Sugar And Spice (18 page)

But when she turned to him, she wasn’t smiling. Instead, her face was pale, and tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m the one who should apologize. I knew you were joking. It’s just that…that the morning before Darrell died, before the company car he was driving was T-boned by an eighteen-wheeler, we had a disagreement about—” Katie gulped down several tiny sobs. “You see, I worried about the way he ate, and I made too much of the fact that he preferred cheeseburgers and fries to grilled chicken and steamed vegetables. It was such a stupid disagreement. One we’d had before, and it didn’t amount to anything. But—but he told me that I had to stop trying to run his life.”

“Katie…honey…” Mack wanted to pull her into his arms and hold her. She looked so miserable.

“Oh, we’d have made up that evening when he came home. We always made up. But he didn’t come home. He never came home again. He was killed instantly.”

“Katie, I’m sorry that you lost your husband, and I’m sorry that I said something that brought back unpleasant memories.” He curled his hands around her shoulders and gently pulled her toward him, intending to wrap his arms around her.

She stared at him, her eyes wide and round, watery with tears, and leaned into him. But the minute her breasts pressed against his chest and he eased his hands down her arms, she gasped and jerked away from him.

“Katie?”

She ran from him, straight to the back door. Realizing she was running scared, he simply stood there and watched while she flung open the door and hurried out onto the porch. After giving her a couple of minutes, he retrieved his parka from the hall tree, walked outside, and came up behind her.

With her blond hair blowing in the frigid afternoon wind and her slender shoulders trembling, Katie stood gazing out at the falling snow.

The next wave of snow and ice was coming in earlier than predicted. They could easily have downed power lines and up to a foot of snow by morning.

Mack walked up behind her, draped his parka over her shoulders, and stood there, not touching her again, waiting for her to respond.

She didn’t move, didn’t speak.

He waited for a good five minutes before reaching out, taking her hand in his, and saying, “Come on, honey, it’s time to go inside now.”

While the weather grew worse outside, the wind howling as a fresh blanket of ice and then snow covered the already frigid, white ground, Mack and Katie stayed warm and safe inside his cabin, thanks to the gas heat. Periodically, Mack checked the weather radio for updates, and the news wasn’t good.

As he had predicted, power lines were beginning to go down through not only Sevier County but neighboring counties too. Roads throughout the region were becoming impassable, and residents were being warned to stay indoors. It seemed the worst winter storm to hit the Smoky Mountains in a couple of decades had descended on northeast Tennessee. A storm of this magnitude was almost unheard of in December.

After Mack had escorted her off the porch and back into the house several hours ago, Katie had busied herself finishing the cookies, making dinner for them, and then cleaning up the kitchen. Their conversation had been limited to little more than yes and no whenever the other made a comment. By eight o’clock, she’d been able to use needing a bath to escape from Mack. And she so desperately needed to get away from him, from those midnight blue eyes that seemed to see directly into her; away from the sympathetic looks he gave her; and away from his gruff, cold attitude. It was as if as long as she stayed in a jovial mood, joking around with him, he was fine, but when she became emotional and weepy, he put up a wall between them because he didn’t want to deal with anything unpleasant.

She’d stayed in the bathtub until her water turned cold and her fingertips wrinkled. Now, she was dressed in Mack’s big flannel shirt and standing in the middle of his bedroom, wishing she didn’t have to go downstairs and face him.

You won’t have to talk to him, won’t have to carry on a pleasant conversation, she reminded herself.

She should just go downstairs, grab a novel from his collection of hardbacks and paperbacks stacked in a bookshelf by the fireplace, and act as if she was totally absorbed in reading. He’ll probably be grateful for the solitude. After all, that’s what he is used to, isn’t it?

Doing exactly as she had planned, Katie tiptoed down the open staircase and quietly entered the living room. Mack sat in the overstuffed chair to the right of the fireplace, Destry curled at his side. Both man and dog glanced up when she walked over to the bookshelf. She looked at Mack and nodded. He returned her silent greeting, then focused on the forty-two-inch flat screen hanging across the side wall in the wide living room. He kept his gaze glued to the John Wayne western, which was playing on the satellite channel he was watching.

