When Luke woke up in the big brass bed with Carrie draped across his torso, he thought he was still daydreaming. He’d imagined sleeping with her so many times that he couldn’t believe this was real.
But she had real hair, a strand of which tickled his nose so much that he sneezed. And she had real lips, which kissed his earlobe and spoke his name. Also real breasts, one of which he was holding in his hand at that very minute.
He squeezed it gently and she moved against him, sighing in contentment.
“Did we really do what I think we did last night?” he said.
“We did.”
He was quiet for a moment before pushing himself up against the pillows. “It was wonderful, Carrie,” he said.
“I’d agree with that,” she murmured.
“How about if we go for it again?”
She sat bolt upright. “Later. I’ve decided something, Luke.”
“Haven’t we both been too busy to make momentous decisions?”
“Yes, but last night after we came to bed, raindrops kept falling on my head. Like in the song.” She pointed upward, where a water stain had spread over the ceiling.
“We didn’t get all the water in time,” he said in dismay. The stain resembled a part of a woman’s anatomy that Luke found particularly fascinating. Carrie’s was amazingly attractive, in fact.
“I’m going to rent Smitty’s Garage to Whip Productions.”
He regarded her in amazement. “You mean it?”
“I have to. The roof needs repair. Now the ceiling needs painting besides. Will you tell Whip or shall I?”
“You’d better,” Luke said. “He’ll be glad to hear from you.”
She scrambled out of bed. “Where’d I put his business card?”
He studied her with amusement. “It’s eleven o’clock on Sunday morning. Wouldn’t it be better to wait until he’s got his eyes open at least?” Whip slept late every chance he got.
“Eleven o’clock!” Carrie exclaimed as her gaze fell on the clock. It corroborated Luke’s statement. “I’ve missed church.” She sank onto the bed, seeming to notice for the first time that she was stark naked.
“Let me console you,” he said wryly as he reached for her. “The best way I know how. What’s this?” He rubbed at a red mark on her hip.
“That’s from a bit of stiff upholstery material sticking out of the settee. It’ll go away soon enough.” She tugged the sheet up and rolled to curve herself next to him, his front to her back. “I haven’t missed church in years unless I was sick or away,” she said.
“I’m sorry, Carrie. I’d have made sure you woke up in time if I’d known it was important to you.” His fingers began to lazily inscribe circles on her abdomen.
“You had a really good idea a while ago,” she said, shimmying one leg over his.
He felt himself responding and kissed the back of her neck. “What was that, sweet Carrie?”
“We should make love again.”
“I’m in favor of it,” he said as she drew his head down to hers. He leaned into the kiss, gathered her close. One thing about her—she really knew how to kiss. She knew how to do everything else, too.
Well, he did, too, and so he put his whole heart into it. Not that it was too difficult. With Carrie, it almost had to be that way. Otherwise making love with her would be so pointless. He wanted their lovemaking to mean something, to be something she’d remember long after he’d gone. He’d never made an enemy of a former lover yet, and he wasn’t about to start now.
“ARE YOU READY for something to eat?” she asked some time later as she sat up and rumpled her hair. She looked like a tousled sprite or maybe a charming elf, but she made love like a tiger. Not that Luke had ever made love with one, but if he had, he suspected that he’d rather have Carrie. He was astonished at her virtuosity, not to mention her versatility. She’d invented several positions he’d never tried before.
“Not hungry yet,” he said, pulling her close again.
“We should keep up our strength,” she said teasingly.
“In that case, maybe we should try something that’s comparatively low energy,” he told her.
“Like what? Watching TV? Listening to the radio?”
“Or reading the paper.”
“I don’t have the paper delivered. I usually read it at the garage.”
“We could talk,” he said.
“Talk. About what?”
“About you,” he suggested, circling one of her nipples with a forefinger.
“Not about me,” she said.
“Well, then anything.”
“About you,” she replied. “About what you like to do. Who you really are.”
