A Week in the Snow (12 page)

“Don’t turn this around on me,” he said.

“You don’t understand,” she said, wanting to make him see her point, but she didn’t know where to begin.

“You’re not going to do this. You’re not retreating into a shell.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not the only one who is scared to death,” he said.

The roughness of his voice—that almost desperate sound—was enough to take her breath away. Rebecca closed her eyes and listened as his words rained around her.

“Don’t you think I wonder what it’s going to be like at the end of this week? That I would give anything to be able to ask you to stay for another week, and then maybe another, and get to know you in every way I can, not just while we’re naked?”

Rebecca’s heart started to pound. Her eyes flew open. “What did you say?”

“You act like I’m taking this casually,” he said. “I’m not. I said I don’t do this kind of thing, and I meant every word of it. I’m not the kind of man who lets a woman in like I’ve let you, and then lets her walk away without at least trying to see what could be there.”

“It’s just sex,” she insisted.

“It was never just sex,” he shot back.

Rebecca started to tremble. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, hiding her body from him. It was a natural reaction to an emotional upheaval. How had this happened to her? She didn’t know him a week ago, and now she was already dreading what it would be like to miss him.

If it wasn’t just sex, then what was it, exactly?

“You’ve had a long-distance boyfriend before,” he said. “It’s not like it would be new…”

Richard stopped, realising what he had just said. Was he really asking her for a commitment? Was he really pushing that far? And what right did he have, the man who was still married to someone else, even if his wife hadn’t been around in years? He hadn’t filed divorce papers, and, even worse, he hadn’t told Rebecca about the woman who was between them. She was there, just as surely as a physical presence, and until she knew the truth it was entirely unfair to ask her to continue in any sort of relationship, emotional or otherwise.

But he couldn’t make the words come. He couldn’t tell her.

“Are you serious?” she was asking him now, and he looked into her wide blue eyes.

“Yes.”

The word sent shockwaves through both of them. She stared at him, taking in the word and the possibility. How crazy was it that she had wound up in this man’s bed in the first place? Nothing could trump that kind of insanity, yet here she was, considering how Richard might fit into her life. Rebecca was never one given to snap decisions, and certainly not decisions on affairs of the heart made within just a few days, but damned if she wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of having Richard for more than just her time here in Iowa.

He stood before her with his heart on his sleeve and his secret beating a tattoo of fear across his world. If he told her, he would lose her. He knew that as surely as he knew she would eventually leave his house and go back to her life in Miami. He knew that no matter what kind of distance there was between them when she was over a thousand miles away, it couldn’t compare to the distance he put there himself by not telling her the truth.

She thought he was an honest man, didn’t she? Once she knew he had hidden something from her, she would never be willing to believe the rest of what she had learned about him. He would lose value in her eyes and he would never be able to regain it.

“You’re right,” she said, and Richard was startled out of his thoughts.

“What?”

“You’re right. I’ve had no problem with a long-distance relationship before.”

Hope flooded Richard, as thick and strong as the guilt that was already there. “You mean…”

“I mean, yes. Yes. Let’s see where this goes, Richard.”

He crawled into the bed beside her, held her head in his hands, and kissed her until the thoughts of his wife and all the things he hadn’t told her were chased away by the passion he felt for Rebecca. When he reached between her legs and tried to entice her into letting him do more, she laughed and pushed his hand away.

“I’m going to make you wait,” she teased.

“Why?”

“Because it’s fun.”

She gave him a mischievous grin, and he couldn’t help but wonder what kind of fun would happen after she had made him wait all day long. “Can we get out the toy chest tonight?”

“Now you’re reading my mind.”

He was hard already, straining against the fabric of his slacks. “I have to try to write stories for the paper while you’re right in front of me? And then watch you take pictures while I want you so bad I could bend you over the nearest park bench and ram you in front of God and everybody?”

“Yes.”

He almost groaned at the idea of Rebecca spread out over a park bench. “We had better get to the office, then, because I want to get this day over with.”

She swung her legs over the bed and stretched, arching her back and showing off her breasts. Richard swallowed hard as he looked at the pert nipples, already hard and taunting. She stepped towards him until those nipples were tugging at the fabric of his shirt. “Let me go get a shower.”

He watched her sashay into the bathroom. When the water started, he sank down on the bed and put his head in his hands. His body throbbed for attention. His mind was racing.

His hand ached. His heart was full with happiness and sick with dread.

“It’s going to be a very long day,” he murmured to the pillows.

For the first time in his life, working was torture. His hand hurt—that was the first thing to become apparent. No amount of painkiller kept it from aching as he tried to type, and that alone put him on edge.

It wasn’t just his hand that caused him problems, though. He had to sit at the computer and put together articles while the woman beside him kept whispering naughty things into his ear. When he started to work on the story about the town’s annual budget woes, she made a point of counting sexual positions—out loud—and disrupting his ability to make sense of numbers. When he went to upload a file on to the server, she casually asked if he would like to upload a few files into her when the sun went down. She asked him where he would like to upload—her mouth? Her hand? Her pussy? Or the tight ass he had yet to sample?

When she told him how much she had been craving a good ass-fuck, he almost choked on his coffee.

Amanda had never acted this way. The thought of being anything but a lady had never crossed her mind. In the bedroom she had been willing and eager, but had left the adventurousness to him. The first time he had brought home a vibrator she had blushed and hidden under the covers. It had taken weeks to get her to use it, but even then she had never done it when he was around.

The direction of his thoughts made matters worse. The thought of sex with his long-lost wife while Rebecca sat right next to him made him feel all kinds of guilty.

