From This Day Forward Page 18

  A weak moon penetrated the cloud cover. Ginnie stared at it through the dappled sheer curtains, watching the play of clouds around it, listening to the branch she had forgotten, again, scraping against the house. It was the only sound she heard.

  So she didn’t have to be afraid anymore? That’s what Neil had told her. And she wasn’t, not of Todd arriving on her doorstep. Had that fear really disappeared? When? She’d lived with it so long, it had become a part of her. Could it have—was it possible it had just silently faded from her life? She knew herself well enough to know that she would be frightened if confronted by Todd, but she also knew now, accepted now, that that was something that might never happen.

  She twisted in the bed, trying to get comfortable, and couldn’t. But if she wasn’t afraid of Todd, what was she afraid of?

  She was afraid she would spend the rest of her life hopelessly loving a man who could never be hers.

  Neil was doing well without her. Wasn’t that where all their conversations had led? Maybe he hadn’t wanted to divorce her, maybe he hadn’t believed it would be forever, then, but he hadn’t said one word about resuming their life together now, and she thanked God that he hadn’t. That might have been too large a temptation to resist.

  She knew, just as clearly as she knew that tomorrow she would cut off that blasted branch, that too much had happened for them to resume a life together. As much as she loved Neil, and even—improbable thought that it was—even if he loved her, there was no way they could erase what had happened. It would always hang between them.

  She’d not been able to cope with marriage to him at the time they were married, she’d not been able to be what he needed. What made her think she could do so now? They would only wind up destroying any feeling they still had for each other.

  Eventually, she knew, there would be accusations; there would be recriminations. How long could he go on being strong, assuring her that she had nothing to worry about?

  And that’s what he had done the past three days.

  Ginnie saw that clearly, too. Now. He had been strong for her. He had been strong for Todd. He had even been strong for Carole Flannagan.

  “Oh, Lord, Neil,” she whispered into the night. “You’ve been strong for everyone else, but who’s been strong for you?”

  He was doing it again, wasn’t he?

  In spite of all he had said, he was shouldering the whole responsibility, standing up to it like some unfeeling monolith.

  But he wasn’t unfeeling, she knew. The signs were there in rare unguarded moments, in the pain in his eyes, the lines in his face, even the slump to his shoulders when he didn’t know she was watching.

  “You can’t do it alone, Neil,” she moaned into her pillow. “Ask for help. Please, just ask for help.”

  But he couldn’t. She knew that, too. He had no one to turn to except, because of their shared memories, her.

  Go to him, a voice in her mind whispered almost audibly. He needs you. Even if he won’t say it, he needs you.

  “No.”

  The sound of her own voice filled the silent room. Ginnie scrambled upright, piling the pillows behind her in bed.

  Could she do that? she wondered—blatantly, leaving no doubt of her intention. Could she cross the darkened house and go to him? But if the thought of the pain of losing him again was unbearable, how could she live with the pain of rejection if he sent her away?

  She could pretend to have heard a noise, she thought. She could put herself in a position for him to make the first overture.

  “No!” she said aloud. “No, no, no, no, no, Ginnie. In this, at last, be honest.”

  She remembered the words, the expression in Neil’s voice, or the lack of it, as he had told her, They’re trying to find out what’s left of him. Is there any hope? I don’t know what to think anymore.

  She had lain sleepless for only three nights because until now, in spite of herself, she had managed to put thoughts of Todd into the background.

  But Neil had not been able to do that. He had been faced with them—daily? she wondered. For him, this must be the culmination of years of nightmares. And even though she had stopped him from saying it, she knew what he thought the search parties would be looking for along the highway north of Morrilton. How could anyone be expected to go through that alone?

  She slipped from the bed. She would not let him be alone tonight.

  And if he rejected her?

  She wrapped a fist around the curved metal column of the footboard. He wouldn’t, she vowed. He wouldn’t.

  In the back of her closet, in a zippered bag along with the coral silk dress and other relics from her life in Little Rock, hung a peach satin robe, still new in spite of its years. Ginnie shed her flannel nightgown and draped the robe around her.

  At the back of her dresser, equally aged but also new from disuse, rested a bottle of perfume Neil had once given her. Her hand trembled as she drew the stopper from the bottle and lightly, very lightly so as not to overpower him with the freshly applied scent, she touched it to her body, remembering as though it were yesterday and yet also as though it were a half-forgotten dream, the pulse points from which the elusive scent would tantalize him.

  Her hand faltered on the knob of her bedroom door. She couldn’t do it, she thought one final time. She leaned her forehead against the door. Then she straightened, threw her head back and banished that thought from her mind. She opened the door and slipped through the silent house.

  A fire still burned in the fireplace, protected by the screen, and casting its glow through the living room and into the dining room, where an etched mirror on the wall caught her image and threw it back at her–a pale wraith gliding though the night.

  She paused in the hall outside Neil’s door. It was open. Not, she knew, as an invitation, but so that he would be able to hear any strange sound in the house.

  He lay on his side in the bed, facing the double windows from which the drapes had been drawn open, looking into the silvered darkness of the night and the darker shadows of the ancient privet hedge. She wondered if he saw that or still darker thoughts.

