by Elaine Fox
Gerald looked confused, and Lily was sure it was because, after two years of besotted devotion and unrequited affection from her, he was suddenly sensing her withdrawal.
“Good night, Gerald,” she said.
“I’ll—talk to you tomorrow?” he said, holding on to her hand until he had just her fingertips. “Make sure you’re okay?”
“Of course,” she said reassuringly.
He bent toward her again. She turned her face to the side. And, for once, when he left she was happy to have gotten only the chaste peck on the cheek.
Lily closed the door behind him and went into the kitchen, Doug at her heels. With a sigh of relief, she got herself a glass of water and leaned on the counter, looking out the back window at the black night. She turned on no lights, just stood in the darkness, sipping her water and thinking.
She had made a huge mistake. She was so suddenly sure of it she could hardly believe she’d never noticed, never even questioned it until this moment, this fateful evening.
She had fallen for a man she had mostly invented. Gerald wasn’t her Mr. Knightley. He was a nice man from her father’s office, who dressed well and had a GQ face, but who didn’t understand her or truly care for her. Nor did she understand him, beyond what she’d projected onto him.
Doug went to the back door and looked up at her expectantly, panting lightly.
“Okay,” she said, and opened it, stepping out onto the back porch with him.
Doug trotted happily out into the yard, sniffed the air, and promptly darted for the back fence, a favorite haunt of his lately.
Lily sat down on the back stoop, water in her hand.
Her father…she could barely stand to think about him. What would he think? That she’d flaked out on him again. He’d had his heart set on Gerald, and now she knew he would believe she just couldn’t wait those eight weeks Gerald might be away. That she was too impulsive to put the time in. He’d never understand that she’d simply had a revelation that Gerald was not the one.
The one was someone she’d put out of reach, someone of whom her father would never approve, someone who did not fit in that imaginary picture frame she’d placed on her father’s desk.
She was such a fool, falling for Mr. Churchill instead of Mr. Knightley, but what could she do? She was no Emma.
“Are you feeling better now?”
The voice from the darkness startled her, but for some reason she wasn’t completely surprised to hear it. From the shadows of his side of the back porch—a mirror image of the front porch—Brady walked down the steps and around the center railing to put one foot on her stoop. Both hands were in his pockets. He’d changed from his khakis and polo shirt into jeans, an untucked tee shirt, and no shoes.
“I feel,” she said, “remarkably normal.”
Except for this fluttering in my chest whenever you’re near, and the dampening of my palms, and sadness in my heart. Because Brady didn’t want her, she knew. He didn’t even respect her. He’d made that clear this afternoon. When you got down to it, she didn’t think much of herself, either. She’d agreed with all he’d said. Why would he respect someone who’d turned a schoolgirl-type fairy tale into her life’s ambition? He’d seen right through her, to the false hopes, the pompous assumptions and the shallow reasons for wanting to marry Gerald.
“You scared the shit out of me, you know,” he said, his voice neutral, unreadable. Was he still annoyed with her? Should she be annoyed with him? “I thought you’d had a heart attack or something.”
She laughed once. “I’m getting old, Brady. But I’m not that old.”
“You know I didn’t mean that,” he said quietly.
She sighed. “I know.”
Silence held sway a few moments. A breeze lifted her hair from her cheek and ran its fingers along her skin. Brady sat down on the bottom step and leaned back against the porch column.
“I’m sorry for what I said this afternoon,” he said finally. “It was totally uncalled for. I didn’t intend to hurt you.”
She shook her head, though he wasn’t looking at her. “Don’t worry about it. I’m all right.”
She swallowed over a lump in her throat. A foolish, childish, don’t-say-mean-things-to-me lump. She disliked herself for that, too.
He lowered his head, picked at some grass beside his feet with one hand. “I just…I wish I hadn’t said it. Any of it.”
“We’ll forget about it,” she said, feeling tired.
He chuckled mirthlessly. “I won’t.”
They sat in silence a few more minutes, Brady’s discomfort obvious. She knew he was sorry. He wasn’t a mean person. It wasn’t his fault that everything he’d said had been true.
“You’re awfully brave to be out here with Doug on the loose,” she said finally.
“Damn, is he out here?”
The fact that he didn’t leap up from his seat told her he wasn’t afraid of her dog the way Nathan was, but she knew he didn’t like Doug. That had been the most perfect thing about Gerald, the fact that Doug had actually liked him. And vice versa! She’d considered it a sign, but was it?
Or was the sign the fact that Brady obviously disliked Doug, no matter what the dog felt? It bothered her, his dislike, more than anything else. It felt like…judgment.
“He’s down by the fence,” Lily said.
She saw Brady’s silhouette nod.
Lily took a sip of her water. “Look, I’m sorry to have scared you, but I’m okay now. There was a nurse at the party who said it’s not all that uncommon for women to faint if they’ve had nothing to eat.”
Plus she’d just finished her period and was a little anemic, but she wasn’t going to get into that with Brady.
