by Gail Dayton
“My dress is all crumpled.” Sherry stood scowling at herself in the bathroom mirror. “And my hair—”
Mike grinned, coming to stand behind her, looking at their reflection together. “That’s the good thing about your new hairstyle, isn’t it? It always looks like you just got out of bed, so when you really did just get out of bed…”
She turned around and pinched his arm through the tux. “Hush.”
His grin faded and he fought the urge to kiss her again as she gazed up at him.
“This was the most beautiful experience I’ve ever known,” she said, not quite whispering.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Me, too.” He swallowed down the emotion trying to break free. “But you know—” he had to stop and clear his throat “—you know it can’t happen again.”
She touched his mouth, her fingers tracing lightly across his lips. He kissed them. He had to.
“I know,” she said. “Too bad.”
The urge took over his body, hands moving to hold her, head lowering. He kissed her once more, deep and hot, with all the passion he still felt. At the door to the pool house, at his last opportunity, he kissed her one last time. He cupped the soft curve of her cheek in his hand, laced the fingers of the other through hers and kissed her with everything that was in his heart, slow and sweet and tender.
Then he opened the door and they went back out into the world.
The next few weeks passed in a painful blur. Mike moved Sherry back to the day shift, claiming that with Clara back home she needed watching at night. In reality, he did it to make it easier for him to avoid Sherry.
It helped that they had two cars now and didn’t have to chauffeur each other around. Sherry had simply walked into her father’s office at the party, claimed the keys to her car and driven it home.
In one sense, all the changes worked. He seldom saw her. But that didn’t seem to matter. Sherry was always there, whether she was physically present or not. She was a constant ache in his heart.
So he would get over it. He had no other choice. He had to endure it, get through it, and eventually the pain would go away. He hoped.
Late on a Wednesday night, Mike was working in his office as usual when the phone rang.
“Micah?” Sherry sounded tentative, almost afraid of him. He’d never intended that.
“I’m here.” He tried to gentle his tone, but didn’t know how well he succeeded when just hearing her voice made his body tighten.
“You need to come down to the hospital. Clara’s fine, but—”
He didn’t hear anything more. He’d already flung the phone in the direction of its cradle and headed down the stairs.
Ten
Sherry met him at the emergency room door. “She’s fine, Micah, truly. Feisty as ever.”
She pulled his hand from its too-tight grasp on her elbow and held it as she led him through the maze of treatment rooms. “That’s why I called you. She’s arguing with the doctor and the nurses and anyone else who will hold still long enough.”
“Then why is she here?” He wanted to shake her, put his fist through the wall, do something to get rid of the lingering panic, but he clamped down on the urge.
“She fainted. I caught her, so she didn’t break anything, but—well, I guess I panicked.” Sherry made a face. “That’s why I came out here to wait for you, because Clara was yelling at me for calling 911. I think it embarrassed her to be wheeled out of the building on a stretcher.”
“Thank you. You did the right thing. She can stand a little embarrassment.” Mike looked up at her then, truly focused on her for the first time since he’d arrived at the hospital.
A bruise darkened her left cheekbone and a black eye was beginning to develop above it.
He frowned. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” She waved his question away.
Mike stopped and pulled her around to face him, touching the puffy bruises with gentle fingers. “It doesn’t look like nothing to me. What happened?”
“Your mother is waiting.” Sherry pointed at the door just behind her through which the reassuring sound of familiar voices came.
“I know. I can hear her. You said she was fine. Isn’t she?”
“Well, yes. Basically. The doctor said—”
“I’ll ask him myself in a minute. Now, tell me what happened to your face.” He brushed back her hair and tipped her chin up, turning the discoloration to the light.
Sherry pulled away, refusing to meet his searching gaze. “Your mother’s heavier than she looks. When she fainted—” she shrugged “—I lost my balance. We both went down, and the kitchen island got in my way. But Clara’s fine.”
Mike’s throat went so tight it hurt to breathe. He gathered Sherry into his arms, ignoring her stiff resistance, and held her close until his heart decided it didn’t need to pound its way out of his chest after all. This woman had not only taken care of his mother, she’d sacrificed herself doing it. And she was his wife.
How was he going to let her go? He could always get her to stay by telling the truth about his finances, but he didn’t want her on those terms. He needed to push her away, prove to her that they came from two different worlds that could never overlap. And maybe, if the pushing didn’t work—
No. They were too different. He would prove it to himself, as well, if he had to.
He pushed away from her and went through the door into the treatment room.
His mother glared at him past a tangle of wires and tubes. “It’s about time you got here. Take me home, this instant.”
“Hell, no, I’m not taking you home,” he retorted, knowing she wouldn’t respond to soothing words. “You blacked my wife’s eye when you fainted. You deserve a week’s torture in the hospital as payback.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it torture,” the doctor protested.
“Neither would I. But my mother does.” Mike introduced himself to the emergency room physician. “What happened?”
