An Honorable Man

by Darlene Gardner

  Her mouth twisted and he could almost see her mind working. “In that case,” she said haughtily, “I accept.”

  He ended up walking her home, insisting upon it even though she assured him the downtown area was safe after dark. Late on a Monday night, activity was nearly nonexistent except for the occasional car and the call of a distant night bird. The tourists who visited Indigo Springs tended to be the early-to-bed, early-to-rise types.

  “You know what I don’t get,” she said when they’d almost reached her doorstep. “I don’t get why the story’s so important to you.”

  “Every story’s important to me,” he said without inflection.

  She nodded, accepting his lame explanation. She came to a stop in front of her door, in much the same way as she had that first night they’d met.

  That night, he’d been reasonably confident she’d let him kiss her. He had no cause for optimism tonight.

  “What?” Her back was to the streetlight, her face partially in shadows. He knew her expressions well enough by now he could tell her nose was wrinkled and her lips thinned. “You’re not going to try to get me to invite you in?”

  “Not tonight,” he said.

  “Is something wrong?” She sounded less suspicious, almost…concerned. “You don’t seem yourself tonight.”

  He shrugged, surprised she’d picked up on his mood when he was trying so hard to conceal it. He tried to throw her off track. “You don’t know me well enough to say that.”

  “Maybe not, but I can tell something’s bothering you.” She chewed on her lower lip. “Look. I know I’ve been giving you a hard time, but you helped me out when I was in a jam, and, well, I can be a good listener.”

  Since he’d signed the credit-card slip, it had felt as though the weight of tomorrow’s date was pressing on his shoulders. He had a crazy premonition the burden wouldn’t be as hard to bear if he shared it.

  “I realized earlier this evening that Wednesday is my mother’s birthday.” He seldom spoke about his mother because it was just so damn hard to talk about her without his voice breaking. He struggled for control. “It brought home how miserably I was letting her down.”

  She tilted her head quizzically, her expression softening. “If you forgot to get her a present, there’s still time to send flowers.”

  He took a deep breath and released it before speaking. “My mother died when I was twelve years old.”

  “She did?” Surprise made her voice sound higher than normal. “I had the impression she and your father were divorced.”

  “That’s what I wanted you to believe.”

  “Why?”

  “A little while ago you asked why the story was so important to me.” He wet his suddenly dry lips, unable to come up with a reason to continue to keep his secret. “It’s important because Allison Blaine was my mother.”

  He waited for her to chastise him for keeping that pertinent piece of information to himself. The silence between them stretched, the hoot of what sounded like an owl filling it.

  She was holding her key ring in her right hand, having fished it out of her purse as they walked through the downtown. Wordlessly, she inserted one of the keys into the lock and opened the door.

  Just when he thought she’d disappear inside without saying anything, she turned and held the door open wide.

  “Why don’t you come in?”

  SIERRA WALKED SLOWLY into her living room, careful not to spill either of the mugs of decaf she balanced in her hands. She suspected Ben didn’t want the coffee any more than she did, but offering him a beverage had given her a chance to collect her thoughts.

  She didn’t know why she hadn’t guessed Allison Blaine was Ben’s mother, especially because that simple fact explained so much.

  “Here you go.” She delivered the coffee to where he sat in one of the room’s two large swivel chairs. Their fingers brushed, and she resisted the impulse to wrap her hand around his and hang on.

  “Thanks.” He watched her sit on the matching love seat, then swept a hand to indicate the small room where she spent most of her time. “I like your style.”

  The swivel chairs flanked the love seat. She’d chosen a burnt-orange fabric to pick up the warmth of the wood floor. She’d piled multicolored pillows on the furniture and added modern glass end tables and funky lamps with zigzag bases. The walls were painted a pale ginger, and pleated shades topped with tricolor valances covered the windows. A plasma screen television was mounted over the fireplace.

  “I guess both of us are full of surprises,” she said.

  “I didn’t say I was surprised.” Although it didn’t take much movement for his chair to swivel, it remained perfectly still. “The room suits you.”

  She doubted anyone else in her acquaintance would say that. Now wasn’t the time to talk about her taste in decorating, though.

  “Then you’re the surprising one,” she said. “Why do you have a different last name than your mother?”

  “Blaine was her maiden name. She kept it when she married my father.”

  Sierra thought that was odd, considering the times, but there were other issues to explore more important than whether his mother was an early feminist. “Why didn’t you say something before now about Allison Blaine being your mother?”

  He leaned his head back against the pillows and looked at a point on the ceiling instead of at her. “It’s hard to explain. I guess I thought I could keep my emotions out of it if I treated it like any other story.”

  “Except that’s not working out,” she said softly.

  “Not by a long shot,” he acknowledged, then grew silent.

  She’d never been one to pry in another person’s affairs, but something he’d told her made her go against her long-held practice.

  “That one time you visited Indigo Springs,” she asked quietly, “was it when your mother died?”

  “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “She brought me and my two younger brothers to visit our grandparents. Her parents.”

  She felt his pain as acutely as if it were her own. “That must have been a terrible time for all of you.”

