The 200% Wife

by Jennifer Greene

  “Uh-huh.” Abby lifted her glass over the swirling, steaming water. It wasn’t like Gar was in a mood to accommodate her, but he moved faster than a spring-loaded trigger to grab the wine bottle and pour her a refill.

  “She never did call often. And since we were never more than friends—casual friends,” he rapidly qualified, “she had no reason to know you were in my life.”

  “Uh-huh. So your married broker likes to flirt with you on the phone, and this Narda is seriously gorgeous and occasionally lets you know she’s hot for your “od—”

  “Did I say either of those things?” Gar asked the ceiling. “I’m almost positive I never said either of those things.”

  Poor baby. Possibly she was savoring his being miserable—just a little bit—but enough was enough. “Listen, you, I never thought you were hanging out in a monastery until the day you met me. You’re a successful, single, eligible, adorable bachelor. Unless the women in Tahoe are all myopic, my guess is you have women giving you a rush quite frequently.”

  “You think I’m adorable, huh?’

  She rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to explain why those women calling you didn’t give me a royal cow. I can get into jealousy. I just tend to see it as a low-return investment. Worth indulging in, but not worth getting in a major sweat over. A lover who’d cheat on me would be out the door—nothing to be jealous about, because I wouldn’t want any more to do with him. But that’s a different situation. I can hardly hold you responsible because the ladies in Tahoe have good taste in men.”

  “I completely agree,” Gar said gravely, which earned him a splash and a tickling assault with her toes.

  He started laughing. Abby did, too, but she wasn’t quite ready to end the conversation. She was well aware that he’d started out the evening with another source of stress. Maybe the subject was quicksand, an area where a new lover had no right to intrude. But Abby had yet to see Gar vent a problem on anyone else, including her.

  She understood self-reliance and control and pride. She had all of them in abundance. Which, fortunately or unfortunately, made her uniquely aware of how stupid it was to take those things too far.

  “Gar…you can tell me to put my foot in it, if you want,” she said hesitantly. “But your ex-wife was one of those callers. I take it she still doesn’t seem inclined to leave you alone?”

  He sobered quickly. “No.” He rubbed a tired hand at the back of his neck. “It’s mighty tempting to tell you that I’ve found a brilliant way to handle the problem. But so far, any brilliant answers seem to elude me.”

  “I think I quit believing in brilliant answers when I was around twelve. Nothing in adult life is ever that easy,” she said gently. Even in that soft, shadowy darkness, she could see something in his eyes that made her pause. “Well, damn…have I somehow made this worse? Has she increased these calls because of me in some way?”

  “I don’t want you worried about it, Abby. It’s not your problem.”

  “That didn’t remotely answer my question, big guy.”

  He sighed, not without humor. “Because of the night she walked in on us, she’s aware you’re in my life,” he admitted. “Hell. She has no legal—or moral—right to know anything I do. But it seems to be bugging her. For some reason, it never seemed to occur to her that I would be with someone else.”

  It burned like a bee sting, that she could have accidentally added to the problems with his ex-wife. Abby hadn’t forgotten the promise she’d made to herself. Either she was good for Gar or she had no business being with him…and he’d already had an overdose of floundering women who couldn’t stand on their own. “So she’s more than giving you hell. She’s being a serious plague?” Abby murmured.

  “I’ve tried listening to her. I’ve tried cutting her off. Doesn’t matter what I do. It’s like getting through to rock,” Gar said dryly. “If push comes down to shove, I can try the obvious legal recourse and check out what constitutes a harassment charge—”

  “But it would really bother you to do that.” Abby had no trouble intuiting the why. “It’d go against your sense of honor, wouldn’t it, Cameron? You’ve got quite a dragon on your back about protecting women. No matter what the provocation, I can’t see you choosing to be tough with a lady unless you absolutely had to. And you’re probably worried she isn’t real stable on the drug front, that she could tip one way or another—especially if she’s showing you less-than-stable behavior with these calls.”

