Father of Two

by Judith Arnold

  If he were a randy adolescent, he probably would have started shaking with a combination of ecstasy and panic. But he wasn’t a randy adolescent, thank God, and panic wasn’t any part of what he was feeling as he bent to take her mouth. He slid his tongue between her teeth and deep inside. She seemed to freeze in his embrace, as if startled by his invasion, and then she relaxed, her hands creeping up his arms to his shoulders, where they came to rest, tentative, trembling slightly.

  Maybe she was panicked. But she was no randy adolescent, either—and he had every intention of kissing her panic away. He would love her so magnificently she’d forget what panic was. He would make her come so many times the only tremors she’d know would be the earth moving.

  Her tongue stirred to life against his. Her fingertips brushed the sides of his neck and her body swayed toward him. No, she wasn’t panicked, not anymore. She was with him, all the way.

  He skimmed one hand up and down her back, in at the slope of her waist, out at the flare of her hip. The other hand he wove through her hair and forward until he could touch the edge of her jaw with his thumb. As if she had a spring-lock hidden there and he’d somehow released it, her mouth opened wider.

  He groaned. He felt her against him, her slender body nestling against his, her belly pressing into his belt buckle. He slid his leg between hers, wishing he’d thought to wear shorts so he could feel her, naked skin to naked skin. She moved one of her legs, rubbing her knee against his thigh, and he groaned again and scooped his hand low, around her bottom, moving her against the taut muscle of his thigh. She let out a small moan.

  She was hot. He was hotter. He nudged the skirt up with his knee, felt her heat through the denim of his jeans, and came damned close to losing it right there, on her front porch. His hands clenched; his pulse pounded inside his chest, and he realized that, somehow, with this woman, he was responding just as crazily as any randy adolescent who’d just discovered how fantastic sex could be.

  He had to bring things down a little, at least until they could get behind closed doors. Slowly, reluctantly, he loosened his hold on her and pulled back, allowing himself a lingering nibble of her lower lip before he eased his mouth from hers. She shuddered, and he closed his arms snugly around her let her rest against him.

  “Can we go inside?” he asked, his voice so husky he could barely hear himself.

  “Murphy, what are you doing to me?” Even though he had her wrapped up in a bear hug, with her face buried against his chest, he could hear her just fine.

  “I’m making love to you.”

  “No.”

  “I’m not?” He drew back, and as she shifted to peer up at him her hair brushed against his chin. He wanted her hair to shower down all over his face. He wanted her on top, with her hair tumbling into his eyes and her legs straddling his waist, and her breasts where he could see them, and touch them, and...

  “No, you’re not. This is not happening.”

  “Oh.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s not happening.”

  “No.”

  “We’re both just...hallucinating it,” he said, playing along. “We’ve slipped through a reality warp and into an alternate universe. In fact, you’re not you and I’m not me. We’re two other people—who are going to go inside and make love in this house which exists in an alternate universe.”

  She almost smiled. “No.”

  “Okay.” He took another breath and struggled to come up with an equally satisfying scenario. “You’re holding out for an expensive date. Dinner tonight at Reynaud—” he named the priciest restaurant in Arlington “—followed by dancing beneath the stars. Then I drink champagne out of your shoe, and then we screw each other silly.”

  “No.”

  “Okay.” He shaped his face into a pose of concentration. “You’re holding out for marriage.”

  “No!” She methodically extricated herself from him, removing her hands from his shoulders, taking a step back and staring in apparent amazement at her legs, which had less than a minute ago been intimately entangled with his. “I’m not holding out for marriage.”

  He still felt her warmth against his thigh, the pinch of her hands clutching his shoulders. He still tasted her on his tongue. “What?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound impatient. “You don’t want me to wine and dine you, you don’t want me to marry you... Tell me what you want me to do.”

  She made a face, then swiveled away from him and spent several seconds straightening out her clothing—not easy to do since her fingers were still trembling. “You know what I want you to do?” She gave a short laugh and turned back to him. “I want you to take a long walk off a short pier.”

