Summer of Fire - Linda Jacobs [129]
He slid off his boot and it clunked to the carpet. To underline the point he pulled off his socks.
In the bathroom, he dashed double handfuls of cold water on his face. He had lost the spare tire and his muscles were defined from the summer’s work. His hair wasn’t ever going to get any thicker, but what there was bore gold sun streaks. His face was bronzed and the puffy bags beneath his eyes had disappeared.
Coming out of the bath, he stopped and looked at the connecting door. Clare was behind it, wearing that silly grizzly shirt or maybe nothing at all. His breathing deepened, or maybe it just seemed the air grew dense. This new, heavy atmosphere defined his body, making him aware of all his sensations. The carpet felt soft beneath his bare feet. His jeans rode low, looser in the past weeks, well-worn cotton against his skin. He ran a hand over his stomach and chest and stared at the thin panel that separated him from Clare.
She was probably in bed now.
He began to pace, as best he could in the small room, a few feet toward the nightstand, about face and around in front of the silent TV to the other side of the bed. If he had any sense, he’d turn on the set to distract him.
He kept moving.
The king bed looked vast and empty, while just beyond that wall Clare was equally alone. On each circuit, he had to pass the door, not once, but twice.
He would never know what had been between her and Deering, but she’d told him it was over. She could have stayed at the Storm Creek camp with the pilot the other night, not gone home with him to Mammoth. She could have let him leave that night in Jackson, instead of sharing her and Devon’s room, sleeping trustfully near him.
Last night, she’d come into his arms. His hands felt full with the pulse of wanting to touch her again, to feel her bare skin full length against him.
Steve slowed his pacing. He was never going to sleep knowing how close she was. He found his palms pressed flat against the door. Slowly, he bent and put his ear against it to hear if she had put on the TV. All was silent.
If he opened this side, ever so quietly, he could see if she had her lamp on. Before he could change his mind, he twisted the turn button on the lock and pulled the door open. The knob-less facing panel looked odd, beveled like a door, but one without promise. If he knocked, she might tell him to go away. Perhaps she would not.
He told himself that it didn’t make sense to start something that was doomed to end with them separated by half the continent.
But for him it was already begun. After four years on ice, it was time to start living again.
With her hand on the knob of the connecting door, Clare jumped at the soft knock. Relief turned her knees to jelly as she opened the door.
Steve leaned against the jamb as though he had all the time in the world, but she felt the fallacy in that; saw the tautness in the muscles of his bare arms and chest. Her heart pounded.
“Steve.” She backed up, flustered. Her hand went to the pulse at the base of her throat. “Why didn’t you tell me downstairs that you wanted to talk to me?”
He hooked his thumbs inside the belt loops of his low-slung jeans. It hitched them down to reveal his navel, encircled with a whorl of golden hair. “We can talk if you like . . . but . . .” His gray eyes were smoky.
It seemed at once a long time and yet might never last long enough, while Steve simply looked at her. His gaze drank in her breasts beneath the grizzly bear T-shirt, down to where it draped boyish hips she’d hated in high school. The way he crooked a brow said he didn’t think her hips were a bit like a boy’s.
He came to her in three swift strides as though he’d forgotten the pain in his knees. Her mouth opened beneath his as if they’d had years of knowing each other rather than a single kiss.
Her fears for Devon were still with her, could never be far from the surface, yet Steve compelled her to lose