Jeff felt such remorse for Allie, he pulled
her back into his arms, barely aware that only a sheet separated
his nakedness from her. He couldn’t think of a plausible,
comforting comment to make, so he did the only thing he could think
of and held her close.
No one—certainly not Amos or Olivia Ford—had
apparently given any thought to the fact that Allie had lost her
mother, too, and the nurturing that any child should have had. But
it occurred to Jeff. “If I had the power, Allie, I swear I’d turn
back the clock and make it all different.”
He held her and stroked her back. She was
fine-boned and delicate under his touch.
At this moment, it felt as if he were doing a
very important job, taking care of Allie. She was independent and
capable, but she had a tender vulnerability that made him want to
protect her. What a hell of a tangle their lives were in, though.
Even after everything that Olivia had done, he doubted that Allie
was likely to abandon her charge. Her sense of responsibility was
lifelong and too ingrained to turn her back on. He’d move on at the
end of summer and always wonder what could have been if they had
met at a different time and place. Allie and her kindness would be
just a memory he could warm himself with on empty nights.
But for now, time seemed to stop here in this
little room, and it was safe to let himself realize that he’d
fallen in love with her.
She began to quiet in his arms. Either his
words gave her comfort, or more likely, she’d simply worn herself
out. It felt so good to hold her, though, almost tantalizing. He
had to remind himself that she had come to him as a friend, and
that she had no one else to turn to. But hell, he was just a man,
and as she shifted a bit, he was again painfully aware that only a
couple flimsy layers of fabric separated their bodies and bare
skin.
His thoughts returned to his dream of Allie’s
smooth, pale skin and long, slender thigh lying along his, and for
the first time in years, he thought he might find his own soul
again in Allie Ford’s warmth. But what right did he have to seek
it? Hadn’t she given him more than he deserved? Because of her he
was able to stand straight again. His hands were steady, and he
knew the satisfaction of doing a day’s hard work and doing it well.
She didn’t owe him more than that, and she deserved a better man
than him. But if time had truly stopped and tomorrow were not
coming, he’d tell her she’d stolen his heart. He’d get down on his
knees and beg her . . .
Allie rested against Jeff, and her sobs
slowed to sniffles as a kind of relief stole over her. Just the
sound of his voice was comforting to her. How strange and yet how
right it felt to be in this man’s arms. And despite all that had
happened, the weight on her shoulders seemed a bit lighter. Maybe
it was just because she’d finally gotten to tell somebody the
secrets she’d carried in her heart for years, ones that she had
hidden even from herself. And not only had Jeff not judged her, he
had defended her. No one had ever done that. No one before had even
asked what she thought.
But now that the storm raging within her had
quieted, she felt a little awkward. What must he think of her, a
hysterical woman who’d barged in on his privacy? His handsome face
was blank, as if his thoughts had traveled beyond their
conversation, and his eyes were dark and unfathomable in the
shadows. The two of them were scarcely decent, he with no shirt and
in bed, for heaven’s sake, and she wearing only a shawl and a
nightgown.
She pulled away from him and sat up, wiping
her eyes on the handkerchief she pulled from her nightgown pocket.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up from a sound sleep and cry
all over you. Thank you for listening and, well, everything.” She
stood and adjusted her shawl. It was really too hot in here now to
wear it, but it was all that covered her gown. “I’d better go back
to the house.”
“
Allie, stop apologizing. You have
nothing to be sorry for. Nothing. Anyway, I wasn’t sleeping
soundly.” He glanced up at her from under sandy brows, and the heat
in his eyes said a hundred things that his husky voice did not.
“Stay . . . please . . . I
don’t want you to go.”
Allie swallowed. She had no knowledge of men
or the mysteries that existed between a man and a woman. But
without being told, she knew what he wanted. It both thrilled and
frightened her.
“
N-no?”
Keeping his eyes on her, he shook his head
slightly. “No.”
She didn’t take the hand he held out to her
but wordlessly she groped behind her for the chair and sat down
again. Her knees bumped the edge of the corn shuck mattress where
he sat with his back propped against the pillow. Her mind and heart
were galloping neck and neck, at top speed; the first asked if she
knew what she was doing, the other urged her to ignore the
question.
