The Misconception

by Gardner, Darlene

  “The same way you saw me with a woman when you came into the bar? Tell me something, Marietta. If you’d walked away instead of overhearing our conversation, would you have believed I was cheating on you?”

  Yes. The answer made her pause, made her wonder if what she and Tracy had seen that day had been what it appeared, or if Ryan, too, had been innocent. But Jax, she reminded herself, wasn’t innocent. No matter what he claimed, he’d known she was behind him. He must have. Men didn’t turn away beautiful women without a good reason.

  “Stay out of this, Marietta.” He took a step closer to her, reminding her of a dangerous, primal cat. She wouldn’t have been surprised had he growled.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Stay out of it. I know you love Tracy, but this isn’t the way to help her. I don’t see any good coming of that.”

  As much as she didn’t want to listen to him, what he said made sense. Tracy would be furious at her for interfering. Maybe, by trying to pull her sister away from Ryan, she’d be pushing them closer. She swallowed, feeling her pride sliding down her esophagus.

  “What exactly do you propose?” she asked with as much dignity as she could muster.

  “I propose that you get out of here before Tracy sees you. Give me a minute. I’ll get her the drink and let her know I’m leaving. Then I’ll drive you home.”

  “Why should I let you drive me home?” Marietta asked. “Especially considering you’ve been drinking for the past hour?”

  “All I’ve been drinking is ginger ale,” he said. “I’m giving up alcohol for the next six months or so.”

  The time frame resonated with Marietta. “Why would you do that?”

  “You can’t drink until after the baby was born, so why should I?” He touched her face. “A Maserati is a darn sight more comfortable to a pregnant woman than a taxi. What do you say to that ride?”

  She stared at him, dazed by the realization that he’d given up alcohol. There had to be an explanation, such as that he was one of those rare men who didn’t like alcohol. That had to be it.

  “Well?” He arched an eyebrow and reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind one of her ears.

  Since he was traveling in the same direction as she was, refusing him would be churlish. That, and not the little shivers that danced on her skin where his fingers brushed, was the only reason she was going to accept his offer.

  “I’ll wait for you by the door,” she said in a low voice.

  His expression softened and a corner of his mouth lifted, throwing his symmetry off kilter but still making him look so darn tempting that she wondered if, by doing right by Tracy, she was doing wrong by herself.

  Chapter 15

  As he’d proven many times in the wrestling ring, Jax was a cooperative kind of guy.

  When he performed a leg drop, instead of crushing his prone opponent’s windpipe, he landed on his butt so his leg didn’t touch the other guy’s neck.

  When he walloped another wrestler with a folding chair, he made sure to hit him across the beefiest part of the back, where it hurt the least.

  He never, ever drove his opponent’s head into the mat when he had him in a bulldog headlock. He just made sure it looked that way.

  His cooperative skills had never been put more to the test than after he discovered that, through no design of his own, Marietta was pregnant.

  He could have kept on ranting and raving at her for duping him, but he hadn’t. He’d tried instead to comprehend her incomprehensible conception scheme. When that failed, he put the past behind him and focused on the best interests of their unborn baby. The truce, the marriage proposal, the move next door: They’d all been in the interest of cooperation.

  He’d gone so far above and beyond the call of cooperation, it was scary. And now he’d moved into the realm of involvement, which is what he’d been engaging in when he’d sagely advised Marietta to leave Tracy alone. By doing so, he’d probably saved her relationship with her sister.

  That’s why it irked the hell out of him that Marietta didn’t seem to know the meaning of the word cooperation. She’d fought him at every juncture and now. . . now she’d gone as silent as a mime.

  Fourteen minutes into the fifteen-minute drive from Paddy’s Pub to their side-by-side townhouses, anybody would have thought she’d lost the ability to speak.

  He’d tried everything to get her to open up, including jokes about Captain Hook having trouble telling time because his second hand kept falling off and nobody being sure which position the Invisible Man played on the football team. In response, he’d gotten nothing. Not a laugh. Not a chuckle. Not even a request to shut up.

  By the time he pulled his Maserati curbside behind Tracy’s car in front of their townhouses, he was considering getting his crowbar out of his toolbox to pry open her teeth. Then the Red Sea of her mouth parted, and she spoke.

  “Why didn’t you tell me at the bar that Tracy didn’t drive to Paddy’s Pub?” Marietta asked.

  Since Marietta’s mind moved in strange ways, Jax was a little freaked out that he immediately grasped the implications of her question. He got out of the car, came around to the passenger’s side and opened the door while he considered how to answer. He could lie or play dumb, but that wasn’t his style. So he told her the truth.

  “Because I thought you might not leave with me if I told you Ryan was going to give her a ride home,” he said.

  His hand was outstretched to help her get out of the low-slung automobile, but she ignored it and got out herself. “Damn it, Jax,” Marietta cried. “How could you do that?”

  “Tracy didn’t seem to mind.”

  “Of course she didn’t! She still thinks she’s in love with him.” Marietta slammed the car door. The harsh sound cut through the still night, echoing her fury. She walked quickly to her door, which was in darkness since she hadn’t left on a porch light.

