No More Mr. Nice Guy

by Jennifer Greene

  “Caro,” he said gently, “most people seem to want a two-story colonial house in a suburb. It’s a predictable choice, a sensible, logical choice.”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t say much more. He’d urged the cracker to her lips, and her taste buds were exploding under the unexpected saltiness of the delicacy.

  “We’ve been looking at houses for weeks, because we like to look at houses, because we both like to imagine what it would be like to live with different floor plans and layouts and in different areas. Yes?”

  “Yes,” she agreed.

  “Yes,” Alan echoed, “but last week it occurred to me that we’re forgetting to dream, Caro. And that standard traditional houses may be someone else’s dream. What about a place that could be made totally individual to us? A nest for just our dreams and no one else’s. Are you listening?”

  She was listening, or perhaps feeling more than listening. Alan was serious. She couldn’t remember ever having seen quite that brooding intensity in his expression. A shock of hair brushed his temples, out of place. His palm drifted from her cheek to her throat, where his thumb idly stroked the soft underside of her chin. He was looking at her…possessively. Alan never looked at her possessively.

  “A barn seems pretty unlikely at first, doesn’t it?” he said quietly. “But look closer, honey.” He leaned back, drew her into the crook of his shoulder and motioned toward the roof. “Can you picture a double skylight up there, on both sides of the beams? And a huge stone fireplace in the center of the room. Can’t you imagine sleeping up there in one of the open lofts, with a view of the stars above and the warmth and glow of a fire below?”

  She wanted to share the whimsical dream, but it was hard. A cold wind was whistling through the barn boards, and there were cobwebs strung from beam to beam. “A person could fall out of those open lofts pretty easily,” she said hesitantly.

  “We’d have railings.”

  “What about bathrooms?”

  “We’d have bathrooms, too.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere you want to put them.”

  “Heaven knows, there’s room for ten bathrooms downstairs alone,” she murmured.

  Maybe insanity was catching, because she could almost imagine the massive old barn being transformed into a house. Homey—never. But with paint and partitions and windows and carpets… She tried to envision it as a home, for Alan’s sake. For the moment it seemed less important to worry about what had brought on his drastic personality change than to tend to the crisis at hand. Alan was looking at her. He seemed to need something important from her, something she couldn’t fathom.

  She pushed the lock of hair from the temples of her stranger. “Alan, are you serious about this?”

  “You know exactly what I’m serious about?”

  “What?”

  “I want a place for you to dream, Caro. A place for you to be absolutely anyone you want to be. We can make a nest anywhere…on the beach, in a city, in a barn. It takes something more elemental than walls and windows to bring two people together, and we both know that. But what I’d like for you is a place where you feel free to let down your hair, not care about the rules, about responsibilities. Admit it, sweet. Life teaches us all to be cautious, but that isn’t really what we want to be. That isn’t what you really want to be, now, is it?”

  “No…” She felt the faintest warmth color her cheeks, as if she’d confessed to the deepest, most intimate secret with that single word. It was so true, though. At times she’d felt trapped by the lessons life taught her, aware she was overly cautious and maybe too careful. No one wanted to bungle through life asking to be hurt…but she’d never wanted to be inhibited with Alan. Did he understand?

  The sleepy blue of his eyes somehow promised her he did. A dozen words surged to her lips, all wanting to escape at the same time. For forever she’d wanted to be honest with him, man-to-woman honest, intimately honest about secrets and fears and dreams. Maybe it was the craziness of the barn, or the champagne, or the unique flavor of the caviar, but she suddenly understood that she could have that kind of honesty with Alan if she just reached for it.

  And he was so close. He shifted, leaning over her. The pad of his thumb gently traced the shape of her bottom lip. “Where did you get those beautiful brown eyes?” he murmured.

  “Pardon?”

  Alan’s gaze slid from her eyes to her lips. She could feel him staring at her lips as one of his hands slowly reached down and undid the top button of her jacket. Then the second button. Then the third.

