Lorraine Heath (25 page)

Clay followed her to the kitchen, a kitchen he’d visited many times in his youth. It smelled of flour, cinnamon, and sugar. It smelled of Mama Warner even though she’d probably not entered the room in a good long while. He thought she’d spent so many years in this room that it would always carry a part of her with it. Just like his life. She’d always be there, in his heart, even after she left this world.

Meg walked to the table. Clay walked to the door and stopped, turning his hat in his hands. “I won’t be staying.”

She turned her head quickly, the knife she’d picked up hovering over the pie. “But Mama Warner wanted you to have some pie.”

“You can tell her I did. Tell her I enjoyed it.” He settled his hat on his head and reached for the door.

“But she wanted you to stay for a while.”

He studied the glass doorknob, remembering the day that several such knobs had arrived. He and Kirk had helped Mr. Warner put them on the doors. They’d given one to Clay, and he’d taken it to his mother—something fancy for her house. She’d put it on her front door so it could greet her guests. He wrapped his hand around the knob. “I’m not up to dealing with your hatred this evening, Meg.”

“Please stay,” she whispered, a slight tremor in her voice. “It’s pecan.”

He glanced over his shoulder. She looked vulnerable and so damned tired. She’d been honest in the beginning about her feelings and how she would treat him in town. It was unreasonable to think a couple of kisses could destroy a wall built on a foundation of hatred. Reluctantly, he nodded. “One piece.”

She turned her attention back to her task. “Would you like some coffee?”

Placing his hat on the table, he sat in the chair. “Buttermilk, if you got it.”

She set the plate and glass before him.

“You gonna join me?” he asked.

“I’d rather just watch.”

“I don’t like being watched. I get enough of that in town.” Ignoring the fork she’d set before him, he picked up the piece of pie and took a healthy bite. While he chewed, she pressed her finger to the plate, picked up a crumb, and carried it to her mouth. With great difficulty, he swallowed. He was jealous of a damn crumb because it had touched her lips.

He cleared his throat. “I, uh, I was concerned when you didn’t come to watch me work. I thought … I don’t know … I just thought …”

“What did you think?” she asked softly, holding his gaze.

He returned the pie to his plate before the sweat on his fingers made it any soggier. “I thought maybe the kiss upset you.”

He brought the glass to his lips, drinking deeply, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

Briefly, she placed her finger against the corner of his mouth. “You missed some.”

In awe, he watched as the white liquid on her finger disappeared into her mouth, and he wondered if she had any notion what her actions did to his insides.

Smiling softly, she placed her hand over his. “I never much liked buttermilk before.”

He turned his palm up and laced his fingers through hers. “Actually, I did miss having you watch me work this week.” He touched his other hand to her cheek. “I thought about you a lot, about that kiss. I wish to God you’d slapped me.”

“I wish I’d slapped you, too.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You wouldn’t even look at me today.”

“I was afraid if I did, people would see how glad I was that you walked over.”

“Would that have been so bad?”

She squeezed his fingers. “I’m not up to explaining to the people of this town or to my family what I feel for you. I can’t even explain it to myself.”

The kitchen door burst open, and Meg jumped to her feet. “Robert.”

“What the hell’s going on here, Meg?”

Clay shoved away from the table and stood.

“Mama Warner wanted to see him about a marker.”

“She seen him?”

She angled her chin. “Yes. She wanted him to have a piece of pie for his trouble.”

Clay felt as though he were a damn dog sitting under the table waiting for a morsel of conversation to be tossed his way. He placed his hat on his head and brought the brim down low. “I’ll be leaving now.” He walked to the door. “It’s good to see you, Robert.”

Robert stepped aside. “My uncle would rather not see your shadow crossing this threshold.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but if your grandmother asks to see me again, only a bullet will stop me from coming into this house.”

Maybe it was crazy for a lonely man to want to be alone, but Clay hadn’t wanted the company of his brothers after visiting with Mama Warner.

He stared at the swimming hole. No ripple disturbed the dark water, which resembled a mirror reflecting the pale light of the moon. During moments like this, Clay wished he were a painter.

