Now and Forever (7 page)

“They can't be,” he said, his big hand
smoothing down the wild strands of loose hair at her back. “You're a long way past your eighth birthday, little girl.”

“What's that got to do with it?” She tried to smile. “I'm still your baby, aren't I?”

His chest rose and fell heavily, and the silence between them seemed charged with electricity. His big hand moved, catching roughly in the hair at the nape of her neck to jerk her head back so that he could rake it with his dark, glittering eyes.

“What do you mean by that?” he shot at her.

The punishing strength in those lean fingers frightened her almost as much as his sudden, unreasonable anger.

Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes welled with tears as she looked up at him defiantly.

“You…you great bully!” she choked. “I can't…can't even kid you anymore, you take everything I say seriously! All right, I won't talk to you at all anymore and see how you like that, Russell Currie!”

“It might be safer,” he said flatly. His eyes narrowed even more. “You damned lit
tle fool, don't you know the difference between teasing and provocation?”

Her eyes widened like saucers. “Provocation? So now I'm trying to seduce you?”

The anger seemed to leave him, and a sparkle of amusement danced in his eyes. “I don't think you'd know how,” he said softly.

Her teeth clenched at his arrogance. “Frank might not agree with you,” she snapped.

“Careful, baby,” he warned in a voice that became calm with controlled anger.

“Careful, my eye! Just because you think I'm still eight years old doesn't mean other men do, Russell! I'm grown up. I don't make mud pies or throw rocks…I wish I'd never…oh, you horrible, cold-blooded…!” She choked on the words, a sob tearing out of her throat as the tears rolled down her cheeks.

“You damned little fool,” Russell said in a strange, tight voice. His callused hands cupped her face and he bent to put his mouth against her wet eyes, sipping the tears from her closed eyelids in a slow, smoldering intimacy that took her breath away.

“R…Russ?” she whispered, shocked by the action, feeling his heart as it began to pound against the walls of his chest. Her fingers pressed lightly against the thick mesh of hair over those unyielding muscles, feeling the cool dampness with hands that trembled.

“Don't talk,” he murmured deeply. His hands tightened on her face, and he drew back to look down at her. The thunder rumbled ominously overhead as the sky began to darken, but the real storm was in his eyes, glittering, furious, dangerous. Oblivious to the sharp jagged blade of lightning that shot down on the horizon like a pitchfork, and the tremor of the very air that followed it, he bent to her trembling mouth. His teeth caught the full lower lip, nipping at it sensuously.

“Open your mouth for me,” he growled huskily, his fingers hurting her head, “show me how grown up you are, Tish.”

“Russell…” she choked, her breath strangling her, the brushing, nibbling, coaxing pleasure of his tormenting mouth making tremors all over her body. “The…storm…”

“It's in me,” he murmured against her
mouth, “and in you, hungry and sweet and wild. Don't talk. Kiss me….”

His mouth opened on hers, pressing her lips apart in a burning, hungry silence that winded her. His hands moved down her neck, pressing her body against the whole lean length of his with a frankly arousing expertise, and she never thought of fighting him. Even when his tongue probed at her soft, yielding lips, even when she thought the coiling muscle of his arm was going to break her in two as he forced her body closer.

It was her first taste of a man's passion, and it frightened her. The other kiss had been a punishment, but this was like the end of the world. She raised her arms to his neck just as he stiffened and thrust her away with a glittering contempt that brought tears back into her eyes.

“You were mine when you were eight years old,” he said, breathing heavily. “I taught you to ride and hunt and fish and swim. When you were older, I taught you how to handle yourself on dates and how to drive and I'm glad we had those years together. But it's time we started closing doors
on the past. I'm hot blooded as all hell, Tish. I can't take that kind of kidding anymore without reacting to it. If you keep pushing me, this is just a sample of what's going to happen between us. I'm older and wiser and a hell of lot more experienced than you are. I took your mouth and you let me. I could take the rest of you just as easily, and don't you ever forget it! Now, get out of here.”

Shocked and hurt by his words, she turned and slammed down into the driver's seat, ignoring his retreating back as she started the car and backed out into the road. He didn't look back even when she turned it and started toward town.

T
ish walked through the dress shop in a daze, barely seeing the salesladies as she fought a new awareness that caught her breath. Finally, she chose a long white gown that clung like a second skin, its neckline, a low V that just escaped immodesty.

Back at the house, she paced in her room, debating whether or not to go to the party at all. Facing Russell again was an obstacle that she dreaded more by the minute. The memory of their kiss was still too fresh, and
her pulses raced every time she remembered it. Something wild and hungry was unleashed in her, something so totally unexpected she could hardly believe she was the same passive young woman who came home a week ago. Her life was changing in a way she couldn't fathom, perhaps changing too fast for her to cope.

“Tish, are you ready?” Eileen called, bursting into the room without knocking.

She paused in the doorway, looking much older than her seventeen years in the frothy, low-cut blue evening gown that set off her complexion. She glared at Tish's casual red and white sundress.

“You aren't going to wear that, are you?” she asked.

