Always (36 page)

He tried coaxing and probing with the utmost of patience, but to no avail. He whispered against her stubbornly sealed mouth. “Come on, Em. One kiss, that’s all. Just one. You know you want it.”

“No, I don—”

That was all he needed. He captured her parted lips, molding them to his own in a long, sensual kiss that elicited exquisite, intertwined memories of one reckless night’s lovemaking on the eve of war and one Sunday afternoon’s playful abandon on a parlor floor. If Ross had his way, he would have more of the same, much more, enough to fuel a lifetime’s worth of memories for them both.

A frustrated moan came from deep within her throat before she turned her head away. “No.”

“Yes,” Ross said, skimming his lips across her jaw and down her neck.

“Let go.”

Reluctantly, he did as she asked, but not, apparently, what she expected. When he let go, she stumbled back a few steps to smack into the brick wall behind her. “Oh! Jiminy pats!” she said, clapping a hand over her mouth. He hadn’t heard her use that expression in years. “Curse my traitorous mouth!”

“While you’re at it, you’d better curse every other part of your body that wants more of the same, Em.”

“Stop doing this to me!”

“I never want to stop. I want to kiss you again and again and again. I want to peel off all your clothes and touch every part of you. I want to take you to bed every night of the week and—”

Emily shook her head and covered her ears. “Go away!”

Ross took her by the wrists, pulling her hands from her ears. “Hear this. I’m not going away. Maybe I need to state the obvious. There’s a chance you could be pregnant again.”

“You think I haven’t thought of that?”

“You’re not behaving as if you have. One thing’s for sure, though, you’re stuck with me this time. I’m not leaving. Not ever again.”

She pulled free. “If you won’t go away, then I will.”

“Where?”

Turning away, she made a dash for the Queen Street end of the alley. “Someplace where I can think in peace!”

“All right! Fine!” he called after her. “But you should know that you’ve got a big ink spot on your—” But she’d already disappeared around the corner and out onto the busy sidewalk.

“—nose,” he finished and let out an aggravated sigh. He knew where he would find her. But that was for later. Now, he would go back inside that print shop, roll up his sleeves, and set to work. He’d promised her he wouldn’t go away, and he intended to start making good on that promise today.

*

There hadn’t been a good soaking rain for over a week. The grass was dry, prickling the back of Emily’s neck and itching against her bare ankles and heels. The sun’s rays dried the few drops of warm water that remained from when she’d splashed at the edge of the creek a few minutes ago.

Hot. Oh, yes, it was hot, and as she lay on her back with her eyes closed, soaking up the heat and sun, listening to the soft buzz and hum of insects, she was sweating clear through many layers of clothes. But that was good. Summer was supposed to be hot. It even smelled hot, like parched grass and stagnating, muddy water. Hot and lazy. Empty of worries and troubles.

A flutter of activity in the oak tree branches to her left made her crack one eye open to spy a pair of bluebirds perched on a low-hanging limb. They were side by side, the one a vivid blue with a burnished red breast and the other a shade lighter. A male and a female, taking a break from the serious business of food gathering and nest building to experience a few moments of quiet companionship. Emily closed her eyes again. For them, it was simple. Not so for her.

She tried to clear her mind, but it didn’t work. Instead, she thought back to the very beginning, to the day Ross showed up at her father’s shop looking for a job.

“Wish that boy would go away,” she whispered to herself. “If Papa won’t make him, then I will.”

And she’d almost succeeded, except for the fact that the boy, in his own quiet way, had proven to be almost as stubborn as she was. She wondered how differently her life would have turned out if, all those years ago, Ross had gone away like she’d wanted. Very differently, she knew, and she found that despite all their tribulations, she didn’t care for that idea at all.

There was a rustling sound far off to her right. She wasn’t alone. Someone was making his way down the steep, wooded embankment. “Whoa! Whoops! Look out!”

At his warning call, Emily pushed up onto her elbows to shade her eyes. Ross was scrambling down the little hill, sending a shower of loose pebbles and puffs of dry dirt ahead of him. It was an incongruous sight, Ross in his city clothes and shiny black shoes, trying to negotiate in bucolic surroundings, surroundings Emily associated with their barefooted childhood. Yet no more incongruous than she herself—a full-grown woman dressed in mourning black, shoeless, lying flat on her back in the grass.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Wearing a familiar grin, Ross brushed himself off and approached. “Nice place. Come here often?”

