Silver and Spice (15 page)

From nowhere, she found herself flat on her back again, her eyes filled with a rainbow of stained-glass prisms, all reflected on Jake’s face. “Honey, give me credit for the patience of a saint,” he murmured.

“No one would suggest you were a saint,” she began on a husky murmur.

“This time, yes. Oh, yes, Anne. But no more…”

He took her with the light still dancing on them, the afternoon sun still so delightfully pouring through the windows. When light gave way to late-afternoon dusk, they napped. But when it was dark, moonlight played through the stained-glass window, and they were again caught up in the magic of the senses. Jake played the slow torturer this time, a role he had always assumed expertly. But Anne was learning.

***

The next day was busy and the next, and the next. Anne had a long list of things to accomplish—unpack the motor home, put away the food, vacuum and scour the vehicle, buy groceries, wash clothes, whisk away the thin layer of dust in Jake’s house…

Jake had an equally long list of priorities. A long walk through the woods behind his house, a boat excursion on the lake, lunch in the
gazebo
over the water. His list was longer than Anne’s. He had a lot of odd hours scheduled for more critical activities: laughing, making love.

On Wednesday, a storm whipped up on the lake around noon, distracting both of them. Lightning pierced the frothing water in sizzling yellow slashes, casting a fluorescent glow on the surrounding trees. Branches shook and swayed in a mad dance, and thunder roared out huge, angry bellows that seemed to surround the house. The clear, still waters of the lake turned wild, and if Jake’s arms hadn’t been around her, the vision from Jake’s glass-paneled living room would have been close to terrifying.

They watched for an hour, until nature’s fireworks settled down to a steady, pelting rain. They turned to each other then, Jake with a rueful smile for the day’s plans gone awry. “No walk today,” he said wryly.

Anne had to agree. And she couldn’t have been less eager to do household chores, either. “A good book,” she suggested.

“And hot cider with cinnamon sticks.”

They holed up in the study, Anne at one end of the couch and Jake at the other. After a great deal of fussing, they got their legs tucked together properly, rested their warm mugs of cider on their chests, and opened up their respective books. A financial bestseller
 
for Anne, a Mickey Spillane novel for Jake. They chuckled at each other’s idea of a good book, and then both heads bent down.

Anne tired first, setting down her mug to stare absently at the oak desk. Papers had begun to pile up there since they’d arrived. It seemed this was to be
their
office. The look of never-serious rogue didn’t fool Anne anymore, though Jake had obviously scheduled a total vacation for himself these few weeks, although he’d made more than a few business calls when he thought she wasn’t looking. Anne didn’t let on that she noticed. The man she was so restlessly, so totally, frighteningly in love with didn’t want her to think he had anything on his mind but her.

Unfortunately, that made her love him more.

Unconsciously she found herself studying him, the beak nose and sun-weathered skin, the silvery sideburns that truthfully needed a trim, the way his brows arched downward in concentration. Her eyes softened helplessly, the longer she looked at him.

There was a small corner in her head that was still holding out on Jake; she couldn’t explain why. The dozens of things that had always made a permanent relationship with Jake
impossible…many of them he had dispelled. The house—she knew it was for her, a measure of his knowing how much she valued security. And if his involvement with silver still struck uneasy chords she could not deny his serious attitude toward it. This was no fly-by-night venture for him; he knew what he was doing. Coeur d’Alene was a perfectly lovely place to raise children…

Several times, she nearly interrupted whatever they were doing to tell him she wasn’t going home at the end of the week. Yet she hadn’t. She knew she loved him, a fool couldn’t doubt he loved her. But there was something, a restless, ceaseless worry in the back of her head at the very center of her heart.

How long would he really want to settle down? Would he be happy in the same place, playing father and husband just like other men? Could cautious Anne, hung up on stability and schedules, really hold his interest for the long term?

His eyes flickered to hers, and she hurriedly opened her book again. To the same page she’d already read four times. Jake’s toe suddenly started a lazy circular motion on her hip. Her palm enclosed his toes scoldingly. He chuckled.

“You’re bored with that book,” he accused.

“I am not.”

“You are. When are you going to amble over to the desk and sort out my mess?”

She flipped the page. “You don’t make a mess. You just keep on with that theme because you know it makes me worry about you.” Narrowed eyes scolded him over the top of her book. “A typical masculine ploy.”

“How could you misjudge me so terribly?” He sounded wounded.