  “I’m quite a bit older than my brothers. They didn’t really understand what was happening.”

  “How about you?”

  “I was plenty old enough to know she was never coming back.” He paused. “After all these years, I still miss her.”

  “What was she like?”

  “She was a mom. Sweet. Quiet. Always there when you needed her even though she had to work hard to make ends meet.”

  Again he lapsed into silence. Again she felt he might stop talking if she didn’t keep asking questions. “What did she do for a living?”

  “She worked at the day care where she sent my brothers. When my father was home, which wasn’t often because he was a truck driver, she’d work a second job at night. She was on a cleaning crew, I’m pretty sure at an office building.”

  He reached into his wallet and pulled out a photo worn around the edges. It depicted a young boy she instantly recognized as Ben smiling directly into the camera. A pretty, dark-haired woman with large, dark eyes rested her chin on top of his head, her arms encircling him. An enormous gray creature was in the background.

  “Is that a hippopotamus?”

  A corner of his mouth quirked. “For some reason, I was crazy about them. On my tenth birthday, she took half a day off work and picked me up after school. She didn’t tell me where we were going until we got to the Pittsburgh zoo.”

  “She looks so young,” Sierra said.

  “She was only thirty when she died. A little younger than I am now. She was seventeen when she married my dad,” he said. “I didn’t find out until after she died they got married because she was pregnant.”

  “That must have been tough.” Sierra had seen the complications of teenage pregnancy firsthand last summer when her niece—the daughter Ryan and Annie had given up for adoption when they were in their teens—had shown up unannounced in In
digo Springs. “Did your mother finish high school?”

  “No,” Ben said. “That’s something else I found out after she was gone. It explained why she took the types of jobs she did, although at the time I didn’t realize how tough it must have been for her. She never complained.”

  “She sounds wonderful.” Sierra handed the photo back to him. “I’m glad you and your brothers have such warm memories of her.”

  “I’m afraid my brothers don’t remember her very well,” he said. “Like I told you before, my dad got remarried before I went off to college. My brothers call our stepmother Mom.” He paused long enough for her to suspect he’d clammed up for good this time, but then he said in an even softer voice, “It’s almost like they’ve forgotten her.”

  She remembered him saying he had stayed in Pittsburgh year-round while he attended college. None of the newspapers at which he’d mentioned working were near Philadelphia, where his father and stepmother lived.

  “Do you see your family much?” she asked.

  “On the occasional holiday if I’m not working,” he said. “Jerry and Connor—those are my brothers—settled in the Philadelphia area. They’re both married with kids.”

  A picture crystallized of a man determinedly keeping himself apart from family. She could hear distance in his voice when he talked about them.

  “Maybe your brothers didn’t forget your mother,” she said gently. “Maybe they’re just getting on with their lives. Maybe that’s what you should do, too.”

  He blew out a heavy breath through a narrow space between his lips. “That’s what my boss suggested, too.”

  Sierra wasn’t consciously aware of scooting forward and reaching out to him until her hand rested on his knee. He covered her hand with his, sending warmth shooting through her. Then he turned it over so their palms were touching and interlaced their fingers.

  Their eyes met. Her animosity disappeared as though it had never been. She would swear their connection went a level deeper than the physical.

  “I should be going.” He didn’t make any move to get up. The lines around his eyes looked more pronounced than usual. She put the cause at fatigue, disappointment or possibly a combination of the two. She imagined him returning to his lonely room at the Indigo Inn, where he’d lie awake thinking about how his mother’s birthday was getting inexorably closer.

  Without letting go of him, she got up from the love seat and tugged on his hand until he was standing, too.

  “I’d like it better if you stayed,” she whispered.

  Mere days ago when she’d first gotten the idea to proposition him, her hands had shaken so much she’d had trouble getting dressed. Tonight the hand that he still held was as steady as her voice.

  His forehead wrinkled as he regarded her. “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure.”

  He still didn’t look convinced. She anchored the hand not holding his on his shoulder and moved closer to him, until their upper bodies touched.

  She heard his sharp intake of breath just before she raised her lips and kissed him. He barely moved, allowing her lips to play with his as she experimented with soft, feathery kisses.

  She couldn’t remember ever seizing the initiative in a sexual situation, not even as a teenager. In her years with Chad, he’d always taken the lead.

  Ben’s hand tightened around hers. She moved closer to him and felt the evidence of his arousal. A thrill ran through her that she’d done that to him with the slightest of kisses.

  She moved her hand from his shoulder to his nape, holding his head in place. Her heartbeat quickened, then she very deliberately parted his lips with her tongue.

  She delved inside, enjoying the nubby texture of his tongue and the heat that seemed to start at her mouth and spread. He tasted both like the beer he’d drunk at the Blue Haven, and like himself. Clean and warm and masculine, the way he smelled.

  Her tongue mated with his, kissing him deeply as an urgency built inside her. Their elbows were bent, their hands still linked and pressed between their bodies, against their hearts.

