One Summer (6 page)

“L
et me get you some ice for your mouth.”

The furnished apartment’s galley-type kitchen was complete, down to a refrigerator with an ice-maker. Rachel found a dish towel in the drawer beside the sink, opened the freezer compartment to scoop up a handful of ice cubes, wrapped them in the towel, and wet the knobby bundle. Then she handed it to Johnny, who leaned against the counter by the stove. He accepted the ice pack without a word and pressed it to his swollen lip. Judging from his slight wince, the sensation brought more pain than relief.

“All right, suppose you tell me what happened.”

“What are you, my parole officer?”

The smart-alecky drawl was vintage Johnny Harris. Absurdly, Rachel found his surliness reassuring. It meant that something of the boy she remembered was left in the man after all.

Rachel met his eyes for a long, unwavering look. “I’m your boss, remember? Your employer. You just had a fight with a customer in my store. I think I’m entitled to some explanation.”

“Before you decide whether or not to can me?”

“Exactly.”

His eyes narrowed. Rachel folded her arms across her
chest and waited. For a long pause neither of them gave an inch.

Johnny shrugged. “You want the truth? Edwards attacked me. I defended myself. You can believe it or not.”

“I believe it.”

Now that he had lowered himself to explain, however tersely, he sounded hostile, which was just the attitude that Rachel had expected him to take. The tension in her spine relaxed a little. No matter how much he had changed outwardly, the person inside the hard-as-nails exterior seemed essentially the same.

At her profession of faith, his jaw tightened, and he tossed the ice pack onto the counter. The cloth untwisted. Ice spilled out with a clatter. Rachel tsk-ed in disapproval and was instinctively scooping the ice toward the sink when her attention was caught by his sudden movement. Without warning, he caught the sides of his T-shirt in both hands and dragged it up over his head. Frowning and turning instinctively to face him, Rachel found herself eyeballing a masculine chest that was gorgeous enough to make her catch her breath.

Whatever else he’d done in prison, clearly he had found time to work out. His pectorals were sharply defined, his abdomen flat and ridged with muscle. His upper arms bulged. His waist was narrow compared with the corded width of his shoulders, and the center of his chest was covered with a triangle of silky-looking black hair.

Wow, was the thought that ricocheted through her stunned brain.

The shirt came all the way off and was wadded in one hand. He looked at her, the glint in his eyes wicked. Clearly he meant to discompose her. For her, the trick was not to let him know that he had succeeded. She had to regain her presence of mind—quickly.

“What are you doing?” If her voice was calm, she owed it to the unflappability engendered by years of teaching budding hoodlums.

“Changing my shirt. What did you think I was doing? That I was going to jump your bones right here and now, teacher?” He took a deliberate step toward her until his chest was just inches away from her face. Rachel had to look up, way up, past swirls of black chest hair and broad shoulders and a strong, stubbled chin, to meet his eyes. They were narrowed, the pupils slightly dilated, the irises a deep, smoldering blue.

“Were you hoping?” he asked, his voice husky, the question no louder than a silky whisper.

For an instant—no longer—Rachel’s blood seemed to cease its flow. He was scaring her, there was no doubt about it. What restored her to sanity after a lightning plunge into icy doubt was the absolute certainty that he was coming on to her with the intent of scaring her. He was like a child who, told by everyone he was bad, was determined to prove them right.

This insight gave her the courage to stand her ground.

“In your dreams,” she said with a snort, and turning away, continued scooping chunks of melting ice into the sink as if she had not a worry in the world.

For a moment he was silent, watching her. Rachel got the feeling that he was nonplussed. But if he meant to play Big Bad Wolf to her Little Red Riding Hood, then he was destined to disappointment. She had not the slightest intention of turning tail and running away from him, ever. Early in her career, she had learned that the biggest mistake anyone in a position of authority can make is to show even the faintest suggestion of fear to those whom they wish to lead.

“Still the same Miss Grant, I see,” he said finally, and some of the hardness left his eyes and his mouth. “You always did have an answer for everything.”

“Not everything.” She glanced up at him with the beginnings of a smile.

“Close enough.”

With that, he turned and left the kitchen’s narrow corridor.
Reaction set in, and for an instant Rachel went limp with relief. Leaning against the counter, feeling as if it might be some time before she had the psychic energy to stand up again on her own two feet, Rachel watched him go. That was a mistake. The sheer amount of sex appeal he exuded was unbelievable. Black wavy hair just touching wide, bronzed shoulders, a broad, muscular back, tight jeans hugging to-die-for buns, long legs swaggering on high-heeled cowboy boots: the sight of him doing nothing more suggestive than walking away from her made her loins clench.

The intense physicality of her reaction stunned her. Though far from promiscuous, she was no stranger to sex. There had been Michael, of course, but while she had been madly in love with him, she had also been young and nervous, and their encounters had left her with the feeling that poets had grossly exaggerated the pleasures of physical intimacy. Over the ensuing years there had been two other men who had wanted to marry her. Both had read only the Sunday newspaper, and both had been quite content to pass the rest of their days doing exactly what they had always done. She could envision spending her life with neither of them. The magic was simply not there.

It was only as she passed thirty that she had realized that to have the family she wanted, she might have to do without magic. She was now prepared to settle for a good solid friendship with her mate, like the friendship she believed she was developing with Rob. He would run his drugstore and read the Sunday newspaper and perhaps
Business Week
. She would have a whole inner life of which he would know nothing. But perhaps most marriages were like that. With that in mind, she had let Rob make love to her some half-dozen times, and she had enjoyed their encounters. But their coupling was something less than feverish, and never, even in their most intimate moments, had she felt heat like that which enveloped her now.

