Nick's Long-Awaited Honeymoon

He started to speak, closed his mouth and tried again, only to repeat the process. By the time he’d thought of an answer, she was trying not to smile. He almost couldn’t speak all over again. “Well,” he finally said, “I didn’t punch Forrest in the nose when he kissed you tonight.”

“It was very big of you to refrain from hitting a man who was making an innocent pass at me in a crowded room, Nick.”

He stared at her silently, then took a step closer.

“What?” she asked.

“Oh. I was just thinking about the first time I saw you. It seems to me you were with another man that night, too.”

Brittany took careful note of Nick’s features and calmly crossed her arms. “I was not with another man tonight. And the night we met I was with a boy.”

“Your hair was long then,” he said as if she hadn’t spoken. “It hung straight and shimmery halfway down your back. Every time I looked at it I knew I had to wrap my hands in it. Never mind that you were too young, too innocent and way too good for a boy like me.”

Brittany knew she should put a stop to all this reminiscing. Just as she knew she had to put the past in perspective. And she would, as soon as she got her bearings and reminded herself of her resolve. That had always been hard to do with Nick. If he had walked directly to her, she could have put her hand up to ward off his advance. But he only took one slow, easy step at a time, and he kept talking in that same easy way he had, melting her resolve one degree at a time.

“Never mind that I had a bear of an exam to take at the police academy at 8:00 a.m. the next morning and my brother would have had my butt in a sling if I was late,” he said, his blue eyes now as soft and mellow as lamplight.

Brittany tried to swallow the hoarseness in her throat “We went out for burgers, Nick, and talked until midnight. But you never touched my hair that night.”

“I was imagining it the whole time, savoring the moment, enjoying the anticipation.” He reached up and threaded his fingers through the hair at her ear.

“It isn’t long anymore,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes. And she knew he was savoring again. A muscle convulsed in his throat and his lips parted. And then, as if he’d had all the savoring he could stand, he pulled her to him and covered her mouth with his.

His kiss was as familiar as the sound of her own name, his scent one that could never be bottled. She breathed it all the way to the bottom of her lungs, the scent of man and soap and cold winter air. Her own eyes drifted closed, her lips parting beneath his.

His mouth moved over hers like a man a long time denied. He’d always kissed her like this, even the first time. He’d swept her off her feet that night. And she’d let him. She didn’t blame him. And she didn’t blame herself. She’d been a lonely girl in another new town, and he’d been a dark, brooding nineteen-year-old with a bad-boy smile and an amazingly kind heart. She’d been hopelessly in love with him. Also hopelessly naive. She’d latched on to him for stability, when she should have been nurturing her own fledgling strength.

She was older now and wiser and, God help her, stronger. Strong enough to put an end to what was happening between them before it burned out of control.

He groaned what sounded like her name. Deepening the kiss, he wrapped his arms around her back, molding her to every hard inch of him. Even as she sighed his name she knew what she had to do. She shuddered, turning her face an inch and then two. Sucking in a ragged breath of air, she straightened her spine and let her arms fall away from his waist.

He kissed her cheek, her temple, the delicate ridge of her ear, moaning in protest when she shook her head.

“Nick. We can’t do this. Not anymore.”

Chapter Two

“Please, Nick. We have to stop.”

Nick heard Brittany’s hoarse whisper. He felt her stiffen, her arms going limp at her sides. His breathing was ragged, his body so taut with need he couldn’t see straight.

Stop?

He never wanted to stop. But Brittany was drawing away, pulling out of his embrace. And he had no choice but to let her go. Just as he’d had no choice six months ago when she’d told him she wanted to move to Jasper Gulch, South Dakota.

“That shouldn’t have happened, Nick.”

He could have argued. Heaven knew he was good at it. But the dull and troubled edge in her voice kept him silent.

“I don’t know how it happened,” she said quietly.

There was no controlling the sound he made deep in his throat. He knew exactly how it had happened. The same way it had always happened between them. They could be talking one minute, arguing, even, and the next thing either of them knew they were tangled up in sheets.

Tonight Brittany hadn’t let it get to that point. She was standing across from him in the narrow room, glancing from him to her watch and back again. “It’s late.”

Too late? he wanted to ask.

