In the parlor, Anna waited nervously.
At first she sat down on one of the plush velvet sofas and very carefully arranged the skirts of her blue summer dress. She wanted to look just right when Brit came in.
In seconds she was up pacing, her heart beating erratically. She crossed anxiously to the white marble fireplace to peer into the gold-framed mirror that hung above. She pinched her cheeks and bit her lips. She smoothed her hair, arranging the golden locks to fall appealingly on her shoulders, taking care, as she did so, to make sure a shiny curl concealed the ugly black tattoo below her right ear.
She turned away from the mirror.
She glanced at the clock and shook her head. What was keeping him? Why hadn’t he come?
Brit quietly closed LaDextra’s door, but he didn’t go straight to the parlor. He turned and rushed down the dim corridor to the back stairs. He anxiously climbed the steps, taking them two at a time. When he reached the second floor and the door to his room, he’d already removed his badly scorched shirt.
Inside, he wasted no time in stripping down to the skin, leaving his soiled, smoke-blackened clothes where he dropped them. Naked, he made a beeline for the bath. Nervous as a schoolboy, Brit rushed to bathe, wash his hair and get his clothes changed so he could hurry down to the waiting Anna.
In the big marble tub, he washed away the soot and sweat and grime from his lean body. He soaped his hair and scrubbed his scalp with nimble fingers.
Out of the bath, toweling himself dry, he studied his face in the mirror and frowned. He needed a shave, but there was no time. It would take too long. She might not wait.
Brit tossed the towel aside, stepped into clean underwear and reached for a freshly laundered shirt. Not bothering to button it, he drew on a pair of black, neatly pressed trousers, hastily buttoned them, then hopped on one foot, then the other as he put on his shoes and socks.
With the minutes ticking away, Anna kept glancing at the clock, so tense she felt she was going to jump out of her skin. She couldn’t sit still. She paced restlessly before the cold marble fireplace, wondering what was keeping him.
When twenty long minutes had passed, Anna stopped pacing, shook her head sadly and told herself she was once again behaving like a fool.
Brit was not coming to the parlor.
He was not coming to her. She had imagined everything. She had let herself read a meaning into his look on the gallery that was never really there. The way he had gazed at her, the way he held her hand so tightly in his, had meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
How could she have believed that, just because he had smiled at her and squeezed her hand, he’d meant her to know that he would come to her? He wasn’t about to. Now or ever.
Her face immediately grew hot with embarrassment and shame. Dear Lord, what if he learned that she was waiting here for him like a lovestruck girl? What if he casually wandered into the parlor and found her here? How could she ever explain?
Eager to get away before he could catch her, Anna quickly crossed the spacious room, stepped out into the foyer and hurried to the front door. She slipped quietly outside, crossed the broad gallery and went down the front steps.
Raking his hands through his still-damp hair and buttoning his shirt as he came, Brit skipped down the back stairs and rushed toward the parlor. His heartbeat quickening, he stepped, smiling, into the arched doorway of the lamplit parlor and looked eagerly around.
The room was empty.
Brit’s smile instantly fled. Confused, disappointed, he frowned and shook his head. His wide shoulders slumped wearily.
She wasn’t here. She wasn’t waiting. Had he really expected her to be here waiting for him? Just because she had smiled so sweetly at him and gripped his hand as if she would never let it go? That was no reason to suppose she’d be here where he’d left her, eagerly anticipating his return.
All at once exhaustion settled over him, consumed him. The long, hard day of fighting the raging blaze had left him with absolutely no energy. He was tired to the bone. The thing to do was to go right back upstairs and go to bed.
But Brit wasn’t sleepy, despite his weariness.
He was restless. Disillusioned. Edgy.
He exhaled heavily and headed for the front door, feeling as he had felt while fighting the fire, as if he were suffocating. Like he couldn’t get a breath. Outside on the front gallery, he glanced at the hammock, considered stretching out in it.
