Heart of Dixie - Tami Hoag (1) (18 page)

He parted her thighs and kissed her deeply, intimately, his tongue stroking and probing. Flames of desire leaped inside her, burning away patience and focusing her attention on the need that throbbed through her like a physical pain. Her back arched off the blanket and her fingers clutched at Jake's hair, tugging.

He reared up over her then, lifted her hips and filled her with a single thrust, pushing, pushing until she gasped. He brushed his lips against the shell of her ear, saying, "All of me, Dixie. I want you to take all of me, everything, and give me everything. I love you."

She breathed his name and tightened her fingers on the hard muscles of his back. "Yes. Yes." They made love slowly, intensely, watching each other's eyes, concentrating on each sensation. The sky darkened to purple and the sun sank like a flaming ball, spreading fire across the horizon. The ocean roared and hissed.

Dixie felt completion rushing toward her as powerful and urgent as the surge of the sea, and in one corner of her heart, in the last bastion of her fear, she tried to hold it off for a moment, afraid of the power of it, afraid of what would come after. But it was beyond her strength to prevent it and the last wall of her defenses fell, battered down as wave after wave of sensation consumed her. Jake strained against her, his body rigid, a groan rumbling deep in his chest. He clutched her to him with a fierce embrace and Dixie answered him with one of her own, squeezing him tight, her heart pressing to his.

After a long moment he raised his head and looked down at her, brushing her hair back from her eyes, his expression tender but watchful. He was waiting for something. She could sense it. But she was too spent to try to figure out what it was. She let him look into her eyes, let him see everything she was feeling.

Finally he gave her a little smile and said, "I'm freezing my butt off. When did it get so cold out here?"

"It was always cold. We were just too preoccupied to notice." She flipped the edge of the blanket over him. He rolled onto his side with her in his arms, wrapping them together. "Yeah, I guess I had my mind on something else, like how much I love you."

"Why, Mr. Gannon, you have such a way with words," she drawled, batting her eyelashes in a perfect imitation of a debutante at a cotillion. "You ought to be a writer."

"You think so? I was thinking maybe I should do something with my hands," he said, winning a giggle from her as he tickled her. He sobered and kissed her, tenderly, deeply. When he lifted his head again he looked as serious as she'd ever seen him. "Dixie, I think we need to have a talk."

Panic coiled in her stomach. She had committed herself. She had promised him everything she was, everything she had been, but the prospect of telling him now made her shiver. She would tell him, she swore to herself, she would. She just needed a little more time to prepare, that was all. She had revealed much of her past already. She didn't think she had the strength for anything more today.

"Not on an empty stomach," she said, finding a smile for him. "I'm starved, aren't you?"

Jake sighed and sat up, letting the blanket pool at his waist. "Yeah," he murmured. "I'm starved too." Starved for the truth. Dixie had promised him, but she was reneging now that the passion had come and gone. She was pulling back from him. It hurt.

"Don't be mad at me, Jake," she begged, sitting up beside him.

Her eyes were wide and smoky in the firelight, more golden than brown. They begged eloquently for understanding, for time. He caught himself cursing her for being such a damn good actress. She could twist his emotions into knots with nothing more than a look, a subtle nuance of expression.

She put a hand on his arm. "Please don't be mad. I know we need to talk. I just don't want it to be right now, okay? Everything has happened so fast. Let me catch my breath. We can talk ourselves hoarse tomorrow if you want. Just not tonight. Please?"

The tears were his undoing. He felt like a cad for pushing her even though he knew full well he hadn't pushed very hard or for anything unreasonable. He loved her. He deserved to have her tell him the truth. He wanted everything to be settled between them so they could forget about the past and look to the future. But those damn tears did him in. His resolve crumbled like a sand castle.

He gave Dixie a hug and kissed the top of her head. "So you're hungry, huh?"

"Famished."

"For food?"

She gave him a throaty chuckle. "For the moment." ELEVEN

DIXIE WOKE BY slow degrees, her body sated, her mind numbed by the pleasant fog of dreams and memories of the night before. She burrowed deeper under the covers, her head nestling into a plump down pillow that smelled like Jake--warm, clean, masculine. She pulled the sheet and quilt up to her chin, sighing and smiling.

