Lightning That Lingers by Sharon Curtis, Tom Curtis Page B

with desire and tender amusement, as she slid a little distance down the seat, straightening her shoulders with a visible attempt at dignity.
    Staring with some intensity out the windshield at the frozen, twisted line of trees across the field, she slowly drew off her mitten and touched bare unsteady fingertips to her damp lips. Her hand dropped. She cleared her throat. “You’re very thorough.”
    Admiring the pluckiness that made her continue to resist him, he said, “Which, I take it, is not a characteristic you find endearing?”
    “People who are good at everything depress me.”
    “Don’t worry. I have moments of great ineptitude.”
    Glaring blankly out the window, she said, “I have
hours
of great ineptitude.”
    He wanted to take her in his arms again but he couldn’t, because the desire to make love to her was still stinging his body. Instead, he rested his arm on the seat back, his fingertips stroking her shoulder, running along the pliant groove of her jacket seam. Then, without wanting it to happen, his fingers strayed to her face, tracing the line of her nose, the gently rounded nostrils, the entrancing corner of her lips. I want you, he thought. I want you, lady.
    He slid his fingers underneath her soft knit cap to explore the warm hollows of her ear. “D’you know something?”
    “What?”
    The slight breathless quality in her voice found a strong answering vibration within his body that took a heavier struggle than he had anticipated to subdue. The face she turned toward him, though wary, seemed to have no idea what effect she had on his body chemistry. He grinned inwardly. It wasn’t safe to allow this poor kid out after dark!
    He withdrew his hand and started the engine. “You don’t really cringe.”
    Jennifer, watching the skillful, intriguing motions of his hands on the steering wheel, was trying to fathom how Philip Brooks had happened to a life that until now had been droning along at a pleasantly mundane rate.
    It had begun to snow, gay tumbling drops that grew bright in the headlights, scattering like breeze-blown blossoms. Black and dramatic, thenaked tree limbs met in tangled embraces overhead. Behind the stars, the sky was the color of magic.
    Magic. When they reached the turnoff that would have permitted them to double back toward the Victorian Arms, the car swept onward. Jennifer closed her eyes.
I hope he’s kidnapping me
. Abandoned to the wolves … She was forced to begin redefining the wolf. Unexpected depths had surfaced in a man she had expected to be shallow. He was funny, forceful, and clever. If it was difficult to tell whether he was kind or merely charming, it didn’t seem to lessen his appeal. She spent a moment thinking about the word “appeal.” To say that Philip Brooks had appeal was to win a black belt in understatement.
    Philip Brooks. The name caught and held in her mind, printing and reprinting. Brooks had a special meaning in Wisconsin, as Rockefeller had in other parts of the country. One studied it in elementary school history classes. A grand and eclectic family, they had made a fortune in banking and put it into consolidating small railroad companies throughout the Midwest. Outstanding philanthropists, their names showered the pediments of art centers and libraries all over the state. She had a flashing memory of the M.C. at the Cougar Club introducing Philip as a “native blueblood” which she had paid no attention to at the time. And there was the patrician accent—never explained. Surely it was impossible for a true Brooks, precious to the state’s historical heritage, to be peeling off his jeans in a raucous nightclub. The thought shocked her more than any other thing that had occurred this strange evening.
    The station wagon stopped in front of a mammoth gateway, the tall brickwork and wrought iron bristling with rank and importance. It was the portal to the Brooks estate.
    Philip depressed a disk on a small control that sat on the dashboard