The Marriage Arrangement

by Patricia Ryan

  He’d resolved not to pounce on her, as he had at her parents’ house. He’d woo her slowly and prove to her that he wasn’t Prez or any of the rest of them. He wasn’t even the old Clay. She was reinventing him, and he welcomed the transformation.

  Clay stomped his boots on the back porch, smiling at the muted twang of country music from inside the house. He opened the door to a rush of warm air and now exquisitely familiar dinnertime aromas: garlic and tomatoes, oregano and basil.

  While he shed his coat and gloves and boots in the mud-room, Clay reflected that his efforts to win Izzy’s trust boiled down to a campaign of emotional seduction—and there was the rub. He knew all about physical seduction; he’d polished that particular operation to an art form. But when it came to actual human feelings, he was way out of his depth. He knew he needed to be attentive to Izzy, so she’d realize he cared about her. But if he laid it on too thick, she’d more than likely feel threatened, and retreat from him.

  Luckily—and it was pretty much dumb luck, ’cause he was blundering around like a clueless adolescent—he hadn’t blown it quite yet. He may even have achieved some progress. Izzy’s initial wariness with him after South Ozone Park had worn off, and he even had the impression that she was warming to him again.

  She wasn’t going to like this Myrtle Beach gig, though. And she was definitely going to get bent out of shape over the Wolf Peak thing next month.

  Harry and Teddy greeted him in the kitchen with a glass of red wine. They were into bottle number two already, and singing along with Carrie Underwood while they stirred sauce and boiled pasta.

  “Where’s Izzy?” Clay asked as he dumped his briefcase in a chair and loosened his tie.

  “Upstairs, resting.” Teddy dipped a spoon in the sauce and tasted it with a critical expression.

  Harry drizzled some olive oil into a bowl of lettuce and began tossing it. “She’s been complaining about her lower back.” He smiled slyly. “Sounds to me like she could use a nice massage.”

  “A nice, long one.” Teddy upended the wine bottle over the sauce pot. “With oil.”

  “Warm oil.” Harry winked and shook some wine vinegar onto the salad.

  “Sober up, Harry.” Clay took a sip of his wine. “We’re flying out of La Guardia at eleven-seventeen tonight.”

  Harry sighed and popped a piece of lettuce into his mouth, then wiped his hands on the dish towel hanging from his belt. “Mind telling me where to?”

  “Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.”

  “Kitty Hawk? That aerial exhibition? I thought that got canceled.”

  “They uncanceled it. It’s on for tomorrow morning.”

  Harry grimaced. “Give me that.” He grabbed the wine bottle from Teddy and took a swig directly from it. “If I’m gonna be dragged along on another one of your suicide excursions, I intend to get as hammered as humanly possible. And stay that way.”

  Clay thunked his glass down on the breakfast bar. “Suicide excursions?”

  “This one’s not even that important,” Harry said as he lifted the bottle to his mouth again.

  “They’re all important.” Clay wished they weren’t; man, was he sick of this daredevil crap. “We need the publicity.”

  “There won’t even be that much press there.”

  “You’ll be there.”

  “One drunk and surly photographer does not count as ‘press.’”

  “Anyone mind if I change the subject?” Teddy reached beneath the counter and withdrew something, which she handed to Clay. “That, uh, met with a little accident.”

  It was the framed snapshot of Judith and him, cavorting in the snow the weekend they got married. The glass over the print was neatly cracked in one corner. “What happened?”

  “I was dusting, and it fell off the mantel.” Teddy took a leisurely sip of wine, eyeing him closely.

  “You don’t dust.” Clay knew that Teddy cooked because she liked to cook, but she left the housekeeping to the cleaning lady.

  “What can I say?” She shrugged as only an Italian can shrug. “Something came over me this morning.” She tilted her wineglass toward the photograph. “You ought to keep that thing somewhere safer. Mantels are so... precarious.”

  Harry lowered his head as he adjusted the rim of his Yankees cap—a transparent attempt to hide his expression. Clay glanced at him, and he adopted an air of exaggerated innocence, his hands held up in an I-don’t-know-anything gesture.

