Rosemary eyed the door as they walked out and then looked up and down the street, secretly hoping that Mary Smith wasn’t hurrying up the block with a very plausible excuse on her lips.
This ripple of excitement she was experiencing was because she was going on an outing that meant a lot to Danny, nothing more. She was just doing this for Danny.
“What does one wear to a puppy farm?” she asked as she got into her car.
“A very patient smile. See you at your place in about an hour,” Chris told her as he walked down the block to his own car. He figured that would give her enough time to get ready.
6
Rosemary sat back in the passenger seat of Chris’s car as he drove them home from Carmel. Darkness hugged the road, broken by an occasional beam of light from an oncoming car. They were coming with more frequency, cutting through the dark like light sabers in the night, now that they were almost at their destination.
All in all, it had been a rather incredible day. She’d actually spied on one of her clients—there was absolutely no other way she could describe what she had done by going to the restaurant where Chris was to meet his potential date. Then she’d spent a very pleasant and stimulating hour gaining approximately five pounds.
After that she’d been whisked away to Carmel for the remainder of the day. She wasn’t the type to just “whisk” anywhere anymore. For the longest time now, everything about her life had been organized. It followed a natural order, a schedule, steps that were imprinted on her brain if not on a page. She’d been a spontaneous person once, but that had been lost in the scramble to make a living and simultaneously raise a boy single-handedly.
To top the day off, she’d been completely overwhelmed by a litter of new puppies, all of which wanted the laces off her sneakers in the worst way.
She glanced at Chris as the headlights from another oncoming car dramatically outlined his chiseled profile. He looked a lot like his father, she thought. Except for his eyes and his mouth. Both were soft, sensual, and almost alluringly wicked. Those he had gotten from his mother.
Melissa Maverick looked young enough to pass for Chris’s sister rather than the matronly mother Rosemary had envisioned on the way up to the kennel. Young in her looks and her attitude.
Both of Chris’s parents had welcomed her and Danny as if they had always been coming up there for visits instead of just being someone Chris had whimsically decided to drop into their midst.
Melissa had instantly taken charge of Danny, reminiscing about Chris when he had been that age. Everyone but Chris had gotten a kick out of the detour she had taken down memory lane.
Rosemary smiled, thinking of the conversation at the dinner table. It had been a long time since she’d felt that comfortable anywhere. She glanced at Chris. “I think your parents are very nice.”
He was pleased at the comment. There had been a rather wild, undisciplined period in his life, but now that he was older and had worked it out of his system, he saw his parents for what they were. Decent, loving people who had tried to do their best in raising him.
“Yeah, I like them.” His mouth quirked in an amused expression. “Took a bit of doing, raising them, but I think they turned out all right.”
His words struck a familiar chord. She grinned. How many times, while she had been growing up, had she felt the same way about her own parents? That she was raising them instead of the other way around?
“I guess all kids feel that way, that they had a hand in forming their parents.” She wondered if that went through Danny’s mind, as well. Probably.
“Well, actually, they do.” Chris glanced at her and saw the puzzled look on her face. She probably thought he was putting her on. “A kid has a way of turning you into a more responsible person. And making you remember what it was like to be a kid at the same time. The world through a kid’s eyes is really terrific. I’d forgotten about that world until Danny started hanging around with me.” He smiled fondly. He honestly enjoyed being with the boy. It made him seriously think about having children of his own. “There’s a great deal of joy in that kid.”
Yes, she knew. Danny certainly had brought a lot into hers. “And energy. Don’t forget energy.”
Chris glanced in his rearview mirror at the occupants in his back seat. He grinned. “Sure doesn’t look that way now.”
Rosemary looked over her shoulder. Danny was slumped over in the corner of the car, fast asleep. His arm dangled around Rocky’s neck. The puppy was dozing with her muzzle splayed on his thigh.
She wished she had thought to bring a camera with her. This was one of those keeper moments you pasted into family albums. She lingered a moment, her chin resting against the seat, imprinting it on her heart.
She turned around in her seat. “The way he was going today, I didn’t think anything would tire him out.” But then, so what else was new? “Danny’s always running everywhere instead of walking.”
That didn’t sound so unusual to Chris. It sounded wonderfully normal. He switched lanes, easing to the right for his exit. “Maybe Danny’s just excited about living.”
Rosemary smiled. She liked the sound of that. “Maybe.”
Chris took the off ramp on Culver. The light at the end of the street was red. He eased his foot onto the brake, coming to a full stop. There was no impatient desire to get home tonight. He was enjoying her company too much.
“What about you? What would make you excited about living?” he asked.
She couldn’t help wondering what he thought of her, though she assured herself it was only idle curiosity, nothing more. “I am excited about living. I just show it in my own fashion.” She smiled. “Call it quiet excitement.”
He spared her a look before turning back to the long winding road. It was such a nice night, he decided to take the back streets of Bedford to reach home. Quiet excitement. The term seemed to suit her.
“Yeah, I guess maybe you have something there at that.”
The atmosphere was pregnant with things that weren’t being said. Things that she didn’t want said. If they were, it would place an entirely different spin on the day.
