Jennifer Greene - Silver and Spice

With a flush in her cheeks, she stood up-but not soon enough. She could feel all the snaky coils of long hair begin to unwind. “I’ll tell Gran everything you said, Mrs. Stone. How good it is to see you again.”

“So few people take the time for an old lady these days, Anne. Give Jennie my love.”

Anne managed to reach the front door before her hair actually tumbled. She reached up frantically; there were three pins left. Irritably, she wrenched those out, and the rest of the tumbling mane promptly cascaded down her back, all soft and tickly through the silk latticework of her dress.

It didn’t matter; she was through with the party anyway. From the front steps, she could see the long line of cars parked along the road; the cement walk that led down to them was bordered by hedges trimmed into animal shapes. One bush was a wolf. The long slope of grass had the sheen of dew; fall leaves whispered as she hurried through the darkness toward the shores of Lake St. Clair. She had parked her car a block away.

As she approached her little red MG, her step faltered. He was already there, leaning back against the car directly ahead of hers. The dark green Morgan had not been there when she parked; her MG had barely fit between two monstrous gas guzzlers, and she remembered both well. His sleek car was of classic vintage, long and low, not the type of car she was likely to forget.

He was leaning back, arms folded lazily across his chest. Even in the darkness, she could make out the silvery eyes, glinting directly on hers, the waiting in them controlled. Barely. Impatiently, she reached her car, leaned over to toss in her purse, and then, with exasperation, slipped off one shoe and hurled it at him. Then the other. He was picking up the silver sandals when she vaulted into the driver’s seat, hitching up her skirts in a motion that proved she had given up on ladylike modesty.

Her stockinged toe pressed lightly on the accelerator as she started the engine, and with practiced finesse she edged the MG rapidly out of the parking space. In seconds, she was roaring down the quiet boulevard, her long hair spinning a cloak around her. She saw from her rearview mirror that he hadn’t even gotten in his car yet.

During the fifteen-minute drive to her condominium, nearly all of Anne’s image of perfection was destroyed. Her stockings were snagged, her skirt was hitched up over her knees, her hair was a witch’s tangle around her, she’d bitten off the shiny lip gloss, and the wind had whipped away most of her other makeup. She was exceeding the speed limit, so she hugged the dark side roads where no one was likely to notice her. The police had little to do in this affluent suburb of Detroit except catch speeders.

Braking sharply as she reached her condo, Anne felt a moment of triumph when she saw that there wasn’t another car in sight. Certainly not a long, low Morgan. Holding her skirts up, she sprinted over the wet, grassy yard to reach her door, breathless as she worked the key in the lock.

In seconds, she was inside and throwing the dead bolt, and then she leaned back against the door until she could breathe normally again. Every nerve ending was tingling. Laughter was trying to bubble up inside of her.

The condo was dark, with only the pale light from the small lamp falling on the pair of white velvet couches with their scattering of shocking pink pillows. Her fig tree was getting huge, playing a marvelous game of Shadows on the thick white carpet. The chrome and pewter appointments gleamed, giving evidence of her meticulous care. Magazines were neatly aligned on small, elegant tables. Somewhere along the way she seemed to have accumulated a collection of marble eggs; their pearly pink surfaces shone from the far corner of the French bookcase. Everything was in its place, all feminine perfection. She loved the look of the room.

Usually.

Switching off the small lamp, Anne ran her fingers back through her hair with a little sigh. A desperate feeling of disappointment came from nowhere to clutch at her heart. The chase had set off a confused kaleidoscope of emotions, none of which she wanted to deal with. Taking a brush from her purse, she restored at least basic order to her hair as she wandered into the kitchen. Suddenly thirsty, she took a long drink of water and listened, for a moment, to the lonely silence. A neighbor’s light went off in the distance across the courtyard, the only other light that had been on besides her own.

Slowly, she made her way to the bedroom and pushed open the door.

He was there. Lying back against her pillows, his shoes off and the tux jacket opened, his unbuttoned shirt baring several inches of that sand-silver mat of hair on his chest.

