More Than Friends (34 page)

"I'm telling you all this," she said, losing her composure enough to send her voice higher, "because I don't know what to do." Her mittened hands were holding tight to the edge of the bench. She was torn between wanting him to stay and wanting him to go. "When I found out Michael was coming home, I figured you'd cool it, and I was relieved, because I like seeing you too much. But it's been five days now--" she was baring her soul and unable to stop, "--and I've been dying. Seeing you is the highlight of my day. And that infuriates me. I made my own life when you sent me away. I relegated you to the past. But now you're back, tormenting me in the middle of the night." Appalled by the confession, she caught her breath. But the damage had been done, and that angered her even more. "Damn it, you have no right making me want you again!"

Grady grunted. Planting the shovel in a snowdrift, he stalked off the cleared path into the deeper snow of the yard.

" Grady she shouted. He wouldn't walk away from her. Not a second time. Not when he'd been the one to return.

She went in hot pursuit, following the trail his boots had made, out to the far edge of the yard and into the woods. The snow was lighter underfoot, deflected by the boughs overhead. She found him in the pine grove, under the widest and tallest of the trees, with his back to her, his hand flat on the bark, and his head bowed.

She stalked right up to him. "Two right, Grady." He turned, drew her close, and covered her mouth with his own before she could say another word. Not that she would have. With his very first touch, her anger fizzled. This was what the hungry part of her, the part that awoke in the night so desperate for his touch, wanted. He sucked her lips open and surged inside, and for the first time in twenty-two long years, Teke tasted all she'd been missing. It was a breathtaking, mind-blowing, bone-melting experience.

The first taste was the best when it came to fresh-steeped tea in the morning, raisin toast slathered with soft butter, or hot fudge over melting vanilla ice cream--but when it came to Grady, the taste started great and got better and better, deeper, wetter, hotter, until Teke was dying for more.

Grady seemed similarly affected. His body trembled with a cruder need. Tearing his mouth from hers, he crushed her close.

She buried her face in his sheepskin collar, drinking in his smell as she had devoured his taste. When he unzipped his coat, she pressed her face to his throat. She was startled by the familiarity of him, the newness and the delight. It didn't occur to her to protest when he pushed off her hat and buried his face in her hair. He had done that so often when they had lain together, and the gesture was as satisfying to her now as then.

"Thick and pillowing," he said hoarsely. "I used to love falling asleep in this." Holding her face in his hands, he kissed her eyes and the bridge of her nose. He ran his mouth across her cheek, ate at her lower lip, then her upper lip, then both, as though he couldn't get enough.

Teke couldn't, either. Her breathing was ragged when he finally returned her face to his neck, but passion was only partly to blame. She was suddenly frightened. The war inside picked up steam. "I didn't want this, Grady. Oh, Grady .. ."

"Do you remember the first time we kissed?" he asked. How could she not? It had been a turning point in her life, a commitment to something that was destined to go far beyond. "We were in Hiller Malloy's boat. I was helping you repair it."

"I didn't want to kiss you."

"You kept looking at me and looking away."

"It seemed I'd been doing that for years, looking at you and looking away, and all the while you were getting taller and filling out and I was wanting you more. So then you were fourteen, and I thought I'd die if I didn't kiss you. I knew you hadn't kissed anyone else, and I had to be the first, like I could put my sign on you, so no one else would ever touch. But I was scared to death, because I didn't think I'd be able to stop." He took a handful of her hair and moved it over his face, then took a shuddering breath. "Everything you did was pure. But you were a natural. You let me show you what I liked. You were malleable and strong."

She was so far under his spell that it was a struggle to think straight. "Aren't those contradictory terms?"

"No. When I build canoes, the cedar is like that. I shape it to my mold, then know that it will withstand all but the roughest of the rapids." He ran

eager hands over her back in the process of tightening his hold. "I won't be able to build another canoe without thinking of that." She burrowed more deeply into the collar of his shirt, wanting to hide from him in him. There was a contradiction in that, too, but she didn't care. Her thoughts raced on. "We're finished, you and I. You have no place in my life. This is madness, what we're doing here."

