Man From Tennessee

Chapter Five

Trisha did not wake until nine, a late hour in this household, so she was not surprised to find the house empty and no sign of Kern when she went downstairs. Dressed in the new jeans and shirt, with a battered pair of tennis shoes she’d remembered to throw into her suitcase, she gulped down half a cup of coffee and carted a sweet roll outside with her.

She was determined to work herself into a better frame of mind. Last night she had slept long and hard, but dreams had haunted her. Kern’s lovemaking had been rapturously consummated in one dream; yet in another he had thrown the name of tease at her, which churned like pain inside. In a third dream he had repeated over and over, “There’s only one way it can end for us, Tish. In bed. I can get you out of my system so easily if I see once and for all how cold and ungiving a woman you are!”

Daylight had come as a relief. She felt a need to do something physical to distract her from the increasing confusion she felt around Kern. Brushing crumbs off her hands from the roll, she shoved them in her back pockets and walked.

Kern’s land was a unique blend of landscapes. At the highest level was the spruce and fir forest, dense and abundant with berries at this time of the year, trillium sometimes blanketing a long stretch of forest floor. Some of the most spectacular waterfalls were above those areas he kept private, one of which she knew was uniquely special to any place on earth, yet it was not where she headed.

Below the fir-tipped peaks was the kind of land the campers came for, the cove-hardwood forest the region was famous for. It was magical to walk through. The huge tree trunks, some so wide four or five men couldn’t span their arms around them, stretched to the sky, forming leafy umbrellas high above her head. Yellow poplar, oak, basswood, hemlock-she remembered only a few of the names. Sunlight dappled down in long dusty streaks, shining on dogwood and rhododendron and an incredible number of wildflowers that only flourished in this protected area. Soft mosses covering the rich dark earth felt spongy beneath her feet.

An unusual wistfulness touched her expression as she walked. The city was her life now. She had roots established and a frenetically paced job that usually suited her well. But unwillingly, she could too easily remember that it wasn’t a cement-and-computer world where she’d wanted to raise her children, but here, with nature’s values and nature’s laws.

A hot whispering breeze brushed against her checks as she continued on, trailing a sprawling pattern of delicate white mountain laurel that bordered the path. Half an hour later she glimpsed the roof of Kern’s horse barn, and a wry smile touched her lips. Out of simple curiosity she headed that way. It was very dark inside, and the smells seemed doubly pervasive because of it. Trisha loved the smell of leather that was well cared for and recently polished, fresh hay and the scent of the horses themselves.

She noticed that two stalls were empty and suspected that either Kern or Jack had rented the horses out to campers. One horse stomped his feet at the sound of the stranger entering; another let out a plaintive whinny, bored after yesterday’s rain and inactivity. She stroked the silky necks as she ambled by. Four of the horses she’d never seen before, but of course Kern would have expanded his stock in five years.

“Would you ride with me?”

Trisha whirled, startled by the sudden tiny voice that seemed to come from nowhere. “Hello,” she offered cheerfully to the pigtailed little blonde dejectedly leaning against the stable door. She recognized the child from breakfast the day before. “It’s Georgia, isn’t it?”

The child nodded. “Would you go for a little ride with me?” she requested again. “My mom’s sick, and my dad promised but now he can’t. I can ride real good, but no one will let me go alone.”

Trisha crouched down to be more on a level with the big sad eyes. “Oh, I’d love to, honey, but I’m not very good with horses. I wouldn’t even know how to saddle one.”

The big blue eyes fluttered wide with hope. “You don’t need saddles. You just put on a big blanket. We could just go for a little while. Mr. Jack’ll say okay, and so will my daddy. Please? Oh, please?”

“Honey, I just can’t…”

One huge crystal of a tear formed in the child’s eye and slowly dribbled down her cheek. Trisha sighed. The first time she had gotten on a horse she had set off at an instant gallop and all too soon found herself head over heels, rolling on the ground. Her relationship with horses from then on had been never to travel in the direction of the stables without sugar, carrots or apples, all of which she was willing to deliver with crooning words and petting, and all from the other side of the wooden gates.

