Heart and Home (21 page)

Chapter Twenty

I finally pulled into the
field across from the hayride and parked beside Troy’s pick-up truck. I walked
across the road, into the other field as a dwindling crowd crossed the road to
their cars. The grind of tractor engine sputtered up ahead, and as I approached
the waiting area one of the ticket takers announced, “I’m sorry, ma’am. The
tractor’s on its last run tonight.”

The guy beside her added,
“They left about five minutes ago.”

“That’s okay,” I crossed my
arms and drew my sweater tight against the frigid wind that picked up since I’d
left Becky’s. It whistled through the dry stalks of corn, which swayed and
danced as if under some spell. “I’m waiting for Troy.”

“Oh, hi there. I’m Ernie,”
the guy nodded. “You must be Janice.” He extended a hand to me. “Troy said you
were coming.”

“Hi,” I took his hand. “You
must be Troy’s cousin.”

“Yeah,” he tilted his head
and grinned as he pumped my hand. “Ernie Kepner. It’s real nice to meet you
finally. As much as he’s talked about you this last week or so, it’s like I
already know you.”

“Wow,” heat rushed into my
face. “He talks about me that much?”

“Don’t tell him I said so,”
Ernie let go of my hand and stepped back. He and Troy couldn’t have been any
more different if they were day and night. Where Troy was tall, blonde and
built like a linebacker, Ernie was medium height and stocky with brown hair and
grey eyes. When he grinned, however, I saw the relation immediately. “God,
he’ll kick my ass if he finds out I told you that.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,”
I laughed.

“Janice? Janice McCarty?”
Another man pushed through from the back of the small group. “I heard you were
back in town. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but we went to school
together.”

I studied him briefly, but
nothing came to mind, “I’m sorry.”

“Mrs. Herman’s biology
class.” He said. “Dan Banister. I used to sit behind you.”

“Oh yeah,” I hoped the vacancy
in my eyes wasn’t as obvious as it felt. “How are you?”

Dan started to fill me in on
his life since high school and the others in the group stood around us,
shuffling restlessly while we talked. Maybe I was paranoid, but some of the
girls, who looked like they were fresh out of high school, shot daggers at me.
I wondered how many of them had some kind of crush on Troy and were jealous
that I came to meet him, and then thought about how conceited that sounded
inside my own head. It was funny just how quickly the jealousy set in, and
though I’d never really considered myself a possessive person, there was
something different about Troy that made me want to make him all my own.
 

When he finally did come
back around and they let the last load of guests unload, it was chaos. I stood
along the sidelines hugging my sweater tighter while the wind whipped my hair
against my face. I watched Troy turn the tractor around and park it while the
others finished last minute clean-up.

Troy glanced over at me and
held his hand up to let me know he was on his way as he stopped to talk to
Ernie. They laughed and then Ernie nodded, to which Troy clapped him on the
back and then started toward me again. He only paused to call back over his
shoulder, laughing again as he approached and held his hands out to take mine.
He drew me in close, pausing in mid-sway to lean in and taste my waiting kiss.

“Mm,” he sighed against my
kiss, and then drew back. “Are you ready to go?”

“Ready when you are.”

We walked hand-in-hand
across the street, and then I followed him more than a half-mile up the road
before we actually turned into the long, winding driveway. We both parked in
front of the garage, which sat adjacent to the gray farmhouse with a beautiful
wraparound porch. The house itself was dark, save for the motion-censor
activated porch light that kicked on as Troy pulled in, and though he had his
own apartment, I still wondered what his mother might think if she knew I was
there. Would she stop trying to fatten me up, think less of me for not playing
the game the old fashioned way? Or what if she was accustomed to him bringing
women home? Slow tendrils of jealousy snaked around my curiosity, stifling the
eagerness of my mood. Surely he’d dated since high school, but how often, and
how many of them did I know?

I drew in a deep breath as
we walked around to the staircase, which was located on the furthest side from
the house. Troy flipped on an outdoor light switch before we climbed toward the
landing. The breath relaxed the tension, and I let any thoughts about his life
before me slip away as I watched the snug fit of his jeans hike the staircase.
I waited while he unlocked the door, holding my sweater tighter around me as
the wind whipped through us. I glanced out into the woods behind us, the depth
of the forest even right outside his backdoor completely amazing after all that
time in the city.

He led me inside and turned
off the outside light behind us, switching on the kitchen light before ushering
me into the small room. Despite its size, it was fully equipped with stainless
steel appliances and handcrafted cabinetry. I paused at the small dining table,
which also appeared to be handcrafted. There were neat stacks of paperwork and
a face down copy of a John Saul book he’d obviously taken out of the local
library.

“Don’t mind the mess,” he
begged, and when he meant mess, really it was the occasional evidence that when
he was not working himself to death out in the field, he liked to sleep,
occasionally read and keep his apartment clean.

“Mess?”

I followed him through to
the living room, where instead of finding the bachelor signature mismatched
furniture that looked more comfortable than it did pretty, I discovered the
room was very modern in that it took its shape and size into accord. The
furniture set seemed boxy and stout, shapes designed to fit together
comfortably while utilizing the minimal space. The end tables were glass and
the lamps on them stout and boxy. There were several framed black and white
photographs of eccentric building designs displayed on the walls.

“That is the temple at
Ronchamp,” he said when I paused and tilted my head to study the first photo.
“And that one is the Villa Savoye.”

“Oh,” I nodded, still
completely unfamiliar.

“Both designed by Le
Corbusier, a modern architect.” He went on to add, “The furniture is actually
based on his design too, though I slightly altered it myself to slim it down.”

“You designed your own
furniture?”

