“Ah, about that.” His heart thudded in his chest, picking up speed as he realized he was indeed going through with this. “It was more something I needed to do, before our date.”
He took a step closer, unmistakably entering her physical space. Shay’s eyes were wide and he could see the flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.
“Oh?” She licked her bottom lip. “And what was that?”
Bracing his free hand on the cherrywood next to her, he leaned down. “This.”
Chapter Ten
Shay was startled, but not alarmed. While she hadn’t anticipated being kissed in Mark’s office, the last thing she wanted was to pull away. Instead, her eyes drifted closed as she arched up to meet him. His lips were firm and cool on hers. He’d had a peppermint recently. The sweetness was crisp and unexpected. Candy canes and peppermint gum would now hold a completely new association for her.
She’d thought he would be shy, kissing her hesitantly, but she was wrong. His mouth was exactly like that heavy-lidded gaze he’d given her at the roller rink—that of a man who knew what he wanted and how to get it. What he wanted, clearly, was her, and as he deepened their kiss, his tongue stroking hers, she returned that sentiment with every cell in her body. Somehow the fact that he wasn’t touching her with either of his hands—one of which he was using for balance, the other splinted between them—made it more erotic.
She was used to men putting their hands around her waist or cupping her face when they kissed her. Missing that was like being unable to see in the dark and having other senses heightened. Without Mark’s hands anywhere on her body, she was all the more aware of the other ways they touched. His legs, for instance, had come to bracket hers as he leaned into her. His growing arousal was impossible to miss and made Shay feel deliciously wanton.
Here she was, a bookish academic with no love life to speak of in the past year, making out with a tall, dark and virile man practically atop his desk! She clutched his shirtfront, pulling him even closer but bracing herself against the desk so they didn’t lose their balance. She kissed him hungrily, reveling in the sensations he conjured throughout her body, trying to remember why she’d thought he shouldn’t kiss her the other night.
She’d been a fool. If a man kissed with Mark’s confident mastery, a woman should take advantage of it as often as—
“Mr. Hathaway?” A knock at the office door reverberated through the office like a gunshot.
Shay was so startled that she would have sprung free from his embrace, but there was nowhere to go, trapped as she was against the desk.
“We’ve got a customer request out here that I need your authority to fulfill,” the male voice called through the door.
Mark lowered his head, pressing his forehead to hers and breathing heavily. Even though continuing to touch him probably wouldn’t help either of them regain their composure, she couldn’t stop herself from running a hand up his back. His muscles were bunched beneath the shirt. Judging from his very fit body, he followed the kind of active lifestyle he encouraged in his customers.
She swallowed as she thought about the strength and stamina that came from keeping active and healthy.
“Be there in a minute, Roddy.”
Slowly, Mark straightened, shuffling half a step away from her, as if he needed space but didn’t actually want to let her go.
“Do you swim much?” he asked her.
Shay blinked. Of all the things he could have asked at that moment… “Uh, sometimes. In the summer.”
“I used to love to go to the community pool and go off the high-dive. It occurred to me that between now and Valentine’s Day I was going to be thinking about you. A lot.” He gave her a sweetly lopsided smile that made her ache. “And wondering if I should kiss you, thinking about kissing you… It was like getting into the water a centimeter at a time. So when you came in today, I decided I’d take the plunge and see what happened.” Though technically take the plunge and see what happened wasn’t the most romantic thing any man had ever said to her, Mark had a unique advantage. What had “happened” was spontaneous combustion, the aftereffects of which still had her reeling. She didn’t care if he compared their kissing to a swan dive, a cannonball or a triple pike as long as they could do it again.
A half groan caught in his chest. “If you keep looking at me like that, I won’t be able to leave this office. Shay…”
“No, you should go.” She drew a shuddery breath. “We both should. You almost made me forget I’ve got dinner with my family tonight.”