Her heart skipped two beats and then raced; a small fist clenched in the folds of her skirt. “To begin with, there isn’t any possible way you could have gotten here ahead of me, and don’t even tell me how you got in,” she said furiously. “And to end with, Jake, the answer is no. Not again. Not this time.”

“Now, Anne.” His tone was coaxing, lazy. Slowly, he swung his legs over the side of her bed, taking three long strides before he reached her, her silver sandals dangling by their straps from one finger. “You didn’t really think the dead bolt would keep me out?” The hardness left his eyes, taking in that odd blend of vulnerability and stubborn determination that was Anne. “I’ve come better than two thousand miles to tell you I think it’s about time we got married,” he told her. “Let’s not start off with a quarrel.”

Anne heard him; she even had a vagrant urge to try a swinging left hook to wipe the uneven grin off his face. For one helpless moment, though, she couldn’t stop herself from making a quick, fierce study of the man. Her eyes swept over the familiar planes of Jake’s face, resenting the new, unexplained crease between his brows, scanning the hook nose and sensual mouth and the chin so inevitably peppered with evening stubble. If there had been the slightest sign that he had been ill over the past three years; if by any chance he had been ill and she hadn’t known… Jake was such a terrible fool when it came to taking care of himself.

About the instant her eyes were finally reassured that he was perfectly fine, she was uncomfortably aware that the devilish spark in his own eyes had increased to a full-fledged flame. Clearly, he was delighted by whatever emotions her transparent face had given away. And about that same instant, the word married finally registered in her brain like the surprise little bomb that it was.

“Married?” she echoed lightly. Her vulnerable eyes turned cool, and her tone deliberately radiated concern. “So you’ve finally flipped out, have you, Jake?”

He chuckled as he handed her the sandals. She wasted no time putting them on. His hand on her shoulder was undoubtedly intended to offer her balance…except that the feel of that hand threw her off balance. Behind all the lazy laughter in his eyes was a stark, steady glint of determination. “Now, don’t get scared,” he said teasingly.

“Scared?”

“Like the little girl who’s lying in bed waiting for the alligators under the mattress to come and get her. Marriage doesn’t have to be like that, honey.” Absently, Jake pushed the hair back from his forehead, a gesture that failed to restore order of any kind. “I figured it was about time I came home and finally did something about you, Anne. You’re thirty-one. A female bachelor, getting fussier and more set in your ways every day. Pretty soon you’ll be over the hill-”

“True.” She added with a remarkable amount of compassion, “Perhaps age is your problem, too? Maybe you’re going through a midlife crisis, Jake. I think you can get pills for that.”

“Not until I’m forty. I still have six years to go. Speaking of pills, are you taking any?”

“Brewer’s yeast,” she said sweetly. “And occasionally wheat germ.”

Damn that crooked smile of his. It was the sexy eyes that had initially led her down the primrose path to his bed a very long time ago, but it was the impossibly crooked smile that had made her fall in love with him. Memories flooded her consciousness as if a dam had burst.

She plugged the hole in the dike and headed for the door. “Out you go,” she said cheerfully. “It’s been a wonderful conversation, Jake, after not seeing you for three whole years. I won’t even mention that it’s two in the morning, that you had no right to pick my locks-”

“Window.”

“Pardon?”

“I came in through the window.”

“What-?” But it was obvious which window he had come in-the one near the bed where the curtains were fluttering in the night breeze. Anne found herself staring, suddenly lost. Jake had climbed in another window another time, when she was eighteen. And made love and made love and made love and… She lifted her face to his, jade eyes turned emerald. “Go away, Jake. Just go completely away.”

“Now, Anne.” Jake’s hand brushed the small of her back as he urged her through the door. “You know we’re both dying for a cup of coffee.”

“You are not staying.”

“Of course not.”

Despite the seeming meekness of his tone, Jake’s words echoed in the hall with the reverberation of a detonated grenade. Anne had waged war with Jake before. She wavered momentarily, weighing the dangers of spending fifteen minutes with Jake over a cup of coffee in the same way a general might calculate the risk of sending his troops over a minefield. A good general, of course, would send the troops around the minefield.

Anne let out a breath. “One cup of coffee,” she said flatly. “Only so you can tell me what trouble you’ve gotten yourself into the last few years.”