Besides, she knew the real reason she’d fainted. She had stopped breathing. Just before the faint, that was. As Sutter and Megan were making their announcement, as the two of them stood up there so obviously in love, so obviously connected, so obviously meant for each other, Lily had come to the realization that Gerald—the Gerald who had for so long embodied her Mr. Knightley—was a figment of her imagination. He wasn’t a real, solid, flesh-and-blood soul mate like Sutter was to Megan.
With that realization came the breathless certainty that she’d been kidding herself for years, that she’d been blind to what had been right in front of her face for all that time.
She wasn’t in love with Gerald. And he most certainly wasn’t in love with her. They were both playing the same game—with themselves and with each other.
Her father had somehow, without even trying, made it clear that he wanted them together, and obedient children that they were—Lily his biological daughter and Gerald his ergonomic son—they went along. They told themselves they belonged together. And Gerald still believed it, apparently.
As Lily saw it now, the faint was the line of demarcation between illusion and reality. She been existing in illusion for years and had been so shocked by reality that she had stopped breathing. Stopped until she lost consciousness. As if she had to erase all that had gone before. She’d gone down the moment she’d realized that the myth of Gerald was just that, a myth, and she’d woken up with the certain knowledge that he was not the right man for her.
“If fainting was normal,” Brady said now, “you’d see women dropping like flies everywhere you went. I hope you’re still planning to see a doctor on Monday.”
She smiled at his severe tone. “You’re sounding like an old mother hen, Brady. Who would’ve guessed you had that in you?”
“Not me, that’s for damn sure,” he said dourly.
From the back of the yard, a chunky white wraith emerged from the trees bordering the alley and raced up the lawn, suddenly stopping halfway. Nose in the air, Doug turned in a circle, onto some scent more distracting even than an actual man on his back porch.
“You have the weirdest dog I have ever known,” Brady said. “Yesterday I saw him licking your back door.”
Lily looked from Doug to Brady. “Maybe he
wanted to get in.”
Brady laughed. “I’m not surprised you didn’t hear him knocking.”
“All dogs have idiosyncrasies.”
Brady shook his head. “Not like that one. He’s a menace. Did I tell you he’s been stealing my shoes?”
“What?” Lily tilted her head toward him. “Stealing your shoes?”
“Yeah. I’m missing a whole bunch of shoes.”
“Doug wouldn’t take them!” she said, instantly on the defensive.
Talk about a mother hen. Doug was a lot of things, but shoe thief wasn’t one of them. Lily was tired of people blaming him for things he couldn’t possibly have done. Nathan’s mother was always complaining that he dug up her flower beds and defecated in her garden, despite the fact that Doug never left Lily’s yard.
“How do you know?” Brady swiveled on the step to look at her.
“How do you know he did?”
“Because the screen on my back window was clawed out of its frame, and it was obviously done by an animal.”
“So? It could’ve been a raccoon. Or a squirrel. Or a person. Look, Brady, I know you don’t like Doug. But you don’t have to make things up about him just to prove the point. It’s okay. Lots of guys don’t like Doug. And vice versa,” she said pointedly, as if the fact of Doug’s animosity could possibly be an insult. Crazy as it seemed, though, Lily still thought it was.
To have Brady hate Doug, however, made her so upset she could hardly stop herself. Now that she realized she could never be with Gerald, and that Brady not only didn’t like her dog, but he very likely didn’t like her either…well, it was all just too much.
“I’m not making anything up,” Brady said, his voice edged with indignation. “The damn dog’s been taking my shoes. In fact, he’s taken one from every damn pair I have.”
Lily laughed cynically. “Are you telling me my dog has figured out which shoes go together, and has taken one of each? My goodness, what fashion sense he has. I never realized.”
“He’s demonic, that dog,” Brady said heatedly. “I have no doubt he’s capable of figuring out which shoes go together. Look at him.” He threw a hand out toward where Doug was now periodically standing up on two back feet, paddling his front feet in the air and sniffing the breeze. “What the hell is he doing? Tracking bats?”
Lily frowned, watching the dog’s antics. He did do some strange things, she had to admit, but that was part of his charm. Brady would never understand that.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know he doesn’t steal shoes.”
She stood up. She didn’t need to sit out here and listen to him belittle her dog, proving with every word that he and Lily were nothing alike, had nothing in common, and could barely be good neighbors, let alone anything else.
Brady stood too. “Come on, Lily, we both know he hates me. I’ll get the screen and show you. It was obviously him.”
“That wouldn’t prove anything. How do you know it wasn’t Tricia? Huh? Doesn’t that seem more likely to you? That the woman you drove insane came and stole your shoes? Maybe she’s sleeping with them under her pillow. Maybe you drive every woman you meet insane. Did you ever think of that?” She spun on the step and grabbed for the back door.
With one step Brady was beside her, hand on her arm, turning her back around.
“It wasn’t Tricia. And I don’t drive every woman I meet insane.”
Even in the dark his eyes were fierce. The feel of his hand on her arm was hot, tight, and compelling.
Lily swallowed over another lump in her throat. He hated her dog. He thought she was stupid and immature. He—he was looking at her like…like…
Brady stepped in and slid his other arm around her waist. Before she could say a word, his mouth descended onto hers.
