To Have and to Hold (9 page)

❧

There was something magic in the sleek lines of the red and white Cessna 310. It had the grace of the big twin-engine bird it was, and Madeline loved the feel of it in the air.

Sitting there, strapped in beside Cal, she felt as safe as any seagull.

"I love it!" she said aloud, watching the clouds sail above in fluffy white sculptures.

He glanced sideways at her and smiled, his eyes never leaving the controls for more than an instant. "Cessnas have a good safety record," he told her. "And sexy lines—like a woman."

She watched his long-fingered hands at the controls, and saw the ease with which he mastered the big plane. It had been like that with her, leisurely expertness in the way he mastered her struggles and her fears....

She turned her eyes out the window and watched the small towns appear and grow large on the horizon as they approached. Everything was misty with haze, and the houses and cars looked like toys from that altitude.

❧

In no time at all, they were landing in Columbus. Cal checked in with the fixed base operator and bought her a Coke from the machine snack bar.

"Dan and Merry should be here any minute," he told her, easing his big frame down next to hers on the wooden bench as he munched on a cracker. "I called them before we left Atlanta. You'll like them. Just plain people, no frills."

She snatched one of his crackers and nibbled at it. "You told them I was coming?" she asked, delighting in the cool soft drink that eased the suffocating heat.

"That's why Merry's coming to meet us," he grinned. "I've never brought a woman here before. She's curious."

"Knowing you, she probably expects a blonde in a red satin dress," she teased wickedly.

His dark eyes narrowed, dropping suggestively to her mouth. "Wait till I get you alone, little cat," he threatened.

She stared at her ragged cracker with great interest. "What will you do?" she asked.

"Bruise that soft mouth until it opens under mine, the way it did last night," he murmured deeply.

The blush went all the way to her hairline. She finished the rest of her cracker and washed it down with a swallow of the soft drink, avoiding the howling amusement in his eyes.

"Here they are," he said, rising as a new yellow Lincoln town car pulled up a few yards away.

She gaped at the car. "Just plain folks?" she croaked.

"That's what I said." He took her arm, picked up the two suitcases under the other arm and marched her off to meet the newcomers.

He was tall and thin and dark, she was small and blonde and fair, and Cal introduced the middle-aged couple as the Colmans.

"We're so glad to meet you," Merry said with a radiant smile at Madeline. "I didn't know there were many women left who liked fishing."

"Actually," Madeline said with a smile, "I'm better at drowning worms than anything else, but I like the excuse of a fishing pole to sit on a bank and think."

"Don't we all," Dan Colman laughed, his leathery skin crinkling in the sun. "Well, if you're ready, let's get home. I'd like to show Miss Blainn around the place before you head for the pond."

Madeline's first impression was of softly rolling green pastures lined by tall, straight pine trees and dotted with hardwoods and Jersey cows.

"We have three-hundred and fifty cows, all Jerseys," Merry was explaining as they rode in the comfort of the air-conditioned Lincoln. "And we sell every bit of our milk locally."

"Dan's golden idea," Cal chuckled. "He processes and bottles it in gallons here on the farm and sells most of it in a little retail outlet adjacent to the dairy. He doesn't lack for customers."

"It's a living," Dan grinned.

The tour took about an hour. It was a big farm, and Madeline's head was whirling with cows and barns and milking machines and increased production figures when they finally arrived at the sprawling white-frame farmhouse.

"You've got fifteen minutes to freshen up, and then we're going," Cal called after her as she followed Merry toward the bedroom down the hall.

"Yes, sahib!" she called back.

"Men," Merry laughed. "There's no dealing with them." She pointed out the bathroom and linen closet. "Anything else you need, just call. I'm glad you came. You know, he laughed today," she said seriously. "I haven't seen him do that in years, not since...."

Madeline only smiled. "I'm glad he has friends like you," she said gently. "He's a man who needs them very much."

"Are you just a friend?" Merry asked quietly. "Forgive me for asking, but the way he looks at you...."