Good God, what was wrong with her? The mere sight of Johnny Harris without a shirt was making her ache.

Surely she, at the ripe old age of thirty-four, was not in danger of turning into a Johnny Harris groupie, as the
Tylerville Times
had termed the half-dozen or so young girls who had turned up every day without fail at his trial. She would never have suspected that his bad-boy persona might appeal to her, too.

Although in her case she guessed that the appeal stemmed less from his persona than from his body. Though she wouldn’t previously have suspected it, she supposed that she, like most women, was far from immune to a magnificent masculine physique.

Her reaction, therefore, was perfectly normal, even something that might have been expected. Certainly she had no reason to feel embarrassed by it—particularly since no one except herself need ever know about it.

What she had to do was keep her libido firmly in check. Johnny Harris was not a man any woman of sense would want to get involved with.

The creak of aging wood beneath the carpeted hall floor warned Rachel of his return. She was suddenly very busy wringing out and hanging up the towel. As he appeared in the doorway, all but blocking it, she saw that he had indeed changed his shirt for another just like it and washed the blood from his face.

“What I want to know is, what were you doing in the store in the first place? You had no reason to be there until morning.” Still faintly rattled, afraid that he might discern something of the effect he had had on her, she cast him the merest glance, busying herself with wiping down the counter with a paper towel.

“I remembered that Grant’s used to sell snacks, and I was aiming to buy a bag of potato chips and a Coke for supper.” Having apparently decided to abandon his attempts to frighten her for the time being, his reply was nonchalant.

“You should’ve gone down to the Clock for a meal.” The Clock was a cozy, family-style restaurant run by Mel and Jane Morris. It was about two miles away, at the other end of the downtown area, but he could have walked easily enough. Most of Tylerville ate there at least once a month. The food was good and plentiful, and the prices were cheap. Then it occurred to Rachel that perhaps he didn’t have the money to cover even a meal at the Clock, and she felt ashamed of her own lack of foresight. She should have offered to pay him a week’s wages in advance, but until this moment it hadn’t even occurred to her.

“I did. The old bat at the door told me that they were full up.”

Rachel looked up then, frowning. “Full up? But they’re never—” Comprehension dawned in a flash.

“They weren’t tonight, either. I could see four empty tables from where I stood. I guess they don’t want to serve ‘my kind’ in there.” There was an edge to his voice.

“I’m sure …,” she began, uncomfortable but hoping to try to ease what she suspected was the humiliation he’d suffered.

“I’m sure, too. Sure that Tylerville doesn’t change.” He stepped back, clearing the kitchen doorway. “You’d better be on your way. We wouldn’t want to give Miz Skaggs or the rest of ’em reason to talk. Think of the scandal: that nice Rachel Grant went upstairs with that Harris boy and didn’t come back down for a whole”—here he glanced at his watch—“a whole half-hour.”

But this time the leering smile that twisted his mouth went right over her head.

“You’re coming with me,” she said, crumpling up the paper towel and heading past the small dinette set in the end of the great room nearest the kitchen, toward the apartment’s rear door. As she passed him she beckoned imperiously. “Come on.”

“Where?” When she reached the door and turned back
to face him, a hand on the knob, she saw he hadn’t budged.

“We’re going back to the Clock, and we’re going to eat. They’re not going to get away with treating you like that.”

Johnny simply looked at her for a moment. Then he shook his head. “I don’t need you to fight my battles for me.”

“You need somebody to. You don’t seem to me like you’re doing any too well on your own.” Her voice was tart.

For a long, pregnant pause, their gazes locked. Then Johnny shrugged, capitulating.

“Sure. Why not? I could eat.”

“So could I.” For an instant the vision of her mother’s painstakingly prepared pork chops danced in her mind’s eye. Elisabeth would be put out if Rachel passed up that meal in favor of the Clock, but on the other hand, Elisabeth’s reception of Johnny at Walnut Grove would likely be far more dramatic than the Clock’s snub. She could not take him home to supper, and she was determined to see him fed. It was equally important that the townspeople not be allowed to treat him as a pariah. If she could help it, they would not.

When Rachel descended the stairs, Johnny was behind her. As her car was parked out front, she saw little alternative to heading through the hardware store. She felt herself tensing at the prospect, but she kept her head high and tried to look as confident as she wished she felt. Sure enough, the store was busy—busier than it normally was on a Thursday right at six o’clock closing time. Clearly, word of the previous hour’s altercation had spread. As she left the stockroom and made for the door, Johnny sauntering behind her as if he owned the place, Rachel was conscious of every eye in the vicinity on the pair of them. Friends she acknowledged with an offhand wave. The merely curious she ignored.

“Miss Grant, your mother called. She said to tell you
supper’s almost ready, so you should hurry on home.” Olivia’s high-pitched voice followed her across the floor.

“Thank you, Olivia. Would you call her back for me and tell her I won’t be home, please? Johnny and I are going to eat at the Clock.”

There. Now everybody in the store knew. The whole town would know in a matter of hours. The gossips would buzz; her mother would have a conniption. Rachel supposed that taking Johnny Harris to supper at the most popular restaurant in town and publicly announcing that she meant to do so was the modern equivalent of throwing down the gauntlet.

Which was exactly what she felt she was doing.

Dead silence greeted her announcement. Rachel waved cheerfully in the general direction of the counter, reached the door, opened it, and stepped out into the fading heat of the late summer evening.

“You like living dangerously, don’t you?” For the first time since she had met him at the bus depot, Johnny was actually smiling. It wasn’t a broad smile, more a slight curve of his lips. If it hadn’t been for the amused glint in his eyes, she would have half-thought she was imagining the whole thing.

“I dislike injustice,” she said briskly, and got into her car.

6