Sweet Nothings

by Catherine Anderson

  “You haven’t seen them,” she whispered tautly and tried to slip out from between his body and the vanity.

  Jake blocked her way with his braced arm. “You’re not going anywhere, Molly. Not until I’ve finished.”

  Her expression pinched, she met his gaze in the mirror.

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Don’t do what? I’m only telling you the truth. Granted, maybe it’s not a subject for polite conversation, but we went beyond polite when I had you pressed up against that tree this morning. At which point, I might add, I held your breasts in my hands and kissed them through your blouse.” He winked at her again. “You can tell yourself that I really don’t know what’s under the clothing. I beg to correct you. I have the touch.”

  “The what?”

  “The touch.” He lifted his hand to rub his fingers and thumb together. “These hands know gorgeous breasts when they feel them.” He studied her face for a moment. “I’d venture a guess that it was good old Rodney who told you that your body is less than perfect.”

  She glanced quickly away.

  “I thought so.” Jake gripped down hard on the edge of the vanity. “I’ve never met the man. But I’ve only to look at what he did to his horse and wife to know that he’s a pissant.”

  She threw him another startled look, which he answered with a grin.

  “A lying pissant,” he revised. “You’re a short, sweetly rounded lady. You want to know my take on Rodney? I think he’s a limp-dick excuse for a man, an even poorer excuse for a husband, and an all around lying bastard, if you’ll excuse my French. He didn’t want his wife to read historical romances because it might give her unrealistic expectations. Hello? That screams inferiority complex to me. I think he did his damnedest to make you feel ugly because it gave him more control. He was probably afraid you’d discover what a loser you were married to and trade him in for a better model.”

  Jake pushed erect.

  “If I had been him, I would have been reading your books every time you laid them down to see how I could improve my skills and please you. Second warning of the night.” He moved to the doorway. “I bought a couple.”

  She turned from the sink. “You bought a couple of what?”

  Jake looked her dead in the eye. “Historical romances. I’m three-quarters through the first one.” He flashed her a slow grin. “All I can say is, I like the way your mind works.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  After Jake left, Molly turned back to regard her reflection in the mirror. Touching a hand to her hair, she stared at the masses of uncontrollable curls, which she’d never liked and had grown to hate after she married Rodney. Now, after listening to Jake wax poetic about how glorious her hair was, she wondered if she should start wearing it loose. Maybe he was right, and it was one of her best features, not one of her worst.

  Gathering up the towel he’d dropped in the sink, she draped it across her chest again and studied herself critically. Could it be that she really had been hiding her light under a bushel for a decade? She’d always loved the color pink, but Rodney had convinced her it made her complexion look ruddy. Holding the terry close to her face, she leaned toward the glass and trailed a fingertip over her cheek. As hard as she tried, she could detect no increased reddish tones in her skin. Maybe Rodney had lied to her all those years, just as Jake insisted.

  According to him, pink was her color. Though he hadn’t come right out and said as much, she knew he wished she would stop wearing only neutral shades and become a bit more daring in her dress. A vision of herself in tight jeans and a figure-hugging, outrageous pink knit top spun through her mind. Just the thought of exposing her shape that way brought an embarrassed blush to her cheeks.

  Reddish tones, she thought as she took in her heightened color. She had always flushed very easily—from exertion, heat, or embarrassment. Maybe her tendency to turn red at the drop of a hat was what Rodney had been talking about. She pressed even closer to the mirror to stare hard at her skin. The pink in her cheeks didn’t seem to clash or look particularly ruddy against the towel. Did it? Jake had likened the contrast to raspberries and cream.

  Rodney—Jake. Jake—Rodney. Whom was she supposed to believe? Who was right, and who was wrong? As she pondered the questions, an ache took up throbbing residence in her temples. She didn’t know what to believe anymore. Should she listen to Jake or continue as she had been, dressing and wearing her hair the way Rodney had suggested?

