“I’m not the town’s most famous foosball player,” Tim said, not meeting her eyes. “I’m pretty sure I did everything I could to win the game.”
“That’s what I suspected. You didn’t want to take Paul’s title away from him.” She let go of his hands to cup her palms around his face. How many men could resist the temptation of beating the alpha male? “You’re an amazing man.” Then she went at his shirt buttons herself.
“I don’t remember saying that, but as long as I get credit, I won’t argue.” He dropped his hands on either side of her and watched as she worked her way down his shirt. She yanked the tails out of his waistband and pulled the fabric aside to bare the impressive expanse of his chest.
“Wow!” She let her fingers drift over his bared skin, tracing the curve of a pectoral muscle and tickling across the light fur of glinting auburn hair. She flattened her palm on the washboard of his abdomen and felt his muscles contract under her touch.
“Claire?” His voice was ragged. “If you keep that up, you may be having that third orgasm sooner than you want.”
She dragged her gaze up from the magnificence of his chest. His pupils were huge and dark, while the tendons of his neck were strained with the effort of controlling his response to her exploration.
Just like that, she was ready for the third orgasm; she could feel the heat and moisture bloom inside her. She started to straddle him, but considered the size of the couch in contrast to the size of the man underneath her. “Why don’t we go upstairs, where there’s a king-sized bed?”
“Once I get into your bed, I intend to stay until morning.”
“I have to get up early,” she warned.
“How early?”
His thumbs were circling her nipples, so it was hard to think. Closing her eyes didn’t help; it just made the focus on her breasts more intense. She grabbed his wrists to stop him, her fingers barely going halfway around the girders of sinew and bone. “Um, I have to get the girls up and dressed and be at church by nine thirty to get my choir robes on. So seven-ish.”
Before she knew what was happening, he had hitched her over his shoulder and pushed off the cushions. The afghan got left behind in the transition, so her bare breasts were flattened against his flannel-covered back, and her naked bottom was in the firm grip of one of his large hands. His other hand was snugged across the backs of her knees, to hold her in place.
“Are you always so Neanderthal?” she asked, giving him a playful thump on his back.
He grunted in caveman fashion before heading for the stairs. “Call me Grog.”
Being carried upstairs while inverted was surprisingly interesting. With any other man, she would have been nervous about being dropped or causing him injury. Slung over Tim’s shoulder, she relaxed and enjoyed the whimsy of it. His playful side was just one more revelation.
“Turn left,” she said as he paused at the top of the stairs.
Her view changed from pine planks to rose-colored carpeting. Tim gave her buttock a pat and bent to drop her carefully onto the bed.
He straightened to strip his shirt off and unfasten his jeans.
“I have an important question to ask you,” she said, remembering her conversation with Holly. “Keep undressing,” she prompted when his hands froze at his waistband. “Would you dance in a bowling alley?”
He kicked his boots off and stepped out of his jeans before pushing her knees apart and kneeling between them. “Depends on how good the music is.”
She had no more questions.
“CLAIRE, I HAVE coffee.”
“Wha...?” She heard the voice and she smelled the coffee, but she couldn’t figure out what either one was doing in her dream.
The bed seemed to drop out from under her on one side, and she rolled into something warm and solid. The voice rumbled closer to her ear. “It’s seven ten. You have to sing in the choir.”
Tim. Foosball. Sex. Amazing sex. It all flooded back into her brain. She lifted her head and madly shoved her hair out of her eyes.
He was sitting beside her on the bed, with his shirt unbuttoned and a mug of coffee in each hand. “This is one of the best dreams I’ve ever had,” she said, trying to pull the sheet over her breasts as she scooted into a sitting position. Tim’s weight on top of the covers made it impossible, so she grabbed a pillow instead.
“Don’t cover up on my account,” he said with a smile that made her feel shy and hot at the same time. He held up one mug and then the other. “With milk and sugar or black?”
