Hatfield and McCoy Page 10

  “Hey!”

  “Oh, buck up!” Julie retorted. “There’s calmer water ahead.”

  His arm snaked out, and his hand caught her wrist. For a moment their tubes twirled in a wide circle through the water, then they reached a patch of calm past the rocks, in the high water. He smiled and leaned back but didn’t release her. Julie closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face.

  She was quiet for a moment, then she asked him, “Why did you come back today?”

  He didn’t move. He was stretched comfortably, basking in the sun. “I wanted to see you.”

  “But nothing has changed about me,” she reminded him quietly. “I’m still a charlatan.”

  She saw his jaw harden. “If only we didn’t have to talk about it all the time—”

  “But trying to pretend—”

  “Julie, it’s a beautiful day. Do we have to go through this?”

  She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. A sudden flash of sight came to her, and she smiled. “All right, McCoy. In a matter of minutes, we’re going to pass by a large rock in the middle of the river. And there’s going to be a big black snake sitting on it, sunning itself.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah!”

  Julie was right. They came upon the snake just a few minutes later.

  “Don’t you see?” she pleaded. “I do know things sometimes. Not always, but sometimes.”

  McCoy was silent.

  “Well? What do you think now?” Julie persisted.

  “I think you bribed the snake,” he said very seriously.

  “Oh, come on!”

  “All right, Julie. Maybe you were out here a few weeks ago. Maybe you knew the rock was there. Maybe you didn’t know that you knew the rock was there, the memory was just sitting there, somewhere in the back of your mind. And if there had been a snake on it before, why couldn’t there be a snake there again?”

  Julie groaned and leaned back again. The swirling waters brought them crashing together. Her leg brushed his.

  “McCoy?” she asked softly.

  “What?”

  “If I asked you not to do something—if I were really passionate about it—would you listen to me?”

  “Julie—”

  “McCoy, please, this is important to me. If I sensed that you could be hurt … really hurt … would you listen?”

  “Julie, you know how I—”

  “Even if it was just to humor me?”

  “Let’s stop over there, on the rocks, and pull up the cooler.”

  “McCoy!” Julie snapped. But it didn’t matter. He wasn’t listening. The water was hip deep, and he’d slipped from his tube. He dragged the tube with the cooler along with him to where some high, flat rocks were rising out of the water.

  Julie slipped from her tube, too, and followed him. By the time she dragged her tube beside his, he had opened the cooler and pulled out the bags of food.

  “Have a seat, Miss Hatfield. Lunch is served.”

  Julie sighed and sat in the sun. It was high in the sky now, bright and warming. There was a soft breeze moving through the trees that lined the river bank. The water was so many colors, blue and green and aqua and white where it dashed over the rocks. The scenery was incredibly beautiful.

  McCoy passed her a plastic picnic plate with chicken and little containers of potato salad and cole slaw. He sat beside her, munching a drumstick.

  Julie glanced at him and felt a fierce pang in her heart as she studied him. She cared about him so much. From the hot steel in his gray and silver eyes to the tight cords and muscles of every inch of his body. Someone like this came by only once in a lifetime.

  And still …

  “Is lunch all right?”

  “It’s amazing. Especially for a single man.”

  “Single men are extremely inventive and imaginative,” he informed her. He suddenly passed her the wine bottle. “My sister made the lunch,” he admitted.

  Julie laughed softly. “We’re supposed to drink this great wine out of the bottle?”

  “I packed the wine. Can’t you tell? I forgot the glasses.”

  She smiled again, laughed and swallowed a sip of wine before turning to her chicken. She was amazed at the appetites they had built up, and they ate in a companionable silence, waving at times as other tubers and rafters passed by their spot on the rocks.

  When the food was gone, McCoy stuffed their plates and garbage into the cooler, but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to leave. They stretched out on the rocks, feeling the sun. Julie closed her eyes. Then she realized that he was leaning on an elbow beside her, staring at her.

  She gazed into his eyes.

  “That suit should be illegal,” he told her. His finger traced a pattern softly over her hip.

  “McCoy—”

  “You should be illegal. Damn it, Julie, you’re just the very last thing I needed now in my life. If only you weren’t so damned beautiful …”

  He leaned over and kissed her gently. Julie swallowed as his lips parted from hers. His kiss had promised more. So much more.

  And she wanted it all.

  But the pain was suddenly with her. “Answer me, McCoy,” she said.

  “About what?” He hedged again.

  She touched his cheek. “If I was really certain that you were in danger, would you listen to me? Please, Robert, it’s important.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You do know my first name.”

  “McCoy!”

  He laughed softly, then his expression became very serious. He traced the fullness of her lip with his thumb. “All right, Julie. Yes. If you were really afraid. If only to humor you.”

  She smiled, content.

  He leaned close to her. “It’s getting kind of cool now, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe. Just a little.”

  “I know how to get warmed up.”

  “Do you?”

  He nodded gravely. “Come home with me, Miss Hatfield. I’ll show you how.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Yes. I’ll come home with you. And you can show me how.”

