“Wow!” Emily said, peering over Lisa’s shoulder at the blooms. The awed syllable brought Lisa back to her senses. She moved toward the roses, smiling despite herself. Sam! Even before she opened the white embossed card nestled among the green foliage she knew that. The simple message brought a suspicious fog to her eyes. “I love you,” it said. “Marry me.”
“I suppose those are from the hunk who met you after work last night?” Emily’s half-envious voice brought Lisa’s attention back to her. She blinked surreptitiously, hoping the other woman wouldn’t notice the film of moisture. Then she smiled without answering.
“Boy, some people have all the luck,” Emily continued, apparently not needing an answer to draw the correct conclusion. “What I wouldn’t give to have a sexy specimen like that after me.” Then she looked down at her own short, slightly-too-plump body and reached up to touch her wire-rimmed glasses ruefully. “Not much chance, huh? Unless he has a fetish for fat thighs?”
The teasing hopefulness in her voice made Lisa laugh.
“Don’t be silly, Em,” she said in as nearly normal a tone as she could manage. “You know you do very well for yourself, and your thighs are not fat. Now, if you’re quite through fishing for compliments and trying to steal my male friends, why don’t you come in so that we can get to work?”
Emily came in and sat down in the chair opposite Lisa’s desk, while Lisa settled in the chair behind the desk, making a conscious effort not to look at the roses with their flagrant message of love. Emily, however, had no such inhibition.
“He doesn’t have a friend, does he?” she inquired hopefully in the middle of a conversation about various ways to cover the opening of a local mall. Lisa merely frowned severely in answer, and continued with what she had been saying. With a last, mournful look at the roses, Emily allowed the subject to drop.
As Lisa had half-expected, Sam was waiting for her that evening when she left work. He was leaning against the passenger door of her car—which, as promised, she had found parked outside her apartment that morning. When he saw her walking toward him, he grinned, straightening away from the car and watching her walk with a warm appreciation that went a long way toward making her forget that the green-and-gold-striped dress she was wearing was from a maternity store and that her middle bore more resemblance to a basketball than to the slender wand described so often in popular fiction.
“Introduce me!” a throaty voice whispered just behind her. Lisa turned to see Emily regarding Sam with mock-dazzled eyes.
“Not on your life,” Lisa was surprised to hear herself reply.
When Emily chuckled, Lisa grinned back, then went to join Sam. Watching him as he opened the door for her—the passenger door, she noted with amused resignation; apparently his male-chauvinist tendencies hadn’t subsided sufficiently to allow her to drive while he was in the car—she could see why he reduced Emily to envious drools. He towered over the pale, slender, and not-so-slender men streaming through the parking lot in their three-piece suits; the breadth of his shoulders and chest and the muscles clearly visible in his arms beneath the short-sleeved red T-shirt he wore bespoke a man of action, not a pencil pusher. The strength of his thighs in the white duck slacks, the narrow virility of his hips—all were the stuff women’s fantasies were made of. Add to that a bronzed face with uncompromisingly male features, a shock of wavy black hair, a grin that flashed charm along with white teeth whenever he cared to use it, and those blue eyes—Lisa nearly drooled herself.
“Emily was right—you are a hunk,” she told him with a grin as he bore her off to the Blue Crab.
Sam glanced over at her with some surprise. “Who’s Emily?” he asked suspiciously.
Lisa laughed, and told him.
“So you think I’m a hunk, too, do you?” he drawled when she had finished. “I’m not sure I like that. You should want me for my mind, not my body.”
“But you have such a nice body,” Lisa teased.
He looked over at her, that familiar lopsided grin tilting his mouth. “So marry me, and you get exclusive rights.”
Lisa looked at him. His tone was light, playful, but the expression in his eyes told her that he was serious. She was tempted. . . .
“Watch where you’re driving,” she said severely. And the subject was allowed to drop. For the moment.