“Milk and sugar, please.” She took the mug and swallowed the nectar it contained. “It’s actually sweet enough. You are my fantasy man.”
“Hold onto your coffee,” he said, making the bed rock as he settled in with his back against the headboard and his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He had pulled his jeans on, but his feet were bare.
“You have beautiful arches,” she said as she took another sip of her coffee.
The mattress shook as he laughed and flexed his left foot to exaggerate the arch. “If it makes you want me, I’m good with that.”
She was feeling oddly constrained. In the bright, clear light of morning, some of the things she’d done and let him do to her last night made her blush. It was hard to chat casually when images from their lovemaking kept flashing across her mind’s eye. The truth was she’d known him for so little time that she didn’t have a lot to discuss with him. Willow? Holly’s abusive husband? The foosball game? The Castillo painting? Nothing seemed quite right for the moment.
“You’re mighty quiet. Having second thoughts?”
“Oh God, no! Just a bit of morning-after awkwardness.”
“I’ll get out of your way, then,” he said, swinging his legs off the bed. “Just let me grab my boots.”
She grabbed his arm. “No, Tim, I’m not trying to get rid of you. I’m trying to, well”—she shrugged—“think of something to talk about. We don’t know all that much about each other.”
Or we know things we can’t talk about, like your wife’s suicide.
He kept his feet on the floor, but he turned toward her with a glint of wicked humor in his eyes. “There are a few things I know, like the way you like to be—”
“Shhh,” she said with a laugh as she put her hand over his mouth. “I have to be in church in less than three hours, so I need to be in the proper frame of mind.”
His tongue traced a slow, sensual circle in her palm, and she snatched it away. “You’re not helping.”
“All right. You know, I like this place. It’s solid and comfortable, even though it’s pink,” he said, gesturing at the room around them. “Have you thought about buying it? You could use it as a weekend getaway.”
“No, I stay with Holly when I visit here, which isn’t that often, to be honest.”
“Sanctuary isn’t a bad place. Why are you so set against it?”
“I feel more at home in New York. Don’t you miss it yourself?”
There. She’d approached the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of his wife’s death.
“I like it here.” He stared down into his coffee. “It’s easy.”
“Really? I feel the opposite way,” she said, sliding her legs out from under the covers and hugging the pillow in front of her. “Sanctuary has its own issues.”
“It sounds more like you have issues with Sanctuary.”
“Oh, definitely,” she said, pulling on her bathrobe. “I really have to shower.”
“I don’t suppose I could persuade you to save water and shower with a friend,” he suggested, a laughing gleam back in his eyes. “After all, cleanliness is next to godliness, and it’s Sunday.”
“Solo cleanliness.”
He reached out and caught her wrist, pulling her in to stand between his knees. Despite the fact that he was sitting and she was standing, their eyes were nearly level.
“Claire, you’re as skittish as a new foal.” The teasing glint vanished as he cupped his hands over h
er shoulders. “Last night was a lot of fun, but it wasn’t just a romp in the hay. It was a lot more than that. I don’t know what exactly, but more.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “That’s how I feel too, especially the ‘I don’t know what exactly’ part.”
He slid his hands up to her face, holding it so he could brush his lips lightly across hers. “We’ll work that out as we go.” He spun her around toward the bathroom and gave her a gentle smack on the rear.
Tim sat on the bed, elbows on knees as he cradled his coffee mug and listened to the splash of Claire’s shower. He felt a stirring in his groin when he pictured water sluicing over the soft skin he’d so recently explored. She would look delicious with her long hair slicked down her wet back.
“Okay, I need to derail that train of thought,” he said to himself, shoving off the mattress. He prowled around the room, checking the view out each dormer window, prolonging the pleasure of being in Claire’s bedroom.
When the sound of running water ceased, he padded over to scoop up his boots and plunked back down onto the bed. The whir of a blow-dryer picked up where the shower left off, and Tim smiled. She’d be in there a while if she had to blow-dry her mane.
