“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really. If you’ve got a bed in this place, I’d be happy to demonstrate. In fact—” he turned his head to give her a wicked look “—once I get you naked, I’m thinking I’m going to spend a long time demonstrating.”
“Mmmm, I like the sound of that,” she said.
Somewhere in that breathless hour between night and morning, Lainie woke to see moonlight streaming into the room. She shifted, and in shifting felt the twinge of soreness between her thighs. Beside her, J.J. slept, one arm thrown over his head. He was indisputably there, and indisputably naked, meaning that she couldn’t even for a minute tell herself that everything she remembered was just an astoundingly vivid erotic dream. It had really happened.
Hell.
She had to be out of her mind, Lainie thought as she looked at the profile of the sleeping J.J. Temporary insanity. After everything she’d seen, everything she knew about him, winding up in bed with J.J. was about the most idiotic thing she could have done.
And the most amazing.
She couldn’t suppress a fatuous grin. She hadn’t known what real sex was until just a few hours before. Even years after everything was all over, she would still fondly remember J.J. for showing her what her body was really all about.
Even after their affair was a thing of the past.
She stared at him, her smile dimming. Even sleeping, J.J. was a solo act, she thought, watching him. They’d been twined together when they’d fallen asleep, but once J.J. had made it to z-land, he’d pulled away, throwing off the covers that she’d bundled about herself. Symbolic, in a way, of everything they were about—separate lives, separate needs, separate experiences.
Hell.
Closing her eyes determinedly, she tried to drift off to sleep, but it wasn’t happening. Not even close. Finally she gave up and stealthily slipped out of bed, grabbing her robe and padding noiselessly to the living room.
The light from the street lamps and the sliver moon streamed in through the windows. She had no idea of the time as she sat on the couch, only that morning lay in the distance. Moodily she stared out at the silent street.
It was far from the most intelligent move she’d ever made, but she’d done it. In all honesty, she wasn’t as sorry as she might have been. Sometimes you had to throw smart by the wayside and just take a chance. The question was, what happened next? He’d be leaving soon for the racing season; he’d have to.
And she’d still be here in Salem.
The thing to do was keep it in perspective. If she started having expectations, she’d only be disappointed. I’ve never been any good at doing what people expect. J.J. wasn’t about being tied to anything. Or anyone. He’d made that abundantly clear over the years.
She moved her head at the sound of a creak in the hall, and turned to see him there, in the doorway.
He was naked, his body washed by the outside light so that he looked like some kind of statue, sculpted and flowing. He studied the room. Studied her.
“What time is it?” he asked.
Lainie moved a shoulder. “I don’t know. Maybe three.”
“Didn’t like sleeping with me in the bed?”
“I couldn’t sleep. Did I wake you up?”
Her movement hadn’t; her absence had. When he’d reached out to find cold sheets, he’d come looking.
He didn’t answer her question, though. Instead, he crossed to the couch and sat beside her. She was curled up, arms wrapped around her legs, chin on her knees. Her silky robe had slipped off one shoulder.
“You look like you’re way too deep in thought for 3:00 a.m.,” he said.
“Not so much.”
He reached out to pull her back against him. At first she resisted, but finally she relaxed, leaning back into his chest.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
They’d had sex. Period. It hadn’t meant anything, Lainie reminded herself. It never did to J.J. If she told him she was wondering what was supposed to happen between them now, she’d look like the worst sort of sap, the woman who mistook sex for something more. J.J. didn’t do something more; he jumped into torrid affairs and got out of them just as quickly. She’d known that going in; if she hadn’t been smart enough to protect herself, well, that was her own problem.
What shocked her was realizing that she would happily take the quick affair with him, just that, because she was not ready to have this over with.
She stirred. “Just thinking about tonight, I guess.”
“What about tonight?” He tightened his arms around her.
“It was pretty amazing.”
“I’ll agree with that. That little number you did with the live python and the cowgirl outfit was something else.”
She laughed and finally, finally, she was able to relax. One of his hands began sliding idly over her chest, tracing her collarbones, sliding down into her cleavage.
“So when do you leave?” she asked.
“Well, I have to go to Buffalo next week to work on my tuck.”
She hadn’t thought it would be so soon. The muscles tightened in her belly. “Work on your tuck?” she asked.
“Finesse the aerodynamics. They’ve got a wind tunnel there. You can lose a ton of time in downhill and super-G if you don’t get your tuck right.”
She nodded. “So week after next is it, then,” she said, trying to sound casual.
“Not exactly. I’ll only be gone a couple of days. Then the week after that I head to Aspen to get some slope time. I’ll be there for maybe a week and a half.”
“So, two weeks from now.”
She could feel him smile. “Not exactly. I’ll be back again. Then I go off to Austria to get serious about it. The World Cup season opener at Sölden is two weeks before Halloween.”
“And then you really are gone.”
He gave a quiet laugh. “Maybe. Hard to say. There’s a two-or three-week break between Sölden and when the season really starts. I can try to come home for a couple of days.”
