Irresistible?

by Stephanie Bond

  “How am I doing?” Ellie whispered as they walked to the back of the car.

  “Great,” he said, smiling. “I think she hates you.”

  Ellie frowned, then nodded agreeably. She was earning her pay, wasn’t she?

  She spied several shelters within walking distance, but a sign bearing the name “Blackwell” led them to one off to the right and up a small incline.

  “I thought this was your mother’s family,” Ellie said to Mark as they unpacked the food.

  He smiled. “It’s both, really. Without getting too complicated, my dad and four of his brothers married mom and four of her sisters.”

  “Is that legal?” Ellie asked.

  This time he laughed. “It’s legal, but sometimes I don’t think it was very smart. All of their children are double first cousins. It makes for a pretty tight-knit group.” He pulled a huge cooler from the trunk of his car, and led the way up the path. Gloria hurried ahead, visibly crestfallen that one of her sisters had beaten her to the punch and, having arrived first, was already spreading vinyl tablecloths over the ten or so picnic tables in the shelter.

  Within a few minutes, several carloads had arrived, and Ellie’s head spun from the names and faces she’d tried to commit to memory. Everyone, including Gloria, seemed impressed with the chocolate cake she’d made. “It’s low-fat, too,” she said to Gloria.

  “Well,” harrumphed Mark’s mother, giving Ellie a sweeping glance, “not everyone was meant to look like a stick.” The cake was thereby relegated to the lowly salad table, to occupy a spot beside a plate of unpopular celery and carrot sticks.

  After an hour, Ellie decided to take a break from the adults and mix with Mark’s young cousins. Delighted to discover several of them had brought in-line skates, she retrieved hers from her bag and joined them on the paved parking lot, ignoring disparaging looks from Mark’s mother. She taught the more experienced skaters a few moves and was soon enjoying herself very much, laughing in spite of the sick feeling building in her stomach. She felt like a fraud, but it was equally disheartening to know that even when she was being herself, Mark’s mother disapproved.

  As unobtrusively as possible, Ellie watched Mark mix with the odd collection of relatives. The fussy aunts, the crying babies, the joke-telling men were so different from the stoic manner he put on. Ellie wondered how he’d metamorphosed into the polished, articulate executive he’d become. He was obviously everyone’s favorite. It was gratifying to see he’d originated from homespun people—good, decent people with simple wants and needs whom he seemed to care about. This was a side of him she hadn’t expected to discover, and it caused an unsettling shift in the characteristics she’d assigned to him.

  It bothered her, too, that his family was so different from hers. He’d mentioned he was an only child, like Ellie, but Mark’s extended family was large and varied, warm and comfortable around each other. She tried to conjure up images of long-forgotten aunts and uncles from faded photographs she’d seen in family albums. Both sets of grandparents had died before she was a toddler. Ellie’s mother had been the youngest of her three siblings by nearly a generation—she wasn’t close to them at all. Her father had one brother left, living somewhere on the West Coast, she recalled. She wondered how many unknown cousins she had all over the country, and made a mental note to pump her mother for more information the next time they talked on the phone.

  She stole a glance at Mark, and felt a zing go through her at the sight of him, his head thrown back, laughing. She envied Mark Blackwell and his rowdy relatives. Ellie sighed. A big, close, loving family was all she’d ever wanted, and all she’d never gotten.

  Mark slapped his cousin Mickey on the back, enjoying a shared joke. His gaze slid to Ellie, an annoying habit he’d adopted in the last hour, along with every male relative at the picnic over the age of ten. His smile died and his mouth went dry as she whirled on the skates, causing her skirt to billow alarmingly high.

  “Where did you snag her?” Mickey whispered hoarsely, admiration tinting his voice.

  Mark jerked his head around to find the eyes of his balding, chunky cousin riveted on Ellie. A strange feeling of possessiveness descended over him. “She’s an artist and my office commissioned her to do a painting.”

  “An artist, huh? That explains it.”

  “That explains what?”

  “Why she’s not like every corporate female clone I’ve ever seen you with.”

  Mark frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Not that you haven’t dated some beauties, cuz,” Mickey hastened to add. “It’s just that my tastes lean toward warmblooded creatures.” He exhaled heavily. “And that woman is hot.”

