by Leslie Kelly
Then he walked again, kissing her, deeply and powerfully, as they finally reached his room and fell onto the bed.
“Caroline, now that we’ve evened the score for Thursday night, we’re doing things my way,” he said as he pulled out of her. “And my way means backing up to cover all the steps we just skipped.”
“I don’t remember skipping any steps,” she teased. “I think we covered that stairwell from bottom to top.”
He gave her a cocky, Mick-like grin. “My way means now I’m going to cover you from bottom to top.”
Before she realized what he meant, he was moving down, lowering his mouth, down her body in a never-ending line of kisses, licks and tastes.
Her last coherent thought was that his way was pretty damn good, too.
MICK WOKE UP first Monday morning, hearing the trash truck cruise down the street and the slam of the back door of his neighbor’s house. Mr. Tyler was letting Buddy, his chocolate lab, out into the backyard. In ten minutes the door would open again. Buddy would gallop back across the lawn into the kitchen where the kids ate breakfast and prepared for another school day, wondering why the long, glorious summer days had come to an end so quickly.
Across the street, the Wilson boy would be delivering papers. Mrs. Larson would be sipping tea on her front porch, watching the world come to life on another cool, sunny morning. The day would stretch out, seeming long and endless as Indian summer days tend to do. As if there was all the time in the world to visit with a neighbor or have a beer with a buddy after work.
Small towns stretched time somehow. They didn’t go by the regular clock. And while on some days the pace, the routine, the sameness of it all threatened to send him screaming out of his mind, on mornings like this he remembered what he loved about it.
He turned toward Caroline in the bed in the semi-shadowed bedroom, listening to her breathe. Sharing the air. Reliving the night. And wondering what the hell he’d done.
Because she didn’t love anything about this life. Not its people. Not its pace. Not the attitude it engendered. Not the kind of man it had made him become.
Mick’s casual familiarity with anyone had been considered friendliness in a town like Derryville, where there was all the time in the world to cultivate relationships. But in Caroline’s world it had meant something else. A lack of commitment. A lack of seriousness. A laziness toward his emotional responsibilities. He was very much afraid Caroline viewed it as the inability to be serious and faithful and all the other things she’d thought she wanted because of the way her lousy old man had been.
She’d painted him with that brush before. And nothing had changed, in spite of last night. She was the same. He was the same. The geography still sucked.
So why the hell was he doing this again? Getting involved with Caroline was the last thing he’d planned on doing. Christ, it had taken him years to get over her the last time.
That had been back when he’d been a stupid kid. Now he was a grown man. So what had he let himself in for this time? A lifetime of wondering if he should have asked her to stay—which he wouldn’t, knowing how much she loved her life? Or wondering if he should have gone with her, which—on a morning such as this—seemed as foreign to him as the idea of relocating to the moon?
Besides, she’d never suggested it. Never asked him to come with her all those years ago. She’d simply walked out after throwing accusations in his face. If she had asked, well, there had been other days when the idea of starting something fresh and new in a fast-paced world appealed to him tremendously.
Too late. Much too late now with them both established in their separate worlds.
And now he’d been stupid enough to go and sleep with her again. Let her fill his head and consume his body and make his heart do stupid things it had no business doing. Like caring too much. Asshole.
“Mmm, good morning,” she said softly, burrowing under his comforter as if she missed his body heat.
It was tempting to give it to her, but Mick still had some sense of self-preservation left. He slid out of the bed, walking naked over to the window to stare down in the backyard. Just in time to see Buddy respond to his owner’s whistle, tearing toward the back door of his neighbor’s house. Like clockwork.
“What time is it?”
He glanced at the clock. “Seven.”
She sat up in the bed, letting the covers fall to her lap. Then she blinked a few times and shook her head slightly. She looked around. At the room. At a few pieces of their clothing tangled on the floor. At him.
Color rose in her cheeks and she pulled the covers up.
“Don’t worry. Nothing has changed,” he muttered, knowing what was going through her head.
She was having regrets. Already wondering how to save face, to salvage their ridiculous “roommate” situation now that they’d gone and given in to their attraction to each other.
“How do you figure that?” she asked, her voice thick with sleep and confusion. “I’d say something has definitely changed here.”
“Well, we’ll just change it back.” He pulled a pair of jeans out of a drawer and drew them on, covering his naked body.
Caroline watched him, drawing the blankets around her as she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. “Change it back. There’s a trick.” She sounded more annoyed now, even though he’d given her what he thought she wanted: a graceful way out of this situation.
“I mean…look, we went a little crazy. We should probably just forget it ever happened.”
Her jaw dropped and she gave him an incredulous look. “Oh, so now it didn’t happen. You did not make love to me three times last night.” She rose to her knees on the bed, growing visibly angry. “You didn’t whisper those things to me, you aren’t insane for me, you really would have survived if you couldn’t bury your cock in me until the rest of the world didn’t exist?”
He flinched. Somehow the heated words they’d exchanged in the night didn’t sound quite the same in the light of day. “That’s a low blow.”
