She saw his arousal, and felt her own throb in counterpoint. Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his chest, breathing in the clean, musky scent of his skin.
Clay gasped.
“You are so hot,” she blurted out.
He grinned. “I know.”
“Oh, you! I meant you throw off heat like…like an erotic bonfire.”
Clay laughed. “So do you, Annie. So do you,” he whispered, holding her face with the fingertips of both hands. He gazed at her with sheer adulation, which both humbled and exalted her. Tears filled her vision at the admiration she saw in his wonderful blue eyes.
“I love you, Clayton Jessup. I don’t know how it’s possible to fall in love with someone so fast and so hard, but it’s the truth. I love you.”
“I feel as if I’ve been walking through life with a huge hole in my heart, and now, suddenly, it’s been filled. You make me complete, Annie. I know, that sounds so corny—”
“Shhh,” she said, putting a forefinger against his lips. “It doesn’t sound corny at all.”
He led her to the bed then and they climbed over the ridiculously high side frames, laughing. It was an awkward exercise, with Clay’s injury.
“At least there’s no danger of us falling out of bed if you get too rambunctious,” she teased.
In response, he swatted her on the behind, which was raised ignominiously in the air before she plopped down next to him.
Turning serious, Clay rolled onto his back and adjusted her so she lay half over him. Then he took her hands, encouraging her to explore him.
And she did.
Oh, Lord, she did.
She told him things she’d never imagined were in the far reaches of her fantasies. She used words…wicked words that drew a heated blush to her cheeks, and a chuckle of satisfaction from Clay.
Clay told her things, too, in a voice silky with sex. He spoke of erotic activities that made her tremble with trepidation. Or was it anticipation?
“I never expected that a man’s hands could be so gentle and aggressive at the same time,” she confessed.
“Who knew you’d be so passionate!” Clay said as he performed magic feats on the many surfaces of her body. “I love the soft sounds you make when I touch you here. And here. And here.”
Clay nudged her knees apart and lay over her, weight braced on his elbows. He teased her nipples with his fingers and lips and teeth and tongue—plucking, sucking, fluttering, and nipping—till Annie ached for more. It was hard to believe that the staid businessman could be such an inventive lover.
Finally, finally, finally, he penetrated her, and there was no pain, just a stretching fullness. Clay went still, his body taut with tension as he watched her.
“I love you, Annie,” he whispered.
Her inner folds shifted around him in response, allowing him to grow even more, filling her even more.
“I love you, too, Clay. With all my heart.”
Only then did he begin to move, long strokes that seemed to draw her very soul from her body. Then he surged back in again. Over and over, he took her breath away, then gave her new life.
She drew her knees up to give him greater access.
His heart thundered against her breast.
“Come for me, Annie,” he gritted out painfully. “Let it happen, love.”
But Annie fought her climax till she saw Clay rear his head back, veins taut in his neck, and let loose with a raw animal sound of pure male release as he plunged fully into her depths. Only then did Annie allow herself to spasm around him in progressively stronger reflexes till she, too, cried out with pure pleasure-pain.
Annie wept then—not from physical soreness, or emotional distress. It was the beauty and rightness of what they shared that drew her tears. There was a dampness in Clay’s eyes, too.
After that, they made love again, a slow, serious exploration of each other’s bodies, their likes and dislikes.
Then they made love a third time…a joyous, rib-tickling affair, involving mattress wave machines and carousels and sinfully sweet cotton candy.
CHAPTER SIX
It was two o’clock in the morning, and she and Clay were sitting on the floor watching Roustabout. She wore only Clay’s dress shirt; he wore only a pair of boxers. She’d never enjoyed a movie more.
They were eating candy apples and chili dogs. He’d balked at the food choice at first, but Annie noticed that he’d then scarfed down two of both in record time, washed down with a Coke.
“We have to go back to the farm soon,” she said regretfully. “We don’t want to arrive when everyone is already waking up for the day. Talk about ‘pink and flustery’! I’d be more like red and catatonic…with mortification.”
“You aren’t having second thoughts, are you?” Clay stood up and was taking their empty plates and glasses over to the kitchenette counter. He stopped and stared at her with concern.
“No, sweetheart, I’m not ashamed of anything we’ve done together. I just don’t want to broadcast it to the world yet.”
“Good,” he said. “Because I have something for you.” Clay went over to the hallway where he’d placed the express mailer that Mr. Bloom had handed to him earlier. Pulling the string zip, he took out a small box and handed it to Annie.
She raised her brows with uncertainty, then stood up and opened the small cardboard box. Inside was a velvet box. Annie felt a roaring in her ears, and she began to weep before she even opened the tiny latch to see an old-fashioned diamond in a gold setting, surrounded by diamond chips.
“It belonged to my grandmother. I called my office this morning and had my secretary take it out of the safety-deposit box and mail it to me. If you don’t like it, we can buy a new one, what ever you want.” Clay was rambling on nervously while Annie continued to weep.
“It’s beautiful,” she sobbed.
“Will you marry me, love?”
“Of course I’ll marry you,” she said, and continued to sob.
“Here, let me put it on for you,” Clay urged, a tearful thread in his voice, too.