Georgia’s mother was still in her nightgown and nursing a cold. Her father was making tea for his wife. Trisha went into humorous detail as to her utter lack of experience with horses, her proven lack of control over them, and the more relevant fact that Georgia was their only daughter. The Shearers were clearly more interested-and grateful-in the idea of a babysitter.

And Jack proved equally helpful, bustling promptly ahead of them to put the reins and blanket on a huge roan at the far end of the stables. “Kern already told me to give you any help you wanted if you wandered down here. I thought he said for sure you wouldn’t be near the horses, but it doesn’t matter. Mildred’s just a lamb, and I’ll show you a good easy trail to follow. You won’t run into any trouble. If you’re worried at all, though, I’ll get a mount and go with you. Kern said-”

“No, thank you,” Trisha said firmly, aware of the blonde’s admiring look. She grinned. “Some humiliations are better faced alone. A lamb, you say?”

“Really, she’s very gentle.”

It was not as if she had other plans for the morning, and a short trip around the campgrounds wasn’t going to kill her. Georgia comfortably vaulted in front like a pro, and Jack helped Trisha slide on just behind her.

Three hours later Trisha snail-paced the walk to Kern’s with a gamboling Georgia at her side, seeking lunch. Hurrying was not the order of the day. Unconsciously she stiffened still further at the sight of Kern at the door, his arms folded across his chest as if he had been waiting. His eyes narrowed only momentarily on the child and then rested on Trisha, who was making a monumental effort to walk normally.

“I was about to send out a search party for you. There was a time you wouldn’t go a quarter mile off the trail on your own, bright eyes; and in this country, if you haven’t forgotten, one leaves word before just taking off for hours at a time.”

“It never occurred to me that you would be worried,” she answered honestly, not at all pleased that just looking at him was enough to promote an image of last night, of steel-gray eyes softened in passion. She swept past him to the cool bright kitchen with the child in hand, all too aware he was radiating both impatience and exasperation. “I’m sorry, Kern. I knew you were busy and I never planned on being in your way. Jack knew where we were. Have you had lunch?”

“I would have, but I kept expecting you to come in. Rhea had been coming over to fix meals, but somehow she’s under the impression that she’s not wanted here for the moment. I wonder who could conceivably have given her that idea.”

It didn’t seem particularly wise to answer that. She ran a quick brush through her hair and washed her hands in the bathroom, returning to the kitchen to make sandwiches, with Georgia perched on the counter next to her. It was Georgia who put cheese, meat and lettuce to the bread slices. The first finished product, wobbly though it was, was presented proudly to “Mr. Kern,” who now sat in a kitchen chair, watching both of them.

“I’ve never been fond of bolo-” Kern started to say, and was quelled at the pride in the five-year-old’s eyes.

Trisha was ridiculously proud of him for rallying. “Thank you, honey,” he told her. The child beamed. “Have you been with Trisha all morning?”

Georgia nodded shyly.

“Then would you mind telling me, honey, where the hell-”

“Kern!”

“Where the two of you have been for the last four hours?” he amended.

Georgia’s sandwiches were decorated and cut to look like faces, raisins for eyes and carrot curls for smiles. The child sat next to Kern. Trisha had no intention of sitting anywhere. Ever. In the next life there were be no horses, certainly not bony ones. She munched as she continued working, slicing and paring vegetables; there was enough time to make a decent soup for Mrs. Shearer’s evening meal.

“We’ve been riding,” Georgia said shyly.

“Have you?” Kern said, as if he were properly impressed. His glance at Trisha reminded her that he knew very well her feeling for horses.

“T’sha rode behind me,” Georgia explained seriously. “We rode all over the whole mountains. Mildred didn’t want to go home. I didn’t either. And Daddy said T’sha could have me all day. I didn’t even fall off once.”

“And T’sha?” Kern prompted with equal gravity.

“We were going up this huge mountain and T’sha slid off his back. It took ages and ages to get her back on again.”

“Did it now?”