  “You got a nice desk drawer somewhere?” Teddy asked. “Or, like, a box, where you keep memorabilia? Stuff from the past?”

  Clay just stared at her.

  “If you do,” she said, “you’re better off keeping it in there.”

  Looking down, Clay rubbed his thumb over the glass, contemplating the image beneath: two happy young newlyweds, people from another lifetime. The sauce in the pot bubbled and popped.

  “That’s probably a good idea.” Clay slid the picture into the inside pocket of his suit coat.

  He could almost hear the tension easing in the room, like steam escaping. Harry resumed his tossing of the salad and his half-drunk, off-key singing. Teddy furtively crossed herself as she picked up the spoon and stirred the sauce.

  IZZY, LYING ON HER BACK in her darkened bedroom, heard a soft knock at the door. “Teddy?”

  “It’s Clay.”

  Her spirits lifted. The ache in her back seemed almost to evaporate. Idiot!

  “Come in.”

  Light from the hall illuminated the room as Clay opened the door and crossed to her. She turned her head to face him as he crouched next to the bed.

  “Hey, coffee bean.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, or tried to. He grinned ruefully when it kept popping out. “You okay? You haven’t been overdoing the work today, have you?”

  “Just an hour today, while Harry was here. And I spent about twenty minutes touching up the blacksmith’s cottage.”

  Clay had agreed to repair his medieval landscape on the condition that Izzy would handle the delicate repainting of the pieces that needed it. She’d agreed readily, and they worked together on the project almost every evening. She relished this time with him, probably more than she should.

  He rose, loosened his tie, and retrieved something from inside his suit coat. She couldn’t make it out, silhouetted as he was in the light from the hallway. “So, you’ve been feeling all right?” Clay lifted the lid of the old, carved chest at the foot of her bed, tucked the small object inside, and closed it.

  “Yeah... just fine.”

  Clay smiled crookedly. “Liar.” He came around to the side of the bed, slipped his hands beneath her, and rolled her gently onto her stomach. Shrugging off his coat, he tossed it onto the foot of the bed, sat next to her, and laid a palm on her back. His touch felt wonderful through her T-shirt; her sigh of pleasure came out more like a moan.

  Clay moved his hand down to her lower back and rubbed gently. Her eyes closed, and a little growl of contentment escaped her. She heard his shoes hit the carpet as he kicked them off, and then he reclined next to her on his side, without ever taking his hand off her back.

  Izzy loved it when Clay was close to her like this. She wished she didn’t, but she did. She loved his heat, his touch, the enigmatic scent of herbs mingled with starched cotton. It had been hard, moving into the blue room, especially after he’d made it so clear that he wanted her in his bed. But one of them had to be smart, and it looked like she was elected by default.

  Clay lifted the hem of her T-shirt and then she felt the delicious warmth of his hand on her bare back, right above her sweatpants. He massaged her in just the right places and with just the right amount of strength. Slipping his hand beneath the elasticized waistband of her sweats, he worked on the muscles that hurt the most. Izzy felt as though she were melting into the bed.

  Unhooking her bra so deftly she hardly even noticed—of course he’d have that move down—he expanded the massage to include her entire back. He didn’t stop rubbing he
r until the pain was gone and she felt a sense of warm, liquid satisfaction.

  “Better?” he asked, trailing his fingertips over her back with an intoxicatingly feathery touch.

  “Mmm.” What else could he do with those skillful hands? Izzy grew warm considering the possibilities.

  “Your skin is so soft,” he murmured. He glided his fingertips up her side until they brushed the swell of a breast. “Especially here.”

  She opened her eyes. His face was very close to hers. “Clay...”

  “Do you have any idea whatsoever how crazy I am about you?”

  For now. But his expression was so sincere, almost desperate. She closed her eyes to block it out.