Katie found a copy of an older David Baldacci novel, one she’d read several years ago but wouldn’t mind rereading. She took the book with her, sat down on the sofa, lifted her feet off the floor, and settled in comfortably. She was well into chapter three when Mack rose from his chair. She deliberately kept her gaze riveted to the book.

“Want some popcorn?” he asked.

“Oh, no…well, sure. Popcorn would be fine. Thank you.”

“Beer or cola?” he asked as he headed for the kitchen.

“Cola, please. I don’t really care for beer.”

He removed a bag from the popcorn box and placed the bag, right side up, in the microwave. “Are you a teetotaler?” Mack asked.

“No. I enjoy an occasional glass of wine or a mixed drink, but I really don’t care for the taste of beer.”

“Hmm…”

Within minutes, the microwave timer beeped. Katie hazarded a glance into the kitchen, and when her gaze connected with Mack’s, she gasped. Caught! Her heart fluttered erratically. Why was he staring at her that way? His hard glare made her nervous. But she shouldn’t be nervous. She knew she was safe with Mack.

Physically safe—yes. Emotionally safe—no.

Katie simply could not deny the fact that she found Mack attractive. Very attractive. There was something so innately masculine, so fundamentally male about him that she found it difficult to resist the primeval feminine urge to respond to his masculinity. And that was the last thing she wanted—to respond to him the way a woman responds to a man who attracts her. She had not been with a man in the four years since Darrell’s death. She hadn’t wanted anyone. How could she give her heart to another man when it still belonged to her husband? She couldn’t possibly love two men at the same time, could she? Besides, what she felt for Mack was hardly love. After all, she didn’t really know him. No, what she was feeling for him was pure, old-fashioned lust. The hot, sweaty, passionate, nasty kind of desire.

Suddenly, a loud chinking sound followed by a whooshing thump came from outside the cabin. A second later, the room went dark. Katie cried out, startled by the unexpected darkness, despite the fact that Mack had told her it was only a matter of time before the heavy accumulation of ice on the trees and power lines would send many crashing to the ground. And that’s just what had happened, aptly finishing the job of cutting them off from the rest of the world.

“It’s okay,” Mack told her. “A tree limb probably hit the power line.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “The sudden darkness just startled me.”

“If you want to continue reading, I’ve got some battery-operated lanterns upstairs.”

“Oh, no, that’s okay. I’ve already read the book, but it was a good one and I knew I’d enjoy rereading it.”

Mack came back into the living room, but instead of sitting in the chair by the brightly glowing fire, he sat beside Katie. She tensed. He held out the bag of hot popcorn to her.

“Here, take this, will you? I need to light a few candles so we can have a little more light than the fire puts out.”

She grabbed the warm paper bag and held it when he got up and went in search of candles. Within a few minutes, he had placed fat jar candles around the room, and the candlelight cast a shadowy, golden glow over the semidark room.

Mack came back to her and deposited himself on the opposite end of the sofa, in a slouchy, relaxed sprawl, his knee brushing her thigh as he maneuvered into a comfortable position. Tension spiraled from her thigh to her entire body rather quickly. Her reaction to the accidental touch of his jean-covered leg warned her that she couldn’t let him get close, really close. This man was dangerous, even in small doses, and probably lethal if taken in as a whole.

“If you’d like to go to bed early, I can go upstairs and give you some privacy,” Mack said. “I’ll have to bring Destry back down in a couple hours, but we’ll try not to disturb you.”

Say yes, thank you, so you can be alone, the sensible part of Katie’s brain told her. But for some reason, she didn’t listen to logic and instead went with her emotions, which were all over the place.

“I don’t think there’s any way I can go to sleep this early,” she said. “Not after sleeping so well last night.”

“Okay. Destry and I will just stay put for a while longer.”

When he heard his name, the big dog raised his head and glanced in their direction, then came up on all fours and ambled across the room. After Mack rubbed his head and behind his ears, Destry lay at Mack’s feet.

“He’s very devoted to you. Did you raise him from a puppy?” Katie asked.

