Wintergreen

Chapter 9

“Chicago. The Blackhawks are from Chicago,” Johnny said disgustedly. “And you don’t go to a hockey game dressed like that, Mom. For Pete’s sake. Don’t you know anything?”

“What’s wrong with this skirt?” Lorna demanded.

“Everything. It’s not jeans. Hockey arenas are dirty. And cold. Like, you get hot dogs without napkins,” Johnny explained, as if that illustrated his point.

Actually, it did. Lorna stared at her closet. She couldn’t conceive of wearing jeans to meet a potential colleague of Matthew’s. Nor had Johnny ever given her a single reason in nine years to trust his judgment in clothes. She just had a terrible feeling that this was the single occasion on which she should trust him. He was the only one of the two of them who had ever been to a hockey game.

Deciding to follow a middle road, she took off the skirt and pulled on caramel-colored wool slacks and a silky cream blouse.

Johnny sighed. “The pants will get dirty, and you’re going to freeze in that blouse.”

“You’re due next door,” Lorna said sternly. She pulled on a lacy cream sweater over the blouse and looked at him.

He nodded. “Whatever happened to playing the field?”

“What field?” she asked, bewildered.

“Since when are you only seeing one guy? I thought we were going to go see those horses of what’s-his-name.”

“Stan.”

“Whatever. He was nice.”

And Stan had a stable of horses whereas Matthew had scolded Johnny for breaking the window. Actually, Matthew had two strikes against him in her son’s eyes. A long time back, Johnny had encouraged his mother to date because he wanted a father, but it never seemed to have occurred to him at the time that such a man would have the right to touch Lorna. She understood the psychology, but it was the first time she’d walked the tightrope of putting theory into practice. It would be nice if someone would just promise her that Johnny would get past those psychological barriers and love Matthew. Because if he didn’t…

“What about the horses?” Johnny asked impatiently.

“I loved horses until I was twelve,” Lorna told him. “Then I finally got close to one, offered it a lump of sugar and felt the horse bite down on my fingers so hard I thought they were broken.” She walked over, pressed a kiss on her son’s head and picked up her purse. “Did you tell Brian he could sleep here tomorrow night?”

Matthew’s neophyte lawyer had sandy hair, an all-American smile and the name of Aaron Granger. His girl, Becky, was shy, clearly terrified of displeasing Matthew and an ardent sports enthusiast. As Lorna slid into the pale gray sedan that Matthew drove on such occasions, she noted, not particularly happily, that the three of them were dressed in jeans and heavy sweaters.

Sports was obviously to be the topic of conversation, and Matthew was sadistic enough to immediately promote Lorna as an ardent hockey fan.

It was an hour’s drive to the Red Wings’ arena in Detroit. A week before Christmas, houses were lit up with sparkling lights; Christmas trees reflected from picture windows onto the freshly fallen snow. Shopping malls advertised the season with illuminated displays. Crass commercialism, Lorna thought idly, and loved every minute of it. Occasionally, she glanced at Matthew, who had barely had a chance to say two words to her. There were dark circles under his eyes, and a preoccupation in his expression that he was trying to pretend wasn’t there. He looked remote and handsome in a thick fisherman’s sweater, his dark hair brushing the collar. Intuitively, she got on his wavelength. He needed her this evening; that was a first. He wanted to know about Aaron but was honestly in no mood to play convivial host.

“And did you see that save in the last period of the Bruins game last Friday?” Aaron said from the back seat.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lorna said truthfully.

Detroit was always its own Christmas tree; its skyscrapers lit up at night like a promise against loneliness. Matthew drove farther and farther away from the lights, into the darker part of town. By the time they parked, Lorna was frankly bewildered. One carried a mace bomb or weapon in this neighborhood. She wasn’t prepared.

Matthew took her hand as they walked, and never let go. She thought idly that as the senior member of a law firm, he should really be more…circumspect. Proper. They were the mature pair in the foursome. Yet he hooked his arm around her shoulder as they entered the arena, hugging her close. Amid the crowd, she took the singular occasion to pat his fanny scoldingly. His husky chuckle made her glance around worriedly.

