From Here to There (37 page)

"Yes, not that it would matter. We
are
married," she reminded him.

 "I've dreamed about you," he said as he bent to take her lips lightly with his, slanting his mouth first one way, then the other.

 "Nightmares?" she asked teasingly as she nipped and kissed the side of his neck.

 "You tell me. In my dream you were lying on my bed, your arms reaching up for me." He didn't know why he was telling her his dreams, admitting the weakness he had where she was concerned, but the words seemed to come without volition.

 "Hmmm seems like an easy dream to make come true," she whispered. She took hold of his hand and pulled him toward the stairs. Once they were upstairs, she ran a hot bath for him. Before he could shrug out of his shirt, he felt her hands on it, pulling it from his shoulders. He turned, saw her golden eyes darken with passion. She reached up, her eyes on his as she finished unbuttoning it, kissing his chest. Slowly undressing him before she led him back into the bathroom where the tub was almost filled.

When he sank into the hot water with a sigh, she took a washcloth and soaped his back, kissing his neck after she had scooped water to rinse the soap away. “You like this?”

 "You can see that I do," he said, almost under his breath, but against all his best judgment. He'd told himself while in California that it was impossible between them, but he had headed back to her as soon as he could go. Family meant pain, but she was like a magnet drawing him to her. He needed her.

Back in her room, he resisted the temptation to grab her, take her immediately, letting her set the pace.  He wanted her touch, her kiss on his flesh. He hadn't known until that moment how much he'd needed it. Could he be the man she needed though?

 Helene had never felt such a surge of a burning desire to know this man, to take away his pain, to feel again all the things she had the last time they'd made love. She pushed him down so that he sat on the edge of the bed. Leaning over, she looked into his eyes, the blue so pure it seemed unreal. Her lips lightly teased his. Her breath came out a moan as he pulled her onto his lap, claiming her with a kiss that started with the light touch of his lips, then changed as his arms tightened around her. His tongue delved into her mouth, possessing and claiming with a power she couldn't deny if her life depended on it.

 She ran her hands down his chest, circling around his nipples, then teasing down across his ridged belly.  "I need you," she whispered.  Her hands were shaking with desire as she pushed him onto his back. She felt heady with power as she saw the effect of her touch on his body, but it was having no less and effect on her own.

 He groaned at what her inexperienced touch was doing to him. Phillip had known women before, women who knew all the right moves, the ways to entice, but he'd never felt anything like this. He allowed her to play with him, to drink her fill, because he was lost in mindlessness, writhing under her touch.

 Reaching up, he knew he could wait no longer to possess and be possessed. His own hands shaking, he pulled open her robe and found her, as he had hoped, naked under it. He cupped her breasts with his hands, stroking and kissing. Taking first one, then the other into his mouth. 

 Phillip lifted Helene over him and in a joining so natural it was as though they'd done it a thousand times before and so exciting it was as though the first time any man took a woman, they became for those precious moments as one. Thrusting, moving, caressing and finally finding fulfillment together.

 Helene collapsed on top of him, barely aware he was pulling the quilt over them.  Outside the night had the stillness only a heavy snowfall can bring. It was as though all sound was muted. For this time, this moment, there was no world but the one in which they lay entwined.

#

 Sitting at the kitchen table in their robes, Helene watched as Phillip ate the meal she'd warmed for him. At Phillip's feet, Hobo sat, watching expectantly.

 "I'm really hungry," Phillip admitted as he took another bite of the lasagna and surreptitiously slid a small piece onto the floor for the big dog.

 Pretending she hadn't seen the violation, Helene poured him a glass of white wine. "Can you tell me now how it went with Derek?"

 He shrugged sitting back in the chair and taking a sip of the wine. "He's filled with resentment. Mad at the world and me. Blaming everybody but himself." He didn't tell her of the depression that had seemed to settle over him as he'd faced the possibility that in leaving his family, he'd done to his brother what his own father had done to him. Sending money was no substitute for having come back more often. He had known his mother wasn’t really capable of doing more than birthing children.

 "He's only going to hurt himself with resentment like that," Helene observed, leaning her elbows on the table.

 Phillip said nothing. Theoretically what she'd said was true, but he knew from experience it didn't work out that way in reality. His brother's resentment was hurting him too.

 Helene sensed the reserve in Phillip, his unwillingness to share completely with her, but as she'd learned with her uncle, she waited patiently. Eventually Phillip would want to talk to her.

 "I talked to the attorney the state had assigned. The guy seemed okay if not particularly interested in Derek's case. He got more interested when he realized I could afford to pay." Phillip shook his head. "I don't know what was right, but I did pay Derek's bail. Right or wrong, I couldn't let him sit in jail."

 "That should show your brother you care."

 Phillip pushed aside his plate and lit a cigarette. "I doubt that. He'll see it as guilt money. I don't know if he listened to anything I said. Sometimes it can just be too late." He clenched his jaw.

 "It's never too late so long as you and he are both alive." Helene reached out to stroke his jaw.

 "It would be if my father tried to come around," Phillip admitted, revealing more than he realized by the simple statement.

“Did you know him?”

