Hard Habit to Break

by Linda Cajio

  An evil chuckle escaping her, Liz threw back the covers and slid out of bed. She quickly padded over to her closet, opened the louvered doors, and surveyed her wardrobe with critical eyes.

  She shook her head at the black cocktail dress with the plunging neckline. Too obvious, and besides, she couldn’t wear it to the bank. The forest-green wool with the long sleeves had possibilities, but it might be too warm later in the day.

  “There has to be something,” she muttered, flipping through the hangers.

  Subtlety was what she needed. Something subtle, and yet seductive …

  “Ah-ha!”

  She pulled out a vivid pink silk blouse and held it up to the room’s growing light. Perfect! Then she picked out a mauve suit, knowing its pencil-straight skirt was cut deliberately tight across the hips.

  Hanging them over the top of the closet door, she headed for the bathroom.

  Fifty minutes later she slipped on her highest heels and straightened, glancing over to the full-length mirror to check on her results.

  “Oh, my,” she gasped in surprise.

  There was definitely a subtle allure to the way her blond hair just brushed her shoulders. By lining both her upper and lower eyelids, she had made her eyes seem larger. In contrast, her other features seemed even more delicate and fragile-looking. She’d turned up the collar of her shirt and left the first three buttons undone. The effect was sophisticated yet sexy. With no bra, the small, full slopes of her breasts were noticeable, and her nipples stood out darkly under the semi-transparent silk shirt. The skirt seemed glued to her hips and thighs.

  “Once you get to the bank, don’t take off the jacket!” she warned her reflection.

  She picked up the oversize suit jacket and left the bedroom. Her strides were shorter than usual because of the tight skirt, and her step slower because of the height of her heels. Her walk wasn’t awkward, but she prayed she wouldn’t break an ankle as she carefully made her way down the stairs.

  In the kitchen she dropped her jacket over a chair and picked up the sugar bowl. Opening the lid, she frowned at the glittering crystals that nearly reached the brim.

  “Can’t have that.”

  She walked over to the counter and dumped the sugar back into the proper canister, which was three-quarters full already. Then, taking a deep breath and clasping the empty bowl in front of her, she marched through the house and out the front door.

  Matt didn’t know it, but he was about to sweeten her morning, she thought, then grinned. He’d sweeten it in more ways than one.

  Eight

  “I’m coming!” Matt shouted as he hurried down the stairs.

  Slipping his arms into the sleeves of his blue cambric shirt, he wondered why someone always telephoned or came to the door while a person was in the bathroom. There must be something in bathroom doors that sent out a radar signal—bathroom occupied, send attack force now.

  Grinning to himself, he began to button his shirt with one hand and opened the door with the other.

  “I’ll be damned,” he breathed, his hand freezing on the top button.

  “Good morning, Matt,” Liz said.

  The words were a simple greeting, but the delivery sounded as though she were on the other side of a bed than on the other side of the threshold. Her blouse was a wisp of nothing, and the junction of her legs was outlined in a deep V by her tight skirt.

  His heart thumping erratically, he was positive he’d never seen a banker look so sexy. Liz gave new meaning to the words “rising interest.”

  “I was wondering if I could borrow some of yours,” she said.

  He dragged his eyes away from her too visible breasts.

  “What?”

  “I need a little sugar, Matt.”

  For a moment he thought she was asking for a kiss, until he finally noticed the bowl she was holding in one hand.

  “Sugar. Of course.”

  He didn’t move away from the door, his attention recaptured by her breasts. Both nipples were raised by the cool morning air. He had a strong urge to rip the blouse from her and taste the sweet flesh underneath.

  “Matt? The sugar?” she prompted him. The sugar bowl she was offering suddenly hid the splendid view he’d been admiring.

  Blinking, he realized she’d wanted only to borrow some sugar. Motioning her inside, he took the bowl from her hand. As she walked by him he found himself intently watching the provocative swing of her hips.

  “Matt?”

  “Mmmm?”

