Without a word, he slipped the salad into the fridge and the bread and chicken into a warm oven. It was five-forty. Early for dinner. He settled a hand at my waist and guided me to the couch where he tugged me down beside him. Then, he produced a small, velvet ring box.
“Don’t.” I pushed it away and turned my head. “I don’t want it.” I don’t know what I was so afraid of. Maybe of loving and losing again. I wanted sex without a commitment.
He looked from me to the unopened box. I drew a cleansing breath as he pocketed it. I did not intend to offend him. He had been my truest friend over days of the harshest testing.
“How was your day?” he asked benignly.
“Fine.” I was afraid to look at his face, afraid to see the anger or sorrow I might have put there. “I missed you.”
“You need to get back to your old routine, take your lunch with the ladies.” He hesitated. “But I’m glad you missed me.” His laugh sounded forced.
I sat straighter to study him. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Your car needs an oil change.”
I was suddenly annoyed. I had come in feeling all warm and receptive and he... rather abruptly... wasn’t. “Fisk, my car’s oil is none of your business.” I sounded brittle, as if I were setting emotional barriers between us. “You have vehicles of your own to worry about without concerning yourself with my car or its oil.”
His expression darkened. “It’s something you allow I might know about. Like I said, things are slow at my place in the winter. Besides, I’ve got ranch hands to help out. You’ve only got me.”
Something about the look on his face stirred a peculiar hunger in my gut. He was following my lead and distancing himself from me, physically and emotionally. I had started it but that was not what I wanted.
I took his wine glass and put mine with his on the side table before I curled under his arm. He yielded but didn’t seem particularly interested. The scent of him made me hungry, and not for parmesan chicken.
By way of apology, I got on my knees at his side and kissed his jaw. He sat unmoving and stared straight ahead. I nibbled little kisses from his ear lobe to his chin, then his throat and down to where his chest hair scrabbled from beneath his open collar. My lips followed as I unbuttoned his shirt to his belt buckle. I had wanted to see his chest again ever since the glimpse at his house that morning.
His skin warmed under my hand and gave a slight tremor, but he neither moved nor turned his eyes from the far wall.
How far could I go with this? Maybe he was not the sleeping tiger I had supposed, but a dysfunctional tom. Perhaps I had been wrong about his sexuality. I slipped my fingers inside his shirt. His heart pounded, yet he didn’t shift position or speak.
His non-response challenged me to be more daring. I wanted to arouse him, to get him panting. I remembered necking in his flatbed truck that night in the grocery store parking lot. Was this the same guy who had been so hot to trot? Had events of past month cooled his ardor?
I stretched across his lap, putting us chest to breast, as we had been that night.
Still nothing.
Pressing both hands against his warming flesh inside the shirt, I kissed his jutting, stubborn jaw, working my way to his Adam’s apple as he lifted his chin giving me access.
He might not be getting turned on, but I was working myself into a lather.
What about Charlie? My conscience inquired. It was a cheap shot. The part of me that was utterly tired of dreary thoughts of death and dying answered. Charlie who?
Charlie would have gotten a kick out of that mental exchange. But Charlie was gone, taking with him his laughter and the mischievous twinkle in his eyes and his routine, though thoroughly adequate, method of lovemaking. And he had left me here with this silent robot.
“You think I’m stupid, don’t you?” Fisk asked finally, the belligerent tone quenching my fire like a bucket of cold water. I pulled my hands out of his shirt and shifted over to kneel beside him.
“No, I don’t think you’re stupid.” I hesitated. “Just because you didn’t have the educational opportunities I had...”
“What makes you think I didn’t?”
“Well...” It sounded like he was goading me, spoiling for an argument. While I had been getting all turned-on, he had been brooding and becoming more and more annoyed. Now what was that about? Bickering was not on my agenda for the evening and he was destroying a perfectly good ambiance.
“Look, buster, if you are trying to give me a realistic look at your difficult side, I’m not in the mood.”
He glowered at me a long moment. “Do you ever consider my mood?”
“Certainly I do.” What was he driving at?
“We spend nearly every minute of our time together discussing your grief. Your feelings. Your needs. Every conversation is about you.”
I bristled. “First off, that’s not true. The first conversation we ever had was about your career as a doorman, followed soon after by the one about choosing the right bacon, a subject I took quite seriously, if you will recall.”
He might have interrupted, but I was just getting started. “You have been solicitous, pretending to be concerned about my feelings, catering to me, bringing me gifts, fixing meals. If I’ve gotten self indulgent, it’s your own damn fault. You’ve done the spoiling. You can’t blame me for acting like a brat when you’ve made me that way.”
He practically snarled. “You keep letting me do it.”
“Well, sure. Why not? If indulging me makes you happy, who am I to argue?”
“It’s because you think you’re better than me.”
“I do not.” I thought a minute. “Does it threaten your masculinity that I have a college education?”
He suddenly was on his feet, huge, angry, threatening. “That’s why you won’t marry me, isn’t it?”
I retreated, involuntarily, and the expression on his face became disgust. He strode to the kitchenette and turned off the stove, then retrieved his sport coat from the tiny closet, but he didn’t button his shirt. I wished to glory he would button his damn shirt.
