No Kids or Dogs Allowed

by Jane Gentry

  Her mouth was dry, suddenly.

  Steve hugged her again, hard, and handed her a glass of wine and held her while she sipped it.

  “Aormm,” Sammy complained, squirming between them. “Murmphf.”

  “It upsets him when he’s ignored,” said Elizabeth, detaching herself from Steve. She badly needed some relief from the intense physical and emotional pressure. “Poor baby.”

  “I wish you had half as much sympathy for me as you do for him,” said Steve. “I’m upset when I’m ignored, but do you drop everything and pet me? No.”

  “He’s a great deal cuter than you are,” said Elizabeth heartlessly.

  Sammy lifted his nose and followed it unerringly to the kitchen. Steve and Elizabeth followed to find him barking at a pot on the stove.

  “Kielbasa and chili,” said Elizabeth. “May Sammy have some?”

  “He’s not supposed to beg,” said Steve.

  Sammy sat by the stove, grinning and ingratiating.

  “I don’t think he knows that,” Elizabeth said. After she filled her plate and Steve’s, she chopped the rest of the hot dog buns with a little chili and some bites of kielbasa.

  “We don’t want to make him sick,” she explained to Steve. To Sammy she said, “There, darling. Eat the good yums-yums all gone.”

  Which he did, in forty seconds flat. He belched, licked his vast chops and collapsed on the floor under the table.

  “Unbelievable,” said Steve. He fetched the filled plates off the stove, where they had languished while Elizabeth fed Sammy. “Would you like to come to the table and eat your good yum-yums, too, or do you plan to spend the afternoon fawning over that furry Casanova?”

  “Jealous, are we?” asked Elizabeth, her eyes twinkling.

  “You’re very fickle,” said Steve, settling in a chair. Under the table, Sammy snored. Steve nudged at him to make him roll over.

  “He’s better looking than you are,” said Elizabeth. “And easier to get along with and bigger. Why shouldn’t I throw you over?”

  “You forgot smarter and has bigger teeth,“ said Steve, picking up his hot dog. “However, as you have just witnessed, he snores. I don’t.”

  “How do you know you don’t?” asked Elizabeth reasonably. “You’re always asleep when you do it.”

  “There’s one way we could find out,” said Steve. “Want to take a nap?”

  Yes, she did. Very much. And there wouldn’t be any time to snore, either. But she said, “Sorry. As appealing as you are, no.”

  “Why not, Elizabeth?”

  She gazed across the table at him: handsome, sexy, desirable, almost irresistible Steve. Damn it. She wanted to go to bed with him. And didn’t see how she possibly could. At least he deserved to know why.

  “Because of the girls. Because if we can’t bring them around, then we have no future together. And if we have no future—I can’t bear...”

  She didn’t finish, but Steve could fill in the blanks. And he knew exactly what she meant. It was hard for him at night, to think of her, to open his mouth to phantom kisses, to reach for her with his caressing hand and find only an illusion created by his inflamed desire.

  But if he were to take her to his bed, to cover her body with his, to kiss her naked breasts and have her rise to his touch. To feel himself enclosed by her and rock her fiercely under him, to possess his love and complete his heart.

  How could he bear to have her taken from him then?

  That, surely, would be deepest hell.

  Chapter Eight

  Giggles foamed like bubbles from Cara’s room. Elizabeth could hear the rustle of their petticoats and the soft tap of their slippers as Cara and Sara Fane dressed for the dance.

  Cara had bought a silky, deep teal brocade with a full skirt and off-the-shoulder puffed sleeves, which made her look like an eighteenth-century belle.

  At last she floated down the wide stairs. She had a thin gold bracelet around each wrist and her great-grandmother’s little cameo hanging from a gold chain around her neck. Her black curls cascaded down her back, almost to the wide lace sash around her waist, and satin slippers glimmered on her small feet. Her green eyes glowed, and her eager little face was pink with excitement. Small and graceful, the edges smoothed, the angles softened, she was in every way a herald of the woman she would become.

  She was so lovely that Elizabeth, watching her, had to blink to stay the tears.