Sherry stood on the fringes of the room and watched her husband in action. Clara’s blood pressure medicine would have to be adjusted, and the doctor thought her regular cardiologist, who was on his way in, would probably recommend a pacemaker, but she really was all right. Or as all right as she could be, given the circumstances. Sherry clung to that knowledge. She hadn’t totally screwed up.
Of course Clara didn’t want the pacemaker, didn’t want to be electrocuted a hundred times a day, didn’t want any fuss. She most especially did not want to stay in the hospital for any length of time, much less overnight. Mike overrode her objections to the hospital, told her they’d discuss the pacemaker later and soothed his sisters when they came flying in. His skill left Sherry marveling.
A passing nurse handed her an ice pack for her eye, but the shiver that swept through her had nothing to do with the cold. She could still feel Mike’s touch, feel the warmth of his arms around her, the throb of his heart beating against hers. She wanted more, and the depth of that wanting scared her.
It was happening all over again. The same old pattern. She was willing to turn herself inside out for a few drops of attention. It had to stop. And yet, and yet…
Mike was different. He had made love to her. To Sherry Eloise Nyland Scott, not to some available body. She could swear it had happened that way, that she hadn’t just imagined his passionate care. For her and no one else. How could she think of never having that again, ever, for the rest of her life?
But how could she let herself experience it again, knowing it couldn’t last? Wouldn’t it make her all the more needy? All the more willing to follow him around like some old dog begging to have its ears scratched?
Then again, she was stronger now. She’d broken away from her father. He hadn’t made a single phone call to either Mike’s house or Clara’s since the party, but if he did, she’d tell him just what she thought. Granted, the break had required drastic acts on both their parts—his despicable plan plus her desperate reaction—to make it
happen, but she knew better now. She knew she could make it alone. She knew she could do whatever she had to. So what harm could she come to by making love to Mike again? What could it hurt?
A few more weeks passed before Mike could put his plan into action. His mother’s blood pressure was back where it needed to be, but she was still resisting the pacemaker. She wouldn’t move in with him, wouldn’t let any of the family come stay with her, so he hired a private-duty nurse. She complained about that, too, but he ignored the complaints. If she needed a keeper, he’d make sure she had one.
Finally, bright but not so early, on a Saturday morning, Mike pulled up in front of a big, two-story frame house and got out of his car. Sherry exited from the other side and came around to stare up at the Key West–style house with its porches spanning the front of the house on both floors. “We’re painting that?”
He laughed. His plan would work wonderfully. “Just the inside. The exterior paint ought to be good for another year or two, providing we don’t get another hurricane. We do have to paint the porch floors. They wear through pretty quick.” The messy job ought to show her quickly that she didn’t fit into his life.
“And why are we painting it again? I mean you and me doing the job, not why does it need painting.” She hitched up her borrowed, too-big painting shorts.
“Because it’s cheaper if we do it. Costs too much money to have somebody else do what we can do ourselves.” This was perfect. She even gave him the opening to emphasize their many differences. He might have money enough to hire painters these days, but he’d done it himself plenty of times. Surely his cheapskate attitude would help drive her away.
“No, I understand that. I mean—why this house? What does this house have to do with us? With you?”
“Didn’t I say?” Mike opened the trunk of his car to get out the approximately one-zillion gallons of paint. “Mom owns it. I grew up in this house.”
“You did?” Sherry had to use both hands, but she helped lift the cans out of the trunk.
“Yep. When I moved back to West Palm Beach, I moved in here with them. But after Dad died, Mom said I needed my own place and she did, too. Her health wasn’t as good by then, and I thought she’d be better off someplace smaller where I could still keep an eye on her.
“So we moved into the apartments and she started renting this house out. The renters just moved, and the place has to be cleaned up for the next batch. Paint is just the beginning.” He gave her a wicked grin, thinking of all the carpet cleaning, vinyl polishing and bathroom scrubbing yet to come.
She rolled her eyes at him and started lugging cans of paint to the porch.
He decided to start upstairs in the bedrooms. Standard white paint made the house easier to rent, though harder to keep clean. Sherry spread the drop cloths, he put up the ladder. The twelve-foot ceilings required it, even with a long handle on the roller.
Sherry was assigned the woodwork, and after some basic instruction, turned out to be pretty good at it. He could cover more territory faster with the roller, so he ended up finishing the wide baseboards alongside her. Her hands and forearms were covered with tiny paint speckles, she had a big splotch of paint in her hair—his fault—and a smear along her cheek she’d done herself. She was a mess. His plan was working perfectly and it put him in a good mood.
They moved to the next bedroom. Mike loaded the roller with paint.
“Let me try.” Sherry grabbed the handle, but was smart enough not to yank it. “I want to do this part.”
“Why?”
“Because.” She tugged, and he let go, reluctantly.
“Careful. Don’t get too much paint on it.”
“I know that.” She picked at the paint in her hair. “Mr. Drip-the-Paint-on-His-Wife.”
“It’ll come out.”
“It better.” Sherry narrowed her eyes at him, but he thought she might be teasing. He hoped she wasn’t. He wanted her unhappy, and she seemed entirely too cheerful.
