Crazy for You (17 page)

With his other hand, Andrew reached over to
cup her face and turn it to him. She resisted, but finally, she let
him pull her face close to his so she was looking him square in the
jaw. His mouth and lips were entirely too close. She broke free,
sat back on her haunches, placed her hands firmly on her hips, and
met his gaze head on.

“All right. Lay it all out on the line. Tell
me what I said wrong this time. Let’s get it over with,” he
ordered.

Tasha didn’t know where to start, how to even
say it so it would make sense to a man who ought to be from the Ice
Ages as far as his viewpoints were concerned. And he didn’t even
understand what he said that had her so riled?

“Okay! All right! You want to know what’s the
matter with me? Well, I’ll tell you. I’m tired of you thinking I’m
some feminist lunatic with a wacky lifestyle and no morals.”

Surprised, Andrew interrupted, “I never said
that Tasha...”

She blinked. “Sure you have. You say it all
the time.”

“No, you’re wrong. I’ve never said that.”

“But you imply it.”

“When...and what does this have to do with
what I said a minute ago?”

Tasha was confused. Suddenly her head started
throbbing. What did that have to do with what he said earlier? She
wasn’t sure. Where did that come from?

“It’s...it’s just that domesticity thing you
were throwing around. Dammit!” Tasha stood up, totally confused now
as to what she really wanted to say. Then the tears started. “If I
want to do something nice for you like pick out a damn ham and
cheese sandwich because I think you might like it, then I’ll do it
simply because I want to do it. Not that I have any ulterior
motives, or that I feel some womanly urge to do so, or that I want
to get you out of your damn clothes. I simply wanted to!

“No,” she continued angrily. “I’m not into
subservience anymore than the next woman, but dammit, if I want to
do something for a man, be it you or any man, I’ll do it no matter
what anyone says or thinks, any feminist, my mother—I don’t give a
damn what any one of them would think. I do what I want, when I
want, and if that includes choosing to serve my man, so to speak,
or any one else for that matter, then so be it. I’m getting tired
of this crap!” Looking down at her shaking hands through her
blurred eyes, she realized that she still held the ham sandwich.
Only now, it was mangled in her hands. “So here’s your stupid ham
sandwich, you creep. Bon appetit!”

It bounced off his chest with a thud and hit
the blanket as Andrew stood unmoving before her.

Twenty-five

Eden II, The Lake
Heatwave, continued…

The forest around them fell silent after
Tasha finished her tirade. She stood there, her gaze locked with
his, tears still rolling down her cheeks. After a moment, Andrew
stepped closer, avoiding the already ruined sandwich.

“I never said you had no morals,” he
whispered.

Tasha closed her eyes briefly then opened
them again, wishing for once she’d kept it all inside. “I know.”
She slipped the fingers of both hands deep inside her denim shorts
pockets and glanced past his shoulder.

“Then why did you say that?”

Taking in a ragged breath, Tasha brought her
gaze back to his face. His eyes, she thought, looked full of hurt.
Well, she suspected hers did, too. She shrugged her shoulders. “Who
knows? My insecurities are showing, I guess. I really don’t know
what you think of me. You know, because I...I ran around naked the
other day, at the beach...and...and at the volleyball game.”

Andrew stepped closer. With a forefinger, he
smoothed the tears off each her cheeks. Tasha closed her eyes,
feeling she might melt at his touch. “I don’t think any less of
you,” he replied quietly. “In fact, it only makes me think the more
highly of you.”

“Why?” She wouldn’t look at him.

“Because you stick to your convictions and
don’t back down for anything or anyone.”

Tasha’s eyes closed; she trembled and felt
his hands grasp her upper arms to pull her closer.

“I do think you’re crazy though, sometimes.”
He chuckled quietly for just a second.

No sooner had Tasha opened her eyes, did she
close them again, for in about the same instant, Andrew’s lips
gently found hers, pressing, nibbling, and sending quivers down her
already tremoring spine. Then he released her.

Tasha looked at Andrew, wondering how all
this had transpired so quickly. Caught unaware at the kiss, she
didn’t quite know what to do or to say. But then he said it.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything earlier.
And...I’m sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have thrown such a
fit.”

