Chapter Eight #5
They walked in silence for a while. The rushing stream glinted in the bright afternoon light, the path they took was covered with the first of the fallen aspen leaves, gold and bronze, laying like scattered handfuls of loose coins on the ground before them.
Gray suddenly stopped, held a finger to his lips, and knelt down on one knee, holding out a bit of bread he’d brought with him.
Hannah watched and waited, and then had to clasp her hands together in order not to clap them in delight when she saw a small brown creature, no higher than a leaf, separate itself from a tumble of leaves to come out and stand on its tiny hind legs before them.
It held its paws together as if to pray for guidance about what to do as it eyed the bit of bread.
Then, in a flash, it decided. It raced forward, took the crumb, and skittered away even faster than it had come, tail high.
“Chipmunk,” Gray said, looking back over his shoulder, and seeing her entranced expression, smiled and said, “Come on. Hunker down. You try it next.”
“There’s two!” she breathed a moment later.
A moment after that, there was another, and soon it wasn’t necessary to whisper about how many there were. Because soon after that, she found that though they startled when they first heard human laughter, they learned to ignore it, if the bread crumb was big enough.
“All done, all gone, go back to gainful employment, varmints,” Gray said at last, dusting the last of the bread from his palms. Then looking at Hannah’s face, he laughed and said, “Oh no, we’re not going back to get them another crumb.
They have to take care of themselves out here all winter, a treat’s a treat, but it would be no kindness to get them used to waiting for handouts when the snow is four feet deep. ”
He stood and gave her both hands to help her up.
In the moment when she rose, her numbed knees caused her to lose her footing, and so she accidentally measured her length against him.
She pulled back from him as quickly as the chipmunks had at first. He smiled down at her, and she spoke up hastily, for though flustered, she was too aware of the nature of that newly lazy smile beneath his flaxen mustache.
“Four feet? Does it snow that much here, then?” she asked quickly.
“Then, yes,” he said slowly, gazing at her mouth.
“No,” she said at once, and then, not knowing what to say in light of what she saw in his eyes, she dared in her panic to put her gloved hand to his lips. “No, it would be a mistake,” she said.
He took her hand and kissed it lightly, and then tucked it entirely in his, “Feels damned stupid to kiss a glove,” he commented, before he asked, “Why would it be a mistake?”
Now that they were talking about it, she relaxed. Once a man got to talking, she knew, the immediate danger was past.
“Because I’m from the theater,” she jested, “where only the villain wears a mustache.”
And then his lips were on hers, and his arms were around her, and she remembered what an aching eternity it had been since a man had held her so, before she forgot because she’d never known a kiss like his.
It was gentle, demanding, loving, and lusty all at once.
He was warm and sweet-smelling as the crushed ferns and bracken around them, his mustache was silken, and his mouth made her grow hot and cold as she leaned in deeper to him in a confused, vain attempt to have him protect her from what she was feeling.
But when his tongue finally sought hers, she remembered other intrusive things, and tried to pull away. He let her go at once.
There was as much puzzlement as frustration in his eyes as he stood and looked at her.
Letting her go was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and now he regretted it as much as he failed to understand the reason for it.
She’d been warm and willing, and that damned sweet mouth of hers had tasted even better than he thought it could, so it was shocking that he’d forgotten it in the wonder of the scent and feel of the rest of her.
“Was it the mustache?” he asked after, amazingly enough to him, he’d had to catch his breath. “Or that you didn’t like the kiss?”
She sought the simplest of her many reasons, and like all light things, found it had risen to the top of all her other roiled thoughts.
“I don’t know you,” she said.
“I can take care of that,” he said, taking her hand again.
“And…and, you don’t know me,” she said in a rush, withdrawing her hand, for that was the truest thing of all.
“You’ll have to see to that,” he said. “Isn’t that what this walk’s about?”
“It was supposed to be about giving Peggy and Royal some privacy, because you said he was serious,” she said, looking into his eyes, trying to keep her tongue from her lips, where she swore she could still taste him as much as his eyes told her he could still taste her.
“He is. But there are other things a man can be serious about,” he answered, finally looking away.
She’d no immediate answer for that but a shiver. And though he looked as though he’d a remedy for that, he only took her hand again, more tightly this time, before he led her on.