“I think you know what I like to do by this time,” he said.
“Mmm. Maybe you’re right.” She kissed his cheek, the tip of his earlobe, the place where his pulse beat in his throat.
“Besides, we omitted the whole past-history thing. How many boyfriends you’ve had, how many starlets I’ve bedded.” He figured they might as well get it over with while still protected by the mantle of postcoital pleasure.
“Do we have to go there?” Carrie asked plaintively. “I could skip it with no trouble at all.”
“I don’t like baggage that falls open and dumps things out over a period of days, weeks or years,” he told her.
“What is this—baggage inspection time? And if I don’t pass, I miss the flight?”
“I meant what I said about not wanting a one-night stand,” he said apropos of nothing.
She treated him to a sobering look. “I meant it when I told you I never do them.”
“Meaning you tend toward long-term boyfriends,” he ventured. “As in serial monogamy.”
Clearly he wasn’t going to back off this baggage business. She emitted a lengthy sigh and decided to level. “Okay. In high school there was Brandon Quigley. We broke up before we graduated and went our separate ways. Then I didn’t have a real boyfriend for a couple of years, but after I took over the garage I fell in love with an ad salesman from WYEW, the local radio station. We were a couple for two years or more. I got out when he started talking about moving to Charleston. I was into perpetuating the business and was starting to fix up the home place, so he went on without me.”
“Didn’t he visit occasionally?”
“Not much, and after he got engaged I dated a divorced guy who eventually went back to his wife. There was a junior executive at Yewville Mills who moved to Virginia after the mill shut down, and later three men in rapid succession—a pharmaceutical rep, a watermelon farmer from Pageland and a mobile-home installer.”
“No engagements? Nothing became permanent?”
“Nope. I couldn’t imagine settling down with any of them. I was young and stayed flighty for a while, though I really liked Mert, the mobile-home installer, and was sorry when he moved to Spartanburg. We tried a long-distance relationship, but it sputtered and died.”
Luke studied her, taking in the way the corners of her mouth drooped uncharacteristically. “He broke it off, or did you?”
“I did, but—oh, Luke, it all seems so silly now.”
“Go ahead.”
“I always wanted more than any of my boyfriends did. Most of them were into quick, easy sex, no strings attached. I envisioned a real relationship that wouldn’t be put on hold every time hunting season rolled around or when they wanted to go camping or biking or on a golf weekend that couldn’t include me. I wasn’t thinking marriage, exactly. Just consideration. Shuffling their lives around so I’d be a priority. Does that make sense?”
“I think so,” he said, touched by her words. He knew guys like the ones she’d described; men who were so into themselves that no woman could compete.
“Anyway, that gets me over with, so how about you?”
The last thing he intended was to come across like the men who had hurt her, so he had to figure out what he wanted to say and how much to reveal.
“I’ve dated a lot in Hollywood. Many dates were arranged by my press agent and meant nothing to me. Most of them, in fact. In college, I had a girlfriend who refused to accompany me to L.A. when I got my big break.”
“Did you love her?” Carrie asked.
“I thought I did at the time.”
“But did you?”
“In retrospect, yes. We weren’t right for each other, that’s all.”
“And the others? The women you met in California?”
How to explain this? It wasn’t easy for someone who wasn’t in the business to understand.
“I cared about them,” he said. “Unfortunately they all had their own agendas, and often I was in the way.”
“Oh, like the guys I dated—self-absorbed, thoughtless?”
He nodded. “Similar. The women I met usually planned careers in show business. Before anything could develop between us, they’d go to some faraway island for a magazine shoot, or if they managed to stay in town, I’d have to go on location without them. That kind of life is certainly not conducive to settling down with one person.”
“I guess not” was all Carrie said. She nestled closer, and all of a sudden he couldn’t recall the faces of any of the women he’d dated back in California. And the men she’d gone out with were idiots if they didn’t understand what a prize Carrie was.
