Man From Tennessee (3 page)

“Damn it. I’ve been trying to get my mother here for ages. But not
now,
Tish.”

Trisha was reaching into the refrigerator. She straightened at the sound of his voice, bringing out a package of cheese. “So you talked to her.” She kept her face averted, slicing the cheese wafer-thin, making tiny sandwiches for Julia that she knew would please.

“I told her there was nothing wrong with me. I don’t understand why she had to hightail it out here from Grosse Pointe, and I don’t understand why she looks so awful. I just spoke to her on the phone last Sunday. She was ‘marvelous, darling,’” Kern quoted.

Trisha piled the little quarter sandwiches on a tray and bent to seek some sort of relish from the fridge plus parsley and olives, which Julia loved. “She fibs, Kern. Pit her against the average four-year-old and you could probably have a contest,” Trisha said calmly.

His smile was swift, like fresh air. She caught just a glimpse of it as she turned back to the tray. The deep-set gray eyes had almost pinned hers, and Trisha thought how like the mountain cats he was. The easy, sure movements. The eyes always alert. The subtlety of muscle cloaked in that golden skin of his. The scars and bandages took nothing away from him but added an unexpected illusion of human frailty. She felt disturbed as he watched her making the tea. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she added finally.

“Well, I can’t handle her now. People are flooding into the camp this season and I’m behind because of the ridiculous accident. Sit down for a minute, will you?” He scraped back a kitchen chair and waited.

She didn’t want to sit. She wanted to take the tray back to Julia and leave, quickly, but she couldn’t justify that kind of cowardice in her own mind. After pouring two cups of coffee, her own half full, she took the chair across from him.

“You’re going to have to stay until she’s ready to go home.”

It was what she had planned all along, but it sounded different coming from Kern, as if what he was talking about was staying with
him.
“Well, of course. After I have Julia settled, I’m going down to Gatlinburg to get a motel—”

“There’s three bedrooms upstairs. Don’t be ridiculous.” He lifted the cup and took a long sip of the bitter hot coffee, staring at her over the rim. “I barely recognized you when you walked in,” he said quietly. “I understand you’ve got quite an impressive job these days.”

“An assistant buyer at Markham’s is hardly impressive, Kern. But I like it,” she murmured, stirring a spoon into the coffee she didn’t really want.

“You went to school at night for two years. Started as a salesclerk. I’d call it impressive to start from nowhere and end up at the place you are. Mother told me you’ve got your own place, close to the river,” he continued. “When I first met you I never thought you’d be happy living in the city, but you’re right in the heart of it, aren’t you? And those rents aren’t inexpensive.”

“Yes,” she said flatly. So he had made a point of knowing what she’d been up to. Why? Rapidly she switched the subject. “How badly were you hurt? It was a car accident, wasn’t it?”

He grimaced. “The mountain roads weren’t meant for drag racers. It was a couple of kids. One of them got a broken leg and the other lost a few teeth. It could have been worse.”

“And what about you?”

“A few cuts and scrapes. Nothing.”

The scar on his forehead and bandaged wrist weren’t “nothing.” Julia had spoken of a concussion and broken ribs. Still, it was typical of Kern to downplay his own hurts, and as far as wanting to share with her—well, of course he wouldn’t. “The camp looks double the size it was before. And the house…”

“Naturally, it’s finished,” Kern said curtly. “You stayed with mother for a time after you left?”

Unconsciously she reached to smooth back a tendril of hair that brushed her cheek. “Yes,” she admitted a little ruefully. “I certainly didn’t intend to. When Uncle Nate moved from Grosse Pointe to California, he left a few boxes of my things with Julia, because she was closer—”

“And it was a lot less trouble than having to mail them here,” Kern interrupted dryly. “God forbid he should ever have had to go out of his way for you.”

Trisha gave a little shrug, surprised he had remembered her uncle at all. “It wasn’t his fault he had an orphan thrust on him when my parents died. I hadn’t planned to go back to live with him nor your mother. It was just a question of going to her house to pick up my things. But the day I went it was raining and I had a halfhearted case of flu. The next thing I knew—”

“Mother had taken you over.”

“With appalling speed.” Trisha shook her head. “Well, I
was
ill, and then later it was a question of getting on my feet with a job. Talking to Julia about my leaving was like arguing with a brick wall. But whether or not you believe me, Kern, I grew to care for her very much and still do. Once I got past that formidable exterior…” She stopped, rather appalled that she was telling him so much so easily.

