The Wallflower

by Jan Freed

  O-oh, what she’d give to feel. His mink soft hair, the lean planes of his face, his hard sculptured mouth...that beautifully formed mouth. Startlingly sensual in such a masculine face.

  What would that mouth feel like pressed against her own? Sarah’s longing to know was a physical pain. Stupid to torture herself like this. She looked up.

  Jack stared back.

  Oh-god-oh-god-oh-god.

  Busted! Caught red-handed in a grip of lust and love she couldn’t control, couldn’t hide—because she couldn’t look away.

  The thread of awareness always between them zapped into a white-hot humming current. Charging the air she breathed, forcing her to take shallower and faster breaths. She watched helplessly as his eye color shifted from khaki to a swirl of green-gold flecks.

  Oh-god-oh-god, we’re alone in a closet, her heart babbled.

  Yes, but why? Think! her mind commanded.

  Jack had something he wanted to tell her. Yes, that was it. If she didn’t break this unbearable tension soon she’d do something really stupid. Like launch herself at him bodily.

  “Wha—” She stopped and cleared her throat. “What did you want to tell me, Jack?”

  His eyes clouded, as if he were having trouble processing her question.

  “You got a message in your mailbox,” she reminded him desperately.

  Comprehension lit his gaze, along with the return of that strange earlier excitement that had driven him to seek a private place to talk. “Yeah, a message from Irving Greenbloom to call him as soon as possible. I phoned from the teacher’s lounge. And Sarah...”

  The result of his call fermented in his gaze, frothing up to spill over in a flow of words. “Two independent production companies want to option Free Fall. It could mean an auction! Irving is flying to Houston on Friday to discuss negotiation terms with me. He thinks I have a good shot at doing the rewrites, if I want.”

  It was Sarah’s turn to process words sluggishly. “Rewrites? Isn’t the sceenplay already written?”

  “Yes, but all directors want changes to scripts. Usually major changes. Usually hired out to one or more established writers the director trusts. This could be a huge opportunity for me, Sarah!”

  A thought struck dread in her heart. “Would you have to leave Houston?”

  His inner glow dimmed. “I don’t know. Maybe. I hadn’t thought much past telling you.” He frowned at a lower shelf as if taking stock of more than bathroom supplies.

  This was his dream come true they were talking about. He’d waited for her in the hallway, knowing the danger of being spotted with a female student. Risking it anyway to share his good news with her first. She’d dampened his joy, when this should be a shining glorious memory.

  “You did it, Jack!” Sarah said fiercely, drawing his surprised gaze. “I’m so proud of you, I could bust! If I could, I’d take you out for lobster and champagne, my treat. But you’ll have to settle for my congratulations.”

  Gathering all the love and admiration she felt for this man—which was more than enough to smother her selfish disappointment—she poured it into a beaming smile.

  For an astonishing instant she saw his throat work. Then he laughed self-consciously and rumpled his hair. Too cute!

  “I’d settle for a big hug,” he said, spreading his hands wide.

  She rushed forward gladly. His strong arms aided her burrowing snuggle against his chest. She laid her cheek against his boring blue shirt, absorbed the battering beat of his heart...and would’ve happily stayed locked in a supply closet for the rest of her life—if it meant she could stay locked in his arms.

  She closed her eyes and inhaled his fresh woodsy scent, a combination of clean skin and expensive cologne. Her hands crept around his waist. “You smell so good,” she murmured, drowsy and content.

  His arms tightened, his heartbeat sped up. He lowered his face and nuzzled the crown of her head.

  Her eyes popped open.

  “Mmm, even your hair smells like peaches,” he said in a satisfied growl. “Did you know that’s my favorite food in the world? Is that why you do everything but brush your teeth with the damn things, so you can slowly drive me crazy?”

  She was wide-awake now. “No-o. The guest house has a big basket of peach-scented stuff. It’s got everything. Soap, shampoo, lotion, talcum powder—even body massage oil.”

  He grew very still.

  “That’s the only one I haven’t used, yet. Maybe I’ll try it soon. What do you think?” She smiled against his shirt.