Her eyes pleaded with him not to, so he took a deep breath and made a feeble stab at idle conversation, instead. They exhausted the topic of the weather in about ten seconds. After that they talked about Savannah. Brittany seemed relieved, and latched on to the subject, rattling off the name of Savannah’s teacher and her new best friend. He’d spoken to Savannah on the telephone often, so he already knew her favorite subject was math, but he let Brittany tell him, anyway. Since they both loved their daughter to distraction, talking about her was safe. Or at least as safe as any subject was for them.

He followed Brittany into the kitchen where she brewed tea for herself. She didn’t have any beer, but she offered him a soda. They took their drinks to the living room and sat in the comfortable old furniture, he on the sofa, she with her feet curled underneath her on a matching overstuffed chair, her high-heeled shoes sitting crookedly on the carpet below. They could have been two friends talking late on a Saturday night. Except they’d always been more than friends.

When they ran out of things to say about their daughter, Brittany told him about some of the history she’d learned about Jasper Gulch. Every now and then the wind rattled a windowpane or a shutter. Nick was aware of every sound, but little by little the smooth cadence of Brittany’s voice worked over him. His soda grew warm as she spun tales of the man who’d founded this town and others who had come to help him. Few people had Brittany’s gift for bringing the past to life, describing the people of another time as if she’d lived there with them. She would have made a marvelous teacher. No doubt every little boy in her class would have had a crush on her.

Her eyes were so dark he couldn’t see the pupils from here, but there was no disguising the interest in their depths. “Jasper Carson arrived here from the Black Hills more than a hundred years ago with a widow he’d won in a poker game at his side and a little gold in his pocket,” she explained. “He married the woman and founded the town, but it was Abigail Carson who gave the town its name.”

Intrigued by the story, Nick settled himself more comfortably into the cushions, listening to her tale.

“Local legend paints Jasper as a rugged, handsome, exasperating man. If you ask any of the Carsons alive today they’ll claim they’ve inherited each and every one of those traits. According to Jasper’s journals, Abigail was none too happy with her fate. It seemed she wouldn’t give her new husband the time of day, if you know what I mean.”

Nick almost blurted out that only a woman could make such a statement so soon after being kissed so thoroughly, so completely by a man who knew every inch of her body, every nuance of her personality, the meaning behind every one of her sighs. Clearing his throat that had suddenly gone dry, he said, “Did she? Finally give him the time of day, I mean.”

Brittany smiled, warming to the tale. “Evidently he won on that point, but lost on the one about the town’s name. Abigail grew to love him, but she insisted they name the town after his first name, instead of his last. Thus, Jasper Gulch was born, followed in close succession by three Carson sons.”

“Then their marriage was built on give and take and survived in the midst of incredible odds.”

Her smile faded. “Nick.”

He sat forward, elbows resting on his thighs, his hands folded as if in prayer. “I know what you’re going to say, Brittany. I know we’ve been over this a thousand times. Believe me, I know. But I also know that what we shared in the doctor’s study twenty minutes ago was pretty damned incredible. I can’t just forget it. Can you?”

She jumped to her feet and paced to the other side of the room. “You’re right. We have been over this a thousand times. We’ve said it all a thousand different ways, with caution and confusion, in anger, in defiance, in disbelief and in tears.

You and I both know the attraction has always been explosive between us. But we also know our problems have a way of returning with the dawn.”

She came to a stop near the kitchen, her vehemence fading to a kind of acceptance Nick liked a lot less. He didn’t remember standing up, but as long as he was on his feet, he strode closer. As she watched him, her eyes grew round and wary. It hurt more than any insult she could have uttered, and stopped him in his tracks.

“I’ve missed you, you know.”

Her shoulders sagged. “I know. I’ve missed you, too. And so has Savannah.”

Nick ran a hand through his hair. He wanted to shout in frustration. And then he wanted to carry Brittany to the nearest bed and make love to her all night long. He wanted them to give their marriage another chance. He already knew what she would say if he whispered his wish out loud: “We’ve given our marriage another chance a hundred times.”

And they had.

The marriage counselor they’d seen had been quick to attribute their problems to their childhoods. Nick had already known who was to blame, and it wasn’t his mother. He was twenty-nine years old, and he’d spent most of the ten years he’d known Brittany trying to make things right.

“We’re hopeless, aren’t we?” she said quietly.