He liked holding her in his arms, and he must have dozed before she suddenly pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked drowsily.
She shot him a wild-eyed glance. “I completely forgot that I invited Memaw and the rest of my family for Sunday dinner! I have to start the pot roast.” She jumped out of bed, agitated. Her hair was in a tangle and she wore no makeup, but she was gorgeous.
“Does this mean I have to go home?” he asked, studying her.
“Yes. I mean, no.” She grabbed a robe off the back of the closet door. The closet was small, the room big. It had wallpaper with tiny pink roses scattered on a cream-colored background, and the cheval mirror in the corner reflected the bed. Last night it had reflected them in the bed, and he longed to hit the replay button.
He sat up and smiled at her. “Stay or leave, Carrie. That was the question.”
She moved to him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She smelled like vanilla, and he longed to bury his face in her hair and take her back into bed. “How about if you go home and let me start cooking. Come back around three o’clock and have dinner with my family.”
“I’d like that,” he said honestly.
“They won’t know how to treat a movie star.”
“I’m just Luke Mason,” he said. “An ordinary guy.”
“Yeah, like Godiva is ordinary chocolate. Speaking of which, are you ready for breakfast yet? I don’t do eggs.”
“Something to eat would be good.” He was thinking waffles or pancakes or even granola.
“Come downstairs and help yourself to a chocolate banana on a stick from my freezer,” she said, moving away and tying her robe around her.
“That’s breakfast?”
“’Fraid so,” she said, smiling back at him. “I buy them by the dozen at the Southern Confectionery Kitchen downtown. I figure that the banana is a healthy food. As for chocolate, researchers have lately discovered that it has health benefits. Plus, a chocolate banana is easy to eat when I’m in a hurry to work in my garden in the morning.”
Luke followed along without comment, stopping at the kitchen door when he spotted the rabbit chowing down on rabbit kibble.
“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “Maybe I’ll just have what he’s having.”
She tossed him a foil-wrapped missile from the freezer. He peeled off the foil, stared at the frozen banana for a moment and concluded that he was happy to be eating breakfast with Carrie no matter what it was. The banana actually made an excellent breakfast, and at least he wasn’t required to pretend he liked grits. That was a big plus.
CARRIE WAS TOUCHING UP her hair with a curling iron when the phone rang shortly after Luke left.
“What was it like?” Dixie said. Carrie switched her cell phone to speaker and set it on the vanity top as she considered how to answer that.
“Carrie?”
“It’s a fine restaurant. You and I should go there sometime,” Carrie said.
“Not the restaurant, silly. The people. And did you peek inside the limo?”
“There’s no dirt. You know how sometimes bits of leaves cling to your shoes and they’ll be on the floor of your car? Well, this limo was spotless. No dirt on the carpet, no fingerprints on the doors. The driver must spend all day polishing it.”
“What did you and Luke Mason talk about?”
“The usual,” Carrie said.
“What’s usual?”
“He’s coming for dinner today. Are you still bringing dessert?”
Silence. “Luke Mason is coming to dinner?”
“Right. I invited him.”
More silence.
Carrie decided to provide additional information. If she didn’t, she’d be on the phone with Dixie for an hour. “He doesn’t have much of a family, and I felt sorry for him. He’s lonely.”
“Luke Mason is lonely,” Dixie repeated as if utterly fascinated.
“He’s a long way from home.”
“What should I wear? Should I scrap the blueberry cobbler and bring my special tunnel-of-fudge cake, instead? What about allergies? Is he allergic to anything, like eggs? Wow, Carrie, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”
“I’m not doing anything to you, Dixie. I’m doing something for Luke Mason.” How extensively she was doing things for Luke, not to mention to Luke, was something she had no intention of discussing.
“So the tunnel-of-fudge cake would be okay?”
“Sure, that sounds fine. I’ve got to hang up, Dixie. It’s time to set the table.”
