Man From Tennessee

Chapter Two

It was a New Year’s Eve party at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club on Lake Saint Claire. The ballroom was crowded, an overwhelming assault on the senses of festive lights and colorful couture gowns, French perfumes and champagne. A band in tuxedos played loudly over the high-pitched laughter, and increasingly boisterous conversation. The younger set of women were as scantily dressed as possible; the older, richly ornate in jewels and brocades.

Trisha wore a pale blue floor-length gown that had cost the earth and did not suit the gathering at all. Medieval in design, the velvet came to a long low V at her wrists and ruffled demurely at the neck, draping loosely over her slim figure. She looked like an innocent princess, but that wasn’t a picture that belonged in the sophisticated world of Grosse Pointe.

Her uncle had deserted her upon their arrival, which was not unexpected. It was typical of how he had raised her once her parents had died. Her uncle was not ungenerous; the material advantages were always there. But he was cold and indifferent far beyond the point of mere insensitivity. As a result Trisha was painfully shy and almost unforgivably naive for a girl of nineteen, a dreamer in mind and in looks.

The yacht club had dozens of rooms beyond the ballroom. There was a choice of three bands, a place to play poker, a room for conversation and plenty of champagne everywhere. She wandered about slowly, feeling lost and uncomfortable. She hadn’t wanted to come. At last she ventured to the third floor of the club, seeking refuge from the constant noise. Tentatively she opened a door to a dim, quiet room. The only light was from the moon, which streamed in through the windows at the far end of the room, overlooking the ice-encrusted lake.

“Close it!”

She jumped in shock at the reverberating command that came from nowhere.

“I said close it!”

She closed it quickly, her heart beating wildly. Hours later she had wondered why she hadn’t had the sense to close the door with herself on the opposite side. As it was, the party noise dulled to a distant hum and she leaned against the door, trying to fathom where the voice was coming from.

“Over here.”

Cautiously she moved closer until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. When he struck a match to light a cigarette she was startled and her imagination worked overtime: it was surely the devil’s face. He was stretched half out on the floor, leaning lazily against the wall, the cigarette in his one hand and a drink-and bottle-on the floor beside him.

There was no question that someone had made a terrible mistake trying to fit him out in powder blue. Black was clearly his color. He practically had more legs than there was carpet space and the breadth of his shoulders was just as daunting. The giant came equipped with a wicked pair of bushy eyebrows and dark eyes that radiated danger. She smiled politely and backed up as rapidly as her stiff legs would allow until she bumped into something, and he started laughing.

“I just bite necks, and that’s only when there’s a full moon. Although come to think of it…” He motioned to the window and the full white moon sitting low over the lake. “Never mind. Come and sit down if you’re here to escape from that madhouse.”

“Just for a minute,” she said weakly, with a careful glance to ensure she knew exactly where the door was. When she turned back he was smiling, and that soft sensual smile mesmerized her as he motioned her closer. Captivated, a bit frightened, she knelt on the carpet a little distance from him.

“You have blue eyes, don’t you?” he asked idly as he poured her a glass of the amber-colored liquor.

She nodded, staring at the bottle.

“I’m not drunk,” he told her perceptively. “They’re serving champagne downstairs and I don’t drink it. This is my second whiskey-from the look of you, your first.”

She sipped at his whiskey, tiny sips so she wouldn’t gag. Quiet reigned for a long time. She found herself unable to stop staring at him, aware but not self-conscious that he was studying her just as intently. She saw a brooding man, intense and private. Arrestingly attractive though not really at all handsome. Disturbingly sexual and comfortable with power. “Why?” she asked quietly.

“Pardon?”

“Why are you getting drunk?”

He twirled the liquid in his glass, staring at her. “It’s New Year’s Eve.”

She shook her head. “That’s why they’re drinking.” She motioned downstairs. “That’s not why you are. Of course it’s none of my business. For that matter if you want me to go…” She made to get up again but his long arm reached out, a mammoth hand enclosing hers in a small, unexpectedly sensual little prison.

“Stay.” The please was there, though he didn’t say it. She felt loneliness-something she understood very well. She had the impulse to flee. This man spelled danger. She was out of her league. But the urge faded and she had the strange desire to comfort and soothe.

