Bluestone & Vine Page 9

  Seth noted she quite pointedly refrained from looking anywhere below the man’s chest.

  “If this is the sort of thing you Yanks do for attention,” she went on, “I’ll thank you not to do it again while I’m here.”

  Mabry smiled briefly at that, then wheezed, followed by a sharp gasp of pain. Pippa’s gaze flew to Seth’s for a moment, fear and panic quite clear in her big blue eyes.

  Seth felt every bit as helpless and scared as she did, but he winked at her, mouthed, “You’re doing fine,” then got to his feet to go and meet the rescue team so he could fill them in on the situation.

  In the end, it took quite a bit of doing, and he aged what felt like years as the paramedics worked to extract Mabry. Seth had climbed on Mabry’s other tractor and used it to drag a path through the melting snow, wide enough so the firetruck and the EMT truck could get all the way to the entrance of the barn. Pippa had offered to help, using the snowmobile to tamp down a path, but Seth had told her to stay by Mabry. She seemed to have a calming effect on him, and Seth could tell that’s where she really wanted to be. Other than to allow the paramedics to do their thing, she never left the old man’s side.

  Once the trucks could reach the barn, things moved pretty quickly.

  Seth helped the firemen, all of whom he knew by name, while Pippa was alternately being cheerleader and cross headmistress to Mabry, depending on what was most needed, more than once bringing a surprised smile to Seth’s face and those of the emergency crew.

  In short order, the tractor was lifted off of Mabry, leaving the jack shaft in place, to be removed at the hospital. The same leg had suffered a bad, protruding fracture that had produced a fair amount of bleeding when the tractor was lifted off it. Too much, to Seth’s way of thinking, which had been proven true as Mabry went in and out of consciousness and his vitals began bottoming even as the paramedics rushed to stabilize the wound. All that was left to do after the heavy lifting was to stand on the sidelines and watch. It took Seth straight back to his days in the service. As he had then, Seth felt utterly helpless.

  What seemed like an eternity later, Pippa and Seth stood side by side in the open barn doorway as the ambulance carrying Mabry slowly rolled out the driveway.

  “How far do they have to go?” Pippa asked.

  “The closest hospital is down in Hawksbill Valley, in Turtle Springs. About twenty-five miles from here.” At her gasp, he added, “There’s no traffic between here and there, and only one major intersection, so they’ll get him down there quickly.” Or as quickly as the winding mountain roads would let them, but he didn’t mention that part.

  “I’m so glad the roads got cleared and the sun came out.” Pippa was rubbing her own arms as she said this, as if chilled, despite the much warmer temperatures and clear skies overhead. “I don’t want to be in the way, but can we go down and see him later?”

  “I talked to Mabry’s daughter, Maggie,” Seth said. “She’s already on the way to the hospital. She said she’ll call me and let us know how he’s doing. I think we should wait until we hear from her.”

  Pippa nodded, then turned to look back at the barn, to the tractor, now turned upright but still sitting at an awkward angle due to the broken axle. They both looked at the scatter of blood-soaked gauze and torn paper packets littering the packed dirt floor around the pool of blood that had soaked into the dirt. The firetruck had been called to head to another emergency right when the paramedics had gotten Mabry stabilized and into the ambulance. Time had been of the essence for the emergency teams on all fronts, so Seth had assured them he’d wear the gloves they’d given him to put all of the detritus in a trash bag. The EMT driver had also given him the number of a service that was trained and certified to do the kind of cleanup required after such an event. Seth wasn’t sure that would be necessary, but he’d taken the card nonetheless.

  Seth worked to keep his mind focused on Mabry and not let it drift back. It was a discipline that had taken him a few years to master, but it still wasn’t easy. In fact, it was downright exhausting. He started making mental lists of what would need to be done going forward, not just in the immediate time frame, but long term, given the severity of Mabry’s injuries, all of which helped to keep his thoughts fully occupied.

  “So much blood,” Pippa whispered.

