Once in a Lifetime

“Why don’t you like Evangeline Moore?”

He turned out the light over the kitchen sink and leaned against the counter. “I lived a long time, and I know people when I see ’em. He ain’t serious about her, and that’s because he knows she ain’t for him.”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“’Tain’t difficult. She gets low grades in the manners department, and Tel can’t stand rotten manners. She ain’t bad, mind you, but these boys here…they come up practically by themselves, except for what raising I done and Telford when he got older… They been through a lot and worked hard.”

His countenance darkened with concern, and she could see that Telford and his brothers meant a lot to Henry and that he took pride in them.

“She ain’t got no appreciation for what they been through and what they’ve done with their lives, either,” he went on, “and she don’t care. She just wants a Harrington. Now you. You ain’t asking nothing from no man. My kind of woman, willing and able to make it on your own.”

“Thanks. That doesn’t explain why you don’t like her.”

“She just ain’t for him. I could stand her, maybe, if she wasn’t so supercilious, always pretending to be something she ain’t. She can’t fool me.”

And what about Alexis? Wasn’t she an imposter, an upper-middle-class educator posing as a housekeeper?

Her lower lip dropped. Henry was one surprise after another. “If she wasn’t so what?”

“Super…oh, you mean that? Well, I want you to know I finished high school, even if that was a couple a hundred years ago.”

She paused, wondering how he’d react to her next question. “Did you ever marry?”

He threw his hands up and looked at the ceiling. “I sure did, which is why I understand the Evangelines of this world. First time was plain stupid, but the second…well, the Lord decided he needed her more than I did.” He turned his back, but not before she glimpsed his lips trembling and his eyes blinking rapidly.

She patted the bones that protruded beneath his shoulder. “I’m sorry. I’d better get to my room and see what Tara’s doing. Good night.” She didn’t wait for his reply, but rushed from the kitchen to allow him privacy. When she found Tara asleep in her bed, loneliness washed over her. She wasn’t jealous, and she didn’t want an affair with Telford, but seeing him with that woman wasn’t her idea of fun. She walked over to the window and stared at the garden, idyllic in its shroud of moonlight and its blanket of shrubs and flowers, the perfect setting for lovers. She yanked the blinds down and closed them. She might be alone, but at least she no longer had to suffer the indignity of a philandering, lying husband. Anything was better than that, she told herself as convincingly as she could.

What was that? This time the knock sounded louder and lasted longer. “Good Lord. Telford.” It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d be back in less than half an hour. “I’ll bet he’s mad as the devil.”

Anger barely described what he felt. Indeed, outrage more closely approximated his mood. She opened the door, and he looked at her standing there, a siren with the face of an innocent. If he hadn’t been so furious, he would have laughed. He’d never seen her so beautiful as she was that evening. Or sexier, with that décolletage proclaiming the richness of her treasure and her tight-fitting getup emphasizing her nicely rounded bottom. If Henry had cooked the lamb chops instead of the cabbage stew, he doubted he’d have tasted the difference.

A smile crawled warily over her face. “Hi. You wanted me for something?”

“Do I want… You knew I’d come after you, and don’t pretend you didn’t.” Her shrug didn’t fool him. She was strung tight as a bow.

“Did I do something to displease you? If so, I’m—”

He stepped into the room and stopped inches from her. “Of course not. You were the perfect hostess. I couldn’t have asked for a more charming woman to grace my home and entertain my guest, but—”

She interrupted him. “Isn’t that what a homemaker’s supposed to do?”

He stared at the rise and fall of her bosom, and when he let his gaze drift to her eyes, he didn’t doubt that she knew where he’d been looking and that his attention to her breasts excited her. She wet her lips, obviously without knowing she did it, and her breathing accelerated. She knows I’m here.

“You didn’t want Evangeline in this house, and you didn’t want her here with me. Oh, you weren’t rude; in fact you were sweet as sugar. I wanted to get my hands on you—”

“If you had, what would you have done with your girlfriend looking on?”

“I’d have—”

“She’s not looking on now.”

Of their own will, his left hand went to her sweet little bottom and his right one to her shoulder, and in a second he had her in his arms and his tongue deep in her mouth. Shudders plowed through him, and his blood pounded in his ears as she locked him to her. The hardened tips of her breasts rubbed against his chest, and when he heaved her higher to take one into his mouth and suckle her, she straddled him and rocked against him. Heat enveloped him like tongues of fire from a roaring furnace, as she pressed against the weight that hung hard and heavy between his legs. Her hips undulated in a pulsing rhythm. Wild and reckless.

