Her Man Upstairs

by Dixie Browning

  “Hey, I hardly spoke three words to the woman,” Cole protested. “By now she’s probably already forgotten my name.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” Marty said dryly.

  What the devil was she so steamed about? If she already had an accountant, all she had to do was say so. If anyone had a reason to be steamed, it was he. For a few minutes there he’d felt like he had a target painted on his chest.

  “Let’s get to work, all right? We’ve wasted enough time.”

  Nine

  In a cheerfully cluttered room a few hours later, Sasha eased off her five-inch heels and massaged her size-five feet. “Now I know how a ballerina must feel. Oh, quit fussing around! Sit down and talk to me,” she exclaimed. “No point in washing the inside when the outside’s spattered with winter grunge.”

  Dutifully, Faylene set aside her spray bottle of window cleaner and the wad of crumpled newspapers. “Next warm spell we have I’ll get ’em all done, inside and out. I got me one of them things you screw on to a hose. You ready for iced tea?”

  “In the fridge. Pour us both a glass, will you?” Sasha eased her feet up onto the sofa. For the few minutes the housekeeper was out of the room, she let herself sag against the cushions. “Bring those macaroons, too,” she called. Faylene had stopped by the bakery on her way to work. She was a whiz at cleaning, but her culinary skills were notorious, as everyone who’d ever employed her quickly discovered.

  With refreshments on hand, the two women got down to brass tacks. Faylene touched her Dolly Parton do to make sure the lacquered surface was still intact. “What’d she think?”

  “Lily? Who knows? Maybe you can find out, I couldn’t get a thing out of her.”

  “Comes from filling out all them gov’ment forms all day long. She don’t talk to me, neither, and I been cleanin’ for her goin’ on a year now.”

  “So far all I’ve been able to find out is that she graduated from Wharton, her father’s in the military—probably pretty high rank, although I’m just guessing about that. Oh, and she hates country music.”

  “Bob Ed says Mr. Stevens’s got a guitar on board that boat o’ his.” She pronounced it git-tawr.

  “So we’ll broaden her education.” Sasha sipped her syrupy tea. “Today’s country music was yesterday’s folk music. If we tell her something like that, she might be more inclined to expand her horizons. But first he needs some incentive to hang around. That’s where we come in.”

  “It still don’t sound much like a match to me, her being college educated and all. Maybe we ought to look around some more. How ’bout one o’ them highfalutin business men you work for.”

  “Married, gay or dull as mud. Don’t underestimate our studly carpenter. A friend of mine knows the decorator who did his house, and she says—”

  “What house? If he’s got a house, why’s he sleepin’ aboard that old boat? It’s not like it was a yacht or anything.”

  “According to my source, he used to be pretty high up the ladder with this big development firm up in Virginia. In fact, he was married to his boss’s daughter, but then there was some kind of scandal—business, not personal. Anyway, by the time the dust settled, he was out of a job, the company was down the drain and his wife and her lawyers cleaned him out. That’s why he’s living on board his boat and taking small jobs to make ends meet.”

  “I don’t know ’bout meetin’ no ends, but he didn’t charge Bob Ed nothin’ to fix his windows. Shelled out two weeks in advance for the wet slip, too.”

  “Even better. I doubt if Mar—that is, if Lily would be interested if he were truly down on his luck.”

  The light dawned. “Law heppus, it’s Marty you’re fixin’ to match him up with, not Miss Lily.” Faylene smirked, rearranging a face that had more wrinkles than a box of prunes.

  “Well, what do you think? She hasn’t had a man in years, not even a loaner.”

  “She’s sure been awful crotchety lately.”

  “Mmm-hmm. And Lord knows, he’s temptation on the hoof. By the way, are y’all planning your usual birthday bash this year?”

  “Stewed goose with rutabagas, collards, barbecue and all the rest, same as always.”

