Yesterday's Love (15 page)

“Morning,” she murmured quietly, not wanting to shatter the pleasant early morning hush of daybreak. She opened her eyes to meet his steady gaze, but as she took in the look of dismay on his face, her own gaze wavered. “What's wrong?”

“How could I do it? How could I be so stupid?”

“Do what?” She shook her head to try to clear the cobwebs. “Tate, I am not very good in the morning. You're going to have to try harder to make sense.”

“How could I make love to you without protecting you?” he muttered, burying his face in his hands. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, Victoria thought, then Tate's soul was deeply troubled.

“You were a virgin, damn it. I never should have touched you. What if you get pregnant?” he said, then added decisively, “I'll marry you. That's all there is to it. We may have some problems adjusting at first, but we'll work it out. We ought to start thinking about a date.”

“Tate…”

His head snapped up. “What?”

“Don't worry about it.”

“What do you mean don't worry about it? Of course I'm going to worry. I've never done anything this foolish and irresponsible before in my life. I never wanted to hurt you, and now I might have gone and gotten you pregnant. My God!”

“Tate, it's okay,” she said soothingly, putting her cool hand on his bare shoulder. The flesh was warm, inviting. She felt him tremble, right before he decisively shrugged off her touch. He groaned aloud.

“Touching is not a good idea. That's what got us into this mess.”

“Tate McAndrews, I will not have you describing the most beautiful night of my life as a mess!” Victoria snapped.

“Tell me that a few weeks from now when you're pregnant.”

“I am not going to get pregnant.”

“Do you have some sort of exclusive on luck?”

“No,” she said patiently. “But I took care of it. I saw a doctor…right after we met.” She blushed. “Well, not exactly right after, but soon…I mean once I knew….”

He gazed at her as though she'd announced that she'd been praying to a fertility god. “You…”

“Saw a doctor,” she repeated firmly. She grinned at him, noting the relief in his eyes. “Someone had to be sensible,” she added with a shrug.

Laughter bubbled up then, and Tate pulled her back into his arms. “You are incredible, Victoria Marshall.”

“I've always thought so. I'm glad you've finally figured it out,” she said, gasping when he nipped playfully at the taut peak of her breast. “Tate!”

“Yes,” he said innocently.

“What time is it?”

“I'm trying to make love to you, and you want to know what time it is?”

“I'm due at an auction at ten. I don't want to be late.”

Tate moaned. “The woman who has never once in the two weeks I've known her been on time is worried about not being late to an auction. I can't decide whether to be astonished or insulted.”

“Go for astonished. It's easier on the ego,” she said as she rolled over top of him to see the clock for herself. “Whoops. It's nearly nine. I've got to get moving.”

“You move much more, wiggle even one tiny finger, and you won't get out of this bed for a week,” Tate announced in a voice so filled with urgency that Victoria froze.

“How do you expect me to get out of bed if I can't move?” she asked breathlessly, as her body became instantly aware of exactly how many interesting points of contact it had established with Tate's.

“I am going to do the moving. I am going to lift you ever so slowly so that you do not rub against me,” he muttered, a low growl in his voice.

She wiggled.

“Victoria!”

She wiggled again and grinned. “Maybe I could be just a little late.”

* * *

They arrived at the auction at noon. The yard of the farmhouse was crowded with familiar faces and the auctioneer's voice was filling the air with the rat-a-tat-tat patter that kept the bidding moving at a head-spinning pace. An excitement built inside Victoria, almost as great as that she'd experienced in Tate's arms. She loved exploring the rows of furniture and cartons of household goods at a farm sale, looking for some special treasure. Sometimes it seemed the more battered and decrepit the item, the more it appealed to her sense of discovery. She always wanted to learn what was under the paint or beneath the rust. Then she tried to imagine the lives it had touched. Maybe that was what made antiques so special to her, the fact they each had a history, stories they could tell about someone who had treasured them.

