by Nancy Warren
He couldn’t stand to see this woman with the sexy legs and quirky attitude stuck with a guy who smelled of formaldehyde. Not to mention that he couldn’t imagine the perversions that might hide within the mind of a person who spent his working life with the deceased.
“Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll be at Ted’s Sports Bar later. If you can drag the stiff over there, I’ll help you get rid of him.”
She gazed at him, her big blue-green eyes full of doubt. “How will you get rid of the stiff? I mean, Harvey.”
His head jerked up and he pushed his glasses higher against the bridge of his nose. “Harvey? Not Harvey Wallenbrau?”
“Yes. Do you know him?”
He snorted. “I went to high school with him. Had a hairstyle right out of the fifties. I swear he used Brylcreem.”
She wrinkled her nose, and under the fluorescent lights he watched her freckles dance across the surface of her skin. “He still does.”
“You can’t go out with him.”
“Apart from being a mortician, is there something wrong with him?”
There was a guy’s code Steve followed religiously. It prohibited the spilling of the beans on certain unsavory activities perpetrated by men on women and it had an eternal statute of limitations. So he couldn’t tell her about the peephole, a small hole drilled between the boys’ shower room and the girls’ shower room during his days at Pasqualie High.
It had been the source of much snickering and jockeying for position after phys ed class, but in truth there wasn’t much to see apart from a lot of steam and the odd flash of skin that could have been anything. Of course, the guys all claimed they saw boobs, but he doubted any of them actually had.
But The Reptile, as Harvey Wallenbrau had been nicknamed because of his lizardlike habit of constantly licking his lips, had had his eye glued to that peephole so much that for Steve the prank had stopped being funny. One day, Steve and his friends had come into the locker room to find the hole in the wall had been refilled and the boys’ gym teacher reading them all the riot act. No one had ever learned how the peephole had been discovered—which was fine by Steve. Once more he felt the urge to protect a nice girl from The Reptile.
“He’s weird,” was as far as he’d go to explain why she shouldn’t go on this date.
“Well, my aunts are friends with his grandmother and she forgot to tell them he’s weird. I can’t get out of the first date. I already said yes. However, I’m determined to stop at that.”
Even one date with Wallenbrau was one too many in Steve’s opinion. “Well, get him to the sports bar. I’ll think of something.”
“How do I get him there? We’re supposed to see a movie.”
“Tell him there are strippers at Ted’s.”
She perked up. “Are there?”
“No. If you want to see strippers you go to—Oh, never mind.”
“I see.” She smiled at him, and an imp of mischief danced in her eyes. “I’ll do my best. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He backed out of the ladies’ room. As a last thought struck him, he stuck his foot against the door to stop it from closing and said to her, “Hey, if you go to the movies, sit up front where there are lots of other people. Don’t let him get you in the back row.”
She turned to the mirror and studied the red mark on her neck.
He narrowed his eyes so she’d know he meant business. “Hey!”
Their gazes met in the mirror. “No more turkey baster. If you need a hickey, I’ll give you one.”
2
STEVE SIPPED HIS BEER slowly and half watched the hockey game on the big-screen TV while keeping an eye on the entrance to Ted’s. He was trying to figure out a smooth way to get the redheaded gal out of The Reptile’s clutches without bloodshed. Not that he’d mind shedding some of Wallenbrau’s blood—if he had any—but Ted, the bar owner, frowned on such things.
In an odd way, he felt responsible for her. He didn’t like to think of an old-fashioned girl like that stuck with The Reptile. She arrived a little after nine. To his surprise, she was alone.
And she didn’t look happy.
He rose from the bar stool and went to her. “Where’s the stiff?”
This time she didn’t correct him. “There was a problem at the funeral home. He had to leave early.”
“That’s great, then. You’re home free.”
She gazed at him as though tragedy had struck. “He wants to reschedule. But I can’t go out with him again. He’s so…” She shuddered delicately.