She nodded. “I shouldn’t have thrown such a
fit today.”

“We’re even then?”

She nodded, watching his face.

“Your point was well taken, though.”

“Was it?”

Andrew gathered her close and held her to
him, laying her head on his shoulder, threading his fingers through
thin strands of her hair. “Yes. We’re so different, I just don’t
know what to do about it.”

Tasha nodded against him. “I know,” she
whispered softly. Deep inside, though, she knew what had to be
done. And she’d already made that very clear to him.

****

An hour later they were finishing up the
remnants of their picnic, still picking over what was left of the
bunch of grapes, trying to find any salvageable enough to eat.

“So, do you eat like this all the time?”
Andrew asked, sitting with his knees propped up in front of him,
his back leaning against the tree.

Tasha, laying on her side at the edge of the
blanket, her head propped on her hand, finished chewing the last
grape she’d popped into her mouth before answering. “Like
what?”

“Fresh stuff. Fruits and vegetables. Are you
a vegetarian?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I just avoid
eating lots of red meat for health purposes, the fat and all, you
know? I really like fish and chicken better. I do eat lots of
fruits and vegetables though. Especially the ones I sell in my
shop.”

“That’s right, you said you sold
vegetables.”

“Organically grown fruits and vegetables and
vitamins and herbal remedies. I’m a part-time herbalist and all
around health expert, you might say. Although I have to admit I
don’t practice what I preach all the time. Dairy products are my
weakness. What about you?”

“Red meat and potatoes. Hasn’t seemed to hurt
me yet.” He gorilla-pounded his chest in a macho-man sort of
way.

Tasha curled her nostrils and ignored him.
“Probably with a smushed-cooked green bean smothered in pork fat on
the side,” she added sarcastically.

“Umm. And cornbread.”

“Of course,” Tasha returned and rolled her
eyes. “With lots of butter, I’m sure.”

“Didn’t I tell you we originally were from
the south? My mother still cooks like that. Fried chicken, grits,
gravy, bacon drippings in everything.”

Tasha grimaced. “I didn’t know anyone still
cooked like that anymore. Look, you have to agree that a nice,
crisp steamed green bean is so much better for you and you retains
all the nutrients and the flavor that way. The way you eat them,
they’re not doing diddly for your body nutritionally and it just
adds all those fat grams.”

Andrew stretched his arms over his head then
lazily slunk down to lay next to her. His face held the most
unusual smirk, she thought, as he leaned closer. He was no more
than a foot away and Tasha wasn’t quite sure what was coming next.
“I dare you to find one stray ounce of fat on my body.”

Tasha felt her eyes widen. He was right and
she knew it. There wasn’t an ounce of fat anywhere on that body.
That was evident from the toga party the other night. But she liked
a challenge. “Take off your shirt.”

And in one swift movement, he did. How did
that happen so easily? She’d been trying to get him out of that
shirt for days now. Her eyes dropped to his chest, lean and firm
all the way to his waist. Dark chest hair smattered over his chest
then tapered to a darker point just at his belt.

“So,” Tasha breathed deeply and averted her
gaze back to his face. “You work out much?” she asked, trying to
avoid the smirk on his face.

“I lift weights some. Play a little
handball.”

“Oh, well,” she continued, glancing past his
body toward the cool lake. It sure is getting hot out here, she
thought. “Then you’re burning it all off, but that doesn’t mean
you’re healthy.”

His eyes locked with hers. “I’m healthy.
Believe me. Fit as a fiddle and lots of stamina.”

“Oh.”
I’ll bet.
Tasha glanced
away.

He picked up a tendril of her hair and began
twirling it between his fingers. Tasha knew it was impossible, but
it felt as if her hair had nerve endings all of their own and were
pleasuring in his caress. A slow fire began eating away within her.
It was damned hot out here.

“Yeah, and I owe it all to my mother’s
down-home country cooking.”

Tasha cocked her head sideways at him, her
hair slid out of his fingers. “You don’t still live with your
mother, do you?” she asked bluntly.

Andrew reached for a carrot and bit off a
chunk. Chewing the bite slowly—and if a person could chew
seductively, he was—Tasha watched as he rolled the vegetable
between his fingertips and contemplated her. “What if I do?”

