“That’s all she ever called him—that, and pig. Even to his face.”
“How did you ever hook up with someone so different from you?”
“We weren’t different. In fact, we were very much alike—both ambitious, dedicated to our careers, determined to achieve phenomenal success.… You meant Melina, didn’t you?”
He nodded. “You’re so proper, and she thought nothing of calling her best friend’s fiancé ‘pig’ to his face.”
She smiled as she began unwrapping the sandwiches. “She’s an amazing woman. Without her, I probably would have moved into my office years ago and never come out again. She has a real appreciation for life and people that I envy. I can leave her alone for five minutes in a restaurant, and she’ll make at least two friends while I’m gone.” Her smile took on a regretful cast. “I’m not very people-friendly.”
“You’re just out of the habit.”
“I don’t think I ever had the habit.”
He sat up to take the plate she offered. The sandwiches were meat and cheese on French rolls, with lettuce, tomatoes, and Italian dressing, and all cut into manageable pieces. He added a handful of chips and a spoonful of onion dip, then asked, “Did you notice that you didn’t answer my question about Doug?”
“What was the question?”
“What happened?”
In spite of the drippy dressing, Lynda ate neatly, taking several bites from the sandwich, more to delay answering, Ben figured, than out of hunger. But then she patted her mouth with her napkin—such a prissy gesture, he thought with a grin—and shrugged. “As I said, we were a lot alike. Both ambitious, both working endless hours. Even though we shared an apartment, we really didn’t see each other very often.”
“You even had to schedule your lovemaking.”
As he expected, she blushed heatedly. “I’m going to kill her, I swear. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you everything, the snot.” She took a deep breath, then rushed on, as if that were the only way she could tell something so personal. “Okay, here’s the story. We were going to get married as soon as one of us found the time to plan a wedding and both of us could schedule a few days off for the ceremony and a honeymoon of some sort, but we’d been trying for nearly a year without much luck. We had already agreed that marriage wouldn’t change our lives. I wouldn’t take his name. He didn’t want children. We were going to be the quintessential two-career couple.”
So what was the point of getting married? Why make a commitment to someone if it didn’t mean anything—if you wouldn’t share each other’s lives?
“We had scheduled a meeting with the goal of setting a wedding date, but he had to cancel—some sort of emergency business involving a client who’d gone to an empty little town out west for his granddaughter’s wedding. Doug flew out there and …” With a curious smile, she shook her head. “Six hours after getting there, he ran away with the bride. Last I heard, they were still living in that empty little town. He was working for her grandfather, she was teaching kindergarten, and they had twin sons who would be two now.”
“And were you heartbroken?” He wouldn’t have asked the question if he weren’t pretty sure he knew the answer. She and Doug hadn’t been planning a marriage—just a merger. She hadn’t fallen in love. She’d found a suitable prospective partner who brought his own assets, strengths, and capital to the partnership, someone she could work with and live with but never really be happy with.
“No,” she admitted, as if it were a shameful thing. “Truthfully, I was relieved. When I told my mother that he’d run off and married someone else, she drove up from Binghamton and she and Melina gave me a thank-God-the-pig-is-gone party.”
A successful lawyer, dedicated, ambitious, hardworking, presumably rich … What mother didn’t dream of such a catch for her only daughter? For Mama Barone to celebrate losing him, Doug must have been one hell of a loser.
“So … that’s the whole sordid story—and it’s not sordid at all. I can’t even get a good tale out of getting dumped for another woman.” She finished the last bite of her sandwich, daintily wiped her hands and patted her mouth, then sipped her Diet Coke. “What’s your story? Why aren’t you married and raising a family?”
“No story. Just no interest. I never thought of myself as the marrying kind.”
“Having too much fun being single to give it up? You don’t want to tie the knot because you have an aversion to nooses? If God had meant for you to have a wife, he wouldn’t have given you a sex drive?”
His gaze narrowing, Ben studied her for a moment before stacking his plate with hers. “Which is it you don’t have a very high opinion of? Marriage? Me? Or both?”
