Lightning That Lingers (17 page)

She had been raised to believe that financial matters were deeply personal, and there was something uncomfortable about asking a lover what his income was, but darn it all, this was relevant. She drew a breath that left her feeling lightheaded. “Philip,” she asked, “are you rich or poor?”

There was a food cooler behind a heavily glazed window in the wall over the counter, that once had been used with huge blocks of ice during the summer months. During the winter, it was a natural refrigerator, and he pulled out a package of Emerald Lake bluegills and started to unwrap them, giving himself time to be sure he had the right words. An apology would have been an insult; softpedaling, foolish. Thank God, this part of it wouldn’t make any difference to her anyway. To him, that knowledge was a luxury.

“In a list of income levels in last week’s
Journal
I found mine—after taxes—under the heading
PROUD TO BE OFF WELFARE
. The taxes on this place ought to be listed in Guinness.”

He glanced at her and found she was watching him with friendly interest, her brown eyes peaceful. The image returned of seeing her that first night at the Club, her face among the maze of faces, her burnt honey eyes looking at him differently, as a man instead of a lab animal. He had seen the regret and disappointment come into them when he began to dance. After that, she had treated him like an enemy and he had had to open up his soul to her to show her that he was real again, a process that had not been without its terrors. Here they were together. It should be simple, and yet it wasn’t. The idiocy of his job stood between them, more now than it ever had. There was nothing he could do except to anticipate grimly the moment she realized how much.

“What people think of as the great Brooks financial empire has been overextended since the Depression. There was a brief comeback during the Second World War when the railroads did pretty well hauling scrap metal, but after that things tottered for years. And my parents were … very gentle people, not business brains. They made the best decisions they could, but it wasn’t enough.” A memory surfaced, like a sharp stab, of his father sitting with him on his bed at dusk, explaining in a raw unfamiliar tone that they had failed to save his heritage for him. “To have kept it alive they would have had to love money more, and they couldn’t. Lily Hill was our summer house. When I was sixteen they had to sell the house in Chicago and we moved back here permanently. They both died within three years of stress-related
things. Dad had a congenital heart defect. I remember the day I came back after college and turned the key in the front door and stepped into this huge pile, knowing that I was the only person left in the world it meant anything to. When my parents died I grieved for them intensely, and then the grief left and I just seemed to shut down inside.…”

“Philip—I’m sorry.”

He came to her, cupped her face and kissed the tip of her nose. “It was a long time ago.”

“You … couldn’t you find work as a biologist?”

“Not close enough to live here. Nothing that would pay enough to take care of the taxes.”

“It’s important for you to keep the land.” She made her words a statement, and even so, saw emotion tighten in every muscle in his face.

“The land is a wildlife preserve. It’s been in my family for generations. I’d sell the bones of my ancestors to a dog kennel before I’d let developers slice it up into sublots. God knows I don’t want to keep it. I’ve been trying to give it to the state but they only want to accept it as a park.…” He reminded himself consciously not to leap on a soapbox. “Parks are fine. They have a place. But people don’t have to have every damn acre of the earth to tramp over. Some animals adapt to public access, but many species are profoundly disturbed in the natural course of their lives—finding food, caring for their young, selecting mates. All you would have needed was one trip to Yellowstone Park ten years ago to see the bears begging at car windows like hookers.” The soapbox. One more sentence; that’s all you get, Brooks. He could
see the distress building on her face. “Park land tends to serve people, not animals.”

She was quiet for a moment before speaking. “Will state officials change their minds?”

“I hope so. It’s going to be damned hard to dance my routine with arthritis.”

Darrell arrived with a bouquet of daisies which he handed to her. Glancing down at the pillow she was sitting on, he asked, “Have you two been ice skating, or what?”

They were nearly finished with dinner when Philip, who had been rather dreamily watching her spread wild grape jelly on a piece of cornbread, said, “Darrell helped make the jelly.”

Darrell looked pained. “Do you have to tell the world?” To Jennifer he said, “Wait until summer comes. Every damn weekend he has Jack and me out doing some damn thing like picking rhubarb, or elderberries, or raspberries, or slogging barefoot through some swamp picking cattails for flour. Then fall comes and and he has you out picking apples and canning them into applesauce.”

