One Summer (40 page)

Johnny groaned. “I should have said it with flowers. I knew it.”

Rachel punched him in the arm. “Quit joking. I’m serious.”

He caught her by the shoulders and pushed her a little away from him so that he could see her face. She was kneeling beside his sprawled legs, her skirt spread out around her like the petals of a daffodil. Her hands came up to grasp his forearms as he gazed at her with some exasperation.

“So am I,” he said.

“Then …?”

He sighed. “Okay. Okay. Rachel, will you marry me?”

“No.”

“No!”

“Try again. That was unsatisfactory.”

“Good God. Do you expect me to get down on one knee?”

“That would be nice.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Rachel shook her head. He stared at her for a moment, very hard. Then he gave her a wry smile of surrender, moved so that he was on one knee, and took her hand.

“Rachel, will you marry me?”

“Better, but no cigar. Or bride, in this case.”

“Damn it, Rachel!” He glared at her in a distinctly un-loverlike manner. His grip, which had tenderly cradled her fingers, grew hard.

The look she gave him was very bright and direct. “Johnny, do you love me?”

He met her eyes, and his gaze softened and warmed, though she did not miss the dark blood that crept up to stain his cheekbones. Clearly admitting to such a thing embarrassed him.

“Of course I do. You can kind of take that for granted when a man asks you to marry him.”

Rachel shook her head. “I don’t want to take anything for granted. I expect that this is going to be the last proposal I ever receive in my life, and I want it done right. If you love me, say so. Tell me, for goodness’ sake.”

“Rachel …” he began, with no small degree of wrath. He appeared to think better of whatever he had been going to say, because he closed his mouth and met her deliberately limpid gaze with narrowed eyes. Then, to her mingled surprise and amusement, the hand that was not holding hers moved to cover his heart. He looked for all the world like a surly boy getting ready to recite the Pledge of Allegiance under duress.

“Johnny—”

“Hush. Can’t you see I’m about to bare my soul?” He frowned her into silence and took a deep breath. “ ‘My
love is like a red, red rose that’s newly sprung in June. My love is like the melody that’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonny lass, so deep in love am I, an’ I will love thee still, my dear, till all the seas gang dry.’ ”

Johnny’s deep, low voice gave the poetry a haunting resonance that touched Rachel’s heart. He no longer looked surly, no longer looked like a schoolboy reciting against his will, but like a man humbled and strengthened by the love he was confessing. Rachel met those smoky blue eyes, and at what she saw in them, tears rose to her own. Her fingers tightened on his as he continued softly.

“ ’Till all the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt with the sun. And I will love thee still, my dear, while the sands of life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only love, and fare thee weel awhile. And I will come again, my love, though it were ten thousand mile.’ ”

For a moment after the last words died away, they were both silent. Rachel looked deeply into Johnny’s eyes and thought she saw the true and good and shining thing that was his soul. Her eyes were so teary that they threatened to overflow—and then, suddenly, he grinned.

“Robert Burns must’ve had his pick of chicks. That poem of his is one hell of a line.”

“Johnny Harris!” Shocked out of her weepy sentimentality, Rachel shoved him hard. He didn’t fall on his backside, as she had intended, but he did lose the smirk and grab for her.

“Let me go!”

“Christ, Rachel, I was joking! I didn’t mean it!”

“That lovely poem—I almost cried—and you were joking! I could kill you! I said let me go!”

She was struggling to get free. He managed to hold on to her as he sat again and dragged her across his lap, but the glare he got for his efforts was hot enough to singe his eyebrows.

“Take your hands off me!”

“Rachel, you misunderstood! I—”

“If you don’t take your hands off me, I’ll—I’ll—” Rachel, furious, was unable to think of a dire enough threat. While she sputtered, tugging at his ring to remove it and throw it in his grinning face, he pulled her closer against his chest, locked her hands in place with one long arm around her waist, and tilted her face up to his with his free hand.

“I wasn’t joking about the poem.”

“You said—”

“I know what I said. I didn’t mean it. I mean, I meant the poem. Every word. I swear.”

Rachel stopped wriggling and stared up at him with transparent suspicion.

“You knew that that poem is my very favorite in the whole world, didn’t you? You deliberately used it to manipulate me.”

He kissed her temple, his expression blatantly unrepentant. “I knew—I had a poetry-spouting tartar for a high school English teacher, remember? She fascinated me so that I remember practically every word she said. But I still meant it.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying,” he said, and kissed the tip of her nose. “And what’s more, you know it. You know how I feel about you. Just like I know how you feel about me. Rachel, sometimes when I’m feeling really sickeningly maudlin, I think that we were meant to be.”

Rachel looked up at him, up at the dark, handsome face and twinkling blue eyes and sexy, smiling mouth, and gave it up. If she wanted Johnny Harris, then she was going to have to take Johnny Harris on his own terms.

What good was a bullied confession of love, anyway? As he said, she knew how he felt. Knew it with the combined power of her mind and heart and soul.

45

“Y
es,” she said.

“Yes?”

“You heard me.”

“Good,” he said, and grinned. “I’d hate to have to return the ring. I didn’t keep my receipt.”

“Aren’t you funny today!”

“I try.” But when he looked at her, his eyes were suddenly grave. “Rachel, I can’t stay in Tylerville.”

“I know.”

“I thought we would get married as soon as possible, quietly, and go someplace, maybe out west.”

“How soon did you have in mind?”

“The sooner the better. This week. Rachel—” he hesitated. “I don’t think you’re safe here. I’ve thought and thought about this, and the only thing I can come up with is that there is a nut out there who hates me enough to kill the women in my life. If it’s true, the next logical target is you.”

“Do you really think so?” Her voice was very small.

“I hope not. But we have to act as if it were true. Guess where I spent last night?”