"You're not moving away."

Her dilemma in a nutshell. "I can't," she wailed against the spot on his chest where the second button of his shirt had come undone. Her breath stirred the crinkly hair there, cool against his heat. Between that heat, and his exquisitely male scent, and the fine tremor that snaked through his limbs, she knew that his arousal matched hers.

"Push me away, Grady," she begged. "Someone might see us."

"I'm watching. No one's coming."

"I shouldn't be doing this. Something bad will come of it, I know it will, but so help me, I can't control it." She slipped her arms around him, contradictory yet again. "Push me away." He smiled into her hair. "I'm not pushing you away. Not after waiting so long to hold you."

She raised her face, thinking that the waiting had been an eternity. Her eyes moved over his features, then she tugged off a mitten and let her hand do the same. "This isn't making anything easier. Don't make me do it," she begged, still whispering, touching his mouth now. "You have that power, Grady. If you were to push the issue, I'd make love with you in a minute, but it'd be wrong. My life has been turned upside down and inside out. There are too many complications, already. I can't handle another."

"I only want to help."

"You want to make love." There was no mistaking his erection, with his hands on her bottom, hiking up her parka just enough to mold her hips to his. He felt stirringly hard.

"Yeah, I want to make love," he admitted, and caught her lips in a kiss that told her how much. It was a fierce kiss, with little to temper it, and she fed the ardor. Her mouth was open, her tongue as heavily involved in the mating as his lips, teeth, and breath.

He was the one to finally twist away. "Okay," he breathed unevenly.

"Okay. I'll stop. I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer."

"Don't wait! That's what I'm saying! It won't work! I don't want it to work!"

"I'll wait."

"Don't, Grady."

He silenced her with a last kiss, a less fierce, even sweeter one this time. At its end, he drew his tongue along the length of hers and out. She was trying to recover from that when he put a chaste peck on the cheek, turned her, and with a small push sent her off.

She stumbled back through the woods to the house, more confused than ever.

fourteen

Thanksgiving arrived, leaving in its wake a tableau that was cold and bleak and very much in need of the festiveness that the holiday customarily brought. Annie wanted the festiveness to be there this year, too, as a foil against the precariousness of their lives. It was a difficult time, what with their separation from the Maxwells, Sam's uncertainty about his place in the law firm, and Annie's uncertainty about her relationship with Sam. She wanted the holiday to be as much fun as possible.

Sam was a treasure. He came home Wednesday night with a bouquet of bright yellow roses for her, an armful of rented movies, and half a dozen lobsters, fresh off the boat, newly cooked, and ready to eat. Zoe and Jon loved the lobster. Annie loved the roses. The movies were a success, but not in the way she sensed Sam had planned. Rather than a family viewing session in the den, Zoe and Jon took them to the Maxwells to watch there. On one hand, Annie felt badly for Sam, who desperately wanted to be forgiven by the children. On the other, a family viewing session was out of the question for her. She had too much to do in preparation for Thanksgiving dinner. Once she announced that, though, Sam set aside his disappointment and became her shadow. He had promised to help her, and he did.

The help carried over to Thanksgiving morning, when he bolted out of bed at the same time she did. She knew he would have liked to linger. She knew he would have liked to make love, but she wasn't ready for that. Unable to help herself, she had begun curling against him in the middle of the night, but in the light of day doubts lingered. Still, she and Sam worked together well. He transferred the twenty-pound turkey from the refrigerator to the sink and washed it while she prepared the stuffing. While he held the turkey open, she spooned the warm bread-and-chestnut mixture inside. He made a pot of coffee while she took cheese rolls from the freezer, sliced them into disks, and left them on the counter to thaw. He inserted two leaves in the table and put on a linen tablecloth. When that was done she laid out a single place setting. He laid the other ten to match. Watching him, Annie leaned against the doorjamb and nursed her coffee. Her doubts weren't only about Sam; they were about herself, too. "Think we bit off too much by inviting guests?" she asked. They had invited Sam's newest associate and his wife, plus two faculty couples from Annie's school. "Teke can handle twenty without batting an eyelash. I can barely handle my own four on an everyday basis." Sam warmed her with a look. "You've been handling your own four just fine."

