Too Hot to Handle: A Loveswept Classic Romance (13 page)

“You prefer that to apples?”

“Well, let’s just say I’m hungry, Matt Holland, and I’ve never been known to have a small appetite for anything I like.”

Matt took the next exit, and threaded his way off the two-lane road and back onto the expressway headed in the opposite direction. He couldn’t concentrate on his driving and Callie and his feelings all at once. He’d always been accused of having tunnel vision. He was accustomed to directing his attention to one thing at a time, and Callie seemed to come at him from all directions, shattering any attempt at concentration.

For this weekend, he’d simply forget about everything but Callie and the growing need he had to draw her back to Atlanta with him.

“Strawberry ice cream for the lady, and a slab of apple pie for me,” Matt told the waitress at the first truck stop he’d found that announced homemade desserts.

“An extra-large slice of apple pie,” Callie directed with a firm nod.

The waitress brought their food quickly.

“What exactly did John Henry whisper in your ear when we were leaving?” Matt asked casually as he dug into his pie.

“I don’t think I’m going to tell you, Matt. Let’s just say he’s getting cold feet, now that he thinks his little plan to find me a man is working out.”

“You think he doesn’t approve of me?” Matt hadn’t considered this possibility before.

“It isn’t that, exactly. He’s concerned that maybe we haven’t found a common meeting ground yet.” Callie licked a frosting of pink from her upper lip and swallowed. Suddenly she couldn’t look at Matt. The conversation was becoming serious, and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to think about where their relationship was heading.

“Funny.” Matt reached out and caught a spot of ice cream she’d missed at the corner of her lip. His finger traced the lower edge and dropped to catch her chin and lift it, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I’d say we’ve found one very important common meeting ground.”

His lips, still sticky with apple, touched hers, and they blended into a sweetness she never wanted to end.

“Excuse me,” the waitress said. “Will you be wanting anything more?”

Matt pulled himself away and answered the waitress without taking his eyes from Callie’s face. He winked. “Indeed we do, a lot more.” He looked at the waitress and winked again. “But we’ll have to go elsewhere or you’ll think we’re exhibitionists.”

Callie hid a smile. The waitress giggled in delight. Matt put a handful of bills on the counter and tugged Callie out of the restaurant. Callie blushed when she
saw the open grins of the patrons watching the two of them walk arm in arm out the door.

“You know that waitress is in love with you now,” Callie said as he opened the passenger door for her.

“I’m already taken.”

“You’re a bad influence on womanhood, Matthew.”

He chuckled, then pulled her into his arms. “Must be the apples. Remind me to see if there’s such a thing as apple ice cream. William would love it.”

She kissed him fervently, and they rocked back and forth, smiling and kissing again. When he finally released her she heard scattered applause from the doorway of the truck stop.

This time it was Callie who gave the world a sample of her joy, by throwing the group imaginary kisses and a smile of pure happiness.

“Callie, you mean you don’t even want a receipt for the merchandise—the craftwork, I mean—that you’re leaving to be sold?” Matt’s incredulous voice carried through the shop, and Callie winced as the owner, Perry Lawrence, looked up questioningly.

“Don’t worry, Perry,” she called. “I’m with my new, self-appointed business manager who doesn’t understand our arrangement. Cool it, businessman,” she admonished Matt under her breath.

Matt looked from Callie to the armful of kudzu baskets he was carrying, and shook his head. For the last hour he’d played stock clerk as he unloaded baskets and wreaths and followed Callie into one shop after another. He’d been amazed to learn that Callie worked without formal merchandise orders from the shopkeepers.

They apparently never knew, and didn’t care, when
she’d appear with goods. They were always happy to see her. As she accepted one check after another for past sales, Matt realized that her work sold extremely well.

Surveying the items still piled in the van, he came to the conclusion that they had at least one more stop to make.

“Let’s hurry,” he ordered as she stacked baskets and counted wreaths. She shot him a disgruntled look.

“I wish William were here. I’d sic him on you. Teach you some manners, Mr. Holland. And some patience.”

“Sorry.” He grinned an apology and started helping her organize her last delivery.

