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“No, Charles wasn’t rich, but he…he was there when I needed him. He wasn’t off gallivanting all over the country chasing a dream and trying to make his fortune. Why didn’t you take me with you, Flint? Why didn’t you take me with you?”
She watched pain and regret fill his black eyes. He reached to coil a lock of her hair around his finger. “I wish I had,” he murmured. “I wish to hell I had.”
The wrenching tone of his voice almost melted the steel armor protecting her heart, but she stiffened her resolve. “But you didn’t. You made your choice and left me behind. Now it’s too late.”
“Is it, Julie? Is it too late for us?” He scooped up several stacks of bills, held them out to her and smiled that smile that had always turned her into mush. “You can have anything your heart desires. I’ve brought you a treasure.”
Fury flew over her. She slapped the cash from his hand. “Keep your money! I never wanted money. I only wanted you.” Despite her best efforts, tears ran down her cheeks.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said, gathering her into his arms, “I’m yours.”
Before she could wiggle free, his mouth slanted over hers. Sensual, warm, familiar.
She melted under his sensuous spell. His lips evoked an avalanche of delicious memories that smothered her protests and plunged her into a sea of pure sensualism. His tongue branded her as his, only his.
Holding her close, he dropped kisses over her face, trailed his tongue along her jaw, nibbled on her earlobe. He cupped her buttocks, drew her against his hardness and groaned. “God, how I want you, darlin’. I’ve ached for you for six long years.” His mouth devoured hers.
Reality crept through the cracks of her consciousness and dashed her with cold water. She tensed and tore her lips away. “What are you doing?”
“Gettin’ me some sweet, sweet sugar,” he murmured, reaching for her lips again.
“No!”
“No?”
“You heard me. I can’t believe you’re doing this. I’m engaged to another man. I should be married and at my wedding reception right this minute. You cannot kiss me. No.”
“Babe, I wasn’t the only one doing the kissing. You were going after it pretty good yourself.”
“Don’t call me babe. You know very well I’ve always hated being called babe.”
“Sorry, darlin’.”
“And don’t call me darlin’, either. I’m not your darlin’. I’m not your anything. I am about to become Mrs. Robert Allen Newly.”
“Newly? Julie Newly?” A snort of laughter exploded from him.
She bopped him on the shoulder with her fist. “Don’t you dare laugh. Yes, I’ll be Julie Newly, and it’s not funny. It has a lovely lilt. And if you know what’s good for you, Flint Durham, you’ll take me back to Travis Creek right this minute.”
“Not until we talk.”
“Why have you suddenly become so enamored with talking? Before you left here, all you did was grunt occasionally. You were certainly never a verbal communicator.”
He shot her a salacious grin. “I was always better at the nonverbal stuff. You never complained about that.”
Julie felt her cheeks heat. “I’ve matured.”
“So have I. That’s why I want to talk. We have a lot of things to straighten out.”
Julie couldn’t miss the stubborn set of his jaw. She knew from past experience that trying to convince him otherwise would be like trying to argue with a fence post. She would give him ten minutes, listen to what he had to say, then demand to be returned to her parents’ house.
Still in a huff, she strode to a straight chair, plopped down and said, “Start talking.”
Three (#ulink_7e8232e4-09e1-52be-a92e-43309c89cf5b)
Flint dragged another straight chair to face Julie and straddled it backward. He crossed his arms over the top slat, rested his chin against them and stared at her, absorbing her image. How often he’d dreamed of seeing her again, ached for her. Now he felt like a desert-parched man at a crystal-clear oasis. He slaked his thirst on the loveliness of her face, a face that had first captivated him fifteen years before and had profoundly altered his life. Time had been gracious to her, drawn her beauty more keenly, transformed her from a lovely girl to an exquisite woman.
“You’re more beautiful than ever,” he said, speaking his thoughts aloud.
“Thank you,” she said, her nose going up and her blue eyes turning frosty, “but you have exactly ten minutes to have your say. I would suggest that you use your time on topics more important than my looks.”
He grinned at her imperious tone. “Right. Where shall I begin?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know. You’re the one who skipped town on our wedding day.”
