by Lauren Smith
Devon emerged from the kitchen wearing a pink apron with frilly lace, one her mother had given her as a joke for Christmas last year. She suppressed a giggle. “What are you wearing that for?”
“Hmm?” He glanced down, noticed the apron, and frowned. “Mrs. Lesley insisted that I should wear this. She also suggested I remove my shirt before you got home, but I didn’t think that was a proper way to greet you. This is after all a lady’s house, not a house of ill repute.”
Rebecca tensed. “Wait, you let Mrs. Lesley in here?” That old woman was snooping in her house now?
“Er…yes. She’s actually a rather charming lady—”
“Jesus, Devon, don’t let her in here. She’s always spying on me, judging me, and—”
He came and placed a fingertip on her lips. “Rebecca, that woman is a genuinely kind person. She hasn’t been watching you. She’s been watching over you. There’s quite a difference. She told me about your former lovers and how they mistreated you. In fact, she interrogated me at length to ascertain whether or not I had honorable intentions. That woman is a friend to you and I suggest you treat her as such.”
Devon’s declaration gave her pause. Mrs. Lesley was looking out for her? She thought back on their encounters over the years. The way the older woman was always trying to talk to the boys she’d brought home for dates and how the really awful guys had been chased off almost at once because they didn’t like Mrs. Lesley bothering them.
She’d been driving them away to help me?
That can’t be. Huh. Then again…
Rebecca glanced toward the window above her sink where she knew she could see Mrs. Lesley’s home if was stood in the kitchen. Had she misjudged the older woman all these years?
Devon was grinning again. “Now, cease your worrying. Mrs. Lesley assisted me this afternoon, and I do not want her efforts to go to waste. Close your eyes and follow me.”
“Devon, what is all this?” she demanded, skeptical of whatever scheme he’d planned. Just because he was self-assured, that didn’t mean he could be trusted to survive in this modern age. He was like a toddler in many ways. She couldn’t forget how he’d reacted to the shower last night, or how he still didn’t trust her cell phone when she showed him how she could talk to people.
“Are you ready for your surprise?”
“Uh…sure,” she replied. Given the heavenly smells, she assumed he had gotten food into the house but he definitely couldn’t have cooked anything. He didn’t know how.
He brushed a lock of her hair back. Rebecca blushed when she realized he’d noticed she’d left her hair down ever since the department store. For a short time this afternoon she’d believed she could look beautiful and feel beautiful, and she didn’t want to let that feeling go.
“Close your eyes and trust me.” There was a hungry look in his eyes that her body echoed with a need of its own. But he didn’t kiss her, didn’t do any of the things that she was so close to begging him to do.
Because he doesn’t want you as much as you want him. He’s gorgeous. You’ve dated men like him before. They never care about women as much as they lead you to believe. He’s just amusing himself by being nice to you.
It was a pattern she was all too familiar with, the shame of being left at a restaurant while her date chased down a cute, young waitress, or being completely stood up. Gorgeous hunks were always trouble, the first to break a girl’s heart. But she wanted Devon to be different, so much so that it hurt.
She closed her eyes, and he took her hand. She followed cautiously as he led her toward the kitchen. When they passed the couch, she heard Evan’s excited panting, but thankfully she didn’t trip over him. Then, just as her heels hit the tile floor in the kitchen, the smells wafted even more strongly around her. Delicious, tantalizing smells. Her heart gave a wild thump, and she tried to calm down. When was the last time someone had cooked for her?
Never.
The answer burdened her with sadness, but she refused to let it taint this perfect moment. Devon ushered her into a seat at her little table.
“Can I open my eyes now?” she asked. There was a sound of clinking, then a snick-snick noise, and she felt a faint heat blossom close to her face.
“Yes,” Devon announced.
Rebecca opened her eyes and stared in amazement at the perfectly set table, with candles that had just been lit. Devon walked over with two plates of spinach salad with freshly cut strawberries and mandarin slices, a light honey-based dressing, topped with crumbled feta and almond slivers.