  Jax stood on the sidewalk, his hands jammed in his pockets, watching Marietta rummage through her purse for her keys. Minutes ago, he’d been thinking about how uncooperative she was. Now he added unreasonable to the equation.

  He shouldn’t attempt to reason with Marietta any more tonight. He should disappear into his own townhouse and shut the door on Marietta’s anger, which was exactly what she deserved.

  He’d no sooner taken a step toward his place when he saw her swipe at something on her face. Oh, hell. It was a tear. His feet changed directions before his mind reconsidered the wisdom of reasoning with the unreasonable.

  She was still rifling through her purse when he reached her, so he put two fingers under her chin and forced her to face him. As he suspected, her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Something wasn’t right here. Marietta’s reaction was much too strong.

  “I don’t know what’s come over me.” She blinked rapidly to keep the tears at bay. “It must be true what they say about pregnant women being overly emotional.”

  “That’s not all of it, Marietta. Something’s wrong. It might help if you told me what it was.”

  “I’m worried about Tracy, that’s what’s wrong.” Her voice had lost all its anger. “She fell for Ryan’s lines once. Chances are she’ll fall for them again.”

  Jax wasn’t fooled into believing there wasn’t more to Marietta’s pain, but worry over her sister certainly seemed to be part of it. He smoothed the hair back from her face, which looked pinched and upset.

  “What if they’re not lines?” he asked softly. “If Ryan did cheat on her, what if he regrets it? What if he truly loves her and wants to make their marriage work?”

  “Oh, please.” She swiped at another escaped tear. “Men like Ryan don’t love. They lust. He’s only lusting after Tracy, because he’s been without her for a while. If he gets her back, it won’t be long before he’s lusting after someone else. It’s a never-ending pattern perpetuated by the male of the species.”

  He stared hard at her until the tough facade she wore like a mask slipped, revealing the vulnerable
woman underneath. Her eyes were dewy with tears, her chin quivering with emotion.

  “Who did this to you?” he asked softly.

  She lowered her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Who hurt you like this that you can’t trust any man?” he asked, willing her to tell him, to let him into her life.

  “Nobody hurt me,” Marietta said so harshly he knew it couldn’t be true. “I don’t trust men, because evolutionary evidence supports the fact that they can’t be trusted.”

  He shook his head, still studying her. He advanced a step, and she retreated, until her back was against the door and only the breeze was between them. “I don’t buy that. Somebody did something to make you this way. Who was it? An ex-husband?”

  “I’ve never been stupid enough to get married.”

  “A fiancé, then?”

  “I’ve never been engaged, either.”

  “Then a boyfriend. Was it a boyfriend?”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about all the men in her life who had disappointed her, starting with the father who wronged her entire family by cheating on her mother. But that would only lend credence to his ridiculous theory that her views had been shaped by personal events instead of biological evidence.

  “Academia,” she said through clenched teeth. “It was academia that caused me to think this way.”

  “Really?” Hardly any space separated them, but he moved forward anyway so that the length of his body was barely touching hers. The night was cool, but she was suddenly so overheated she had an almost irresistible urge to take off her jacket. “What does academia have to do with you and me? With the way we make each other feel?”

  She couldn’t pretend she didn’t understand he was referring to the hot sizzle that connected them like pancakes to a griddle. “We’re both young and healthy,” she whispered. “It’s perfectly natural for us to be sexually attracted to each other.”

  He tangled his hands in her hair, and she couldn’t move, could barely breath. His breath was hot on her face. “A few minutes ago, when you were giving me the silent treatment, I was so irritated I almost stopped the car and told you to get out and walk.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  He cracked a smile. “Hell if I know.”

  “So what’s your point?” she croaked.

  “My point is that you’re making me crazy. If this were only about sexual attraction, don’t you think it would have burned out by now?”

  “Not necessarily.” She forced herself to ignore the delicious shivers dancing over her skin. “Research shows that—”

  “To hell with research,” he interrupted. “I’m not Calvin Coolidge’s rooster.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The rooster,” he answered as he removed the pins from her hair. She was so intent on making sense of his words that she didn’t try to stop him. “The one that wants to copulate with every hen in the henhouse. That’s not me. I only want to copulate with one hen.”

  She bit her lip to stop her mouth from dropping open. “Are you telling me you get turned on by animals?”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners as he gazed down at her. “You’re the hen, Marietta. You’re the one who turns me on. Do you honestly believe I want every woman I meet as much as I want you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He laughed, a low, seductive sound deep in his throat. “If every woman did to me what you do to me, I couldn’t get through the day. I doubt I could even walk.”

  Something shifted inside Marietta and softened. Despite all academic evidence to the contrary, she wanted to believe that only she, and not a hundred other nubile young women, could elicit this response from him. She wanted to believe, which made her traitorous psyche every bit as dangerous as his staggering appeal.

  “Really?” she asked.

  He lowered his head and laughed again, his mouth so close to hers that she felt his breath on her lips, his laugh echoing inside her.

  “Really,” he answered and dipped his mouth farther.

