by Linda Seed
If he wasn’t in the house, he had to be in the studio. The outbuilding, about the same size as the house, stood at the end of a twenty-yard path that led from the back door of the little cottage.
She descended the porch steps into the yard, got on the dirt path that led to the studio, and marched forward, her hands in fists at her sides, her heart pounding. She got to the studio, threw open the door, and stepped inside.
Daniel was just finishing the second version of a bowl he’d screwed up the first time because he was too busy thinking about Lacy. The shape was right, the color was right, and he’d stayed pretty much focused long enough to get to the last steps without major incident. He’d detached the piece from the punty, had used a torch to smooth out the bottom of the bowl, and was just putting the thing into the annealer to gradually cool when he became aware that he wasn’t alone in the room.
He closed the door of the annealer, took off his safety glasses, turned—and felt his heart stutter when he saw Lacy, gloriously silhouetted in the sunlight pouring through the door.
He said, “Lacy. What—”
That was all he got out before she strode purposefully across the room, threw herself into his arms, and kissed him as though her life, her future, her very soul depended on it.
It was as though the switch that governed his rational thought was turned off with a resounding click. The thoughts that had been tormenting him—the ones about the house, and kids, and where this relationship was going—vanished like a forgotten dream. He had no more power to stop her or himself than he had to change the orbit of the earth.
He did have enough presence of mind to shove her away from the hot furnaces and toward a corner of the room where nothing was likely to produce third-degree burns, so he hadn’t gone completely stupid. Once the danger of severe injury was averted, though, he gave himself to the moment and they simply consumed each other.
Before he even knew what he was doing, he had wrapped his hands in her hair and was caressing her tongue with his. Was there anything else in the world besides this? Did it even matter if there was? The heat of the studio combined with the heat of Lacy’s body to make him feel as though he were melting into a steaming mass of pure pleasure.
She smelled like white jasmine and she tasted like his own hopes and dreams. He wrapped his arms around her and felt her clinging to him.
She didn’t say anything—didn’t tell him what she felt. Instead, she showed him with her body, her touch, the pure, blazing intensity of her desire.
He didn’t question it. He just responded to her in kind, his own passion, his own fire, rising to meet hers.
Her mouth savored his, and her hands were on him everywhere at once. He shoved her backward and onto a big wooden worktable until she was sprawled across it with his body covering hers. A glass bowl that had been sitting on the table fell to the concrete floor with a crash.
She wasn’t thinking, couldn’t think anything except Yes and More. She tore at his shirt, pulling it off over his head, then ran her hands over the delicious lines of his torso.
Lacy’s button-down shirt was too much of an obstacle, so he tore it off of her, sending buttons flying. He pulled down the cups of her bra to free her breasts, taking one and then the other into his mouth. The feel of his hot tongue on her made her gasp.
Instinctively, she wrapped her legs around him, gripping him to her. He pulled away just long enough to unbutton her jeans and drag them down her body. Her sandals clattered to the floor as he yanked the jeans off of her and threw them aside.
There was no time for him to get fully undressed. No time. He unzipped, freed himself, and plunged into her.
She wrapped herself around him and clung to him as he thrust into her, his body shimmering with sweat from the heat of the room and from the heat of his desire.
“Oh.” She heard the one syllable coming out of her own mouth over and over: “Oh, oh, oh.” Because this was something she hadn’t known about. This level of pleasure, this height of maddening, impossible arousal. It was discovery and revelation, rising on a crashing wave of urgent need.
He stiffened and shuddered against her with a gasp. And then, while he was still inside her, he brought his fingers down between her thighs to caress her until she spasmed in release.
Afterward, she lay on the table with Daniel bent over her, both of them limp, their breathing ragged.
“Jesus,” he rasped out. “I didn’t … expect … to see you today.” He was still trying to catch his breath.
“Didn’t you hear?” She could barely speak, breathless, her body under the weight of his. “It’s take … your girlfriend … to work day.”