Because they were late, she didn't have time to do her usual advance survey of the items being offered. She signed up for a number so she could bid, then pulled Tate through the crowd.

“I'm starved,” he murmured in her ear. “Can't we get something to eat?”

“You can. I'm working.”

Tate's sharp gaze swept over the scene. “Are all of these people working?”

Victoria regarded him quizzically. “Tate, haven't you ever been to an auction before?”

“Never.”

She shook head. “That's what happens when you spend your life playing games with rows of boring numbers. You miss all the fun.”

“I thought you said this was work.”

“It is for me. But a lot of these people just like to come and spend the day visiting with their friends. It's sort of like an old-fashioned community picnic.”

His eyes lit up. “Picnic?”

Victoria grinned at his hopeful expression. “There are tables of food right over there. Go get something, if you're hungry.”

He nodded and loped off through the crowd. When he returned a few minutes later he was carrying two plates piled high with hot dogs, homemade potato salad, coleslaw and slices of both cherry and apple pie. Victoria's eyes widened incredulously.

“I didn't want anything,” she told him.

“Good,” he said, grinning at her. “This was all for me. We never did have dinner last night, and you made me skip breakfast.”

“We would have had time for breakfast, if you hadn't…” Her voice trailed off.

“Hadn't what?” he teased.

“Tate, please. You're distracting me.”

“Am I?” he asked innocently. “Good.”

“It is not good. I have to pay attention.”

While Tate ate, Victoria studied the crowd, trying to pinpoint who the heavy bidders were and what they were buying. Only a handful seemed to be dealers or serious collectors. The rest were the usual assortment of auction followers, who bid erratically and frequently too high simply because an item appealed to them. Their unpredictability was what gave the auction its challenge. You had to know the value of every piece and set your limits, or you could be lured into a bidding war with someone to whom price was no object.

Tate watched with amazement as the intensity in Victoria's eyes mounted and her brow puckered into a tiny, fascinating frown. Somehow he'd thought of her business as a game, primarily because of her unique way of conducting it. He saw now that it was anything but a game to her. She took it seriously and, judging from the careful way she was watching the crowd, she knew what she was doing. Apparently she had to be as good a judge of people as she was of antiques.

He had been paying so much attention to Victoria that he'd lost track of what was happening on the makeshift stage set up under a huge oak tree. When she lifted the number she'd been holding in her lap, his gaze flew to the stage to see what she was trying to buy. It looked like a huge stack of unmatched dishes to him, and they were all in these glaringly bright shades of orange and red and blue. He couldn't imagine eating food off plates those colors.

“You're kidding!” he muttered aloud. “You want those things?”

“It's Fiestaware,” Victoria said excitedly, as if that explained everything.

“Oh,” he said and looked again. “It doesn't match.”

“It doesn't have to,” she said and flashed her card again. “Many collectors want a mix of colors. Others are looking for a single piece to fill in a set. I like to get as much as I can find.”

The bidding had intensified, with only Victoria and two others remaining. Her card was waving in the air more frequently than a flash card at a high-scoring football game. Tate could barely tell from the auctioneer's rapid chatter exactly what the current price was, but it sounded outrageous to him. One of the remaining bidders dropped out, leaving only two. It was up to Victoria. She hesitated, then waved her card.

The other bidder promptly raised her offer and Victoria's face fell in disappointment. When the auctioneer looked back at her, she shook her head.

“You're going to drop out now?” Tate asked incredulously, as the auctioneer began his chant, “Going! Going!…”

Tate snatched Victoria's card and held it in the air.

“Tate, what are you doing?”

“You want it, you're going to have it,” he said adamantly.

Victoria tried to snatch the card back. Tate held her hand up. When his bid was raised, he managed to wrestle the card away from Victoria long enough to wave it in the air. By now people around them were chuckling, but he didn't care. All he knew was that Victoria was going to have those dishes if it was the last thing he did.

