Pillow Talk (23 page)

"Sugarcane harvesting," Parker said. "Most of it's finished by now but there's still a field left to be cut."

"Oh." She considered for a moment as they walked. "That's okay," she said, "as long as it doesn't flop when it's cut."

"Absolutely no flopping," Parker said seriously.

They'd reached the edge of the back garden. Parker spotted Mr. Solomon next to his pickup truck and waved him over. He introduced Meg and the children. Samantha held up Barbie and Ken to be introduced, too.

Mr. Solomon's sun-lined face crinkled even more around his eyes. He had at least a dozen grandchildren. "Mr. Ken and Miss Barbie, too. Well, now, I'm honored to meet you both."

Samantha glowed. Parker assumed most adults ignored her penchant for treating her dolls like friends in tow. He pretty much had until Meg taught him about make-believe.

Make-believe.

"Meg, would it be all right with you—if Mr.
Solomon had
time, that is—if he showed the
kids
the sugarcane harvesting while I
give you a tour of the house?" He held his breath,
willi
ng none of the children to proclaim they'd rather see the house than a bunch of plants.

Meg gazed back at Parker. He read her message. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to be alone with him as badly as he wanted her in his arms again.

"Mr. Solomon's a very careful driver and most strict chaperone," he said.

The older man nodded. "That is true." He scratched at a piece of lint on his spotless overalls. "Father of five and grandfather of eleven," he added, throwing a thoughtful and speculative look in Parker's direction.

A look Parker didn't miss. He'd introduced her only as Meg, omitting a last name. Earlier when Parker had collected the paraphernalia to go along with the fishing rods, the caretaker had expressed his sympathy for Jules's death. Either news of his marriage hadn't reached Sugar Bridge or Solomon, who'd had little use for Jules in recent years, paid it little heed.

"The crew's in the field about five miles down the road," Solomon added.

"Say, yes, Mom." Ellen had one hand on the handle of Solomon's pickup.

Meg raised her brows. She didn't have to say
a
word; her forbidding expression said it all.

Parker felt like glaring at the girl himself. He didn't want the private tour he had planned for
Meg spoiled, but he did understand the need for discipline.

Teddy kicked Ellen. "Can't you ever remember to say please? Don't spoil it for the rest of us."

"I'm sorry, Mom.
Please
may we go? I'm sure it's much more educational than catching fish."

Gus made a face. "Girls."

"You'll behave and do as Mr. Solomon says?"

They all nodded. Even J
em barked, which made Parker smile.

Meg turned to him. "Could he take the van so they don't have to ride in the back of the pickup?"

Groans issued from the kids.

"Anything you say," Parker responded, winking at Solomon.

The smile she gave him made him glad he could indeed give her whatever she desired. He tossed the keys to Solomon, thanked him, and listened as Meg reminded the kids to behave.

They piled into the van and drove off, the bucket of fish forgotten. Parker collected it as he and Meg walked toward the house. He'd dump ice over the fish. To Meg he said, "They'll be fine with Solomon."

"Did he raise you here the way Horton raised you in New Orleans?"

Parker nodded. "Pretty much. Teensy hated it out here—almost as much as my father did.
Grandfather would stay when he could but he was usually busy."

"Working?"

He nodded and as they were headed to the house via the brick pathways and shrubbery separating the outbuildings from the main house, he changed the subject. "That back building is the original kitchen. It was set well away from the house for fire prevention and cooling purposes."

"Makes me appreciate my microwave," Meg said. "They had to carry the food all this way?"

"The house dates from 1837. In the antebellum or pre-Civ
i
l War days, slaves would have done that. Afterwards"—he shrugged—"for a few years there was scarcely enough food to worry about whether it was hot or cold. When fortunes picked up again, so did technology."

He thought she was looking at him a little strangely and understood why when she said, "It's odd to hear someone say slaves so matter of factly."

"It was just that—a fact of life, a reality of the labor system of the old south. Though in 1809 transporting slaves into Louisiana from other countries was made illegal."

"That long before the civil war?"

"Well, they could still be bought and sold across state lines."