  “I’ve been trying so hard to be cool these past couple of weeks,” he said, “to do and say all the right things, but it’s so hard. You can’t imagine how tough it is to keep my distance from you, when all I want is to take your clothes off and—”

  “Clay, please.” Disentangling herself from his embrace, Izzy sat up and ran a shaky hand through her hair. “We need to talk about this like two sane adults.”

  Something sparked in his eyes, half amused, half wolfish. “That’s not what we need to do.”

  “We had an agreement,” she said, reaching behind her to fasten her bra. Her fingers felt inordinately clumsy, though, and she couldn’t get the little hooks in the eyes.

  Clay sat up, reached around her with both arms, and rehooked her easily, then smoothed her T-shirt down, letting his hands come to rest on her thighs. “I told you, I’m sick of our agreement. Things are different now.”

  “You’re the same.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Oh, Clay.” Izzy drew in a steadying breath. “Think about it. You’ve spent the past ten years jumping in and out of beds. That would give any woman pause.”

  He looked as though he’d just figured something out. “If you’re worried for health reasons, don’t. I didn’t have unprotected sex once in those ten years. I’ve had myself tested, anyway, but the results have always been negative.”

  “That’s not it,” she said. “I know you well enough to know you’d never take any chances. And I can’t believe you’d knowingly put me at risk if you had. My point is that you’re pretty much a dyed-in-the-wool womanizer. You’ll never change.”

  He took his hand off her legs. “Do you realize how insulting that is?”

  Izzy just stared at him. He looked genuinely stung.

  “I’m as capable of change as anybody,” he said. “Haven’t I changed already? I haven’t had anything to do with another woman since we got married.”

  “I never asked that of you. You probably find it pretty frustrating. Maybe it would be best if you just went back to—”

  “Damn it, Izzy.” He gripped her shoulders, his gaze boring into hers. “I don’t want to hear that, can’t you get that through your head? I don’t want some nameless string of one-night stands. I want you” He pulled her toward him until his mouth was a hairsbreadth from hers. “You.”

  He closed his mouth over hers as his arms encircled her, holding her tight. The kiss was so consuming, so intense, that Izzy felt as if they were floating, just the two of them, with no up or down or sideways. Her mind reeled; her heart slammed in her chest.

  When it ended, she had her arms around him. She was breathless and disoriented. His hands were in her hair, his lips on her throat, her face...

  “You,” he breathed into her ear. “Just you.”

  Her head fell forward, onto his chest. She clutched his shirt in her fists. “You say that now.”

  “I’ll say it tomorrow,” he murmured into her hair, “and the next day, and the next...”

  “But what if it doesn’t work out? What if... what if you really can’t change?”

  “I can.”

  “But if you can’t...” She looked up at him, imploring him with her eyes to understand. “Our friendship is such a special thing, Clay, a precious thing. It means so much to me.”

  He ran his fingers along her scalp. “To me, too.”

  “I don’t want to lose you as a friend. I don’t want to ruin what we have.”

  “What we have will only get better,” he said earnestly.

  He really believes this, Izzy thought. And he’s coming close to making me believe it, too.

  Taking advantage of her hesitation, he tilted her chin up and whispered against her lips, “Let me show you how much better it can get.”

  He kissed her again, a languid, ardent kiss that she returned in kind. She couldn’t have done otherwise if her life depended on it.

  His hand stole down to her breast, cupping it just as Harry bellowed, “Chow time!” up the stairs.

  Izzy broke the kiss and pulled away from him.

  He drew her back into his arms. “Izzy, listen. I have to go away tonight, on magazine business, but—”

  She groaned. “What is it this time? Barefoot leaping across the Grand Canyon?”

  He tapped a finger on the tip of her nose. “Smart-ass. It’s aerial stuff, at Kitty Hawk. Wing-walking, sky-surfing, free-falling...”

  “Free-falling?”

  “Yeah, that’s when you don’t open your parachute till the very last—”

  She pressed a finger to his lips. “Sorry I asked.”

  “That’s all right.” He grinned mischievously and captured the finger between his teeth, then closed his lips around it. Izzy gasped at the sexual charge generated by his hot tongue on her fingertip. She withdrew it, and he chuckled.

