The Misconception

by Gardner, Darlene

  But now, after so many months of missing him, of craving him, she wasn’t sure what she would do if he wanted her back. She knew the precise moment Luanne finished washing his hair, but she didn’t trust herself to watch him walk across the room toward her. She knew, even without looking, he’d be the first customer she thought looked sexy in wet hair and a maroon cape. Then he sat down, and she couldn’t avoid looking at him any longer.

  “What do you want done today?” She tried the breezy tone she used with all her customers, but her voice cracked, ruining the effect.

  His dark, dark eyes met hers in the mirror, and she remembered the first time she’d seen him. She’d been sitting alone at a table in a sundae shop, reveling in the taste of chocolate fudge, when she spotted him staring at her from across the room. He hadn’t released her gaze, just picked up his own sundae, walked deliberately to her booth and sat down across from her.

  “You know what I want,” he said now.

  Her breath hitched. She was right. He wanted her back. Because it had been easier that way, she’d tried to convince herself that the long months of silence meant he no longer loved her. But he’d simply been giving her time to forgive him. Could she? Would she?

  “You’ve cut my hair enough times,” he added.

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell me you forgot. Short on the sides, longer in the back. I’m not like you, Trace. I don’t change hairstyles month to month.” He paused, pinned her with those eyes. “Is something wrong?”

  “Of course not. Nothing’s wrong. What could be wrong?” Mortification spread through Tracy as she picked up a pair of scissors. He wanted a haircut. Just a haircut. He didn’t want her, after all. She forced herself to be professional, but touching the wet warmth of his scalp was sweet torture. His hair was so silky that running her fingers through it had been another one of the sensual pleasures of living with him. She snipped, because it was expected of her, but wasn’t sure whether she’d made the cut in the right place.

  “So, how’ve you been?” he asked.

  How had she been? Desperately trying to convince herself she wasn’t miserable without him.

  “Great,” she said brightly, snipping again and again. “Just great. And yourself?”

  “A little lonely, but getting by.”

  “Lonely? You?” Snip, snip. “I find that hard to believe.”

  “You always did have trouble believing in me.” Before she could argue, pointing out it was difficult to believe in your husband when he was making out with a stacked blonde who looked like a Barbie doll, he continued. “But you’ve made it clear you don’t want to talk about that. So let’s talk about you instead. There must be something new in your life in the past eight months.”

  “Nine.” She lifted a hank of his hair and snipped it off. “It’s been nine months.”

  He smiled, and his eyes crinkled at the corners in that way that never failed to charm her. “It’s been nine months since we separated but eight months since I’ve seen you. Anything new since then?”

  Was he asking if she had a new boyfriend? Is that what he wanted to know? “Like what?”

  “Like your acting. Are you doing any community theater?”

  She could answer that. “There’s a new company in Arlington called the Put Up With Us Players. We’re doing an experimental play that opens in a couple of months.”

  He nodded, as though filing away the information. “You’ll have to let me know when. I’ll check it out.”

  “You might not want to.” She panicked at the thought of him in the audience watching her, the way he was watching her in the mirror. “It’s a little weird.”

  “I can handle weird.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “Anything else new?”

  “I’m taking some college courses at Kennedy toward a degree in anthropology,” she said, just for something to say.

  “You are? Why?”

  “Do you think I want to be a hairdresser all my life?” she asked, repeating the question Marietta often asked her.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding.

  She cut off a piece too close to his scalp. “Don’t move your head,” she warned.

  “Yes,” he repeated. “You love being a hairdresser. There’s nothing wrong with being a hairdresser.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with having goals in life, either.” That was another thing Marietta often told her.

  “Then open your own shop. Forgive me for being blunt, Trace, but this anthropology thing sounds more like Marietta than you. You shouldn’t let her talk you into something you don’t want to do.”

  “I don’t let her talk me into things,” she snapped, snipping.