It was dazzling. Not too big. Not too modern. Ideal.
“Oh, Clay, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. More than I ever thought possible.”
They kissed to seal their betrothal.
Then they sealed their betrothal in another way.
“How soon before we can get married, do you think?” Clay asked much later. “I’ve got to get back to my office sometime soon, and I hate the thought of leaving you behind.”
“I don’t know. Aunt Liza will want to have a big wedding, but we can do something small, for family only.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I’m not sure. I always pictured myself walking down the aisle in a white gown…the works. But now…well, I want to be married to you as soon as possible.”
“We’ll have a big wedding, if that’s what you always wanted, Annie, love. But we’ll set a new time record for arranging a big wedding. Okay?”
She nodded, unable to stop staring at the beautiful ring on her finger.
“Will you be able to come back to Princeton with me for a while? Would that be too scandalous for Aunt Liza?”
Annie laughed. “Oh, I think we could convince her that your house keeper is chaperon enough, but I couldn’t stay for more than a week. It’s too much to ask Chet and the others to take on my work for much more than that.”
“But, honey, at some point they’ll have to pick up your slack. When you move up north, they’ll have no choice but to—”
The small choked sound Annie made caught Clay midsentence.
“Annie…Annie, what’s wrong?”
Stricken, she could only stare at him. “You think I’ll move to New Jersey permanently?”
A frown creased Clay’s forehead. “Of course. You didn’t think I would be moving here, did you?”
“Yes,” she wailed. “You didn’t think I’d give up the farm, did you?”
; “Yes.”
They were both gaping at each other with incredulity.
“How could you think that you and I would marry and live in that farm house? It’s too small for your family as it is.”
Annie shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t thinking that far. At some point, Chet will probably marry Emmy Lou, once he gets his head together. And I would imagine they’ll live at the farm house. But we could always build a house somewhere else on our land. There’s plenty of acreage.”
“Annie, I’m not a farmer.”
“Well, I am,” she said stormily then softened her voice, putting a hand up to cup Clay’s rigid jaw lovingly. “Clay, isn’t there any way you could do your work from Memphis?”
“Annie, my business has been operated from the same Manhattan office by three generations of Jessups. My family home has been in Princeton for almost a hundred years.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“I am not moving to Memphis, and that’s final.” He pleaded with her to understand. “That farm of yours is a money drain, pure and simple. This afternoon I read some of the farm magazines sitting around your house. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that eventually you’ll have to sell off some land to developers or use hormones in your cattle feed. You’re about twenty years behind the times, babe.”
“How dare you…how dare you presume to tell me how to run my farm? And you know nothing about me at all, if you think I would ever sell off even a shovelful of Fallon land.”
“It’s an unwise financial decision, Annie. Believe me, this is what I do for a living. This is my expertise.”
“You can shove your expertise, Clay Jessup. And you can shove this, too,” she said, taking off the ring and handing it back to him. The whole time tears were streaming down her face.
“Annie, don’t. Oh, God, don’t leave like this,” he said, watching with horror as she snatched up her clothes and began to dress as quickly as possible. “Let’s talk about this. You’re not being rational.” He began to dress as well.
“You’re not coming back to the farm with me.”
“I don’t want you driving alone in the middle of the night.”
“I’m a big girl, Clay. I’ve been doing it for a long time.” Dressed now, she stared at him for a long moment. “Tell me one thing, Clay. Do you still intend to raze this hotel?”
“Of course. What would ever make you think otherwise?”
Annie tried, but couldn’t stifle the sob that rose in her tight throat. “Call me crazy, but I thought you were developing a heart.”
“You’re being unfair.”
“Life’s unfair, Clay.” She grabbed her shoulder bag and headed toward the door, anxious to be out of his sight now, before she broke down completely.
“I love you, Annie.”
Her only response was to slam the door in his face.
Clay gazed at the closed door with abject misery.
How could I have made such a mess of things? How will I survive without Annie? What should I do now?
And somewhere, whether it was the television or inside his head, Clay couldn’t tell for sure, Elvis gave him the answer: “I’m so lonesome I could cry…”
Truer words were never sung.
And Clay was pretty sure this qualified as a God’s-big-toe stumble.
Two days later, on Wednesday, a despondent Clay stared out his hotel room window as Annie and her brothers dismantled their live Nativity scene for the day. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve, so it would probably be their last day on the site.
Clay had no idea if he’d ever see Annie again after that.
Oh, he’d tried to reconcile their differences, but Annie wouldn’t budge.
“Are you still selling the hotel?” she’d demanded to know yesterday when he’d confronted her in the hotel café. She and her family had managed to deflect all his phone calls before that. She’d even threatened to give up their live Nativity scene yesterday, despite her family’s need for money, if he didn’t stop coming out and “bothering” her. “Well, answer me. Are you still selling the hotel?”
“Yes, but it has nothing to do with us, Annie. It’s a business decision.”
She’d made a harrumphing sound of disgust. “Would you move to Memphis?”
