Now and Forever (9 page)

“Oh, Russ, you're such an unholy tyrant,” Eileen murmured against his shirt.

He chuckled deeply. “Flattery,” he replied, “will get you nowhere.”

“I'll vouch for that,” Tish murmured, oblivious to the puzzled looks Frank and
Belle were exchanging in the aftermath of the argument.

Russell's eyebrows went up as he moved away from Eileen. “Later,” he replied, and his eyes narrowed with a threat, “you and I are going to have a talk, Miss Sarcasm.”

“Oh, I'll look forward to it,” she said with mock enthusiasm, her eyes spitting at him.

“I know brothers and sisters are supposed to fight,” Belle said huskily, “but you two make an art of it, don't you?”

“Tish isn't my sister,” Russell said flatly, and watched the shock filter into two pairs of blue eyes. “In case she's forgotten to tell you, I will. I brought her here when her father was killed in a farming accident, and I raised her. But for all that, there's no blood between us.”

Tish wanted to hit him. It was there in her eyes, in her whole look, although a small part of her was glad that he hadn't told the whole truth.

“Come and get it!” Mattie called suddenly, stepping out into the hall, “or I'll throw it out!”

Forcing herself to laugh, Tish took Frank's
arm, tight. “You heard her,” she said. “We'd better hurry.”

“Would you really throw it out?” Frank asked, puzzled.

“She's been known to,” Russell said. “And once, she threw it
at
my father when he made one remark too many about the amount of onions she fried with his steak.”

“It was Baker's fault,” Tish had to agree. “He and Mattie never agreed on seasoning.”

“Once,” Russell corrected as they moved toward the dining room. “The time they conspired to put half a bottle of pepper sauce on your peas when you weren't looking.” He chuckled deeply, the sound pleasant and familiar. “God, the look on your face!”

She had to laugh, too, remembering.

“What's pepper sauce?” Belle asked.

“A very, very hot sauce made with hot peppers and vinegar,” Eileen told her. “And if you're not used to it, it can burn your tongue up. Poor Tish. She drank water for an hour trying to put out the fire.”

“Two hours,” she corrected. “But I got even.”

“How?” Frank asked.

“I…” She hesitated, wondering how uncouth it would be to tell her straight-laced guests that she'd made a string of Baker's undershorts and tied it to the bumper of his Cadillac for his weekly trip to Atlanta. He hadn't noticed it until the State Patrol pulled him over, and he came home with a face as red as his hunting cap, screaming for blood….

“Go ahead,” Russell taunted. “Tell him.”

She cleared her throat and avoided Frank's curious eyes. “Later maybe,” she said quickly. “Let's eat, I'm starved!”

M
attie served them a tempting variety of foods, with country fried steak and homemade rolls, and fresh turnip greens and rutabagas from the garden topping the list. The Tylers seemed to be delighted with the little woman's efforts, and even finicky Belle was complimentary—or maybe, Tish thought maliciously, it was just to impress Russell.

The sultry blonde managed to seat herself in Tish's old place at his side, and she barely took her eyes off him long enough to eat.
Tish forced herself to concentrate on Frank's restrained conversation, although her gaze occasionally wandered doggedly to Russell's dark, roughly handsome face. He caught that gaze once and held it with such a raw power that her face flamed and she dropped her eyes to her plate. She hardly looked up for the rest of the meal and barely heard Frank's quiet voice as he attempted to inquire about the color in her cheeks.

Once Eileen ventured a question about Russell's trip, only to have him abruptly change the subject with a hard stare that challenged her to pursue it. He asked Frank about his plans for Bright Meadows, listened to Belle's animated nonsense, and played the perfect host. But there was a static undercurrent that Tish could feel, and when she noticed the drawn muscles in Russell's hard face, she knew that he felt it, too. Oddly, none of the rest appeared to be affected, and that puzzled her.

When they finished eating, they went to the living room for coffee, but in a few minutes Tish excused herself to help Mattie clean up the kitchen. Watching Belle sit beside Russell on the sofa, almost clinging to
his muscular frame began to bother her so much that she felt she had to leave.

“You don't need to help me,” Mattie fussed, trying to chase her out of the kitchen. “Go talk to your company.”

“My company's doing most of the talking.” She smiled and went right ahead making the coffee. “Why don't you go home and spend a little time with Randall before he has to go back? He's just down for the weekend, isn't he?”

Mattie's dark eyes sparkled. “Until day after tomorrow,” she said. “You know, he's the first one of our family to get past fifth grade except for me. Now he's a doctor, and I'm so proud. Joby and I both are proud.”

