"Yeah, I'm putting you on." He resumed eating, but his smile remained insufferably complacent and amused. "Well, we know that Grandma's beds are safe from us, don't we?"
"We certainly do."
"I mean, when we kissed, nothing happened, right?"
"R-right."
"The earth didn't tremble, stars didn't pop out, fireworks didn't explode. I didn't feel much, did you?"
"No."
"No surge of lust."
"Definitely not."
He shrugged eloquently. "We tried it out and found it lacking, so you've got nothing to worry about. Now, back to your original question about what we're going to do this afternoon."
Stevie barely listened. She had been relieved to know that he was teasing about an afternoon of lovemaking, but her ego was stung. Why had he found the possibility so absurd? When they kissed, hadn't he felt even slightly feverish? Lust was a strong word to describe the tingles she'd felt in all her erogenous zones when his tongue had softly engaged hers in a mating rite, but at least she'd tingled.
He'd come away from the kiss totally unaffected.
Was kissing her so unexciting that even a renowned and seemingly indiscriminate womanizer like him could come through it without feeling something?
"… you don't have to.'' "Don't have to what?" she asked, realizing that he'd been talking all this time.
"Don't have to help," he said, looking at her strangely. "Haven't you been listening?"
"No. My mind was on something else."
His brows frowned steeply. "You're not in pain, are you?"
"No, nothing like that."
"Good." He studied her for a moment as though he wasn't convinced that she was telling the truth. When he was satisfied, he summarized what he'd been saying earlier. "I've got some chores to do around here. While I'm at it, you can relax in one of the bedrooms upstairs."
"I'd rather be outdoors. The woods are so pretty."
"Suit yourself," he said, getting up out of his chair and carrying his empty plate to the sink.
"There are books on the living-room shelves.
Feel free to browse if you get bored."
"Thanks."
"I brought along some work clothes. As soon as I change, I'm going to start working outside.
Holler if you need anything."
"I will."
He left the kitchen. Feeling slightly dejected and deserted, Stevie turned toward the sink.
"Oh, Stevie?"
"Yes?" she said, coming around quickly.
He was peering around the edge of the door, only his head visible. "I felt a little surge of lust."
Then, lightly slapping the doorjamb and giving her a quick wink, he vanished.
Stevie muttered foul imprecations to the empty spot where his grinning face had been.
"What the hell are you doing?"
Stevie, sitting back on her heels in the dirt, glanced over her shoulder. She almost did a double take, but caught herself just in time.
Judd was looming above her wearing nothing but a pair of dirty Levi's and a frown. In the couple of hours since she had seen him, he'd worked up a sweat. Little rivers of perspiration trickled through his plentiful chest hair. He was using a rake as a prop, one elbow resting atop the handle, his hip thrown off center.
She could see straight up into his armpit, but it seemed an invasion of his privacy to stare at that as much as it did to visually track the beads of sweat sliding down the center of his belly into the low waistband of his jeans.
Something sweet and elemental pierced through Stevie's femininity, reminding her of the twinges of pain she had been experiencing recently.
But these were different. These twinges brought pleasure, not dread and doubt. But like the others, she pushed conscious thoughts of them aside because they left her feeling ambivalent and afraid.
'What does it look like I'm doing? I'm weeding this flower bed." She turned back to the task that had hopelessly soiled her white culottes and caked her hands with fertile loam. She was sweaty. Her braid was lying heavily on her damp shirt, which was clinging to her back.
She felt wonderful. It was as though this sweat was healthier than that which she worked up on the tennis court.
"You're supposed to be relaxing," Judd told her.
"This is relaxing. I enjoy tending to plants and these have been so badly neglected." She turned her head to give him a reproving look, but quickly glanced away. He was crouching behind her. Up close, his face was grimy, streaked with sweat, and more handsome than ever. She could smell his skin and knew that his lips would taste salty if he chose to kiss her just then.
Swallowing hard, she said, "There's a pitcher of ice water on the porch."
"Thanks." He eased up, groaning slightly when his knees popped, and moved up the steps to the porch. "These old bones needed the exercise, but I probably won't be able to get out of bed in the morning." He poured himself a glass of ice water. After he'd drained it, he asked,
"Did you do something up here?"
"I swept. The porch was littered with leaves and pine needles. It was a disgrace."
"A regular little busy bee, aren't you?"
"It feels good to be doing honest-to-goodness work. Besides, staying busy keeps my mind occupied."
He loped down the steps and gave her long braid a playful yank. "Just don't wear yourself out."
"I won't."
"You look worn out."
The sun had already slipped behind the tops of the trees, which in turn cast slanted shadows across the clearing in front of the house. Stevie was sprawled in a bench swing suspended from the branch of a mighty pecan tree. She was idly pushing the swing with her bare foot.
Before she'd sat down in it, she'd hosed it off and swept cobwebs off the chains. They needed oil, but she rather liked the pleasant squeaking sound they made as they rocked forward and back. They were in harmony with the perpetual creaking of the windmill.
The swing had been just one of the many projects she had assigned herself during the course of the afternoon while Judd nailed up dislocated shutters, used a weed sling on the clearing, and did some major cleanup around the barn and garage.
Now, as he spoke his semi chastening statement, he dropped onto the ground in front of the swing and lay on his back in the recently mowed grass.
He had put his shirt back on but left it unbuttoned.
It fell open, baring his impressive chest and tantalizing stomach, which for all his carousing was flat and taut and lightly shadowed with dark hair. Stevie kept her eyes studiously averted, but it wasn't easy. It hadn't been easy to keep her eyes off him all afternoon.
"I am tired," she conceded, "but deliciously so. I don't remember when I've watched the sun sinking behind leafy trees. The dappled light, the shadows, the shades of gold and green. It's all beautiful. And the sounds-rustling forest sounds that you never hear in the city. Yet it's quiet."
He rolled to his side and rested his cheek in his palm as he gazed up at her. "Do you always rhapsodize?"
"Only when I get this tired," she said with a smile, which he returned. "I enjoyed today. It's a shame we have to go back and inhale carbon monoxide and diesel exhaust instead of resin and wildflowers."
"Do we?"
She braked the swing with her heel and lifted her head off the thick chain, on which it had been resting. "Do we what?"
"Do we have to go back?"
Her eyes narrowed on him. "What are you up to now, Mackie?"
"God, you have a suspicious nature."
"I'm not suspicious. It's just that I don't trust you as far as I can throw you," she said sweetly.
"Now what do you mean by asking if we have to go back to Dallas? Of course we do."