He took so long to answer that she was certain he wasn’t going to. When he did, his voice was gruff and impatient. “I’ve just had enough of cement and pollution…of using people like rungs on a ladder.” He was looking out over the lake, not at her. “But in a year or two I very well may not care anymore. There was an article in yesterday’s paper. My company, taking over another. A ‘financial coup’ they labeled it.” He shook his head. “What it was was taking advantage of another man when he’s down.”

He talked-a world completely foreign to her, but it didn’t matter. She was listening to him on another level entirely. So cynical, so hard, the words spit out from him as if he’d forgotten how to talk about his feelings. “Don’t do it then,” she said simply. “Do something else. Something that you want-that you need.”

“God, you sound young,” he said dryly. He reached beside him to switch on a small table lamp. She felt his eyes sweep over her as if they were fingers, assessing the quality of her dress, her hair, her skin. She shivered uncomfortably, wary of the sensual appraisal again and yet strangely compelled to sit still for it. He had admitted he was a predator, but she did not feel like prey. His face seemed to soften the more he stared. “It isn’t just young in years, is it?” he asked, probing quietly. “It’s in those bright eyes. We still believe in rainbows, do we? Happy endings? Love?”

She lifted her chin. “I get up every day glad to be alive. How about you?”

He hesitated, then chuckled dryly. “Perhaps there’s a case for naiveté.”

His insolence sparked a rare spurt of temper. “Mister-whatever your name is-I saw both my parents killed five years ago in a car crash. Don’t you go telling me I don’t know what life’s about. I’d still rather look up than down any day. It’s a question of choice. If you haven’t made it, I feel sorry for you!”

The door snapped open at the far end of the room; two drunken revelers trying to find privacy. “Get out of here,” the stranger snapped, making Trisha jump warily at the instant autocratic order in his voice. They left promptly, and Trisha, suddenly uneasy, stirred to get up.

“Stay.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Stay. I have a mountain I want to tell you about. If you’re so young that you still believe in dreams you should like hearing about it.”

She fell in love hearing about it. At midnight there were New Year’s fireworks, shouts and a hullabaloo from below that destroyed their conversation. The tall dark man stopped talking, pulled her up from her sitting position and held her hand as they watched the fireworks over Lake Saint Clair from the window. When he turned to her finally, every instinct already guessed what he was going to do. The dark grave look in his eyes was oddly possessive, searing as his face moved closer. The secrets shared, of dreams both wanted to believe in, felt like the kiss that happened. She had never felt as protected as she did with his arms around her, the first sweet yearnings of desire burning inside of her.

Sometime after that the raucous dance music slowed and mellowed for the tired, thinning crowd below. Old nostalgic love songs floated into the hushed dark room. For two hours they danced alone in the stillness. On occasion he would lift her head and just look at her, and she held nothing back in the way she looked back at him. She wasn’t so young that she didn’t realize she could be hurt; she just didn’t care. He was a man of dreams, a man to protect as she had never felt protected. She felt cherished, desired. She curled close like a kitten, her arms around his waist, her forehead against the soft new bristle of beard forming on his chin at the late hour.

Three weeks later he met with her uncle, while Trisha waited outside the study wringing her hands. The wedding was hastily planned. But there was no choice. He had come to the breaking point in his executive world. A merger had been accomplished that would move him from the president’s chair to the chairman’s seat, permitting him to maintain his finger in all the Lowery pies but enabling him to relinquish direct control. It was his chance. She understood. He was free, and he wasn’t willing to wait any longer for anything he really wanted. If she really believed in his dream of the mountains, she had to go with him now. There would be no second chances with a man like Kern.

It was after midnight when Kern emerged alone and angry from her uncle’s study. He caught her up in that dark hall and pressed his mouth on hers until her neck ached and she felt dizzy and frightened and deliciously possessed. When he let her go she held on to his arms, too shy even to look at him. “I can’t get you out of this house soon enough, Tish,” he said gratingly. “Your uncle’s got a lot to answer for as far as you’re concerned, the cold-blooded…” He shook his head, and his voice lowered, using the gentler tone he always used with her. “I need you, Tish. You’re pure nectar to me, almost too pure… I know it’s too soon for you, but you’re better off with me than where you are now. We’ll make it work. I know you’re young, Tish, but I can’t wait. Won’t…”

Kern had been impatient through the ceremony, impatient with his mother, impatient still to be in the city they were leaving on the morrow. He had piled two weeks of work into a single week. She understood his urgency, but he was different…a stranger. Kern was used to making mountains move at the snap of his fingers, but Tish knew only the quieter, gentler man.

