Her sisters whispered about this. Women were supposed to love it. Not her. It always made her feel too vulnerable, too…naked. She was all about being wild, always had been, but not like this. Not. Like. This. It was uncomfortable and upsetting and…
“Sheesh, Dais, I’ll never stop if you respond like that. Come for me, love. Come. Give in, let it happen.” He wasn’t talking, wasn’t whispering. It was a croon to her, a promise.
“I don’t…I can’t…”
He chuckled, a soft earthy sound, a vibration low in his throat that he transferred to a kiss on that most intimate part of her. “Okay, then. Fight it. It’ll be fun.”
It wasn’t fun. She felt need tear through her like fire, burning, flames licking at her consciousness, blinding sharp. She tried to hold back. Tried to hide, but desire kept escalating, scaling that mountain of hungry, greedy need…until she tipped over the edge and soared.
He took his own good time about shifting, finally came up to smile wickedly at her in the darkness. “You’ll be sorry you showed me how much you liked that,” he promised. “You’d better believe I’ll remember the next time.”
She couldn’t answer him. He didn’t seem inclined to give her a chance to, anyway. He lifted her legs high and tight around his waist and then dove in, drove in, all at once. She felt a yielding of loneliness inside her, a keening to be like this, with him, forever, like this, but of course that was just her heart talking. How was she supposed to think? He was thick and hard. He was whispering wicked ideas to her. He was holding her, holding her, so she couldn’t escape yet another climb toward release, every muscle in her body straining for the next cliff edge, the next mountain top, and then there it was…another sensation, like flying free, flying through a silver wind, a flashing-soft sky, soaring…straight back into his arms.
“Oh, yeah,” he whispered exultantly, as if this were what he expected all along. As if he always made the world tilt when he made love. As if he always turned a woman into shambles when he made love.
As if he loved her.
Eventually she started breathing again. Eventually she even opened her eyes. She seemed to be wrapped around Teague’s naked body tighter than a present at Christmas, both of them smelling like sweat and sex, neither of them moving.
She wanted to move. She wanted to lift her head and stare at him. It’s not as if she hadn’t been married. It’s not as if she didn’t enjoy sex. But Teague…they’d made love in the blizzard, and she’d been so sure that was just a lost moment in time. Now she wanted to know where he got his Wheaties. Where he learned all that wicked stuff. How come he moved her to heights she’d never climbed before.
But she didn’t look at him, didn’t ask him. For just a moment more, she wanted to be nowhere else but right here, snugged in his arms, no reality intruding in any way.
But, of course, there was no escaping reality. An alarm clock ticked right next to her head. “I have to go. Close up the café.”
“Yeah, you do. But first you promised you’d tell me about your ex.”
“Now?”
A low chuckle came out of his throat. “Hey, you think I want to talk about another guy after we just made love? On the other hand, I don’t often have you naked and vulnerable. I figure I have to use this to my advantage while I can.”
“Idiot,” she murmured affectionately. He had to know that he wasn’t being manipulative at all, not when he told her exactly what he was doing. “I told you I’d tell you-”
“Yeah. So spill. Exactly why you’re so poor if your ex is supposedly so rich and successful. Exactly why didn’t you want your family to help you or know how much trouble you were in. Exactly why you got the divorce.”
“Sheesh. Could we work on one question at a time, tiger?”
“No. All at once. Let’s just get this conversation over with.”
She sighed, staring blindly at the moonlight shining in his bare windows. Rime decorated the panes in magical shapes, crystals and diamonds and jewels. The kind of diamonds you couldn’t touch, of course-the kind of diamonds that disappeared if you tried to touch them. She’d tried to touch the wrong kind of diamonds her whole life, but how could she explain that to Teague? “I don’t know where to start, except that…I always had a panic attack at the idea of being ordinary.”
“Since we’re pretty short on time, you don’t have to waste it telling me stuff I know.”
