by Jennie Jones
She squeezed her eyes shut. Stop thinking. ‘What time is it?’
‘Eleven. School’s not out for another four hours.’
She shook her head, compressing her lips. ‘Not that. Imelda.’ Her voice sounded choked by indecision and her squeezed eyelids burned.
‘She’s at the church,’ he said.
And she’d be there all day. She’d taken a plate to share for lunch and afternoon tea.
‘It’s the sale thing,’ Tom said. ‘Bric-a-brac.’
‘The Bring-and-Buy for the historic society.’
‘Adele?’ She was aware of him tilting his body and leaning down to her because his shadow crossed her face. ‘Open your eyes, Adele. Look at me.’ Even behind closed eyelids the essence of him penetrated her muscles and her bones. He smelled so masculine. Of tools and engineering. Of soil and pickaxes. Of lead pencils and excitement.
Of absolute heaven.
She opened her eyes, blinked to focus on him and spoke before something else inside her stopped her. ‘Yes. I want to.’
The way he threw his arms around her in such a soft and tender manner, holding her and maybe protecting her from herself and her qualms, caused her knees to actually buckle.
‘I’ve got you,’ he said at the side of her head, his mouth close to her ear.
She was supported. Her body resting against his, her head buried in his shoulder.
‘I’m going to kiss you now.’ He moved his mouth to her neck. ‘And I need you to know that I’m going to put my all into this kiss.’ He planted a soft kiss on her jawline. ‘Everything I’ve got.’ Another kiss on her chin. ‘Because I want you. I want you so much.’ He trailed his lips up to hers and let them hover a breath away from her mouth. ‘But I’ll stop, Adele. If you ask me to.’
Her breath must be fanning his lips now because it was coming from her chest and out of her mouth in soft gulps.
He waited and it seemed like seconds before sense returned. She dragged her voice from what seemed like the pit of her throat. ‘I won’t ask you to stop, Tom.’
He smiled slowly. ‘I’m going to be thanking you forever.’
‘Oh, wait! I’m not—I mean I haven’t—not for years—I’m not protected.’
One arm slid from her body, the other gripped her a bit more firmly. He placed a finger on her lips. ‘I’ve got it covered.’
A smile hovered inside her and on her mouth. ‘Right now?’ she asked him. ‘On you?’
He nodded, not looking in the least bit shameful. ‘I came back to help Ali, but I also came back hoping for you. Since we started kissing, I’ve kept a little silver packet in my back pocket wherever I go. In the hope that this moment would happen.’
So they were free to move to the bedroom. As soon as she could move—he might have to pick her up and carry her there because although her muscles were softened and her heart had melted, her mind seemed to be petrified and somehow that was stopping her legs and arms from working. But it wouldn’t be rushed, once they got there, he was too considerate for that. So there’d be no frantic dash to tear clothes from each other like it happened in the movies. She might have to take her own clothes off while he dealt with his shirt buttons and his jeans. She only had to peel a thin top over her head, slide out of her ivory cotton jeans, and rid herself of her cotton underwear. She’d be standing naked before he was.
No, wait—he had to deal with his boots and they were laced tightly. It would take him ages to get those off. She’d be naked for minutes … She stopped herself. What the hell are you thinking? He wants you. She looked up and into his eyes, appealing with him to understand. ‘I’m tongue-tied and limb-tangled, Tom. I don’t remember what to do. I’m so nervous.’
He kissed her lips, quietening her. His hand wandered down her spine, squeezing her hip and resting at last on her bottom. ‘I know how to untangle you,’ he told her. ‘I know what to do.’
‘I didn’t think I’d be this hopeless.’
‘I didn’t think you’d be this beautiful. You’re one seriously feminine woman, Adele, and you blow my socks off.’
She giggled, unable to stop it from bubbling up as she envisioned his boots exploding in order that his socks could blow off. At least she’d be naked and worrying for thirty seconds less. ‘I’m such a ditz. And now all of me is trembling.’
