Silver and Spice

Chapter 14

Like a general facing Code Red, Anne’s mind registered Emergency with frightening efficiency. Jake smiled at her lazily. The next five minutes were a mass of confusion. Jake opened up four paneled doors, revealing built-in drawers and cabinets, boxes of tumbling papers. Anne raced to the kitchen to make coffee. Desk drawers opened and slammed; Anne adjusted the light above the desk.

The noise abruptly ended. Jake returned to his Mickey Spillane adventure, occasionally rising long enough to refill the coffee cup on her desk. The storm ended in late afternoon, and dusk settled in with total calm. When Jake brought in a tray of sandwiches and set it on the carpet, Anne rose from behind the desk for the first time in two and a half hours. She settled cross-legged on the floor, across the tray from Jake, vaguely aware that two weeks ago she would never have considered picnicking on the carpet when there were perfectly good tables strewn throughout the house. An irrelevant thought.

Jake handed her a sandwich, a huge amalgamation of ham and bacon and turkey and lettuce and cheese, so thick she could barely get her fingers around it. “So what do you think?” he asked casually.

“That it would take an efficiency expert months to get you organized.” Green eyes made every attempt to cow the humor in his own. “Have you ever heard of the word file?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t believe it. Spell it.”

“F-i-l-e,” he obliged. He swallowed a mouthful of sandwich, not easy to do when he was wearing his widest crooked grin. “The lady is about to spit a little fire,” he speculated to thin air.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Just because you’ve stuffed receipts in shoe boxes? Just because you’ve got active bank books buried in a mound of candy wrappers?” She took a sip of tea. “Did it ever vaguely occur to you that when you fill out your tax returns in crayon, the IRS might get a little curious?”

“Now, Anne. Let’s not exaggerate.”

“No one overpays the IRS one year by some ridiculous sum, and then the next year turns in a half-done tax return with a big check and a note that says, ‘I’m sure this will cover it.’” Her voice was rising in spite of herself.

“I was busy last year at tax time.” He brushed the crumbs from his hands, his silvery eyes glinting on hers, full of amusement, and certainly not concerned. “Why does everyone see the IRS as some kind of enemy? I don’t care if they come here and turn everything topsy-turvy. What’s the difference? I’ve got nothing to hide.”

She cradled her head in her hands. “Just bring me an aspirin, would you?”

He sighed, his expression turning serious as he pushed the tray aside. “Anne, in certain ways, I know well I’m probably not going to change. When I take on something, it’s for the challenge of it, not the money involved. I like to earn money, but once that’s done, the challenge is gone. Hear me?”

“All I hear is that you have to be the first person in history to get in trouble with the government for overpaying your taxes,” she moaned distractedly. “Jake, hasn’t anyone ever mentioned to you that people cheat right and left to get out of paying taxes? Do you realize exactly how much you’ve thrown away by never acquiring a tax shelter?”

“But that’s all your bailiwick,” he said patiently, and drew her up to a standing position. “Come on, time to clear away the cobwebs. Let’s sit outside.”

Jake took the tray to the kitchen, then draped a sweater over her shoulders as they wandered outdoors, making their way to the narrow wet dock that led to the gazebo over the water. The storm had left the lake unbelievably calm and clear; stars shimmered on the surface like diamonds on black velvet. Waves lapped gently at the shore, reminding Anne of the sleepy rhythm of a lullaby.

Jake’s gazebo was five-sided, with two sides walled for privacy and shade and the others screened for a clear view of their cove and the lake. Two chairs were wet, but the lounger, tucked in the shaded corner, was dry. Jake stretched out first, then pulled Anne between his thighs. She leaned back, resting her head on his chest, her pulse beating at a still-troubled rate-but less so. No matter how concerned she was for his finances, she had also just spent hours bent over a desk, and this break was welcome. Jake crossed his arms under her breasts, comfortably secure. “Now do you believe I need you?” he asked finally. “Things have rather gotten out of hand the last few years. The silver boomeranged on me. I had more profits coming in than I ever expected. And my trip to Tulsa just seemed to be a case of being in the right place at the right time. Actually, Anne, the money started accumulating when I was still a kid, fishing off the coast of Alaska. I had nowhere to spend the money while I was stuck on that boat. It just sort of all got away from me…”

Unfortunately, she could believe him. Not that anything had “gotten away from him,” but that he honestly hadn’t noticed how much wealth he had accumulated over the years. Jake really just didn’t care about money; he never had. His fingertips gently combed back her hair, and Anne sighed in confusion. Even that casual touch was a whispered call to another world: sensual, primitive, dark. Filled only with Jake. “Normal people hire accountants,” she tried one last time, but there was no bite left in her voice.