Fourteen
The kiss was delicious. She fell into it like a pool of warm water, let it envelop her, sweep her under, drown her. Their tongues touched and twined, their bodies melded, her hands reached up to his head, and her fingers dove into his thick, soft hair.
Their bodies were a symphony, their coming together a tango, the kiss a perfectly balanced blend of lips, tongues, breaths, hands, and bodies. She felt as if she were spiraling upward toward the heavens, and downward toward the white-hot center of the earth.
She was embraced by a body at once protective and potent, and the sensation was heady.
Her hands grabbed his torso, spreading wide as they traveled up his ribs, feeling the solid, muscular mass of him.
His hands swept up her back to bury themselves in her hair. He pulled back slightly, bending his knees and moving his head to trail his lips down her neck to that spot—oh God that spot—on the side of her neck that shot shivers up and down her skin. She grabbed his arms, wanting skin, then held his head, her fingers clutching his hair.
He backed her up against the door, his lips taking hers again. His body pressed against her, his hips on hers, grinding her against the wall. It was hard and painful, and she couldn’t get enough.
There was no hesitation this time. No pulling back. He wanted her, that was obvious. And he was going to get her unless she did something drastic.
Something she was not about to do.
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
Her skin was on fire, her nerves electric. She felt as if she were eating cake with icing that made the roof of her mouth tingle with sugary sweetness—decadence, extravagance, too much and not enough.
“What’s the matter, Lily? Never done it outside?” He smiled against her lips and took her mouth again in a commanding kiss.
Laughter bubbled up within her—laughter borne of adrenaline, of power, of lust.
“I’m not sure you’re aware,” she said between kisses, holding his face in her hands, “that the moment Doug gets bored with whatever he’s doing, he’ll be all over you.”
Brady didn’t need any more prompting. He reached past her, opened the door, and they stumbled back inside. He kicked the door shut behind them with one foot, and they came together again like a clamshell, no air between them.
Mouths, hands, bodies reached, touched, moved like synchronized parts of a clock.
Brady’s arms encircled her, pulling and holding her to him as he moved them through the kitchen. She opened her eyes to see him watching where they were going and giggled through the kiss.
She knew where he was headed. She pulled away and took his hand.
“Come on,” she said.
She led him up the stairs to the bedroom. They arrived breathless, almost startled to find themselves there.
“Do we need to talk about something?” Brady asked.
Lily paused, looking into his eyes. But neither his expression nor his question gave away what he was thinking.
“I don’t know. Do you need to talk about something?”
Brady paused, staring back. Illogically, Lily shivered under the heat of his gaze.
“Not if you don’t,” he said finally.
They each laughed quietly, nervously. Then Brady moved forward. His hands slipped around her waist and she felt again how large his presence was. Almost as if his hands could span her waist and lift her to the ceiling with ease. She was light as a feather, he was strong as a titan, they were producing an energy together that was otherworldly.
I want you. The words sprang to Lily’s mind but she dared not speak them. Her hold on this moment seemed so tenuous.
She should be thinking…of someone…of something…else. But she couldn’t think of anything but Brady, here before her. He was looking at her in the way she’d always dreamed of being looked at. As if he saw her, recognized her soul. He understood her, she felt, in ways she didn’t even understand herself.
“Lily,” he said softly, his lips brushing her cheek, moving softly to her ear.
She closed her eyes, let her hands rest on his upper arms, feeling the bulge of his biceps, the tension in his touch. She inhaled, and the sound quivered between them.
&nb
sp; He trailed his tongue down her neck while his fingers moved to the zipper at the back of her dress.
“Can I take this off?” he asked. The question was so quiet she felt as if she might have dreamed it.
Afraid of speaking and waking from the moment, she turned her back to him, felt the zipper descend, felt the fabric of the dress loosen and fall to her feet.
Brady’s arms came around her and his lips pressed against the muscle between her shoulder and neck, then moved to her nape. She inhaled again, closed her eyes, dug her fingers into his forearms enveloping her.
“I’ve wanted to do this since the first moment I saw you,” he said.
She smiled into the darkness, inhaling deeply with the words. Could he mean them? Did he feel that way about her, always? Or did he just say this sort of thing…?”
She turned in his arms, putting her hands to his face and pulling it down to hers. Their lips met. She moved her fingers to his shirt, sliding down until she was at the hem of his tee shirt, and pulled upward.
“Can I take this off?” She echoed his words, smiling with them.
He stepped back a fraction and held out his arms.
She pulled the shirt over the waistband of his jeans, up his torso, watching as the tightly muscled stomach was revealed. Then the well-defined chest, the muscled shoulders, flexed and long as he held his arms over his head.
She whipped the shirt over his head and tossed it to the side, letting her hands trail his lean, toned body. Who knew this was what resided beneath all those sweaty tee shirts he ran in? She knew he had nice legs, but this body. She palmed his skin, ran her hands down his chest to his waist, fingered the subtle line of hair that emerged from just above the button of his jeans.
“Let me help you with those,” he murmured.
She shook her head. Then she pressed her lips to his chest, sucking the skin just hard enough to leave a mark, a temporary one, while her fingers flipped the button open, and pulled the fly down over the hardness beneath.
