“No,” she replied. “I don’t even have a college degree. The only jobs I had before I wrote my first book were scooping ice cream at Baskin-Robbins and mopping floors at the local rest home. That’s how low I was on the economic ladder, bottom rung hanger. I wasn’t even qualified to wipe old people’s butts. Only the nurses and nurses’ assistants were allowed to do that. I was only qualified to clean the floor.”
Sam licked his lips sarcastically. “Hmm, yummy. Do we have to talk about wiping butts while we’re eating?”
Adele laughed. “Sorry.”
“So what gave you the idea of writing an educational book?” he asked. “Wasn’t that a little out of your league?”
“The only reason I finally found the guts to write it is because something dropped me into a situation where I was basically forced to do it. My sister has twins, a boy and a girl, and they both got labeled with learning disabilities at school. But they were fine! They just had a nasty teacher who made them afraid of learning to read. My nephew would vomit every morning before he had to leave for school. That’s how much he hated learning. I wrote the book for them. I remembered what it was like to be a little kid in school, and all the pressure to learn to read and do math. That’s why I wrote the book.”
“That’s a pretty good reason. So what happened?”
“They loved the book and asked me to write more of them,” Adele replied. “I wrote five, and the twins started doing really well in school. They moved on to a different teacher, and their new teacher started telling them they were advanced for their age and giving them all kinds of praise and extra attention. Pretty soon, some of my sister’s friends asked me to do some more work for their kids. It took off from there.”
“And look at you now,” Sam added. “Driving a Mini Cooper and taking men out for dinner.”
Adele chewed her squid and regarded him with a cool eye. “Listen. I want to tell you something. I know you’ll probably say no, but just hear me out. I made myself a promise that when I got rich that I would do everything in my power to make the world a better place and I would never forget what it was like to be poor. I want to do something for you. I want you to let me buy you a new fridge.”
Sam dropped his fork with a clatter. “No way. No way on God’s green earth. We just met, and here you are taking me out for dinner. I’m not letting you buy me a fridge! If I do, the next thing I know you’ll be supporting me. I have to keep my independence.”
“I’m not going to support you,” she replied. “I only want to pay you back for what you said a minute ago about looking into that man’s background. You did me a big favor by saying that, and I have your expertise as a former yen specialist to back it up. Let me do something for you in return. It’s my way of paying it forward.”
“Paying it forward, huh?”
“Do you even understand what that term means?” she asked.
“Of course I do,” he shot back. “I just don’t want you buying me a new fridge. It wouldn’t be right.”
“Why not?” she asked. “Why don’t you let somebody do something nice for you?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I don’t like the idea of introducing money into our relationship.”
“Our relationship!” Adele guffawed. “What relationship is that?”
“I’m just saying... Well, we’ve only just met. Maybe nothing will come of it, or maybe we’ll just be friends. I don’t know, but wherever this winds up, I don’t want money contaminating it in any way.”
“It won’t contaminate it,” she told him. “You’ll have a new fridge. The fridge will be one less thing you’ll have to worry about.”
“No,” he declared. “You’re not buying me a new fridge.”
Adele shrugged. “Okay. Have it your way but you can’t blame a girl for trying.”
Chapter 3
Sam waited outside on the curb while Adele paid the bill. She met him when she came out of the restaurant. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he replied. “Why?”
“Why did you walk off like that?” She asked.
He turned away and looked up at the stars in the sky. “I just did.”
“Does it make you uncomfortable or something,” she asked, “that I paid for the meal?”
He followed her across the parking lot toward her car. “I just wish you wouldn’t keep throwing money in my face.”
“How have I thrown money in your face?” she asked.
“You offered to buy me a new fridge, and you offered to bring me into your contract negotiation as an independent consultant. Every time something comes up between us, you throw your money at it. I don’t like it, and I want you to stop.”
“I don’t think I am,” she told him. “I’m only doing what makes sense to me. I have money and you don’t. Why can’t I use my money to make your life better by buying you a fridge? And I offered you the position as a consultant because I thought you’d make a valuable asset to our team. I did it for purely selfish reasons, I assure you.”
They got in the car and started driving back across town. “Just don’t do it anymore. I don’t like it, and if you don’t stop, I might have to stop seeing you.”
She grinned sidelong at him. “Are you seeing me now?”
“You know what I mean,” he replied. “It’s bad enough not knowing where next month’s rent money is going to come from without you shoving my situation in my face all the time.”
“I’m only trying to help you,” she told him. “I’m trying to give you options and opportunities. It’s my way of giving back.”
“I don’t want options and opportunities,” he grumbled.
“Then you have no one to blame for your own failure but yourself. You won’t take an opportunity when it’s handed to you on a silver platter, and you won’t let anyone do something nice for you. That’s a pretty rotten way to live.”
They pulled up in front of where Sam’s house was, hidden behind the bushes. He opened the door and the interior light came on. They studied each other at close range. “If you think the way I live is so rotten, maybe we shouldn’t see each other again.”
“I don’t know how you live,” she replied. “I don’t know anything about you, except what you tell me.”
