At first Bree thought he’d read her mind. Again. Then she realized she was holding the silk boxers in a way that indicated she wasn’t planning to let go of them anytime soon.
“Oh,” she said quietly as Rufus plucked them from her hand.
“Camille’s always trying to fix me up,” he said. “She thought racy underwear would help nudge me in that direction.”
“And did it?”
He didn’t look at her as he began to fold them. “You know me, Bree. I’m saving myself for Ms. Right. My underwear hasn’t seen a lot of action for the last two years.”
She started to make some flip comment about how you could lose things if you didn’t use them, then the gist of what he’d said hit her. Like blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Was he saying he was saving himself for her? That he hadn’t had sex with anyone since meeting her? Oh, surely not.
“I’m sorry?” she said, certain she must have misunderstood.
Instead of replying, he only finished folding the boxers and carefully set them atop the rest of the laundry.
Bree, however, wasn’t willing to let it go that easily. “You’re not serious,” she said. “About the two years, I mean. That was just a joke, right?”
Rufus remained silent.
Unsure why she wanted to belabor the subject, she insisted, “You’re not telling me you haven’t had sex with anyone since you met me.” When he still said nothing, she added, halfheartedly, “Are you?”
He did finally look at her after that, but only for a second. Then he bent and picked up the laundry basket and started carrying it toward the stairs on the side of the living room that had been blocked from her view before. Bree followed him as far as the bottom step, then halted. Rufus continued blithely up to the top, but still didn’t say a word.
Two thoughts occurred to her at once, and she didn’t know which was more troubling. First, that by not answering in the negative, he’d pretty much indicated he was saying yes, he hadn’t had sex with anyone since meeting her. And second, he was going to be putting on a shirt.
Damn. And double damn.
Unable to help herself, Bree started up the stairs, too, pulling herself along the handrail until she hit the top, because her legs, for some weird reason, suddenly felt like Jell-O.
“Two years?” she called incredulously when she reached the top, uncertain which room he’d disappeared into. “You’ve gone two years without…you know?”
There was no answer from any of the three bedrooms off the hallway before her. Or from what looked like a bathroom, either.
“Rufus?” she called out.
“What?” his voice came from the farthest room.
“Can I come back there?”
“Sure.”
She started walking slowly down the hall, then hesitated again. “I mean, you’re decent, right?”
“Of course I’m decent,” he called back.
She took a few more slow steps, then halted at his bedroom door. He was standing with his back to her looking at two shirts lying flat on the bed, as if he were trying to decide which one to put on. Evidently he hadn’t decided on pants yet, either, because he was standing there in the lipstick-kissed silk boxer shorts and nothing else.
“You said you were decent,” she said lamely to his back.
“I am decent,” he told her without turning around. “I’m also in my underwear.”
She gripped the doorjamb and bit her lower lip hard, mostly to prevent herself from crossing the room, because what Bree wanted most in that moment was to stand behind Rufus and…lick him. “Next time,” she said shallowly, “I’ll try to be more specific with my questions.”
“You do that.”
He finally made a decision and scooped up a well-worn polo the color of a pine forest after a hard rain. Then he dragged on a less disreputable-looking pair of blue jeans than the ones he’d had on, stuck his bare feet into a pair of extremely well-worn Top-Siders, and turned to face her.
She remembered then that there was one question she had been specific about that he hadn’t answered. So she asked it again. “Have you really not had sex with anyone since you met me?”
He dropped one hand to his hip and, with the other, reached back to rub his neck in that way men do when they know they have to say something they really don’t want to say. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I really haven’t had sex with anyone since I met you.”
“Why not?”
He dropped both hands to his sides, expelled a restless sound, and looked at her as if she should know the answer to that better than he did. “Because I haven’t wanted to have sex with anyone since I met you, Bree. No one except you.”
She thought about all the times she’d worked with him when she’d been going out with other guys. All the times she’d talked to one of the other female bartenders—while Rufus was within earshot—about a date she’d had the night before with some wealthy guy she’d managed to snag. She thought of the times she’d come into the bar with a date when he was working. And she thought about how he must have felt on those occasions. She’d always known Rufus had a thing for her. But she’d never realized it went as far as this.
She told herself she should apologize. But that might just sound patronizing. So all she said was, “I didn’t know it was like that.”
He shrugged. “Now you do.”
Something about the way he said that made it seem like he was tacking on an unvoiced, So what are you going to do about it? But really, what he was probably thinking was, So what am I going to do about it?
They stood there in silence for a moment, each clearly having no idea what to say. There was something heavy and uncomfortable hanging between them that was thick enough to hack with a meat cleaver, but damned if Bree could identify exactly what it was. Tension, maybe. Embarrassment. Confusion. All of the above.
“Maybe I should go,” she finally said. She even went so far as to take a small step backward, into the hall.
“No,” Rufus said quickly, completing three giant steps to catch up to her. “No, you shouldn’t. I promised you dinner. And I always deliver.”