  Seth glanced at her and saw her own face had gone a ghostly shade of white. He knew that expression. He immediately slipped his arm through hers and turned her away from the interior of the barn, walking her outside into the fresh air and the blinding white of the sunshine reflecting on the rapidly melting snow. He steered her toward the back porch of the house. She didn’t put up even the slightest resistance. Seth knew all about working on adrenaline and the mind’s ability to stay ruthlessly focused during times of extreme trauma, just as he also knew the severe crash that could happen once the trauma had abated and time started to move forward again at normal speed.

  “Mabry’s going to be all right,” Seth told her calmly, as if this was an everyday conversation they were having. Imprinting normal on a moment that felt like anything but, helped to divert the brain from the recent trauma to something else. Anything else. “He’s a stubborn old cuss.”

  “He’s a decent, kind, and loving soul. He doesn’t deserve this,” she countered, her words thick with emotion.

  “It was an accident, Pippa, not a reprimand,” he told her gently. “They can happen to anyone.” He felt the fine trembling begin to vibrate down her arms. He knew those weren’t surface tremors, but the kind that went bone deep and were uncontrollable, shaking a person right down to their core.

  He glanced at her just in time to see her eyes go a bit spacy. Ignoring the screaming tension that hadn’t quite unknotted the muscles in his neck or down his spine—the result of fighting both the war going on inside the barn, and the one he’d stopped officially fighting several years ago—Seth immediately sprang into action once more. “It’s okay; you’re all right,” he said, keeping his voice gentle, quiet, and smooth. “Up you go,” he added, scooping her into his arms. “Hold on.”

  She was sturdier than she looked, he thought, but he could feel the tremors shaking hard in her legs now, and knew he’d gotten her just moments before she’d have gone down. He hoisted her up a bit higher against his chest. “Put your hands around my neck,” he told her as he moved directly toward the house at a steady but unrushed pace. She needed soothing, not more alarm. “Lock your fingers together. Good, good,” he murmured, as he bumped the screen door open, then pushed his way in through the rear porch to the back door that led into the kitchen.

  He walked through that room, down the short hall to the living room and eyed the recliner, thinking he could lower her there, push it back, then give her a few moments to wind back down. She just gripped him harder when he started to move her. So, instead, he nudged the fancy little antique coffee table aside and lowered his tall frame down to the middle of the small couch, then settled her across his lap.

  “Thank . . . you,” she whispered through chattering teeth. “Foo—foolish.”

  He tucked her cheek against his chest, and slowly stroked her back, then her hair, then her back again. She slid her hands from his neck and pillowed them under her cheeks, pinning them there as if willing them to stop trembling. He could still feel the tremors in her torso and legs, but they weren’t as strong now. “Not foolish,” he told her. “Human. I’ve been there, too.” He tightened his hold just a bit when she tried to move. “Stay put awhile longer, okay? Give yourself a break.”

  He rocked slightly, but steadily, and continued to stroke and soothe, which might have seemed silly to some, but he knew the feeling of being held, being rocked, was in itself a powerful trigger, taking one back to a time before memories truly began to form.

  He felt the tremors slowly ease from her limbs, and her breathing steadied. She took long, slow breaths, and let them out in equally slow, shuddering releases. He eventually stopped rocking her, but continued to
hold her, realizing the motions, the soothing, had worked their magic on the knots and tension in his own neck and spine as well.

  “I’m guessing,” she said at long length, her voice a rough whisper, “that it took a bit more than a tractor accident for you to end up curled in a ball like this.”

  “Trauma is trauma,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t really respect or conform to any kind of scale.”

  She finally lifted her head and looked up at him. “Thank you,” she said, simply.

  He smiled then, a brief curving of his lips. “It helped me, too.”

  She looked surprised by that, then smiled briefly. “I’m glad. That makes it easier to accept.”

