Home at Rose Cottage

by Sherryl Woods

  He told himself he didn’t need to have a long-range plan. Living in the moment had served him well enough for years. One step at a time, that was the key.

  Today his goal was merely to get inside the door. Maybe by tomorrow he’d start worrying about pinning down why Maggie was really running so scared around him and what she really expected from him. Then, if he didn’t like those answers, he could head for the hills.

  She was going to go to bed with him. Maggie knew it the instant Rick showed up looking all rumpled and sexy with two lattes in hand. She’d spent the whole night telling herself she was right to send him away, that they couldn’t possibly have any sort of future because she wasn’t cut out to compete with women who made her feel like a whale, even if she was a perfectly respectable size ten instead of a two. She was not that masochistic. She reminded herself that she wanted a whole lot more from a relationship than explosive passion.

  But even as she’d been congratulating herself on her good sense, a part of her had been yearning for the man’s touch. Another part—her libido, no doubt—had been bargaining with her brain, telling it that if Rick actually came back again, all bets were off. Explosive passion didn’t come along all that often. A woman would have to be an idiot to turn her back on it, at least while she was off on vacation. Back in Boston, she’d have to face facts, not now.

  After all, she justified, Rick would only be here a few days at most. How much more complicated could things get in a few days?

  She tried to keep all of that off her face when she accepted the cup of coffee with a perfectly uncomplicated, “Thanks.”

  “Expecting me?” Rick asked.

  “Not really. I thought you’d wake up and think twice about what you’re doing here.”

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “I came down here to see you.”

  “No, you came to annoy me,” she insisted. “If I’d asked you to go away with me, you would have turned me down flat, trumping up some excuse or another. Face it, Flannery, you came because I told you not to.”

  “No, I came in spite of that,” he corrected. “You should know by now that I’m not that easy to shake.”

  “Neither is a stalker. It’s not a recommendation.”

  He looked momentarily nonplussed. “Please tell me you don’t think that’s what I’m doing,” he said.

  She sighed. “No, of course not.” After all, who would be obsessed with her? Men were infatuated with her. Then they weren’t. That was the cycle she expected. She met Rick’s gaze. “But I honestly don’t get why you came all this way when I’d made it clear on the phone that I didn’t want you to. Is it some sort of macho pride thing?”

  “Do we have to discuss this right here on the front porch?” Rick asked.

  “It’s not as if there are a lot of passersby to overhear,” she told him.

  He held up the bag. “But I brought lattes and freshly baked bear claws. I thought we could sit down and have a civilized chat.”

  “You really just want to talk?” she asked skeptically. That would be a first. They’d done precious little talking, at least not about anything meaningful, during their whirlwind romance.

  “For now,” he admitted with one of the lopsided grins that never failed to charm her.

  Maggie debated with herself, then stepped past him. “We’ll go out back. It’s pleasant down by the water this time of day. That’s where I always have my morning coffee.”

  His grin spread, and there was no mistaking the smug ego behind it.

  “What?” she demanded, determinedly leading the way to the backyard swing…and at least the illusion of safety.

  “Still scared that if you let me inside, you won’t want me to leave?” Rick asked.

  She returned his gaze. “Yes,” she admitted candidly.

  He nodded. “The truth at last.”

  “You only recognize it as truth because it flatters you.”

  “None of this is about ego, Maggie.”

  “Then what is it about?” she asked, as she sat on the double swing and curled one leg under her, leaving plenty of room for Rick beside her. The sun glistened on the Chesapeake Bay, which was already alive with watermen pulling in crab pots and reeling in rockfish. There was a tangy scent of salt in the air, mingling with the sweet fragrance of her grandmother’s roses, now back in bloom after years of neglect.

  “It’s about meeting someone who fascinates me and wanting to spend more time with her,” he said simply. “I thought we’d gotten my motives out of the way a couple of weeks ago. I was candid with you from that first night.”

  All Maggie remembered from that night was the unexpected shock of Rick’s mouth on hers, the unexpected surge of need that had swept over her when he’d touched her. If they’d talked at all, it had gotten lost in a haze of heat and passion.

  “So you explained the rules and gave yourself an out, in case I got any ideas,” she surmised. “Bully for you.”

  “It wasn’t an out,” he corrected. “I was being honest.”

  “And then you disappeared,” she reminded him, thinking about how much it had hurt when the phone hadn’t rung and how furious she’d been with herself that she’d cared. He’d told her exactly who he was. She hadn’t wanted to believe it.

  He stared at her, obviously stunned. “Disappeared? I didn’t go anywhere.”

  “I didn’t mean it literally. You stopped calling.”

  “Is that what has you all worked up?” he asked incredulously. “I didn’t call for a few days, so you think I went off with some other woman?”

  Maggie ignored the indignation in his voice. She leveled a look straight into his eyes. The truth would be there, if not in his words. “Did you?”

  “No, dammit! I spent six solid days and nights in my studio, finishing up photo shoots and working in the darkroom, so I could get ahead and have some free time to spend with you. You told me you’d have a break once the August issue was wrapped up, so I wanted to be free when you were.”