When he was finished with the articles he started working on the layout, and that’s when Rebecca stopped teasing and got interested in something other than what was in his pants. She watched as the paper came together on the computer screen, marvelling at the puzzle of articles, pictures and advertisements that formed the
Crispin Tribune
. When she asked about where it printed, and how, he explained that a central server in Des Moines accepted the files and printed them throughout the night. Someone at the processing centre then pulled the papers from the racks, folded them, and had them ready for the delivery van by the wee hours of the morning. One of the three employees of Crispin’s paper picked them up, inserted local ads in the middle, put mailing labels on those that went through the postal service, and put the others in clear plastic bags for doorstep delivery. Every week, the same process was repeated, and by now Richard had it all down to an art, if not an exact science.

She watched as he uploaded the files, thrilled to be learning more about what he did every week. The office had been in the same place since the first editor of the
Crispin Tribune
had started it, way back in 1938, and it was obvious that not much more than the computer system had changed. Ancient equipment filled up several of the back rooms and made the large building look smaller than it really was. Dust covered everything in the back storage area and made Rebecca sneeze. Richard laughed at her as he explained how the old printing press worked and showed her the drawers that still held their metal letters. Half-full bottles of old ink lined the shelves.

“This is fascinating,” she said, staring at the bottles. Her eyes suddenly widened and she smiled at him with an air of discovery. “I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared out of the door and Richard chuckled. He knew exactly where she was going. Sure enough, she returned a few moments later with her camera. She had told him she carried a camera everywhere, always, for she never knew when inspiration would strike. Apparently it had struck in the offices of the
Crispin Tribune
.

Richard watched as she framed shot after shot of the back room, zooming in on things he never would have noticed: a mistake in the typeset on an old box, dozens of ancient papers fanned out with their dates showing, a bottle of ink with a perfect fingerprint on the closed lid. Rebecca saw these things with her creative eye and suddenly Richard viewed his office as a lovely place with secrets in every corner, instead of a dust-covered place that needed a good cleaning.

“You’re amazing,” he said to her, and she grinned at him before she lifted the camera.

She caught her first photograph of him while he stood in front of an old
Crispin Tribune
sign, a worn and faded banner they used to use at sporting events until it was too ragged to be hung with any dignity. He looked into the eye of her camera as she took the picture, completely relaxed under the gaze of her film.

Most people instinctively shied away from her lens, or worried about how the film would record them. She loved that Richard was comfortable enough with himself to allow such things and not bat an eye in embarrassment.

“What a place,” she said, turning in a circle on the dusty floor.

“It is great, isn’t it?” He had caught the fire from her, and now he was seeing all kinds of things to use in photographs, and even an article or two about the old printing press, the hectograph, and all the things that went together to make a paper run efficiently throughout the decades. He could do a whole series of stories on how the newspaper made it into the hands of readers each week. He was already seeing the headlines.

Rebecca read the thoughts in his eyes and smiled at him. “We make a good pair.”

He took her into his arms and kissed her.

No one had come by the offices all day, but, as fate would have it, one of the local police officers chose that moment to walk in the front door with a classified ad. When Officer Watts saw Richard embracing a woman who was definitely not his wife, his surprise was written all over his face. He was even more surprised when Richard didn’t immediately spring from the woman’s arms. In fact, he took his time in moving away from her before coming to the desk and greeting the young man with a smile, as though nothing was amiss.

“Been a long few days for you boys, hasn’t it, Steve?”

Steve blinked at Richard, looked again at the pretty brunette who was standing on the other side of the room, and decided to take the very obvious hint. “Busy doesn’t begin to describe it,” he said. “Why every fool with a heart condition chooses the same moment to shovel his snow, I’ll never know. What happened to your hand?”

“A nice little slice of glass.”

“Stitches?”

“More than I care to count.”

“Hey, at least it wasn’t a heart attack.”

Richard grinned. “There’s a reason I don’t shovel snow.”

Steve handed the ad to Richard, who pulled paperwork from under the counter and started putting the information into the form. “I just sent the paper off for printing, so this will have to run next week. I hope that’s all right.”

Steve nodded, eyeing the young woman as she walked through the back room. As soon as she was out of earshot, Steve leaned over the counter. “Hot damn and shazaam,” he whispered. “Who the hell is the chickie?”

“The chickie is named Rebecca. She’s here visiting from Miami.”

“How the hell did you get a woman from Miami?”

“Mail order,” Richard quipped.

The officer rolled his eyes. “I mean…how did you meet her?”

“She had some car trouble and I helped her.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “How’s her car now?”

Richard paid attention to the paperwork and didn’t answer. Steve looked around the corner at Rebecca then looked back at Richard. “Haven’t heard from Amanda, I take it?”

Richard shot him a look that could freeze an ocean. Steve held up his hands and backed away from the counter. “Hey, whoa, okay. Sorry. It’s none of my business.”

“We can talk about it later,” Richard said, smoothing things over. “Just not now, okay?”

“Okay. Man, I’m sorry. Really.”

“It’s all right.” Richard gave him a genuine smile to show him that it really was all right, then handed the paperwork over for Steve’s signature. Steve signed it, slid the appropriate amount of money across the counter and stepped towards the door, but not before shooting another look in Rebecca’s direction.

When he was gone, Richard sighed and leaned on the desk. Close, so close, and now he knew the word of Rebecca’s presence would be all over town by the end of the day. It wasn’t that Steve was a gossip of any higher order than anyone else, but Crispin was a small town, and one overheard conversation would make it into every nook and cranny of their little world with surprising speed.

He had to tell her.

Richard looked at her as she walked back through the room, her camera in front of her face, taking shots of things he hadn’t noticed before. He watched her as she lost herself in the old articles pinned to the bulletin board, and studied her as she took a good look at his awards on the wall. When she turned back to look at him, her smile was so radiant his whole heart warmed at the sight of it.