  “It’s tea length,” said Cara shyly, twirling to show her mother. “Does it look all right?”

  Elizabeth surreptitiously wiped her eyes, and she had to clear her throat before she spoke. “You look absolutely beautiful,” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Cara, with a child’s ecstatic bounce. “I do, don’t I?”

  “Wait right there,” said Elizabeth, leaving the room. “I want to take your picture.” She had wept twice before, looking at her daughter: once with joy and astonished love, the first time she cuddled newborn Cara in her arms, and once with pride and a helpless sense of time passing, the morning Cara started kindergarten. And she felt it all now: the joy, the love, the pride—and the relentless time that was sweeping Cara so inexorably away from her. She wiped her eyes again and fetched the camera.

  Three frames later, Sara appeared, in a pink dress the color of peonies. The two girls fluttered together, each with an arm about the other’s waist, and quivered like butterflies poised for flight. They belonged in an old-fashioned summer garden, among the roses and the larkspur and the bluebells and the buttercups, and they cast the light of growth and life into the cold November night.

  No one would ever believe, looking at them, that there was ever a damp, drizzly November in any soul, thought Elizabeth, as she bundled the girls into their coats and led them to the car. The trouble might reappear tomorrow, but for tonight—even in November—they could have moonlight and roses. Cara would spend a delightful evening with cake and punch and awkward, eager boys, and Elizabeth would spend an even more delightful evening in front of the fire with Steve and a good meal and a good wine and a number of excellent kisses. She didn’t even have to go out to retrieve Cara from the Harkness gym: Sara’s parents were on pick-up duty. So she dropped Cara and Sara at the gym door with a light heart and the prospect of an entire evening spent in comfort and pleasure.

  She had just laid the fire and poked it into life when Steve rang the bell.

  His hands were full of bags laden with Chinese food.

  “This stuff is leaking on my coat,” he said, bending his head to kiss her.

  “It’s leaking on everything,” she told him. She led him into the kitchen and let the bags drip into the sink while she sponged at the front of his trench coat.

  “That’s not doing much good, Libby,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” she said, scrubbing at the dark stain. “This coat’s designed to be impenetrable.”

  “I can tell you from experience that it’s not.” He took the coat off and threw it across a chair. “See? My shirt’s wet from the rain.”

  “Oh, look at you,” she said. “You’re dripping.” She threw the sponge into the sink and picked up a cup towel. “Here.”

  “I don’t need that,” he said.

  “You certainly do,” she said.

  “Come here,” he said. “You must need a closer look.” He gathered her to his wet shirt, cup towel and all.

  “I can’t see it all from here.” She put her arms around his waist and smiled up at him.

  “You can share the rainwater with me then.” He looked into the clear green eyes and saw all his hope and desire there. His hands dipped below her waist and massaged her round bottom through her jeans. “Am I getting your sweater wet?”

  “It’s untreated wool,” she said, seeing the desire in his eyes and feeling the evidence of it against her. “Slaver just rolls right off it.” Only she was the one drooling, she thought. She wanted him. Wanted, wanted, wanted him.

  “Well, aren’t you lucky it’s waterproof?” he as
ked, gliding the tip of his tongue across the separation of her lips.

  She took a long, deep breath and opened her mouth to him. Still he wouldn’t kiss her, but teased her with his tongue, dipping it just slightly into her mouth, withdrawing when she leaned closer, fanning it gently against the corner of her smile and moving slowly across her bottom lip again. It made her crazy.

  She wanted to run her hands down his hard bottom, to press him closer to her, to unfasten his jeans and hers and lie with him, there on the soft new rug.

  Why couldn’t she have what she wanted? For a short second she was enormously angry at Cara and Melody, then the anger passed. No sighs, no regrets, no recriminations; she needed just the will to keep fighting.

  “I need another kiss,” he said, nuzzling at her neck. “A real one, this time. Not like the short ration I got at the door.”

  “Oh, and whose fault is that?” she asked. “It isn’t as if I haven’t offered.” It isn’t, she said to herself, as if I haven’t begged for that kiss, with my heart and with my body.

