Up at Butternut Lake: A Novel (29 page)

“Don’t think of it that way,” Allie said, stroking his cheek. But Walker looked suddenly indecisive. She knew he wasn’t a man who typically suffered from a lack of confidence, not to mention paralyzing self-doubt. But she didn’t want him to overthink this, either. And she knew only one way to distract him. Fortunately, it was a pretty good way.

So she tightened her legs around his waist and kissed him again, taking his whole tongue into her mouth and sucking on it. Hard. He groaned and moved his hands down over her blue jeans back pockets, squeezing gently. Now it was her turn to groan.

He knelt down and laid her on the thick, soft living room rug in front of the fireplace, sliding his hands up under her sweater. “I was going to take you upstairs to my bedroom,” he said. “But I can see now we’re never going to make it that far.”

CHAPTER 23

Y
ou are so beautiful,” Walker said, wonderingly, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at Allie. They were still lying on the living room rug, in front of the fireplace, and he was watching the way the fire’s shadows danced over her bare skin.

Allie started to disagree, but he silenced her with a kiss.

When he finally stopped kissing her, he looked at her skin in the firelight again and mused out loud, “What do you do to make your skin so beautiful? Dip yourself in liquid gold every morning?”

“That’s exactly what I do,” Allie said, a smile playing on her lips. “Every morning, as soon as I’m done brushing my teeth.” She groped for the sheepskin throw that she had pulled off the couch at some point during their lovemaking and wrapped it securely around her naked body.

Walker watched her, amused. “It’s a little late for that kind of modesty, isn’t it? Especially since the last two hours have given me such a . . . um,
complete
knowledge of your body. And Allie? Trust me when I say that body should never be covered up again. Not if you can possibly help it.”

Allie smiled but refused to relinquish the throw. “Are you suggesting that I stop wearing clothes?”

“Only when you’re alone with me,” Walker said, running his fingers through her honey-colored hair. “Because as much as I think Butternut’s citizens would enjoy seeing you naked, I’m too selfish to share you with them.”

Allie’s lips parted and her hazel eyes darkened, and Walker knew, instinctively, he could easily coax that sheepskin throw away from her now. But at the moment, as improbable as it seemed, his desire to talk to her was even stronger than his desire to make love to her again.

“Allie,” he asked now, still stroking her gold-highlighted hair, “was tonight different than you thought it would be? Or didn’t you think about what it would be like? Between us, I mean.”

“Oh, I thought about it,” she said, with a rueful smile. “Lately, to the exclusion of almost everything else in my life.”

He shook his head in surprise. So it had been that way for her, too?

“What about you?” she asked, almost shyly. “Did you think about it, too?”

“You have no idea,” he said, with a sigh.

“How close did tonight come to what you’d imagined?”

“Oh, I missed by a mile,” he said. He stopped stroking her hair and ran a single finger down her throat to the hollow at its base. She shivered. “My imagination failed me,” he continued. “I knew making love to you would be amazing. But I didn’t know it would be
that
amazing.”

She reached up to touch him now, stroking his cheek with the back of her hand. “I couldn’t say it any better than that,” she admitted.

“There’s only one thing I’d change,” he said, his finger leaving the hollow of her neck and traveling down to where a hint of her cleavage was still visible above the throw. She squirmed a little with some combination of desire and impatience, but she didn’t loosen her grip on it. Now it was her turn to want to talk.

“What would you change?” she asked.

“Well, when I imagined it, I always imagined carrying you up to my bedroom and making love to you in my bed. The way you deserve to be made love to.”

“Well, I’m not sorry it happened here,” she said, patting the rug beside her. “We couldn’t wait, that’s all. Besides, anyone can make love in a bed. That doesn’t require a lot of imagination.”

He smiled. Maybe she had a point there. There’d certainly been no shortage of imagination in their lovemaking tonight.

“Besides,” she said, glancing around the living room. “This room is very romantic. In a north woods kind of a way. Sort of masculine and seductive at the same time.”

Walker frowned. “You mean, like a bachelor pad?”

“No, I didn’t mean that—” Allie started to say, with a little shake of her head. But Walker interrupted her.

“Look, it’s important to me that you know something, okay?”

“Okay,” Allie said.

“With the exception of my ex-wife, who lived here for four and a half months, I’ve never brought another woman here before tonight. I know you didn’t ask, but I need you to know that. There was a woman I used to see, occasionally, in Minneapolis, but I haven’t seen her since I met you that day at Pearl’s. I called her after that and told her I couldn’t see her anymore. Not in
that
way, anyway. And since that was basically our whole relationship . . .” His voice trailed off.

“Walker, it’s okay,” Allie said gently. “I know you’re not some womanizer, if that’s what you’re concerned about. If you were, the gossip mill in Butternut would be running overtime. And you don’t owe me any kind of explanation, either. Not for anything that happened before tonight. I’m sorry if I put you on the defensive.” She reached up and kissed him lightly on his lips. “I didn’t mean to.”

He felt his tensed body relax. “You didn’t put me on the defensive,” he assured her. “I wanted you to know this isn’t something I do all the time. This is different.
You’re
different.”

“You don’t think I can tell that by the way you made love to me?” Allie asked softly, still stroking his cheek.