The honeymoon suite was lavish, with thick gold carpeting and filled with flowers. They had a view of the Detroit River at night. He had ordered a late dinner to be sent up to the room and then turned around and canceled it. He had sat on the bed and watched her standing still at the window, looking out. In the pale pink silky dress, her profile delicate, her shining gold hair hanging almost to her waist, her unsureness was a fragile and lovely portrait to him. “Come here, Tish.” She had looked at him with frozen eyes, and he had smiled, motioning her closer. “It will be all right.” He had come to her, bent her cheek to his chest and slowly unzipped the dress, kissing her forehead when he felt her trembling. “I love you, Tish…it’s going to be all right…”

But it wasn’t. Kern was still impatient and she knew it. She lost all of her confidence with her clothes, and Kern, formidable in his tailored suits, stripped off his civilized veneer when he took them off. Suddenly there was so much of him all at once, so much intimacy all at once. Wanting desperately to please him and not having the least idea how, she felt more sick than sensual, and Kern had been on fire. A primitive wildfire she had never guessed at was inside him, earthy in lust, with none of the control she had seen in him before.

The pain was a shock and she had struggled mindlessly to get away from the stranger that was Kern. He had hushed her, soothed her, tried to be gentle, but she sensed he was unhappy with her responses. And she couldn’t blame him. When it was over, she knew it hadn’t been right and was almost out of her mind with unhappiness, for his sake, for theirs. Until then she had a tentative but very optimistic confidence that she was a mate for Kern, that he needed her softness and gentle understanding to bring him strength, to be the kind of man he wanted to be. After that it was downhill.

The mountain was fantastically beautiful, better than her dream, but living there had been a nightmare. There was only a cold-water well that had to be pumped and a cabin to camp out in while Kern set about building the house. He didn’t want to live off the Lowerys so he set up a campground for the trailer trade, in order for them to be self-sufficient. It was all he wanted; the hard work didn’t daunt him. He was happy. Happy with everything but his new wife.

She was becoming obsessively sure of that. He worked sixteen-hour days in which she barely saw him. Rationally she understood it would have to be that way at the start. Emotionally she couldn’t cope. She didn’t know how to keep house in the primitive conditions. She didn’t know how to cook, much less on a wood stove. She was painfully shy with the strangers and local people. And she hadn’t been prepared for the snakes and bears. By the end of the day she was as exhausted as he, and when they came together at night she was frozen with the fear that she wouldn’t please him. Passion and anxiety were not a blend that went well together, and every morning she looked up at the tall, virile, healthy man that was her husband and saw his eyes shying away from her.

It was then that she had walked out. Emotionally destroyed, a bundle of inadequacy, a pale wraith of the fragile loveliness she once was. All the pieces had to be put back together because she was shattered, and it had taken a long time. She had not pursued a divorce. She didn’t want that piece of paper that would have given her her freedom. The thin band of gold had stayed on her finger. Not because she had any illusions of getting back with Kern, but because it served as a protection and kept other men away.

With Julia’s help in the beginning she had made it on her own. She was proud of her job and the life she had made for herself. The confidence she had in herself was real this time, not based on dreams.

The kettle whistled, and Trisha removed it from the burner. Just for a moment, seeing Kern hurt had brought back the old memories of a strong man who had his moments of vulnerability, who she had believed even needed her. Of course he really didn’t then and he certainly didn’t now.

“Damn it. I’ve been trying to get my mother here for ages. But not now, Tish.”

Trisha was reaching into the refrigerator. She straightened at the sound of his voice, bringing out a package of cheese. “So you talked to her.” She kept her face averted, slicing the cheese wafer-thin, making tiny sandwiches for Julia that she knew would please.

“I told her there was nothing wrong with me. I don’t understand why she had to hightail it out here from Grosse Pointe, and I don’t understand why she looks so awful. I just spoke to her on the phone last Sunday. She was ‘marvelous, darling,’” Kern quoted.