Her whimpers heightened his need to have her thrashing beneath him with his name spilling from her lips, and when she pressed her crossed ankles against the small of his back, he nearly exploded.

“Alexis. Baby, I’m reaching my limit. Do you want us to—”

Her moans quickened, and her hands caressed his hair as she held his head to her breast.

“Tell me what you want.” She held on tighter, and he knew he had to loosen her hold on him and look into her eyes. This was not a time for a gargantuan error on his part. He took several steps away from the door, tripped and fell backward with her across her bed.

He rolled away from her. “Do you want me to leave or stay?”

She ran her fingers across her forehead, as if clearing away a patch of haze. “Both,” she said, sitting up. “I don’t understand how it is that when you put your hands on me, I stop thinking.” She frowned. “What were we talking about?”

He sat forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “You could drive me insane. You know that? One minute you’re setting a torch to me and the next you’re as cool as spring rain.” He’d leave, but he couldn’t stand right then. “Did you think I wouldn’t ever bring a woman guest here?”

“The other time when you kissed me, you went at me as if women were about to be banned. We backed off from that and said we weren’t going that way. But still, you should have told me ahead of time that you were bringing her here.”

“Come off it, Alexis. Henry told you. You want me to believe you dressed like this to have dinner with Tara, Henry and me?”

She had the nerve to grin. “I can do better than this. What’s wrong with looking nice at dinner? Did she like me?”

He threw up his hands. “Did she like you? Of course. Why shouldn’t she? She’s crazy about you.”

She looked at her fingernails, then polished them on the silk that covered her thigh. “Hmmm. Then it’s you she doesn’t like. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have gotten back here so soon.”

“If I thought you meant that, I’d teach you a few things.” He got up and walked to the door. “I wouldn’t advise you to try that again.”

“What? You mean I shouldn’t kiss you if you kiss first? What do you expect from me? I’m human, and you’re…” She licked her lips. “You’re indescribable.”

“I don’t know what I expected to solve by coming here. You’re unreasonable.”

She gazed at him through slightly lowered lashes and served notice that she could give as good as she got. “You expected exactly what you got.”

He wanted to kiss her until she opened to him, surrendered and flowered in his arms, and he wanted to shake her. He did neither. “See you in the morning.”

“Sure thing,” she said with an airiness he knew she didn’t feel. “Good night.”

He closed the door softly and headed for the den. One of these times when we come together like that, I’m going to let her call a halt. If she doesn’t…

If that evening had been a bust, and it had, it was his fault. Evangeline Moore was not and never had been special to him; indeed, he could count three perfunctory kisses as the extent of their intimacy. It was the minimum a man could do when he took a fawning woman home after a reasonably decent dinner. Hell, he didn’t even know where her bedroom was and, unless she was confined to bed with a prolonged and serious illness, he didn’t expect to find out. He’d been so intent on covering his flank, on proving to both himself and Alexis that they didn’t have any ties and were free to do as they pleased and with whomever they liked, that he overlooked one simple thing: when a man and a woman fired each other up and came as close to all-out lovemaking as they had, they had solid ties whether they liked it or not. Besides, he hadn’t cleared that agenda with Alexis. She was right when she said he should have told her. He didn’t want to think of his reaction if she’d had a man in her room when he knocked on her door.

He sat in the darkened den with his feet on the coffee table and his hands locked behind his head. If he got Alexis out of his system, what would he do about Tara?

The next morning, Alexis opened the liquor cabinet, her heart in her throat. She needn’t have worried. Her whole being awakened, rejuvenated like new life in early spring, when her gaze took in the six bottles of dry white vermouth on the bottom shelf facing the door where Telford couldn’t have missed them. He had deliberately refused to give Evangeline the martini she asked for. When the woman mistreated Tara with her rudeness, she lost points with Telford, and he took steps immediately to shorten his time in her company.

Several afternoons later, Alexis walked with Tara along the road leading to what would soon become the new Harrington warehouse. They paused at the quaint bridge—logs grayed from the wind and rain and flat from having borne the weight of humans and animals for a century or longer—that straddled the small brook marking what was the end of Harrington land until the brothers bought the adjacent acreage for the warehouse. Tara picked up a few pebbles and tossed them into the moving stream. Lilies of different colors had sprouted up in the patches of briarberries and blueberries that grew on either side, and she wondered about lizards and snakes. A color picture of either one could give her nightmares.