He laughed, and she felt it as a low rumble that traveled from his body to hers.
When he finally got up off of her, he zipped up and raked his hands through his hair. “It was time for a break anyway, but I was just looking forward to a cup of coffee. This was better.”
She started to get down off of the table, but he stopped her. “Oh, wait. Whoa. Hang on a minute.”
He gestured, and she saw the issue: She was barefoot, and the broken shards of the bowl they’d knocked over littered the floor. He got a broom and swept it up, then handed over her clothes and shoes.
“I’m never gonna look at that table the same way again,” he remarked as she began to get dressed. She put on her jeans and her shoes and rearranged her bra, then realized that she couldn’t finish dressing because her shirt was in shreds.
“Well, this is a problem.” She held up the shirt with its missing buttons and its long tear across the front.
“Ah. Jeez. I’m sorry about that,” he said, looking embarrassed.
“Don’t be. I can always get another shirt. Believe me, it was worth the twenty dollars.” She could feel the wide, silly smile on her face, but couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
He picked up his own T-shirt off of the floor and handed it to her, and she put it on. When they were both as reassembled as they could reasonably be—he was still naked from the waist up, a situation she wasn’t in any hurry to remedy—he came to her and pulled her into his arms.
“Not that I’m complaining, but what’s going on? Is everything okay?” She felt his voice as a low vibration through his chest.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Better than fine, especially now. It’s just …”
He pulled back a little so he could look into her eyes.
“Just what?”
“I … I was talking to my mother, and I said something to her, and it made me realize … and I had to come out here to tell you. It couldn’t wait.” Her heart was thumping with the gravity of what she was about to say to him.
“Lacy? You had to tell me what?” His voice was soft, gentle. And sexy as hell.
“I had to tell you … that I love you, Daniel. I do. And it’s real, and it’s not going to go away. I needed you to know that. I love you.”
Daniel froze with the words still in the air between them. He knew what he was supposed to say, but when he opened his mouth to say it, no words came out.
This thing he was feeling, was it love? The sense that he was only half a person when he wasn’t with her, was that love? The relief that flooded him when he saw her after they’d been apart, was that what love felt like? And if it was, was he ready to accept that?
“Lacy …” He caressed her shoulders with his hands.
Something happened in her eyes as he watched her, as she realized he wasn’t going to say it back. Her look of hope and pleasure turned to hurt. The thought that he’d put that pain in her eyes gut-punched him, but goddamn it, was he supposed to say something he wasn’t ready to say?
“Lacy …”
“No, that’s fine.” She gave him a small, forced smile and pulled out of his arms. “You don’t have to say it back. You don’t have to say anything.”
He could see it, though, could see that it wasn’t fine. Disappointment played on her face as she avoided his gaze.
“Wel
l, look,” she said. “I should go. I mean, you were working.…” She turned and walked out of the studio and headed toward her car, her arms clutched across her chest, her footsteps determined.
He scrubbed at the back of his neck with his hand. How had something so perfect turned to shit so quickly?
Chapter Twenty-Six
“So, he didn’t say it back. So what? It’s not important. It’s stupid to let it bother me.” Lacy quickly wiped a tear from her cheek as Gen looked on sympathetically. Lacy had needed someone to talk to, and she couldn’t pull together an emergency meeting of her friends on such short notice. So she’d gone to the Porter Gallery, and had, mercifully, found Gen there alone. She’d laid out the sequence of events, starting with her revelation about being in love with Daniel and ending with his panicked look when she’d declared that love.
“Honey, it’s not stupid. If it bothers you, it bothers you.” Gen rubbed Lacy’s shoulder as the two of them sat in big leather office chairs behind Gen’s desk.
“I mean, it’s reasonable if he doesn’t know. We’ve only been seeing each other for two months.” She blew her nose with a tissue from the box on Gen’s desk. “Why the hell did I have to say it first? Why did I do that?”