Trisha piled the little quarter sandwiches on a tray and bent to seek some sort of relish from the fridge plus parsley and olives, which Julia loved. “She fibs, Kern. Pit her against the average four-year-old and you could probably have a contest,” Trisha said calmly.

His smile was swift, like fresh air. She caught just a glimpse of it as she turned back to the tray. The deep-set gray eyes had almost pinned hers, and Trisha thought how like the mountain cats he was. The easy, sure movements. The eyes always alert. The subtlety of muscle cloaked in that golden skin of his. The scars and bandages took nothing away from him but added an unexpected illusion of human frailty. She felt disturbed as he watched her making the tea. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she added finally.

“Well, I can’t handle her now. People are flooding into the camp this season and I’m behind because of the ridiculous accident. Sit down for a minute, will you?” He scraped back a kitchen chair and waited.

She didn’t want to sit. She wanted to take the tray back to Julia and leave, quickly, but she couldn’t justify that kind of cowardice in her own mind. After pouring two cups of coffee, her own half full, she took the chair across from him.

“You’re going to have to stay until she’s ready to go home.”

It was what she had planned all along, but it sounded different coming from Kern, as if what he was talking about was staying with him. “Well, of course. After I have Julia settled, I’m going down to Gatlinburg to get a motel-”

“There’s three bedrooms upstairs. Don’t be ridiculous.” He lifted the cup and took a long sip of the bitter hot coffee, staring at her over the rim. “I barely recognized you when you walked in,” he said quietly. “I understand you’ve got quite an impressive job these days.”

“An assistant buyer at Markham’s is hardly impressive, Kern. But I like it,” she murmured, stirring a spoon into the coffee she didn’t really want.

“You went to school at night for two years. Started as a salesclerk. I’d call it impressive to start from nowhere and end up at the place you are. Mother told me you’ve got your own place, close to the river,” he continued. “When I first met you I never thought you’d be happy living in the city, but you’re right in the heart of it, aren’t you? And those rents aren’t inexpensive.”

“Yes,” she said flatly. So he had made a point of knowing what she’d been up to. Why? Rapidly she switched the subject. “How badly were you hurt? It was a car accident, wasn’t it?”

He grimaced. “The mountain roads weren’t meant for drag racers. It was a couple of kids. One of them got a broken leg and the other lost a few teeth. It could have been worse.”

“And what about you?”

“A few cuts and scrapes. Nothing.”

The scar on his forehead and bandaged wrist weren’t “nothing.” Julia had spoken of a concussion and broken ribs. Still, it was typical of Kern to downplay his own hurts, and as far as wanting to share with her-well, of course he wouldn’t. “The camp looks double the size it was before. And the house…”

“Naturally, it’s finished,” Kern said curtly. “You stayed with mother for a time after you left?”

Unconsciously she reached to smooth back a tendril of hair that brushed her cheek. “Yes,” she admitted a little ruefully. “I certainly didn’t intend to. When Uncle Nate moved from Grosse Pointe to California, he left a few boxes of my things with Julia, because she was closer-”

“And it was a lot less trouble than having to mail them here,” Kern interrupted dryly. “God forbid he should ever have had to go out of his way for you.”

Trisha gave a little shrug, surprised he had remembered her uncle at all. “It wasn’t his fault he had an orphan thrust on him when my parents died. I hadn’t planned to go back to live with him nor your mother. It was just a question of going to her house to pick up my things. But the day I went it was raining and I had a halfhearted case of flu. The next thing I knew-”

“Mother had taken you over.”

“With appalling speed.” Trisha shook her head. “Well, I was ill, and then later it was a question of getting on my feet with a job. Talking to Julia about my leaving was like arguing with a brick wall. But whether or not you believe me, Kern, I grew to care for her very much and still do. Once I got past that formidable exterior…” She stopped, rather appalled that she was telling him so much so easily.

Kern leaned forward. “Go on,” he said, encouraging her.

“Well…I invited her to dinner after I was set up in the apartment. She was so shocked-as if she thought I’d just forget her once I left. Apart from my being an indifferent cook at best in those days, I don’t think anyone had had the nerve to serve Julia spaghetti in years. Much less invite her to a place decorated in early attic,” Trisha said dryly. “I remembered that she was fussy about salad dressings so I made a Jell-O molded salad. No one can mess up one of those. Only…”

The corner of his mouth was twitching. She felt an odd stirring inside to see that slash of a smile. “Go on.”

