Linda Lael Miller Bundle (14 page)

“Is she always this good?” Shay whispered once Kelly had finished her cocoa and gone off to the living room to sit quietly on the couch and thumb through a copy of
House Beautiful
.

Mitch shook his head. “I’m still a novelty,” he answered, trapping Shay neatly against the kitchen counter and bending to steal one mischievous kiss. “She’s only staying a few days, Reba and her husband are attending some conference in Seattle.” Liking the taste of the first kiss, he gave her another. “Hank’s pretty upset, isn’t he?”

Shay nodded. “I told him about Eliott.”

Mitch’s hand was in Shay’s hair, his thumb tracing the rim of her ear. “You did the right thing, princess. He’s going to need some time to come to terms with what happened, that’s all.”

“You were remarkably patient with him.”

Mitch kissed her again. “I’m a remarkably patient man.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “But I’d sure like to take you to bed right now, lady.”

Shay trembled, needing Mitch and knowing that her need would have to be denied. “I’d sure like to go,” she replied honestly.

Mitch laughed and nuzzled her neck once. “I’ll try to arrange something,” he said, and then they coaxed Hank out of his room and went to Ivy’s apartment for the evening.

Mitch called Shay at the office first thing the next morning. “Keep the weekend open,” he said. “I’m going to take you somewhere private and love you until you’re crazy.”

A hot, anticipatory shiver went through Shay. “What about the kids? Where would we—”

“Reba is picking Kelly up tomorrow night. Maybe Hank could stay with Alice.”

“Well…”

“Ask her, Shay. You’re talking to a desperate man, a man consumed with lust.”

Shay laughed. “I’ll check with Alice and call you back.”

Alice asked no questions. She simply agreed to keep Hank for the weekend and returned to the group of knitters gathered at the back of the shop.

The rest of that week crept by, even though Shay was busy day and night. She didn’t see Mitch at all, but he managed to keep her blood at an embarrassing simmer by calling her at intervals and making scandalous promises.

Finally, Friday afternoon arrived. Shay left the office early, picked Hank up at school and brought him back to Alice’s shop.

Alice immediately set him to work unpacking a new shipment of yarn. “You just go along, dear,” she whispered, half pushing Shay out through the shop’s open door and into the hallway. “Hank and I will be fine.”

Shay pulled a crumpled piece of paper from her coat pocket and handed it to Alice. “This is a telephone number, where you can reach us, er, me.”

Alice glanced at the number, which constituted the sum total of what Shay knew about where she would be that weekend, nodded her head and tucked the paper into the pocket of her apron. “Have a lovely time, dear,” she said, dismissing Shay with a wave of one hand.

Because Shay had to leave the station wagon with Barbara and Louise so that they could make deliveries, Mitch picked her up in front of the building. She felt like a fool, standing there on the front steps with her suitcase at her feet.

“I didn’t even know what clothes to pack!” she snapped once she’d gotten into Mitch’s car and fastened her seatbelt.

“You probably won’t need any,” he replied.

Their destination turned out to be a log cabin in the foothills of the Olympics. There was smoke curling from the stone chimney and lights glowed at the windows. Pine trees towered behind the small house, scenting the crisp evening air, and among them were maples and elms, a few bright orange leaves still clinging to their branches.

Mitch took the box of supplies that he’d picked up at the store down the road, and carried it to the porch step, setting it down to unlock the door. Shay took as long as she could to get her suitcase and follow.

The inside of the cabin was simplicity at its finest. The wooden floors were bare, except for a few brightly colored scatter rugs, and polished to a high shine. A fire snapped and chattered on the hearth of the rustic rock fireplace, tossing darting crimson shadows onto the tweed sofa that faced it. There was a tiny bathroom and an even tinier kitchen, where Mitch immediately busied himself putting away the food.

“Whose place is this, anyway?” Shay asked, oddly nervous considering all the times she’d been intimate with Mitch.

Mitch closed the door of the smallest refrigerator Shay had ever seen and turned to unzip her jacket and slide it off her shoulders. “It belongs to a friend of Todd’s,” he answered, but his mind clearly wasn’t on such details. His eyes were on the third button of Shay’s flannel shirt and it was a wonder that the little bit of plastic didn’t melt under the heat.

“There isn’t any phone. I gave Alice a number—”

“That number is for the store down the road. If anything happens, Alice will have no problem getting through to us.”