  “All the rest meaning a supply of aged-in-the-jar moonshine,” Sasha teased. It was the hunting guide’s standard birthday bash, a tradition in an area where entertainment was usually of the homemade variety. It was also a golden opportunity for matchmaking. Sasha wouldn’t miss it for anything. Last year’s guest list had included a bank president, the chief of surgery at Chesapeake General and three Tides players who were slated for big things in the majors, all clients of Bob Ed’s—plus Faylene’s special friends.

  “Just don’t wear them spike-heel shoes this time,” the bouffant blonde warned. “You get one o’ them things caught ’tween the planks on the dock and sic a lawyer on ’im, and Bob Ed’s not gonna invite you to no more parties.”

  “I’ll be sure to dress suitably for the occasion. Maybe I’ll borrow a pair of your sneakers. But back to Cole Stevens—my source in Virginia said the wife was a real witch, so our hunky carpenter might be just a tad gun-shy.”

  “Name me a man that’s not, ’specially if they think they’re being herded into a corral.”

  “What about you and Bob Ed?”

  “You don’t see us rushin’ to tie any knots, do you? And what about you? You had four husbands and not a one of ’em stuck around no longer’n it took for the ink to dry on the papers.” The two women knew each other well enough to get down and dirty without giving or taking offense.

  “How do you think I got to be such an expert? And anyway, we’re hardly herding them to the altar—all we’re doing is encouraging two nice people to take a second look at each other by putting them together in a different context,” Sasha reasoned.

  Faylene pursed her lips. Actually, they were more or less permanently pursed, as she drew the line at Botox injections. “There’s some other fellers invited to the party. Maybe I’ll invite Miss Lily and we can see what happens.”

  “Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

  “Kill more’n that, if we get lucky. Bob Ed’s invited them fellers from that fifty-five footer that tied up the other day.” A born-and-bred local, Faylene referred to anything larger than a commercial fishing boat by its length rather than its name. “‘You make sure Miss Lily comes, and I’ll take care o’ Marty.”

  “It’s a deal,” Sasha agreed, her expression that of a cream-fed Persian cat.

  Marty considered asking Cole for help, but then she heard the whine of the power saw, reminding her that she needed him upstairs more than she did downstairs. She’d moved the damn things into the garage using only her back, her brain and a two-wheel hand truck. If she could just get this one past the single step and into the kitchen, the rest of the way would be easy.

  After spending the winter outside, her poor minivan was going to appreciate having the garage to itself again, she thought as she levered the cut-down section of bookshelf onto the cart, balanced it and cautiously began moving backward toward the single step.

  Ver-r-ry carefully, she backed up the step and tried to pull the cart up with her. When the damn thing started sliding, she let out a yelp.

  Sudden silence from upstairs as the power saw cut off. Marty yelled again. Bracing her back on the door frame, she jammed one knee against the side of the shelf, hoping to keep it from toppling onto the cement garage floor. “Cole! Help me!”

  “What in God’s name—?” Like a genie out of a bottle, he appeared behind her. “Hang on, I’m coming!”

  “You can’t get past,” she wailed, struggling in the doorway between kitchen and garage to steady the teetering bookcase.

  He disappeared briefly. A few seconds later he reappeared in the garage, where he braced the leaning bookshelf with both hands. “What the devil were you trying to do? No, don’t say anything. Steady now, I’ve got the shelf. When I tip it back, pull the cart up onto the kitchen floor, then wait until
I come back around to take control.”

  The look she gave him was the rough equivalent of Over my dead body.

  The cart was capable of moving a refrigerator as long as it was balanced. But a six-by-six-foot by eighteen-inch bookshelf was, by its very nature, unbalanced.

  “Where the hell are you going with it, anyway?”

  “Living room.”

  “Now? Why?”

  She just shook her head. If she couldn’t explain it to herself, she knew better than to try explaining it to anyone else. “Through here. Hold it while I take up the rug.”

  A few minutes later the first of the bookshelves was sharing space in the living room with a sofa, three chairs and two tables. It was monstrous.

  It’s a first step, she told herself. Every journey begins with a single step—she’d read that somewhere.