Kern leaned forward. “Go on,” he said, encouraging her.

“Well…I invited her to dinner after I was set up in the apartment. She was so shocked—as if she thought I’d just forget her once I left. Apart from my being an indifferent cook at best in those days, I don’t think anyone had had the nerve to serve Julia spaghetti in years. Much less invite her to a place decorated in early attic,” Trisha said dryly. “I remembered that she was fussy about salad dressings so I made a Jell-O molded salad. No one can mess up one of those. Only…”

The corner of his mouth was twitching. She felt an odd stirring inside to see that slash of a smile. “Go on.”

“I had molded it beautifully,” Trisha said frankly. “Only I seemed to have molded in the spoon I’d stirred it with. She never said a word. When she offered to serve the salad I just said yes, and it was only after she was gone and I was cleaning up that I saw she had carved very carefully around the spoon…”

He had such a delicious chuckle, throaty and vibrant. Trisha smiled back, an unexpected warmth curling all through her at the sound of him. His eyes softened in laughter, the corners crinkling in little fan lines, and when he stopped smiling the sensual softness was still there when he looked at her.

“Anyway, she took care of me for a time, and I found myself reversing the role, taking care of Julia from time to time. I didn’t think you’d mind, Kern. Julia never even brought up the two of us. And when she was determined to come down here and see you, I couldn’t say no to her.”

Kern stood up to take his empty coffee cup to the sink. She’d deliberately tried to provoke his laughter with the silly little story, and she had. Five years ago there was none, and suddenly his laughter was a reminder of how they might have related to each other. She stood up, too, and took a breath.

“Well, I’d better get this tray to your mother,” she said briskly. “I may just stay here tonight, Kern, if you really don’t mind. Then by morning if Julia’s better I can have us both out of your hair quickly—”

The vise of his fingers suddenly grasped her wrist. Her shocked face stared up in amazement at his instant change in mood. Hawk eyes seared hers. “So we managed fifteen minutes of casual conversation. We almost sound like old friends, Tish,” he said sarcastically. “Very cool, very relaxed, very poised, Trisha. Not at all the way you used to be!”

His work-roughened hand did odd things to the soft skin of her own. “It’s still there, I see. I saw it the minute you came in.”

The slim gold band seemed to wink at both of them. For a moment she looked up at Kern, her eyes like two blue ink drops on snow. Her face had whitened, not because of the sudden rough contact, but because her senses were unexpectedly assaulted by the closeness of him. He was such a sexual man. The piratelike beard enclosing a mouth that was incredibly smooth-textured. The outdoor scent that was uniquely a part of him. The careless array of thick black hair around a face whose expression was never careless, always alert, always perceptive…

He released his hold. “I waited for you to apply for a divorce.”

“I thought you would, Kern. In the beginning I didn’t have the money for it, and…it never really mattered, not when we both knew it was over. I—” Her voice was barely audible. The longer she stared at him, the more she felt mesmerized by the gray light of his eyes, strangely soft for an instant and sad. Bitterly sad for what they both wanted from each other once, and Trisha ached to be closer suddenly, to reach out and just hold him, and be held.

There was a sharp rap on the door behind her, and Kern stepped around her to answer it.

“Sorry I’m late, honey. I—oh!”

The woman had her arms extended with the obvious intention of giving Kern a hug of greeting, until she caught sight of Trisha standing there. It did not take thirty seconds for the scene to gel in Trisha’s mind. If Kern had broken every limb there would still have been no need for Julia to come help. He was obviously being well taken care of.

The lady was a well-curved Amazon with the black eyes and black hair of their Cherokee neighbors. Tight jeans were molded over long legs. A red T-shirt, worn braless, hid nothing of her voluptuous figure, and an incredibly long swath of loose hair flowed to her waist. Her skin was the bronze of an outdoor woman…a mountain woman. A very sexy woman in a natural way, with probably a few years over Trisha. At that particular moment very little seemed to matter.

Trisha swallowed the ridiculous lump in her throat and stepped forward with a slim hand extended in greeting. “I’m Trisha Lowery,” she said pleasantly. “An unexpected visitor of Kern’s.”