  At the thought, the pain in her head became knifelike. Dear God. It was absolutely true; she was still living her life according to the guidelines Rodney had set down. Every stitch of clothing in her closet had been selected with his advice in mind. “Loose, concealing garments and neutral colors,” he’d always preached. “You don’t have the figure or the complexion to carry anything else off.” Because of him, she wore no makeup, afraid of looking like a trollop. Because of him, most of the time she wore platform-soled shoes that she detested in an attempt to look taller. She no longer even laughed naturally because of him.

  Was it any wonder she couldn’t find herself when she looked in a mirror? Molly pressed a hand to her throat as an even more alarming revelation came to her. Now, instead of following Rodney’s rules, she was seriously thinking about complying with Jake’s.

  Shaken, she sank down on the toilet, not knowing what to think anymore. Only one thing seemed clear to her in that moment. Ten years ago, she’d bent over backward, trying to please Rodney, wearing the kinds of clothes that he preferred, doing her hair the way he liked. Now, after surviving a hellish marriage and coming out on the other side, she was listening to another man and about to do the same thing all over again.

  She knotted her hands into fists and pressed them hard against her knees. She was so tired, so sick to death tired, of being told what to do. If she wanted to shave her head and wear a bodysuit of bright purple spandex, it was nobody’s business but hers. It no longer mattered what Rodney thought. And she wasn’t about to start living her life according to Jake Coulter’s dictates. She was single, almost thirty, and this was a free country. No one was going to tell her what to do, how to behave, or how to look.

  From this moment forward, she was going to do what she wanted, to hell with everyone else.

  Leaping to her feet, Molly spun to take in her reflection. Hair. That was all she saw. She had a small face, and it was barely visible in the cloud.

  Trembling violently, she threw open the cupboard door and searched frantically for the scissors. When she found them, she whirled back to the sink, grabbed a hank of hair, and whacked it off about two inches from her scalp. Snip, snip, snip. As she sheared off the hated curls, she refused to assess the damage she was doing. She didn’t care. Snip, snip. Take that, Jake Coulter. Snip, snip. She wasn’t a stupid sheep, to be pushed and prodded and led around. Maybe she’d start wearing fire-engine red lipstick and gaudy earrings that dangled down past her shoulders. Why not?

  When she ran out of curls to whack off, she felt limp with exhaustion. She let the scissors slip from her fingers and clatter into the sink with the towel and all her shorn locks. Almost afraid to look at herself, she forced her gaze to the mirror. The instant she saw her reflection, tears flooded her eyes.

  Rodney hadn’t lied. He’d been telling the absolute truth. She looked like Bozo the Clown.

  “Molly’s running late,” Hank said grumpily.

  Jake merely smiled as he poured himself a second cup of coffee. “Yeah, she is.”

  “She’s never late,” Hank pointed out. “Aren’t you worried something’s wrong?”

  Jake chuckled. “She’ll be along any time now.”

  “I was going to help her fix sandwiches.”

  Jake turned from the coffeepot. Lifting his steaming mug to his lips, he took a slow sip of brew, eyeing his brother over the porcelain rim. “We don’t want to overwhelm her with too much the first morning. Why don’t you go ahead with milking and gathering the eggs?”

  �
��You going to help her fix breakfast?”

  Jake nodded.

  “What are you going to make?”

  “A country-style breakfast with all the trimmings,” Jake said.

  “Biscuits from scratch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fried potatoes and pan gravy?”

  Jake grinned. “Yes.”

  “Bacon and sausage and eggs?”

  “Maybe even some ham as well,” Jake assured him.

  Hank looked as if he were about to drool. He went to the utility room for the egg basket and milk bucket.

  As Molly left the cabin, her gaze was caught by something lying just over the threshold on the porch. She looked down and focused bewilderedly on a paperback novel and a nosegay of maiden pinks. She crouched down to stare. The delicate flowers were bound together at the stems with an old strip of leather.

  Jake.