He nodded toward where his door lay. “You could find out. Do you still want to come in and see my work?”
Adele took her keys out of the ignition. “Sure.”
He led her up a flagstone path and then cut through a hole in a hedge. He turned a corner, and Adele found herself in a garden she couldn’t see from the street. No one would have known it existed. A quaint cottage adorned with fuchsia bushes sat on the other side of the garden. Mellow lamplight streamed through the windows and reflected off a koi pond in front of the veranda.
Adele caught her breath at the sight, and the delicious perfume of antique roses filled her senses. “This isn’t your house, is it?”
Sam watched her reaction. “Not what you expected is it?”
Adele stared in every direction at the garden. Every corner contained some magical wonder to delight her sight, touch and smell. “I should have expected something like this. I should have known an artist would live some place like this!”
He took her hand and tugged her toward the veranda. “Come inside.”
They mounted the steps, and Sam pushed the door open. The cottage consisted of one massive room covered on all four walls with painted canvases and shelves of paint, glass jars, studded with brushes, and collections of objects arranged as still lives in a jumbling stream of creative expression.
A giant cast-iron wood-burning stove stood on one side of the room, and an empty easel stood on the other. Three doors on the far side of the room communicated with the other end of the house. A dogtrot hallway ran down the near end, with a wooden countertop, a gas cooking range, and shelves of foodstuffs making up the kitchen.
Adele stopped and stared at the scene. “It looks like something out of provincial France. It looks like something out of th
e life of Van Gogh.”
Sam laughed.
Adele nodded toward the doors. “What’s on the other side?”
“Nothing special,” he told her. “One is my bedroom. One is packed to the ceiling with boxes, and the other is the bathroom.”
“I guess you keep the TV in your bedroom,” she remarked.
“I don’t have one,” he told her.
Adele’s head spun around. “You don’t have one? How do you catch up with the news? Internet, I suppose.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t have a computer, either. And I don’t catch up with the news. I haven’t heard or seen it since I moved here from Manhattan.”
Her mouth fell open. “Why not? Don’t you want to know what’s going on in the world?”
“I know what’s going on in the world,” he told her. “I’m probably one of the few people who does know what’s going on in the world, and I don’t know it from watching the news or checking the internet.”
“But how.....?” She broke off.
Sam waved her questions away. “I know all I need to know about that. Why don’t you sit down? I’m afraid I don’t have anything to drink. I could offer you a chocolate chip cookie if you like?” He headed toward the kitchen.
Adele glanced around the room, but she didn’t see any chairs or anywhere else to sit. “All right. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”
He rummaged in the kitchen. He couldn’t be getting the cookies out of the fridge. He came back with an old battered metal tin and held it out to her. She took an offering and wandered over to one of the canvases hanging on the wall.
“I like your work,” she told him. “It’s very raw and emotional, isn’t it? It looks like you’re bleeding onto the canvas.”
Sam made a face. “Is that what it looks like? Maybe that explains why no one ever buys anything.”
“What do other people say about them?” She asked.
He considered her question. “No one says anything. You’re the first person who’s commented on them.”
“How is that possible?” she asked. “You said you’d done five local shows and the big exhibition in Seattle. Don’t tell me no one has come up to you and told you what they think.”
“Actually,” he admitted, “no one ever has.”
“Didn’t anyone review your Seattle show in the newspaper?” she asked.
Sam shook his head. “I never thought about that before. I suppose no review is worse than a bad review. No one telling me what they think tells me everything I need to know about what they think.”
Adele reddened and meandered to the next canvas. “Well, I like them. I’m the first person telling you what I think, and I think they’re very powerful and expressive. If I wasn’t worried about hurting your feelings, I would buy one.”
He kicked at an invisible speck of dust on the floor and munched his cookie. “You wouldn’t hurt my feelings.”
“But you wouldn’t let me buy you a fridge,” she pointed out.
“I wouldn’t want you to buy one of my paintings to help me out financially,” he explained. “If you wanted one for artistic reasons that would be different.”
Adele shook her head. “You’re a tough nut to crack, aren’t you?”
“Spare my pride, will ya? I’ve got enough to worry about without you trying to be nice.”
She moved on. “Which of these are you showing at the coffee shop?”
“That one over there.” He pointed across the room. “This one here and three others that aren’t in this room.”
“Can I see them, too?” she asked. “I’d like to get an idea what the show will be like.”
“I can’t show them to you because they aren’t finished,” he told her. “You can get an idea what the exhibit will be like when you see it next week.”
“And will the pieces in the coffee shop be for sale?” she asked.
“Of course,” he replied. “That’s the whole point of doing an exhibit.”
She nodded and looked around again. What was she going to say now? “Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”
He shouted over his shoulder on his way to put the cookie tin away in the kitchen. “Help yourself.”
She opened the door at the very end and found herself looking into his bedroom. A plain white futon on a low, wooden frame almost occupied the entire room. Three striped cushions rested at the head of the bed. A crisp white comforter spread across the bed lay bright in the moonlight coming through the window.