“Yeah. I know. Come on.” He patted her shoulder. “I’ll buy you a beer.” He wondered why she’d bothered coming if she’d already ditched Harvey, but he imagined, knowing women, that she’d tell him soon enough.
They sat at a quiet table and Steve ordered a couple of pints of draft. He raised his eyebrows at the redhead to be certain she was okay with beer, but she was someplace all her own.
The buxom barmaid stared at his companion, then at him, as though she wanted to take his temperature or something. This gal was not the kind of woman Steve usually spent time with.
She was more of a charity case.
He sipped his beer and watched frustration build on her face until she said, “I hope you don’t mind that I came here anyway. But I need to come up with a reason not to reschedule that date.”
“Explain to me why you can’t turn the creep down.”
“It’s my name,” she said tragically.
Steve wasn’t sure if she was answering his question in some oblique fashion or if she hadn’t heard him at all and just blurted out this odd statement.
“What’s wrong with your name?” He meant, What is it? He didn’t have a clue.
“Harriet?” She stared at him in stunned disbelief. “What’s right about it? It’s ruined my existence.”
“Well, I concede it’s a superdorky name, but can’t you change it?”
“My great-aunts named me. Harriet was my mother’s name.
It struck him that passing on that name was akin to passing on a curse, but even he could see that wouldn’t be a very sensitive remark. He wondered what was wrong with her father to let a poor little baby get stuck with a handle like Harriet.
“Your father…” he said delicately. You never knew about fathers.
She blinked a few times, and he sensed he’d stumbled into the insensitive zone without meaning to. “My aunts told me my father was distraught over my mother’s death. He thought Harriet was a wonderful name.”
Of course he did. He probably bought her those kilts in bulk from Highlanders R Us.
But it turned out he was wrong about the father. Harriet sighed into her beer. “He’s gone, too. I could never change my name.”
“Gone? As in…”
She nodded, seemingly accustomed to her tragic history. “He was a photojournalist. Killed while filming a marathon.” She shook her head. “He was trampled. Killed instantly.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I was four at the time. I barely remember him. I’d always lived with my aunts because he traveled a lot so it wasn’t as traumatic as it might have been.” She sipped her beer, then licked the foam off her upper lip. “That’s why I went into journalism. I want to follow in his footsteps.”
Watching her, he hoped she didn’t follow too closely in her father’s footsteps. She was so different from most of the women he knew, she intrigued him. He was dying to ask why she hid her athletic body under all those prissy clothes, but before he could work out a tactful way to ask—if there was one—she was speaking again.
“Anyway, my aunts would be heartbroken if I tried to change my name.”
He recalled their odd conversation earlier in the bathroom. “Right, right. The aunts.” He drank his own beer, thinking there had to be something she could do about her name. “Don’t you have a nickname?”
“Harry.”
“Hmm. I see your point.” He tossed a couple of pretzels in his mouth and chewed t
houghtfully. “What about your middle name?”
“Adelaide. It shortens to Addy. I’ve tried everything I can think of. H. A. MacPherson sounds like ha, ha. My initials spell ‘ham.’ It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless.”
“Look, I’m not exactly up on female psychology, but having a dorky name is not enough reason to go out with a guy like Wallenbrau. I mean, why stick yourself with a second handicap?”
She slumped forward, forehead in hand, strands of fiery red hair spilling over to trail into her pint. She didn’t seem to notice, and he didn’t want to embarrass her by pointing it out. He heard a couple of guys cheer and figured somebody must have scored in the hockey game. He’d tune into the late sports report on TV when he got home to find out.
“It’s my aunts. They try so hard to get me married and settled down with a good man. And they love me so much I hate to hurt their feelings.”
In his opinion, nobody could confuse The Reptile with a good man. The very idea was an insult to his sex. “Are they senile or something?”
“Of course not.” She picked her head up off her hand and stared at him in surprise.
