldn’t keep the hopefulness out of her voice. “With gorgonzola
dressing?”

His grin broadened. “A pint of it.”

She gave him a hesitant smile of her own,
pleased with his choice, but was still feeling rocked by her
discovery.
Jack Hudson couldn’t read.

All through dinner he kept the conversation
going with stories about jobs he and Smitty had done. There was the
one about the lady who wanted twenty built-in mannequin heads in
her closet to store her wigs. The sight was so eerie, Smitty had
refused to go anywhere near the bedroom. Or so Jack had thought,
until he went into the huge closet one day and all the heads
simultaneously jerked around toward him, their sightless eyes
pinning him in front of the pile of cedar drawers he’d been working
on.

“I broke two of the drawers and banged the
hell out of my head on a shelf trying to get out of that closet.
His laughter underscored every word. “Practically gave myself a
concussion.”

Lila giggled along with him, wondering if
two beers were possibly one too many. She’d brought the plates out
to the office, and they were both sitting around the space heater,
eating pizza and salad. It was kind of like camping out, and the
most unusual thing she’d done in a long time.

He grinned and twisted the top off another
bottle of beer for himself. “Damn Smitty. We lost over two hundred
dollars on the closet alone, but it was worth every penny. Lord, we
must have laughed for a month. Every time I looked at him, he’d
jerk his head around and stare at me, wide-eyed.”

Lila chuckled and wiped her eyes with the
red bandanna he offered, forgetting, for the moment, her own
complaints against Dale Smith.

“Of course, I got him back,” Jack said.

“Of course.” She hiccuped.

“I found this old stuffed cobra one day down
in Denver. It was all coiled up, the hood flattened out, and it was
kind of wobbly. So I brought it home, and the next day, just before
quitting time, I put it in the front seat of Smitty’s pickup.”

Lila started laughing again, and he joined
in.

“I wish I’d had a camera when he opened up
his truck. The look on his face. And talk about lightning reflexes.
Man, he slammed that door shut so fast and so hard, he broke all
the glass in the window.”

Her sides were going to split; she was sure
of it. His stories were crazy, absurd, and the funniest things
she’d heard since she didn’t know when. Imagine, mannequins coming
to life and cobras on the plains of Colorado. She barely got
herself under control when he added, “I’ve still got the snake.”
She burst out laughing all over again.

He rose to his feet and brushed a light kiss
on the top of her head. “If you’ll make some coffee, I’ll get
dessert.”

His action surprised her, warmed her, and
squelched her laughter in the blink of an eye. “Okay,” she managed
to say, and stood up too.

The coffee was beginning to drip when he
came into the kitchen with a gold box tied with a black ribbon. The
name Justine Chocolatier was inscribed across the top in black ink.
Lila took one look at the box, one look at him, and said in a
disbelieving voice, “You bought a whole torte?” Justine’s desserts
were famous over half of northern Colorado.

“The whole thing,” he said. “Kahlua
truffle.”

“Wow,” she said softly. The thought of so
much decadence was a little overwhelming.

He sliced them each a generous piece, and
Lila poured the coffee into two deep mugs. At his request they
returned to the office, which Lila had to admit was acquiring a
cozy ambience. The space heater glowed and emitted enough warmth to
take the bite but not the adventure out of the air. Jack had folded
his ski jacket and put it on a low stack of lumber for her to sit
on, and the expanse of windows revealed a new snowstorm rolling in
over the mountains.

“I’ll never be able to eat all this,” she
said after three glorious bites.

“I know,” he said with a sly twinkle in his
eye. “I planned on making the ultimate sacrifice and finishing your
piece after mine. That’s why I made the pieces so big.”

She almost asked him where it all went.
Justine’s Kahlua truffle torte had about one million five hundred
calories per cubic inch, and he had no discernible extra weight on
his tall, broad-shouldered body—his perfectly proportioned,
quintessentially masculine, tall, broad-shouldered body. But on
second thought, she decided such a question was far too personal
and probably flirtatious. She took a sip of coffee instead and sat
back to watch him eat her dessert.

He was solid. She remembered that from when
he’d held her. Solid, and hard, and strong. She liked the way he
smelled too. No cologne, just an enticing scent of man and sawdust.
Another thought brought a private flush to her cheeks. She liked
the way he tasted. She liked it a lot.

