“You’re right, I forgot,” he acknowledged with a soft, appreciative laugh. “So, next Thursday—provided you’re free, of course.”
“Next Thursday,” she agreed, deliberately not commenting on whether or not she was going to be free. She knew her father assigned a far deeper meaning to that word than she did. “And to make this up to you, it’ll be my treat.”
“I won’t argue with that, but you have nothing to make up for,” he informed her. “It’s not as if we were on the trapeze, with you being my catcher and suddenly disappearing on me. Remember, Elizabeth, this is the time to really enjoy yourself,” he reminded her. “When you’re young.”
She knew it would do her no good to argue the point, or to insist that his assumption in this case was baseless. He wasn’t about to be convinced. Her protests would just have the reverse effect.
And besides, she didn’t want to keep Jared waiting much longer.
“I love you, Dad,” she said, ending the call the way she usually did.
“And I you,” her father replied.
Hanging up, John gave it to the count of five to make certain the connection was terminated and then he hit a series of numbers, making another call. There were things he wanted to ask Maizie Sommers—not to mention give her his colossal thanks.
* * *
“That was my dad,” Elizabeth told Jared, putting the receiver back into its cradle.
“I had my suspicions,” Jared deadpanned. And then, his mouth quirking into a smile, he added, “Hearing you say ‘Dad’ when you picked up the phone kind of gave it away.” He paused for a second, debating asking the next question, then decided that honesty was the best policy. “You stood him up?”
“Not intentionally,” she protested, then decided to face up to her failing. “But yes, I guess I did.”
“How long have you been doing it?” he wanted to know. Then, in case she misunderstood, Jared clarified his question by adding, “Having dinner with your dad on Thursdays?”
Her smile was wrapped in fond memories. “Ever since college. I didn’t go away even though I was supposed to—I was accepted by a college back East—and to keep abreast of my life, he started this little tradition where he would take me out to dinner, and we’d talk about what was going on in each of our lives,” she volunteered. “I have to admit that I looked forward to it just as much as he did,” she told him. “Maybe even more. It gave me a sense of being connected.”
And that, Jared gathered, was very important to her. He could relate to that. “Is he angry?” he asked.
She shook her head. “My dad doesn’t get angry— No, I take that back,” she amended. “I did see my father get angry just once. When my mother died, he got angry at God.”
Jared released a low, appreciative whistle. “Boy, your father doesn’t fool around, does he? Goes right for the big target, no small-time stuff for him,” he said wryly.
“Other than that one time, my dad has always been the gentlest, kindest man I know. I never had a time when I felt he was cramping my style, or being critical of any of my choices. He’s always been there for me, always been nothing but supportive—of my brothers as well as me,” she added in case she’d made it sound as if her father played favorites.
He nodded. “I know what you mean. I kind of feel the same way about my father. About both my parents,” he amended. “While a lot of my friends in school had parents who split up, mine seemed to have something very special going on. Something rare,” he underscored. “So rare that the average relationship just wouldn’t measure up. I always felt that if I couldn’t have that, I didn’t want anything.”
It was, he reminded himself, one of the reasons he’d never even thought about settling down himself. Because he had this shining example of happiness before him and knew that he didn’t want to settle for anything less.
At the same time, he knew how much less there could be out there. He’d heard his friends’ horror stories, been there for some while their parents were in the throes of divorces that seemed as if they were forged in hell. That was something he knew he would have wanted to avoid at all cost.
He felt that if he couldn’t have a relationship that was as perfect as the union that his parents had, then he didn’t want anything at all.
Besides, this was the twenty-first century. Not getting married, not having a family, those choices were acceptable now. No one looked at you as if there were something wrong with you. Remaining single for the rest of your life was just as normal as being married. It was all about choices.
Or, conversely, it was about not making choices. About abstaining from making any life-altering decisions—ever.
But now he was beginning to think that maybe what his parents had wasn’t so incredibly unique and unattainable after all. Maybe it just took having someone unique come into his life. Making him think...
Making him wonder what if...?
“I think my father felt that way about my mother,” Elizabeth was saying. “That she was one in a million. After she died, he had a very hard time coming to grips with everything, but then he finally rallied. Because of us—his kids,” she explained.
She could remember it as if it were all just yesterday, instead of more than two decades ago. “My maternal grandmother offered to take us in, saying that men had a hard time raising children on their own and that since my dad was a doctor, he wouldn’t be around much anyway. She’d spare him the guilt that neglect generated by taking us with her back to Georgia and raising us.” A fond smile curved her lips as she relived that period.
“That was when he came out of the tailspin he was in. I was only five, but I remember the look on his face when he realized my grandmother was telling him he could just walk away from us. He had this very strange look in his eyes and right then and there, he boxed up all the pain that was tearing him apart and pushed it into some faraway compartment in his mind. And just like that—” she snapped her fingers “—he was himself again. He was my dad.
