by Hailey North
And sure enough, she answered!
He made a mental note to send a dozen roses to the long-suffering and oh-so-wise Thelma James of Ponchatoula, Louisiana, as he said, “Daffy, what’s happening?” just as if she’d called him rather than the other way around.
“Hunter, what a surprise.”
Surprise. Dammit, he’d sent her flowers. Called her at least three times in two days. What was the surprise?
“The connection is breaking up,” she said.
No swearing. Hunter gripped the phone and said, “I’m going to be stuck in Salt Lake for at least another day or so.”
“I can hear you now. This merger must be complicated.”
“Very,” he said, wondering whether he should tell her how much he missed her. And how much that amazed him.
“Business is like that,” Daffy said.
Hunter nodded. He was doing a pretty poor job of this phone-conversation thing.
Silence hung over the lines, plumping the pockets of his mobile provider but doing nothing for Hunter’s interests. Finally he said, “Daffy?”
“Yes?” Her voice leapt a bit, which gave Hunter hope.
“If you’re not busy this weekend . . .”
“Yes?” This time the question was much more reserved and Hunter almost lost his nerve. But not for nothing had he earned his way out of the gutter.
“Want to go up to Ponchatoula with me?”
“Ponchatoula?”
Right. Daffy the consummate Uptown girl had to think he was pulling her leg. She probably thought City Park was a suburb of New Orleans. Well, for some things Hunter refused to apologize. “My hometown,” he said.
Silence ticked away yet again. Hunter stared across the lonely sitting room of his suite in Salt Lake’s finest hotel, picturing Daffy beneath him on the bed in Vegas, her face a symphony of ecstasy as he brought her to the heights of pleasure. But other images overlapped, particularly the rancid memory of Emily ridiculing him for having the nerve to ask out the homecoming queen.
“I’d love to go with you,” she said softly.
Hunter stared at his phone. Had she really said yes? And why did it matter so much? “Great,” he said. “I’ll pick you up early Saturday morning. I’m afraid I may not be in until late Friday.”
“Sounds good,” Daffy said. “I have an event I have to cover Friday night anyway.”
“Oh,” Hunter said. Had he expected her to be sitting by the phone, nothing else going on in her life?
“Hunter?”
It was his turn to utter the “Yes?” that drove him crazy when she’d said it.
A beep sounded on the line and Daffy, to his extreme frustration, said, “See you Saturday. I’ve got to get this call.”
And there he was, alone in his suite, left hanging.
At least Saturday was only three days away.
Daffy felt compelled to take the other call, knowing that if she stayed on the line much longer, she’d break down and shout out her need for Hunter like a silly teenager suffering her first crush.
And Daffy Landry had never needed any man.
Right. So, chicken that she was, she took the other call rather than acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, things were changing. Why else did she feel as if the lights in her room had dimmed the moment he hung up?
Jonni repeated her greeting and Daffy blinked and managed to respond.
“You left me a message to call you,” Jonni said in her usual self-contained and quiet way.
“That’s right. I did.” But the only person she wanted to talk to was Hunter. No, that wasn’t true. She had asked Jonni to phone her. “There’s something I wanted to tell you,” Daffy began.
“If it’s about David, I don’t want to hear it,” Jonni said.
Daffy held the receiver out and stared at the beige plastic. “Excuse me?”
“I know you’ve been thinking the worst of him, and if you’ve gone and done something to try to prove it, I simply do not want to know.”
Wow. “Well, it’s a good thing I don’t have bad news,” Daffy said.
“So you did do something.”
“I only followed him.”
“Daffy!”
“I was trying to help.”
“I don’t need any help.” Her sister’s voice was firm.
“But if he were seeing someone else, wouldn’t you want to know?”
“What difference would it make?”
“What difference?” Daffy knew her voice shot up. “Only about a day-and-night difference.”
“I married David and I’m not leaving him,” her sister said softly, but in a determined voice that raised the small hairs on Daffy’s neck.
