So she kissed his neck, then his mouth, and lost herself in the feel and taste and sound of him. He was the forever place where her heart could finally put down roots and flourish. Without worrying when it would end or turn into the empty, going-through-the-motions nothing that her parents’ marriage had become.
She’d decided long ago to never give her heart to anyone except the perfect man for her. And she and Conrad had always been off-limits romantically. Even after he’d left for college, and losing his day-to-day friendship had shown her how much more she wanted with him.
Friends forever was simply too important to mess with.
At least that’s what she kept telling herself, everywhere but in her dreams.
“You feel so good.” She couldn’t touch him enough. “Why do you feel so much better than any other guy?”
“Because you can’t have me.” His hands framed her face. His gaze was intoxicating as he studied her with the honest intensity that was uniquely Conrad’s. “And since this can never be real, what the heck, right? What do we have to lose?”
“Right.”
In her dreams, they got to be everything she’d ever fantasized they could be. No fear. No chancing the very real likelihood that Conrad wasn’t interested in her romantically, and that things would never again be the same between them once she fessed up.
In her dreams it was safe to simply make each other feel good…
The kind of good she was determined to find in her real life, even if having it meant leaving Conrad and Chandlerville behind.
His mouth hovered closer. “You trust me, don’t you, Clair Bear?”
“Of course I do.”
“But do you trust me enough to take a shower?” His kiss slid down her neck, his teeth scraping, making her tingle here, there, and everywhere.
“A…a shower?”
“Before we go see Barbara, you should really clean up.”
“W-what?” Why, why bring up her mother at a time like this?
“We’ll be late for the barbecue,” he said. “We’ve got to get a move on.”
“We?”
“You either advance toward the enemy in an ambush, or you’re trapped in the kill zone. Trust me, Clair.”
“I do trust you.” Even when he talked in Special Forces riddles. “But…”
His breath panted over her arm. His tongue was sandpaper and softness, warm with a side of slobber. His nose kept bumping her armpit for attention. He was the sexiest man she’d ever known, even when he was licking her elbow. Even when he—
Wait.
Licking her elbow?
Her dream suddenly smelled like wet dog and mud-soaked clothes. She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed and concentrated like a woman obsessed, on the feel of his solid arms and soft, firm lips. She soaked in all that dreamy, Conrad goodness that she was determined to have, just this once. Tonight of all nights, she wasn’t waking up until she was good and ready.
She brushed her hands up his ridiculously muscled arms. She pressed her nails into the tensile strength of his chest. Parents of young children were supposed to let themselves go. ER doctors had heinous schedules that left them absolutely no time to stay in shape. But not her Conny.
He was a hands-on single parent, working his butt off to one day become head of the ER at Chandler Memorial. And still, for two years running, he was the captain and MVP of Chandlerville’s Ultimate Frisbee team. There’d never been a more droolworthy good ol’ boy. Not for Clair.
She crushed her lips to his. He swept her into an even deeper kiss.
“You taste so good,” he praised.
But tasting her shouldn’t be possible, she conceded, since he was still licking her elbow. And whining. And unlike any of her other Conrad dreams, he smelled like he needed a bath.
She tried to breathe through her nose, but then she was suffocating. Seriously? Had he been rolling around in the mud or something?
Wait a minute.
Muddy meadow.
Pouring summer rain.
Fireworks shared with a less-than-commiserating doggy companion…
She tried to stop her thoughts from surfacing. But behind her closed eyes, images replayed of a certain pampered canine abandoning Clair to her stormy musings, and taking shelter beneath Bethany Darling’s truck.
“No,” Clair complained. “Don’t wake up. I—”
She jolted back to reality, her elbow most definitely being slobbered on. Matilda, not Conrad, who was giving Clair puppy love.
Her neck felt fused at an awkward angle that might never straighten itself out. There was something warm and pleasantly musky-smelling beneath her cheek. She jerked her head away from its perch, groaned, and wiped at the drool that had pooled from the corner of her mouth onto Conrad’s shirt.