“Wow,” she whispered, staring at the salad.
Devon reached for a bottle of red wine and poured her a glass. “Please, start eating. I know you must be famished.” He nodded at her plate, and she couldn’t resist diving in. The salad was amazing, light but tasty. He removed his apron and set it on the counter before he took a seat to eat his own dinner.
“I’ve also prepared some chicken and scalloped potatoes.” Devon took a sip of his wine, his eyes hopeful, yet also full of personal pride.
“Seriously?” Rebecca stared at him. “When did you learn to…? I mean, you didn’t know how to use the oven or…”
“Mrs. Lesley was most instructive. I had to take copious notes on how all the buttons worked and what temperatures to cook at, but I believe I have mastered the fundamentals.” He grinned. “I assume, by the look you walked in with, that you’ve had a challenging day at your job?”
Rebecca blew out a breath. “You could say that. My boss is an OCD nut job who wants to change everything to make it perfect. But it already is perfect, you know? And I had to keep distracting him so he didn’t go into the wing where the statue…er…you were, I mean. If he finds that gone, I’m toast. I convinced the janitors to put up some cleaning signs. It can buy a few days, but he’ll want to see it soon to prepare it for the new exhibit launch, and then I’m out of a job.” She rubbed at her temples, massaging them as Devon finished his salad before she took another gulp of wine.
“I’m sorry,” Devon said with a sigh. “Perhaps the goddess will grant you a boon and handle that pathetic excuse for a man.”
She laughed, picturing an angry goddess turning him into the missing marble statue.
“If I might ask, what is OCD?”
“Obsessive-compulsive disorder. It’s a condition people have where they need to have everything perfect, and they get a little crazy about it.”
Devon chuckled. “In my day, we simply called those people mothers.” He was smiling, but the smile faded and his gaze darkened.
Rebecca didn’t like seeing shadows in his eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “It’s nothing. Please, tell me more about your day.”
Rebecca realized what he was trying to do. Be the perfect man. Make her dinner, ask her about her day… But she didn’t need him to be perfect.
“Devon, please, talk to me.” She reached across the table and took his hand in hers, squeezing it. “What’s wrong?”
He hesitated, looking at their connected hands.
“I just realized that after two centuries in stone, everyone I ever loved is…gone. I hadn’t thought of that before now. I was so angry at Aphrodite for trapping me that I hadn’t thought about anyone else, not even my own family. My mother and my two younger brothers are…” He didn’t say the word dead, but it lingered in the air between them.
“Oh, Devon, I’m so sorry.” Her response felt weak, but she didn’t know how to comfort a man who’d lived two hundred years ago.
The pain in his eyes vanished as he dropped a shield over his heart. She could see it happening, the shuttering of his emotions until there was only a pleasant and controlled smile upon his face. It left her feeling dismissed and confused.
“Ready for the second course?” He rose and went to the oven, using mitts to pull out the chicken and potatoes.
They ate in silence. She was glad for that because she was starving, but she also didn’t know what else
to say.
“Do you enjoy dancing?” Devon suddenly asked.
“Dancing?”
“Yes. You know, waltzing, quadrilles…”
“Er… I only know the waltz, but people don’t really dance that way anymore. We just sort of slow dance.”
“Slow…dance?” He drew out the words, as though testing them to see if that would reveal their meaning. “Do you mean the music is played slower?”
“Sort of. It’s…well, it’s not hard.” She wasn’t a fantastic dancer, but everyone could slow dance.
“Would you teach me?” he asked. A longing had softened his eyes again, and she couldn’t resist.
“Sure.”
“Wonderful! I’ve missed dancing,” he admitted as he finished his dinner. He collected their plates, cleaned them, and set them inside the dishwasher. Rebecca stared at him in awe. Cooking and now the dishes? And he wants me to teach him to slow dance. Aphrodite had made a mistake turning this man into stone. Rebecca had never been able to get any of her old boyfriends to dance with her.