Her smile faded, and an uneasy look came into her dark eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … Melina tells me I shouldn’t tease until I get more practice at it. This is why I’m not married. I’m not very good—”
Without warning, Ben leaned forward, curved his fingers to fit the back of her neck, and kissed her. It wasn’t a hot kiss, or passionate or anything else, but the sort of kiss he might have given a girl on their first date back when he was a kid. A sweet kiss that stunned her into silence and made him want so damn much more.
“Are you going to slap me?” he asked, backing away only a few inches.
She shook her head.
“What if I kiss you again—this time with my tongue?”
She swallowed hard as desire and uncertainty flitted through her eyes. He thought for an instant she might find the courage to say, Yes, kiss me … or No, don’t. He figured instead she would back away, stumble through a few moments’ awkward conversation, then announce it was time for him to go home. In the end she did nothing but stare at him, her dark eyes twice their size, reminding him of some skittish creature, wanting to come closer but afraid to give up its distance.
Then she leaned toward him—not a lot, not so much that she even noticed it, but he did, and he decided what the hell. If she wanted to punch him when he was done, she could.
He slid his fingers along her jaw and her lashes fluttered shut. Her skin was too soft for his experience, too soft for the comparisons that came to mind from growing up poor and working in construction. Her hair was soft, too, long strands of black silk that fell loose from their pins and covered his hand as he slowly worked his fingers through the mass.
Somewhere along the way he moved closer, or maybe she did, because he didn’t have to lean forward as far, and whenever he shifted at all, his legs bumped hers. His mouth brushed hers side to side, lazily teasing, before he slid his tongue between her lips. She didn’t open to him right away—he would have been surprised if she had—but made him wait, so he made her wait, too. He slid his mouth away from hers, leaving kisses along her jaw to the delicate curve of her ear.
“You don’t have to sit here all tense and stiff, darlin’,” he murmured, sending shivers through her. “You can come closer. You can touch me. You can have your way with me,” he teased … or not. Reaching blindly while he continued to kiss her, he found her hand, fisted in her lap, and moved it to his thigh, where he uncurled her fingers and smoothed them out flat. As his mouth claimed hers again, he placed her hand on his shoulder, then slid his fingers back into her warm, silken hair, held her still, and thrust his tongue deep into her mouth.
For the space of one heartbeat, she remained motionless, unresponsive, then the heartbeat ended. She slid both arms around him, her pampered hands with their long, delicate fingers delivering restless caresses that made his muscles tighten and his skin burn. Greedily she sucked at his tongue, as if she’d never been kissed, never gotten hot, never let passion and need overshadow cool aloofness, and his body responded in the same way. His chest grew tight, making air hard to come by, and when he managed a breath, it seared his lungs. His muscles were taut as well, and he was hard and swollen in seconds. Even his injured arm was pulsing with each thud of his heart.
And then it ended. One moment her hands were on his shoulders, his ch
est, underneath his T-shirt and sliding over his ribs, and he was thinking how much he needed her and wondering how to get them down on the quilt and out of their clothes with only one working hand, and the next she pulled free, backed off, and drew a deep, deep breath. She was staring at him wide-eyed again, and this time he stared back. Her hair was mussed, her lips kissed free of the coral-tinted lipstick she favored, her eyes hazy and confused … and heavy with arousal.
For the first time since he’d met her, her movements were lacking grace as she finger-combed her hair, then moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. The desire to lean forward and say, Let me do that, was strong, but he restrained it.
The ice maiden, the woman at the Starlite had called her last weekend. There was no denying that she was cool on the outside, but he had to admit he was a little surprised by the heat on the inside.
“I—I— What was that?” Her trembling hand gestured in the heavy warm air between them, and her voice wasn’t much steadier.
Neither was his. “Damned if I know,” he said on a ragged breath. He’d intended it to be a kiss. Just a kiss. Not a prelude to anything. Not a release of passion. Just an intimate kiss of the kind he’d given countless women before walking away from them.