She plied a fingernail down the length of his foot, and chuckled when he laughed. They read for another moment or two, until Jake said casually, “The IRS is going to do an audit on me next month.”

Every muscle in Anne’s body went instantly rigid.

Like a general facing Code Red, Anne’s mind registered
Emergency
with frightening efficiency. Jake smiled at her lazily. The next five minutes were a mass of confusion. Jake opened up four paneled doors, revealing built-in drawers and cabinets, boxes of tumbling papers. Anne raced to the kitchen to make coffee. Desk drawers opened and slammed; Anne adjusted the light above the desk.

The noise abruptly ended. Jake returned to his Mickey Spillane adventure, occasionally rising long enough to refill the coffee cup on her desk. The storm ended in late afternoon, and dusk settled in with total calm. When Jake brought in a tray of sandwiches and set it on the carpet, Anne rose from behind the desk for the first time in two and a half hours. She settled cross-legged on the floor, across the tray from Jake, vaguely aware that two weeks ago she would never have considered picnicking on the carpet when there were perfectly good tables strewn throughout the house. An irrelevant thought.

Jake handed her a sandwich, a huge amalgamation of ham and bacon and turkey and lettuce and cheese, so thick she could barely get her fingers around it. “So what do you think?” he asked casually.

“That it would take an efficiency expert
months
to get you organized.” Green eyes made every attempt to cow the humor in his own. “Have you ever heard of the word
file?
”

“Sure.”

“I don’t believe it. Spell it.”

“F-i-l-e,” he obliged. He swallowed a mouthful of sandwich, not easy to do when he was wearing his widest crooked grin. “The lady is about to spit a little fire,” he speculated to thin air.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you’ve stuffed receipts in shoe boxes? Just because you’ve got active bank books buried in a mound of candy wrappers?” She took a sip of tea. “Did it ever vaguely occur to you that when you fill out your tax returns in crayon, the IRS might get a little curious?”

“Now, Anne. Let’s not exaggerate.”

“No one overpays the IRS one year by some ridiculous sum, and then the next year turns in a half-done tax return with a big check and a note that says, ‘I’m sure this will cover it.’” Her voice was rising in spite of herself.

“I was busy last year at tax time.” He brushed the crumbs from his hands, his silvery eyes glinting on hers, full of amusement, and certainly not concerned. “Why does everyone see the IRS as some kind of enemy? I don’t care if they come here and turn everything topsy-turvy. What’s the difference? I’ve got nothing to hide.”

She cradled her head in her hands. “Just bring me an aspirin, would you?”

He sighed, his expression turning serious as he pushed the tray aside. “Anne, in certain ways, I know well I’m probably not going to change. When I take on something, it’s for the challenge of it, not the money involved. I like to earn money, but once that’s done, the challenge is gone. Hear me?”

“All I hear is that you have to be the first person in history to get in trouble with the government for overpaying your taxes,” she moaned distractedly. “Jake, hasn’t anyone ever mentioned to you that people cheat right and left to get
out
of paying taxes? Do you realize exactly how much you’ve thrown away by never acquiring a tax shelter?”

“But that’s all your bailiwick,” he said patiently, and drew her up to a standing position. “Come on, time to clear away the cobwebs. Let’s sit outside.”

Jake took the tray to the kitchen, then draped a sweater over her shoulders as they wandered outdoors, making their way to the narrow wet dock that led to the gazebo over the water. The storm had left the lake unbelievably calm and clear; stars shimmered on the surface like diamonds on black velvet. Waves lapped gently at the shore, reminding Anne of the sleepy rhythm of a lullaby.

Jake’s gazebo was five-sided, with two sides walled for privacy and shade and the others screened for a clear view of their cove and the lake. Two chairs were wet, but the lounger, tucked in the shaded corner, was dry. Jake stretched out first, then pulled Anne between his thighs. She leaned back, resting her head on his chest, her pulse beating at a still-troubled rate—but less so. No matter how concerned she was for his finances, she had also just spent hours bent over a desk, and this break was welcome. Jake crossed his arms under her breasts, comfortably secure. “Now do you believe I need you?” he asked finally. “Things have rather gotten out of hand the last few years. The silver boomeranged on me. I had more profits coming in than I ever expected. And my trip to Tulsa just seemed to be a case of being in the right place at the right time. Actually, Anne, the money started accumulating when I was still a kid, fishing off the coast of Alaska. I had nowhere to spend the money while I was stuck on that boat. It just sort of all got away from me…”

Unfortunately, she could believe him. Not that anything had “gotten away from him,” but that he honestly hadn’t noticed how much wealth he had accumulated over the years. Jake really just didn’t care about money; he never had. His fingertips gently combed back her hair, and Anne sighed in confusion. Even that casual touch was a whispered call to another world: sensual, primitive, dark. Filled only with Jake. “Normal people hire accountants,” she tried one last time, but there was no bite left in her voice.