‘Do you want me to carry you?’ There was a tease in his tone, and the start of a grin on his mouth.
‘No. I’d like to try to make it there on my own two legs.’
He chuckled.
‘I do have one request though.’
‘Name it.’
She swallowed but kept the smile on her mouth. ‘Could we arrange it so that I’m not naked first? You know—just standing there while you undress.’
‘No problem.’ He released her and pulled his shirt up and over his shoulders and his head without undoing the buttons. He threw it to the floor and unbuckled his belt.
As Adele’s eyes widened at the sight of his bare chest—full, broad, stacked with hard muscle—he bent and unlaced his work boots. He’d kicked them off before Adele had a chance to close her mouth, which had moistened considerably during her fast reconnaissance of his body. God. The man was built and it was a visually stimulating build.
‘Okay, beautiful shy lady.’ He held his hand out for her to take, and Adele slipped her hand into his. ‘I’m almost naked here, and I intend to undress you slowly, giving every part of your body the attention I think it deserves so that you’re not standing there, doing nothing. Let’s go make love.’
She paused for only a few seconds. Her hand was in his, his grip firm but without pressure. His eyes were on her, conveying his desire and intention. Even throughout his humorous coaching and gentle guidance, attraction, and now the intoxicating awareness of sexual tension, swung between them. She felt like a bird on a wire, the freedom of the whole sky before her. For the first time in her life, she succumbed to craving, to something she wanted. She stepped forwards, knowing with certainty that this afternoon she’d fall in love.
Chapter Eleven
Ali moved the plaster animals on the kitchen table and Tom reined in his thoughts. ‘What’s that, kid?’
‘I said, how about the tail? Shall I paint it two kinds of brown?’
‘Oh, yeah. Sure.’
He rubbed a hand over his jaw. His head was in the clouds and his mind had gone walkabout in some haze of sensuality that was all Adele. For three days he’d operated in a trance. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Not her voice, not the feel of her, nor how sweet the knowledge was that it had been so easy to vanquish her nerves—in just a few strokes of her body and a few carefully placed kisses. He certainly couldn’t ignore the images of her, as they swamped his mind. Three days. Three furtive but oh-so-satisfactory bouts of bedroom passion. Christ, she’d even been the one to suggest they get into bed this morning—with no prompting from him. It was like she’d blossomed in front of his eyes and he wanted to pluck at everything that sprung from her.
‘This brown or that one?’ Ali asked.
‘What? Um—’ Tom looked at the paint tubes lying in a row before the kid’s pottery dog.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’ He shifted the chair so that he wasn’t so close to the table and pointed at a tube of paint. ‘That one. Then maybe a bit of white instead of another brown?’
‘Yeah, good idea, kiddo,’ Ali said as she swirled her paintbrush in a jar of water.
Tom grinned. ‘Less cheek, you.’
She grinned back and all sensual thoughts of Adele fled as he focused instead on the similarities between mother and daughter. Same colour eyes, same haunted look around the cheekbones because they were both so thin. And the same smile. A beautiful, genuine shy smile.
He checked his watch. ‘Your mum should be home soon.’ He was babysitting. Something he’d never done in his life, but it hadn’t been as hard as he’d worried it would be. Adele was at a historic society meeting
and he and Ali had been sitting at the kitchen table in Adele’s house for two hours. Ali content with her plaster-cast animals and the tubes of paint Imelda had given her, and Tom satisfied that he didn’t have to make conversation due to his thoughts being all over Adele.
He cleared his throat and pushed his chair back. ‘Fancy a cocoa or something?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘What time do you normally go to bed?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
Tom glanced at his watch again. ‘Shit. It’s nearly nine.’
‘You’re not supposed to swear in front of me.’
‘Your mother will be the one swearing if she comes home and catches us up this late.’
Ali giggled. ‘She doesn’t swear. Only you swear.’
‘Yeah, well—we’re going to keep this latest conversation to ourselves, aren’t we, kiddo?’ He opened a cupboard and took out a tin of cocoa and a sugar bowl.