“Rhea Andreas.” The woman acknowledged the handshake with another careful look at Kern. “I was coming to fix Kern’s dinner, but—”

“I was wondering how he managed without his right hand,” Trisha said cheerfully as she picked up Julia’s tray. “It was nice meeting you, Rhea. I’m on my way—out of the way.”

“Tish—”

“Have a good dinner,” she urged, and with a bright smile aimed somewhere between the two of them, briskly headed out the door and back to Julia’s room.

“I think we’d better plan on leaving first thing in the morning,” Trisha said promptly, as she angled the tray onto Julia’s lap.

Julia closed her eyes. “My blood pressure’s up. I can feel it. Could you get my pills from the suitcase, Trisha?”

By the time Trisha returned with the suitcase, Julia had eaten the sandwiches and finished the tea. “How I hate it when I don’t feel well,” she said testily. “Such a nuisance. Especially now.”

“Kern will know a doctor—”

“Over my dead body.”

Trisha let it be. Julia, however formidable with her Grosse Pointe symphony set, was never going to be a match for her son. And Kern would brook no such nonsense if he thought Julia needed a doctor in the morning. “Perhaps you’ll feel better after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. But if you don’t feel up to going home in the morning, darling, I think I will go back alone. It’s not that monstrous a drive to come and get you later—”

“I never heard of anything so ridiculous,” Julia snapped. “You’ve got a month’s leave, Trisha. Kern isn’t as badly off as I was afraid of, but I still want to stay a day or two now that we’ve come all this way. You can’t just go home!”

“I can’t stay here.” The words just slipped out. She had no right to feel shock at the sight of the woman Rhea. But telling herself she was a fool to suddenly feel like splintered glass didn’t help. Before she arrived she had never, never had any expectations where Kern was concerned.

“Trisha, you must be curious after all this time,” Julia said. “Don’t tell me the situation is the same as it was before.
You’re
not the same. I’ve waited and waited…”

Trisha’s jaw dropped. There had been no hint in five years that Julia had ever wished the two of them back together. Julia was the one who had coddled her Grosse Pointe style, decrying everything about the mountain life her son had chosen. “Exactly
what
have you been waiting for?” Trisha demanded.

Julia’s eyes shuttered, and she fussed with the blanket pulled to her chest. “You could do it now, Patricia. Convince him to come back home. You could have persuaded him before, but now… You’re a much more beautiful woman. You’ve got grace and style and confidence. I don’t blame you for hating all this—this primitive country—but if you were both back home…”

“Lord, I don’t believe this!”

Julia regarded her with utter calm. For a moment Trisha even wondered if Julia had arranged for the bluish tinge on her lips, the odd little half breaths, the physical weakness. And then she felt horribly guilty for the thought. “Oh, Julia,” she scolded wearily. “That really isn’t why you insisted on making this trip, is it?”

“I wanted to know how Kern was, of course. But Roberts could have driven me. There must be some reason I have a chauffeur,” Julia said reasonably.

“You told me his family was ill.”

“Hmm.”

Trisha rolled her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “Neither of us has been carrying a torch all this time. How could you even think it!”

“You’ve never gotten a divorce.”

“That’s just a piece of paper!”

“So’s a marriage certificate. But you kept that,” Julia said pleasantly.

“That’s completely different. I knew I never wanted to marry again; there just wasn’t any point…”

“All right,” Julia said calmly, her eyes so shrewdly assessing that Trisha had the urge to shake her. “Whatever you say, darling. But all I want to do is spend a couple of days. You can’t desert me when we’ve come this far. At least wait until I feel a little better.”

“Wrong, Julia. That’s just what you have a son for. I’m leaving in the morning.”

Trisha refused to listen any further. Julia was tucked in, the curtains pulled closed, her case unpacked for her and the tray taken care of. By the time Trisha finally left the room, Julia’s eyes were closing.

Wearily Trisha wandered outside, her hands dug in the pockets of her cream silk slacks. For a few minutes she simply refused to think about Kern or Julia, or Rhea. She was exhausted, disturbed and unsettled inside.

The peace of the evening reached out to her like a gift. The peaks were silhouetted in the brilliant flame colors of the falling sun. The pine trees studding the mountains took on burnished hues…she had expected no peace, but it was there suddenly, and her rapid stride slowed.

