He gave an evasive smile. “Some.”
Anne waited. After a minute, she said, “Like what?”
“It’s better told at another time. I have something more important in mind right now.”
“What?” she asked with total innocence, until his eyes fell to her breasts. The nightgown was sheer. Blushing, she crossed her arms over the pale yellow bodice.
He took her wrists and pulled them away, then murmured a husky, “I haven’t properly said hello,” and drew her forward. His lips found hers unerringly, and proceeded to do all the things Anne loved until she was dizzy with pleasure.
Had she actually been angry at him the night before? The only thing she felt now was love. She kissed him as deeply as he kissed her, and when he shifted her, cradled her, she pushed her hands into his hair.
He was everything Anne had waited for and wanted. His kiss set her afire, his arms fed the flame. By the time he set her back, her cheeks and lips were rosy with heat.
She opened her eyes wide. “That was a nice hello.”
To her delight, he wasn’t done. When he reached for her again, she went willingly. Her hands slipped around his waist, fingers burrowing under his sweater to brush his skin. She was barely aware that he had pushed off the slim straps of her nightgown, until he drew back to release her arms and let the silky fabric fall to her waist.
His gaze caressed her breasts, which tingled and swelled. “How lovely you are, Annie,” he said hoarsely.
“You’ve seen me before.” She felt vaguely self-conscious.
But his eyes were deep green with passion. “Then, you were sick with a fever and a hacking cough. The beauty was there, but I hardly had time to admire it. Now’s different. You are lovely. I’ll say it again and again, every time I hold you, every time we make love.”
Her insides quivered, all the more so when he stroked her breast. When his fingers rubbed her nipple, she grabbed at his shoulders for support. “You’re cruel.”
She felt a grin by her ear. “You bring out the worst in me,” he said and kept up the torment.
The flames in Anne burned hotter, threatening to reduce her to embers. Small, unfamiliar sounds came from her throat when he eased her down on the bed and took her breast in his mouth. He sucked it in, bringing her arching off the bed. Clutching handfuls of his sweater, she was thinking she couldn’t bear any more, when he released her and whipped the sweater over his head. Her hands were all over him, then. She couldn’t touch him enough.
He ground out her name through gritted teeth and crushed her to him to stop her. She gasped at the press of his chest against hers, the texture against her softness, the rapid thunder of his heart.
“I need you,” she cried, looking up at him. This wasn’t enough, just wasn’t enough. “Please?”
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked huskily, and sucked in his breath when she pulled at the snap of his jeans. Seconds later her fingers were inside, against his abdomen. “My God, Annie!” For long seconds of indecision he stared down at her, and she was an open book, she knew. But she wasn’t ashamed. She might not be ready to say the words aloud, but the depth of her love, her longing, brought tears to her eyes.
Then something went wrong. Suddenly his eyes grew hard.
“Damn it!” he swore and released her abruptly. Bolting from the bed, he strode to the window, where he stood with his hands on his hips, his legs apart, his head hung low, his shoulders heaving. Then, swearing again, he stalked past her and left the room.
Anne sat in stunned silence, unable to move, to think, to feel. Finally the chill in the air drove her under the quilt, but even then the trembling hit her hard. There was only one explanation for Mitch’s behavior, and it had to do with the “obligation” to which he had once referred. He wasn’t free.
So again she wondered, Do I leave, or do I stay? And again she reached the same decision. Self-destructive or not, she was staying. She had to be near Mitch.
But she wasn’t being humiliated again. She wasn’t begging for love until it was freely offered first.
Needing to make a statement to that effect, she slipped from bed, went to the dresser, and pulled on a pair of corduroys and a turtleneck sweater. Then she went downstairs with her head held high.
But her show of confidence was wasted. Mitch was nowhere in sight. He had eaten. She saw dishes in the sink. And the blue Honda was parked outside. Deflated, she guessed that he was out in the woods.
Resigned to spending the afternoon alone, Anne built a roaring fire and settled before it. She had a short essay to translate, and a new novel, of the bestseller type, to read. She set to it.
