by Tara Janzen
Ty grinned. He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t know what horrific behavior was about to be confessed, but even if the two of them had ended up in the throes of passion on the library floor, he’d be the last to condemn her. Hell, by his figuring, she was a twenty-year-old woman married to a man who at that point had to have been in his late fifties—and Ty was giving Charles the benefit of the doubt on his age. Ty didn’t sanction adultery, far from it, but he knew people weren’t saints either.
Before he spoke, he willed the grin off his face, in case she looked up and thought he wasn’t giving the subject the serious consideration it deserved.
“I understand all about things getting out of hand,” he assured her, reminding her of his own previous confession.
“Of course you do,” she murmured. The color in her cheeks deepened. “I don’t mean to imply that our situations were similar. For one, I was a married woman, not an untried teenager. For another, things didn’t get quite that out of hand.”
“Linda wasn’t all that untried.” He added the information matter-of-factly, just to set the record straight.
“Oh.”
The silence continued uncomfortably, until Ty reached his limit.
“So you’re in the library with John, being comrades in arms, literally.”
She took a breath. “We kissed. Nothing as . . . well, as intimate as the kiss you and I shared, but more than was appropriate. I was quite taken up with the whole thing, so much so that before I knew it, my dress was being unbuttoned and Charles was bellowing in the aisle.”
“Shocking,” Ty agreed, imagining Charles in full bellow. “But hardly licentious.”
“It depends on a person’s point of view, I’m sure.”
Ty conceded the point with a nod.
“What happened afterward only made the matter worse. Quite unforgivable,” she said.
“John wanted to marry you.” It was a guess, but Ty thought it was a pretty good one.
“How did you know?” she asked, surprise evident in the lift of her delicate brows.
Ty thought about telling her the truth, that he hadn’t even gotten close to one of her buttons and he was full of ideas, most of them much more shocking than anything she’d told him. But he didn’t tell her that.
“It’s a problem honorable men have when they feel they’ve compromised a woman. They want to marry her. Trust me on this one.” He allowed himself a wry smile.
“But I was already married,” she said, making the obvious point.
“Yeah, well, some guys might have thought Charles was too old for you. That Charles had taken advantage of his position as your teacher and as a colleague of your father’s.”
“He was brilliant, though. It was a privilege to study under him.”
“You told me.” Brilliant, and old, and rich, and cheap. He noticed she didn’t mention it was a privilege to be married to the old coot.
“John’s pursuit of me was the term’s sole source of gossip,” she said. “And of course the library incident became notorious and blown all out of proportion, though goodness knows how. There wasn’t anyone else there. It was humiliating. I tried to reason with John about his marriage proposal, but he swore he was in love with me, which was impossible. One kiss hardly constitutes a basis for love.”
Ty wasn’t so sure. He’d gotten pretty emotionally involved just putting her coat on her. The kiss they’d shared had only intensified the feelings. Victoria Miranda Elizabeth Willoughby was enough to work on any man’s emotions. Her innocence appealed to him, while her body enticed him. Her intelligence intrigued him, and her formality dared him to breach her defenses.
“Poor Charles felt hounded out of his alma mater,” she continued. “We left before the end of the term, and arrangements had to be made for my degree. I had done most of the course work, but not all. Charles made them take my field experience into consideration, which was actually far beyond anything they required.”
Charles had been running scared, Ty decided.
Some hot-blooded young man had wanted his wife, and the old man hadn’t been at all sure he could hold on to her.
“A tough situation,” he said.
“Scandalous,” she agreed, pouring herself more tea. “Charles was most upset. Outraged, really. I thought he would never forgive or forget. I had dragged the Willoughby name through the dirt. It’s a miracle my reputation wasn’t ruined beyond redemption.”
“Nobody’s reputation gets ruined because of a kiss,” Ty said, fighting to control his anger at her dead husband’s vindictiveness. “Especially if, as you say, the kiss wasn’t even as involved as the one we shared after the dance.”
“Not quite as . . . elaborate,” she confirmed, busying herself with the tea tray. “But Charles’s main reason for leaving Oxford was to spare my feelings. The constant reminders of my behavior created no small amount of stress on both of us.”
Ty leaned forward and loosely clasped his hands between his knees, forcing himself to at least look relaxed. “I hate to contradict anything your brilliant husband had to say, but I don’t think you’d recognize licentious behavior if it fell out of the sky and landed on your front porch. I also don’t think you’re capable of instigating such behavior, certainly not in a public place. Though if you’d like to give it a try and prove me wrong, I’d be happy to cooperate.”
Victoria gave him a shocked glance. She didn’t think the retelling of her sullied past had scared him off a bit. Quite the contrary.
“You’re not married now, Victoria,” he went on. “Neither am I. And nobody is going to come bellowing down any aisles.”
He was right, but that didn’t make her feel safer. Quite the contrary.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “from what you’ve told me, if Charles had bellowed a bit less, the whole scandal would have been confined to three people in a deserted library. Unless you’re the one who talked about it all over the place.”