  “Yeah, you do. I know she loves you, but she has a weird way of looking at the world. You should take that into account when she’s giving you advice. Especially when it’s about relationships.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means men aren’t animals. Just because monkeys are indiscriminate about who they mate with doesn’t mean men are. If your sister would give some man a chance, she might find that out.”

  Even though his observations about Marietta held a grain of truth, Tracy felt herself get defensive. “You’re wrong about Mari. For your information, she’s pregnant.”

  His jaw dropped. “By a man?”

  “Of course, by a man.” She paused. Marietta wouldn’t want her to repeat this, but she had a point to make. “He asked her to marry him.”

  “You’re kidding? Who would have called it? I’m surprised she even gave the guy a chance. Let me guess. He’s a professor, right? Somebody with ideas as wacky as hers.”

  Tracy shook her head. “He’s definitely not a professor.”

  “So what’s he do for a living? Is he a chemist? Mathematician? What?”

  Tracy frowned, because she hadn’t thought to ask, but Jax had been beautifully dressed in clothes only a prosperous man could afford. “I think he’s some kind of businessman. Whatever he does, I’m sure it’s respectable.”

  “It better be,” Ryan said, smiling at her and making her heart swoon, “or Marietta won’t let him stick around.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while, and Tracy tried to concentrate on his haircut. Instead, she reveled in the sensations of touching him again. Even in the midst of winter, she’d always gotten a warm sensation when she stood next to him, and she had it now. But, when she brushed the satin skin at his nape with the backs of her fingers, she was the one who shivered.

  “You still like the Black Eyed Peas, don’t you?” he asked.

  She nodded, wondering what he was getting at. He kept watching her in the mirror, which made Tracy nervous but which was preferable to Ryan watching himself. Without a doubt, she was giving him the worst haircut of all time. “They’re playing at the Verizon Center next weekend.”

  “I know.” Disappointment shot through Tracy. Now that she was ready to hear him apologize for being with that woman, he didn’t seem inclined to talk about the incident. “I tried to get tickets, but they’ve been sold out for months.”

  “I mentioned it, because I have an extra ticket. I thought you might want it.”

  She was dragging a comb through his hair, intending to trim his ends. Instead, her scissors closed near his scalp. “Are you asking me out?”

  He laughed. “Of course not. You’ve made it clear you want this divorce, so I’m not going to stand in your way. I just don’t see any reason we still can’t be friends. Remember, Tracy, we were always friends, too.”

  “I remember,” she said softly as her mind dwelled on what he hadn’t said. They’d been lovers, too. Insatiable lovers.

  “Remember Steve and Sue? They’re going. So are George, Jenny and Anna. I bought the last ticket for another friend, but she can’t go. It’s yours if you want it. No strings attached. You don’t even have to sit beside me.”

  No, she thought darkly. Anna, who’d always had her eye on him, would probably do that. She should refuse. I
f she didn’t, she wouldn’t hear the end of it from Marietta. Then again, she didn’t have to tell Marietta. And what would it hurt to be at the same concert with Ryan, especially when it featured music from her favorite band?

  Plenty, she thought.

  He reached into his back pocket, withdrew a wallet, extracted a ticket and held it up. “You don’t even have to drive there with me, if that’s what you’re worried about. Just meet us.”

  She hesitated, gazing at the ticket of temptation. Too weak to resist, she took it from his fingers and laid it on her counter.

  “I’ll think about it,” she said.

  Chapter 10

  Old Town Alexandria was only five miles from the urban bustle of Washington D.C., but it had the feel of a quaint eighteenth-century village plunked down in the middle of suburbia.

  Gas-powered streetlights illuminated the main streets of town, which were lined with antique stores, specialty shops and restaurants. Bradford pears, resplendent in their shiny white blooms, sprang from tree boxes cut into the herringbone brick sidewalks.