Late afternoon became early evening without a sign of Mitch. More restless than bored, more concerned than angry, she wandered into the kitchen. But she didn’t have it in her to make dinner, so she returned to the fireplace.
Not long after, the back door opened and shut. Heavy boots crossed the kitchen floor. A slicker-clad figure appeared.
Without a word he approached, shucking the slicker along the way and draping it over a chair. Then he hunkered down near her and added another log to the fire. When it had begun to sizzle and smoke, he swiveled to face her.
“Angry?” The fire behind him threw a halo around his head, but his face was in shadow. Unable to tell whether he empathized or taunted, she went with the truth.
“No. I have no right to be angry.”
“I needed to walk. Even wet, it was good. I needed to think.”
About her? About another “obligation”? “You sound like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders,” she teased.
“It sometimes seems that way.” His voice was softer, more rueful. “It’s been a bad week.”
“Work?” she asked with caution.
“No. Work’s fine. I have good backup there. They keep things running when I fade out.”
Anne sat quietly, waiting for him to say more. If his problem wasn’t business, it had to be personal. Suddenly, she didn’t want to know.
She stood with a start. “I’ll go make dinner.” He caught her wrist. Suddenly gentle, he said, “It’s my turn. You did it last night. This time I’m cooking for you.”
His gentleness threw her, as did his eyes, which begged her to let him do this. It wasn’t exactly the begging she wanted, but it was something.
Trying to be as nonchalant as she could, she sank back into the chair and held up both hands. “It’s your house.”
He chuckled, in a suddenly lighter mood. One agile movement brought him to his feet, another brought him to her. He planted a kiss on her cheek before she had time to pull away.
“What was that for?” she asked.
“For being a saint,” he said and set off. Dinner was so companionable, that when Tuesday morning brought bright sun, Anne wasn’t surprised to see Mitch up early to join her for breakfast.
“It’s a perfect morning to set in the spouts,” he said, wiping the dishes as she washed.
“Spouts?”
“We’ve had cold nights and warm days. The sap should be flowing like water.”
Anne laughed in delight. “Maple-sugaring? We can do it ourselves? I’d planned on visiting a local farm to watch.”
He gave a satisfied grin. “Why go elsewhere when we have everything we need right here?”
“Do you know what to do?”
“Do I know what to do? Since when have you had cause to question my expertise?”
She grunted. He was all too appealing when he was in good humor. “Modesty seems to have escaped you entirely.”
He gave a short laugh. “No one’s perfect.”
In Anne’s biased judgment, Mitch was as close to it as anyone could be on that day and the ones that followed. Though they hiked, read, and rested, the bulk of their attention focused on the maple-sugaring, about which he did indeed know almost everything.
“The best trees have to be big, forty years old or more,” he explained, when they left the house carting the tools he had produced from a shed. “We’re using metal spouts. This is the old-fashioned method of tapping trees, but it works for me.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Many times.”
At the first maple that fit that bill, he drilled a small hole and inserted a metal spout that extended several inches beyond the bark. He did the same at each large tree.
“The sap generally flows between mid-March and mid-April. I do this whenever I’m here then.” With a shove, he pushed a spout into place, then inserted one on the back side of the same tree.
“More than one per tree?”
“With a tree this size, there’ll be enough sap for two. Here, you slide this one in, while I get more buckets.”
By the time he returned, she had done as he asked. He fit a bucket on the spout.
“A sliding lid?” she asked, studying it. “I’ve never seen lids on sap buckets, period.”
A smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Then you’ve never seen a stray horse or a field mouse drink the sap as it collects.”
She laughed. “No, I haven’t.”
“This lid doesn’t always keep them out. A persistent animal can get what he wants. But it helps.”
They picked up the equipment and moved on to the next tree.
“How much sap will we get?” she asked, but she was distracted watching him as he debated where to drill. He was a sight to behold, larger and more rugged-looking than ever in a high-collared sheepskin jacket and faded jeans.
He knelt before the tree and applied the drill. “On a good day the bucket will fill and overflow. On a poor day we’ll get only a few inches.”