She took another step backward into the hallway, a larger one than was probably necessary to let him pass. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. And if he seemed to take a larger step than necessary to get around her, well…Bree pretended not to see it.
She followed him to the kitchen, which, like the rest of the house, was cozy and well appointed with everything anyone could need to feel comfortable. The furniture here was older and well used, too, but sturdy and nice. He had all the essential appliances like a coffeemaker, toaster oven, and microwave, and a few that surprised her—espresso maker, bread machine, food processor.
“I didn’t know you liked to cook,” she said, remarking on those last two.
He shrugged. “It’s not a passion,” he said. “I just like to be self-sufficient.”
“Next you’ll be telling me you grow your own food in the backyard.”
He colored a little at that.
She laughed. “No way.”
“Just tomatoes and peppers. Those are passions. And maybe a few herbs, too.”
“Do you have a microbrewery in the basement?”
Now he laughed, too. “No. But there’s some Red Stripe in the fridge.”
Her favorite brand. What a shocker.
He went to the fridge and pulled out two of those, along with a ceramic bowl in which, she discovered, he was marinating a couple of steaks. After opening the beers, he pushed a button on the portable CD player on the counter, and the room was filled with mellow guitar.
He tilted his head toward the back door. “Keep me company while I light the grill. It’s such a nice evening, I thought we could eat out. Literally.”
The hours that followed were some of the most pleasant Bree had spent in a long time. She didn’t do enough of this, she thought as Rufus brought a couple of after-dinner coffees out to the deck for them to enjoy. By now, the sun had dipped behind the trees
, and the sky was stained with the last orange and gold remnants of daylight. The mellow guitar music had segued to sexy saxophone, and when she sipped her coffee, she realized Rufus had laced it with Frangelico—another favorite. As she leaned against the deck railing beside him, she could feel what little tension was left in her body gradually easing away. Even more important, the anxiety that normally gnawed at her brain began to evaporate, too.
“You have a really nice place here, Rufus,” she said softly as she watched a rabbit in the far corner of the yard nibble at a patch of clover.
“You sound surprised,” he replied just as softly.
She set her coffee mug on the deck railing and turned to face him. “I guess I kind of am.”
He turned to face her, too, but still cupped both hands around his own mug. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess you just never struck me as the home and hearth type.”
He hesitated only a moment before saying, “Maybe that’s because you never tried to find out what type I am.”
“True enough,” she admitted.
He dropped his gaze down to his mug. “And now that you know what type I am?” he asked.
Oh, that was a question Bree really couldn’t let herself answer. So she lifted her mug again, drank deeply of the rich brew, and said, “How do you manage it? Owning a home like this doing the kind of work you do? I barely manage to make ends meet by month’s end. But you have this great place, and all these creature comforts, even though you always seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t need much to be happy.”
As she spoke, he continued to study his coffee, never once looking up at her. When he finally did lift his gaze to hers again, he seemed more tired than he had before. He seemed distant. He seemed disappointed. Nevertheless, he played along.
“I am a guy who doesn’t need a lot to be happy,” he told her. “A roof over my head that doesn’t leak, a steady income that allows me to live above the poverty level, the love of a special woman I know will be by my side forever. That would do it for me.” He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Two out of three ain’t bad, I guess. Unfortunately, it’s that third one I don’t have that I consider most important.”
“Rufus…”
“Look, Bree, I’m not trying to put you on the spot. But the same way you’ve always been honest with me about what you want, I want to be honest with you about what I want. It’s only fair.”
To both of them, she supposed. It couldn’t have been easy for Rufus the last two years, caring for her the way he did and she not reciprocating. Why should he make it easy on her? Especially since, thanks to that little interlude in her kitchen last week, she’d given him some small hope that she returned his feelings. Of course, she did return his feelings. That was the problem. She just couldn’t afford to, that was all.
Instead of pressing the subject, which a lesser man might do, Rufus went back to the original topic. “I’ve worked at one job or another since I was thirteen,” he told her. “First cutting people’s lawns and washing their cars and babysitting. Then, when I turned sixteen, I started working real jobs. Sometimes two if I could swing it. Where my friends in high school graduated and went to college, I went to work.”
“Why didn’t you go to college?” she asked.
“Didn’t want to,” he said matter-of-factly. “I never liked school, except for playing basketball. I knew I’d hate college, too, unless I could go on a basketball scholarship, and that didn’t happen. Work I didn’t mind so much, so I went for that. I’d been saving my money since I was a kid, so I kept on. Like you said, it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. I didn’t spend that much. Eventually, I had enough to put down on a house with a mortgage that doesn’t run me much more than paying rent would.” He looked back at the house. “It wasn’t this nice when I bought it. I’ve put a lot of work into it.” He smiled when he realized he’d used the word work again. “Different kind of work,” he said, “but still enjoyable.”
“But you could have made a lot more money if you went to college,” she said. “You could’ve gotten a better job with better prospects.”
“Oh, like you?” he asked. But there was nothing bitter or sarcastic in his voice. It was just a very good point.
“Yeah, okay, but still,” she said. “You could’ve majored in something besides English.”
