The Talk of the Town (25 page)

A kerosene lamp burned on the entry table. The smell of cauliflower for the evening meal that was being prepared in the kitchen at the back of the house assaulted her nostrils. A worn flowered runner muffled her footsteps as she climbed the stairs to the second floor.

In a narrow hall, facing the door with her knuckles raised, Roxie suffered an attack of nerves so severe she almost turned tail and ran. She pulled her hand back and plucked at the damp crepe of her blouse that clung to her skin. What could she say? Luke wouldn’t welcome her interference, and she knew she couldn’t stand any more of that indifferent attitude he put on. But one thing kept her from leaving.

Love. If anything, she loved him more than ever. Every protective instinct she possessed rushed to the fore. She wasn’t going to let him go through this alone. Whatever he may have done, she was going to help him through it. Whether he wanted her or not, he needed her. And she loved him too much to turn away.

She knocked. Closing her eyes, she took in as many deep breaths as she could.

The door wrenched open.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

She opened her eyes. He stood there, filling the doorway with his broad shoulders. He was still wearing his work clothes, a blue shirt and jeans. His hair was charmingly mussed, his face uncharmingly remote.

“That’s not a very friendly welcome,” she said.

“I’m not feeling very friendly.”

“Please, Luke, I just want to talk.”

He held the door as if ready to slam it in her face. She wondered if she would have to resort to climbing through his window in order to talk to him. With an abrupt movement he suddenly stepped back and flung open the door.

“Suit yourself,” he said in that apathetic tone she hated.

His room was small and spare, with a ratty throw rug covering part of the bare floor, a cracked ceiling with a bare light bulb glaring down, and a stained shade pulled halfway up in the curtainless window. A chest of drawers in need of refinishing, a ladder-backed chair and an iron-framed bed were the only furnishings. To Roxie, it looked depressingly Spartan.

“It’s larger and cleaner than any cell,” he said.

She spun around to face him. His eyes were like ashes, cold and gray. Her heart lodged hard in her throat.

They were so different, so completely different. He was so dark and defensive; she so fair and vulnerably open. He distrusted love, happiness, all the things he’d never known. She had faith in the certainty of life’s blessings while he sometimes seemed to curse the day he was born. Would they be able to bridge those differences? It would take effort, a lot of effort on both their parts. Did she have what it took to try? Did he?

Luke jerked away, breaking the invisible lock that had held them together. He crossed to the window, set his hands on the frame, and studied the wet street. Her heart pounding, she waited. He wheeled around.

“Well, aren’t you going to ask me if I did it?” he challenged, his strong hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “Isn’t that why you came?”

All the courage she’d gathered and the conviction she held surged into her voice. “No. I don’t have to ask. I know you didn’t.”

He stared at her for so long she thought she might faint from the almost sickening apprehension building inside her. Then he extended his hand. Without hesitation, she rushed to take it.

Chapter 13

Luke took her hand, his fingers curling over hers to tug her closer. Gazing into her blue eyes, he saw them shining with what he’d so often yearned to see—love. Soft, glowing, acquiescent love. He bent his lips to her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. Then he raised his head.

“Loving me won’t be easy,” he warned her.

His gray eyes flashed as the lightning outside danced in their depths. “Love is never easy,” she said softly. “Not the lasting kind of love.”

Luke moved his lips to the pulse point of her wrist, feeling it beat frenetically for him.

Roxie played lightly with his dark hair, letting strands of it drift through her fingers.

Their eyes met, and for an exquisite eternity neither dared move.

Then the pain of denial would no longer be borne. After turning off the harsh overhead light, Luke lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bed. Its rusty springs squeaked as he settled their weight on it. Roxie scarcely noted the lumpy mattress, the squealing springs, the stark surroundings. She was aware only of him, of his body squeezed in next to hers.

“You’re wet,” he said, just now noticing.

She lifted her hand and laid it against his cheek. “I forgot my umbrella.”

He squinted, half smiling. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful when you’re wet?”

She pursed her lips. “I do believe you’re the first.”

