Now and Forever (3 page)

“And Martin just happened to be riding around the lake. I know, damn it.” His jaw tightened in profile. “Mindy said you phoned her to bring you some more clothes. By the time I cooled down and came home, you were long gone. You wouldn't even answer your damned phone at college!”

“I never wanted to see you or talk to you again,” she murmured, turning her eyes to the parking lot ahead.

“So your roommate told me.” He pulled the car into a parking space at the airport terminal and cut the engine. His dark eyes narrowed on her face, traveling down to her plunging neckline and remaining there so intently that she folded her arms self-consciously over the gap.

Was he remembering, too, she wondered? Remembering what had happened after Jimmy Martin ran away?

She could still hear Russell's voice, the quiet fury in it that cut like tiny whips as
he'd dragged her trembling body in the damp towel wholly into his arms.

“My God, you've been begging for this all summer,” he'd growled, holding her mercilessly even as she struggled, “why fight me now?”

And he'd bent his head. And even now, a year later, she could still feel the hard, cruel pressure of his mouth as it took hers, the humiliation of a kiss without tenderness or consideration or warmth. It had been, as he meant it, a punishment to hurt her pride as much as her soft mouth. When he'd finished and she was shaking like a leaf from the shock of it, he'd thrown her away from him. And the words he'd used to describe her as he strode out of the bath house had left her crying and had sent her running from Currie Hall before he came home.

She swallowed nervously, avoiding his intent gaze.

“I couldn't forget,” she whispered, “what you called me. It wasn't true, any of it, and…!”

“I know.” His big hand touched her cheek, gently. The back of his fingers were cool against the heated flesh. “God, Tish,
we were so close! I knew better, even when I accused you, but the sight of you and Martin…I lost my head. I wanted to hurt you, and that was the only thing on my mind.”

Unconsciously her lips trembled. “You succeeded.”

His fingers touched that full, soft mouth lightly. “I know. I could feel your mouth trembling under mine.”

Her face went scarlet at the words. Until that day, she and Russell had been like brother and sister. She'd followed him everywhere as an adolescent. Even when he went to dull livestock auctions, she endured the smell of cattle and horses and sweat and smoke just to be near him.

It had been like that all through school; she had bragged about her bigger-than-life adopted brother to the other children when they teased her about being a sharecropper's daughter. Even though Russell had bought her new clothes, the children remembered the flour-sack dresses she once had worn, and threw it up to her. All she had to do was threaten them with Russell, and knowing his temper, they'd shut up. But that was child
hood. And now, she wasn't a “sister” anymore…

“A year,” Russell remarked absently, “and you're still terrified of me.”

She swallowed down a hasty denial and brushed at a stray lock of dark hair. “Please,” she said quietly. “I don't want to talk about it.”

He lit a cigarette and sat smoking it until the silence descended on them like a fog. “It's damned hard to face a problem by walking away from it, Tish,” he said finally.

Her chin lifted proudly. “I don't have any problems.”

“Thank you for that stoic testimony, Saint Joan, and shall we both pray for rain before the flames hit you?”

Her face became a bright red and the laughter welled up inside her and burst like a summer storm. Russell's dark eyes glittered with amusement, and the years fell away. Quite suddenly, the antagonism she'd felt was gone like a shadow before sunlight.

“Oh, Russell, you…!” she cried, exasperated.

Chuckling, he crushed out his cigarette. “Come on, brat. Let's go home.”

 

Minutes later, she was sitting in the cockpit of Russell's Cessna Skyhawk while he went over the preflight checklist, a procedure that was still incomprehensible to her.

She watched him with quiet, caressing eyes and saw the way the light burned in his dark hair. Despite the events of the past year, the dreams she had always had about him had never really stopped. The vague longing persisted. The look that had flashed through his stormy eyes that lazy summer afternoon when the whole pattern of her life seemed abruptly to change forever still haunted her.

Anyway, she had Frank. Frank, who was younger and handsome and so undemanding. Frank, who wouldn't remind her of the childhood that had caused so many nightmares.

But, oddly, she wanted Currie Hall again. She wanted Mattie, little and wiry and coffee-colored, to call her “sugar cane” and fuss over her. She wanted old Joby's lazy smile as he polished the silver and hummed spirituals in the kitchen while Mattie cooked. She wanted Eileen's gay laughter and the feel of the towering old house nestled among the pecan trees that were old
enough to remember Reconstruction and the ragged trail of weary Confederate soldiers making their way home.

How was it possible to love something and hate it all at once, she wondered, and again her eyes were drawn to Russell as he eased his formidable weight into the seat beside her.

He tossed the clipboard with the checklist onto the back seat of the four-seater plane and threw a grin at Tish. “Ready?” he asked.

“Ready.” She checked her seat belt and her door while he cleared the plane for takeoff and taxied out onto the runway to wait for the final go-ahead.

When it came and he pulled back on the throttle, she felt a rush of excitement as the small craft gathered speed and nosed up toward the sky in a smooth, breathless rush.

Russell chuckled at the wild pleasure in her face. “It wasn't me you missed,” he taunted. “It was the damned airplane.”

“I love it!” she cried above the drone of the engine.

“Do you? I'll wait until we get over some
open country and treat you to a few barrel rolls,” he mused.

“You wouldn't!” she gasped, gripping the seat.

He caught the expression in her eyes and threw back his head, laughing like the devil he was.

“Russell Currie, if you dare turn this plane over with me in it, I'll…I'll send an anonymous letter to the Federal Aviation Administration!” she sputtered.

“Baby, there isn't much I wouldn't dare, and you know it,” he replied. “All right, calm down. We'll save the stunts for another time.”