“Tate McAndrews, stop it this minute,” Victoria pleaded. “I can't afford to go any higher.”

“I'll pay for the dishes.”

“Tate,” she said, his name coming out as a soft groan. “Please.”

“You want them,” he repeated insistently.

“Not for me.”

His eyes flew open, and the card drifted back to his lap. “Not for you?”

“No. For the shop. I'm going to sell them.”

“Oh. Of course,” he said quietly, as the auctioneer said with a broad grin, “Sold to the gentleman…and lady…in the fifth row.”

“Oh,” Tate repeated, and this time his eyes were wide with shock. Victoria's lips were suddenly quivering, and then she was laughing, unable to control her mirth.

“Tate, you were wonderful.”

“I feel like a fool.”

“No,” she said, kissing him. “You did something impetuous, totally crazy, absolutely impulsive, just to make me happy. I love you for it.”

“You do?”

“I do,” she said, grinning at him.

He chuckled and winked at her. “Should I do it again?”

“Don't you dare. We'll both go broke.”

* * *

As the spring days lengthened toward a summery brightness, Tate spent more and more time with Victoria. They managed to avoid her inquisitive parents and an enthusiastically watchful Jeannie, though that was getting to be an uphill battle. One night, Victoria fully expected one of them to pop out of her closet just as she and Tate were rediscovering the magic that their bodies made together.

Though Victoria had tried to force Tate to include her in his life in Cincinnati, he'd been more insistent that he wanted to understand hers first. If he had told her once, he had told her a thousand times that he wanted to experience firsthand the lightheartedness that made her lips curve in a perpetual smile and her eyes sparkle like jewels in sunshine. When he said such uncharacteristically romantic things with a serious gleam in his eyes, her heart flipped over. She found herself doing exactly what she'd sworn not to. She fell more and more deeply in love.

Unfortunately, on top of that, none of her attempts to bring a sort of innocent pleasure, a more casual abandon into Tate's too-structured life went exactly according to plan. It was as though the same fate that had willfully thrown them together to fall in love had now decreed that it couldn't possibly work.

First, she had arrived at Tate's office in the middle of the day and dragged him on a picnic. It had gone beautifully once he'd stopped grumbling about the disruption in his busy schedule. She'd prepared a lovely lunch, brought along a book of poetry and found an idyllic setting. After they'd eaten, she'd leaned against a tree with Tate's head nestled in her lap, and started to read to him, her melodious voice filling the air with softly spoken, romantic words. It had been just about perfect…until a bee had settled on Tate's lip. She could still hear his startled shout, and she would never forget the frantic trip to the emergency room, once his lip had started swelling to at least three times its normal size.

“I'm sorry,” she had said over and over again.

“No' yo' fau',” Tate mumbled thickly.

“Yes, it was. If I'd had any idea you were allergic to bees, I would have…”

“Wha'?”

“I don't know. I could have done something.” She'd run her finger lightly across his lip and winced as she saw a flicker of pain in his eyes. “Oh, Tate.”

“Shhh,” he had said soothingly. “Don' worry abou' i'.”

But she had worried and a few days later, when Tate had insisted on helping her plant her vegetable garden, she had practically pitched a fit, imagining him attacked by a whole swarm of bees and blowing up to the size of a hot air balloon.

“Victoria,” he'd said patiently. “I'm sure the odds against my being stung again are a million to one.”

“They are if you stay indoors.”

“I'm helping with the garden.” She knew that tone by now. She swallowed her doubts and gave him a shovel.

They had pulled weeds and cleared the patch of ground in the side yard, worked the rich black soil until it was absolutely perfect, added organic fertilizer and then put in rows of tiny tomato, corn and green bean plants.

“Where's the watermelon?” Tate had asked.

“I hate watermelon.”

“I don't.”

They had driven back to the garden store, where he had picked out three watermelon plants.

“Tate, one would be enough.”

“What if it died?”

“Okay. Then two should do it.”

“You might decide you like it.”