He was only dimly aware that she wasn’t struggling, wasn’t even attempting to protest. He was too lost in the taste of her, in the way her body molded itself to his, the way one foot trailed up his calf as she fitted herself more snugly against his instant arousal.
Sweet heaven, the woman was a witch. Cool and calm one minute, she drove him to a frenzy as he tried to get a reaction. The next minute she was all heat and heart-stopping temptation. How was a man supposed to cope with a woman who could change moods on a dime? A woman who could look like an angel and kiss like a sinner?
Right this second Ricky would have given everything he owned to be able to scoop her up and carry her off to his bed and take full advantage of everything she was offering. He doubted even his iron will and sense of honor could have prevented it. Only the very dim memory of his commitment to his best friend nagged at him, until he finally released Allie with a shuddering sigh of regret.
“One of these days we’re going to finish this,” he said on a ragged breath.
“Now seems like as good a time as any,” she said, her expression dazed and hopeful.
“Tom’s waiting for us.”
She stared at him blankly. “Tom? What does he have to do with this?”
“He finally managed to convince his ex-wife to go out on a date.”
“And that matters to you and me because…?”
“She’ll only go if we go.”
Allie regarded him with fascination. “Why is that?”
“She wants to meet you more than she wants to steer clear of Tom.”
“Okay, back up. They’re divorced, correct?”
Ricky nodded.
“Then why do they want to go out at all?”
“According to my mother, they’re still in love.”
“What do you think?”
“No question in my mind that he’s still in love with her. I haven’t spoken to Nikki, but my mother assures me that the feeling is mutual.”
“Then why on earth did they get a divorce in the first place?”
“Because they’re both too bullheaded to compromise. She wants him to quit his job and go to work in her father’s business. He loves what he does as much as I do. We’re both danger junkies.”
All of the color seemed to drain out of Allie’s face. She quickly turned away and started for the door, but not before he’d seen that something was terribly wrong.
“I’ll get ready,” she said, her voice a little too quiet, a little too subdued.
Ricky snagged her wrist. “Hey, what just happened?”
“Nothing,” she said stiffly.
“Allie, talk to me. One minute you were full of questions about Tom and Nikki, the next you looked as if I’d kicked the stuffing out of that favorite teddy bear of yours.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. We’d better hurry if we’re going to meet your friends.”
This time when she pulled away, Ricky let her go. But he had a feeling it would be a long time before he could shake the questions stirred by her odd behavior. He had a hunch the answers were even more important than he could imagine.
Chapter Twelve
Allie wasn’t sure why it hadn’t sunk in sooner that what had been a rare and terrifying experience for her was something that Ricky did all the time. By his own admission, he thrived on taking risks. He hadn’t built a career around saving lives because it was simply something that needed to be done or even as a way to prove to his father that he was macho as well as artistic. He did it because he loved the danger inherent in exploring collapsed buildings for survivors.
She had been caught by surprise, trapped in the rubble of her own home, alone and terrified for hours. He had considered rescuing her to be little more than a game, pitting his skill against Mother Nature’s precarious aftermath.
Of course he was a well-trained expert. Of course he understood the risks and no doubt did everything in his power to minimize them. But the bottom line was he was the kind of man who would be easily bored by anything less than the extraordinary challenge of a dangerous profession.
How could he possibly be attracted to anything less in a woman? No wonder he’d never settled down with one woman. He needed the variety to avert boredom. As for her, she must seem incredibly dull, just an ordinary teacher, who couldn’t even share in some of the activities most people took for granted, like music and dancing.
She realized glumly that these were definitely issues she was going to have to wrestle with, preferably sooner rather than later, and preferably without Ricky nagging at her for answers. She had hoped to get out of the kitchen without revealing her dismay, but obviously he’d noticed her reaction, even if he hadn’t understood the reason for it. He wouldn’t be satisfied with her evasion for long.
Thankful that they wouldn’t be spending the evening alone, she rushed to get ready. She even managed to forget her own dilemma when they joined Tom and his ex-wife.
Allie liked Nikki at once. She had a warm smile and an exuberant personality. From the minute Allie walked through Nikki’s front door, the other woman treated her as if they were old friends with a million things to catch up on.
“We have to talk,” she told Allie, drawing her into the comfortably furnished living room of a Spanish-style home on a narrow waterway in Coral Gables. She gestured dismissively toward the men. “Let them fend for themselves. Tom knows his way around.”
Tom looked disappointed, but he dutifully led Ricky off toward another part of the house.
Amused, Allie watched them leave. “I don’t think this is what Tom had in mind,” she suggested innocently.
“I’m sure it’s not,” Nikki agreed cheerfully. “I stopped doing what Tom expected on the day I divorced him. Actually before that. He didn’t think I’d file to end the marriage in the first place. The man has a monumental ego. It serves him well in his work, but in his personal life…” She shrugged. “He needs to get over it.”
