Wintergreen

Chapter 3

Lorna reached over to tuck Johnny in, automatically straightening her son’s cowlick as she bent to kiss him good night. “Don’t stay up late,” he ordered her sleepily.

Lorna smiled, flicking out the light next to him. “Sleep well, sweets. I love you.”

“Mom.”

She turned at the door.

“Where’d he come from? You never had him around before.”

“Johnny,” she said patiently, “I explained. He was someone I knew a long time ago-that was the reason I invited him for dinner.”

“Yeah, I know what you said.” Johnny hesitated, mashing back the pillow behind his head. “And he’s okay. He’s got a neat car, and all those stories about criminals and stuff. I mean, I like him fine, but I don’t know about you. He’s a man’s man, you know?”

She swallowed a grin. “No, I’m not sure that I do.”

“You just tell him to go home. You’re tired.”

And that was the truth, she thought as she detoured into the bathroom before facing Matthew again. She brushed her hair into a thick glossy curtain that just touched her shoulders, then sat down on the edge of the porcelain tub and simply breathed. For the first time in hours.

So many conflicting emotions were churning inside her that she felt as though her heart had been put through a blender. It wasn’t that the dinner had been so traumatic; it hadn’t been. Johnny had gregariously taken over the conversation, and once he’d discovered that Matthew was a criminal lawyer, he’d grilled the attorney with all his nine-year-old guile. No amount of softspoken admonishments or maternal kicks under the table had stopped his offensive. Johnny, the spoiled brat, considered it his right to vet any man Lorna saw. His hostility toward and mistrust of Matthew had been instant. The thaw had been marginal.

And Matthew, contrary to what she had expected, had fielded Johnny’s every question and totally ignored her. He took the child’s interrogation seriously and treated him with respect. A stranger might have even thought Matthew relaxed. But Lorna was vibrantly aware of the way the muscle in his jaw continually tightened, of the way he deliberately avoided looking at her, of the absolutely controlled quality of his voice. And when Johnny neatly sidestepped helping with the dishes and ignored Lorna’s request to pick up his toys, Matthew’s black eyes had fired, though he hadn’t said a word.

It was hardly an instant love affair between uncle and nephew. Not that Lorna had expected it to be, but she hadn’t anticipated how it would wrench her heart to see the two of them together. Both hoarded their feelings as if they were gold; both had the same square jaw; both were possessive and protective. Johnny’s right shoulder shifted exactly the way Matthew’s did when he was uncomfortable. They had beautiful, even white teeth. Both had an abundance of arrogant self-confidence, a quality Lorna alternately resented and envied.

Tears threatened suddenly. Matthew was family. He and Richard, Sr., were the only family Johnny had besides her. She stood up, rapidly applying a bit of blusher to her cheeks. She hadn’t been this emotionally exhausted in a long time, and she had no desire to face Matthew again. She knew he hadn’t seen beyond Johnny’s blond hair and freckles. The only conclusion she could possibly draw was that Johnny reminded him of the kind of woman he thought she was or had been. The kind of woman who would be unfaithful less than a year into her marriage, the kind for whom a vow of love meant so little…

Lorna slipped off her high-heeled shoes, irrationally deciding that she could face anything as long as her toes weren’t pinched, and padded back out into the living room.

Matthew was standing before the white marble fireplace, looking at a photograph of Lorna and Johnny at a picnic a few years before. His glass of brandy was next to him on the mantel; another glass was waiting for her on the coffee table. He turned to look at her as she entered the room; the reserved smile he’d managed for Johnny was gone, replaced by an expression of authority and determination. As she gazed at his stern features and dark, impenetrable eyes, Lorna felt distinctly uneasy.

She bent to pick up her glass and then sat down in a corduroy armchair, curling one leg beneath her.

“Shall we get the details out of the way, Misha? Exactly when do you need the money?” he asked flatly.

She hesitated. “I don’t need the whole ten thousand dollars, Matthew,” she said quietly. “Only enough to pay Johnny’s tuition for this year. Johnny needs this school, but my furnace went out last week, which is why I started to panic-”

“The question was only when, Misha, not how much.”