Shay’s arms were still in her jacket sleeves, the garment only half removed, when Mitch slipped out of his own coat and began unbuttoning her shirt. She quivered, unable to utter so much as a word of protest, as he undid the front fastening on her bra and bared her breasts.

When he touched her, with one tentative hand, she gasped with pleasure and let her head fall back, her eyes drifting shut. Mitch stroked her gently, shaping each of her breasts for his pleasure and her own, teasing her nipples until they tightened into pulsing little pebbles.

Finally he removed her jacket entirely, then her shirt and her already-dangling bra, her jeans and her shoes, her socks and, last of all, her panties. A low crooning sound came from Shay’s throat as Mitch caressed every part of her with his hands, slowly, as if memorizing her shape, the texture of her flesh. One by one, he found and attended the spots where her pleasure was most easily roused.

After what seemed a dazzling eternity to Shay, he took off his clothes and they knelt, facing each other, before the fire. Now, while Mitch’s hands brazenly cupped Shay’s breasts, she used her own to explore him, learning each muscle in his powerful thighs with her fingers, each hollow and plane in his broad back and on his chest. At last she tangled her fingers in his hair and moved astraddle of him, catching his groan of surrender in her mouth as she kissed him and at the same time sheathing him in her warmth.

They moved slowly at first, their mouths still locked in that same kiss, their tongues mimicking the parries and thrusts of their hips.

But finally the need became too great and Shay leaned back in triumphant submission, bracing herself with her hands, her breasts swollen and heaving under the attentions of Mitch’s fingers. She groaned with each slow thrust of his hips, pleaded senselessly at each lingering withdrawal.

He stopped plying her nipples with his fingers to suckle and tongue them instead and Shay was driven to madness. She threw her legs around Mitch and he shouted in a madness of his own, plunging deep.

Shay would not allow him to escape the velvety vengeance that cosseted him, rippled over him, sapped his strength. Her triumph was an elemental thing, and she shouted with the joy of it even as Mitch growled in a release of his own.

Once they’d recovered enough to rise from that rug in front of the fire, where they’d fallen in a tangle of perspiration and breathless laughter, they ate sandwiches and drank wine and then made the sofa out into a bed and made love again.

In the darkest depths of the night Shay awakened and lay listening, in perfect contentment, to the calls of the owls and the cry of some lonely, faraway beast. She felt her spirit, crumpled by the rigors of day-today life, unfolding like a soft cloth. She snuggled closer to Mitch and wished that they could stay there in that cabin far longer than just a weekend.

The morning was cold and the sky was a brassy blue, laced with gray clouds. Mitch and Shay consumed a hastily cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast and then went outside.

They found a silver ribbon of a creek, hidden away among the trees and watched a deer dashing up a hillside, white tail bobbing. It was all so beautiful that Shay ached with the effort of trying to draw it all inside herself, to keep.

Early in the afternoon snow began to fall, drifting down in big, lazy flakes that seesawed their way to the ground. Mitch built up the fire and then came to stand behind Shay at the window, kneading her shoulders with his strong hands, his chin propped on the top of her head.

“What are you thinking, princess?”

Shay knew there would be tears in her voice and made no effort to hide them. “That two days isn’t going to be enough.”

“Two centuries wouldn’t be enough,” he agreed quietly, and his arms slid around her and tightened.

They watched the snow for hours, it seemed, and then they went back to the bed. There was no lovemaking; they were too tired for that.

When Shay was prodded awake by hunger, she sat up in bed and yawned. It was dark outside and the fire was almost out. She squinted at her watch and was shocked at the time; it was after midnight!

She prodded Mitch with one hand. “Wake up!”

He stirred briefly and then rolled over, hauling most of the covers with him and burying his face in his pillow.

Shay swatted his backside. “I said, wake up!”

He muttered something and burrowed deeper.

Disgusted, Shay scrambled out of bed and hop-danced to the window because the floor was so cold under her bare feet. The snow was deep now and it glowed in the moonlight, so white and glittery that Shay’s throat went tight as she looked at it.

Her stomach rumbled and she remembered that she was hungry. She found her robe and slippers and put them on, then began ransacking the kitchen, making as much noise as she possibly could.

Mitch woke up reluctantly, grumbling and groping for his jeans. “What the—”

Shay shoved a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich into his hands and began wolfing down one of her own. “I challenge you to a duel, my good man,” she said, eating and putting on her clothes at the same time.

