“Putting aside the fact that cursing flowers to eternal damnation is probably not what they meant by talking, can you explain to me what houseplants, with leaves and such, have to do with seeds buried six inches deep in the ground?”
“They’re bulbs, thank you,” she corrected him and accepted his murmured apologies for blatantly misrepresenting the world of flora. “And, I don’t know, they’re all part of the same plant family thing, aren’t they?”
“Search me.”
She spun around in his arms and flung her hands behind his neck.
“There’s something else I’d rather do with you.”
His hands dropped to her hips and pulled her closer.
“What’s that?”
“Watch baseball.”
It only took five minutes, full of protests of a busy day on his part and accusations of being a deal welsher on hers, before she talked him into clearing his afternoon in time for them to make the 1:20 p.m. start of the game that day.
On Addison Avenue at one o’clock, she tugged on the hand Spencer held, dragging him through the crowds and urging him to hurry.
“It’s bad luck if we miss the national anthem,” she scolded as they sprinted across the street against the stoplights, winking at the cop directing traffic. They had already stopped at a bar a block from the ballpark to buy tickets from her favorite scalper. Spencer had looked askance at her when she’d walked up to the tall, grizzled man with broad, bony shoulders leaning against the bar as if he lived there. The man she knew only as Blue greeted her with a smacking kiss and his standard, “Hey there, girlie!”
When Spencer introduced himself as her husband, arm firmly in place around her shoulders, she couldn’t sputter out a denial or an explanation fast enough to prevent Blue from making a wedding present of the tickets she wanted.
“You shouldn’t have told him that.” They were entering the park, still arguing about his possessive gesture.
He wiped a hand across his mouth for the third time. “I can’t believe I just did a shot of whiskey at one in the afternoon.”
“It was the least I could do after he gave us the tickets.” Spencer grunted in reply. “He did offer to let you call the shot, remember. Besides, he went to high school with my dad.”
“Lovely.”
“For a long while, Blue was the most arrested man in Chicago.” She cocked her head, considering. “Not sure if he still holds the title. There are some up-and-coming young ticket scalpers these days.”
“Just tell me that you don’t kiss them all.”
To his credit, once they were inside the park, Spencer followed her every direction without protest. Seated in the bleachers, where there were no individual seats, only numbered tags screwed into benches every sixteen inches, he even seemed to find a silly joy in crowding her, insisting that the man on his left was pushing him over. He stood and cheered with her and the entire stands when Sosa sprinted all the way to the outfield wall at the start of the game. He drank the marginally cold Old Style beer without flinching.
When a five-year-old two rows in front of them—hopped up on cotton candy, cola and hot dogs—threw up in his mom’s lap from overexcitement, Spencer didn’t even blink. He just casually mentioned that in the box seats there were both waiters and no small children unless one invited them.
She didn’t even take her eyes from the field as the opposing team’s pitcher wound up and let it rip. A second later, she was on her feet with the rest of the crowd, shouting.
“You call that a strike? Why don’t you call your optometrist?”
She looked down at the sound of laughter. The beginnings of a slight sunburn reddened Spencer’s cheeks. He was sweating a little in the direct sunlight and smiling up at her. For a moment, the world spun and she braced herself with a hand on his shoulder.
“Okay?” She saw his concern and forced a smile, nodding, and blamed it on the odd feeling she’d had all afternoon. As much as he fit in her world and as much as she’d enjoyed his on the night of the symphony, she was still caught off guard sometimes by how different they were. It was as if seeing double and being unable to determine which vision was the true one.
His hand under her elbow eased her down. “A shot of whiskey at one in the afternoon can have that effect.”
She swallowed at the thought and shrugged it off. “I know.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Even at nineteen I wasn’t crazy enough to streak around the block sober.”
The frozen lemonade at the vendor’s stand suddenly seemed more appealing than beer, though, and she didn’t object when he followed her lead.
After the game, they walked over to the pub where her brother tended bar, far enough from the park to avoid the postgame crowds. Calling for pints of water to battle their sun-beaten dehydration, they snagged seats at the far end of the bar, under the television where the sportscasters played out their game analysis on mute. Addy and her brother settled into the comfortable tradition of the analysis of the loss. They explained to Spencer that you couldn’t consider yourself a true Cubs fan unless you toughed it out through twice as many lost games as won.
When he asked how many games he’d have to sit through before the Cubbies won one, they pelted him with balled-up napkins.
Cubs talk led to rehashing who’d been the better baseball player in their misspent youths, which led soon enough to sibling rivalry being played out on the seventy-five-cent pool table fronting the bar’s plate-glass windows.
After the wager reached best four out of seven, Spencer offered to settle the tie by playing each of them. He proceeded to run the table first on her brother, which made her cackle, and then on Addy herself, which made her scowl as she handed over the ten-buck forfeit. He just winked at her.
“You’re not the only one with a misspent youth.” When she gaped at him, he grinned and shrugged. “They don’t call law school study sessions ‘bar review’ for nothing.”