She took a sip of brandy and let it flow down her throat before answering. He was standing with his feet apart and one elbow resting on the mantel; the stance was aggressive, all authoritative male, and she thought, No, Matthew, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let myself get defensive. Not for anyone, not anymore. Her tone was low and very, very controlled. “The school he’s in has all but asked me to find another place for him. Johnny’s bright, Matthew. Too bright. When he gets ahead of the others, he’s bored…but any kid who calls him ‘brain’ gets a punch in the nose. He’s already played hookey several times. Of course, he only goes to the library, but-”

“Misha, I don’t have to hear all about the boy’s problems. The only thing I really need to know is when you want the money.”

Her smoky eyes darkened expressively as she set down her glass. She didn’t care if Matthew could read the signs of impending anger: her flicked-hair back; her stiffened chin; her eyes the ominous gray of a storm cloud. “Next week,” she clipped out.

Matthew finished his drink and leaned back against the marble fireplace, loosely folding his arms. “Honey. Stop bristling.”

“Look-”

“For you, Misha, I’d do my best to walk on water. When I saw you again and realized you were in trouble…” He shook his head, just a little, his eyes holding hers in a gaze so intense she could not look away. She wanted to. Something kept happening whenever he looked at her, whenever he was close enough to touch her-something completely different from the way she had once felt about Matthew. “You’re unhappy because I don’t want to listen to you talk about your son,” he said quietly. “At least let me explain, Misha. I don’t feel I have the right-not to even offer you a few words of advice, not even simply to listen. His own father surely has first rights. Stone’s still living in the city. Even though things apparently didn’t work out between you, he has the financial and moral responsibility to take care of Johnny’s needs. Why don’t you go, to him first, Misha?”

She looked away then, every nerve ending coiling up tight. “Never would I go to that man. First of all, because he’s a bastard. And second, because Johnny isn’t. He’s a Whitaker, Matthew…”

“And I never thought we had a problem with honesty,” Matthew responded coldly. “Misha, he’s your son. That’s all that matters.”

“Not to me!” She sprang from the chair and stalked to the closet to get his coat. Two huge tears that she had no intention of shedding stung her eyes. With Matthew’s coat in her arms, Lorna turned back to him; her silvery eyes were brilliant in her pale face. “Not to me, Matthew,” she repeated more calmly. “You’re just like Richard. Just like your father. Do you think I would sleep with two men at the same time? Do you think I would put a ring on my finger and then, less than year later-”

“Misha-”

“It was fun, being a nymphomaniac,” she said bitterly. “It was a short-term illness, but it was wonderful while it lasted. Just anyone who asked me…ah, well, those certainly were the good old days. And it was certainly wonderful seeing you again, Matthew. As in good night.”

He hadn’t moved. She could see the coal-black sheen of his eyes from clear across the room. Then he started moving forward, slowly and deliberately. She could almost feel the tautness of his control, yet his voice sounded low. Velvet low. “You were a beautiful lady, Misha. I never saw you as anything other than a beautiful, sensitive, very special lady. Very, very young. Butterfly shy, easily frightened…” He was very close now, and she caught her breath as she realized he was reaching out for her.

“No.” The word was almost inaudible.

“Lonely…”

“Matthew-”

His fingers started, very gently, to thread through her hair. His thumb idly caressed the tender line of her jaw, raising her face to his. Through a blur of tears, she could see the smoldering passion in his charcoal eyes. “You were a girl then. Not nearly as beautiful as you are now. I wanted to protect you like an older brother when I saw things going so wrong. Don’t think I would have touched you then, Misha, because I never would have. Never,” he echoed.