“We picked berries,” Georgia continued, with growing confidence in the tall, fierce-looking man who seemed remarkably interested in her morning. “Wild berries. And Mildred ran away. Boy, can she go! I helped T’sha catch her.”

Trisha burst out laughing. “Some help! I did the running and you called out between mouthfuls of berries.” She swiped at Georgia’s face, then at the counter and table, clearing up swiftly and efficiently. She resisted the urge to wipe off Kern’s lazy grin as well.

“I’m beginning to get the feeling there’s a reason you’re not sitting down for your lunch, Tish,” Kern drawled.

“Are you?”

“Could I touch your beard?” Georgia requested. “I’ve never touched a beard.”

His eyebrows rose slightly at the request, but he obligingly bent down.

“Kind of scratchy,” Georgia judged.

“I can’t shave with my left hand,” he said as justification. “But in another day or so-”

“Oh, keep it, Kern,” Trisha said impulsively, and then could have bitten her tongue. What was it to her if he were clean-shaven or bearded, and the slate-gray eyes were suddenly on her like a floodlight. “Or shave it off. As you like, of course,” she added with careful indifference.

“So you suddenly have a liking for beards, do you?”

“No, I-”

“Suddenly you put together an old-fashioned mountain breakfast in fifteen minutes flat. I see you’ve got your makeup off and a smudge of dirt on your jeans. And up on a horse again…” He shook his head in mocking disbelief, but his eyes held a gleam in them that reflected last night’s memories. Those things were not the only things that had changed in Trisha. “If you don’t watch it, you might just fall in love with the mountain life all over again, Tish-”

“You must not have been listening to the story,” she said stiffly. “If you needed proof I’m a city girl, Kern, all you had to do was hear how I fell off the most placid ‘lamb’ in your stables!”

Kern stood up, stretching lazily. “Would you like a good rubdown, bright eyes? If you’re complaining of stiff muscles…” His eyes took in the fit of her snug pair of jeans, the way it would all fit together without the pair of jeans. Unwillingly Trisha could feel a faint color escape to her cheeks, imagining, as he meant her to, his palms intimately working on…muscles.

“There’s no need,” she said crisply. “Besides, right after I finish here I’m taking Georgia’s mother some soup. She isn’t feeling well, and after that-”

After that she’d taken one look at the camp’s log-cabin headquarters, and decided to make it the afternoon’s project. She had to have something to do with herself for two days, and the need for cleanup was a direct measure of Kern’s inability to get around since his accident. Jack certainly hadn’t objected to the idea; he had all but thrown his arms around her at the offer to reorganize the chaos of files and first-aid supplies and camping equipment.

“Somehow I’m not surprised you managed to make arrangements to be away from here for the afternoon,” Kern said dryly. “I thought you’d choose shopping, though, Tish. It’s a much farther distance to town.” He waited, but she offered no reply. “Rhea’s invited the two of us over for dinner at seven.”

Trisha turned from the door where Georgia was already headed out, her back suddenly stiff. “Well, you go, of course,” she said casually. “I don’t think I will, Kern. By then I’ll be tired.”

He was silent for a moment, and she looked back at him, unable to read the oddly disturbed look in his eyes. “That’s what you want, Tish?” he said deliberately.

“I-yes, of course it is.” To think of Kern with another woman…but of course it was the only answer she could give. She was not part of his life anymore; he wasn’t even asking her to be part of his life again. He was only asking her to sleep with him, and she had to be certain he understood she wasn’t interested.

It was past nine. About a dozen people were stretched out lazily around the campfire, all of them more or less in the same condition: grubby, sleepy and sated from the community dinner cooked on the fire not an hour before. Trisha had a half-full can of beer in her hand-she never drank beer-and her tousled blonde head and shoulders were slumped against a huge old log, with Jack on one side of her and little Georgia on the other. She surveyed her stretched-out legs and the absolutely filthy appearance of her jeans with rueful amusement, half listening to the lazy conversations around her. Jack had just put down an old country fiddle that seemed to know all the old Appalachian hill songs, and she was still humming a few in her brain, too tired even to put on her shoes.