I followed, verbally nipping at his heels. “Sure, take your marbles and go home to pout, you big wuss. You are nothing but a big wimp, do you know that?” I was angry and frustrated and completely confused. I wanted him to stay and thrash it out, then make mad, passionate love, not slink off into the night.
“I’m getting out of here before we say things we’ll regret.”
I trailed him to the door. “I cannot believe you are too chicken to stay and tell me what’s got you in such a snit.”
“You calling me ‘wuss’ and ‘wimp’ and ‘chicken’ might have something to do with it. I’m sick of being a shoulder to cry on. Hell, you don’t even know me. You just want someone who’ll listen to you bellyache.”
His words struck a nerve. Okay, so our friendship had gone mostly my way. I hadn’t put much effort into it. And he was right. I actually didn’t know him very well. I hadn’t taken the trouble to find out what made him tick. But I hadn’t realized it before. I could do that.
“Okay, tell me something about you that I don’t already know,” I challenged. “Amaze me.”
He turned as he opened the door and his eyes narrowed. “You didn’t know if I had any college because you didn’t ask. You took one look at my overalls and my work boots and you put me in a category. But you were wrong. I do have a degree. Two of them, in fact. One’s in microbiology.”
He’d done it, all right. He had amazed me. Stunned me to silence.
“The other one’s in fine arts. Music,” he added, and my jaw dropped further.
“No way.”
He seemed to get some satisfaction from my disbelief. “I’m goin’ home now.” He was out the door and clattering down the stairs before I recovered.
“Good night,” I murmured, but I was the only one who heard it. I stood there thunderstruck, hoping it was good night and not good-bye.
I walked around the
tiny apartment trying not to grieve over my new, devastating loss. I didn’t exactly blame myself that Fisk had suddenly realized I was too snooty for him, or too needy. I reviewed recent conversations and could not, for the life of me, figure out what had set him off.
The grief I felt at losing Charlie, who basically had been absent from our marriage for a long time, was entirely different than this new devastation.
Charlie had not left voluntarily.
Fisk had.
Big difference. Huge difference.
Chapter Seven
I turned off the lights and sat on the sofa in the darkened living room, stunned and soul searching. I didn’t bother to change out of the skirt and blouse I had worn to work.
Obviously Fisk and I were misfits, literally as well as figuratively. For example: he did not fit in my little apartment. He was a big man and required space. Maybe I crowded his soul as well.
Maybe.
I kept trying to figure out what had prompted him to leave at that particular moment. We had been on the couch together. I had been kissing him. We hadn’t been talking. I could not think what I needed to apologize for. Then I had a sudden insight: the ring. He was offended that I wouldn’t marry him. But I was willing to have sex with him. Wasn’t that enough?
Okay, I absolved myself, he was the one who walked out. I had asked him to stay. That was all I could do. It wasn’t up to me to hunt him down and plead for forgiveness, particularly when I didn’t know exactly what I needed to be forgiven for. Besides, if he felt like I was crowding him, tracking him down would only make things worse. I needed to let him stew a while and find his own solution to whatever his problem was.
Idly I wondered how long he would need.
Had I seen the last of Fisk Reed?
That possibility cued tears. A quiet trickle became a deluge. As I wept, I rationalized. Fisk had been there when I needed him, had seen me through the most difficult weeks of my life. Maybe he had never intended to stay beyond the end of the drama.
Then why had he argued about the headstone?
I had just gotten the tears under control when, before dawn, a vehicle pulled in and parked in front of the building. I leaned up and fingered an opening to peer through the blinds.
Fisk stepped out of his black pickup and my heart leaped.
Without turning on any lights, I opened the door before he knocked.
Uncertain about his mood, I shivered, marveling all over again at his size. He loomed, breathtakingly handsome in the same clothes, including the shirt he still hadn’t buttoned.
Without a word, he locked his huge hands at my waist and pulled me hard against him. His hungry mouth devoured mine. He brushed his hands up, skimming my breasts, then down to cup my bottom, humming sweet approval in words garbled with passion.
He handled me roughly, but I didn’t object, caught up in his erratic mood. He pushed me to the closet door with the full-length mirror, pressed the front of me against it, then lifted my hands, stretching my fingers to the doorjamb overhead. Holding my wrists aloft with one hand, he wrapped the other arm around me and squeezed his free hand between me and the mirror. He unbuttoned my blouse and unfastened my bra. I breathed as I could and lost all train of thought.
He lowered my arms and turned me to remove the garments leaving me stripped to the waist. After a long, approving look, he set his mouth and tongue to studying my torso. I laced my fingers into his hair, encouraging his feeding frenzy.
Turning me again, he smushed my passion-heated breasts against the cold glass, which made me gasp. He undid my skirt which slid to the floor, leaving me only panties and pantyhose. He wrapped his fingers over the waistbands and stripped away both in a single swipe.
“Stay right where you are,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I watched his reflection in the mirror. Without taking his eyes off me, he stepped out of his shoes, and tossed his coat, shirt, slacks, briefs and socks.