But it had been more, and had held the promise of so much more. And it had convinced him of one fact. No matter how much experience he had at leaving, it was going to be damned hard to walk away from Lynda.
After the soccer game on Saturday afternoon, Alanna’s team met at Harry’s for their usual sundaes-and-milkshakes celebration. They’d won their game, though in Bethlehem, that didn’t matter as much as it did other places. Win or lose, everyone got treated pretty much the same … but she liked winning, a lot.
She was sitting on a stool at the counter with a chocolate malt in front of her and Susan and their friend Mai on one side. The stool on her other side was empty, and she intended to keep it that way until the Graysons got there.
“Hey, Lannie.” Susan leaned over to whisper. “There’s that friend of Grandpa Bud’s, remember? The one we met at the band concert.”
Alanna had just seen Dr. J.D.’s truck park across the street and was trying to tell which of the kids had come with him when Susan nudged her. Annoyed, she turned to look and saw the man from Georgia sitting by himself in the nearest booth, eating a piece of pie and reading the newspaper. “Yeah, that’s him,” she said, then immediately looked outside again.
“Caleb and Trey are coming with their mom,” Susan said smugly. “I saw ’em get in the car with her. And before they come here, they gotta drop off Gracie for Shania Russell’s birthday party.”
Alanna gave her a dirty look, then glanced back at the guy in the booth. “What’s the big deal about him?”
“Susan thinks he’s cute,” Mai said with a grin, then ignored the poke in her ribs.
Alanna looked at him once more. “He’s old.”
Mai answered again. “She likes older guys. That’s why she follows Trey Grayson around like a puppy.”
Susan’s face got all red, and she gave Mai a shove that pushed her off the stool. “Would you shut up? I’m never telling you any secrets again!”
“Oh, like anyone in here doesn’t already know you have a crush on Trey. Let’s see.” Mai climbed onto the stool on her knees and clapped her hands. “Hey, everybody—”
Susan clamped both hands over Mai’s mouth and shook her hard while whispering angrily in her ear. Probably threatening to tell everyone about Mai’s crush on Kenny Howard. Kenny’s father was the pastor of their church, and Alanna had heard Aunt Emilie say he sure proved true that old saying about preachers’ kids. He’d given Josie a black eye once, and she was younger and lots littler and a girl besides. And last summer he and his friends had ganged up on Caleb and beat him up. Miss Corinna said Kenny was a bully and a troublemaker, and no one liked him except his troublemaker friends. And Mai.
But even if Susan did tell, it wouldn’t matter. There were so many people in the café that no one had even heard Mai clap her hands for attention except the man from Georgia, who’d looked up from his paper and was watching them with a smile.
He was cute, Alanna admitted, for someone his age. But he must be at least thirty, and while liking Trey was okay—he was only a few years older than them—liking someone who was thirty … She would have to be at least twenty-eight before she could even think about it, and she was only twelve now. That was forever away.
“What happened to your arm?” she asked while Susan and Mai continued to whisper. Most people probably thought they were telling secrets, but she’d seen Susan pull Mai’s hair, and Mai had pinched her back.
He glanced at the splint as if he’d forgotten all about it. “Fell off a roof and sprained my wrist.”
“What were you doing on the roof?”
“Working. I’m doing some repairs at Lynda Barone’s house.”
“I know her. Well, I’ve met her, but I don’t know her. Kinda like you. You talk just like my Aunt Emilie did when she came to live with us in Boston.” It had been more than four years ago, but she could still remember how much she’d loved the sound of Emilie’s voice, soft and sweet and never angry. Sometimes she’d told them stories until they fell asleep, and Alanna had known that as long as they had Emilie, everything was going to be okay.
“Aunt Emilie from Atlanta?”
“Yeah. How did you— Oh, yeah, Josie. That’s my loudmouth sister. She’s got a splint just like that. She’s around here …” Alanna glanced around, then rolled her eyes. “She’s gone to Shania’s birthday party, too.”
Finally knocking it off, Susan and Mai straightened up and Susan jumped into the conversation. “Hey, I saw you at the game last week with a blonde girl. Is that your wife?”