“It was a bear and her two cubs, I swear it was…you’ve never seen anyone run so fast in your entire life…”

“The trout were just jumping for the bait…”

The stories were getting better as the hour was getting later. The smoke from the fire curled in a lazy spiral straight up the cloak of trees surrounding them, making a natural tepee. The night was sleepy warm, and she could hear the hooting of an owl in the distance.

“What I’d give for a life like this all the time,” a short, stoop-shouldered man murmured from the distance. “Hey, Jack, what do you have to do around here to buy a piece of ground?”

Jack stirred, edging up to a sitting position beside Trisha. “The way I understand it, there isn’t any land for sale around the Smokies. The government gets first shot, unless it’s an issue of direct inheritance. It was Kern’s grandfather who willed this to him, as I understand it.” He looked to Trisha for confirmation, who simply nodded, her eyes half closed as she stared into the fire.

“I just read the park has some 516,000 acres. I wouldn’t think anybody’d need more than that,” someone else said.

“Well, from here, we can’t protect enough land like this,” came another lazy voice from the far reaches of the fire. “I’ve been to the Rockies and I’ve been to the Tetons. Each mountain area’s got its own flavor-this one isn’t the grandeur, it’s the richness. You just can’t get tired of it; there’s more different colors of green than an artist could come up with; there’s the change in seasons and no end to the wildlife. I keep wondering how God even came up with it…”

Smiling, Trisha half sat up, curling up her knees and resting her arms across them. Her soft-spoken voice seemed part of the night, gentle, warm and sensual. “There’s a Cherokee legend about how these mountains came into being. The Indians say that at the beginning of the world everything lived in the sky, all the animals and the people. The world was just an ocean, no land, but unfortunately it got to be crowded up there in the sky, so the Cherokees sent down a little water beetle just to check out the possibilities. Well, the beetle dove to the bottom of the water and brought up mud and more mud, and finally that mud burgeoned up to form some land. But it was still too soft for anyone to live on, so the people sent down a giant buzzard to find a dry spot, but he became tired about the time he was over what was to be Cherokee country. His wings were flapping when he sunk down on the land, and all that flapping dried the mud in the pattern of mountains and valleys…”

“These mountains and valleys, they say.” Kern’s voice vibrated low as he wended his way through the lazy pairs of legs to get to her side. Through a chorus of greetings he seemed to be looking only at her, and before she was even aware of it, Jack had obligingly moved and made a place for him next to Trisha. Long, jeaned legs suddenly stretched out next to her. An afternoon and evening of Jack’s subtle admiration invoked none of the disturbing sensations that Kern’s presence instantly did. Ebony hair and beard, ebony eyes by firelight-he was the pirate who savored his treasure, this land and its richness. Savored, protected, cherished, would kill to keep, she thought whimsically.

“Tish used to love the old Cherokee legends. Has she told you about the Little People yet? They’re the keepers of history to the Cherokee, the spirits who come out only at night to share the legends and songs that are too old for any man to remember.”

Helplessly she found herself turning to look at him. His deep voice was droning out stories for the others, but his eyes captured hers. For a long unbroken moment there were only two of them, and Kern was the scarred pirate, with a physical power no man could match and a devil fire in his eyes when he looked at her. And for that moment she was his golden treasure, fragile, unable to deny his right to take and hold-and keep. The image held for as long as he stared at her, so strong that she could feel the change in her heartbeat, as real as the night wind that touched her skin. Answering someone’s question, he turned away, and she shivered suddenly in the darkness.

“One of those Cherokee spirits just walk over your grave, Trisha?” asked the woman, chuckling, on the other side of Georgia.

“Some ghosts just refuse to rest,” Trisha admitted, and with an uneasy little laugh brought her attention deliberately back to the group.