“I’d say you were too old to be a mama’s
boy,” she returned quickly. “Either that or you were an only child
or a spoiled brat and you still want the pampering.”

Andrew chuckled. “False on all accounts. No,
I don’t still live at home. It would, believe it or not,” and he
lowered his brow at her when he said this, “cramp my lifestyle a
bit. And I was far from a spoiled brat or the only child. I was the
middle child who always seemed to get left out and who turned out
to be the pleaser to get attention. I think that’s why I’m such a
workaholic. I had to work a little harder than the rest to get
anyone’s attention when I was growing up.”

Tasha thought about all that for a second.
“Bet you had the whole nine yards growing up, didn’t you? The kids,
the stay-at-home mom, the dad who brought home the bacon, church on
Sundays, the dog and the picket fence.”

Andrew nodded hesitantly a strange look on
his face. “Well, yes. What about you?”

What about me? Tasha rolled over onto her
back, threaded her fingers together across her abdomen, and stared
up at the turquoise afternoon sky. Deeply, she sighed. Different
worlds.

“My life growing up was so far removed from
that little scenario, you probably couldn’t fathom it.” A niggling
feeling of trepidation crept over her for a moment, but she pushed
it aside.

“Try me.”

It was the way he grinned at her just then,
when she looked up at him that made her go on and tell him. It was
one of those come-hither grins, the kind that curled a man’s lip up
at the corner and curled a woman’s toes in the process. A
thin-lipped Kevin Costner grin—the kind that said I’m a little bit
amazed at you and I don’t know quite what to do with you yet. She
liked that grin, she decided, even it was confusing the hell out of
her. She tried not to think about it.

“In a nutshell, my parents were and still are
hippies. Definite throwbacks to the sixties. I’m an only child,
conceived in the late sixties during a kind of Woodstock-type music
event out in Colorado. I grew up in a small mountain town where,
for a while, we lived in commune with several other families during
the early seventies. The adults grew the food and sold flowers and
probably some other things that were somewhat illegal. I was too
young to really remember much. We kids had our chores, but we
played a lot in the fields more than we worked.

“My mother’s name is Violet Rainbow, she now
is into holistic medicine and crystals, you know, all the New Age
stuff. My father’s name is simply Zeus and he repairs mountain
bikes. Of course, those are not their real names. My full real name
is Moontasha Begonia, if you must know, because, as my parents once
said, Smith was such a plain name they wanted us to stand out in
the world. We’ve all been on a perpetual Rocky Mountain high, a
natural one, that is, for as long as I can remember, valuing nature
and her gifts and trying to avoid commercialism, yuppism, and the
all-American dream. To put it bluntly, I grew up eating alfalfa
sprouts and tofu and I wouldn’t know a picket fence if I saw one.
So, I guess you are I are about as far apart in backgrounds as two
people could be.” And for a fleeting moment, it bothered the hell
out of her, feeling just like she did in high school when she tried
to be something she wasn’t.

Andrew had rolled over onto his stomach and
looked down at her as she spoke. His eyes narrowed, and she could
tell he was chewing on his inner lip as he thought about what she
told him. She’d blown it now, she could tell. She’d just confirmed
every crazy thought he’d had about her. “You made all that up
didn’t you?”

The corner of Tasha’s mouth drew up and she
shook her head slightly as she chuckled. “All the truth, I swear
it.” Well, at least it was all out on the line. She never had been
one to pull punches.

“You are one helluva interesting woman,
Moontasha Begonia Smith.”

“Yeah,” she reached up and chucked his chin
with her fist lightly. “And you’re about as foreign to me as an
alien. But I’m willing to put that all aside if you are.” The
second that statement was out of her mouth, Tasha panicked. Why had
she said that?

His eyes searched her face for a brief
moment. “Consider it shoved—way out of the way.”

She nodded her agreement. “It’s done.” Her
eyes caught his and held for a long moment. Okay, now, so what does
this all mean?

Andrew lowered his head and gently brushed
his lips across hers for the second time that day. The tingles that
brief kiss generated stayed with her long after he’d rolled over
onto his side, his arm bent to support his head, looking at
her.