Matt knew he was acting bossy, but he hoped she understood why he had so little patience. She shouldn’t need a crystal ball to figure out that he wanted to be alone with her, as they’d been in the cabin.

“Look, Matt, one of Lacey’s clowns.”

They were at the last shop. Matt had unloaded the final set of wreaths and baskets, and they were almost out the door when Callie stopped and lifted a happy-faced fabric clown from a child’s rocker.

Matt took the clown and glanced at it quizzically. “When you said clown I thought you meant something like a doll. This is as big as a child.”

“Wait until you meet Lacey. She thinks very big.”

“So do I,” Matt warned. “And right this minute I’m ready to think about a shower, followed by a very big steak and a pitcher of iced tea, followed by a big
bed.” He put the clown back into the chair and placed his hand possessively on Callie’s back, nudging her toward the door.

“Shoot, and I thought that thinking big meant something entirely different,” she answered teasingly.

“Big, large, enlarged—only a term, my dear, a state of mind that’s cussed, discussed, and rarely understood. W. C. Fields said something to that effect.”

Callie laughed. “I don’t think he was referring to what you’re referring to.”

“Hmmm.” Matt caught her arm and lowered his voice suggestively. “Wait until we get to our room, and I’ll tell you what Rudolph Valentino used to say.”

“Rooms,” Callie corrected. “I always stay with Rosa Mitchell, an old friend of my grandfather’s. Rosa is seventy-eight, and I wouldn’t think of shocking her with immoral behavior.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

Callie hadn’t been kidding.

Matt looked ruefully at the heavy pine-log bed and the prim little washstand with the pitcher and bowl, and sighed in disbelief. They were in an old inn, a charming relic dating back to frontier days.

The downstairs had the usual great room, complete with fireplace. The dining room had a couple of huge tables for family-style eating. Two upper floors with rooms opening off a narrow hallway made up the rest of the house.

Rosa Mitchell’s quarters were on the ground floor, just behind the guest-registration area. Callie’s room was directly above Rosa’s on the second floor, and
Matt was at the opposite end of the corridor on the third floor. The room was small and hot, and Matt was frustrated beyond belief. He was ready to head back to Sweet Valley—immediately.

He glanced at his watch. He’d been fuming much too long. Callie had announced that she was going to take a long shower, then a nap.

For some reason, she’d trilled lightly, she hadn’t slept well the night before. He should take a shower and a nap, too, she’d said primly, then meet her downstairs in the great room by six o’clock. They’d go out for dinner.

Oh, well, if there was anything he’d learned, it was that Callie had her own way of looking at things and her own timetable to follow. He had the feeling that he was being tested, that if he weren’t in the lobby at the proper time, she’d simply leave without him. There were certainly enough people in the resort city willing to share their time with Callie. She wouldn’t lack for companionship.

Matt pulled fresh clothes from his bag and headed down the hall toward the shower. He was surprised to hear the spray of water. He’d understood he was the only one on that floor, and the other guests had already left the inn for the evening. He leaned against the wall outside the shower and tried not to admit to his disappointment.

He’d been leaning there for a moment before he heard the voice. The person in the shower was singing. It took him a moment to understand the words, something about not sitting under the apple tree with anyone else.

Apple tree? Matt tried the doorknob. It turned beneath his fingertips, and he opened it cautiously.
If the woman inside wasn’t Callie he was going to feel like an awful fool, in addition to which he was likely to spend the night in the local jail instead of alone in the pine-log bed.

Through a translucent shower door he saw her outline. Matt sighed. He’d recognize those magnificent breasts anywhere.

“Callie!”

“What kept you, Matthew? Can’t you understand a subtle invitation when you get one?”

“Why didn’t you come down to my room?”

“Rosa gave me explicit instructions to stay out of my young man’s room.” Callie laughed softly. “She didn’t say anything about sharing the shower with him.”

Matt stepped inside and shed his clothes. In the shower he took Callie in his arms and felt contentment wash over him as if it had been brought by the warm shower spray.

In his room he’d been edgy and unable to stand still. Now he would be satisfied simply to hold her without moving at all. This woman was a drug that he was rapidly becoming addicted to, and Matt wasn’t a man to lose control of his body. He’d never been so emotionally vulnerable before. He shivered.

