The Christmas Clock and A Song For My Mother - Kat Martin Page 0,20

curl of heat slid into her stomach. “I could never be friends with a woman I'd still like to have in my bed.”

Syl just sat there. Joe had never spoken to her that way, not even when they were engaged to be married. Clearly, he had done it to shock her, to punish her in some way for the pain she had caused him. Instead, when he had assessed her with that hot look in his eyes and a jaw turned to steel, she had never felt so womanly, so seductive. And she had never felt the fierce heat that was burning through her now.

But Joe was no longer the boy he had been back then. At twenty-nine, he was a full-grown male.

With stunning clarity and panic in her heart, Syl realized she was far more attracted to the man he had become than she had ever been to the boy he was before.

Standing at the edge of the lake next to Teddy, Joe watched Syl's little Honda Civic pull out of the parking lot. She had made an excuse to leave just minutes after he had made his off-color remark.

He shouldn't have said what he did. He had never spoken to a woman that way before. But every time he saw her, the past seemed to surface, to rise up with agonizing force. Memories of lazy fall days on campus, the two of them lying beneath an ancient sycamore, Syl's head in his lap as she studied for a test. Thoughts of shared afternoons by the pond.

He remembered the winter they had gone sledding. The snow had been soft and deep, the sun so bright it hurt his eyes. He had pushed the sled off a rise and jumped in behind her. The sled had flown as if it had wings until it hit a rock beneath the snow. He remembered how they had flown into the air and Syl had landed on top of him. He remembered their laughter, the soft kiss that made him want more.

He thought of the brutal days after she had left, the drinking and fighting, the trial and the days he had spent in prison. He thought of the hard, ruthless man he'd become just to survive inside those thick, gray walls.

It had taken him years to recover, to make a life for himself, to find his rightful place in the world. Then Syl had come back and his peaceful existence threatened to crumble, just as it had before.

Every time he saw her, a haze of anger settled over him. He wanted to make her pay for all the suffering she had caused.

He wanted to erase all the pain she had endured, the fear and the heartbreak.

He wanted to turn back time, wanted to be there when she needed him.

Today, he had discovered, he just plain wanted her.

Joe sighed as he stared out over the water. No other woman had ever stirred him the way Syl could with a simple smile. No other woman had ever heated his blood with a single glance. He thought he was over her, had told himself so a thousand times.

Now he realized he would never be over Sylvia Winters.

And the question became, what the hell was he going to do about it?

Rainy weather set it. Dense gray, flat-bottomed clouds loomed overhead and the temperature began to drop. Doris put the final touches on the little Pinocchio statue she was painting, coloring his floppy hat a rich, deep blue that matched his shoes and then she set the figurine down to dry on the kitchen table.

Through the walls of the kitchen, she could hear the faint buzz of Floyd's saw cutting small round holes in the wooden birdhouses he sold over at the mercantile. On impulse, Doris grabbed a mug and reached for the gently boiling teapot on the stove. She dropped a bag of Earl Grey into the mug, added a heaping teaspoon of sugar, just the way Floyd liked and dunked the bag a couple of times. A second impulse had her setting the mug down on the counter long enough to untie the apron from around the waist of her jeans and pull up the sleeves of her sweater. Then she grabbed the mug and sailed out the door.

When she reached the garage, she paused, though she wasn't quite sure why. Just to catch her breath, she told herself, using the moment to smooth an errant strand of pale hair back into the neat chignon