“Use Great-Grandma’s best tablecloth, the one with the lace at the corners. And don’t forget the cloth napkins,” Dixie cautioned.
“With Voncille and Skeeter’s brood, I’m not sure I want to go the cloth-napkin route. Otherwise I’ll be washing and bleaching little white squares of fabric for the rest of the week. Bye, Dixie.”
“Wait, wait. I forgot to ask you about Tiffany Zill. What’s she really like?”
“Dixie—”
“Tell, tell!”
“Later. Besides, you’ll be glad to know that I’m going to sign a contract with Whip Productions so they can use Smitty’s for filming.”
“You are?” Dixie sounded dumbfounded.
“Yes, but I’ll have to fill you in later.”
“Don’t you dare hang up, Carrie Smith!”
“Sorry, Dixie. Gotta run.”
She clicked off over the sound of Dixie’s outraged objection.
WHEN LUKE ARRIVED home, he checked his cell phone and discovered a message from Whip.
“We’ve got to do something about Tiffany. She called me up last night, crying her heart out. We can’t have her self-destructing before we even start filming.”
Luke phoned Whip back immediately. “What is it—some problem between her and Peyton?”
Whip let out a long sigh of frustration. “He’s flying to Alaska for an extended fishing vacation, and she can’t go because she has to work.”
Luke thought about it for a moment. “How about if I phone her in a while and suggest that we do something together this afternoon. Maybe that’ll cheer her up.”
“Might as well try it,” Whip said. “Fill me in on how it goes.”
“Sure, Whip,” Luke said, and he immediately phoned Carrie.
“You don’t mind if I bring a guest to dinner, do you?” he asked. “It’s Tiffany. She’s seriously in need of nurturing.” He would never have made such a request except that Carrie already understood about Tiffany’s fragile emotional state, and besides, he couldn’t imagine Carrie saying no.
She didn’t hesitate. “That’ll be fine, Luke, though my sister, Dixie, will go absolutely berserk at the idea of entertaining not one but two movie stars.”
“Does your family stay into the evening?”
“They’re mostly gone by six or seven o’clock.”
“May I request the honor of your presence tonight? All night?” he asked.
He heard pleasure in her voice as she said yes, and hung up elated at the prospect of spending another night amid her rumpled sex-scented sheets, his arms wrapped securely around her.
Tiffany was a basket case when he stopped by the large estate she’d rented on the lake. He walked up the flagstone path, and she opened the huge double doors with a green gel eye pad fastened over her eyes. She squinted at him through two slits in the plastic. “You’re a little early,” she said. “I’m in the middle of a migraine.”
“I’d like to get to Carrie’s on time,” he told her, walking in and nodding to Ham, who was on the couch reading the sports section of the Los Angeles Times amid a nest of discarded pizza boxes. “Does he have to go with us?” he whispered to Tiffany, thinking that Carrie’s hospitality might not extend to the Incredible Hulk, who was not only a social dud but appeared to eat half his body weight in food every day.
“No, since we’re going to a private home.” Tiffany removed the gel pad, which had concealed puffy red eyes.
She’s got to be in a whole lot better shape before we can start filming, Luke realized. “Let’s hurry,” he said.
Tiffany addressed Ham. “Tell Becky to slice off a hunk of that turkey breast in the fridge. You can both have that for dinner if you like.”
Ham nodded, tossed the sports section aside and padded off in the general direction of the kitchen.
“Am I all right? Should I change clothes?” Tiffany asked anxiously.
Luke took in her hair, caught high in a barrette on one side, and her well-cut ivory slacks, which fell in a perfect line from her derriere to the tops of her expensive sandals. “You’ll do,” he said gruffly, upon which she smiled and ran to get her purse as well as Carrie’s freshly laundered T-shirt.
When they drove up in front of Carrie’s house, with its assemblage of cars and one battered minivan, Tiffany was agog.