“Name your weapon,” Mitch muttered with a disgraceful lack of enthusiasm.

Shay stepped outside the door for a moment, wincing at the cold, and then let him have it. “Snowballs!” she shouted as the first volley struck Mitch’s bare chest.

O
n Sunday morning the snow began to melt away, leaving only ragged patches of white here and there on the ground. In a like manner, Shay’s dreams seemed to waste away, too. She had hoped that Mitch might propose to her again—she felt ready to accept now—but as the time for them to leave the cabin drew closer, his mood went from pensive to distant to downright sullen.

Shay watched him out of the corner of one eye as they drove past the small country store on the highway—the proprietor had been the one to build the fire and turn on the lights in the cabin before they arrived—but she didn’t ask Mitch what was wrong because she thought she knew. He probably dreaded the inevitable return to the realities of the relationship as much as she did.

When Mitch reached out for the radio dial on the dashboard, Shay gently forestalled the motion.

“You’ve almost finished the Roget book,” she threw out, to make conversation. “What’s next?”

Mitch tossed one unreadable look in Shay’s direction and his jawline tightened as he turned his attention back to the road. “I suppose Ivan will sift through the dregs of humanity until he finds some other scum for me to write about.”

Shay stiffened. “Is that what my mother was, Mitch? The dregs of humanity?”

He cursed under his breath. “I was talking about Roget and you damned well know it. Don’t bait me, Shay, because I’m not in the mood to play your games.”

It was an uncomfortable reminder of the last time Mitch had accused her of playing games and Shay felt defensive. Still, she tried hard to keep her voice level. “Do you really think I want to argue with you, especially now? Especially after—”

“After what, Shay? Two days of reckless passion?” His tone was blade-sharp. Lethal. “That’s our only real way of communicating, isn’t it?” He paused, drew a deep, raspy breath. “I’ll say one thing for us, love: we relate real well on a sexual level.”

Shay was wounded and her voice sounded small and shaky when she spoke. “If you feel that way, why did you ask me to marry you?”

The brown eyes swung to her, scoured her with their anger. “I guess I lost my head,” he said bluntly. Brutally. “Rest easy, sugar plum. I won’t risk it again.”

“Risk—”

“If you want to marry me—and I don’t think you have the guts to make that kind of commitment to any man—you’ll have to do the proposing. Rejection hurts, Shay, and I’m not into pain.”

Shay turned her head, and the tall pine trees along the roadside seemed to whiz past the car window in a blurry rush. The terrible hurt, the three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn in Mitch’s attitude, all of it was proof that she’d been wrong to expect consistent, unwavering love from a man. Why hadn’t she learned? She’d watched Rosamond enter into one disastrous relationship after another. She’d nearly been destroyed by a failed marriage herself. Why in God’s name hadn’t she learned?

“Shay?” Mitch’s voice was softer now, even gentle. But it was too late for gentleness.

She let her forehead rest against the cool, moist glass of the window, trying to calm herself. “Leave me alone.”

The sleek car swung suddenly to the side of the road and came to a stomach-wrenching stop. “Shay.”

She shook his hand from her shoulder, keeping her face averted. “Don’t touch me, Mitch. Don’t touch me.”

There was a blunt sound, probably his fist striking the steering wheel or the dashboard, followed by a grating sigh. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I get so frustrated. Everything was so good between us and now it’s all going to hell again and I can’t handle that, Shay.”

“That’s obvious.”

She heard him sigh again, felt a jarring motion as he shifted furiously in the car seat. “Don’t give any ground here, dammit. Whatever you do, don’t meet me halfway!”

Shay could look at Mitch now; in fact, her pain forced her to do that. She sat up very straight in her seat, heedless of her tousled hair and the tears on her cheeks. “I’ve met you more than halfway, Mitch. I came up on this damned mountain with you. I shared your bed. And you turned on me.”

“I didn’t turn on you, Shay. I got angry. There’s a difference.”

“Is there?”

“Yes, dammit, there is!”

“If you truly love somebody, you don’t yell at them!”

Mitch’s nose was within an inch of Shay’s. “You’re wrong, lady, because I love you and I’m yelling at you right now! And I’ll keep yelling until you hear me! I LOVE YOU! Is that coming through?”

“No!” Shay closed her eyes tightly. Memories of her mother filled her mind—Rosamond screaming, Rosamond throwing things, Rosamond driving away everyone who tried to love her. “No!”