  Tears stung Molly’s eyes. Aside from her father, no man had ever given her flowers, not even her husband of ten years. Hand trembling, she picked up the nosegay and touched the blossoms to her nose, inhaling their delicate scent. How sweet. She imagined Jake traipsing through the woods in the predawn gloom to pick her a bouquet, and the sting of tears in her eyes became a flood.

  With her free hand, she swiped at her cheeks, disgusted with herself for being so emotional. It was only a nosegay, after all, and had cost him nothing. Women received gorgeous hothouse roses all the time and didn’t weep all over them.

  Only somehow this nosegay with its smashed stems held fast by a leather thong seemed far more special than a delivery from a florist. Jake had invested a good chunk of his time in the endeavor. Then he’d bound the stems and made the delivery himself.

  She’d never been the weepy type. Now, all of sudden, her tear ducts seemed to be turning off and on at will. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes, and no matter how fast she blinked, she couldn’t dispel them.

  It was just so sweet of him. Flowers. Finding them here brought back so many wonderful memories of her father. He’d always left her surprises. “Little I-love-yous,” he’d called them, and they’d often been flowers he’d picked from the garden. Nothing expensive, really. She’d wake up in the morning to find roses in a drinking glass on her nightstand or a nosegay of pansies next to her cheek on the pillow. It had been a lovely way to wake up and an even lovelier way to start her day, knowing her dad cared about her in a special way.

  After she married, there had been no more sweet surprises on her pillow, only tear stains from where she’d lain awake crying while she waited for her husband to come home to her from the arms of another woman. She’d yearned for Rodney to give her flowers, just once, but he never had.

  Remembering those times now, Molly knew that was nine-tenths why she’d tried so hard to please him. She’d been constantly competing with faceless rivals for his love, and she’d fallen into the trap of thinking she was the one at fault, that if she just tried hard enough, she might win his affection. She’d changed her appearance and altered her behavior in order to seem more sophisticated. Though it had happened slowly, she’d eventually changed herself so much that she could no longer recognize the person she had become.

  Smiling sadly through her tears, Molly sniffed the maiden pinks again and then picked up the paperback. She wasn’t surprised to see that it was a historical romance. She’d mentioned in passing that she’d once loved them, and in a very subtle way, Jake was calling her back to that, not to be the woman he wanted her to be, but to simply be herself again.

  “Who are you now, Molly?” he’d asked her. At the time, she’d been so disturbed by the question that she’d resented him for asking it. In the days since, she’d often felt cornered and believed he was playing some vicious game, trying to seduce her, not because he really wanted her, but simply because she was there.

  Now this.

  She sighed and hugged the book to her heart, accepting now what she should have realized from the start. Jake Coulter was nothing like Rodney Wells. He was his antithesis in practically every way, the only similarity being that he was male.

  Touching a hand to her hair, Molly wished now that she’d thought twice before cutting it. After ten endless years, a man had told her she was pretty, and instead of taking the compliment, she’d thrown it back in his face.

  He was going to hate what she’d done to herself, and he’d probably be furious. By cutting off her hair, she’d told him she didn’t value his opinion, plain and simple. He wasn’t a stupid man. He’d get the message. Big problem. After finding the flowers and book, she wasn’t sure that was the message she wanted to send.

  Jake was wondering if Molly would be wearing her hair in that dreadful braid again this morning. On the one hand, he was reluctant to influence her too much. He had a feeling she’d gotten enough of that from her ex-husband to last her a lifetime. But another big part of him yearned to see her cut loose and be a free spirit for a change—to literally let her hair down and thumb her nose at the world.

  He was imagining how she might look with all those fabulous curls falling in a riotous cascade to her shoulders when he heard her enter the house. He smiled smugly, keeping his back to the archway. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was expecting her hair to be down. If by chance it was, the trick would be to act surprised. Then, after he collected himself, he’d shower her with compliments, pretending it had been all her idea.

  “Hi,” she said from behind him.

  Her voice was shaky and faint. His smile deepened. He’d been around females enough to know when a woman was waiting on tenterhooks for a man’s reaction to her appearance. Taking a last sip of coffee, he slowly turned, determined not to disappoint her.