“Darlin’, I didn’t skip town. I explained that I wasn’t ready to get married. All I had to my name was two hundred dollars in the bank, a shack on the water and a used Harley. I was earning barely enough as a fishing guide to support myself. I couldn’t give you the things I wanted you to have or provide a decent place for you to live.”
“You’d been telling me the same tale for two years. I was sick of waiting. I told you dozens of times that money wasn’t that important to me. Besides, I had my teaching job. We could have gotten by just fine.”
“But I didn’t want to just get by. I wanted—” He scraped the red kerchief from his head, tossed it aside and raked his fingers through his hair. God, how to say this? “I wanted to give you fine things and a big beautiful house. But more than that, I wanted to be somebody, somebody that your family wouldn’t look down their noses at. Somebody you could be proud to marry in front of the whole damned town instead of having to sneak off and find a justice of the peace. That’s why, even though it took me eight years to do it, I got my college degree. I had a burning desire and a crazy idea that I could be a writer.”
Her brows went up and her eyes grew wide. “A writer? You?”
“Yep.” He rested his chin on his arms again. “I’ve always had a powerful urge to write. In fact, I used to stay up half the night, pounding away on an old typewriter I scrounged up. I fancied myself as the next Ernest Hemingway.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it. Why in the world didn’t you tell me?”
“Pride, I guess. Nobody knew except Miss Fuller, my English teacher in high school, and Dr. Stephenson, my creative writing teacher at Lamar.”
Her eyes turned sad. “I can’t believe that you didn’t tell me something so important to you.”
“I’m sorry. I should have, but I was waiting until I sold something. All I’d done was collect enough rejection letters to paper the whole courthouse. What kind of a profession was writing for somebody like me—the town bad boy, that old drunk Wilber Durham’s kid? Hell, maybe I was deluding myself in thinking that I could be a writer. I was scared to death that you would laugh at me.”
“Gee, thanks! It’s nice to know that you thought I was so shallow and insensitive. No wonder you jilted me!” She sprang to her feet. “This has gone far enough. Take me home this minute.”
“Not until I’ve had my say. Remember, I have the keys.”
She rolled her eyes upward and made exasperated growling sounds between her clenched teeth. She marched around in quick circles, pulling at her hair, most of which had come loose from its pins and hung in charming dishevelment. He knew that she was furious and getting madder by the minute, but he was desperate. No way in hell was he going to let her get away until he made her understand that the two of them were meant for each other.
“You have to sleep sometime,” she said, smirking.
“Julie, honey, will you listen to me? I’m trying to explain. I didn’t jilt you. I asked you to wait for another year.”
“And after that it would have been another year…and another.”
“I promised you that a year was all I was asking.”
“You promised me that you would write to me, too, but you didn’t.”
“I did write to you. I wrote you several letters.”
“Baloney! I never got them.”
He frowned. “You didn’t send them back to me with the newspaper clipping from your wedding?”
She looked truly stunned. “Certainly not.”
“Then who did?”
“I don’t know.” Julie dropped to the chair, hung her head and was silent for several seconds. “My mother,” she whispered. “It could only have been my mother.” She looked up, a pained expression on her face. “Dear Lord, how could she have done such a thing when she knew—” She clamped her mouth shut and glanced down at her fingers.
“When she knew what?”
Tears trickled down Julie’s cheeks. “When she knew how…how much I loved you, how much I needed you.”
Flint’s heart nearly choked him. “Oh, darlin’.” He pulled her up from her chair and into his arms. “I love you, too. And I need you. I hurt from needing you.” He started to kiss her, but she started hissing and spitting like a wildcat. “Babe, what’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” she shrieked. “‘What’s wrong?‘ he asks. You waltz off to become Ernest Hemingway, then waltz back in six years later—on my wedding day, I might add—and expect me to take up where we left off? Well, think again, bub. And don’t call me babe.”
“But I explained, or at least part of it. If you had read my letters—”
“But I didn’t read them.”
He raked his hands through his hair again. “You would have if it hadn’t been for that bitch of a mother of yours.”
“Don’t call my mother names!” she yelled.
“She’s called me worse.”
Julie jacked up her chin and glared lightning bolts. “She has not. She never even says ‘darn.’ But I have. I’ve called you every name in the book for leaving me. Would you like to hear some of them?” She let loose with a string of invectives that turned his ears red.
