When they’d exhausted every “safe” topic, they stood staring at each other.
“Well…” He absently scratched his dark head.
“Well…” She looked away, no longer able to meet his gaze without feeling foolish. Her cheeks grew hot. Other places grew hot. They were about to engage in something she didn’t want—sex without commitment—and she couldn’t figure out why.
Because…the only time they got along was when they were horizontal. Much as she hated to admit it, that was the sad reality. He accused her of being too independent, and maybe she was. But he was too dictatorial. The one thing they had in common was their overpowering physical attraction to each other.
The anticipation thickened. She shifted from one bare foot to the other. Her pulse rose and her heart thumped so hard she imagined he could hear it. One of these nights she’d refuse to give him what he’d come here for.
But not tonight.
“I guess we should look for those boxing gloves before it gets too late,” she told him, playing the game. They never spoke the rules out loud or even acknowledged there was a game, but the result was always the same. “Where do you think you left them? The storage room?”
“The bedroom.”
Her face turned an even deeper shade of red. He was anxious tonight. He’d skipped a couple of the usual steps.
She swallowed her nervousness. “Okay, let’s go look.”
The room was tiny, dominated by the double bed, with no space left for any other furniture except a trunk she’d picked up at a garage sale and used as a table. A half-size closet built into one wall held the jeans and shirts she wore to work, the drawer under it her underwear and shorts. Her few good dresses for church hung from a hook on the back of the door. That was it. Nothing else could fit.
She made a pretense of going through the closet, anyway, even getting on her hands and knees to peer under the bed with a flashlight.
“I don’t see them. You sure you didn’t take them with you?”
When she stood, he moved closer and pressed himself against her, enveloping her in his arms. He was already aroused. “Now that I think about it,” he said, sliding one hand inside her shorts, “I guess I did.”
JACK PROMISED HIMSELF he wouldn’t do this again, because it only made the situation harder on Lucky and on himself, but his determination had deserted him the instant she’d appeared at the door. In its wake remained an aching desire that only touching her could erase.
He nuzzled the crook of her neck, catching the scent of sunblock and the metal left on her skin from the iron-contaminated groundwater. Sexy. He didn’t know how, but it was.
Lucky could smell like fish, or the vinegar she sometimes put on her sunburn, and still excite him to the point of pain. But it was the breathy little sounds of pleasure she made when he touched her that always did him in. Like now. They bubbled from her throat to heat his blood and erase whatever good intentions he’d had when he arrived.
He continued to stroke as he undressed her, taking time as he removed her top and bra to kiss the freckles on her shoulders and the line her bathing suit had made across her tanned back. Slight of build, with few curves to speak of, she wasn’t the ideal of beauty, and yet she was beautiful. To him, anyway. She possessed the kind of beauty that exists without effort or artifice.
Big brown eyes…a quick smile…even that thick drawl of hers put a twist in his gut. The new hairstyle flattered her wholesome good looks; he thought it made her resemble a water sprite.
He sat on the side of the bed and took off her shorts, sliding them down slender hips and legs until she faced him in nothing but neon-purple panties, a pair of red lips printed above the crotch. Outrageous. But that was Lucky. He peeled them off and tossed them aside.
Given her history, it was a miracle she’d even remembered to put on underwear. She often forgot it and her shoes, or she got distracted while dressing and ended up wearing something crazy, like one rubber beach shoe and one fuzzy house slipper.
Right now only the nails on her right hand had polish, and two of her left toes. She might have done it purposely. Then again, she might have spaced out in the middle of painting them and not realized she hadn’t finished. With Lucky you were never quite sure.
The bed was too small, the room too hot to be comfortable, and the air, as always, held the unpleasant odor of mildew. Outside, a tugboat—or towboat as Lucky called them—chugged upriver toward one of the inland docks, its horn blaring. The pilot checked his position by flashing a search beam back and forth between the banks. With each swoop, the light penetrated the curtains and illuminated the bedroom.
Jack wiped the annoyance from his mind as he hurriedly shrugged out of his own clothes and pulled Lucky down to lie with him. He concentrated, instead, on the taste of her mouth. Sweet. And on the taste of her breasts. Even sweeter. When he entered her it was better than the fantasy he’d been having for the past couple of nights. The fantasy about this very thing…
He began to move with almost cruel slowness, long, controlled strokes that had her writhing beneath him. Again and again he took her to the edge of madness, then withdrew.
Why couldn’t she care as much about him as she did her damn river? He’d expected her to follow when he’d made his ultimatum and rented a place in town. She hadn’t. Over him, she’d chosen mud, fish guts and noisy insects.
Still, fool that he was, he couldn’t stay away from her. And he couldn’t move back. Even if his pride allowed it, they had other problems that proximity alone wouldn’t resolve. Still…anything was better than this sham marriage they’d created.
The tugboat passed, the sizzle of the bugs again invaded the room, and he and Lucky climaxed in near-perfect unison. When he could breathe once more, he took his weight off her and gazed into her eyes. They were dark, unreadable.
“Move to the apartment with me.”
“No. You come home.”
They’d both spoken the same words a hundred times before.
“This isn’t a home, Lucky. It’s an undeclared disaster area. When we married, I never expected you’d want to live here permanently.”
“My family—”
“Hell, I know. You don’t have to tell me. I have it memorized.” Her family had settled this bend in 1837 and a Mathison had lived here every generation since. The original log cabin had long ago fallen in to decay, but this ridiculous place, erected near the same spot by her late grandfather, might as well be the original, considering its condition.
When the winter rains came, the river rose, sometimes to a level that threatened the whole area. The dam downstream couldn’t always handle all the runoff.
Jack hadn’t lived in Potock long enough to see a flood, but he’d heard the old-timers in town talk about how bad the floods could get. This bedroom told the story. The walls had water stains all the way up to the window casement.
Despite that, and even though she knew he was uncomfortable here, she refused to live in town, even for part of the week. They’d tried it for a month and even he’d had to admit the running back and forth had been inconvenient.
So he’d given in and suggested they build another house on the river—a decent house—but this land was too low, and Lucky wouldn’t hear of selling it. They were at a stalemate.
“You have to commit to this marriage if we’re going to save it,” he told her.
“I have to commit?” She sat up, so Jack did, too, propping his elbows on his raised knees. “You’re the one who ran out of here at the first sign of trouble—like a coon with hounds on his tail.” Her hick accent had thickened with her indignation. “You left me, Jack. Not the other way around.”
“Because