The Bachelor Takes a Wife

by Jackie Merritt

  Andrea heaved a long-drawn-out sigh and blamed Keith for causing her such an awful case of the blues. She’d been hard on him and in a way she was sorry, mostly because she wasn’t normally unkind to anyone. But Keith scared her. He was a disruption in every way possible. She’d been completely contented before the Cattleman’s Club ball and now she wasn’t, and who or what else should she blame for that? No, Keith was definitely the cause of her discontentment, and by his own words, he was not going to leave her alone.

  How to deal with this? How to deal with an unwanted Romeo? The questions went around and around in her mind. If someone had noticed Keith’s dark-blue SUV in her driveway today—and it seemed pretty farfetched to assume that no one had noticed it—then it was probably all over town by now that he’d been to her house.

  “Who cares?” she mumbled. There were those in the area who never forgot anything, so a lot of Royal residents remembered that she and Keith had once been an item. A fresh new rumor might titillate imaginations for a while, but so what?

  Sighing again, Andrea realized the afternoon was practically gone. She’d wasted hours brooding over Keith’s brazenness. Whenever Keith had wanted something, even as a child, he’d gone after it like a hound on the scent of a rabbit.

  Well, in this case, she, apparently, was the rabbit!

  “Damn you, Keith,” she muttered and got up from her patio chair and went inside.

  On Friday, Keith did not come to her classroom. He’d told her he wouldn’t be there, but Andrea really didn’t believe anything he said. Oddly, that empty little chair at the back of the room bothered her in some unfathomable way, because she found herself looking at it far too often.

  It also bothered some of the children, whom Andrea saw glancing toward the back of the room several times. For the first time since she’d begun teaching at Kiddie Kingdom, she was glad when school was out for the day and she could go home. Telling herself it was only because she had so many things to do to prepare for her dinner party that evening, she drove from the school to her favorite supermarket.

  That afternoon she accomplished a great deal. With five good friends coming for dinner, she couldn’t just sit around and worry today. She shopped, she drove home with a back seat full of groceries, she cooked and she tried almost desperately to lock Keith out of her thoughts.

  By six-thirty the dinner menu was ready except for a few final touches that could only be done just before serving, Andrea was dressed in a lovely hostess gown the same color as her eyes, and, of course, thanks to Lucyanne, the house was perfect. To the spotlessly clean rooms, Andrea had added numerous vases of freshly cut flowers. She loved candles, but omitted them this evening because one of her guests was allergic to the smoke.

  Ten minutes before seven her guests began arriving. Everyone there knew Andrea’s routine. Cocktails at seven, dinner at seven-thirty. She poured herself a glass of wine and joined her friends already involved in a rather humorous dissection of a recent bestselling book. Andrea wasn’t quite through reading it, but when she stated rather flatly that she didn’t like the book and probably wouldn’t finish it, five sets of eyes looked at her in surprise.

  Then the arguments began. Her friends were going to convince her that the book might have flaws, but wasn’t it possible the author deliberately included them to make readers think?

  For the first time ever Andrea didn’t give a whit about the friendly, rapid-fire debate. Realizing that startled her, for she had always loved intellectual debates with these wonderful friends. She excused herself on a kitchen-duty pretext and fled the room.

  Breathing hard, as though she’d just run her usual three miles, she strode through the kitchen and went outside through the garage. Standing in the shadows of garage and house, she breathed in the cool night air and tried to pull herself together. Nothing was the same as it had been before the Cattleman’s Club ball, and she had the most awful urge just to let go and cry her eyes out.

  Which she couldn’t do. She had to return to her guests. She had to smile and talk and act as though her life was the same smooth and serene routine it had been for years. She had to serve her marvelous dinner and talk again while everyone ate it. And then she had to offer after-dinner drinks, which everyone would accept, and talk again. For hours. At least until eleven, although some of her dinner parties had run past midnight.

  She was just turning to go back inside when she heard a car on her street. It was moving slowly and when she looked she saw that it was a dark SUV. That was Keith’s SUV, she’d bet her life on it! Now he was driving past her house at night? What next?

  Keith saw the cars in Andrea’s driveway. She had guests. He turned at the end of her street and drove home.

  When he got there he turned on Eric’s computer once again and opened the numeric file he’d found. Studying the rows of unbroken double-spaced numbers, which made absolutely no sense, as every type of written record contained vacant spaces, he began playing around, trying various tests, such as eliminating certain numbers or combinations of numbers.

  He worked for several hours, accomplished nothing concrete or conclusive, and finally went to bed. The second his head hit the pillow there wasn’t a number anywhere in his brain. In fact the only thing occupying that particular part of his anatomy was an image of Andrea’s face. And she wasn’t looking at him with a kindly expression, either.

  Grunting in frustration, he punched his pillow.

  Six

  Andrea bid her guests good-night with her usual warm, winning smile. They complimented her delicious dinner and exemplary hospitality and departed in high spirits shortly before eleven. Relieved that no one seemed to have picked up on her jittery mood, Andrea busied herself picking up glasses from various tables in the living room and carrying them to the kitchen.