“No offense, but Harvey Wallenbrau is hardly Pasqualie’s catch of the season.”
“Well, neither am I.” She’d said it so simply—and since she was absolutely right—he was rendered speechless, so he drank some more beer.
Over the rim of his glass he studied her. She wasn’t a woman who’d stand out in a crowd, but he noticed her skin was creamy-fair with a bronze dusting of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. Her hair was red-gold and hung straight. Her eyes were kind of big and blue-green with a disconcerting way of staring at a person. Her lips were shaped nicely but sported neither color nor shine. In fact, in his admittedly inexpert opinion, he’d say she wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup. Maybe she wasn’t a knockout, but she wasn’t a troll either.
Wallenbrau was a troll.
“You can’t go out with him again. That’s all there is to it.”
“You’re right.” She nodded with deliberation, as though she’d come to a decision, picked up her bag and started to rise.
“Where are you going?”
She blushed. “The ladies’ room.”
What was embarrassing about that? Then he eyed her bag and caught on, shaking his head. “Oh, no. Not the turkey baster.”
“It’s the best I can think of.”
“It’s barbaric. Besides, it doesn’t look a bit like a hickey. If your aunts aren’t senile, they’ll figure it out right away. You need a man’s mouth to make a decent hickey. Just the right suction and angle. It’s not a job that can be turned over to a kitchen utensil.”
He was feeling a little huffy on behalf of his entire gender. Far too many of men’s functions had been replaced by battery-operated devices and medical technology. Some things should be left to real flesh-and-blood men.
The hickey was one of those things.
Knowing he was standing up for all men, he rose from his seat with dignity. “Miss MacPherson, if you need a hickey, I will provide you with one.”
She giggled, and again his attention was caught by the overlapping front tooth. It made him wonder what it would feel like if he kissed her. That slightly crooked tooth was sexy and when she giggled, her face warmed and he noticed an outrageous pair of dimples he hadn’t seen before.
“Are you sure it’s no trouble?”
He grinned back. “It will be my pleasure.”
She blushed even more rosily and glanced around the crowded bar nervously. He thought she might bolt for the bathroom if he didn’t plant a good one on her ASAP.
“Come on,” he said, taking hold of her arm. “I’ll walk you to your car.”
“You mean…”
He nodded. “Outside.”
Her breath seemed to shudder and she shot him a nervous glance.
“I promise it won’t hurt as much as that turkey baster.”
That seemed to help her make up her mind. “All right.” She nodded and headed for the door.
He fell into step beside her, walking out into the quiet and relative cool of the night.
“Where should we…I mean…”
Her nervousness was kind of sweet. It wasn’t even a real kiss he was proposing, merely a tug of his lips against her neck, a small price for either of them to pay to keep The Reptile out of her life.
A horse chestnut stood beside the parking lot, its spread branches offering a semblance of privacy. “How about here?” He motioned to the tree and with a nod she preceded him.
She put her back against the tree, took a deep breath that huffed her chest in and out like a bellows, then lifted her chin.
This had to be one of the strangest things he’d ever done. He shook his head then stepped closer. She was a few inches shorter than he, so he bent down, lifting the soft weight of hair off her neck. He moved closer and smelled again that old-fashioned scent of lavender and home baking. In the pale light cast by a streetlight and filtered by the chestnut, her neck was long and white. A pulse beat just in the crook where chin melted into throat.
Intoxicated by the warm flesh, the rich silk of her hair still in his hands and the scent of her, he pressed his lips to her throat. His eyes drifted shut as more sensory perceptions pelted him. Soft. Her skin was softer than down, but warm and exciting. A kind of buzz vibrated through her skin and set his body humming to her frequency.
“Suck me,” he heard her say. He opened his lips against her throat and tasted her with his tongue. Oh, yeah. He wanted to suck and lick every inch of this delectable skin. He put both hands behind her neck and brought her forward so he could take his time, move from her throat, down to the curve of her shoulder and…
“Suck.” She hissed the word and, like a blast from a cold hose, sanity returned. He wasn’t on a date with a sexy babe, he was administering a charity hickey to a woman named Harriet. Get on with it.