  He opened his mouth and then shut it, trying to fathom the source of her sudden hostility. He knew she wasn’t crazy about him—in certain contexts. But this context was different, and she’d certainly seemed pretty crazy about him just moments ago, when they’d been kissing like fiends.

  His confusion must have been plain in his face. She sighed, squared her shoulders and aimed her sharp little chin like a weapon at his face. “I know what’s going on here, Murphy,” she explained. “You’re trying to seduce me.”

  “Okay,” he said carefully, wondering what the hell she was getting at. “I’m trying to seduce you. No argument there.”

  “I don’t want you seducing me,” she railed, clearly exasperated. “It’s a sleazy tactic, and it’s not going to work.”

  “Tactic?” He began to sense where she was heading, but he wasn’t inclined to make things easier for her by following her there, completing her thoughts for her. If she wanted to make a point, she was going to have to come right out and say it.

  She did. “You think you can seduce me and I’ll drop Leo Kopoluski’s libel suit.”

  His mouth popped open and shut again, as he groped for the words that could turn her anger around. He didn’t want to lie, but he wasn’t exactly sure of the truth, either—other than the one crystal-clear truth that he wanted to take Gail to bed and set a record for the most phenomenal sex in the history of the species. This did not seem like an outlandish goal, given the wild heat they managed to generate merely by kissing.

  Leo Kopoluski’s suit against the Gazette was a completely separate issue. It was garbage, and he’d be kidding himself if he pretended he didn’t want it to disappear. But that had nothing to do with his obsessive yearning for Gail. “You think I’d take you to bed to keep you from suing the newspaper?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “That suit has nothing to do with—”

  “You just admitted you were trying to seduce me, Murphy.”

  “Right.” Was seduction a crime? Did it so offend her delicate sensibilities? “I was trying to seduce you. At this point, I don’t think that’s a secret. I want to make love with you. And you want to make love with me.”

  “No.”

  “Admit it, Gail—you were seducing me right back.”

  “I was not! I don’t know the first thing about seduction!” Her face flushed, but not with desire. She seemed almost embarrassed.

  He couldn’t imagine why. She ought to be proud of herself, reveling in her power to reduce him to a creature of abject lust. “Of course you know about seduction,” he argued, wishing he could get a handle on what exactly was bothering her. Something was, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with seduction—or, for that matter, the damned libel suit.

  Color drained from her cheeks. “No,” she said. “I don’t know about seduction.” She spun away and reached down to pick up the plastic bag with her wet clothes in it.

  “You’re a lawyer,” he reminded her. “What do you think that means?”

  She straightened up with a jerk and gazed warily at him. “It means I defend indigent defendants against unfair charges.”

  “It means,” he argued, “that you go into court and you try to seduce the jury. Or the judge. Or the D.A. You go in and try to persuade them to see thi
ngs your way, to believe what you believe, to view the world in a manner that will bring you and your client gratification.”

  “Gratification!” She was actually pale, now, her eyes round with astonishment.

  “Of course. That’s what lawyers do. We try to make everyone fall in love with our position, and we soften them up with verbal foreplay, and then we consummate the deal and call it a win.”

  It was her turn to be rendered speechless. She pursed her lips, her eyes assessing, her brow furrowed. “You’re insane,” she finally said.

  “No, Gail. What I am is a damned good lawyer. So are you. Which makes you a seductress in my book. Which is why—” he took a step toward her, and she shrank back “—you did such a fine job of seducing me a couple of minutes ago. And now, I’d like us to negotiate the terms so we can consummate this deal.” He smiled. “I want you, Gail. And you want me.”

  “In your dreams,” she muttered, digging in the pocket of the tight-fitting skirt and pulling out a key.