  She went to her bedroom then to change into her nightgown and summer-weight robe, for comfort mostly, but also to avoid the risk of spilling or splashing something onto the exquisite fabric of her blue dress, and returned to the kitchen.

  All the while her mind jumped from one thing to another, mostly from her established routine to Keith, who had disrupted longtime habits and rituals. She resented him terribly. If he stayed on his side of Pine Valley, she wouldn’t have to resent him at all. She would hardly be aware of his existence, which was precisely how their non-relationship had flowed along—with only an occasional discomfiting lurch—for years and years.

  But he did what he wanted. He always had, if she looked back and recalled the bossy, mouthy little boy he’d been, even though he’d also been her best friend. And then, at thirty-eight years old, from out of the blue, some weird event had made him see her in a brand-new way. And he had the bloody gall to think she should be thrilled about it! What exactly could she do about such arrogance?

  She was still deep in thought on the subject when her front doorbell chimed, startling her so much that she nearly dropped the plate in her hand. Quickly gathering her wits—a guest must have accidentally left something behind—she dried her hands and hurried to the foyer.

  Switching on the outside light, which she’d turned off once her dinner guests had driven away, she peered through the peephole in the door. Her jaw dropped, her stomach knotted and her pulse began racing: It was Keith!

  The bell chimed again. Drawing a huge breath, Andrea unlocked and opened the door a crack. “It’s late. Why are you here?”

  “I saw your lights. May I come in?”

  “What for?”

  “Because I need a friend.”

  “Oh, you’re in one of your lonely moods.” She knew she sounded cruel, and she really didn’t want to hurt Keith. But who else did she know who would ring her doorbell at this time of night? Her friends were considerate. Her friends called before dropping in.

  Keith slapped at a moth that had been drawn by the light. “To be perfectly honest, I thought about what you said yesterday, and I think you just might be right.”

  “What did I say?”

&nb
sp; Another moth buzzed Keith’s head and he made a swipe at it. “Could I please come inside and escape these critters?”

  Grudgingly she opened the door and stepped back so he could enter. “What did I say yesterday?” she repeated stonily.

  “Hey, do I smell coffee? Would it be too much trouble to give me a cup?”

  She shook her head disgustedly. “You have more bullish brass than Texas longhorns. If you want some coffee it’s in the kitchen.” Spinning on her heel, she walked away.

  Grinning all over his face, positive that she wasn’t really angry with him for dropping in uninvited but she had to act that way, he stayed right behind her. “How’d your party go? Ended kind of early, didn’t it? What happened? Wasn’t it any fun? Did you make the mistake of inviting a bunch of boring people over?”

  She swung around to face him. “My friends are not boring! We had a perfectly lovely evening.”

  “A lovely evening that stopped dead before the clock struck eleven, let alone twelve?”

  “I suppose your parties are just beginning at eleven, probably with every guest falling down drunk by twelve! Well, my friends don’t happen to enjoy that sort of sport, old sport!”

  He reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, shocking her to immobility, and said softly, “How come I rile you so much, sweetheart?”

  Andrea swallowed hard and forced her feet to step away from him. Going to the coffeemaker, she filled a cup and then brought it to the counter. “Sugar, cream?” she asked in a voice she barely recognized as her own. He changed who she normally was, she thought unhappily. That was his secret, his power; he had the ability to eradicate all the gentility she’d acquired through the years and leave her with nothing but a raw inner core.

  “Black, just the way it is.” Keith sat on a counter stool and lifted the cup to his lips for a sip, keeping his eyes on her all the while. Her robe had not been designed for seduction, but it seduced him, probably because it was a robe, which hinted at a flimsy gown and nothing else under it.

  “Was your party a shower of some sort?” he asked.

  “A shower! Why on earth would you think that?”

  “Because of your robe.”

  It took a second for her to make the connection between shower and robe, and when she did she couldn’t help smiling.

  “You’re incorrigible,” she said.

  Keith smiled at her. “Have some coffee with me.”

  “Might as well,” she muttered, totally giving up on ever besting him. “I already knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight.”

  “Why not, hon?”

  His endearment caused a shiver to travel her spine. Holding her cup of coffee in front of her, she hit him with a hard look. “You know damned well why not.”

  “Not because of anything I’ve done. Maybe because your party was a bust?”

  “It was not a bust! Damn, you’re irritating.”

  “Did you just now come to that conclusion?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Well, if I’m so irritating and you thought so before now, how come you let me in?”

  “Yes, let’s get back to that. What did I say yesterday that you decided was so agreeable that you had to come by in the middle of the night to remind me of it? And I would appreciate a straightforward answer, if you don’t mind.”

  Keith slowly took another swallow of coffee and tested her patience further by narrowing his eyes as though deep in thought.

  “Will you please get to it?” she demanded hotly.

  “Well, on second thought maybe I shouldn’t.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!”

  “You might get upset.”

