Jezebel's Blues (16 page)

“Do you ever accept a compliment?”

He mockingly frowned. “Try not to make a habit of it.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you?”

“Why do I get the feeling we’re getting off the subject here?”

“Are we?” With a quick movement, he pushed away the sheet Celia had demurely drawn up over herself, exposing her breasts to his gaze. In a rumbling voice, he asked, “What if I told you I think you have the prettiest breasts I’ve ever seen?”

Celia flushed as his hands and eyes roved over her. It was a flush of the spirit and one of the mind—she was embarrassed and pleased and suddenly, incredibly, aroused. Still, she strove for lightness. “I’d say it was sort of a backhanded compliment.”

He paused, lifting his gaze in surprise. The beautiful lips were only millimeters away from hers. “Backhanded? Why?”

“Because it assumes you’ve seen quite a number of unclothed women.”

“Mmm.” He pushed her shoulders until she lay against the pillows. “I’m always giving backhanded compliments,” he murmured against her lips. “But just because I’m clumsy when I open my mouth doesn’t mean I don’t mean it.” As if to illustrate, he bent his head over her, taking one nipple into his mouth slowly. His hair fell forward to brush her flesh as his tongue swept silkily back and forth. “You really do have a pretty body,” he whispered, and his breath added to the erotic sensations. His mouth slid lower, teasing over her ribs to her belly, where his tongue danced over her navel, sending a rocket of sensation through her. “Just right for my hands and my mouth, like they were made for me, waiting for me.”

Her body rippled softly, but along with the response of her flesh, pleasurable but predictable, came a glow of acceptance. “Oh, Eric,” she whispered, her hands tangling his hair.

“Women always want more than what they have,” he said, and his mouth traveled down and up, over breasts and belly and arms. He kissed her mouth softly. “They want a smaller rear end and a skinnier waist and big breasts.” He moved close to her, his naked body pressing along her side with heat and hard muscle and hair-dusted flesh. Celia swallowed, unable to prevent a small gasp.

“You’re perfect, Celia.” His fingers trailed lightly down the curve of her upper arm, tickling the sensitive inner crook of her elbow, to her hand. He lifted it gently, guiding her to the rigid evidence of how she pleased him. “You see?” he whispered.

With a sense of power and excitement, she let herself explore him, tentatively at first, then with greater abandon, trusting her instincts.

In turn, his hand slid over her belly, into the soft folds between her thighs, and his mouth settled again over the tips of her breast, teasing and dancing, his fingers sliding with exquisite pressure. She cried out at the overload of sensations and heard him growl as her fingers tightened around him.

All at once, he was poised above her, his legs pushing hers apart as he settled once again between them. His eyes were dark with passion, his color high in his cheeks, and as he paused at the threshold of their joining, he kissed her roughly. “You’re not like anybody else, Celia.”

Unable to bear the temptation, she arched to bring him home and heard their simultaneous cries an instant before she tumbled again into the explosive, erotic joy of loving Eric in a quiet void where they alone moved together.

* * *

The night was as enchanted as any fairy tale, Celia thought once, watching Eric laugh as she tickled his ribs and the bottoms of his feet. Enchanted because her sad drifter was happy when he made love to her; enchanted because kissing Celia made him forget that he could no longer play guitar. He made love the way he sang, slow and deep, and no matter how often he turned to her, Celia knew it would never be enough.

Toward morning, they dozed off. Eric held her close to him, as if she were an anchor, he a ship that would drift in the night.

As the pale dawn spread light through the room, Celia started to awake. For an instant, she was disoriented and surprised to find him tangled around her, but remembering the night, she smiled. Shifting gently away, she propped herself up to watch him while he slept.

Even after looking at him hundreds of times, his pure male beauty stung her anew. He was sprawled in the deepest of sleeps, as he had been the first morning of the flood. He’d tossed the sheets away in the heat, and so lay perfectly bare and open for her gaze.

She swallowed. His hair sprayed black across the white cotton pillowcase, curling around his strong neck and touching his broad shoulders. His mouth, soft and full in repose, looked tender amid the shadow of his unshaved beard. Lashes as long as a child’s arched over the high plane of his cheekbones.