  “Honey, in my dreams we’ve gone well past wanting. In my dreams, you and I are naked and sweaty, and we can’t get enough of each other. We’re—”

  “Good-bye, Murphy.” She jammed the key into the front door, jerked the knob and shouldered the door open. The screen door snapped back on its spring, and if he hadn’t leaped back it might have taken off the tip of his nose.

  “We could be good together,” he called through the screen.

  She peered out at him. “In your dreams,” she repeated. “In my nightmares. We are never going to be naked and sweaty. And as far as not getting enough of each other, well, I’ve already had way too much of you.” She slammed the inner door, leaving him to stare at the screen.

  He swore. He blasphemed. He used terms that would provoke shrieks of reproach from Erin. And his ripe, rank language hardly came close to expressing how utterly annoyed he was.

  What the hell was her problem? How could she be so warm and willing and—Christ!—so sexy one minute, and then turn it off so fast?

  He couldn’t turn it off so fast. Even though he was infuriated to the point where he wanted to kick her freaking door in, he was also still exceedingly turned on. Not just his body but his mind was wickedly aroused. He didn’t simply want physical intimacy; he wanted to know what was going on in that mystifying brain of hers, what strange psychosis made her think she didn’t know how to seduce a man. He wanted to break the psychic code of a woman who could go from rosy-cheeked to ashen in no time flat, who could run away from the most intense kiss he’d ever experienced, who could act as if all that pleasure was simply too much for her to bear.

  He was a lawyer, a professional at the art of seduction. He hadn’t gotten where he was by giving up and backing down. Following such pleasure to its ultimate destination was the only choice he could make. He and Gail were going to consummate this deal, one way or another.

  But first, he was going to have to figure out what in God’s name she was so afraid of.

  Chapter Nine

  “COME ON, EVERYONE—this is important!” Allison Winslow shouted above the din of voices that filled the kitchen. “Pay attention, or you don’t get to eat.”

  Molly had phoned Gail an hour ago and said she simply had to come to Allison and Jamie’s house for dinner, because Allison had collected a sampling of dishes from the caterer and she needed help in deciding what to serve at her wedding next month. Gail didn’t care what Allison served, and she wasn’t in the mood to audition the caterer’s offerings.

  She had no appetite. In fact, she could not imagine ever having an appetite again, let alone only one month from now, when Allison would be exchanging vows with Jamie McCoy, the writer responsible for “Guy Stuff,” a weekly humor column that ostensibly explained what made men tick.

  Gail knew what made men tick, and it was located somewhere below their waists. Just a few hours ago, Dennis Murphy had been ticking like a time bomb. It was some kind of miracle he hadn’t exploded.

  It was even more of a miracle that she’d been so close to exploding, herself.

  She hated this. Hated that he could make her feel such alarming, overwhelming yearnings. Hated that with just his devilish smile and the bewitching sparkle in his eyes, he persuade her to step into his arms and let him press his body along hers. Hated that he could wedge his knee between her legs and make her...hurt. Hurt like nothing she’d ever known before, hurt in a way that caused her to believe that he and he alone could make the hurt go away.

  She didn’t want to hurt. She didn’t want to be vulnerable to him. The last time a man had made her feel this vulnerable, he’d been wearing a uniform and carrying a gun, and the hurt he’d inflicted had left scars that even now, eleven years later, marked her soul. She had sworn then that she would never again let a man reduce her to such utter helplessness, but Murphy...

  God help her, when Murphy took her in his arms and kissed her, she wanted to be helpless. She wanted him to take over, do things to her, make that dark, compelling hurt blossom into something marvelous.

  But if she ever let him get that close to her, she’d wind up hating him even more than she already did. There was nothing marvelous in the kind of pain a man could inflict on a woman. Gail knew. She’d been there. She’d just barely survived it.