Tish untied the little black woman's apron with firm hands. “Go home,” she said. “While Mindy's gone, it's my kitchen, and I'm throwing you out for the night, okay?”

Mattie laughed and shook her gray head. “I always did think you were impossible, sugar cane. All right, I thank you, and I will go home.”

Impulsively, Tish hugged her. “I kind of like you, you know,” she teased.

Mattie winked. “I kind of like you, too. Good night.”

When she went out the door, Tish started up the dishwasher and was just setting a tray with cups and saucers when Russell walked in the door.

She froze at the counter, fighting down a burning urge to turn and run. Her gray eyes met his dark ones accusingly across the length of the room and everything that had been said between them rushed back into her mind and seemed to separate them like a stone wall.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the doorjamb, just watching her. “Nothing to say, Tish?” he asked. “You were vocal enough in front of witnesses.”

“Is there anything that's safe for me to say, Russell?” she asked quietly. “I'm afraid to open my mouth. If I tease, it's provocation. If I touch you, it's attempted seduction. If I hang around you, I'm…”

“I never meant to cut you like that,” he said gently. His voice was soft and slow, although there was nothing of apology or humility in his brief statement. “But you
started it. It doesn't sit well to have a woman I raised tell me she hates me. It stung. I retaliated.”

She dropped her eyes, and deep inside she admitted that he might have had some justification, but it still hurt. “All you do lately is yell at me,” she said flatly.

“If you'd open your damned eyes, you'd see why,” he growled.

She turned away, puzzled. “How was Lisa, Russell?” she asked curtly, with thinly veiled sarcasm. “Well hidden, I hope?”

She could taste the contempt in the very air around her, and regretted the petty insult even as it left her lips. “That's one subject you don't breach with me, little Miss Piety,” he said, his words cold as ice. “It's the one part of my life I share with no one. Is that clear?”

Flushing, embarrassed, she turned her attention to the coffee pot and began to fill the cups with streaming black liquid. Why had she done that, why had she attacked the other woman's existence with such venom? She didn't know the answer herself.

“Who told you about her?” he asked
tautly, his voice slicing like a razor in its controlled quietness.

She shook her head. “Something I…overheard. It's none of my business, I'm sorry….”

“You're always sorry,” he growled from just behind her. “Not that you made some damned childish remark like that, just that it fired my temper.”

She kept her eyes on the steam rising from the full cups, and her fingers touched the tray lightly. “Randall's home,” she said, trying to divert him.

“And you sent Mattie home early. Little Saint Joan, out to save the whole damned world!” he taunted.

Tears pricked at her eyes at the harsh, bitter whip in his deep voice. “Please don't,” she whispered unsteadily.

His big hands shot out, catching her roughly around the waist with such deliberate pressure that she flinched. “Don't what?” he growled at her ear. He was so unnervingly close that she could feel his breath on her cheek. “My God, I've fought this until my nerves are raw, do you know that? I saw you sitting there so proud and
defiant at the supper table, until you looked up into my eyes, and then I could see the melting start, I could feel the pain. Don't you think I know how much I hurt you? I did it deliberately, I had to…Oh, God, Tish, I want you the way I want air to breathe…turn around!”

He whipped her up against his hard body as his mouth found hers in one smooth, perfect motion. The hard, smoky warmth of his kiss drugged her and the close contact of their bodies and the strength of the big, powerful arms that held her, caused her senses to swim. He forced her stunned, bruised lips apart with a gruff murmur. His hand, tangling in her long hair, pulled her head back against his shoulder while he tasted her mouth slowly, roughly, hungrily….

“Poison,” he whispered against her lips, “damn you, like poison in my bloodstream until I can't breathe! Eyes like November rain, and I see them in my sleep….” He nipped at her mouth, soft, smoky, biting kisses that made her moan in token protest as he tormented her. He drew back to look into her misty eyes. “My God, I could make you give me anything I wanted, and I'm not
even trying. Madness, all of it, almost fourteen years between us and you'll never catch up. No, don't talk,” he said when she tried to speak, to ask him what he was saying because her mind was too cloudy to comprehend. “Don't say anything, just stand still and let me taste that sweet, soft mouth. Kiss me, sweet…kiss me.”

She obeyed him blindly, her arms reaching up under his jacket and around his waist, her blood surging at the closeness, her breath gasping as it mingled with his, her mouth hurting from his ardor.

The floor seemed to drop out from under her, and she realized suddenly that it had. He was holding her clear off the floor in his hard arms, carrying her.

“W…where?” she managed in a shaky whisper.

“My God, where do you think?” he growled huskily, heading straight for the back stairs.

“No,” she protested weakly. “Oh, Russ, no…” she murmured just as another voice merged with hers.