The stands were steeply tiered; hot dogs were sold without napkins, just as Johnny had warned her. The game was just starting as they squeezed past a couple to get to their seats. Lorna found herself between Matthew and Aaron, and studied the oval of ice below with deadly intensity. The whole playing area was screened by a fence that checkerboarded her vision.

“Face-off,” Becky said enthusiastically.

“Sure is!” Lorna nibbled at her hot dog, praying it would warm her up. The place was kept at what felt like a subzero temperature. She vowed never to doubt her son again. Freezing, she kept her coat over her shoulders, noted that a face-off took place in the center of the ice and carefully did her best to evaluate Aaron Granger for Matthew.

Aaron was summa cum laude, University of Michigan. He and Becky planned to marry…

A light flashed on over the ice. The crowd stood up and roared. Lorna did, too. “Did you believe that?” Aaron shouted to her.

“Incredible!”

“This soon in the game!”

“Well, you know the Red Wings,” Lorna suggested brightly.

Matthew turned to stare at her. She stared just as deliberately straight ahead, discovering their team had made a goal. It really wasn’t so hard. The goalie sat there by the net, looking like a gorilla, lunging when the puck came near him. The other players skated wildly, passing around the little puck. The spectators appeared to love every action by the home team. Their enthusiasm was catching. They stood up and screamed for everything. Probably trying to keep warm.

Keeping her eyes on the ice, Lorna learned that Aaron had seen absolutely nothing of life, put Becky on a pedestal that was frighteningly high and had gone through college on a sports scholarship. He had decided to go to law school mainly because he wanted to earn a big salary.

“Icing!” Aaron shouted, and leaped to his feet.

Lorna jumped up as well. “Did you see that icing?” she demanded to Matthew.

“Are you cold?” he whispered next to her ear.

“Certainly not,” she hissed back. “I’m usually overwarm at these games-that’s why I dressed this way.”

“Misha-”

She glanced at him. Those dark eyes had settled on her with an intensity that caused needed heat to rush through her veins. She touched the tips of his fingers and looked away. Chaos had broken out below. One of the Detroit players was shoved into a little box, like a jail. Nobody seemed to replace him. The whole thing wasn’t fair; the other team got to use all their players. Lorna, like her son, didn’t like injustice.

All of a sudden, the fans were on their feet again. Lorna gulped down the last of her hot dog and jumped up.

“Did you see that assist?” Becky demanded.

“Terrific!” Lorna raved.

She screamed with pleasure like everyone else when a Blackhawks player got shoved into the jail. Then two players were in the jail. The lights flashed again. Then again.

“I haven’t seen a hat trick in years,” Aaron said. “This is some game.”

“I haven’t ever seen a hat trick,” Lorna said truthfully.

Matthew pressed her hand again. She refused to look at him this time, and took away her hand. She folded her arms beneath her breasts and buried her hands under her arms. Some warmth there. The crowd’s enthusiasm was catching. Loyalty was beginning to build up in Lorna. The Detroit players looked more scarred than the others.

To some extent, she was appalled. The game was simple, really, just like any other competitive sport in which one team tried to score higher than the other. The terminology, unfortunately, was like a foreign language she hadn’t learned yet, but the gist was obvious. The only problem was that the players on both sides seemed to spend more time trying to kill one another than trying to score. She’d let Johnny go to a game like this with friends when she monitored every violent show on TV? And the more violent the game, the more the crowd roared its approval.

“…so I applied to Whitaker and Laker.” Aaron was responding to her questions, patiently and gently asked. “Matthew Whitaker is the best. I knew I’d be the youngest member of his firm, but I…”

Lorna’s eyes all but popped out at the scene on the ice. She pulled at Matthew’s sweater. “He hit our guy with the stick,” she hissed furiously. “Did you see that? He deliberately hit him with the stick. He didn’t even have the ball.”

“Puck,” Matthew whispered.

“Puck, then. They’re letting him get away with it!”

“They’re a wee bit ticked they’re losing,” Matthew commented. “See where they’re pulling the goalie? They’ve got to score and now, or they’re going to lose.”

The goalie wasn’t being “pulled” anywhere; he left the ice of his own volition, as far as Lorna could tell.

The fans hurled themselves to their feet and stayed up, screaming encouragement and insult. The puck pitched back and forth at the speed of light. Adrenaline was racing through the crowd; lights were flashing and eardrums were popping.