His lips hovered at her temples. “I know my tax accounts wouldn’t be a full-time job for you, Anne, but there’s more than enough financial work around here to keep you busy the rest of the time. I never expected that you would be happy just sitting home. Maybe with children, in time…but that will be up to you. And Coeur d’Alene has possibilities for you that we haven’t even talked about.”

For a man discussing career possibilities, his hands were certainly on a different wavelength. He shifted her so she was lying at an angle across his lap, her head tilted back in the crease of his shoulder. In the darkness, shadows and light played over his features, making his silver eyes glow as they came closer. “I
need you,
Anne,” he whispered. “The way you argue, because you’re so darned pragmatic and so intelligent, your warmth and your laughter and the way you fit next to me. The sound of your voice. I need your heart—”

“You have it, Jake. You’ve always had it,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “A part, never all. I want
all
of you, honey.”

Those smooth, cool lips settled over hers—but they weren’t at all cool now. Warmth and tenderness were so much a part of his kiss that a ripple of sheer sensual tension rocked Anne. Heart, body, soul…was that all he wanted? All of them at that precise moment went on the auction block. Her tongue slipped inside his mouth, wantonly wooing him, teasing the tip of her tongue against his.

Her hands were busy pushing aside his shirt, seeking the crisp hair on his chest, the feel of his flesh. Jake broke off the kiss with a low, vibrant sound from his throat, and lifted her up to pull off her green cashmere sweater. Night air touched her skin, raised prickles of sensual awareness along her flesh.

His eyes wouldn’t leave her own, as if he sensed that something was different. She couldn’t have said herself what sparked the change in feeling. She had been totally exasperated as she worked over his books, not frustrated with the figures so much as with the man himself. Jake, so darned different from her—salt and pepper…and she’d always known that. But the word
need
had spiraled something irreversible, something that reached the soft core of her, which no one had ever touched. Hers was the need; need for the only other human being who could fill her heart, create feelings of richness and a joy in just breathing.

She ached with those feelings now, longed for the simple right to touch his skin, the right to hear the rasped intake of breath as she stroked the long, tight muscle in his thigh. She felt as if she were absorbing him, inch by inch, cell by cell. Her lips pressed into the hair on his chest, seeking first his heartbeat and then trailing over to his flat nipple, where her tongue reached out and nudged the male bud to hardness.

Slowly, her lips trailed back up, to the underside of his chin, all bristly with a night beard.
“Anne.”
She was wearing a skirt that day, for no particular reason that she’d discovered until now. His hand was sweeping long, slow caresses up her stockinged leg, stealing very slowly underneath the skirt fabric. His palm on the curve of her thigh, molding up and over her bottom, ignited a fire in her loins, a sparking, brilliant, bright orange fire. His chin nudged at hers. “We’re out in the open,” he said with a harshness that almost made her laugh.

“It’s a dark night, and there hasn’t been a boat out since before the storm,” she answered.

“You’re beginning to sound like me. That’s terrifying.”

“You don’t look terrified,” she said impishly.

He nipped at her neck. “I hate to tell you this, honey, but there is no possible way to make love on a chaise longue.”

She reached for his belt buckle and undid it. There was enough leeway for her fingers to slip inside the waistband of his cords. His stomach flesh was exquisitely sensitive. Her finger could touch his pelvic bone, trace it quite a little distance. “Oh, well,” she murmured. “If we can’t, we can’t.”

Within moments, the chaise mattress was spread out on the redwood deck. Clothes were draped over chairs. And Jake, very rapidly, was draped over Anne. His body surged forward to join with hers, with exactly the fevered speed she craved…and then stopped. Locked inside her, he rested his weight on his elbows, staring down at her with glowing, brilliant eyes. No smile touched his lips, but there was a softness… “You’re staying,” he whispered, only half a question.

“Is the offer still open?”

“Don’t be light, Anne, not about this.”