She begged off the rematch, pleading sunburn and general exhaustion, and kissed her brother goodbye. Outside the bar, she took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her stomach. Two hot dogs and the peanuts had obviously not been a good idea. She wondered if it would be impolite to burp.
“Sorry to interrupt your winning streak,” she apologized to Spencer, “but the smoke was getting to me.”
He hailed a passing cab. “I’ll trounce you anytime you like, sweetheart.” She felt him press a kiss on top of the baseball hat she’d bought for him but ended up wearing. “Let’s go home.”
At home, they collapsed on the sofa in the library and argued over who was going to get up and go to the kitchen for drinks of the caffeinated sort. After a few rounds, Spencer played what he considered to be the ultimate card.
“I drank Old Style.”
Addy thought for a moment.
“I bought it.”
“That, my dear, is not exactly something to brag about.” When she pitched one of the many aptly named throw pillows at his head, he fielded it with ease and tucked the pillow under her feet on the sofa before standing up, pressing a quick kiss on her mouth and heading to the kitchen. She could hear him from where she lay reclined in the early summer sun, a cool breeze carrying the scent of cut grass through the open window. He was on the phone, ordering a pizza for dinner. His dinner at least, since the thought of food still made her stomach do a slow backflip.
She called out to him and he carried the phone with him as he came back into the room.
“Will you skip the green peppers tonight, please?” she asked. At his curious glance, she explained. “My stomach’s still out of whack and the thought of that smell—” she grimaced “—yech. Sorry.”
When he sat down again next to her and pulled her feet onto his lap, unlacing her shoes and starting a slow, deep foot massage, she could have groaned out loud. She draped her head over the sofa arm and gave in to the urge.
“God, I like you so much.”
“You’re just saying that b
ecause I’m rubbing your feet. See how much you like me when I make you get up and answer the door when the pizza gets here.”
She barely heard him, although his words reassured her that he hadn’t noticed the tiny little stumble she’d made, the brief hesitation before she’d managed to finish her sentence by saying “like you so much.”
She had been on the verge of saying, “God, I love you.”
Maybe she could have played it off. After all, people said “I love you” all the time and didn’t mean it. She’d said it herself yesterday to a co-worker who’d brought two dozen doughnuts to the office. And she certainly didn’t have any deep personal feelings for Susie LeClerc beyond gratitude for the snack on a day with no time for a lunch break.
But he would only have needed one look at her face, frozen with shock at the sound of her own words, to make the truth abundantly clear.
She was in love with him. In love with her husband, and that made everything completely and horribly wrong.
Spencer was still stroking the arch of her feet with his thumbs, kneading deep and then manipulating her heel. She wondered that it didn’t vibrate under his fingers with the tension that hummed through her. He seemed to think she had fallen asleep, which was fine. It gave her time to think.
She couldn’t think.
What the hell was she supposed to do now?
Sure, Spencer was the one who had brought up the idea of their staying married once or twice in the past, but that was a long time ago. And he’d meant it more as a matter of convenience between the two of them, since they’d both been burned before. She didn’t think he’d appreciate it if she sat up now and turned to him, saying, “You know, let’s do it. Let’s stay married. We share a house well enough, sex is clearly not a problem and by the way, do you love me?”
Yeah. Right. No way. Her heart was already racing with dread at the thought.
Calm down, girl, she told herself. Don’t go getting all agitated here. Just take a page from the book of the man himself. Spencer Reed’s Guide to the Calm and Reasonable Approach to Any Crisis.
There was no law requiring her to make any kind of immediate confession of her feelings to Spencer. She could simply tuck them away for now and let things just ride for a while. He’d said something similar to her once, she remembered, about the possibility of their hitting the six-month goal line and letting things go from there. So she’d crossed a line of her own, and considerably before the six months were up, too. So what?
She would just let it go from here. No expectations, no pressure. After all, the man liked her, she knew that. He made efforts to see that she was happy, although frankly she explained some of that away by picturing his mother as a dragon lady who’d locked him in a closet as a child if he’d failed to be polite. But surely there was a chance at least that someday it might be more than politeness that motivated his concern for her.
She knew she would never get the grand, overwhelming declaration of eternal love. Spencer just wasn’t the type. But there was something to be said for a man who brought her Ace bandages when she sprained her ankle and Diet Coke at any and all hours of the day. That kind of man would never wake up one day and decide that the grand-gesture thing was getting a little old, and leave.
The kind of man Spencer was would find little ways of making her happy every day, for all of their days, and maybe that was better.
Certainly it was better.
That resolved, she opened her eyes and found Spencer watching her. God, she loved the look of him. The dimple that showed up in one long, lean cheek when he smiled. The solid shape of muscles under his clothes that made it feel like a secret when she pictured him naked. His quick smile. The horn-rimmed glasses he used only for reading.
He wiggled one of her toes.
“Had a nice nap?”
“Mmm.”
She pulled her feet off his lap, rose to her knees next to him and swung a leg over his thighs, straddling him. Bent her head and started working on the tiny buttons of his white oxford shirt.
“That must have been some nap.”