“Even if he were cheating on you?” Daffy knew how strongly Jonni felt about the fidelity she expected of herself; how could she make an exception for her husband? Why, one of the reasons Daffy doubted that she would ever marry was because she wasn’t sure she wasn’t too much of her mother’s daughter not to stray.
“No matter what,” Jonni said.
“Why?”
The silence stretched long over the phone and Daffy, for once, kept her silence, waiting for her sister to find the words she sought.
At last Jonni said, “Daddy stood by Mother.”
“Wow,” Daffy whispered. She repeated the word, noting in a most detached way that her vocabulary had dwindled to that single word.
She wanted to argue with her sister, line up the logical reasons that their parents’ relationship should not determine the fate of her own life. But what was the point? Jonni wasn’t open to reason, and if David truly was only assisting the intern with her legal needs, her sister had nothing to worry about anyway.
“I’ve got to go,” Jonni said, her voice firm. “The nanny’s bringing Erika in from her walk. I do appreciate your trying to help, but let it go, okay?”
“Sure,” Daffy said. The phone buzzed in her ear after her sister hung up.
She continued to grip the receiver, mulling over Jonni’s attitude and kicking herself for missing Hunter as much as she did.
Daffy couldn’t remember when she’d felt more lonesome.
17
Saturday morning arrived cool and clear, more like spring than early summer in Louisiana. Daffy snuggled under the covers, then threw them off as she remembered just what day it was.
Hunter was picking her up at nine to drive to Ponchatoula.
And the clock read 8:45!
Vaulting from her four-poster bed, Daffy grabbed for the peignoir draped across the foot of the bed and then paused, the frothy fabric clutched to her bare breasts. Despite the number of times both her mother and her sister had admonished her, Daffy still slept in the nude.
Fifteen minutes. That gave her time to put on a quick cup of coffee before jumping into the shower. She did love her morning java. And before embarking on a day with Hunter, she needed her wits about her.
At that moment the doorbell rang, chiming clearly all the way through the raised Creole cottage to her bedroom near the back of the house.
Not Hunter! Not yet.
She wasn’t ready to face him, not after the stilted phone conversations and the week’s gap since their fantasy trip to Las Vegas. She, for once, had no idea what to say.
The bell rang again. Apparently Hunter was not feeling awkward. Daffy slipped into the robe, ran a comb through her hair, and swished a mouthful of Scope. One did like to be prepared for happy outcomes.
She was almost to the door when she remembered just how sheer her peignoir was. She considered, one foot in midair, then sailed forward.
Good. Shake him up a bit, she thought, and swung the door open wide.
Looking every inch as gorgeous as she remembered him, Hunter stood on her porch, two steaming cups of PJ’s coffee in his hands and a paper bag tucked under one elbow.
“Room service,” he said, a look of what Daffy could only think of as wolfish admiration on his face as he surveyed her from the top of her tou-sled head to
the tips of her bare toes.
She stood in the open doorway, reveling in the way he was soaking in the sight of her, and did the same. He wore khaki shorts, a polo shirt, tennis shoes, and the ancient Timex. Nothing fancy. Certainly nothing to indicate his substantial bank balance.
Not that Daffy cared. It was the curve of his mouth and the light in his eyes and that searing, so-direct way he had of seeing into her soul that mattered to her.
A clip-clip-snip noise penetrated her bemused brain and Daffy dragged her attention away from Hunter. Her next-door neighbor, wealthy enough to hire a staff of gardeners, was out early, clipping her bushes and checking the quiet street for any tidbits worthy of repeating to her circle of afternoon-tea lady friends.
Daffy lifted a hand in a friendly salute. Her peignoir gapped and her neighbor pursed her lips, resuming her clipping with even greater vehemence.
Biting back a gurgle of laughter, Daffy said, “Maybe you should come inside.”
“Good idea.” After bestowing a friendly smile on the neighbor, Hunter followed Daffy in. As he stepped into her house, he said, “One look at you in that robe—if you can call it that—and the entire neighborhood will be banging down your door.”