Rebecca went into the living room and glanced around. There was probably enough room in the backyard to dance, but not inside.
“Let’s go outside.” She stood in her heels and winced.
“Are you all right?” He touched her gently on the hip as they slipped out the back door and stood on the small brick patio.
“Oh, I’m fine. My feet just hurt after wearing these damned heels all afternoon.” She gave a little kick of her right foot, showing the high heel.
“Women in my day usually wore slippers and the occasional boot with heels if they were going outdoors, but those heels were much shorter.”
“Lucky them,” Rebecca said with a sigh. Then she squeaked in surprise as she was hoisted in the air and carried to a lawn chair, where she was set back down. Devon knelt at her feet and gently took the high heels off, rubbing her tender soles with his hands.
“Better?”
The only sound that escaped her was a mix between a sigh and a moan as he continued to rub her aching feet.
“You have to stop doing that,” she said.
“Doing what?” he asked as he looked up into her eyes.
“Er…nothing.” She hastily got to her feet and then held out a hand. “You wanted to learn to slow dance, remember?”
“Yes, if you still want to teach me.” He glanced down at her feet with hesitation.
“I do.” The thought of showing him how to dance slow, their bodies close, was too tempting to resist. The night air around them quieted down except for the occasional coo of doves and chirp of crickets.
He took her hand, and she pulled him into the center of the patio, then faced him.
“First, I put my hands around your neck,” she said, sliding her arms up until she locked her fingers at the nape of his neck. “Then you put your hands on my waist.” When his palms curled around her waist, she shivered, relishing how good it felt.
Devon lowered his head so their faces were impossibly close. “And then?”
“Then we move together, a step to my left as you take a step to your right. You move slightly forward, and I move back at the same time.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
His large hands were on her hips, making her feel delightfully feminine. Her tweed skirt, which flared at her knees, swayed as they began to dance.
“How am I doing?” he asked, moving his face closer until their cheeks pressed together.
“Wonderful.” Simply wonderful.
She shifted, leaning against his shoulder, and she felt him rest his head on top of hers as they continued to slowly glide around the patio. They danced as though in a dream—her dream.
“I like this much better than waltzing,” he whispered.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Do you?”
“Yes. In my day, waltzing was as close as we could get to a woman in public, and even then it could be considered scandalous.” He rubbed her waist with one hand. “Dancing so close as we are now, it would be considered compromising.”
“How compromising?”
“We’d have to marry to save your reputation.” He chuckled, but his tone was strange, as though he thought the idea was not silly at all, but rather intriguing. It reminded Rebecca of how different their worlds were, how much had changed in two hundred years.
She had a million questions for him, but she knew if she asked them, the answers might make things awkward. Well, more awkward. But she had to know.
“Devon, did you love someone before…well, before you were turned into stone?” She couldn’t imagine a man like him not loving someone.
She lifted her head from his shoulder to gaze into his eyes. There were faint lines around them, as though he’d smiled a lot. But he wasn’t smiling now.
“I have never been fortunate enough to love a woman. I’ve made love to many, but love was not a concern of mine then. It was part of the reason I was cursed. For being a selfish bastard.” He closed his eyes a moment, sighing before he opened them again. “You’re cold. We should go back inside. I have dessert waiting.”
He stepped away, and the distance between them seemed to span centuries rather than feet. It shouldn’t have left an ache in her chest, but it did.
We’re from different worlds. Different times.
7
Devon returned to the kitchen, his pulse racing. Dancing with Rebecca had begun a stirring inside his heart, a heart he’d feared had remained stone even when Aphrodite had turned him back to flesh and blood. A stirring like the first tentative shoots of flowers in early spring. A promise of things to come, of things to change.
Am I capable of change? After spending the last two centuries caged in stone with no hope of escape or death, he’d had no thoughts of change, only survival or death. But he was free now, free in a way he’d never imaged and he was here with a woman unlike any he’d ever met before.
