by Leanne Banks
Color bloomed in her cheeks. “I didn’t mean that way.” She closed her eyes and shook her head as if this conversation was almost more than she could bear. “I mean the whole thing was too much. I’m not used to making love like that.”
“I sure as hell hope not,” Justin said.
Her eyes popped open. “And I didn’t think it all the way through, the ramifications to the children.”
Confused as the dickens, Justin put his hand on her shoulder. “Amy, what are you talking about? Last night had nothing to do with the kids.”
Her gaze of distress slid away from his. “Well, I didn’t think about sleeping arrangements and how the children would feel about finding us in the same bed.”
“Wouldn’t that be normal for a married couple?”
“If we were a normal married couple,” she said. “But we’re not. And I started thinking about what we’ll do when the two-year trial period is over and if you leave how much it will hurt the kids.”
But not her. Justin fought the stinging sensation he felt in his chest. He swallowed the bitter taste of regret. “Sounds like morning-after remorse.”
“Some,” she admitted.
“I can move out if that will make it easier,” he said, thinking it would make life a damn sight easier for him.
Her eyes widened in fear. “The children.”
He remembered and nodded at the bottom line. “It’s okay. I won’t leave before the custody issues are resolved,” he said, wondering if it would kill him. “We’ll just stay out of each other’s way.”
She moved her head in an uncertain, helpless circle, but said nothing.
Justin wondered where he could find a pair of blinders so he wouldn’t see her twenty times a day. And earplugs so he wouldn’t hear her voice. And a clothespin for his nose so he wouldn’t catch her scent at odd moments. He wondered how to wipe out the memory of how she’d felt in his arms and tasted in his mouth. He wondered how to erase the visual of burying himself inside her, feeling her let go and let him in.
He didn’t know how he’d do it. He just knew he had to.
Amy left a bag lunch on the counter for Justin. When she returned that evening, she found it in the exact same spot she’d left it, uneaten. The cookies she’d made for him were also uneaten. When she caught a quick glance inside his room that evening, she spied a dozen stock charts posted on the wall. Remaining in his room, he didn’t show up for dinner or afterward when she could have awkwardly attempted to explain her inexplicable behavior. Perhaps it was best that she hadn’t had an opportunity to explain anything since she wasn’t so sure she understood too much herself right now.
She only knew there wasn’t much she wouldn’t do to give her sister’s children a secure home and it felt as if Justin could threaten that goal at the same time he was helping to make it happen. He reminded her she was human, that she was a woman. With no effort at all, he made her aware of how much she could want. He added a dimension to her life that was thrilling and distracting.
The distracting part bothered her most. What she needed to accomplish was too important to get waylaid by a passion for a man with compelling green eyes and an inner core of power that drew her like a magnet.
So why was she thinking about him now? she asked herself as she prepared another bag lunch for him. She scowled, then wrapped two cookies in a plastic wrapper and put them in his bag. A vivid memory of Justin, his eyes lit with desire, his body naked as he thrust inside her, flashed across her mind. A rush of heat suffused Amy. Splashing her face with cool water from the water faucet, she decided she might have more in common with Joan of Arc than she’d thought. When it came to Justin, she felt like she was burning at the stake.
Finding the lunch untouched on the kitchen counter again the following afternoon, Amy reached the conclusion that Justin had put her on ignore. She couldn’t, however, fault him for his treatment of the children. Emily drew some watercolor pictures for the walls of his bedroom as a thank-you for the piano. Amy noticed he praised the little girl for her effort. The boys swarmed around him for attention, and he took them outside to play a quick round of dodge ball.
She glanced at the lunch she’d left him and made a face. No surprise, but so far she was flunking Wife 101.
Justin acknowledged Amy with a quick nod as he headed for his room to bury himself in stock charts. Even in a wacky market, the stock charts made a helluva lot more sense than his witchy wife.
“Kate Hawkins called,” Amy said.
Justin stopped. “What did she want?”
“To invite us to a barbecue. I accepted.”
He nodded slowly.
“And the local stockbroker’s association called asking whether you preferred beef tenderloin or seafood spinach crepes for the dinner where you’ll be speaking. I told them beef. When the woman learned I was your wife, she invited me to come.”
“You’d be bored,” he told her.
She lifted her chin and met his gaze. “I told her to count me in.”
Irritated and confused, he didn’t bother hiding it. “Why?” he demanded.
“Careful,” she said with a smile so sweet it made his teeth ache. “I might get the impression you don’t want me to come with you.”
“Like I got the impression you don’t want to make love with me.”
Her eyes widened in surprise and color rose in her face. She walked closer to him. “This is obviously difficult for you to understand, but nobody gave me an instruction manual for how to handle this situation. We don’t have a normal relationship, whatever normal is. Believe me, I don’t have one tenth your sexual experience, so if making love with you left me feeling totally unwrapped, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone. Excuse me if I needed to catch my breath, catch my mind!” she nearly yelled.
Taken aback, he looked into her brown eyes flashing with misplaced indignation. He felt the slow drag of his gut, tugging him toward her again. It would be the death of him, he thought. “You never answered my question about your sexual experience.”