Daffy blushed, but made no move to close the drifting fabric together. “Coffee!” She held out a hand, but Hunter shook his head.
“First things first,” he said, turning to set the cups and the paper bag on a side table.
Then he opened his arms and advanced on her even as she flung herself against him, all self-constraint vanished.
“This was the longest week,” he murmured, smoothing her hair and kissing her all over her face and neck.
“Oh, for me, too.” Daffy clung to him, her pride evaporated, her misgivings forgotten. Last night she’d told herself she’d keep him at arm’s distance. Be friendly, but clearly not swept away by him. She’d planned to show him it took more than one fab date and the most incredible love-making she’d ever known to woo and win Daffodil Landry.
“Where’s your bedroom?” Hunter nibbled at her mouth and worked at the sash of her peignoir as he asked the question.
His eyes had that dark and smoky look she’d seen so often last weekend. Her body was responding already. She was damp with wanting him to fill her, possess her, and travel with her to the paradise of passionate release.
With a grin, she pulled her sash free, roped it around his waist, and, beckoning with one finger, said, “Come with me.”
“Just try escaping me,” Hunter said, wondering why he’d bothered asking directions to the bedroom. One flick of a finger and that see-through scrap of cloth would dissolve onto the floor, and they’d never make it there. “God, I missed you,” he said, though he was pretty sure he was repeating himself.
Daffy smiled, slipped the sash off him, and stretched out her arms to him. Hunter took one delicate hand into his and marveled that a week away from a woman he’d really only just met could make such a difference in his whole outlook on life.
They were passing down a broad hallway. Any other time Hunter might have been interested in his surroundings; he was naturally curious as to the kind of life Daffy lived. But today nothing mattered but this overpowering sense that his world would not be all right until the two of them lay exhausted in a sweaty tangle of limbs.
Funny, he’d stopped for the coffee thinking to use it as a bridge, a means of reconnecting by bringing a gift that also served as a topic of conversation. But to his delight, she’d welcomed him with open arms. Could life get much better?
Daffy led him into a large room dominated by a massive four-poster. Standing beside the bed, she let that sexy concoction of a robe slip to the ground.
Oh, yeah, Hunter thought, life had just gotten even better.
She reached for his belt, but he got there first, stripping himself of his clothing and kicking free his shoes, all the while staring at her body like a man starved.
Still standing, he pulled her to him. She arched against him and he caught one breast in his mouth, reveling in the feel and the taste. “Don’t ever go away for so long,” he said.
She laughed, a breathy sound that was as much a sensual moan as a sound of humor. “You went away, not me.”
“Yeah, right. But don’t.” He lifted his mouth from her breast and said, “It’s possible I’m addicted to you.”
She stroked the line of his jaw with a very naughty gleam in her eyes. “Then maybe you ought to score a quick fix.” As if to accentuate her comment, her hips performed a wild dance of desire and she pulled him onto the bed amidst the rumpled silky-soft sheets and lacy pillows.
“I’ve gone to heaven,” Hunter said, and slid into her slick warmth, joining her body with his, the two of them so perfectly in sync it seemed they must have been doing so for more than one lifetime.
He moved over her, cupping her hips up to better answer his hunger for her. And she drove him on, her body speeding his tempo, the breathy moans and sweet senseless things she was saying enveloping them in a heated world in which only the two of them existed.
He thought he called her name, but couldn’t say for sure. The blood roaring in his ears mingled with her own cry of ecstasy. Hunter clasped her even more tightly to him, and with a shout, lost himself in her.
He didn’t move at all for the longest moments; then slowly, through the afterglow of his release, he realized he was probably crushing her. Lifting his weight off her, he drank in the sight of Daffy, glowing, satisfied, smiling.
“Wow,” she murmured.
“Wow,” he echoed with a grin, shifting to the side of her and stroking her belly lightly. “If I’d known coffee was an aphrodisiac . . .”
