A Marriage-Minded Man

by Karen Templeton

  Eli plugged a CD into the truck’s sound system, something mellow and jazzy.

  “This okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s nice,” she said, relaxing into her seat. Pretending to, at least. It occurred to her she had no idea what his musical taste was anymore, assuming—please God—he’d outgrown his grunge rock phase. The tempo picked up, Eli scatting softly along with it. She’d forgotten what a good voice he had—

  “Did you know June?”

  “Um, a little,” Tess said, sitting up straighter, wondering why on earth he’d brought up Aidan Black’s first wife. “Where’d that come from?”

  “Just thinking about how gutsy she was.” She could barely see his slight smile when he glanced over. “Wasn’t hard to see why Aidan was so crazy about her. Or why her death hit him so hard. I’m sure he never in a million years thought he’d get a second chance like he did. With Winnie, I mean.”

  Thinking, Oh, boy, Tess said, “Is that what you want, Eli? A second chance with me?”

  “Actually, no. Well, yeah, obviously I would, but…I wasn’t talking about myself. It’s you who deserves another shot, at love, at happiness, at whatever life’s gypped you out of.” Her own mind was whirling so much she didn’t at first realize he’d paused. Until he said, “Whoever that’s with isn’t the issue.”

  Her heart pounding, she looked at Eli’s profile, barely visible in the dark. “You honest to God mean that?”

  “I honest to God do.”

  Approaching Tierra Rosa’s outskirts—such as they were—they passed Garcia’s market, the security lights in the parking light slashing across Eli’s face, and for the first time Tess saw—really saw—the man he’d become.

  The man she was falling in love with, God help her.

  Her neighbor’s doofus dog bar-owfed at them when the truck pulled into her drive. Shaking, one hand on the door latch, she considered her options. Considered, again, what she wanted versus what she should do. Oddly, the choices weren’t nearly as cut-and-dried as she might have expected. Hoped they’d be. Finally, she swung her gaze to Eli, saw a tenderness in his expression that brought a lump to her throat. “Would you…like to come in?”

  His lips tilted. “For coffee?”

  “No.”

  He blew out a half laugh, half sigh. “I don’t expect—”

  “I know. And I wouldn’t be making the offer if I thought you did.”

  The man just kept looking at her, like he was trying to see straight through her. Cowering under his scrutiny, she faced front again. “I’m trying, Eli. But I’m scared.”

  His seat creaked when he leaned across to gently touch her jaw, bringing her eyes back to his. “Of what?”

  “You get one guess.”

  Releasing a breath, Eli sagged back in his seat, one hand on the steering wheel. “For however long you want me in your life,” he said, turning to her again, “I’m here.”

  Her vision blurred. “Unfortunately, you’re not the first person to say that to me.”

  “Yeah, but I mean it.”

  And oh, my, how she wanted those words to trample the fear welling up higher and higher inside her.

  “Tess?” She looked over. “Whatever you want to do, I’m fine with it. Your call.”

  “I want you to come inside,” she said.

  After another long gaze, Eli got out and went around to her side to open her door, help her down from the truck. The door shut, he slipped one arm around her waist, sending another thrill through her, this time of eager, if bittersweet, anticipation. Behind a chain-link gate on her neighbor’s side yard, the dog started whuffling and whining.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Butch. He’s a complete wuss.”

  “Be right back,” Eli said, releasing her to go see the dog, who became unhinged with joy. Crouching, he shot the breeze with the beast for a minute while Tess unlocked the front door, joining her by the time she’d dumped her purse and keys on the entry table, then turned on the lamp by the chintz floral sofa sitting where the sectional had been.

  “Nice chat?”

  Eli shut the door behind him. “Butch wasn’t real keen on money markets these days, said my safest bet would be in Treasury bonds.”

  Laughing over her knotted stomach, Tess plopped onto the pink monstrosity, nearly turning herself inside out to get her boot off.

  “Um, wow,” Eli said, frowning at the sofa. “Flowers. And…ruffles.”

