Chapter Eight
The storm hit unexpectedly and took out the electricity two evenings later.
My cell phone rang as a blast of rain smacked my windows. I picked it up and said hello without looking at the name.
“Hi, Allie.”
“Jace.” My voice squeaked.
“How about if I come down and get you? No one on your side of the road has electricity.”
“No, I’m fine.”
In the distance I heard an earsplitting crack, like a lightning bolt, and I jumped. The lightning bolt kept crackling. “Hang on.” I kept the cell phone in my hand and ran to my window in time to see one of the giant trees behind my dad’s house crash down about six feet from the window.
I screamed, then yelled, “Oh my gosh!”
“What is it? What happened?” Jace shouted. “Allie!”
“A tree crashed down right by the house. It was so close.” I heard another earsplitting crack and I cupped my hand to the window only to see a second tree fall.
“I heard that,” Jace said. “I am coming to get you. Try not to argue much or I will have to pick you up, throw you over my shoulder like a knight in shining armor, and shove you onto my horse. Don’t think I won’t do it.”
“I can go to a hotel.”
“You can go to Hotel Jace. It’s close by, it’s cheap, and I don’t have to work tomorrow, so I’ll make you breakfast.”
Trouble. Oh, that was trouble. He was trouble. “I need a room for one.”
“You’ll have it.”
“With a lock.”
“I don’t have any locks on my doors.”
“That figures.”
“You can have your room for one, though.”
I felt like I’d been in a room for one my whole life.
“You can come in my room and tell me good night, Allie, then go to your room for one. I’ll be there in three minutes.”
“Storms are great as long as they stay outside,” I drawled, sitting in front of Jace’s stone fireplace holding a huge mug of hot chocolate. He had even added marshmallows. He knew I loved marshmallows. He did not have towering trees around his home, and I was grateful for it.
Beside me on the couch, he nodded. “I agree. I do not want to see wind, rain, thunder, or lightning in my living room. But I do like storms, like you. Remember that one in Yellowstone . . .”
“We were in that tent that wouldn’t stay up, and the thunder and lightning were right overhead, the rain poured down like a river, we were soaked . . .”
“And laughing . . .”
We chatted on, as if all was well between us, as if I hadn’t darted out like my hair was on fire the other day, telling him we couldn’t see each other, and he hadn’t manhandled me into his truck. I’d even snatched up two of my apple pies when Jace came to pick me up. When I saw the smile on his face as he took them, it about melted my heart into a puddle. “Thanks, hon—” He stopped, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Thanks, Allie. These are going to be delicious. I’ve missed your apple pies.”
We drove through the pounding rain and buffeting winds, another lightning strike making the sky glow, and arrived three minutes later at his house. He put the pies on the counter. I cut one into slices, he got the plates, I got the forks, and he started a pot of coffee. We worked in familiar, happy tandem. I squashed down how much I liked the domesticity part of it.
I heard about his day, and was fascinated by all he’d done in the emergency room, the people he’d met and helped, his compassion and empathy for them. He heard about mine. He asked questions about my past job, what I was thinking for the future. I told him about my latest crime thriller. He told me about a medical journal article he read. I told him about my short and careful bike ride. He told me to stay off my bike until I was healed, then he told me about a ride he’d been on. It was normal husband-wife talk. The comforting, familiar, happy sort.
Sitting on the leather couch, about a foot away from Jace, the storm thundering, the fire burning, I knew I was in dangerous territory. Dangerous and lusty.
Why had I agreed to come to his house when I could have climbed into my car and zipped to a hotel for fear of falling trees? Clearly I am a woman who likes emotional torture and invites sexual frustration into her life.
I stared into the flames of the fire and tried to distract my traitorous heart, but it would not be tamed or lassoed up. Sex with Jace was like falling into heaven on a feather bed with candles all around . . .
We were laughing about something and then . . . I don’t know who moved first. I may have been the guilty party. I probably was. In fact, it’s likely that it was me, sexually frustrated woman. When his lips came down on mine, I relaxed into him as if I’d kissed him an hour before and had been kissing him for years. His arms came around me and my arms linked around his neck and that kiss was . . . deep and delicious.
