Contract Pending

by Jenna Bennett

  When he let me go, Todd was breathing faster. “I’ll be waiting, Savannah.” He gave me one last long look before he turned on his heel. I watched him walk away. And then I got in my car and drove out of the parking lot and onto the Columbia Highway.

  I wasn’t thinking too clearly, or I would have gone back to mother’s house for the night. Or at least to pick up my suitcase and the rest of my things. I didn’t. I got in the car and started driving. Once I hit Interstate 65, I turned north and drove some more, through the dark and silence. It wasn’t but an hour later that I saw the lighted twin towers of the Batman building above the trees in the distance. Downtown Nashville. Home, sweet home.

  The driveway of 101 Potsdam Street was empty, although the porch light was turned on. I tried not to feel like I was standing in a spotlight when I knocked on the door and waited. Feeling like an idiot in my satin dress and strappy silver shoes. Wondering if I didn’t look like one, as well.

  At first I didn’t think anyone would answer. Maybe Rafe had done the smart thing and taken himself and Mrs. Jenkins off somewhere safe, until whatever was going on blew over and Marquita’s murder was solved and the Hispanic man had moved on to another victim. I wrapped my arms around myself, shivering with a mixture of cold and nerves, and considered leaving. Considered where I might go, with Officer Slater presumably still in my apartment.

  The office? A motel? Back to Sweetwater? It was only ten thirty; I could be back there and in bed by midnight.

  I was just about to turn and retrace my steps to the car when the door opened. Soundlessly. Seemingly on its own.

  I swallowed. “Rafe?”

  No one answered. The door stopped moving, halfway open. I peered into the darkness. “Mrs. Jenkins? Anyone?”

  There was still no response. I moved a little closer, my heart thudding in my chest. “Hello?”

  And then I lost my breath when an arm shot through the opening, grabbed me, and yanked me inside. The door slammed shut as I tumbled against a hard, male body.

  For a second neither of us moved. Then...

  “Have you lost your mind?” Rafe asked, his voice rough as he set me upright. “What’re you doing here this time of night? Dressed like that?”

  I tried to fill my lungs, but couldn’t quite manage. Between the surprise and fear—fading now—the tight dress and the nearness of him, I was feeling lightheaded.

  “C’mon.” He led the way down the hallway toward the kitchen, moving like a cat through the darkness. I stumbled after.

  The light was on in the kitchen, and it felt homey and friendly. A small TV was playing on the counter—basketball—and a bottle of beer was open on the kitchen table next to a bag of salted cashews. He glanced at me. “Hungry?”

  I shook my head. “I had dinner.”

  “Course.” Those dark eyes moved over me. Snagged here and there on the way. My hair, my mouth, the pulse beating at the base of my throat, the top of the dress, the bottom of the dress, and then lingering in the same places coming back in the other direction. He ended by looking into my eyes, his own flat and black, giving nothing away. “Date with Satterfield?”

  I nodded.

  “Nice dress.” He turned away. Grabbed the bottle of beer and lifted it. When he put it down again, it was empty.

  I tore my eyes away from the movement of his throat, the muscles in his upper arm, tight under the sleeve of the blue T-shirt. “I bought it this morning. Thinking it might make him propose.”

  For a second I wasn’t sure he’d answer. Then he did. As usual not by responding to what I’d said, but what I had taken care not to say. “Yesterday morning scare you that much?”

  Trust him to hit the nail squarely on the head.

  I shrugged. Yes. And no. Considering that while I was trying the dress on, I’d also been thinking about him taking it off me.

  And what on earth was wrong with me, that I could be thinking about Todd proposing and Rafe undressing me almost in the same breath?

  He went to the fridge, pulled out another beer. Held one up with a question on his face.

  I shook my head. “I had wine with dinner.”

  He nodded. Put one of the bottles back and closed the refrigerator door. Then he opened the other bottle and poured half the contents down his throat before he asked, “So how did it go?”

