Man From Tennessee (8 page)

Jack stirred, edging up to a sitting position beside Trisha. “The way I understand it, there isn’t any land for sale around the Smokies. The government gets first shot, unless it’s an issue of direct inheritance. It was Kern’s grandfather who willed this to him, as I understand it.” He looked to Trisha for confirmation, who simply nodded, her eyes half closed as she stared into the fire.

“I just read the park has some 516,000 acres. I wouldn’t think anybody’d need more than that,” someone else said.

“Well, from here, we can’t protect enough land like this,” came another lazy voice from the far reaches of the fire. “I’ve been to the Rockies and I’ve been to the Tetons. Each mountain area’s got its own flavor—this one isn’t the grandeur, it’s the richness. You just can’t get tired of it; there’s more different colors of green than an artist could come up with; there’s the change in seasons and no end to the wildlife. I keep wondering how God even came up with it…”

Smiling, Trisha half sat up, curling up her knees and resting her arms across them. Her soft-spoken voice seemed part of the night, gentle, warm and sensual. “There’s a Cherokee legend about how these mountains came into being. The Indians say that at the beginning of the world everything lived in the sky, all the animals and the people. The world was just an ocean, no land, but unfortunately it got to be crowded up there in the sky, so the Cherokees sent down a little water beetle just to check out the possibilities. Well, the beetle dove to the bottom of the water and brought up mud and more mud, and finally that mud burgeoned up to form some land. But it was still too soft for anyone to live on, so the people sent down a giant buzzard to find a dry spot, but he became tired about the time he was over what was to be Cherokee country. His wings were flapping when he sunk down on the land, and all that flapping dried the mud in the pattern of mountains and valleys…”

“
These
mountains and valleys, they say.” Kern’s voice vibrated low as he wended his way through the lazy pairs of legs to get to her side. Through a chorus of greetings he seemed to be looking only at her, and before she was even aware of it, Jack had obligingly moved and made a place for him next to Trisha. Long, jeaned legs suddenly stretched out next to her. An afternoon and evening of Jack’s subtle admiration invoked none of the disturbing sensations that Kern’s presence instantly did. Ebony hair and beard, ebony eyes by firelight—he was the pirate who savored his treasure, this land and its richness. Savored, protected, cherished, would kill to keep, she thought whimsically.

“Tish used to love the old Cherokee legends. Has she told you about the Little People yet? They’re the keepers of history to the Cherokee, the spirits who come out only at night to share the legends and songs that are too old for any man to remember.”

Helplessly she found herself turning to look at him. His deep voice was droning out stories for the others, but his eyes captured hers. For a long unbroken moment there were only two of them, and Kern was the scarred pirate, with a physical power no man could match and a devil fire in his eyes when he looked at her. And for that moment she was his golden treasure, fragile, unable to deny his right to take and hold—and keep. The image held for as long as he stared at her, so strong that she could feel the change in her heartbeat, as real as the night wind that touched her skin. Answering someone’s question, he turned away, and she shivered suddenly in the darkness.

“One of those Cherokee spirits just walk over your grave, Trisha?” asked the woman, chuckling, on the other side of Georgia.

“Some ghosts just refuse to rest,” Trisha admitted, and with an uneasy little laugh brought her attention deliberately back to the group.

With her just-washed hair turbaned in a towel, Trisha surveyed the meager contents of her traveling wardrobe with irritation. The navy dress had a spot; the cream outfit had been worn twice; the jeans and shirt were filthy; and she’d been wearing the nightgown for five days straight. A long hike was what she’d had in mind for the day, with a grandfatherly man named Edwards she’d met the night before at the camp, a regular visitor of Kern’s. As she scooped up the clothes in one hand and carefully wielded her coffee cup with the other, she told herself that with luck she’d have the washing chore done in an hour and have the rest of the day free until four, when she and Kern had to pick up Julia.