“Is that all?” Mark gave her a grin that was more sinful than anything that had ever been dipped in chocolate or rolled in coconut. “You made me forget my name.”
SHAY HUGGED HER MOTHER before shrugging out of her coat. “Sorry I’m late.” It was only by a few minutes, but punctuality had always been critical in the Morgan household—as if there was a silent tardy bell only they could hear. But Shay had been running two steps behind all afternoon because she kept losing track of what she was doing, flustered and preoccupied by the lingering memory of that kiss in Mark’s office. Take the plunge indeed. She felt like she’d yet to come up for air.
“Comparatively speaking, you’re early,” Pamela Morgan told her. “Bastien called to say his girlfriend’s flight back into town was delayed and that we could eat dinner without them if we wanted.”
“I’m all right with waiting if you and Dad are.” Shay followed her mother through the living room of her past—the sturdy plaid couch had been there for decades. A small set of bookshelves was crowded with spelling bee, debate, science fair and reading bowl trophies. There were no actual books on the rickety living room shelves, but Tom Morgan’s study held hundreds of novels, research tomes and his own personal law library.
“Dad in his study?” Shay asked.
Pamela nodded. “He wanted to review some precedents his paralegal found for him, if that’s all right. He promised he’d join us when Bastien gets here.”
Shay ground her back teeth together. When Bastien arrives, Dad will grace us with his presence. Intellectually, she was aware that her flare of annoyance was out of proportion to her dad wanting to squeeze in a little bit more work before dinner. But she’d been conditioned by years of wondering if her dad saw her as a second-class citizen.
“He loves you, you know,” Pamela said softly.
Shay started. “Who, Dad? Yeah, I know that.” Her mother’s insight surprised her, although it shouldn’t. After all, Shay’s mild resentment—really, she had it under control most of the time—had developed over more than three decades. And her mom had been there to witness each of those decades.
Pamela reached out to pat her cheek. Her fingers, like the rest of her, had aged, but the scent of lavender lotion was the same as it had been through Shay’s childhood.
“Come help your mother in the kitchen?” Pamela asked. “I was going to bake a heat-and-serve dessert from the store but when Bastien called, I decided there was time for a homemade apple pie.”
“I’ll help,” Shay volunteered, “but we both know I’m not as good at it as you.” Shay actually had a few tasty desserts in her own baking repertoire, but she never managed to make them as cooking-magazine beautiful as her mother.
Pamela had already started slicing green apples at the kitchen island, and Shay picked up where her mother had left off while Pamela worked with the dough.
“You and your brother probably see your father as two separate people,” Pamela said. “Bastien thinks his dad has always been too hard on him, and you’ve no doubt felt as if your dad gave your brother the lion’s share of attention. You probably both feel like he loves the other more, but he loves you the same, just differently. He’s hard on Bastien because he believes in him.”
Shay made a noncommittal sound.
“He believes in you, too. And he’s so proud of you. But you were his baby girl, so tiny when you were born, so adorable in your tap recital when you were five.”
Adorable might not be the word Shay would use—she’d seen the picture and was mortified by the giant pink net tutu and the stage makeup that made her look like a miniature Vegas showgirl. She started to remind her mother that she was no longer five, that she was a grown woman with a career she’d worked hard to earn. But then she pictured Mark, already so close to the surface of her thoughts all evening.
She’d watched him with his own little girl, had seen the stress of his knowing he’d never be able to truly protect her from everything that life threw her way, not really. That was a hard pill for a dad to swallow. Maybe some of the suggestions Tom Morgan had made over the years, advice that he saw as making her life easier, had simply been a misguided attempt at protection, not actual chauvinism.
Carefully, she set the knife on the counter and turned to her mom. Shay didn’t want to sound accusatory, but she might as well ask this question now instead of spending the next thirty years building unspoken resentment. “What about you, Mom? Why didn’t you push me more? I used to think that my going into education would bring us closer together after all your years of teaching. But you’ve seemed to care more about whether I was dating anyone than whether I was promoted.”