  Mark’s frown deepened. He hadn’t hired her to be hot. Guilt stabbed him in the gut when he remembered the money he’d paid her. The thought struck him that it might be nice if Ellie Sutherland had accompanied him of her own volition, instead of having to be bribed. Then she could have acted naturally and his family could have fallen in love with her…wait a minute—what was he thinking?

  His cousin let out a low whistle through his small teeth. Mark joined him in holding his breath when a particularly risky move revealed every square inch of her rock-hard thighs and the barest glimpse of white cotton undies. Mark licked his lips nervously and Mickey dragged a handkerchief out of his back pocket to mop his forehead.

  “I don’t think she hit it off with Mom,” Mark said carefully, attempting to plant a seed of dissent.

  “That settles it,” Mickey said, nodding confidently. “Marry her.”

  Someone rang a bell to signal the meal being served. Ellie removed her skates and rejoined the adults, dutifully giving disappointing, but true, answers to repeated questions from Gloria’s sisters about what she did for a living and how she’d met Mark. Mark hovered close by, as if to verify she was doing what he’d asked of her. Every infant at the gathering squalled when she held them, and soon the new mothers were keeping their babies to themselves. Ellie slipped her camera from the bag and snapped two rolls of pictures, the women politely rigid when she focused on them, the men curiously hamming for the camera.

  Indeed, it seemed the chilly reception extended to her by the Blackwell women wasn’t a feeling shared by the Blackwell men. They buzzed around Ellie continually, laughing and flirting, elbowing appreciation to a silent Mark. Uncle Jerome, the marrying man, shadowed her every move, offering her lively, if suggestive, conversation throughout the afternoon. Even beating the men at horseshoes didn’t banish their smiles and winks. When it looked as if the female relatives were about to descend on her with tar and feathers, she rejoined the children. This time, she pulled out her sketchbook and drew caricatures of the ones who could sit still long enough for her to render a pastel drawing. The children gleefully took the sketches to their parents, and before long, an audience had gathered.

  The sudden attention made Ellie nervous and she noticed a frown on Mark’s face. He wasn’t paying her to make a favorable impression. She glanced at her tablet. “One sheet of paper left,” she said. “Gloria, how about it?”

  Mark’s mother suddenly turned shy and blushing, but smiling, she nodded and sat before Ellie, striking a regal pose.

  Ellie scanned the woman in front of her for a few seconds. The phrase queen bee kept going through her mind. Ellie looked at Mark, who gave her a slight nod. “Go ahead,” he seemed to say. “One last nail in the coffin.”

  Hurriedly, Ellie sketched, hardly looking up. Once finished, she swallowed, amazed at how unkind the picture had turned out. With a bemused smile, Gloria reached for the drawing as everyone gathered around. Instantly her smile dissolved and her face reddened, then she handed it back to Ellie and huffed away amid choruses of laughter from her family.

  Mark stepped forward to look at the sketch, a buxom insect with a tiara on her head, wielding a giant-size stinger. He pursed his lips. “Queen bee,” he said, studying the drawing with a tight smile. “So true. You’re very good
.”

  Ellie watched people drift away to the dessert table and said, “It was hurtful to her, and I should apologize.”

  Mark shook his head. “You’re doing just what I asked you to do,” he said, handing the sketch back to her and looking into her eyes. “Everyone got a chuckle out of it. Mom’s just not very good at laughing at herself.”

  “Still, I feel so mean,” she said, biting her lower lip.

  He extended his hand to her and pulled her up. “Let’s get dessert.” His first touch sent charges of electricity through her fingers. She quickly withdrew her hand once she got to her feet.

  When everyone discovered Ellie’s cake was low-fat, most of the women relented and served themselves portions ranging from polite to generous. Uncle Jerome even teased Gloria into having a chunk, pointing out it wouldn’t hurt her to start counting her fat grams. Gloria begrudgingly ate every crumb. The men deferred to more fattening fare. Mark declined, saying he wasn’t big on sweets, and Ellie declined as well so someone else could have the remaining piece. To her surprise, it was Gloria.