He bit off a curse as his phone buzzed on the bedside table. It was too early for anything other than a medical emergency. Sure enough, when he dialed in to his answering service, a distraught woman sobbed into the phone that her Bitsy had been hit by a car.
He pulled on his socks and boots, buttoned his shirt and tucked it in, and walked to the door. It would be better to write her a note downstairs in the kitchen. That would sidestep her sudden shyness.
He had his hand on the doorknob when he reversed direction, heading back for her bed. Planting one knee on the mattress, he bent to inhale her scent from the sheets.
When Claire emerged from the bathroom, Tim and his coffee mug were gone. Calling his name down the stairs elicited only silence, setting off a waltz of relief and disappointment inside her.
“Not even a good-bye kiss,” she said to her reflection in the mirror. She wondered if he had left out of consideration for her ridiculous fit of nerves. “He really is a nice man.”
And funny and playful and smart and compassionate and kind and sexy as hell.
“What’s not to like?” she asked the mirror again as she pulled on her under-the-choir-robe clothes.
He was building a house in Sanctuary.
His wife had committed suicide.
“Two big problems,” she conceded to herself.
They dissolved from her mind when she found the note he’d left on the downstairs hall table. He’d used the preprinted to-do pad she kept by the refrigerator and filled in the blank line before List so it read:
Tim’s List—after he takes care of the veterinary emergency that called him away before he could say good-bye:
1. Kiss Claire in her sister’s kitchen.
2. Kiss Claire in an empty stall.
3. Kiss Claire in the Sportsman.
4. Kiss Claire in her living room.
5. Kiss Claire in her bedroom.
6. Find a lot more places to kiss Claire.
He’d put a check in front of the first five items.
“Oh dear God!” she said, running her fingertip over the list. “I could fall in love with this man.”
A fist of panic closed around her throat at the thought.
HE WAS MAKING love to Claire. They were in a bed, but he couldn’t tell if it was Claire’s or not. It didn’t matter because all he wanted was to touch her warm, curving body. Suddenly, the room around him changed to the apartment in New York City where he and Anais had lived right after their wedding. And the body under his changed to Anais’s.
He knew immediately, despite all his concerns about the similarities between the two women. Making love to them was completely different. He was startled because somewhere in the back of his mind lurked the idea that his wife was dead. He laid his fingers against the pulse point of her neck, just to be sure.
“Not yet,” Anais said, her mobile face alive with laughter and malice. “Not quite yet.” She slid out from under him and picked up a gun off the bedside table. Standing naked and bathed in a spotlight, she held the gun to her temple.
“No!” he shouted. “I’ll stay with you through it all!”
“That’s not good enough.”
She squeezed the trigger, and he jerked awake, the surface under him rocking wildly.
“Holy shit!” He realized he was in the hammock behind his house, and Sprocket was barking.
He swung his legs around so his feet were on the ground and reached down blindly to scoop up the little dog, needing the feel of something warm and alive.
He stared over Sprocket’s head to the mountains beyond, orienting himself in the real world, away from the nightmare. The light was building toward midday, so the hills looked more green than blue.
He tried to draw his usual comfort from them, but all he felt was the old guilt rolling over him in waves.
Claire had enlisted a fellow alto’s assistance with her sleep deprivation problem. Mrs. Grandison had strict instructions to joggle Claire’s elbow if she noticed her nodding off during the sermon.
With Mrs. G’s help, she made it through church without embarrassing herself. She gave Brianna and Kayleigh a private tour of the gallery and truly enjoyed discovering which artworks each girl responded to before she drove them home.
She stayed upright through an afternoon of dealing with “lookie loos,” browsers with no intention of buying anything. She set her phone to vibrate and then checked it compulsively, hoping to hear from Tim.
