Just a Little Bit Guilty

  He was right. The stiff, hot drink hit her stomach like an invasion of mischievous elves carrying torches. They quickly mounted an attack on the tourniquets that held her nerves taut.

  “Okay?” he inquired. Each of his fingers had begun rubbing perfect circles on her wet skin.

  “Va bene,” she whispered.

  “Bah what?” His voice was as warm as the water, and as caressing.

  “Va bene,” she repeated. “It means ‘that’s fine.’ Grazie. That means ‘Thank you.’”

  “Grazie,” he echoed. Vivian took another mind-relaxing swallow of doctored coffee, and closed her eyes.

  His hand deserted her back. Vivian looked over her shoulder to find him taking off his blue-plaid shirt and the underlying ribbed top. He caught her gaze and stopped, his arms up and most of his chest exposed.

  “Go ahead,” she said evenly. But when she looked away, staring down at the water, her heart rate had begun a steady acceleration.

  He tossed the shirt and the long-johns top into a corner. She looked around again, her lips parted. Vivian’s eyes flickered over the well-developed shoulders and the lean muscle stretched across his torso. His thick, reddish hair contained an attractive dusting of sun-bleached blond.

  “Nice highlights,” she said.

  “All natural,” he countered.

  His hands closed slowly over the tops of her shoulders. He sat down on the tub’s rim, behind her. His denimed knee gently brushed her bare arm.

  He slid his hands into the water, down her back, goading every tight muscle to give in. It was bliss. Vivian felt wrapped in the protection of his hearty soul. She set the mug on the edge of the tub, locked her arms around her legs, and put her head on her knees.

  “Prettiest woman I’ve ever seen,” Jake said tenderly, sincerely, his tone as soothing as the water and his hands.

  For nearly a half hour he massaged her naked back. Her pain dissolved. Vivian turned and looked up at him tenderly. Then, slowly, she stood. The foam and fluff of scented bubbles tantalized him, letting only small glimpses of her body peek through.

  She held out her arms to him.

  “Viv,” he murmured happily. He pulled a towel off his shoulder and dried her, smoothing the bubbles away, revealing everything. Once again he lifted her in his arms. This time he carried her to her darkened bedroom and tucked her under the girly white eyelet and thick blue coverlet. Rain pattered on a nearby windowsill. Her eyelids drooped in delicious response. “I don’t want to fall asleep,” she whispered. “This is not the effect you were going for. And not the one you were getting, I promise.”

  He smiled gently. “Take a nap. I can wait.”

  As he bent over her, kissing her forehead, her nose, her eyelids, she fell soundly asleep.

  JAKE FORCED HIMSELF to give her more than an hour before he returned carrying a dinner tray. He stopped beside the queen-sized bed, enthralled. The soft pool of light from a tiny porcelain lamp on the oak nightstand made her skin glow like hot honey. She lay on her side, her silky black hair drying into soft waves. Her full lips were relaxed, slightly parted. Her black lashes were tiny fans against her cheeks. Holding his breath, he set the tray down beside the lamp. She sighed and turned onto her back, her shoulders bare above the coverlet.

  “Viv,” he called softly. Jake braced one arm on either side of her and bent over to brush her forehead with his lips. “Wake up, darlin’.”

  Her eyes fluttered open, dark and dreamy. They caught his and hypnotized him so much that he wasn’t aware that he responded with a rough, loving sound that came from deep in his chest. But she heard it, and her face filled with heart-stopping adoration. He saw now, in this vulnerable instant before she could hide again, that she loved him, as certainly as if she’d spoken the words.

  “Dear God,” he whispered hoarsely. “Thank you.”

  Her hands slipped to the top of the covers and slowly pushed them down, revealing her breasts and the pink mist of desire on her skin. She put her fingertips on either side of his face and urged him to come to her. Her hands trailed up and down his chest. While he watched, transfixed, she slipped out of bed and knelt by his feet. She removed his boots slowly, and when she finished, she ran her fingers over his bare ankles and feet.