Mitch’s hands were clasping her shoulders then. “Open your eyes, Shay; look at me!”

Shay did open her eyes, but only as a reflex.

“I’m still here, aren’t I? You can get mad at me, Shay, and I can get mad at you, and it’s still all right. Don’t you see that? It’s all right.”

She fell against him, burying her face in his shoulder, clinging to him with her hands. She had always been afraid of anger, in other people, in herself. And she trembled in fear of it then, even as she began to realize that Mitch was right. Getting mad was okay, it was human. It didn’t have to mean the end of something good.

Presently, Mitch cupped one hand under her chin and lifted, brushing her lips with his own.

“All weekend,” he said, “you’ve been telling me what your body wants, what it needs. Your mind and your spirit, Shay, what do they want?”

She sniffled. That one was easy. With her whole heart and soul she wanted Mitch Prescott. She wanted to laugh with him and bear his children and yes, fight with him, but she couldn’t bring herself to say those things aloud. Not yet. She was still coming to terms with too many other emotions and her right to feel them.

Mitch overlooked her complete inability to answer and kissed the tip of her nose. “We’ll get this right, Shay. Somehow, I’m going to get past all that pain and fear and make you trust me.”

Shay swallowed hard. “I—I trust you.”

He started the car again. “I’ll believe that, my love, when you ask for my hand in marriage.”

“It’s supposed to be the other way around, isn’t it?” Shay caught her breath as the car sped onto the highway again.

“Not in this case,” Mitch answered, and the subject was closed.

The boxed manuscript landed in the middle of Ivan’s desk with a solid, resounding thump.

Ivan looked at the box and then up at Mitch’s unyielding face. “Good Lord,” the older man muttered. “You’re not serious!”

“I’m serious as hell, Ivan. I’m through writing this kind of book.”

Ivan gestured toward one of several chairs facing his desk. “Sit down, sit down. Let’s at least talk this over. You didn’t fly three thousand miles just to throw a ream of paper in my face, did you?”

Mitch ignored the invitation to sit—he’d had enough of that flying from Seattle to New York—and paced the length of Ivan’s sumptuous office, pausing at the window to look down on Fifth Avenue. He thought of Shay, back home in Skyler Beach and probably up to her eyes in cheeseballs, and smiled. “I flew three thousand miles, Ivan, to tell you face-to-face that you’re going to have to get yourself another Indiana Jones.”

“You’re older now, more settled. I can see why you wouldn’t want to do the kind of research your earlier books required, but your career has taken a different course anyway, between the Rosamond Dallas biography and the Roget case. What’s the real problem, Mitch?”

“A woman.”

Ivan sighed. “I should have known. Don’t tell me the rest of the story, let me guess. She’s laid down the law. No husband of hers is going to fly all over the country chasing down leads and interviewing murderers. Am I right?”

Mitch was standing at the window, still absorbed in Fifth Avenue’s pre-Christmas splendor. “You couldn’t be further off base, Ivan. If it hadn’t been for Shay, I wouldn’t have had the stomach to write about Alan Roget.”

“So she’s supportive. Three cheers for her. I still don’t understand why a writer would turn his back on his craft, his readers, his publishers, his—”

“I never do anything halfway, Ivan,” Mitch broke in patiently. “And right now holding that relationship together takes everything I’ve got.”

“If it’s that shaky, maybe it isn’t worth the trouble.”

“It’s worth it, Ivan.”

Ivan sat back in his swivel chair, his eyes on the manuscript box in front of him. “I almost dread reading this,” he observed after several moments of reflective silence. “I suppose it’s just as good as your other stuff?”

“Better,” Mitch said with resignation rather than pride.

Ivan was, for all his professional tenacity, a good sport. And a good friend. “This lady of yours must be something. Once the dust settles and you want to write again, you give me a call.”

Mitch grinned, already at the door of Ivan’s office, ready to leave. “I expect her to propose any time now,” he said, enjoying the look of surprise on his agent’s face. “Goodbye, Ivan, and merry Christmas.”

“Bah humbug,” Ivan replied as Mitch closed the door behind him.

“Doesn’t anybody cook their own Christmas turkey anymore?” Shay grumbled as she read over the work schedule Barbara had just brought into her office.

Barbara was wearing a bright red apron trimmed in white lace and there was a sprig of holly in her hair. Everybody seemed to have the Christmas spirit this year. Everybody, that is, except for Shay. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Ms. Kendall, most people would be glad to have so much business.”