  “What?” I had to refocus my eyes again. “Oh, dinner? Fine.”

  “He propose?”

  “He did. Yes.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “I didn’t say yes.” Of course, I didn’t say no, either.

  “Why go to all the trouble if you were gonna turn him down?” He gestured to the ‘trouble’—my dress and hair—with the bottle.

  “I didn’t know I was going to turn him down until...” I hesitated, “he asked.”

  He put the bottle on the table and folded his arms, long legs in snug jeans crossed at the ankles. The pale blue T-shirt had a washed-out Corona logo on the chest, and it had been soft when I fell against him earlier. Almost as soft as the skin underneath. The skin I’d had my hands on just a day and a half ago.

  I looked away, but not fast enough, because I could see his lips curve.

  He didn’t comment, though. “What happened?” he asked instead, his voice almost warm.

  His eyes were warm too, and a little amused. “I came to my senses,” I said.

  “Meaning?”

  “Marrying Todd because I’m afraid of you seems rash.”

  Something moved in his eyes. “Why are you afraid of me?”

  “Because you—” ...do things to me, and make me feel things, that no one else does. You make me question everything I’ve always known to be true and make me want things I know I can’t have.

  I couldn’t tell him any of that, though, so I just shook my head. “I’m not. Not the way you think. And it isn’t really about you. It’s about Todd. I looked at him sitting there, across the table, and I just... couldn’t.”

  Rafe nodded. “I know the feeling.”

  “I’m sure you do.” There must have been dozens of women up through the years who had wanted him to commit, when he didn’t want to. “And that reminds me, I’ve seen a couple of your old girlfriends recently. Elspeth Caulfield today. And Yvonne McCoy yesterday. She said to give her a call sometime. She gave me her number to give to you, but I left it in Sweetwater.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Of course not. Why would I do that?”

  He smiled. “Did Elspeth tell me to call her, too?”

  “I didn’t mention that I’d seen you,” I said. “She’s weird. I met her in your old bedroom in the trailer in the Bog.”

  Both brows shot up this time. “My bedroom?”

  “The one with the green rug and the naked girl on the wall, right?”

  He nodded. “I don’t recall her being naked. Totally.”

  “She might as well have been, considering the size of the... fabric scraps she had on.”

  “Not too different from the fabric scraps I imagine you might have on under there,” Rafe said, with another look at my dress. Before I could react, he’d continued, “What were you doing in my bedroom? Both of you?”

  “I don’t know about Elspeth, but I was curious. The door was open, so I went in.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. I wondered if he was fighting an impulse to shake me until my teeth rattled. Or some other impulse. “What were you doing in the Bog in the first place? Not your kinda place, is it?”

  “Hardly. I wanted to see where Marquita’s car was found.”

  “Playing Nancy Drew again?”

  I shrugged.

  “Find any clues?”

  “None. Unless the naked girl on your wall is a clue. Or Elspeth.”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Rafe said. “The naked girl’s been on my wall since I was sixteen. And Elspeth—”

  “She’s been hanging around since you were sixteen, too. Or close to it.”

  He smiled. “Can we
go back to Satterfield for a minute? I wanna make sure I understand something. He asked you to marry him, and you turned him down?”

  “Not exactly. I didn’t say no. Although I didn’t say yes, either.”

  “Why?”

  “I already told you. Marrying him because I’m...”

  “Yeah, we covered that. Except you’re not afraid of me. Or so you say.”

  “I’m not.” Not the way he thought.

  He shifted his stance. “I just can’t wrap my head around this, darlin’. Satterfield’s gainfully employed, well-off, polite, pure-bred...” He was ticking items off on his fingers as he listed them, “and he knows what fork to use at dinner. He’s just the kind of guy a nice girl like you’s supposed to marry, ain’t he?”

  “Maybe I’m not such a nice girl,” I said. Muttered, rather. When he didn’t answer, I snuck a peek at him under my lashes. He quirked a brow.

