Traci On The Spot

by Marie Ferrarella

  Morgan rose to his feet at the same time she jumped to hers. “Yikes,” she cried. “These drops are as big as swimming pools.”

  Without thinking, Morgan grabbed her hand and they ran up the hill toward the house.

  “‘Yikes’?” he echoed. “Who the hell says yikes these days? You’ve been watching too many cartoons.”

  “Never too many.” She laughed as they made it through the back door. And just in time. Suddenly, sheets of rain began falling.

  Jeremiah, agitated and distressed by the weather, almost managed to knock Morgan down as they hurried in. Morgan grabbed for the doorjamb and shifted out of the way just in time.

  Running a hand through his hair to shake off the rain, Morgan glared at the dog. “Can’t you train this animal?”

  She managed to maintain a straight face for almost a minute. “Not a problem. Jeremiah,” she said, looking sternly at the dog. “Knock him down. See?” Traci turned a sunny smile on Morgan. “He almost did it.”

  When was he ever going to learn? “Do you ever get serious?”

  Traci pushed her hair out of her face in the careless manner of a woman who was content with her looks in any situation.

  “Not if I can help it. It doesn’t pay. Too depressing.”

  She’d always been just a little too crazy for his tastes. “You know, there is a happy medium between Kafka and Jocko the Clown.”

  “Tell me when you find it” She looked down and saw that there was a small puddle forming on the floor where she stood. She’d gotten wetter than she thought in that short run. “You have any more towels around here, or do I just stand dripping on your floor?”

  “Sorry, this is all I have. I wasn’t expecting a storm.” His eyes washed over her as he passed her the lone towel. “Although, maybe I should have been.”

  She fluttered her eyes at him the way she’d done when she’d imitated Cynthia. “You say the sweetest things.” Traci rubbed the towel through her hair quickly, then offered it back to him.

  Morgan took it, vaguely aware that her scent was clinging to it. It became more potent when he brought the towel closer. Disturbed, he dropped it on the back of his chair.

  Something moved through him, restless and unsettled when he looked at her.

  He had to be crazy to be having these feelings about her. She was just as competitive, just as irritating, as ever. And she was about to be engaged. Any way he looked at it, the package was not inviting.

  Or wasn’t supposed to be.

  Avoiding her eyes, Morgan crossed to the window. “Not exactly the greatest weather for a reunion.” The trees directly outside the window were bending to and fro, like stately dancers doing stretching exercises before their performance. “You’d think the weather bureau could be right once in a while.”

  Traci stroked Jeremiah’s head, then moved beside Morgan. It was really beginning to look foul out there. Her first weekend off in months and it had to turn into this.

  She shrugged philosophically. “What? And spoil a perfect record? Not hardly. Think it’s easy always being wrong?” she quipped.

  He turned to look at her. She was back on the floor, stroking that wimp of a dog of hers. “I don’t know. Is it?”

  “Oh, low blow.” She grinned, and somehow the storm stepped back a few feet away from them. “I like that. You’re beginning to show promise.”

  The look in her eyes warmed him.

  The crack of thunder made Traci jump back to her feet. “I think it’s time to take this show on the road before there isn’t a road to take it on.” But even as she said it, Traci found herself not wanting to leave just yet. As if, once she walked out the door, she’d be closing a chapter of her life forever.

  It was a silly thought, but she couldn’t shake it.

  “You might be right,” Morgan agreed and then grinned at her. “I guess there has to be a first time for everything.”

  “Just because I said I liked that low blow doesn’t mean you should get carried away. A little sarcasm is a good thing, but there is such a thing as overkill.”

  “You ought to know,” he murmured. There was humor in her eyes and he was drawn to it.

  Every inclination directed her toward the door and the road beyond. She was right in wanting to leave before the road became impassable. And yet something—she wasn’t sure just what—was telling her to linger a little longer. Linger despite common sense and a whining dog to the contrary.