“Why, the house is absolutely darling!” she exclaimed. “All that white gingerbread trim, and those precious pots of petunias, and that old-time porch swing! It’s exactly the kind of house Carrie should live in,” and she kept up her overblown paean once she got inside.
Luke was more interested in meeting Carrie’s relatives, a veritable sea of curious faces staring at both of them as she opened the door. As for Carrie, her welcome was warm, and she immediately drew them into the parlor.
Before she could introduce the people assembled there, a small redheaded sprite ran up to him and said, “Mister, are you the movie star?”
An audible gasp came from the redhead with the long braids.
“Get on back here, Amelia,” she ordered. “You’ve got no business talking until you’ve been introduced.”
Luke knelt and took the child’s hand. “My name’s Luke,” he said. “And, yes, I’m in Yewville to film a movie. So is Tiffany,” he said.
“Can I call you Tiffany?” the little girl asked, turning toward her.
“If I can call you Amelia,” Tiffany said with a sweet smile.
This broke the ice so that introductions progressed smoothly.
“This is my grandmother, Memaw Frances,” Carrie said, first escorting him to meet the matriarch of the clan, an eightyish matron with perfectly coiffed white hair.
“I just love your movies,” Frances said as she blinked at him through her glasses. “I especially liked Seven Years in Tibet.”
Carrie hastily intervened. “Memaw, Brad Pitt starred in the Tibet movie. Luke’s last movie was Night Pass. Remember, you went with your friend, Dottie.”
“Oh, yes, we drove to Florence one afternoon and stopped at the mill outlet store on the way. That’s before it closed for good, of course. I did used to love buying cheap sheets and pillowcases there.” Frances smiled and extended her hand. “I’m happy to meet you, Mr. Mason.”
“It’s just Luke, please,” he said.
After that he learned that little Amelia, her two brothers and one sister belonged to the redheaded woman with braids, whose name was Voncille and who was married to the taciturn Skeeter. Estill, the older man with the concave chest who also had concave cheeks due to a lack of teeth, was Skeeter’s uncle or related to him in some way that Luke didn’t catch. Claudia, who was around the same age as her sister, Frances, and wore her steely gray hair pinched into waves across her forehead, was profoundly deaf and had to be told everything twice, including Tiffany’s name. This was slightly awkward, because Tiffany didn’t like it when people didn’t know who she was.
While Luke was still attempting to figure out what to say to minimize the damage and shore up Tiffany’s ego, another man arrived. He peered out from under a heavily gelled thicket of light brown hair. “I’m Jackson, Carrie’s cousin,” he said, pumping Luke’s hand as he peeked down the front of Tiffany’s shirt. “I like the movies a lot. A whole lot. Mighty glad to meet you, Luke.”
“And you remember me,” said the brunette whom he recalled from the picnic.
“And me,” said Carrie’s sister, Dixie, who resembled Carrie so closely that they might have been twins, except that Carrie’s eyes were a much lighter shade of blue.
Before he could respond, Tiffany tripped over to the curio cabinet and began to ooh and aah over the thimble collection within. Frances and Claudia immediately joined her to explain the origin of each one, all collected by Carrie’s great-grandmother.
“Have you almost got those place cards ready?” Dixie asked Joyanne, whose head was bent over what appeared to be a jumble of cut-up greeting cards that she was embellishing with a black calligraphy pen.
Luke rocked back on his heels, unsure what to do with himself while Carrie was helping Liddy, the eldest girl child, pull up her socks, which had worked their way down into her sneakers. By then Joyanne was distributing the place cards around the table in the dining room, visible from where he stood. Afterward she came over and began to ask him how she might find an agent to represent her in Hollywood. Skeeter had started correcting the children, who were now sprawled on the floor playing with a deck of cards. Estill, who seemed overwhelmed by such a large group, raised his head and asked loudly and plaintively from his chair in the corner, “Who are all these people?” but no one answered him.