Though she’d been in this room for the better
part of an hour already, she just now really noticed Jeff’s
appearance. In fact, she noticed everything. Could this possibly be
the same man who’d appeared at her doorstep in May, disheveled and
derelict? He’d regained the natural grace she’d noticed long ago.
His sun-streaked hair was sleep-tousled, and his shoulders were
wider than she had realized. The faint shadow of his beard outlined
his firm jaw and chin. Lean, hard muscle defined the breadth of his
chest and the strength in his arms. His flat belly bore a narrow
strip of hair down its center that disappeared beneath the sheet
that barely topped his hipbones. Dear God, but he was a beautiful
man, the most handsome one she had ever seen. Not that she had seen
all that many.
Her attention moved downward, over his
pelvis, over the shape of his long legs beneath the sheet, and back
to his hips again. When Allie realized where her eyes had strayed
to, her face burned and her heart thudded in her rib cage. His very
maleness drew her, and she felt womanly in a way that she had known
only in his presence. She realized that they had been moving toward
this moment since the day she met him.
Jeff swung his legs over the side of the bed,
the sheet still wound around his middle. “Allie,” he whispered, and
took her hand to press a kiss into her palm. “I owe you a lot, and
I’ve got nothing in this world to give you. I used to be a man of
some standing. Now, well, you know what happened to me. A lot of it
was my fault, and some of it was just fate and bad luck. I don’t
know what’s coming tomorrow, honey. But there’s tonight—there’s
still tonight. If you’ll have me.”
Modesty tugged at her. She should refuse. She
should demand an apology and when she had it, storm back to the
house in a huff of outraged female virtue. Society’s conventions of
decency would require that she do so.
But society’s conventions had been cold
comfort to her all her life. Far stronger than modesty was the
yearning she had to share a closeness with Jeff that allowed
nothing else to get in the way. No bad memories or silent
indictments haunting her from the burying ground, no Olivia, no
blame for past deeds or failures. She didn’t need to be the mother
or the servant. Instead, she would be a woman. Looking into his
lean, handsome face, she saw sincerity. He was offering her the
chance to feel close to someone for the first time in her life,
perhaps for the only time.
“
Your past doesn’t matter to me, Jeff.
I think you’re a good man, with a good heart, and I can’t ask for
more than that.” Meeting his searing green eyes, she returned the
kiss on the work-roughened hand that held hers. “I’ll have
you.”
Jeff closed his eyes and sighed, the way a
condemned man might if he was granted a last wish. Then he gazed at
her for a long moment. “Come to me, then.” He pulled her out of the
chair to sit beside him on the bed, and her shawl fell away.
Touching gentle fingertips to her bruised cheek, he followed them
with soft kisses that brushed her ear and hairline. Pleasurable
shivers flew down her arms and over her scalp, and shyly, she
turned her lips to his.
His kiss was more demanding than it had been
this afternoon. She had been unwilling to stop him then—now, with
the exquisite feeling of his lips on hers, she put her arms around
his neck and gave herself up like a wanton. Fiercely he took her
mouth as he plunged his hands into her hair and held her, threading
his fingers through the strands. When she felt his tongue tease her
lips apart, her breath came faster as if trying to keep pace with
her thundering heart.
He smelled of the wind-dried bedding and of
sun and an essence that was his alone, making Allie think of the
bare elements of earth and sky. Pulling back, he ran his hands up
and down her bare arms while his gaze touched her lightly. Then he
reached for the kerosene lamp and turned down its wick, plunging
the little room into darkness and the dim, gray-white light of the
moon.
He threw back the sheet and pulled her onto
the bed with him. In the feeble light she glimpsed a dark, imposing
shadow low on his torso at the juncture of his long legs. With
detached surprise she realized that he had nothing on at all. He
was naked.
Jeff propped himself up on one elbow and
looked down into her face. “Allie, you’re as pretty as a red rose
in the snow.”