  She supposed there was no harm in giving in for a couple more minutes. Traci pretended to look around for her purse, stalling.

  “You never told me—why are your parents selling the house now?”

  She would have thought that was something they would have done during that low period they’d experienced, not now, when, according to her mother, everything was going so well for them. Jim Brigham’s company had not only regained its former ground but grown beyond it.

  Morgan paused, looking for the right words to frame his answer. “They want to be free to travel around in, to put it my mother’s way, ‘the sunset of their years.’“ He shrugged, looking around as if he hadn’t done so a dozen times already before she’d arrived. “My guess is that the house was beginning to need too many things—”

  “Like good storm windows?” There was a definite chill in the air that seemed to be coming from outside despite the fact that everything appeared to be locked up tight.

  He’d noticed the draft earlier; he nodded. “And other things.” He was warming to his explanation. “They were beginning to think of it as a burden, so they asked me to sell it for them.”

  She could guess at the practical reasons behind it, but she wasn’t all that crazy about practicality. No matter how much Daniel swore by it, she thought suddenly. The unexpected thought unnerved her.

  “Seems a shame to let it go.”

  He studied her closely. “Why? It’s falling apart.”

  She sniffed her contempt of his view. “You would only see that.”

  Morgan set his jaw hard and folded his arms before him. “What do you see?”

  Her expression softened as if she were looking beyond the walls. “Memories.” Habit as ingrained as breathing had him challenging her. “I don’t need a building to see that. Memories are in your head and your heart and, occasionally, in an album.”

  Her eyes widened as she looked at him. “Why, Morgan, that’s positively poetic.”

  Morgan knew better than to take her comment at face value. He waited for a punch line. She wasn’t about to disappoint him.

  “Limited,” she added airily, “but poetic.”

  He knew he could count on Traci. “Okay, I’ll bite. Why limited?”

  She glanced toward the fireplace in the living room and wished for a fire. It only reminded her that she really should be leaving.

  “Because if we followed your way of thinking, no one would have ever bothered with preserving historic landmarks.”

  He couldn’t help laughing at the comparison. “This house is hardly a historic landmark.”

  The man was hopeless. “No, not to the world. But to those of us who spent a lot of time here.” She stopped and looked at him. “You don’t feel anything, do you?”

  “Confused,” he volunteered. “Does that count?”

  Traci laughed as she hit his chest playfully with the flat of her hand. “No, that doesn’t—”

  The next thing she knew, Jeremiah was up and growling at Morgan as fiercely as if he’d just uncovered an entire battalion of enemy soldiers—or cats.

  Traci made a grab for the dog’s collar a second before he reared at Morgan. Teeth snapped with a menacing finality.

  Morgan took a step back uneasily. “What’s his problem?”

  “I guess Jeremiah thought we were fighting and he was coming to my rescue.”

  Those teeth really did look large close up. And lethal. So much for thinking the dog a wimp. “Better tether him if you and Daniel ever argue.”

  Traci stroked Jeremiah until
the dog calmed down again. With a tentative yawn, he lay down at her feet. “We don’t argue.”

  Morgan laughed out loud and Traci looked at him accusingly.

  “Oh, come on, Traci. This is me. I know you. You’d argue with God.”

  She stuck by her statement. It was the truth. “Daniel and I don’t argue.”

  As she said them, her own words made her think. Why didn’t they argue? Normal people argued. She more than most, although she wasn’t about to admit that point to Morgan.

  He looked at her closely. “You’re really serious.” True concern nudged him on. And maybe just a little bit of hope. “Traci, I was only kidding earlier, but maybe you should really think about this. He obviously can’t be the one for you. You need passion in your life, zest. The kind of man who can make you argue. A man who can periodically take you and shake you up—and you him.”

  Realizing he was saying a hell of a lot more than he intended to, Morgan abruptly stopped talking.