  She put her hands behind his neck and pulled his head to hers. And the kiss that followed made them both dizzy.

  “The food’s getting cold,” she murmured after a while. “We ought to eat.”

  “I’d rather do this.” He sat in a kitchen chair and straddled her across his lap. The weight and warmth of her against him made him gasp.

  “We can always do it later,” she said, but she leaned into his arms and kissed him again before she got up.

  She moved across him, of necessity grinding against his belly and down his thighs as she parted the distance between them, and the pressure was nearly more than he could bear.

  “Oh, can we?” he said, groaning. Enough, already. Reluctantly he took his hands off her and let her go.

  “Well, I don’t see why not.” She was well aware of the effect of her squirming, and delighted by it. “We have hours and hours. We have time for any number of things. Shrimp chow mein and Szechuan chicken and fortune cookies and a bottle of wine and a little discreet hanky-panky in the parlor. I’m sure we can think of a way to amuse ourselves through a long winter evening.”

  “I hate discreet hanky-panky,” he said, moving painfully out of his chair. He got bowls from the cabinet and emptied the cartons.

  “Discreet hanky-panky is better than no hanky-panky at all.” She rummaged in a drawer for chopsticks and placed them in soldierly rows beside the bowls.

  Steve, still in some discomfort, wasn’t sure about that. Discreet hanky-panky, he thought, was like having half as much food as you needed to keep from starving, or half as much air as you needed to breathe. Instead of relief, it just sharpened your torment.

  Elizabeth leaned against the cabinet and sniffed at the chow mein. “That smells wonderful.”

  He picked a shrimp out of the bowl with the chopsticks and carefully conveyed it to her mouth.

  “I love shrimp,” she said.

  “Do you?” He fed her another.

  “Yeah. And scallops and oysters.”

  “I thought it best to stay away from oysters,” he said, starting for the table with two plates. “In view of your theoretical aversion to physical involvement.”

  Her lips tightened slightly. “All I do all day is fight,” she said. “I can’t stand any more of it.” She loaded all the food onto a big tray. “Let’s go into the den. The wine’s on the coffee table.”

  The firelight bathed the room in gold. The smug old leather chairs squatted on either side of the hearth like a couple of old men, snoozing in a napping place they’d occupied for nearly eighty years. The couch stretched out comfortably between them, its down cushions plump and inviting. Elizabeth put the tray on the two ancient steamer trunks, which, covered with glass, served as a coffee table, then sat cross-legged in front of the feast and reached for a plate.

  Steve read the label on the wine and shook his head. A wonderful Chablis. With Chinese food, out of boxes, drunk by people in jeans instead of tuxedos. He filled his glass and closed his eyes and breathed deeply of summer pastures and sunlit fields and wind and rain and curling vines. He came to himself again when Elizabeth chuckled.

  “Are you hypnotized?” she asked.

  “Damn near it.” He took a sip of the wine: pure Olympian nectar. He closed his eyes and let the bouquet of the wine close around him again.

  Elizabeth raked Szechuan chicken and chow mein onto the plates and handed one across the table to Steve.

  “You only love me for my wine,” she said.

  “It’s a great attraction, I’ll admit,” said Steve. “But not the only one.”

  “I wish I could hypnotize Melody and Cara,” said Elizabeth. “You’re much easier to please than they are.”

  “God is easier to please than they are,” Steve said. “You know we shouldn’t go on hiding from the girls, Libby. They have to get used to us as a couple.”

  “What makes you think they aren’t?” Elizabeth asked. “We’re together all the time.”

  “Cara, for one thing,” he said. “She nearly exploded from rage when she saw me kiss you.” He fed her another shrimp. “We should be holding hands in public, honey. Kissing each other hello and goodbye in front of them. It won’t hurt them to see a little affection between us. Might even help reconcile them to the inevitable.”

  “Which inevitable?”

  “The inevitable in which we get married and produce a bunch of little Johnnys and Sandys and build a loving, happy home.”

  She thought of the Vorklands and longed for that future Steve envisioned.

  “Do you think the girls would get used to it?” she asked wistfully. “The holding hands, I mean. They’re so terribly opposed. I can’t get through to Cara at all.”