She rolled the paint on, leaving speckled gaps behind.
“Press harder,” he said.
“Like this?” She tried again, with marginally better results.
“Harder.” Mike reached around her to grab the metal pole and apply the proper pressure. “When you use a roller, you more or less mash the paint on the wall.”
A smooth stripe of paint, appeared and Sherry laughed. “Oh, that is so cool. The wall’s all dingy and dirty, and presto! It’s all pretty and white.”
She still held the paint roller, admiring the single stripe of paint while the paint dried on the roller, and while he, Mike suddenly realized, still held Sherry. His hands were on the roller, but his arms were around her.
He let go of the handle, but couldn’t back away. Not with her scent filling up his head like helium and her nape right there in front of him needing to be kissed.
What had happened to his plan? He’d been so sure it would work, he’d let down his guard and she’d crawled in over it.
“I want to paint colors. Blue. I want blue. And red. I want to paint something red.” She whirled around, almost whacking him in the head with the paint roller. “I never got colors before. Bebe redecorated every other year, but always white walls, what she wanted. Never what I wanted. My opinion never mattered. Ever.”
“Easy.” He took the roller away from her and leaned it against the wall, trying not to think about the little girl who hadn’t mattered. “And let’s stick with white here, okay? You can paint the apartment whatever color you want.”
“You mean it?” The excitement shining in her eyes made his heart pound faster.
He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? It’s only paint. If we go blind from all the color, we just paint it again.”
“Oh, Mike.” Now there were tears in her eyes. How was he supposed to fight tears?
Sherry threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so fiercely he staggered back a pace before he caught her up against him and returned the kiss with equal fervor. His need exploded, as if the past endless weeks of control had only added fuel to his smoldering fire, ready to catch the instant she stirred him up.
He pushed both hands inside her baggy shorts, to cup her bottom over the filmy panties she wore, and hauled her up hard against him. Not enough. He laid her down on the worn, paint-spattered old sheet that served as a drop cloth and cupped her breast in his hand. Not enough. He shoved her T-shirt and bra up out of his way and claimed her breast, pulling her nipple deep into his mouth, and still it wasn’t enough. Would never be enough, because he wanted her. Sherry. Not just her breathtaking body.
Mike tugged the T-shirt back down over her breast and lay there with his head where it was, gasping for breath, praying for strength. “Can’t,” he croaked.
Sherry’s fingers combed through his hair. “Why?”
He could hear the tears in her voice. Please don’t cry. He couldn’t handle that. He’d break in a million pieces if she cried.
“Why, Mike?” she whispered.
“Because.” Stupid answer. He had to do better. He owed her that much. It might be easier if he could let go of her. Then again, maybe not. “I told you. It has to mean something. To both of us.”
“But I know you care—” She broke off, her hand stilled on his head.
He couldn’t take this. He broke away from her, stood up and walked away, but not far. Just to the door leading out to the second-story porch where he looked out at the street. He heard Sherry moving around behind him. Maybe she’d leave now, leave him to his misery. No such luck.
She touched his shoulder. “Mike?”
He tried to shrug her off, but she wouldn’t go. She took his arm, and he let her tug him around to face her. He couldn’t look at her, though, staring past her at the other door. Her fingers tracing feather soft down his cheek made his eyes close against the sweetness.
“Can you possibly think I don’t—” Her voice wasn’t any louder than a whisper, but he heard her. “You do, though, don’t you? Oh, Micah.�
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Her hands rested on his chest as she stretched up and kissed his mouth. He didn’t kiss her back—somehow—but his hands came up to cover hers.
She kissed his cheek right next to his mouth. “You have no idea how much I care.”
She stepped away from him then, and he let her go, the way he would have to when the time came. She grasped the hem of her T-shirt and took it off, then reached behind her to unhook her bra. With a little shimmy, she dropped it to the floor.
What was she doing? Mike stood frozen, staring, as she skimmed her shorts and panties down to the floor and stepped out of them. Why?
He couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t talk as she walked back to him. What did she want? Whatever it was, it was hers. Anything she wanted. She was so beautiful.
Sherry took the hem of Mike’s shirt and lifted. His arms went up automatically to allow her to remove it. Her fingers slipped inside the stretchy waistband of his shorts and he caught them, stopped them. He couldn’t do this, not if she didn’t mean it.
“Sherry, you don’t have to—”
She kissed him, stopping his words effectively, her breasts brushing against his naked chest. His hands tightened on hers.
“Hush.” Her lips whispered their way across his cheek to his ear. She rose on tiptoe to reach it, leaning into him. “I know I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to, Mike. So what do you think that means?”
With his hands still gripping hers, she put her arms around him, pressing her sweet body against his until he trembled with the force of what she did to him. What did she mean? He had trouble finding his brain’s logic function. She had to mean that she wanted this, wanted whatever happened.
She set his hands in the small of his back and left them there. Her hands dove back under the waistband of his shorts and she went to one knee as she lowered his remaining clothing to the floor.