  “I think you like to live dangerously.” His thudding heart belied his casual tone.

  “Depends on how you define danger. I don’t like knowing there’s a bullet out there with my name on it, if only the gun knew where to find me. But I kind of like driving you crazy. Serves you right for making me jealous.”

  He drew in a sharp breath.

  She didn’t smile. She’d crossed the line from coy innuendo to true confessions. There was no turning back now. “Why did you kiss Donna that night like you wanted to take her to bed?”

  His breath released slowly. To his credit, he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It was an experiment. To see if I wanted to take her to bed.”

  She tensed. “And did you?”

  “I’ve answered that once already.”

  “No, not ‘Did you take her to bed?’ Did you want to? Tell me the truth.” A year crawled by.

  “No, Sarah, I didn’t.”

  She was so consumed with relief it took her a second to realize he was slipping off the straps of her backpack. “What are you doing?”

  “First, I’m getting rid of this thing.”

  He caught the full weight of the pack with one hand and lowered it easily to the floor.

  “Then I’m getting rid of this damn jacket—” his fingers were already on the third button “—which, by the way, I really, really hate—” he tugged off the garment one sleeve at a time while she stood as limp as a toddler “—so I can see this short little purple dress of yours—” he tossed her coat over her backpack “—which, by the way, I really, really love. And then, Sarah Davidson, we’re going to conduct a little experiment.”

  “We are?” Her voice came out thready and weak. Lack of oxygen tended to do that.

  “Yes, we are,” he stated firmly in his resonant Moses voice.

  Hallelujah!

  He swept a steel forearm around her waist, tilted up her chin with his free hand and lowered his head.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SARAH GLIMPSED the turbulent swirl of Jack’s creek water eyes and braced herself for rapids.

  But the first touch of his lips against hers was soft, a sliding of flesh into a quiet pool. Silky. Supple. Stunningly sensuous, for all that his mouth barely made contact. One brush. Two. A slight waggle of his head.

  Her eyelids fluttered down. She slid her palms over his shoulders and pressed chest to knee against Jack Morgan. Indescribable. A blissful sigh parted lips she kept open—an entreaty that, much to her frustration, he ignored.

  For such a hard-looking mouth, his lips were exquisitely gentle. They brushed and plucked and nibbled in careful increments of increasing pressure. As if he had all the detachment, all the patience, all the control of a scientist in his lab. Without her bulky jacket between them, Sarah knew better.

  Every male muscle pressed against her was taut and straining, evidence she hadn’t misread his eyes earlier. The creek rushed strong and fierce, was in fact rising up the banks of his control by the second. The hard ridge nudging her belly urged her to jump right in. And unlike Jack, she didn’t need an engraved invitation.

  Sarah threaded her fingers through his hair, sealed their mouths together and recklessly took the plunge.

  She stroked boldly, greedy for texture and taste, eager to enter the deep waters just beyond her reach. Three seconds passed. Four. Then she hit the current she sought. The green-gold swirl she loved. The man he hid from the world. Impassioned...and blisteringly p
assionate.

  The powerful arm cinching her waist dragged her in tighter, bending her back. His free hand moved to catch the base of her skull. He swallowed her gasp and slanted his mouth for a tighter fit—the better to sweep her away with his delving tongue.

  Being kissed by Jack was hot, rough and wet. The wildest most exhilarating ride of her life. She tumbled against the sleek boulders and banks of his mouth with instinctive pliancy. Yielding to his domination. His sheer maleness. Aggressive, but not bullying. Exciting and natural.

  The things he did to her mouth generated a moist billowing heat between her thighs. A tension she recognized, but had never experienced this fast, this tight, this desperate. Twining her arms around his neck, she rotated her hips against his groin.

  Sensation rocketed up from the point of friction, sluiced back down in a warm liquid rush.

  He reached spread-fingered for her bottom, then lifted her inches off the floor. She broke off the kiss and panted. Dizzy. Shelves moving. She was moving. But where? She braced her palms on his bunched shoulders and twisted.

  His mouth latched onto her right breast.