Yet he did now. His lips gently met hers, soft, teasing, giving the briefest taste of him, hinting evocatively at the passion he was holding back. His huge palms cradled her face, and tenderly he brushed away the moisture beneath her eyes. Move away, Lorna, she told herself, but somehow she couldn’t obey that inner command. Nothing made sense. A sudden rush of disturbing emotions whispered through her, sensual feelings that couldn’t possibly belong to her. She’d never wanted Matthew. He’d never wanted her. Yet something crazy in his voice, that low, hypnotic, velvet voice of his, stirred up yearnings and desires and promises, the most irresistible of promises…

“So beautiful,” he murmured. “I’ve missed you, Misha. Not the girl you were, but the woman you are. Can you understand that? It has nothing to do with another place and time. It has to do with now, the way you smile. The look in your eyes, Misha, the way you flare up, the way you vibrate with emotion…”

His coat was between them; then suddenly wasn’t. Ever so slowly his mouth captured hers again, but this time he didn’t release her. His lips lingered, increasing their pressure as his arms enfolded her; her senses reeled, and she was helpless under the assault of textures and scents and sounds that were uniquely Matthew. He liked his shirts starched; she knew no other man who wore starched shirts anymore. The fabric was slightly abrasive against the soft flesh of her palm, its stiffness a denial of the warm, mobile muscle and flesh of his shoulders. The collar had no give to it at all; she felt she had won a battle when her fingers finally reached the yielding flesh of his neck, so vital, like Matthew, so electrifyingly virile, like Matthew. His hair curled around her fingers, thick and silky. Everything-the soap he used, the aftershave he splashed on, the shampoo he favored…they were all Matthew. Not Richard. Not any other man. And suddenly, neither past nor future existed.

With increasing hunger, his mouth covered hers; his tongue dipped inside, and they shared the ultimate taste of each other. One of his hands cradled her head, and the other stroked down her neck and her back to the base of her spine, urging her closer to him. She felt a crazy series of shivers run through her body, as if every nerve ending had suddenly responded to this unique man, to what he was feeling, to what he needed, to what he wanted.

His mouth captured hers with such intensity that she could sense his own conflicting emotions. He had not come here for this-she knew it; he had not intended to touch her…yet he didn’t stop. His hands tattooed desperate, almost savage messages into her flesh as he kneaded it through the soft knit dress, firing the same explosive feelings in her. It was all wrong…and so impossibly right. Never had she imagined such sweet, fierce hunger as she now felt.

He wrapped his arms tightly around her, as if he could lock her to him, mold her body to his. His heart was pounding against hers; between her aching breasts, pounding so hard she could feel his urgency, his desire. The hard pressure against her stomach and the thrust and parry of his tongue inside her mouth conveyed a fierce need that was getting out of their control, but she didn’t care. She didn’t care…

“Oh, Matthew…”

“Hush, Misha. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not…just let me hold you.” His evening beard grazed her cheek as his lips nuzzled her throat. “Just let me hold you,” he repeated more softly. He cradled her head, urging her cheek to his shoulder, and his lips pressed into her hair. Her arms circling his waist, she closed her eyes, feeling very close to tears.

If subconsciously she had felt this way about Matthew before, she’d had no inkling of it. He had always been strong and protective and gentle with her, but she had never conceived of him as anything but a friend; she’d never have believed that she could want Matthew so badly, that she’d feel a need to inhale him the way her lungs needed to inhale oxygen. Richard had nothing to do with it. It was Matthew, pure and simple. Only it was far from simple.

She hadn’t forgotten Johnny. She hadn’t forgotten that Matthew still believed Johnny was conceived in adultery…and it mattered, desperately, but not now. Now, it seemed like a century since anyone had held her.

“Misha…”

Reluctantly, he was trying to put space between them, and her arms tightened as she raised her face to his. “No,” she whispered fiercely. Don’t move away, her heart cried. She knew all the reasons why they shouldn’t be doing this. She had been cautious and careful for years, backing out of every relationship long before she risked getting hurt. She knew better than to take such a risk with Matthew; she was conscious that he had the capacity to hurt her. It didn’t make sense. “Just for a minute,” she murmured.

