Heartstrings (41 page)

T
heodosia finished her two hotcakes
well before Roman finished his stack of ten. She couldn’t imagine what he had in mind for their first day of doing nothing and everything, but counted on his ideas to ease the confusion she continued to feel over her plight.

That thought in mind, she decided to hurry the morning along by cleaning up the pan she and Roman had used to cook the hotcakes. Using a small, thick towel to guard her hand from the hot metal, she reached for the pan handle, then prepared to pour stray bits of hotcakes onto the ground. “Stop!” Roman shouted.

His shout so startled her, she dropped the pan. “Roman, what on earth—”

“There are still hotcakes left in the pan.”

She glanced at the empty pan and his full plate. “Roman—”

“You were going to throw away the baby hotcakes,” he explained. “They’re the best part of a hotcake breakfast.” He pointed to the tiny round cakes still left in the pan. “Those are the ones that drip off the spoon after you’re finished pouring out the big ones. Come on, Theodosia, don’t tell me you’ve never eaten baby hotcakes. I thought everyone had done that.”

She picked up one of the dime-size hotcakes and popped it into her mouth. It crunched between her teeth, but held the same flavor as the larger ones. “There now, Roman, I have sampled a baby hotcake. Are you satisfied now?”

“Good, huh?”

She realized he was not going to drop the subject of baby hotcakes until she confessed to feeling the same way about them as he did. “I do not recall ever having dined upon a more savory food. Why, I am surprised that the best restaurants in Boston do not serve such delicacies.”

“Go ahead. Make fun.”

She wondered if she’d hurt his feelings. “I am not making fun, Roman. I—”

“You should be.”

“Should be what?”

“Making fun. Inventing fun. Having fun. You know what else you can do with baby hotcakes besides eat them?”

She couldn’t think of a single use for the hotcake scraps, but suspected Roman knew of thousands.

Roman reached for a few of the small cakes, then examined the area and spotted the exact thing he’d been looking for. “Watch this.” He lay on his belly and dropped a few tiny hotcakes beside the anthill he’d found.

Curious, Theodosia lay down beside him.

“Look at the ants take the cakes into the mound,” Roman said, his gaze riveted to the industrious ants. “I used to watch ants for hours on end. I still like watching them.”

“Ants are one of several groups of social insects that belong to the order
Hymenoptera,”
Theodosia explained. “The known species of ants are classified in seven subfamilies of
Formicidae.
The ancestors of ants are believed to have been solitary, fossorial wasps—”

“Theodosia?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up and watch the ants.”

She did, and before long she, too, began dropping bits of hotcakes for the ants to carry into their mound. When one cake proved too bulky for them to haul, she assisted them by picking up the food scrap and dropping it directly into the mound’s opening.

Roman didn’t say a word while she played with the ants. He simply watched her, feeling a deep satisfaction when he saw the fascination and contentment in her beautiful whiskey-colored eyes.

Finally, after over an hour of playing, Theodosia straightened into a sitting position and saw Roman taking off his boots and stockings.

He sank his bare toes into a mud puddle.

She watched the dark, sticky mud ooze all over his feet. “Why are you doing that?”

He shrugged. “It feels good, but if you want to try it, you have to find your own puddle. This one’s mine.”

She couldn’t fathom why
anyone
would want to bury their feet into mud. “I don’t care to try it.”

“Suit yourself.” He leaned forward and pushed his hands into the mud as well. Sinking them deep, he grabbed as much mud as he could hold, then pulled it out of the puddle.

Theodosia saw little bubbles rise and pop on the surface of the mud he held, then an earthworm squirmed over his thumb. She couldn’t resist moving over to where he sat. “You have found a member of the
Lumbricidae
family, Roman, which is a hermaphroditic worm that moves through the soil by means of setae—”

“Nope. You’re wrong. This is not lubmicditty.”

“
Lumbricidae.”

“Whatever.” He lifted the worm level with Theodosia’s eyes. “This is Ernie. Yeah, good ol’ Ernie Earthworm, and he moves through dirt by squirming, got that?” He began looking for more worms and soon had a whole handful.

Theodosia reached for one.

He yanked his hand away. “My worms.”

His crooked grin caught her full attention. How she loved that naughty expression of his.

“If you want a worm, Theodosia, you have to find one yourself.”

She glanced at the mud puddle.

He almost laughed at the look of disgust on her face. “I guess to someone who only becomes a bit dusty, the thought of sticking your hands into a mud puddle is about the worst thing you can think of, huh? Tell you what, Lady Immaculate…how about we take a bath after we finish playing in the mud?”

“Together?”

“Is that shock I see in your eyes, or excitement?”

His question made her blush. “I have not been playing in the mud, Roman, therefore I do not need to bathe.”

She regretted her words the second they left her lips.

Roman released the worms, slopped up some more mud, and smeared her left cheek. “That’s more than a bit of dust you’ve got on you. You need a bath.”

She saw mud drip to the bodice of her dress. “Roman, look what you did to me.”

He found her dismay highly amusing. “Aren’t you going to get back at me?”

Her head still bent over her chest, she raised her eyes to him, then immersed her hands into the mud and drew forth two great globs of the cold slosh.

He saw real mischief sparkling in her narrowed gaze and looked forward to seeing what she would do to him. “Go on,” he pressed. “I dare you. I double-dare you. Hell, I quadruple-dare you.”

The mud sliding beneath her sleeves and down her arms, Theodosia suppressed a shiver. She knew if she threw the mud at Roman, he’d throw more back at her. Becoming so totally filthy was not a pleasant thought, but backing down from Roman’s quadruple challenge was far worse.