  “Are you sure this is low in fat?” she asked Ellie, shoveling in the second piece. “It’s surprisingly good.”

  Ellie beamed, glad she would leave with one redeeming mark. “The guy I live with gave me the recipe.” When she saw Gloria’s eyes widen in response to the remark about her roommate, Ellie hurried on, “This is the first time I’ve made it. I’m glad it’s as good as he said it would be.”

  “You know,” Gloria said thickly through a mouthful, “Marcus needs a good cook in his kitchen.”

  Ellie’s smile froze, wondering if Mark had overheard the comment. She nodded woodenly, surprised at the concession his mother had made, but more surprised at how good the idea sounded, her cooking in Mark’s kitchen. Of course, they’d have to eat chocolate cake every night since it was the first and only thing she’d ever made that had turned out well enough to actually serve. Avoiding Mark’s eyes, Ellie enjoyed the slight lifting of her heart.

  About halfway through the hokey-pokey, the Blackwell women started dropping like flies. Clutching their stomachs, they ran for the nearest bathroom, several yards away. Gloria seemed to be the most violently ill. When they emerged an hour later, wiping sweat from their clammy foreheads, they’d determined the culprit must be Ellie’s cake since no one else had been afflicted.

  White as a sheet and mad as a hornet, Gloria demanded, “What did you put in that cake?”

  Ellie backed up a step and tried to keep the shakiness out of her voice. “The normal stuff—flour, eggs, cocoa, prune juice—”

  “Prune juice?” Gloria screeched. “Who puts prune juice in chocolate cake?”

  “It replaces the oil and m-makes the cake low f-fat,” Ellie stammered.

  “How much did you put in?” Gloria asked, her eyes bulging.

  “A b-bottle of concentrated—” She stopped at the horrified looks around her. “A s-small bottle,” she added weakly, holding up her thumb and index finger.

  “A whole bottle? Lord, we’ll be purging for a week—” Gloria stopped, grabbed her stomach and trotted back up the hill to the rest room, followed by six others.

  Ellie closed her eyes and took a deep breach. When she opened them, Mark stood before her, a wry smile on his face. “That really wasn’t necessary, Ellie—” he took her hand “—but it certainly cinched you a spot on my mother’s least-likely-to-be-a-good-daughter-in-law list.”

  Her senses leaped when he touched her, her mouth instantly parched. She swallowed miserably. He’d never believe her if she told him none of it had been planned. Ellie fought back tears of frustration.

  This day had proved one thing to her. She was inherently wrong for Mark Blackwell.

  MARK SWUNG his glance from the road ahead to Ellie’s profile and tried to guess what she was thinking. The day was an unqualified success as far as his original plan was concerned, but he hadn’t counted on his feelings shifting somewhere between the time he’d picked her up and the time he dropped her off. Away from her, he seemed able to logically dismiss her. But once in her presence, some undefined feeling took control.

  “Your pictures turned out well,” she said, breaking the silence and, thankfully, his train of thought.

  “Did they?”

  “Yes.” She still stared straight ahead, her voice unreadable. “I think the dark gold background will be the best, if that’s okay with you.”

  “You’re the artist.” he said.

  “Yes, and I’m very proud of what I do,” she said, a note of defensiveness in her voice.

  “As well you should be,” he said quickly, once again speaking to her profile. Suddenly he remembered the disparaging remark he’d made about her being an artist when she first came to his office. And, the raised eyebrows and rolling eyes of his mother and her sisters had not escaped him today. Apparently, they hadn’t escaped Ellie, either. “I admire your talent,” he said sincerely.

  She didn’t respond, but her head shifted slightly toward him.

  “It was a nice day,” he said lightly.

  Ellie’s dry laugh rang out. “Sure it was,” she said miserably. “I gave enemas to your mother and all of your aunts.”

  “Most of them have been constipated all their lives.” He chuckled, but at the look on Ellie’s face, he bit his lip to stern his laughter. “It’s okay—no one was hurt.” Actually, he couldn’t remember enjoying a family gathering more than he had today. His family’s bout with diarrhea aside, he’d enjoyed watching Ellie skate and mix with his young cousins. And cut up with his uncles. And her drawing ability was truly special. She was a very unusual woman, and damned attractive, at that. Another peek at her in the semidarkness of the car revealed a long expanse of lean, tanned leg. His right hand itched to reach over and rub the smooth length of skin.