With her just-washed hair turbaned in a towel, Trisha surveyed the meager contents of her traveling wardrobe with irritation. The navy dress had a spot; the cream outfit had been worn twice; the jeans and shirt were filthy; and she’d been wearing the nightgown for five days straight. A long hike was what she’d had in mind for the day, with a grandfatherly man named Edwards she’d met the night before at the camp, a regular visitor of Kern’s. As she scooped up the clothes in one hand and carefully wielded her coffee cup with the other, she told herself that with luck she’d have the washing chore done in an hour and have the rest of the day free until four, when she and Kern had to pick up Julia.

As she stepped into the hall with her hands full, the towel she’d been wearing slipped, and by the time she’d taken three more steps it had evidently decided it was happiest in the floor. Automatically her eyes darted up, but there wasn’t a soul in the house, since Kern had left more than an hour before in the truck. With an irritated sigh she set everything on the floor, wandered determinedly back to Kern’s room and drew out an old, frayed long-sleeved shirt of his from the back of the closet. The yellow fabric fit predictably, an exercise in drowning. All that identified her feminine status disappeared, and it took five impatient rolls of each cuff just to rediscover her hands.

Adding a hairbrush to the pile on the floor, she snatched it all back up and carted it downstairs. Beyond the bedroom where Julia had stayed was Kern’s office study. Beyond that was a utility room, with washing machine and dryer and lemon-painted wall-to-ceiling cupboards for storage. Trisha put the washer setting on cool and gentle, pretreated the stains on the jeans and then leaned back as the machine filled, absently working the brush through her hair. A large low window made it a pleasant room to be in, utility status or not. Budding azaleas burgeoned over the windowsills; the mossy lawn just outside was lush and emerald, sloping gently to the woods. A pair of woodpeckers were busy trying to peck insects from the bark of a huge old mountain maple, and a red squirrel was perched paws-up in the middle of the lawn, scolding the world in general about nothing in particular. Trisha smiled in amusement; “boomers,” the locals labeled the squirrels, for they never ceased their chattering.

From the distance in the woods she caught the soft reflection of a pair of eyes. A white-tailed deer stepped one foot from the safety of cover to the open, civilized carpet of lawn, changed his mind and bolted with that coltish awkward leap that was a blend of grace and timidity so common in the breed. The red squirrel suddenly hopped after him-at last finding someone to listen? Chuckling, Trisha stretched lazily and took her coffee cup for a refill to the kitchen. It was at least twenty minutes before she needed to do anything else.

Her barefoot step was quick and quiet past Kern’s office, and then she backed up unconsciously with a startled frown. The room was new to her, and she’d made a point of not intruding near it since she’d been there. Teak paneling and a dark Oriental carpet reminded her very much of Kern’s office in Detroit, shut off from sights and sounds, the way he liked to work.

The room was divided by function, the north side yielding an old-fashioned wood stove, a careless array of books and magazines, a lounge chair. But the south side was all business, right down to the computer equipment and file cabinets. The sophisticated equipment was very different from the easy mountain living style of the rest of the house, but surprised Trisha not at all. She knew that Kern kept an active interest in the complex corporation he had inherited from his father. She remembered all too well that his reputation in the business world had been ruthless. He had a perception and skill for maneuvering people and events that left competitors behind; nothing had ever stood in the way of what he wanted…

Her frown deepened as she studied the man she was so certain had not been in the house. A man alone-too much alone, she had seen that in him five years ago-and with a disquieting sense of déjà vu she suddenly saw the same man. Facing away from her, he was seated at the desk in the middle of the room, his fingers laced behind his neck and his head bowed. The room was so silent she could hear the ticking of the clock, but it was the silence in the man that troubled her, the look of tension and preoccupied weariness, the look of trouble…

She hesitated. “Kern?” she asked softly.

His head jerked toward her and she glimpsed…what?-frustration? pain?-before he quickly masked his features, his hands dropping and his shoulders automatically squaring back.

“I was doing some wash,” she told him, explaining her presence awkwardly, “and was just going to get a cup of coffee. If you want one…”

“Thanks.”

When she returned from the kitchen with a small tray, he was standing, leaning back against the desk. The one hand still worrying the tension at the back of his neck dropped the minute he saw her.

“There’s two aspirins on the tray for the headache,” she said calmly.

