A Soft Place to Fall

by Barbara Bretton

  He stood in the doorway for a minute. Her face was buried against the sleeve of a dark navy wool coat. Her eyes were closed. With a little luck she was sound asleep and would stay that way until morning. He used the opportunity to extinguish the candles in the bathroom, pull the stopper on the tub, and put towels down on the wet floor. Max watched him from the hallway, tail thumping in pure enjoyment.

  The front door was a whole other problem. He'd kicked it off its hinges and it now hung crazily in the frame. He'd need to make a trip to a hardware store in the morning so he could set it right again. He fit the door into the opening then pushed a suitcase in front of it. The solution wasn't going to win any awards but it would keep strangers out and Max and the cats in and right now that was the most he could ask for.

  He barely had time to secure the door when he heard another thud from the bedroom. He found her sitting naked on the floor in the hallway – the bed took up the entire room – looking so completely astonished that he couldn't help laughing.

  "Here," he said, taking off his shirt and handing it to her. "Put this on."

  She had trouble coordinating her movements so he helped guide her arms into the proper sleeves. Her fingers fumbled at the buttons.

  "Wrong side," he said.

  She tried again. "I'm really not this stupid," she said, her words slightly slurred.

  He knelt down on the floor in front of her. "Here," he said. "I'll do it for you." She smelled sweet and his body responded fiercely to her nearness. Her fair skin was rosy from the bath. Her curly hair drifted wild and damp across her shoulders. Her breasts were round and full and beautiful and she was completely at his mercy. The champagne had demolished her defenses. It would be easy to draw one of her tightly budded nipples between his lips and tease the tender flesh with his teeth. She would moan softly in the back of her throat and arch her back and he would slip his hand between her legs and feel her desire. It would be quick and fierce and primal. She would come first, he would see to that, and then when she was beginning her slow descent from the pinnacle, he would let himself go and she would rise again with him, higher and higher, until they crashed into the stars.

  He thought about flat tires, the Yankees' batting order, the mileage between Shelter Rock Cove and every major city in the United States while he quickly buttoned up her shirt, being careful not to touch even a millimeter of her lush and sensual body. When they made love, he wanted her to be there with him, body and soul.

  Chapter Four

  "Call her," Susan said as she scrunched down into the pillows with the phone pressed to her ear. "You screwed up. You created an awkward moment. Apologize before it goes any further."

  "Apologize for what," Hall demanded, his voice slightly muffled on the other end of the line. "I didn't do anything wrong."

  "You acted like a jerk. You let yourself get all bent out of shape over some guy whose dog trashed her car."

  "He skips out after his dog trashes her car and you're calling me a jerk?"

  "You're missing the point."

  "And you're missing Letterman," her husband grumbled from his side of the bed.

  She poked him in the shin with her heel.

  "What point?" Hall asked. She could hear the sound of papers rustling in the background. What was it with men and the telephone? They never gave it the full attention it deserved.

  "The point is that this guy and his dog aren't the point at all. Why waste time worrying about some tourist passing through town? Annie's here, and so are you. So what are you going to do about it?"

  More paper rustling on the other end of the line.

  "Stay out of it, Susie," her husband said in a low voice. "You're asking for trouble."

  She ignored him. He hated it when she played matchmaker but, as she frequently pointed out to anyone who would listen, she was responsible for three happy marriages in Shelter Rock Cove over the last ten years and she was gunning for number four.

  "Quit reading your mail while we're talking," she snapped at Hall. "You've waited twenty years for a chance to ask Annie out. I hope you're not planning to wait another twenty before you actually get around to it."

  She slammed down the phone. Sometimes a man needed emphatic punctuation before he got the point.

  "You're wasting your time," Jack said as she scooted over closer to him.

  "You don't know what you're talking about." She slipped into the crook of his arm and rested her head on his chest.

  "It'll never work out between them."

  "Sure it will."

  "Annie doesn't see him that way."

  "She doesn't see any man that way yet but when she does --"

  He held her close and kissed the top of her head. "When she does it won't be the Good Doctor Talbot."

  "You don't know that."

  "Yes, I do," he said, "and so do you. When Annie falls in love again, it won't be with anyone from Shelter Rock Cove."

  "Crystal balls," she asked dryly, "or is this just your way of telling me to mind my own business."

  He laughed, which was one of the reasons she loved him. "Kevin's shadow is everywhere in this town, Suze, and she knows it. One day some stranger's going to come riding in and our Annie will take a look at him and pow! We'll get a phone call from Vegas from the happy couple."

  Susan pretended to shudder. "That's horrible."

  "That's the way it's gonna happen and we both know it."

  "Vegas?"

  "One of those little chapels on the Strip."

  "Not with a total stranger. Annie's not the impulsive type."

  "We all are," Jack said, "given the right circumstances."

  "Nope," she said with conviction, "not Annie. She's too levelheaded for that."

  "Our girl's changing --"

  "She is not." Don't lie, Susan Mary Frances Galloway Aldrin. Isn't that exactly what you said to Annie in her kitchen?

  "Take another look, Suze. This isn't the same woman who was Kevin's wife."

