“I’ll try to settle Alice, then I’ll be in to help.”
She carried her daughter into the sunroom and set her in the bassinet. Harry entered as she was tucking the blanket in around Alice’s feet.
“I put her in here so she won’t wake up if we make noise,” she explained, glancing over her shoulder.
He looked at Alice with an unreadable expression on his face. “I didn’t notice before, but she’s got your nose and jaw.”
Pippa considered her daughter’s face. “It’s funny, but all I can see is Steve. She has his hair and hairline. And his eyes.”
“She looks like you, too.” He crouched beside Alice and ran a finger lightly over her downy hair.
Pippa wasn’t sure what it was, but there was something about his large, work-toughened hand touching her daughter so gently, so tenderly… All of a sudden a lump formed in her throat and she blinked rapidly to dispel totally inappropriate tears.
As if he could sense her inner turmoil, Harry glanced at her. She pulled a face, trying to make light of her stupid emotionalism.
“Sorry. Mummy hormones. Steve has only seen her one time, the day she was born....” She sniffed mightily, willing her stupid tear ducts to dry up.
Harry’s mouth settled into a tight line as he returned his gaze to Alice. They both watched her daughter in silence.
“He’ll come round, you know,” Harry said. “I know him pretty well, and he’ll come round.”
“It says a lot of good things about you that you believe that, Harry, but I can’t live my life banking on that. It’s not fair to Alice. And it’s not fair to me, either.”
He didn’t argue with her. What was there to say, after all?
She slapped her palms against her thighs and forced a smile. “So. This hole we’re supposed to be repairing…”
Harry led the way to the bedroom, surveying the area briefly before turning to her. “It’s going to get messy. I’ve got some drop sheets, but I think we should put your bed in the hall, since you’re sleeping on the couch anyway.”
“Okay, sure. I’ll get rid of the bedding....”
She’d done a cursory cleanup last night, removing the worst of the debris and vacuuming up the insulation. Now, she tugged the quilt and sheets free and dumped them in Alice’s room. When she returned, Harry already had her mattress off the bed and was manhandling it through the door. She helped him lean it against the wall, then returned to the bedroom to move the box spring. Lifting it revealed the many small odds and ends she stored beneath the bed—a pretty keepsake box, stacks of books, a few pairs of old shoes, her radio—as well as dust bunnies the size of small ponies.
“What can I say? Vacuuming is not my forte,” she said when Harry nudged one with the toe of his boot.
“Better be careful one of them doesn’t crawl up and eat you in your sleep.”
“Idiot. Everyone knows dust bunnies are vegetarians. As if.”
They were both smiling as they shuffled the box spring into the hallway and leaned it against the mattress. When they returned to the bedroom she knelt on the floor and began collecting the books. Harry leaned down to unplug the radio. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him reach for the keepsake box and an alarm sounded deep in her brain, sending a spurt of adrenaline rocketing through her body.
If anyone should be moving that box, it was her. In fact, if she’d been thinking with even a single brain cell, she would have anticipated this scenario and hidden it deep in the closet hours before he was due.
Acting on instinct, she shot out a hand to intercept him, hoping to beat him to the box. “I’ve got it,” she blurted.
Not her smartest move ever.
Her hand collided with the side of the box as Harry grasped it, knocking it from his hand. She watched with dawning horror as it tumbled to the floor. The lid popped off, and the contents fell out and rolled across the floor.
Shit.
For a moment they were both very still as they stared at her hot-pink silicone vibrator, complete with spare batteries—just in case—and a small tube of personal lubricant.
Heat roared into her face. For a moment she could do nothing but breathe. She didn’t dare think of making eye contact with Harry. Instead, she reached out and ever-so-calmly popped the vibrator into the box, along with her other goodies. Standing, she crossed to the tallboy, opened the top drawer and stuffed the whole thing in amongst her underwear.
She pushed the drawer closed, her hand clenched around the knob, painfully aware that she needed to face Harry.
Pippa didn’t move. She felt as though every muscle in her body was stiff with embarrassment. God only knew what he was thinking of her.
That she was a horny single mum.
That she lay in her bed at night thinking about sex and men. That she was gagging for it.
You’ve got to admit, some of those things are true.
Not all of them, and not all of the time. For example, she didn’t lie in bed every night thinking about sex and men. And she wouldn’t describe her desire for sex as gagging, exactly. But she did miss sex. She did miss the hard strength of a man’s body. She missed the sweaty earthiness, the needfulness of the sex act. She missed the intimacy and simplicity and the rawness and the release of it.
She missed feeling desired, and the warm, languorous few seconds afterward when her body was loose and satisfied and her brain ceased to function and simply was.
She missed feeling like more than a mother, missed feeling like a woman.
It won’t get any easier. Turn around, say something clever, move on.
She unclenched her hand, took a deep breath and turned around.
Harry was winding the cord around the body of the radio, his movements very neat and precise. He didn’t look up, and he didn’t say anything. She tried to think of something witty to say, but her brain was still ringing with humiliation. Instead, she resumed collecting the books. She transferred them to the hall. Harry followed, placing her radio alongside them. They returned to her bedroom together and stared at the empty space they’d created.