  She twisted in another direction, but the boot wouldn’t budge. “Thea and Jonny brought it over yesterday so there’d be someplace to sit—it came with the ranch when he inherited it—but it’s like having Miss Piggy in my living room. She won’t be staying.”

  “I feel much better now,” Eli said, undoing his bolo tie as he approached. “Need help?”

  “No, no…I’ve got it…whoa!”

  Her butt slid forward when Eli grabbed her foot, yanking off the boot in one swift move, then motioned for the other. When she frowned, one side of his mouth slid up and her mind shorted out for a sec. “Think of it as foreplay.”

  “In that case—” up went the other tootsies “—have at it…oops!”

  Her hand flailed out, knocking the remote off the end table. Eli got to it before she did, then dropped onto the sofa beside her. Really close. Omigod-I-want-to-eat-you-up-you-smell-so-good close. “So,” he said, wiggling the remote. “Still don’t know how to use this?”

  “Sure I do. I just keep poking at things until something happens.”

  “Sounds a lot like my first sexual experience.”

  “Yeah, I do seem to remember a lot of trial and error going on there.”

  The remote clutched in his hand, Eli looked at her, their mouths really close. “Was it that awful?”

  “If you’re asking me if rockets went off…no.” Tess hesitated, then let her hand stray to his shirt buttons. Sober—she hadn’t even had wine with dinner—she was strangely shy. “But it wasn’t awful.”

  “I know what buttons to push now,” he said. “Which you may have noticed.”

  “You’re killing me here.”

  “That was the idea,” he said, leaning closer. If that was possible. “Okay, to just turn on the TV…you hit this…then this…”

  The TV blooped to life. Tess reared back to gawk at Eli. “You’re giving me a remote tutorial now?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to know how this thing works. So.” He smacked the remote into her hand, then hauled her foot into his lap and started massaging her instep. Oh, mama. “You do it.”

  “While you’re doing…that?”

  “Just gettin’ you nice and warmed up—”

  “You’re not just teasing me?”

  His eyes bore into hers. Dead serious eyes. Dead serious, sexy-as-hell eyes. “I don’t tease, honey. Now go on,” he said, nodding at the TV. “Show it who’s in charge.”

  Suddenly realizing she might well come out of the evening with both a teeth-rattling orgasm and the ability to program her DVR, Tess did indeed play along, until Eli at long last—meaning, maybe five minutes later—pronounced her Queen of the Comcast remote, and as a reward, she supposed, moved in for a kiss that could’ve supplied power for the entire town, it was that slow and delicious and thorough. But when she reached for the hem of her sweater, he shook his head.

  “Nope, not yet.”

  “Because…?”

  “Because what’s the rush?” He kissed her again, easing her back onto the sofa.

  “You just wanna make out and stuff?”

  “For now,” he said, smiling. Stroking her temple with his thumb. His lips touched hers, just enough to stir things deep inside her, not enough to make them boil over. Yet. “We had sex. Now I want to make love to you. For as long as it takes. And in my book, making love means lots of kissing…long, slow, wet kissing…”

  Not a tease. Right.

  “Um,” she said as his mouth lowered to her neck, “any reason we
can’t do this…um…n-naked?”

  “You know,” he murmured between kisses along her jaw, “you really need to learn how to relax and enjoy the moment.”

  “I’m thinking I’d enjoy it a lot more naked. On six-hundred count cotton sheets.”

  Chuckling, Eli pushed himself to his feet, then pulled her up, as well. “Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he said, tugging her into her bedroom and turning on the lamp beside the bed, the bedroom all in neutral colors because that’s what Enrique liked, never mind that she’d always dreamed of cobalt-blue walls and crisp white linens—

  No, Teresa, she heard her mother say, you can’t paint the walls blue. It’s too hard to paint over them again if we sell the house…

  “Hey,” Eli whispered, bracketing her face with his hands, concern vibrating in his eyes. “Where’d you go?”