She glanced at him apprehensively. The lion was content now, his dark eyes bright with the pleasure of soaring above the crowded expressways, of challenging the clouds.

She wondered if he was remembering other flights. In Vietnam he had been a combat pilot and she and the rest of the family had lived for letters and rare trans-Atlantic phone calls, and the six o'clock news had held a terrifying fascination with its daily reports on offensives and skirmishes. He'd
been wounded in an attack on the base and spent weeks in a hospital in Hawaii. When he finally came home there was death in his eyes, and he had bouts with alcohol that threatened to last forever. It was rumored that his problems were caused, not by a winnerless war but by the death of a woman in childbirth. A woman, the only woman, Russell had ever loved. It was a subject no one, not even Baker, dared to discuss with Russell Currie. A subject Tish only knew about from vaguely remembered bits and pieces of overheard conversation.

She studied his profile with a tiny frown. His reputation with women was enough to make protective mothers blanch, but, somehow, Lutecia avoided thinking of him in that respect. It was too dangerous to remember how those hard arms had felt in an embrace, how that firm, chiseled mouth…

He turned suddenly and caught her curious stare. It was as though those piercing dark eyes could see the thoughts in her mind. One dark eyebrow went up as his gaze dropped relentlessly to the soft curve of her mouth and lingered there until her cheeks
flushed red, and she jerked her face toward the window.

Soft laughter merged with the sounds of the engine. She closed her eyes against it.

It only seemed like minutes before the sprawling town square of Ashton came into view below, like an oasis of civilization surrounded by miles and miles of farmland.

Tish smiled unconsciously, gazing down on the growing metropolis that had sprung from the major economic base of agriculture. Ashton was an old city with its roots in the Confederacy and its veneer of progress spread thin over prejudices that ran deep.

Like all southern cities, it had that sultry atmosphere of leisure and courtesy that endeared it to the natives while annoying the hell out of impatient northern tourists. The surrounding countryside was an artist's vision of green perfection, from gently thrusting hillside to groves of pecan and oak trees nestled between new industry and old architecture.

Churches lined the wide, heavily traveled streets. They were predominately Baptist and rabidly outspoken every time the liquor
referendum was revived. Republicans were rumored to live in the community, but the Democrats beat them so bloody at the polls that most of them were reluctant to admit their political affiliation. Troublemakers were dealt with quickly and efficiently, and not always by law enforcement personnel. In fact, Sheriff Blakely—who had been sheriff for so long few locals could remember when he wasn't—had been known to run the State Patrol and FBI agents out of his jurisdiction when they interfered with his authority. Creek County had a formidable reputation for taking care of its own, in spite of state government.

Tish smiled, lost in her musings. With all its faults and vices, this was home country—Georgia. The beginning and end of her world, whether she wanted it that way or not. In this pocket of the largest state east of the Mississippi River, she could trace her ancestry back almost a hundred and fifty years—generations of farmers…

The word was enough to turn her thoughts black. Farming. Her father, that horrible inhuman scream…

“No!” The word broke from her involuntarily.

“What is it, baby?” Russell asked quickly, glancing at her with concern.

She drew a sharp breath, banishing the memory again. “Nothing. Nothing at all.” She leaned back against the seat and let her eyelids fall.

 

He set the plane down in a perfect three-point landing on the private airstrip at Currie Hall, and her heart began to race wildly as she caught a glimpse of the house, far in the distance, half-hidden in the green curtain of towering oaks and pecan trees.

Beyond the airstrip, the fields were covered with green growth that had to be peanuts or soybeans, she knew by their proximity to the ground. But they weren't the dark green they should have been, and she looked up at Russell with a question in her eyes.

“Drought,” he said, answering it as he answered most of her unasked questions, as if he could sometimes read her mind. “It's been a long hot spell, and I've had to replant most of the corn. To make matters worse,
the armyworms came this month. We're going to take a hell of a licking financially before I straighten this mess out. It's causing problems with the cattle too,” he added, shutting down the engine with a sharp jerk of his lean fingers. “We won't have enough silage for the winter, and that means more money for feed this year. It's the same over most of the state. A hell of a bad year.”

“You'll sell off most of the cattle, I guess?” she asked absently.

He nodded. “Either that or try to feed them, and we'll lose our shirts either way.” He eyed her curiously. “You haven't forgotten as much as I'd thought, even though you've been buried in concrete for two years. I'd almost believe you've been reading the market bulletins.”

“Baker sent me a subscription to the local paper,” she said smugly. “I even know about the corn fungus that's poisoning the crop for cattle.”

“God!” he exclaimed with reluctant admiration. “You'll make some farmer a wife, yet.”

She glowered at him, “I told you years ago I'd never marry a farmer,” she re
minded him. “I'd rather die than be buried in the country for the rest of my life.”

His eyes narrowed on her face. “If you were a few years older, I might change your mind about that. When are you going to stop burying your head in the sand? You can't run away, baby.”

“What am I running from?” she asked, her full lips tightening as she glared up at him.

“The past, your childhood—me,” he added with a strange half-smile.

The look in his eyes knocked the breath out of her. She opened the door of the plane and stepped down onto the hot pavement, sweeping her hair back with a restless hand.

The jeep was sitting on the edge of the strip where he'd left it and she started toward it. When he got there with her suitcases, she was waiting for him in the front seat. She eyed the thin layer of dust on the seat with distaste.

“I can remember a little girl who didn't mind dust,” he remarked as he got in under the wheel.

“I'm not a little girl anymore,” she re
turned, crossing her legs as she began to feel the smothering fury of the sun.