Suddenly needing an ally, something to break up the mood, Rosemary leaned over and switched on the radio. When the digital light blinked on, she saw that Chris had it set to his station. It was only natural. Somehow that was soothing.
She’d tuned in in the middle of a song. A singer was threatening a male suitor with the eminent return of her boyfriend who was going to make him sorry he was ever born. Rosemary sat back and let the tension ease away from her body.
Friends, we’re just friends, nothing more. Nothing to get nervous about.
Looking at the station’s call numbers, Rosemary suddenly realized what time it was. She straightened as she shifted toward him. “Isn’t this a little late for you to be up?”
Chris looked at the digital readout on his dashboard. He didn’t quite catch her drift, but played along. “It’s five to eleven. We’ve got a full hour left before the footman turns into a mouse.”
“No, I meant your radio program—”Roamin’ With The Maverick.” You’re on from five to nine, aren’t you?” He nodded. “Well, don’t you usually go into the station an hour before you’re on?”
Danny had to have told her that. Chris wondered if she had asked, or if the boy had volunteered the information. “Yes.”
She glanced at the clock as if for reinforcement. “By the time we get home, that gives you—what?—four hours to sleep if you fall asleep on your doorknob.”
The image made him laugh. The question made him smile. “Worried about me, Rosemary?”
She shrugged and fixed her eyes on the road. “It comes naturally with being friends.”
He remembered what she had told him about Patrick. The thought pleased him. They were taking baby steps, but they were steps. “Then we’re friends?”
“Yes.” She would have thought that was selfevident. She wouldn’t have let someone she disliked interact with he
r son. Didn’t he realize that?
He nodded and smiled as he turned down another road. “Good.”
“I wouldn’t have gone up to Carmel with you if we weren’t.” Rosemary didn’t know why, but she felt compelled to explain that to him. Or maybe she just wanted to put things into perspective. For herself as well as for Chris.
Chris smiled. Was she aware that there was a nervous edge to her voice? The one that always seemed to creep in whenever he got a little too close?
“All right, friend, since you’re worried, rest easy. I’m not going in tomorrow. I put in for a vacation day. Actually, I thought I’d be sleeping over at my parents’ house tonight.” This, however, had turned out a whole lot better.
So he had already made plans before he’d asked them to come along. “Why didn’t you?”
The path to their development was lined with huge, towering trees on both sides. Aging eucalyptus trees, their scaly barks hidden in the darkness, nodded shaggy heads at them as they drove by. It made for a very tranquilizing atmosphere.
It offset the charge Chris felt within.
“Because tomorrow’s Monday and Danny has to go to school.”
That he was so accommodating was sweet, but she hadn’t wanted to interfere with his plans. “But we didn’t have to come up with you.”
She still didn’t get it, did she? But she would. In time. “Yeah, you did.” Chris turned down the radio so that the music was only a whispered backdrop. He’d rather listen to the sound of her voice. “I had a feeling you needed some spontaneity in your life.”
Rosemary frowned. Somehow, she didn’t want him to think of her as a stick in the mud, though she knew it didn’t really matter. Friends were supposed to like you no matter what you were.
“It’s the Rapunzel thing again, isn’t it?”
He glanced at her hair. It had long since come tumbling down after one puppy jumped at her with such enthusiasm he’d knocked her over. Pins had gone flying all over the place and they had all had to scramble quickly to retrieve them before the puppies made a snack out of them.
“In part,” he agreed. “And maybe I just wanted the company on the drive there. Danny certainly enjoyed the puppies.”
There was no contesting that. Rosemary laughed as she summoned an image of her son on the ground, surrounded by enthusiastic pink tongues.
“I don’t think he has to wash his face for at least a week. As a matter of fact, I’m surprised he has a face left.”
“They can get pretty enthusiastic.” Chris looked down at her feet. There was a small hole in the toe of her left sneaker. “Sorry about your shoes.”
In reply, she wiggled her foot. A toe was sticking out of the hole. “Don’t give it another thought. It made the puppies happy.” Her eyes shone as she talked. “Besides, to carry one of your metaphors further, Cinderella did come back from the ball without one of her shoes.”
Chris made a right turn onto a road of orange groves doomed to extinction. Progress was everywhere and sometimes he wondered if it was such a good thing. There would be a brand-new shining development there next spring instead of aged orange trees. He would have preferred the trees.
Their development was just up ahead. He made another right and entered it. The streets all fed into one another like a well-fitting puzzle. He knew the way back with his eyes shut. “I’d hardly call a trip to a kennel going to the ball.”
She wondered if he was making fun of her, then decided that he wouldn’t do that. It was one of the things she liked about him. With his looks and his popularity, he still wasn’t egotistical or sarcastic. He could have easily been both.
“Different strokes for different folks.”
Chris came to a stop in her driveway. Turning off the ignition, he hooked an arm over the side of the seat and looked at her. “And you certainly are different, Rosemary.”
Why did she suddenly smell his cologne? And why did it feel so closed-in here?
“Good different or bad different?” God, she couldn’t believe she was actually asking that. It was a flirtatious question that had no place between them.