It was still hard to believe he was flesh and blood.

A gentle arousal weighed in her belly as she let her gaze travel over the sinewy arms and sleek chest, over the flat, hard belly and the big hands. A ripple seared through her as she looked at the oddly vulnerable weight of his sex, resting on his thigh—last night she had been just a bit alarmed to see the size of him. Her gaze moved lower, to the furred calves and the strong, bare feet with their high arches. Like his hands, his feet were beautiful, sculpted with graceful curves and lean lines.

She remembered the last morning they had awakened together in this room. The pale light was much the same then as now, and Celia remembered her wish that morning to straddle this rough and tender stranger.

Since then, she had learned so much more—learned of his lonely, lonely heart, his lost dreams and sad childhood and wandering life. She had learned her stranger could tease and fish; that he loved the blues and his sister and a wild, willful river named Jezebel.

Her heart caught in her throat. She loved him. Against her better judgment, against everything she’d dreamed she’d have, she loved him.

And this morning, her beautiful, restless drifter was lying still and quiet next to her. It might be her only chance.

Gently, she bent over him, teasingly running her hands over the plane of his belly and the rise of his ribs, watching in delight and terror as his eyelids flickered and another portion of his anatomy stirred to life. She moved closer, letting her breasts brush his body as she trailed kisses over his neck. He moved an arm sleepily to circle her shoulders.

Smiling at her own bravado, she touched the male heat of him, and the same iridescent bubble of pleasure that had made her laugh last night rose again within her at his response.

He awakened with a growl. “Celia! What are you doing?”

“Shh.” She grinned at him mischievously, feeling her heart catch at the glowing sapphire of his eyes. Like the wanton woman in her vision, she threw her leg over him, tossing her hair over her shoulder to look down at him with a smile. He made a low, dark noise and reached for her.

But as they began to move again in the silent morning, her teasing slipped away, leaving behind the shining truth.

Eric called her name in a helpless voice, his hands bruising her shoulders, his lips in her hair. He clutched her to him with unwilling and almost desperate need.

He didn’t know love any more than he knew happiness. As his breath, moist and warm, brushed her cheek and his scarred fingers held her, Celia knew she would lose him.

In spite of that, in spite of the foolishness of it, she whispered in his ear. “I love you, Eric.”

It was a small thing, that single, heartfelt whisper, but at least he could take it with him when he left her. He enveloped her then, holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe—as if he could keep her from slipping away.

* * *

They slept again. When Celia awakened, it was to find the bed empty. Alarmed, she sat up. He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye, would he?

“Celia.” The word was heavy and deep.

She turned to see him crouched by the window, wearing his jeans and nothing else. On his neck were small marks made by her mouth, and his hair had not yet been combed; it tumbled in a glossy disarray around his face. “I thought you’d gone,” she said.

“I wouldn’t leave while you were sleeping,” he said, and stood up. “But I need to get out and make some more phone calls about Laura.”

His walls had slammed into place again—as if nothing had passed between them, as if he would just walk away and forget the night. Gathering the sheet around her, Celia sat up straight. “I thought,” she said, testing, “that I might talk you into staying for that breakfast I never fixed you.”

He closed his eyes. She watched his jaw clench one time, then he looked at her and she saw the loneliness screaming from the blue depths. He crossed the room and knelt by the bed, taking her hand. “Celia, I shouldn’t have come here last night.”

She yanked her hand from his grip. “Save it,” she said harshly. “I can do without graceful parting words.”

“Celia—”

“I mean it,” she said, and stood up, taking the sheet with her. “I’ve had lots of practice with people who care for me only when it’s convenient.”

He reached for her again. “No, Celia—”

With a bitter smile, she dodged his touch. Shaking her head over her own illusions, she said, “I knew when I met you that it would be like this. I kept telling myself to leave it alone. To stay clear of you.” She swallowed hard, clinging to her anger and frustration to keep the sorrow at bay.

“I’m sorry.” His voice was subdued. “It was selfish of me to come here. I just wanted to see you.”