  He smiled between short breaths. Her hands slid up his legs to the waist of his jeans. His eyes never left her face as she unzipped the faded denim. He shifted and helped her push his jeans and white briefs to the floor. Vivian admired him openly.

  “You’re magnificent,” she told him softly. “Everything about you.”

  It might have been hours, it might have been minutes. They lost themselves in the glory of quick, new explorations. He rolled her onto her stomach and used his tongue to salve the bruise across her back, murmuring soft, nearly incoherent words of sympathy as he did so. He lay on his back and let her touch him as he had touched her earlier. Before she stopped, he was shifting on the bed with pleasure, his hands wrapped in tight fists around the brass rails behind the pillows.

  “No more,” he ordered. “No more.”

  “More,” she ordered huskily.

  He took her in his arms and lovingly put her on her back. His gleaming eyes held hers in a tender rebuke.

  “Together,” he urged.

  “Together, then,” Vivian agreed.

  The weight of his body made an exquisite addition to her sensations. Vivian moved under it, testing the feel of him, aching to know how he’d feel inside her.

  She looked up into his flushed face and half-closed eyes and felt an even more overwhelming rush of tenderness.

  “Jake,” she whispered. He kissed her deeply, then covered her throat in little nibbling kisses as his hands reached under, raising her hips in preparation. Slowly he slid inside her.

  She matched every move he made, her hands skimming over his body to find new points to stroke as he stroked her. This time would be quick; they both sensed that. When the final burst of pleasure began inside her, it traveled swiftly throughout her body and exploded around him. “Jake,” she groaned. “Cara mia.”

  “My heart,” he answered hoarsely.

  She cried out again, and he matched the sound. He poured himself into her as she twisted beneath him, smiling, her head thrown back.

  Jake wound one hand into hers and kissed her deeply as their bodies relaxed. Putting an arm under her shoulders, he held her tightly to him. She grazed his sweaty neck with kisses and wrapped her legs tighter around his hips. His mouth brushed her ear.

  “My darlin’ Viv,” he murmured. “Feel the love and goodness in the world. It’s all around us, it’s here now.”

  He raised his head slightly, and she gazed up into his face.

  “I see it,” she whispered.

  AFTER A LONG and tender night in Jake’s arms, the buzz of her clock at seven a.m. was a stark eye-opened she didn’t want. Vivian leaned off the bed and whacked the snooze button with her fist. Immediately, Jake’s arms surrounded her from behind and pulled her back under the covers.

  “Calm down now, Tough Stuff,” he rumbled, his sexy, sleep-roughened voice vibrating against the back of her neck. “We’ll have thousands of nights together. This was just the first.”

  Vivian sighed wistfully, hoping that it would be so. Her hips and back nestled into the curve of his body, and the arm he’d put over her tightened. His hand roamed gently over her until it found a comfortable resting spot beneath her navel.

  “Go back to sleep,” he urged. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” she whispered into the pillow. For a second they lay in silence. When he spoke again, his tone was gruffly teasing.

  “Pardon me, ma’am. My hearin’s not so good in the mornin’. Could you repeat that?”

  “I love you, too,” she said louder, with a little twist of exasperat
ion. He rubbed her stomach.

  “It’ll get easier to say as time goes by,” he said dryly, and dozed off again.

  Vivian gave in to the heat of his body and the bed, and went back to sleep. At 7:40 she awoke with the instinctive knowledge that she’d overslept. The clock confirmed it.

  “I have to leave for court in thirty minutes!” she rasped as she leaped out of bed. He grumbled and grasped thin air trying to capture her, but too late.

  When she got out of the shower ten minutes later, her bed was empty and she heard pans rattling in the kitchen. She padded into the kitchen in her slip and a dark blue pin-striped skirt. Wonderful smells filtered toward her.

  “How about a bacon-and-fried-egg sandwich?” Jake asked from his spot by the stove. He wore only his jeans. She whistled. He turned around and whistled back. “You wake up lookin’ a whole lot better than I do.”