It was an amazing display of bravado, but Allie didn’t buy it. “You didn’t think Tom would let you go through with the divorce, did you?”
Nikki stared at her in surprise. “How did you figure that out? No one else did. Well, except for Ricky’s mother. She saw straight through me.”
“And once you’d started the whole divorce thing, you didn’t know how to stop it?”
The other woman sighed. “Pretty stupid, huh?”
“Not stupid. It was a drastic measure and it didn’t work. I imagine you had your reasons for trying it.”
“Oh, yes,” Nikki said fervently. “That job of his scares me to death.”
The response hit a little too close to what Allie had been thinking earlier. “But you knew what he did when you met, correct?”
“I thought he would be ready to stop once we started talking about having a family. I offered him an alternative, working for my father. I didn’t care whether he did that or something else. I just wanted him to be safe. Instead of even trying to see my point, he accused me of trying to change him. He told me he wasn’t cut out for a desk job and he never would be.”
“And you couldn’t live with that,” Allie surmised.
Nikki shrugged. “I didn’t think I could, but now that I’ve been through the alternative—living without him—I know it’s worse. I still worry myself sick every single time he’s raced off to some disaster. I still sit by the phone, then panic when it rings. Thankfully, so far it’s been Tom checking in to let me know he’s okay.”
“He calls even though you’re divorced?”
“Every night he’s gone,” she said.
“Have you told him what you’ve figured out? That the divorce didn’t give you the peace of mind you’d expected it to?”
Nikki sighed. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Too much pride, I suppose. I keep hoping that being without me will be just as hard on him. I’m pretty sure it is, too, but I haven’t seen any evidence that he’s willing to consider a compromise.”
“And do what instead?” What would be the compromise between a desk job and slip-sliding into a mountain of debris that could kill a man with one false step?
“I wish I knew.” She gave Allie a penetrating look. “What about you? Are you okay with what Ricky does?”
“To be honest, I don’t think it sank in until tonight what he does. He said something that caught me off guard. It shouldn’t have, but it did.”
Nikki looked surprised by the response. “How can that be? You met when he rescued you.”
“I know. I guess I was so wrapped up in the relief of being saved that I forgot all about the risks he took to get me out of there. And somehow I completely missed the fact that he does that kind of thing all the time, that it wasn’t some sort of heroic fluke.”
“Now that you’ve realized it, are you going to stick it out or bail?”
Allie’s gaze strayed toward the direction in which the men had gone. “I wish I knew,” she admitted candidly, then shrugged. “Of course, it’s not exactly an issue. Ricky and I are just friends.”
Nikki stared at her, then burst out laughing. “Oh, my,” she said eventually. “Listen to the two of us. We’re both delusional. I think my ex-husband is going to suddenly convert to some nine-to-five life and you think there’s nothing going on between you and Ricky.”
“There isn’t,” Allie insisted.
Nikki patted her hand. “Tell yourself that all you want. I saw the way he looked at you.”
“How?”
A grin spread across Nikki’s face. “The same way you looked at him, like a lovesick teenager.”
Well, hell.
The evening wasn’t going at all the way Ricky had anticipated. Even after they reached the club where they’d gone for drinks after dinner, Allie and Nikki had had their heads together every second, giggling like a couple of schoolgirls over jokes they apparently saw no need to share. Tom didn’t seem to mind, but it was driving Ricky crazy. What the heck did they have to talk about? They’d just met.
He finally decided enough was enough. He stood up and put his hand under Allie’s elbow. When she turned a startled look in his direction, he said, “Dance?”
“But I don’t—”
“You can,” he retorted, exerting a little pressure to encourage her to get to her feet. He glanced pointedly toward Tom and then Nikki. “I’m sure they’d like to dance, too.”
Allie nodded at once. “Of course.” She beamed at Nikki, who was regarding her ex-husband warily.
Before Allie could comment, Ricky urged her toward the dance floor. The music was slow, which was why he’d chosen that moment to insist on the dance. He could pull Allie close and demonstrate the rhythm of the song with the movements of his body.
For an instant she tensed against him, but then he felt her slowly relax.
“What’s the song?” she asked, her gaze on his.
He told her the title of the old love song, and her expression brightened. He could hear her starting to hum the melody from memory. She found the rhythm on her own, without his guidance, then returned his gaze, her expression pleased.
“Told you so,” he said.
“Told me what?”
“That you could dance.”
“Because I remember the song,” she said, then added wistfully, “I used to be able to play it on the violin.”
“Have you played at all since you lost your hearing?”
She looked shocked by the question. “Of course not.”
“Why not? You can still read music, can’t you?”
“Yes, but—” Her expression faltered. Tears welled up. “I just can’t. It would be too frustrating not to be able to hear it, not to know if I made a mistake.”
He saw how much the loss of playing hurt her. “Some people would consider that an advantage,” he said. “You could play in blissful ignorance. I’m sure Pedro would be happy to loan you his violin, and Maria would consider it a blessing if you’d keep it.”