Tish bit her lower lip. “I…I don't know if I'm going, Lena,” she said unsteadily.

“But the party's for you! You've got to go!”

A sound in the hall caught her attention. She turned away from Eileen's pleading eyes and looked straight into Russell's dark, unreadable ones.

“You're going,” he said, pausing in the doorway, his shirt carelessly unbuttoned, his
jeans grass stained, his hair black and damp with sweat.

She straightened proudly. “I'd rather not,” she protested.

“If you don't go,” he said quietly, “Gus and Eileen don't go. They're riding over with us.”

Her eyes fell before his insistent gaze. “I'll get ready,” she said in a defeated voice.

“Tish, what's wrong?” Eileen asked gently. “You look so depressed.”

“I'm just tired, Lena,” she said with a forced smile. “Go on now and let me dress.”

The younger girl left with a reassuring smile, but Russell paused in the doorway, his eyes studying her restlessly, searchingly.

“Make it fifteen minutes, honey. We're already late,” he said casually.

“All right,” she said without looking at him.

“Lost your tongue, hellcat?” he chided deliberately.

She whirled glaring at him with stormy gray eyes.

He only smiled, the challenge sparkling in
his bold gaze. “If you were a few years older, Saint Joan,” he said darkly, “I'd carry this afternoon's lesson a few steps further. You've got a hell of a lot to learn.”

“Don't think I want to learn it from you,” she threw back at him. “You're too brutal.”

“In that kind of situation, most men are,” he said coolly. “I hadn't thought how overwhelming a man's passion might seem to a virgin experiencing it for the first time. You were safe enough. Just don't try it with a younger man.”

“I…I don't ever want to try it again,” she said, turning away from him.

“You will. Get your clothes on, honey.”

She turned around to tell him she could dress without being told when to do it, but he was already gone.

 

Tish dressed, applied a thin coat of makeup and ran a brush through her long dark hair. She felt very much like a lamb going to slaughter and hated the nervousness that had robbed her of the confidence she used to feel when Frank was with her. If only he were here, she thought miserably, he could protect her. But…from what?

Grabbing a white crocheted shawl from her closet, she curved it over her bare shoulders and went downstairs. Eileen and Russell were waiting for her in the hallway. He was wearing a white suit that accentuated his dark good looks and a rust-colored shirt that clung to his muscular chest like a second skin. As he turned, looking up at her on the staircase, she felt as if a burst of lightning shot through her veins. His eyes traveled the length of her body with a slow, thorough boldness that excited and flattered. They came to rest on her face, and a mocking smile touched his hard mouth.

“Oh, that dress is a dream!” Eileen breathed, wide-eyed. “Where
did
you find it?”

“In town,” Tish replied, avoiding Russell's eyes.

The doorbell rang, and, ignoring Joby's efforts to reach it, Eileen went past him like a blue whirlwind, calling, “That's Gus!” over her shoulder.

Russell lit a cigarette, his probing eyes steady on Tish's averted face. “Still sulking, little one?” he asked in a gruff whisper.

“I don't sulk,” she replied pertly.

“You didn't fight me,” he reminded her with a narrow glance. “At the last, it was the opposite.”

Her cheeks filled with color. “Please don't!”

Eileen came back before he could answer her, dragging a tall, lanky redheaded boy by the hand. “Tish, this is Gus!” she said with a beaming smile.

Tish looked up into pale, twinkling eyes. “Glad to meet you, Gus,” she said genuinely.

“Same here, Miss Peacock,” he grinned. “Eileen's told me a lot about you.”

“I understand you're interested in soil conservation,” she remarked as they started out the door, and they were at Jace Coleman's front door before the enthusiastic young scholar finished his discussion on soil erosion, sediment control, and the benefits to be gained by putting rock rip-rap on stream beds to prevent erosion.

Nan Coleman laid claim to Russell the minute the four of them went through the door.

“I knew you'd break down and come,”
Nan said mischievously, openly flirting with Russell.

His eyebrow lifted over a pleasant smile. “Did you?” he asked.

Tish left them there and made her way to the punch bowl, anxious to escape the disturbing sight of her best friend flirting with her…her…what was Russell to her?

The music, provided by a local band, was lilting and loud, and she had to admit that the players were unusually good. They had a repertoire that included pop tunes as well as country-western music, and she was almost immediately drawn onto the dance floor in the cleared banquet room.

Between dances, she listened to Jace Coleman, Nan's tall, gray-haired father, while he mourned his crops.

“I can take the loss, of course,” Jace admitted grudgingly. “It's just the principle of the thing. Now, it's armyworms!” he exclaimed.

“Buy beetles,” Russell advised him humorously, joining them with Nan clinging to his arm. “The county agent says they make mincemeat of armyworms.”

Jace set his thin lips. “I started this farm
when county agents were a bad joke, and I'll run it my own way until I'm dead. Then Nan can listen to college boys who've never felt the pull of a mule on the other end of a plow.”

“Remember your blood pressure, Dad,” Nan teased gently. “It's just been a bad year.”

“Tell Russell that,” Jace invited. “He planted corn.”