  Their gazes caught, held, and quite swiftly another feeling entirely engulfed him. He’d learned about extreme situations triggering all sorts of primal responses, but he’d never found himself experiencing trauma with a member of the opposite sex. The urge to lower his head, take her mouth—and not in some sweet, gentle, get-to-know-you kiss—was as compelling and strong a need as he’d ever experienced. His body had surged quite insistently to life, ferociously seconding that idea. You were just about to dump her in Noah’s cabin and get back to work, he reminded himself, needing rational thinking to make a swift return. Don’t complicate things.

  Then her gaze dropped to his mouth, lingered there a long moment, and moved slowly back up to meet his own.

  “Pippa,” he began, knowing he had to nip this off, and quick. But she’d whispered, “Seth,” at the very same time, and something about the sound of his name on those little bow-tie lips of hers, with that bottomless sea of blue above them, doomed him to the pull of the moment.

  He leaned down just as she arched up to meet him. They were both in it, both wanting, both throwing all caution aside and simply living in that one, singular moment of need and want.

  She whimpered, then fisted her hands in his hair when he started to lift his head, and slipped her tongue past his lips, in case he had any doubts that the sound had been one of need. He held her there, suckled her tongue, then slipped his into the wet, hot recesses of her mouth. They instantly fell into a mating ritual of sliding, suckling, kissing, taking a breath, then delving in once again. She writhed against him, and he pulled her up so she could straddle his thighs.

  The position equalized the better part of the vast difference in their heights and she cried out when the very softest part of her rode on top of the most rigid part of him. He felt her shudder through an instant climax despite the layers of clothes between them, making his own hips rock upward of their own volition, allowing her to wring every last drop of pleasure from the moment, if not from him.

  It had been a very long time since he’d felt the warmth of a woman wrapped around him in the most intimate of ways, a truth his body was screaming at him to rectify. But instead of tearing away the few flimsy barriers between them and plunging himself mindlessly into the sweet, hot bliss he knew awaited him, he broke free of her mouth and wrapped her up against his chest, reaching for any shred of rational thought he could find, a tether back to reality, no matter how tenuous.

  She was panting heavily, her cheek and lips pressed against the side of his now damp neck. He rested his own cheek on top of her head while they both climbed back down from the stratosphere they’d just shot themselves into.

  Neither of them said a word as their breathing slowly steadied. He didn’t loosen his hold on her though, and neither did she try to crawl from his lap. A thousand thoughts raced through his mind, as he weighed all the pros of perhaps doing this again sometime, preferably when sprawled across the wide expanse of his bed, against all the reasons why that would be a very, very bad idea.

  He’d known her for two days and already he could call up picture-perfect moments of her in his mind. Her beaming smile just before she dropped into a deep curtsy after her literally over-the-top snowmobile-entry into his life; her sitting on the floor of his barn, goat in her lap, brushing Dexter’s coat; her leaning on the doorway, batting her lashes while asking for a Shetland pony. Reflexively grabbing her throat after barking out a laugh, sitting next to Mabry, goading him into staying strong and alert, looking hurt and so very small when she realized he was getting rid of her.

  He swallowed a sigh at that last part. She was bold and daring, confident and independent ... vulnerable and still a little fragile, and she kissed him like he was the last man on earth.

  He’d never met anyone quite like her, and he’d be a fool if he didn’t admit she was exactly the kind of woman who might sneak in and steal his heart. Then go traipsing back to Ireland with it tucked deep in her pocket.

  So, that would be a no, then. He had not a single regret in having done it, but he wouldn’t be kissing Pippa MacMillan again.

  “As a means to getting oneself past a bit of shock,” she said a little primly, “I’d have to say that ranked even higher than the rocking and patting.” She lifted her head and looked at him. “Though that helped a great deal, too.”

  Her gaze was direct. Not hopeful, not dismissive, but simply ... real.

  “It’s definitely going on my preferred list,” Seth replied, perhaps a bit more cautiously. She was still straddling his lap, and his body hadn’t quite climbed on board with the whole never-doing-that-again decision. He suspected she’d climb off him soon enough, though, and he found he wasn’t in any hurry to expedite the end of this particular moment-out-of-time. If it wasn’t going to happen again, then he wouldn’t mind having all there was from this one, and he wasn’t going to apologize for that.