“Never!” she gasped. “Not a word!”
“John wanted to marry you, and he was a friend. So he probably wasn’t inclined to go around and ruin your reputation.”
“He seemed a solid sort,” she admitted after a moment’s consideration. “Other than his infatuation with me, of course.”
“Charles was the only one with anything to gain by making a lot of noise out of one kiss and maybe a button or two,” Ty concluded.
“Oh, no. He had nothing to gain. We had to leave Oxford, for goodness sake. He was as humiliated as I was by the incident.”
“No,” Ty said, shaking his head. “He was a lot more than humiliated. He was scared, and he knew the best way to keep you was through guilt. The more the merrier.”
“I can’t imagine that,” she insisted. “I did feel terribly guilty, but I was . . . well, guilty.”
“Of a kiss. That’s not much to be guilty about.”
“It wasn’t just the kiss.” She hesitated, reaching for her teacup, then changing her mind and folding her hands back in her lap. “It was . . . you see . . . how much I enjoyed it, and believe me, it was nothing compared to how much I enjoyed yours, and that seems to be the problem.”
Of course it was, Ty thought. That was always his problem: Women enjoying his kisses so much, they didn’t want anything to do with him. Maybe Corey had been right. Maybe he didn’t get out enough to know how the game was played anymore.
Victoria dreaded having to explain further, but one look at Ty’s face told her he had no idea what she was talking about. She wasn’t exactly sure herself; she’d never tried to put her feelings into words. There had never been an occasion when she’d needed to put them into words. She had avoided men for that very reason—the turmoil they created.
“It didn’t seem fair to Charles,” she said bluntly, forcing herself to meet Ty’s eyes and promising herself she would never date another man, if only to save herself the embarrassment of this sort of explanation.
“Charles is dead.”
“Yes. And I de
cided not to become involved that way with a man ever again.”
“You mean kissing?” he asked. “Or do you mean marriage? Or do you mean something else?”
“Well, marriage is definitely out,” she said. “Definitely out. And kissing leads to all sorts of things that I’d really rather not discuss, but which I am sure you are aware of.”
“I think I remember a few possibilities,” he said, still mightily confused.
“Yes, well, you see, it wasn’t so terribly disappointing with Charles. I mean, it was quite obvious his passions lay more with academia than with . . . with . . .”
“Sex?” Ty suggested, helping her out. He was still confused, but he was getting damned intrigued again.
“Yes.” She drew herself up and fingered the collar of her awful yellow blouse. She had stopped meeting his gaze some sentences back. “But with a man like yourself, for instance—whom I knew right from the start to avoid, but with whom I still find myself somewhat involved—well, with a man like you the . . . uh, expectations, I’m sure, are bound to become unrealistic. I’m not sure exactly why. But even with my extensive reading on the subject, I find myself imagining all sorts of things. Thoroughly romanticized, I assure you.”
Extensive reading? He was thoroughly intrigued. “Maybe Charles wasn’t doing it right.”
She cast him a prim glance. “Charles was brilliant, and according to my research, he was proficient in the basic moves.”
Ty was beginning to get the picture. Charles had convinced her she was licentious because she had enjoyed another man’s kisses, and to appease him, she had convinced herself she was frigid. An interesting combination. Sex, he knew, was confusing for a lot of people, but by his figuring, Victoria was more confused than most.
“I’m sure you see now why we shouldn’t attempt continuing a relationship on our current course,” she said, managing to keep busy by arranging and rearranging the tea tray.
“Not exactly,” he admitted. “I haven’t read any books or anything, but I know enough to know that ‘proficiency in basic moves’ doesn’t sound like much fun in bed.”
Fun? A cup and saucer clattered to the floor and rolled across a corner of the rug. The cream pitcher almost followed in the wake of Victoria’s ill-timed lunge.
Fun! Her fingers grappled with the pitcher. She stuck her foot out to keep the teacup from rolling and spilling across more of the rug. One of her bobby pins slipped free and sent a loop of chestnut curls cascading down the side of her head.
When everything came to a stop, with her nearly spread-eagle over the tray, she stole a quick glance up at him. He was grinning.
“I guess fun wasn’t in the books,” he said, his grin spreading until his whole face was lit with teasing mischief.
“N-no. It wasn’t.” The man was unbelievable. Fun, indeed. What she’d done with Charles on the odd month had no more resemblance to fun than . . . than she didn’t know what. Once or twice there had been a glimmer of passion, but more often than not there had been a sense of a duty performed, of comfort given, sometimes of a job well done. In truth, the faint rewards of sex had been less than compelling. Nothing at all like Ty Garrett’s kisses, which had been very compelling.
He leaned forward and set the tray aright. “I can see where we’re really on opposite sides of the fence on this thing.”
Thank goodness, she thought. He had finally understood her.
“But judging from what you’ve told me,” he continued, “I’ve had more experience in this area than you. That would make me the expert, and I think you need to give sex another chance.”
Her face flamed. He hadn’t understood her at all, not her motives, at least, though he seemed to have understood her goal quite clearly.