Bright, life-giving anger surged through her. She lifted her chin. “Don’t do it, Eric—don’t cast yourself as one of Jacob Moon’s tragic heroes, and don’t you dare make me one of his weak, victim heroines.”

“It’s not like that!” he said. His eyes narrowed, his chin jutted forward and Celia knew he was going. “You’re the one that keeps thinkin’ I’m somebody I’m not.” He grabbed a sock from the floor and stormed toward the door. On the threshold, he pawed and looked back at her as if he would say something else. Then with a single shake of his head, he left her.

Only then did she allow herself to sink down onto the bed, her control crumbling. The scent of him clung to the pillow he had slept on, and Celia buried her face in it.

She was an idiot. A fool. A victim of her own fantasies. Eric wasn’t the good and honest man she’d tried to believe he was. Or perhaps there was some goodness and honesty there, but it had long been buried by his restlessness and wandering.

She wept. Wept for him and for herself, for the perfect sweetness of their union and for all the days they would never share. Wept for her stupidity and romantic delusions, wept for the times she would miss him.

Then, because she was practical above all things, she dried her eyes and got up. They could no doubt use an extra pair of hands at the Red Cross station. And really, in light of the sorrows some of those people faced, a broken heart seemed a manageable affliction.

* * *

It was something of a mistake to go to the high school, Celia found. She busied herself in helping to prepare the noon meal for a slowly dwindling crowd, then bustled about performing various small tasks. A week and a half had passed since Jezebel had retreated, however, and the greatest portion of disasters the people had faced were now dealt with. A federal work crew had been dispatched to rebuild and repair the damage wrought by the water; relatives and friends had taken in most of the homeless temporarily sheltered in the school gym, and even most of the missing had been found. Except Laura. Laura was still missing.

Foiled in her attempt to stay busy, Celia went to her classroom in the late afternoon. It was located on the third floor of the old building, and the proportions were satisfyingly grand. A bank of broad windows faced south and showed a wide expanse of verdant treetops punctuated with the rooftops of Gideon. Below, in a baseball field, a gaggle of youths pitched and batted, caught fly balls and ran bases.

It was an extraordinarily peaceful scene. A painting of small-town America, just as she’d pictured it for so many years.

What would it have been like to grow up here? She rested a hip against the windowsill and frowned. What would it have been like to attend this high school with people she had known since kindergarten? Would she, like Eric, want to leave this town by now?

She had missed the comfort of long-term friendships and the steadiness of familiar faces in her wandering childhood. But what had she gained?

She had gained Paris in the morning, had heard the music of Italian voices in Milan. She had ridden a train through the Alps and stared in awe at the stupendous beauty of those history-drenched mountains. She had sat in a German pub listening to the wild music of Gypsies while her parents danced and drank dark beer. She had watched her gloriously beautiful mother dance Sleeping Beauty in ornate, centuries-old theaters and listened to her father read aloud in his booming, powerful voice words that he had written and words he had not.

All that early roaming had left her ready to settle in this small, quaint place—but if she had spent her childhood here, her curious heart would have led her away, just like so many others.

Lynn spoke from the door of the quiet room. “Celia. Thank heaven—I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Struck by an odd tone in her friend’s voice, Celia turned with a frown. “What is it?”

“I just got a call from some rescue workers.” Her expression was heavy. “They found a man’s body in a rowboat several miles downriver—they think it’s Jake.”

“Laura Putman’s ex-husband.”

“Right.”

“Why did you need to find me for that?” Unconsciously, Celia crossed her arms.

Lynn gave her a knowing smile. “Honey, I’ve been around the block a time or two. I saw Eric walking from your house this morning.” With a lift of her eyebrows, she added, “I’ve also seen more than one case of whisker burn.”

Celia guiltily touched the raw pink place on her chin and flushed. “I should have stayed home today.”

“No one but me would put it together.” Lynn shrugged. “Anyway, someone needs to tell him, and I thought you might be the best one.”

“I don’t think so,” Celia returned, biting her lip. She dusted the windowsill distractedly with her fingertips. “We didn’t exactly part on the friendliest terms.”