Carrie caught Luke’s eye over the heads of everyone else before she and Dixie disappeared into the kitchen and smiled. He already couldn’t wait for bedtime.
“I LIKE YOUR FAMILY,” Luke said later as he and Carrie walked hand in hand through a meadow toward a copse of trees that hid a small creek. A full moon lit the sky, casting the distant trees in pure molten silver, and the shrill of crickets lent music to the September night.
“Everyone was surprised that you were so approachable. I’m sure they didn’t expect you to get down on the floor with the kids and play Go Fish while we cleaned up the kitchen.”
“I don’t know about them,” he said, “but Tiffany certainly was amazed.” His costar’s jaw dropped when she saw him on his stomach amid kids and cards, the lop-eared rabbit, which had ventured out from under a desk as he shuffled, sitting nearby and sneering at him every minute.
“The whole time Tiffany was loading dishes into the dishwasher, I was concerned that she’d splash gravy on those white slacks of hers.”
“Wouldn’t matter if she did,” Luke said. “She’d find a dry cleaner.”
“Not in Yewville,” Carrie said.
“Carrie, stop worrying about what this place doesn’t have and start appreciating what it does have,” he advised.
“I thought I did. Do, I mean.”
“Maybe not enough. These days, not many families get together every weekend the way yours does. People like Estill eat alone, far away from family and sometimes without friends.” He’d learned from Claudia that Estill resided in a trailer in a remote section of the county and that Voncille and Skeeter drove out there to get him every Sunday. Estill hadn’t participated much in the proceedings—he’d hunched over his dinner and scarcely spoke—but he’d seemed to brighten when the kids asked him questions and plied them with jelly beans when he thought no one would notice.
“We take care of our own, that’s for sure.”
They continued in silence, the long grass snatching at their ankles, until they reached a path fragrant with freshly strewn pine straw. “We’re almost there,” Carrie said, squeezing his hand. “Sycamore Branch is one of my favorite places in the world.”
They stooped to duck beneath a dense haven of kudzu vine draped over low-hanging branches and found themselves in a small glen. A narrow stream, glimmering like shot silk in the moonlight, surged over a tiny waterfall, the water scintillating on the rocks until it disappeared into the darkness. A scattering of beams and boards indicated where a building must have once stood.
“That’s the old spring house,” Carrie said. “My great-grandparents cooled their food there because they didn’t have an icebox. That came later, and then electricity.”
The soft colors of the night filtered through the canopy of leaves above and reflected in Carrie’s luminous eyes. She pulled him down on a wide flat rock and leaned back against his chest. He slid his arms around her, listening to tree frogs winding up and letting loose nearby. The air smelled of moss and cool water.
“Dixie and I used to play house here when we were kids. This rock was the living room, that one to your right was the kitchen and the one closest to the spring house was the garage where I went to work every day.”
“And Dixie—did she work at the garage, too?”
Carrie shook her head. “Dixie is more traditional. She’s beginning a new career of selling real estate, and she’d like to find a husband. She’s a better cook than I am, too.”
“That couldn’t be true. The pot roast was fantastic.”
“I’m glad you liked it, but I didn’t make the dessert. Dixie did that. Memaw brought watermelon pickle, which she puts up every summer. Voncille contributed yeast bread.”
“And the children,” Luke added with a smile. “They’re great.”
“I love those kids. Paul is eleven, Liddy is nine, Amelia is six and Petey is two.”
“Voncille said she was in high school with you. She acts much older somehow.”
“Vonnie’s two years my senior. She dropped out to marry Skeeter in eleventh grade, and they’ve had a time of it. They’re happy, though.”
Carrie seemed reflective, and he nuzzled her temple. “Hey, if they’re happy, that’s all that counts.”
She sighed. “Easy for you to say. Skeeter keeps getting laid off. Voncille doesn’t work—thinks she should be home with the kids. She’s tried all sorts of useless get-rich-quick schemes, like stuffing envelopes at home. She wants to work full-time when little Petey starts school.”