  “Shut the door.”

  Abruptly Matt came to his senses and gave a silent curse at his gawking reaction to her. He shut the front door and reluctantly raised his gaze to her face. A knowing smile played on her lips, and her eyes held a look of pure feminine triumph.

  He squinted at her in disbelief. Liz dressed like an ad for Frederick’s of Wall Street? Borrowing sugar from him? And in broad daylight?

  What the hell was going on around here?

  Feeling a hasty retreat was his wisest course of action, Matt headed for the kitchen. Once there, he dumped a scoopful of sugar into the bowl, crystals spilling down the sides and onto the blue tile counter. He didn’t bother to clean up the mess as dozens of reasons for Liz’s sudden morning visit collided in his brain. But one thought was uppermost. If she was out of sugar, then he was a Martian. Struggling for some thread of logic to explain her enticing appearance and sultry behavior, he discovered he couldn’t find one. Not one innocently logical explanation for her presence occurred to him. There wasn’t any, he concluded.

  Her abrupt change in attitude meant only one thing. Liz was up to something.

  Sugar forgotten, Matt turned around and leaned back against the counter. Crossing his arms over his chest, he stared at the octagonal wall clock, all the while wondering what the hell she could be up to. He dismissed the idea that she could be trying to provoke a sexual response from him. She already knew he was interested. In fact, he was more than interested with her dressed like that. It was a monumental effort not to carry her off to the bedroom.

  Was she teasing him after last night? She should know he wouldn’t give a damn about three big brothers, whatever their professions. Father Michael had been only a momentary shock. Was she attempting reverse psychology on him to scare him off? If so, it was causing the opposite effect.

  Rubbing a hand across his forehead, he groaned in frustration. Liz wasn’t a devious person. She had always been honest with him. Sometimes too honest, but she never played games to entice a male … at least she didn’t with him. Wearing a sheer blouse with no bra didn’t mean anything. There were a lot of women who didn’t even own a bra.

  His thoughts were interrupted when Liz entered the kitchen and walked toward him. “How do you like Hopewell so far?” she asked.

  “Fine, fine,” he replied, straightening up from the counter. He stared at her breasts, hoping she wouldn’t cross her arms over them, and at the same time praying she would.

  “Good. Very good.”

  He knew he had to have imagined the wanton purr in her voice. It wasn’t really there. She stopped close beside him and began brushing the spilled sugar together into a small pile. Although her breasts were no longer in his line of vision to torture him, her light perfume filled his nostrils, and her arm and hip brushed lightly but rhythmically against him with her movements.

  “I want to thank you for being such a gentleman last night,” she said, finally breaking the silence

  Her voice was low and breathy, and Matt tried to ignore the alluring sound of it. He gave her a sharp nod in reply.

  “I really appreciate the sugar. Small towns are so warm and friendly, aren’t they? Not like big cities.”

  “It’s why I moved here,” he answered, feeling the topic of conversation was about as unsexy as it could get. Liz certainly wasn’t. “I always wanted to live in a small town.”

  Her gray eyes were wide as she turned toward him and murmured, “I’m so glad you picked Hopewell.”
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br />   He stared at her in shock. She’s been fighting him since the first moment they’d met, and now she was acting as if she couldn’t wait to hop into bed with him. Suddenly he was furious with her for confusing the hell out of him.

  “What is wrong with you?” he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at her. “You’re dressed like a hooker and cooing like a stuffed pigeon this morning. Did you take an idiot pill or something?”

  She looked at him for a long minute, then calmly said, “I have no idea what you’re so angry about, Matt. I’m only dressed as usual for work—”

  “You have never worn that to work!”

  “Yes I have, although I haven’t worn it since you’ve moved here. It’s nice and cool—”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “And it still looks good at the end of the day, so it can double for evening wear,” she continued, ignoring his caustic comment. “I’m not ‘cooing,’ either. I’m simply being pleasant this morning. Evidently you are not pleasant in the morning—”

  “What the hell does ‘evening wear’ mean?” he asked suspiciously.