He’d learned more about her today while they’d shopped and spent time together than he ever had another soul. She was a woman who loved walking in the morning and seeing the sunrise crest the trees with its brilliant splash of colors. She had ambitions someday to run a museum, and she was obsessed with art, especially sculptures. Her brilliant mind left him spinning in wonder. He found it so easy to talk with her, to tell her about his own life, the parts that he wasn’t ashamed of, and every moment with her felt like a precious grain of sand slipping into an hourglass. He didn’t want to think about when the week was up and what the goddess would do with him then.
Rebecca’s voice came from behind him. “Devon, I’m sorry if I did or said something that upset you.” He turned to face her. Her lips trembled, and her eyes brimmed with tears that she was doing her best to pretend weren’t there. The hardness of his heart fractured, creating a great spider web of cracks that spread across the walls he’d built up for so long. The beating heart he’d spent years ignoring was burning for her in a way he barely understood. But the feeling of lightness inside him, the burdens of his past sins, seemed to fade whenever Rebecca was near him.
“You didn’t. You could never upset me,” he said in a low, husky tone. She met his gaze as he closed the distance between them, and he saw a spark of brilliant lightning in her eyes, an energy that called out to him like the sweet song of a siren on distant rocks in a stormy sea. After two centuries without a woman in his arms, he was done waiting, done playing by a fickle goddess’s rules.
He raised a hand to cup Rebecca’s cheek and slanted his mouth over hers. He explored her lips, learning the shape and feel of them in a way he had only imagined during his long imprisonment. Before this moment, his kisses had been frivolous, a playful game that had teased with promises. The time for teasing was over. He wanted her, and he was done playing the gentleman.
With each press of his lips, he stoked the fire inside her into something hotter. Devon pulled her into his arms, and she responded. Her mouth on his sent spirals of hunger th
rough him. He needed more. With a soft growl, he lifted her into the cradle of his arms and carried her through the kitchen and up the stairs to her bedroom. She broke the kiss, panting softly against his neck.
“Devon, what are we—?”
He hushed her with a kiss as he set her on the edge of her bed, then leaned over and captured her mouth again, cupping her face and reveling in the warm velvety touch of her lips. A whimper of need escaped her as he reached for the buttons of her tweed vest. Her hands grasped his wrists, stopping him.
“Wait,” she gasped, and he stepped back. His body tensed as he tried to calm himself. If she wanted to stop, he would, but by God he prayed she didn’t want to. “I can do it much faster,” she said, her fingers nimbly slipping buttons through their slits until she’d cast the vest aside. Then she was pulling her white blouse out of her skirt and unbuttoning it as well.
Devon removed his black T-shirt but didn’t touch his jeans—that would only come after he’d pleasured her to her satisfaction. He wanted to see the tightly wound Rebecca flat on her back, spent and exhausted with glorious ecstasy before he took her. He’d had a lot of time to ponder why Aphrodite had been so angry with him, and perhaps ironically the endless thoughts of what he should have done long ago now only fueled his libido.
“God you’re beautiful,” she whispered as she reached up to touch his bare chest.
He chuckled. “You are the beautiful one.” He slipped his fingers through the lacy straps of her black… What manner of stays were these? He’d never seen a contraption like it before. It was too small to properly cover a woman; rather, it lifted her breasts up and presented them for his hands and mouth, yet did nothing to hide her glorious breasts. Whoever had invented this bit of cloth had his eternal gratitude. He knelt in front of her and studied her skirt, wondering how best to get it off.
“It has a zipper. You just pull on the little metal thing and it undoes itself in the back,” she said, her voice breathless. She rolled onto her side, trying to show him the zipper.
“Ahh! I see! The same as on my jeans,” he laughed softly in delight. Before she could react, he’d gotten to his feet, flipped her onto her stomach, and unzipped the skirt, tugging it down. She gave a little squeal as he then flipped her onto her back again.