  Chapter 7

  “Where is your home?” Julie asked, after McCoy’s friend Jim Preston had taken them from the coffee shop, where she and McCoy had hot chocolate, to McCoy’s car. She’d been somewhat surprised to discover that Jim’s coffee shop was in the central Harpers Ferry area, one of the quaint and rustic eateries that catered to tourists.

  She knew Jim Preston herself, if only casually. Like her and McCoy, Preston was a native of the area. He was a handsome man of medium height and build with dark sandy hair and dimples when he smiled.

  Julie liked Jim and his two teenage children, and she was impressed with the warmth he and McCoy seemed to share. They were very old friends.

  “I wonder why you and I never met before,” Julie mused out loud, not realizing that she hadn’t waited for an answer to her first question.

  McCoy grinned, casting her a quick glance. “Well, Madam Curiosity, I imagine that the answers are the same to both questions. My mountain is on the Maryland side of the region.”

  She arched a brow. They had dropped his sister off near Charlestown on Sunday, and that was West Virginia, near the sight where Old John Brown had been hanged.

  “My sister’s home is new, remember. I still have the old family home in the hills, Miss Hatfield.”

  “Oh,” she said, smiling. And then she waited, intrigued.

  “Actually, I hadn’t opened it up in years,” he said softly. “My sister and Jim had painters in and got the place cleaned up when they heard that I was coming in from Washington. I hadn’t thought I wanted to go back. But I’ve loved it since I’ve been here.”

  “Are your folks—gone?” Julie asked.

  He smiled. “Gone to St. Petersburg. I bought this house from them when they moved. They didn’t want to keep it, but they didn’t want to let it out of the family, and at one time …” His voice drifted for a moment.

  “At one time?” Julie pers
isted.

  He shrugged. “It’s a big place. Too big for them to keep up anymore. They’ve had it with ice and snow, and the only thing they say they really miss are the kids. That’s not really true, though. They come back every year. Can’t keep old mountaineers away from the mountains once it really turns to spring and summer.”

  “That’s nice,” Julie murmured. He hadn’t said what he had been about to say.

  He closed off frequently, she realized. There was something there that he didn’t talk about. Or something that he didn’t trust her enough to talk about yet.

  She made a mental note to call his sister and see if they couldn’t meet for lunch one afternoon. She had the feeling that McCoy’s sister might be willing to tell her lots of things she wanted to know.

  He turned up one of the old dirt mountain trails and the Lincoln began to climb in earnest. They moved through a deep forest area that was richly and heavily treed, and then the clearing with the house on it seemed to burst out in front of them.

  It was stunning. Made of a rich dark wood that had been kept to natural shades, the house was as old or older than Julie’s own family home, built big and broad, with wide, embracing porches. Four gables adorned the upstairs windows, while the back porch, enclosed by glass, seemed to jut over the mountain peak and look down on the beauty of the valley.

  “Wow!” Julie said softly. She looked at McCoy. “This is some family home.”

  He shrugged. “My great-grandfather was a senator from the region, a man with a great dynasty in mind. Life is fickle, though. He had only one son, and that one son had only one son, my dad.”

  “Poor man,” Julie said.

  “He was probably the one who started the feud with the Hatfields,” McCoy said lightly. “I hear that he was a very cantankerous old man. Maybe he started a feud with my great-grandmother, too. That would explain things.”

  “Was there really a feud, do you think?”

  “Well, we seem proof of that, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe,” Julie said, but she was still smiling.

  “I love the house, though. I always have. It was a great place to grow up. Come on in.”

  Julie’s smile deepened and she hurried out of the car and ran up the steps to the house. McCoy opened the front door, and they entered a great room with naked oak beams. It was full of overstuffed furniture and bookshelves, a warm, delightful and inviting room.

  “This is the best,” McCoy advised her, lifting a hand to indicate that she should pass through an arched opening to the back of the house.

  Here was the porch that extended over the back. At one end of it was a massive fireplace that stretched from wall to wall. Before it was a large, thick fur rug, and just beyond the rug, close to where a blaze would flame, was a setting of furniture, an older wicker sofa and matching chairs and occasional tables. A comforter had been tossed over the back of the sofa.

  At the other end was a very modern entertainment center. There was a table and chairs set out, and Julie quickly imagined that this was where McCoy came mornings.

  Then she glanced at the thick fur rug and the comforter again, and she smiled. This was his favorite room. It was where he came to sleep. It wasn’t because of the fireplace, it was because of the view of the sloping, forested fall to the valley deep below. A bubbling stream could be seen rushing down the mountain. The trees and bushes waved softly in the spring breeze, so deeply green, alive in shades of forest and kelly and the lightest of limes.

  Julie inhaled softly and walked across the room to better see the view. McCoy stepped past her and slid open one of the windows. The soft, cool mountain breeze swept in around her. It touched her cheeks. It gently ruffled her hair.

  “Like it?”

  “I love it.”

  “Want something? Coffee, wine, water, anything? How about an Irish coffee? I think I have a can of whipped spray stuff in the fridge, I had the kids up here last night.”

  Julie smiled, feeling him beside her, but still stared at the view. “Irish coffee with whipped spray stuff sounds great.”

  “Don’t make fun of my culinary talents,” he warned her sternly.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it. You make wonderful coffee,” she assured him as he left for the kitchen.