  She felt his eyes on her face, almost softer than a caress. “You don’t have to be this understanding, Abby. But you got the whole nutshell. I have no interest in encouraging her, but I just don’t want to feel responsible for anything she might do.”

  “And you’re not, Gar, but what you are doing is being way too tough on yourself. Just do the best you can, you know? If she really won’t quit, maybe you’ll have to make tougher choices. But as long as she isn’t driving you outright nuts, you don’t have to leap into some action that doesn’t feel right to you. However…”

  “However?”

  Abby felt she was about the least qualified person on earth to give advice on his ex-wife. It was more than time to move to less dangerous subject waters. “However…I keep thinking about your suite at the lodge. Not that it isn’t a stupendous place, but I can sure see that it’s pretty impossible to escape from stress there. I mean, you have no place where you can shut off the phones. Relax and put your feet up for real. Wouldn’t you like a yard? A place with a shop for your woodworking?”

  “Look who’s talking. You’re camping out in Don Juan’s lair.”

  She chuckled. “Well, that’s the truth.” She leaned her head back against the cool, smooth tiles, as he had. “It took about two seconds flat before I was happy being spoiled with the hot tub. But that den-of-iniquity bedroom with the cheesy fake furs sure isn’t what I’d choose on my own.”

  “So. If you could build an ideal place, what would you pick?”

  “Hmmm.” She took a last sip of wine and let it swirl on her tongue. “I dunno…a porch with an old-fashioned swing. Soft colors, maybe not pastels, but no stark black and whites, for absolute positive. Thick carpets, because I like being barefoot in the house…”

  “An easy-care kitchen…”

  “Definitely a must. And lots of closets, so it’s easy to get stuff put away and out of sight.”

  “I want a workshop. Long. Well lit. Where I can lock the door and shoot anyone who tries to come in.”

  Abby chuckled. “Me, too. I don’t want a workshop. But I always thought the ideal house would have a private place—an office or whatever. That was just my space.”

  “No purple,” Gar said firmly.

  She had to grin again. “You have a thing against purple?”

  “I love my mother. But I swear, I grew up purpled to death. No purples.”

  “Well, if you’re gonna get picky…I can’t stand pea green.”

  “No purples. No pea greens. How many bedrooms you want?”

  “Hmmm. That’s tricky. Even a dream house shouldn’t be such a monster size that it’s tough to take care of, but I’d still want some spare bedrooms for company…times like holidays, my family tends to descend en masse.”

  “Mine does, too. But what about bedrooms for kids?”

  “Kids?” she asked blankly.

  “Children,” Gar said succinctly. “Those little things that start out in diapers and never stop talking and make sticky messes? You want any of those?”

  His voice was lazy and light, teasing. So had hers been, yet this strange lump suddenly lodged in her throat. Once upon a time, her answer to his question would have been easy.

  She’d always wanted children. Her parents, her sisters, had always been everything to her. Growing up, she’d always pictured herself having the same kind of family, a house filled with noise and laughter and sibling squabbling and love. Definitely love.

  Ambition and her drive for achievement and success had postponed those dreams, b
ut initially Abby had assumed there’d be time for a family a little later. Over her years in business, though, that dream just started…eroding. The higher she climbed the corporate ladder, the more she’ was treated a certain way—by men and women, no different. If she was ambitious, she must have more testosterone than estrogen. Her femininity was suspect. She couldn’t be normal. Aggressiveness was admired in a guy, but no one loved a woman with the same qualities. Respected, yes. But definitely not loved. And those invisible messages over the years had kept adding up—if she was good at business, than she must be flawed at doing the traditional woman things. Like being a mom. And a homemaker. And somebody’s wife.

  She felt Gar’s eyes on her.

  And forced herself to swallow that sudden thick lump in her throat. Pictures flashed in her mind, of her cooking and baking debacles, of the failed crafts scattered all over her living room—but she banished those from her mind, too.

  There was no reason to think Gar intended something emotionally loaded by his question about children. They’d just been making idle chitchat about an imaginary ideal house, kids in general. The whole personal identity crisis she was going through was not Gar’s problem—nor did she ever want it to be.