Conrad’s shirt?
“Oh, my God!” She’d been all but lying on top of him. She scrambled back into her seat and peered through the windshield of his Jeep. “It’s morning. Conrad?” She shook him. “What are we doing here? What time is it?” She punched his shoulder. “Conrad!”
“Huhmph…” He slumped against his door and crossed his arms, still out of it. “Taste so good… Trust me, Clair.”
She touched her fingers to her tingling lips. They had been kissing in their sleep, she realized. At some point, not everything had been a dream. She could still taste him.
Matilda whined a high-pitched warning that an even louder ruckus was looming. Her elbow adulations intensified. Clair liberated her arm. As best she could from the front seat, she patted the doberman’s head in consolation, trying to keep her happy.
“Shh,” she stage-whispered. “Give me just a minute.”
She reached a hand toward Conrad, desperate to know in real life what it felt like to have him want her.
Matilda barked.
Harper stirred, waking enough to sense that he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.
“Daddy?” His eyes opened. His gaze locked with Clair’s. “Daddy?!”
Conrad started awake at the sound of his son’s cry. His spine shot ramrod straight. He wiped his eyes with his fists. Then he stilled, blinking his surroundings into focus. His attention pivoted to Clair.
His jaw dropped. “What the—”
“Daddy.” Harper kicked his feet, still strapped into his car seat. “Gotta pee.”
Matilda added her two cents with a barrage of eardrum-bursting barks.
Conrad checked his watch. “It’s morning already?”
“Were we…” Clair didn’t finish. She wouldn’t let herself finish. She had no business finishing.
But she couldn’t stop staring at his mouth.
“We were kissing?” he asked.
She nodded, flushing beneath his stare. “I was dreaming that we were—”
“Me, too. But did we… I mean, at some point, did we actually—”
“Yeah,” she conceded, sparing them both the mortification of his finishing his sentence. “I think we might have.”
They fumbled with their door handles and spilled onto the curb outside her house. The world was morning quiet, except for Matilda’s complaints. The doberman’s bark spiked through Clair’s hangover as she yanked open the back passenger door. Conrad did the same on his side.
Before she could grab for Matilda’s collar, the dog slipped around her and raced to do her business—across the quiet, empty street and smack-dab into the middle of Mrs. Riley’s prized azalea bed.
“Daddy, pee…” Harper wriggled and strained as Conrad struggled to make sense of the car-seat straps. “Gotta go.”
Conrad shook his head as if to kick-start whatever gray matter wouldn’t engage. “I’m on it, buddy.”
“Let me.” Clair—who should be seeing to Matilda and never should have let the dog get by her in the first place—shooed her friend’s fingers away.
Their skin brushed for the scantest of seconds.
Conrad jerked as if he’d been shocked. He wiped a hand over his dawn’s growth of beard. His thumb
rubbed across his bottom lip and tortured her with dreamy flashbacks.
She released the clasp holding Harper in place. The little boy wiggled out of the straps and launched himself into his father’s arms. But except for catching the kid, Conrad remained frozen, fixated on Clair.
Matilda barked, shaking Clair out of her trance.
“Get out of my flower bed!” seventy-year-old Rebecca Riley hollered. “Clair, is this a new service you’re offering your clients? My front yard as an alternative dog park for your pet-sitting business?”
“Pet concierge,” Clair corrected under her breath.
Despite the morning’s mounting misadventures, Conrad chuckled at her running battle with some Chandlerville residents who’d known her all her life and refused to take ALL PAWS’s skyrocketing success seriously.
“Morning, Mrs. Riley,” he called out with a wave.
Clair silently mimicked his cheerfulness. She cut him a look that would have sent a man with a stronger sense of self-preservation packing. Conrad winked back.
“No!” Mrs. Riley yelled. “Not on my hydrangeas.”
“Daddy!” Harper struggled to get down. “Pee…”
“Head inside,” Clair insisted. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Conrad hesitated, then walked toward the front door that everyone knew she kept unlocked.
