Jennifer Greene - Man From Tennessee

He released his hold. “I waited for you to apply for a divorce.”

“I thought you would, Kern. In the beginning I didn’t have the money for it, and…it never really mattered, not when we both knew it was over. I-” Her voice was barely audible. The longer she stared at him, the more she felt mesmerized by the gray light of his eyes, strangely soft for an instant and sad. Bitterly sad for what they both wanted from each other once, and Trisha ached to be closer suddenly, to reach out and just hold him, and be held.

There was a sharp rap on the door behind her, and Kern stepped around her to answer it.

“Sorry I’m late, honey. I-oh!”

The woman had her arms extended with the obvious intention of giving Kern a hug of greeting, until she caught sight of Trisha standing there. It did not take thirty seconds for the scene to gel in Trisha’s mind. If Kern had broken every limb there would still have been no need for Julia to come help. He was obviously being well taken care of.

The lady was a well-curved Amazon with the black eyes and black hair of their Cherokee neighbors. Tight jeans were molded over long legs. A red T-shirt, worn braless, hid nothing of her voluptuous figure, and an incredibly long swath of loose hair flowed to her waist. Her skin was the bronze of an outdoor woman…a mountain woman. A very sexy woman in a natural way, with probably a few years over Trisha. At that particular moment very little seemed to matter.

Trisha swallowed the ridiculous lump in her throat and stepped forward with a slim hand extended in greeting. “I’m Trisha Lowery,” she said pleasantly. “An unexpected visitor of Kern’s.”

“Rhea Andreas.” The woman acknowledged the handshake with another careful look at Kern. “I was coming to fix Kern’s dinner, but-”

“I was wondering how he managed without his right hand,” Trisha said cheerfully as she picked up Julia’s tray. “It was nice meeting you, Rhea. I’m on my way-out of the way.”

“Tish-”

“Have a good dinner,” she urged, and with a bright smile aimed somewhere between the two of them, briskly headed out the door and back to Julia’s room.

“I think we’d better plan on leaving first thing in the morning,” Trisha said promptly, as she angled the tray onto Julia’s lap.

Julia closed her eyes. “My blood pressure’s up. I can feel it. Could you get my pills from the suitcase, Trisha?”

By the time Trisha returned with the suitcase, Julia had eaten the sandwiches and finished the tea. “How I hate it when I don’t feel well,” she said testily. “Such a nuisance. Especially now.”

“Kern will know a doctor-”

“Over my dead body.”

Trisha let it be. Julia, however formidable with her Grosse Pointe symphony set, was never going to be a match for her son. And Kern would brook no such nonsense if he thought Julia needed a doctor in the morning. “Perhaps you’ll feel better after you’ve had a good night’s sleep. But if you don’t feel up to going home in the morning, darling, I think I will go back alone. It’s not that monstrous a drive to come and get you later-”

“I never heard of anything so ridiculous,” Julia snapped. “You’ve got a month’s leave, Trisha. Kern isn’t as badly off as I was afraid of, but I still want to stay a day or two now that we’ve come all this way. You can’t just go home!”

“I can’t stay here.” The words just slipped out. She had no right to feel shock at the sight of the woman Rhea. But telling herself she was a fool to suddenly feel like splintered glass didn’t help. Before she arrived she had never, never had any expectations where Kern was concerned.

“Trisha, you must be curious after all this time,” Julia said. “Don’t tell me the situation is the same as it was before. You’re not the same. I’ve waited and waited…”

Trisha’s jaw dropped. There had been no hint in five years that Julia had ever wished the two of them back together. Julia was the one who had coddled her Grosse Pointe style, decrying everything about the mountain life her son had chosen. “Exactly what have you been waiting for?” Trisha demanded.

Julia’s eyes shuttered, and she fussed with the blanket pulled to her chest. “You could do it now, Patricia. Convince him to come back home. You could have persuaded him before, but now… You’re a much more beautiful woman. You’ve got grace and style and confidence. I don’t blame you for hating all this-this primitive country-but if you were both back home…”

“Lord, I don’t believe this!”

Julia regarded her with utter calm. For a moment Trisha even wondered if Julia had arranged for the bluish tinge on her lips, the odd little half breaths, the physical weakness. And then she felt horribly guilty for the thought. “Oh, Julia,” she scolded wearily. “That really isn’t why you insisted on making this trip, is it?”

“I wanted to know how Kern was, of course. But Roberts could have driven me. There must be some reason I have a chauffeur,” Julia said reasonably.

