A Distant Summer (7 page)

Done.

Just as this interlude in the reality of her life was finished.

Tucker reached around her to push down the toaster control as his lips tucked a kiss along the curve of her neck. A sweet yearning scolded her melancholy thoughts.

It wasn’t over yet.

There was an eternity of minutes until noon.

With a sigh, Kris abandoned their breakfast to pivot in his arms and return the kiss.

“Hmmm.” He lifted his head after a lingering moment and pulled her closer against him. “I could grow fond of mornings like this. And nights like last night.” His smile slanted roguishly. “And days like yesterday and nights like the night before.”

An unexpected blush of remembrance fanned across her cheeks, and she lifted her palm to touch and wonder at the warmth. But the soft pleasure in Tucker’s gaze made her blush feel somehow natural and feminine and right.

He placed the back of his hand against her face, gliding a caress over the contours of her cheek and brushing her mouth with gentle fingertips.

Desire parted her lips, and she pressed a kiss to one of his fingers, wanting to capture him in some tangible way. But he moved his hand out of reach and settled it at her waist. Then, again, he bent to soothe her lips with his.

The toaster interrupted with a loud click and Tucker turned a rueful frown to the appliance, which sat steaming complacently. “Poor timing,” he announced. Kris merely smiled as she slipped from his hold and began putting things on the table. Tucker followed her example, and in a matter of minutes breakfast was ready and waiting.

As she sat across from him, taking turns with the salt and pepper shakers, the silence seemed to cluster in her throat. She hadn’t said much of anything since awakening. She didn’t know what to say ... until it was time to say goodbye. Even then there would be thoughts that had to remain unspoken, so many feelings she mustn’t voice.

She glanced at him and envied his casual movements, the way his dark shirt and jeans made him look comfortable. She was dressed similarly in denims and a knit pullover, but she didn’t feel at all comfortable. Perhaps it was the unrestrained weight of her hair, usually braided and bound into a chignon as a normal part of her routine, but left free this morning to caress her shoulders in final concession to the intimacy she had shared with Tucker. When noon arrived, it would be bound again. That was important to her.

Kris lifted her fork and toyed with the food on her plate. It had seemed important to fix this breakfast, too. Now she wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t hungry, and she didn’t believe he was especially so either. But it was a way of pretending, a way of postponing reality.

“Where did you learn to cook?” Tucker asked.

Her gaze met his at the offhand manner of the question. During their past two days together he’d made a concerted effort to learn details about her job, her daily routine, and her hometown. Kris had to admit he was adept at seemingly casual inquiry, but so far she’d been better at evasion.

“Ruth taught me,” Kris answered, laying the fork on the plate. She traced the design on the handle with a fingertip, then absently lifted the fork again. “She owns a gift shop across the street from the building where I work, but she spends as much time in my office as her own—if not more. I suppose that isn’t really so surprising, since the
Gazette
seems to be the gathering place for almost everyone in town.” A warm feeling always accompanied thoughts of home, and Kris paused to enjoy it before she continued. “Ruth has been a very good friend for a very long time.”

Good
friend was hardly an adequate description. There wasn’t anyone else like Ruth anywhere. Fondness brought a note of laughter to Kristina’s lips. “But no matter what she tells me, I know I will never, ever be able to make piecrust the way she does.”

“I always buy ready-made piecrust,” he offered as conversation. “Of course, it usually comes with a ready-made pie as well. I get them at the supermarket. Don’t you have supermarkets in...?” He looked at her expectantly.

“Of course, we have supermarkets, Tucker. There just are some things I refuse to buy ready-made.”

“Oh, I see. Piecrust is a matter of principle with you.”

Kris smiled easily, thinking how much Ruth would like him if the two of them should ever meet.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

Her smile faded as suddenly as it had come. Ruth would never meet Tucker. Kris had deliberately avoided mentioning the town in which she lived.