  “Safe can be nice,” he murmured gently. “In fact, I think that’s what first attracted you to me, wasn’t it, Caro? You’ve always felt safe with me. But maybe…you really never wanted to feel all that safe. And just maybe, it never occurred to you that the two of us are capable of something quite…dangerous together.”

  Again she tried to say something, but words failed her.

  Alan smiled with satisfaction, just before his mouth covered hers.

  Surrounded by the tattered scruff of beard, his lips were infinitely beguiling, wooing her down, deeper into the blanket. A swallow sang somewhere. Sandalwood and cold crisp air and the scent of straw assaulted her senses in a rush, as if no other smells had ever existed. A hum filled her ears with a whispered song about yearning and desire and magic. It was crazy, really.

  Alan’s tongue stole inside her mouth. Tongue tips touched; hers initially retreated. They were in a barn, she tried to remind herself. She had to muster up a little sense. It was midmorning. It wasn’t the right time of day. And Alan would certainly never…

  It seemed that Alan certainly would, because his fingers unfastened the last button of her jacket. His hand slipped inside, pushed up her heavy wool sweater, and in one smooth motion unlatched the front hook of her bra. For a moment, Carroll was distracted by the faintest whiff of feminine outrage. Where had he acquired the expertise to unlatch front-hooked bras like that? She’d never worn one before; the wisp of violet lace was brand-new…but then, a lot of things suddenly felt brand-new. Dangerously, deliciously new.

  Her breasts, for instance. Women were supposed to be so sexually sensitive around their breasts. Carroll had never felt that special sensitivity; it was simply nice, being touched. Alan’s thumb deliberately rubbed the nipple, teasing the tip with pressure and then softness, and suddenly “nice” had nothing to do with the throbbing sensations affecting her pulse. The tingles traveling up her spine were distinctly…wicked. Her breath caught, was immediately captured by Alan’s kiss.

  A lifetime later, he raised his lips, only to let them wander back down to her neck, then up to the shell of her ear. “I think,” he murmured, “you’re not feeling quite so safe right now, are you, Caro?”

  “Alan—” An awful lot of moorings were shifting all at once.

  “I think—” his lips dipped to her throat “—it might have been a mistake ever to let you feel safe, love. You’re not, you know. We’re alone here. There’s no one anywhere around for miles. And you’d better understand right now that I’ve wanted to touch you this way for so long…”

  His head ducked down again, at the same time as his hand wandered from her abdomen to her thighs. Through her thin white cords, she could feel the heat of his palm, the deliberate sensual pressure. Desire trickled through her bloodstream, unexpected, deliciously enticing. Wanting had never been so easy to feel, to express, to share.

  His palms cupped her breasts together. His tongue lashed at their tips until the nipples were red and hot. His tongue was so soft that the graze of beard surrounding his mouth seemed impossibly rough, sensuously rough.

  He rubbed his cheek against her vulnerable flesh, first against satin-soft breasts and then against the smoothness of her stomach. Air hissed from her lungs. Adrenaline—or maybe melted butter—raced through her veins. Danger licked through her senses…but so did a languid, sultry feeling of pure feminine power. The Alan-would-nevers had changed in her mind to the very sure k
nowledge that she could well be taken on the floor of a barn, by a man she suddenly realized she didn’t know at all. More terrifying than that, she wasn’t sure she cared!

  Her knees, locked together, were gently, firmly separated when his hand slipped between them. He stroked the inside of her thigh, where she’d always been the most vulnerable, where Alan couldn’t possibly know she’d always been the most vulnerable. She twisted around him, unsure whether she was trying to press closer to him or stop his hands from their marauding forays. It didn’t stop him. His mouth molded itself fiercely to hers at the same time his palm made a shelf at the juncture of her thighs, and he rubbed until she arched for the feel of his hand, abandon rippling through her like a storm.

  Gradually, slowly, Alan decreased the pressure, gently gliding his hand back to her thigh, her hip, around to the soft flesh of her stomach. As he would gentle a wild creature, he gentled the woman breathing so hoarsely beneath him.

