Man From Tennessee (2 page)

“Like hell?” he finished for her.

The corner of her lips lifted, just a little. His slash of a smile held the same memory hers did. Hell had the inevitable devil in it, and when Trisha had first met Kern that was exactly how she had labeled him. And for good reason…

Kern stayed with his mother while Trisha found her way to the kitchen. She opened cupboards to find the accoutrements for tea, barely conscious of how much the room itself had changed. The colors were burnt orange and copper; every appliance and convenience shined with care. The long window over the sink held a view of the garden and the stretch of woods beyond, carpeted with spring violets. In front of her eyes was a picture that wouldn’t go away. It was a picture of Kern and the night she had totally and whimsically fallen in love with one tall, dark-eyed man, her devil of a man…

It was a New Year’s Eve party at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club on Lake Saint Claire. The ballroom was crowded, an overwhelming assault on the senses of festive lights and colorful couture gowns, French perfumes and champagne. A band in tuxedos played loudly over the high-pitched laughter, and increasingly boisterous conversation. The younger set of women were as scantily dressed as possible; the older, richly ornate in jewels and brocades.

Trisha wore a pale blue floor-length gown that had cost the earth and did not suit the gathering at all. Medieval in design, the velvet came to a long low V at her wrists and ruffled demurely at the neck, draping loosely over her slim figure. She looked like an innocent princess, but that wasn’t a picture that belonged in the sophisticated world of Grosse Pointe.

Her uncle had deserted her upon their arrival, which was not unexpected. It was typical of how he had raised her once her parents had died. Her uncle was not ungenerous; the material advantages were always there. But he was cold and indifferent far beyond the point of mere insensitivity. As a result Trisha was painfully shy and almost unforgivably naive for a girl of nineteen, a dreamer in mind and in looks.

The yacht club had dozens of rooms beyond the ballroom. There was a choice of three bands, a place to play poker, a room for conversation and plenty of champagne everywhere. She wandered about slowly, feeling lost and uncomfortable. She hadn’t wanted to come. At last she ventured to the third floor of the club, seeking refuge from the constant noise. Tentatively she opened a door to a dim, quiet room. The only light was from the moon, which streamed in through the windows at the far end of the room, overlooking the ice-encrusted lake.

“Close it!”

She jumped in shock at the reverberating command that came from nowhere.

“I said close it!”

She closed it quickly, her heart beating wildly. Hours later she had wondered why she hadn’t had the sense to close the door with herself on the opposite side. As it was, the party noise dulled to a distant hum and she leaned against the door, trying to fathom where the voice was coming from.

“Over here.”

Cautiously she moved closer until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. When he struck a match to light a cigarette she was startled and her imagination worked overtime: it was surely the devil’s face. He was stretched half out on the floor, leaning lazily against the wall, the cigarette in his one hand and a drink—and bottle—on the floor beside him.

There was no question that someone had made a terrible mistake trying to fit him out in powder blue. Black was clearly his color. He practically had more legs than there was carpet space and the breadth of his shoulders was just as daunting. The giant came equipped with a wicked pair of bushy eyebrows and dark eyes that radiated danger. She smiled politely and backed up as rapidly as her stiff legs would allow until she bumped into something, and he started laughing.

“I just bite necks, and that’s only when there’s a full moon. Although come to think of it…” He motioned to the window and the full white moon sitting low over the lake. “Never mind. Come and sit down if you’re here to escape from that madhouse.”

“Just for a minute,” she said weakly, with a careful glance to ensure she knew exactly where the door was. When she turned back he was smiling, and that soft sensual smile mesmerized her as he motioned her closer. Captivated, a bit frightened, she knelt on the carpet a little distance from him.

“You have blue eyes, don’t you?” he asked idly as he poured her a glass of the amber-colored liquor.

She nodded, staring at the bottle.

“I’m not drunk,” he told her perceptively. “They’re serving champagne downstairs and I don’t drink it. This is my second whiskey—from the look of you, your first.”

She sipped at his whiskey, tiny sips so she wouldn’t gag. Quiet reigned for a long time. She found herself unable to stop staring at him, aware but not self-conscious that he was studying her just as intently. She saw a brooding man, intense and private. Arrestingly attractive though not really at all handsome. Disturbingly sexual and comfortable with power. “Why?” she asked quietly.