He forced her to grin. “I mean, a real panic attack, Teague. Maybe it started from being the only one in the family with the totally ordinary name. I swear I remember fighting it even way back in my sandbox days. I wanted to be different from everyone else. I wanted to see the world. Take big risks. Have a big life. Do exotic, romantic, wonderful things.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So, I thought I found it all in Jean-Luc. I thought he was exotic and romantic and wonderful.”
“And was he?”
“Oh, yeah. I remember the first time he sold a painting for big money-over a hundred thousand. He rented a yacht. With crew. We sailed with some friends, feasted for four days. He bought me a Hermes bag.”
“I don’t know about the bag, but the rest sounds romantic and generous and all.”
“Yup. Only, by the time we got back home, he’d spent every dime. We didn’t have money to pay the rent, much less to buy groceries. The car had already been repossessed. Not for the first time.” She turned her head. “Suddenly you’re real quiet. You getting the picture? Because that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
“Not good.”
“Not good,” she echoed dryly. “All the trunks that I shipped home were loaded with stuff. Stuff I could sell, but I just wouldn’t get much for it. I mean, it’s not like a Natori bra can be resold. And I’ve still got a few drops of LaMer moisturizer-the kind that goes for a thousand an ounce-but I can’t sell that. What it all amounts to is that I’m wearing good clothes because it’s what I have, not because I’m trying to impress anyone.”
“But you do care that people think you’re successful,” Teague said quietly.
She didn’t answer that. He already knew she had more pride than brains. Besides, he wanted the whole story-and she wanted to get it over with. “I sold plenty through the marriage. I sold yellow diamonds, black pearls from Polynesia. I’ve also washed dishes in a bar to pay the rent, and I’ve cleaned up messes after parties that you just couldn’t imagine. When Jean-Luc had money, he loved sharing it with the whole world. No one ever said he wasn’t generous.”
“He sounds as practical as a tree stump.”
Again she had to smile. His fingers were sieving through her hair, creating that light tickle sensation that made her want to curl up close-when she was already as close as a woman could get. “Yeah-and what kills me was that I never wanted to be the practical one. I wanted to be the wild, impulsive one. Everyone in White Hills knew I was born to be wild.”
“You are wild, babe.”
She closed her eyes, all too aware that she’d completely changed from the woman she once was. The woman she’d once wanted to be. And she still had to finish the story for Teague. “Jean-Luc was honestly a creative man, a talented artist who deserved all the glory he got. But he needs a harem to take care of him. At least three maids, then someone to work and actually bring in food and rent. And then a bodyguard to keep all comers away who’ll ask him for money-because for damn sure he’ll give it away.”
“Sounds like hell to live with.”
She whispered, “He was.” And suddenly she found it was easy to get out of bed. She wanted her clothes on. Wanted that reality she’d wanted to disappear minutes before. Didn’t want to look at Teague anymore at all if she could help it. At least until she had a better handle on control. For some stupid reason, she felt like crying.
“You stayed for so long because you loved him?”
She wasn’t a Vermonter for nothing. Her voice was as brisk as a sturdy wind. “Nope. I was wildly in love with him in the beginning, no question a
bout that. But I think love started dying the first day I woke up hungry. I mean, seriously hungry. The thing was, we moved around so much that I couldn’t work-day-by-day jobs, sure, but nothing that could have given us some financial stability. We were all over the place. Living with friends one day, renting a cottage or a villa the next-wherever the spirit of painting took him. So…”
“So?” he prodded her when she didn’t immediately finish her thought.
In the dark, though, it was hard to find every sock and button…and somehow she didn’t want to turn around until she was fully dressed. “So…he gave me the yellow diamond one day-and we had to pawn it the next. That was the turning point for me. I didn’t give a hoot about the stone. It was just that I finally realized he wasn’t being impulsive and absentminded and a devil-may-care artist. He knew we couldn’t afford his grandiose gestures. He knew they were going to turn off the electricity. He just thought he could snow me, like he’d snowed me all the other times. He thought I’d be swayed into staying by the romance of the extravagant present. He loved me the same way. Hugely one day-and pawning me off the next.”