“I don’t have a headache.”

“Of course you don’t.” She handed him a mug, which he took, and then held out the aspirins in the open palm of her hand.

He took them, glaring at her, a marvelously ferocious scowl between bushy black brows that was thoroughly wasted as he popped the aspirins and washed them down with coffee. And then it was her turn to be irritated; weariness erased itself from his eyes as he lazily surveyed her figure from top to toe. The long slender legs, barefoot, the flapping yellow shirt at her thighs-he seemed to know she wore nothing beneath. Perhaps it was written on her breasts, she thought irritably, because that was where he seemed to be staring, suddenly the image of a perfectly relaxed man.

“You’re deteriorating sadly, Tish,” Kern said dryly. “Every day you’re here you seem to be going less and less formal. From designer labels to jeans, and now to a ten-year-old shirt and barefoot. By tomorrow I fully expect you to be running around here stark-”

“I told you I was doing a wash. I had no idea you were back in the house.”

He cocked his head back, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll be damned if you don’t manage to look like a princess even dressed like that, Tish. Every time I see that chin of yours go up and that haughty little nose of yours, I see the lady in her ivory tower. Inviolate, untouchable, pure. How is it you still project the same image?”

Once the mocking tone would have hurt, and badly; now Trisha just shook her head scoldingly at him, refusing to be drawn. “Do you want me to burst into tears because you’re being so nasty or feel complimented at the princess image?”

“Damned if I know.”

Her delicate eyebrows arched in teasing disbelief. “There must be monsoons if Mr. Lowery is suffering from indecision. At least a tornado. No?”

“God, you’ve gotten sassy,” he commented with mixed exasperation and humor, motioning to the papers he had strewn on his desk. “You’re also way off base, although there are times my mother does seem to have World War III potential in her. Or else for unknown reasons she’s simply trying to drive me out of my mind.”

Chuckling, Trisha perched on the arm of his lounge chair. “It can’t be that bad.”

“No? She used to be a damned good businesswoman, but a couple of years ago I asked her if she wanted me to handle her investments. It was around the time she started looking not very well to me, or at least not as well as I thought she should look. I was trying to lift the burdens a little, because she has quite an independent income from her mother’s family, apart from the Lowery’s…”

“And,” Trisha prompted.

He threw up his hands in mock disgust. “There should be nothing to it, damn it. If I can keep control of a seven-figure business with quarterly visits and good management, it should be chicken feed to handle this bit on the side. Instead, my mother’s been acting like she’s on a leash for every con man this side of the Mississippi! I find myself a landlord of two run-down little apartment houses in Detroit, hassling sewer laws. There’s some idiotic little bakery in Hamtramck she bought up for God knows what reason. She’s set up some foundation for art-student scholarships-there’s three-hundred little applications here to decide from. This one volunteered her portfolio ahead of time; as far as I know she’s an expert at drawing squiggly lines…”

Trisha smiled, the proud tilt he’d accused her features of having now softening in empathy. Julia’s cause took no deep thought to understand. “Perhaps it’s her way of forcing you to make more and more trips up north, Kern.”

His fingers laced behind his neck again as he stared at her. “All right,” he admitted thoughtfully, “but it still doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense. We had a major war when I moved here, but that’s long over with; she knows I’m settled here. And if she’s lonely I’ve invited her here dozens of times. It’s not as if we’re close-though I’ve tried since my father died. God knows, the apron strings were cut when I was approximately five; mother’s a long way from being a clinging personality…”

“You’re right,” Trisha agreed gently, “but she is growing older, Kern, and perhaps she’s afraid of that. Alone, not quite well, and she doesn’t…bend well. Maybe she doesn’t know how to. She can’t very well just come out and say she needs you, Kern.”