He went on. “I don’t think a young woman like yourself should deny herself the support and comfort and love of a husband and children solely because of a less-than-ideal first marriage.”
“I—I have no intention,” she stammered, “of denying, or anything. When, or if, the right man comes along, of course, I’ll consider . . . alternatives . . . or something.”
“Well, darlin’,” he said, taking her hand in his, “I’ve been giving this a whole lot of thought, and I’m pretty sure I’m the right man . . . the best man . . . the only man.”
Eight
Impossible.
The word was still running through Victoria’s mind almost a full day later. Ty Garrett? A Colorado rancher? The right man for Victoria Miranda Elizabeth Willoughby?
Impossible.
She’d told him as much, yet she was going to his house for Chinese food. He’d repeated his invitation on his way out her door and had practically refused to leave until she’d accepted, assuring her they should at least remain friends. They seemed to get along well enough for friendship, he’d said. She had agreed, though she’d made her position on his other statement clear.
“Nothing in common,” she muttered, jamming her feet into low blue heels. “Absolutely nothing in common!”
Surprisingly, he’d accepted her one-word summation without an argument. That was preferable to the alternative, of course, but she would have thought that if he really believed he was the right man for her, he would have been able to support his idea with a fact or two, an example of compatibility. One lousy example shouldn’t have been so hard to come up with. They were both human, after all.
She straightened and tugged her cream-colored silk jacket into place. Peacock-blue piping skimmed the curve of her waist at the bottom of the short jacket and framed her chin at the top of the mandarin collar. Blue and gold embroidery decorated the sarong-style cream-colored silk dress beneath the jacket. She knew the dress fit, because she had bought it herself in Shanghai. A Chinese dress to wear in China. Charles had thought the sentiment painfully adolescent, but she had been only eighteen when they’d gone to China the last time.
Charles had said the dress looked cheap. She had thought it was pretty and exotic. She still did. Charles had said take it back. She had taken it no farther than its box and packed it in one of her traveling trunks.
She squirmed in front of the mirror, tugging at the side seams. Maybe the dress was a tad tight through the bodice. She’d never actually worn it before, and it was possible she’d filled out since her teenage years—though she hadn’t noticed any of her other clothes getting snug.
Chinese food. She stopped squirming. They both liked Chinese food, didn’t they? They both liked spiced peaches. They both liked children. Ty had been great at the junior high dance, patient and compassionate with the awkward kids and firm with the rowdy ones. She hadn’t known she liked children until she’d started teaching them. They were amazing, much more interesting than she’d thought.
They also had a common professional interest in the grassland. Different professions and different opinions, but a common interest. And what about those kisses? Had they been so forgettable for him that they hadn’t even come to mind?
“Hmmph.” She turned and checked the back of the dress in the mirror, smoothing it over her hips, though there was nary a wrinkle in sight.
A Chinese dress for eating Chinese food. She wasn’t going to change. She wanted to wear the dress. It would add a certain ambience to the meal, a touch of culture. It was appropriate, she was sure, and it was much “sunnier” than anything else in her closet.
But it was a bit tight.
* * *
Ty’s jaw dropped the minute she got out of her car. Through the voluminous folds of her brown coat he saw slinky silk and female curves, the same curves he’d felt when they’d danced, beautiful curves in all the right places. He swore right then and there that if he ever got the chance, he was going to burn that darn coat and buy her something else.
Corey had ridden back from the gate with her, and he bounded up the porch steps.
“Hey, Dad. Guess what?”
Ty tore his gaze from Victoria to meet his son’s excited face. “What?”
“Miss Willo
ughby’s dress is real silk, all the way from China. She got it in Shanghai. Pretty cool, huh?”
Ty started to shake his head, then caught himself and nodded in agreement. He didn’t want Corey getting any ideas, but Ty thought the dress was about as far from cool as a dress could get. It was about as hot as a dress could be and still be decent.
“Hi, Victoria,” he said, coming down the steps to take her hand. He hadn’t argued with her last night about her opinion on any future for the two of them because he’d needed time to think. She had some crazy ideas he had to get around before he could get anywhere with her. Any thoughts he’d had of not getting anywhere with her at all had died their last death when he’d seen her dress. Women were too rare around Talbot to give up on one who wore silk dresses slit up the side. Silk dress or no, women like Victoria were too rare to give up on at all, in any way.
The gloves were off. It was time to let her know exactly what she did to him, and to try everything in his power to see if he could do the same things to her. After two practically disastrous dates, he was hooked.
He wrapped his hand around hers and pulled her close. “I missed you,” he whispered, kissing her next to her ear and lingering longer than was necessary or polite.
Victoria barely noticed the impropriety. She was too busy trying to catch her breath.
“We saw each other just last evening,” she managed to say when he lifted his head. She knew Americans were friendlier than most, and maybe being friends meant casual welcoming kisses. If that was so, then she needed to work on coming up with a casual response. The suddenly racing pulse and flood of warmth coursing down her body were not casual.