“I can thaw anything,” Madison said with a smile.
“All right, then, stay and talk to me while I cook. The boys won’t be back for a while, so we might as well get to know each other.” Mrs. Barnett gave Madison a steady, penetrating look. “I think that Thomas may be serious about you.”
“I don’t think so,” Madison said as she ducked her head to hide her blush. “He and I are worlds apart.”
“Not so far apart,” Mrs. Barnett said softly. “I think that there’s a very serious side to you that you hide from the world. That beautiful face of yours is a mask, isn’t it?”
Madison didn’t know how to reply to that, and since the door opened and two men, Thomas and Mr. Barnett, entered at that moment, she didn’t have to answer.
Thomas caught Madison off guard when he exuberantly threw his arms around her waist and lifted her off the floor. “What’s for dinner, woman? I could eat a bear,” Thomas said as he let her back down, then nuzzled her neck.
Madison knew she should push Thomas away, but his light play was new to her and startling. Roger was aware of his dignity when others were around, and when they were alone, Roger was aware of sports on TV or on a field or—
“Green beans,” Madison said when she realized that everyone in the kitchen was looking at them. She had no idea that they’d never seen Thomas act so lighthearted. He had been serious even as a child.
“That it?” Thomas asked, smiling at her. “Just green beans? I’m sure they’ll take hours to cook, so let’s go outside and catch fireflies until the food’s ready,” Thomas said in such a leering voice that they all laughed.
Madison lifted herself on her toes and looked over Thomas’s head. “Isn’t someone going to save me from this satyr?”
“We’re all much too fascinated to move a muscle,” Mrs. Barnett said with what Madison had come to see was her usual honesty. “Go on, Thomas, take her outside and ravish her in the moonlight.”
“You’ve been reading romantic novels again, haven’t you, my love?” Mr. Barnett said with a smile at his plump, soft wife. “In case you haven’t noticed, it’s only six o’clock and it’s summer, so there is a great deal of daylight outside.”
“It’s always moonlight to lovers,” Mrs. Barnett said, her eyes on her husband.
“Go!” Mr. Barnett said to Thomas, then walked toward his wife.
Thomas grabbed Madison’s hand and pulled her from the kitchen onto the porch.
“Aren’t you overplaying it a bit?” Madison said nervously once they were alone. Pulling her hand from his, she stepped to the porch rail, her back to him.
“I’m not playing at all,” he said softly.
Madison didn’t dare look at him. “I don’t think that we should—”
She didn’t say any more because Thomas pulled her into his arms and kissed her. And it was a kiss such as Madison had never received before. It was deep and thorough and altogether wonderful.
When he broke away, her first thought was, How very much I’ve missed in my life!
Her inclination was to fling her arms around him and kiss him more, but she forced herself to move away. “What was that for?” she asked, trying to make her voice sound angry. But if there was anger, it was at herself, not at him.
“Just to see,” Thomas said as he put his hands in his pockets.
If he starts whistling, I’ll pick up a chair and hit him, she thought. “To see what?” she snapped, this time the anger genuine.
“If you like me as much as I like you,” he said.
There was such innocent sincerity in his voice that her anger dissipated. “And what did you find out?” she asked.
“Yeah, you do.”
She couldn’t look in his eyes for fear that she’d give too much away. She wasn’t going to be the country girl who oohed and aahed and told him that no man had ever before been as nice to her as he was being. No, that would make her sound as though she were from a class where the men dragged women about by their hair.
Instead, she turned back around, put her hands on the porch rail, and looked out at the forest. There was about fifty feet of mowed grass between them and the dense trees, then beyond that was pristine forest.
“So what do we do about it?” Madison asked softly.
“Anything we want,” he answered, and she could hear the intensity in his voice.