"We're both finding our feet right now. I...care for him very much," she admitted gently.

Merry touched her arm lightly. "Freshen up. I'll pack some fried pies and a thermos of coffee for you to take along. Cal won't quit for lunch even if the fish aren't biting."

"Thank you," Madeline called after her.

The fried pies were delicious three hours later as she sat beside Cal on the banks of the pond, literally smeared with insect repellent and starving to death. On the string submerged in the water was one fish, a hand-wide big mouth bass that Cal had pulled in himself. Madeline's count so far was ten worms drowned and nothing to show for it.

"Why don't I just toss the worms into the water?" she asked as she munched the delicious apple pie with its tasty brown crust. "I'd accomplish the same thing."

He glanced at her in amusement. "Quitting?"

She stiffened. "Never. I never quit!" "That makes two of us. Pour me a cup of coffee, honey."

She poured the thick black liquid into a mug and handed it to him. He took it, brushing her fingers with his in a gentle caress.

"You're good company," he remarked, laying the fishing pole aside to grab an apple pie and take a bite out of it. "No chatter."

She smiled. "My uncle taught me that fish don't like noisy conversation. What he didn't teach me was to hold my mouth right."

"So the fish would bit, you mean?" he asked, finishing the pie and swallowing it down with the coffee.

"Ummmm," she said, her eyes drifting lazily over the ripples on the pond, the lazy brush of the green limbs where the sultry breeze touched them and the trees far away on the horizon.

Cal's big arm went around her unexpectedly, and he pressed her down against the soft grass on the bank, looming over her.

She laid her hands against his broad chest and gaped up at him. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to show you how to hold your mouth," he said with a dark, wicked grin, and bent his head.

"No...fair," she whispered as his hard mouth moved slowly, relentlessly onto hers.

"In this, anything is fair," he murmured roughly, and his mouth was suddenly hot and hard and insistently demanding.

She stopped trying to think and reached up, drawing the full weight of that massive chest down against her while she returned the kiss with a hungry, burning eagerness.

The sudden blare of a car horn came between them. She pulled away and sat up, her mouth red and swollen, her face like fire as the Lincoln pulled up in a small dirt turnaround by the pond's edge.

"Sorry to interrupt," Merry called from the driver's seat, "but we're going over to see the Little White House at Warm Springs. If the fish aren't biting, want to come?"

"You'd better say yes," Cal warned her in a husky, strange voice. "Because if we stay here, my mind is n't going to be on the fish any longer."

"We'd...love to!" Madeline called breathlessly, and began to gather up the picnic items scattered around them.

"Hellcat," Cal teased as he helped her and then stood up, drawing her with him. He looked deep into her misty, yielded eyes. "You set fires in my blood, woman. Do you know that? What were you trying to tell me with that kiss?"

She pulled her eyes away from his. "I...I enjoyed the fishing."

"Oh God, honey, so did I," he whispered huskily. "Let's go."

Dan drove, and Cal sat in the front seat with him, leaving Madeline an d Merry to talk in the back seat. It was only a few miles to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous Little White House, and Madeline was looking forward to her visit.

The grounds were immaculate, green and cool and quiet, a refuge for a busy man. Nestled in the trees was the small white house where Roosevelt died, roses climbing up two of the four columns on the front porch, shutters at the windows.

The wood floors were spotless, highly waxed, and they echoed with every footstep. Inside it was like a shrine, even to speak seemed a sacrilege. Everything was as the late President had left it, from his favorite chair to the sparsely furnished bedroom where he drew his last breath.

Quietly, they moved outside to the walk of state stones and flags, and with quiet sighs they moved among the colorful flags.

Cal caught Madeline's slender hand as they walked, holding it gently in his, and when he caught her eyes she saw something in his face that stopped her in her tracks.

He frowned down at her, his eyes narrow and pained. "There's something I've got to tell you," he said gently. "Something I should have told you in the beginning."

"What?" she asked.