  He kissed each white breast one last time, then reclasped her bra and pulled down the sweater and kissed her again, on her throat, her cheek, her closed eyelids. The tension in his groin was painful, distracting him when he didn’t want to be distracted. He wanted to savor the flush on Caro’s cheeks, the trembling of her mouth, the sensual darkness in her eyes when her lashes fluttered open. He’d never seen Caro like this. He’d never dreamed how special, how beautiful, how vulnerable she was in loving.

  There was a word for a woman who teased. There was probably a word for a man as well. Unfortunately, he’d have to live with the epithet, because he’d just had an infinitely clear glimpse of how it could be for them, how he wanted it to be for Carroll when they made love for the first time.

  The caviar and wine had been so easy. He could think up more ways to court her as a woman wanted to be courted. He’d been selfish, he realized, too set in his ways to see Carroll’s needs—but that was all going to change. He was going to change—completely.

  “Caro?” Reluctantly, he leaned away from her to reach for the bottle of champagne and tin of caviar. When he handed her a cracker and a glass of wine, their eyes met, and he couldn’t help but smile. Carroll was lying limply on the blanket, and her brown eyes still looked dazed. “Would you like to go dancing tonight?” he asked her.

  “Dancing?” The word seemed unfamiliar. The world seemed vaguely unfamiliar. She couldn’t stop looking at Alan, even as she sipped the wine, even as she nibbled at the caviar.

  Her breasts felt a lingering, exhilarating awareness from the intimate chafing of his beard. The caviar suddenly tasted saltier. The air was fresher, the smell of straw stronger than before. A feeling of wonder felt as fragile as a secret inside her, intensified by a growing awareness that Alan had feelings for her that she’d never guessed before.

  The wine and caviar and loving came at her all at once, as something he’d planned uniquely for her. If he’d intended for her to feel special, she definitely did. More special, more alive, more woman than she’d felt in forever.

  Alan clicked glasses with her, winked with a winsome grin. “Dancing,” he repeated. “As in—until dawn, Caro. Tonight, if you’re free?”

  “Yes, but, Alan? I always thought…you didn’t like to dance.”

  He motioned that detail aside with a wave of his hand and took a long swallow of wine, his gaze flickering absently around the barn. “Do you see what I mean about this place now, honey?”

  Carroll restudied her surroundings, this time barely noticing the cobwebs and chill and bare boards. Maybe they were still there, but they didn’t seem to matter as much. All her life, she’d been determined to be practical. At this moment, she could envision a palace in a tree house. “An endless feeling of spaciousness,” she commented blissfully.

  “It would definitely be a house like no one else’s.”

  “Absolutely. And character, Alan. The whole place has character.” Alan threw back his head and laughed, and Carroll cocked her head at him curiously. “What’s so funny?”

  “Oh…nothing’s funny, exactly. I’m just so relieved you like the place, can see the same potential in it that I do, Caro. When you first walked in, I could see you had doubts.”

  “A few, maybe—but none that seem so terribly important now,” she said softly, although she wasn’t sure she was referring to the barn.

  “Good,” Alan said with satisfaction, “because I bought the property yesterday.”

  A dollop of caviar suddenly went down Carroll’s throat the wrong way. Alan thumped her on the back until the coughing spasm passed.

  ***

  Wedding invitations were spread out on Carroll’s kitchen table, along with the Sunday paper, a roll of stamps, coffee mugs and extravagant lists of potential guests. Nancy finished a lengthy dissertation on her fiancé’s travel plans, from Stéphane’s flight back to Quebec to his expected return two days before the wedding. When that failed to get Carroll’s attention, she tried talking clothes, and when that failed, she just shook her head. “I hate to say this,” Nancy said politely, “but I’m supposed to be the scatterbrained one in this family, with Mom running a close second.”

  “And?” Carroll licked a stamp, stabbed it at the envelope and looked up.

  “You’ve addressed three envelopes to the James Parker family. Far as I know, we only have to invite them one time, and then only because Mom’ll have a fit if I don’t.”

