by Wendy Wax
She missed him more than she could have imagined. Missed the calm reasonableness that had always set her teeth on edge, the quick wit on which she’d sharpened her own. It pained her to admit it, but she’d rather argue with Ross than agree with anyone else.
Because she’d been thinking about him, his voice didn’t sound out of place at first. It came to her as if in a dream, a very yummy dream from which she did NOT want to wake.
“You know, for the longest time after that night in the supply closet, the faintest whiff of toner would make me think of you,” he said.
Her eyes flew open. Without moving, she watched him walk toward her. He had a faint smile on his lips and a definite twinkle in his eye.
“I couldn’t even drive by a Kinko’s without getting an erection.”
She fought the answering smile that tugged at her lips. As he approached, her flesh goose-bumped with anticipation and her pulse kicked up.
Experimentally, she reminded herself that he was eminently suitable and that her parents wanted her to want him, but her ardor didn’t dampen one bit.
He was tall and broad and incredibly sexy. Without the labels she’d always attached to him, he was much too attractive to resist.
“Stop where you are,” she said.
If he got any closer she was going to wrestle him to the ground and have her way with him. And what would that accomplish?
He stopped where he was, which was almost right in front of her. “Just out of interest, I feel compelled to ask ‘or what?’ ”
This was a good question. “Or we’re going to have sex and probably regret it.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going to regret it. And I don’t mean to brag, but I’m pretty sure I can keep you from regretting it, too.”
He took a step closer and sniffed. “You’re not wearing toner right now, are you?”
Her heart was racing and she was pretty sure she could feel the blood rushing through her veins. “I don’t think this has worked out so well for us in the past,” Shelley said. “I mean, the last time we slept together you told me it was a mistake.”
“It was.”
“But it’s not now?”
“We were working together then,” he said reasonably. “That’s never a good idea.”
“And now?”
“Now the closest we’re going to get to that is competing for accounts.”
“It’s not even going to be a competition,” she corrected as a burst of adrenaline shot through her. “I plan to leave you choking in my dust.”
“Yeah, I heard you got Skyler,” Ross said. “He’s good. But then, so are you. I don’t have a problem with a little healthy competition.” He was standing so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek.
She wanted him, wanted him badly. And she wanted more than repartee and incredible sex. “The last time we saw each other I believe I told you to get lost.” She swallowed. “And you did.”
“I wasn’t lost.” He inched closer so that they were toe to toe and chest to chest. She could feel her body straining toward his.
“No?” She wasn’t sure how a person’s voice could break on a one-syllable word, but hers did. He seemed so calm and confident. She seemed to be quivering.
“So where were you?” She tried to match his confident tone and failed miserably.
He put a finger under her chin and tilted her face up to his. His blue eyes were clear and warm. “I thought I’d give you a little time to get over the fact that I’m perfect for you.”
“Perfect? You?” She wanted to scoff, but couldn’t quite pull it off.
“Well, you did once refer to me as stellar.”
“No.” She shook her head, but gently so as not to dislodge his finger. “I’m pretty sure I spit on stellar. And of course, you were awfully secretive about being Jewish.”
“It wasn’t a secret. You just weren’t paying attention.” He moved his hand to cup the side of her cheek and pulled her face close to his. Then he kissed her—one of those long, deep, soulful kisses that touched her everywhere at once.
OK, so maybe she’d have to give him stellar.
“I’ve wanted to apologize for Passover,” she said. “I was just so surprised. And angry. Nothing seemed to be what I thought it was.”
He kissed her again, and then he placed his hands on her waist and pulled her closer. Their bodies melded in all the right places. “No apologies needed,” he said. “I just hope this whole religion/common background thing isn’t going to be a problem for you.”
Her breath caught in her throat as he sank to his knees and took her with him. “Well, I wouldn’t call it a problem, exactly.” She kissed him back with everything she had inside, delighted by what had sprung up between them. “But I do have a small request.”
His lips were warm on hers, and his body promised all kinds of things that she could tell he was ready to deliver. “I’m willing to give whatever is . . . between us . . . a shot,” she teased. “But you have to promise to keep it to yourself.”
Shelley kissed him again and reached for his belt buckle as he held her tight. “We are definitely not mentioning this to our parents. After everything my mother put me through, there’s no way I’m ready to make her this happy.”
About the Author
Wendy lives with her husband and two sons in a testosterone-laden home in the suburbs of Atlanta. When not at one ballpark or another, she spends her time either writing or attempting to invent an automatic toilet seat-dropping device.
Readers can contact her through her Web site at www.authorwendywax.com.
Also by Wendy Wax
7 Days and 7 Nights
Leave It to Cleavage
Can’t wait to join
Wendy Wax
in her next hilarious and sexy novel?
Read on for a preview of
her new book . . .
Single in Suburbia
Coming in Summer 2006
from Bantam
Single in Suburbia
ON SALE SUMMER 2006
chapter 1
In the car lot of life, Amanda Sheridan decided, she was a Volvo station wagon with about 80,000 miles on it.
People said a woman should look at how a man treated his mother when deciding whether to marry him, but Amanda now knew, from painful personal experience, that a man’s car-buying habits were a much better indicator.