"Not here. Not now." He looked down at their clasped hands. "But very soon, love, very soon."

He said the endearment with a practiced ease—but there was a new sincerity in it, almost as if he really meant....

"Come on, you two," Merry called gaily. "Let's go look at that old Ford convertible with the hand controls!"

And the magic passed, to be caught up in the excitement of rediscovering the past.

❧

That night, they sat on the Colman's front porch with the farm couple and listened to the peace of country living. It was, Madeline thought, so very different from the sound of subdivisions. No blaring horns, no screeching tires, no noisy neighbors—nothing, in fact, except the pleasant noise the crickets and june flies were making and the distant baying of hounds.

"I could stay here forever," Madeline sighed, dropping against Cal's broad shoulder where they sat in the slow-moving porch swing.

Cal laughed softly. "Wh at would McCallum do without you?" he asked.

"Hire another redhead, if the truth were known, I'll bet," she teased.

"Sleepy?" Cal asked her.

She nodded.

"Go on in. We'll sleep late tomorrow and start back about noon. Good night, Burgundy."

She stood up and smiled down at him. "Thanks for today."

"It was my pleasure, in every sense of the word. "Night."

"Night. Good night Dan, Merry," she said, vaguely disappointed when Cal didn't follow her. With a sigh she moved down the hall and was at the door when she heard the heavy stride behind her.

She turned as Cal loomed over her. "I forgot something," he said softly and drew her gently against the length of his big body, bending toward her.

She reached up to meet him halfway, looping her arms around his neck as his mouth came down on hers with a slow, warm tenderness that sent time spinning away. She clung to him, drowning in his nearness, in the kiss that made a mockery of any other caress she'd ever known, returning his gentle ardor with reckless abandon, uncaring of what she was giving away about her own feelings.

He drew back finally, and looked down at her, his eyes dark and quiet, his breath deep and uneven.

His big hands slid up her back to the nape of her neck, cupping her head as he bent again, lightly brushing his mouth against her.

"Good night, sweetheart," he whispered.

Her lips trembled at the tenderness in that dark, leonine face. "Oh, Cal..." she whispered brokenly.

He put her from him and drew back. "Don't tempt me, honey, don't dare. Go to bed."

She turned away, forcing her numb hand to open the bedroom door, not looking as she pushed it shut. The look on his face had said everything.

She rose the next morning to find Cal withdrawn and moody, his mind clearly on a problem of some sort. There was tension between them suddenly, not the easy companionship of past days, and the Colmans seemed to sense it too.

The good byes were said, with promises to come again, but all the way black to Atlanta, Cal hardly said a word.

They landed at the metropolitan airport, and Cal parked the airplane with quiet, cool efficiency. Madeline scanned the rows of planes of all sizes and shapes, searching for some safe topic of conversation.

"Do...do they always have these planes for rent," she asked quietly, "or do you have to reserve them...?"

He threw his arm across the back of his seat and turned toward her, his face solemn, his eyes narrow. "I didn't rent this plane, Burgundy," he said quietly. "I own it."

Madeline didn't know about the market values. But it was a twin-engine plane and brand new, and obviously cost much more than any car. She sat dazedly staring at him, her eyes wide and unblinking.

"That's right, it cost a lot of money," he agreed, unsmiling. "I told you at the very beginning that I wasn't a poor man."

"But...the Mercedes..." she was faltering.

"...belongs to Bess. I was keeping it in condition for her. I've got a garage full of cars, everything from a Rolls to a Jag," he replied.

"And...Suleiman?" she whispered.

"There have been a few attempts on my life. I don't like to carry a gun, so I take him with me most places," he told her. "He's saved my skin more than once. In my line of work, I make enemies."

"You're...in construction you said."

"I build airplanes," he told her with narrowed eyes. "At least, one of my corporations does. My God, it's been under your nose all this time, and you haven't even guessed!"

She felt the apprehension like a living thing. "What do you mean, Cal?" she asked.

"I'm McCallum."