Gen looked wistful. “Ah, the who says it first dilemma. I know it well.”
“Who said it first between you and Ryan?” Lacy asked.
“I did. I almost said it about five different times before I finally came out with it. He said it back, thank God, or I’d have had to beat him to death with my shoe.”
They both looked down at Gen’s shoes, which had three-inch heels sharp enough to impale somebody.
“God,” Lacy said miserably. “I said it first, and he didn’t say it back, even after crazy hot studio sex. Gen, he threw me onto the table and he tore my shirt off. Can you imagine Brandon doing something like that?”
“He probably would have stopped everything to whip out a little mending kit,” Gen mused. “With one of those tomato-shaped pin cushions.” Amused by her own observation, Gen chuckled.
“Can we focus?” Lacy said. “I’m having a crisis here.”
“All right.” Gen looked at Lacy with sympathy. “Look, Lacy. I think it took some serious guts for you to say it first. Telling someone about your feelings for them is never a bad thing. You know how you feel, and now he does, too.”
“But what now?” Lacy said. “Now that I’ve humiliated myself with my declaration of apparently unrequited love?”
“Let’s just put aside the whole idea of humiliation,” Gen said. “What do you want to have happen?”
What did she want? She wanted him to love her, and for that to be so obvious to both of them that there would be no question of whether to say it. But if she couldn’t have that, then, God help her, she still wanted Daniel. No matter what.
“Honestly?” she said. “I want to turn back the clock and take back what I said. But since I can’t do that … I guess I just have to pretend I didn’t say it. Be patient. And hope like hell that he’s not too freaked out and we can just … keep doing what we’re doing.”
“Including hot studio sex,” Gen put in.
“From your lips to God’s ears.”
“You know,” Gen began tentatively, “if he doesn’t know how he feels yet, that’s okay. It’s still pretty early in the relationship.”
“I know,” Lacy replied, her voice glum.
“But it’s possible that he does feel the same as you do, and that he’s just too big of a wussy to admit it yet.”
Lacy looked at Gen. “You think?”
“Well, he is a man, after all,” Gen said. “Wussiness, where love is concerned, would not be completely out of the question.”
That was true. But what kind of wussiness were they talking about, exactly? The kind that made a person cautious? Or the kind that made someone run like hell?
“Ah, Jesus. I’m an idiot. And I’m a total wimp,” Daniel moaned to Will as the two of them jogged on the bluff trail at Fiscalini Ranch. It was late afternoon, and the sun, partially hidden behind a layer of fog, was beginning its descent toward the western horizon. A chill nipped the air, but Daniel didn’t feel it because he was warm from the run. He was sweating a little, enjoying the exertion. The sound of waves crashing into the bluffs blended with the noise of barking sea lions.
“There she was, all gorgeous and perfect and … and so Lacy,” he went on as they crested a hill. “And this goddess tells me she loves me. And what did I do? I froze. I couldn’t say it, man. What the hell’s wrong with me?”
“Maybe you don’t love her,” Will suggested, keeping pace beside Daniel, his blond hair damp with perspiration.
“Ah, bullshit,” Daniel said.
“So, then you do love her,” Will said, not unreasonably.
“Why wouldn’t I? I’d have to be an idiot not to love her,” Daniel said.
“I notice you dodged the question,” Will said.
Yeah, he had. But why?
He stopped on the trail and bent forward, hands on his knees, breathing hard. Then he straightened and ran his hands through hair damp with sweat.
“I have the feelings,” he said. “All right? Jesus. Yeah. I have the feelings. So why can’t I just say that?”
“Because you’re just like Rose,” Will said. “Not in every way, obviously. But in terms of behavior in love relationships … yes.”
“I’m like Rose,” he repeated, mulling it over.
“She couldn’t admit to having feelings for me because of her previous problems with men.” Will squinted, probably because he wasn’t wearing his glasses.