“Tish, where are you?” Eileen came in the door laughing, and suddenly froze at the
sight that met her widening, unbelieving eyes. Tish's legs felt like rubber as Russell set her back down, and she could only imagine how she looked with her mouth swollen, her hair tangled by Russell's hard fingers, her whole look wild and frightened…

“I…uh…that is…” Eileen stumbled as curiosity turned to puzzled certainty in her round face. “Have you…seen Frank?” she added weakly, with a smile that trembled.

“Where are you, Tish?” Belle called in a honeyed voice.

“Uh…Grand Central, isn't it?” Eileen cleared her throat and made a beeline for the door, intercepting Belle before she could get to it. “Hi, Belle, she's outside, I'll show you,” she said gaily and half dragged the woman away.

“Tish…” Russell began, his deep voice edged with regret.

“It's…it's all right,” she whispered, avoiding his dark, steady gaze. “I didn't mean to push you…”

“You didn't do anything. I did,” he replied. “Eileen's not blind, little one,” he added softly. “I bruised your mouth enough so that it shows, and it was obvious even to
a novice that it wasn't one affectionate kiss we were sharing.”

“Haven't you shamed me enough?” she whispered shakenly.

“There was nothing shameful in it,” he told her, pausing to light a cigarette. “There wouldn't have been anything shameful if I'd made it up those stairs with you, for all that you knew I was taking you to my bedroom. In fact,” he said as he lit the cigarette, “that's precisely where I was taking you. But not,” he added, meeting her shocked eyes levelly, “for the reason you thought.”

“I don't want to know!”

“Why not?”

She flushed, lowering her eyes. “I can't…handle that kind of relationship, not with any man, but especially not with you. It's too new…Russell, it's…it's…Oh, God, you scare me to death!” she whispered tearfully, her emotions raw and uncertain and lacerated. “You make me feel things I never knew I could feel, you…”

“Say it!” he shot at her.

“All right, all right! I can't…I can't…it's comfortable with Frank, it's easy…but you burn me alive! I'm afraid of you, Russell!”

“Good God, what is there to be afraid of?” he asked shortly.

But she couldn't answer him. Trembling, burning with frustration and embarrassment, she turned away.
Myself,
she wanted to tell him.
I'm afraid that I'll offer you everything I have, and that you'll take it.

“It's Lisa, isn't it, Tish?” he asked tightly. His voice was deep and slow and harsh in the silence of the spacious kitchen. “You can't cope with it, can you?”

To her shame, she hadn't even thought about his mysterious woman until now. Those burning minutes in his arms had brought a magic that drowned out the world. Now she remembered, and her eyes closed, as she realized miserably what he was telling her; that Lisa was a part of his life he wouldn't give up.

“No, Russell,” she said, keeping her eyes on the counter as she went back to pick up the tray. “I'll never be able to cope with it. And you…you wouldn't give her up…”

“No way, honey,” he said curtly. “Not even for you. And that says it all, doesn't it? So we'll forget what just happened.”

She nodded. Somewhere the sound of
laughter came filtering through the walls, but she wanted only to cry. Her mouth hurt from his powerful kisses; her body hurt where it had been bruised against the hardness of his, where his fingers had bit into her waist. But that was nothing compared to the pain in her heart. Rejection was one thing, but to have that…that tramp mean so much to him that he couldn't give her up…to ask her to share him with Lisa…She hated him. Hated him! She turned around to tell him so, but the room was empty.

Eileen came through the door just as she was wondering what to do about her ravaged appearance.

“I, uh, brought you a comb and lipstick from your purse,” the younger girl said, mildly embarrassed. “I didn't think you'd want to go back out there until you…regrouped.”

Tish managed a shaky smile as she took the items from the girl's outstretched hand. “Thanks, Lena. Where…where are they?”

“You mean, where's
he
gone. That's anyone's guess,” she said, reading the question in Tish's darkened eyes. “He took off down the driveway like a bat out of you-know-
where, without a word to any of us. I left our guests in the living room frowning. Better hurry, Frank looks pretty suspicious.”

“Suspicious about what?” Tish asked innocently as she ran the comb through her tangled hair.

“About why you and Russell stayed gone for so long and why Russell came out looking like a madman. Gosh, Tish,” she admitted hesitantly, “I didn't know what to do when I walked in….”

Tish managed a smile at that confession. “Thank you for distracting Belle. I think I'd have gone through the floor if it had been her instead of you.”

Eileen watched her replace the lipstick on her still-swollen lips. “You know what I'm dying to ask, don't you?”

Tish kept her eyes lowered, but the color came into her cheeks despite her best efforts. “It…it was just a kiss, Lena, and the only time…”