In her family men bought good-quality cars and drove them until they stopped running; they racked up the miles and bragged about their odometer readings. And in most cases, their marriages lasted just as long.
In Rob’s family, which Amanda had been a part of for almost twenty years, the men traded up. Every year they chose a new car and passed the year-old vehicle down to their wives. Occasionally a car might last a little longer if there was a teenager in the family, but as a rule, if you were a Sheridan, when your car’s ashtray got dirty it was time to trade that sucker in.
Which went a long way toward explaining why Rob was test driving a BMW Z-3 convertible named Tiffany while Amanda, whose bench seats were sagging, appeared headed for the used-car lot.
Amanda scooped Wyatt’s baseball socks out of the clean-clothes basket and tossed them on his bed then stashed a fresh stack of towels in the kids’ linen closet. Pithy car metaphors notwithstanding, Amanda had no idea how she was supposed to get Rob, who appeared to be in the throes of a monumental midlife crisis at the age of forty-five, to come to his senses, and even less idea of how she’d go on alone if she failed.
It was now almost two months since that January morning when her husband admitted to lubricating another woman’s carburetor; two long months since he’d moved out to park his, er, car, in a strange garage.
Amanda had spent the first month in denial and the second in a semi-comatose state from which she roused only long enough to take care of Meghan and Wyatt. She’d steadfastly kept her chin up in public, had even managed to adopt a “men will be boys” attitude that belied the ga
ping hole she felt in her heart and the knife wound in her back.
Still, despite the evidence to the contrary, she simply could not believe that Rob had stopped loving her when she wasn’t finished loving him; could not believe that he’d looked her in the eye and told her that his feelings for her had died. Died! As if they were living, breathing things that she’d somehow managed to kill.
Her chest tightened.
Rob had moved out “to look for himself,” but as far as she could tell, all he’d found was a fancy town house in a singles complex and the zippy little Tiffany.
In the kitchen she brewed a pot of coffee and pulled out a thermos to take to the ball field. She’d let two whole months slide by without resolution and had been spectacularly unsuccessful at forcing Rob to discuss the situation. But she’d been wrong to let Rob call all the shots. Two months was more than long enough to live in limbo; too long to be at the mercy of Rob Sheridan’s libido.
If there was one thing she knew about her husband, and given his current behavior it might be the only thing she knew about him, he would be at Wyatt’s season opener tonight. Which meant it was time to straighten her backbone and stop being such a wimp; time to give Rob an ultimatum: her or us; alone or together.
She’d just have to find the words that would make him realize what he was giving up and she’d do her best not to include the word “asshole” while she was doing it. But by the end of the evening, one way or another, she intended to regain control over her life.
“Are you ready, Wyatt?” She took a last look in the hall mirror and tried to squelch the butterflies tumbling in her stomach. She refused to dwell on the small wrinkles that radiated out from her eyes, the deepening grooves that now stretched across her forehead and bracketed her mouth. Better to focus on the unexpected weight loss that made her jeans fit the way they were meant to and the new cashmere sweater that she’d bought for the occasion.
“Just have to get my bag and cleats.” Wyatt clattered down the stairs behind her and went into the garage. At thirteen, he was tall and lanky, already matching her five-eight and on his way toward his father’s six-two.
Outside, the sun was setting and the temperature had started to drop. In Atlanta, the end of February was tricky; some days felt like spring, other days bit like mid-winter. She poured the entire pot of coffee into the thermos and took an extra moment to add cream and sweetener, though the way those butterflies were cavorting, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to drink a drop.
“Last chance, Meghan!” she called up the back stairs.
Her daughter’s door opened and a cacophony of what was supposed to be music billowed out around her. Meghan leaned over the balustrade, her dark hair falling forward to obscure her face. At fifteen, sarcasm was her friend. “Normally I’d love to go freeze my butt off for two hours just for the thrill of watching Wy play. But I’ve got a project due tomorrow.” She offered a flip smile and a shrug. The beat of the music pulsed behind her.
“Your dad will be there.”
Meghan went still. The flip smile fled and was replaced by a look of hurt so stark that Amanda had to look away. “Do you think I should come so he can pretend like he cares about me for a minute or two?”
Amanda made herself meet her daughter’s pain-filled eyes. She watched Meghan’s gaze sweep over her, taking in the new sweater and carefully made-up face.
“You’re wasting your time, Mom. He’s written us off like yesterday’s news. And I, for one, am not planning to run after him.”
Shrugging into her leather jacket, Amanda picked up the thermos and blankets. “No, no running,” she promised as she said good-bye to Meghan and headed for the door.
And no begging, she added silently to herself.
Rob was the one who needed to beg their forgiveness and ask to come home.
And if he didn’t?
Then she’d find the backbone to tell him to get lost. Right after she shoved his dipstick where the sun didn’t shine.