  He wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t thought herself, in the wee hours of the morning when the world was its blackest and doubts loomed their largest. The fact that she agreed, however, wouldn’t have stopped her from taking umbrage at his words.

  What stopped her was the look in Morgan’s eyes. He wasn’t baiting her, wasn’t trying to arouse her ire. He was serious.

  As if he cared.

  The way she had cared when she had thought of Morgan throwing away his life on someone like Cynthia. It gave her pause and momentarily took away her tongue.

  When she found it, she spoke quietly. “He’s a good man, Morgan.”

  Morgan wasn’t quite sure exactly how he had gotten in so close to her, he only knew that, somehow, they were standing almost toe-to-toe and the distance was rapidly shrinking, even though neither one of them was moving a muscle.

  “So’s the pope. You’re not marrying him.”

  A half smile curved her full mouth. “No, he didn’t ask.”

  Her answer told him more than she realized. “So, you are marrying Daniel?”

  She thought that one over carefully. Slowly, she nodded. “I think so.”

  Morgan resisted believing her. Because he didn’t think that in her heart she believed herself. “That doesn’t sound like the Traci I know. The one who runs headlong into things without thinking.”

  No, it didn’t. She forced a smile to her lips. “Maybe I’ve grown up.”

  He remained unconvinced. “I don’t think so. Not you. Not like this.”

  She lifted her chin, suddenly feeling very uneasy, as if the ground beneath her feet were liquefying. But that was impossible. That happened only during an earthquake, and they didn’t get earthquakes out here.

  Only storms.

  Like the one swirling around her now.

  “What would you know about it?” she challenged, digging for some of her customary bravado. “You haven’t seen me in, what, eight years?”

  “Nine,” he corrected softly.

  Very lightly, he feathered his fingers along her face. He couldn’t seem to help himself. Nor could he help this feeling that was taking hold of him against his will.

  It was against his will, wasn’t it?

  “And I know.” He smiled into her eyes, quieting her protest, as if anything earthly actually could. “I read your strip.”

  “I already told you, Morgan. All that’s exaggerated.” The words were supposed to be shouted. But they merely dripped from her lips like a faucet that wasn’t quite turned off.

  “Yes, I know.” His face, his lips, drew closer. “But so are you.”

  Something was twisting inside her stomach. “Morgan?” she whispered.

  “Hmm?” She seemed to be all around him, invading his senses like a virus.

  She ran the tip of her tongue over her parched lips. “You’re standing too close.”

  He cupped her cheek. “No, I’m not. I can’t kiss you from across the room.”

  “Oh.” Slowly, she nodded her head, as if in a trance. And maybe, just maybe, she was in one. Otherwise, she’d be running for her life. Because what she was feeling was scaring her. “Good reason.” Her throat had never felt so dry in her whole life. As dry as the world outside the window was wet.

  And then his lips touched hers and the world outside might as well have existed on another planet.

  Because she certainly did.

  5

  She heard them.

  She actually heard them. Bells. Banjos. And maybe even a sousaphone thrown in for good measure. They were all there, an entire symphony full of them. Along with music she couldn’t place and a rush of fire that threatened to consume everything in its path.

  Her, first of all.

  She’d seen the kiss coming. But what she hadn’t foreseen was what could come after. Nothing could have prepared her for that.

  Caught completely off guard, Traci had no defenses against the feeling that swept over her with the speed of a flame eating its way up a narrow line of gunpowder. And because her head was spinning around like a carousel at warp speed, she had no desire to offer any, either.

  Breathless, intoxicated, Traci allowed herself to be taken away by the feeling. To savor it, to revel in it. Most of all, to be awed by it.

  It was almost like when Rory kissed her. Almost but not quite.

  This was different.

  Better.

  Her fingers tightened on Morgan’s shoulders as she rose on her toes to surrender completely to the sensation. It was absolutely incredible.

  Traci?

  Her name throbbed in Morgan’s mind as bewildering, demanding sensations throbbed in other parts of his body.

  This was Traci?

