by Bryn Donovan
After a few moments, he heard her come in behind him. “Look, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business. I was just surprised.”
David turned around to face her. “Maybe you should answer me something. Why’d you ask Mr. Willingham that? If anything unusual had happened in the house?”
“I don’t know…”
“What have you heard?”
“Nothing. I… Carlos said something the first day I was here, about ghosts.”
“Huh.” David turned away. “Well, it looks like a haunted house, doesn’t it? Old place like this, people always say stuff.”
There was another knock at the door.
“That’s probably the electrician,” David said.
It was. David showed the guy around while Andi got back to work.
After the electrician left, David hung out in the side parlor that Carlos had already abandoned for the day. David didn’t have anything left to do, but he didn’t want to leave Andi in the house alone.
Honestly, he didn’t much feel like going back to his place alone, either. The fact that Mr. Willingham had gone home alone had bothered him. Would he be like that when he was that age?
Of course he would, and he’d always known it. That’s what happened when you stayed single your whole life. So what? There were worse things.
He didn’t even know why he’d been gruff with Andi. Her curiosity had been perfectly natural, under the circumstances.
Finally he went into the front hall, where she was sweeping sawdust off the stairs. “Hey, Andi. I think I’m going to take off.”
She looked up. “Yeah, okay.” She sounded just a little sad, but she didn’t react to him as though he were a jerk. “I’m probably going to go pretty soon too, get some dinner.”
He nodded. “That’s right, you like eating early.”
“Yeah. Are you coming here tomorrow?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he asked, “Listen, do you want to go back to my place and get some takeout?” He hadn’t been planning to ask this, but he wasn’t surprised either, given the way he kept imagining her in his bed. At least he hadn’t opened his mouth to make a more indecent suggestion.
Even the dinner invitation probably made no sense. He’d just said the other day that they shouldn’t get involved. And since he lived all the way downtown, this was a blatantly romantic invitation. He wasn’t even sorry that it was blatant.
When she didn’t answer right away, he said, “Never mind, forget it.” He couldn’t blame her at all.
“No, let’s do that,” she said. “Sounds good.”
* * *
After the way the night before had ended, David’s condo was about the last place Andi expected to be that evening.
Maybe he just wanted some company. Maybe for him, the kiss was already forgotten—just a random incident, nothing to dwell on. She hoped not. Now that she was at his place again, she couldn’t think of anything else.
After the delivery guy brought linguini with lobster and butternut squash ravioli, David asked, “Do you want to just eat in the kitchen? That’s what I usually do.”
“Fine with me.” She sat down at the granite-topped table as he dished the pasta out onto real china. It looked and smelled delicious. “I like your plates. They’re simple,” she commented. “It reminds me. I need to go over to Field’s tomorrow and get something off Lissa and Greg’s registry.”
“Lissa’s your sister, right?”
“Yeah, the one who’s getting married. If I wait much longer, there’s only going to be the expensive stuff left.”
The corner of his mouth quirked upwards. “When you say Field’s, you mean Macy’s, right?”
“I still love that store, but they never should have changed the name!” It was like rechristening Wrigley Field, as far as she was concerned.
“Totally agree.” He poured her a glass of Chardonnay and set it in front of her without asking if she wanted it. She did want it. As she took a sip of the wine, he came around and sat in the chair next to her.
“I sort of hate getting something off the registry,” she told him. “I know it’s what they want, but it seems so impersonal. So then I start thinking about making them something homemade, but it’s kind of too late to get started on a knitting project.”
“You know how to knit, too?” He sounded surprised.
“I know, I’m amazing!” she teased. “I can’t do anything really fancy. And I have, like, three projects I started and never finished. Mostly I just buy patterns and yarn.”
“There are worse hobbies.”
“I guess,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, it’s too late to knit them something. Not that they probably want some knitted thing.” She laughed. “When one of my older cousins got married, her father-in-law gave her this saw with a picture painted on it.”