“He told my grandmother in a very quiet voice that he was our father and that we belonged with him. He said nothing in the world was going to change that. My grandmother flew back to Georgia the very next morning. Alone.”
As she paused, her revelation taking a momentary toll on her, Elizabeth realized that somehow she’d wound up monopolizing the conversation.
“How did we wind up talking about that?” she asked, suddenly feeling embarrassed.
“We were trading notes on parents,” he reminded her, then steered the conversation into neutral waters. “I guess it’s safe to say that we’re both pretty lucky. Some of my friends had parents they had to make an appointment with just to see them when they were growing up.” He saw Elizabeth looking at him skeptically and he relented somewhat. “Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating,” he admitted. “But not by much.”
He was even luckier to have both parents still alive, she couldn’t help thinking. “I can see why giving them this surprise celebration is so important to you,” she told him.
The anniversary celebration made him remember the length he had to go to in order to ensure that his parents would be there to receive their well-earned congratulations from family and friends.
“I’m just hoping my mother likes it enough to forgive me for lying to her.”
He really looked concerned, she realized. That put him, quite possibly, in a class by himself. Not many men worried about the effects of a lie they’d told.
She decided to change his stand on that. “That wasn’t a lie.”
“Oh? Then what would you have called it?”
That was easy enough to answer. “A desperate measure undertaken for your mom’s own good. You didn’t want to have to resort to spoiling the surprise for her,” she said, “so you really had no choice in the matter. You had to tell her something to keep her and your father in town for the party, and promising to introduce her to someone she believes is important in your life did the trick.”
His parents taking off
instead of turning up at their own surprise party had greater repercussions than just that. “Not to mention that Megan would read me the riot act if she found out I told them about the party to keep them in town. She’d probably go into premature labor right there just to get back at me.”
Elizabeth grinned. She had no idea he was capable of that level of exaggeration. “Well, if nothing else, that would take care of the entertainment portion of your evening,” she teased.
He could just see that—on second thought, he most definitely did not want to see that. “I don’t think Megan would exactly see it your way. She hates feeling like a walrus, which is the way she describes herself these days. The only thing she hates more than that is the thought of the pain she’s in for when she eventually goes into labor.”
“Labor doesn’t necessarily have to be bad,” she told Jared. “I’ve heard stories that some women actually have had an easy time of it.”
He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “Megan has never had an easy time of it—no matter what’s involved.” His sister had a tendency to overdramatize everything. She was the type that if she sneezed, she was convinced she was coming down with a fatal strain of pneumonia. “It’s not in her nature. Her kid will probably be in therapy by the time he or she is three months old.”
That didn’t sound very promising, she thought. “Maybe your sister’ll change once the baby is born. Babies have a way of doing that.”
“I hope you’re right—for her husband’s sake as well as the baby’s,” he said, although he had to admit he had his doubts. Megan, unfortunately, wasn’t anything like Elizabeth.
The moment the thought occurred to him, he looked at Elizabeth thoughtfully. He really liked the upbeat way she viewed things. “Are you always this optimistic?”
Elizabeth lifted and then lowered her shoulders in a vague shrug.
“I do my best. Being a pessimist brings not only the person having dark thoughts down, but it brings down everyone around that person as well. Personally, I like leaving people with a smile, not depressing thoughts.” That had always been her goal, ever since she’d first succeeded in making her father smile by playing her mother’s violin. “That’s why I love the violin,” she explained.
He couldn’t see the connection. “Come again?”
“Depending on what you play,” she told him, “you can either bring tears to someone’s eyes or a smile to their lips.”
“And you can do that with a violin?” he asked, somewhat skeptical of the claim.
“Absolutely. I can give you a demonstration if you like,” she offered.
He had no doubt that she could back up her claim. She was a remarkable woman who, he was growing to believe, could do anything she set her mind to. But right now, he wasn’t all that interested in listening to a private concert. He was more interested in regaining the foothold that had been established before his mother and her father had interrupted.
“I know another way to bring about that smile you mentioned.”
Was it just her, or was that incredibly seductive-sounding?
There went her heart again, beating like a drummer working his way to a crescendo. She barely had enough oxygen to utter, “Oh?”
“Yes. If you’d like, I could give you a demonstration,” he offered, turning her words back around to her.
Her lips were all but stuck together. She nodded, then managed to whisper almost haltingly, “All right.” Elizabeth found herself out of breath by the second word.
Jared’s eyes held hers prisoner as he slowly slipped his arms around her.
But just before he lowered his mouth to hers, he stopped.
Her breath caught in her throat.
Was something wrong?
Had he decided he was getting too involved with someone he’d hired, someone who, however temporarily, was employed by him?
Elizabeth debated just drawing back, or possibly saying something flippant and face-saving—although for the life of her, she didn’t know what—when she saw Jared taking his phone out.
Was he going to call someone?