  By the time Molly telephoned and implored her to attend Allison’s wedding-dinner preview, Gail had lacked the energy to argue. Besides, she knew sitting home alone and brooding about that horrible man with his horrible children and his horrible abundance of charisma would only make her feel...well, horrible. So she’d replaced Molly’s obscenely short skirt for a pair of cotton slacks and driven over to Jamie’s house on the west side of town. Molly was there, with John and Michael. Allison’s grandmother, whom everyone called Grammy, was there. Allison, Jamie, and Jamie’s eleven-month-old daughter Samantha were there. Everyone was crowded into the spacious, brightly-lit kitchen, having a grand time trying to outshout everyone else—except for Gail, who wouldn’t have been able to find her voice if it was standing on the butcher-block counter in front of her.

  “Okay, okay—now pay attention,” Allison lectured, once she’d succeeded in getting everyone to quiet down. “Let me tell you what we’ve got here, so you’ll know what you’re tasting.” She pointed to one of the half-dozen platters arrayed across the butcher-block table. “These are little individual crab quiches,” she said.

  “Are you kidding?” Jamie protested, throwing up his hands at the sheer lunacy of such a thing. “Quiche? Guys don’t eat quiche! Tell her, John. Explain this to her.”

  Gail’s brother-in-law grinned. “Guys don’t eat quiche,” he dutifully repeated.

  Allison gave Jamie a withering look, which he missed because he had turned his back to her and buried his face in the refrigerator. Michael dropped the toy airplane he was playing with and trotted over to the table. “What is it?”

  “It’s like a little pie,” Allison told him.

  “I like pie,” he said.

  “Now there’s a real man,” she praised, scooping him into her arms and giving him a big kiss. Perching him against her hip, she pointed to the next tray. “These are shrimp puffs.”

  “Shrimp puffs!” Jamie straightened up, spun around and kicked the refrigerator door shut. His hands were filled with bottles of beer, one of which he passed to John. He set the rest on a side counter, then twisted the cap off one and took a sip. “Allison...love...I thought you told me we were going to serve red meat at this wedding. You like red meat. You’ve been known to devour an entire quarter-pound hamburger in one sitting.”

  Allison ignored him. “This is chicken in tarragon and wine sauce,” she said, pointing to another platter.

  “Wine,” Jamie muttered, somewhat appeased. “Thank God for that. What the heck is tarragon?”

  “Yi, yi, yi!” Samantha chanted, banging on the tray of her high chair with her spoon.

  Allison serenely moved on to the next platter. “Spiced rice with vegetables.”r />
  “I’ll take the wine stuff,” Jamie said.

  “We need something to serve the vegetarians at the wedding.”

  “We invited vegetarians?” Jamie exclaimed in phony shock. “Let’s tell them not to come.”

  Once again Allison ignored him. “I think this dish is going to be delicious. It’s got broccoli, cauliflower, sautéed onions and bits of tofu mixed in.”

  “Tofu?” Jamie groaned dramatically. “I’d rather elope than serve our guests tofu.”

  Allison scowled at him, but her pose of annoyance fooled no one. Even Gail, in her distracted state, couldn’t miss the love that flowed between them. No matter how raucously they teased and baited each other, the current ran strong and deep, causing the air around them to vibrate with an affection so warm it glowed.

  Turning from her, Jamie surveyed the rest of the table. “Where are the little cocktail wieners?”

  “Jamie, pay attention. We’re having a classy wedding. Remember?”

  He glanced toward Grammy, who sat regally in a chair near the window, beaming at the gathering of family and friends. “Help me out, Grammy. You like cocktail wieners, don’t you?”

  “She told me there was going to be red meat,” Grammy told him as she surveyed the selections. “I don’t see any red meat.”

  “There is going to be red meat,” Gail promised. “We’ll be serving prime rib. I didn’t think the caterer needed to prepare a sample of that. We all know what roast beef tastes like.”

  “Thank God,” Jamie said. “Prime rib. Maybe we don’t have to elope, after all.”

  “I want pie,” Michael announced, pushing away from Allison’s shoulder until she lowered him back to his feet. “Can I have pie?”