“Well, maybe we could live here part of the time…have homes in New Jersey and Tennessee.” See, I can compromise. Why can’t you, Annie? “Would you be willing to promise to never…uh…to never stick your arm up a cow’s butt again?”
Annie had looked surprised at that request. Then she’d shaken her head sadly. “Clay, Clay, Clay. You just don’t get it, do you? I’ve bred a hundred cows in my lifetime. I’ll breed hundreds more before I die. If you think cow breeding is gross, you ought to see me butcher a pig. Or wring a chicken’s neck, cut off its head, gut, and feather it, all in time for dinner. Believe me, cow breeding is no big deal.”
It is to me. And I refuse to picture Annie with a dead chicken or cow. She’s just kidding. She must be. “Don’t you love me, Annie?” He’d hated the pathetic tone his voice had taken on then, but the question had needed to be asked.
“Yes, but I’m hoping I’ll get over it.”
No! his mind had screamed. Don’t get over it. You can’t get over it. I won’t. I can’t.
That had been the last conversation he’d had with the woman he loved and had lost, all in the space of three lousy days in Memphis. Then today he’d discovered a card table in the lobby with the sign HEARTBREAK HOTEL EMPLOYEE FUND. Apparently, Annie and her family had donated two hundred dollars of their hard-earned money to start a fund for hotel employees who would soon be out of work, due to him. Annie had found a way, after all, to make him, albeit indirectly, involved in the Fallon family Christmas good deed for 1998. And it didn’t matter one damn bit to anyone that he’d dropped five hundred dollars in the box.
A knock on the door jarred him from his daydream. It was the elderly bellhop. “Mr. and Mrs. Bloom said to tell you the lawyers’ll be here any minute. Best you come down to the office to go over some last-minute details for the sale.”
The bellhop glared at him, then turned on his heel and stomped away, not even waiting for Clay to accompany him. Hell, the entire hotel staff, except for the Blooms, had put him on their freeze list. You’d think he was Simon Legree. Or Scrooge.
Minutes later, Clay was in the manager’s office, doing a last read-through of the legal documents. The attorneys hadn’t arrived yet, and David had gone out front to register a guest.
“Mr. Jessup, I have some things that belong to you…well, they belonged to your mother, but I guess that means they belong to you now.”
“What?” Clay glanced up to see Marion lifting a cardboard box from a closet shelf.
“When the fire occurred at the photography studio next door all those years ago, I was on duty. I managed to save a few scraps of things from the fire,” she explained nervously.
“Why didn’t you send them to my father?”
“I tried to give them to him when he came to Memphis to bury your mother, but he refused to take them…said he wanted nothing to remind him of her. It was the grief speaking, of course.”
No, it wasn’t the grief speaking. That’s how my father regarded my mother his entire life.
Hesitantly he opened the box. On top was an eight-by-ten photograph, brown on the edges.
“It was their wedding picture,” Mrs. Bloom informed him.
Clay felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut. His father— looking much younger and more carefree than he’d ever witnessed—was dressed in a dark suit with a flower in the lapel, gazing with adoration at the woman standing at his side carrying a small bouquet of roses. Their arms were linked around each other’s waists. She wore a stylish white suit with matching high heels, and she was staring at her new husband with pure, seemingly heartfelt love. They were standing on the steps in front of a church. The date on the back of the picture read August 10, 1967.
“How
could two people who appear to have loved each other so much have fallen out of love so quickly?”
Marion gasped. “What ever are you talking about? They never stopped loving each other.”
Clay cut her off with a sharp glower. “My mother abandoned me and my father less than two years after this photo was taken.”
“She never did so!” Marion snapped indignantly. “Clare came here to tie up some loose ends with her business, and to give her and your father some breathing room over their differences. But they never stopped loving each other.”
He started to speak, but Marion put up a hand to halt his words. “You have to understand that there’s something about the air that comes down from the Blue Ridge Mountains. It gets in a Memphian’s soul. Your mother was Memphis born and bred. She had trouble adjusting to life in Princeton, and your father was a stubborn, unbending man. I think he feared the pull of this city on your mother—jealousy, in a way—and so he became dogmatic, unwilling to be flexible.”
“She left my father,” Clay gritted out.
Marion shook her head vigorously from side to side. “Clare wasn’t giving up on your father. She had every intention of returning home. If it hadn’t been for the fire…” Her eyes filled with tears as she spoke. She swiped at them with a tissue and pointed to an envelope in the box of miscellany.
Clay picked it up and immediately noticed the airline logo on the outside of the envelope. Inside was a thirty-year-old one-way ticket, Memphis to Newark. It was too much to digest at once. Clay stood abruptly and headed for the door.
“Mr. Jessup, where are you going? We have a meeting soon.”
He waved a hand dismissively. “I’m going for a walk. I need to think.”
“But what should I tell the lawyers?”
“Tell them…tell them…the deal is off…for now.”
It was Christmas Eve, and Clay was driving a bright red Jeep Cherokee up the lane to Sweet Hollow Farm, more hopeful and frightened than he’d ever been in all his life.
Would he and Annie be able to work things out?
Would her brothers come out with shotguns in hand?
Would he fight to the death for her…a virtual knight in shining Jeep?