Lightning That Lingers (8 page)

“How long does it take”—she drew in a shaking gulp of air as his thumb discovered her nipple—“for this thing to happen to our eyes.”

“In thirty minutes we’ll be doing very well. In the meantime, tell me how you spent your day.” His voice sounded slightly breathless as he nestled her against his jacket.

She protested with a startled, uncertain laugh that
nobody’s
boredom threshold was high enough for that.

Smiling, he began to ask her questions. What time did she get up in the morning? Was getting up hard or easy for her? What did she eat for breakfast? Did she listen to music or was her house quiet? What did she sleep in? Some of the questions teased; others titillated. Some were serious and she began to find herself following the mood of them, explaining the flow of her day, her job, her thoughts, the people she saw and worked with. Never before had anyone explored her life in such lively detail. No one had cared before that she liked apple jelly and beds with fishnet lace
canopies, or that she was making a Shaker chair from a kit in her spare time or that she stopped every morning on the way to work at Lake Park to feed the uneaten half of her English muffin to the mallards. No one but her mother had asked about the intricacies of settling into a new job and establishing oneself with a talented and experienced staff.

Not many minutes ago she had accused him of being thorough, and he was. He was probably the most thorough, observant listener she had ever conversed with. She stopped watching to learn whether or not this was only the élan of some surface charm. She forgot to worry.

His hands explored her with the same sympathetic seductiveness as his voice, which had become husky, a murmur. Time passed, a flowing gift. Her eyes became dark-adjusted. Her body became love-adjusted.

“I think you’re ready now,” he said softly.

She jumped.

Laughing gently at her belated alarm, he slid down the zipper of her coat, drew it down from her shoulders and then zipped her into his own parka. His warm sweet scent rose from the down lining, enveloping her as she watched him pull a wool melton jacket from the back seat and shrug into it. He climbed out of the car and held open her door invitingly.

She knew the hours that followed would live in her memory forever. The forest was a jeweled world. Snowflakes glittered from clumps of puffy snow caught on pine branches. The ground twinkled as if it were strewn with chipped stars. Night breezes lulled the high scalloped tree crowns and cast the
incense of damp cedar into the moist, snow-spangled air.

She could pick out detail in the moonlight as if it were day. As she turned slowly, looking around her in the dazzling silence, Philip took buckets from the back of the car and filled them with kibble-style dog food. He handed her a stack of tin pie plates and began to walk with her toward an opening in the forest wall, their footsteps muffled in the dense snow carpet. She no longer noticed the cold.

“Where—”

A softly spoken word interrupted her. “Whisper.”

“Where are we going?” Her low tone mated with his. “Do you have a kennel here?”

“No.” He smiled. “I have wild friends.”

Beyond, a meadow bathed in starlight. She watched Philip fill the pie plates and put them on the ground. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her once, slowly, and she tasted the mist of his breath and snowflakes.

Like a dreamer she walked hand-in-hand with him to the meadow’s edge where he took her in his arms under the drooping canopy of a willow. Amid the ice droplets that glistened like tear-shaped gems at the tip of each branch, he caressed the snowflakes from her lashes with his lips. Then, gently, he turned her back toward the meadow, and stood close behind her, his hands spanning her waist to hold her comfortably.

His hushed whisper caressed her ear. “It’s better not to stand behind a tree when you watch animals in the wild. Otherwise, you’ll have to move to peer around the tree and animals find movement threatening. When you stand perfectly still,
in the shadow of a tree, you become almost invisible. If you have to move, do it very slowly, and if you accidentally make a noise, freeze. Also, try not to stare head-on. Predators stare directly at their prey when they’re sizing it up for attack, so for most animals staring has bad associations.”

He didn’t speak again, nor did she.

The meadow was alive. Her heart beat slowly, like the delicate and deliberate footsteps of the three does that came to drink from a spring-fed stream.

Raccoons emerged, masked bandits from the darkness. Trundling toward the pie plates with heads low, backs humped up, chittering to each other, they reminded Jennifer of the early crowd at a diner. They ate methodically, their paws working like little black hands. Some dipped the kibble in the stream, leaving the bank a smeary mess. Plentiful as the food was, once or twice there was some greediness and a spat broke out. It was hard not to laugh out loud at the indignant tremble of whiskers and upturned black noses. A skunk ambled out from a sway of grasses and took his place at the pie plates as though it were a cafeteria. She laughed again, softly, as the other diners withdrew to a disgruntled distance. Philip’s voice, soft as the harp-song of the breeze in the pines, began to tell her about the animals; about the amiable little skunk who couldn’t seem to understand why everyone avoided her, about the raccoons and how many seasons he had known them. Later he told her about the red fox that stole with alert concern across the meadow and the great horned owl that flew above the trees with the silence of a spirit. The winter night opened as a fresh universe, warm with personality and purity.

As the moon peered at them over the stark tree limbs, she watched muskrats take vegetable scraps from Philip’s hands. A porcupine lumbered up to him eagerly and he fed salt to it.

Sitting on the wagon’s tailgate, she drank coffee from his thermos, a red plaid wool blanket spread over her lap. She gazed in new wonder at the snowflakes he caught on his jacket and showed her through a small illuminated magnifying lens. Each separate crystal carried its own special beauty.

She was enraptured.