Her eyes unaccountably filled—for the vulnerability she heard in his voice, for the aching swell of love inside her. “I want to, Jake,” she said simply.

Her words seemed to call forth a tidal wave. A long, passion-induced frenzy washed over her, born of Jake’s hands, Jake’s mouth, Jake’s exquisite feel and motion in the core of her. The water splish-splashed beneath them as they were swamped and drowned and reborn, over and over like a fumbling mystery of nature, wild and primitive and soaring with the joy of life…and loving.

***

Anne’s laughter echoed throatily as Jake pushed the glass doors closed behind them. “That’s certainly the first time I’ve ever streaked,” she said mischievously.

They were both carrying bundles of their clothes, and shivering just slightly because of the run from dock to door. “Get a robe on, Lady Godiva. And be thankful it’s past midnight and
every light is off around the lake.” Jake’s eyes flickered first to the clock on the wall in the kitchen, then back to Anne’s bare limbs and the stream of ash-gold hair swaying almost irresistibly to the curve of her bottom. “I’m hungry,” he announced suddenly.

“So what else is new?”

His slash of a grin was accompanied by a teasing palm on her backside. “I was
talking
about a nice, juicy steak.”

“That’s not where your eyes were looking.” She picked up Jake’s shirt and pulled it on, but his fingers nudged hers aside to do up the two buttons he wanted, leaving a disastrous amount of cleavage showing and her hair tucked inside. Flicking back the cuffs, she was humorously aware that the look was not going to sell to a fashion magazine, but she glanced up and saw that Jake didn’t seem to agree.

“You have unbelievably perfect legs,” he mentioned solemnly.

“You just want me to cook your steak.” Anne, too, glanced at the clock. “You will undoubtedly have dreadful dreams if you insist on eating at this hour.”

He shook his head. “I’ve always had a cast-iron stomach.”

Moving past him to open the refrigerator, Anne murmured absently, “That isn’t the only part of you that tends toward cast iron.”

Jake was leaning over the counter when she turned to him with a defrosted steak in her hands. “What was that you said?”

Heat flooded her cheeks. “How do you want your steak?”

But he took it from her hands and got out the broiling pan. “I’ll cook it. Sure you don’t want one?”

“No, thanks.”

But the delectable aroma that soon wafted from the broiler made her change her mind—as far as hunger was concerned. She poured some soup into a pan and punched the button for simmer. While they were both waiting for their respective midnight feasts, her eyes wandered absently to the counter. Stacks of mail had arrived for Jake that morning; he’d opened and skimmed over the stuff but left it. A brochure with a picture of a coffee bean on its cover caught her eye.

“I’ve been interested in coffee for ages,” Jake admitted. “Did you know that in Tokyo, they have health spas where the people put on paper bikinis and get buried to the neck in dry-ground coffee? It’s supposed to be therapeutic.”

“There’s a lot of rumbling these days about how dangerous coffee can be,” Anne commented.

“Exactly. And being a morning coffee-aholic myself, I got intrigued. Almost to the point of journeying to Colombia…or maybe Indonesia. The industry’s worked hard at options—taking out the caffeine, taking out the acid—but a lot of people still insist that coffee is a health hazard. Obviously, the thing to do is go to the coffee plant itself, and all kinds of experiments are being tried. People want their morning coffee, but there’s money to be made out there if someone could guarantee that the potential dangers were taken out of it.”

Anne shivered suddenly, as if an ice cube had just been run up her spine. Jake served her soup and then pulled his steak from the broiler with pot holders. They settled next to each other at the counter and started eating like starving fools. Her strange sensation of being chilled disappeared as they chattered, more nonsense than sense, although by the time she began to wash their few dishes, Jake was rambling on about another interest of his.

The Silicon Valley in California…computer chips…multibillion-dollar worldwide semiconductor market…the valley’s need to keep the competitive lead in the endless trade war with Japan…

Anne curled up in the fold of Jake’s arm on the couch, sharing one last glass of warm cider before sleep. Listening, she could have lazily shaken Jake for all the years when he had never offered one word as to his own interests, beyond a brusque, lazy statement of where he’d been and what adventures he’d been up to. She loved hearing the sound of his voice, and she loved discovering new depths to the man. Jake put months of study into anything he was even minimally interested in, simply for the joy and challenge of it. Anne felt sleepy and loved and enfolded in the cloak of sharing…