  Tears filled her eyes. She wasn't the type of woman who gave into her feelings easily -- at least, not when anyone could see her. "I don't want things to change." Not in a way that was beyond her control. "Dad's gone, and so is Kevin, and my mother isn't getting any younger . . . who knows what's around the next corner. I've had enough." She struggled to rein in her emotions. "I've just had enough change to last a lifetime."

  "You sound like Claudia."

  She laughed despite herself. "That's a terrible thing to say."

  "You know I love your mother but if she had her way we'd all be watching Lawrence Welk on a black-and-white TV. Can't do it, Suze. Life keeps finding a way."

  She understood what he was saying but she wasn't ready to accept it.

  "I wish we could stop time . . . just stay the way we are right now." She took his hand and kissed each callused fingertip. "Is that so much to ask?"

  "No," said her husband of twenty years. "Not too much at all."

  #

  Hall hated it when Susan was right. They had been friends since grade school and her taste in his women was a hell of a lot better than his. Women had been interested in him since his voice changed. That had never been a problem. Picking the right one for the long haul – well, that was something else again.

  When he married Margaux straight out of med school, Susan had told him it would never work but he refused to listen. Six years later when he was getting ready to walk down the aisle with Denise, Susan had waggled her finger under his nose and ordered him to think very carefully about what he was doing because she absolutely refused to buy him a third wedding present. She had made a joke of it but they both knew she meant every word. She was kind enough not to mention that fact when he married Yvonne.

  Funny thing was each time he had believed the marriage would work. He wanted a family. He wanted a marriage that would last a lifetime. He had been brought up with those values and he still believed in them. His ex-wives were beautiful, accomplished women whose backgrounds and beliefs matched his d
own to the ground. He made good money as a doctor so they could pursue their own careers and other interests without worrying about where the next meal was coming from. There had been no screaming fights during either marriage, no wide expanses of disappointment or disinterest. In both cases the marriage should have worked and worked well and when he found himself in the middle of an amicable split nobody was more surprised than Hall and nobody less surprised than Susan Galloway Aldrin.

  "You're never going to be happy as long as you're still carrying that torch for Annie," she had told him during the Memorial Day Haddock Fry on the town green. "You need closure, Dr. Talbot, and until you find it nothing's going to work out for you."

  Four months had passed since that conversation and he was still wondering how in hell to make the first move. How did you tell the woman you'd loved since high school that you knew the reason why she didn't sleep well at night, why she was so determined to keep her flower shop thriving, why she'd sold the beautiful center hall Colonial and all of the furniture in it and moved to a shack by the water? How did you tell her that her husband had asked you for money a few days before he died and that you'd sent him away empty-handed and told yourself you were doing them both a favor when maybe that wasn't strictly true..

  Hall had told Kevin it was for his own good, that he had to come clean and figure a way out of the mess he'd made of his life before it was too late. He offered Kevin the name of a financial counselor who could help him figure a way back from the abyss but it was like talking to the wind off the ocean. Kevin was always a gentleman, even when his back was to the wall. He listened, he thanked Hall for his time, then he turned and walked out of the office. That was the last time Hall saw him alive.

  Two days later thirty-six year old Kevin Galloway was dead of a massive heart attack. Kevin left behind a grieving widow, a heartbroken family, and an old family friend who wondered if he was somehow to blame. He couldn't look at Annie without feeling responsible for the sorrow in her beautiful eyes.

  Call her, Susan had said. Pick up the damn phone and call her. Stop being the Family Friend and start acting like a man.

  Easier said than done, Susie. Annie's phone wouldn't be up and running until tomorrow afternoon.

  He could hear his pal's snort of derision. What's the matter with you, Talbot? Get in your fancy-schmancy Rover and drive over there. Bring a bottle of wine with you and toast her new address.

  He glanced at the heavy watch on his left wrist. Ten minutes to midnight. The Family Friend still knew the boundaries. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The Pfeiffer cesarean had been rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Rounds were mid-morning. Maybe he would buy up a bag of donuts from DeeDee's first batch of the day and bring them over as a low-key housewarming present. It wasn't a bottle of Pouilly-Fuisee but even the Family Friend had to start somewhere.

  #

  She wouldn't stay put. No matter how hard Sam tried to keep her in the sleigh bed, she kept finding a way to slide out of it. Finally he climbed in next to her and blocked her exit with his body. She'd already nearly set the house on fire and then come close to drowning. He wasn't about to test the theory that bad luck came in threes.

  The two cats were still at the far corner of the bed, down by the foot. Max was curled up in the hallway, snoring deeply. Outside the ocean crashed rhythmically against the shore while he spent his first night in Shelter Rock Cove in bed with a beautiful woman. They hadn't made love or kissed or held each other close and yet he felt as if they had shared all of that and more. He had come up here to be alone for the first time in his life while he tried to figure out his next move. The career that had defined his life for so long was dead and the future – hell, he couldn't see it through the fog.