  Through crushed velvet and pink satin, as if her nipple were bare, he suckled until Sarah clutched his head and wanted him inside her now.

  She was sliding down, down his body. More friction. More heat. More dampness where she ached.

  “I knew it would be like this between us,” he said thickly, grasping her waist with both hands. He hitched her onto a tall chair.

  No, a stack of boxes. Her legs dangled beside his hips. Wanton. Scandalous. She didn’t care.

  “Sarah, Sarah, I tried to stay away from you.” He palmed her thighs and pushed up crushed velvet, his gaze never wavering from hers. “Tell me you love this Mark guy and I’ll stop.”

  With a roar in her ears like that of water closing over her head, Sarah surrendered to the green-gold undertow, floated and swirled on eddies of desire. “I don’t love Mark,” she whispered. “I never loved Mark.”

  Triumph flared in his eyes. His warm hand moved slowly up her inner thigh. “You’re so soft. So incredibly soft.”

  If he stopped now, she would die.

  “So brave and fierce and small and—” his fingertips slid under silk “—ahh Sarah. You’re so wet for me, sweetheart, so responsive—” he anointed her reverently with the evidence of her passion “—so beautiful and good and—” one finger slipped inside her “—hot and tight.” He drew in a hissing breath as her hips moved involuntarily. “That’s right, sweetheart, let me take you all the way there. I’ll keep you safe.”

  Sarah reached for him blindly. Her hands scrabbled on his shirt, collected fists full of cotton, and jerked him toward her waiting mouth. She kissed him with all the terrible wonderful passion obliterating rational thought, drowning her in fire. She kissed him desperately—whimpering a protest—when he tried suddenly to pull away. She kissed him voraciously—whimpering her need—when he quickened the pace of his busy fingers. She kissed him through a climax that exploded through her body like floodwater through a canyon, sweeping away all previous experiences as if they’d never been.

  She might’ve kept on kissing Jack the rest of her life if he hadn’t ripped his mouth away, shoved down her dress and closed her knees. A shocked gasp pierced Sarah’s receding passion. She blinked over his shoulder.

  A cleaning woman holding a dangling set of keys stood just inside the open door. But it wasn’t the titillated horror in her dark brown gaze that made Sarah feel physically ill, although that was mortifying enough. It was the horrified betrayal in the slate blue eyes staring at her from the hallway.

  Fighting her nausea, Sarah knew she’d just been crossed off Donna’s list of friends.

  BY FRIDAY, Sarah’s agitation over The Closet Incident had relocated to her chest and become a con-stant ache. Sitting at her sewing machine in home ec class, she found it hard to concentrate on making a silly skirt. Eight other classmates worked with sweatshop fervor on various garments they would model in three weeks. On the opposite end of the room, a wall of computer monitors glowed with colorful graphics, students staring at the screens.

  If only she were designing a functional floor plan for a family of four. She envied Fred for having completed his three-week stint at the sewing machine last week. With typical self-absorption at the computer, he was oblivious to her misery. She was on her own. So, what else was new?

  According to Mrs. Dent, this skirt pattern was a piece of cake. Ha! As if Sarah and cake weren’t synonymous with disaster. Maybe this pattern was simple for someone who had the slightest interest in taming this beastly machine from hell.

  All she wanted to do was rip out the thing’s guts and let them rust in the February drizzle.

  Who cared if her stitches were straight when her best friend was hurting? When she was the one who’d inflicted the pain? She should’ve confessed her attraction to Jack long ago. Then Donna wouldn’t have been totally shocked by seeing Sarah flushed and replete, her legs spread wide...

  “O-o-ohh,” she groaned, violently rejecting the mental image.

  “Sarina?” Mrs. Dent turned from beside Kate two machines ahead. “You didn’t break another needle, did you?”

  Sarah held the school record, if the elderly home ec teacher’s memory was correct. Several giggles sounded above the electric whir of motors. Kate twisted around, her expression sympathetic.

  “No, ma’am,” Sarah answered. “I’m okay.”