“You’re right. Unlike you, I could barely breathe let alone think,” she fumed and turned on her heel.
He could just let her have her temper tantrum while he returned to his stock charts. In another life, he thought wryly and followed her into the den where she watched the children from the picture window. “How long had it been?”
She slid a sideways glance at him. “Three and a half years,” she said in a low voice.
He blinked. “Why so long?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I was too busy. I worked while I was in college to help pay for my tuition. Relationships looked messy and I knew I didn’t have the time or energy for them.”
“Who was it?”
“A guy who was very persistent. He pursued me long enough to catch me at a moment when I was—” She shrugged.
“Weak,” he supplied.
“Curious,” she immediately corrected as if weak wasn’t in her vocabulary.
“Did he satisfy your curiosity?”
She paused a moment. “Yes, but not much else.”
Ouch. “Lousy lover?”
“I really didn’t have any basis for comparison.”
She surprised him again. “Your only lover?”
She nodded. “And last until you.”
“You’re telling me you’ve only had two sexual experiences in your life?” he asked, unable to believe it.
“No,” she said. “After the first time with him, I gave it two more tries, then called it quits. Being with you was—” she said, taking a breath. “Very different. But you have such a huge—” she glanced at him “—ego, that I’m sure you’ve heard this kind of thing before.”
Bowled over by her disclosure, he struggled with a weird assortment of emotions. He had an odd urge to punch the guy who’d taken her without taking care of her. On the other hand, Justin was fiercely glad he had been the man to show her the pleasure of lovemaking. He walked to her side and despite
the fact that her back looked as stiff as a board, he curled his hand around the nape of her neck beneath her hair. Despite her cajone-breaking image, he suspected the woman needed gentleness, something he hadn’t offered her so far. “I wouldn’t have thought you were so inexperienced,” he said.
She glanced up at him. “Why?”
“Well, hell, Amy, you’re built like a woman who could pose for a man’s fantasy magazine. You laugh and every male within earshot age four to ninety-four is vying for your attention.”
“You really think I’m built like a woman who could pose for a men’s magazine?”
Justin twitched at the thought. He rubbed his face. “Don’t get any ideas. The local school board wouldn’t approve and neither would I. I wish I’d known all this.”
She took a deep breath. “That’s what I’ve been saying. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. You don’t love me,” she said, searching his face. “But we’re going to do this for at least two years, right?”
He nodded, wondering if two years would be long enough for him to learn everything about Amy he wanted to learn.
“If we had been dating for less than a month and we made love, would you have necessarily expected me to stay the whole night?”
“After a night like that?” he asked, and he watched her nod. “I would have kept you in bed for three days straight.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.” She gulped. “I’m not familiar with the etiquette, so—”
He gently squeezed the back of her neck. “Screw etiquette, Amy,” he said as kindly as he could manage. “This was about getting enough of you.”
Nine
Amy’s stomach dipped and swirled at the expression on Justin’s face. She was beginning to feel that every time she was around Justin, she was in over her head. She prayed that wasn’t true.
How had they gotten into this discussion? she wondered desperately. How had they gone from a barbecue and stockbroker’s dinner to the complete unabridged history of her dismal sex life? Eating glass would have been preferable to telling him about her lack of romance, but Amy had made a deal with herself. If she wanted Justin to answer her questions, and she grudgingly admitted she did, then she would have to attempt to answer his questions.
She cleared her throat. “Can we get back to the broker’s dinner?”
“You’ll be bored,” he told her.
“No, I won’t. It will give me a chance to understand more about what you do.”
“I can show you charts anytime.”
“It will be the first thing resembling a date that you and I have attempted,” she said bluntly.
That stopped him. He looked at her curiously. “You want a date?” he asked, sounding surprised.
She stifled a sigh. “Yes.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t take anyone I liked to this meeting. Besides—” he said, breaking off as his gaze skimmed over her breasts and lower.
“Besides what?”
Clearly reluctant, he rubbed his mouth. “Besides, if I were taking you on a date, my mission would be to get you into bed.”
His mission. At the thought of being Justin’s singular sexual mission, Amy felt a shudder ripple through her.
“But not at a stockbrokers’ meeting. In the past, I could have picked up a woman there, but—”
Anger shot through her. “Picked up a woman? Is that why you don’t want me to go? I might be interrupting your happy hunting grounds.”
“I said in the past,” Justin told her.
All her doubts clamored to the surface. “Yes, and our marriage is a figure of speech for both of us, so what’s to keep you from ‘hunting’? For all I know you could be picking up women when you go out with your so-called friends.”
He looked at her with an incredulous expression. “Are you jealous?”
Amy’s fury increased tenfold. She sucked in a quick breath. “I am not jealous,” she insisted. “But if you’re going to seduce me, I might need to be concerned about safe sex.”
His eyes darkened and Amy quickly gleaned that she’d insulted him. “I’m not the one sneaking away from your bed in the middle of the night,” he told her. “And if you were so concerned about safe sex, then why didn’t you mention contraception the other night?”
