Read Online Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis - Free Book Online Page B

mother had asked about the intricacies of settling into a new job and establishing oneself with a talented and experienced staff.
    Not many minutes ago she had accused him of being thorough, and he was. He was probably the most thorough, observant listener she had ever conversed with. She stopped watching to learn whether or not this was only the élan of some surface charm. She forgot to worry.
    His hands explored her with the same sympathetic seductiveness as his voice, which had become husky, a murmur. Time passed, a flowing gift. Her eyes became dark-adjusted. Her body became love-adjusted.
    “I think you’re ready now,” he said softly.
    She jumped.
    Laughing gently at her belated alarm, he slid down the zipper of her coat, drew it down from her shoulders and then zipped her into his own parka. His warm sweet scent rose from the down lining, enveloping her as she watched him pull a wool melton jacket from the back seat and shrug into it. He climbed out of the car and held open her door invitingly.
    She knew the hours that followed would live in her memory forever. The forest was a jeweled world. Snowflakes glittered from clumps of puffy snow caught on pine branches. The ground twinkled as if it were strewn with chipped stars. Night breezes lulled the high scalloped tree crowns and cast theincense of damp cedar into the moist, snow-spangled air.
    She could pick out detail in the moonlight as if it were day. As she turned slowly, looking around her in the dazzling silence, Philip took buckets from the back of the car and filled them with kibble-style dog food. He handed her a stack of tin pie plates and began to walk with her toward an opening in the forest wall, their footsteps muffled in the dense snow carpet. She no longer noticed the cold.
    “Where—”
    A softly spoken word interrupted her. “Whisper.”
    “Where are we going?” Her low tone mated with his. “Do you have a kennel here?”
    “No.” He smiled. “I have wild friends.”
    Beyond, a meadow bathed in starlight. She watched Philip fill the pie plates and put them on the ground. Then he took her face in his hands and kissed her once, slowly, and she tasted the mist of his breath and snowflakes.
    Like a dreamer she walked hand-in-hand with him to the meadow’s edge where he took her in his arms under the drooping canopy of a willow. Amid the ice droplets that glistened like tear-shaped gems at the tip of each branch, he caressed the snowflakes from her lashes with his lips. Then, gently, he turned her back toward the meadow, and stood close behind her, his hands spanning her waist to hold her comfortably.
    His hushed whisper caressed her ear. “It’s better not to stand behind a tree when you watch animals in the wild. Otherwise, you’ll have to move to peer around the tree and animals find movement threatening. When you stand perfectly still,in the shadow of a tree, you become almost invisible. If you have to move, do it very slowly, and if you accidentally make a noise, freeze. Also, try not to stare head-on. Predators stare directly at their prey when they’re sizing it up for attack, so for most animals staring has bad associations.”
    He didn’t speak again, nor did she.
    The meadow was alive. Her heart beat slowly, like the delicate and deliberate footsteps of the three does that came to drink from a spring-fed stream.
    Raccoons emerged, masked bandits from the darkness. Trundling toward the pie plates with heads low, backs humped up, chittering to each other, they reminded Jennifer of the early crowd at a diner. They ate methodically, their paws working like little black hands. Some dipped the kibble in the stream, leaving the bank a smeary mess. Plentiful as the food was, once or twice there was some greediness and a spat broke out. It was hard not to laugh out loud at the indignant tremble of whiskers and upturned black noses. A skunk ambled out from a sway of grasses and took his place at the pie plates as though it were a