Her voice trailed, the train of thought gone as she caught his expression intent upon her. His eyes were glinting something she never expected to see from Kern, the simplest sort of gentle warmth without even a hint of a sexual overtone. Had they ever shared a problem before? A warm glow kindled inside her, an awareness that she could almost believe in new beginnings…

“Kern?” said a vibrant voice from the doorway. “I knocked but when you didn’t answer I just came in. I knew you’d have the work ready for me…”

Trisha stood up, nodding a polite hello to Rhea with shoulders promptly squared as though she were wearing her best evening gown. Kern had not mistaken her pride of bearing and it had to be in capital letters at the moment. Rhea had foregone mountain wear in favor of a stark white skirt and a matching jacket, a tasteful, not inexpensive outfit that did the most for a long stretch of darkly tanned legs. The long hair had been roped and coiled, and though the lady could not really claim classic beauty, there was an unmatchable pair of rich lustrous eyes fastened on Kern.

“And I should have known you’d come early for it,” Kern said warmly, his hand extended in greeting to Rhea’s. The hand was clasped, held.

“I’m sorry you couldn’t make it to dinner the other night,” Rhea ventured hesitantly to Trisha, her expression politely impassive as she noted the huge yellow Shirt, half-dried hair, bare feet. “We had a wonderful time. Perhaps another occasion…”

Trisha smiled vaguely, snatching up the tray of dead coffee cups as she ventured for the door. “You two are busy. I’ll see you again at four, Kern, when we go to pick up your mother.” It took an effort to close the door behind her with the awkward tray, but she managed it.

And then she closed her eyes for a full thirty seconds. Kern’s warmth, his hand extended, the woman’s sexual vibrations, their so-easily-read ambiance…jealousy was a simple word. The sudden shakiness in Trisha’s limbs was more than that, a despair in having to acknowledge how much she did care. Kern had accepted her back in his household easily, but she had no illusions as to his feelings for the long term. She was there because of his mother. She could be his bed partner if she wished it, but there was no question that he wasn’t offering more. Why should he, after what had happened between them? One inhibited, skinny woman with a bad track record, next to Rhea, one of Rubens’s treasures?

Hell, she murmured to herself as she clattered the cups in the dishwasher and tiptoed past the closed door to retrieve her wash. It was time to pull herself back together. Just the idea of Kern comparing the two of them was enough to make her shore up walls of pride against her crumbling confidence. Put competition in a sexual arena and all those tentative hopeful murmurings in the back of her mind were soundly buried.

At four Trisha was waiting for Kern in the driveway, the keys to the Mercedes restlessly swaying in her fingers. The mauve pantsuit shivered over her slim figure in the breeze, a subtle color that brought out the ivory in her complexion. Gone was the sunburned nose and windswept hair; in place was a mask of expert makeup and a sophisticated loose froth of curls, brushed back to show off a haughty profile. Trisha of Grosse Pointe was back and only the small pulse at the delicate V of her throat revealed any emotion at the sight of Kern’s suited figure finally emerging from the house.

“You’re late,” she said curtly, as she opened the door to the driver’s side and promptly slipped in.

More slowly Kern followed, eyes narrowed just slightly at her unexpected chill tone. By agreement they were taking the Mercedes over Kern’s truck or Jeep since they felt there would be more comfort and space for Julia. Yet there seemed no space at all once Kern folded in his long legs. In a dark suit Kern carried with him the brusque snapping sort of assurance she remembered from when she’d first met him, but these days the fabric seemed to strain at his shoulders as if the veneer of civilized man was only paper-thin. Hawklike features surveyed her new outfit, unfairly noting first the vulnerable V of her open throat before judging the aristocratic set of her profile. “You obviously had the urge to go shopping,” he commented lazily. “If you needed money-”

“I managed,” she said pleasantly, as she started the car and put her gold sandal intimately to the accelerator. She was about to become very good friends with speed. The chant in her mind all day had been to get Julia and get out before there was trouble-and as for the cost of the outfit, Julia would more than willingly subsidize the trip home, a thought that never seemed to have occurred before.

“Well, however you ‘managed,’” Kern echoed deliberately, “the effect is cool and expensive, Tish. Lovely.”

“Thank you.” She saw his foot applying an imaginary brake as she rounded a curve too fast. Well, if he would just stop staring at her… “I had a terrific time shopping this afternoon,” she said finally. “I saw a bundle of designs I could bring back home to my job; a few days of rest in the mountains and I feel invigorated all over again, full of plans and ideas.”