“Silly, you’re the aphrodisiac.” She rolled onto her side and they lay face-to-face.
“Why, thank you, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve been called a lot of names in my day, but that’s a first.”
“Then you hang around with a lot of nonobservant people.” She kissed him on the shoulder, then lay back with a sigh.
“Ready for another great weekend?” Funny, but he’d asked her to go with him to Ponchatoula as a test to see how the Uptown girl would react to the true world of Hunter James. He’d impressed her with Las Vegas, but he’d thought to shock her with his past poverty, probably to see whether or not she’d run screaming from his side. Now he couldn’t imagine why he’d thought such a measure necessary. He couldn’t imagine spending the weekend—or any day—without her.
“Ready when you are.” Daffy pushed up until she sat back against the mound of pillows.
He couldn’t say he was ready to move. Spending the day right there in Daffy’s bedroom appealed mightily to him. If he hadn’t told his mother he was coming for a visit and bringing a friend, he’d heat things up all over again. But this time he’d do it nice and slow . . .
Daffy was staring at her legs and had one hand pressed to her inner thigh.
“What’s wrong?” Hunter sat up. “Did I hurt you?” He’d thrash himself if he had.
A funny, almost curious expression flitted across her face as she lifted her hand. “I’m okay,” she said rather ruefully, “but we were in such a rush we skipped a detail or two.”
Hunter looked from her hand, where a streak of moisture glistened, to her thigh and slapped himself on the forehead. “No condom.”
She nodded.
“Never in my life,” he said, watching her to see if she was upset with him for not taking the responsibility he’d preached so pointedly only last week. He’d known that if any woman could cause him to forget his rules, it would be Daffy. She had the power to mesmerize him he’d never found in any other woman. “We-ell,” he said slowly, dragging the word out a syllable or two, “we-ell. I apologize. It is my fault.”
Daffy just sat there, her hand back between her thighs, an odd look on her face.
“Are you upset?”
She shook her head. Ducking her chin, she said, “It feels . . . kind of good, actually. I mean, this is
the first time in my life I’ve ever had sex without a condom.”
Hunter sensed her embarrassment at the intimacy of the discussion. He pushed back against the pillows and put an arm around her. Only then did she glance up and meet his eyes. Instead of upset, though, she looked happy. He tightened his hold around her and said, “It’s my first time, too. And man, did it feel great!”
She blushed and nodded.
“Hey, marry me and we’ll do it like this always.”
Daffy stilled. He could feel her withdraw from his embrace.
“Very funny,” she said, slipping free from his arm and sliding off the side of the bed. “Why don’t you heat up the coffee and I’ll take a quick shower?”
So he wasn’t invited to the shower? Hunter got off the bed, kissed the top of her head, and said, “I was only joking.”
She nodded and gave him a smile that was a shadow of her usual happy one. “Yes, I know,” she said, and picked up her robe.
Hunter stood there as she flitted into the bathroom and pulled the door closed. Man, even speaking the verb “to marry” sent Daffy scuttling.
He’d have to find out why.
And he’d have to remember his condoms. From their most recent discussion, he was pretty sure they had nothing to worry about healthwise, but a rule was a rule.
Besides, a guy could get spoiled.
He pulled on his shorts and headed to the front of the house to collect the coffee. That was when the thought struck him. He looked around for the voice that must have spoken, ’cause surely it hadn’t come from inside his own head. But there it was again: “So why not marry Daffy?”
Marry?
Shaking his head the way he did to clear water from his ears after swimming, Hunter entered the kitchen and put the cups into the microwave. The pale yellow walls reminded him of the dress Daffy had worn to the TekWare convention—and shed in the limousine.
Never before had he paired a particular woman with the verb “to marry.”
He stirred the heated coffee and considered that a weekend in Ponchatoula would probably settle his senses back to normal and also do a good job of chasing Daffy away. Once she realized the gap in their backgrounds, no doubt she’d decline to date him again.