  “When can you sit for your portrait again?” she asked.

  “How about Saturday morning? That is,” he added quickly, “if you don’t mind spending another Saturday with me.” He held his breath for her response. Could he wait another six days to see Ellie again?

  “Saturday morning is fine,” she said, finally swinging her head around to meet his gaze.

  “Fine,” he said, feeling the breath leave his lungs. God, she was beautiful. “Fine,” he heard himself repeat. His groin tightened uncomfortably and he dragged his eyes away from hers. Her apartment building loomed ahead on the left.

  “Thanks,” Ellie said quickly, hopping out as soon as he pulled to a stop.

  “Wait,” he said to the closed door. He cut the ignition and jumped out of the car. “Wait,” he called, and she turned back, struggling under the weight of that ridiculous bag. “I’ll walk you to your door.” He strode toward her, his knees suddenly rubbery. Would she let him kiss her? Would a kiss be appropriate under the circumstances? And when was the last time he had ever worried about whether or not to kiss a woman good-night?

  She waited until he’d caught up and taken her bag, but remained a couple of steps ahead of him, walking into the apartment building and up to her door on the second floor.

  “Thanks,” she said, sounding a little breathless.

  “You did me the favor,” he said, referring to the picnic. She smiled. “I meant, thanks for walking up with me. It wasn’t necessary, but nice.”

  He could barely see her eyes for the brim of her hat, which sat slightly askew. New freckles glowed across her cheeks from the afternoon’s sunshine. Her lips held the frosty remnants of pink lipstick long since faded. She hadn’t bothered to renew it. How refreshing to be with a woman who was content to be her natural self sometimes. He wet his lips. “Ellie?”

  She raised wide, innocent eyes to his. “Yes?” She didn’t have a clue he wanted to kiss her. And why should she? He’d hired her to go on a picnic with him. The whole arrangement seemed very impersonal at the moment. Did he dare?

  “Ellie?” he repeated.

  “What is it, Mark?” she asked, her head slightly angled.


  “This,” he breathed, lowering his mouth to hers. Her lips were silken, parting to accept his fully, her tongue tentatively offered. Desire shot through his body. He dropped the canvas bag with a loud thud and took her into his arms to draw her deeper into the kiss. Suddenly, the apartment door swung open.

  Mark and Ellie parted and turned their heads to see a questioning Manny, holding a half-eaten apple. “I heard a thump,” he explained, leaning on the door frame and taking a large bite.

  Mark straightened. What is the deal with this roommate man, anyway?

  Everyone stared at everyone else, the silence broken only by Manny’s loud chewing. After a few seconds, Mark cleared his throat. “Well, I’d better be going.”

  Manny reached inside the door to retrieve a light jacket from a hook. “I was on my way out myself—just wanted to make sure you got home safely, El.” He flashed her a tight smile. “I’ll walk out with Mr. Blackwell.” He took a last bite out of the apple for punctuation and tossed it into a trash can beside the door. Then he stepped squarely between them in the hall, struggling into his jacket with exaggerated movements that obstructed Mark’s view of Ellie.

  Mark frowned slightly, then said, “I’ll see you Saturday, Ellie.” He peeked around Manny’s breadth as the man took his time pulling on the jacket. Ellie said nothing, but he saw—reproachfulness?—flicker in her eyes. Had his kiss been unwelcome? It hadn’t seemed so, but then again she hadn’t counted on her roommate/boyfriend/whatever catching them.

  Mark walked side by side with Manny down the stairs and out into the dusk. They stopped on the sidewalk and Mark withdrew his car keys. “So,” he said casually, “what’s your relationship with Ellie?” He pressed a button on his key ring and his car interior light came on a few feet away. Mark swung his attention back to her roommate.

  Manny stood with his hands in his jacket pockets, studying Mark silently with narrowed eyes. Finally, the tall blond man spoke quietly, “Ellie means more to me than anyone else in this world. Don’t break her heart, mister.” With that, he turned and walked away, pulling a cigarette from his pocket and poking it in his mouth.