  He held out his naked arms and grinned a sweet, sexy-sleepy grin. Vivian tiptoed over on the cold tile floor and snuggled into his arms gratefully. He kissed the top of her head.

  “You goin’ to feel better today, Judge Costa?”

  “I’m going to feel wonderful.”

  A strip of bacon popped and sent grease onto his uncovered back. Yelping, he turned the stove off. Then he grasped her by the waist, lifted her off the floor, and began marching out of the kitchen. She dug her fingers into his shoulders.

  “I have to go to work, Jake!”

  “You give me ten minutes, I’ll give you somethin’ to think about all day,” he promised.

  “Ohhhh,” she breathed, as they returned to her bedroom.

  Twenty minutes later, she finished winding her hair into a French braid and wobbled through her living room, still flushed and her knees shaky, her jacket hanging over one arm. Jake strode out behind her with his ribbed top and plaid shirt crookedly arranged, his shirttail trailing over his jeans.

  “Here’s your breakfast,” he said softly, handing her a paper bag. He gave her hurried outfit a once-over, took her hand and towed her onto the sun porch. Early-morning light gave the plant-filled room an ethereal quality. Jake turned her to face him and began straightening the bow on her white blouse.

  “It’s nice to be looked after,” she admitted, her eyes gleaming.

  He stroked wisps of hair back from her forehead, then caught her face between his hands and greedily studied her. “Be at my place right after work. Ready to spend the night. Oops. Sorry. Not meaning to order you around, Your Honor. Call it a polite but really, really hopeful invitation, awright?”

  She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Awright.” She mimicked his drawl.

  “Say it one more time. Please.”

  “What?”

  “You know.”

  She grinned. “I love you, Jake.”

  “Now git,” he said gruffly. “And practice sayin’, ‘I love you, Jake.’ You still put too much worry in the words.”

  “Because we still have lots of issues to discuss . . .”

  “You’ll be late for court. And I’ve got an apartment building to renovate.” He kissed her to stop the conversation.

  She sighed. “You win. For now.”

  SHE FOUND THE bulky package wrapped in white paper and blue ribbon on her desk when she came back from the morning session. Callender trailed into the office behind her.

  “Jake Coltrane, you sweet boy,” Vivian said under her breath as she glanced at the small card tucked into the package’s bow. To Cal, who looked at the mystery gift with envy, she added, “Aren’t men wonderful? Isn’t life wonderful?”

  “No.”

  “Bad day?”

  “Yes.”

  Cal stalked out and, shrugging, Vivian tore into the present. She peeled the paper back, took a hurried look through the contents, and burst into laughter.

  Tom stuck his head in the door.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Why would anything be wrong?”

  “I never heard you laugh before.”

  She held up a pair of cut-off jeans and a frilly white blouse. “My Dukes of Hazard farm-babe outfit.”

  “Your what?”

  “Never mind.” Still laughing, she put the clothes down and pulled two books from the package. “And I got these. Look. Dairy Technology and Livestock Management and A Day at the Farm, ‘For ages eight to eleven.’”

  She stacked them on top of the clothes then retrieved something else, something she cupped in her hand. Her laughter faded to a soft smile.

  “What’s that?” Tom demanded. “A corncob crack pipe?”

  “No.” When she showed no sign of telling him what she held so protectively in her palm, he exhaled in disgust and left. Her eyes gleaming, Vivian held the tiny perfectly whittled wooden rose up and admired it.

  “I love you, Jake,” she whispered. “And I’m going to find a way to make it work.”

  Chapter Nine

  SHE FINISHED WITH the afternoon docket by three-thirty and had just plopped down to study a legal tome at her cluttered desk when Roberto, escorted by Barney Washington, appeared at the office door.

  “Vivvy, you gotta go see about Jake!”

  Fear raced through her, and she leaped to her feet.

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  Roberto’s rough hands twisted his red sock cap into a wad.

  “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to tell, he’s gonna be mad . . .”