Marvelous in clothing, the man was stunning without, perfectly built, broad through the shoulders and chest, narrow through the waist and hips.
My breath caught as he pressed his hard, hot cock against my bottom and slid it between my legs while he set his hands to work again between me and the mirror. His mouth and fingers drove me nearly mad before he turned and lifted and pushed inside me. He was magnificent as he plunged deep. I writhed with pleasure which mounted until we exploded in a wild joining, finishing, miraculously, together, gasping, neither of us able to speak.
When we could breathe normally again, he tossed the cushions off the sofa onto the floor and pushed me down on them, to rest, I thought. Lowering himself over me, presenting a whole new aspect, he whispered, “Marry me.”
I rocked my head from side to side, no, while I cradled him between my legs. All I wanted was his huge, warm body to be linked with mine again.
I could not believe we were so perfect together as we again came at the same moment. Perhaps sated this time, Fisk pushed himself over to lie beside me. We lay intimately entangled, yet neither of us seemed to feel a need for words.
Sometime later, he stood, offered me a hand up and guided us to the shower.
“Marry me,” he said.
My, “No” was less emphatic and he grinned.
“Is this what you meant by a different method of persuasion?”
He nodded.
“If you can have the milk free,” I whispered, “why buy the cow?”
His grin widened. “I’m in the cattle business. I know good stock when I see it and I want to own it.”
“Do you brand your cows?”
He patted my tush. “Yeah. And I just marked this one mine for keeps.” His grin faded. “I want you, Jan, permanently, in my bed, in my house, in my life.”
“But why?” I wanted him to say those three little words. I needed to hear them. Instead, he soaped and rinsed and touched every inch of me wickedly before he entered me again, striving beneath the pounding spray. I milked him reflexively that time. He might deny me the words, but I wasn’t going to let him hold back anything else.
Later, as I sat exhausted on the side of my bed, wrapped in a towel, Fisk appeared in the doorway fully clothed. The sun was up. “Good night.”
I yearned to have him sleep beside me. “Stay,” I said softly.
It was his turn to shake his head. “No. And there’ll be no more of that great sex until you say you’ll marry me.”
I looked up at his face and, God help me, the truth arced between us. I loved him. I wanted to hold out until he said the words but, I rationalized, hadn’t he told me he loved me in every gesture? In every word? In every smile and lazy glance? His unspoken regard had ignited like feelings in me. I was crazy in love with this sexy, gentle, marvelous human being. I responded simply, as if that one word didn’t carry the weight of our entire future in it.
“Okay.”
He looked surprised, then skeptical. “When?”
“Whenever you say.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
He grinned, then gave me a chaste little kiss and the smile wavered.
“I’ve got to tell you something, and I’m not sure how you’re going to take it. Maybe it should wait for morning.”
“Can’t it wait here as well as somewhere else?” I patted the bed beside me.
Grinning again, he drew the towel from around me and watched lasciviously as I stretched and posed, teasing him. I entertained lurid thoughts as he stripped slowly, returning tit for tat, so to speak. After another extremely satisfying session, I slept the sleep of the forgiven, secure beneath Fisk’s protective arm.
* * *
It was well after noon. Sausage was sputtering in the skillet and I had poured us each a cup of coffee and I sat down across the small table from him, silent and waiting.
He locked his eyes on the cup steaming in front of him. “My brother and his wife are raising their grandchildren.” He took a sip of the coffee as if he were stalling.
> “I see,” I said, not seeing at all.
“Marie—that’s Stan’s wife—has a lump.”
“In her breast?”
“Yes.” He refused to look at me. “She has to have an operation.”
“Probably right away,” I guessed.
“Yeah. She may have to have chemo afterward. And she has to live stress-free for a while.”
“Oh.” The point was coming.
Fisk’s eyes shot to my face. “Their grandchildren are good kids, but they come with a goodly supply of stress.”
“How old are they?”
“The boys are ten and seven. And there’s a little girl. Younger. I’m not sure how old.”
He remained silent for several ticks of the clock. “What I need to know is: can I take the kids off their hands for a while?”
“How long have you known about this?”
He looked startled. “No, no. Don’t be thinking I had ulterior motives for chasing you. Stan left a message on my machine last night. I called him after I left here.”
I drew a deep breath. “Now you don’t just want a wife. Now you’ve got to have one.”
“No.” His gaze captured mine. “I never wanted any wife at all until I met you. I need you. That has nothing to do with anybody’s kids. A neighbor lady cleans my house every two weeks. I already called her. She’ll come every day to keep the house and the kids. I just kinda thought, well... if you could stand it... I thought we might make a... a family.” He looked so worried that my heart went out to him. He wanted to do this good deed, but not if it meant losing me.
“It’d be temporary,” he added. “Just until their granny gets well.”
“What if I’m not a good mother, even temporarily?”
“Then we’ll send the kids somewhere else. Hell, I don’t know if I’ll make any kind of a dad. And hardly any parents have to start with three, half grown.”
“True.” I sipped my coffee again and realized it was black. I like cream and sugar.
Chik~Lit for Foxy Hens Page 6