“As for what those big mouths in the bathroom said about you being different,” he continued, “you probably were. If he’d been going out with society types or old money or whatever his mother considered ‘refined,’ you’d have been a breath of fresh air.”
A few years out from leaving the mobile nest of her fairly unconventional parents, there probably hadn’t been an ounce of pretension about her. Even now, the polish he suspected she’d acquired in her husband’s circles seemed as understated as her quiet sensuality. There was something about her that defied definition. It was almost as if her desire for permanence had forced her from her parents’ artistic, nomadic lifestyle to seek stability in the urbane and conservative and she’d yet to find where she was comfortable in between. What truly impressed him, though, was the strength that pushed her past what many would see as totally daunting obstacles, along with a seemingly innate ability to nurture, to ease and to make a man feel as if every word he uttered mattered.
The way she made him feel just then.
“He might not have even realized how constrained he felt until you came along.” Thinking of the emotionally vacant relationships he personally limited himself to, he cleared his throat, glanced from the quiet way she watched him. “You went to work as his secretary. Right?”
Looking a little doubtful about his assessment, she gave a small nod. “He’d been there four years.”
“So even before you came along, his career choices made it pretty clear he had a mind of his own. It sounds like he was willing to follow the family profession, but on his own terms. When he did meet you, I doubt he gave a second’s thought to what his mom and dad would think. By the time he realized he wanted you in his life, their opinion might have mattered to him, but not as much as you did.”
He knew for a fact that the physical pull between a man and a woman tended to lead the way where the sexes were concerned. If Curt had been half the man Erik suspected he was, he’d have had as hard a time as he was at that moment keeping his hands to himself. On the parental objection front, he couldn’t imagine his own folks finding any fault with her at all.
“As for eloping,” he continued, not at all sure where that last thought had come from, “he probably knew his parents wouldn’t be willing participants, so it just made sense to avoid the problem. Most guys I know prefer to duck all the big wedding plans, anyway. Unless that’s what his fiancée really wants,” he qualified, because he’d given in on that one himself.
A bit of red glitter clung to one knee of her jeans. With the tip of her index finger, she gave it a nudge. “I didn’t care about anything big, Erik. I just wanted to marry him.”
He had no idea why that didn’t surprise him. What did was how a while ago, he’d wanted details. Now, he did not.
“A little more insider info here,” he offered, despite a stab of what felt suspiciously like envy. “Men aren’t that complicated. If Curt was like most of us, if he was working longer hours, he was just doing what he needed to do to get ahead in his field and provide the kind of life he wanted for his family. It’s what a guy does,” he said simply. “Our egos tend to be tied to what we do for a living. But our work is also how we take care of the people we care about.”
As if he’d just touched on something familiar, her glance lifted, then promptly fell.
She’d forgotten how often Curt had told her that he wouldn’t be putting in those hours forever. That soon he’d be a partner and they could afford a bigger house, better cars, the kinds of vacations he wanted them to take. So many times he’d told her he was doing what he was doing for them.
She’d loved him for that. But she also remembered telling him she couldn’t imagine living in a house larger than the one they had. She’d been fine—more than fine—with everything they’d already possessed.
“I think he needed bigger and better more than I did.”
“That’s entirely possible.” Erik watched her nudge again at the bit of sparkle, the rest of her fingers curled into her palm. “A lot of people measure their success by their acquisitions. Especially if the people around them do the same thing.” He wouldn’t be in business himself if there weren’t people who wanted to own the exclusive sailing sloops he loved to build. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t thinking of you. And Tyler. And don’t forget, he also cared enough about what you had together to work through the...ah...baby problem you two had,” he decided to call it, “and adopt that great little guy upstairs.”
What she had recalled moments ago had put a microscopic tear in the doubts that had caused her to question nearly every memory. Erik’s conclusions had just ripped that hole wide.
She had no secrets from this man, she realized. There was nothing of any import about her he didn’t know and, in some inexplicable way, seem to understand. Because of that he had just reminded her of a time when she had known without a doubt that her husband loved her. Curt had been so worried about losing her, of her thinking less of him because he couldn’t give her the child they’d both wanted so much. Yet the struggles, disappointments and finally the joy of Tyler had only brought them closer.
So many details of her married life had faded in the past months. So much had been lost or skewed by second-guessing and uncertainties. But that much she remembered with crystal clarity, and while the memory was a bittersweet reminder of what she had lost, it also felt mercifully...healing.
“As for the rest of it,” he said quietly, “if you were happy and if he seemed happy with you and Tyler, that’s all that matters.” Without thinking, he reached over, traced his finger over hers. “If you’d stop looking for ways to explain what you heard, I think you’d probably know that.”
The tip of his finger moved over her knuckles, his touch gentle, reassuring. His strong hand looked huge next to hers, and she wanted badly to absorb his certainty as he uncurled her fingers and rested his palm on the back of her hand.