So this was where he slept. What did he dream about in that bed? Did he have a woman in his past? Maybe she betrayed him with someone higher --or lower-- on the social ladder, and that’s why he hated the business world so much. Maybe he still dreamed about her. Maybe he had a girlfriend, and that’s why he didn’t want Adele doing anything nice for him. Maybe he was worried about his girlfriend finding out and thinking something was going on when it wasn’t.
More doors—closets, maybe—covered the far wall. She would give anything to sneak a peek into those closets. You could tell everything you wanted to know about a man by looking at his clothes. She could judge a man’s character by the smell and feel of his shirts. His past, present, and future clung to the beaten fabric.
A board in the floor creaked behind her, and she jumped near three feet into the air. She spun round, and Sam stood right behind her. “The bathroom’s over there.”
Her neck and cheeks burned. If only she could look away to hide her embarrassment, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his face. “I know.”
“Then what are you doing here?” he asked. “This is my bedroom.”
“I know,” she replied. “I just wanted to see.”
“All you had to do was ask,” he told her.
She floundered in confusion. Where was she supposed to look? What was she supposed to say? She opened her mouth, but no words came out. What was going to happen now?
He stared into her eyes, right down into the bottom of her soul. The lamplight from the main room behind him cast his silhouette into black relief so she couldn’t see his features. Only his blue eyes flashed in the flood of moonlight pouring through the windows.
When he spoke, his voice sparked and boomed in her ears. He spoke every word with deliberate slowness. He knew exactly what he was asking. “Would you like to come inside?”
Her neck ached when she nodded. What was she doing? She only met him this afternoon, and now he was leading her by the hand into his bedroom and shutting the door behind her. Her body raged in excitement and anticipation. Did she really want to do this? Did she really want to do what?
But she didn’t have to ask that question. They were only going to do one thing in that room. He stopped in front of her, next to the low swung bed. There wasn’t anywhere else to stand. The bed took up all the space in the room, except for a foot of space on each side of the bed. The futon only came as high as her ankles. You’d break your neck falling onto that bed.
Adele swallowed hard. She had to get her voice working again before... whatever it was happened. “Sam...”
“Don’t talk,” he snapped.
Silence fell. He loomed over her in the darkness, and his black bulk blocked the window. She couldn’t see his eyes anymore, now that he stood with his back to the light. When would he touch her? Would he touch her? Was he having second thoughts? Maybe he didn’t even like her or find her attractive at all. Maybe he only wanted to stick it to her and send her packing. Maybe he only wanted to show himself and her that he didn’t need her highfalutin generosity or her goddamn fancy dinners.
Adele’s heart raced, and her breath grated through her mouth. She had to get control of herself. Did she want him touching her? Did she really want to do this with a total stranger? Then a long-forgotten voice, the voice of her body, rose up from the depths of her being. It screamed in her ears. Yes! She wanted to do this. She wanted him to touch her and possess her, for her chasm to open to him. Her knees knocked together in a terrible mix of p
assion and anxiety at the thought of what was about to happen.
Ever so slowly, he lifted his hands and placed them on her shoulders. They fell on her with monolithic weight. Adele summoned all her will not to crumble under the weight of those hands. He moved closer to her, and the heat of his presence seared her to the bone. His breath blew across her face and she smelled the chocolate on his lips. Her mouth watered for the taste of him.
But the chocolate only barely disguised another smell that intoxicated her even more. An earthy smell of rich soil, of oil paint, all mingled with the spicy aroma of his sweat. Adele’s head swam with the overpowering elixir of a man. How long had it been since she let a man cross her boundaries and occupy the same space with her? She couldn’t even remember.
Now here he was. He crossed that boundary without even asking her permission. He stood so close she smelled his breath and the heat coming off his skin drove all the cold from her limbs. She didn’t even realize how stiff and cold she’d grown in her drive to make her company profitable and successful. She’d let her own womanhood fall by the wayside.
Now here he was, calling her back. Was she ready to let her armor fall? But she didn’t have time to think about it. He ran his hands down her shoulders to the lapels of her jacket and pushed it back. It slipped off her shoulders and slid to the floor. The first layer of her protective shield fell with it, and a lightning bolt of thrilling excitement shot through her. Let him come and take her. Let him strip her of her hard-shell and her expensive propriety. Let him reduce her to the sweaty, smell soaked woman that she was. Let her smell and sweat mix with his until they both dissolved in a pool of flesh.
He took a step to one side, and the light from the window fell on her face. He could see her face while she couldn’t see his. What was he seeing? Did he see her craven desire? Did he see written plain as day on her face that she wanted to bow down and worship him? Did he see that she wanted him to own her, body and soul, at least for one night or maybe just for even one hour, a second?
Whatever he saw, he didn’t hesitate. He stepped the rest of the way up to her and closed the gap between them. He almost knocked her off her feet, but at the last second, he caught her around the waist and lifted her off the floor.
Hang Em' Up: A Bad Boy Sports Pregnancy Romance Page 48