Ah, so he wanted to play games. That was fine. In fact, that suited Emily’s mood perfectly. Taking a deep breath, she lowered her voice and narrowed her gaze. “Go away.”

Ross hunkered down before her. “Does your pa know you come here every Saturday?”

“Sure he knows. What business is it of yours?”

“It’s my business because I know it’s been you pulling those tricks on me at the shop.”

Emily wrinkled her nose, then lay back down again, closing her eyes and folding her arms across her chest. “You don’t have any proof of that.”

“I don’t need any. Your pa knows, too.”

“Did he say so?”

“Nope, but he knows just the same.”

“You’re lying. If he knew, he would have given me the dickens for it.”

“I hope he does.”

Emily lay silent for a moment, then smiled in satisfaction. “But he never did, you know. He never said one word about it.”

“That’s because he left us to work it out on our own. He was a smart man, your pa.”

Emily pushed up onto her elbows again. “Sure he was. And he had a smart daughter, too.”

Ross had settled down to sit beside her. He picked at some grass blades as he spoke. “Don’t I know it. Smart enough to rebuild his business and make a success of it. You know who stopped by after you left?”

“Who?”

“Old Jacob Groff. He plunked down his money and made your twentieth order for the day. He also said he’d take out a regular ad if you ever decide to start up the
Gazette
again. He doesn’t hold with your crazy notions about women getting the vote, but he thinks you have a knack for getting people’s attention. Everybody’s talking about that handbill.”

“Good,” Emily said.

“Maybe we could even try it.”

“Try what?”

“Start up the old
Gazette
again. I mean, after the job printing begins to earn a profit. Why not? We could start out as a weekly, and—”

“Wait a minute. What’s this ‘we’ stuff?”

“You and me.” Ross reached out to take her chin in his hand. “You and me. Married. With kids. And a house. And a business. And—”

Emily pushed his hand away and sat up. “I didn’t say I’d marry you. There are things to consider first.”

“Like what? I love you, and I think you feel the same about me. What else is there to consider?”

“Last week you were going to marry Johanna. This week you say you want to marry me.” Emily paused. Her next question didn’t come easy, but she had to pose it again and hope that he would tell her the truth this time. “Who will it be next week, Ross?”

“You,” he said seriously. “Johanna doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I haven’t felt anything for her for a long time. At least, no more than as a means to some pathetic idea I once had of success. Maybe I didn’t know it at the time, maybe my pride was still hurting, but if I ever really felt anything for her, it was finished the night before I left for the war.”

Emily frowned. The memory of that night was still very profound. And painful.

Seeing her expression, he pressed, “It wasn’t Johanna I thought about when we made love that night, and it wasn’t Johanna I thought about during those long nights when I was a prisoner. It wasn’t Johanna I came home for, either. It was you.”

“Me?” Emily looked into his eyes to see if she could read any insincerity there. She saw none. “You came home for me?”

“I believed I’d a mistake to make amends for. I thought we ruined our friendship by becoming lovers. I couldn’t live with that. I wanted my best friend back. Now, though, I suspect that our mistake wasn’t in crossing the line between friends and lovers but in trying to go back again. We can’t ever go back again.”

“No,” Emily agreed cautiously. To her, this simple truth had always been evident.

Ross smiled. “But that’s fine with me because I don’t want to go back anymore. I still want my best friend, mind you, but I want my lover, too. In fact, I find it terribly intriguing that both happen to be the same woman.”

“I could have told you that long ago,” she said.

“I think you did.” Ross leaned forward to toy with a loose strand of her hair. “Except maybe not with words...”

The playful glint in his eyes stirred a warm tickle in Emily’s stomach. To squelch it, she looked away and pretended to observe the antics of a squirrel by the foot of a sycamore. Clearing her throat, she changed the subject. “So, what happens to Eleanor?”

“Eleanor?”