‘My friend Katrina used to swear. She said her daddy sweared.’
‘Swore.’ Tom pulled a teaspoon from the cutlery drawer beneath the sink and grabbed a washed mug from the draining board.
‘She said I was mean when I told her she ought not to swear.’
He paused, the mug and a tea towel in his hand. ‘Yeah?’ he asked, hoping he didn’t sound as cautious as he was feeling. ‘So what did you say back?’
Ali didn’t answer.
Tom turned to her, drying the mug. She was head down now, focusing on her dog but the paintbrush wobbled in her hand. She winced as the brush, loaded with white paint, hit a part of the dog’s tail that she’d already painstakingly painted two shades of brown.
‘Hey, that looks good. Great idea to give him a white-tipped tail. He’ll always be known around town now. Everyone will know its Ali’s dog—if he runs off and gets lost on High Street.’
He expected a smile, or another giggle, but he just saw uncertainty on her face.
He didn’t want to push it, and anyway, he had no idea how to push it. He turned, dealt with the lid of the cocoa tin, then took milk out of the fridge. ‘Do you have the milk heated up?’
‘Yes, please.’
No ‘kiddo’, no ‘yeah’. Something in his gut summersaulted. He’d hit on an issue. It might be the issue. What the hell did he do now?
He heated the mug of milk in the microwave, trying not to watch the digital seconds tick over on the display or listen to the silence between them.
‘You know,’ he said as he spooned cocoa into the mug, added a spoonful of sugar, and stirred. ‘I told my friend Scott off once. He didn’t like that. Made me feel kinda stupid for a while.’
He put the mug on the table in front of her, and sat. She’d stopped painting. The paintbrush was in the jar of water.
‘Why?’ she asked, not looking at him. She stroked the head of her dog with her fingertips, checking that the paint was dry.
‘Well, I wasn’t wrong to tick him off, because he’d done something silly and he was a bit rude to a lot of people.’ A bit rude? Scott had been an out-and-out arsehole that first night—not that anybody could blame him—swearing abusively at everyone, including Tom. Scott had been panicked, that’s all. Rightly so, as it turned out. ‘You see,’ he continued, ‘due to the accident he caused, a lot of the people who worked for me were suddenly out of work. It wasn’t my fault, but they wouldn’t talk to me.’
He saw a little frown crease her pale brow.
‘I tried hard to communicate with them, but they still see me as the baddy.’
‘You should try not talking to anyone.’ She said it softly, her focus unchanged, the frown still in place. ‘Especially baddies.’
‘Oh?’ His hand trembled, so he took it off the table and rested it on his thigh. ‘Well to be honest, I wouldn’t like not talking. I mean, who would I have around to tell my troubles to when I go back to Canberra?’ He hadn’t lied—not to Adele and not to Ali. They both knew he was going, at some point.
‘You could tell them to me on the phone.’
He heart filled for the kid. His little mate. ‘Thank you, Ali. Best offer I’ve had all year. I’ll hold you to that.’
She slid off the chair, as though making to leave the kitchen.
‘Hey, kiddo—’ Tom said, rising. ‘What baddies do you know?’
She paused, bit on her lip for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I don’t know any.’ Her frown suggested she was taking his question seriously and that she was now questioning him about why he would have asked.
‘Katrina, maybe?’ he said, pushing it a bit further.
Her frown turned quizzical. ‘How can a friend be a baddy?’
Hell, how did he answer that? ‘Sometimes they don’t realise they are being a baddy.’
‘But your friend Scott is still a friend, right? And he was a baddy.’
‘Well, yes and no. He didn’t mean to be a baddy, but he did do something wrong, and as his friend, I have to make sure that I understand, but also that his behaviour doesn’t—you know,’ he rolled his wrist, ‘—hurt me, or something.’
She nodded, but he’d lost her. The connection had gone. The focus behind her eyes had shifted from secret-friendship-chat to little girl being polite to the neighbour in her house.
‘I’d better get my pyjamas on now,’ she said, back to using her softened tone. ‘Before my mummy comes home.’