“If you’re ever marooned in the wild, you’ll know how to survive.” Philip laughed at Darrell’s expression. “Maybe I do it for the pure joy of seeing you standing over a hot stove in your aviator sunglasses, wearing an apron over that corny muscle shirt of yours, stirring a pot with a big wooden spoon.” He stood. “Can you excuse me for a minute? The bird feeder needs attention.”

Men made Jennifer shy, and she couldn’t change overnight. Nor had she forgotten that on one meeting with Darrell he had been naked, and on
another, she had been. While they finished eating together, he tried with unexpected kindness to draw her out. She was attempting to respond, ashamed of her own stiff manner, when Chaucer arrived at a glide.

“If there’s anything I hate,” Darrell said glumly, “it’s eating while that owl is around, fighting with you over every bite.”

Chaucer landed on the table, bobbed, subjected Darrell to a scornful survey and then went to Darrell’s plate. He marched up one side and down the other of Darrell’s mashed potatoes, then jumped on his water glass and bent over for a sip.

Darrell’s expression made her try to hold in her laughter, but it came sputtering out. She was carried away by it when Chaucer leaped on the vase to inspect a daisy and then nipped off its head. Darrell’s long-suffering grimace did nothing to bank her mirth, which didn’t begin to subside until she realized he was staring at her intently.

“You’re real foxy when you laugh,” he said.

She knew her cheeks had begun to color. “Thank you.”

He smoothed over the bird tracks in his potatoes and took a bite. “You really blow Philip away, you know.”

“Philip blows me away, too.” Through the window she could see Philip in the snow, his lean outline defined by a backdrop of cranberry bushes, their bright red berries glowing in the weakening light. As she watched, a tiny black-capped chickadee landed on his hand and flew away with a sunflower seed. A glance at Darrell caught a subtle emotion: hero worship, deep affection.

“You know the patience it takes to make them
trust him like that?” As though it were something that struck him on impulse he asked, “You sure you care a lot?”

“I’m sure.”

“That’s good. I’d hate to see him get hurt. People don’t understand him. They think he’s”—a hesitation, a half-smile—“you know, like me. A great-looking, empty-headed stud. Makes him pull away from people. Chicks usually just want to get in his pants. Jack is the only friend he keeps from the old days when the family had big dough. Jack says that’s because Philip can’t afford to party in the same style anymore, and if he can’t pay for himself, he doesn’t go. People from town are bashful with him. He’s a
Brooks
. Sometimes they get this idea that he’s cold because he’s so comfortable being alone. But he’s not cold. This is one sweet guy.”

Those words returned to her later as she stood beside Philip in his softly lit bedroom, watching him put the baby owls to sleep in a wooden box. He spoke to them in a low tone, stroking the downy feathers soothingly, his hands graceful as a magician’s, the long-boned fingers beautiful, clean and golden.

“I want to make love,” she said softly, lifting aside his hair to brush her mouth on the back of his neck.

He closed the box lid and turned quickly on his chair, a smile in the clear compelling eyes. “A beautiful sentiment. Am I doing something to inspire it?”

“Watching your hands makes me want to feel them on … on me.”

“Show me where.” His soft tone matched hers,
his gaze reaching out to her as he offered her his hands.

A sharp sensation escalated in her chest, cold and hot at one time, the keen anticipation of her body. Grasping his wrists, she guided them to her waist, stirring them against the T-shirt of his that she wore. The motion stretched the fabric, teasing it over her breasts and back. She closed her eyes and saw bright-hued streams of primary colors, felt the tingling sweetness of her awakening nipples.

His hands revolved in lazily widening circles, spreading to her hips, and in back, to the cheeks of her bottom. The world careened around her as his strong fingers framed her thighs, turning her. A flutter sank from her stomach to the warmth between her legs when his hands began to steadily caress her upper thighs. His lips touched her twice, on one back pocket, then the other, nuzzling under her T-shirt to find the margin of warm skin that bordered her jeans. The lace-work caress of his hands moved inward, and his mouth worked a deep circular motion on the small of her back as the low flutter within her became a sting.