“A saw, like you use to saw wood?”
“Yeah. He painted a little mural on the side of it. A barn and some cows.”
David frowned. “Wouldn’t the paint come off when you used it?”
“They weren’t supposed to use it. They were supposed to hang it up on the wall. You know, like art.” Andi laughed at his bemused expression. “See, I’m broadening your horizons. You trust fund kids are missing out on some good stuff.”
“I never had a trust fund.”
Had she offended him? “I barely know what a trust fund is,” she confessed. “But you know what I mean.”
“No, you don’t understand. I haven’t gotten money from my dad since I was twenty.”
“But you’re rich,” Andi blurted out. Then she realized that this wasn’t an especially polite thing to say.
“I’m sort of rich. That’s money I made myself. I didn’t have anything from him. Until that house,” he added.
“What about your college tuition? Your law school tuition?”
“Scholarships. Huge student loans. Working night shifts. Couch surfing.”
Andi’s mouth hung open. “I had no idea.”
She’d thought everything had been handed to him. It changed her perception of him to learn that he knew at least as much as she did about trying to get by.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to think I owed him anything.”
Andi looked at his shadowed face then took another bite of her pasta, trying to think of how to change the subject. “This is really good,” she said. “I didn’t know I was going to get paid in pasta, too.”
This did not lighten the mood. “I didn’t invite you over as payment.”
“No, I know.”
“I’m just saying, this is separate from the job.” He looked away for a moment, his jaw tight. “They can be two separate things, right?”
Andi wondered exactly what he was saying. “Yeah,” she said, setting her fork down. “I think they can.”
David’s hand covered hers.
The physical contact both relieved and excited her. She could sense something pent up inside him, a dark, unspoken need.
“David,” she said softly, “what did you invite me here for?”
He pulled her closer and kissed her. In her eagerness, Andi leaned forward in the chair. David stood up and pulled her to her feet, bringing her whole body close against his own.
The connection she had felt the night before hadn’t been a fluke. It was an overwhelming attraction, and now she knew he felt it, too.
She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him better. He was so tall. It occurred to her that it would be easier to kiss him if they were lying down, and then she was scandalized at her own train of thought.
But she found it hard to think much at all. She enjoyed the feel of his strong, controlling arm around her waist and his hard, straining body beneath his jacket. She loved the smell of the leather.
When he broke off the kiss, she made a small sound of protest. Gripping her shoulders in his large hands, he kissed her once more, as though his life depended on it. She savored the kiss, deep and satisfy
ing.
And not satisfying. Fierce heat rushed between her legs. Desire had come over her that suddenly. Shoving aside the plates behind her with a loud clatter, she put one hand flat behind her on the cool, polished granite tabletop for support.
As his fingers made a few seconds’ work of the buttons on her flannel shirt, his mouth moved to the side of her neck, and she felt his teeth.
“Ah,” she said aloud.
Raw kisses trailed from her collarbone to the hollow of her throat, as though he would devour her. She wanted him to.
The cell phone in her back jeans pocket rang.
“Oh, God,” she gasped. “It’s Lissa. I have to pick up.” Her sister worried so much, and Andi had told her she ought to be home by dinnertime. If Andi didn’t pick up, Lissa would start calling the hospitals.
“Go ahead,” David breathed against Andi’s throat. As Andi took out the phone and pressed the “talk” button, he reached around to unclasp her bra.
“Hello?” She gasped—David’s fingers stroked across the sensitive undersides of her breasts.
“Andi!” Lissa did sound concerned. “Where are you?”
“I’m at David’s. David Girard’s.” She felt his warm, open mouth against her breast. “Oh God,” she said, right into the phone.
There was silence on the other end.
“I’ve got to go. I’m fine.” Andi hung up.
David rose and kissed her on the mouth again.
“I don’t know what I’m going to tell her,” she breathed once he relented.
