Seeing Stars: A Loveswept Classic Romance (11 page)

“I’ll do that, first chance I get.” Charlie laid a gnarled hand on Nick’s hard forearm, pulling the comforting palm more firmly against his shoulder for a moment. “In the meantime, what have I got to lose except a lot of pain?”

They turned then, each of them carrying a bulging grocery bag, and started back to the counter.

“Aunt Granny?” Rachel tugged impatiently at the hem of Dovie’s sweater. “I asked you if this was a good carrot.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, bending over to examine it from leafy green top to nicely pointed tip. “It’s a wonderful carrot.”

“How about this one?” Rebecca demanded.

“Perfect,” Dovie pronounced. “How many does that make?”

“Eight!” the girls chorused excitedly.

“That’s all we need.”

Rachel and Rebecca raced each other to the
counter, singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” at the top of their lungs.

Dovie dug into her change purse as she trailed after her nieces, but Charlie wouldn’t hear of her paying for the carrots. When he also refused to take any money for the rest of her things, she closed the clasp on her purse and promised, “I’ll bring you a bowl of ambrosia, then.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed.

“And salt-free,” Nick added.

That drew another chuckle and another handshake. “Thanks, Doc.”

“Merry Christmas, Charlie!” Dovie herded her nieces out the door, then held it open for Nick, whose arms were full of grocery sacks.

“Will you tell me what I’m supposed to do with all these oranges?” he asked as he loaded everything except the carrots into her station wagon.

Rachel licked her lips. “I
like
oranges.”

Rebecca rubbed her tummy. “Me too.”

“Well, now …” Nick laughed, jubilant and handsome, capturing Dovie’s heart as he managed to reach into a sack and produce two plump oranges.

“Let’s eat them in the park,” Rachel said.

“Oh,
please
,” Rebecca added, her shiny, shoe-button eyes wide with excitement.

Dovie left the decision up to Nick. “What do you think?”

He knew how much she’d missed the energetic little girls. And besides, with the sun beating warm
upon his face and the snow beginning to melt under his
feet
, it was one of those rare winter days that just begged to be enjoyed. “Why not?”

“Last one there is a rotten egg!” Rachel challenged.

“First one takes her place!” Rebecca countered.

“Shall we?” Nick invited as her nieces scampered ahead.

A shiver of anticipation skimmed her arms as Dovie closed the back door of her station wagon, then laid her hand in the crook of his elbow. “Thank you.”

A homey town with no stoplights and a square of businesses around the courthouse, Spicey Hill boasted a small, snow-covered rectangle that people commonly referred to as “the park.”

“Look, we’ve got it all to ourselves!” Rachel turned a somersault, landing on her snowsuit-cushioned back.

Rebecca did a somersault, too, then stood and brushed off her backside. “Let’s go make a snow fort!”

“So much for these.” Nick laughed and laid the two oranges on a nearby bench, alongside the temporarily abandoned bag of carrots.

“They’ll come running when they get hungry.” Dovie moved into the arm he slipped around her shoulders as naturally as a river flows downstream. “Meanwhile, let me show you the park.”

“To the west—that’s your left—we have the water tower.”

They walked in that direction, the afternoon sun on their cheeks, conscious solely of how close they were.

“It’s sort of old-fashioned-looking,” she said. “The kind on stilts with a conical lid.”

A flock of starlings, their throaty squeakings like thousands of unoiled wheels, fluttered helter-skelter into the tall oaks flanking the water tower.

“Then to the north we have the bandstand.”

With one hand Nick cupped the back of Dovie’s head and pressed it down to the hollow between his chest and shoulder blade as they started toward the structure. With the other he removed his sunglasses.

“On the Fourth of July the Veterans of Foreign Wars give a free concert. People come from Buttermilk Ridge and Turkey Run and, oh, just everywhere to hear them play.”

She crooked a finger through one of his belt loops as they climbed the creaky steps. He seated himself on the bassoonists’ bench and pulled her onto his lap. She fell into the accommodating nest of his shoulder with a palm resting on his heart, looking up into his face as he bent his head over her.

“Is this where the teenagers come to neck?” The tip of his nose brushed her cheek, cold yet, as were the lips that made a silken exploration of her own while his warm breath created dew on her skin.