  “Did I really?” Carroll looked appropriately amazed, then yawned sleepily.

  “How late were you up last night anyway?” Nancy asked suspiciously.

  “Till four-thirty.”

  “FOUR THIRTY IN THE MORNING?!”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “And does that time bear some relationship to the fact that you’re wearing only one slipper?”

  “I have a blister on the other foot,” Carroll explained reasonably. It was on her right toe, and not very big. Blisters were never any fun, but if one had to get one, dancing all night was definitely the way to do it.

  Drinking champagne while dancing all night was an even better way. And doing both with Alan…

  Abruptly realizing that her sister was staring at her with an annoyingly patronizing grin, Carroll shuffled a half dozen wedding invitations in front of her and efficiently sifted through her mother’s guest list. “We’ve got to get to work,” she said firmly.

  “One of us was working. You’re the one who keeps mentally wandering off.” Nancy added in a murmur, “How the mighty do fall.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Nothing. It’s just nice to see that you can be as batty as the rest of us.”

  “Does this conversation make no sense at all, or is it me?” Carroll wondered aloud.

  “It’s you,” Nancy assured her. “I assume it’s Alan who’s done this to you?”

  “Done what to me?”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. You don’t even know.” Nancy shook her head in despair.

  Carroll stood up and hobbled over to the stove for more coffee. “I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about. I’ve known the man for months. He hasn’t done anything to me.”

  “Something has changed you in the last few days.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You’re going out with him tonight?”

  Carroll nodded. “And on Thursday. He’s speaking to a medical group, a banquet at Purdue where he has to give a talk.”

  Nancy scrunched up her nose. “Sounds dull.”

  “You’ve never been to anything as dull as a medical convention,” Carroll agreed happily.

  “There, now. My sister just made an almost rational statement for the first time this morning,” Nancy said to thin air. “Maybe she hasn’t got as bad a case as I thought.”

  “Do you have any idea,” Carroll said thoughtfully, “how many times I nearly strangled you when we were kids?”

  Nancy chuckled. Carroll, having forgotten the coffee, found herself in front of the kitchen cupboard that held the aspirin. Popping two, she fo
llowed them up with a water chaser. Contrary to what her sister kept implying, the only things wrong with her this morning were a total lack of sleep, a teeny blister and a slight headache caused by having consumed a ridiculous amount of champagne the night before.

  All of which had been worth it.

  Darn it, who would have guessed Alan could even think up such enticing things, much less whisper them in her ear on a crowded dance floor?

  A little nagging voice in the back of her head kept harassing her to take a second look at things. Realistically, for instance, a man didn’t change from day to night at will. Realistically, she wasn’t absolutely positive by light of day that she wanted to live in a barn. Realistically, she was a little shocked to discover she’d nearly been seduced in a bed of straw on a Saturday morning. Realistically, she wasn’t absolutely sure with whom she’d danced cheek to cheek for an entire night, because the Alan she knew panicked at weddings for the obligatory waltz with the bride.

  Her eyes turned dreamy, staring at the water in her glass. Realism belonged on 60 Minutes. Who cared? She’d be sensible again tomorrow. Today she was too busy relishing secrets. For so long she’d been afraid that the chemistry was tepid between them, that Alan never really saw her as a woman, that desire was something she would never experience…

  “Caro?” Nancy’s voice was patient.

  “Hmm?”

  “Are we going to let the front doorbell keep ringing, or would you like me to get it?”

  Carroll blinked. “Oh—I will.” She straightened and headed for the door, but when she opened it, there was no one there—just five long slim boxes lying on her doormat. Frowning, she gathered them up and used her hip to close the door against the bitter wind.

  “Good heavens!” Nancy hurried forward to catch a box before it fell. “What is this?”

  “I haven’t any idea.” Juggling them on the way to the kitchen, Carroll tried to search for a card, but couldn’t find one. Finally, she pulled the ribbon off the first box and parted the folds of green tissue paper. Her breath caught. A dozen long-stemmed white roses were lying there, infinitely fragile.