When the roses arrived the next day, bearing the same message, Lisa was surprised. Since the first bouquet took up most of the extra space on her desk, she put this second dozen—as bloodred and fragrant as the first—on top of the file cabinet. And endured the good-natured teasing from her office mates that was the inevitable result of having two bunches of flowers delivered to her office in two days.
“They’re beautiful—but please, no more roses,” Lisa told Sam that night. She hadn’t even been surprised to find him waiting for her. Having him take her to dinner seemed the most natural thing in the world; and the brief good-night kiss that was all he allowed her seemed natural, too—except that it left her wanting more.
The next day it was carnations, pink and spicy, accompanied by the same message that had come with the roses. Lisa stared at them, aghast, before finding them a spot on the windowsill. And that night she remonstrated with Sam. But he made her no promises, merely grinned an aggravating grin.
As she had half-expected, the next day brought more flowers. As did the next, and the next, and the next. Baskets of delphiniums, bowls of irises, pitchers of daisies. All with the same message. Her office reeked of perfume; it was full to overflowing with gorgeous blossoms. She gave them to the secretaries, to her fellow editors, to anyone who would take them—much to the hilarity of the entire office staff. But still they kept coming. Lisa was furious, amused, and touched in turn. That a man such as Sam was capable of such a gesture—she would never have believed it if the incontrovertible proof did not fill her eyes and her nostrils every minute of every working day.
“Please stop, Sam,” she wailed one night about a week later. As had become his habit, he had met her after work and taken her to dinner—at a fast-food place this time, because they were going on to see a movie. “I’m drowning in flowers; the whole office is drowning in flowers! What do you think you’re doing?”
He looked at her meditatively while munching on a french fry. “Don’t you know?” She shook her head. “I’m courting you, my darling Lisa,” he said with a grin. And turned his attention to his meal despite her best efforts to continue the conversation.
After two weeks, the arrival of the flowers was a commonplace part of her day. Every desk in the building was decorated with them. Lisa threw out faded blossoms only to have their place taken by new ones. Then, over hot dogs at a baseball game, Sam told her that something had come up and he had to return to the Circle C for a while.
“How long will you be gone?” Lisa asked, conscious of a sudden feeling of emptiness in the pit of her stomach. The half of the hot dog she had eaten suddenly felt like a pound of lead inside her.
“A week—maybe two. I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t necessary.” He looked at her, and lifted his hand to wipe a trace of mustard from her lower lip. “Lisa—come with me.”
Lisa returned his look, her eyes touching on every plane and angle of that harshly carved face. Slowly she shook her head.
“I’m—not ready. I need more time, Sam.”
He drew in a harsh breath. “I can’t stay here forever,” he said in a low, tight voice. “You’re going to have to make up your mind one way or the other. I’ll want your answer when I come back. And I’m warning you, if you say no, I won’t ask again. So think hard while I’m gone, Lisa.”
She blinked at him. The charming, lighthearted companion who had laughed with her and teased her over the past two weeks had been replaced by a man who was suddenly as hard and unyielding as granite. He meant what he said, she had no doubt. Before she could reply, he was on his feet, taking her arm and practically lifting her from the unyielding wooden bleacher. On the drive home he spok
e not a word. And at the door to her apartment, he left her without even the meager good-night kiss she had come to crave.
With Sam gone, each day seemed at least a week long. She even missed the daily arrival of the flowers. On her regular visit to her obstetrician for her routine prenatal check, she found herself wishing vainly that Sam was with her, ready to share in the growing excitement of their coming child. In bed at night, she longed for him; her dreams were filled with the height and breadth of him, his smile, his eyes; when she woke in the morning, her pillow would be damp where she had cried for him the night before. At work, she had to put a good face on the inevitable remarks that accompanied the cessation of the flowers—and the absence of Sam waiting for her each night, which it seemed every female on the magazine’s staff noticed. In short, she missed him more than she had ever dreamed possible. But still—still, she could not make up her mind to marry him. If she was this devastated by his absence after only two weeks, what would it be like if she married him—allowed herself once again to love him without reserve—and it didn’t work out? She was very much afraid that she would die of grief—or allow it to destroy her.