Teague still hadn’t moved from the bed. “Yet you stayed with him for a long time.”
“Yeah. Out of idiotic misplaced pride.” She lifted her hands in one of the Gallic gestures she’d picked up in that ghastly marriage. “I was just so ashamed to tell anyone. My family thought I had this jet-setting fabulous life. My sisters thought of me as a role model, the one they could always turn to for advice, to take charge. They were proud of me, for living my life my own way, for making it unconventionally. I knew famous people. I dressed in designer duds. I was traveling, seeing the world. Teague?”
“What?”
“I stole a loaf of bread one day.” She pushed a hand through her hair. “I was hungry. But I wasn’t that hungry. And I can still remember thinking, how ashamed my mom and dad would have been if they’d known.”
“Well, hell. Let’s get a rope and hang you right now.” For a man who’d been so somnolently still, he suddenly bounded out of bed in one swift move and crossed the room stark naked. Suddenly he was an inch from her, his knuckles lifting her chin. Before she could breathe, his mouth came down on hers, soft, warm, firm. “I think you can probably let that guilt go,” he murmured.
“You’re making light of it. And maybe it was just a loaf of bread. But I wasn’t raised to take anything from anyone. I still don’t understand what made me do it.”
“You think you might have felt just a little bit desperate at how you were living? Not knowing where the next dime-or franc-was coming from? That sometimes scared people do scared things?”
“That’s not an excuse.” But she searched his eyes in the dark room, still felt the warmth of his kiss, of his body, of all they’d shared naked moments before. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.” He didn’t answer, just stood there, his finger idly tracing her jawline. “I think I’m just trying to explain…why I kept it all from my family. From the people who knew me growing up.”
“You wanted them to think you lived a romantic, exciting life.”
“It sounds pretty shallow when you put it that way. I just mean…I hate coming home with my tail between my legs. I hate people thinking I’m a failure. Thinking that I was always a wild, irresponsible screw-up and the life I got was payback.”
He stood at the front window long after she’d left-taking his sacred Golf GTi-and he heard her moving to third gear before she’d reached the end of the road and the first stop sign.
His head was buzzing. He’d never dreamed, from the image she put on, that her ex had been such a selfish self-centered bastard. It changed things.
All this time he’d believed her about not wanting to stay in White Hills. Now he wasn’t so sure. She had plenty of pluck. She’d coped with a blizzard, coped broke, coped with a selfish liability like Jean-Luc for years. When it came down to it, she seemed to be inspired by adversity, not afraid of it. She’d pushed up her sleeves and become a cook. Made that horrible attic room into something artistic and personal and fun.
He got it. That she wanted people to think she wasn’t practical and responsible. She wanted people to think she was exotic and fun and romantic and wild. He didn’t understand it, but he did understand that the key to Daisy was her pride.
She said she was proud, but as far as Teague could tell, it was her pride that had taken a battering over the last years. In her own way, on her own terms, she needed to feel that fierce sense of pride again. Not fake pride. Not lying-to-everyone pride. But the kind of pride that made her feel good about herself inside.
She wanted to feel wild. She didn’t want to be ordinary. The more Teague repeated those concepts in his mind, the more a plan slowly started brewing. Possibly a goofy plan-but then any plan was better than desperation. Teague understood that Daisy intended to be gone as fast as she saved a down payment on a car and enough savings to take off. And that meant, if he had any way to influence her feelings, he had to move damn fast.
Because he was afraid he’d fallen. Hard and fast. He already knew the odds were against both of them-but a man didn’t feel this power of love very often, if ever, in a lifetime. He wasn’t throwing away a treasure if there was any chance he could woo Daisy into seeing herself as unique and wonderful and loving as he saw her.
Nine
Daisy had never spent much time thinking about Valentine’s Day, yet for the last week, she couldn’t get it off her mind. She wanted to give Teague a present. She didn’t have much money, but the present she wanted to give him wasn’t an issue of cost. She just had to prowl the market for exactly the right item, and Valentine’s Day was coming up in another week so it would give her an excuse to give it to him.