Good intentions. A woman could get in deep trouble pinning her hopes on good intentions. Better to focus on the here and now. “It’s not a lot of time,” she said. “I think we’d better make the most of it.” And maybe, just maybe, she could burn out this sudden need for him.
His hand slid swiftly inside her robe to close over her bare breast, in a shocking rush of sensation. “Oh, I agree.” He rolled her nipple between his fingers. “In fact, I think you ought to call in sick so we can make the most of it all day long.”
She shifted and turned so that she lay over him, face-to-face. “I can’t do that, but I do think we ought to take advantage of the time we do have.” She felt him stir and harden against her belly.
“No argument here,” he said hoarsely.
Chapter Ten
He’d never been much of an early riser. J.J. stifled a yawn as he scoffed a cup of coffee from George’s thermos. If he saw the dawn, it was usually because he’d been up all night, not because he’d wrenched himself out of a nice, warm bed. Man, or at least J. J. Cooper, was at least partially a nocturnal beast.
Particularly on a Saturday morning.
But somehow, the past weeks, he’d come to enjoy dragging his sorry butt to the Human Habitat site each weekend. There was something immensely satisfying about it. Not the early rising—that part still sucked—but the work itself, the sense of contributing. All the itchiness he’d felt over not being at speed camp had abated. Some of it was about just knowing he was doing something meaningful.
And, of course, some of it was Lainie.
How the hell he’d managed to keep his hands off her for so many years, he’d never understand. Now the idea was ludicrous. He had only to look at her to feel the tug of want, only to touch her to feel the sharp spike of need. It might burn out at some point, but right now, in bed, they worked.
And out of it, he realized in a sudden blink of surprise. He felt good these days, really good. Maybe it wasn’t just Human H
abitat, and it wasn’t just working the luscious Lainie over in bed. Maybe it was as simple as the fact that being with her didn’t leave him time to brood over his future. He wanted to be more for her, and it took him outside himself. Maybe, he thought uneasily, it was just being with her, period.
He shook his head at himself. Nearby, on the grass, Kisha was turning cartwheels. Tyjah tried to copy her, but what he managed looked more like forward rolls. Latrice stood by watching, with the subdued resignation of the oldest child who winds up aged before her time.
Kisha executed another wobbly cartwheel and J.J. clapped.
She beamed. “Hi, J.J.”
“Hey.” He wandered over to them.
“Look at our house. It’s almost done.”
“Maybe not almost, but it’s getting there.” They’d framed the structure up the weekend before. Now they’d squared the walls and the roof was going on. As soon as he finished his coffee, he’d be back up with the roofing team, getting the plywood covering nailed down.
“Tall,” Tyjah said, pointing at the roof.
On impulse, J.J. reached out for the three-year-old and hoisted him to his shoulders. “Nope, that’s tall,” he told a laughing Tyjah. “You’re a big guy now.”
“He’s just a little kid.” Kisha giggled.
“I’d be careful what you say to a person who’s got high ground,” J.J. advised.
“He can’t do this.” She turned another cartwheel.
“That’s pretty impressive.”
“I was s’posta learn to do a handspring but the Boys’ and Girls’ Center burned up.”
J.J. frowned and put Tyjah down. “What? When?”
“Oh, forever ago,” she said.
“In July,” Latrice informed him, rolling her eyes.
Kisha stepped into a handstand. For a moment she held it, then she began to waver. J.J. moved quickly to catch her legs and steady her until she dropped them down and stood up. “Thanks.” She bounced around, jumping on the grass.
“So you had to stop taking your gymnastics class because the center’s gone?”
“Yup. We’re supposed to go to Peabody, but that’s a long way away and Gran’s mostly too busy to drive.”
“When are they going to build a new one?”
Kisha looked blankly at Latrice.
“There’s no money,” Latrice said. “Not now, anyway.”
J.J. watched Kisha doing her cartwheels. “Did you take gymnastics classes, too?” he asked Latrice.
“I took painting,” she replied.
“Painting, huh? Did you like it?”
Her eyes lit up. “Oh yes. I did a picture of our house and a picture of Tyjah and a picture of a sailboat.” She smiled shyly. “I could show you sometime when you’re visiting Lainie, if you want.”
It was the longest sentence he’d ever heard from her. It was the first time he’d ever really seen her smile. Usually, she was a silent, serious presence watching over the exuberant Kisha and Tyjah. And now the center, the one place she didn’t have to be responsible for them, was gone.
“How would you like it if we put up a new center and you could take classes again?” he asked impulsively. “Would you like that?”
“Yeah!” Kisha shouted, before her older sister could answer. As for Latrice, she simply held Tyjah close and stared at J.J. with shining eyes.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lainie walk up with Elsie. And he felt that same punch of anticipation that he felt whenever he saw her. Her hair was clubbed back in a ponytail. She wore jeans and a faded red T-shirt that he knew for a fact she’d spent no more than thirty seconds selecting that morning. How was it that she managed to look as artlessly sexy in it as any fashion model at some expensive shoot?
Lainie smiled at him, then glanced at the kids, jumping up and down and grinning madly. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing. Latrice and Kisha and I were just having a little talk, weren’t we?”