“I’m guessing she’s up to speed.” He peeled her shirt from her body then removed her unhooked bra.
Andi flushed with sudden shyness. She worried about what he would think of her figure, just a little on the plump side.
David looked at her like a starving man confronted with a lavish buffet. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. She glowed under his appreciative stare.
He stripped off his shirt and undershirt quickly, as though about to jump in the ocean and save somebody from drowning. The broad neck and shoulders, the chest that narrowed to a flat, muscled belly, added up to an image of graceful strength. But nothing melted her more than the look in his eyes.
She touched him, gliding her hands along his bare, warm back. Then she stopped. Something felt strange, slight ridges on the skin where it should have been smooth. Immediately she moved around him to look, even as he tensed under her touch.
Faint raised scars, slightly darker than the surrounding skin, crisscrossed his back. Her heart lurched.
“What is this?” she asked in not much more than a whisper. She ran her fingers lightly over his back and he closed his eyes briefly. “David, what happened to you?”
“Got in a fight in a biker bar,” he said. “You don’t want to know the details.”
She stared at him. “Really?”
“Yeah. Guys had no sense of humor.” Then he completely distracted her with another hungry kiss. His hands skimmed down the sides of her bare torso and beneath the waistband of her jeans, taking her hips in a possessive hold and pulling her against his unmistakable arousal.
She managed to whisper to him, “You better be nice to me tomorrow.”
Chapter Five
She said it in a joking tone. He nodded, completely serious.
With one hand, she touched his hair, his beautiful, suavely chiseled face. She ran the backs of her fingers along the crisp hair of his strong chest.
He helped her out of her jeans. She thought of how Lissa was always making fun of her for wearing lacy, fancy underthings beneath her work clothes. Right now, Andi was glad she did. And then she realized it didn’t make all that much difference anyway, because in the next couple of seconds she was completely naked except for her socks.
She was about to take them off, too, but that thought went out of her head when she felt his hand stroke between her legs. Before she even considered what she was doing, she moved her legs further apart, adjusting her stance.
Her elbows propped behind her on the table, she closed her eyes as his fingers slid across her cleft. She was creamy wet for him. A moment of teasing pressure, just at the right place, spiked her pleasure almost to the tipping point. Andi whimpered.
She tugged at the waistband of his jeans, undid his fly. He shucked them off, and in a few quick movements he got the wallet out of his back pocket and withdrew a foil packet. She was glad one of them was thinking clearly. In a moment he was sheathed and he picked her up off the floor easily, setting her on the edge of the granite tabletop.
“Yes,” she assented.
He thrust into her.
As he drove in hard, Andi felt she was holding on for dear life, her legs clasped around him, half lying back onto the table. One of his hands reached between them, glancing across her swollen clit. “David,” she moaned.
“I like how you say that,” he breathed.
* * *
With deep male pride and a dark lust, David watched her take her pleasure. Once he’d started kissing her, he knew he had to have her right there. Now her face was flushed, and the tips of her full breasts, rising with every gasp, were a fresh-bitten, rosy red.
Her legs loosened their circle around his waist. He lifted her up and heard her gasp with surprise as he positioned her with her back to him, half lying across the table. He took in the sight of her warm, soft flesh, against the hard granite, in an exquisite state of longing and surrender. He loved her extravagantly female curves, her waist flaring to generous hips. Reaching around to caress her sensitive bud, he felt how she dripped with her own sweet honey. He thrust into her again.
She ignited a fierce passion in him, and it astonished him that she not only accepted it, but met it with a wild desire of her own. He didn’t stop touching her for a moment, giving her everything he could, reveling in her pleasure, barely distinguishing it from his own. He knew he was close to his edge. “Andi,” he said.
She cried out as they climaxed. His whole body gave itself over to her.
Suddenly exhausted, emotionally racked, he bent down forward over her, resting his head against her back. He felt he might weep.
Her words came back to him: You better be nice to me tomorrow.