“Julie! I don’t like to hear you talk like that.”
She cocked one eyebrow. “Well, la-de-dah. Isn’t that just too bad? If my choice of words offends you so badly, you can just take me home. Maybe I can still salvage my wedding.”
“No chance. Cuss until you’re blue in the face, but you’re staying here until I make you understand that there will never be anybody else for you except me.”
“You’re going to have a long wait.” She turned her back and crossed her arms.
“Honey, will you let me explain why I had to leave Travis Creek in such a hurry?”
“I’m not talking. I’m not listening.” She covered her ears and started singing “Dixie” again.
“Dammit, Julie,” he yelled. “I had received a letter the day before that knocked me for a loop. I was offered a full scholarship—”
“Look away…look awaaaaaay Dixieland,” she caterwauled.
Exasperated, he retreated to the couch and sat down. He plunked his booted feet on the pine coffee table, picked up a magazine and began leafing through the pages. He couldn’t have read it if he’d wanted to, not with all that howling and screeching going on. Julie was gorgeous; she had a well-modulated speaking voice that was sexy as hell; and he loved the woman with all his heart and soul—but the bare-faced truth was that she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Never could sing worth a damn. Six years hadn’t changed that, either.
A few minutes later, she ran down. After an interval of blessed quiet, she said, “Flint, will you please take me home now?”
“Nope.”
She sighed theatrically. “Well, if you won’t take me home, at least let me go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.” He stood. “I’ll take you.”
“Home?”
“No. To the bathroom.”
“I can go by myself. Where is it?”
“Outside.”
Julie wrinkled her nose at the accommodations. At least it wasn’t a little house down a path. The small room, which seemed to have been added as an afterthought to one end of the long back porch, had a shower, a toilet, a sink and…a window without bars.
But when she tried pulling it up she almost got a hernia. Examining it closely, she saw that the blasted thing was nailed shut. Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a claw hammer or a pair of pliers.
Flint banged on the door. “Are you okay in there?”
Her keeper. She couldn’t even go to the bathroom without him standing outside waiting for her. Some way, somehow, she had to escape from this place.
He banged again. “Julie, are you okay?”
Frustrated and furious, she flung open the door. “Can’t I even use the ladies’ room in peace?”
“Sorry.” If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought that he looked contrite.
Hiking up the tail of her torn wedding dress, she brushed past him, then stopped to scout the area, trying to figure out where she was. The cabin was in a heavily wooded tract, built partly on land and partly on beams over the edge of the bank. A pier extended out from the porch steps, but she didn’t see a boat anywhere. All she saw was woods and lake—miles and miles of woods and lake. But there had to be a boat around somewhere.
Boats and water had always made her nervous, but because of the twins, she’d worked hard at overcoming her fears. She still wasn’t thrilled about getting in a boat, but she could manage if it meant freedom.
Julie walked to the porch railing and nonchalantly glanced down at the water lapping at the beams. A red bass boat rode in a slip beneath the porch.
“Where are we?” she asked casually.
“At a friend’s place on Lake Rayburn.”
She shot him an exasperated glare. “I figured as much. But where exactly?”
He grinned. “Uh-uh. I’m not biting that line.” He turned her to him. “Julie, don’t even think about trying to sneak out and take off. Riding the Harley is out, and I know how you feel about boats and water, and you can’t make it out on foot. If you tried, you’d only get lost and endanger yourself. We’re a long way from anywhere.” He stuck his fingers in his back pockets and sniffed the air. “Besides it’s going to rain before long.”
She glanced at the sky over the water. The sun was heading down—which at least gave her a directional clue—and a few clouds streaked its face, but the weather was clear as a bell. Before she could open her mouth to refute his claim, the wind kicked up a chill breeze, and she heard the rumble of distant thunder. Or was that her stomach? Clamping her hand on her tummy, she asked haughtily, “Are you going to starve me, too?”
He chuckled. “Hadn’t planned to. Let’s see what we can rustle up in the kitchen.” He gestured for her to precede him into the cabin.
“You go ahead. I think I’ll stay out here for a while.”