His answer was a ghost of a smile as his lips descended on hers again, this time courting her pleasure with tenderness. With a lazy, slow movement, his palms traced the shape of her, molding, exploring her hips and then her waist. One hand slid up to cradle the orb of her breast, then trailed higher to simply caress the soft skin of her throat. Simply? The hollow in her throat suddenly felt as soft as satin, as fragile as a rose petal, as sensitive as the pulse that beat so erratically within it. His lips tasted, savored, promised, deliberately coveting her response, taking pleasure from it. “Always so loving, Misha,” he murmured. “So much love in you. So sweet…”

He slid the back zipper of her dress halfway down, then pushed the material aside, baring her neck and shoulders. He kissed the hollow above her collarbone, his lips so smooth and warm on that sensitive skin that a shudder rose from deep inside her. His tender mastery stirred sensual yearnings so strong that all her blood seemed to rush to her head. She felt dizzy, lightheaded, feverish. She couldn’t seem to keep her hands still, wanting to touch him, wanting to explore his skin. “Misha,” he murmured, “you know damn well what you’re asking for…”

Yes. Him. Matthew. An hour with him, a day. She felt richer where he touched; her skin felt cherished; she felt a freedom to touch and explore that she had never felt before, a need to please and to know… Her lips clung to his, groping to tell him. It was not just sex, but she didn’t know what it was. She was a little frightened and very, very high, and she drank in his warmth, her hands roaming his back.

His breathing was harsh and labored. “God, I want you,” he groaned. He unzipped her dress completely, and his hands stole inside, kneading the flesh of her back, making sensual circular motions on her thin silk slip…

“Just what do you think you’re doing to my mother?”

An electric volt shot through Lorna as she heard the belligerent voice of her son. Matthew stiffened, and they both jerked around to face Johnny, who was standing in the doorway to the hall.

“I wasn’t hurting your mother, Johnny,” Matthew immediately assured the boy. Lorna could not believe how calm his voice sounded. Her throat was dry and her fingers trembling, her body not at all prepared to cope with the abrupt withdrawal of Matthew’s touch.

“It sure looked to me like you were.” Johnny’s sleep-laden eyes were nevertheless furious; his chin jutted forward with all the aggression of a man twice his size. “Nobody hurts my mother, mister. You better just get out of here.”

“Johnny!” The child had his fists clenched as if ready to take on the grown man. A year later, she might remember that instant and smile; but at this precise instant she was afraid of what would happen. “He was not hurting me. Honey, go back to bed-”

“Mom, don’t lie. I can take care of him-”

If she had been looking at Matthew, she might have seen a half smile on his lips. But she was looking at her son, groping for the proper words. Her maternal instincts had never failed her before; but now she stood as if paralyzed. Her flesh was still warm from Matthew’s touch, her heart still beating wildly. She shivered violently as Matthew zipped up her dress and rested a quietly supportive hand on her shoulder.

“Johnny, I would never hurt your mother,” Matthew assured him quietly. “You have every right to be concerned about anyone who might. I’ll be leaving the house within the next five minutes. You can keep your door open when you go back to bed.”

There was a silence. “Well…” Johnny’s fists slowly unclenched, but he aimed a look of total distrust at Matthew.

“Matthew wasn’t hurting me, honey,” Lorna echoed, and took a long breath.

Johnny wasn’t looking at her. “You’re leaving soon?” he insisted to Matthew.

“I’m leaving soon,” Matthew agreed.

The child stalked back through the dark hallway. When Lorna turned around again, Matthew was bending over to pick up his coat, but his eyes met hers. A twinkle of something dark and private passed between them. “That’s quite a chaperon you have there. It’s pretty impossible to believe he’d take it kindly if he woke up one morning to find someone in bed next to you.”

“Well, of course, I wouldn’t…” Her first impulse was to defend herself. Of course she wouldn’t allow some strange man in bed with her while her half-grown son was asleep in the next room! But she didn’t finish the sentence, aware from the way Matthew’s eyes pierced hers that he’d already come to that conclusion. A conclusion, she thought fleetingly, that should be none of his business.