“Do you think you can do that?” he asked.
Watching his fingers curve around hers, she gave another little nod.
“That’s a start, then,” he murmured.
He had no idea how far beyond a start he’d led her.
At that moment, with Erik doing nothing but holding her hand, she couldn’t help but think of how Curt would have really liked this man. She could have hugged him herself for defending Curt the way he had—had she not already been wishing he would hold her.
He tipped up her chin, curved his hand to the side of her face. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Her heart gave an odd little bump. “Sure.”
“You’re a really lousy liar.”
She had no idea what he saw in her expression. She just knew her throat felt suspiciously tight as his dark eyes narrowed on hers.
“You’ll be all right, Rory. I don’t know how long it will take for you,” he admitted, surprising empathy in the deep tones of his voice. “It was a couple of years before I realized I was having a good time again. But you’ll get better before you even realize it’s happening.”
Her head unconsciously moved toward his palm. The heat of his hand felt good against her cheek, warm, comforting. Grounding. At that moment, she just didn’t know if it was that anchoring touch or his confident assurance that she needed most. She felt relieved by that contact. It was as if he was letting her know she wasn’t as alone as she so often felt. She craved that security as much as she did his disarming gentleness when his thumb brushed the curve of her jaw and edged to the corner of her mouth.
His eyes followed the slow movement, his carved features going taut as he carried that mesmerizing motion to her bottom lip.
Her breath caught. When she felt his thumb give a little tug, her heart bumped hard against her ribs.
An instant later, his jaw tightened and his hand fell.
At his abrupt withdrawal, disappointment shot through her.
Swift and unsettling. She wouldn’t have pulled away, wouldn’t have done a thing to stop him had he moved closer. Knowing that, embarrassingly certain he did, too, Rory rose before he could and reached for an empty mug on the end table.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I said I wouldn’t do that again. Dump on you like that, I mean.”
When she turned back, Erik had pushed himself to his feet.
Beyond his broad shoulders, a log broke in the fireplace, embers spraying upward. The tick of ice blowing hard against the window grew more audible with another gust of wind.
The storm added yet another layer of unease.
“I asked,” he reminded her.
“That’s true.” Hoping to shake how he unsettled her, she tried for a smile. “So it’s your fault.”
She was talking about his uncanny ability to uncork her most private concerns. From the way his glance dropped to her mouth, he seemed to be thinking more of the seductive pull snaking across the six feet of tension separating them.
Or maybe it was just her own tension she felt.
“Just part of the service.”
He’d only been doing his job.
The reminder had her ducking her head as she turned away. It didn’t matter that she’d wanted his kiss, or how badly she’d wanted him to hold her. It didn’t even matter that she didn’t trust what she’d felt when she’d been in his arms before, that almost desperate need to hide in his strength.
He’d offered her his help, a little comfort and his experience. What he wasn’t offering was a refuge, and she had no business thinking of him as one.
“If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just say good-night now,” she murmured. “You’re welcome to stay down here and watch TV if you want. My bedroom is the one—”
“I know where your bedroom is, Rory.”
Of course he did.
“The sheets are clean and I put clean towels in the master bathroom.” Her bathroom wasn’t very big, but he already knew that, too. “I set out a new toothbrush for you.”
“I’ll figure it out,” he assured her. “Is there anything you want me to do down here?”
“Just bank the fire.”
The rest could wait until morning.
The telltale muscle in his jaw jerked. “Consider it banked. I’ll take care of that,” he said, taking the mug from her. “You go on up. I’ll catch the news for a while and turn off the lights.”
He obviously felt the need for a little space, too.
More than willing to give it to him, she started for the stairs.
The silence behind her and the faint ticking of ice against glass had her turning right back.
“Is the roof up there okay? It can handle the weight of the ice, can’t it?”
“The roof should be fine.”
She lifted her chin, turned back again.
Another step and she turned right back. “Is there anything I can get you before I go up?”
He’d barely met her eyes again before he shook his head and turned away himself. “I don’t need a thing,” he assured her. “Just go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Chapter Eight
For Rory, sleep rarely came easily. When it did, it was usually fitful, an often futile exercise where the loneliness she could sometimes mask with activity during the day reared its ugly head at night to haunt her. But she must have been asleep. Something had just wakened her, a distant, cracking sound followed by an odd, heavy silence.
With Tyler’s back tucked against her, she blinked into the dark. Realizing that it shouldn’t be that dark since his night-light should have been on, she reached for her robe at the foot of the twin bed.
She had no idea what time it had been when she’d heard Erik come up the stairs and close the door at the end of the hall. She’d lain there listening to the sound of water in the bathroom pipes and the heavy creak of floorboards as he’d moved around her room. When silence seemed to indicate that he’d gone to bed, she’d attempted to block further thought in that direction by listening to her son’s deep, even breathing and the wind gusting like muffled cannon blasts against his bedroom wall beside her.