“Pardon?”

“Why are you getting drunk?”

He twirled the liquid in his glass, staring at her. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”

She shook her head. “That’s why they’re drinking.” She motioned downstairs. “That’s not why you are. Of course it’s none of my business. For that matter if you want me to go…” She made to get up again but his long arm reached out, a mammoth hand enclosing hers in a small, unexpectedly sensual little prison.

“Stay.” The
please
was there, though he didn’t say it. She felt loneliness—something she understood very well. She had the impulse to flee. This man spelled danger. She was out of her league. But the urge faded and she had the strange desire to comfort and soothe.

He took so long to answer that she was certain he wasn’t going to. When he did, his voice was gruff and impatient. “I’ve just had enough of cement and pollution…of using people like rungs on a ladder.” He was looking out over the lake, not at her. “But in a year or two I very well may not care anymore. There was an article in yesterday’s paper. My company, taking over another. A ‘financial coup’ they labeled it.” He shook his head. “What it was was taking advantage of another man when he’s down.”

He talked—a world completely foreign to her, but it didn’t matter. She was listening to him on another level entirely. So cynical, so hard, the words spit out from him as if he’d forgotten how to talk about his feelings. “Don’t do it then
,
”
 
she said simply.
 
“Do something else. Something that you want—that you
need.
”

“God, you sound young,” he said dryly. He reached beside him to switch on a small table lamp. She felt his eyes sweep over her as if they were fingers, assessing the quality of her dress, her hair, her skin. She shivered uncomfortably, wary of the sensual appraisal again and yet strangely compelled to sit still for it. He had admitted he was a predator, but she did not feel like prey. His face seemed to soften the more he stared. “It isn’t just young in years, is it?” he asked, probing quietly. “It’s in those bright eyes. We still believe in rainbows, do we? Happy endings? Love?”

She lifted her chin. “I get up every day glad to be alive. How about you?”

He hesitated, then chuckled dryly. “Perhaps there’s a case for naiveté.”

His insolence sparked a rare spurt of temper. “Mister—whatever your name is—I saw both my parents killed five years ago in a car crash. Don’t you go telling me I don’t know what life’s about. I’d still rather look up than down any day. It’s a question of choice. If you haven’t made it, I feel sorry for you!”

The door snapped open at the far end of the room; two drunken revelers trying to find privacy. “Get out of here,” the stranger snapped, making Trisha jump warily at the instant autocratic order in his voice. They left promptly, and Trisha, suddenly uneasy, stirred to get up.

“Stay.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Stay. I have a mountain I want to tell you about. If you’re so young that you still believe in dreams you should like hearing about it.”

She fell in love hearing about it. At midnight there were New Year’s fireworks, shouts and a hullabaloo from below that destroyed their conversation. The tall dark man stopped talking, pulled her up from her sitting position and held her hand as they watched the fireworks over Lake Saint Clair from the window. When he turned to her finally, every instinct already guessed what he was going to do. The dark grave look in his eyes was oddly possessive, searing as his face moved closer. The secrets shared, of dreams both wanted to believe in, felt like the kiss that happened. She had never felt as protected as she did with his arms around her, the first sweet yearnings of desire burning inside of her.

Sometime after that the raucous dance music slowed and mellowed for the tired, thinning crowd below. Old nostalgic love songs floated into the hushed dark room. For two hours they danced alone in the stillness. On occasion he would lift her head and just look at her, and she held nothing back in the way she looked back at him. She wasn’t so young that she didn’t realize she could be hurt; she just didn’t care. He was a man of dreams, a man to protect as she had never felt protected. She felt cherished, desired. She curled close like a kitten, her arms around his waist, her forehead against the soft new bristle of beard forming on his chin at the late hour.

Three weeks later he met with her uncle, while Trisha waited outside the study wringing her hands. The wedding was hastily planned. But there was no choice. He had come to the breaking point in his executive world. A merger had been accomplished that would move him from the president’s chair to the chairman’s seat, permitting him to maintain his finger in all the Lowery pies but enabling him to relinquish direct control. It was his chance. She understood. He was free, and he wasn’t willing to wait any longer for anything he really wanted. If she really believed in his dream of the mountains, she had to go with him now. There would be no second chances with a man like Kern.