Kisha nodded with barely suppressed excitement.
Suspicion flickered in Lainie’s eyes. “What are you up to, Cooper?”
He walked over and pressed a friendly kiss on her. “I’ll tell you when I’ve thought it through. I need to get up to the roof now.”
Lainie looked across the room, watching as J.J. used a framing square to mark a piece of wood, then slid it back into the pocket at the back of his tool belt with one hand, as he pulled out his hammer with another. There was a fluid grace to his movements, a confidence. When he picked a nail out of the bag that hung on his hip, he needed only two swings of the hammer to sink it entirely.
What was it about a man in a tool belt, anyway? J.J. should have looked bulky, stocky with his muscled thighs and arms, but somehow he only looked stripped down and powerful, as though his body were composed of the absolute essentials, muscle and sinew and bone.
George walked by, and J.J. flagged him down. Lainie watched, at first casually and then with growing attention as J.J. spoke animatedly to a skeptical-looking George. When both of them started motioning and nodding, Lainie’s eyes narrowed. Casually she stepped a little closer.
“…a few hundred thousand, maybe,” George was saying.
“I’ve thought about that,” J.J. responded. “I figure I can get some of my dad’s suppliers to donate materials and we can do a benefit to raise the rest. I bet I could get Kurt or one of the other ski team guys to show, sign autographs, maybe get my sponsor to donate some equipment for auction. We do it right, we could have a new center up by spring.”
A new center, she thought, knowing instantly what he meant. Knowing instantly the reason for the hero worship in Kisha’s and Latrice’s eyes.
“What do you want me to do?” George asked.
“Nothing, right now. Let me think about it, make some phone calls,” J.J. said. “See if we get anywhere.”
See if we get anywhere. A concept seven-and ten-year-olds didn’t understand. Lainie looked out at the backyard, where Kisha was jumping around ebulliently.
And she stepped forward. “J.J., can I talk with you a minute?”
“Sure.” J.J. glanced at George. “I’ll catch up with you later on this, George, okay?”
“Works for me.”
J.J. turned to Lainie. “What did you need?”
“Let’s go outside.”
He shrugged and followed her. “Why do I feel like I just got sent to the principal’s office?” he asked as they stepped through the framed threshold of the front door.
At the edge of the yard beyond, Lainie turned to him. “I heard you talking with George about a center. A new Boys’ and Girls’ Center, you mean? Was that what you were talking about with Latrice and Kisha when I walked up?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What’s George’s take?”
“Wait and see, I think. I’ve got some ideas about how to pull it all together.”
She frowned. “J.J., what are you doing? These are little kids. You can’t go telling them you’re going to build them a center, because they’re going to believe you.”
“Maybe they should,” he said, an edge to his voice.
“Look, number one, you don’t even know if the organization wants to reopen here. Number two, you need to get money—”
“Which I’ve already talked with George about,” he interrupted.
“Number three,” she continued, ignoring him, “you’ve got to coordinate the construction. And number four, you’ve got to actually build it. That doesn’t mean George doing it.” She fixed him with a stare. “He’s already got enough projects. That means you. That’s the way this organization works.”
He shrugged. “Then I’ll do it.”
“How, when you’re not even going to be around?” She tried unsuccessfully to temper her frustration. “I know you mean well—you always mean well—but you’ve got Buffalo, you’ve got Aspen, you’ve got Austria. Kind of hard to fit major construction in with all that, don’t you think?”
“No, I don�
��t. I can make some progress.”
“J.J., you’re talking about seven-year-old kids. They don’t get progress, they only get built or not built. They’ve had a lot of disappointment in their lives, and I’m not going to stand by and see them hit with another one.”
He felt the flare of anger. “They’re not going to be disappointed.”
“Yeah? You going to stick around until the place is done?”
“You know I can’t.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” She rounded on him. “You don’t know how volunteer projects work. There’s never enough time and energy to go around. You leave, your precious center gets dropped flat.”
“Why couldn’t you take it on? You know they need it.”
“Because they need a house more,” she snapped. “J.J., you don’t start stuff and leave other people to fix it. And you don’t get people’s hopes up and then disappear to go on about your life. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to them, to other kids who’ll hear about it, to George, to everybody.”
“I’ll make sure it gets done.” This time, he didn’t bother to hide the irritation in his voice.
“You know, you don’t have the best track record.”
“What do you know about my track record that you didn’t read in a tabloid?”
“Did you forget I grew up around you?” she demanded. “This is my community. These people matter to me. They’re getting used to you, don’t you understand that? You’ve become a part of their lives. They’re starting to depend on you like you’re going to be here in a month, when you and I both know that you’ll be long gone. And if there’s no one here to see it through, the center will be long gone, too. It’s going to break their hearts, and these kids deserve better that that.”
“I don’t think it’s the kids you’re scared about,” he shot back, “I think it’s you.”
The sound of hammering was very loud in the silence. Lainie stared at him, white-faced. She moistened her lips. “This isn’t about us.” Her voice was barely audible.
“Isn’t it?”
Under His Spell (Holiday Hearts #4) Page 11