  She slipped silently into the room and stood by the side of the bed, watching him, until something, the perfume perhaps, caught his senses and caused him to shift in the bed, to turn, to look toward her.

  “Ginnie!” he whispered, instantly alert as he propped himself up. “What is it? Did you hear something?”

  This was her last chance to back out. She knew it. She could make some excuse and leave the room. She barely heard the rising wind over the roaring of her own blood in her veins.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t hear anything.”

  She watched her hand, which had trembled so traitorously only moments before, as it reached without a tremor for the covers of his bed. She lifted them and slid in beside him.

  She felt his start of surprise and saw it in his shadowed features, masked and yet curiously exposed by the moon’s glow. He waited, barely breathing, dark carved alabaster against the luminescence of the stark white sheets. He would not make the first move, she realized, would not make it easy for her. But that was all right.

  She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned into him until his head rested against her breast. She couldn’t tell him that she had come only to bring him comfort. His pride wouldn’t tolerate that. And now that she held him against her, she wasn’t at all sure that comforting him was truly the sole reason she had come.

  “This is one sleepless night neither one of us needs to spend alone,” she whispered.

  “Oh, Ginnie,” he moaned as his arms went around her, drawing her closer, as his face burrowed against her breast, as a long shudder ran through him.

  They held each other, motionless, for countless moments. The initial movement was hers. She tangled the fingers of her hand through the rich darkness of his hair, pressing his head closer to her, urging him to follow her down into the softness of the pillows. As they slid downward, the hem of the
satin robe caught at her knees, remaining there, baring her lower legs to the gentle abrasiveness of Neil’s.

  Flesh against flesh. The first touch of it jolted through her, much as a first drink of wine, before diffusing warmly through her body. Flesh against flesh.

  She still cradled his head against her breast, but now he moved, nuzzling aside the satin, warm lips seeking equally warm flesh. She moaned and struggled closer. No other sound was necessary. Words might be needed later, but not now. Now–now she wanted no words to shatter these ethereal, impossible, wonderful sensations.

  He moved as tentatively, as gently as she, almost as though he, too, were aware of the fragility of the moment. Carefully, with excruciating slowness, he slid one hand to her hip, content it seemed, just for now, to hold her.

  She would not release his head. That, she could not do. But the sensations of the soft silk of his hair in her fingers and his warm lips on her breast were not enough. She freed her other hand and eased it down his back, feeling his smooth, firm muscles as her fingers inched lower, and lower, and lower.

  She felt a small shock when she realized he wore nothing. He preferred to sleep that way, she knew but had not allowed herself to remember. He’d urged her early in their marriage to join him in bed unencumbered by night wear, but she had refused. She had been embarrassed, although she hadn’t been able to admit it to him, to flaunt her body, feeling at the time there was something slightly immoral about it. But now she felt no embarrassment. Not with Neil. Nothing she shared with Neil could ever be immoral.

  She freed her hand from his hair and moved her fingers across his shoulder in delicate tracery, down his side and around to his chest. Somehow knowing that she must do this, too, she found the small tie that held her robe together and unfastened it, drawing the satin with her as she slid her hand from between their bodies and moved against him.

  Flesh against flesh. Her flesh against his. Ginnie sighed with the sheer joy of once again feeling that.

  She had finally come to him. Neil’s numbed senses took that in as he turned to her, drawing warmth from her, as his hands slid over the wisp of satin that was almost as familiar to his touch as her skin was. He wouldn’t question why, now, she had sought him out when never before had she been able to make the first overture. Needing her was as much a part of him as breathing. He didn’t think he could stand it if she pulled away from him again as she had that morning, and as she had the morning before.

  He held himself in check until her warmth permeated him. Her gentle touch both soothed and enflamed him. Ginnie, he moaned silently. Mean this. Oh, please, love, mean this.

  He felt her hand trailing fire across his back, to his chest, and puzzled at her slight fumbling motions until he felt the slide of satin being drawn from between them and then the length of her soft, sweet self pressed against him. His heart pounded against the wall of his ribs.

  Careful, he warned himself, knowing that if he fully unleashed his need, he could drive her from him. He touched his lips and tongue to the skin over her heart and moved unerringly, moistly, cautiously, to the waiting fullness of one small, proud breast. When he reached the taut peak, he hesitated.

  She moaned deep in her throat and pressed his head to her as she insinuated herself against his body, moving her thigh into fiery contact with him.

  “Slowly, love,” she heard him whisper. “Slowly.”

  Then her breast was his, claimed as well as given, as fires ignited through her body, fusing her to him.

  He slid upward. His mouth found the pulse in her throat and lingered there before moving up to the one behind the shell of her ear. His hands slipped from the satin, around, to stroke the softness of her with deliberate slowness.

  Her mouth ached for his. She twisted beneath him, but he still denied her that touch. His lips caressed her eyes, her temples, her cheeks, and finally, oh finally, her lips.

  She sighed against his mouth as he claimed hers. “Oh, yes,” she murmured. She clenched her fingers into the muscles of Neil’s back as their kiss went on forever–possessive, wistful, hungry, giving.