The same gentle hands that had given her his stillness under the willow laid her back on the wagon bed, stroking her cheeks, parting the zipper of her parka and his jacket to bring their bodies together. He held her, just held her, rubbing his body slowly against hers to warm her chilled flesh, and told her about the legends of the night, the forest; and about the spring that soon would come and the animal young that would fill the trees and streams.

And she was enraptured.

He returned her to her doorstep in the dewy mantle of a setting moon. Then and only then did he kiss her again, gathering her to him with heart-lifting care, bringing his mouth to hers, holding her in a deep, steady kiss that they both broke from breathing quickly and hard. For a long, helpless moment she met his wantonly beautiful gaze. Then he touched her forehead lightly with a graceful finger, whispered, “Sleep well,” and left her.

Five

Habits die hard. By morning, Jennifer began to worry.

The reassurance of his presence might have helped, but by midweek he had not tried to see her. And that brought home the torments a relationship with a man like Philip Brooks would cause. He was not a stranger to her, and never would be again, and yet she had no way to know if he hadn’t called because he was busy, or indifferent, or complacent. Or if in that one night together he had satisfied whatever instinct had impelled him to pursue her. This wasn’t going to be simple.

By the end of the week, two things had happened that made it seem impossible.

The first was a letter from her mother that arrived Wednesday.

The second incident occurred on Thursday afternoon when Jennifer almost walked into the staff room in search of the
Publisher’s Weekly
that Annette had carried off earlier. It was Annette’s voice sweeping around the slightly open door that froze Jennifer on the threshold.

“… that Jennifer was dating Philip Brooks? You could have knocked me over with an index
card when Eleanor came out with it”—fingers snapped briskly—“just like that.”

“You’re the last soul in town to find out, then.” The second voice belonged to Lydia’s younger sister Tracy, a high-school senior earning extra credit by helping part time in the library. “Mr. Caras was out plowing snow in the storm last weekend and he saw Philip bringing her home in the wee hours. He said it was quite a goodnight kiss they had too. Ooo-la-
la
. He practically ran the old plow into the ditch.”

“Too bad he didn’t.” It was Lydia’s voice, the tone caustic. “The old poop. I can’t tell you how sorry I feel for Philip Brooks. He can’t sneeze without half the county betting on whether he’s going to whip out a hanky or a tissue.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Annette said wryly. “Eleanor still doesn’t realize he’s dancing at the Cougar Club.”

“Who’d dare to tell her? She’d die. You know how the old guard feels about that family. The Brooks name equals royalty.”

“True enough,” Annette answered. A pause filled with the trickle of pouring coffee. “Jennifer is about the last person in the world I expected to see next on the Brooks menu. He doesn’t usually go in for—”

“Cold cuts.” A chuckle from Tracy.

“That was mean.” There was a frown in Lydia’s voice.

“And not what I meant,” Annette said coolly. “She may seem a little reserved sometimes but she’s actually a very warm person. You should see her with the children.”

“Like the Pied Piper,” Lydia agreed around a swallow of coffee.

“She’s wonderful. Pretty, too. Exquisite really, and I don’t think she has any idea. She’s so unassuming about herself. What I was going to say was that he usually doesn’t make a meal of someone who’s obviously tender.” A lighter snapped. A whiff of cigarette smoke wafted through the doorway. “Where on earth do you think she could have met him?” The silence seemed to shrug. “I know she couldn’t have met him before we took her to the Cougar Club. I mean, she surely would have said something, right? Listen, this is one sophisticated guy. Do you think we ought to warn her that the man has what understatement would call—a certain notoriety for letting almost no one into his life?”

“Ugh. Interference!” said Lydia. “Still—”

“You two are crazy!” Tracy sounded indignant. “If Philip Brooks asked either one of you out, you sure as heck wouldn’t be listening to a lot of cautious advice from your friends. Ten minutes of Philip Brooks is better than no minutes of Philip Brooks. Notorious, my foot. Who cares? He’s awesome.”

Silence. “The kid’s right,” Annette said.

Tracy chuckled suddenly.

“What?”

“The kid knows something you don’t know,” Tracy’s voice teased.

“What?” Annette said. “By gum, Lydia, look at how sly she looks. All right, young’un, tell.”

A quick pause. Then, with significance, Tracy’s voice. “He’s July.”

“Who? What are you talking about?”

“Philip Brooks. You know. In your calendar.” Another chuckle. “You mean you haven’t even looked in your own calendar? I
thought
you just got it to bug Eleanor. Philip Brooks is July.”

“Are you kidding?” There was a short flurry of movement. Pages ruffled wildly. A silence. A burst of excited laughter, stifled painfully.

“Lordy, lordy. Will you look at that? She speaks no less than the truth. The man is July.” Annette’s voice sounded strange. “The man is July and I want him so much it makes my stomach hurt. What he does to my insides ought to be illegal.”

“He’s an aphrodisiac on legs.” Lydia laughed. “Hey, cut it out, Trace. You’re getting fingerprints on his thigh.”

Jennifer was five feet away before she knew she was stepping backward. The children’s section was a safe haven, where she scooped up somebody small in a quilted crawler, found a large book, and took both with her into the depths of a beanbag chair to read aloud, hiding her face and her scathing embarrassment behind the friendly pages.