As she stepped into the hall with her hands full, the towel she’d been wearing slipped, and by the time she’d taken three more steps it had evidently decided it was happiest in the floor. Automatically her eyes darted up, but there wasn’t a soul in the house, since Kern had left more than an hour before in the truck. With an irritated sigh she set everything on the floor, wandered determinedly back to Kern’s room and drew out an old, frayed long-sleeved shirt of his from the back of the closet. The yellow fabric fit predictably, an exercise in drowning. All that identified her feminine status disappeared, and it took five impatient rolls of each cuff just to rediscover her hands.

Adding a hairbrush to the pile on the floor, she snatched it all back up and carted it downstairs. Beyond the bedroom where Julia had stayed was Kern’s office study. Beyond that was a utility room, with washing machine and dryer and lemon-painted wall-to-ceiling cupboards for storage. Trisha put the washer setting on cool and gentle, pretreated the stains on the jeans and then leaned back as the machine filled, absently working the brush through her hair. A large low window made it a pleasant room to be in, utility status or not. Budding azaleas burgeoned over the windowsills; the mossy lawn just outside was lush and emerald, sloping gently to the woods. A pair of woodpeckers were busy trying to peck insects from the bark of a huge old mountain maple, and a red squirrel was perched paws-up in the middle of the lawn, scolding the world in general about nothing in particular. Trisha smiled in amusement; “boomers,” the locals labeled the squirrels, for they never ceased their chattering.

From the distance in the woods she caught the soft reflection of a pair of eyes. A white-tailed deer stepped one foot from the safety of cover to the open, civilized carpet of lawn, changed his mind and bolted with that coltish awkward leap that was a blend of grace and timidity so common in the breed. The red squirrel suddenly hopped after him—at last finding someone to listen? Chuckling, Trisha stretched lazily and took her coffee cup for a refill to the kitchen. It was at least twenty minutes before she needed to do anything else.

Her barefoot step was quick and quiet past Kern’s office, and then she backed up unconsciously with a startled frown. The room was new to her, and she’d made a point of not intruding near it since she’d been there. Teak paneling and a dark Oriental carpet reminded her very much of Kern’s office in Detroit, shut off from sights and sounds, the way he liked to work.

The room was divided by function, the north side yielding an old-fashioned wood stove, a careless array of books and magazines, a lounge chair. But the south side was all business, right down to the computer equipment and file cabinets. The sophisticated equipment was very different from the easy mountain living style of the rest of the house, but surprised Trisha not at all. She knew that Kern kept an active interest in the complex corporation he had inherited from his father. She remembered all too well that his reputation in the business world had been ruthless. He had a perception and skill for maneuvering people and events that left competitors behind; nothing had ever stood in the way of what he wanted…

Her frown deepened as she studied the man she was so certain had not been in the house. A man alone—too much alone, she had seen that in him five years ago—and with a disquieting sense of déjà vu she suddenly saw the same man. Facing away from her, he was seated at the desk in the middle of the room, his fingers laced behind his neck and his head bowed. The room was so silent she could hear the ticking of the clock, but it was the silence in the man that troubled her, the look of tension and preoccupied weariness, the look of trouble…

She hesitated. “Kern?” she asked softly.

His head jerked toward her and she glimpsed…what?—frustration? pain?—before he quickly masked his features, his hands dropping and his shoulders automatically squaring back.

“I was doing some wash,” she told him, explaining her presence awkwardly, “and was just going to get a cup of coffee. If you want one…”

“Thanks.”

When she returned from the kitchen with a small tray, he was standing, leaning back against the desk. The one hand still worrying the tension at the back of his neck dropped the minute he saw her.

“There’s two aspirins on the tray for the headache,” she said calmly.

“I don’t have a headache.”

“Of course you don’t.” She handed him a mug, which he took, and then held out the aspirins in the open palm of her hand.

He took them, glaring at her, a marvelously ferocious scowl between bushy black brows that was thoroughly wasted as he popped the aspirins and washed them down with coffee. And then it was her turn to be irritated; weariness erased itself from his eyes as he lazily surveyed her figure from top to toe. The long slender legs, barefoot, the flapping yellow shirt at her thighs—he seemed to know she wore nothing beneath. Perhaps it was written on her breasts, she thought irritably, because that was where he seemed to be staring, suddenly the image of a perfectly relaxed man.