When she left Denver today, her brief vacation affair would be over. She didn’t intend to correspond with him in any way. Two days were all she’d offered to him, and two days were all she could steal from her own tomorrows. If she stayed another day or even a few minutes past the self-imposed noon deadline, her tightly controlled emotions would break free, and she would be irrevocably involved with Tucker, the one man with whom she couldn’t risk falling in love.

Kris patted her lips with a napkin and reached for a glass of juice. Aware that Tucker watched her, she took a drink and slowly realized that she had let the conversation drop abruptly. “I’m sorry. I’m not very good company this morning, am I?”

“Maybe if you stopped trying to keep me at arm’s length, conversation would come easier.”

Her laugh was short and tense. “At arm’s length? Is that how you describe days like yesterday and nights like last night?”

The look in his eyes suffocated her attempt to tease. “You know what I mean, Kristina. You’re taking great pains to keep our relationship on the level of a passing affair. I’ve told you about my office, about the hospital, about my patients, and about the malpractice suit. You know on which days I play racquetball and what time I’d normally leave for work. You know where and when I was born, the names of my brothers and sisters, and the fact that I was once engaged to be married.” His fingers tapped the tabletop with impatience as he held her gaze. “On the other hand, the things I’ve learned about the people and activities that fill your life number exactly three: You live somewhere in Arkansas, edit a newspaper, and have a friend named Ruth. That isn’t much, Kris, considering all we’ve shared during the past few days.”

She gazed down at her uneaten breakfast, acknowledging the truth of his observation by her silence yet knowing that Tucker knew far more about her than he realized, far more than any other man had ever discovered.

His sigh was a soft resignation. “And today you’re leaving.”

She looked up at that, feeling somehow defensive. “I told you in the beginning I couldn’t stay longer. I thought you understood.” Suddenly the words she had been about to say echoed in her memory with eerie dejà vu. He had said the same thing to her once ... on paper. She still could remember how heavy the letter had felt in her hands, how much its message had hurt. And now, with the remembering, came a feeling of sympathy. “I’m sorry, Tucker, but I have to leave.”

He frowned his frustration. “I’m not going to throw myself in front of your car to stop you. I’m only asking for some information: Your phone number and your address. You can’t expect me to let you go without at least knowing how to find you again.”

She pushed back from the table and carried her plate to the sink. “I don’t want you to find me again.”

His chair scraped against the tiled floor, and then his hands were on her shoulders, roughly turning her to face him. “You don’t mean that,” he said, his eyes intensely blue and compelling.

“Tucker, I....” Her self-control wavered beneath his regard, but she gathered her resolve. “You’ve made this a wonderful vacation, one I’ll never forget. But your life, your career, are here. There isn’t even a hospital in…where I live. It’s better if we say goodbye now.”

“Tell me where you live, Kristina.” It was a quiet but convincing display of his determination. The grip on her shoulders tightened, tugging at a strand of her hair and at her veneer of calm. “I’ll find you one way or another, so why don’t you just tell me?”

She was cornered. If she refused again, it would only make him more determined. She tried to lift her shoulders in a conceding shrug. “Maple Ridge. It’s about sixty miles from Russellville.”

His expression softened. “Thank you.”

“I meant what I said, Tucker. Today is goodbye.”

“And tomorrow’s another day. Don’t think I’m going to let you just walk out of my life.”

“You did it once before.” The accusation was out before she could stop it, and she was unprepared for his reaction.

He became instantly still, as if absorbing not only the words but the myriad of emotions behind them. Kris stared up at him, wishing with all her being that she had kept silent.

“My God,” he whispered. “I knew someone must have hurt you at some time in your life, but I—” His hands slid the length of her arms and wrapped themselves around her cold fingers. “Am I responsible for hurting you, Kris?”

He was responsible for more than he would ever know, but the hurt? No, she had created that for herself. “I didn’t mean that, Tucker. I shouldn’t have said it. It was unfair to bring up the past. I’m sorry.” With a wry frown she disengaged her fingers and stepped back. “I seem to be forever apologizing this morning. Maybe it’s time I got ready to go.”

