by Daphne Clair
“Is that your job—the window display?”
“Part of it.” She was more nimble than the older ones and enjoyed the task. It gave her a buzz when her display lured someone into the shop.
The new jeans he wore looked good on him, and so did the maroon T-shirt tucked into them. They fitted snugly, without the strained look that suggested he’d grown out of those he’d been wearing last time. No matter what he wore, he had to be the sexiest real-live man she’d ever seen, easily beating into oblivion the pop star pinups on her bedroom wall.
“Can I help you?” she asked him, as she would any customer, but instead of warm and welcoming it came out starchy, almost prissy.
He grinned as if he thought it amusing. “You already have,” he said.
“Really?”
“Guess you don’t remember, but you sold me some stuff last week—clothes.”
As if she’d forget! Paige thought. Didn’t he know how stunning he was? She nodded. “I remember.”
“I wanted to thank you,” he said. “I wore them to a job interview, and…well, I got the job.”
“Oh, that’s cool!” She broke into a smile. “What kind of job?”
He was looking at her strangely, as if she’d just given him a small shock. Then he shrugged self-deprecatingly. “Only working in a café kitchen and they’re not promising anything permanent, but…well, it’s enough to keep the wolf happy.” When she looked blank for a moment, he added, “The one that’s howling at my door.”
By then she’d got it anyway, but didn’t say so, just smiled.
“And we get free food,” he said.
Her heart sank a little. Still smiling, she queried,
“We?” And then wondered if she’d been nosy.
“Me and the wolf,” he explained. “That’s one hungry critter.”
She laughed then, and he looked pleased. It struck her that he’d been aiming for that, trying to make her laugh with the corny joke. The thought warmed her cheeks, and she told herself not to be silly. Why would a guy like him be the least bit interested in a girl like her? And especially the way she looked now, in her uniform and with no makeup, her hair tied in those girly pigtails, the only way to keep it tidy and out of her eyes at school.
It wasn’t as though he were some pathetic old man with a fetish about schoolgirls. He couldn’t be much older than she was. He’d like pretty girls who matched his own spectacular good looks. Blondes with bouncy curls, brunettes with flowing, glossy manes, or blazing redheads—girls who wore bright, shiny lipstick to outline their luscious mouths, who colored their eyelids with the exact shadow to enhance eyes that were a clear blue or green or soft, sexy brown, instead of an indeterminate greenish-brown flecked with splashes of blue and gold. Girls who didn’t have to wear glasses. Not plain-Jane girls like Paige Camden.
But, amazingly, he was looking at her as though he liked her a lot. And even more amazingly, he said, “What time do you finish here? Can we grab a coffee together afterward?”
CHAPTER SIX
PAIGE stared at him openmouthed, no doubt looking like a particularly stupid goldfish. When she found her voice she squeaked, “Me?”
“Me and you.” His smile faded. “I owe you. I’d like to buy you a coffee.”
The funny little flutterings inside her subsided. “No, you don’t. There’s no need to buy me anything.”
That was the first time she saw his stubborn look. He looked up, away from her, and his chin thrust out. His eyes when they returned to her were darkened and stormy. “I want to,” he said. “It’s a debt, and I always pay my debts.”
He smiled again, and she knew she was supposed to sprinkle a grain or two of salt on the words. But the smile was irresistible. Even as it occurred to her that he probably used it all the time to get what he wanted, she gave in. Because whatever the reason, at the moment what he wanted was her…or at least some of her time, and even if it was only out of gratitude, the prospect was decidedly alluring.
“Five o’clock,” she murmured. “I’ll meet you outside.”
When the shop closed up and the woman who sometimes dropped her off on her own way home asked if she wanted a lift, she said, “Thanks, but I’m meeting someone.”
And as the woman walked away Jager peeled himself away from the adjacent wall where he’d been lounging with his thumbs tucked into the pockets of his jeans, and came over to her, taking her hand.
His strong fingers closed around hers, and his eyes smiled, although his mouth stayed firm and straight. It was a wonderful mouth, she realized, fascinated by the clean outline of it, the indentation that softened the shape of his upper lip, the determined set of the lower one.
“What’s your name?” Taking her with him, he started walking along the street. She had never held hands with a boy before, but he made it seem natural, comfortable and yet somehow exciting too.
“Paige,” she answered him. “Paige Camden.”
He repeated it, in a sexy undertone that made her toes tingle inside her regulation black lace-ups. “Paige. That’s nice.”
She was glad he thought so. “What’s yours?”
“Jager.” He spelled it out for her. “J-a-g-e-r.” She guessed he’d had to do it for lot of people. “Jeffries,” he added. “JJ, if you like.”
She liked “Jager.” But she asked, “Is that what your friends call you? JJ?”
“I don’t have friends.” As if aware that he’d shocked her, he added, “Some of my workmates up north called me that.”
“You come from up north?”
“Yep.” He halted outside a coffee shop. The aroma of coffee floated out to the pavement where a few tables had been set to augment those inside.
“Will this do?”
“It’s fine.” Whatever he suggested would have been fine with her. Already just being with him was enough.