“I had molded it beautifully,” Trisha said frankly. “Only I seemed to have molded in the spoon I’d stirred it with. She never said a word. When she offered to serve the salad I just said yes, and it was only after she was gone and I was cleaning up that I saw she had carved very carefully around the spoon…”

He had such a delicious chuckle, throaty and vibrant. Trisha smiled back, an unexpected warmth curling all through her at the sound of him. His eyes softened in laughter, the corners crinkling in little fan lines, and when he stopped smiling the sensual softness was still there when he looked at her.

“Anyway, she took care of me for a time, and I found myself reversing the role, taking care of Julia from time to time. I didn’t think you’d mind, Kern. Julia never even brought up the two of us. And when she was determined to come down here and see you, I couldn’t say no to her.”

Kern stood up to take his empty coffee cup to the sink. She’d deliberately tried to provoke his laughter with the silly little story, and she had. Five years ago there was none, and suddenly his laughter was a reminder of how they might have related to each other. She stood up, too, and took a breath.

“Well, I’d better get this tray to your mother,” she said briskly. “I may just stay here tonight, Kern, if you really don’t mind. Then by morning if Julia’s better I can have us both out of your hair quickly-”

The vise of his fingers suddenly grasped her wrist. Her shocked face stared up in amazement at his instant change in mood. Hawk eyes seared hers. “So we managed fifteen minutes of casual conversation. We almost sound like old friends, Tish,” he said sarcastically. “Very cool, very relaxed, very poised, Trisha. Not at all the way you used to be!”

His work-roughened hand did odd things to the soft skin of her own. “It’s still there, I see. I saw it the minute you came in.”

The slim gold band seemed to wink at both of them. For a moment she looked up at Kern, her eyes like two blue ink drops on snow. Her face had whitened, not because of the sudden rough contact, but because her senses were unexpectedly assaulted by the closeness of him. He was such a sexual man. The piratelike beard enclosing a mouth that was incredibly smooth-textured. The outdoor scent that was uniquely a part of him. The careless array of thick black hair around a face whose expression was never careless, always alert, always perceptive…

He released his hold. “I waited for you to apply for a divorce.”

“I thought you would, Kern. In the beginning I didn’t have the money for it, and…it never really mattered, not when we both knew it was over. I-” Her voice was barely audible. The longer she stared at him, the more she felt mesmerized by the gray light of his eyes, strangely soft for an instant and sad. Bitterly sad for what they both wanted from each other once, and Trisha ached to be closer suddenly, to reach out and just hold him, and be held.

There was a sharp rap on the door behind her, and Kern stepped around her to answer it.

“Sorry I’m late, honey. I-oh!”

The woman had her arms extended with the obvious intention of giving Kern a hug of greeting, until she caught sight of Trisha standing there. It did not take thirty seconds for the scene to gel in Trisha’s mind. If Kern had broken every limb there would still have been no need for Julia to come help. He was obviously being well taken care of.

The lady was a well-curved Amazon with the black eyes and black hair of their Cherokee neighbors. Tight jeans were molded over long legs. A red T-shirt, worn braless, hid nothing of her voluptuous figure, and an incredibly long swath of loose hair flowed to her waist. Her skin was the bronze of an outdoor woman…a mountain woman. A very sexy woman in a natural way, with probably a few years over Trisha. At that particular moment very little seemed to matter.

Trisha swallowed the ridiculous lump in her throat and stepped forward with a slim hand extended in greeting. “I’m Trisha Lowery,” she said pleasantly. “An unexpected visitor of Kern’s.”

“Rhea Andreas.” The woman acknowledged the handshake with another careful look at Kern. “I was coming to fix Kern’s dinner, but-”

“I was wondering how he managed without his right hand,” Trisha said cheerfully as she picked up Julia’s tray. “It was nice meeting you, Rhea. I’m on my way-out of the way.”

“Tish-”

“Have a good dinner,” she urged, and with a bright smile aimed somewhere between the two of them, briskly headed out the door and back to Julia’s room.

“I think we’d better plan on leaving first thing in the morning,” Trisha said promptly, as she angled the tray onto Julia’s lap.