They had dined on the beach wrapped in their blanket and sitting as close to the fire as they dared. The picnic supper Jake had brought had consisted of cold breast of chicken, garlic bread, and a pasta salad he had made himself. They had shared a small bottle of white wine and fed each other bits of fudge, devoting much time to licking fingers and nibbling crumbs off each other's lips. Dixie had crowed over getting Jake to eat sugar and Jake had crowed over getting Dixie to eat a meal that hadn't been dunked in animal fat and fried to a crisp. They had declared the match a tie. The ride back to Mare's Nest had seemed to take forever. As the weather changed, the sea grew rougher. Dixie's little boat had bobbed like a piece of driftwood. She had been forced to devote her attention to getting them back in one piece when all she had wanted was a leisurely trip with plenty of time to look at the stars and enjoy the motion of the water. As it turned out there had been no stars and the motion of the water had been enough to make a seasoned sailor queasy.

There was bad weather coming in from somewhere. The wind had howled during the night and she could tell by the chill on the end of her nose that the temperature had fallen considerably. She turned, thinking to cuddle up to Jake, but he was gone. She vaguely remembered his kissing her forehead and slipping out of bed, saying something about his morning run. The man was a fanatic. She was definitely going to have to work some more on getting him to slow down and relax. This was one morning he could well have forgotten jogging and gotten his exercise in a much more enjoyable way.

Dixie stretched and smiled and burrowed down into the bed again. They had driven back from the marina to find Tyler Holt's pickup parked behind her house and the lights on in the attic windows. Without a word they had turned down the path and walked to Jake's cottage, dogs and cats trailing after them, only to be shut out on the porch. She wondered if Delia and Tyler had cleared the air between them. She hoped so. She wanted her cousin to be happy. She also wanted her house back. Jake's bed wasn't nearly as comfortable as hers, a fact she could overlook while he was in it. When he was in bed with her she wasn't aware of anything but heat and pleasure and loving him so much she thought her heart would burst.

She sat up now and leaned back against the pillows, drawing her knees up and pulling the blankets to her chin. Gray light fell through the window like thick mist. Through the glass she could see the ocean was the color of granite, pitching with whitecaps, spitting foam against the shore. The sky hung down low, the leaden clouds rolling, their swollen bellies looking ready to burst. The sand of the beach was as white as bleached bones in comparison.

Abby hobbled nervously along a short stretch of beach with a stick in her mouth. She didn't like storms and was as good at predicting one as any meteorologist. Bob Dog watched her with a quizzical expression, bowing and prancing, trying unsuccessfully to entice her into a game. Three of Dixie's cats sat on the porch rail, lined up like milk bottles, their tails twitching.

There was no sign of Jake, but she knew he was out there, his long powerful legs eating up the shoreline, the wind in his hair, his intense blue eyes fixed on a distant point. How he had any energy left after last night was beyond her. All she wanted to do was stay in bed and cuddle with him for the rest of the day. She felt supremely lazy but forced herself to get up just the same.

She had put Jake off on the matter of their heart-to-heart, wanting more time to prepare herself. Now she thought about her plan for the morning, the nerves in her stomach doing a tap dance.

She would set the scene carefully. First she would shower and dress--her jeans and one of his shirts. Nothing remotely glamorous because she wanted the emphasis to be on who she was now, not who she had been. She would make a pot of coffee and bring over some of the cinnamon rolls she had baked the day before. And she would make wheat toast to appease his sense of nutrition. She would let him shower and dress and then they would sit down at the table and she would simply tell him.

It was no big deal. Being Devon Stafford had been a job and she had left it. Jake had been in the Marine Corps and he had left it. Same thing. She would reveal all, get it over with, answer his questions, and then they could get on to the next phase of their relationship.

She showered in record time and dried her hair with Jake's blow dryer cranked on high. She ended up looking as if she had been trapped in a wind tunnel, her bob a wild bush around her head. She tried to press it down with her hands, then left it. Her hair was the least of her worries. After pulling on her jeans and a heavy brown plaid flannel shirt from Jake's closet, she ran to her house, tripping over cats and dogs on the way.

Tyler Holt's truck was still there. Either he and Delia had made up or she had killed him. Knowing them both, Dixie figured it was a fifty-fifty proposition.

"My God, Dixie, you look like somebody scared you," Sylvie said, swinging open the porch door. "What did you do to your hair?"