His mouth curved, the smile rising. “Unique different.”
She laughed. “Nice save. Well, thanks for an extraordinary day.”
He seemed to draw closer without moving a muscle. “It doesn’t have to be over.”
Something trembled within her, something small and fearful. And excited. Rosemary felt as if she’d just lost her footing on the ice. Any minute now her feet were going to fly out from underneath her as she struggled for balance.
“Yes, it does. I have a son to get to bed, a puppy to cage and…”
Her mind went blank as her voice just faded away.
Chris leaned over, just as she knew he would, and touched his lips to hers. Why she didn’t pull back when there were flares going off in her head spelling Mayday in big, bold letters, was totally beyond her. But she didn’t pull back. She just sat there as if every limb in her body had been dismantled and watched his mouth lower to hers.
And then she wasn’t watching anymore.
She was experiencing.
Rosemary felt as if she had just slid off the ice floe completely. Except that it wasn’t ice anymore. It was the top of a waterfall and she was plummeting downward at an amazing speed.
So fast that her breath had been sucked out of her lungs.
She wanted to curl her arms around his neck. She wanted to fall into the kiss. But something inside her was afraid. So very afraid.
Of what, she didn’t know. Herself. Feelings. The unknown. Being hurt. All of the above.
It held her back.
It was so much easier dealing with other people’s lives, when she could keep a clear head and keep herself emotionally divorced from what was happening.
She couldn’t begin to deal with this.
Her lips were sweeter than anything he had ever tasted. Tempting, ripe. Giving. He felt her hesitation at the same time that he felt the passion bridled just within.
She was exciting and exhilarating and he wanted to go on kissing her like this all night. Forever.
Alarms and common sense were rushing to her rescue. Rosemary wedged her hands against Chris’s chest as if she were trying to pry herself away instead of push him back. With effort, she succeeded.
She was breathless and stunned. Her head felt like an apple tumbling out of a fruit bin and rolling along the floor.
“I really have to go,” she whispered.
No, she didn’t. And he didn’t want her to. “Rosemary—”
The alarms were growing louder. She wasn’t supposed to be doing this. She had fixed him up with someone else. Granted that the woman hadn’t come, but there still might be a good reason for that. Besides, she didn’t kiss, didn’t date. She didn’t need to. She was happy with her life. Happy, happy, happy.
Her eyes implored him. “Please. As my friend. Understand.”
He wanted to find out exactly what it was that he was supposed to understand, but the note of distress in her voice had him backing away. For now.
“Fine,” he said casually, though he felt anything but fine.
Unhooking her seat belt, Rosemary was out of the car as if she had been ejected by a spring. She quickly opened the rear door and leaned in. Rocky, awake, whimpered in protest as she was moved from Danny’s lap.
Chris rounded the trunk. “Here, let me carry Danny in for you. He’s too heavy.”
She was about to wake Danny up and walk him into the house and up to his room, the way she did on the rare occasions when he fell asleep on the floor in front of the television set.
Rosemary looked at Chris over her shoulder. “I can manage.”
Despite her protest, Chris moved her out of the way. “Yes, I know, you told me all about managing. Now let me tell you all about stubborn.” He fixed her with a knowing look. “You’re being it. Now stay out of the way.” She opened her mouth to protest. “As a friend.”
She pursed her lips to
gether, but the smile came anyway.
“Okay. Thanks.” Rosemary waited until Chris had Danny in his arms, then she picked up the puppy and followed in Chris’s wake. Juggling the dog to one side, thinking that she was already growing too large to be handled this way, Rosemary pulled her key out of her pocket and opened the front door.
“Where’s his room?” Chris headed toward the stairs even as he asked. Since the house had the same layout as his, he had a pretty good idea which room Danny had chosen as his. The one with the window seat.
“Upstairs.” Rosemary pointed needlessly. “First one you come to.” She headed to the family room where Chris had set up Rocky’s cage. “I’ll just put Rocky away and join you there.”
The door to the enclosure that Rocky thought of as her home within a home was standing open. Kneeling, Rosemary slid the puppy into her cage with a minimum of effort. The dog plopped down, one ear dipping into the empty dog dish. It was her favorite sleeping position.
“You’re growing up too fast, dog,” Rosemary murmured, rising to her feet. “And so’s your master. I guess I’m just going to have to get used to it.”
She heard a floorboard creak over her head. Chris. Rosemary hurried upstairs to Danny’s room.
Chris had placed the boy on his bed and had already removed his shoes and socks. He was just throwing a sheet over Danny when she entered.
Chris looked up. “I thought you might just want to let him sleep.”
She nodded. She didn’t want to disturb Danny. His sleep was more important than being properly dressed for it. “We seem to be on the same wavelength.”
Chris’s eyes met hers and held for a long moment. “Maybe.” He slid his hands into his back pockets. “Well, I guess I’d better call it a night myself.”
For a moment Rosemary considered offering Chris something. A cool drink or a late snack. But she decided against it. It was better if he left now. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea.
Which is what? a small voice inside her head inquired.
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