  “You trying to tell me something, darlin’?”

  I hesitated. “I’m not sure what I’m trying to do,” I admitted eventually. “I just know that I looked at him, and I couldn’t go through with it. See, I did what I was supposed to do when I married Bradley. I was twenty three, and I thought I knew how life worked. I bought into the whole fairytale, the one about ‘gainfully employed, well-off, polite’... I did everything I was supposed to do, and look where it got me. I’m divorced, I’m alone, I’m terrified of trying and failing again. I’m afraid that if I marry Todd, it’ll be more of the same.”

  “Satterfield won’t cheat on you,” Rafe said. “He worships the ground you walk on.”

  I nodded. “He says he loves me. And I don’t know why that should sound like a prison sentence, but it does.”

  The words were just pouring out, and I had no idea how to stop them. “I’m afraid he’ll use it as an excuse to suffocate me. From the very best of intentions, of course. He wants to keep me safe, so he’ll try to keep me from doing anything, just so nothing happens to me.”

  “It’s natural,” Rafe said.

  “Maybe.” Although I didn’t have to like it. “I know I should marry him. We have so much in common, and he’s my brother’s best friend and my mother loves him. But Bradley and I had a lot in common, too, and look how that turned out. Why would this be any different? I mean, what if I don’t grow to love him? I’ll be stuck in a marriage to a man I don’t love. Another man I don’t love. And not to be vulgar, but I spent two years faking orgasms for Bradley. I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life.”

  For a second, Rafe’s expression turned blank, before it melted into amusement again. I blushed, giving myself another of those mental slaps. He was so easy to talk to, and so unconcerned with proper behavior, that I found it only too easy to tell him things I wouldn’t dream of telling anyone else. All sorts of confessions fell out of my mouth when I was talking to him.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, my cheeks hot.

  His voice was uneven, as if he were trying not to laugh. “No problem. I already knew you and Bradley had problems in bed.”

  I’d told him that, in another moment of temporary insanity, soon after we met. Thinking that if he knew I was frigid, if I told him that I hadn’t been able to satisfy my husband in bed, it might make him back off. Instead he’d informed me that just because Bradley couldn’t get the job done, didn’t mean that he couldn’t.

  “And,” he added, “I told you I could help you with that.”

  “I know you did.”

  “So is that why you’re here?”

  “I don’t know why...” I said, and then I stopped. Took a breath and faced facts. “Yes. That’s why I’m here.”

  That, and because I couldn’t seem to stay away. Because my car had somehow found its way here without conscious thought on my part. Because this was where I’d gone, where I’d run, instinctively. Just like I’d run to him in my dreams last night.

  “You want...” It was his turn to stop, to consider his words. “You wanna finish what we started yesterday.”

  I nodded. I didn’t exactly agree that what was between us had started yesterday, but yes. I wanted to finish it.

  “And then what? I can look forward to the future Mrs. Satterfield thinking about me whenever it’s time to fake another orgasm?”

  His eyes were bright and intent. I opened my mouth to say that I hadn’t meant it exactly like that, but then I closed it again when I realized that maybe that was exactly what I’d meant. It was a sobering thought.

  “If you don’t want to...” I said instead.

  “There ain’t a chance in hell that I don’t want to. I just wanna know what I’m getting into first.”

  Right. “I’m not going to do an Elspeth and chase you for the rest of your life, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

  “Yeah,” Rafe said, “that’s what I’m afraid of. You chasing me for the rest of my life.”

  I took a deep breath. This was not going the way I’d wanted at all. “You know, I can tell that this was a bad idea. I don’t know what I was thinking, to come here like this. So I’m just going to pretend that this didn’t happen and leave now...”

  I turned on my heel to do just that. And before I had taken more than a single step, I was spun back around, and then pushed up against the front of the refrigerator, the cool metal against my bare back and the heat of his body against my front.

  For a second or two, I couldn’t breathe.

