Harmony (37 page)

The question was, where did he see their relationship going? It was too soon to decide the future. But he could see she was what he was looking for. He enjoyed her sense of humor most when she was trying to be serious. Thought she danced great. She was intellectual, especially with numbers. Had the best set of legs he'd ever seen on a woman and a mouth that said
kiss me
every time he gazed at it.

If he listened to what she said, he knew she'd never marry—him or anyone else. If that's what she wanted, he supposed she was entitled. But he didn't like it. What
was he supposed to do if he fell in love with her? Not only was a cut-up heart at stake, so was his manhood.

Tom had gotten his reply on the loan. It was a no-go, at least not for the amount he'd asked for. The bank offered him two thousand if he used it on a housing loan. And if he put up the store and all its assets as the collateral. Everything he had was tied up in Wolcott's. Risking its worth on a signature for a house . . . Tom just didn't know. He could make the monthly payments just fine, but the property wouldn't be what he wanted—it was a stinking weed patch by the lumberyard.

Lighting a smoke, Tom clamped it between his lips and took out the battered tackle box beneath the counter that contained clock pieces. As he sorted through the tiny coils and springs, minute metal cutouts and gears, Edwina stayed on his mind.

She mystified him. He'd thought himself broad-minded—to a degree. But this notion of a woman not marrying so she could have a career, and her asking not for a wedding ring from a man, but rather sex instead—it all went against the grain of his thinking.

On the other hand, times were changing. Hell, the twentieth century was just around the corner.
Modern
was the word of the day. Automobiles, electricity, and flushing commodes were gaining in popularity. So why not change attitudes as well?

Tom mulled this over while he worked on the clock and spent the next hours talking with customers who came and went. At five, he locked up and dropped the shades. By 5:01, he'd combed his hair and gotten rid of the stick of spearmint gum he'd been chewing. Ten seconds later, he went through the storeroom door and left it open behind him so that light could spill inside.

The long, narrow space, semidark, was jammed with overstock. Life-size rubber deer that came apart in four easy-to-screw-in sections stood along the wall beneath the shelves. Next to the deer was a crate of number 13 bore leather cleaner. And some pistol kits with oil and polish, and Buzzacott's patented complete camp cooking
outfits. On the shelves themselves were tins of hunter's camouflage makeup—your pine green and bark brown—along with bowstrings, floats, reels, black fly paste, collapsing telescope cups, and slingshots.

Halfway down the storeroom, the scene changed. White aprons with ruffles hung on pegs in neat rows. A fancy china service took up a shelf, below which were books about etiquette and stuff. Plain white gloves were lined up next to a basket of hair ribbons. Ink pens and bottles. Sample party invitations and calling cards in cream paper. A dried bowl of rose petals. Two bottles of perfume.

Tom took it all in—the broad picture.

One side drab, one side colorful.

One side harsh, one side soft.

One side, Tom's life; one side, Edwina's life.

If ever two people were mismatched, it was obvious in the contents of their closet.

Edwina's door opened and she slipped inside the cramped room. She looked so pretty in her green dress, his heart ached in a way it never had before. Her eyes, even in the vague light, matched the color of the dress—a kind of mint, just the hue he'd first noticed in her eyes in Stykem's office. Her mahogany hair was swept up, neat and tidy, held in place by gold combs on both sides. Seeing him, she broke into a beautiful smile.

“You're here.”

“I told you I would come.”

“Yes, I know. But after the last time we arranged to meet . . .” Her downcast lashes shadowed her cheeks. “I prepared myself to be disappointed just in case.”

That she would be so honest about her desire to be with him brought special meaning to the moment. He'd known he wanted to be with her as well, but not until now had he realized how much he'd come to look forward to her company, to actually crave it. In the beginning, she had been a challenge, an amusing pursuit, when he'd tried to get her to break down and show her true self. But now that she had, he realized the complexities
that made Edwina were the reasons he'd become utterly intrigued by her.

“Come here.” He opened his arms and she tucked herself into them. Keeping her close, he breathed in the scent of roses, closing his eyes and imagining they were someplace else, someplace they didn't have to hide in order to touch.