  He was relaxed now, his arms stretched out on the rim of the malachite tub, and it was so rare to see him indulging in some serious laziness. The foolishness of eating Chinese in the bathtub had done the job. It was exactly what she’d wanted, what she’d hoped—to do something for him for a change. To be good for him. The way he’d been incredibly good for her. And absolutely nothing else was supposed to be on this night’s agenda.

  “Um…” Gar’s voice suddenly dropped an octave. Possibly because he’d discovered her toes traveling in some unexpected places. “Why do I have the feeling that we’re not still having a conversation about dream houses?”

  “You can talk about houses,” she assured him.

  “Well…but somehow my mind is suddenly less on houses and more on the imminent fear of drowning.”

  “You can’t swim?”

  “I can swim.”

  “You’re afraid of a little risk?”

  His eyes gleamed. “I think one of us is asking for serious, trouble, Stanford.”

  It positively couldn’t be her. She’d always been a problem-solver, not a problem-causer. Which she told him—primly and firmly—right before she scooched across the hot tub to-claim a kiss.

  He was smiling when she kissed him the first time. But his skin was slippery. Hot Distracting the man wasn’t even a marginal challenge, yet, amazingly, a simple, mischievous kiss turned into another, then another. And suddenly she was the one distracted.

  He dragged his mouth against hers, stealing her tongue. It was just play, still play, that stealing and dueling of tongues, but his hands discovered places to skate and slide that lacked any claim to child’s play. She was close enough to rub her slick, warm breasts against his slick, warm chest, to taste the water droplets on his shoulder, his jaw. A candle dribbled down to its base and flickered out. Fragrant smoke and steam drifted together, and their corner of the room was suddenly darker and more intimate. She could hear his breathing roughen, hear the burbling, bubbling water, but nothing seemed louder than the pounding of her own heartbeat.

  Nothing could happen. She was sure. No matter how huge the tub, it was still square, with no conceivable way to stretch out, no conceivable way to…

  Midway through another dragging, drugging kiss, he pulled her on top of him. Water sluiced and slooshed as he maneuvered her on his lap, her knees tucked around his hips. Blood rushed through her pulse at a fresh gallop. It seemed Gar had a slightly different vote on what could or couldn’t happen. Cradled on his lap, she could hardly fail to feel his interest in the project grow and harden. It was something like sitting on a hammer. A warm, pulsing hammer.

  “You’re going to kill me,” he murmured once, his voice as rough and hoarse as if he were a man suffering from fever:

  Maybe fever was her problem, too. Her old friend Anxiety hadn’t shown up with Gar before, but her heart was firing frantic pistons of nerves now. She was a take-charge lady, but not in this. She didn’t know what to do in this position, felt fumblingly awkward and afraid of failing him, and where his body was mostly concealed by the silky, silvery water, hers was painfully, vulnerable exposed. This was exactly the kind of nerves that always made her freeze up. Only…

  Only that fever kept sweeping her under, sabotaging that whole intelligent, commonsense train of thought. It was all Gar’s fault. Gar had put the goofy idea in her head that she had power—the feminine power to please him, to entice him, that he wanted her to do those things, that she could.

  And damn the man, but she just couldn’t keep her mind on worrying about failing him. The look in his eyes seemed to hot-wire all her sensible logic. Water lapped at their heartbeats as he lifted her, watching her response as he slowly, intimately filled that aching hol-lowness inside her. He felt silky. Hot. Huge. And she suddenly felt liquid from the inside out, her pulse gamboling, charging like a wild colt who’d just discovered freedom. She couldn’t catch her breath. He wouldn’t let her try.

  In the satin darkness, his palms cupped her breasts, lifting them, kneading. He whispered, “I love you.” He whispered, “You’re beyond beautiful, love.” And then he whispered something angry with frustration, and by then she was so rattled and so hot that she started a rhythm without thinking.