“God, I hope so,” Walker said, bending down to kiss her.

After a moment, Allie broke away from him, then asked with a mischievous smile. “Remember what you said about making love to me in a real bed?”

He nodded.

“Well, it’s not too late. You can take me up to your room now.” She peeled the sheepskin throw away from her body and flung it casually aside.

Walker swallowed. She looked so beautiful that it almost hurt to look at her.

“I would take you there,” he said, his voice thick with desire. “But I think we missed our window of opportunity again.”

His hand reached down and cupped one of her breasts, which was golden in the firelight, except for the pink, puckered nipple, which hardened immediately under the caressing touch of his fingers.

“The problem with going upstairs,” he said slowly, savoring the anticipation of making love to her almost as much as he knew he would savor the actual sensation of it, “is that it would take at least sixty seconds to get to my bedroom. And I can’t wait that long. Not anymore.”

“There’s no reason why you should wait that long,” she said, pulling him to her and initiating another round of lovemaking, the intensity of which left them both exhausted and exhilarated at the same time.

They did eventually make it up the stairs to Walker’s bedroom. By then, the fire in the fireplace had burned down to a mound of glowing embers, and the sky was taking on the pale pink shades of early morning.

“It’s so peaceful,” Allie said softly, looking out at the mist-shrouded lake from Walker’s bedroom window. She had the sheepskin throw wrapped around her again, and her tangled hair hung loose on her bare shoulders.

“Come to bed,” Walker said, wrapping his arms around her from behind and kissing her neck in what he knew was an especially sensitive place for her.

Allie sighed, and it sounded to him like a perfect mixture of contentment and desire. She left the window and followed Walker to bed. There, they made love again, marveling at the delicious feel of the cool sheets against their bare skin.

Just as the sun was rising, Allie fell asleep. Walker knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, so instead he watched her sleep. She looked so young, he thought, her face relaxed in sleep, her honey-colored hair charmingly tumbled around on the pillow.

But in her own way, he knew, she was very mature. Far more mature than he was. Not only had she experienced more loss in her life than he had, but she’d had to assume more responsibility, too. Managing a successful business, as he’d done, was one thing. But being single-handedly responsible for a child? That was another thing.

He felt a stab of guilt then, thinking about how tired she’d be today. He could go back to sleep when she left. She’d have a whole day ahead of her with an energetic five-year-old.

So he resisted the urge to do what he wanted to do now—which was to run a finger down the inside of one of her thighs. The gesture, he knew, would wake her up immediately. And lead to more lovemaking. He had never been with a woman before whose body was so immediately responsive to his own touch. It was incredibly flattering. And deeply arousing.

He swallowed, hard, trying to rein in his own desire. They’d already made love four times, but he was still hungry for her. She’d reawakened his inner sixteen-year-old and brought him back to a time in his life when his sexual needs were seemingly inexhaustible and indefatigable.

But she needed to sleep. When she did wake up, there would be enough time to make love again. So he settled back on the pillows, closed his eyes, and listened to the steady rhythm of her breathing. He felt, too, the delicious warmth emanating off her naked body.

He lay that way until he felt a new sensation. An unfamiliar sensation. It started with a quickening of his pulse and was followed by a nameless feeling that settled in his ribs. It was a tightness, a squeezing sensation, that made him feel as if his breath were being forced out of him. He wondered, for one wild moment, if there could be something physically wrong with him. Was he having a heart attack? Or a stroke? But neither one was likely. He was thirty-five years old, and, as far as he knew, in perfect health.

It was more likely that whatever he was feeling was psychosomatic. The physical manifestation of some feeling he’d gotten good at ignoring. Or denying. Or keeping at a safe distance.

And that emotion, he knew, was fear.

He’d been afraid before, of course. Nobody could live thirty-five years without being afraid. But there were different kinds of fear, obviously.

He thought about Allie’s late husband, fighting a war half a world away, under attack by enemy combatants. That was a special kind of fear, reserved for people brave enough to put themselves in almost impossibly dangerous situations. He’d never felt that kind of fear before.

But he’d felt other kinds of fear. Once, when he and his brother were teenagers, they’d taken an aluminum canoe out on a lake on an overcast summer afternoon and gotten caught in an electrical storm. He’d felt fear then. He’d felt it again, a few winters ago, driving up here late one night. His truck had skidded out on an icy road, and he’d narrowly missed hitting a tree. And then, last spring, he’d been hiking in the woods at dusk, and he’d accidentally gotten between a mother bear and her two cubs. He’d thought, for a second, that she was going to charge him, and he’d been afraid.

But watching Allie now, he realized he’d never been afraid like this before. Lightning, an icy road, an irritable bear—none of them had even come close to making him this afraid. Because now, for the first time in his life, he was in love. And it was terrifying.

Then again, for the first time in a long time, he was thinking clearly. Lying here, watching Allie sleep, he knew exactly what he needed to do. He just didn’t know if he was brave enough to do it.

CHAPTER 24

A
llie, you look different,” Sara Gage said thoughtfully, studying her across the desk in the back office of the Pine Cone Gallery. Sara was at the computer, and Allie was waiting for instructions on hanging a new collection of watercolor paintings by a local artist Sara had recently discovered.