Jennifer Greene - Man From Tennessee

“You want to see what happened ten days ago?” Matt shouted to Kern. “It’s down to your right.”

Unconsciously she pressed closer to Kern to see. She felt his hand smoothing back her hair and raised stricken eyes to his. This had been their land, once. Kern’s eyes met hers, inducing an unconscious tremor that pulsed through her body. His hand stopped its stroking and his fingers rested at the nape of her neck as they both looked out where Matt was hovering.

The bleak scene below was not large, a tribute to how rapidly the forest rangers reacted to a fire. Thousands of acres that might have been affected were not. Still, all Trisha could think of was a match being set on Kern’s land and what the land meant to him.

Matt headed back. “Fraser firs sure lookin’ better on your side of the ridge than on the Smokies side,” he called over her to Kern.

“Too soon to tell. The agriculture people will be here next week. We’ll see what they say,” Kern answered.

“There hasn’t been a fire for over a week.”

“Yes, but it’s too damned dry.”

“When are you going to take your turn at the controls, Trisha?” Matt turned to her with a teasing grin.

“As long as you’ve got crash helmets to put on…”

When they landed, Trisha wandered off to the Jeep to wait while the men talked for a few more minutes. The whirring sound of the propellers was still in her ears, and she felt a strange mixture of exhilaration and disquiet from the ride. It was not easy to forget what she’d seen.

Kern finally strode from behind her, patting her fanny as if to tell her to get a move on and get in. She moved so quickly to get into the Jeep that he laughed at her. “Well, bright eyes. Bringing up secrets from the deep, are we? Looking for a pilot’s job in the mountains?”

“Certainly,” she quipped back as he started the engine. “Barring a minor matter of a license and experience, of course.”

“Of course. Once upon a time I piloted a single-engine Cessna myself, but the license doesn’t extend to copters, and it seems I just haven’t found the time to go after it. But-fires, this aphid thing in the Fraser firs, marauding bears and wild boars, a missing camper on occasion-it occurred to me last winter that a copter’s a fast way of keeping control-”

“And a most intriguing little toy,” Trisha suggested innocently. “As Julia would say, the only difference between a man and a boy is the price of his toys.”

“Now don’t get sassy.” His eyes flickered over her, a grin slashed above the ebony beard. “If you’re nice to me, I might just sign you up for lessons.”

“Talk, talk, talk.” The wind was whirling her hair so helter-skelter in the open Jeep that she put both hands up impatiently, capturing a tousled knot at the top of her head.

He braked the Jeep and they both climbed out. “Hold it.” Kern leaned folded arms over the side of the vehicle, an expression on his face that she couldn’t quite fathom, but the teasing look was gone. “Were you just talking about wanting to fly?”

Trisha let her hair fall in a tumble to her shoulders, reaching in for her purse on the floor of the Jeep. “No. I’ve always wanted to fly,” she admitted. “But it’s just a dream, Kern, the way opening a crafts shop for me was once a dream I had here.”

“You never told me you wanted to do that.”

She shrugged, tossing back her hair, aiming for the house. “There’s irony somewhere. The dream was the selling of authentic Cherokee designs and the back-country quilting patterns; the reality’s been in dealing with plain old polyester on a mannequin.” She turned to smile at Kern as she opened the door to the house. “The ride was fun. Thank you very much.”

She waited. Kern hadn’t accepted being dismissed with civilized politeness before. He had always taken advantage of the few moments they had had alone. And the hall was empty, dark and quiet. But he just stood there, waiting for her to go inside, his eyes resting on hers with the awareness of a hawk’s. Suddenly embarrassed, Trisha hurried past him. He’s got you waiting for him to seduce you, she thought irritably. Less forgivable to her was knowing that she’d been standing there, not only anticipating but counting on it.

“Lord, no! I just got my feet up after traipsing around all day. If you two would just leave, I could kindly treat myself to a forbidden glass of Cognac, close out all the disgusting fresh air in this house, and write some letters.” Julia repeated it just in case either Kern or Trisha had missed the point. “I do not want to go on some little mystery excursion anywhere at eight o’clock at night.”

Trisha sighed, staring glumly at a fixed point between Julia and the waiting Kern. The impulse, really, was to curl up in a chair and simply fall asleep. After a long day of shopping to decorate Julia’s room, she had been too tired to more than peck at dinner, and she hadn’t taken off the outfit she’d worn all day: a slim olive skirt slit attractively to show off her legs, an ivory silk blouse with a crisp V-neck and long sleeves. It was attractive on her but swelteringly hot. Hot, tired and vaguely restless, she was in one of those moods where she really didn’t know what she wanted.