Her feet automatically took a certain trail. There was a waterfall she remembered, a secret place, too far to reach this night, but the direction was instinctive. She took her hands from her pockets and hugged her arms against the evening chill. The trees cradled her in shade, rustling whispers just above her. Just once she wanted to remember this country without anguish, without memories, just to savor the old dreams…

The night sounds began suddenly—the eager restless rustlings of animals who preferred the darkness to do their living. The Smokies were a protected area, for fauna and for animals. Possum, raccoon, white-tailed deer, wild turkey and fox frequently ventured onto Kern’s land. The animals and particularly the snakes that she had once been afraid of didn’t affect her this night.

She walked an hour or more. It was a tar-black sky when she ventured back to Kern’s, guided by patches of moonlight between the trees. Her sandals were soaked with dew by the time she returned. The breeze had tugged loose her chignon and gold strands of hair ribboned across her cheeks. She was chilled, bone weary, but more at peace from her solitary hour in the mountain night than she could ever remember. There was just something about the air. Light-headed, strangely euphoric, she plucked a white blossom as she crossed the clearing behind Kern’s house, lifting it to smell the heavy sweet fragrance.

He was there, in the shadow of the doorway, perhaps a hundred yards away. All in black, the sling gone. She couldn’t see his face or any of him clearly. But she knew it was Kern. She dropped the blossom, instinctively digging her hands in her pockets again. It was an effort to switch off that deliciously sensual mood and convert it to a cool, polite smile. “Kern?”

He started walking toward her, his eyes meeting hers in the darkness. A knot tightened in her chest. He looked so damned primitive, black on black, his eyes glinting silver. As he came closer, she was desperately trying to come up with some polite, safe conversation.

But he didn’t talk. He just kept coming. Like the night closing in and an illusion of slow-motion time, he walked right up to her. The fingers of his left hand threaded through her hair and gently tugged. Her face was raised to moonlight, her lips already parted in shock.

He blocked out the stars, moon and sky when his head bent to hers. His arms cloaked her chilled skin in vibrant warmth. His lips were soft, tantalizingly sensual next to the bristling texture of the beard. Her neck arched back, cradled in his left hand, her breast pressed against his chest.

It was so completely unexpected. She was still trying to think of polite things to say, still trying to pretend that the mountain night hadn’t touched her with the promise of old dreams. His lips brushed hers, over and over, and then sank in thirstily. Her mouth was the vessel, open to the erotic exploration of his tongue, the sensual touch firing a strange ache and longing inside. For just a moment she was someone else, not the painfully inhibited Trisha who had fled from Kern’s bed. She was just a woman, lost in the chilled night air, reaching out from loneliness to the one person who knew all about loneliness.

“Tish…”

The soft lips left hers, trailed to the sensitive skin of her neck. His fingers roamed slowly from the nape of her neck to her shoulder, gradually seeking the silky skin of her throat beneath the blouse’s fabric. She heard a murmur escape from her lips and felt a frightening weakness as if she needed to hold on. Her hands found his waist, pressed into his flesh, and suddenly her heart was beating rapidly. He smelled so warm. None of it made sense. Confused, she tried to draw back.

“No, no. Not yet, Tish,” he murmured. His mouth covered hers just as his palm covered her heartbeat, then edged just inches over to claim the uptilted orb of her breast. Voltage shocked through her at his touch. Her breasts were small; suddenly they felt huge, almost painfully swelling in response. Her fingers dug into his skin and suddenly his head lifted from hers. Silvery dark eyes studied her.

She shivered, heard a low moan in the distant trees that reminded her of old fears…of failing him. Of a hundred embraces that had ended in disaster, even if they had not been quite like this one. But to put herself in that place again… She jerked back, clutching the collar of her blouse together.

Her voice quavered. “I don’t believe you did that.”

“And I don’t believe how much you’ve changed.”

She bit her lip as he followed her back into the house. Only in the dimly lit kitchen did she glance back at him. He just stood in the doorway, his one hand loosely massaging the back of his neck as if he were tired. But the look in his eyes wasn’t at all tired. The look in his eyes frightened her. He knew she had responded; he knew it wasn’t the same.

She pushed her hair back from her face and turned from him. If she were home, she would have had a cup of tea. After what just happened, she wondered shakily if he stocked any of the mountain-made whiskey.

She had had no dinner, but lunch had been eaten late on the road, and she knew she couldn’t handle food right now anyway. She just needed something to put her to sleep, to settle her nerves. Grateful for his Lowery upbringing, Trisha found not whiskey in the cupboard but the finest Cognac. “Do you want a glass?”