  A tremor ran through Ginnie, and she felt the gathering of moisture behind her closed eyelids. How could she ever have denied the...the rightness of this? And how could she ever live with only the memory of it? She forced back her tears. Now was not the time for crying. Now was the time for loving. And if all that remained after this night was a memory, then it would be a memory that neither of them would ever forget. A memory, perhaps, to replace some of the starker ones they had shared in the years before.

  She felt Neil lifting her, easing the satin from her shoulders until nothing separated them. His hands and mouth moved with delicious thoroughness as they relearned her body. And hers, as hungry as his, refused to deny themselves the touch of him, the taste of him. He was hers. For this night at least. And she was his.

  She felt him drawing her down, turning her, with his weight balanced over her. She caught his face in her hands and joined their mouths as he joined their bodies.

  Oh, yes, the rightness, she thought in the moment of stillness that followed, and then she thought no more. She was caught with him in a warp of time stretching endlessly upward. Her body racked with tremors, but her soul sang, as together they sought and postponed, sought and postpone, and ultimately found that blindingly clear moment of unity which both shattered and bonded them.

  Neil drew her head against his chest as he brushed the damp tendrils of hair from her forehead. Her cheek rested over his thudding heart. She caught his hand and placed it over her own heart. This was the language they needed now, she thought, not words. Not yet. She felt his arm tighten possessively around her as she sighed against him.

  A noise, indistinguishable as it mingled with the sounds in her dream, awoke Ginnie later, much later, she thought, although she had no way of really knowing. The moon no longer cast its glow, but the darkness inside the room was greater than that outside.

  She felt the tension in Neil’s arm around her that told her he, too, was awake and listening. She heard the fierce pelting of moisture against the windows and then the howling of the wind. The wind. She knew now that was the sound that had awakened her. She felt the lessening tension in Neil that told her when he identified the noise.

  They had shifted in their sleep. He lay on his back with her nestled in the crook of his arm. She traced her fingers to his heart and rested her hand there, feeling its even beat and the steady rise and fall of his chest. He caught her hand in his and pressed it against him as he turned to her.

  His mouth sought her, his hands sought her, and she received him greedily, not trying to hide the desperation of her need.

  When Ginnie awoke again, she was alone in the bed. Weak sunlight filtered through the windows and illuminated the tumbled bed covers and the two pillows crumpled closely together. No rain pelted against the windows, but a heavy drizzle hung in the sky. The sheets still bore the warmth of Neil’s body. She struggled up from that warmth, running her hand wonderingly over his pillow before she piled the two pillows behind her.

  The chill of the room touched her sleep-warmed skin, and she shivered and fumbled for her robe. Her foot brushed the coolness of satin, and she found it at the base of the bed, between the sheets.

  She struggled into the robe and leaned back against the pillows just as Neil walked into the room. He had donned jeans and drawn a shirt over his arms, but it hung open. He sat on the side of the bed and handed her a cup of coffee, waiting until she had sipped from it before he spoke. He took the cup from her and set it on the nightstand.

  “I’m sorry you woke up,” he said. “I had plans of my own for awakening you.”

  She smiled and touched his cheek. Their closeness hadn’t disappeared with the night. Maybe there was hope for them. Maybe... “Then I’m sorry I did, too,” she said in a voice still thick with sleep.

  He caught her hand and held it to his mouth, pressing a kiss into her palm. “Last night–”

  �
��Shh.” She wanted nothing to spoil the memory of their night together. “You know how hard it is for me to wake up,” she said, and wondered at her brazenness. “I think I need some help or I may never get out of bed this morning.”

  Neil laughed and drew her to him. “You’re right. You may never get out of this bed. Oh, Ginnie, do you know how long I’ve waited for this?”

  She let her breath out long and slow against his throat. Yes. She knew. She had waited the same eternity he had. She slipped her hands beneath his shirt and urged him down to her, but he needed no urging. His mouth found hers, his hands parted the satin, and he sighed against her.

  “You know,” he said. His eyes locked with hers as with one finger he delicately traced her already throbbing breast.

  They both heard the knock on the back door. Neil pulled away from her. Moaning in frustration, she began throwing off the covers.

  “This is ridiculous,” she muttered. “I don’t mind the kids coming by, but they’re getting earlier and earlier every day.” She didn’t stop to think as she jumped from the bed. “If that’s Debby, I’ll send her away, Neil.”

  “Ginnie. Wait,” she heard him call out as she hurried to the kitchen. She was dimly aware of the compromising peach robe, but it made no difference now. She loved the kids, but surely they had seen the car in the driveway. Surely they knew she didn’t need to be disturbed at this hour.

  She flung open the back door without stopping to look through the curtain and stared up at the barely recognizable young man beyond the screen.

  She stepped back and would have fallen had Neil’s arm not closed around her waist, giving her the strength she so desperately needed.

  “Hello, Todd,” she heard him say.

  Chapter 13

  T aller. He was much taller, Ginnie thought from the safety of Neil’s arm. Now she’d never be able to hold him off if he—

  And bloated. Todd’s features were a caricature of what they had once been. No clue remained of the intelligence that had once sparked from his eyes.