‘Yeah. Good idea.’ Had he pushed her too far? Too quickly? Was there something beneath this odd conversation about baddies that he was supposed to have recognised straight away? He was seriously lacking in judgement here, and he might have just done more harm than intended good.
He watched her leave the kitchen, heading for her bedroom. Mummy. She’d gone all little-girl. She didn’t need Tom—some big oaf of a guy who couldn’t string two words together in front of her. She needed her mummy.
***
Adele knew, the moment she stepped into the hallway, that Ali was still up. When a child slept, a house had a stillness about it. A calmness, and sometimes just the whiff of fear that the child would wake up and take hours to go back to sleep.
She threw her keys onto the hall table and walked into the kitchen. ‘Hi.’ She smiled.
‘Oh. Hi.’
‘Everything okay?’ Tom looked guilty. She grinned. ‘Ali still up?’
‘Um … yeah. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay. It’s only just gone nine. One late night isn’t going to harm her.’
‘We got carried away.’ He indicated the mess on the kitchen table that he had obviously been trying to clear up.
‘Leave that,’ she told him. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘She’s just getting her pyjamas on.’
‘That’s fine. Really.’
He straightened and looked into her eyes. His features softened from whatever glum mood he’d been in a moment ago, and his focus on her deepened.
She felt the pull of desire in her belly. It had been her constant companion these last three, glorious days of heady—if secretive—sexuality between them.
She’d like nothing more than to walk up to him and be enfolded in his arms, breathing in the strength of him as her hands stroked his firm back. But she didn’t move.
‘We had the spaghetti,’ he said. ‘She’s had cocoa but she hasn’t finished it. Actually, I only just made it, so she hasn’t started drinking it yet.’
‘Is everything all right, Tom?’
‘Sure! We had fun. As you can see from the mess on your kitchen table.’
She puckered her brow, and cocked her head to one side. ‘Did something happen?’
‘No. Only that she got white paint on a part of the dog’s tail she hadn’t meant to paint white. But I think I fixed that. If you could tell her you like the white-tipped tail, it might help make it better.’
She nodded. ‘I can do that.’ She looked at the plaster dog. ‘It does look cute, actually.’
He moved to the sink and folded the tea towel into four, as though he wanted the
occupation to last as long as possible, then he laid it on the draining board, his hand still on it.
‘Was Ali rude to you, Tom?’
‘Hell, no.’ He didn’t look at her, and stayed where he was with his back to her. ‘That kid wouldn’t know how to be rude. She’s fantastic.’
Pride in her daughter found its way to her chest, but she thrust it to one side. There was something wrong. Maybe with Tom though, and not with whatever the evening had produced between Tom and Ali. ‘So … why the bad mood?’
He swivelled to her and gave her a crooked grin. ‘Aw, look—I’m just tired. I was on the phone all day. You know—Canberra stuff.’
She nodded, and returned his smile. ‘I know.’ Whatever was really wrong, he didn’t want to talk about it. She wouldn’t push. ‘Thanks again for babysitting. Although Ali’s hardly a baby these days.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, looking away. ‘Sometimes she’s such a little kid. I forget she’s not a grown up.’
‘That’s because you’re friends.’
‘Yeah. I guess that’s why, but I should remember it.’ He looked at her suddenly, his eyes narrowed. ‘You’re the best mother, Adele. Don’t you forget that. She’ll always need you. She’ll always be your little girl.’
A sweet sensation curled in Adele’s chest. ‘Thank you.’ She wondered briefly if he was thinking about his own mother. They hadn’t continued the conversation started the day they’d found themselves in bed. The time spent alone since then had been taken up by kissing, and touching, and getting back into bed.
‘I’d better go.’ He walked to the door and Adele stepped to one side for him to pass. He gave her a chin-up acknowledgement and a tight smile. ‘Say goodnight to the kid, eh?’
‘I will. Thanks again.’ He was leaving? Without saying something to Ali? Without another passionate, secretive look for Adele?