It was no use. He couldn’t lie still. He lit a cigar. The late-rising moon was up fully now, brightly illuminating the sprawling grounds and the vast valley below the house. And revealing the hundreds of blackened, still smoking acres of land that had burned in the fire.
Cigar in his mouth, Brit went down the front steps and out onto the manicured lawn. With no particular destination in mind, he circled the big house, choosing—he didn’t know why—the east side. He unhurriedly rounded the eastern corner of the mansion and stopped dead in his tracks.
His lethargy instantly departed.
Anna stood at the old wishing well, her long golden hair gleaming silver in the moonlight, the skirts of her blue summer dress lifting in the night breezes.
For a long moment Brit stood there unmoving, staring, awed, wondering if he could trust his eyes. Was she actually there or was she only an illusion brought forth by his yearning heart?
Anna moved slightly.
She was real.
She was there.
Brit dropped his cigar, crushed it out under his heel and started toward her.
Anna sensed his presence, turned and watched him approach, her pulse quickening at the sight of him so tall, so dark, so devastatingly handsome, coming toward her in the bright moonlight.
Brit reached Anna, smiled down at her and asked softly, “Were you making a wish?”
“Yes,” she said truthfully, gazing up at him, “and I got my wish. You have come to me.” She took a half step closer and asked, “Haven’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice a warm caress, “I have. I have come to you, Anna.”
“Brit!” She murmured his name on a sigh.
“Sweetheart,” he responded huskily.
Then, slowly lifting a hand to brush back a windblown lock of golden hair from her ivory cheek, he said, letting her know his intent in case he might still be misreading her, “I am going to kiss you.”
She smiled a dazzling smile and replied, “And I am going to let you.”
Brit quickly closed the gap between them and took Anna in his arms. He looked into her eyes for several seconds, a muscle dancing in his lean jaw, then lowered his head and kissed her. It was the sweetest, most tender of kisses. His warm, smooth lips settled on hers in a soft caress so caring, so unthreatening, she melted with bliss.
When the brief buss ended, Brit lifted his head and drew Anna closer against his tall, lean frame. Anna sighed with happiness and laid her forehead against Brit’s chest. They stood like that for several peaceful moments, their arms around each other, their hearts beating together, their bodies taut with longing.
Holding her, wanting her, Brit cautioned himself to let her set the pace. He was not going to rush her. He was, if need be, willing to take all night to win and woo her completely. She meant too much to him. More, much more than any woman ever had.
At last Anna raised her head, tipped it back and looked up at Brit. She said, “Kiss me again?”
“Ah, baby,” he murmured, and kissed her.
This time what began as that same kind of sweet, gentle brushing of lips swiftly escalated into a fiery kiss of budding passion. Both were breathless when the long, penetrating kiss ended, but they hastily changed positions and kissed again.
For the next half hour the two of them stood there in the brilliant September moonlight at the wishing well, kissing, touching, straining against each other, pressing their sensitized bodies together through the increasingly vexing barrier of their clothes.
Brit stood with his back braced against the wishing well, his feet apart. His hands at Anna’s small waist, he held her close against him, his knees on either side of her legs. Their lips combined in probing, prolonged kisses, and Brit could feel her passion-hardened nipples rubbing against his chest, her pelvis pressing temptingly against his own.
He wondered if she knew what she was doing to him. Already she had him so aroused he wished that he didn’t have to wait, wished that he could just take her right now, right here where they stood. He had to fight the strong temptation to swiftly turn her about, press her up against the well, rip away her underwear, open his trousers and quickly bury himself inside her.
He didn’t do it.
He was not going to behave like an animal this night. He loved this woman, no matter who she was or was not, and he meant to give her so much patient pleasure she would never want to be in any arms but his.
Brit kept kissing Anna, and kissing her, until she was sighing and clinging to him in unquestioned surrender. Wordlessly he swept her up into his arms and carried her back inside the big, silent house.
He climbed the shadowy stairs and took her directly to the privacy of his room.