Amos came to see her, as he had every week since she had moved into the apartment—except, now that she thought about it, when Sam had been with her. He tried to be casual, tried his best not to mention Sam, but Lisa wasn’t having any of that.
“Did you call Sam? Before he came, I mean. Did you tell him about the baby?” Her eyes and voice were accusing.
Amos, seated on her couch with a glass of iced tea in his hand, looked up at her with something resembling alarm. “No, of course not,” he said. But Lisa was not convinced.
“Amos, I’m on the verge of making the biggest decision of my life. And I need all the facts. Please, if you told Sam about the baby before he came to see me, tell me. I need to know. It’s very important to me, Amos.”
“I didn’t call him, granddaughter. I’ll admit, I thought about it; I wanted to. But you told me to keep out of it, and I decided that you were enough of an adult to make your own decision about this. I give you my word of honor that I didn’t tell Eastman that you were expecting his child. As far as I know, he knew nothing about it until he saw for himself.”
Lisa was silent. Her grandfather’s voice carried the ring of truth. Not that he wouldn’t lie to her, she knew, if he thought it was for her own good, but this time she tended to believe him. Maybe because she wanted to, she thought with an inward grimace.
“He wants to marry you.” It was a statement, not a question. Nevertheless, Lisa nodded. Amos snorted impatiently.
“Then for God’s sake, girl, what are you shilly-shallying about? Six months ago you were crazy to have him! He’s the father of that baby you’re carrying, and whether you like it or not that means something. And, though he’s not the man I would have picked for you, he’s a good man. He cares about you. He’ll keep you safe. I won’t be around forever, Lisa, and I’d feel better knowing that you were married to him. He strikes me as the kind of man who looks after his own—you and that boy of his and the baby.”
Lisa looked at him sharply. Never before had she heard him mention his possible demise. Could he be ill, and not telling her? But he looked as robust as ever, sitting there in his immaculate gray suit with the white shirt and tasteful silk tie and matching pocket square that made up his inevitable Sunday uniform. And something about the expression in his eyes told her that he’d been playing on her sympathies.
“Amos, you old fraud, you’ll live to be a hundred, so don’t try that on me. If—and I say if—I decide to marry Sam, it won’t be to ease your worry on your deathbed! Now come on, if you’re going to take me to church, we’d better go. We’re going to be late as it is.”
The next few days passed even more slowly than the first week of Sam’s absence had. It was torture not knowing exactly when he would be back. He didn’t call, which surprised Lisa until she figured out that he was giving her a chance to see how much she missed him. She could have called him—getting his number from the directory service in Montana would have been ridiculously easy—but she didn’t. To take the initiative and call him would have seemed too much like an admission of some kind.
Finally, exactly twelve days, four hours, and sixteen minutes after Sam had told her goodbye, Lisa decided that a burst of activity was what she needed to work off the blues that threatened to engulf her. She would paint the bathroom ceiling, as she had been meaning to do ever since she’d moved into the apartment. The previous tenant had apparently had a thing for hot pink, and that was the color of the ceiling. Lisa meant to change it to a cool, unnauseating white.
She had been up on the ladder for almost an hour when a knock sounded on the door. Probably the girl who lived downstairs, wanting to chat, Lisa surmised as she climbed down off the ladder and stretched her cramped back. The girl was very nice, as was her young husband, but Lisa wasn’t in the mood for idle conversation. Her back hurt, she was tired, and she missed Sam. In her book, that added up to nothing short of misery.
Still, she pasted a smile on her lips as she opened the door. It widened with incredulous delight as she saw who stood there, an answering smile curving his lips and a bouquet of red roses in one hand.