He grunted as he pushed the bit forward into the tree. “If we were to continue for the entire length of the sapping season, we might get ten or twenty gallons from each tree.”
She was startled. “That much? Whoa. What would we ever do with all that sap?”
The hole drilled, he straightened and motioned with his finger for her to insert the spout, which she deftly did this time with the aid of a hammer.
““All that sap,”’ he said, “boils down to very little. To get one gallon of syrup, you have to boil down anywhere from thirty-five to fifty gallons of sap.”
“Ah. That explains why genuine maple syrup costs so much.”
Mitch went on with the lesson as he continued to work. “New York and Vermont produce the most syrup in this country, though the province of Quebec yields more than the two states combined. Today, most of the commonly used syrups are actually a combination of maple syrup, cane sugar syrup, and corn syrup. If you ask me, though, there’s no contest. The straight stuff, the real thing, beats all.”
Anne couldn’t argue with that.
For a while they proceeded in silence, but it was a friendly silence, an intimate one. She noted that he favored his right arm, cranking the hand drill around with it, while the other held the shaft in place. When she offered to take a turn, he indulged her, enjoying her struggle with a smug smile. When she finally gave up and turned the chore back to him, he said, “That’s okay, Annie. I could never have cleaned the house the way you did this time.”
“You noticed?”
“How could I help it,” he teased with a rewarding grin. “I was nearly blinded by the sparkle.”
Anne knew the feeling. She was nearly blinded now by the sparkle in his eyes. When he pushed two spouts into her hand, she was temporarily disoriented.
“In the tree?” he prodded with a cockeyed grin, leaving her to recover while he went for more buckets.
That first day, they drilled holes, inserted spouts, and hung buckets on the largest of the maples near the house. On succeeding days they collected the sap that had flowed. It was no mean feat, carting heavy buckets from tree to house and back.
“If we had the most modern equipment,” Mitch teased as she massaged the nagging muscles of her shoulders, “we’d have used plastic spouts attached to plastic tubing that would take the stuff directly from the tree to the sugarhouse. It’s much more efficient in terms of time and labor.”
“That’s all okay,” she reasoned. “We don’t have a sugarhouse. Besides, I’m gaining weight. The exercise will do me good.”
He looked her over. “Well, you’re not scrawny anymore, but … in danger of being overweight? Not a chance.”
“Fine for you to say. You did most of the work this week.” And he had.
He had cooked nearly every meal, in addition to doing the lion’s share of the sugaring work.
He threw an arm across her shoulders and drew her to his side. “I owed you for being such a bastard when I first got here. Most women would have packed up and left.”
She managed a gruff, “The thought did cross my mind.”
“I’m glad you stayed,” he said with affection.
There was a gleam in his hazel eyes, a softness in his smile, gentleness in the fingers that cupped her shoulder, and a velvet edge to his voice. All in all, it was a warm moment. Anne committed it to memory.
By Friday morning, there was enough sap in the large vat to begin the boiling process.
“They usually do this in long, shallow pans called evaporators,” Mitch explained. “The one we’re using is a little deeper than we need, but it’ll have to do. When all the water has evaporated, we’ll have pure maple syrup.
No matter that he had done this before, his enthusiasm and genuine enjoyment of the process were in no way watered down.
As for Anne, she was enchanted watching the thin, colorless liquid bubble and thicken to a dense golden brown. On impulse, she slid an arm around his waist, happier in that moment than in any in recent memory. Regardless of what the future held, she would cherish this memory.
He grinned down at her. “What?”
She sighed her pleasure. “It’s been a tin week. This is a great finish to it.” She was leaving in the morning. As it was, she had stayed a day longer than she’d planned, but he had asked her to.
“I’d rather a more personal finish,” he said now. “Better still, I’d rather no finish at all.”
She basked in the tenderness of his expression, loving him and aching to say it. But she wasn’t setting herself up for rejection again. And anyway, just then the sap gurgled wildly.
“It shouldn’t be long,” he said, lifting a large wooden spoon to stir the solution and test for its thickness. “Should we have pancakes or French toast for dinner?”