“Lots of women have one,” she said suddenly. “Women have needs, too, even if we don’t run around advertising them on billboards. I refuse to feel embarrassed about a perfectly natural act.”
“Then don’t.” He sounded pretty matter-of-fact.
She looked at him out of the corner of her eyes. He appeared pretty matter-of-fact, too. He caught her looking and shrugged.
“In case you haven’t worked it out, I’m the last person who will ever judge a woman for seeking a little pleasure.”
Huh.
She thought about it for a second and decided she believed him. Some of the tension left her shoulders. So he knew that she occasionally got off in the privacy of her bedroom with the aid of a battery-operated device. Big deal. They were both grown-ups. He probably did…things in the privacy of his own bedroom, too.
She cleared her throat. “I guess you’ll want to set up the ladder now, yeah?”
He did, putting down drop cloths first before positioning the ladder to one side of the hole. She stood clear as he donned a face mask, grabbed his hammer, climbed the ladder and started pulling down the remainder of the two sheets of plaster. Dust filled the air and she retreated into the hallway. Five minutes later, that job was done, the room was filled with what looked like mist and Harry was standing in the middle of it, his hair and face and body covered with plaster dust.
Any other man would look stupid, like a man-sized sugar-doughnut. Harry looked like a Greek statue come to life, hard and tough and perfectly proportioned.
She crossed to the window and opened it, then they put the debris into garbage bags. It wasn’t comfortable—she was still way too self-conscious over the reveal to feel comfortable—but it was bearable, and the next hour flew by as Harry hauled the new plaster sheets up the ladder and screwed them in place. She helped by holding each sheet up with the aid of a broom to extend the reach of her arms, bracing her
body beneath the handle and gritting her teeth until her arms and legs trembled with the effort. By the time he’d installed both sheets she was dripping with sweat and wrung out.
“Enough for tonight,” Harry said, tossing his hammer into his toolbox.
“If you’re stopping because of me, I can keep going.”
“Sure you can, slugger.”
She decided not to argue with him, since she really didn’t have the energy. She helped him pack his gear for the night then offered him a coffee.
He hesitated a moment before shaking his head. “Thanks, but I’d better make tracks.”
She saw him to the door and waved him off, just as she had last night. The second she closed the door, the moment with her vibrator sprung out from the vault she’d confined it to in her mind. She’d managed to keep it at bay while they worked, but now there was nothing stopping her from reliving the whole debacle in vivid Technicolor.
She closed her eyes and moaned pitifully as the image of her hot-pink vibrator tumbling at his feet played over and over in her mind. Talk about humiliating. No, it was beyond humiliating. Someone needed to invent a new word to cover the level of embarrassment she was currently experiencing.
She didn’t want Harry knowing such a personal, private thing about her. It was way too intimate. And they weren’t intimates. At best, they were sort-of friends—sort-of because there were a bunch of things standing in the way of them ever being true friends, Steve being the major impediment.
Despite that, Harry now knew that sometimes, when the need took her, she spent some up-close and personal time with her hot-pink battery-operated boyfriend.
She moaned again and clenched her teeth. If she could, she would erase those few seconds from the history of the world.
But she couldn’t. Harry knew what he knew, and she knew that he knew, and nothing would ever change that. And tomorrow night he would arrive at her house promptly at six o’clock and she would have to look him in the eye and pretend it was business as usual, as she had tonight.
This would be a really good time to run off and join the circus, in case you were wondering.
The phone rang, the sound startlingly loud in the quiet of the house. Pippa raced to get it before Alice woke.
“Pippa. Sorry it’s a little late, but I’ve been meaning to call all day and check how you are,” her mother said. “Did the money come through all right?”
Pippa had called her mum last night to explain about the ceiling and ask for a small loan to cover the building supplies for the repair. True to form, her mother had agreed immediately and the money had landed in her bank account this morning.
“It did. Thank you. You’re a life saver.”
“You sound a little rushed. Is this a bad time?”
“No, Harry was here but he’s gone now. I ran to get the phone so Alice wouldn’t wake up.”
“Harry?”
“He’s the friend I mentioned who was helping with the repair.”
“Oh, that’s right. He’s clearly a good friend to have. Would I have met him?”
“No.” Pippa could hear the stiffness in her own voice. She wasn’t sure why, but she felt uncomfortable talking about Harry.
“Sorry. Am I being nosy?” her mother asked in her blunt, no-nonsense way.
“There’s nothing to be nosy about.” More stiffness, with a side order of defensiveness. What on earth was wrong with her?
“Okay,” her mother said diplomatically. “How’s my favorite granddaughter?”
They talked about Alice for a few minutes before her mother wound up the call.
“Speak soon, okay?” she said.
“Okay. Love you.”
Pippa was about to put the phone down when her mother spoke up.
“Pippa…if you ever wanted to go out to dinner or a movie, I’d be more than happy to come down and babysit. You only have to ask.”