She shrugged. "With lots of canned soups and ready-made foods."

"Am I complaining?"

Wryly she said, "I'm not sure you dare. You must

be grateful that I didn't kick you out. J.D."s having an awful time on his own."

Sam stopped what he was doing. "Is he? I didn't know. I guess I'm the last one he'd share that with. Me and Teke."

"Teke must know, the same way I do. Jana and Leigh visited him in Boston last weekend. They say he was a little scattered. He tried to make brunch."

"Why didn't he just take them out?"

"He wanted to prove something." Annie could certainly identify with that. She was doing much the same thing herself. "My heart goes out to him. He's ill trained to take care of himself. For that reason alone, I'm glad he'll be with Teke and the kids today. It's too bad that J.S. and Lucy decided they had to go to Florida to be with friends."

"Would their presence have been a help?" Sam asked. Annie knew the answer to that as well as he did. "It might have been nice for Michael."

Sam set two spoons neatly to the right of a knife. "But they're furious at Teke. Add that tension to the tension J.D. may bring, and it spells disaster for the kids."

She could picture it. "My heart breaks for them. Do you think their dinner will go okay?"

He gave a less-than-encouraging shrug. "J.D. is being rigid beyond belief. Teke made one mistake. Is that grounds for chucking the whole marriage? He must be going through a mid life crisis. I used to think he was relatively rational. Now I'm not so sure."

"He's rational," Annie said. "He's just angry."

"But in punishing Teke, he's punishing the kids. It doesn't seem fair."

"He agreed to go to the house for dinner today. That's a concession." She wanted to think the best

of J.D. He was her friend, too. "Do you think he's testing the ground for a reconciliation?"

"I hope so. I miss the fun we used to have. Looking back on it--God, I've spent so much time doing that--I realize that J.D. always kind of went along on our ride, but that was okay. We had such good times. I miss those, and I miss the kids." He started on another place setting.

"Today will be tough for them. For us, too. It's a change. That's why having guests is good. If there were just the four of us and Pete, we'd be even more aware of the Maxwells' absence." He straightened with a look of determination. "We'll do fine, Annie. Whether or not J.D. and Teke can make it as a couple, we can. I know it." She gave him a tentative smile and for a minute wanted nothing but to dissolve in his arms and put her ear to his heart the way she used to do. But the minute passed, and thinking that loving him was going to be an agony if she couldn't learn to trust him again, she retreated into the kitchen.

Sam finished with the table, showered and dressed, and then drove to Rockport to fetch Annie's dad. He parked behind the rusted station wagon that looked to have taken root in the rutted drive. Sam wondered if it worked. He half hoped that it didn't. Pete was a distracted driver, a menace on the road, if the truth were told, which was one of the reasons Sam picked him up when he was coming to visit. On this day, Sam had been looking forward to it. He wanted to talk with Pete before sharing him with the others.

"Pop?" he called from the kitchen. He didn't look at the counters, which were cluttered with foodstuffs, or at the stove, where a small percolator

reeked of burned coffee, or at the sink, which was half-filled with dirty dishes. He concentrated on stepping around a bucket and mop, a large aluminum trash can, and a case of paint cans with yellow spatters, and entered the studio. "Pop?"

Pete looked up in surprise. He was sitting on an overturned orange crate, sketching on a pad, and was wearing nothing but a pale yellow shirt, faded boxer shorts, and brown socks. "It's that time already?" he asked in his sandy voice.

"Nine o'clock," Sam acknowledged fondly. He had actually hoped to get there earlier, but however late, he could never be impatient with Pete. With his blond-white hair and beard, his pink cheeks, and eyes that were expressive in a childlike way, Pete was as much a work of art as his paintings.

Now the older man set down what he was sketching and scurried across the floor to the spot behind a jagged remnant of wall where a mattress and stacks of open shelves marked his bedroom. "Want some coffee?" he asked as he wound a tie around his neck.

"No thanks." Sam slipped his hands in his pockets and looked around. For all the chaos of the kitchen, the studio was light and airy. "I had two cups before I left."