“Anxious to go back to work, are you?” Almost too easily he was falling for the conversational gambit.

“Very much. This week I took a leave for Julia, but the three weeks after was vacation that I could probably reschedule for anytime.”

“Had enough of mountain life in a few short days? It didn’t take you long.”

“Certainly not six months this time.”

It hit home. The silence between them was abrupt, so tangible it could have been sliced. For a ridiculous instant Trisha felt the urge to cry, and then her rational mind smoothed out as her driving did. She had cut her losses and run five years before, not as an act of cowardice but of self-preservation. This felt no different. The man beside her had disturbed, had already carved through old defenses she’d believed were invulnerable.

Half an hour later they were both seated in Ted Bassett’s office. The doctor was standing with his hands dug into the pockets of his white lab coat, unsmiling, his blue eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. “I wish I could tell you something definite,” he said frankly. “Your mother just isn’t a simple diagnosis, Kern. You already know about the heart murmur and that she had hypertensive blood pressure. People can have both conditions and live for years with proper medications. I can quote you the range of statistics if you want-”

“Forget that sort of thing,” Kern said abruptly. “All I want to know is exactly where she stands.”

“And that’s just what I’m trying to tell you. Professionally, all I can suggest is that you ensure she takes her pills, gets the proper rest and maintains regular medical care. But…”

Trisha’s frown of concern mirrored Kern’s.

“But,” Ted repeated gravely, “my gut instinct tells me she’s stroke material. I’m not trying to alarm you. There’s no real medical reason to justify that, but if you two know of anything at all that’s worrying her…”

A short while later the two of them were out in the corridor. Trisha’s sandaled heels clattered on the hospital tiles, her face as stark as the nurse’s caps they passed. Kern, nearly a full head taller than she was, radiated a firm stride that halted abruptly several feet from Julia’s closed door.

Trisha paused as well, glancing back at the sudden “don’t-argue-with-me” slashed on his features. “I’m going to talk mother into staying here,” he said flatly.

Her eyebrows rose as she shook her head. “Don’t be silly, Kern. The only thing to do is take her home, around the things that she loves, the things she’s familiar with-”

“You’re the one who wants to go home, Tish. So you made a point of telling me earlier. But we both know what mother’s worried about.”

“What are you talking about?” Trisha asked him curtly, her eyes darting nervously at a passing patient who was plainly overhearing their conversation.

“The pair of us-that’s what she’s worried about. And since you’re in such an all-fired hurry to get home, just go. Mother isn’t leaving my sight.”

Trisha drew in her breath at his unexpected bluntness. She felt slapped with guilt, knowing that what he said about the source of Julia’s worry was true, and his cold “just go” put a sting to that slap. He really couldn’t care less if she stayed or not… “I’m not leaving her here with you, Kern,” she whispered furiously. “She hasn’t cooked a can of beans in thirty years, and I don’t see bridge clubs populating the mountains! What’s she supposed to do with her time-watch you go out the door each day for ten hours? She happens to be the only mother I’ve got, too, and if only because I’m another woman, I’m the best one to take care of her.”

“She’s not leaving here.”

“Would you just be reasonable-”

“I said, she’s not leaving here, Trisha.” He took three strides forward and raised an arm as if he were going to open Julia’s door, as if the matter were already settled. Trisha grabbed at his sleeve to stop him, too angry and upset to even consider her words.

“Then I’m staying, too, Kern! At least until I see that she’ll be happy. You can’t possibly object when you know I could help her…”

He was looking at her slim fingers on his sleeve, and she dropped her hand quickly. The stone features were still prominent, but there was an odd half curl at the corner of his mouth, masked quickly when she stared up at him in sudden confusion. “For mother’s sake, you’ll stay for a while then,” he said, dryly rephrasing her words.

Uncertainly, she frowned, her lips parted to say something-then nothing. Kern was already opening the door, greeting his mother in brisk, cheerful tones.