  His view was even more spectacular than her own. She certainly didn’t want to tell a McCoy that his mountain was better than hers, but it was an awfully pretty mountain.

  Night was coming now. Here, up high and almost in the clouds, it came very evidently, and with an even greater array of color. She could still see the sun in the western sky, a brilliant orange, emitting streaks of that same shade across the sky. In places, the orange was tempered by a softer yellow, and down by the trees there seemed to be a darkening frame of shadows in shades of violet and purple.

  He came gently into the room. She didn’t so much hear him come as she sensed him. But she knew that he was with her.

  She still looked out the window, looking at the extravagant colors, the sheer richness of spring. She felt the breeze. It moved through her hair, caressing her throat and her neck, touching her cheeks as gently as the soft movement of invisible fingers.

  He was with her. She still hadn’t heard his movement. She just knew. And she knew the scent of him. Subtle, masculine.

  A slow, burning warmth began to fill her. Just because he was near.

  Because he would touch her.

  She knew the touch, and she knew the tenderness. She knew him, knew the man and knew things about him that made her love him. She didn’t need to see him to know the contours of his face, the deep sandy shade of his hair, the compelling steel and silver of his eyes. She didn’t need to see him to know the generous fullness of his mouth, the sensuality.

  She knew all the hues within his heart and soul and mind, and those colors were all beautiful, and part of the warmth that touched her.

  He could move so silently …

  He would be coming across the room to her.

  Yes, now.

  A smile curved her lip.

  He was coming closer and closer. Moving with long strides but silent grace. She felt him, and felt cocooned in the special warmth that he brought, felt a supreme sense of well-being come over her.

  He was going to make love to her. Now. Prove that he knew exactly how to warm her.

  He stood behind her and swept the fall of her hair from her neck, and she felt the wet, hot caress of his lips against her nape.

  The pleasure was startling. So startling. Hot tremors swept instantly along her spine. Danced there. Her knees grew weak as swift-flowing desire came cascading into the depths of her being.

  He held her hair, and his kiss skimmed over her shoulder. As he kissed her, he lifted the shoulder of her T-shirt. The soft knit slid from her shoulders. It fell to the floor in a pool of lilac. The feel as it left her flesh was so sensual. Soft, warm, exquisite, leaving her skin bared to his kiss.

  The straps of her suit fell from her shoulders. The dampness of it peeled from her body, leaving more skin bared. Sensitive. Waiting.

  She felt his hands on the snap of her shorts. She heard the long rasp of the zipper. The flutter of fabric as they fell. Then the coolness of her still-wet suit slid against her, landing discarded at her feet.

  His arms encircled her. She could feel the strength of his naked chest as he pulled her against him. He still wore his cutoffs.

  She could feel the roughness of the fabric against her tender skin. Even that touch was sensual.

  His whisper touched her ear. The words, each breath of air, brought aching new sensation. “You are … exquisite. You do things to me that I hadn’t imagined could be done …”

  A smile curved her lips. She turned in the circle of his arms.

  She stared up into his eyes and felt the driving passion in their silver depths.

  And then he kissed her.

  And she felt an explosion deep within her. She felt the hungry pressure of his lips, forming over her own, firmly
, demandingly, causing them to part for the exotic presence of his tongue.

  He’d kissed her before …

  Never quite like this.

  And when his lips left her mouth, they touched her throat. Touched the length of it. The soft, slow, sensual stroke of his tongue just brushing her flesh. With ripples of silken, liquid fire. She could see his hands, broad, so darkly tanned, upon the paleness of her skin. His fingers were long, handsomely tapered, callused, but with neatly clipped nails. Masculine hands. Hands that touched with an exciting expertise. Fingers that stroked with confidence and pleasure.

  She allowed her head to fall back, her eyes to close. The sensations to surround her.

  The breeze … it was so cool against her naked body. So soft. So unerringly sensual. Perhaps because her body was so hot. Growing fevered. But the air … it touched her where his kiss left off, and both fire and ice seemed to come to her and dance through her.

  She spun in his arms. It was no longer daytime. Shadows were falling, and the breeze was growing cooler.

  And his kiss went lower.

  And where his lips touched her, she burned.

  And where his lips had lingered earlier, the cool air stroked her with a sensuality all its own.

  And still his kiss lowered. And lowered until he teased the base of her spine. And his hand caressed her naked buttocks and hips, and she was turning in his arms.

  Her hand rested on his head, her breath quickened, and caught, and quickened again. She cried out, amazed at the tempest that rose within her, startled by the sheer sensual pleasure that ripped through her.

  She cried out again, and again, and then discovered that she was sinking, sinking into his arms …

  Night had come. The moon remained in the sky, but she could not see clearly.

  Darkness was falling over the mountains. She reached out and touched his face, stroked the contours of his cheek. She pressed her lips against his, then against his forehead, then against each cheek. She groaned softly, kissing his throat, just teasing it with the barest brush of her teeth.

  It was incredible to touch him. She was in his arms, and she was barely aware that they moved. Then they were sinking once again, down, deep, deep down into the fur before the fireplace.