  As Jax turned away from the commercial area and navigated a cobblestone street that was easy on the eyes but hell on his rental car’s shock observers, he almost expected George Washington to step out of one of the well-preserved residences.

  Jax figured the nation’s first president had popped into his mind for a reason. Good old George wouldn’t have let a simple “no” stop him from getting what he wanted. If Martha had refused to marry him, George probably would have called in the Continental Army to persuade her to change her mind.

  Jax would take his inspiration from George. He was going to stick by the vow he’d made after he found out that the steamiest sex of his life was going to produce a baby. Marietta would marry him before he became a father.

  A father! He could barely believe it was going to happen. Not that he didn’t want a baby. Hell, he’d always wanted that.

  It just hadn’t been on his agenda this soon. He’d kept his eyes and his heart open, waiting for that bowl-you-over kind of love that would deliver him a mother for his unborn children, but so far he was still standing.

  He’d wanted to make love to Marietta on the spot, despite her snowy complexion and frightfully bad fashion sense, but he certainly wasn’t in love with her.

  What man could love a woman who schemed to gain access to grade-A sperm but didn’t have enough sense to realize her baby deserved access to both a mother and father?

  Jax had that truth drilled into him every time he saw a father playing catch with his son or lifting his daughter onto a swing. His child wouldn’t look into a mirror, as Jax had, and wonder if he resembled a father he’d never seen. Jax would be there from his child’s first step and beyond, from infancy to adulthood.

  Marietta would just have to get used to that. She’d invited him into her bed, and now they both were going to have to lie in it. Which, come to think of it, might be a perk to the whole impossible situation.

  Jax found her townhouse with little trouble. Located down a narrow side street within walking distance of the heart of town, it oozed charm. The snowy blooms of dogwood trees fluttered in the April breeze, providing an added dimension to the string of single-row houses that graced the block.

  Designed in the colonial style with brick facades and elegant wrought-iron railings, the two-story townhouses were no wider than a single room. Marietta’s boasted a sextet of street-view windows lined by dark-green shutters and a triangular pediment positioned above a door of the same color. Yew bushes and ivy provided a rich green blanket for the azaleas that splashed the front of the residence with color.

  A “For Sale” sign on the townhouse next to Marietta’s drew his attention. Jax thought of his antiseptic apartment in downtown Chicago, which had as its main feature a dearth of charm, and let himself covet the place for a moment. Then he took the brick stairs two at a time, lifted the brass door knocker and let it fall. It was nearly half-past six and the porch light was on, so it was a safe bet that Marietta was home.

  Whether or not she’d open the door was another matter. But he hadn’t come all this way to be turned away. He jammed his thumb over the peep hole and waited. The door opened a crack.

  “Who is it?” Marietta asked in her unmistakable high-brow way.

  He stuck the bag of food in her face, obstructing her view of him. “Delivery.”

  “But I didn’t order anything.” The door opened wider, and he got a good look at her. She’d changed from the ugly sack cloth she’d worn to work to comfort clothes. She’d topped a pair of baggy sweat pants with a “Kennedy College Biology” sweatshirt, and her hair was pulled back in a sloppy pony tail from a face scrubbed clean of makeup. Her glasses were brown and oversized, the kind that had gone out of fashion years ago.

  “Oh,” she said, a frown on her luscious mouth, “it’s you.”

  “I brought dinner.” He held up the bag of food. “If you invite me in, I’ll share. Then we can talk.”

  “I’ve already told you we have nothing to talk about,” she said, then sniffed. Her nose wrinkled, and her lips curled. “What do you have in that bag? Isn’t dinner supposed to smell good? Is that. . .” She sniffed again. “. . . soy sauce?”

  Actually, it was bean curds, soy pasta and wheat germ. It had taken all his willpower to bypass the amazing array of restaurants the city offered in favor of a health-food store whose owner had insisted that pregnant women needed to eat protein-rich foods, but Jax had done it.

  He’d even ordered double portions, figuring it was only fair if he choked down some of the food with her.