Stone captured a strength that wasn’t always there. Stone contained no softness. Over the years, it had roughened his hands. He wished it had roughened his heart.

“I thought I’d find you here,” a voice as soft as silk whispered through the night.

Clay turned from the water and leaned against the boulder. Pressing his boot heel against a worn spot in the rock, making his knee jut out, he fought to appear calm.

Meg walked to the boulder and gazed at the pond. “It occurred to me that you lied to me,” she said softly.

“When?”

“When I asked you what Kirk looked like the last time you saw him.”

“That’s not the question I answered. You changed the question and asked what he looked like when he brought me the letters. I told you.”

She placed her hand over his where it rested on the boulder. “What did he look like the last time you saw him?”

Turning his palm up, he squeezed her hand. “Don’t do this.”

She tilted her face toward him, her eyes filled with tears that made them seem as deep as the water on the other side of the boulder. “Ah, Meg.”

Moving around his knee until she was nestled between his thighs, she placed her cheek against his chest. “What did he look like?”

Clay brought his arms around her. She was so small. He didn’t think he’d ever realized how small she was. “He looked …"—closing his eyes, he swallowed, swallowed the truth—"he just looked as though he’d fallen asleep.”

She lifted her gaze to his, the moonlight reflected in her tears. “I kept hoping someone had made a mistake, that somehow he’d been spared, and one morning I’d look out the window and see him walking home. But he’s not going to come home, is he?”

Clay shook his head. “I’m sorry I didn’t bring Kirk home. I should have at least brought him home, even if it meant carrying him on my back.”

“They were his friends, his men. He organized them and had them all enlist together so they could fight together. He was their leader. They fought and died at his side. He wouldn’t have wanted to leave them. Why didn’t you tell us you’d buried them?”

“I didn’t figure anyone around here would appreciate the fact that I’d touched their honored sons. You can’t take a man off a battlefield without touching him. You can’t bury him without touching him. I did what I did because those men had been my friends, and they deserved more than a mass grave. I didn’t do it to please their fathers. The day you came to see me about making the monument, you didn’t even want me to say Kirk’s name. How would you have felt then if you’d known I’d held him in my arms and wept over him?”

“I would have hated you more.” Touching her fingers to the white hair at his temples, Meg wondered if his quest at Gettysburg had aged him. She tried to imagine the horror he’d faced, wading through a field littered with bodies, searching for those he knew, smelling the stench that must have risen higher and higher with each passing day, and carrying mangled bodies to a place where they might rest in peace. Despite Clay’s words that Kirk looked as though he’d fallen asleep, Meg could not imagine that death ever came silently during war. Kirk would have fought death as diligently as he’d fought the Union soldiers. Pressing her face against Clay’s chest, she released the agony of her grief, no longer certain if the tears she shed were for Kirk … or for Clay.

Clay felt the small tremor travel along Meg’s back. He tightened his hold on her. “Meg?”

Her trembling increased in intensity. Where were the twins when he needed them? What had they said to her? What could he say to her to ease her hurt?

She cried hard mournful sobs that rose from the deep well of her heart. He gazed at the stars. He supposed if she needed or wanted more from him than his arms around her, she’d tell him.

She sniffed inelegantly. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

“No, ma’am.”

She lifted her skirt and blew her nose before wiping the tears from her cheeks. He caught a glimpse of white cotton and closed his eyes against the sight. He’d never realized how alluring white cotton could be.

“It hurts to cry,” she said, her voice raspy.

“It hurts worse not to.”

“Did you cry?”

“For four days straight.”

“Is that how long it took you to bury them?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said in a voice that sounded like stone grating against stone.

She looked to the heavens. “The moon’s pretty tonight.”

He wanted to tell her she was pretty tonight, but he didn’t know how to phrase the words so he wouldn’t sound like some lovesick schoolboy.

She pressed her finger to his lips. “You said you spent a lot of time thinking about our kiss. I thought about it as well.” She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and threaded her fingers up into his hair.

“Meg—” He wasn’t certain what he’d planned to say, but he knew it couldn’t have been important because the words drifted from his mind as soon as her lips lighted upon his. Her mouth was as warm as the shade in August and as soft as a piece of velvet that his mother had sewn into one of her quilts.