“Good for her.”
“If she can find a job. She’s working on her GED to make up for the lack of a diploma from Yewville High.”
“I’m glad to know more about your family, Carrie, but I’d like a crash course in Carrie Rose Smith.”
“You’ve already found out almost everything important,” she said.
“Not your favorite color or the soft drink you like best. If you prefer boxers or briefs on men. Your birthday.”
“Pale blue, like moonlight on water. Cheerwine, a Carolinas drink. Briefs, on you. And December 24.”
“Your birthday is the day before Christmas?”
“Unfortunately yes. I’ve always felt cheated because other people get presents twice a year and I only get them once.”
He squeezed her hand. “You know what? I’m not familiar with Cheerwine, but I understand exactly how you feel about your Christmas birthday because mine’s on December 24, too. The same day as yours.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Really?”
“It is. I never had a real birthday party. Sherry would always give me a little present because she felt sorry for me, but—” He didn’t like to talk about his sister, and besides, after she died, no one had ever made a fuss about his birthday again, not even his parents. They’d all had a hard time keeping Christmas after Sherry’s accident, which had happened in November.
He cleared his throat. “Now, back to what you like. Grease under your fingernails. Hub, at the garage. Stray dogs. And slightly kinky sex.”
She made a face. “You make it sound as if I’m into chains and handcuffs.”
“No, but I liked the shower scene this morning. Not to mention getting good mileage out of that settee in the attic.”
“I’d always wondered what it would be like to make love on that plush fabric,” she said thoughtfully. “I finally found out.”
“I’m glad I could help you with that,” he said in all sincerity. “And if you have other fantasies you’d like fulfilled, I’m your man.”
“I’ve always wondered if it could be done on the porch swing. But don’t tell anyone.”
“You think I would talk about such privileged information?” He wasn’t sure whether to be offended or amused.
“I hope not, since I’d hate for my sexual proclivities to become part of the Yewville gossip mill.”
“How about my sexual proclivities?” he asked mildly.
She made a disparaging sound. “People go to the movies. They remember that you had sex with Buffy Gaetano in Frankly, Roberta and that Judith Stirgill jumped your bones in Crawdads. They expect you can sleep with anyone wherever you want, Luke Mason.”
He laughed and kissed the tip of her nose. “I told you, sometimes it’s not even me up there on the big screen.”
“Hmm. I don’t know whether to believe it.”
He kissed her hard, leaving both of them gasping for breath. “Do you believe that kiss?” he asked. “What it means and what it could?”
“Not sure. Try it again,” she said.
He kissed her again, deeper, and with more passion. His fingertips explored her face before he trailed kisses down her throat and the hollow exposed by her V-neck sweater. He feathered his hands up her sides and curved them around sweet, warm flesh. When her nipples reared up to say hello, he paid them the attention they deserved.
“We should have brought a blanket,” Carrie murmured as together they fell back against the rock.
“Next time.” He counted his way down her ribs, marveling at the delicacy of her bone structure. Her jeans presented a problem, though she obliged by slithering out of them in a movement so graceful it might have been choreographed.
He slid over her, and took them to a mindless, heedless place where all they wanted was to yield to wild, heady excitement. When it was over, when his heart had slowed to normal, Carrie unwrapped her legs from around his waist and touched his face as if in a trance.
“This is better than any movie I’ve ever seen,” she said.
“It’s also more real than any I’ve been in,” he said with a chuckle, anchoring her to him with his arms.
She sighed, and he was overtaken by the sudden notion that he could make love to her for the rest of his life and never miss any other women. He started to move apart from her, feeling obliged to contemplate the idea before it got away from him.
But she wrapped her legs around his waist again and held him fast. “Where are you going?” she asked playfully.
“Not far,” he told her, forgetting what he’d been about to contemplate.
“Good. Because I want you to do all that to me again,” she said. And he was more than happy to oblige.