“I don’t know.” Her head moved slowly from side to side in answer to the movements of his. “When I
was a teenager, I was too busy diapering babies to pay much attention.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirty-five in February.”

“And I’ll be forty next May.”

“I wouldn’t be sixteen again for anything.”

“Not even for this?” Nick’s lips descended to hers and he shifted her weight in his arms, turning her so that one breast pressed against him, leaving the other free.

Dovie held her breath as he slid his hand under her sweater and inched it up her rib cage until at last her resilient flesh was captured within his palm. A shudder of delight quaked through her limbs as he caressed her breast, squeezing, then releasing, repeatedly, while his tongue dipped into her mouth and hers played a circle dance around his.

“Seventeen, maybe,” she murmured when he lifted his head a mite. “But not sixteen.”

“And how old am I?”

“Eighteen.”

“Okay.” Through the cotton covering of her bra, his thumb discovered her nipple and explored it until it stood up boldly with desire.

“A very experienced eighteen,” she teased.

Against her open mouth he muttered, “A very anxious eighteen.”

The blood pounded in her ears as tumultuously as his heart hammered beneath her hand when their tongue tips met again and passed, moving on
to dampen the perimeters of their mouths. The seasons fell away as the kiss deepened, making Dovie forget high-school dramas of sitting in the corner praying to be chosen, and making Nick new again … whole again.…

“You feel so good,” he said in a raspy tone when at last they drew apart, gasping for oxygen.

“So do you,” she whispered, and laid her forehead against his chin, rolling it back and forth.

“I’ve got an idea.” Both of his arms circled her waist, holding her still. “Let’s sneak out behind the bandstand and make dirty snow angels.”

She smiled. “Let’s don’t and say we did.”

“I’ve got an even better idea.” Now he adjusted his hips, settling them more comfortably on the bench until his hardness and her softness fit together like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. “Let’s go home and go to bed.”

Dovie felt him, warm and firm, through the denim barriers of their jeans. “Mmm … a very
forward
eighteen.”

“Wrong.” Nick placed his lips against her ear, his voice a husky temptation. “A very horny thirty-nine.”

Her errant pulse skipped to every part of her he had touched and some he had not. “If you tell me you’re not getting older, you’re getting better, I’ll bop you one.”

He laughed that wonderful, full-throated laugh. Damn, but he’d never known a woman with such a
terrific sense of humor! “Would you believe
bigger
?”

“You’re terrible.”

“You love it.”

Yes, she did. She loved the laughter almost as much as she loved the man. Arms that had been denied far too long came hungering, curling around his neck. Lips that had gone wanting for too many years met his mouth, while her tongue delved into its warmth and wetness. Dovie held nothing back. She had needed Nick all her adult life, and, by golly, she meant to have him!

“There they are.”

“Oh, boy, the bandstand.”

Rachel and Rebecca clumped up the steps, one carrying oranges and the other a sack of carrots.

Dovie jumped to her feet, her cheeks scalding with shame and her legs feeling curiously watery, as if she had just run a long way.

“Cute kids.” Nick drew a ragged breath and crossed an ankle over a knee as Rachel sat down on his left and Rebecca on his right.

“Would you peel our oranges, please?”

“We started this one with our teeth.”

“So I see.” He ran his thumb over the tear.

Dovie watched each dexterous movement of his lean fingers, his square nails removing the skin and separating the delicate segments so expertly that not a drop of juice escaped.

“Are you gonna get Aunt Granny a baby?”

“Rachel!” Dovie retorted.

Nick chuckled and filched a crescent of fruit.

“Well, he got Curtis and Linda a baby.”

“Eat your orange, Rebecca,” Dovie reprimanded.

“Here.” Nick smiled and bit into his segment with his slightly uneven white teeth before handing the other half to her.

Dovie’s heart did a drum roll as she reached breathlessly for his offering. There was something erotic about sharing the orange with him. She bit into it and felt the sweetness flood her mouth, her every sense heightened by awareness of Nick.

“That was good.” Rachel rubbed the back of her hand across her sticky lips, then turned to Nick. “Guess what?”

“What?”

“I’m gonna be one of the three kings from Orient Are in the Christmas pageant,” she informed him proudly.

“That’s because they ran out of boys,” Rebecca explained as she wiped her orangy mouth on the sleeve of her snowsuit.