  She gave an indulgent chuckle. “I thought you used to be in the fashion business. It means I can wear it to a restaurant for dinner, or to a show.…”

  “Do you have a date?” he began, an urge to murder rising in him. “Because if you do, you can just break it—”

  “Moi? Have a date?” She picked up the sugar bowl. “Thank you for the sugar, Matt. I’ll see myself out.”

  Straightening, he grabbed her arm before she could move. “Do you have a date, Liz? Just answer me that.”

  She smiled a tiny half smile. “Only with my ‘secret admirer.’ I’ve discovered he’s a man to admire.”

  Bewildered by her answer, he let her go as she pulled away from him and strolled leisurely out of the kitchen.

  Questions slammed around in his brain as Matt watched her disappear through his dining room. Was she inviting him back for another midnight rendezvous? Was she ready to make love? Or would he get another face full of water?

  What the hell was going on around here?

  Lying on her bed, her head propped against the headboard, Liz watched the eleven o’clock news anchorwoman sign off for the evening. Over an hour ago she’d pulled the portable TV to the foot of her bed, and its phosphorescent glare was the only illumination in her darkened bedroom.

  As a commercial began, Liz straightened for a moment and rubbed at the ache that had settled in her neck. Then she tucked the long silk nightgown of midnight blue around her ankles. Even though she felt tired, she knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep. The morning events with Matt kept playing through her head.

  She lay back against the upright pillows and scowled, wondering what had possessed her to stroll over to his house and ask to “borrow” a cup of sugar. She must have been out of her mind! It certainly wasn’t difficult to understand why Matt had thought she was dressed like a hooker. The pink blouse was nearly as transparent as plastic wrap.

  A tiny grin curving her lips, she silently admitted Matt hadn’t been indifferent to her outfit. The look on his face when he’d opened his door had been priceless.

  Thank heavens, though, her not-so-secret admirer hadn’t accepted her invitation to come over this evening, she thought as her grin faded. At least one of them had some sense amid all the nonsense they’d been playing on each other lately. She only wished it had been her common sense that had surfaced just before she’d walked out of her house with that damn sugar bowl.

  She shook her head, knowing she shouldn’t be less grateful to Matt simply because she’d made a fool of herself. After all, she was a grown woman, and she shouldn’t have acted like a perverse child who immediately did something she’d been told not to.

  An odd kind of disappointment surfaced within her, and Liz grimaced as she tried to suppress it. But the disappointment grew stronger. She finally admitted that she would happily have tossed all responsibility for her actions out the window if Matt had shown up that evening. Of course, he’d seen to it that she wouldn’t have to make that choice now.

  She sighed as she watched the late night show logo stream across the small TV screen. When she saw that the movie was Captain Blood, her spirits rose. She’d always been a fan of the old movies, especially pirate movies, and especially Errol Flynn pirate movies. Although she’d seen it seven or eight times before, she decided to watch it again. She had nothing better to do, and maybe a good rousing adventure would finally make her sleepy.

  “Did I miss anything?” Matt asked, strolling into her bedroom as if it were the public library.

  At the sound of his voice Liz screamed and leaped off the bed, terror pounding through her veins. In the same second she recognized Matt, and she placed a trembling hand to her chest to calm her wildly beating heart while her breath bellowed in and out of her lungs.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded in a gasping voice as she slumped in relief.

  “I came over to watch the movie with you,” he explained, stopping at the other side of the bed. He was dressed completely in black again, as he’d been the night before.

  “Well, you scared me half to death. I didn’t even hear you in the hallway.”

  He chuckled. “I guess I should have announced myself, but I wanted to surprise your ‘secret admirer.’ ” He looked around the room. “Where is he?”

  “Wherever he is, he’s definitely not all there,” she muttered. She walked over to the closet, pulled out a blue flowered cotton robe, and shrugged into it. Quickly buttoning the robe’s front, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to watch the movie.” He held up a large brown paper bag she hadn’t noticed in her terror. “I brought popcorn and beer.”

