Free Man From Tennessee by Jennifer Greene Page B

door, he snatched at her arm and all but shoved her across to the passenger seat. The door slammed like a reverberating echo in her ear and Trisha huddled in the seat, eyes suddenly dry. His tall figure crossing in front of the car reflected a cold hard fury that frightened her. When he got inside he just looked at her tousled features long and hard and then started the engine.
    They were at his place in minutes. The single light left on in the kitchen made a lonely circle of welcome on the grass outside. Trisha reached quickly for the door handle, but Kern’s arm shot across, pinning her.
    “Tell me you intended to leave, just when—” he said harshly.
    She shook her head mutely, and his grip imperceptively lightened.
    “I told you I wondered what would happen when you grew up, Tish. Now I wonder how many men were part of that transition. You never took fire like that before. How many?” He grated. “How many men have you slept with in the past five years?”
    She was frightened still, his eyes intense, smoldering anger inches from hers. She knew he wouldn’t believe the truth. It struck her as almost hysterically funny to think of telling him after what just happened that she had almost led a nun’s life, that she had accepted finally that she was simply emotionless in bed. She didn’t understand yet why she had responded to him after all these years. And, if it weren’t for the mortifying confusion and embarrassment she felt inside, the bitter scald of tears held barely in check, she would not believe she had indeed responded.
    “Never mind.” His jaw was taut, but the longer he looked at her fragile feminine features contorted by anguish, the more the flame of rage in his eyes lessened. “We’re not done, Tish. It’s going to happen, and you damn well know it as well as I do. With us there’s only one ending or beginning, because of the way it was.”
    She breathed out no.
    He wasn’t listening. “You run this time and I’ll find you. Don’t even try it.”
    She opened the car door and escaped. The kitchen door was unlocked and she ran through, past the living room and hall, up the stairs. In seconds she was leaning against the closed door of her bedroom, fighting to stop the flow of hot tears.
    Sex was all he had been talking about, not love. He felt no love after all this time? Why should he was the silent cry inside.
    She moved forward, removing her clothes in the darkness. The urge was to pack and flee. The urge was to forget Julia. But unfortunately she simply could not forget. Her pulse finally calmed. She was not running again. It was time for action, time to get them both out of their limbo of a marriage. Five years past time.
    But she could never face going to bed with Kern again. Even after tonight, she didn’t trust herself. She would freeze and fail him. The last time, she had put herself back together. She knew she wouldn’t be able to do it again. Not again…

Chapter Five
    Trisha did not wake until nine, a late hour in this household, so she was not surprised to find the house empty and no sign of Kern when she went downstairs. Dressed in the new jeans and shirt, with a battered pair of tennis shoes she’d remembered to throw into her suitcase, she gulped down half a cup of coffee and carted a sweet roll outside with her.
    She was determined to work herself into a better frame of mind. Last night she had slept long and hard, but dreams had haunted her. Kern’s lovemaking had been rapturously consummated in one dream; yet in another he had thrown the name of tease at her, which churned like pain inside. In a third dream he had repeated over and over, “There’s only one way it can end for us, Tish. In bed. I can get you out of my system so easily if I see once and for all how cold and ungiving a woman you are!”
    Daylight had come as a relief. She felt a need to do something physical to distract her from the increasing confusion she felt around Kern. Brushing crumbs off her hands