  The trouble was, she’d read everything somewhere, at one time or another. Including Othello. One look at Cole, standing in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, brought to mind another quotation. “Yon Cassio has a hungry look. Such men are dangerous.”

  And don’t you forget it, she warned herself.

  Struggling between discouragement and elation, she stared at the elephant in the drawing room. The rest of the herd was still in the garage. “I forgot how big it was,” she whispered. “What am I going to do with all the others?”

  “You’re actually asking for suggestions? Wait until I have time to cut them down, and we’ll make room in here.”

  Cole moved in behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. His thumb began smoothing away the tension that always seemed to gather at the back of her neck.

  “Only trouble here is, you got the cart before the horse. Next time, ask for help.”

  “What I’ve got is a twenty-mule team before a buckboard. What you’ve got is work to do upstairs. I can manage down here.”

  She could manage a whole lot better if she weren’t melting under his magic fingers. A puffy little sigh escaped her as he found the magic spot and began to work on it. Pain…but a good kind of pain…

  “Don’t be so damn stubborn,” he chided.

  “I’m not stubborn, but I know what has to be done and I don’t see any reason to wait till the last minute to do it.”

  His hands left her shoulder and his arms slipped around her from behind.

  “You’re not stubborn. Rain’s not wet. The temperature outside’s not hovering around the freezing mark, either. Hey, it’s almost spring out there, right? Flowers bursting out all over the place.”

  “All right, so I made a mistake. I should have moved all this stuff upstairs first, but I just wanted to get an idea of how it was going to look.”

  When he started to chuckle, she stiffened. “Don’t say it. So now I’ve got a huge mess. I’ve probably made the biggest mistake of my life. Well, maybe the second biggest mistake.”

  His fingers were moving up the back of her neck to her hair, stroking, massaging, sapping the strength from her aching bones.

  He said, “What was the biggest? Just curious—you don’t have to answer that.”

  “I don’t intend to.” He didn’t need to know that she’d been on a romance-reading binge about the time she’d met Beau Owens. She’d mistaken suave manners, tailor-made suits and a Hollywood-handsome face for the real thing.

  The only thing real about Beau had been his total lack of integrity. Wasn’t there another quotation about a lesson too late for the learning?

  Or no—that was a song, wasn’t it?

  She sniffed, wishing she had a tissue. Things were piling up too fast, flattening her hopes like a wet tortilla. Just yesterday she’d been happily working on floor plans. Sales counter here by the front window; old romances, billed as classics, in the dining room; new titles, once she could afford to stock them again, facing the entrance. A few posters, her autographed author pictures and maybe even those three-shades-of-red walls Sasha insisted would send customers into a buying frenzy.

  Frenzy, my foot, she thought. So far all she’d accomplished was to destroy her single asset—her house. Her eyes blurred and then began to sting.

  Without saying a word, Cole turned her so that she was leaning against him, damp-eyed and discouraged. And that was another thing—her emotions were all over the place. Either she wasn’t eating right or sleeping enough, or she was sliding into early menopause. Now there was a cheerful thought!

  “Hey,” he murmured, his warm breath stirring her hair, “we got it this far, didn’t we? What if I help you move your furniture upstairs right now? We’ll leave your rocking chair here so you can sit and plan how you’re going to use your space.”

  “We can’t move upstairs yet—you’re not finished up there.” She almost wished he would quit being so helpful—so understanding. She was falling into the habit of depending on him, and that, she knew from experience, was a fatal mistake.

  “We can throw sheets over the stuff to keep the dust off while I’m working. Until I finish your new kitchen you can still use the one down here, right?”

  His tone was sympathetic, and unfortunately, sympathy had always been her undoing. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been undone, because her friends knew better than to push any of her emotional buttons. Once she started crying, which she absolutely refused to do, it was “man the lifeboats!”

  He let her bawl her eyes out for several minutes, not even attempting to talk her out of it. Not once did he try to reason with her—not that it would have done a speck of good. His hands moved slowly over her back from shoulders to waist—no higher, no lower.

  She sniffed. Why on earth am I crying? I never cry!