“Isn’t it a little early for houseguests?” Mrs. Riley wanted to know as Clair approached.
Clair smiled innocently at her deceased grandmother’s onetime bridge partner. She curled her fingers firmly around Matilda’s collar and began as gently as possible to disengage the troublemaker from her neighbor’s landscaping.
“I really am sorry about this,” Clair said.
The other woman took stock of Clair’s filthy, slept-in clothes and whatever makeup still remained on her face. She glanced to where Conrad had disappeared inside Clair’s house. A crookedly drawn eyebrow shot into her spiky gray bangs.
Another vehicle arrived, interrupting any assurances Clair might have given that nothing untoward had been going on between her and Conrad. The sound of a well-tuned engine idled, and then cut off.
“Morning, Mike.” Mrs. Riley peered around Clair. “Bethany.”
Clair groaned and herded Matilda toward her yard and Mike’s Jeep, which was now parked beside Conrad’s.
“Long night?” Bethany asked.
“Let’s say it was a messy one.” Clair fished into the pocket of her miniskirt for her friend’s keys and handed them over. “I left the truck up on Millers’ Bluff. I’ll take it in for detailing one day next week. Right now I need to get Matilda cleaned up. Janie York’s asked me to drop her off by ten.”
Plus, Clair needed Bethany and Mike far, far away from her going-from-bad-to-worse morning, before—
“Hey, man,” Mike called out.
He nodded toward Conrad, who was heading down the walkway from Clair’s house, looking sexily rumpled in an I’ve-been-here-all-night way. He held out her portable house phone.
“It’s your mom,” he said. “She wants to know when we’ll arrive at the barbecue.”
“We?” Clair croaked, swamped by a wave of déjà vu. In her dream, he’d said something about them being late for her mother’s.
She snatched the phone away.
“Mom? I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” She thumbed the thing off and confronted Conrad, who held up his hands, innocence personified. “Why did you let her think you were coming with me?”
Clair had been so careful with her mother, insisting that her and Conrad’s friendship was off limits.
“It was a natural assumption.” Bethany smirked and checked her watch. “What with Conrad answering your phone at all of six in the morning. Babs has been after you to bring Don. If she thinks Conrad’s your new guy, then—”
“He’s not new my guy.”
Tilda barked at Clair’s tightened grip on her collar.
“All the more reason to take him to be your buffer with your family,” Bethany insisted.
Mike nodded. “It would distract people from asking what happened with Don.”
“And Conrad’ll fit right in,” Bethany pressed. “Your family’s known him and his mom forever.”
Conny, conspicuously silent, toed at a clump of clover between the corner of Clair’s walkway and the curb.
This was the last thing she’d wanted. Exactly the kind of spectacle she’d promised herself she’d avoid. He’d come to her rescue last night. And as a reward, as if it wasn’t bad enough that she’d let her nocturnal fantasies get the better of her, now this.
“Where’s Harper?” she asked, needing to return them to more neutral ground.
“He’s out cold again,” Conrad shrugged. “I poured him into your bed. Told him we could raid your Pop-Tart stash after he took a nap. If I can get another hour of snooze out of him, I’ll have a much less cranky monster on my hands once we bug out.” Conrad shrugged Mike and Bethany’s way. “I couldn’t go to the Summerville place today, even if Clair didn’t look so stricken at the thought of me tagging along.”
“It’s not you.” He didn’t really think that’s what she meant, did he? “I’m just trying to spare you the embarrassment.”
And her the sheer torture of being with him at her mother’s house, pretending that they cared romantically for each other.
He cocked his head, studying her as if he were formulating a plan of attack. “If it would help keep your mom off your back, I wouldn’t be embarrassed taking Don’s place. Still, I’d never find a last-minute sitter.”
“We’ll keep him,” Bethany and Mike said over each other, grinning at Clair like they’d just done her a huge favor.
“Is this your plan to distract Mom from the rodent you’re sneaking into her party? Showing up with a hot babe on your arm?”