They shamed him. He shouldn’t be with her. He knew what kind of man he really was. Yes, he could be nice to her tomorrow, but what about the day after, and the day after that?
* * *
Andi opened her eyes and looked around her. In the dark bedroom, she could still see a little, because light from the hallway slanted through the crack in the door. She was glad for that. Even as a grown woman, she still felt uneasy in the darkness. At home, when she went to bed, she didn’t turn off the lamp.
She lay on a low, king-sized bed underneath a thick, silvery silk comforter. David sprawled next to her, one arm flung above his head. She could just make out his magnificent bare chest and his face, peaceful in sleep.
If she always went to bed with David, she would probably feel safe enough to overcome her fear of the dark. On the other hand, as long as he lay around naked, she would probably want to leave the light on anyway.
The shadowed room was almost colorless. It was like waking up in a Calvin Klein ad. And she’d never even liked Calvin Klein ads. It didn’t matter. She felt happy. Christmas-morning happy.
Oh, man, she thought. Lissa’s going to think I’m such a skank.
She wondered if her sister had called back. Her cell phone was in her purse, out in the main room. She’d left her clothes out there, too. Not wanting to prance around naked, she looked around the room and saw one of David’s shirts tossed on the dresser. She got up, grabbed it and pulled it on. The thick, smooth fabric of the dress shirt against her skin smelled of brisk deodorant and soap.
She fastened a couple of the middle buttons. On her short frame, the shirt covered up the basics. She felt like kind of a sex goddess. It was a fairly unusual feeling for her, and she liked it.
After fishing the phone out of
her purse in the living room, she listened to Lissa’s new message.
Hi, Andi. Um, Greg and I are going out to Rolling Meadows to go to the late Mass with Mom and Dad. We’ll probably make a Target run, too. When the sisters visited their parents in the suburbs, they often went to Target or Walmart to stock up on things. Hope you’re back in the afternoon to take Scruffy out. Hope you’re having fun. A pause. I guess you are. Another pause. Well, call me if you want.
Andi put the phone back in her purse and gathered up her clothes. Lissa’s tactful disapproval made her worry that David might get weird about things, now that it was the morning after.
She looked up at the digital clock above the high-tech stove. Seven thirty-six a.m. David would probably want to sleep a good deal longer, but she wasn’t that tired. Her stomach growled. She had only gotten a couple bites of dinner the night before.
With some regret, she took off David’s sexy dress shirt, changed into her clothes from the day before and went back into the bedroom. “Hey,” she said, touching David’s shoulder. “I ought to go.”
He rolled over and half opened his eyes. “What?”
“I’m going to get some breakfast.”
David rubbed his hand over his face and grunted. “Hang on a minute. I’ll get up.”
“That’s okay. I should really go home and change my clothes.”
He squinted up at her. “Couldn’t you do that after?”
They walked to the breakfast place he suggested. The sidewalks sparkled in the cool sunshine and the leaves on the small city trees were starting to turn gold. David didn’t say much.
When they sat down in the booth at the busy, cheerful restaurant, Andi ordered fruit and a morning glory muffin. David told the waitress to bring a pot of coffee for the table and ordered three eggs and bacon.
As the server walked away, he frowned. “I forgot, you’re a vegetarian. Does it bother you if I have bacon?”
“No, not at all,” she reassured him, touched that he would ask. “I know it’s natural for humans to eat animals.” She shrugged. “But still…I just feel kind of bad for them, you know?”
David’s cell rang. He looked for a moment like he might ignore it. Then he grimaced and picked it up. “Yeah…oh yeah, thanks for calling me back. Tell me exactly what you’re going to do.” As he listened, the waitress came to the table with a pot of coffee and poured out two mugs. “Sounds good. Yeah, today would be great. The sooner the better.” David looked at his watch. “How about eleven? Okay. See you there.” He flipped the phone shut and said, “Speaking of feeling bad for animals…the rat guy’s coming out today.”