Still, he hesitated. It seemed a shame to mar such gorgeous skin. “Are you sure?” he mumbled against her throat.
“Yes.” The sound came breathlessly and it seemed the proximity was affecting her as well as him.
He hated to mark her, but she’d think he was a worse perv than The Reptile if he didn’t finish the job. So rounding his lips and sucking her warm flesh into his mouth, he gave enough suction to guarantee a one-hundred-percent genuine, no-turkey-basters-need-apply hickey.
“Ah,” she gasped softly, and he let her go, easing his mouth away.
He stepped back, satisfied that no one would be in any doubt as to what this mark was on her neck. Unable to stop himself, he leaned forward once more and kissed the red spot softly to soothe it.
As he straightened he noticed the light gleam on the wet patch he’d made against her throat. He licked his lips and tasted her. She tasted like oatmeal cookies just out of the oven. Warm and fragrant.
Slowly she lowered her chin and stared at him, her eyes wide and glassy, her skin flushed with the easy blush of a redhead.
He stared back, his breathing not quite steady. Even for him, finding a girl like Harriet attractive was way out there. He forced himself to grin at her. “There you go. One genuine hickey. Guaranteed to prevent dates with reptiles.” He stepped closer. “Reapply as needed.”
A soft, if slightly unsteady, chuckle answered him. “This should do the trick. Thanks.”
“Anytime,” he said. And the weird thing was, he meant it.
3
HARRIET touched the spot under her sage-green turtleneck, where the hickey hid like a delightful secret. Who would have thought that last night’s dismal date would have such a surprising conclusion?
She had to agree with Steve, his way was a lot more fun than using a plastic suction hose with a red rubber ball on the end. In fact, the feel of his lips against her throat had downright shocked her. True, he was a co-worker helping out the weird girl with the problem, yet when he’d touched her, she’d felt…well, sexy.
She sighed, and held her hand a
gainst that spot for a long dreamy moment. Steve Ackerman was a hunk. Athletic, good-looking, charming: everything a girl like Harriet could only worship from a distance.
Which she’d been successfully doing for the eight months she’d worked at the Standard. Long before that, if she were honest with herself. Steve Ackerman had been a dream at Pasqualie High. She’d first noticed him when she’d initially tried out to be a cheerleader, when she was a sophomore and he was a senior.
He’d been jogging the field—the quarterback who really worked at staying in shape—and she’d been captivated by his easy grace and his strong, even features. If he’d ever noticed her, either during their time together in high school or in the months they’d worked together at the Standard, he’d done a spectacular job of hiding the fact.
She couldn’t believe he’d turned out to be a nice guy. Don’t work yourself up to a fatuous crush, she warned herself, firmly removing her hand from her turtleneck and refocusing on the riveting report from Monday’s city council meeting. The question of whether Pasqualie had enough money in its budget to update its street lighting was gripping stuff all right, she thought, changing an it’s to an its and correcting the spelling of the mayor’s name.
An exciting career in journalism she’d promised herself, even as she’d promised her aunts to stay out of war zones and marathons and to stick to safe stories. This job had seemed such a golden opportunity for a woman with a degree in English literature—specializing in the nineteenth-century novel—and a journalism minor. Her copy editing job was the first step toward her goal of becoming a reporter. The only trouble was she was excellent at what she did, which made it hard for her to snag a reporting assignment.
She felt eyes studying her and raised her head to find Steve Ackerman staring at her turtleneck. She could have sworn the hickey throbbed under his intent scrutiny and she felt the cursed easy blush of a redhead fire her cheeks.
He raised his gaze and looked at her. He was probably feeling mortified at what he’d had to do and hoping she didn’t get any silly ideas.
As if.