  Her fingers crept across his chest, feeling to see if he had a tissue in his shirt pocket. He stiffened, and she suddenly became aware of the heat engendered by two warm bodies in close proximity. Of masculine hardness pressing against feminine softness. The scent of his skin only made matters worse. Instinctively, she moved against the hard ridge. Pelvis to pelvis. The hard ridge moved.

  Omigracious!

  She wasn’t responsible for that! Couldn’t be. She had it on the best of authority that she wasn’t the type to turn men on. It was probably just a standard male reaction to the circumstances. Like—like—drinking beer and belching.

  “There’s a handkerchief in my hip pocket,” he said, his voice sounding strained.

  He was probably embarrassed and didn’t know how to let go without hurting her feelings. So she did it for him. Stepped back and accepted the handkerchief he handed her.

  And immediately missed his warmth, his strength, and everything else she’d been starved for, but hadn’t realized it. She wiped, blotted and blew.

  “I’ll wash it,” she said stiffly, avoiding his gaze.

  He didn’t say a word, just continued to look at her.

  This is a dead-end road, woman. Stop right where you are.

  And then he did just what she wanted most and needed least. He reached out and pulled her against him and…kissed her again.

  This time there was no mistaking the nature of the kiss. It was carnal from the start. Without lifting his mouth from hers, he eased her past the bookshelf, backed her toward the sofa and lowered her onto the cushions.

  It was hard and narrow with scarcely enough room for two to lie down unless they were plastered together. At first neither of them moved. The sensation that swept through her was one she hadn’t felt in years. The mindless kind of hunger that demands immediate satisfaction.

  Why couldn’t she have bought a damn futon instead of a three-cushion couch? His backside had to be hanging off the edge. To keep him from landing on the floor, she anchored him by hooking a leg over his hip.

  Smart move, Marty. Real subtle.

  His hand grazed her breast as he eased the neck of her pullover away to nuzzle her collarbone. A rash of goose bumps broke out along her sides. How could he have known about that tiny hollow at the base of her throat? All he had to do was breathe on it and she fell
apart.

  His hands slipped under her sweater, under her bra. When his fingertips raked over her nipples, she whimpered, “We need to—to talk.”

  Will the last gray cell to leave the brain please turn out the lights?

  Cole’s hands went still. Talk? Was she crazy? More to the point, was he? If he was smart he’d get the hell out of here, contract or no contract, while he was still more or less in his right mind. He might drop anchor down around Southport, or maybe Charleston. Or maybe he’d just keep on the move until he couldn’t remember her name or what she looked like, much less the way she smelled…or tasted.

  He hadn’t even begun to suspect how dangerous she was until the second day. Couldn’t even remember what tipped him off. It wasn’t as if she made any effort to attract him. No makeup, no heavy perfumes, just that flowery smelling soap and lotion.

  “Marty,” he said through clenched jaws, “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

  The hell he didn’t! Crammed together on the hard-as-rocks cushions, with one thigh over his hips and her sweet little mound rubbing against his erection, he was about to explode.

  What with work, worry, plus a hard narrow bunk in a cold cabin that smelled of mildew, Cole couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in this condition. His libido had taken a sabbatical about the time he’d realized that Paula was cheating on him. Since then he’d been too busy to worry about getting laid.

  The trouble was, this wasn’t just a matter of getting laid. This was Marty.

  So? She was a woman, wasn’t she?

  Unless he’d mistaken the signs, she was as eager as he was. And he just happened to have a condom in his wallet.

  Right. One that had been there since around the time of his divorce, when he’d had some crazy notion of going out and snagging himself some revenge sex. The use-by date had probably long since expired.

  She shifted and somehow managed to bring them into even closer contact where it counted. The crazy thing was that it counted everywhere. If he’d needed a reminder of just why sex with Marty Owens wasn’t going to work, that was it. Not only because he worked for her, but because he liked her too much. Respected her. Hell, he even admired her. She was a little too independent for her own good, but then, there was probably a reason behind it.