“Nope. He just showed up here one day about a year ago. He was scrawny and hungry, and I made the mistake of feeding him. He never left.”

“Why would he? If he was lost and lonely and hungry and you were kind to him, there would be no reason he’d ever want to leave you. And it’s obvious that you’re fond of him too. Y’all seem to share a real bond.”

Mack grunted. “He’s company for me. All the company I want.”

Mack didn’t mean that remark as an insult, she told herself, but the comment still hurt her feelings.

Then again, it didn’t take much to hurt her feelings these days. For weeks now, as Christmas approached, she had gotten increasingly sensitive about every little thing. And nobody understood, after Darrell being gone for four years now, why she had been unable to move on, why Christmas couldn’t just be Christmas and not the anniversary of their engagement.

“I have a battery-powered radio in the kitchen,” Mack told her. “I can get it so we can have some music, if you’d like.”

“All right. A little music might be nice.” And it would prevent him from having to talk to her. She understood that this was his subtle way of reminding her that he didn’t want to get into a personal discussion, didn’t want to become buddies and swap childhood memories and share each other’s favorite colors, songs, and food.

Mack stepped over Destry when he rose to his feet. The dog snorted, as if aggravated that Mack wouldn’t stay in one place. Feeling edgy, Katie got up and roamed around the living room, stopping by the front window. She couldn’t really see much of anything except darkness beyond the frosty windowpane.

Soft music filled the cabin. She didn’t instantly recognize the tune, but the soothing melody sounded familiar.

“I figured you for the type who’d like something mellow,” Mack said as he approached her. “I’ve got it on one of those stations that plays semiclassical stuff, along with some fifties and sixties cool jazz. If you’d like something else, just say the word.”

“No, it’s lovely, whatever it is.”

He stood beside her, not touching her, and yet she could almost feel him, his presence so powerful.

They remained silent, neither moving nor speaking for what seemed like forever.

Why did this have to happen? If she had to be caught in a winter storm, wreck Darrell’s Mustang, and need to be rescued, why couldn’t some elderly couple have come along and rescued her? Why did he have to be some gorgeous hunk who oozed sex appeal from his pores? And why did he have to be the first man since Darrell died who stirred to life such strong, long-dormant sexual longings? She had almost forgotten what it felt like to want a man.

Damn! She couldn’t want Mack. She just couldn’t. And for lots of reasons, the least of which was that she was one of those throwbacks from another generation, a woman who wanted to be in love before she had sex.

“We might as well face it,” Mack said. “It’s not going away. If anything, it’s getting stronger.”

She could say that she didn’t know what he was talking about, but that would be a lie. She knew. God in heaven, every cell, every nerve, every muscle in her body knew.

“It’s just our being confined alone together this way,” she told him.

“You think so?”

“Yes, probably. After all, we’re both young, healthy people with all the normal needs and wants and—”

“So, you think if we’d met under different circumstances and weren’t trapped alone together, we wouldn’t find each other the least bit attractive?” he asked, but he didn’t move, didn’t glance her way.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, I didn’t say that. I imagine we might find each other attractive under normal circumstances, but the…the…er…feelings wouldn’t be so intense.”

She knew the minute she’d spoken, she had said the wrong thing, had admitted too much. Tensing, Mack became deadly silent. She thought she could actually hear his heartbeat, then realized it was her own heartbeat drumming like mad inside her head.

“Mack?”

“Whatever you do, honey, don’t touch me.”

She clenched her teeth. Don’t say another word. Don’t move. Don’t do anything except breathe.

They stood side by side as the soft music swirled around them and the sound of crashing tree limbs exploded outside on a fairly regular basis. One moment turned to ten and ten to a hundred. Katie wasn’t sure how long they simply listened to each other breathe, each practically in rhythm with the music. A log in the fireplace burned down, and the charred pieces dropped away, making a thumping sound that startled her. When she jumped, Mack turned around, grabbed his heavy parka off the hall tree, and flung open the front door. Destry raised up, but when Mack slammed the door, the dog lay back down, apparently knowing it wasn’t time for him to go outside.