“We didn’t even get to the blowing,” she snapped, her expression taunting. “Guess we never will now.” She hopped out of the bed, taking the sheet with her.
“You’re angry.”
“You think? God, even in California they wait until after coffee before giving the old heave-ho ‘catchya later, babe.’”
He grabbed her arm, forcing her to meet his eyes. “That’s not what this is. I didn’t plan last night and neither did you. What happened was more about stress and anger and a lot of years’ worth of memories that needed to be revisited. By both of us. It didn’t change the world.”
It certainly hadn’t changed their world.
She yanked her arm away, bent over and scrounged around for some clothes, looking both furious and adorable, sexy and sweet. She finally found one of Mick’s shirts and pulled it on, probably needing the defense of clothing so she wouldn’t feel so vulnerable. Exposed. Like he’d been feeling a few minutes ago, before she’d woken up.
“Okay, let me see if I follow. We got mad, we fought, we had sex, it’s out of our systems and now we forget it ever happened?”
“No, we won’t forget. But I meant what I said last week. We’ve been down this road before. We go crazy for each other, have incredible sex. Then something happens to piss you off—”
“Like now,” she interjected.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You doubt me and you walk away. The only thing that’s different this time is that you have a set date and a set location for the walking away part. Two weeks. And California.”
Her eyes shone with some unvoiced emotion and he saw the tiniest quiver in her lips. God, he’d totally screwed this up. She’d gone from sleepily seductive, to angry, to hurt, all in about two minutes. He stepped close and reached out a hand.
She thrust it away. “Okay, I guess we’re clear.”
“Caroline, I’m sorry…I don’t regret last night.” Then he ran a weary hand through his hair. “But I stil
l can’t be your diversion while you’re in town.”
“You don’t have to say anything else. Because you’re right. This was a mistake. A bad one. I’m on the job—we know it can’t go anywhere. It would only hurt us both more in the end.”
She was right. She was voicing exactly the same words that had been swimming in his head for the past half hour. Somehow, however, they hurt a lot more when she said them. “If we could change things…”
She cut him off. “We can’t. We already know that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for work.” She walked toward the door, her spine straight. “Thanks for helping me…blow off some steam last night.”
After she left, he stared at the closed door, listened to her enter her room, slamming the door behind her. Within a minute or two he heard what sounded like a mournful little cry.
Mick stood there for a long time, wondering if he’d just saved himself some serious heartache. Or if he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life.
“HESTER, have you been out again so early?”
Hester froze in the kitchen as she was locking the back door early Monday morning. She took a few quick breaths, trying to hide her frustration that her brother was up at this hour. Bob usually never got up until 8:00 a.m., which was why Hester ran her more secretive errands so early.
Turning around, she gave him her usual, comforting smile. “Oh, I hope I didn’t wake you. Where are your slippers? The floor is much too cold for you to walk around in bare feet.”
Her brother wasn’t distracted. “Where have you been? You’re going out a lot lately.” He gave her a conspiratorial look. “Is it possible you’ve…well, have you met someone?”
Met? As in met a man? Hester nearly barked a laugh at that idea. Bad enough to have to put up with any male. At least living with her younger brother she could come and go as she pleased. And she certainly wasn’t interested in any physical goings-on with a man. She’d had enough of that nastiness.
“I’m just taking lots of walks,” she finally explained, knowing Bob was too honest and good-hearted to doubt her words.
Thank goodness he had her in his life. That honesty and good-heartedness meant someone could easily take advantage of him if she wasn’t around to keep him safe.
He gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I’m so happy to see you taking better care of yourself. Would you like me to make you a fruit plate for breakfast?”
“No, thank you, I’ll make us some pancakes in a little while, all right? Why don’t you go back upstairs for an hour while I get cleaned up? I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
He gave her a brotherly kiss on her forehead, and her heart tightened a little. Bob had been very good to her. Better than she deserved, some would probably say. But she’d certainly been repaying him for the past three years.
Before he walked out the door, Bob looked over his shoulder and cleared his throat. He sounded nervous for some reason. “Oh, by the way, can you set an extra place for dinner tonight? I’ve invited someone to join us.”
Hester lifted a brow. Someone?
“Certainly,” she finally said, keeping her tone even and patient. “May I ask who?”
“Uh, Miss Flanagan.”
Flanagan…Flanagan…She thought frantically, then placed the name. “You mean Louise?”
Bob nodded, and an unusual color pinkened his cheeks. “I’ve been meeting with her and we’ve become…friends. I’d like her to share a meal with us, if it’s all right with you, Hester.”
All right to have some cheap young woman come into her house and eat with her easy-to-fool brother? Hester would sooner sit down and dine with the hobos who lived in big-city parks.
But she couldn’t say so. Not if she wanted to keep up appearances. And she had to do that, at least for a little while longer. At least until she found out whether the notes she’d been sending a certain Hollywood type were going to pay off.
She’d sent three now since Saturday. So she’d soon find out whether she could pull it off and set herself up for the rest of her life. No more housekeeping for a widowed brother. No more scrambling for extra pennies by ferreting out other people’s embarrassing secrets, and being paid to keep them quiet.