“You’re deteriorating sadly, Tish,” Kern said dryly. “Every day you’re here you seem to be going less and less formal. From designer labels to jeans, and now to a ten-year-old shirt and barefoot. By tomorrow I fully expect you to be running around here stark—”

“I told you I was doing a wash. I had no idea you were back in the house.”

He cocked his head back, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll be damned if you don’t manage to look like a princess even dressed like that, Tish. Every time I see that chin of yours go up and that haughty little nose of yours, I see the lady in her ivory tower. Inviolate, untouchable, pure. How is it you still project the same image?”

Once the mocking tone would have hurt, and badly; now Trisha just shook her head scoldingly at him, refusing to be drawn. “Do you want me to burst into tears because you’re being so nasty or feel complimented at the princess image?”

“Damned if I know.”

Her delicate eyebrows arched in teasing disbelief. “There must be monsoons if Mr. Lowery is suffering from indecision. At least a tornado. No?”

“God, you’ve gotten sassy,” he commented with mixed exasperation and humor, motioning to the papers he had strewn on his desk. “You’re also way off base, although there are times my mother does seem to have World War III potential in her. Or else for unknown reasons she’s simply trying to drive me out of my mind.”

Chuckling, Trisha perched on the arm of his lounge chair. “It can’t be that bad.”

“No? She used to be a damned good businesswoman, but a couple of years ago I asked her if she wanted me to handle her investments. It was around the time she started looking not very well to me, or at least not as well as I thought she should look. I was trying to lift the burdens a little, because she has quite an independent income from her mother’s family, apart from the Lowery’s…”

“And,” Trisha prompted.

He threw up his hands in mock disgust. “There should be nothing to it, damn it. If I can keep control of a seven-figure business with quarterly visits and good management, it should be chicken feed to handle this bit on the side. Instead, my mother’s been acting like she’s on a leash for every con man this side of the Mississippi! I find myself a landlord of two run-down little apartment houses in Detroit, hassling sewer laws. There’s some idiotic little bakery in Hamtramck she bought up for God knows what reason. She’s set up some foundation for art-student scholarships—there’s three-hundred little applications here to decide from. This one volunteered her portfolio ahead of time; as far as I know she’s an expert at drawing squiggly lines…”

Trisha smiled, the proud tilt he’d accused her features of having now softening in empathy. Julia’s cause took no deep thought to understand. “Perhaps it’s her way of forcing you to make more and more trips up north, Kern.”

His fingers laced behind his neck again as he stared at her. “All right,” he admitted thoughtfully, “but it still doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. We had a major war when I moved here, but that’s long over with; she knows I’m settled here. And if she’s lonely I’ve invited her here dozens of times. It’s not as if we’re close—though I’ve tried since my father died. God knows, the apron strings were cut when I was approximately five; mother’s a long way from being a clinging personality…”

“You’re right,” Trisha agreed gently, “but she is growing older, Kern, and perhaps she’s afraid of that. Alone, not quite well, and she doesn’t…bend well. Maybe she doesn’t know how to. She can’t very well just come out and say she needs you, Kern.”

Her voice trailed, the train of thought gone as she caught his expression intent upon her. His eyes were glinting something she never expected to see from Kern, the simplest sort of gentle warmth without even a hint of a sexual overtone. Had they ever shared a problem before? A warm glow kindled inside her, an awareness that she could almost believe in new beginnings…

“Kern?” said a vibrant voice from the doorway. “I knocked but when you didn’t answer I just came in. I knew you’d have the work ready for me…”

Trisha stood up, nodding a polite hello to Rhea with shoulders promptly squared as though she were wearing her best evening gown. Kern had not mistaken her pride of bearing and it had to be in capital letters at the moment. Rhea had foregone mountain wear in favor of a stark white skirt and a matching jacket, a tasteful, not inexpensive outfit that did the most for a long stretch of darkly tanned legs. The long hair had been roped and coiled, and though the lady could not really claim classic beauty, there was an unmatchable pair of rich lustrous eyes fastened on Kern.

“And I should have known you’d come early for it,” Kern said warmly, his hand extended in greeting to Rhea’s. The hand was clasped, held.