  Even though she’d kissed him before, she still wasn’t prepared for the way he overwhelmed her senses. She saw his eyes darken, felt his mouth soften, tasted a hint of ginger ale on his lips, touched the pliant muscles of his spectacularly developed shoulders and breathed in the clean, male scent of him.

  All the while, she felt as though she were falling into a sensuous abyss from which there was no escape. The kiss went on and on, scrambling her mind, heightening her senses. His hungry hands roamed over her body, caressed her breasts, cupped her bottom. She gasped in protest when he drew back, but he only smiled.

  “I want to come inside, Marietta.” He met and held her eyes. “I want to spend the night in your bed making love to you.”

  Love.

  The single word snapped her out of the trance his kisses had caused. The word was a lie. Jax didn’t want to make love to her. He wanted to have sex with her, which was what Marietta wanted, too. But having sex with him, at this late date, wouldn’t serve any useful purpose. She was already pregnant, so procreation was out. It would only complicate things.

  Somewhere from deep inside herself, she dredged up the will to resist him. “No.”

  “Why not?” His hands dropped from her shoulders, and he looked honestly puzzled. “It’s not like we’ve never done it before.”

  “Just because we did it once—”

  “Five times,” he interrupted. “We did it five times.”

  She started over. “Just because we’ve done it five times doesn’t mean we’re going to do it a sixth.”

  “You can’t tell me you don’t want me.” He put his hand over her heart, and she knew he could feel it beating a rapid tattoo against his palm. “I can feel how much you want me.” His other hand cradled her head, tilting it up for his inspection. “I can even see it. Your pupils are dilated, and your skin is flushed. Didn’t you tell me those were signs of arousal?”

  Marietta licked her lips, which she was sure had reddened in sexual response to him. “I never said I didn’t want you, but wanting you has nothing to do with it.”

  “Of course it does. That’s the best reason to make love.”

  “No. The best reason is to perpetuate the species, and we’ve already done that. I’m already pregnant.”

  Jax cursed and let go of her. “You’re unbelievable, is what you are. Do you mean to tell me you think we can live next door without sleeping together?”

  Her chest felt suspiciously cold. She had the idiotic thought that rebuffing him had robbed her of warmth until she looked down and saw that the buttons of her blouse were agape, letting in the cool breeze. She made a stab at rebuttoning, but her hands trembled so much that she gave up. She squeezed a response through her dry throat. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “This is because you don’t trust me, isn’t it?”

  Marietta didn’t need to consider that one. “Of course I don’t. I’m not foolish enough to believe this moment means anything more to you than it would to an orangutan in heat.”

  He took a step backward, looking as though she’d slapped him. His eyes drew together, his mouth drooped, his face paled. “Is that what you think of me? That I have no more control than an orangutan?”

  His stricken expression cut so deep that Marietta wished she could take the words back, but she didn’t say anything. He stared at her for a moment before turning away. Within seconds, he’d opened the door of his townhouse and disappeared inside.

  Marietta leaned against her door for a long time, staring out into the black night and wondering why the wounded look he’d given her weighed so heavily on her soul. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t come up with an answer.

  TRACY’S FINGERS WERE so used to cutting hair that she didn’t need to have her mind switched on to do it correctly. She simply let her scissors do the thinking, giving them free rein to fly over Ryan’s head with expert snips.

 
The wall clock, which had a face that depicted a summer meadow, showed it was nearly one in the morning, but Tracy didn’t feel tired. She and Ryan had walked the few blocks to the house they’d once shared after the gang had dispersed.

  Ryan would have driven her straight home, but she’d insisted they go inside so she could fix the disastrous haircut she’d given him at the beauty salon.

  Here, in the country kitchen she’d decorated herself with calico curtains, homespun wallpaper and hanging pots and pans in shiny copper, she felt comfortable enough to accomplish anything.

  Nearly ten months after she’d left it, the house still felt like home. Her girlfriends used to tease her after visits, calling her decor Country Bumpkin Casual. They hadn’t understood why somebody as thoroughly modern as Tracy filled her house with everything old-fashioned. Ryan had. He’d known, without her telling him, that the folksy furnishings, so unlike the modern decorations that had filled her parents’ house, spoke to Tracy of comfort and security.

  “There,” she said when she’d taken a final snip. “I’m all through. Turn around so I can see how it looks.”

  Ryan turned. His silky, black hair was more closely cropped than she’d ever seen it, so short on top that some of the pieces didn’t lay flat. For a moment, she felt a pang of remorse, because she’d always thought his longish hair was unbearably sexy.

  She angled her head to one side, then to another and it dawned on her that the hair didn’t matter. It never had. Ryan Caminetti, with his flashing dark eyes and tawny skin, would be unbearably sexy even if he were as bald as a cue ball.

  “Well?” His grin, as drool-inducing as the rest of him, made an appearance. He brought a hand to his hair, touched the short strands. “Feels short. How does it look?”

  “Great. I’ll get you a mirror and you can see for yourself.”

  “I don’t need a mirror,” Ryan said before she could leave the room. “You’ve cut my hair a hundred times, Trace. I’m sure it’s fine. It always is.”

  “That’s not true. I made a mess of it the other day when you came into the shop. I still can’t believe you waited this long to get it fixed.”