  The instant he saw her, he choked. Coffee went up his nose and down his windpipe. A harsh whistling sound erupted from his mouth. Molly’s eyes went huge. She touched a hand to her hair, looking stricken.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Jake rasped when he finally got his breath. “What the hell did you do?”

  All the color drained from her face. Plucking at a short tendril of hair, she just stared at him, offering no explanation. Not that he needed one. He’d gone out of his way last night to tell her how gorgeous he thought her hair was, and now it was—gone. He’d been told to shove it a few times, but this took the prize.

  Anger was his first reaction. Deep hurt quickly followed. And then he just felt stunned. She looked—beautiful. The short cap of amber curls feathered forward over her temples and cheeks, creating a perfect showcase for her delicate features. The cut was shaggy, and on someone else, it might have been unattractive, but the tousled, carefree style suited Molly perfectly, giving her a sassy look that was adorable.

  Collecting himself, Jake set his mug of coffee on the counter and walked slowly toward her, barely able to take his eyes off her face. She shifted her feet, pushed selfconsciously at her hair, and then dropped her chin as if she were ashamed to let him look at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said faintly. “I know it was a dumb thing to do and that I look awful.”

  Jake slowly circled her. He really hated to be wrong, and he hated having to admit it even more. “Don’t be silly. I think it’s cute.” He no sooner spoke than he wished he’d thought to use another word. Cute was sort of lukewarm. Gorgeous, on the other hand, would probably be suspect. What was a guy supposed to say? That it was darling? That was a feminine word, and he’d feel ridiculous. “I, um …” He came to stand in front of her. “It’s perfect on you. Really. As pretty as I thought it was long, I like it this way even more.”

  She shoved at her hair again. The light glanced off the disturbed wisps of amber, making him want to touch them himself. “Right,” she said. “There’s no need to lie to save my feelings. I know it looks awful. Maybe I can go to a shop and get it evened up.”

  Jake liked it wispy and tousled. “Don’t even think about it. No beautician on earth can improve on it.”

  She flashed him a miserable look. “It grows pretty
fast. It’ll be long again before I know it.”

  Jake laughed and caught her face between his hands. “I didn’t mean that it’s beyond repair, Molly. I meant that it’s not possible to improve on perfection.”

  An incredulous expression slipped into her lovely eyes. “You mean you really like it?”

  “I really, really do. I thought it was beautiful long, but this is even better.” Crooking a finger under her chin, he lifted her face to the light. “I’m no expert on hairstyles, but wearing it short brings out your eyes and draws attention to your face.”

  “Oh.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “With fine features like yours, that’s a plus.”

  She lifted a dubious gaze to his. “Do you really think so?”

  Still holding her face between his hands, Jake thought he’d never seen anyone so sweetly beautiful. Looking down at her, he could only wonder what he’d ever found attractive about tall, leggy blondes and redheads who wore gobs of makeup. Molly was what he’d wanted all along, but he’d been too dumb to realize it.

  “I really think so,” he whispered huskily.

  For the remainder of the day, Jake grinned every time he recalled Molly’s new hairstyle. She was turning out to be the most unpredictable female he’d ever met. What would come next, spike heels and black net stockings? He hoped not. Molly was more the Madonna type, and he hated to see her change that.

  On the other hand, he’d been wrong about the hair. She’d probably knock his eyes out in black fishnet. Maybe the best thing for him to do was butt out entirely and let her create her own look.

  The thought no sooner entered his brain than Jake knew he’d just experienced a rare moment of genius. Of course he needed to butt out. Molly had been pushed around too much already. “I can’t find myself anymore,” she’d whispered to him last night. He had a very bad feeling that was because she’d buried herself to please her husband. Jake didn’t want to make the same mistake.

  It was high time that she should discover who she really was, and she didn’t need his help to do that. When all was said and done, he’d take her in a heartbeat, be she in fishnet or a nun’s habit. He wasn’t sure when it had happened—or even exactly how—but he’d fallen head over heels in love with her. Done deal, no turning back.