“Water too cold?” Callie reached behind him and turned up the hot water.

When the stream of heat hit his back, Matt roared. “What are you trying to do to me, woman, burn me up?”

She turned the hot water back down. The desire in her eyes was evident. “I just want you to feel the same way I do, Matthew.”

• • •

When Callie slid the emerald-green cotton sweater over her head, she frowned at her reflection in the mirror. Matt had given her a whimsical order not to wear anything revealing. If, as was her custom, she didn’t want to wear a bra, that was fine with him, he had said solemnly, but he didn’t want any other man to share in the secret.

She turned and surveyed her figure in the mirror. There was no hiding her breasts, but at least they were camouflaged reasonably well by the oversized sweater. With her pale green pants and green jelly shoes, she looked very Irish.

“Begora,” she muttered out loud. “Great merciful God, don’t be lettin’ me get in a brawl with this overbearin’, possessive man o’ mine.”

Quickly she applied a light brush of color on her cheeks and coral lipstick. She brushed through her fine mass of dark hair and caught it back with an orange-and-green chiffon scarf, tying the ends of the scarf in a jaunty bow atop her head. Shades of the forties, she thought, as she gave a final pat to her hair and started downstairs.

Matt was standing by the fireplace in the great room. His hair was still damp. The thickest part appeared almost coffee-colored where it hadn’t dried yet. His yellow knit shirt complemented his white cotton pants and white boat shoes. The shirt’s tiny monogram and the gold watch on his wrist stamped him with a signature of wealth, she thought.

Tonight that didn’t offend her. She felt the breath whoosh out of her as he looked admiringly at her, and she smiled.

“Where’s Miss Rosa? I thought she’d be standing
guard at the steps like a headmistress in a boarding school,” he said teasingly.

“Oh, she went out to dinner with friends. Her other guests went out tonight, too. Apparently we’re alone.”

“You mean she was gone when we took that hour-long shower?”

“I believe so,” Callie answered airily, and moved into the great room with a show of innocent nonchalance.

“Then why didn’t we try out that antique bed in my room instead of …? Hell, Callie, I’m not used to shower stalls and weird positions.”

She laughed. “Ah, Matt. Where’s your spirit of adventure? I’ll bet you’ve never made love like that before, have you?”

“No. My back and elbows will never be the same.”

Still laughing, she kissed him. Her laughter faded, and she studied him seriously, then spoke in a low voice. “I want you never to grow tired of me. I …” She hesitated. “I never knew what making love really meant.” Callie paused again. “I’ve got a lot to catch up on, Matthew. No planned obsolescence here, I hope?”

“Sweetheart,” he told her, “what you do to me will never be obsolete.”

Callie was glad to see that Matt enjoyed their dinner of knockwurst and sauerkraut washed down with heavy, dark beer. Helen’s tourist appeal came from a carefully nurtured Bavarian atmosphere, complete with mountain chalets, German restaurants, and what Callie called “oom-pah” music.

“This is a very authentic Alpine atmosphere,” Matt said drolly, looking out the restaurant window. “No snow, no Alps. Really authentic.”

She punched his shoulder playfully. “Eat your southern fried knockwurst,
mein
lover,” she ordered. “The alpine village is as authentic as chalets built among Georgia pines can be.”

The small restaurant Callie had chosen must have had more German atmosphere than others in town, Matt decided. The menu’s premier item seemed to be lagers of thick beer that were passed about freely among the guests, all of whom knew Callie. He couldn’t keep her to himself, as he’d planned. He listened distractedly as a small band played loudly and off key.

“Ve dance,
ja
?” Callie asked in a terrible German accent.

Matt shook his head while she nodded. They grinned at each other.

“
Ja
, you vill dance, Matt,” she insisted.

“
Nein
, I vill not. Zee polka eez not for me.
Nein.
”

Of course she got him to dance, to try something new, as he had known he would. He danced so badly and she danced so well that they were soon the center of a stomping, clapping crowd. Breathing hard, laughing, he finally stopped embarrassing himself and pulled her out into the sweetly scented June evening.

“Let’s walk,” Callie suggested.