He shrugged again. “I didn’t want to, Bree. People who go to college get all bogged down in getting ahead, and getting promoted, and getting the company car, and getting the corner office…getting, getting, getting. I didn’t want to fall into that lifestyle. I just wanted to be able to work at a job I enjoy, then come home at the end of the day to a house I can call my own and to the woman I love. Maybe add a golden retriever to the mix at some point. And maybe, someday, if the planets are aligned correctly, a coupla kids, too.” He met her gaze levelly. “What more is there than that?”
He already knew the answer to that, but she repeated it, anyway. “There’s taking care of your mom,” she said quietly. “There’s needing to know she won’t wind up in some craphole where they don’t give a damn about her. There’s knowing that after she took care of you for twenty-five years, you have an obligation to take care of her.”
“It doesn’t take a million bucks to do that, Bree.”
“Do some reading on the health care industry, Rufus. It takes even more.”
She couldn’t do this, Bree thought. She couldn’t stand out here on this gorgeous, gentle night with this gorgeous, gentle guy and try to justify not being with him. Because there was no justification for that, not really. And if she gave in to what she wanted to do at the moment, it would just make things harder tomorrow—for both of them.
“Look, thanks for dinner,” she said quickly. “But I have to go.”
“Bree, no.”
“This has been a really nice night, and you’re a good guy—no, a great guy—but I have to go, Rufus.”
He opened his mouth to object again, so she gave in to a lesser impulse. Pushing herself up on tiptoe, she covered his mouth with hers—briefly, intensely, hotly. She skimmed the tip of her tongue along his bottom lip, stole a quick taste of the corner of his mouth, then pulled away.
“Thanks again,” she said breathlessly. “For everything.”
Then she turned and hurried through the back door, through the comfy kitchen and relaxing living room, across the cozy front porch and down the flower-lined walk, ignoring Rufus’s petitions for her to come back. She braved a look at the house and saw him standing on the front porch watching her, one arm braced against a column, still holding his coffee in the other hand. The lights inside the house fairly glowed behind him, bathing him in an otherworldly amber light. Any sane, smart woman would be on that porch with him, looping one arm through his, curling the other around his waist, pulling him close in a way that told him she never planned to let him go.
Bree turned the key in the ignition. She threw the car into gear. And then, with only one quick look back, she sped away.
Seventeen
WHEN COLE TOLD LULU HE WANTED TO GO DO something fun, this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. Not that he hadn’t been to artsy functions before, but this one was a little weird, even by southern California standards.
He looked at the four…Well, he supposed artists would be the right word, since they were four people and Lulu had told Cole this was an art gallery. But at the moment, he was hard-pressed to be able to actually identify them as people. Certainly, he wasn’t able to tell what any of their genders were, even though they were all stark naked. In fact, the only way he knew there were four people on the platform in a corner of the tiny darkened gallery was because each was painted a different color. A different Day-Glo color. None of which complemented the others. One was sort of pink. One was kind of orange. The third was in the green family—barely. And although Cole had never actually seen the color puce before, he was pretty sure that was what the last color was. Up ’til now, though, he�
��d always thought the existence of puce was one of those urban legends whose validity nobody could prove.
Their bodies, however, complemented each other very well. In fact, they complemented each other so well that Cole was keeping one eye on the door at all times, just in case the vice squad raided the place.
Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so weird by southern California standards—he was pretty sure he’d seen something almost just like this on Venice Beach once where all the bodybuilders worked out—but it was still definitely weird.
“It’s performance art,” Lulu said softly beside him, evidently sensing his, ah…bewilderment? Yeah, that was it. Bewilderment was a much better word for what he was actually feeling. “The human body and its natural movements as an art form,” she continued.
Okay, that he could see. Not in this particular performance piece, since what they were doing wasn’t what he would call natural, on account of it had to be painful to keep your legs in that position for any length of time, but he could see it elsewhere. In fact, he’d been seeing Lulu’s body and its natural movements as an art form ever since she’d opened the door at Bree’s apartment. The way she looked tonight…
Well. Let him just say that, had Michelangelo been around today, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would be all Lulu, all the time. As would be the walls of the Sistine Chapel. And the floors of the Sistine Chapel. And the nave, apse, and transept, too. Never let it be said that Cole Early hadn’t paid attention in his Art History 101 class. And had the Sistine Chapel been painted to look like Lulu, he would have changed his major pronto.
She just looked so beautiful. He’d thought she was pretty the first time he saw her. And all the other times, too. But with the addition of a little color and a little sparkle, Lulu Flannery came alive. Tonight, she looked as colorful and vivacious as the house she called home. And since leaving the party, she’d begun to act more colorful and vivacious, too. The moment he’d suggested they leave the reception, the color had come back to her features, and her smile had become less strained. As they’d driven to the art exhibit she’d told him she wanted to see, she’d gradually warmed up even more. But it was only once they entered the funky little gallery housed in what she’d told him was an old fire station on Main Street, that Lulu had really come alive.
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