“In your novel,” she said, watching the squirrel dart up the tree trunk and disappear into a green scrub of leaves.

“Ah, so you read it. I knew you would.”

“You haven’t answered the question.”

“That’s because I haven’t finished the book.”

“Oh.”

“Except...”

Emily gave him a cautious sideways glance. “Except?”

“Except maybe you can help me with the ending.”

“Oh?”

“When Andrew left for the war, you see, Eleanor was still very young. Even though she was growing into a beautiful young woman, Andrew had trouble seeing that clearly. He preferred to keep thinking of her as his best friend’s little sister. It was safer that way.”

“Hmm.”

“When Andrew returns from the war, both he and Eleanor have changed, and he realizes that she is indeed a very beautiful woman and he falls madly in love.”

“That makes perfectly good sense to me,” Emily said. “He was an imbecile for not realizing it from the beginning.”

“Well, maybe,” Ross said, “but that’s beside the point. The question is, what does Eleanor say when he asks her to wed?”

Emily pondered this as she stared at the sycamore tree. It seemed forever until Ross finally broke the silence.

“I meant to tell you earlier. You have an ink spot on your nose.”

“What?” Emily looked around. “What?”

“An ink spot. Right...” Ross indicated the tip of her nose with his forefinger. “There.”

“Oh!” Emily rubbed at it with her hand, then looked to see a smudge of black on her fingers. “Darn it.”

“I know what’ll help fix that. A dip.”

Emily turned to see Ross removing his shoes and socks. “What?”

“A swim,” he said, standing and shedding his suit coat.

Emily glanced at the slow-moving creek. “We’ll ruin our clothes.”

Ross yanked his necktie loose and flung it to the ground. “Not if we leave them here.”

Emily just blinked at him.

Ross began unbuttoning his shirt and grinned. “We used to do it all the time when we were kids.”

That was true. They’d often stripped down to their underclothing to swim. It was a common practice among country children, but they weren’t children anymore. To anyone who might happen by, they would appear ridiculous if not downright scandalous. She moistened her lips. “But what if someone—”

“No one ever has before.” Ross’s voice became muffled as he pulled his shirt off over his head. He cocked an eyebrow when he tossed it down. “What’s the matter? Scared?”

Scared?
Emily’s pride kicked in. “Of course I’m not scared.”

Ross didn’t reply. He merely offered an e nigmatic smile as he stripped down to his drawers, then left her to sit motionless and sweating under the merciless hot sun.

“Of course I’m not scared!” Emily called.

“Then come on in!”

He’d already disappeared over the small embankment. All Emily could see were smooth, muscular shoulders and the back of his head. Suddenly, she couldn’t even see that much as he vanished beneath the water.

“Scared... I’ll show him scared,” Emily said under her breath as she began to unfasten the front buttons of her dress.

Resurfacing with a splash and a hearty whoop, Ross shook his head, spraying droplets in all directions. “Whoa! Exhilarating!” Then, he vanished again.

“Anything he can do, I can do, too,” Emily muttered as she wiggled out of her dress and petticoat, and rose to her knees to wrestle with her corset. When she came to her feet, flinging the bothersome garment down onto the wrinkled pile in the grass, she wore a mightily determined expression and not much else.

Reaching the dried mud embankment, she stood in her chemise and drawers, watching as Ross rose from a sitting position to stand. The water level always dropped during the hottest, driest months of the year. If this were spring, it would have easily reached his chest. Today, however, the cloudy creek current only brushed his upper thighs. Water drops sparkled like liquid diamonds against the rich summer tan of his skin, and Emily’s eyebrows rose with interest upon noticing that his thoroughly soaked white cotton drawers clung to his splendid male anatomy in a most detailed manner.

He taunted her, “Having second thoughts?”

“You mustn’t know me very well.” She made her way down the short slope until her toes sank in mud and water. It felt cool and squashy, like soft, wet clay, and she laughed. Two seconds later, the water was up to her knees.

“Come on,” Ross urged.

Keeping her eyes locked with his, Emily forged ahead, fighting a delicious shiver that was only partly due to the cold water that lapped at her knees and thighs. She let out a delighted gasp when he reached out, catching her by the waist and bringing her flush up against him.