  Maggie was beginning to feel foolish. “You couldn’t call and explain that?” she muttered defensively. Would it really have mattered if he had? Wasn’t her decision the right one, no matter what?

  Rick tensed. “I’m not used to having to call and explain myself to anyone,” he said. “Besides, I thought you wanted to keep things casual. That is what you told me, isn’t it? You said you have a habit of getting in over your head too quickly and then realizing you’d made a mistake. You said you didn’t want anything too heavy, right?”

  “Yes.” It was her first line of defense against the inevitable. She’d wanted to be the one to set the tone for their fling. If she implied from the outset it was meaningless, then he couldn’t possibly leave her heart or her pride in tatters. Or at least he’d never know it. She’d pretty much ruined that illusion in the past few minutes.

  “What changed?” he asked, giving her a searching look.

  What had changed? She’d meant those words when she’d said them, but it wasn’t all that difficult to figure out. They’d slept together, and she’d liked it entirely too much. Ashley had picked up on that right off, so it was hardly mysterious. Her sister had guessed that Maggie had suddenly wanted more. In fact, she’d wanted things she’d sworn never to want again, all in the blink of an eye, because the man excelled in bed. To be perfectly honest with herself, she had no idea how compatible they were out of it, which meant that all this angst, all this irrational fleeing, was totally absurd. Flings had their parameters, and a fling—albeit a grand and glorious one—was definitely all they’d had.

  She met his gaze. “I lost my mind,” she suggested lightly. “Sorry.”

  His gaze held steady with hers. “Maybe we both did,” he said quietly. “I wanted more, too, Maggie, and damned if I have any explanation for it, either.”

  She heard the sincerity and bewilderment in his voice, and it reassured her. Maybe she didn’t have to plunge off the deep end. Maybe they could start over and t
ake things slowly, get to know each other a bit before the fireworks got out of hand. That would be something new for her. Perhaps for Rick, too.

  He tucked a finger under her chin and gazed into her eyes. Her entire body trembled. Okay, maybe they couldn’t take things too slowly.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “With my brain?” she responded wryly.

  He laughed. “For starters.”

  “That we could start over, take things a little slower this time. Get to know each other.” She regarded him with a sideways glance, trying to gauge his reaction. She couldn’t.

  “And with whatever other part is chiming in?” he asked, amusement dancing in his eyes. “What’s it telling you?”

  “That we should go inside and make love right this second and to hell with everything else.”

  Heat glittered in the depths of his eyes. “How about we listen to that part first, then give your brain its say a little later?”

  She wanted to say no. She really did. But her hand was in his and they were heading inside before one single coherent sentence could cross her lips. When it did, it wasn’t “Forget about it” or even a simple “No.” Instead, she said, “The bedroom’s this way.”

  Rick wasn’t entirely sure what had gotten Maggie to change her mind. He doubted it was anything he’d said. Reason and sanity didn’t seem to be what they were about. No, if anything, they were all about passion and hunger.

  They’d barely crossed the threshold to Maggie’s bedroom when their clothes went flying. From the first they’d had no inhibitions, no false modesty. Maggie had been as eager as he’d been. Today was no different. Now that the decision had been made, she was coming to him with no apparent hesitation or regret.

  He crushed her lush mouth under his, tasted her even as she fit her body to his, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. His hands were busy with buttons and snaps and zippers, seeking hot skin and her moist core. Hers were just as frantic, tugging aside his shirt, diving below the waistband of his jeans. When she found him, he was already hard and aching.

  Rick couldn’t wait, not this time. There was barely time to slip on a condom before he took her hard and fast, clothes tangled around their feet. Maggie was backed up against a wall, her legs around his waist. Her nails dug into his shoulders as she took him in, sheathing him in slick heat.

  Rick paused, tried to catch his breath, tried to make it last, but the sensations were too sweet, too intense, too commanding.

  In mere seconds, Maggie convulsed around him until he exploded inside her with the kind of heart-pounding, mind-blowing orgasm he’d experienced few times in his life, all of them with this woman.

  Her breath came in ragged gasps. His kept the same rhythm, as he stilled, letting peace steal through him bit by bit. Even then he didn’t let her go, didn’t move to separate their slick bodies. There was something powerful about staying like this, intimately and literally connected. He barely noticed that she was growing heavy, not when holding her close was so wickedly wonderful.

  “Don’t you think you should put me down?” she finally asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because as long as we’re together like this, I doubt you’ll be thinking.”

  She laughed. “Definitely not thinking,” she agreed.

  She gave a little wiggle that made him hard all over again.

  “Oh, my,” she said when he began to stir inside her.

  “Oh, my, indeed,” he said. “See the advantages of staying like this now?”

  “Maybe you should explain them,” she teased.

  He gazed into her eyes, saw the quick flare of heat once more, felt her body already starting to shudder. “Why, darlin’, it’s obvious. Without moving a muscle, we’re already halfway there.”

  “Where?”

  “Heaven.”