He nodded silently. She poured for both of them, handed him his glass and then backed deliberately to the counter by the door. There was less than an inch of fluid in her glass. She gulped half of it, staring out the dark window, and then moved resolutely toward the door.

“We’re going to talk about it, Tish.” His voice was low, as gentle as it was unmistakably a warning.

“No. Please, no.”

She took two more steps toward the door but his rapid pace beat hers. It was Kern who pushed the swinging door so she could pass through. A halo of light from the living room lit the hall. “I’ll get your suitcase.”

“I can get it.” The green bag was still by the front door, carted in when Trisha had brought Julia’s things.

Kern ignored her, snatching it up with his left hand, motioning her up the stairs. His features were taut, and she moved ahead of him, an absolute mess of confusion inside. What exactly
had
he
 
wanted to talk about? Kisses? Divorces? She swallowed, and asked, “Are you supposed to be lifting anything?”

“There doesn’t seem to be much in this anyway.”

“One uncrushable dress and a nightgown. I didn’t need much for a day-and-a-half drive,” she said lightly.

The spare bedrooms were directly at the top of the stairs. At the far southern end of the house was the huge master bedroom that would have been theirs. She paused between the first two doors. “I don’t know where you’d like me to stay.”

“There’s a choice of three.” She didn’t at all appreciate the humorous tone in his voice. Still, he stepped ahead of her to switch on the light on the eastern bedroom and set her suitcase down on a chair. “Rhea will have put clean sheets in here. She stayed when I had the concussion.”

“Yes.” Trisha moved to the window, thinking of the other woman taking care of Kern when he was ill. Kern bent to switch on the lamp by the four-poster bed and then moved to the door to switch off the glaring overhead light.

“I’ll check on Mother.” In the shadows she could still see the outline of the scar on his forehead, the way he held his right arm up parallel to his waist as if it were still in the sling. “I’ll be downstairs for a while if you need anything else.”

“Thank you. I didn’t expect…”

His eyes homed in on her slim figure, the golden hair disheveled as much from his own fingers as from the wind. “What didn’t you expect?”

She took a breath. The word came out awkwardly, before she had the chance to think. “Kindness.”

“But then you never did, Tish,” he said evenly. “As I said, we’ll talk about it. But not now.”

She let out a breath when the door closed behind him. In a few minutes she moved, flicking on the light in the adjoining bath. She had a nighttime ritual, as most people did. Her outfit was folded meticulously and placed in the suitcase, the dress taken out for the morrow and hung up. Her face was washed, a violet wisp of a nightgown put on, her hair brushed smooth. Her personality these days demanded order. There would be no rest until everything was put in its place. An idiotic habit, perhaps, but then for a long time loneliness had created insomnia. As she switched off the lamp and curled under strange sheets in the strange room, the neatness habit mocked her. Kern had been messy as all hell at night, his clothes stripped and left wherever they landed when he had been in a hurry to join her in their bedroom.

She sighed, closing her exhausted eyes deliberately, curling her leg just so and her shoulder in a certain pattern to assure sleep. A lump was lodged in her throat, an anguished knot of too many memories in that other bedroom. One short embrace in the night didn’t change that. Only a fool would read something into a few simple kisses. She’d been exhausted, disoriented, not herself, she told herself wearily. Yet the question plagued her long into the night. Did he actually still want her?

At five minutes to six the next morning, Trisha tiptoed down the stairs, determined to have a cup of coffee in silence before either Kern or Julia woke up. Swinging from her hand was a pair of red sandals with ribbon-thin straps. The navy jersey she wore had red piping for trim and a slash of red belt that cinched in her narrow waist. The dress was an old favorite and she loved the way the material flowed softly around her knees when she walked; more relevant at the moment was that it was unbeatable to travel in. Going home was second on the list of priorities, directly after coffee.

She slipped on the sandals at the closed door to the kitchen and stifled a yawn. An early riser by nature when she was rested, she found it difficult to wake after a long, restless night. She pushed open the swinging door and two startled pair of eyes met each other.

Rhea had a huge coffee pot in her hand. She, too, wore red and navy, a red chamois shirt and a tight pair of navy jeans. Besides the colors there was no resemblance to be found between the two women. Rhea was the image of a country woman next to Trisha’s crisp city freshness. “I—good morning,” Rhea said hesitantly. “I was just making coffee.”