  He had done this to me once before. Slammed me up against a wall and kept me in place with his body. That had been in public, with people walking by; people who probably thought, from his stance and body language, that something amorous was going on between us.

  Nothing had been. Not then. He’d actually been threatening me. Intimidating me, by standing too close, leaning in, with all that tightly coiled strength just a breath away. Using his height, his bulk, the fact that he knew his easy sexuality was frightening to me, to keep me there, like a bug under a microscope.

  He was doing it again now. In a totally different way. One hand was braced next to my head and the other slipped across the satin of my dress, sliding the fabric against my skin. I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. When he leaned in to nuzzle my ear, to skim his lips down my neck to the pulse beating double-time at the bottom of my throat, I caught my breath in a gasp, and felt his mouth curve. He didn’t say anything, though, just moved to slide a jeans-clad thigh between my knees and up, pushing the dress along with it.

  My legs turned to water, and I clutched at him, bunching fistfuls of that soft, blue T-shirt as my eyes threatened to roll back in my head.

  He chuckled. And turned me around, from the fridge to the kitchen table, boosting me up on the edge. And then his hands were there, sliding the dress up, out of his way, so he could step between my thighs.

  “Here?” I managed, more breath than actual sound behind the single word.

  His voice was husky. “I bet Bradley never made love to you on the kitchen table.”

  He’d win that bet. Bradley had been pretty traditional in bed. And we’d always been in bed when we had sex. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I could handle sex anywhere else. Sex with Rafe at all was frightening enough. But sex on the kitchen table, with the lights on, and a bag of salted cashews next to my ear...

  And what if Mrs. Jenkins got peckish and came downstairs for a snack?

  In fact, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this at all, with Mrs. J in the house. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about her in the heat of the moment.

  “What about your grandmother? She could walk in on us...”

  “I sent her to a safe-house,” Rafe said, back to nuzzling my neck. “It’s just us.”

  His fingers were skimming over my back, pushing through fallen tendrils of hair to unhook the back closure of my dress, and I barely managed to get my hands up in time to catch the bodice before it fell. He arched a brow.

  “No... um... scraps of fabric.” I blushed.

  He grinned, a flash of white teeth agai
nst golden skin. The big, bad wolf getting ready to devour Little Red Riding Hood. “You going commando?”

  “Not completely. I’ve got... um...” Panties on. Underneath. But the bra was built in. With a backless dress, there’s really no other option.

  “No wonder Satterfield proposed.” He stepped back to look at me. I was clutching the dress to my breasts, my cheeks flushed and my skirt hiked up to my hips, much like a heroine on the cover of one of Barbara Botticelli’s romances. By the time they returned to mine, his eyes were simmering with heat, and his voice rasped across my skin, raising goosebumps. “Let go of the dress, Savannah.”

  “I...”

  Can’t. I mean, how could I just drop my hands? The top of the dress would fall and I would be practically naked. In front of him. On the kitchen table. With the light on. It would be embarrassing. And unsanitary. Not to mention indecent. I was brought up to be a nice girl, and nice girls don’t undress in front of men who look at them with hot, dark eyes and think hot, dark thoughts...

  He smiled. “Would you be more comfortable upstairs?”

  I nodded.

  “C’mon, then. We can do it on the kitchen table next time. Or the time after.”

  If there was a next time, or a time after that. And there probably wouldn’t be. But I didn’t say anything, just slid off the edge of the table. My legs were unsteady, so he had to hold me, and the dress still bunched around my hips, although it started settling after the first few steps toward the door. He was hustling me along, down the middle of the hallway, until, halfway down, he turned and pushed me up against the wall and kissed me, and I forgot all about the bodice and my lack of underwear, and suddenly I was half naked and clinging to him, and I thought it was going to happen right then and there—

  And that’s when there was a loud bang and a tinkling sound, and Rafe yanked me down to the floor and rolled me underneath him, and there was absolutely nothing romantic about it at all.