The ball field parking lot was almost full by the time Amanda and Wyatt arrived. It was seven P.M. and the smell of hot dogs and burgers cooking on the grill outside the concession stand reached them as they got out of the van. There was no sign of Rob’s car, but from one of the far fields came the crack of the bat and a huge cheer. Amanda smiled, remembering the first time Wyatt had knocked one over the fence. Even all these years later, she could still remember the thrill of amazement at her son’s ability, the high-fives from the other mothers perched beside her in the stands. Wyatt had been playing at this park since the age of five, and had been madly in love with the game from the first time he stepped up to the T and made contact with a ball.
Amanda gathered up the blanket she’d brought and cradled the thermos in it while Wyatt put on his cleats and lifted the equipment bag from the back of the van.
“I’ll see you down there, sweetie.” Amanda watched him walk down the concrete stands toward the dugout, keeping him in her sights until he disappeared from view.
She was tempted to leave and not come back until warm-ups were over and the game had begun, when attention would be on the field, but she was here and she suspected running would feel even worse. She leaned against the side of the van, trying to build her courage, but all she could think of was all the hours they’d spent together in this place. They’d always come here as a family and had been part of the crowd whose kids played not only fall and spring but well into summer. They’d spent countless hours in these stands and others just like them, munching peanuts, cheering their children on, and inevitably picking over the latest gossip.
Gossip. She’d watched other baseball families come apart, seen the children walking around wounded, shuttled back and forth.
At games, the parents, and ultimately their new significant others, would stake out opposite ends of the stands and try to act as if nothing had changed, while everyone else tiptoed around them, trying not to declare too obvious an allegiance to either side.
She’d observed all this. Selfishly, she’d hated how it complicated the pure joy of baseball, but she had never for a moment imagined it happening to them. She’d never imagined any of the things that they were living through.
Amanda snorted at her own naiveté. Straightening her shoulders, she walked directly toward the knot of women already seated in the stands.
“Hello, Susan,” she said. “Helen.” Amanda knew when the entire row of women stopped talking exactly who they were talking about. Helen Bradbury, whose son Blaine was Wyatt’s best friend, blushed and gave her a small wave. Karen Anderson, with whom Amanda shared team mom duties, gave her a tentative smile. There were some other nods and murmurings, but mostly the other mothers watched her face, their own eyes wide, as if they could hardly wait for the entertainment to begin.
Through sheer force of will, Amanda kept a smile affixed to her lips. As normally as possible, she placed her blanket on the far end of the fourth row and went about settling in as if she weren’t suddenly the most fascinating thing in these women’s world.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of sympathy on the face of the statuesque blonde who was now dating the boys’ coach. At any other time Amanda might have found the idea of such a sweet man dating such an apparently sophisticated woman intriguing, but today all she could think was, at least Coach Donovan had waited until he was divorced before he started dating.
Scanning the crowd for a glimpse of Rob, she caught Brooke Mackenzie, Hap Mackenzie’s dewy-skinned trophy wife, assessing her with interest. Amanda’s heart lurched as she realized that this was probably what that Tiffany business looked like—all pampered and polished. Amanda’s eyes teared up, and she dropped her gaze, unwilling to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her falter. As Tom Hanks said in A League of Their Own, and as she’d often reminded Wyatt, there was no crying in baseball.
Swiping the moisture from her cheek, Amanda checked her watch and then did what she hoped was another casual scan for Rob. She caught Wyatt’
s attention and sent him a thumbs-up. Wyatt smiled briefly but then his gaze moved past her toward the parking lot. He flinched and turned away.
Unable to stop herself, Amanda turned to glance over her shoulder. Rob was crossing from the parking lot and heading toward the field, his gaze locked on his son. She watched him bypass the stands altogether—he didn’t even bother to check for her presence—and trip happily down the concrete steps toward the dugout.
He looked like Rob, but not. He had the same blond hair, the same even features, the same lanky build, but the hip-hugging bell-bottomed blue jeans, the spotless white T-shirt, and the red sweater knotted around his neck were new. And so was the skip in his step.
The heat rose to her face and her hands clenched at her sides. The rush of blood to her brain was so loud she barely heard her own gasp of shock or the sudden silence that now surrounded her. Because trailing along behind him was what could only be the new Z-3 in all her tight-chassised, glove leather glory.
Speechless, Amanda watched them go by. The girl—calling her a woman would have been a stretch—actually looked like she’d stepped off the cover of a magazine. In this case, probably Teen People.
She had a cloud of blond hair that moved with her as she walked and a body that made you look even when you didn’t want to.
She had perfectly sculpted limbs, high jutting breasts, and an absurdly tiny waist. Her stomach was unfairly flat over her low-slung jeans; it had never been stretched by childbirth and then expected to snap back. Her silk blouse was white and the burgundy leather blazer was beautifully tailored, but it was her face that sucked all the breath out of Amanda’s lungs as she passed. It was the most perfect face Amanda had ever seen.
“Holy shit!” The expletive left the mouths of the group of women seated around Amanda; it was torn from their lips and infused with both wonder and horror. Several made the sign of the cross. In their sweats and sneakers, wrapped in their blankets, and bedraggled from an afternoon of shuttling their children all over creation, they were a set of serviceable pearls, chipped and unpolished; Tiffany was a four-carat diamond in an antique platinum setting sparkling in the sun.
