Mercury Rising. Christine Rimmer
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between her breasts and beneath her arms, of the way her hair clung to the back of her neck, of the bead of sweat that was sliding down her temple, almost to her cheekbone now. “Listen.” She lifted one hand, carefully, and wiped away that bead of sweat. “Would you like to go inside? I’ve got some iced tea in the fridge. I could maybe even dig up a beer, if you’d prefer that.”
Those silver eyes regarded her. They saw down into the depths of her. They saw things she wished they didn’t.
“Inside?” he asked softly. The one word meant a hundred things, most of them sexual, all of them dangerous.
Too late to back out now. She bent, picked up her dirty gloves. “Yes. What do you say?”
He took a moment to answer. She found herself watching his mouth—the mouth she never quite got to kiss in her dreams. The mouth, she reminded herself sternly, that she had better start forgetting about. And soon.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Iced tea sounds great.”
Another silence, between them. A silence that felt like a standoff. She wanted him to just turn and go up the three steps to her back porch, go on in ahead of her. She didn’t want to have to approach him, to move past him, to lead the way, with him at her back, watching.
But of course, he wouldn’t go ahead of her. It was her house, her responsibility to show a first-time guest inside.
“Well,” she said, and forced her feet to move.
Neither of them seemed capable of looking away. She advanced and he just stood there. And then, when she came even with him, she closed her eyes, briefly, breaking the hold of his gaze. She moved by, went up the steps. He followed. His tread was light, but she felt every footfall, pressing on her, in some deep, private place. She paused to pick up her basket of tomatoes, to drop her gloves at the edge of the step. Then she went on, pulling open the door and standing back.
He went in, and she followed, onto the service porch where her washer and dryer and laundry supplies lined one wall and her bucket of dirty carrots waited on the edge of the doormat to be cleaned.
The porch half bath was through the door to her right. She wanted to go in there, rinse off her sweating face, run a comb through her hair. But no. Not right now, not with him standing here, waiting. Better to show him on in first.
She had dirt on her shoes. “Hold on a second…”
He said nothing, just stood to the side a little and watched as she set down the tomatoes, shucked off her gardening clogs, got rid of her slightly grimy socks, tossing them in the wicker laundry basket on top of the dryer. Her pale feet seemed very bare—defenseless, without her socks. A few evenings ago, she’d given herself a long, lovely pedicure, buffing and pumicing and stroking clear polish on her toenails at the end.
She despised herself right now because she was glad that she had.
Swiftly she slipped on a pair of sandals and picked up the basket again. “Okay.” Her voice was absurdly breathy and urgent. “This way.” She moved ahead again, opened the inner door and went through. He followed.
They entered what she thought of as the family room. Bookshelves lined the walls, the blind eye of a television stared from a corner and the furniture was a little bit worn and very comfortable. She took him through the open doorway to the kitchen and gestured at the bay window and the round oak table in front of it. “Make yourself comfortable.” She set the tomatoes on the counter. “And if you’d give me one minute?”
“Sure.”
She retraced her steps, through the family room and out to the service porch, then on into the half bath at last. She shut the door, rested her head against the wood, closed her eyes and let out a long, shaky sigh. Then she drew herself up and turned to face the mirror above the sink.
Her eyes were wide, haunted-looking. Twin spots of hectic color stained her cheeks.
This was awful, impossible, wrong. Had she learned nothing from the mess she’d made of her life once? It certainly didn’t feel like it, not with the way her heart was pounding, the way she burned with hungry heat.
She might as well have been seventeen again, that first time she snuck Rusty into her parents’ house. Seventeen, with her parents gone—off somewhere. She couldn’t remember where, but it would have been two separate places. Her mom and dad didn’t go out together much. But wherever they were, neither of them had a clue what their bright, perfect, well-behaved daughter was up to. That she had Rusty in the house.
Yes. She had Rusty in the house and she knew that he was going to kiss her. And she knew that he wouldn’t stop with just kisses.
And she was glad.
“Oh, God,” she whispered low.
She flipped on the cold tap and splashed water on her face, grabbing the hand towel, scrubbing at her cheeks as if she could wipe away not only the water, but the heat in them, the evidence of her own insistent, self-destructive attraction to the wrong kind of man. She got a brush from the drawer and tugged it angrily through her hair, trying to tame it. Failing that, she found a scrunchy in the other drawer and anchored the mess in a ponytail, low on her neck.
“There,” she whispered to her reflection, “Better. Really. It’s really okay.” Swiftly she tucked her raggedy shirt more securely into the waistband of her baggy old jeans.
And then there was nothing else to do but get out there and deal with him.
He was sitting at the table when she reentered the kitchen, but he’d turned his chair out a little, so he could comfortably face the doorway to the family room. He wore faded denim and worn tan boots and his skin looked golden in contrast to his white T-shirt. He was Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Ben Affleck out of rehab. He was a young Paul Newman in that old Faulkner movie, The Long Hot Summer, the barn burner’s son looking for more than any woman ought to give him. He was sin just waiting to happen.
And why, she found herself wondering? Why me?
What did he see in her? Not that there was anything wrong with her, just that she simply was not his type. Not gorgeous, not glamorous, not a party animal.
And look at her wardrobe. Eddie Bauer and L.L. Bean—and, times like right now, when she’d been gardening, various little numbers one step away from the ragbag. Cade Bravo’s women wore DKNY and Versace. They probably all bought their underwear at Victoria’s Secret.
It made no sense. No sense at all.
But then, it had been the same with Rusty. Attraction of opposites. A good girl and a bad boy, tasting the forbidden, doing what they shouldn’t do.
And loving every minute of it.
At least, for a while.
“Iced tea, you said?”
“Great.”
“Sugar? Lemon?”
“Plain.”
Her refrigerator had an ice maker in the freezer door. She got a pair of glasses from the cupboard and stuck them under the ice dispenser, one and then the other. The cubes dropping into place sounded like gunshots in the too-quiet room.
She got out the tea, poured it over the ice, filling both glasses. Normally she liked sugar and lemon. But no way she was fooling with any of that right now.
She put the tea away, picked up the two glasses and carried them to the table, setting his in front of him, then sliding into a chair.
“Thanks,” he said.
She gave him a tight smile and a nod in response. Then, not knowing what else to do, she sipped from her tea—too bitter, not tart enough.
She set it down in front of her and looked at it. She was afraid to look anywhere else, and that was a plain fact.
“Jane.”
He was waiting, she knew. For her to look at him.
Better