A few minutes later she was out in the darkness with Kern, not at all certain why she had agreed to come. He’d simply spoken of an hour’s outing and something he thought she’d be interested in, not worth worrying about if she wasn’t. His indifference had doubled her sense of restlessness inside. For two days now the black-shirted, charcoal-jeaned man at her side had radiated such quiet that Trisha was beginning to feel like the stranger she was supposed to be in his house.

Lord, you’re mixed up, she told herself with silent disgust as they drove through the night. Tree shadows were impossibly still on the road, not a stirring of life. Mountain nights promised to be cool, but this one was tepid, clinging, the breezes too tired and hot to try. The full moon was gone and the next seemed too lazy to come out.

He stopped the car in less than twenty minutes. Instinct told Trisha that as the crow flew, they couldn’t be more than a hop and a skip from his own home. The log cabin in front of them radiated warmth from within, an old rambling structure with the scent of horses wafting from a nearby building. A yard light beaconed on the gravel drive of the rustic mountain home.

Trisha stepped from the car, knowing instinctively she should have changed into jeans. Rarely accustomed to being moody for long, she could not seem to shake the feeling that tonight she just wasn’t going to do anything right.

Kern threw an arm on her shoulder as they approached the three-stepped porch. She debated shrugging off the arm or cuddling closer. By the time the door opened, she was still mulling over decisions she just wasn’t in the mood to make that day.

Rhea stood in the doorway with the lamplight behind her. “Well! Why didn’t you say you were coming?” she scolded Kern. “Hello, Trisha.” A free and easy welcome to Kern, a guarded one to Trisha; any sensitive ear would have heard it. The lady wore skin-tight white jeans and a loose black T-shirt that scooped seductively over voluptuous breasts. “Come in!”

“I want you to show Tish what’s in your back room, Rhea. I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course not, just glad for the visit. Make yourselves comfortable while I get us something to drink.”

The main room of the cabin was outfitted with overstuffed chairs, all designed to curl up in. A piece of needlework had been set aside in one of them, a pattern Trisha frankly coveted. Warm lights brightened the fur rug on the floor and the handmade crewelwork on the wall. Rhea brought tall drinks of gin and tonic, and Trisha gratefully accepted one. Make herself comfortable in Rhea’s home? She’d never credited Kern with sadism before.

For a half hour the devil leaned back in one of those comfortable chairs, an ankle resting on his other leg’s knee, swirling the drink in his hand, looking both lazy and completely comfortable. Perched a distance from both of them on the edge of an old-fashioned love seat, Trisha finished two glasses of the liquid rapidly. She was feeling distinctly unnerved and smiling like mad as the other two had an easy conversation. Rhea stood with her back to the rough-hewn walls and her long braided hair swayed as she moved. The black lustrous eyes rarely left Kern’s although there was no question that she was polite, even overtly friendly to Trisha.

When the first pitcher of drinks was done, Rhea strode back into the kitchen to make another.

“Come closer,” Kern suggested when Rhea was out of sight. “You’re hiding over there in that corner like a kitten just brought home.” He patted the arm of his chair, but there was a wealth of awareness in his eyes for the awkwardness she knew she was showing. “You’ll like her if you give her half a chance, Tish.”

“I like her now,” Trisha responded politely. “Are we going home soon?”

Kern burst into laughter as Rhea came back in. Trisha stood up to accept her third drink, already regretting that she hadn’t had dinner but not willing to stop. But it was hot. There was a thirst inside her that simply wouldn’t be sated.

“Come with me,” Rhea invited. “I’ll show you my special back room.”

It was certainly a better choice than behaving like an idiot in front of Kern. The first two gin and tonics were working and the third she clung to like a security blanket, following the tall woman down a long, narrow hall.

“When my husband died, I got into this,” Rhea said quietly. “For six months I barely left this room. Kern mentioned yesterday that you used to be interested in this sort of thing…”

The “little something he thought she’d be interested in” was a quilting frame, and momentarily Trisha rallied. The frame took up most of the room, and she had an immediate picture of history, of mountain women seated around the diamond-star pattern, buzzing of their lives and loves a hundred years before. A long low trunk stood in one corner, and Rhea opened it, taking out a dozen finished quilts. Some had well-known designs and others were obviously Rhea’s own.