She buried her face in his neck, and he pressed a kiss to her brow. Then their lips met like a whisper, soft, tentative. Their kisses grew more persuasive and drugging. He held the back of her head in his palms, keeping her close. Her hands rose to his neck and wrapped around him. The crush of full breasts against him made him draw in his breath.

He kissed her with a reckless, devouring abandon that she matched. That was how he felt—like the heat of her body had entered and consumed him until he lost all judgment. His fingers splayed over her back, then farther to the nip of her waist and then to the curve of her buttocks. He cupped the softness and pulled her to his groin. Delving into her mouth with his tongue, he tasted her, sought the pleasure she gave. The blood that pounded in his brain made him forget reason or where he was.

Inasmuch as he hated to, he broke their kiss.

“Edwina . . .” His voice, laden with unsated desire, sounded husky and thick to him. “What are we doing?”

She stared into his eyes, lips moist. Her reply came softly. “Kissing.”

“In a damn closet.”

“Not a damn closet. Our closet.”

The beginning of a smile caught his mouth and overtook it before he could stop it. “A closet just the same.”

She met the smile with one of her own. “Well, it's private. You have to give it that much.”

“Not quite.”

An arch lifted her brows. “Hmm?”

“There's a deer watching us.”

Her laugh was sweet. “It's rubber. It doesn't count.”

A spell of thoughtful quiet hovered in the room for a short moment.

“We could go to Alder,” Edwina suggested. “It's far enough away that nobody knows who we are.”

“What do you have in mind once we're there?”

Pink spread across her cheeks; then shyly, the words drifted from her mouth. “There's a hotel . . .”

“I don't like the idea of sneaking around, Edwina.”

“I'm not fond of it myself. But what else do you propose? Walking directly to my front door? Staying long enough for tongues to wag?”

His hold on her eased with his indrawn breath. “I know what you're saying. And I know it's the way of things. But I don't have to like it.”

“Nor I.” She placed a hand on his shoulder. “It is our business. It shouldn't matter. But it does. If sneaking to Alder means we can be together, then so be it. I'm not ashamed of this—of us. I simply can't flaunt an affair and expect everyone to take it in stride. It won't work that way. You know it.”

He nodded his agreement, his eyes narrowing. “I know it. But you need to know I'm not with you just for sex. Hell, I could pay for it if that's all I wanted.”

Her gaze clouded with what he could have sworn were tears. But she blinked them back so quickly, he couldn't be sure. “That's very sweet of you to say. I never thought otherwise, Tom.”

They stood motionless in the storeroom. Maybe each of them was thinking over going out of town; maybe each was wondering how wise such a plan was. Tom knew that was how he was looking at things. Even though what Edwina had said was true. If they chose to see each other intimately, it shouldn't be anyone's affair but their own. Going to Alder so they could be together was the only idea he could come up with, too. So he'd be damn careful to cover his tracks.

Edwina began talking first. “I'll take the train on Saturday. I'll tell Marvel-Anne that I'm going to look at flatware. There's a silversmith in town there. You can
ride over on the Mill Creek Road. It should be clear—it's the mail route—and it wouldn't take you longer than two hours. Can Mr. Dufresne watch the store on Saturday?”

“Shay gets back tonight. I don't have anything booked until next week. He'll be around. He can do it.”

“All right. Then I'll take the nine o'clock. There's only one hotel there. It's called the Knotty Pine.”

A dubious curve hooked one side of his mouth.

“That's knotty—k-n-o-t-t-y. Not n-a-u-g-h-t-y.”

“I didn't say anything.”

“You didn't have to.” She put a fingernail to her teeth, thought marring the smoothness of her forehead. “I'll get a room in my name. And you can get one in yours. We'll meet in one of them and . . .”

She closed her eyes, shakily pulling in air, then opening the thick-lashed lids once again. He could see she was struggling with this.