“Not more flowers,” she said, groaning automatically, when what she really wanted to do was throw herself in his arms and cling and cling.
“I thought you might have missed them,” he explained, thrusting them at her as he walked in without waiting for an invitation.
Lisa closed the door behind him and moved toward the kitchen, where she hoped to find at least one container that had not been pressed into flower duty at the office. Sam followed her, lounging against the arched door that led from the hallway to the small kitchen, his arms crossed over his chest as he watched her search through the cabinets.
“Did you?” he asked softly.
Lisa, having located a plastic pitcher and begun to fill it with water, looked at him over her shoulder. “Did I what?”
“Miss the flowers. And me.”
“The flowers, no. I was beginning to feel like I was working in a funeral parlor. You—what do you think?”
She set the roses in the pitcher and put the makeshift flower arrangement on a side counter. Then she turned to face him, fighting like mad to quell the urge to fling herself at him and press kisses all over that bronzed face. Dressed in jeans and a ridiculous Hawaiian-print shirt, he was so handsome he took her breath. Ruefully, she thought of her own paint-spattered jeans and the ancient, once-white shirt that had belonged to Jeff. In the glamor department, he won hands down, she conceded, and had to grin to herself. She’d never thought that she’d live to see the day when the male in her life was more beautiful than she!
“I think you did. I know I missed you. I came back two days sooner than I should have because I couldn’t stand to stay away any longer.”
Lisa stared at him, mesmerized, as he straightened away from the door and came toward her. Then she no longer had to fight the impulse to throw herself at him because he was taking her in his arms and holding her close against his hard muscles, his arms tight around her but gentle, as if he was mindful of the baby, his mouth seeking hers. . . . She met those warm lips eagerly, kissing him with a passion that was almost shocking when she remembered, later, that she was pregnant, her arms twining around his neck, her fingers tangling in the thick softness of his hair.
“You missed me,” he said with satisfaction when finally he had to let her come up for air.
Lisa couldn’t have said anything to refute that smug statement even if she’d wanted to. Her impassioned response to his kiss had answered for her.
“Lisa . . .” he began in a throaty, thickened voice.
She thought, Uh-oh, here it comes. The moment of decision. She had been dreading it, waiting for it, hoping for it, for days. Yet still she wasn’t sure what answer to give. At least, she told herself she wasn’t.
“What on earth have you b
een doing?” he said in a totally different tone, pushing her a little away from him and lifting his hand to touch the bridge of her nose. When he drew back his finger, it was streaked with white paint.
“Oh. Painting.” Lisa rubbed self-consciously at her nose. Though she refused to admit it even to herself, she felt just the tiniest bit disappointed that he had not gone ahead and pressed her for her decision. He had been distracted by a little bit of white paint. . . . Despite herself, Lisa felt more than a trifle piqued.
“Painting what?”
She disengaged herself from his arms, struggling to overcome a rising spiral of indignation. Did he want to marry her or didn’t he? she wondered acerbically. Because if he did, he sure didn’t seem in any hurry to demand her answer!
“The bathroom ceiling.”
“Show me.”
The words were clipped, but Lisa was too caught up in her own feelings to notice. As far as she was concerned, the bathroom ceiling was pretty low on her list of immediate priorities. She wanted to be wooed, dammit—and, yes, won! She did not want to stand around discussing the activities of her day.
“It’s in the bathroom.”
If there was sarcasm in her voice—and there was—it didn’t stop Sam from following her down the hall to the bathroom. He stopped in the doorway, frowning, while she walked on inside and gestured at the ceiling, which was now about one-quarter white.
“See?”
His lips tightened. “Oh, I see, all right,” he said, his eyes surveying the paint can and brush balanced precariously on the top rung of the ladder. “I see you’re not safe to be left alone! You little idiot, don’t you know better than to go climbing around on ladders in your condition?”
The anger in his tone nettled her. She put her hands on her hips and glared back at him.
To Love a Man Page 32