  “I’ve never kissed a man with a beard,” she said, quite contemplatively.

  His grin was spontaneous. “And?”

  “It’s softer than I’d have thought.” She lowered her gaze, studied it a bit, then looked at him again. “I quite liked it, actually, and I didn’t think I would.”

  Just like that his body was right back on board. “You’d been giving it some thought then?”

  Her cheeks, already pink from said beard and the heat of the moment, deepened in color. “Would it make your ego grow to unbearable proportions if I said yes?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to mention she’d already made other parts of him grow to unbearable proportions, so what was one more? “I believe I can keep it in check. I’ll do my best, at any rate.”

  “Then yes,” she said, rather decisively. “I have. Not that I planned on ever doing anything about it, of course. I mean, you’re my sister’s best friend’s brother. And we live an ocean apart. So why start something up, you know? Too much at stake.”

  It was perverse, but the more she made his argument for him, the more he wanted to play devil’s advocate.

  Instead, he said, “If it helps, my behavior just now notwithstanding,” he added with a smile, “I’m not casual about things like this, either.” Which was the truth, and a big part of why it had been a long time for him. “So, I would agree with your assessment.” He almost laughed again when a flash of disappointment crossed her face before she nodded in consensus. What, were they each hoping the other would convince them that maybe continuing wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all?

  “After spending the past four years now with all those out-of-body, instant star experiences going on, can I just say thank you for this lovely, quite in-the-body moment? It was well worth the wait.”

  Again, he had to swallow the entirely inappropriate comment that rose to his lips, about how much he’d enjoy a lovely in-her-body moment, too. Then what she said sank in and he paused and met her gaze. “Not a casual person, either, then, I assume.”

  She shook her head. “My life changed pretty swiftly. There hadn’t been anyone special for a time back then, because I’d been working all the time, taking gigs anywhere I could get them, traveling a fair bit. Not conducive to the kind of relationship we non-casual types gravitate toward, you know?”

  “I do know,” he said, then chuckled. “Intimately.”

  She smiled then, too. �
��And when things started to take off, it was kind of odd, because if I did have a chance to meet someone who interested me, likely he was part and parcel of the industry side of things, or he was another musician, or possibly just starstruck . . . or something even less savory.” She broke off, shook her head, let out a short laugh. “Sounds ungrateful, but it’s simply how it is.”

  “Sounds complicated,” Seth replied. “For me, it’s the opposite. I moved out here, bought a place up in the mountains.” He smiled then. “Just me, my farm animals, and my llama.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve heard about men like you, growing up as I did on a farm,” she said, then shot him a dry smile.

  “Not that lonely,” he said on a short laugh. “Not yet, anyway,” he added, which made her laugh. “Blue Hollow Falls is a smaller than small town. Not much in the way of fellow singles, and I’ve been a bit too busy since I moved here to look farther afield.”

  “So I heard. Mabry told me about the converted silk mill. I’m hoping to get down to see it, just as soon as—oh.” She broke off, frowned, then just looked sad.

  “What?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “Mabry said he’d teach me how to drive on the right side of the road, and offered me a loan of one of his farm trucks. I could simply lease a car, but he seemed so tickled about it. I think he’s like my dad that way, happy to know he’s of help to others. So I said yes. After today, though . . .” She sighed then. “I’m so worried for him. Worried about his farm. What will he do? What will happen?”

  Seth found himself stroking her hair again, then her cheek, as if out of long habit, and had to force himself to drop his hand, which was made more difficult by the light that had instantly flared to life in her sad eyes. “It will work out,” he told her. “We help each other out here. I suspect Maggie will stay on, at least for a while, to help out with things.”

  “Mabry said she might be moving back here permanently, taking over the place when he retires. Though, honestly, I couldn’t see him ever retiring. At least not before now.” She let out a sigh. “Mabry said something about Maggie’s husband being able to work from home, and from the looks of the scrapbook he shared with me today, her sons are grown and in college now.”