  There was only him at that moment. Not the outside world. Not any of the things she was failing at, grappling with, struggling over. She wasn’t failing him, because she was hopelessly, helplessly, part of him, instead of separate. What frustrated him, frustrated her. What pleasured her, pleasured him.

  She knew how to love him. The stunning realization scissored through her pulse, slicing through inhibitions, cutting past fears. She trusted Gar, maybe more than she did herself. This wasn’t need like a weakness, but need as bright and vital and strong as life. She felt strong with him. She felt love, wrapping her up in his secure arms, and something inside her bolted free on that wild rock and ride.

  She’d have laughed from sheer joy, if desire wasn’t clawing at both of them by then with sweet, wet, erotic teeth. Her muscles tensed for that first crash of pleasure that somehow spiraled into another and another. Colors exploded behind her eyes, no black and whites, but rainbows instead, jeweled colors flashing light and sensation.

  And then she fell against Gar with an utterly exhausted splash.

  “Listen, you lazy slugabed.”

  “Hmmm?” She heard Gar’s voice, but she was still half-asleep and enjoying a dream replay of crashing on his chest in the tub the night before. The splash. His throaty laughter. And then his stroking her, stroking her, as they both struggled to breathe normally again…

  The slap on her fanny made her blink awake.

  Positively she preferred the dream over reality, Abby mused. Last night he’d treated her like the most precious treasure he’d ever found. He’d told her he loved her in a way that made a fist squeeze tight around her heart. A fist of longing. A fist of incredible wonder.

  So much for love. When another swat on her backside failed to rouse her, the devil started pulling away the nice, warm, thick blanket. And then the sheet. “You dog,” she said groggily.

  “Now, now. I made you breakfast in bed. Doesn’t that give a guy some brownie points?”

  Unwillingly she opened her eyes, and had to instantly squint against the mercilessly bright sunlight. But she saw the tray and its contents. A fluffy omelet with fresh mushrooms. Toast, dusted with cinnamon and sugar. Coffee thicker than sludge. “Good grief, you’re scaring me, Cameron. I wasn’t born yesterday. You must want something.”

  “Sheesh, is the woman suspicious or what?”

  “I trust you implicitly,” she assured him. “But no man goes to this much trouble from the goodness of his heart. Whatcha want?”

  “Nothing. But, um, I would appreciate it if you
’d eat fast.”

  “Uh-huh. I knew there was something on the man’s mind,” she told the coffee, but her gaze was drawn to him like a thief tempted by an open bank vault. Some things a woman just couldn’t be expected to resist. “You’re not only dressed, but fresh-showered, fresh-shaved, shoes on, yet…What on earth time did you get up?”

  “Six. I started thinking about everything we talked about last night. Houses. Moving. A place of my own. So I called a real estate agent—”

  “At six in the morning?”

  He fed her the toast to hurry her along. And then sabotaged his own efforts by kissing her between bites. “It was a friend, a guy I play racquetball with, already knew he was an early bird like me. Anyway, I have to be back at the lodge by noon for a meeting. But Russ told me about a house that’s just going on the market that we could get a first look at this morning.”

  She swallowed quickly. “Did anyone ever mention that you move at the speed of light? Wouldn’t you like to think about this for a long, lazy twenty-four hours before making a giant move like this?”

  “I’m not making a move. But real estate can come and go damn fast in Tahoe, especially if it’s a good place, and Russ seemed to think it was a prize. I just want a look-see, but I’d really like your opinion, rather than checking it out alone.”

  “So you’ve got a meeting at noon, and you want time to house-hunt, and. it’s—” she checked the bedside clock “—nine o’clock now. So I take it I’ve got three seconds flat to finish this incredible breakfast and get dressed?”

  “Hey, I wasn’t going to rush you. You can take at least five minutes,” he said magnanimously.

  Abby hurled a pillow at his head with a laugh—but she also engulfed her breakfast and threw on clothes faster than the speed of light. She had no idea if he was serious about the house hunting or if this was just a “play” outing. But she didn’t care. She wanted to be with Gar, but not here, not anywhere near the malachite bathtub or the rumpled big bed—not for a little while.