This morning she was standing in the café kitchen with a hot mug of coffee in one hand and a wooden spoon in another, when panic hit.
It was so natural, thinking of Teague as her lover. Thinking of giving her lover a gift. Thinking of the kind of gift that really, really mattered to him-even if he didn’t know it yet.
The feeling of panic lunged at her like a surprise nightmare. Holy cow. When had it happened? How could she have done such a damn fool thing as fall completely in love with him?
The oven buzzed, forcing her attention back to practical priorities. It was still ink-black outside, sleet coming down on a day doomed to be gray, as she swiftly took a cake from the oven and then hustled to the counter, where she was tossing together a blend of dried lavender buds, orange zest, and some beautiful baby white onions. Because she was working this afternoon with Teague, she’d come in the café before dawn, hoping to get a bunch of cooking and baking done.
She spun around and reached in the refrigerator for a weighty package of ground round, when her mind did it to her again. Whispered that love word.
Her heart started mainlining more panic. Okay, okay. Making love with Teague had been stupendous. More than stupendous. Maybe she found it crazily easy to be honest with him, to share things with him she told no one else. Maybe she loved working with him, pushing him, being with him.
But that was no excuse for starting to believe they could have a future. She knew better. He was as happy in White Hills as a cat in sunlight, when she couldn’t possibly stay here. Yet now she realized how long this ghastly problem had been going on. Every time she thought of him, she’d been doing goofy things. Singing out loud. Walking with a little rock and roll in her hips. Thinking of jokes to tell him. Thinking of giving him something important. Laughing for any excuse. Finding something gorgeous in a gray February day that no one could love.
She had to get a grip.
“Oh, God. What are you making now?” Harry always showed up at the café before sunrise, made coffee and then promptly disappeared into a booth with his paper-but he usually paid no attention to anything she was doing.
She grinned at his suspicious expression. “I’m making bitoque with the ground round, cher. I told you. I just put a couple new th
ings on the lunch menu. I promise they’ll fly.”
“I know everybody loves the pastries. But nobody around here wants fancy food.”
“Now, Harry, how many people showed up here for lunch yesterday?” She didn’t waste time waiting for him to answer. “Jason thought it was a great idea.”
“He said so?” Harry asked, obviously taking his brother’s okay as reassurance.
“He sure did.” Actually, Jason had just said, “Whatever.” Neither of them had ever varied the lunch menu from brats in a decade, but then, Jason wasn’t the most inventive short-order cook on the planet. “I’ll tell you a secret, Harry. Bitoque is just hamburger, French style. Same old hamburger. Just with a little bit of sour cream, a little bit of consommé, a little bit of secrets. Just enough to make it special.”
“All right, but then what’s this other thing?” Harry pushed in his stomach so he could find the space to ease in next to her, still looking suspicious.
“Just chicken.”
“That isn’t just chicken. Chicken is a coupla legs, a coupla breasts, then throw it on the grill.”
“Jason is going to throw this on the grill. It’s just going to chill until lunch in this little marinade. Everyone will love it, I promise. Try not to worry.” She pulled out two long sheets of plastic wrap to seal the bowls, then impatiently motioned her boss aside so she could put them in the fridge. When she stood back up, he was standing in the narrow opening with that gruff, exasperated look that had everyone else fooled.
“I am worried. About you. You’re young. You’re beautiful. You’re dressed-” he motioned to her Versace silk blouse and navy slacks “-like a million dollars. Yet you’re cooking in my café. I don’t get what’s going on here.”
“But I told you what’s going on, Harry. I’ve been cooking for you because I love to. It’s always been a hobby, and I haven’t had a chance to do it in years, and what fun would it be to cook for myself?”
“Yeah, yeah, I heard all your malarkey.” A phone rang from the back office. Harry cocked his head toward the sound. “Go. I know it’s for you.”
Wild in the Moment Page 11