  “Roberto Marino, you tell me what you’re not supposed to tell, right now!”

  “Oh, Vivvy, he’s gone!”

  “Where? To Tuna Creek?” she asked immediately, paralyzed.

  “About an hour east of here, I think he said. It’s on CNN. A bunch of farmers got together and barricaded themselves around a guy’s place to keep the sheriff from servin’ an eviction notice. One of Jake’s buddies called him to come help out. They’ve got machine guns and everything! They fired shots into the air!”

  Vivian was already shucking her robe and reaching for her coat.

  THE LOW, ROLLING pastureland gave her a long-distance view of the Melrose farm as she approached it down a country two-lane. Vivian winced at the beehive of flashing lights and news vans bearing satellite dishes. She got within a few hundred yards before a local sheriff’s deputy blocked the road. Vivian parked the Prius to one side, jerked her credentials from her purse and ran up to an officer.

  Still, it took ten minutes of pleas before the deputy let her walk into the area. Reporters seemed to be everywhere, mingling with dozens of heavily armed officers, including SWAT teams. A few curious local citizens had sneaked onto the premises, and a minister was singing “Amazing Grace.” Vivian angled her way through the crowd.

  The farm was a small, homey place with several outbuildings and a handsome split-level house at the end of a graveled driveway. The entrenched farm owner had built a barricade of farm equipment reinforced by sandbags around the house. Vivian strained her eyes to pick Jake out from the dozens of men and women behind the makeshift defense. There must be forty people back there, she thought in amazement.

  And many of them held rifles.

  “You can’t just walk up there!” a reporter called.

  “Watch me,” she muttered calmly.

  A burly, bearded man in faded overalls peered over the sandbags at her. “Ma’am, what’s your business?”

  “Jake Coltrane,” Vivian said coolly. “Tell him Vivian is here.”

  “Well, hold on, hold on, let me check.”

  He turned to a group nearby, gesturing and talking on cell phones. They peered at Vivian and nodded. The bearded man came back and held out a hand.

  “Climb over. He’s in the house, having a cup of tea and being interviewed by some news folks.”

  Vivian pressed through a crowd of
people into a corner of the home’s living room and watched a television reporter from one of the south Georgia stations talk to Jake and four other people. The room was bright with the harsh, white light that accompanied the video camera. Jake looked very satisfied to be at the center of the attention.

  “What if this standoff leads to violence?” the reporter asked.

  “No, nobody expects that,” he assured her. “That’s just not the point.”

  “But you believe public opinion is quietly on your side?”

  “Absolutely. People all over this country are losing their jobs, their homes, their hope. The laws are set up to benefit the bankers and the rest of the big money types, not the small farmer, the small-business person, the ordinary citizen. We hand over billions in taxpayer money to bail out big companies but no money to bail out the small guy. It may be how the law calls it but the law isn’t always sacred.”

  Vivian shifted uneasily. The reporter turned to interview other farmers, and Vivian caught Jake’s eye. She crooked a finger at him then worked her way out of the room, stopping in a paneled hallway lined with family portraits. I’ll quietly whisk Jake out of here. Then I’ll kick him off his milk stool and jab him with my horns.

  “Viv!” He grabbed her around the waist. “I’m hauling you out of here. This isn’t a safe place . . .”

  “Then why are you here? Why didn’t you tell me? Don’t lecture me about danger when you’re involved in an armed standoff with the police.”

  “The local mayor is right over there. And two local preachers, and see that little gray-haired lady? President of the chamber of commerce. I don’t think there’s enough room in the jail to hold all of us for long.”

  She pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll make a couple of calls and get you out of here without being arrested.”

  “Darlin’, I can’t leave. This is what’s right. I barely saved my own land, and I did lose the dairy business on that land, and it took the help of a lot of people to make the bank cut me even a little slack. I owe it to other farmers to support them. The laws are against us.”

  “That may be true, but you’re supposed to work to change the laws, not resort to anarchy.”