  “Well, I’ve made a little progress in understanding,” said Steve, between bites of chicken. “I’ve been talking to Melody. She doesn’t mind sharing me with you, but she refuses to share me with Cara.”

  “That makes sense,” said Elizabeth.

  “It does not,” said Steve irritably. “Why would she think I can’t love the two of them at one time?”

  “Why did Cain and Abel think it?” said Elizabeth. “Or Jacob and Esau?”

  Steve considered that. “I guess it has been around a long time, rivalry like that. The question is, what will we do about it?”

  “The world is full of people who have less to wrangle over than Melody and Cara, and still they fight,” said Elizabeth gloomily. “It’s not you Cara doesn’t like. It’s Melody.”

  “Can’t say that I blame her.”

  “How can you say that about your own daughter?” asked Elizabeth.

  “How can you say it about yours?” Steve countered.

  “Well, in her case, it’s true. She’s been an absolute beast about this.”

  “She’s nice to me,” said Steve. “It’s Melody who’s awful.”

  “Melody,” said Elizabeth truthfully, “has always been perfectly lovely to me.”

  Steve tweezed the last shrimp on his plate and put it into Elizabeth’s mouth.

  “Maybe we could work a trade,” he suggested.

  For a second Elizabeth the Beleaguered almost considered it.

  “No,” she said. “Nobody could love Cara in her present state except a mother.”

  “Or a father,” said Steve. “Marry me.”

  “And live in a war zone?” she asked. “As appealing as you are, I don’t think I could handle it.” She sipped at her wine. “I believe I’ll lock myself in the cellar with a bottle opener and a thousand pounds of Stilton and stay there until that ‘79 Chambertin matures. Cara ought to have grandchildren by then, assuming she can induce anyone to marry her.”

  He looked at her troubled face. It was no wonder that she wanted to escape the stress caused by their two obstreperous daughters. It was a natural reaction. He didn’t mind if she ran for shelter, as long as he was the shelter she took.

  “And apples,” said Elizabeth suddenly. “I
’ll have them roll several bushels of Granny Smith’s down the air lock twice a year.”

  “No crackers for the cheese?” Steve asked.

  “Maybe crackers,” she said. “And a cat for company.”

  Steve reached across the coffee table and handed her a fortune cookie. “Maybe this will give you some ideas,” he said.

  She broke it in half and silently read her fortune. Confucius say, if a man takes no thought about what is afar, he will find sorrow close at hand.

  “What’s it say?”

  She handed it over to Steve. “Think ahead, it says. Good advice, I say. Confirms my plans. I’ll take two corkscrews in case one of them breaks.”

  Steve arose to put another log on the fire. “Speaking of thinking ahead, Melody’s spending the night with Caroline,” he said. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that Cara will go home with Sara.”

  “Entirely too much. They’re coming here.”

  “What bad planning.” He poked the fire into life and came to sit down beside her.

  Elizabeth grinned. “We have enough time to accomplish quite a bit between now and then. What do you want to do? Reform the Congress? Reduce the deficit? Downsize the military? There are all kinds of problems we could solve.”

  “Why?” he asked, leaning her across his lap, so that he could look into her eyes. “Who wants to talk?”

  He teased at her lips again and she grabbed his sandy hair with both hands and pulled it firmly.

  “Did you ever take tennis lessons?” she asked.

  “What in the world has that got to do with this?”

  She tugged at his hair, and he moved his head until the tip of her nose was firmly against the tip of his.

  “Did you?” she growled.

  “Yes. You look cross-eyed.” He laid his hand flat on her stomach and rubbed gently.

  “Don’t try to distract me,” she said. “Didn’t your coach ever tell you about the importance of follow-through?”

  She moved her head just slightly; their lips met. And the follow-through, she acknowledged, was spectacular. He kissed her deeply, his tongue probing, exciting, taking her breath. She raised herself to circle his neck with her arms and pulled herself completely to him. He lifted the thick sweater to ease her shirttail out of her jeans, and his long, clever fingers tickled gently at her ribs and back before he unfastened her bra.