Amy swallowed. “I’m on the Pill.”
“Why?”
It was none of his business. “Because my periods are irregular!” she said through clenched teeth.
He paused a long moment. “Okay,” he said. “You can come to the stockbrokers’ dinner and meeting if you want.”
Too peeved to be reasonable, she barely resisted the urge to kick him. “Never mind,” she said with a sniff and went outside to play with the kids.
Justin felt the breeze from the door swinging in his face and thought about ripping it off its hinges. She was going to drive him insane, he thought. If his friends had been true friends, they would have locked him up and thrown away the key when he’d said he was getting married.
First she tortured him by not making love with him, then she blew him away by making love with him. Then she’d insulted the daylights out of him by sneaking away like a thief. When he tried to keep a sane distance, she insisted on attending a boring stockbrokers’ meeting with him. She’d flattered him beyond measure when she’d told him she could neither breathe nor think after he’d made love to her, then she might as well have kneed him in the groin when she’d suggested he was hunting.
He swore under his breath. The only thing he’d been hunting for was his sanity. He glanced out the window watching her twirl Nick around in her arms. She was an angel and she was a mistress. She was exquisitely soft and unrelentingly tough. She was impossible to manage, and if he did what was best for him, he would get the hell out of her looney bin.
But heaven help him, now that he’d had her, he wanted her again.
Over the next few days, Amy was snooty to Justin in a friendly way if that were possible. She turned her nose up at him at night, but she always left a bag lunch for him. When he didn’t eat it, the next day she left a Post-it Note on his monitor reminding him to eat lunch. That little Post-it Note gave him an odd, warm sensation. He tried to recall the last time anyone had given a damn whether he ate or not and he couldn’t. That night they planned to join the Hawkins’s for a barbecue, and Justin found himself looking forward to the casual gathering. He wryly wondered if his bride might unbend enough to talk with him in the presence of other people.
“It’s not nice to hold a grudge,” Amy could hear her mother say in her mind.
It may not be nice, but it’s safe, she respectfully replied. Much safer to hold a grudge and keep her distance. It was difficult, however, to bear ill will toward the man when he made Emily giggle with a silly joke. He pulled into the long driveway of the Hawkins’s home and the children immediately clamored to get out. Amy released Nick’s car seat belt while Justin took care of Jeremy’s. Emily climbed out with a large bag of chips in her hands.
“There you are,” Kate Hawkins called, walking toward them with her baby in her arms. “Michelle’s been waiting for you.”
“May I push her in the swing?” Emily asked.
Kate smiled and smoothed Emily’s bangs. “Of course you can, angel.”
The boys dashed forward. “Can we swing?” Nick asked.
“It’s all yours,” Kate said, pointing to the swing set. “Michael was determined to get the outdoor gym up for the baby even though she’s not ready for it yet. I’m glad someone will enjoy it this summer.” She glanced up at Amy and Justin and a wicked glint shimmered in her eyes. “Justin, you look remarkably at ease considering you’re a family man, now. I expected twitches and shakes and ulcers.”
Amy was the one experiencing twitches. “He’s actually very good with the children.”
“Wonders never cease,” Kate said.
Justin gave a long-suffering sigh. “You’re never going to forgive me for what I said at O’Malley’s that night you overheard me, a
re you? Would it help any if I mentioned I’ve never seen Michael happier and you’re the cause of it?”
Kate’s face softened. She reached forward and gave him a hug. “Of course I forgive you. Something tells me you’re facing your own challenges now.” She glanced past them. “Oh, here comes Alisa. I’ll be right back.”
“I bet Dylan will turn cartwheels when he finds out Alisa’s here,” he muttered.
Amy watched Kate greet a slim woman with long straight blond hair. She glanced at Justin. “Dylan doesn’t like Alisa?”
“They go way back,” he said, carrying the food from the car.
“How far back?”
“Back to the Granger Home for Boys. Her mother was the cafeteria manager and Alisa used to steal cookies for some of us. She and Dylan developed a heavy-duty crush as teenagers. Dylan keeps asking her out, but she won’t have anything to do with him.” He cracked a half-grin. “As the stomach turns. About the stockbrokers’ dinner,” he began.
Amy lifted her chin. “Never mind.”
“You’re not gonna get snooty again, are you?”
She stopped midstep. “I’m never snooty.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Yes, you are. You’ve been snooty since we talked about the dinner.”
“I have not.”
“Yes, you have,” he said with maddening calm.
“I have not,” she insisted.
He shrugged. “Then prove it.”
She swallowed her trepidation. “How?”
“Kiss me,” he dared her.
Her heart flipped over. She swallowed again. “Your hands are full,” she said in a weak protest.
“My mouth is free.”
She stifled a sound of help. She wasn’t prepared to turn to brainless mush tonight, and she knew kissing Justin would affect her that way.
“Amy,” Kate said, providing a ready distraction, “I’d like you to meet Alisa Jennings.”
“Saved by the bell,” Justin murmured.
Amy felt a rush of relief and turned toward Kate and the blond woman. “Gotta go,” she said to Justin, quickly leaving his side.