He reached over and pulled down the window shade, his eyes glittering possessively in the semi-darkness. “And the last.”

“And the last,” she echoed in a voice that left no room for doubt.

Luke touched her slowly, reverently, not quite able to believe she was real. He’d had so many fantasies, so many frustrations. He feared he would blink and she would be gone. But this was no fantasy. She was real and warm and overwhelmingly exciting.

In his fantasies he’d been a terrific lover, wildly satisfying all the nameless, faceless women of the lost years. More recently, his dreams had been of Roxie, but her reaction had been the same. For her he’d been the perfect lover. But this was not a dream. She lay beside him, her breath mingling with his, and he knew he might not be the perfect lover. As out of practice as he was, he might not be much of a lover at all.

While his mouth explored the delicate bone of her jaw and the heated pulsing of her throat, he tried to quell the fear rising alongside his need. She wound her arms around his neck and sighed encouragingly in his ear. He hesitated, then swept his palm downward to the sensitive peak of her breast. His fingers searched through the pleats of the crepe of her blouse, down to her stomach and back, but he could find no buttons. His fear that he might not satisfy her grew by leaps and bounds. He couldn’t even find the damn buttons!

Lost in the rippling pleasure of that palm gliding over her breasts, those fingertips wandering through her pleats, Roxie didn’t at first realize what he was doing. But pressed as she was against him, she could feel the change in the tension of his muscles, and she finally comprehended his problem. She caught his hand and slid it beneath her, shifting slightly as she guided him to where her blouse buttons were.

“They’re in the back,” she told him.

“It’s been a long time,” he rasped.

“Forever,” she agreed. “I’ve waited for you forever.”

Her slender back warmed Luke’s palm. The pearl buttons cooled his fingertips. He gazed down at her face, softened with love for him, and a new fear took hold of him. “Too long,” he grated. “It’s been too long for me. I’m afraid I’ll go too fast. Afraid I’ll hurt—”

Roxie shushed him with a tender kiss. Her being flooded with a love such as she’d never before known, a love more radiant in the giving than in the receiving. She stroked the strong line of his jaw with her fingertip, letting him feel as well as see how much she loved him.

“We’ll go slowly,” she whispered against his lips, “slowly into the night.”

Her understanding nearly undid him. In a voice raw with emotion, he said, “I need you, Roxie.”

Her heart went out to him. “I need you, too, Luke. I need you, and I love you.”

“All my life I’ve needed you.” He brushed her damp hair off her face, sifted through it with his fingers. “Years and years of needing and wishing and—”

“I’m here now.” She wrapped him within the comfort of her arms, wanting to fill the void inside him, erase from his past all the time he had needed loving and went lacking. “Now and always.”

He looked at her with an intensity that made her dizzy. “All those wishes—I never dreamed they could be fulfilled so completely. I never dared dream of a woman like you. You’re my every dream, Roxie.”

“And you, mine,” she said with hushed happiness.

Thunder rattled through the room as they kissed deeply, deliciously, deliriously. One of his hands slid to the small of her back and pulled her against him so she could feel how hard he was for her while the other caressed her breast through her blouse. She matched him touch for touch, gliding the pads of her fingers over his eyebrows, his cheeks, his chin, as if to convince herself that he was truly there, that they were really together at long last.

When they broke apart to catch their breath, Roxie unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders, running her hands along his arms, muscular from months of warehouse work. She feathered light kisses down his chest to his stomach and back up again, reveling in the smell and taste of his skin, relishing the feel of his hard flesh.

In turn, Luke trailed his fingers along the length of her spine, opening her buttons until her crepe blouse fell away from her body, bunching the hem of the plain satin slip in his hands and working it up and over her head so he could see her in the flesh.

The rest of their clothing came off in bits and pieces, between caresses that sent them soaring and kisses that spiraled deeper, deeper, carrying them further into the world of pure sensation.

She smiled up at him. “Your hands are hot on my skin.”

He rubbed his knuckles down her cheek. “It’s you who makes them hot.”