  She couldn’t stop the sudden giggle that escaped her. Leave it to Matt to cart over refreshments while he put on a fright show for her.

  “You’ll ruin everything by being here when my ‘secret admirer’ shows up,” she pointed out.

  “That’s the general idea. Mind?” he asked, dropping the bag on top of the bed. Without waiting for her answer he sat on the edge of the mattress, yanked off his jogging shoes, then slid toward the bed’s center and crossed his legs Indian-style. “You know, Liz, you really ought to have all the locks on your doors changed. It’s too damn easy to get into your house.”

  “I never had any problems with intruders before,” she replied sourly. “Until you moved next door. I wonder why that is.”

  “You didn’t have me before to point out these little things to you.” He opened the bag, pulled out a smaller plastic one, then held it toward her. “Popcorn?”

  Her shock completely gone, she knew this was the moment to ask him to leave. She would be breaking all her own personal rules if Matt stayed in her bedroom a moment longer.

  “With butter?” she asked, curious.

  He arched his brows. “Popcorn without butter is like the Empire State Building without King Kong.”

  She felt her resistance ebb at the thought of hot buttered popcorn to go with the movie. Gingerly sitting down on the very edge of the bed, she reached inside the plastic bag and scooped up some popcorn. “Thanks.”

  Munching on the salted and buttered ambrosia, she wryly decided that Matt thrived on the outrageous. It must be contagious, because the situation couldn’t get any more bizarre than the adult pajama party she was now hosting. Unfortunately she was the only one who’d dressed properly. She swallowed heavily.

  “Like a beer?” Matt asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  She turned to look at him and found he was watching the movie intently. He was more interested in Errol Flynn’s exploits than he was in her, she told herself. Embarrassment heated her face. The tension in her body dissipated, though, with the knowledge that he wouldn’t suddenly begin to pillage and plunder her.

  “A beer would be fine,” she replied, briefly wondering at the vague regret she felt inside her. She sternly told herself she didn�
�t want to be pillaged and plundered by Matt—and immediately suppressed the voice inside her that called her a liar.

  Without taking his gaze from the screen he popped the tab on a frosted beer can and handed it to her. Scooting more fully onto the quilted spread, she carefully crossed her legs while keeping her nightgown and robe in place with her free hand. After giving him an unnoticed grin, she lifted the can to her lips and sipped the smooth, tangy beer.

  “How long have you been breaking into women’s houses to watch the late movie?” she asked, balancing the can between her crossed ankles.

  “Since I retired from modeling and moved next door. Hey! Gimme back the popcorn.”

  “In a minute,” she replied, pouring enough popcorn for six people onto her lap. She handed back the bag. “Don’t worry. I left you some.”

  “Not much,” he grumbled, shaking the bag to check its now depleted contents. Then he peered at her and asked, “How long have you been sharing popcorn and beer with men?”

  She choked on some popcorn, then sipped more beer to help clear her throat. Leaning to her right and placing the beer can on the floor this time, she turned her head and answered, “Since you retired and moved next door. Matt, why are you doing this?”

  “For the same reason you are,” he replied, his eyes turning greener as they stared into hers.

  She glanced away hastily. “My excuse is that you’re insane and I’m just humoring you until the men with the butterfly net arrive.”

  “Let’s hope they don’t come until the movie’s over. Now, be quiet! This is the best part. Flynn’s about to escape from the island prison and start swashing his buckle all over the place.”

  Bursting into laughter, Liz fell back onto the mattress. Popcorn shot into the air, showering her and Matt in a short blizzard of fluffy kernels.

  “I wish someone had told me it snows in Vermont in July,” Matt said, calmly brushing popcorn off his black shirt and jeans.

  Her laughter subsiding into giggles, Liz raised herself on her elbows. “Only in the higher elevations, like second floor bedrooms. Did I miss any buckles swashing?”