  “Sorry, I…It’s nothing.” She smiled, wondering why, why, she constantly sabotaged herself, why it was so damned hard to simply enjoy the moment?

  Because that’s all it ever is. A moment.

  “Undress me,” she whispered, and he did, pressing his mouth to her belly and collarbone and shoulders as each item of clothing bit the dust, then removing his own clothes as she lay on the bed, watching. Trembling. Finally naked, Eli slid beside her to pull her close, not hard, not frantically, but with a deliberateness that turned her bones to water, made her mold to all that solid warmth like Silly Putty. “Tonight,” he said softly into her hair, making her sigh when he palmed her breast, “it’s all about you. What you want. Whatever you want.”

  Once again, tears crowded her eyes. But she blinked them away before smiling up at him. “You’re sure brave,” she said lightly, knowing instantly he wasn’t buying her act for a single moment. And it rattled her all over again, how this man could see straight through to where she was most raw, most vulnerable, giving him more power over her than anyone else had ever had. Not Enrique, not her mother…no one.

  But for all that, it was her night. Her moment, fleeting thought it might be…a night when she didn’t have to meet anyone’s expectations but her own. With that, she pulled out of his arms and turned off the light, leaving the room bathed in stark, silvery-blue moonlight.

  Because she couldn’t bear to see his face, see the one thing in his eyes she didn’t dare trust…couldn’t bear for him to see, when he filled her, how empty she still felt.

  The heat kicking on startled Eli awake; took him a few seconds to fight off the slight disorientation, until his eyes adjusted to the cottony, predawn light and he realized the soft, fragrant weight against his chest was Tess. Except the crushing sensation inside his chest had nothing to do with her weight.

  Careful not to disturb her, he lifted his watch from the nightstand, squinting at it. Six-thirty on a Sunday morning, the rest of the day entirely theirs, if they wanted it to be. If she wanted it to be. Except he’d known even before they’d walked into the house she’d been coiling more and more into herself, saying one thing and feeling something else entirely.

  Not that there’d been anything even remotely forced about her trembling responses to his touch, her eagerness for him to explore and taste and love every inch of her body—as heartbreakingly tender as the encounter had been, she’d given, and taken, with an almost brutal honesty. But even Eli could sense the sadness beyond the gasps and murmurs of pleasure, the soft laughs and pleases and yeses and like thats that had driven him insane with wanting to please her, to possess her, to make her come like she never had before.

  Since he hadn’t exactly checked his Macho Club membership card at the door or anything.

  Even after all that, though, he could see in the gradually lightening room the worry lines between her brows. The regret. And it killed him that he had no idea how to erase them. To make everything all right.

  To make her all right, to undo years of broken promises and betrayals.

  It also about killed him to ease himself out of the warm bed, but he couldn’t think with her beside him like that, making him want her again. After taking care of morning business, he silently gathered his clothes and carried them out to the living room and got dressed, spying the boxes of outside decorations piled beside the haphazardly decorated Christmas tree. She’d let the kids do it, she’d said. He smiled at the chaotic jumble of ornaments, how she’d put aside her own borderline OCD issues for her kids.

  By now, the sliver of sky peeking through the closed drapes was a thin, milky-gray—light enough for his purposes. Eli started a pot of coffee and slipped on his coat, then carted the boxes outside into the silent, frigid morning. The decorations seemed easy enough, he thought as he buttoned up his coat and pulled on his gloves—some icicle lights, three or four strands of big colored bulbs, all painstakingly wrapped around little plastic forms. The no-fuss, no-muss choices of a single parent with too many things to do and too little time to do them.

  A half hour later, the front door swung open. Hair sticking up in a thousand directions, her arms folded over a fuzzy, light purple robe that made her look like a leftover Easter chick, Tess blinked up at him, shielding her eyes from the now-bright sun. “What on earth are you doing?”

  “Freezing my butt off. Hope you appreciate it.”

  The worry lines softened some when she smiled. “Are you kidding? Done is beautiful. Thanks.” She returned his kiss when he climbed down off the stepstool he’d found in her garage, her fingers loitering at the nape of his neck, her eyes not quite meeting his when he pulled back. “Wow,” she said. “All this and coffee, too?”