“Not more than his name really.”

“Maybe he has regrets.”

He shrugged. “I doubt it.”

 Helene reached out and took his hand, bringing it to her lips. "You don't know the reasons why your father did what he did."

 "Don't give me some Pollyanna answer to all this," Phillip retorted with a hard smile.

 "I'll try not to, but if you don't have hope, Phillip, what do you have?"

 "Nothing?" he suggested wryly, wondering if he had any more hope for himself than he did for Derek. He had come to realize he loved Helene, but all he could think of was the pain it was going to cost him. Love led to loss.

 They heard a truck grinding its way up the driveway, and Hobo ran to stand by the door, his tail wagging enthusiastically. "Uncle Amos," Helene said as she took Phillip's hand and kissed his open palm, nipping it before she freed it. "Things will work out, and if that's a Pollyanna answer, then so be it!"

 "How is the old guy?" Phillip managed to ask, keeping his voice level and trying to ignore the instant arousal Helene's merest touch built in his loins. Outside, they could hear Amos stomping the snow off his boots.

 Helene debated for only a second. There wasn't time to explain to Phillip all of Amos's concerns. He had enough of his own worries at the moment. "All right I guess."

 When Amos opened the door and saw Phillip and Helene, he grinned. “Saw your truck outside and was real glad you got back, son.” Hobo whined at the door and Amos patted his back before reopening the door to let him out for one last run.

"So," he said walking into the room, "how was your trip?" He reached out his hand for Phillip's. "She tell you she's been fretting over you?"

 "I got the idea," Phillip replied with a satisfied grin.

 Amos looked thoughtfully at them both, then smiled as he put his coat on the hook by the woodstove. Helene blushed, fully aware she and Phillip wearing robes wouldn't have escaped her uncle's notice. It was obvious it didn't displease him either.

 "The car radio said a blizzard's going to hit us sometime late tomorrow," Amos said as he turned back to face them.

 "Blizzard?" Phillip asked. "So what can we expect?"

 "Depends on how cold it gets, how much wind comes with it, how long it lasts. From what the radio said, they look for some rough days ahead. There was a storm in the late 1800's that took out over half the cattle in the state. In some areas, there wasn't a herd left. These days though, we oughta be able to do better. My land here is more protected and I have that hot spring up there that keeps water available. Trouble is the wind gets so bad sometimes you can't get out to feed the herd... or if you do, you risk your own life."

 "You mean Curly wasn't exaggerating," Phillip said.

 "Not much. When the snow gets to blowing, a man can barely see his hand in front of his face. It saps the life right out of all the critters, us included. They've got newfangled terms for it these days. Hypothermia, wind chill and the like. All I know is when it gets so dang cold my bones ache and it hurts to breathe the air, we're in trouble." He smiled and abruptly changed the subject. "So, tell me, how's that brother of yours?"

 Phillip briefly repeated the bare facts of his meetings with his brother and the attorney. He didn't touch on his own emotional reaction, the guilt that still plagued him, or the hopelessness he felt when he tried to come up with an answer for his brother. How could he hope to do that when he couldn't deal with his own life? If his brother was experiencing the result of the family they had had, Phillip was also.

“Does Derek’s father come around?” Amos asked.

Phillip hadn’t thought of that. He did know the man and remembered the years when he’d been seeing their mother. He wasn’t really a bad man, just an unsuccessful one. “I don’t think he still sees Derek,” he said finally.

“You might give that a try. Call him and see what he thinks about it. Maybe he can do something for the boy if he came around.”

“That’s possible,” Phillip said wondering why he had never thought of that. Probably because he didn’t want his own father in his life but they weren’t the same man. He wasn’t good at thinking emotional things through.

“You had a good relationship with your father, didn’t you?” he asked Amos.

“The best. He was a good man. He was there for me in all the ways he could. He taught me all he knew about ranching and really life. He was tough but loving. Taught me about the good side and the bad, but the example he set was one of honor. I never forgot it.”

 Phillip had had no such guidance. Business had come easily to him. Decisions were made, and the consequences ruthlessly fought out. He did operate with honor but more because he’d seen it worked best in the long run than any example or religion.

In his personal life, he had been less directed or firm. There he realized, from the time he was old enough to make choices, he had avoided anything that smacked of risk. The desired result, when he asked Helene to marry him, was to have been a safe marriage of convenience. The scheme backfired in his face. In California, he had faced the truth squarely. He loved the woman he married, he could barely concentrate on anything when she was in the room, and he was scared to death.

 Amos interrupted his painful introspection. "Maybe what your brother needs is a change of scene. Why don't you bring him on out here for a spell?"

Phillip flinched. He rose and walked to the woodstove. "Unless we get the charges against him reduced, he can’t leave the state.”

“Well that’s too bad. He might get a lot out of this country. It can really heal a man’s soul. What do you think?”

“The fire's dying," Phillip said to avoid answering. Wearing only his robe, he went outside and quickly gathered an armload of firewood from the stack on the porch. Hobo rushed past him when he came back inside. Phillip threw the wood into the copper kettle by the stove and knelt to feed several chunks to the fire.