  “Rick, what do you know about me?” Maggie asked hours later. They were in bed now, but she was still wrapped in his arms. They’d barely left the room all day long.

  “I know that you’re amazing in bed.”

  Even though she knew he’d meant it as the highest compliment, tears stung her eyes. It was what she’d asked for, wasn’t it? Wasn’t she the one who’d let him think that was enough? Even so, she asked wistfully, “Is that all that matters to you?”

  “Of course not, though it was damn important about five minutes ago.”

  Irrationally angry, she crawled over him, dragging the sheet with her. She could feel his gaze burning into her, but she couldn’t seem to halt the hasty exit. She had to get away from this, away from him. She’d done it again, done exactly what she’d sworn not to. She’d let passion trump any emotional connection.

  “What did I say?” he asked, his voice tense. “Obviously you’re offended.”

  “Not offended,” she insisted. “What woman would be offended at being told she’s great at sex?”

  He snagged her hand, pulled her back to the bed. “Then talk to me. Tell me what’s going on here. I can’t read your mind, Maggie.”

  Maggie sat on the edge of the bed, trying to ignore the fact that Rick’s hand was on her thigh. She struggled to find the right words. She had to make them good ones, words powerful enough to match the passion that tended to rule the two of them.

  “It’s like I told you before, we rushed into this without knowing anything about each other,” she began. “Compatibility in bed isn’t enough.”

  “Which is why I’m here right now, to spend time getting to know you better.”

  “In bed,” she retorted.

  He sighed. “Not just in bed.”

  “Then why haven’t we spent time anywhere else, not today, not in Boston, aside from that one event we went to. I had to do a lot of fast talking to get you to agree to that. You would have turned the limo around halfway there and gone straight back to your place,” she reminded him.

  “But we did go to the party,” he said. “And there was the photo shoot. That lasted a whole day.”

  She smiled despite her exasperation. “We’d just met. And practically the minute everyone else left your studio, we were on that cot in your back room,” she countered.

  He shrugged. “Just proves how powerful the chemistry between us is.”

  “Chemistry doesn’t last,” she said flatly.

  Rick studied her for what seemed like an eternity. “And that’s the real problem, isn’t it? You figure it’ll burn itself out.”

  “It will,” she said with conviction.

  “Probably.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “What’s wrong with living in the moment?” he countered. “I’d rather be a thousand percent alive some of the time than bored to death all the time.”

  “You don’t think there’s a middle ground?”

  “Haven’t found it yet,” he said. “Have you?”

  “No,” she told him honestly. But that’s what she wanted. She knew it existed because her parents had it. Melanie had found it with Mike. Maggie had already had enough of these whirlwind relationships to realize that she wanted more than this.

  “What’s the bottom line here, Maggie? Do you want me to take off?”

  The sensible answer, of course, was yes. She couldn’t seem to get the word out. As unrealistic as it might be, it seemed she wanted more with Rick, a man who obviously had no experience with making anything last longer than a few days or, at most, a few weeks.

  “I can’t think on an empty stomach,” she said instead, keeping her tone determinedly breezy. “That bear claw wore off a long time ago. I’ll go fix something.”

  His gaze held hers. “And then?”

  “We’ll discuss it some more.”

  His lips twitched. “Till you talk it to death?”

  “Maybe,” she said defensively. “A little talking will be good for a change. It’s not as if we’ve ever done much of it.”

  He laughed at that. “Okay, then, Miss Maggie, we will talk to your heart’s
content, as long as you don’t mind if I do what I do best.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Try to convince you to shut up and come back to bed.”

  To her sincere regret, she shivered with anticipation. “You can try.”

  “Thank you,” he said solemnly. “I promise you, I will give it my absolutely best shot.”

  She frowned at him. “Arrogance is not appealing.”

  “Then I’ll be sure to let my actions speak for themselves,” he said agreeably.

  Maggie sighed. That was exactly what she was afraid of. When his actions challenged her willpower, it was no contest.

  4

  To Rick’s surprise after the intensity of the conversation they’d had upstairs, dinner was actually more fun than he’d ever had with a woman outside of bed. Maggie ran her kitchen like a drill sergeant, issuing commands and organizing ingredients with an impressive level of efficiency. He went along with it and found himself enjoying her bossiness, mainly because it was so much fun to tease her about it.

  “You ever think about joining the military?” he inquired when he’d lined up a row of requested spices precisely according to her specifications.

  She shot a daunting look at him. “Why on earth would you ask that?”

  “It boggles the mind to imagine how many potatoes you could have peeled while on kitchen duty.”

  “Very funny.”

  He gestured toward the row of spices, apparently intended for spaghetti sauce. “Wouldn’t it be easier just to buy the sauce in a jar?” he asked, knowing she would consider the question to be bordering on blasphemy.

  “If that’s what your palate’s used to, then prepare to be awed,” she retorted. “Trust me, there’s no comparison.”

  “If you say so,” he said, hiding a grin at the indignation in her voice and the patches of red on her cheeks. He’d discovered a whole new way to stir Maggie up that was almost as enjoyable as sex.