Addy pushed his head back until it rested on the couch, and leaned above him. His hands ran up the back of her thighs, up and under the hem of the khaki shorts she wore, as she lowered her mouth with torturous slowness over his. She kissed him, lips soft and open, first on one side of his mouth and then the other, and ran her fingers through his silky hair just for the pleasure of feeling it in her hands.
“I just thought I’d show you one of the benefits of what we Cubs fans like to call the ‘postgame blues.’”
His hands kneading firmly against her butt, he was grinning up at her before she finished.
“What’s that?”
She was on her knees above his lap, her chest level with his face, as she crossed her arms, gripped the hem of her shirt and pulled it off, knocking off her ball cap on the way and spilling her hair out of the loose ponytail she’d pulled through the back of the cap. His blue-sky eyes clouded and narrowed as she ran a hand down her own bare skin, fingers stroking her own throat, trailing between her breasts, falling, falling, until her hand rested on the top button of her shorts.
She felt a little bit wicked as she popped the button out of the buttonhole and answered him. “Comfort sex.”
Their mouths met, mated, and he slid his hands farther up her shorts. The wet readiness of her wrung a groan from him as he plunged a finger inside her. His other hand streaked up her naked back to tangle in the ends of her hair, pulling her head back and pushing her bare breasts forward.
When the frustration grew to be too much, Spencer pushed her off his lap to stand up and rapidly tugged her shorts down. She pulled him up off the couch and his clothes were gone in a moment. His skin was hot against her as she curled one arm around his neck and stroked a hand over the hard, smooth surface of his chest and the flatness of his stomach. She ran her hand down his side, his hair-roughened outer thigh with its long muscles and then back up the inside until she cupped him in her hands.
Her fingers stroked the length of him, and the force of will that let him stand still as she touched him made him tremble against her.
His hand tightened on the nape of her neck and his forehead pressed against hers as she drew a low moan from him with her fingers.
When she pushed him back down on the couch, he tried to pull her with him, but she dodged his hands. She had something else in mind.
She dropped to her knees and took him in her mouth. Felt him shudder beneath her hands as she loved him. When his every muscle bunched and she felt the energy near to exploding under his skin, he hauled her bodily up over him and pushed her hips down, burying himself inside of her. She curved above him, one knee on the couch, one foot braced on the floor, and felt his hands touching her where their bodies joined, his thumb stroking her until she trembled and shoved herself in strong, rolling thrusts against him.
When she came and cried out, he lifted his hips beneath her, once, twice, until his climax overtook him and he groaned, his breath mingling with hers under the dark curtain of her hair as it fell around them.
She was still panting to get her breath back as he scooted over and tucked her against his side in the space between his body and the sofa back. She lay on her side, threw a leg over his and draped an arm across his. Her fingers dangling over the edge of the couch found his arm and began tracing random patterns on the soft skin on the inside of his elbow. Her head rested on his shoulder.
When she felt him shake his head after a moment, she made a little noise of inquiry.
“So,” he began, and the laugher was so full in his voice that she tilted her head back to look up at him. “Do you feel better about the Cubs’ loss today?” He threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Jeez, I sure do.”
Since he was laughing already, it seemed the perfect time to poke him in the side with a stiff finger. That she managed to tickle him was completely an accident, she swore, as Spencer dumped her on the floor, grabbed her wrist
s and threatened to tickle her until she peed.
The doorbell rang insistently and she gasped with relief as he let up. They both remembered about the pizza at the same instant.
“Oh, damn. Oh, damn.” She hopped about until she got both feet out of the same leg of her shorts and managed to yank them up over her hips. Spencer was sitting naked on the floor in the middle of the room, laughing uproariously at her and wiping tears out of his eyes.
“You are not helping,” she informed him, and abandoned the search for her top as the guy at the door gave up on subtlety and just leaned on the buzzer. She grabbed Spencer’s discarded shirt and the wallet from his pants and sprinted down the hall, shoving buttons through holes any which way.
By the time she yanked open the front door, she’d managed two buttons, but the shirt was barely hanging on one shoulder and she was pretty sure the teenage delivery boy could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Who was she fooling? By the look in his pubescent eyes, he knew perfectly well that she’d just been having sex.
She thrust an extra twenty at him out of sheer embarrassment, grabbed the pizza box out of his hands and closed the door in his face. Then she sagged against the door in relief.
When she heard a muffled, “Man, what a babe” through the door, followed by footsteps trailing away, she was only marginally consoled.
Spencer had his pants back on by the time she returned to the library, and a contrite expression on his face that lasted about three seconds when she frowned at him. He dissolved into laughter again, walked up and wrapped his arms around her. She balanced the pizza box on one hand, out of reach.
“I’m sorry. I’m not laughing at you, I promise.” He buried his face in the crook of her neck and snorted. “I’ve just never seen anyone move that fast.”
When she felt the hands at her side twitch on her ribs, she gave in.
“No more tickling! You can have the pizza!”
He swept the box out of her hands and smacked a kiss on her mouth.
They sat cross-legged on the floor on opposite sides of the coffee table, munching away and talking lazily about what they had to do tomorrow. Addy discovered that she finally had an appetite again and plowed her way through several slices.
Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) Page 16