She touched the tip of her tongue to one corner of his mouth, then to the other. She nibbled on his lower lip, and he felt as though she were pulling him through the keyhole of hell into heaven.

He cradled her face between his hands, angled his mouth over hers, and welcomed the bliss she offered. Boldly, she gave her tongue the freedom to roam within his mouth. She sighed. He moaned.

He thought a man could become spoiled touching a woman. He might never want to touch stone again. Stone wasn’t warm. It didn’t alter its shape with the gentlest of pressures. Stone didn’t breathe so he could feel its moisture on his face. Rocks didn’t make soft sounds that he’d carry with him until the day he died.

She drew her mouth away from his, and he forced himself not to follow and reclaim what he wanted.

Her eyes were dark within the shadows of the night, but he felt the intensity of her gaze as strongly as he felt her fingers tighten their hold on his neck.

“I hate you,” she whispered hoarsely.

He lowered his hands from her face. “I know.”

“So why am I here?” She trailed her fingers over his face, touching every line, crease, and crevice. “Robert kissed me tonight.” She rubbed her thumb over his lower lip. “And all I could think about was kissing you.”

She returned her mouth to his. If this was hate, he’d probably die if the woman ever loved him. His heart beat so hard he was certain she could feel it thrumming through his shirt. Each breath he took carried with it the scent of honeysuckle. Her hands, so small, slipped beneath the collar of his shirt. Her slim fingers moved gently, creating small circles on his neck that seemed to travel clear down to his toes. Then she parted her lips and gave him the greatest treasure of all: hot, moist, and silky, her mouth invited him home.

Meg felt Clay’s hesitancy to follow her lead. She teased his tongue, suckled it, then drew it into her mouth. He groaned, and she felt a shudder run the length of his body. She found his uncertainty endearing. When it came to matters of the heart, he had maintained an innocence that she had seldom seen since the war.

She knew Kirk had kissed an abundance of girls before he ever kissed her, knew he had bedded others before he took her as his wife. He had taught her the pleasures to be found with a man, had given much more than he’d taken. He’d been a skilled teacher, she an apt student.

Yet now, she found Clay’s lack of experience as intoxicating as she’d found Kirk’s abundant knowledge. He moved his hands back to her face, his fingers lovingly tracing the curves of her cheeks, the lines of her brow, and the jut of her chin. He touched her as though she were as delicate as finespun glass. He touched her as though she were more precious than gold.

Drawing away from the kiss, she placed her hands over his. “Are you trying to memorize my lines so you can carve the stone accurately?”

Slowly, he moved his head from side to side. “I could carve your likeness in stone if I were blinded. I’ve just never touched anything as soft or as smooth as you are. I can’t get over how incredible you feel.” His hands fell away from her face.

“What’s wrong?”

In the moonlight, she could see the barest of smiles touch his lips. “Wish I had different hands. Mine are so damn ugly, they shouldn’t be touching you.”

Wrapping her fingers around his hands, she lifted them to her lips and pressed a kiss to his knuckles. Releasing one of his hands, she turned the other over and skimmed her fingers over the roughened surface, a palm that was as unpolished as the stone it had caressed over the years. She placed a kiss in the center of his palm. “I like your hands.”

“Why?” he asked, and she heard the disbelief mirrored in his voice. “They’re so big. They look and feel like stone.”

She rubbed her cheek along his hand. “But they don’t touch like stone. I watch the way you chip at the stone, and then you touch it as though you’re apologizing for treating it so harshly, as though you don’t realize you’re doing it a favor and turning it into something of beauty. I’ve missed watching you work this week to the point that I’ve resented every thoughtful neighbor who stopped by to visit Mama Warner because I had to play hostess and couldn’t sneak away for a few minutes. I don’t mind caring for Mama Warner, but it wears me out to care for all the people who come by to see her.”

“I’ve never felt lonelier in my life than I felt the day after I saw you here, and you didn’t come to watch me work. I started carving Kirk’s features because I thought it would bring you back to me.”