“Amen,” Russell seconded, raising a glass of bourbon to his lips.

“I haven't seen you take Tish on the dance floor yet,” Jace remarked to Russell. “Has this offspring of mine been monopolizing you?”

Nan's full lips pouted at him. “Tish has him all the time. I'm entitled to monopolize him at parties, aren't I, Russ?” she added with a provocative glance at Russell that made Tish's blood run cold.

Russell caught that look in her eyes and ignored Nan. “Do you want to dance?” he asked her.

“My feet are tired,” she said quickly. “They've been walked on until they're
numb,” she added with a nervous laugh in Jace's direction.

“Wasn't my fault,” he teased. “I haven't been able to get my bid in for all these young bucks.”

“Then, this is a good time,” Tish replied, holding out her hand.

Jace shrugged. “They're your feet, Lutecia.”

“Not too tired, apparently,” Russell chided at her ear as she passed by him.

She avoided his glance and followed Jace onto the dance floor, fighting down a maelstrom of emotions, one of which was blatant jealousy.

Across Jace's lean chest, she saw Nan melt into Russell's hard arms as he drew her onto the dance floor in tune to the seductive melody the band was playing. The older girl's tanned cheek nestled possessively against his chest, and her eyes were closed as if she'd suddenly landed in paradise. Tish turned her eyes back to Jace with a feeling of flatness that lasted the rest of the evening.

Just as the band broke into the slow strains of their last song, she saw Russell walking toward her. Dark and elegant in his
suit, he was the picture of masculine sophistication. But under the polish of that elegance, she could feel the raw strength that hours of hard labor in the fields had given him. She could feel the raw power in him that had its own strange magic, that made her so aware of him it was like stroking an open nerve every time he touched her.

“I don't want to dance with you,” she protested when he pulled her into his arms and drew her into the dance.

“I know. I can feel it. But I think you owe me one dance, if you can stop being jealous of Nan long enough to relax.”

“Jealous?” she burst out, freezing in her tracks.

“Shut up and dance. You're an open book to me, Tish, everything shows in your face.” His arm contracted, drawing her closer. “She isn't my mistress, if that's what's eating you.”

She stiffened in his warm, strong embrace. “I don't care how many women you've got. It's got nothing to do with me,” she said tightly.

He only laughed. “Loosen up,” he mur
mured against her ear. “I won't accuse you of trying to seduce me.”

“I don't know why not, you've been accusing me of it ever since I came home, even though you admit I don't know how,” she said irritably.

He laid his cheek against her hair, one big thumb caressing the slender hand he held against his silk shirt. “I could teach you how,” he said quietly, and drew her closer. “But it would be a disaster for both of us. I'm thirty-four years old, Tish. You're barely twenty-one. You need a young man. I'm past the age of accepting limits when I make love to a woman. If you were older…but you're not. It wouldn't work.”

“You…you egotistical, bigheaded…!” she burst out at him in a flurry of embarrassed indignation.

“Open your mouth again,” he threatened shortly, “and I'll bury mine in it.”

Heat washed over her in waves. She lowered her forehead to his chest weakly, hating what he could do to her with words.

“That's better,” he said at her ear. “Now listen to me. Don't let what happened this afternoon put a wall between us. You
pushed too hard and you saw the consequences. It's over. You'll remember it, and so will I, but it'll teach you not to throw that sweet young body at me.”

Her face went scarlet, then it lost its color until it resembled paper. “I hate you, Russell,” she said coldly.

“By all means, hate me,” he said with a harsh, bitter smile. “It'll be a welcome change from having a lovesick teenager hanging around my neck like a chain!”

He might have slapped her for the look on her face. With a sob, she tore out of his arms.

A shadow passed over his face, and he grimaced. “Tish, my God, I didn't mean that…” he said softly.

But before he could finish the apology—which was as close as he ever came to one—Eileen interrupted them.

“Russ, it's Lisa,” she said in a whisper. “Something's wrong. She's on the phone.”

He was gone in a flash, and Eileen took a deep breath. “She sounds almost hysterical. I wonder what's going on.”

“Eileen, who is Lisa?” Tish asked, making a grand effort to pull herself together.

She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. She calls Russ pretty often, and he goes to Jacksonville every month to see her. He never talks about her, and if I try to ask him anything…well, you know how black tempered he can be.”

“Tell me about it,” she said wearily. “How did you find out about her if he didn't tell you?”

“I overheard him talking to Dad one night after they had had a couple of big drinks. Russ said he loved Lisa and he hated leaving her there.” She sighed with a smile. “I thought it was terribly romantic, although you'd think he'd have married her by now. She has the sweetest little-girl voice…Gosh, you won't let on that I told you, will you? He'd have the hide off me!”

A sudden, aching emptiness spread out inside her. He loved Lisa. She was his woman. No wonder he'd never gotten serious about anyone else. Why hadn't he married Lisa? Was she already married? Was she one of those free-thinking liberals who didn't believe in marriage?

“Hey, where have you gone?” Eileen laughed. “Let's go get some punch, Tish. If
it's like usual, he'll be on the phone a long, long time. They love to talk.”