“Where?”

“Standing guard. In your backyard.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not kidding. I’ve even got the mosquito bites to prove it.” Johnny pushed up one arm of his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt-sleeve to exhibit his forearm, which besides being brawny, and nicely covered with dark hair, also sported perhaps half a dozen red, swollen-looking insect bites. “I’ve got more on my other arm, and still more on the back of my neck. Anywhere they found a bare patch of skin, those little bloodsuckers attacked. The bites itch like hell, too.”

Rachel was both surprised and touched. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Didn’t I?” Johnny gave her a level look. “I don’t mean to lose you, teacher. If the cost of keeping you alive is nights spent offering up my carcass to a swarm of mini-vampires, then I’ll pay it. The other women I’ve been involved with have ended up
dead
, Rachel.”

Rachel shivered. “That scares me to death.”

“It scares me, too. But nothing’s going to happen to you because we’re going to make sure that it doesn’t. You’re going to stay in your house at night, and I’m going to camp out in your backyard just in case you should forget. And we get married quick and get the hell out of Dodge. Right?”

“Right.” A smile trembled on Rachel’s lips. “Cowboy.”

Johnny groaned. “I knew I should never have told you my middle name.”

Despite the seriousness of the topic under discussion, Rachel had to laugh. He looked down at her for a minute, eyes gleaming, then silenced her by the simple expedient of kissing her. Rachel gave herself over to that kiss, to the hands that stroked over her back and smoothed her dress along the curve of her bottom, to the possessiveness of the arms that held her. She was his now, just as he was hers. With all the disparity in their backgrounds, they belonged together like two halves of a whole.

“Rachel?” He was dropping kisses along the line of her
jaw while his hands fumbled with the tiny buttons at the front of her dress and then unfastened her belt.

“Yes?” She was tugging, without much success, at the knot in his silk tie. How on earth had he tied it? The thing seemed destined to stay in place for the next hundred years.

“Do you want children?”

Her mind, which was in the process of fogging over with passion, cleared for a minute at that.

“Yes, very much. Why?”

“Good.” He straightened to flash a quick smile at her as he tugged her dress down over her arms. “I hate rubbers.”

He pulled her dress the rest of the way off, tossing it carelessly aside. Rachel knew a momentary pang of distress for the fate of the discarded frock, but he was already stripping her most efficiently of her shoes and ruined pantyhose. At the glint in his eyes as he took a very slow, very thorough look at her sitting on his lap in nothing but pristine white bra and panties, she forgot everything but him and the way he made her feel.

“Nice underwear.”

“Thank you.”

“Lace and silk and pearls. Better than anything I ever imagined.”

“I thought you imagined me in no underwear at all.”

“Well,” he said with a slow grin, “not better than that. But close.”

His hand covered one lace- and silk- and pearl-clad breast while he bent his mouth to hers. Rachel felt a shaft of excitement shoot clear through her body to curl her bare toes as his tongue staked a leisurely claim to her mouth. Her nipples stood at quivering attention under the ministrations of his kneading hands. The now-familiar quickening in her loins made her pull her mouth from his.

“Just a minute,” she said when he would have recaptured his prey.

“Mmm.” He was looking down at her bare legs, which
were draped across the dark blue wool of his suit. The contrast between the slim feminine curves and silky tanned skin of her legs and the masculine propriety of his trousers was enough to make his eyes darken. He ran an admiring hand along the inside of her thigh to her knee and back. Rachel’s legs parted instinctively, but then she snapped them shut and wriggled off his lap and out of his reach.

“Behave yourself,” she told him even as he grabbed for her. Fending him off, she knelt in front of him and worked his zipper down.

“Rachel—” He broke off when her delving fingers found him and pulled him out, wincing only a little as she worked him free of underwear and trousers without doing more than unzipping his pants.

“Shh.” She leaned over and touched her tongue to the tip of his penis. It was a light, almost teasing gesture, but it made him gasp.

“Oh, yeah,” he muttered when her hair puddled in his lap and her mouth swallowed him up. His entire body stiffened, his head was thrown back to rest against the top of the wall, and his hands were threaded through her hair, caressing her skull, guiding her motions.

“Aunt Rachel!”

It took a moment and another shout for this to sink in.

“Oh, Christ!” Johnny groaned, his fingers tightening on her scalp in protest. “Not now!”

“What …?” Rachel looked up. She felt slightly dazed, her senses were disoriented, and the taste of him was in her mouth.

“Aunt Rachel!”

“Loren!” she gasped, dropping him as if he’d suddenly turned red hot. For an instant only they stared at each other in consternation. Then Rachel was crawling across the platform in a frantic scramble for her clothes.

When she looked around, it was to find Johnny, who had
had much less to do to restore himself to respectability, leering at her.

“Nice ass,” he said.

“Aunt Rachel!” The cry was close at hand, perhaps just below the treehouse. Rachel, trying frantically to pull on her twisted and torn pantyhose, gave Johnny a hunted look.

“Go down and stall her,” she hissed.

“Right.” Fully dressed and grinning, he left her to her task and disappeared down the hole. Rachel, buttoning her dress, heard him greet Loren with commendable casualness. She fastened her belt, listening to the low hum of their voices as they talked.

Rachel was just pulling on her shoes when Johnny’s head appeared in the opening.

“Dressed?” he asked, but there was something about his expression that gave her pause.

“Is something wrong?”

“Put your other shoe on and come down.”

“Johnny—” But he was gone, back down the tree. Rachel knew without knowing how she knew it that something bad had happened and jammed her foot into her shoe and hurried in his wake. Near the bottom, she felt his hands close on her waist to lift her the rest of the way down. When she was on her feet, she turned to face him. What she saw in his eyes frightened her.