His lips hovered at her temples. “I know my tax accounts wouldn’t be a full-time job for you, Anne, but there’s more than enough financial work around here to keep you busy the rest of the time. I never expected that you would be happy just sitting home. Maybe with children, in time…but that will be up to you. And Coeur d’Alene has possibilities for you that we haven’t even talked about.”

For a man discussing career possibilities, his hands were certainly on a different wavelength. He shifted her so she was lying at an angle across his lap, her head tilted back in the crease of his shoulder. In the darkness, shadows and light played over his features, making his silver eyes glow as they came closer. “I need you, Anne,” he whispered. “The way you argue, because you’re so darned pragmatic and so intelligent, your warmth and your laughter and the way you fit next to me. The sound of your voice. I need your heart-”

“You have it, Jake. You’ve always had it,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “A part, never all. I want all of you, honey.”

Those smooth, cool lips settled over hers-but they weren’t at all cool now. Warmth and tenderness were so much a part of his kiss that a ripple of sheer sensual tension rocked Anne. Heart, body, soul…was that all he wanted? All of them at that precise moment went on the auction block. Her tongue slipped inside his mouth, wantonly wooing him, teasing the tip of her tongue against his.

Her hands were busy pushing aside his shirt, seeking the crisp hair on his chest, the feel of his flesh. Jake broke off the kiss with a low, vibrant sound from his throat, and lifted her up to pull off her green cashmere sweater. Night air touched her skin, raised prickles of sensual awareness along her flesh.

His eyes wouldn’t leave her own, as if he sensed that something was different. She couldn’t have said herself what sparked the change in feeling. She had been totally exasperated as she worked over his books, not frustrated with the figures so much as with the man himself. Jake, so darned different from her-salt and pepper…and she’d always known that. But the word need had spiraled something irreversible, something that reached the soft core of her, which no one had ever touched. Hers was the need; need for the only other human being who could fill her heart, create feelings of richness and a joy in just breathing.

She ached with those feelings now, longed for the simple right to touch his skin, the right to hear the rasped intake of breath as she stroked the long, tight muscle in his thigh. She felt as if she were absorbing him, inch by inch, cell by cell. Her lips pressed into the hair on his chest, seeking first his heartbeat and then trailing over to his flat nipple, where her tongue reached out and nudged the male bud to hardness.

Slowly, her lips trailed back up, to the underside of his chin, all bristly with a night beard. “Anne.” She was wearing a skirt that day, for no particular reason that she’d discovered until now. His hand was sweeping long, slow caresses up her stockinged leg, stealing very slowly underneath the skirt fabric. His palm on the curve of her thigh, molding up and over her bottom, ignited a fire in her loins, a sparking, brilliant, bright orange fire. His chin nudged at hers. “We’re out in the open,” he said with a harshness that almost made her laugh.

“It’s a dark night, and there hasn’t been a boat out since before the storm,” she answered.

“You’re beginning to sound like me. That’s terrifying.”

“You don’t look terrified,” she said impishly.

He nipped at her neck. “I hate to tell you this, honey, but there is no possible way to make love on a chaise longue.”

She reached for his belt buckle and undid it. There was enough leeway for her fingers to slip inside the waistband of his cords. His stomach flesh was exquisitely sensitive. Her finger could touch his pelvic bone, trace it quite a little distance. “Oh, well,” she murmured. “If we can’t, we can’t.”

Within moments, the chaise mattress was spread out on the redwood deck. Clothes were draped over chairs. And Jake, very rapidly, was draped over Anne. His body surged forward to join with hers, with exactly the fevered speed she craved…and then stopped. Locked inside her, he rested his weight on his elbows, staring down at her with glowing, brilliant eyes. No smile touched his lips, but there was a softness… “You’re staying,” he whispered, only half a question.

“Is the offer still open?”

“Don’t be light, Anne, not about this.”

Her eyes unaccountably filled-for the vulnerability she heard in his voice, for the aching swell of love inside her. “I want to, Jake,” she said simply.

Her words seemed to call forth a tidal wave. A long, passion-induced frenzy washed over her, born of Jake’s hands, Jake’s mouth, Jake’s exquisite feel and motion in the core of her. The water splish-splashed beneath them as they were swamped and drowned and reborn, over and over like a fumbling mystery of nature, wild and primitive and soaring with the joy of life…and loving.

Anne’s laughter echoed throatily as Jake pushed the glass doors closed behind them. “That’s certainly the first time I’ve ever streaked,” she said mischievously.

They were both carrying bundles of their clothes, and shivering just slightly because of the run from dock to door. “Get a robe on, Lady Godiva. And be thankful it’s past midnight and every light is off around the lake.” Jake’s eyes flickered first to the clock on the wall in the kitchen, then back to Anne’s bare limbs and the stream of ash-gold hair swaying almost irresistibly to the curve of her bottom. “I’m hungry,” he announced suddenly.