“Don’t start, Ra.” Clair gifted her sister with her fiercest resting bitch face.
She gave Buster’s tiny head a gentle pat back down into her purse. She gritted her teeth when the toy poodle bolted up again like a jack-in-the box and fired off a sassy, “Hands off, girl!” bark.
Conrad flashed an easy smile. “Good to see you, Rachael. You’re looking lovely as always.”
Clair jabbed him with her elbow.
Unfazed, he plucked the creatively groomed poodle—Seriously, how many pompoms could be clipped onto one tiny body?—from the Louis Vuitton Neverfull tote Buster’s owner used as a pet carrier. Because a little tyrant who could never be left alone, not even for a minute, had to travel in style.
“Come on, buddy,” Conrad said. “It was a long trip over. Let’s go see a man about a dog.”
He dropped a kiss on Clair’s temple before heading off, all long legs and masculine confidence for miles. No matter that his canine copilot was sporting a purple-and-green argyle vest. Or how hard Clair was trying not to read romantic overtones into Conrad agreeing to the insanity of playing her adoring date for the barbecue.
She lifted her hand to cover the skin tingling in the wake of his kiss.
“Really?” Clair’s sister asked. “What are you doing here with the two of them?”
“Buster’s owner PAWSMatched me in a panic an hour ago,” Clair explained, avoiding the topic of Conrad entirely. “She’s rushing to her mother’s last-minute—where Felix the cat lies in wait. Buster and Felix are mortal enemies, so the little dear can’t go with. And Buster needs to be fawned over twenty-four/seven, or he spirals into a depression.”
Rachel shook her head in either amazement or passive-aggressive judgment. Clair couldn’t tell which anymore. They’d been close all their lives, but they were sisters, and very different people. And lately Ra’s commentary on Clair’s life choices had started to read a tad bit resentful.
“You’ve made a career,” her sister said, “out of being at the beck and call of the pampered, neurotic, and overindulged.”
“I’ve had plenty of practice. We were raised by a woman with a chronic superiority compl
ex.”
Rachael snorted.
“Besides,” Clair added, “domesticated pets are conditioned to be dependent and needy. It’s not their fault when an owner goes too far. And I don’t mind being there for them at a moment’s notice.”
“I bet you don’t mind the lucrative boost to your income stream, either, after rolling out the first virtual Uber-for-pets app.”
Whether or not Rachael meant the compliment to be sincere, Clair beamed with pride.
She’d designed, developed and watched the PAWSMatch app become an instant hit with existing and new clients almost as soon as she’d flipped the switch. While her sister seemed more discontent by the day with devoting her every waking hour to cultivating the picture-perfect domestic bliss she’d created with her husband, Glenn, who was a rising star at their father’s bank.
Rachel jutted her chin in the direction of Conrad’s retreat. “Tell me he’s not letting that rat pee on Mom’s impatiens.”
“Conrad knows how to make an entrance.”
“The man had better be formulating an escape plan. Let Babs catch wind of you cozying up to testosterone like that, a man with Conrad’s pedigree and credentials, and she’ll be monogramming towels with both your initials on them.”
“We’re just friends.” If Clair kept repeating that mantra to herself, she’d survive today unscathed.
“So you invited him to a family party, smack-dab under our mother’s nose?”
“Only to get her off my back by letting her temporarily think there’s more between us.”
“If it’s all for show, why was Conrad answering your phone first thing this morning?”
Rachael laughed at Clair’s eye roll.
Of course Ra had heard. By now everyone at the picnic had likely heard.
“I’ll come clean before I fly out tomorrow,” Clair insisted. “Before I skip town for two days, I’ll say Conny and I realized we’d made a mistake and want things to go back to the way they’ve always been.”
Friends forever.
“I’m not sure this guy’s gonna be as easy to shake off Mom’s radar as the rest. An hour ago I heard Babs bullying the caterer into making a last-minute menu change. German potato salad from scratch. Because Conrad’s mom said it’s his favorite.”
Waiting for Your Love (Echoes of the Heart) Page 3