By the time it was over and the Red Wings had won, Lorna was exhausted, exhilarated and without question, warm. Johnny was crazy. She could have worn a sundress.

An hour and a half later, Matthew had dropped off Aaron and Becky and was driving Lorna home. “So what was your impression of him, Misha?” he asked her.

“I have to vote no,” she said simply.

He frowned in surprise. “I was almost sure you liked him.”

“I did. He’s a very nice young man. Bright, from a good family, ambitious, personable, nice-looking.”

“Misha.”

She leaned back against the car seat. “He lacks commitment, Matthew. He wants to get ahead-he’s willing to work. I have no doubt he’ll do his best on anything you tell him to do. But the commitment he made to go into law school was only a commitment to secure a niche in the higher income brackets. That’s not a feeling for the law. There’s no instinct there from the heart.” Her cheek brushed against the car’s velour upholstery as she turned to look at him. “Go ahead,” she murmured. “Tell me that’s a perfectly stupid way to judge a job applicant.”

“Maybe that was what I wanted,” he said quietly. “A perfectly emotional reaction, Mish. It was the reason I wanted you to come-to get your honest opinion.” A smile played on his mouth as he turned into the driveway of her building. “There might have been another reason or two.”

“Such as?”

“The way those slacks fit across your bottom.” He slid up and out of the car, closing his door and striding around to her side. He opened her door, and in a moment they were strolling up the walk to her front door, his arm looped around her neck. “The way your hair looks when it’s loose on your shoulders.” He pressed a kiss on her hair. “The way you fill out a sweater…”

“I believe that was a sexist comment,” she directed in general toward a black velvet sky.

“I take it back, about the way you fill out a sweater,” he offered obligingly. At the door, he seemed in no hurry for her to produce her key. She’d understood from the beginning that there would be no long ending to the evening. It was a weeknight; Matthew was exhausted; it was already after midnight. Still, when she started to open her purse, he hooked both arms around her shoulders and pressed his forehead against hers. White frost-breath suddenly appeared between them. “The game was an excuse to be with you,” he remarked. “And then, you happened to mention that you were a big hockey fan.”

She found an imaginary piece of lint on his coat shoulder. “A good game,” she said brightly.

“Have you ever seen anything like that last slap shot?” he questioned dryly.

“Shut up, Matthew.”

“You’d never seen a hockey game before in your entire life.”

“Maybe I just happened to want to be with you, too,” she informed him gravely. Gray eyes met ebony ones. They were both smiling. “Matthew, jogging makes me ill. You might as well know it. I hate physical fitness. I love potato chips.”

“What else?” he murmured.

He didn’t exactly make it easy for her to find her key, insert it in the lock and turn it. He was unbuttoning her coat as she rummaged in her purse; once the key was in the lock he was pulling her close again, checking the fit of her pants with the palms of his hands, cradling her to his thighs, which were parted as he leaned against the door. Moonlight glistened down on snow, gleamed on his dark hair. His eyes shone like black opals. He was so dark in the winter’s light, all tall and proud and sensual in a way she had never understood a man to be sensual. Sure of himself, but not overt about it. Experienced…in life, in love. He radiated that, as if he could be so sure…

“Have you loved many times?” she queried softly.

“Many? No.” His palm brushed back her hair, first one side and then the other. “Let’s get back to potato chips and the other things you think I need to know about you.”

“My weaknesses?”

“I already know your strengths, Misha.” Teasing kisses landed on her temple.

“I have to read before I go to sleep or I have insomnia,” she confessed.

He chuckled, his arms folding loosely around her again, his fingers lifting and playing with the tendrils of hair at the nape of her neck. “Try harder,” he suggested.

“I hate to be interrupted when I’m working. No human being could want to live with me the first day of my period.” He kissed her, hard, on the mouth then, as if he understood how shocked she was at letting that personal detail slip out. “I like TV dinners. I lose socks in the dryer. I also lose my temper on occasion. I’ve always wanted to go to one of those…uh…movies. I have no control over my son, no discipline. I hate grocery shopping… How long do I have to go on?” she questioned. “Your turn for true confessions.”

“Not yet.” His slash of a smile was only token; it did not reach his eyes. Those dark orbs held stark desire, depths of feeling where lightness suddenly didn’t belong.