They had two cups of coffee each and Jager asked where she lived, if she had brothers and sisters, and were her parents still together. He seemed interested when she talked about her family, her home.
“How long have you been in Auckland?” she asked, and he said a few months. He was living in a cheap boardinghouse, but now that he had a job he’d be finding something better.
Jager stirred crystals into his second coffee and looked at her rather probingly. “How old are you, Paige?”
“Sixteen.”
His eyelids flickered. “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“Why should I?”
For a moment he regarded her somberly. Then a faint smile curved his beautiful mouth. “Yeah, why should you?”
She realized what worried him. Sixteen was over the legal age of consent. A strange mix of sensations—shock, pleasure, anticipation and righteous anger—sizzled through her blood. She ducked her head to hide a blush.
“What are you doing at school?” Jager asked.
She chose to take that literally, and listed the subjects she was studying—English, history, art. She was in her last year and planned to attend university.
“You’re a smart girl,” he said. “That’s young for university, isn’t it?”
Uncomfortably she shrugged that off, hunching over her coffee. “I’ll be seventeen.” She was a conscientious student and, not being pretty or vivacious, had fewer distractions than some of her schoolmates. “What did you do up north?” she asked him.
He talked about his first job on a fishing boat, interweaving scary stories of storms and dangerous machinery with anecdotes about colorful characters and minor mishaps at sea that made her burst into laughter.
He grinned back at her appreciatively. “I like making you laugh,” he told her, sounding almost surprised, and she looked down into her coffee cup again, embarrassed, making him laugh in turn.
“You’re shy!” he accused, as if the discovery delighted him. And she raised her eyes and said, “I am not!” And then, “Well, yes, I am really. But it’s not funny.”
He reached over the table for her hand and
held it tightly. “I don’t mean to laugh at you, Paige.”
She muttered, “It’s all right.” And tried to withdraw her hand, but he held it tighter.
“It’s not all right if I hurt you,” he insisted. He let her go then. “Hit me if you like.”
Her gaze flew up to his. He looked quite serious. “I don’t want to hit you!”
He smiled at her—not the sexy smile this time, but an almost tentative one. “Good. But if I’m ever out of line, feel free. Or just tell me what I’ve done wrong.”
She couldn’t help the thrill that ran over her entire body. He’d offered her coffee, a thank-you gesture for a minor service. But now he was implying some kind of ongoing relationship.
“I don’t hit people,” she said. And then, because she was curious about him and also innately cautious and not a fool, she asked bluntly, “Do you?”
He shook his head. “Only if they hit me first. And never female people.” He held her eyes. “Never.”
She believed him. And her belief had not been misplaced. Even when they were tearing themselves and each other apart, when their ill-judged marriage was disastrously breaking up into shards of wounding words and bitter accusations, Jager had not once raised a hand to her.
When he lifted his hand now from its resting place on the couch back, it was to finger a strand of hair back from her cheek to behind her ear.
The movement startled her, and she stiffened.
“What are you thinking?” he said. “Should I be grateful that my old man suddenly remembered my existence?”
She didn’t think gratitude was in his vocabulary. “You of all people should know everyone makes mistakes when they’re young and…hormone-driven. He can’t have been much older than you were when you…when we…”
“We got married,” Jager said harshly. “There’s a difference.”
“Well, it turned out to be not such a hot idea,” she reminded him.
“Yes.” He got up rather suddenly. “If we start on that subject again…”
He was right. It could only lead to strife.
“Thanks again for your help.” She followed him to the door.
“Anytime.” He turned with his hand on the knob. “Anything. I mean that, Paige.”
When he’d gone, the rooms with their newly gleaming floors seemed empty. She wandered through the house switching off lights and locking up, and found herself staring at her bed in the spare room and picturing Jager lying there against the pillows, waiting for her the way he had so often when they were married, hands behind his head, his magnificent chest bare as he watched her prepare to join him.
She’d been shy at first, and sometimes he’d taken pity and pretended to be absorbed in a book or magazine while she took off her clothes and donned a nightshirt or pajamas. But if she caught him peeking and scolded he’d laugh, then bound out of bed and catch her to him, smothering her protests with kisses, and take her back to the bed to complete undressing her himself.
Gradually she’d become less inhibited, even boldly, deliberately teasing him, treating him to their own private strip show. She knew her face could never compete with the girls he might have had, but her body was fine. At least it had never failed to arouse him.
He’d told her once, when they were lying close after making love, that the day he walked into the shop and saw her on the ladder, with her uniform hiked up her thighs as she reached for the vase on the top shelf, he’d wanted to drag her down and into his arms right then and there.
Half-mortified, half-delighted, she said, “You were looking up my skirt!”
“Couldn’t help it,” he said, smiling wickedly. “I thought, Wow, great legs. Then I started wondering what the rest of you looked like under that skirt and sweater.”
“You did?” She’d have been horrified if she’d known what he was thinking.
“Until you came down and the penny dropped. You were wearing a uniform. I thought, Hell, a schoolgirl.”
“Not, Hell, the face doesn’t live up to the legs?”
“Don’t be silly.” He pinched her nose, and dropped a kiss on her mouth. “You’ve got a great face.”