He adjusted his collar, buttoned his suit jacket and reached for the overcoat he had tossed on a chair. Suddenly, he was all control and authority again; he faced her as Matthew Whitaker, the imposing attorney, and she could no longer read any emotion in his dark eyes. “Misha, whatever you’re thinking, I didn’t come here to seduce you. That had nothing to do with my brother, with your boy. If you’re angry…”

She sucked in her breath, feeling shaky inside. “No.” But she was frightened by the feelings he’d evoked in her. Because all the same, his brother and her child made even the simplest touch between her and Matthew far too complicated. She looked away from him and crossed her arms as she followed him to the door.

He opened it, letting in a sudden chill and the glow of moonlight on snow-covered street. The night had turned silent; the afternoon snowstorm had worn itself out, and the wind had abated. He looked out and then turned back, raising his hand to her cheek. She curled her face into his palm, aching inside, as her eyes searched his. “I don’t see how it can possibly work, Misha.”

She nodded, unable to deny it.

“My father and your son are involved, and they’ve already been hurt.”

She knew it all. And worse, she knew also that Matthew still believed she had been unfaithful to Richard. The trust so vital to any kind of meaningful relationship could never be there for him.

“Do you want me to call you?” he asked quietly.

No, said her every instinct of self-preservation. But she nodded, and he turned to go out into the black, still night.

Lorna had checked on the sleeping Johnny, turned off the lights and locked the door, and was now immersed to the shoulders in a steaming-hot bath, her eyes closed and a towel wrapped around her head like a turban. She thought of Matthew, and then she thought of her son, and then she thought of Matthew…but finally, almost inevitably, her thoughts settled on Richard’s friend and mentor, Ron Stone.

She’d fallen in love with Richard when he was studying for the bar-terrible timing, any attorney would have told her, but then, Lorna had grown up in an academic atmosphere. Richard was immersed in law books seven days a week, but when he did come up for air they were together… They seemed to live on fast food and late-night conversations after the rest of the world had long been asleep, the two of them isolated in a very private world. Richard was her first love, her only lover; within a week after he at last passed the bar, he put a wedding ring on her finger, and their life was abruptly turned upside down.

Ron Stone was older than her husband by ten years. He was tall and blond, as Ivy League as alligator shirts, as smooth as whipped cream, and as good-looking as a tennis pro. An attorney, naturally. Divorce was his specialty, although he didn’t seem to favor divorcees. He liked young, beautiful and unforgivably stupid married women.

He liked Lorna.

Richard had turned into a stranger the day he was admitted to the bar. He worked for the law firm sixty, sometimes seventy hours a week; at night he and a reluctant Lorna partied with a fast-moving crowd, some of whom swapped mates to keep from being bored. Ron Stone headed that pack. Lorna considered him a vulture, but Richard thought him an irreplaceable key that would unlock the doors Richard wished to enter. Ron Stone knew all the right people, could help Richard make all the right contacts. Coming from a successful family, Richard wanted to make his own name in his own way, and now. If that meant using people…well, Ron Stone was a master at that game. From the first he took on Lorna as his own personal little cause. There was no talking to Richard about Stone’s lifestyle or her uneasiness at his innuendos, especially since his behavior toward her was impeccable whenever Richard was within sight.

Her husband would change back to the man she’d fallen in love with, Lorna told herself a thousand times; all he needed was a little confidence under his belt, some successes he could call his own. Any new marriage requires adjustments, and she desperately wanted her marriage to be successful…but it wasn’t. Critical, jealous, possessive, domineering… Richard had not shown any of these traits before they were married, but now he had them all in abundance. She couldn’t even try to talk with him. And Ron Stone kept coming on to her.