“I don’t have any previous problems with men,” Daniel said.
“Ha. Funny.” Will lifted up his left foot to stretch his quadriceps.
“I don’t have any previous problems with women, either,” Daniel insisted.
“Well …”
“Well, what?” He turned to face Will, hands on his hips.
“Nothing,” Will said. “It’s just … you haven’t had a lot of serious relationships, have you?”
Daniel scratched at the back of his neck. “What the hell are you getting at?”
Will shrugged. “Just saying.”
Daniel started running again, thinking that would put an end to Will’s speculations about him and his love life. Daniel had been the one to bring it up, yeah. But he’d expected the kind of sympathy guys usually gave each other in situations like this. He hadn’t expected actual insight.
But now that Will had said what he had, now that it was out there, Daniel couldn’t help but think about it. Was he like Rose? Was he pretending that he didn’t feel something he did, just to avoid the uncomfortable implications of loving someone?
And if so, how did he get to be such a coward?
And, most importantly, what should he do now?
“Try flowers,” Will suggested, as though reading his mind. “Girls love flowers. And the best part is that you can apologize without saying that you apologize.”
“But I don’t have anything to apologize for,” Daniel protested.
“Exactly why you apologize without saying you apologize.” Will said it as though it were completely obvious, which Daniel supposed it probably was to a guy whose significant other was expecting a baby. Will probably had abundant experience in apologizing for things that he didn’t even understand, let alone had actually done.
Daniel grunted in response.
“Cambria Nursery’s always good for flowers,” Will remarked.
The flowers were delivered to Jitters, probably because the Airstream didn’t have its own address. Lacy was prepared to be hard-hearted about it—to scoff at the cliché of sending flowers after hurting a woman’s feelings—but then she laughed out loud when she read the card.
Lacy—
Will says I’m being Rose. Don’t ask.
—D
“What the hell does that even mean?” Lacy wondered out loud, holding the card in her hand
s, the scent of a dozen long-stemmed red roses filling her senses.
Coincidentally, the actual Rose just happened to be there getting a half-caff latte when the delivery arrived. She took the card from Lacy’s hand and peered at it.
“Ha!” She barked out a laugh. “It’s true. He’s totally being me.”
“How do you figure?” Lacy said.
“He can’t admit his feelings. Hell, I wouldn’t even admit that Will and I were dating until I was already duplicating his DNA.”
Lacy took back the card and slapped it down on the counter. “Huh. Seems like you and Daniel are a perfect match. Maybe you should be the one dating him.”
“I would, if my honey bunny wasn’t so damned cute,” she said cheerfully. She looked down at her vast, round midsection. “And if I wasn’t carrying his child.”
Lacy finished up Rose’s latte and passed it across the counter to her. “Flowers,” she mused. “Now I can’t even enjoy being mad. Well, not mad, exactly. Irked.”
“Must have been Will’s idea,” Rose said. “I’ve gotten a lot of flowers since I’ve been knocked up.”
When Rose was gone, Lacy bustled around behind the counter, washing cups and restocking filters and napkins.
The card hadn’t said I love you. On the other hand, it appeared he wasn’t going to run like hell.
That was something, anyway.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Things between Daniel and Lacy had just gotten back on track, with the turmoil of the “I love you” declaration behind them, when Lacy’s mother did something unconscionable.
And then Brandon did the thing he did, which made it all so much worse.
It turned out that Nancy hadn’t just been talking to people at the Cookie Crock about Lacy and Brandon getting back together. She hadn’t just been talking to Brandon about how Lacy had been faithful. She’d also told Brandon—contrary to all fact, and contrary to everything Lacy had said on the matter—that Lacy was willing, nay, eager, to reconcile.
And that was what led Brandon to bring Lacy’s topaz earrings, which he’d found in his luggage and had been holding onto all along out of spite, to Jitters, presenting them to her with a story about how he’d just discovered them.