The ice pelting the window had no longer sounded as sharp, as if the buildup had muffled it. The only thing that had allowed her to not feel as anxious as she might have about the fury outside had been thinking about the man down the hall being so near.
Now she heard nothing at all.
There was no clock in Tyler’s room. Quietly, so as not to wake her sleeping child, she pulled on her robe and found her way to the door.
The moment she opened it, she realized the electricity had gone out. The night-light in Tyler’s bathroom across the hall wasn’t on. Neither was the one in the outlet down by her room. The hall was as black as pitch.
She kept a flashlight in her nightstand, another in a drawer in the kitchen. Without questioning why she didn’t head for her room, she edged toward the stairs, her hand sliding along the wall to guide her to the handrail.
“Rory?”
Her hand flattened over the jolt behind her breastbone. “Erik,” she whispered, turning toward his hushed voice. “Where are you?”
“By your bedroom door. Where are you?”
“By the stairs,” she whispered. “What was that noise?”
“It sounded like a tree went down. My guess is that it took out a power line.” Across twenty feet of dark came the soft, metallic rasp of a zipper. “Do you have a flashlight up here?”
It seemed he’d just zipped up his jeans. Thinking he could well be standing there shirtless, she murmured, “The nightstand on the left. In the drawer.”
She heard him move inside, and his mild oath when he bumped into something, the end of the bed, probably. Moments later, shadows bounced around the room and a flash of bright light arched low into the hall. Following that blue-white beam, he walked up to her, his undershirt and sweater in his free hand, and handed her the light.
She kept the beam angled down, the pool of it at his feet. Still, there was more than enough illumination to define every superbly sculpted muscle of his chest.
Deliberately, she moved her glance to the heavy sports watch on his wrist. “Do you know what time it is?” she asked.
“Almost seven.”
It would be getting light in less than an hour.
He dropped the sweater. In two quick motions he shoved his beautifully muscled arms into his long-sleeved undershirt.
“When you did the walk-through with the building inspector, did he say anything about the generator? It should only have taken seconds for it to take over.”
The generator? “He said it was set to come on for a few minutes once a week,” she told him, scrambling to remember as she watched him pull his shirt over his head. “To make sure it’ll be available when I really need it,” she added.
Erik’s dark head popped out, rearranging his already sleep-mussed hair. His jaw was shadowed, hard and angular in the dim light. “Has it been working?”
“I don’t know.” The gray metal generator on the slab at the back of the building hadn’t been on her priority list. It hadn’t been on her list at all. Until now. “I think he said it’s set for either Tuesday or Wednesday mornings. We haven’t been here then.”
He swiped the sweater from where it had landed near her beam-lit, glittery-red toenails. Rising, his glance skimmed the length of her pale robe, only to jerk away before he met her eyes.
She’d barely realized he looked nearly as tense as he had when she’d left him last night before he dragged the sweater over his head and tugged it down. “I’ll check the transfer switch. Then I’ll get a fire going.
“I just need this.” He took the flashlight from her. “Give me a minute and you’ll have enough light to do whatever you n
eed to do up here. The hall light won’t work, but the bathroom lights will. Did he explain how the standby works?”
A transfer switch sounded familiar. The guy who’d inspected the building a couple of weeks ago had pointed it out. It was in one of the electrical panel boxes in the basement.
“I think so. I don’t remember everything he told me,” she admitted. “We looked at a lot around here that day.” There’d also been Tyler to calm. He hadn’t liked the huge, shadowy space. “There was a lot to take in.”
Something shifted in Erik’s expression. She knew he’d been aware of how overwhelmed she’d been by Cornelia’s intervention, and by how suddenly she’d found herself in a place she’d known nothing about at all. It stood to reason there were a few things she might have missed, or had forgotten. As it was, she could have managed on her own to start a fire to keep Tyler warm. She just had no idea what to do about the generator—which meant, right now, she couldn’t fix this particular problem without him.
She didn’t doubt that he knew that, too, as he followed the beam of light down the stairs, pulled on the heavy boots he’d left at the bottom and disappeared into the dark.
Feeling at a distinct disadvantage where he was concerned, and hating it, she turned in the dark herself, working her way first to Tyler’s bathroom, then back to his room. She’d just started to put on the clothes she’d left on his play table last night when she heard his bedclothes rustle.
“Mom? I’m a-scared.”
“It’s okay, honey. I’m right here. The power went out,” she explained, her voice soft, “but it’ll be back on in a minute.” Leaving her robe on, she found her way to him, hugged his warm little body to hers. “You don’t need to be afraid.” Forcing a smile into her voice, she murmured, “You know what?”
His response was the negative shake of his head against her neck.
“I have a big surprise for you.”
“Is the tree all done?”
“It is. But that’s not the surprise.”
She felt him pull back. “Is he here?”
Her Holiday Prince Charming Page 14