“
She
gets to be the angel Grable,” Rachel added with a touch of envy.

“Gabriel,” Dovie corrected gently.

“I’m sure you’ll both do beautifully,” Nick said.

“Will you come watch us?” Rebecca asked.

“If I can,” he said. “When is it?”

“Christmas Eve.”

“During the early church service.”

“I’m sorry, girls, but I’ll be gone by then.”

“Rachel, Rebecca,” Dovie said briskly, “you’d better
take those carrots home before your mother starts worrying about where you are.” Nick couldn’t have cut her any deeper had he wielded a scalpel on her, but her tone showed no trace of the stark ache his words struck in her heart.

“Awwwww…!”

“Girls!”

“All right.”

“Thank you for peeling our oranges.”

“And if you change your mind about coming to church,” Rebecca said in parting, “I’m the one who says ‘Hail, Mary’ and Rachel is the one who says ‘myrrh.’ ”

“ ‘Hail, Mary’ and ‘myrrh,’ ” Nick repeated solemnly. “I’ll try to remember that.”

After kissing their beloved Aunt Granny goodbye and extracting her promise that they could spend the night with her sometime in the near future, the girls trudged down the stairs and through the park.

Dovie felt the sting of tears as she picked up the pieces of orange peel that her nieces had dropped on the floor. Then she swallowed her pride and asked in a strained whisper, “When were you planning to tell me you’re leaving?”

On an impulse Nick stood and moved close behind her, placing his hands on her narrow shoulders and his lips on the back of her hair.

“Don’t touch me,” she warned in a low, intense tone. “Just answer me. When were you planning to
tell me you’re leaving? Before or after we went to bed?”

He tore his hands away and admitted tightly, “I hadn’t decided. But I sure as hell hadn’t planned on letting it slip out like I did.”

“So …” With icy fingers she shredded the orange peel and flung it out across the snow for the starlings. “It slipped out, did it?”

He thought about lying, but told the truth. “Yes.”

A thorn pierced her heart. Minutes passed. A deathlike pall hung over them. Dovie stared at the cloud coming from the sawmill smokestack east of town until her eyes blurred. Nick stood behind her, wondering how in the hell he could make her understand why he’d kept her in the dark.

Finally she laughed in self-derision. “Do you want to know what’s going through my mind right now? ‘There’s no fool like an old fool.’ ”

“You’re not old.”

A sob caught in her throat. “Couldn’t prove it by me.”

“Listen, Dovie—”

“No, Nick,
you
listen! I’m sick and tired of being taken advantage of by—”

“Damn it, I’m trying to apologize!”

“How dare you?” Rage swept over her in a fiery tide as she spun and cracked him on the cheek with her palm. “How dare you do everything in your power to make me fall in love with you and
then try to salve your guilty conscience with an apology?”

“Look—” Nick reached out to grab her wrist, but she yanked herself free of his grip and ran across the bandstand.

He followed her, touching her more gently now, trying to make her face him willingly, which she stubbornly refused to do. “Don’t keep turning away from me, Dovie.”

“Damn you!” She whirled and whacked his hand off her shoulder, then raised her own hand to strike him again.

But as swiftly as it had billowed, her rage subsided, leaving only regret … so much regret … in its wake. Aghast at her own actions, Dovie dropped her hand and turned away, staring off into space, until she had regained enough control of herself to say, “I’m sorry, Nick. It’s certainly not your fault that I’m such a fool.”

“Come back to Richmond with me.” He stood behind her, his wide brown hands spanning her tiny waist with room to spare. “We’ll have Christmas there—together—where the wrong noses won’t keep sticking themselves into our business and—”

“The ‘wrong’ noses being my family’s noses?” Although she resented his implication, she silently acknowledged there was some truth to it.

The heels of his hands slid up her rib cage with tantalizing slowness. “What do you think?”

She shivered, suddenly feeling the cold, and
crossed her arms over her breasts. “They’ll come around.”

“When?” He released her only long enough to open the front of his old leather jacket and wrap it around her so far, she heard stitches popping up the back. “The Twelfth of Never?” he asked softly.

“You’re not being fair to them or to me.” She lurched back and spun away from him, all her frustrations bubbling to the surface. “And besides, my family is only one of our problems.”