Pippa was so surprised she took a moment to respond. “Um, sure. Thanks.”
“I want you to know the option is there, if you need it.”
“I appreciate it, but don’t hold your breath.” It wasn’t as though her social life was exactly jumping these days.
“Being a mother doesn’t mean you’re not a person still. You know that, right?”
Where was all this coming from? “I know that.”
“I hope so.”
They said their goodbyes then and ended the call. Pippa tried to understand why her mother had suddenly decided to give her a pep talk on getting a life. Was she really that sad?
She thought about the vibrator incident and groaned. Certainly, Harry thought she was that sad.
Because it didn’t bear thinking about—any of it—she went to bed. Tomorrow was another day, after all, full of fresh opportunities to humiliate herself.
* * *
PIPPA HAD A vibrator. Not just any vibrator, either. A hot-pink, generously proportioned device that would give plenty of guys a permanent case of performance anxiety.
She had spare batteries at the ready, too, as well as a tube of lubricant. She kept it all in a neat little box beneath her bed, within easy reach should the mood take her. Any time she got the urge, she had only to reach her hand down to find instant satisfaction....
Harry pulled over to the side of the road with a screech of tires. He gripped the steering wheel, shut his eyes and tried to banish the images filling his head—Pippa, flushed and breathless, pleasuring herself with Mr. Pink a dozen different ways. In the bath, in the shower, on her bed…
“Stop it.”
He was out of control. At least, his libido was. The rest of him was fighting a valiant rearguard action, but he wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold out.
It had been bad enough that she’d been wearing those jeans again. He’d been half expecting it, since she’d made it clear she planned to help him, but he’d still had trouble keeping his eyes off her ass as she moved around the kitchen.
Then there’d been their conversation over dinner. With any other woman, he’d have called their light, teasing conversation flirting. With Pippa… He didn’t know what it was. They’d always teased each other, going out of their way to coax a smile or a laugh. They’d always bounced ideas and insults around. Before, though, she’d been Steve’s, and it had seemed harmless to enjoy that kind of verbal play with her. Now, it felt different. He’d never let himself see her as a desirable woman before, but after tonight and the incident with her bra he had all these pictures in his head and it was getting harder and harder to stop himself from doing something stupid.
Something that would probably get his face slapped and make it impossible for him to help her in the future.
The thought sobered him, not so much because he was worried about getting his face slapped, but because he hated the idea of Pippa needing help and not being able to ask for it.
A car sped past, rattling the truck windows. He unclenched his hands from the steering wheel.
He wouldn’t make a move on Pippa. She wasn’t some girl at the bar looking for fun times. She was serious. She had a daughter she was raising on her own. She was studying and working part-time. Her life was complicated and intense and full of compromises and responsibilities.
He wasn’t up for any of that, and she wasn’t the kind of woman who would be interested in a no-strings roll in the hay. It was never going to happen.
Harry felt a little calmer, a little more in control as he signaled and pulled out into the road. All he had to do was survive a couple more nights of close contact, then he could bow out of her life and go back to being a distant friendly face she saw in passing every now and then. A friendly face who kept his thoughts above her neckline.
A familiar truck was parked out front of his house when he turned onto his street. His foot stilled on the accelerator for a split second before he got a grip on himself. He pulled into his driveway and watched in the rearview mirror as Steve stepped out of his truck and made his way up the drive.
In all of Harry’s justifications and excuses and rationalizations over the past few minutes, not once had Steve figured in his thinking—yet his friendship with Steve should have been the primary reason preventing anything from happening between him and Pippa. It should have been the first thing that came to mind, not the last.
It didn’t matter that they’d parted badly the other night. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t spoken since. He and Steve had a shared history that stretched back more than fifteen years—not something a man threw away because he had an itch to scratch. Even if that itch was approaching unbearable.
Steve’s expression was masked by darkness as Harry joined him in the driveway.
“You been waiting long?”
“Long enough.” Steve ground the words out, low and angry.
“What’s going on?”
“I saw your truck at Pippa’s.”
There was an unspoken accusation in his friend’s tone. Harry went still. “And?”
“I want to know what you’re playing at.” Steve shifted, his booted feet scuffing the cement.
Harry might not be able to see Steve’s face clearly but he could read his body language just fine. He was squaring up. Spoiling for a fight.
“I’m not playing at anything. I’m helping her out.”
“You think I’m an idiot? You think I didn’t notice the way you used to look at her when we were going out?”
Harry’s temper rose. He’d never so much as looked sideways at Pippa when she and Steve were an item.
“Think really carefully about what you’re about to say, because I’ve had a long freakin’ day.”
“Are you, then? Are you screwing her?”
“You’re an idiot.” Harry brushed past him, heading for the porch.
“What’s wrong? Can’t look me in the eye and admit it?”
“Go home, mate,” Harry said without turning around.
“If you’re not doing her, then why were you over there at ten at night?”
Harry unlocked the door and swung it open, reaching inside to flick on the porch light. Only then did he turn toward Steve, taking in his friend’s strained, unhappy face and tense posture.
Suddenly You Page 11