  “Dinner’s a surprise.” He refrained from adding it wasn’t a particularly good one. “You only get to look in the bag after you let me in.”

  “Go away.”

  She tried to shut the door in his face, but he put out a hand and forcibly kept it open. “Not until we talk.”

  “We have nothing to talk about.”

  “C’mon, Marietta. How are we going to make our marriage work if we don’t talk to each other? Haven’t you ever heard how important communication is in a marriage?”

  Her jaw hardened, and her eyes narrowed. “I am not going to marry you.”

  Oh, yes, Jax thought, you are. Saying so aloud, however, didn’t seem like a good idea at the moment. Not with her peering at him through her ugly glasses and compelling, multi-colored eyes as though she wanted to rake her nails down his face.

  “If you didn’t want to marry me,” he said, “you shouldn’t have lured me into your bed and gotten pregnant.”

  “I did not lure you into my bed!” She swung the door all the way open and put her hands on her hips. Color crept up her neck and onto her cheeks. “Even if I did, I don’t remember you protesting. Besides, I had a perfectly legitimate reason for doing what I did. What’s yours?”

  “Lust.”

  His eyes never left hers as he uttered the admission, and the word did a sultry dance over Marietta’s skin, raising the tiny hairs on her arms and legs. Biology, which by all rights should have been her ally, kept acting against her. Apparently, it had also acted against him. She waved a hand in the air.

  “Fortunately, that shouldn’t be a problem much longer,” she stated.

  “What shouldn’t be a problem much longer?”

  “Your lust. It will fade. That is, if you still feel it.”

  “Oh, I still feel it.” His throaty admission triggered reciprocal lust in Marietta, which flowed through her veins like a warm river. Damn the man for being such a specimen of evolutionary perfection. He smiled a lady-killer smile and leaned one broad shoulder against the side of the door, his eyes full of skepticism. “Mind telling me what’s going to make it fade?”

  “Pregnancy.” She cleared her throat. “It’s thickening my waist. Studies have shown men are most attracted to females with waists two-thirds the size of their hips. Soon, my numbers will be way out of whack.”

  His eyebrows rose, and his smile got deeper. “Yo
u’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I am. Biology is a science, and you can’t argue scientific fact.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, honey, but I must be the exception to the rule.” His eyes deliberately ran down her body, making the river of lust flow faster. “I wanted you even before I saw your waist and hips. Those sacks you wear aren’t exactly form-fitting.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. Not all females catered to the notoriously roving eyes of the male species by putting their bodies on display. She was about to tell him so when he slipped past her into the house, looking around with obvious interest.

  “I don’t remember inviting you in,” Marietta said.

  “You would have eventually.” He pulled the door closed, shutting her inside with him, making her even more aware of his masculinity.

  His shirt was charcoal-colored, his suit a lighter shade of gray that complemented his tawny skin tones and hung on him like it was custom-made. Of course, it was. Nobody made off-the-rack clothes for Greek gods.

  He was so tall and powerful that her knees went a little weak. Fighting the evolutionary instinct to feel protected in the presence of a man of such great height wasn’t easy when you were barefoot. To counteract his biologically unfair advantage, she yanked open the closet door where she and Tracy kept their shoes. Over her floppy white socks, she slipped into a trendy black pair with chunky high heels that belonged to Tracy.

  Jax still towered over her, although by about four fewer inches, which wasn’t ideal, but better than before. He cut his eyes at Tracy’s shoes, shrugged and continued surveying her home. She followed his gaze as it ran over her gleaming hardwood floors, decorative fireplace and Federal Period reproduction furniture.

  “This is a lot bigger than it looks from outside,” he said.

  “That’s the way it’s designed,” she said, frustrated that he hadn’t complimented the home she so loved. “The rooms are situated north-south instead of east-west. It’s a form of architecture that was used in the British colonies.”

  He nodded.

  “Well?” she asked.