Pamela frowned, twin blooms of color appearing on her face. Though Shay and her mom might not resemble each other as blatantly as Vicki Hathaway did her mother, there was no question where Shay had inherited her coloring. And propensity for blushing.
“My love for you isn’t conditional on your being ‘successful,’” Pamela said. “Promotions are nice, but they’re not why I’m proud of you! How shallow do you think I am?”
Oops. “That’s not—”
“And as for my asking about your love life, it’s because I worry about you! I want you to be happy. A job is not going to bring you soup when you’re sick or rub your shoulders when you have a bad day.”
Shay bit the inside of her lip. “You’re right, Mom.”
Pamela’s eyebrows shot up. “Well. I wasn’t expecting to hear that, but thank you. I may have inspired you to go into education, but I’m not the reason you were a good teacher. Or that you’re a good principal. You’re good at your job because of how much you care. You have a lot of love to offer, and I guess I always hoped you’d find some man who could appreciate that. When you and Bryan got engaged—”
“He was wrong for me,” Shay said decisively.
“I suppose he was, if you chose your career over him. But what if you met someone who was right for you? Would you make the same decision?”
Once again, Mark came to mind. She recalled the empathy in his voice when he’d seconded her decision to break things off with her fiancé, how admiring he seemed to be of how she handled her job—their first meeting notwithstanding. “Mom, I don’t think the right man would ask me to make that choice.”
MARK STOOD ON THE SMALL cafeteria stage, facing an audience of about a dozen moms and their eager, fidgety daughters. He tapped once to make sure the microphone was still turned safely off before admitting to Shay, “I’m nervous.”
Her lips quirked in a grin. “Of a few PTA moms and their little girls?”
“Ha! You know as well as I do that PTA moms can be dangerous.” He didn’t mean in the petty, controlling way that Carolyn Moon exemplified. He was talking about the fierce mama-bear quality that he’d glimpsed in his sister-in-law and in Charlotte Wilkes. Charlotte might be tiny, but he had no doubt she’d still find a way to kick the butt of anyone who messed with her kids.
And it had occurred to him that there might come a time when one little girl in his troop hurt the feelings of another or someone fell down during a wilderness hike and some mother would demand to know why he hadn’t done more to prevent it.
From the front row, Vicki gave him a thumbs-up, and Mark squashed down his insidious doubts, returning the gesture.
“You’ll do great,” Shay told him. “Hey, you did well speaking in front of the town council and there are fewer people here. Any luck with the town planner, by the way?”
“More than I expected, actually. I’m not the first person who’s approached them about reopening the lodge. A group of women in the historic preservation society tried, since the lodge has roots in our local government, but the building wasn’t old enough to qualify for their proposal. And some environmentalists want to reopen the campground to ensure that nothing is built there, marring the area around it. So my timing was fortuitous. The mayor’s willing to look at my ideas. He wants to make as many voters as possible happy while also increasing revenue for the town. In the long run, anyway.”
There was no denying that it would take an outlay of capital to get the lodge running again, but the nice part was, the lodge was supposed to be rustic. Mark was only proposing minor renovations and staffing, not adding a new building or a massive restoration.
Shay favored him with an approving smile. “See? You rock. And I happen to know,” she added in a whisper, “you’re a phenomenal kisser, so you have that going for you, too.”
With an audacious wink, she stepped off the stage and joined his daughter in one of the chairs up front. Mark watched her go. Evil woman. He was supposed to be concentrating on his new duties as troop leader, not the hormones that now threatened to thunder out of control whenever he laid eyes on her.
He cleared his throat and switched on the podium mike. “Good evening. I want to thank you all for coming and thank Principal Morgan for letting us use the cafeteria and for helping make it possible for Woodside Elementary to once again have a Campside Girls troop.” He clapped his hands together and the other parents present joined in the brief applause.