Shay sighed. “I suppose you’re right.”

“You don’t care much for all this, do you?”

The directness of Barbara’s question set Shay back on her emotional heels. “I’ve dreamed of owning this catering business for years!”

Barbara was undaunted. “Sometimes, we dream of something and we work and sweat and pray to get it and, when we do, we find out that it wasn’t what we really wanted after all. What is it that you really want, Ms. Kendall?”

Shay blushed. Damn the woman and her uncanny perception! “I’m almost embarrassed to admit to it, in this day and age, but I’d like to be married and have babies. I’d like to have the luxury of being weak sometimes, instead of always having to be strong. I’d like to be there when my son comes home from school and I’d like to watch soap operas and vacuum rugs.” Shay caught herself. Barbara would be horrified. Any modern woman would be horrified. “Aren’t you sorry you asked?”

Barbara chuckled. “I was married for a long, long time, Ms. Kendall, and those were some of the things I liked best about it.”

“You’re not shocked?”

“Of course I’m not. You’re a young woman and it’s natural for you to want a man and a home and babies.”

Shay was gazing toward the window. There wasn’t any snow and she wanted snow. She wanted to be alone in the mountains with Mitch again. “I’m not at all like my mother,” she mused in a faraway voice threaded through with a strand of pure joy. “I’m myself and I can make my own choices.”

Barbara must have slipped out. When Shay looked back, she was gone.

Shay propped her chin in her hands, running over her dreams, checking each one for soundness, finding them strong. All she had to do was find the courage to act on them.

Mitch wanted a marriage proposal, did he? Well, she’d give him one he’d never forget. She reached for the telephone book and leafed through the yellow pages until she found the listings she wanted. There was no way she could put her plan into action until after Christmas, what with the business and Ivy’s wedding and the general uproar of the holiday itself, but it wouldn’t hurt to make a few calls.

Kelly cast one questioning look up at her mother. Reba nodded, her eyes suspiciously bright, and the child scampered through the crowd of Christmas travelers and into Mitch’s arms.

He lifted her, held her close. There was no time to tell Reba that he was grateful; he and Kelly had to catch a northbound plane within minutes. He nodded and Reba nodded back. A second later, she had disappeared into the crowd.

“Look, Daddy,” Kelly chimed over the standard airport hubbub, pointing to a pin on her coat. “Mommy bought me this Santa and his nose lights up when you pull the string!”

Mitch chuckled hoarsely. “Your mommy is a pretty special lady. Shall we go catch our plane?”

Kelly nodded. “Mommy already checked my suitcase and I’ve got my ticket right here.”

Minutes later they were settled in their seats on the crowded airplane and Mitch ventured, “I know this is the first Christmas you’ve ever been away from your mother….”

Kelly smiled and patted his hand as though Mitch were the child and she the adult. “Don’t worry, Daddy. I won’t cry or anything like that. It’ll be fun to be with you and be in Aunt Ivy’s wedding and, besides, I get a whole other Christmas when I get back here.”

The plane was taxiing down the runway and Mitch checked Kelly’s seatbelt.

“I’m kind of scared,” she confessed.

He took her hand.

Shay dampened her fingers on her tongue and smoothed Hank’s cowlick. “I want you to be nice to Kelly,” she said as the arrival of Flight 703 was announced over the airport
PA
system.

Hank scooted away, his dignity ruffled. “Mom, don’t spit on me anymore,” he complained. “I look good enough already.”

Shay laughed. “I’m soooooo sorry!”

The plane landed and, after several minutes, the passengers began to stream in through the gate, most carrying brightly wrapped packages and wearing home-for-the-holiday smiles. Mitch and Kelly appeared just when Shay was beginning to worry that they’d been left behind.

Kelly pulled at a little string and the Santa Claus face pinned to her coat glowed with light. “Look, Hank!”

Hank tried his best to be blasé, but he was obviously fascinated by the plastic Santa and its flashing red nose.

“I brought you one just like it,” Kelly assured him.

Shay could feel Mitch’s eyes on her face, but it was a moment before she’d shored up her knees enough to risk looking into them. She wondered what he’d say when he found out that he wasn’t involved with a modern woman at all, but one who wanted a time-out, who would willingly trade her career for babies and Cub Scout meetings and love in the afternoon.