She was going to be out of Derryville so fast Bob would barely remember her face. Then he could have all the Louise Flanagans he wanted over to supper.
Only a little longer.
Bob stared at her, waiting for her response, probably wondering if she’d say something disparaging about him having a woman twenty years his junior come over for a social evening.
It was on the tip of her tongue to do just that. Then she thought better of it. If Hester truly was going to get her way and get out of town, Louise might be an answer to a prayer. Not worrying about Bob would sure make things easier in her new life; he was the one person who’d been truly good to her in the past thirty years. Having a wife, instead of a sister, meant he could go on living his boring, staid life, and she could disappear.
Besides, she just remembered the last time she’d seen Louise Flanagan. She’d come into the church a few weeks back, needing someone to talk to about something stupid she’d done at Mick Winchester’s real estate office. She’d hate for anybody to find out that secret. Probably including Bob, who still didn’t know the whole story.
It wasn’t such a bad thing to have something to hold over a potential sister-in-law. Not a bad thing at all. Especially if the money ran out too quickly.
She gave him a big smile. “I can’t wait to have her over. She’s a nice girl.”
Bob’s relief at having her approval was visible. And Hester counted that as her good deed for the day.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CARO WENT A GOOD twenty-four hours before she said another word to Mick. She had to hand it to him, he handled the silent treatment pretty well. Better than most men. He didn’t get mad or give her flowers or try to tease her into acknowledging he was in the room. Or do what her father used to do: grab her mother by the arm, drag her into the bedroom and within minutes have her howling loud enough to wake the neighbors. By the time they were done, her mother had forgotten whatever she’d been mad at him about. Until the next time.
Mick wasn’t like that, thank God. Well, since sex was the problem anyway, he couldn’t very well try to solve it with sex. But even if it weren’t, she knew him better than that. Mick was a decent guy. Maybe too decent, dammit all, considering the way he’d refused to let them fall into a purely sexual affair.
At this point, a purely sexual affair sounded pretty darn good to her. At least until two weeks from now when she’d have to figure out what to do about this whole mess.
Mick did nothing to make it easier on her. He wasn’t trying to solve their situation. He was giving her time to fume, to be mad at him, to give him snotty looks and the cold shoulder. So that’s what she did. Even though she knew deep down he’d been right, it was still hard to get over that he didn’t want her enough to take a few risks. That was what really bugged her. Well, that and the fact that she wanted him again so badly she couldn’t sleep at night.
“Coffee,” she mumbled Wednesday morning when she stumbled out of bed at the whine of her alarm clock. She’d had yet another sleepless night, listening for the sounds of Mick prowling around the house, as he often did. She’d have loved to just veg out in front of his big-screen downstairs during the night, falling asleep to the familiar sounds of her childhood: canned sitcom laughs. But she couldn’t risk it because of her fear that she’d find him down there.
It was early, only six-fifteen and the sky was still mostly dark, not even a hint of light peeking through the partially open drapes. Not bothering with a robe, she sleepwalked out of her room, down the hall past Mick’s closed door, and downstairs into the kitchen. She flicked on one light, lifting her toes off the cold tile floor and shifting from foot to foot to try to keep them warm. The mornings were chillier now, a true sign that fall was arriving. “Definitely need coffee,” she muttered.
>
She measured out enough coffee for one cup and put it in the coffeemaker. “Make your own coffee, Mr. I-don’t-need-sex-like-you-mere-mortals.”
It was only when she turned toward the doorway and saw him standing there that she realized he’d heard. “Oh, crap.”
“I guess that’s better than being ignored,” he replied evenly. Then he lowered his gaze, his eyes moving over her skimpy white nightie that barely skimmed the top of her thighs and did little to conceal the tiny matching panties she wore underneath.
Caro forced herself to remain standing straight and ordered her legs not to wobble or melt into jelly even though his stare felt as intimate as a touch. And the silence was heady with the same kind of tension that had erupted between them right here in this kitchen Sunday night.
Then she made the huge mistake of looking at him in return.
Mick wore only a white towel slung around his hips. His hair was damp, a few droplets of water riding along the ropes of muscle rippling on his shoulders and chest. More drops swirled in the dark, crisp hair on his chest and glistened on those taut nipples she’d been licking Sunday night. Her gaze followed the path of one lone drop of water as it slid down the long, lean stomach, disappearing into the thin trail of dark hair that led below the low-slung waistband of the towel. She knew where it led. Knew very well.
Caro gulped and closed her eyes, saying a quick silent prayer for strength. God, don’t let me humiliate myself in front of him again. Don’t let me beg.
“You’re up early,” she finally said.
“I just got out of the shower and thought I’d put some coffee on,” he finally said, breaking through the heat that had erupted between them.
“I was making some.”
He glanced toward the pot. “Enough for one.”
Tilting her head back, she shook off her momentary visit to hornyville and gave him a haughty look. “Doing things alone seems to be the only way to take care of certain needs around here.”