He cornered her at every party. Every social gathering. He started calling her at home. Nothing she said or did put him off, and it got to the point where she wasn’t sleeping nights and was afraid to stay home during the day. She became nervous around Richard, telling white lies to explain why she wasn’t home when he called. They fought. He was trying so hard to do well; he wanted so much for both of them…but Lorna was lonely and frightened and floundering. She couldn’t simply tell Ron Stone to shove it, because Richard thought so much of him; she didn’t tell Richard about Ron, because she was afraid he wouldn’t believe her, because she didn’t want to seem naive, because she thought she should be able to handle it… She had a dozen reasons. And then one day Ron had evidently decided he was tired of the hunt and chase; Lorna was home in bed with a cold the day he moved in for the kill. A half hour after he arrived, Richard raced in unexpectedly to pick up a brief he’d forgotten. He found his wife just inside the front door dressed in a filmy nightgown, in what must have looked very much like a parting embrace after a morning tryst with a verbally creative Ron Stone…

End of story, Lorna thought wryly, and flicked open the drain. She stood up, wrapping a towel around herself as she stepped out of the tub. That single afternoon had caused such endless heartache when the solution had really been so simple: Buy an eight-gauge shotgun, the kind once used on elephants, and murder one Ron Stone.

She rubbed a towel over the mirror to wipe off the steam, and saw a pair of haunted gray eyes looking back at her. Ron Stone was not really to blame. She knew that. He was just a predator in a world of predators.

Guilt had haunted her for a long time. She was guilty of not telling Richard; she was guilty of walking a tightrope with Ron when she should have dealt honestly with the situation from the outset. Those were petty guilts, next to the real one-her guilt over a marriage gone wrong…

Lorna turned off the bathroom light, padded barefoot to her bedroom and slipped on a nightgown in the darkness. In just seconds, her head was on the pillow, but her eyes still blinked wide open in the night. That episode of her life was like a door that wouldn’t close, a bad dream that just refused to end. Richard hadn’t believed her version of the incident-her true version-but he had tried to save the marriage. He rather had to; two weeks later, the pregnancy test came out positive. The next eight months were a nightmare; they both tried and failed. There was just no trust left to build on. No love. And the day Johnny was born, blond like Ron, about eight and a half months after that terrible morning…

Richard had been killed in a car accident when Johnny was a year and a half old. The divorce was final by then, but Matthew had sent a note to tell her of his brother’s death. During the divorce proceedings, Matthew had tried a dozen times to talk with her, but she’d shut him off every time. Perhaps she didn’t really want to tell him the story because in her heart she already knew there was no point in trying to salvage the marriage. Perhaps she didn’t want to tell him because, from the first time she met him, she knew she occupied a special, if tiny, niche in his life, and that mattered to her. She’d had his respect, his gentle teasing, his supportive caring…and now she was so ashamed.

It had taken her a long time to put her life back together. She had regained her self-respect, earned her independence. Self-sufficiency was her goal, and she achieved it. The toughest hurdle had been regaining her lost pride. Lorna vowed never again to let anyone get into a position to judge her without a trial; and love without trust…could never be love. She had been overwhelmed by bitterness against Richard-and his father-for judging her… She was not likely to forget the experience.

And Matthew was a Whitaker as well. She hadn’t forgotten that either. But Johnny had a right to know his father’s family… His isolation from the Whitakers had bothered her for a long time. Her son had a right to his last name, a right to the financial support the Whitakers could give him.

Fine, Lorna, she told herself in the darkness. Fine.

If Matthew had ever felt anything other than brotherly love for her, she hadn’t known it. She certainly hadn’t had any sexual feelings toward him. Matthew was terrifying; a successful, formidable, too-quiet man whom she had once taken ridiculous pleasure in getting to laugh. She knew he’d honestly wanted her marriage to succeed. He had never so much as laid his little finger on her in a sexual way…

So what happened today? she asked herself. She closed her eyes in the darkness. How on earth had it all happened? How had they ended up touching…kissing… Matthew’s last name alone should have precluded the kind of feelings Lorna had experienced tonight. The name Whitaker meant pain to Lorna. No trust. Men hung up on black-and-white truths, possessive, judgmental…

She’d been a fool to tell him he could call, Lorna decided wearily. She had only opened the door to more heartache. She’d just feel she was on trial all over again; there’d never be any trust. She’d never again sacrifice trust in a relationship, and she had to think of Johnny.

She did, right before sleep finally overcame her.