Although he knew she was working, she was surprised he hadn’t called. It seemed out of character, especially after his whimsically affectionate note.
She checked her watch and decided she could close up ten minutes early since the gallery was empty. Bustling around, she shut down the computer, checked the alarm on the Castillo room, and flicked off the lights. She was rooting through her purse for her car keys when the door chime sounded.
“I’m sorry, we’re clo—” she said as she turned to find Paul Taggart standing in the doorway, wearing a white T-shirt, jeans, and a black leather jacket and boots. A motorcycle helmet was tucked under his arm.
Time spiraled backward. How many times had he shown up at the end of her Girl Scout meetings, dressed just like this?
“Hey, Claire. Want to go for a spin on the bike?” he asked. She couldn’t tell if he was speaking those words in the past or the present. They were the same in both times.
“Paul?” she said, trying to reorient herself in the here and now.
“You okay?” His grin vanished as he came up and took her elbow in a warm, firm grasp. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I have. You!”
“Not me. I’m flesh and blood, and I’ll prove it.” He leaned down and dropped a quick kiss on her cheek. “Nothing spooky about me.”
Claire hated the fact that she wanted to scrub his kiss off. The only person whom she wanted to touch her was Tim, and he still hadn’t called.
“What’s spooky is that you look exactly the same as you did when we were in high school. Did you sell your soul for eternal youth?”
“Nope, I’m just young at heart. It shows on my face.” He gestured toward the door. “So, what do you say to a ride? The sun is shining, and you’re off work.”
“I need to start dinner for Holly and the kids,” Claire said, deciding not to mention her exhaustion from lack of sleep the night before.
“This early? I can have you back in plenty of time to fix dinner.”
“I’m not really dressed for it.” She glanced down at her lilac silk pants and taupe open-toe heels.
“Since when did that stop you?” Paul’s grin dared her to live dangerously, the way it always had.
He was right about it being too early to start dinner. And she was tired of staring at her silent cell phone, willing Ti
m to call. It made her feel pathetic. “Oh, what the heck! Let’s hit the highway.”
“That’s my Claire,” Paul said, looping his arm over her shoulders and pulling her against his side as he steered her toward the door.
“Just let me call Holly,” she said, pulling out her phone.
“You’re going on a motorcycle ride with Paul Taggart?” Holly’s voice rang with shock.
“Just a short one. Unless you need me there.”
“No, no, everything’s fine. I’m just surprised.”
Claire was little surprised too, but she wasn’t going to admit it. “Has anyone called for me?”
“No.” Holly sounded puzzled. “Were you expecting someone?”
“Mmm, I asked Davis to change my schedule, and I didn’t hear from him yet,” Claire lied. Maybe Tim had called her at home and gotten the answering machine. Except he knew she was working today. And he knew her cell phone number.
She said good-bye to Holly and hit the End button more firmly than necessary. If Tim hadn’t called the gallery, or her cell phone, or Holly’s house, he didn’t want to talk to her.
She pasted a glitteringly false smile on her face and turned back to Paul. “I’m ready.”
Paul’s Harley gleamed in the sunshine as he handed her the extra helmet. He had always made her wear one, even when they were teenagers. She climbed on the back of the bike and wound her arms around his waist while he kicked on the Harley’s big engine. The years rolled back when he roared down Washington Street to the highway. She reveled in the wind whipping the silk of her clothes against her skin and the blur of houses and trees reeling past her vision.
Everything was stripped away: the emotional roller coaster of Holly’s situation, the nastiness of her own divorce, even her disappointment at Tim’s silence. She was a teenager again, thumbing her nose at everyone’s idea of her as a nerd and a good girl. That’s what Paul had done for her then—let her live dangerously while being perfectly safe.
Paul turned off the highway and gunned the motorcycle up a dirt road as she held on for dear life over the bumps. He cut sharply to the right and went careening across a meadow until they reached an outcropping of limestone.
Take Me Home Page 13