  She shook her head. “You’re incorrigible.”

  “You asked for it. And any other part of you that gets near my mouth is in for the same treatment.”

  “Consider me forewarned. But I wasn’t really talking about that. I meant you’re so hopelessly hooked on all these idiotic stunts.”

  “Events.”

  “Idiotic events.”

  He rolled his eyes, but then his expression sobered. “I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you about Wolf Peak.”

  “Wolf Peak... that sounds familiar.”

  Something grim flickered in his eyes. “That’s where Judith, uh...”

  “Oh. That’s right.”

  His eyebrows drew together. “Harry told you?”

  She nodded.

  He looked thoughtful for a moment. “They’ve decided to reopen that chute.”

  “The Suicide Chute?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?”

  “Pressure from the skiing establishment. That chute has seen fewer avalanches over the past decade than in the past.”

  “That couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that there haven’t been any skiers disturbing the surface,” Izzy said sarcastically.

  Clay smiled in acknowledgment of her point. “Another issue was revenue for the locals in the Wolf Peak area. That chute’s going to be a big draw once people find out it’s open again. The excitement has started already. A top extreme skier named Olof Borg is gonna ski it in mid-March. It’s gonna be huge, one of the biggest events of the year. ABC and ESPN will be there, and all the magazines are sending crews. Sports Illustrated. Ski. Skiing—”

  “The Rush?”

  “Got no choice, Izz. We’ve got to be where the action is if we’re going to keep from getting swallowed up by Mercer-Hest.”

  She expelled a lengthy sigh. “Doesn’t it bother you at all that that’s the chute where Judith—”

  “Dumb question, Izzy,” he said quietly. “But business is business. I just wanted to let you know it’s coming up.”

  “Are you planning on doing any skiing at Wolf Peak?”

  He hesitated, then said, “No. That’s Olof’s show, and it wouldn’t be fair to steal his thunder.”

  “That’s some comfort, but I still hate this, Clay. Not just the Wolf Peak trip, but all of them. This whole extreme scene. Sometimes I wish you’d never started that magazine.”

  “Objecti
on noted.”

  “No, seriously—”

  “I’m tired of being serious.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Shut up and kiss me.”

  “No. I want to talk.”

  “I want to kiss.”

  “And I want to eat,” Teddy said from the doorway. “So, would you fucking kiss him already? Talking takes too damn long.” She turned and headed downstairs.

  “Sneaky old broad,” Izzy muttered.

  “I heard that,” Teddy called from the stairs.

  “Good!” Izzy yelled back.

  Clay grinned and shook his head. “Smart lady.”

  “She’s a pain in the ass.”

  “I heard that, too,” Teddy hollered from downstairs.

  “She scares me sometimes,” Clay whispered into her ear, his chest shaking with suppressed laughter.

  “Me, too,” Izzy chuckled.

  Suddenly his mouth was touching hers. Their laughter mingled as he kissed her. He held her head still with his big hands, kissing her and kissing her, until the laughter stopped and there was just the kissing, endless sweet, soft kissing that stole her breath and weakened her resolve.

  “Clay...” she whispered when they drew apart. “This is... this is...”

  “Yeah, I know.” He kissed her forehead. “Your point?”

  She brought a hand up to caress his face, stroking his beard-roughened jaw. “The same as it always was.” She shook her head sadly. “Your going on this trip is just one more sign that nothing has really changed. Underneath it all, you’re the same old Clay—always pushing that envelope. Always drawn to the next challenge.”

  “Izz—”

  “You like to live life on the edge,” she said. “The extreme sports, the women... it’s all the same. It’s all part and parcel of who you are. It’s in your blood. You may want to change, but—”

  “I will. I’ll show you.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “I will, anyway.”

  “Then you’re not going to Kitty Hawk after all?”

  He stilled. “Ah.”

  “Ah.” She moved away from him.

  “You guys!” Harry shouted from downstairs. “If I have to come up there after you, someone’s gonna get a spanking!”