Her emotions choked off any reply she might
have made. No one had ever said something so nice to her. Prim
Althea Ford, one of “those crazy Ford sisters,” lay in the arms of
a beautiful, naked man who found beauty in her as well, and she
reveled in it. He followed his compliment with another deep kiss.
Hot and slick and insistent, it shook her to the very core. She
reached up to touch his ribs and her hand brushed his bare hip.
Growing more daring, she caressed his hard-muscled buttock and he
groaned faintly.
His fingers whispered over her breast,
stopping at the row of tiny buttons closing her nightgown. With
poorly concealed impatience, he unfastened them, all the while
laying a line of kisses up her throat and over her jaw. His warm
breath in her ear raised goose bumps on her arms, and when he ran
his tongue over her lobe, she shuddered.
At last her nightgown lay open to Jeff’s
touch and she froze, waiting, hoping that he would touch her again
the way he had that afternoon. Instead, he leaned over her and
caught her nipple in his mouth, lightly suckling at her breast.
Allie gasped at the intense sensation and sank her fingers into his
hair. Bolts of electricity seemed to shoot directly from her breast
to her womb, and an aching hunger that she had never known before
began to simmer in her.
After he treated her other nipple to the same
attention, she arched against him, a small moan rising from her
throat. He smoothed his hands over her legs, pushing her nightgown
higher with each pass. Finally, with a muttered curse, he gripped
the hem and pulled the garment off over her head and flung it to
the end of the bed. Allie lay as naked as Jeff. He pulled her up
against the length of his warm body, and they embraced skin to
skin, their limbs tangling.
“
Allie, God, you feel so
good—like cream, like velvet. I’ve lain here every night imagining
you with me, in my arms. But I never knew it would feel this
good.”
She’d had no idea he’d given her any such
thought at all. “Jeff . . . ” She could say
nothing more, but she didn’t need to. With some of her shyness
stripped away by the desire he kindled in her, she reached out to
touch him, to feel the silky hair scattered across his chest, the
smooth, hard muscle in his arms, the ladders of his ribs. His
erection, pulsing and hot, pressed insistently against her
thigh.
At the same time, Jeff pushed her to her back
and moved the flat of his hand down over her belly, lower and
lower, until his hand covered the warm apex of her thighs. Every
nerve in her body arced beneath her skin and the longing that had
begun to grow in her now escalated. With a careful, deliberate
touch, he grazed that most sensitive part of her, inexplicably wet.
She jumped, accidently nipping his shoulder with her teeth.
“
God, woman, you’re a she-cat,” he said
with a low huff of laughter.
“
I’m sorry—”
He lowered his head and tugged on her nipple
again with his mouth. “Don’t be.”
Her sudden movement had bumped his hand away,
but he came back again, seeking the slick folds and delicate,
innermost flesh, massaging her with light, rapid strokes.
Allie thought her heart would surely burst in
her chest, it beat so hard. Though she had a virgin’s inexperience,
her shameless body seemed to have a will of its own, and did as it
wanted. She heard a herself moan in response to Jeff’s touch. Her
hips thrust upward to meet his hand, giving him complete access to
continue the sweet torment he inflicted upon her.
“
Jeff, please. Oh, please—”
She believed she might lose her mind if he
didn’t stop, and that she most certainly would if he did. All the
while he muttered encouragement and endearments against her ear,
urging her to do something, but just what she didn’t know.
Perspiration drenched her as she pushed against his hand again and
again. When she believed that she could take no more of this tender
torture, her body climbed to a knife-sharp precipice and teetered
there for a breathless, dizzying instant. Then it flung itself into
wave upon wave of contractions that racked her, releasing the
pent-up yearning. She sobbed Jeff’s name and he answered her with
some wordless sound in the darkness.
Nearly limp from the chaos of emotions and
feelings that had gripped her, Allie couldn’t speak. All she could
do was hold out welcoming arms to him.
Jeff answered her summons, covering her
swiftly and showering her face and temples with quick, warm kisses.
“I’ll be careful, Allie, I swear,” he whispered roughly.