It was kind of musky, very real, and
definitely erotic, especially when he cupped her face in his palm
and turned her deeper into his kiss. She couldn’t forget how that
had felt, or the flavor he’d left in her mouth, or the textures of
his tongue and teeth. The memories had kept her awake most every
night of the week.

“Second to the last bite,” he said, lifting
his fork.

She opened her mouth and took the offered
confection. It was rich and bittersweet, smooth and heavy, divine
even, but it wasn’t as good as Jack Hudson’s kiss.

He slowly withdrew the fork from her mouth
and ate the last bite, all the while watching her until she felt a
rise in her body temperature. For a moment she was afraid she might
do something terrible, or wonderful, like lean closer and kiss him.
She didn’t think he’d mind, not when he looked at her as if he
thought she, too, would taste better than Justine’s Kahlua truffle
torte.

When Lila gazed at him like that, Jack knew
he had to get out of there before he did something he might not be
able to control, like lean over and kiss her. But his curiosity
insisted on knowing what was in the letter before he left. He
didn’t want to go home alone and struggle with her scrunched-up
loops and waves, and he didn’t feel like driving over to his
sister’s and having her read whatever Lila had written to him. That
was assuming, of course, that even his sister could decipher the
lady’s scrawl.

“I would have done better if you’d printed,”
he said, allowing himself to lean forward partway. He rested his
forearms on his thighs and folded his hands together so he’d know
exactly where they were.

“Hmmm?” she replied.

“If you’d printed, or typed, I would have
done better. Cursive always throws me, and yours is worse than
most.”

“Oh.” Lila straightened and brushed her
cheek with her hand, as if that would ease the heat left by his
gaze. She knew how sloppy her handwriting was, more than one
student had griped about it.

“Yes, well, if I’d known . . . known that .
. .” Her voice trailed off, and the heat returned to her cheeks in
full measure.

“Known that I have trouble reading,” he
prompted.

“Well, yes, then of course I would have
printed.” Lies, all lies. It she’d known how much difficulty he had
reading, she wouldn’t have written him a letter, period. The
subject was proving to be painful, and she wished he hadn’t brought
it up. She wasn’t sure why the subject distressed her, but figured
it had a little to do with her guilt and a lot to do with being
attracted to him. It somehow seemed more sexual than sensible for
an English Professor to be attracted to a man who either didn’t or
couldn’t read.

She wished he wasn’t funny, nice, and sexy.
She wished she didn’t like him, and Lord knew she was trying hard
not to. After all, she thought she had learned her lesson about
getting involved with inappropriate men.

Not that he was actually inappropriate, she
corrected herself. She hoped she wasn’t that much of a snob. But it
did reinforce her belief that she and Jack Hudson had virtually
nothing in common.

“Well, yes,” she began, “about the letter .
. .” Now she had to tell him not to come back. She took the letter
he handed her and snapped it open, as if she needed reminding of
what she’d written. “Well, it starts with an apology.” Another lie.
She’d put the apology at the end.

“For what?”

“For almost slapping you,” she said, keeping
her gaze glued to the page.

“Apology accepted.”

“Then there’s another part . . . hmmm . . .”
She let her gaze skim the tersely worded phrases. “It’s about what
a nice job you’ve done on the office.”

“Compliment accepted.”

She could feel his grin, but she didn’t look
up. She didn’t know why she was embarrassed, and she didn’t know
why she was having such a difficult time admitting to what she’d
written. It had all made perfect sense at the time.

“Anything else?” he asked.

She made a big show of checking the letter
front and back. “Uh . . . no, I don’t think so.”

“Liar.”

Her head snapped up at his softly spoken
accusation, her face instantly aflame. “What do you mean?”

“I’m dyslexic, Lila,” he said, reaching out
to brush her cheek with his thumb. “Not stupid.”

Her skin burned under his touch. “There are
a lot of new teaching methods for—”

“No,” he gently interrupted.

“If you were tested. I mean, dyslexia can
be—”

“No.” His thumb slid downward and caressed
her mouth, effectively silencing her.

He was going to kiss her, she knew, and
there didn’t seem to be anything she could do about it except wait,
and lose herself in the depths of his eyes, growing languid with
sensuality. She felt the heat of his body, the warmth of his
breath, the unhesitating destination of his thoughts, and her lips
parted.