“I need to hear just a little more.”

Was that why he was still lingering on her doorstep, because he thought he needed a little conversation? Lorna touched her cold fingertips to his cheek. “It’s warmer inside.”

He shook his head.

“Johnny’s next door at Freda’s.”

He turned the key in the lock. The front door that invariably stuck in cold weather obligingly opened at his slightest push. Lorna had forgotten to leave a light on, and it was dark inside. Dark and warm, as Matthew was dark and warm. He took off his coat, then hers, tossed both over a chair. She barely had the chance to slip off her shoes before he reached for her.

“So you need a book to put you to sleep, do you, Misha?” She considered him brilliant for being able to follow that thread of conversation. His lips were still chilled from the outside air, until they were warmed by hers. His mouth sank into hers and stayed there as his arms enfolded her. Up and down, up and down, his hands rubbed in an evocative pattern, first very slowly and then picking up speed until the pressure was almost hurtful. Almost immediately she felt her own response start to build; then it accelerated until she felt an ache inside her that was almost painful, a longing that was alien, fierce, wild.

She could hear his breathing in the dark room, and wondered vaguely why neither of them had turned on a light. The first time they had made love it had happened the same way-so fast, like dynamite, like a raging fire from the first touch. He was so hungry for warmth, fanning those same desperate flames in herself. Her arms curled around his neck, her fingers closing on a handful of dark hair.

His leg insinuated itself between hers, his thigh tight and hard against her softer flesh. She could feel-could almost hear-the change in his heartbeat as his hands stole beneath her sweater and blouse to the skin over her ribs. Her whole body throbbed when his palm closed over one breast, kneading the firm, swollen flesh, heating it… She felt so warm. Restlessly, she stirred, and his mouth followed hers, his tongue stealing between her teeth, thrusting and probing. She was melting like butter in the sun. She was less and less like herself; she was so cautious about pursuing her sexual feelings. Lorna would never be taking such initiative, her fingers fumbling mindlessly with his sweater, angry at that heavy barrier to closeness. Eventually, he helped her remove the sweater.

“Touch,” he urged her. “Touch me, Misha. I feel as if I’ve been separated from you for a year. As if one more minute is too much.” Her palm touched the mat of hair on his chest, then curled, as she traced up and down with her fingers the swell of male breast to his throat, her thumb flicking over the flat nub of masculine nipple exactly as he was doing to her.

“Matthew…”

He slipped her sweater over her head. He undid two buttons on her blouse, then stopped to flick on the lamp by the couch, eventually undid the rest of the buttons, slowly sliding the blouse and her bra off. “God, you’re beautiful.”

The lamp cast a warm apricot light on her high, firm breasts, the darkened nipples pouting up for him. He looked, his touch gentle and slow as his fingertips glided over her creamy satin skin. His eyes were a dark charcoal glaze of want and the most intimate of needs.

She reached up to touch his face with the palm of her hand, and he turned to kiss her palm, then trailed butterfly kisses down her throat to the curve of her shoulder. His hands kneaded the orbs of her breasts together, and he kissed the crease between them, laving it with his tongue. She felt helpless, enthralled, spellbound; her hands wanted to clench and unclench, and her throat was scratchy. She was too warm and lethargic to move, but inside her there was nothing warm and lethargic. It was all a race, a rush, a burgeoning pressure, and a wild, uncontrollable, bittersweet longing ached through her.

His lips came back to hers and he crushed her to his chest again; she ran her hands up and down his back, all the way down to his flat buttocks that contracted when she touched, pressing his arousal between them. “Misha.” He caught her hands suddenly, raising them up behind his neck. “We’re not doing very well making it into the bedroom again.”

“Hmm.” She didn’t want to talk. So much more than the first time, she felt a sheer rush of feminine pleasure at how powerfully her touch aroused him. At how much she wanted him to want her.

“I only came in for a brief nightcap,” he murmured. “You haven’t offered me a single drop. We were just going to finish that little conversation we started outside.”

Her lips tasted the skin at the curve of his shoulder. “You’re thirsty?”

“No.”

“You want to talk?”

“No.”

She smiled. “You want to see the decor in my bedroom?”

“If it isn’t too far.”

Heavens, he was easy to please.