  And then he saw her leaning over a grocery cart in the parking lot of Yankee Shopper and everything changed. He had made his living playing the odds, balancing the wise choice against the gamble, and he had always come out a winner. But when it came to life he took few chances. The lives of his brothers and sisters were in his hands and he wasn't about to screw that up. There had been women, not many but enough, but no one woman who made him feel as if everything that had come before was only a dress rehearsal. Besides, how many women wanted to throw in their lot with a guy who had five kids to raise at age nineteen?

  He had watched as his friends met and married. He toasted a trio of godchildren and bought more baby presents than he could count. The wheel kept turning and after a while he wondered if maybe he was meant to be the helpful big brother, the terrific best friend, the world's best godfather who even endured the "Uncle Sam" jokes with a smile.

  Funny how he had finally reached a place where he understood that not every man had a happily-ever-after ending in his future when fate sent The One into his life.

  She murmured something in her sleep and shoved her rump up against his side. Her sweet warmth was more intoxicating to him than the champagne she would regret in the morning. He knew how she looked when she stepped from the tub and that she had a tiny birthmark near her right nipple. He knew that she wore a wedding ring on her left hand even though she was a widow and that the guy with the thinning blond hair had seemed taken with her.

  Was she sleeping with him? The thought that another man might have the right to touch her twisted his gut into a painful knot.

  And where was her furniture? She didn't strike him as the minimalist type, not with this enormous sleigh bed. The sleigh bed was the property of a sensualist. No doubt about it. The wood was smooth and curved and lustrous. The mattress, high and firm and welcoming. The abundance of pillows belonged to a woman who understood comfort and went out of her way to find it even if the bed took up the entire room.

  There was so much he wanted to know. Who did she love? Was she happy? He wondered if Warren Bancroft knew the answers and, if he did, would he share them with Sam.

  He turned on his side and fitted his body around hers, drew her warmth into his skin, and let the world fall away.

  Tomorrow morning they would introduce themselves and go their separate ways but until the sun rose up over the ocean, the night belonged to them.

  #

  Annie opened her eyes then quickly closed them. Angry beams of sunlight stabbed her in the retinas, the temples, across her forehead, and around the back of her head. She took a deep breath then tried again. This time the room tilted at an odd angle while her stomach threatened to slide out from under her. Bad idea. She wasn't about to do that again.

  The vague memory of an empty stomach and a bottle of supermarket champagne swam into view. That would explain why she felt like a herd of elephants was learning to tango across her brain pan. Since when did George and Gracie snore like 747s on takeoff?

  Just take it slowly. No sudden movements. All you have to do is get from here to the shower and you'll be okay.

  Eyes tightly closed, she rolled over carefully, one little inch at a time, and was about to swing her legs over the side of the bed when she found herself face to face with the man she'd met in the Yankee Shopper parking lot yesterday. He was lying there next to her, bare-chested and in jeans, with his face pressed deep into one of her pillows. She glanced down at herself and realized she was wearing his shirt, half-unbuttoned, over her clearly naked body.

  "Oh . . . my . . . God!"

  He woke up on the last word, just before she let out a scream loud enough to bring the entire Shelter Rock Cove police department to her door.

  "Nothing happened," he said. "You're not in any danger."

  She felt like someone was blowing up balloons inside her head. "What in hell are you doing in my bed?"

  "I was making sure you didn't hurt yourself."

  Hurt herself? Just breathing made her fillings hurt. "Ten seconds," she said. "If you're not out of here by the time I count to ten, I'm calling the police." He didn't have to know that her phone service wouldn't be turned on until afternoon.

  He swung his legs from the bed and stood up in the hallwa
y. "You got drunk. You took a bath. Your robe caught fire and then you almost drowned in the bathtub."

  "Please." It was hard to look dignified when you were nursing the mother of all hangovers. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

  He met her eyes. "Yes."

  The smell of scorched fabric . . . the dream about him carrying a flaming robe . . . the sight of him plunging that robe into the bathroom sink . . . "I thought I dreamed it."

  "The robe's hanging over the shower rod and I used all of your towels to sop up the water on the floor." A grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. "And don't worry about the front door. I'll take care of it as soon as the hardware store opens up."

  She groaned and fell back against the pillows. "What happened to the front door?"

  "I didn't have a choice," he said. The grin widened. "Good thing I took kick-boxing."

  Another awful thought, one even worse than the kicked-in front door and the ruined robe, occurred to her. "You were in my bathroom last night."

  He nodded. "Yep."

  "And you –" She couldn't finish the sentence. It was too horrible.

  "I tried not to look," he said as the grin turned into a downright smile, "but I'm only human."

  She sat up, tugging at the shirt, wishing it covered her from neck to toes. "Then you got what you deserved," she snapped. "I'm ten pounds overweight and I haven't done a sit-up since 1997." Each word reverberated through her cranium like gunshot.

  "You're beautiful."

  "You're nuts."

  He said nothing, just watched as she coiled her tangle of hair into a knot on top of her head. Her fingers felt disconnected from the rest of her aching, queasy body and she fumbled about, growing clumsier with each second that passed.

  "Are you going to stand there blocking the doorway all day?"

  "You had a bad night," he said. "I want to make sure you don't have a worse morning."