Tom brought her close once more, the blunt stubble on his jaw catching in her hair and pulling several glossy strands loose from their confinement. “Edwina, we don't have to go. We could . . .” He paused before he said it. The words exploded in his head, powerful, potent. No thoughts went beyond the day that could change things—they stopped at the day itself. Maybe the want of it had been there all along. “We could get m—”

“No.” She pulled back quickly, not letting him finish. “Things are fine the way they are. I told you I don't want anything else.” An edginess marked her body movements as she stepped away and hugged herself. “I'm not deluding myself into thinking about things that just aren't for me.” A forced calm, a forced smile eased the tension in her shoulders. Then she leaned forward and briefly kissed him on the lips. As she stood back, her features were soft and sincere—too damned sincere. She really meant it. “I don't need chivalry, Tom. I'm not a maiden you have to rescue. I'm fine just the way I am.”

“So you've said.” He smoothed wisps of hair from her
ear and intently searched her face. “We can get rooms, but we're going to do this my way. There's a restaurant there—Creek-something.”

“The Clear Creek Café.”

“Meet me there at noon. It'll look like we're acquaintances and ran into each other. There's nothing wrong with sharing a table.”

“No . . . there's not.” With a thoughtful little huff, she continued in a tone that was strictly a teacher's. “Well, now that we seem to have settled Saturday, have you memorized your nines tables?”

The abrupt change in topic needled him. He was still trying to resolve her independence and accept it. “Dammit all, no. What good will it do me anyway?”

“You never know when you may need a mathematical equation to help you decipher something.” Her lips pursed in thought. “For example, if you caught nine rabbits and then nine more. Two times nine is what?”

“I haven't the foggiest. Are the rabbits dead or alive?”

Her nose crinkled. “Well, my goodness, it makes no difference.”

“Sure it does. If they're alive, what do I want them for? I'd let them go, so the answer would be zero. But if they're dead, I'd have enough pelts to make a couple of pairs of snow boots, a few hats, and meat for a helluva big pot of stew.”

She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “You're impossible.”

“No, I'm not. I'm a logical thinker.”

A gleam lit her eyes. “All right, then. You have eighteen dead rabbits. How many lucky feet will you get from them? Eighteen times four equals—?”

The variables went over his head. “We haven't gotten past nines.”

“Uh huh.” Her nod was all-knowing. “See how wise it is for you to know the tables from one to ten? If you don't, you'd never know that you could have seventy-two good luck charms.”

“One is all it takes.”

“But with seventy-two, your chances are seventy-one more times likely to go in your favor.”

Tom decided to quit and cut his losses. Arguing reasoning with Edwina was a losing battle.

•  •  •

Friday morning, Edwina sat in the classroom absently staring out the frost-covered window while the girls hung up their scarfs and coats on the wall pegs and set their hats on the shelf above. Her elbow resting uncharacteristically on the desktop, chin on her palm, she let her thoughts drift, with the scuffle of shoes, the purr of voices, and giggles in the background.

She and Tom had been alone together before and she hadn't put any tag of promiscuity on it, solely because what they had been doing had been harmless. A wistful arch touched her mouth. Nearly harmless. Impassioned thoughts didn't count. Nor did the couple of kisses between them. That was chaste compared to what they'd done in her bedroom. But a planned trip to another town so they could get a hotel room seemed calculated, cold. Edwina didn't like having to suggest it, but that was the only option.

Thinking back to what he'd said
. . . We could get m—
 . . . her throat went dry. She hadn't wanted to hear him say anything about changing the arrangement to one of a more permanent nature, about a legal commitment that bound them forever. She couldn't think about it, for very good reasons—ones that went beyond her belief that a wife should be pure going into a marriage. She still felt that way. But she also had other opinions about wedlock. She had pushed them aside when she thought she'd marry Ludlow. Romance had overridden common sense. But never again. She shouldn't have ignored her better judgment, or her father's advice. A woman needed her own security when . . . if . . . she married.

Edwina's mother had relied entirely on her father to take care of her, never once inquiring about banking matters or insurance policies. When her father died, Edwina's
mother didn't know the first thing about financial independence. Edna had gotten into a fix, and it had fallen on Edwina to take care of it, which she was doing fairly well. A couple of weeks ago, she'd sold the ceiling pendant for the light—among other odds and ends that she'd found in the storeroom before moving in. From the profits, she'd been able to pay off two accounts. The tuition she charged for her school was keeping her afloat, with enough to pay Marvel-Anne and the mortgages and a scant amount to continue to make good with the creditors.