“You told me his family was ill.”

“Hmm.”

Trisha rolled her eyes to the ceiling in exasperation. “Neither of us has been carrying a torch all this time. How could you even think it!”

“You’ve never gotten a divorce.”

“That’s just a piece of paper!”

“So’s a marriage certificate. But you kept that,” Julia said pleasantly.

“That’s completely different. I knew I never wanted to marry again; there just wasn’t any point…”

“All right,” Julia said calmly, her eyes so shrewdly assessing that Trisha had the urge to shake her. “Whatever you say, darling. But all I want to do is spend a couple of days. You can’t desert me when we’ve come this far. At least wait until I feel a little better.”

“Wrong, Julia. That’s just what you have a son for. I’m leaving in the morning.”

Trisha refused to listen any further. Julia was tucked in, the curtains pulled closed, her case unpacked for her and the tray taken care of. By the time Trisha finally left the room, Julia’s eyes were closing.

Wearily Trisha wandered outside, her hands dug in the pockets of her cream silk slacks. For a few minutes she simply refused to think about Kern or Julia, or Rhea. She was exhausted, disturbed and unsettled inside.

The peace of the evening reached out to her like a gift. The peaks were silhouetted in the brilliant flame colors of the falling sun. The pine trees studding the mountains took on burnished hues…she had expected no peace, but it was there suddenly, and her rapid stride slowed.

Her feet automatically took a certain trail. There was a waterfall she remembered, a secret place, too far to reach this night, but the direction was instinctive. She took her hands from her pockets and hugged her arms against the evening chill. The trees cradled her in shade, rustling whispers just above her. Just once she wanted to remember this country without anguish, without memories, just to savor the old dreams…

The night sounds began suddenly-the eager restless rustlings of animals who preferred the darkness to do their living. The Smokies were a protected area, for fauna and for animals. Possum, raccoon, white-tailed deer, wild turkey and fox frequently ventured onto Kern’s land. The animals and particularly the snakes that she had once been afraid of didn’t affect her this night.

She walked an hour or more. It was a tar-black sky when she ventured back to Kern’s, guided by patches of moonlight between the trees. Her sandals were soaked with dew by the time she returned. The breeze had tugged loose her chignon and gold strands of hair ribboned across her cheeks. She was chilled, bone weary, but more at peace from her solitary hour in the mountain night than she could ever remember. There was just something about the air. Light-headed, strangely euphoric, she plucked a white blossom as she crossed the clearing behind Kern’s house, lifting it to smell the heavy sweet fragrance.

He was there, in the shadow of the doorway, perhaps a hundred yards away. All in black, the sling gone. She couldn’t see his face or any of him clearly. But she knew it was Kern. She dropped the blossom, instinctively digging her hands in her pockets again. It was an effort to switch off that deliciously sensual mood and convert it to a cool, polite smile. “Kern?”

He started walking toward her, his eyes meeting hers in the darkness. A knot tightened in her chest. He looked so damned primitive, black on black, his eyes glinting silver. As he came closer, she was desperately trying to come up with some polite, safe conversation.

But he didn’t talk. He just kept coming. Like the night closing in and an illusion of slow-motion time, he walked right up to her. The fingers of his left hand threaded through her hair and gently tugged. Her face was raised to moonlight, her lips already parted in shock.

He blocked out the stars, moon and sky when his head bent to hers. His arms cloaked her chilled skin in vibrant warmth. His lips were soft, tantalizingly sensual next to the bristling texture of the beard. Her neck arched back, cradled in his left hand, her breast pressed against his chest.

It was so completely unexpected. She was still trying to think of polite things to say, still trying to pretend that the mountain night hadn’t touched her with the promise of old dreams. His lips brushed hers, over and over, and then sank in thirstily. Her mouth was the vessel, open to the erotic exploration of his tongue, the sensual touch firing a strange ache and longing inside. For just a moment she was someone else, not the painfully inhibited Trisha who had fled from Kern’s bed. She was just a woman, lost in the chilled night air, reaching out from loneliness to the one person who knew all about loneliness.

“Tish…”

The soft lips left hers, trailed to the sensitive skin of her neck. His fingers roamed slowly from the nape of her neck to her shoulder, gradually seeking the silky skin of her throat beneath the blouse’s fabric. She heard a murmur escape from her lips and felt a frightening weakness as if she needed to hold on. Her hands found his waist, pressed into his flesh, and suddenly her heart was beating rapidly. He smelled so warm. None of it made sense. Confused, she tried to draw back.