Roxie combed her fingers through his hair when he bent his head to her breasts. A shock of pleasure arched her spine as he bathed her nipples with his tongue, one after the other. She watched the flexing of his cheeks as he drew each of the rigid tips in turn into his mouth, gratifying his need for her. The breath hissed between his teeth, scorching her sensitive skin, when she reached down and took him, hard and hot, in her hand.

Luke couldn’t believe the wonder of her. The resilient softness and responsive buds of her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, the silk and satin of her thighs. Her lightest touch took him to heaven. Her every kiss was paradise. It seemed to him that he had waited a dozen lifetimes for her. As he raised his hips above hers and fused his body, his entire being with hers, he vowed to love her for a dozen more.

He lowered his brow to her shoulder and hoarsely sighed her name as he made her his. She felt warm and wet and so utterly exquisite he had to strain to hold himself back. Slow, sweet strokes gradually became harder, faster, more imperative.

Thrusting her hips up as he filled her with his hard warmth, Roxie gloried in the joy of being a woman. Of being
his
woman. She cried his name again and again, a pledge to him that she was his, forever, in every way possible.

The bedsprings squealed, his breath rasped, her mind reeled. She clung to the sweat-dampened muscles of his back as they shifted with each pump of pleasure. Her tummy tightened when he changed tempos, bringing her to a fever pitch of arousal.

Lifting his head, Luke saw the change in her expression and knew that she had reached the precipice. He joined her there, the beauty of her passion taking him to new heights. Then his body tightened and hers trembled as, together, they went over the edge.

Gradually, they slowed to stillness. Even as he rolled them to their sides, however, they remained twined together. Sated in body, bound in soul, they faced each other, smiling almost foolishly as they basked in a glorious afterglow.

Luke stroked the silk of her hair, working up the courage to say to her what he’d never said to anyone in his life. At length he whispered, “I love you, Roxie.”

Roxie melted inside, simply melted. “I love you, too, Luke.” She nipped at that beautiful, masculine bottom lip. “I realized I loved you the day you gave me the honey, but I never knew how much until now.”

He grinned wickedly. “How much is that?”

She pinched her fingers together. “Oh, about this much.”

He playfully swatted her bare bottom, then made up for it by kissing her breathless.

With his kiss desire clutched at Luke’s belly, renewing itself. He didn’t think he could ever get enough of her.

“I’ll take what I can get,” he said when he finally broke away, “and I’ll give back to you, Roxie. I’ll give anything to please you. I’ve missed you so much. Last week was hell.”

“I was pretty miserable myself,” she admitted. “Even Mr. Stewart noticed. He said I had to quit moping around and concentrate on business.”

His lips toyed with her ear, then moved lower. “My pride has always been my downfall, but you always knew how to pierce my armor. I think that’s why I first started to love you. You knew how to melt my foolish pride. You believed in me more than I believed in myself. Like coming here tonight, trusting in me.”

Roxie hoped and prayed that he would think her suddenly jumping pulse stemmed from him kissing her neck. She must never, never let him know she’d doubted him, not even for a second. And truly, deep down in her heart, she hadn’t doubted him at all. Her heart had led her straight to him.

Her mouth softened in a loving smile. “I always believed in you, right from the first. I was defending you even before you came to the warehouse for a job.”

Luke’s eyes probed into hers. “I thought then that you just felt sorry for me, and I resented it. At the time I thought I resented it because I didn’t want to be anyone’s charity case.”

“But?” she prompted, sensing there was more.

“But the real reason was that I wanted your love, not your pity.”

“Even then?” She tipped her head up. “You wanted my love even back then?”

“Well,” he drawled, that rakish smile returning in full force, “I certainly wanted your body.”

Teasingly she tweaked a clump of his hair.

“Ouch!”

“You got it,” she breathed, letting her fingers soothe his scalp. “You got it all.”

He wanted to ask for how long, but he didn’t want to press her. He didn’t want her to shy away from him because he was too demanding. So he kissed her forehead and decided to change the subject.

“I found out who owns my grandfather’s place.”