It was nice of him to say so, but she hadn’t believed his offhand compliment. She was just grateful that he never reminded her she was no beauty.
The way he made love to her made her feel beautiful. He worshiped her body with his, just as it said in the marriage service. Inexperienced though she was, it hadn’t been long before she matched his passion and his dedication to their mutual pleasure.
And when he buried his face against her neck and moaned his fulfillment, his arms wrapped around her, his thighs snug in the sweet cradle of hers, it didn’t matter what she looked like. At that moment he was wholly given over to sensation, to the satisfaction of the need she’d created with her body.
And thinking about it so many years later, created a tension in her that she tried to shake off, moving briskly to get herself into bed—alone.
She’d bought a queen-size bed simply because she was used to it and no longer comfortable in a single one. She had no intention of sharing it with anyone, but for the first time it occurred to her that it was a big bed for one person. Lying there, she was conscious of the empty space beside her.
Irritated with herself, she plumped the pillows against the headboard, right in the middle, and reached for a book. But the story didn’t hold her, and she sighed, letting the book drop to the floor, and switched off the light.
A pukeko screeched forlornly somewhere down by the beach. The birds had adapted to city life remarkably well—she’d seen them stalking on their long red legs right beside the busy motorway, undeterred by traffic roaring by. Faintly she could hear the water lapping on the shore. A lone morepork called from one of the neighbors’ trees.
She was lonely. In the darkness she admitted it to herself. Over the past few weeks she’d had company almost every waking hour. Being with Maddie and Glen—and Jager—had helped her stave off the emptiness that lay in wait.
But it hadn’t gone away.
She wondered if it ever would. ***
“Maddie tells me you’ve been working hard on your new home.” Her mother had phoned her at work. “And Glen,” Margaret added with an air of surprise.
“Glen’s been a great help,” Paige agreed. Had Maddie mentioned that Jager had pitched in too? Either she’d kept quiet about it or her mother preferred to ignore the fact.
“We haven’t seen much of you.”
Paige swallowed a pang of guilt, reminding herself that her parents knew they were welcome to visit her anytime.
“Why don’t you come for dinner tonight?” Margaret said brightly.
Paige had been looking forward to an evening poring over wallpaper samples she’d picked up that day, but she said, “That would be nice.”
“Good. We’ll see you after work, then.”
Paige arrived with a French loaf and a bottle of wine, which her mother assured her was welcome, if unnecessary.
After freshening up and shedding the jacket she’d been wearing with her ruby-red skirt and cream blouse, Paige entered the big formal sitting room where her father waited. He kissed her cheek and introduced her to a man who had risen at her entrance, putting down the glass in his hand.
He was solidly built and in his mid-thirties, a smooth-skinned executive type with a firm handshake and a direct stare behind authoritative horn-rims. “Philip is our new head of accounting,” Henry said. “We’ve been talking over some of his projected strategies for the company. My daughter, Paige.”
Philip was pleased to meet her, or so he said. Paige’s antenna went up. Had her mother just wanted to even up the numbers at the table? Or was this a setup?
Over dinner she seized the opportunity when it arose of asking if he had a family.
Philip adjusted his glasses. “A boy who’s ten, and a little girl, six. They live with their mother. We’re divorced.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It�
��s a couple of years now. One must go on.”
Margaret said, mixing approval with understanding, “We can’t live in the past.” She glanced blandly at Paige. “Paige’s husband died in America, you know. She’s come home to start over.”
Paige speared a piece of delicately grilled fish with unnecessary force. She was surprised at her mother. She’d have thought Margaret would expect her to observe a proper period of mourning for her husband before even thinking about other men.
Philip said quietly, “I’m very sorry, Paige.”
Responding to the genuine sympathy, she said, “Thank you.” It wasn’t his fault that her parents thought he’d be good for her.
After dinner Paige showed her mother some of her wallpaper samples while the men talked business. Margaret went to make more coffee, declining Paige’s help, and Philip strolled over to take her place on the sofa beside Paige. “You’re redecorating?” he asked.
Surprisingly, he was an ardent do-it-yourselfer, with plenty of useful advice. When Margaret came back with the coffee he made to get up, but she gave him a pleased smile and told him not to move.
Paige left as soon as she decently could, though not before she’d been maneuvered into inviting Philip to call at the cottage and see for himself what she was doing with it.
At least she’d managed to avoid an actual date and time, leaving the invitation vague.
The following Saturday Paige rose early and prepared to hang wallpaper. Maddie and Glen were away for the weekend attending a friend’s wedding in Taranaki, and Paige had assured them blithely that she could manage on her own. Anyway, she didn’t want to monopolize all of Glen’s weekends, knowing that Maddie didn’t share his enthusiasm.
And she hadn’t heard from Jager.
But when, a half hour after she’d hung the first drop in the sitting room, she heard a car stop outside, followed by a knock on the front door, her heart did a little skip as she called from her perch on a stepladder, “Come in.” She’d left it on the latch after collecting the morning paper. Just in case, she’d told herself, without completing the thought. Just in case Jager arrived while she was unable to answer the door.