It was after midnight when Kern emerged alone and angry from her uncle’s study. He caught her up in that dark hall and pressed his mouth on hers until her neck ached and she felt dizzy and frightened and deliciously possessed. When he let her go she held on to his arms, too shy even to look at him. “I can’t get you out of this house soon enough, Tish,” he said gratingly. “Your uncle’s got a lot to answer for as far as you’re concerned, the cold-blooded…” He shook his head, and his voice lowered, using the gentler tone he always used with her. “I need you, Tish. You’re pure nectar to me, almost too pure… I know it’s too soon for you, but you’re better off with me than where you are now. We’ll make it work. I know you’re young, Tish, but I can’t wait. Won’t…”

Kern had been impatient through the ceremony, impatient with his mother, impatient still to be in the city they were leaving on the morrow. He had piled two weeks of work into a single week. She understood his urgency, but he was different…a stranger. Kern was used to making mountains move at the snap of his fingers, but Tish knew only the quieter, gentler man.

The honeymoon suite was lavish, with thick gold carpeting and filled with flowers. They had a view of the Detroit River at night. He had ordered a late dinner to be sent up to the room and then turned around and canceled it. He had sat on the bed and watched her standing still at the window, looking out. In the pale pink silky dress, her profile delicate, her shining gold hair hanging almost to her waist, her unsureness was a fragile and lovely portrait to him. “Come here, Tish.” She had looked at him with frozen eyes, and he had smiled, motioning her closer. “It will be all right.” He had come to her, bent her cheek to his chest and slowly unzipped the dress, kissing her forehead when he felt her trembling. “I love you, Tish…it’s going to be all right…”

But it wasn’t. Kern was still impatient and she knew it. She lost all of her confidence with her clothes, and Kern, formidable in his tailored suits, stripped off his civilized veneer when he took them off. Suddenly there was so much of him all at once, so much intimacy all at once. Wanting desperately to please him and not having the least idea how, she felt more sick than sensual, and Kern had been on fire. A primitive wildfire she had never guessed at was inside him, earthy in lust, with none of the control she had seen in him before.

The pain was a shock and she had struggled mindlessly to get away from the stranger that was Kern. He had hushed her, soothed her, tried to be gentle, but she sensed he was unhappy with her responses. And she couldn’t blame him. When it was over, she knew it hadn’t been right and was almost out of her mind with unhappiness, for his sake, for theirs. Until then she had a tentative but very optimistic confidence that she was a mate for Kern, that he needed her softness and gentle understanding to bring him strength, to be the kind of man he wanted to be. After that it was downhill.

The mountain was fantastically beautiful, better than her dream, but living there had been a nightmare. There was only a cold-water well that had to be pumped and a cabin to camp out in while Kern set about building the house. He didn’t want to live off the Lowerys so he set up a campground for the trailer trade, in order for them to be self-sufficient. It was all he wanted; the hard work didn’t daunt him. He was happy. Happy with everything but his new wife.

She was becoming obsessively sure of that. He worked sixteen-hour days in which she barely saw him. Rationally she understood it would have to be that way at the start. Emotionally she couldn’t cope. She didn’t know how to keep house in the primitive conditions. She didn’t know how to cook, much less on a wood stove. She was painfully shy with the strangers and local people. And she hadn’t been prepared for the snakes and bears. By the end of the day she was as exhausted as he, and when they came together at night she was frozen with the fear that she wouldn’t please him. Passion and anxiety were not a blend that went well together, and every morning she looked up at the tall, virile, healthy man that was her husband and saw his eyes shying away from her.

It was then that she had walked out. Emotionally destroyed, a bundle of inadequacy, a pale wraith of the fragile loveliness she once was. All the pieces had to be put back together because she was shattered, and it had taken a long time. She had not pursued a divorce. She didn’t want that piece of paper that would have given her her freedom. The thin band of gold had stayed on her finger. Not because she had any illusions of getting back with Kern, but because it served as a protection and kept other men away.

With Julia’s help in the beginning she had made it on her own. She was proud of her job and the life she had made for herself. The confidence she had in herself was real this time, not based on dreams.

The kettle whistled, and Trisha removed it from the burner. Just for a moment, seeing Kern hurt had brought back the old memories of a strong man who had his moments of vulnerability, who she had believed even needed her. Of course he really didn’t then and he certainly didn’t now.