He ducked just as she flung the mud at him. “Ha ha, you missed!”

The mud fight became serious business to her then. Resolute in her efforts to muddy him, Theodosia withdrew more mud from the puddle, but lost her chance to toss it at him when he rose from the ground, pulled something out of his saddlebag, and ran into the woods.

She followed, but at a much slower pace. “Roman?” Listening for sounds that would tell her where he was, she peered all through the thicket. “Roman?”

The loud caw of a crow startled her into dropping her mud. “Roman, I do not find this hiding game of yours at all diverting. Make your presence known at once, or I shall—”

She stopped speaking. Or she would what? she wondered. What threat could she give him?

“Roman, if you do not show yourself this very instant, I shall cease to play with you.”

Nothing. No sound, no movement, no Roman. “Very well,” she called into the woods, “I am returning to camp.” She turned, took a few steps, then stopped abruptly.

Fear lashed through her like a thousand whips. At the base of the tree that grew not a foot away from where she stood lay a rattlesnake, its thick body coiled, its tail clattering in deadly warning.

“Roman,” she whispered without moving her lips. “Roman.”

She’d barely finished saying his name a second time, when all of a sudden he was there. It seemed to her that he’d fallen from the sky and landed directly upon the dangerous serpent.

In the next moment he held the writhing reptile out in front of her, his fingers clasped firmly behind its head. “Want to pet him?”

She moved well away. “No.”

“Aw, come on, Theodosia, pet him. There aren’t many people in the world who can say they’ve petted a live rattler. Pet him.” He stepped toward her. “Pet him.” He advanced toward her again. “Pet him.”

She knew he wasn’t going to give up. “You’ll hold him tightly, won’t you.”

“If he shows one sign of trying to bite you, I’ll bite him myself.”

Trying to take some small measure of comfort in his absurd promise, she slid one finger down the squirming snake’s back. “All right, I petted him.”

“You did good, Theodosia. Real good.”

She almost corrected his grammar from “good” to “well,” but found his mistake strangely soothing. “Where were you, Roman?”

Using the snake’s head as a pointer, he raised his arm and gestured toward the branches of the tree. “I saw the snake before you did and was just getting ready to warn you, when you turned around and nearly stepped right on it. Leave it to you, Theodosia, to walk straight into danger.”

She watched him carry the snake deep into the glade. He returned without the reptile, and she realized he’d set it free. “Another man might have killed the rattlesnake.”

Roman flicked a bit of dried mud off his thumbnail. “I kill for food and defense. I didn’t want to eat that snake, and it wasn’t going to hurt me.”

With that, he pulled from his pocket the bar of soap he’d taken out of his saddlebag, and headed toward the creek.

She knew where he was going, knew what he planned to do there, and knew she shouldn’t follow.

She followed.

“Y
ou look like Santa Claus.”

Roman gave his long full soap-beard a final pat, and swished his sudsy hands in the cool creek water. “And you look like you have a white owl on your head.”

“This is a hat, Roman. An ermine hat.” She reached up and reshaped her soap-hat.

He sat down in the creek, doing his best to study her lather creation and not her gorgeous bare body. “What’s an ermine?”

“A large European weasel.” A rivulet of soap tickled her breasts as it slid over her chest. “In actuality I have a pile of soap on my head, Roman.”

“It looks more like a weasel hat. Say it’s a weasel hat.”

“I already have.” She sank into the water beside him. “Oh, my goodness. These creek pebbles—”

“They feel good on your bare bottom, huh?” He reached for her and pulled her closer. “All round and smooth.”

“Round and smooth,” she mused aloud, looking at him from the corner of her eye. “My bottom or the pebbles?”

He saw an alluring smile in her eyes. “I know an invitation when I hear one, Theodosia,” he murmured huskily.

“Sir, I do not know what you’re talking about.”

“No? Well, let me show you, miss.”

She moaned with deep excitement when he scooped her into his arms and laid her over his lap. His skin was so warm, the water so cool.

He threaded his long fingers through her hair, and she felt her soap hat spill off. His lather beard dripped to her chest. She cupped her breasts, smoothing the suds around and around and around…

The sight of her caressing her own breasts caused Roman to shudder with desire. His arm beneath her neck, he lifted her face to his, and as he kissed her, he slipped his hand between her thighs and his fingers into her womanly depths.

She’d been prepared to savor the slow delicious journey toward pleasure, but her bliss peaked instantly, rippling all through her body as the creek water rippled over her skin. She arched high, her head dipping into the water.

Roman decided she would have drowned if he hadn’t been holding her. “God, Theodosia,” he said when she finally stilled in his arms, “I’m sorry you weren’t ready. I should have spent more time getting you going.”

She had the grace to give him an embarrassed expression but felt no shame at all. Her body responded to Roman’s sensual skills like a musical instrument in the hands of a master, and the resulting melody was too beautiful to resist or hold back.

Gazing into his eyes, she realized she wanted to give him the same pleasure he’d offered her. It didn’t matter that she was uncertain about how to go about it; she knew he would teach her.

She wriggled off his lap and sat in front of him.

Her hands around his waist, she rubbed her thumbs gently across his tight belly, then glanced downward. “Roman, your lance is lunging completely out of the water.”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Yeah, the old sword of passion is definitely thrusting, huh?”

Carefully, she took him into her hand, loving the soft groan her action caused him. “It’s throbbing.”

“Masculinities have a way of doing that when touched by a beautiful woman.”

She smiled. “I think perhaps that I shall conduct an experiment, Roman.”

The suggestive tone in her voice set him afire. “What kind of experiment?”