It was exactly as it had been before, that blazing passion back, all consuming.
It was the same as when we were in the lake at Yellowstone, body to body, magical and seductive, the constellations overhead.
It was the same as when we held each other through long nights, talking and laughing inches apart, camping near a river.
It was the same as when we kissed near a waterfall . . .
But it was different, too. The years had passed, I had missed him to the core of who I am, and sheer, throbbing pain had come between us, which simply seemed to make things . . .
. . . absolutely, positively out of control.
I could not get enough of that man’s kisses. I could not stop my hands from wandering over familiar territory. Jace was thicker now, more muscled, all man. When he flipped me over onto the couch and came down between my legs, I wrapped them around his waist and tilted my head back so he could kiss my neck—and lower.
We fell into our rhythm, our beat, as if the rhythm had never been lost, the beats never gone. I arched into his hips, his fingers undid my pink blouse, I ran my hands down his back and up his shirt, feeling that tight, warm muscle, his hands molding me to him. Both of us were breathing hard, panting, a moan here, a groan there . . .
I could think of nothing but him, nothing but my own passion for him, for Jace. Lust kills brain cells and mine were clearly dead as I unbuttoned his shirt, my hands flying, my mouth to his . . . utterly lost.
It was when his hands were so adeptly unbuttoning my jeans that I pulled away, pushed at his chest, and said, “Oh no. Not again,” and “Please stop.”
He stopped. We were both out of breath, both in the midst of some really excellent arousal, and yet . . . I could not go there again with him
.
“Stop, please.” I hadn’t needed to say it again, though. He had already stopped, his face tight with frustration and disbelief.
“What? Why, honey?”
“See, Jace,” I said, my words harsh. “This is why you and I cannot be friends.” I tried to get my breath back, tried not to cry. “We’re not friend material. We never will be.”
“What are you talking about? We are friends, Allie. We were best friends, and we have this, too, the passion—”
“No, no, we don’t have this. No passion.
No
to passion. Get off of me.”
“Allie—” I saw the hurt in his eyes; I heard the rawness of his voice.
“Get off.”
He put his forehead to mine for a long second, his chest heaving, my chest heaving, and he whispered, “Oh my God.” Then he got off and I scrambled away from that couch, my pink blouse fully open, my white lace bra unsnapped, my jeans unbuttoned, my hair all over the place. His shirt was open, too, all the way, and I tried to ignore that he is a smolderingly hot man.
I tried to snap my bra, but my fingers would not work.
He stood up, towering over me, warm and soft and huggable. Damn.
“What the hell is going on, Allie?”
I was breathing so hard I might have been embarrassed, but he was, too. My whole body was tingling. I had to look away before his body tantalized me way too much and I gave in. “Damn, Jace. Turn around or something.”
“Why? I think I’ve seen everything.”
I inhaled to steady my racing heart. “You look way too sexy after we’ve been messing around, and I don’t want to jump back on that couch with you.”
“I’d like you to jump back on the couch with me.” His tone was edgy, angry. “Why are you pulling away?”
“Because I’m a wreck.” I wanted to get back on that couch so much I ached.
“You are not a wreck,” he said, his voice sharp and frustrated. I didn’t blame him. “Why do you say that?”
“Look, Jace, I have no idea what I’m doing next, where I’m going in my life. You’re all set. You have what you wanted. And I have . . .” My fingers fumbled on my buttons. “I have a rooster that wakes me up too early, an old house, two dogs who insist on sleeping with me, cats I meow back at, and an apple orchard from my dad, who knew I loved apples, but I don’t think he meant the apples as a gift. You and I ended a long time ago, and I can’t get any more emotional or crazy than I already am.” I put my hands to my face, a vision of a run and a fall and a rock and a secret barreling into my brain. “We’re too late, Jace.”
“We’re not too late at all.” His eyes showed his deep pain and utter bafflement. “Not at all.”
And now I would lie. I’d done it before. “I don’t want to be with you, Jace. It’s that simple.”