“Or your daughter?” Mai added with a giggle and an elbow poke for Susan.
“She’s a friend.”
“Are you married?” Mai asked.
“No.”
“Hear that, Susan?”
Alanna gave them both the sort of look their teachers got when they were too giggly, then slid to the floor and walked over to his booth. “Aunt Emilie says one girl’s fine, two’s okay, but three or more, and they get silly. I don’t remember your name.”
“Ben.”
“Did you come here just to work on that lady’s house?”
He shook his head, but didn’t say why he did come. She was used to grown-ups not telling her things because she was a kid, but she was more grown up than they thought. She’d practically raised Josie and Brendan until Emilie moved in with them, and she’d just been a little kid herself. Like Caleb. When his father died, he’d taken care of his two brothers and Gracie for weeks until they’d gone to live with Dr. J.D.
“Why did you come here?” Ben asked.
“We were on our way to Georgia, but we had car trouble here, and we stayed.” She shrugged. “Is Atlanta nice?”
“If you like big, crowded cities.”
She shook her head. “Boston was big and crowded. When we needed help there, the welfare people tried to take us away from Aunt Emilie. When we came to Bethlehem, they were a lot nicer. Everyone wanted to be friends with us and to help.” She shook her head once more. “I’m never living in a big city—”
“Lannie!” Susan whispered, wildly waving her back to the counter.
Alanna looked at her, then at the door, where Kelsey Grayson had just walked in. Behind her were Caleb and Trey. “I’ve gotta go. See ya.”
Ben’s breathing was irregular, and his stomach was unsettled from the odd sensations rippling through him. Curiously empty, overwhelmed, stunned … he felt all that and more. Awed, amazed, and regretful.
And afraid. He knew for a fact he’d made the wrong decision when he’d walked away from Berry all those years ago. He just wished he had some way of knowing that he’d made the right one now. Some little sign, some indication that telling Alanna the truth was right for her, that it wouldn’t screw up things worse
than he already had.
It wasn’t so much to ask, was it?
What do you mean, he kissed you? And you’re just getting around to telling me?” Lynda held the phone away from her ear until Melina’s shriek faded away. There was a moment of heavy breathing, then her friend’s carefully controlled voice. “All right, put the phone back to your ear. I’m not going to get hysterical. It’s no big deal. Only the best-looking guy you’ve ever looked twice at kissed you twice three days ago and you’re just now telling me about it! Lyn! Do I keep secrets from you?” “No, you don’t.”
“No, I don’t! If our situations were reversed, I would have said, ‘Hold that thought, darlin’,’ then run in the house and called you immediately. But nooo. Not you. You wait three days, then casually toss it into the conversation. ‘Ben reroofed the roof, and he patched the porch and twisted his wrist, and, oh, yes, he stuck his tongue halfway down my throat.’ Ohhh!”
“It was just …” Lynda ate a bite of ice cream, then licked the spoon. Just a kiss? Oh, yeah, right. If that was just a kiss, then she was an innocent schoolgirl who’d never been kissed. It had curled her toes, kinked her hair, made her see stars, and stirred a fever. She had never believed a kiss was just a kiss, and Ben had proven it Wednesday evening.
“Just what, Lynda?” Melina repeated.
She didn’t have a clue, and so she gave the same response Ben had. “Damned if I know.”
“So … how have things been between you since then?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“You’re kidding. You haven’t called him?”
“He hasn’t called me. Remember, I’m the old-fashioned one. I like for the man to make the moves. You, on the other hand, consider it great restraint to find out the guy’s name before you molest him.”
“But he’s injured, Lyn. You should be taking him food, checking on him—hell, you should have moved him into the guest room. After all, he did get hurt on your property.”
“Apparently, he’s getting around just fine. He picked up his car Thursday.” She had come home from work to an empty driveway and wondered when he’d come, and how, and if he’d deliberately chosen a time when he’d known she wouldn’t be there. Did he regret that he’d kissed her? Did he think she would read more into it than he’d intended? Was he sorry?
Getting Lucky Page 15