"Oh." She looked around, taking in her surroundings. "That certainly seems a long time ago."

"A different world, to be sure, but I do think we're a product of our history, the sum total of our family traditions.”

Meg was silent.

He could have slapped himself for his thoughtlessness. What a thing to say to a woman who knew nothing about her parentage let alone the almost two hundred years of tradition he represented. "I'm sorry,” he said. "What a klutz I am."

"No, it's okay," she said, lifting her eyes to his. "It's just such a different world view. It's actually fascinating, but it does make me feel as if somehow I've been traveling through life missing something powerful and elemental."

They stopped at the back of the breezeway beneath the second-floor balconies, which were supported by columns arranged around the entire first floor level of the house.

"And," Meg went on, "I think I'm a little envious, too."

He sat the bucket of fish down. "Remember what Samantha offered Gus the other night?"

Her eyes widened. She nodded.

"Same offer. I'll share my heritage." As he said the words, he wasn't sure himself what he meant. The words were ambiguous. Just how much was he willing to share?

His words might be ambiguous, but his feelings were not.

He leaned closer, tipping her lips to meet his kiss.

After a long, sweet plundering kiss, he lifted his head. He could have sworn he detected a glimmer of moisture in her eyes before she pulled his mouth back to hers.

When she finally broke free of the hungry kiss she whispered, "Is there a Mrs. Solomon loitering about the house?"

He shook his head.

"Good," she said, wrapping her arms around his waist.

"Let me throw some ice on these fish," he said, cursing his own sense of responsibility. But he wasn't going to be the one to tell Gus his catch had spoiled.

"Hurry," she said, in a throaty voice he scarcely recognized as Meg's, "or you'll have to ice me down, too."

Twenty-one

I
ce me down?
Where
had
that brazen comment
come from? Meg had amazed herself. But she wanted to experience loving Parker again before she walked out of his life. Now that she'd been offered the opportunity she was going to—as Ellen would say—go for it.

Yet she stood rooted to the porch. Parker had left the door open when he whisked inside for the ice. Rather than follow him, she asked herself if she weren't having some sort of mid-life crisis about a decade early.

The Meg she knew, the woman who packed lunches and oversaw homework and mediated quarrels and wore five-year old dresses so the kids could have new shoes, wasn't the woman poised on the back terrace of a Louisiana plantation house.

A woman about to make love for the second time to a man she'd known less than a week.

Parker reappeared carrying two fancy ice buckets. He tossed the contents over the fish,
set the containers down, and held out his hands to her. "Now," he said, "we can concentrate on us."

Us.

What a sweet-sounding word. Meg smiled and, raising one of his hands to her lips, kissed the line of his knuckles. For today she'd indulge. For today she'd swap make-believe for reality.

Hand in hand they crossed through a cheery kitchen, a walk-through pantry, and into a long hallway as w
ide as any of the rooms at Pon
thier Place. The ceilings stretched way above her head and the chandeliers that hung down were ornamented by decorative plasterwork.

They traversed the length of the hall, passing two different arrangements of a table and two chairs. Each table held a beautiful display of fresh flowers.

"What beautiful bouquets. Are you sure there's no Mrs. Solomon?"

Parker dropped her hand and put his arm around her, pulling her close. "Now that's a sexist assumption."

"Oh." Meg considered that. "You are right."

"Solomon's the green thumb. There's a greenhouse that he rules over."

Meg leaned over and breathed in the scent of the roses. "So good. So alive," she said.

"You like roses?"

She nodded, stepping back from the table.

"Especially pink and yellow. Not red, though. Red are so self-important."

Parker laughed. "Then no red roses for you." He pulled two of the yellow roses from the vase. "If I were still ten, Solomon would have my hide for this, but I think he'll forgive me this time."

Rather than handing them to her, he carried them in his hand. Almost to the front door, he stopped and turned Meg to face a mirror twice as large as the one in the library at Ponthier Place.

She immediately blushed.

Parker wh
ispered, "No need to feel self-
conscious. You are the most perfect woman I've ever known."