His head actually moved back, as if I had slapped him.
“I don’t want
us
again, Jace. We were an
us
, but we’re not going to be an
us
again.”
“Why?”
I heard that simmering anger. Jace never lost it, was never like my dad, but he wasn’t a saint. He swore and said, “I don’t understand you, or this, at all. I’m sorry if I moved too fast—I am. I’ll slow down. We’ll slow this down—”
“You don’t need to, Jace. I said no, so it’s no.”
“Then that’s it?” He put his hands out, his anger up another notch. He was huge and so unhappy. “We have everything we did before, Allie—friendship, we talk all the time, we laugh—”
It would be so easy to give in, to walk back into his arms. I burst into tears, those racking, embarrassing type of tears.
“Oh, honey,” Jace said, his anger spiking all the way back down as he tried to hug me.
I pushed him away, my hands against his warm and lovely chest. “Don’t hug me, Jace.”
“You’re making me sad watching you cry.”
“And I’m sad crying. It’s not like I want to be a sniffling mess. Where’s my room?”
“Let’s talk this out—”
“I’m not talking this out.”
“Then let’s sit in front of the fireplace—”
“No. You’ll talk me into this, I know you and I can’t resist you, and you are too much for me, and this is not right for us.”
It’s not right for you, Jace, trust me on that.
He argued, I argued, I cried more, I saw tears in Jace’s dark eyes, too, then I stalked off, found a bedroom with a bed in it, and slammed the door after telling him, “Stay the hell out.”
My body was strung out, wanting Jace, my mind frazzled. I crawled under the covers and cried myself to sleep, by myself, my body rocking back and forth.
At five o’clock in the morning, I tried to sneak out the door. Through the French doors I saw Jace sitting on his deck, the sun rising like a golden ball pulled by an invisible chain from the clouds. I didn’t join him. I knew he would see me hurrying down his road to my house, but I didn’t bother to turn and wave, and he didn’t bother to call me back.
The next day I stopped by a local artist’s home studio. She lived about a mile down the road in a blue house with white trim, and had a sign out in gold lettering that said PEARL’S MOSAICS AND PAINTINGS.
When I walked in, bells chiming on the door, a woman in the other room called out, “I’ll be right with ya!”
There were paintings and mosaics, all bright, bold, flowing, and magical. One painting, about four feet tall and three feet wide, caught my eye. It was an apple tree, but tucked among the branches was a village with miniature houses and thatched roofs. Swinging wooden bridges attached one house to another. Tiny people, in traditional dress from countries all over the world, gathered under the leaves for picnics, sing-alongs, or holding hands. One boy chased a blue balloon.
The details were pure fantasy. The fall leaves on a Japanese woman’s purple kimono glowed. An Indian woman’s pink sari with gold trim floated in the wind. The plaid of three men’s Scottish kilts dropped exactly to their knees. The apple tree was a living, breathing, utopian place with stairs at the bottom of the trunk winding to a gazebo at the top, which was hung with bright white lights. A chief with a feathered headdress and moccasins played the piano.
A woman entered the studio. She had lush, thick white hair in a loose bun and a welcoming smile. Her white shirt and jeans were both covered in paint. She was beautiful. “Now, heck, you’re Ben’s daughter, Allie, aren’t you?”
“Yes, yes, I am.” I shook her hand, surprised. I shouldn’t be surprised—this home was five minutes from my dad’s, so they were neighbors—but I was. My dad did not socialize. He did not like people. He called them
stupid beings posing as humans, with cardboard brains
.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Thank you.” I tensed up.
“Your father pushed it, by hell he did.”
I felt my mouth drop. “I’m sorry?”
“Your father, and I told him many times.” She swung a finger through the air. “He didn’t act like a father. He was a drunk pig in mud when I first met him. He was a bull with his horns down. He should have been born a slug because that’s how he was as a father, and I told him so, especially after he told me about himself in his parenting years. Inexcusable and sluggish. He was a slug.”
“Uh . . .”
“When he quit drinking the last three years, he started to talk about what a lousy father he was and he told me he didn’t think there was a worse husband on the planet.”