“I love you everywhere,” he murmured. She could taste his words through her skin.

She was turned again, and her hands, love heavy, found his shoulders. One of his hands dragged up the T-shirt to allow his mouth to surge over the slight convexity of her bare stomach. She began to arch into his warm mouth while it trailed over the bow of her pleasure-tightened diaphragm. His other hand went between her legs, massaging her, wringing a moan from her parted lips, and
she pushed against the shelf of his palm, her blood running like hot rain.

“Do you think I’m oversexed?” she breathed into his hair, and felt it eddy against her lips, rich, like some smooth exquisite textile.

He was pulling open her jeans, slipping the zipper lower. “It’s too soon to tell.” The tip of his tongue followed the outline of soft curls at the base of her stomach. “But I’m hoping for the best.” One of his hands climbed her ribcage, riding the impeding cloth out of the way with the back of his hand, his fingers wreathing one rampant nipple. Catching her as her knees buckled, he hauled her onto his body, sliding her thighs around his waist.

A rustle came from the wooden box on the desk. The lid popped open, rising like a hat on the fuzzy head of one baby owl, whose round yellow eyes fixed on them curiously.

Heated everywhere, desire braiding and unbraiding itself inside her body, still Jenny laughed. Philip laughed too, but she was surprised and bewitched by the breathless quality in his voice when he spoke.

“Go to sleep, you.” He reached out a long forefinger and tamped the box lid down. It bounced once and then the box became quiet.

His hands, warm and large, threaded into her hair, his breath coming quickly as he pulled her into a hard kiss. Their bodies twisted feverishly together, entwined. Cradling her, he carried her to the bed. He had begun to tremble, and their hands were clumsy and fast, pulling the clothes from each other, their love an unbanked burning hunger.

“I could hardly wait—the afternoon seemed so
long.…” She arched her back and his mouth made a thrilling outline along the shore of her nipple.

“For me too. I tried not to—”

“What?”

“I was worried about …” He inhaled shakily as her mouth tripped heavy open kisses down his neck.

“About what?”

“Your poor little—Jenny, Jenny, darling, that feels like heaven.”

“Poor little what?”

Laughing, his lips came into slight, moist contact with hers. “Smile. Your poor little smile.” He felt it form against his lips. “Because it feels like someone’s connected it right to my heart.”

Philip’s voice roused her in the sweet deepness of the night and she woke to find him raised up on his elbow, trying with enchanting absurdity to reason with the two tiny owlets who sat on his pillow in a spill of silver moonlight.

She lifted her head groggily. “Philip? What do they want?”

“Embarrassed as I am to admit it, they’ve developed this terrible habit of wanting to crawl under the covers with me.”

“I can understand why,” she said, laughing huskily and yawning. “Do they really sleep with you?”

He sighed and laid his head back.

“Aren’t you afraid of rolling on them?”

“No. I don’t move very much in my sleep. The trouble is, they don’t sleep as much as they used to when I first brought them home. They chase
each other around under the covers and fight. Watch this.” He lifted the bedclothes. The babies skedaddled underneath, and two lumps ran around in random patterns. Finally they converged, and there was a loud clacking and frantic wing-flapping. He pulled the small furies out and separated them. Each clung to an index finger, their wings spread menacingly. One suddenly leaped into the air and landed talons down on a Kleenex box on the bedside table and began energetically ripping it to shreds.

“Okay, you two, it’s the toy box for you.”

“You have a toy box for them?” she wondered sleepily. “What kind of toys do owls like?”

“I have kind of a playpen for them in a bathroom down the hall. They’ve got an old hairbrush, mice made out of upholstery scraps, plastic balls, baby rattles.…”

He took care of his tiny nuisances and returned to the bedroom to find that she’d pushed the bed clear of covers. She lay in the center of the bed on her stomach, her bare legs deliciously long, her chin supported on one palm.

“How’s your smile?” he asked softly, and sat down on the bed at her side.

She rolled on her back and showed him. As the breath began to catch in a hard knot in his throat, he realized that it was no bad thing to have two tiny owls that woke one up at two o’clock in the morning.