Now?
But rather than placing a call, he turned the phone off.
“This time, no interruptions,” he told her, placing the phone on the coffee table.
Incredibly relieved and just as equally charged with anticipation, Elizabeth did the same with her phone.
“No interruptions,” she echoed.
And there weren’t any.
Chapter Thirteen
He hadn’t planned this.
But he would have been lying if he pretended that he hadn’t thought about it.
He had.
More than once.
Thought about what it might be like to explore Elizabeth’s soft, stirring body. To slowly peel away her clothing and discover if what he’d envisioned when his imagination had taken flight was actually better than the real thing.
Or if, just possibly, fantasy ultimately didn’t hold a candle to reality.
But in every version, whether in the one where he stopped on the threshold of discovery, or in the one where the exploratory venture was taken all the way to completion, sanity and clearheadness had always managed to prevail.
But not so in reality.
Because he found himself utterly breathless almost from the first moment, breathless and eager, as something that he’d grown rather accustomed to enjoying morphed into an entirely new experience for him.
For him, anticipation had always been the best part of lovemaking because once the ground was tread and the walls breached, the experience was no more unique than the last one had been.
But this, this just kept building rather than ebbing. This was a bouquet of surprises that he couldn’t even begin to accurately anticipate. And even if he could, anticipation simply could not compare to what was happening.
At first, he’d only meant to kiss Elizabeth.
And then, he told himself, he only wanted to kiss her a little more, a little longer, perhaps a little more passionately.
But that road didn’t lead to a jumping-off place. It only led deeper into the forest of desires.
It was a simple matter of the more he kissed her, the more he wanted to kiss her.
The more he wanted.
In a confused attempt to stem the rising tide of passion, he held her to him, fitting her body against his. But the moment he did, he realized his mistake. Because doing that just led to something more.
Led to a greater yearning.
Jared didn’t remember trailing his hands along the sides of her body, absorbing the delicate swell of her breasts, but the moment he did so, the flame within him flared like a backdraft, threatening to set him on fire.
But hard though it was, he would have refrained from filling his hands with her supple flesh. He would have left her clothes in place and struggled mightily to finally break the connection, to back away. He would have—had she not begun to tug on his shirt, separating the buttons from their holes and dragging the material off his shoulders.
That spelled his complete undoing.
He felt his stomach muscles contracting, felt the rest of him all but dissolving as the raw need to touch her, to make love with her, threatened to utterly consume him.
After that, everything seemed to become a hazy frenzy.
Jared vaguely remembered leading her to the couch and helping her tug away his clothing. Remembered more acutely removing hers as his fingers interfered with hers, his eagerness feeding hers and hers his, creating a swirling cauldron of heat, desire and the promise of ultimate fulfillment that shimmered on the horizon.
She had no idea what came over her. No idea how one thing just kept leading to another and then another. Instead, she discovered what it meant to be on the brink of losing her ability to think, to be rational, to act on her better instincts.
The instincts she was aware of now all focused on sustaining this wondrous pleasure she was experiencing, on simultaneously receiving it and giving it.
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br /> Everywhere his lips touched, she could feel her anticipation heightening, could feel her eagerness multiplying, so that it seemed to totally consume her in ways she’d never imagined.
It was in the very air she breathed.
She’d always been so rational before, enjoying the few times that she’d found herself at this point, in this position, making love with someone.
But during all those times, her mind had never taken a hiatus. She’d never just focused on her reaction, on attaining that delicious explosion and coaxing one from her partner as well.
This time, though, it was different.
Everything with Jared was different, she realized before she was incapable of connecting her thoughts anymore.
And then, just like that, she didn’t care about anything.
Didn’t care that she wanted to keep a tight rein on herself because to fully give of herself was to leave herself completely vulnerable and that had always filled her with fear.
Moreover, she didn’t remember to compartmentalize her feelings so that her sense of self-preservation wasn’t lost. All that had been born of apprehension. Fear of abandonment, of being left behind, to cope and to carry on no matter how much pain her heart was in.
And while she envied what her parents had had, she never wanted to leave herself open to the utter heartache that loving someone so completely, with all her heart, ushered in.
Elizabeth didn’t want to follow in her father’s footsteps.
But all those well-thought-out safeguards that were supposed to protect her heart had gotten lost somehow, burned to a crisp in the fires of this incredible longing that Jared had created within her.
Created just by kissing her.
Fed just by touching her.
As his lips trailed along her skin, causing her to twist and turn into him, Elizabeth did what she could to hold on to that last bit of control and keep it from slipping away.
It was an effort doomed to failure.
The very next moment, she felt herself being swept away, arching her back so as to somehow absorb the sensation even more thoroughly than she had. At the same time, the acute ache, the sweet agony of the climax he’d generated, was almost too much for her to contain.
A Perfectly Imperfect Match (Matchmaking Mamas) Page 13