“Yeah,” he offered a modest
shrug. “Do you want a drink or something? A beer, some iced-tea?”

I shook my head, the
fluttering parade of wings a-flight once more in my stomach. “No thanks.”

I drew in and pretended to
look over his extensive collection of DVDs while he disappeared back into the
short hallway and turned on a light. There were horror movies mixed in with
action, definitely a guy’s collection, I thought.

“This is a pretty nice
place,” I called over my shoulder.

“My dad used to rent it out
to the farmhands when I was a kid,” he called from the other room. “I think Mom
made me move out here so I didn’t feel so stuck after I came back. Plus it kept
me from tearing her house apart and putting it back together piece by piece.”

“It doesn’t feel small,” I
admitted. “It’s kind of cozy, actually.”

“It’s pretty small,” he came
out of the room wearing a clean blue t-shirt. “You’ve pretty much already had
the grand tour, and I’ll bet you didn’t even know it.”

“Do you think your mom will
mind? You know,” I paused and pretended to scan the back of a DVD I’d picked
up, “that I’m here, I mean?”

“I am a grown man,” he
crossed his arms, accentuating the broadness of his shoulders.

I put the DVD back on the
shelf and started toward him, reaching out to snag his shirt and draw him into
me. “There’s no debate there,” I purred, lifting my gaze to meet with his. “I
guess I just don’t want her to think… well I don’t know what I don’t want her
to think, never mind.”

“That really gets to you,
doesn’t it?” He leaned back to get a good look at my face. “What other people
think?”

“No,” I insisted.
 

“Yes, it does,” his mouth
twitched into a playful grin. “That’s why you ran away to the big city, isn’t
it? So people couldn’t talk about you?”

“No, I ran off to the big
city because I thought there was opportunity there,” I answered truthfully.
“And so people couldn’t talk about me.”

He curled his fingers
through the front belt loops on my jeans and swayed my hips into his, “And now
you make a living talking about other people,” he noted, his lips hovering over
mine.

“That’s different,” I braced
his arms with my hands for fear of losing my balance and then lifted my arms
around his neck. “I don’t gossip about people, I report on major events.”

“Gossip,” he brushed his
lips over mine, “major events, what’s the difference?”

I laughed and turned my face
away from his. “There’s a huge difference.”

He kissed my cheek, drawing
me back into his waiting lips.

“I couldn’t stop thinking
about you all day,” he admitted. “That look in your eyes,” and there he leaned
backward again to look inside me, all the while grinning in such a way that
made me feel strange and molten inside. “And your skin,” he traced a finger
down the side of my cheek. “The way you smell.” he leaned into me and closed
his eyes, breathed me in, and then he lowered his lips against mine again and
whispered, “The way you taste.”

I quivered and tilted my
neck into the play of his lips across my skin. The stubble on his chin was like
a sensual counter attack that followed the smooth dance of his mouth back
toward mine.

“God, where’ve you been all
my life?” I moaned into his kiss.

“I’ve been here,” he lifted
me against him and wrapped my legs around his waist before he started back the
hallway.

So wrapped up in the moment
that I didn’t even look around the bedroom once we entered, I closed my eyes
and sighed when he lowered me carefully onto the bed and leaned in above me. He
rested on knee between my legs and held himself in place with an arm above me,
and that was where the kissing games began.

We were two bodies
completely clothed but tangled together as we writhed and stretched into
perfect position after perfect position in attempt to stoke the slow fire
building between us. There were moments when we played so rough that we
wrestled against the instinct to yield or dominate, and then he would just
yield and tenderly pause to stroke my cheek whispering, “I never want to stop
kissing you.”

For more than an hour we
worked at each other until the pain of desire ached in every one of my muscles.
At last, I pinned him beneath me and straddled his hips. His want for me was
evident in the way he pushed against me, in the heaviness of his eyelids when I
traced my finger down the soft trail of crisp hair lining the tight muscles in
his stomach. He’d lost his shirt some time ago and the warmth of his skin was
soft against my palm.

He leaned upward, his hands
falling softly on my shoulders, circling around the back of my neck to draw me
into another kiss. This was it, I realized. Half of the expectation and wonder
was about to be met, and though I didn’t want to turn back now that we had
already gone so far, a part of me feared that I wouldn’t be good enough to
sustain the tender measures he had already taken to make me feel so special.

The butterflies that
tormented me all week were in full effect now, almost to the point of nausea
and pain. My face was so hot, it felt like I was on fire. He rose again, this
time sitting up and holding me over his lap as his hands moved slowly down my
back. He lowered his cheek against my chest and I laid my head atop his, my
fingers lost in the thick curls at the back of his neck.

It was too soon to feel as
strongly as I did, too soon to be so intense.

“You’re heart,” he
whispered, a fingertip tracing down the side of my arm. “It’s beating so fast.”

I swallowed; my hand
trembled against his shoulders. What if the things I was feeling were just that
fear and confusion from my mother’s death? What if I was only turning to him
because I needed someone to comfort me and make me feel safe?

Troy turned his face upward
to look into mine, his eyes the most amazing color of blue I had ever seen and
they made me feel calm for a moment. “Are you scared?”

I nodded and drew my lower
lip between my teeth, looking away from him.

Cupping my face in his
hands, he tilted it downward and looked into my eyes. “We don’t have to do
this, Janice.” A lock of my hair fell over his hand. “I would be more than
content to just hold you here in my arms all night, if that’s what you want.”

“Troy,” his admission
brought tears to my eyes, and feeling like a complete and total fool, I blinked
furiously to keep them from swelling and falling. “I don’t think I’ve wanted
anything more than I want you right now,” part of me feared the repercussions
of having spilled that admission so easily.