  She angled her mouth to kiss him even more deeply, reveling in the feel of his slightly scratchy beard against her skin. She couldn’t seem to get close enough to him. She ran her free hand down the length of his back, pressing her body closer to his erection. He willingly participated, seemingly content to let her move at her own pace.

  The tension built inside her, begging for release. She pulled her mouth from his, finding the act as difficult as if she were a starving bear lapping at honey. She felt dazed when she looked at him—and amazed she could feel this way from mere kisses.

  She stepped back from him, finding it convenient that she was still holding his hand. She nodded up the stairs. “My bedroom’s that way.”

  Her voice sounded sultry and smoky and unfamiliar. At the same time she felt as though a part of her had been buried below the surface, waiting for a chance to emerge.

  She was conscious of every sensation as she led him to her bedroom. The tap of their heels on the hardwood floor. The quick beat of her heart. The breaths that were coming too fast.

  Mostly she was aware of what would happen next. The knowledge reached every pore of her body, as though her veins were filled with anticipation instead of blood.

  Her bedroom was her favorite room in the house. She’d indulged her every whim in decorating it, favoring a white lacy theme for the bedspread and curtains.

  She switched on the light, the glow highlighting how aggressively masculine he looked in the feminine space.

  He looked just right.

  She let go of his hand, gave him a gentle push so he sat on the bed and then did something she’d never done in front of another person.

  She stripped.

  His eyes, hot and intense, didn’t leave her as she slowly unbuttoned her blouse. Her heart hammered, her fingers shook and her hand stilled before she could finish. She moistened her suddenly desert-dry lips, wondering why she thought she could go through with this.

  Then his eyes met hers, and he nodded. The movement was almost imperceptible, but it was enough.

  She finished unbuttoning her blouse and shrugged out of it, letting it drop to the floor. Her hands were more sure now, her breathing a little more even. She unzipped her skirt and shimmied it down her hips until she wore only a push-up bra and lacy, barely there panties.

  His eyes were no less intense but there was a lift to the corners of his mouth.

  “Hot damn,” he said.

  It was the most amazing thing, really. Standing in front of him in only her high heels and underwear, she should have felt like she was reenacting a scene in a bad movie.

  Instead she felt…happy. Really, really turned on. And unable to move.

  “I think I just lost my nerve,” she said.

  He rose from the bed and pulled his shirt over his head. His chest was sculpted with lean muscle and the perfect amount of hair.

  He walked toward her with an easy, sexy grace. His hands felt big and warm on her bare skin, his lips soft and thrilling where they grazed her cheek.

  “You did great,” he said, moving his mouth so it hovered above hers. “I can take it from here.”

  She raised her lips and let him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  A FAMILIAR TUNE slowly invaded Ben’s consciousness, pulling him out of sleep as the previous night came back to him.

  Sierra standing in front of him, wearing the lacy bra and panties that would have made her look like a pinup model if she hadn’t been gazing at him so shyly.

  Advancing until he could touch her, unhooking her bra, slipping off her panties, running his hands over her warm, sleek skin, taking her back to bed and making love to her.

  A delicious languor filled him. His eyes still closed, he turned and reached for her. All he encountered were cool sheets and empty space.

  He cracked open his eyelids to confirm what he already knew. He was alone. Except that wasn’t quite accurate.


  The tune was still playing. It dawned on him it was coming from the television in Sierra’s living area. Now that he was fully awake, he easily identified it as the theme from SportsCenter.

  Scratching his head, he sat up and swung his legs off the bed. He pulled on his jeans and one of the beaters he typically wore under his shirts, then walked soundlessly into the main part of the town house on bare feet.

  Sierra sat on one of her funky swivel chairs with her legs tucked under her, fully dressed in navy slacks and a short-sleeved, lightweight pink sweater. Her hair was damp, supposedly from the shower she’d already taken. She cradled a coffee cup in both hands, her attention riveted on the TV screen. Alex Rodriguez, the third baseman for the Yankees, dove for a ground ball, then fired from his knees, throwing the runner out at first.

  “Good play,” Ben said.

  Sierra’s body jerked, the coffee sloshing in her cup. She swiveled her chair to regard him. “I didn’t hear you come into the room.” She grimaced, one of her hands covering her mouth. “Oh, no. The volume’s on too loud, isn’t it? Did it wake you?”

  “Hey, the only thing better than waking up to SportsCenter would be waking up to SportsCenter with you in bed beside me.”

  The natural glow of her skin immediately tinged with pink. He smiled, amazed and charmed that words could make a woman who’d done a striptease blush.

  “I think you better give me that coffee cup.” He moved toward her, extending a hand.

  “Why?” she asked, even as she obliged.

  He set the coffee cup down, bent, anchored his hands about two feet apart on the back of the chair and kissed her.

  He felt her intake of breath when their mouths met. She tasted like the coffee she’d just drunk, but sweet instead of bitter. He gently drew her bottom lip into his mouth, the way he’d discovered she liked.

  He lifted a hand to stroke her face. Without both of his hands steadying it, the chair spun halfway around. Her mouth twisted away from his. She craned her head, her shocked eyes meeting his before she let loose with a full-bodied laugh that started in her diaphragm and expanded outward.