“So what else is new?”

His slash of a grin was accompanied by a teasing palm on her backside. “I was talking about a nice, juicy steak.”

“That’s not where your eyes were looking.” She picked up Jake’s shirt and pulled it on, but his fingers nudged hers aside to do up the two buttons he wanted, leaving a disastrous amount of cleavage showing and her hair tucked inside. Flicking back the cuffs, she was humorously aware that the look was not going to sell to a fashion magazine, but she glanced up and saw that Jake didn’t seem to agree.

“You have unbelievably perfect legs,” he mentioned solemnly.

“You just want me to cook your steak.” Anne, too, glanced at the clock. “You will undoubtedly have dreadful dreams if you insist on eating at this hour.”

He shook his head. “I’ve always had a cast-iron stomach.”

Moving past him to open the refrigerator, Anne murmured absently, “That isn’t the only part of you that tends toward cast iron.”

Jake was leaning over the counter when she turned to him with a defrosted steak in her hands. “What was that you said?”

Heat flooded her cheeks. “How do you want your steak?”

But he took it from her hands and got out the broiling pan. “I’ll cook it. Sure you don’t want one?”

“No, thanks.”

But the delectable aroma that soon wafted from the broiler made her change her mind-as far as hunger was concerned. She poured some soup into a pan and punched the button for simmer. While they were both waiting for their respective midnight feasts, her eyes wandered absently to the counter. Stacks of mail had arrived for Jake that morning; he’d opened and skimmed over the stuff but left it. A brochure with a picture of a coffee bean on its cover caught her eye.

“I’ve been interested in coffee for ages,” Jake admitted. “Did you know that in Tokyo, they have health spas where the people put on paper bikinis and get buried to the neck in dry-ground coffee? It’s supposed to be therapeutic.”

“There’s a lot of rumbling these days about how dangerous coffee can be,” Anne commented.

“Exactly. And being a morning coffee-aholic myself, I got intrigued. Almost to the point of journeying to Colombia…or maybe Indonesia. The industry’s worked hard at options-taking out the caffeine, taking out the acid-but a lot of people still insist that coffee is a health hazard. Obviously, the thing to do is go to the coffee plant itself, and all kinds of experiments are being tried. People want their morning coffee, but there’s money to be made out there if someone could guarantee that the potential dangers were taken out of it.”

Anne shivered suddenly, as if an ice cube had just been run up her spine. Jake served her soup and then pulled his steak from the broiler with pot holders. They settled next to each other at the counter and started eating like starving fools. Her strange sensation of being chilled disappeared as they chattered, more nonsense than sense, although by the time she began to wash their few dishes, Jake was rambling on about another interest of his.

The Silicon Valley in California…computer chips…multibillion-dollar worldwide semiconductor market…the valley’s need to keep the competitive lead in the endless trade war with Japan…

Anne curled up in the fold of Jake’s arm on the couch, sharing one last glass of warm cider before sleep. Listening, she could have lazily shaken Jake for all the years when he had never offered one word as to his own interests, beyond a brusque, lazy statement of where he’d been and what adventures he’d been up to. She loved hearing the sound of his voice, and she loved discovering new depths to the man. Jake put months of study into anything he was even minimally interested in, simply for the joy and challenge of it. Anne felt sleepy and loved and enfolded in the cloak of sharing…

But the chills kept coming, from the very depth of her heart, from the most vulnerable corner of her being. She asked questions and smiled and curled closer…and all of that was real. Just as real as the wrenching cold inside her that kept growing.

“Bed,” Jake announced finally, and stretched as he got off the couch, reaching out a hand for her.

She took it. His fingers securely held hers, familiar and warm. In the bedroom, they slipped out of their clothes, and moments later were curled together spoon-fashion. Jake was half asleep almost before his head hit the pillow, but Anne’s eyes flickered open.

She had to ask, her voice lazy and sleepy and studiedly casual. “So you’re losing interest in silver, Jake? You think you’ll move on to coffee soon? Or to the Silicon Valley?”

Jake’s voice, like Anne’s, sounded sleepy. “I can’t imagine ever completely losing interest in silver. But as…far as what comes next…” He leaned over in the darkness to kiss her forehead. “I don’t know, Anne. There are still a thousand things to do out there. Does it really matter?”

“No, of course not.” She closed her eyes, snuggling against him, feigning sleep until she heard his even breathing. There was no other answer she could have given him. She’d made a very real commitment of love. And just as she knew Jake would try to move mountains to make her happy, she also knew his soul would never be content in one place for long-but she’d known that when she made the commitment.

Still, her no seemed to echo in the darkness, like the whispered cry of a child from a long time ago.