She turned and walked toward the door, but she had to stop when she heard him call her name. Her heart pounded with futile wishes; her memory held fast to the timbre of his voice. Closing her eyes, she braced herself to face him before turning again.

“Kristina,” he repeated in a voice both tender and determined. “I don’t want to spoil what’s left of our time together with an argument, but I want you to know that this isn’t good-bye. I have commitments here in Denver, but as soon as I can arrange it, I’m coming to see you. There hasn’t been enough time to discover what kind of relationship might develop between us, given the opportunity. I’m going to give us the chance to find out.” He paused as if waiting for her protest, but none would come. “I just wanted you to know.”

She nodded, and as he watched her leave the room, he admitted that the curious knot in his stomach had an element of uncertainty. Why was he being so persistent about seeing her again? And why was she so against the idea?

He didn’t understand, couldn’t follow her reasoning. His career was here; hers was in a small town with no hospital. What in hell did that have to do with anything? He hadn’t asked her to move to Denver, hadn’t considered doing so. Even if their feelings developed into commitment, as he thought they might, surely job location would be a point on which they could compromise.

He wasn’t sure he had a career worthy of compromise—if the question should arise—and at the moment a town without a hospital sounded good to him. A town in which Kristina lived sounded even more appealing.

Shoving a hand into his pocket, Tucker turned to look out the window at the May sunshine. A robin poked relentlessly at the ground, and he absently watched its persistence.

How had she become so important to him in such a short time? Two days — and two nights — had captured him, and he didn’t want her to go. There was so much he hadn’t discovered about her, so much more he wanted to know.

She was elusive, allowing him no more than a quicksilver glimpse of the emotion and life experiences that had created both her coolly deliberate composure and her warmly impulsive laughter. He never before had met anyone like her; he’d never before shared so much of himself with another person. And until this morning he hadn’t realized that she had shared so little with him.

How had that happened? In their exchange of ideas, in the give-and-take of their companionable silences, in the communion of their lovemaking, he’d felt closer to her than he had ever felt to another person. And he’d thought she felt the same.

He frowned as the robin suddenly took flight and winged away. Why had Kris made that unexpected reference to the past? Was it possible he’d been the one who hurt her?

That was hard to believe. It had been so long ago, and their time together so brief. One weekend, however perfect, was only a heartbeat in the framework of passing years.

But he hadn’t imagined that peculiar edge in her voice.
You did it once before.
What had she meant? He’d been honest from the beginning of that idyllic weekend to its conclusion. He’d told her there was no place in his life for a continuing relationship, no matter how much he might wish to see her again.

The letter he’d received a few weeks later had surprised him, but he’d answered it as honestly as he knew how. And when the second letter arrived —a pale lavender envelope with a hint of fragrance; funny, he should remember that—he’d returned it unopened, deciding it was better not to allow a correspondence to develop between them. He wasn’t particularly proud of his behavior now, but he couldn’t believe it had created the scars that Kristina tried so hard to conceal.

He’d been a first-class fool to let her walk out of his life then. And no matter what she said, he wasn’t going to repeat that mistake. The tables were turned. This time she’d told him — from the beginning —that she didn’t want to get involved. But her voice, the nervous movements she sometimes made, even the shadowed look in her eyes, gave a different impression. The time they’d spent together had been as special for her as it had for him. He was experienced enough to recognize that.

But special or not, she had some reason for maintaining that elusive distance, and he was persistent enough to find out what that reason might be. He’d give her some time to gain a bit of perspective and, maybe, to miss him a little. That he was going to miss her, more than a little, was already evident. The afternoon stretched before him with all the appeal of a week-old newspaper and an empty refrigerator.

But he’d keep busy until he could go to her, see her again, and then....

Tucker turned back to the kitchen clutter and felt warmed by the memories of their morning together. For the first time in almost a year he felt good about life and about himself. Kristina was an inseparable part of that emotion, and he wasn’t going to let her slip away without a protest.