  “I’m already upset!”

  “Yeah, I guess you are. I upset you pretty easily, don’t I?”

  “I don’t have words to describe how easily.”

  He ignored her sarcasm and mused aloud, “I wonder why that is.”

  The red-hot anger rising within her wasn’t a pleasant sensation, and she was honestly afraid of where it might lead. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to speak normally.

  “I don’t have to wonder, I know. Now, take this any way you wish, but either tell me what I said yesterday that intrigued you so…the only reason I opened my door to you at this hour…or leave. Those are your choices.”

  “Okay, but remember you insisted on candor. You said that we should probably go to bed together and get it out of our systems. I’d like to take you up on that offer.”

  Andrea slumped against the refrigerator and just stared at him. “You’re insane.”

  “Did you or did you not say those very words?”

  “Not in the context you’re construing them!”

  “Oh. Well, what other meaning could an invitation to join you in bed have?”

  “I didn’t invite you to join me in bed!” she shrieked. “That is not what I said!”

  “I’m afraid it is, Andy,” he said with a smile she would just love to smear across his face with a hard slap.

  “Leave!” she shouted. “Get your butt off that stool and leave my house!”

  “Well, if you’re going to get all bent out of shape over some simple conversation, then fine, I’ll be happy to go.” Keith set down his cup and got off the stool.

  Andrea was breathing hard, so full of righteous fury that her color was high and her bosom heaving. There was also discomfort in her chest, not a piercing physical pain that would frighten a person, but a thudding ache without a name. It was there, and she knew nothing about its cause or meaning, other than it was somehow connected to Keith. Or maybe it was a reminder of Keith, perhaps a ball of memories that had wound around itself so tightly for so many years in her effort to forget all that had been good between them that it was now wizened and almost unrecognizable.

  Then, with a swiftness and strength that took her breath, some part of herself that was alien to the woman she’d been for a very long time urged her to find her voice and call him back, to ask him to stay and finish his coffee. Surely they could talk without anger, couldn’t they? She opened her mouth, but nothing came out of it.

  Keith walked around the counter and started to leave the kitchen, but then he took her completely by surprise and reversed direction in a fast-moving blur. Her back still to the refrigerator, he pinned her with his body pressed against hers and looked deeply into her shell-shocked eyes.

  “You’re a beauty, Andy,” he said huskily. “You clearly said that we should go to bed together, and I did not misinterpret your meaning. You were thinking that we stir each other’s emotions far too much to pretend we’re unaware of it, and that maybe it was because we never really made love when we should have. You were hoping, I think, that one time together would kill the bad case of nerves we have around each other. You could be right, although I’m not positive of that. One time together might only open a dam of desire that neither of us could even imagine. But I’m willing to take that chance, if you are.”

  “I…didn’t mean it the way you…took it.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think I was…uh, trying to get across to you a completely different kind of…message.” Truthfully she couldn’t remember why she’d said something so unbelievably stupid. She should have known how he would take it. And she was still reacting stupidly to him, thinking that the ache in her chest could be a bunch of old memories that refused to stay buried.

  But she had another, more urgent concern at the moment, an unfamiliar physical weakness. Her muscles felt rubbery and all but useless, her legs threatening to buckle, and if he wasn’t pressed so tightly against her, she was quite certain that she would slide down the face of the refrigerator like a wave of hot liquid.

  Nervously she licked her lips. Whatever else she did or didn’t know, one thing was clear: she had to break this up and get him out of her house.

  “You…I…” Stumbling over simple words was foreign and embarrassing, and she felt impossibly adolescent.

  “W
hat, sweetheart? Say it.” Keith lowered his head so his lips were but a breath from hers. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered.

  What you want…what you want. The words repeated in her bewildered brain, for what she wanted was something she hadn’t wanted in years. Even more painful to contemplate was why she would feel all silky and sensual now because of a man she didn’t even like. She wished she weren’t thinking such things.

  Only now she couldn’t push the tantalizing topic from her mind. Keith’s body was hard and yet yielded to her female curves. She was dazed and yearning, aching in places that had felt nothing for so long.

  So, what did she want? Her heart could have said the words if it could speak, but the part of her that could speak, her mouth, simply would not cooperate.

  “I…I want you to leave,” she said and stunned herself by sounding like a rusty spring.

  Keith’s dark eyes were traveling her face with a smoldering light. “And I want you,” he said in a low-pitched, gravelly voice. “How are we going to align our differing desires?”

  “We…we aren’t,” she whispered. “We…can’t. We…” It was the last word she said before his lips settled on hers. A moan rose in her throat as her body caught fire. His nervy connecting of their bodies, his nearness, that low, bedroom voice in which he’d been speaking had all been foreplay, and it had worked. She slid her hands up his chest, locked them together behind his head and opened her mouth to suck on his tongue. Oh, what joy, she thought dizzily. Why had she relegated these incredible feelings to the trash bin after Jerry’s death? Other widows grieved and then lived again. Why hadn’t she?