  “See how handy I am to have around?”

  The smile faltered. “What would you like for breakfast? I picked up some bacon the other day, and I make a mean omelet. Three kinds of cheese, tomatoes, peppers, chile—whatever you like.”

  “All of the above?”

  “You got it,” she said, shuffling toward the kitchen.

  Eli hauled the empty boxes back inside, letting them drop onto the floor before joining Tess in her immaculate kitchen, the regimented order even more pronounced in the sunlight streaming through the window over the sink.

  “Need help?” he said to her back as she pulled eggs and cheese and bacon out of a sleek black fridge.

  Still not looking at him, she shook her head. Eli let it go…until, after laying several strips of bacon in a cast-iron skillet, the egg she tried to crack into a glass bowl slipped out of her shaking hand, exploding on the tile floor.

  “No, it’s okay, I’ve got it,” she said when he went for a paper towel.

  “What you’ve got,” he said, gently shoving her aside to clean up the slimy mess, “is a major case of B.S.” Still squatting, he looked up at her, immediately saw the truth and chagrin in her eyes. “Didn’t I tell you last night the one thing, the only thing, I want from you is honesty? So if you don’t mind—” he got up to toss the soaked towel into her garbage, then rinsed off his hands “—I’d really appreciate you cutting the crap and telling me what’s going on.”

  After a long pause, she said, very softly, “I don’t want to ruin last night.”

  Eli turned, his heart splitting at her tormented expression. “Not possible.”

  The bacon began to hiss in the pan; she returned to the stove to turn down the heat, not even protesting when Eli took over egg-cracking duty.

  “Okay,” she said at last. “You want honesty? When I woke up and realized you weren’t in bed, saw your clothes weren’t there, I felt like somebody’d thrown me under a truck.”

  Squelching the spurt of irritation, Eli took a fork to the eggs to beat them into a froth. “So you still don’t trust me.”

  Knuckling the space between her brows, Tess drifted over to the small kitchen table to sit in the chair facing the window, squinting into the sun. “This isn’t about you.”

  “It was me in the bed with you last night, Tess. So how can it not be about me?”

  Her eyes squeezing shut, she leaned forward, thrusting both hands through her messy hair for a
second or two before tilting her eyes to his. “You remember telling me that you dumped me because you were scared of your feelings? That it was all too fast, too much, and you just couldn’t deal?”

  “I was seventeen, for God’s sake.”

  Their gazes tangled for a second before she got up to turn the bacon. “Don’t recall terror being age-specific.”

  “You’re afraid of me?”

  “You’re not listening.” Carefully setting down the fork, she turned. “I’m feeling things for you I haven’t felt for anybody else in a long time,” she said, her voice too soft, too controlled, “and I’m scared because…”

  The corners of her mouth curved down. “Because except for my children, loving people has just never ended well for me, okay? My father left, my mother couldn’t have cared less about me, my husband…” Tears bloomed in her eyes; he watched her blink them back. “I don’t know…maybe there’s only so many times a heart can get broken before it doesn’t heal anymore—”

  “Honey—”

  “I was just beginning to feel safe, Eli, in this little world I’ve patched together from the scraps I’ve been left. You have no idea what a relief it is not having to worry about whether somebody loves me or not, or wonder why nothing I do seems to work. Don’t you get it, Eli? I was finally free. And then you came along,” she continued, close enough now to smack the heel of her hand on his shoulder, “with all these promises in your eyes, making me want to believe in something I’m absolutely petrified to believe in again—”

  Tess twisted away, gripping the edge of the stove. “I think it’s terrific that you were able to move past your heartbreak, but…” She shook her head. “I’m not there. And I don’t know that I ever will be. I’m sorry, Eli,” she whispered, hunched over. “But I don’t know how to fix what’s broken inside me. And I can’t be who you or anybody else wants me to be. Not anymore.”