  How a woman who had been as irritating as scratchy long winter underwear for more than a decade of his life, who was damn irritating now, could possibly inspire this rush he was feeling—this bone melting, mind numbing reaction that made him want to plunge himself into the kiss, into her, and never come up for air—was completely beyond him.

  He couldn’t begin to fathom it.

  Traci?

  Naw, couldn’t be.

  And yet, here she was, in his arms, sealed to his mouth, sucking out life forces from him with a speed that had Morgan reeling. And wanting more. A hell of a lot more.

  The very thought that he wanted to make love with her sobered him even as it threatened to send him over the edge.

  Shaken, dazed and more confused than he’d possibly ever been in his life, Morgan drew away from her. But as if some part of him refused to let go, he found himself still holding on to her arms.

  Morgan’s eyes narrowed as he studied her face. Yes, it was Traci. No doubt about it. What was in doubt, though, was his sanity. So much the more because part of him, against all odds, had suspected this all along.

  Traci swallowed. It didn’t help. Her throat felt dry, scratchy. She was aware of everything around her. She could have even sworn that she could feel her hair growing.

  “Were you trying to prove a point?” The question came out in a low whisper. Anything louder and she knew her voice would crack. Or even give out completely. And when had it gotten so damn hot in here? She blew out a breath. Her bangs fluttered against her damp forehead.

  Pulses throughout Morgan’s body scrambled to reclaim positions. He cleared his throat. “I don’t know, was I?”

  If he had been, it was completely lost on him. As were his bearings and, just possibly, his name, rank and serial number.

  Very slowly, the world came back into focus for Traci. This was ridiculous. She couldn’t be having this kind of a reaction to Morgan. Not Morgan. They were friendly enemies, competitors, maybe even fond of each other, but nothing more.

  But if that was true, how the hell had he managed to evoke this wild, erotic tune that was even now still ricocheting in her brain?

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. She had an odd expression on her face. Did she feel as disoriented as he did? It would help if she did. Not a hell
of a whole lot, but some.

  Traci slowly shook her head before answering, trying to buy herself a little more time.

  “Nothing,” she mumbled. Then her eyes looked up at him, wide with wonder. She had to say it. “You never kissed me before.”

  He would have, he thought, if he’d known that kissing her could pack such a wallop. But admitting it would put him at a disadvantage. “It never came up.”

  She could only stare at him incredulously, willing her knees back among the functioning. “And it did now?”

  He had to make light of it. If he didn’t, she’d see right through him—down to the shaken mess that was passing as his soul at the moment

  “We were standing close, your lips were there.” He shrugged, at a loss as to where to go from here. “I don’t know, maybe I was struck temporarily insane.”

  It seemed as good an explanation as any, at least to him. Why else would he have kissed her? It wasn’t as if he was actually attracted to her. Sure, she was pretty, gorgeous, even, in the right Light, but he knew her. Knew what she was like. How could he be attracted to a woman who had once put red ants into his sandwich?

  And yet, hadn’t he, in some small, imperceptible way, been attracted to her all along? Hadn’t he wondered, in the back of his mind, what it would be like to kiss her?

  Well, now he knew. And it blew out all the stops.

  There was something more there, Traci thought. She could see it in his face. Or maybe she was just hoping there was more—to placate herself and her still erratically fluttering pulse.

  “Is that your best defense, Counselor?”

  “That’s my best explanation,” he clarified. And then, because he believed in telling the truth, or at least some measure of it, he relented. “It’s either that, or call you a witch.”

  She didn’t knew whether to be annoyed or amused. “So this is my fault now, is it?”

  “Not so much a fault as-” He stopped as a thought struck him. “Do you kiss Donald this way?”

  “Daniel,” Traci corrected. Donald was the name of her cartoon suitor. Traci’s cartoon suitor, she amended, annoyed at herself for the slip. Annoyance shifted to a more likely target. “And that’s none of your business.”