  “Well...” Fingering a strand of pearls at her neck, her eyes filled with exasperated affection, Mrs. Dent finally nodded. “I’ll be next door in the kitchen if you need me. Ask for help if you think you’re getting into trouble.”

  Too late for that. “Thank you, Mrs. Dent. I will.”

  Sarah hunched over her sewing machine, pressed the foot pedal and slid black cotton gingerly beneath the jackhammer needle. With her hands busy, her thoughts returned to The Closet Incident.

  After her initial shocked glimpse, Donna had recovered her wits enough to hustle the cleaning lady out before Jack turned around and was recognized as a teacher. In her best Assistant Principal voice, she’d assured the woman that appropriate action would be taken.

  Of course she’d done nothing since then. Literally. She wouldn’t talk to Sarah at school, had barely looked at her all week. Hadn’t called at night to check in and make sure she was okay. As dependent as she was on her friend for safety and food, Sarah feared most for the loss of warm camaraderie.

  And then there was Jack. Grrr—oops!

  “Darn,” Sarah muttered, steering her skirt seam back on course.

  Jack had retreated behind his rules and regulations as if they would protect him from her brazen influence. As if he hadn’t gone fishing for her tonsils in that closet, or changed her definition of “the little death” to “enormous.”

  Not that he’d been callous. No, he’d simply... withdrawn. She had the uneasy impression he thought she expected a ring on her finger. Mi. Responsibility would think that. Sarah blinked rapidly and scowled down at her sloppy seam. Stupid man.

  Well, she was a grown woman, dammit. He wasn’t responsible for her sexual behavior, and she wasn’t answerable to his moral code.

  She could lure the Saturday postman into the guest house for wild sex if she wanted. She could seduce the cute college kid who tended Mrs. Kaiser’s garden if she felt like it. For that matter, she could play Lolita for the entire male faculty at Roosevelt High if she had a mind to. Jack could ding his little bell until his finger fell off and there was nothing he could do to stop her—

  Clunk.

  Grrr. She stared at the balled up mess of black cotton beneath the broken sewing machine needle.

  “I hate this machine!” she bawled, stopping the surrounding whir temporarily.

  Classmates turned and stared in amazement at the sight of Sarina obviously close to a breakdown of some sort.

  Kate rose from her chair, hissed at the others to keep sewing, then m
oved to Sarah’s side. “Bad day, huh?”

  Sarah managed a choked laugh.

  Kate tossed back her long dark hair and smiled grimly. “I hear ya. My whole week has been the pits.” She held out her upturned fist and uncurled her fingers. “This should make you feel better.”

  Please don’t be a joint. Sarah eyed the sewing machine needle with a mixture of relief and humble gratitude.

  “Thanks, Kate. I owe you one.” Standing, Sarah let the girl sit in her place and start the repair work.

  Asking Mrs. Dent for another replacement needle was a humiliation Sarah couldn’t have borne. She had no desire to make the Guinness Book of World Records for Most Sewing .Machine Needles Broken by a Home Ec Student.

  No, if she went after any record, it would be for something with a little more pizzazz. Like Most Necks Broken by a Woman Posing as a High School Student who Suddenly Went Berserk in Fifth Period English. Sarah smiled to herself. Yeah, that had a nice ring to it. Much more potential for publicity, too.

  She’d leave her first victim under his poster of Morgan’s Ten Commandments. Poetic justice—

  “Wanna know something else funny?” Kate asked, jerking Sarah back to the present. “You remember that algebra test I studied so hard for?”

  Sarah nodded, not liking where this was headed. Kate would flunk the subject unless she pulled off a C or above on every remaining test.

  “Well, I got a C plus.”

  “But...that’s great!” Sarah grinned delightedly. “I knew you could do it! Did you tell your mom and Ja—your brother?”

  “Yeah, I told ’em.” Picking up a pair of small scissors, Kate began snipping out errant threads on the ruined skirt seam. “I got a lecture on how Jack’s perfect study habits got him a scholarship to USC. And how if I didn’t want to be stuck in a rut once I graduated from high school, I’d better shape up and start applying myself now.”