Meg shook her head. "Oh, no. You've got that all wrong." Even make-believe couldn't go that far.

Parker stroked the soft petals of a rose against her cheek.

Meg felt the touch on her body as she watched him performing the gentle action in the mirror. The combined effect heightened her already yearning senses. She started to twist around, her need to press full length against his body driving her.

"No hurry," Parker said, reaching for the top button of her long-sleeved shirt, then trailing the rose down the side of her neck.

"But I feel like hurrying," Meg said, surprising herself at her own bluntness.

Parker grinned. "Good, but you don't need to. I told Solomon not to come back for at least an hour." He slipped the second button free. "Now let me show you another room."

Giving in to his game of slow seduction, Meg gazed at him in the mirror. She savored the hungry look in his darkened eyes. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. Reaching her hands behind her, still watching him in the mirror, she ran her hands down the front of his thighs, then slowly worked them up just until her fingers rested out of reach of his arousal.

She circled her derriere against him and whispered, "Two can tease, you know."

He caught her and turned her, pressing her against him exactly the way she wanted him to. He possessed her mouth with his and this time she let her hands rise to cradle him. Even through the fabric of his jeans
she felt the heat of him
.

Freeing her mouth, she knelt and pressed her lips against the bulge in his jeans.

He groaned. Or moaned. Or called her name. She wasn't sure which, but she knew she reveled in his reaction. She wanted to give him everything today, hold nothing of herself back.

"Meg," he finally said, "I think we ought to do the rest of the tour later."

"What happened to nice and slow?" She asked, her eyes opened wide, batting her lashes to play with him.

"Can't do it," he said. He tugged gently on
her shoulders and she eased her body back to a standing position, kissing his abdomen and chest as he lifted her.

A wide staircase rose from the central hall. Parker steered her towards it, an arm around her holding her close. He'd managed not to drop the roses, Meg noticed.

"The master bedroom is downstairs, as it was in plantation days," Parker said as they mounted the stairs. "Typically there were bedrooms for the younger children, and when the boys reached about age twelve they slept in an outside house called the
garconnierre."

"To keep them out of mischief?"

He grinned. "Or so they could get away with it without disturbing the rest of the house?"

"Maybe we should go there," Meg murmured.

"Too far away." He caught her even closer. They'd reached the top floor. "In modern times we've converted some rooms to guest rooms. I'll show you my favorite."

His favorite was a spacious room with tall windows that opened like doors onto the upper balcony that ran the length of the house. They paused in front of the windows overlooking the lane of spreading oaks.

"That's the Mississippi you see beyond the trees," Parker said, returning to where he'd left off on the buttons of her shirt.

"So beautiful," Meg murmured.

"So beautiful," Parker echoed, tugging her
shirt free of the waistband of her jeans and sliding it from her body.

"I don't know about that,"
Meg said. Even in the fading December sunlight, this room was much more well-lit than the darkened library where they'd made love the other evening. Plus when things had gotten really intimate they'd been under the covers of the children's tent with only the bobbing shadows of the flashlight.

Parker lay the roses on a table and held her lightly by the shoulders. "Meg, you are one beautiful woman. I think maybe you don't give yourself enough credit."

"No?" She knew she sounded hopeful. She wanted to believe him because he made her feel so beautiful.

"No." Parker brushed a kiss across her lips. "The other
night you taught me about make-
believe. Today I'm offering to teach you just how beautiful you are."

She considered his offer. It was no more preposterous than the fact that the two of them were about to bare their bodies to one another and share the most intimate gifts two people could give to one another. "For today," she said.

"I'll take what I can get," Parker said, stripping off his sweatshirt and wondering what had happened to the arrogant man who could have his way with any woman of his acquaintance. Here he was, practically begging Meg to
let him prove to her how beautiful a woman she was.

The women he was used to accepted their beauty as a given, his appreciation as their due. God, but she had turned his world upside down.

He smiled at her and reached for the buckle of her belt. With Meg, he liked his world so much better.

She guided his hands, then placed both their hands on his belt. Easing it free, she tugged at the zipper of his jeans. She knelt and untied his shoes. He kicked them off and she did the same with hers. Then together, they both stripped free of their jeans and underwear.