“I’m Mark Hathaway and I’m here for the same reason you are—I have a daughter I love. Campside Girls fosters teamwork, environmental awareness, positive self-image and a whole host of other things that I want for Vicki. Some of you have already signed up to join our new troop and I look forward to working with you. For the rest of you, I want to answer any questions you have before you make your decision and tell you a bit about our tentative schedule for the next few months.”
He paused, studying his notes. “In late March, we’ll have an actual campout, provided I can get a few other adults to sign up, and the Fitness Fair here at Woodside. Participation in that will count toward earning the girls’ healthy habits patch.”
Earlier in the week, Shay had formally approved Mark’s request to have a vendor booth at the fair. He was going to have Roddy run a small rock-climbing wall with the assistance of some high school volunteers to manage the line while Mark supervised a “bike rodeo” and helmet fittings. Even though Keesha had started her new job, she’d said she’d work the booth for a few hours and do free face painting for the kids if Mark would buy the supplies.
Mark talked some more about regular meetings and looking for age-appropriate community service as well as welcoming help from volunteers and ideas for arts-and-crafts projects. The extent of his abilities in that area was to slap some peanut butter on a pinecone, sprinkle seed on it and call it a bird feeder. Although, if it turned out that the Campside Girls had a duct tape badge, he was in business.
When he’d finished covering the information, he asked, “Any questions?” The first hand up belonged to a young woman who looked about college age. “Yes, the lady in blue?”
“Francesca Dover,” she said. She bumped shoulders with the little girl sitting next to her. “I’m Deanne’s big sister and will probably be bringing her to most of the meetings.”
“Wonderful, we look forward to seeing you. And your question is?”
Francesca grinned from ear to ear. “Some of us were wondering—did you ever actually find a Valentine, Mr. Hathaway?”
Muffled titters came from the audience, although most of the moms tried to cover it. One woman in the front clapped a hand over her mouth as if he wouldn’t be able to tell she was laughing behind her palm. Wouldn’t it shock them all to know he had indeed found a Valentine? It had certainly come as a surprise
to him.
Mark studiously did not glance in Shay’s direction. He was afraid to single her out, even for a moment. Was she amused by the teasing question, or was she mortified, fighting one of her Technicolor blushes?
He faced down the smirking young woman, returning her smile with effort. “I thank you for your touching concern, Francesca, but we’re here for the Campside Girls. Let’s not waste time on something as mundane as me. So any other troop-related questions?”
When the evening concluded, he had a troop of eight girls, including his daughter.
“Job well done, Mr. Hathaway,” Shay congratulated him, her eyes sliding toward his for a brief, private moment before she allowed herself to be separated by a PTA officer who said she needed to ask the principal a favor.
Mark watched her go, wishing they could have had a few minutes alone. He hadn’t held her since their kiss in his office, but he’d thought about it every damn day. As eager as he was for their Valentine’s dinner on Monday, he had Vicki’s presence to consider.
You have to tell her. Usually, people procrastinated giving bad news, something they knew would upset the listener. Just the opposite was true in Mark’s case. His daughter would likely be jubilant that Shay was joining them for dinner.
From her booster seat in the car, Vicki burbled with excitement about the formation of the troop, especially since Tessa and Valerie had joined. “My best friend and my second-best friend are gonna be with me!”
“Make sure you give the other girls a chance, too,” he advised with a quick glance in the rearview mirror. “You’ll probably make even more friends.”
“You know Deanne?” Vicki asked. It was clearly a rhetorical question, because she instantly followed up with, “Francesca’s not really her sister. But Francesca’s dad married Deanne’s mom, so now they’re sisters. If you marry someone with a girl, I can have a mom and a new sister!”
Oh, great. His taking on Campside Girls was supposed to help distract Vicki, make her content with the family she already had—namely, him. Instead, she’d upgraded her search from any woman with a pulse to a woman who could provide her a stepsister.
His Valentine Surprise Page 13