“No,” she said fiercely. “Never.”
He touched her cheek, tried to smooth away the lines of tension that had formed around her mouth. “I’m sorry. I was just hoping it might give you back something you’d lost.”
“No. It would just make it a thousand times worse.” She buried her face against his shoulder.
He wasn’t quite ready to let the idea rest. He held her away from him and looked into her eyes. “Until tonight, you thought you’d never be able to dance again, but look at you now. It’s something to think about.”
To emphasize the point, he gathered her close and spun her around the dance floor in a series of intricate steps that she followed without a single stumble. The color rose in her cheeks and the sparks returned to her eyes. By the time the music stopped, she was laughing.
“Okay, okay, I can dance, but only if I hang on to you for dear life.”
“And the problem with that is?” he asked, his gaze locked with hers.
Her bright-eyed expression faltered. “You won’t always be here,” she whispered so low that he could barely hear her over the music.
Ricky wanted to deny it, wanted to tell her that she would always be able to turn to him, but the commitment terrified him. The only thing that terrified him more was the prospect of losing her.
Yet over the next few days that was exactly what he sensed was happening. Allie was still sharing the house, but there was a growing distance between them, a distance he didn’t understand and couldn’t seem to bridge.
Her strength was back and she seemed to be settling into a comfortable routine that didn’t include him. She spent her days at work and her evenings with friends or locked up in her room doing paperwork for the clinic. He’d spotted her studying the classified ads for apartments on more than one occasion—though, thankfully, the rental market was tighter than ever because of the number of families displaced by the hurricane.
He was pretty sure he’d go nuts if he couldn’t think of some way to shake that scary composure, that carefully polite facade that greeted him over the breakfast table.
He debated confronting her, asking why she’d suddenly withdrawn. He’d traced it back to the evening they’d spent with Nikki and Tom, but Tom was absolutely no help when Ricky questioned him about whether he’d noticed any reason why Allie might be ticked off.
“She seemed okay to me,” Tom told him.
“And Nikki hasn’t said anything?”
“Believe it or not, on those rare occasions when I actually spend time with my ex-wife, you are not the topic of conversation,” Tom said.
Ricky heard the edginess in his friend’s voice. “How is that going, by the way? Are you making any progress?”
“It depends on what you call progress,” Tom said. “Her string of admirers seems to be dwindling, but she still gets all huffy when I suggest we go out. I’m running out of ideas and patience.”
“Tell me about it,” Ricky said grimly. He made up his mind that he had to do something to break this unspoken standoff between him and Allie.
He had a hunch based on past experience that a kiss would do it. He just had to find the excuse—or the right occasion—for stealing one.
Although his schedule at work could be unpredictable, it appeared he had the weekend off. He concluded that Saturday would be the perfect opportunity for the two of them to spend some quality time together. He broached the subject over breakfast on Friday.
Reaching across the table, he tapped Allie’s hand to distract her from the morning paper. “Do you have plans for tomorrow?” he asked when her startled gaze met his.
For an instant he actually thought he saw panic flare in her eyes, but she finally shook her head. “No. Why?”
“I thought we might spend the day together.”
“You don’t have to do that. I’m fine on my own now. I’m sure there are plenty of things you’d rather be doing than baby-sitting a houseguest who’s probably overstayed her welcome.”
The last part of her res
ponse snagged his attention. “You have not overstayed your welcome. Have I said anything at all to make you think that? If I have, I’m sorry. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want to. In fact, I insist on it.”
She avoided his gaze. “You don’t have to be polite. I know this was supposed to be temporary. In fact, I was thinking of spending Saturday looking at a couple of apartments.”
Ricky felt his gut clench at the confirmation that she was itching to move out. The very thought of it made him crazy. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped. “Why should you spend money on an apartment when I have room here?”
“I must be cramping your style.”
“Allie, where is this coming from?” he asked, barely curbing his impatience. “I thought we were doing okay here.”
She regarded him guiltily. “I’m sorry. You’ve been wonderful. I just feel as if I’m imposing on you. I need to get back on my own.”
“On your own? Or away from me? Why?”
She stood up, her movements hurried. “I have to get to work. Can we talk about this another time?”
She rushed out of the room, not waiting for a response. Rick stared after her.
“Well, what the hell was that all about?” he murmured when she’d gone.
He grabbed the phone and punched out Nikki’s number. “I need to talk to you,” he said when she answered.
“Okay, talk, but if this is about Tom you’re wasting your breath.”
“It’s not about Tom, though I could give you an earful on the subject. Another time, though. Do you have any idea what’s up with Allie?”
“Allie? Is she okay?” she asked at once, sounding genuinely concerned.
“That’s what I’m asking you. Ever since that night the four of us went out, she’s been acting all weird. Do you know what that’s about?”
“I might,” Nikki responded thoughtfully. “But first let me ask you something. Are you in love with her?”
“I care about her,” he said.
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