Dixie started and clutched a hand to her heart. "Cripes, Sylvie, you hadn't ought to jump out at people that way. You nearly gave me a heart attack." She trudged up the steps to the porch, stepping around a knot of kittens wrestling on the landing. She scowled at her friend. "What are doing hiding up here anyway?"

Sylvie made an incredulous face and lifted her jewel- encrusted hands to the heavens. "What hiding? I wasn't hiding. I came to borrow some coffee. Can't a friend borrow a little coffee? Is this a crime in South Carolina now, to borrow coffee?"

Dixie gave her a steady look. "Coffee. Uh-huh. Your being here doesn't have a thing to do with finding out what happened between Tyler and Delia." "Is Tyler here? I had no idea," she said, blinking innocently.

Dixie rolled her eyes and strode past her, weaving her way through the clutter toward the kitchen. The house was quiet except for Cyclops, who trotted after her howling for his breakfast.

"You don't fool me, Sylvie Lieberman," she said, scooping cat food out of a container on the counter and dumping it into an array of bowls on the floor.

"You want to know if they made up or not."

"And you don't?"

"'Course I hope they did. I hope Tyler had sense enough to tell Dee he still loves her even if she does look like a refugee from Chernobyl."

She opened a cupboard, yanked a can of coffee and slammed the door shut before the junk crammed inside could fall on her in an avalanche.

"And what about you and Mr. Handsome?" Sylvie asked slyly. She peeked inside a plastic container on the table and snatched a cinnamon roll. "Did you tell him?"

"Not yet. I'm going to over breakfast." "You'd better, dearie," Sylvie said, nibbling on her roll. "No good can come of keeping this secret from him."

Dixie leaned back against the counter and rubbed her temples. "Don't put any extra pressure on me here, Sylvie. I'm nervous already."

"It's just a little stage fright," Sylvie counseled, coming to wrap a slender arm around Dixie's shoulders. She gave her a motherly squeeze. "Everything will turn out fine. Trust me, I know these things. My Sid, God rest his soul, always said I had a sixth sense about people. Your Jake is a good one."

Dixie nibbled her lip, her brows furrowing. "I hope you're right, 'cause I'm so crazy in love with that man it scares me."

"So that's what's the matter with your hair."

"Your coffee," Dixie said, thrusting the can at her friend.

"Coffee?" Syvlie said blankly. "Oh, yeah. My coffee." She took it and tucked it in the crook of her arm like a football. She bussed Dixie's cheek and moved toward the door. "Thanks, love. Good luck."

"Sylvie?" Dixie gave her a tremulous smile. "Thanks for the pep talk. You're a good friend."

Sylvie sniffed. "Tell me something I don't already know." Jake was trotting up to the cottage when Dixie returned with her cinnamon rolls. He slowed to a walk, wading through the mob of dogs fawning at his feet. He looked flushed and fit, like an ad for running gear. Dixie felt her stomach warm just looking at him as he bent to pat furry heads.

"Hey, lady," he said, grinning up at her, dimples flashing. "That looks like a shirt I used to own."

Dixie sniffed at him. "Well, you weren't there to put your arms around me when I woke up. This was the next best thing."

"I'm here now," he said, his voice low, rumbling with sensual promise.

He cupped the back of her head with one big hand and dropped a kiss to her mouth. He had intended it as a quick peck, but the instant their lips came together, it softened and deepened until both of them groaned at the pleasure of it. Bob Dog tried to wedge his nose between them, then sat down on the path beside them and let out a mournful howl.

"Jealous," Jake muttered. He tweaked Dixie's cheek and backed toward the steps. "I'll hit the shower, then we can have breakfast."

And talk, his gaze said plainly enough. Dixie sucked in a breath and nodded.

"I'll make some coffee."

"Great. Hey, did you change your hair?" He cast a quizzical glance over his shoulder. "It looks...bigger."

"Get in the shower, Gannon, before I sic my dogs on you."

The breakfast preparations took all of five minutes. Dixie wandered around the cottage listening to the sound of the shower running and the storm warnings coming over the radio. She was too nervous to sit, too nervous to eat. There was nothing in Jake's house to straighten even if she had been inclined to do so. The place was neat as a pin, looking like a writer's retreat to be featured in Country Living magazine. Even his desk was immaculate-- typewriter covered, pens in their holder, blank paper neatly stacked.