Naked, standing together in front of the broad windows, they gazed at one another. "You are the most generous-hearted woman I know," Parker said. He picked up one of the roses and offered it to her.

The other he carried as he led her across the room to the four poster bed.

Meg watched as Parker pulled back the yellow and white coverlet. Her earlier boldness had almost deserted her when they'd stood naked in front of one another but Parker's admiring gaze had bolstered her confidence.

Parker plucked several petals from the rose he held and scattered them over the sheets. "A bed fit for a beautiful princess," he said, "a beautiful princess who taught me the value of make-believe."

Meg slipped onto the bed, half-sitting, hal
f-
lying against the mound of pillows. Parker sat on the edge of the bed facing her. He trailed the rose over her lips, then said, "The way you smile along with life is a beautiful thing."

Running the silky petals up to her forehead, he said, "And your mind, so lively and sharp, makes you even more beautiful."

"Keep going like this and you'll embarrass me," Meg said.

He shook his head. "I promised to teach you how beautiful you are."

She felt the touch of the rose on her earlobe and breathed in the scent. "You listen to people. And you don't just listen with your ears"—he lifted the rose and placed it over her heart—"you listen from here."

Meg held out her arms to Parker. "Shh, you're making me feel all funny inside, telling me these things."

"Funny good or funny bad?"

"Oh, good."

He smiled and circled the rose around her pubic hair. "And your sensuality, Meg, is unmatched."

"It is?" She wanted to believe him but she'd always thought of herself as one who held back from expressing the full strength of her desires. Or perhaps she'd just never been with the right man before.

He kissed the spot where the rose had touched and she sighed and dropped back
more fully against the pillows, her legs parting and opening her body to Parker's exploration.

But after that one kiss, he lifted his head. "No more till we talk about something," he said.

"Talk?" she murmured the word. She didn't want to talk, she just wanted him to keep touching her in that way he had, that way that turned her insides to jelly.

"I have to apologize for my behavior the other night."

That got her attention, but it didn't make any sense. "But you're here with me again today."

"Oh, yes." Parker glanced away, then back. "What I'm apologizing for is completely ignoring protection. That is something I've never done in my life." He swallowed. In a most serious voice, he said, "And I want you to know that if you get pregnant, I'll be fully responsible."

"Thank you, Parker," she said. She was touched but the same concern hadn't entered her mind. "I never even thought about that. It took me six years to get pregnant with Samantha and that was with really, really working on it. And she's five, so I pretty much never think about contraception."

"So you're not on the pill or using anything else?"

"No."

Parker looked even more serious. "Well, there are health reasons to think about, too."

"As long as you're healthy, we're okay. I mean, I'm practically a virgin."

"What do you mean?"

"Why, Ted's been dead for ove
r a year and before that we…
" She trailed off. "Well, there was never anyone else before Ted."

He rose up on one elbow. Staring at her, he said slowly, "Aren't you forgetting someone?"

Meg realized what she hadn't said. She played with her fingers, then said, "Jules and I never had sex."

"You don't have to say that just to protect my feelings," Parker said in a rough voice.

"It's the truth."

Parker listened to the quiet dignity of her voice. She lay there naked before him, telling him she'd never had sex with her second husband. With what he knew about
his brother, Parker found
it hard to believe. Yet he was glad. His relief overwhelmed his sense that there was more to the story than she was revealing.

He touched her abdomen, then moved his hand slowly up to her breasts. He circled her nipples with his thumb, then leaned over and sucked first one, then the other. His need for her grew with every demanding movement of his mouth on her breast. With his other hand he parted her legs, running his hand along her thighs, then dipping two fingers inside her to explore the heat of her inner lips. His fingers came away slick and wet.

He raised his mouth from her breast. She'd thrown her head back against the pillows. Her lips were parted and her breath came quickly.

"Thank you for giving yourself to me," he said. To himself he added, "And thank you for not doing so to my brother, for whatever hornbrained reason."

She must have interpreted his expression because she said softly, "Only you, Parker."