One Step Away: Once Upon a Proposal

by Sherryl Woods

  “Because football was a huge part of your life. It shaped you. I’d like to understand that.” Unwilling to explain further, or to admit to feelings that she wasn’t ready to put a name to, she met his gaze evenly. “If it’s still too painful, I can wait a while longer.”

  “But you won’t just forget about it.”

  She shook her head. “Afraid not.”

  Suddenly his expression brightened and he winked. “Or I can just win the bet.”

  Relieved that her request hadn’t spoiled the mood, Beth grinned at him. “Not a chance, Hutchinson. Not a chance. You’re too much of a competitor to let anything you want get away.”

  His gaze caught hers and held, the challenge plain and far more seductive than she’d anticipated. “I hope you will always remember that, Beth.”

  Her heart climbed into her throat as their gazes remained locked. The bet faded in importance. All that mattered now was the intent of that quiet warning. Ken had just reminded her with a few spare words that there was more at stake in the game they were playing than a few stolen kisses. She trembled at the realization that whatever the stakes, he was a man whose entire public persona revolved around winning.

  * * *

  Ken gazed around the jam-packed auction house with a sense of amazement. It looked to him as if every farmer, every Yuppie, and every slick antique dealer from a two-hundred-mile radius or even farther had turned out.

  He stood in line with Beth to purchase a number, chuckling when she insisted he have his own.

  “If I’m paying for everything, why can’t we share?” he grumbled without any real rancor, loving this lighthearted mood she was in.

  “Because when you go nuts and start bidding, I want that number of yours on record so there won’t be any reneging on our bet.” Suddenly all business, she pulled a notebook from her purse. “Now, are you coming with me or do you plan to look around on your own?”

  “Hey, this is all new to me. I’d better stick with my instructor.”

  She grinned at him. “Just try not to fall behind. We only have an hour to see everything.”

  “I’ll do my best,” he promised, trying to keep the amusement out of his voice. After all, there was absolutely nothing in this huge room that could possibly compete with the woman he was with. She was just about the most fascinating person on the face of the planet, as near as he could tell. He loved her wholehearted enthusiasm for whatever task she was engaged in. More and more, he was wishing that driven intensity would be focused on him. Not his house. Not the furnishings. Not these antiques. Not any of the other myriad things that distracted her. Just him.

  His gaze rarely left her as they surveyed a pile of rusty beds. It never strayed as they tried the doors and drawers on a dozen different dressers and cabinets. Most of them had warped wood and layers of paint, as near as he could tell.

  Beth definitely held his attention as they edged between stacks of old quilts that, despite their intricate beauty, smelled musty to him. And she was far more intriguing than a bunch of old pictures, most of which couldn’t even be seen through the coating of dust on frames and glass.

  Then he saw the old-fashioned sleigh. Its runners were rusty. The paint was chipped and peeling. The leather upholstery was weathered beyond repair.

  But when he looked at it, he remembered every Christmas card he’d ever seen with a Currier and Ives winter scene. He envisioned that sleigh with its runners gleaming, its upholstery buttersoft and comfortable, its paint a shiny black trimmed with gold and a pair of prancing horses pulling it through the snow.

  Chelsea would be entranced, he thought at once. But it wasn’t his daughter he imagined bundled up in blankets as the sleigh moved across the pure white Vermont landscape. It was Beth, snuggled by his side on a romantic, starlit night.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” he muttered to himself as he ran his fingers over the sleigh and marveled at his sudden flight of fancy.

  Two hours later the decrepit sleigh was brought up to the front of the auction house.

  Ken listened to the first bid to get an idea of the value. Fifty dollars. He would pay ten times that or more, he decided. He stayed out of it until the price hit two hundred and fifty.

  “Five hundred,” he called out, holding his number aloft as he’d seen others do.

  Beth’s head snapped around and she regarded him with wide-eyed astonishment. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to tug his arm down.

  “I want it.”

  “It’s falling apart,” she told him in a hushed voice.

  “I want it,” he repeated stubbornly.

  Suddenly a slow, delighted smile spread across her face and whatever argument she’d planned to offer died on her lips. She released her grip on his arm. “Go for it, then.”

  He bought the sleigh for six hundred and fifty dollars and considered it a bargain. He didn’t even want to know what it was really worth. Only when the bidding was over and he’d paid the attendant and gone outside to claim the sleigh did he stare at it with a sense of bemusement. He turned to Beth.

  “Now what do I do with it to make it go?”

  Her quick peal of laughter rang out on the crisp air and in seconds he had joined in. “Promise you’ll go for the first ride with me when it’s fixed,” he coaxed.

  She glanced from the sleigh to him and back again. “You’ll be lucky to get this thing cleaned up and usable by next winter.”

  Ken shook his head. “You’re forgetting that I have a miracle worker on my payroll. Consider this your first priority.”

  Her eyebrows quirked up. “Before the house?”

  “Before everything,” he said softly. “Except this.”

  His lips met hers in a quick claiming, then lingered to savor her startled sigh, the velvet-soft texture of her mouth and the warm moistness inside. His entire body trembled with a fierce longing for even more, but he slowly pulled away, shaken by the force of his growing feelings for this woman who had been a stranger only a few weeks before.

  His gaze settled on the flashing sparks in her green eyes. “I wish...”

  “What?” she said, sounding faintly breathless from an anticipation that he sensed matched his own.

  “That we were somewhere other than the middle of a snowy parking lot, someplace cozy and warm and intimate.”

  Her eyes widened, then darkened with what he was now certain was a desire as powerful as his. He could feel the quickening of the pulse in her neck beneath his fingertips, the slow, unmistakable heating of her skin. “Beth?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Is that a possibility?”

  For an instant he sensed that she was at war with herself. Then a sigh seemed to shudder through her and she slowly nodded. “My place,” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  The answer might have been succinct, a little hesitant, but he knew a commitment when he heard one. He sensed there would be no second thoughts. He pressed another kiss against her lips, headed off to make arrangements for the delivery of the sleigh, then practically ran back to the car, praying all the while that he was right and that she wouldn’t change her mind.

  He wouldn’t blame her if she did. Even if she’d never heard of him before, surely over the past few weeks she’d heard about his reputation for supposedly torrid, love-’em-and-leave-’em affairs. The whole town was abuzz with such gossip and a lot more speculation about him. The tabloid lies were something he’d come to take for granted, but he didn’t want Beth believing them, not for one single minute. He wanted her to understand that whatever happened between them would be as rare and special for him as he guessed it would be for her. He wanted her to know, even if he didn’t understand how or why it had happened, that she mattered to him, that because of her he was healing, learning who he was again.

  If only he could find the
words.

  * * *

  All the way back to Berry Ridge, Beth prayed that Ken wouldn’t say another word. She didn’t want him to manufacture pretty speeches or to make promises that he wouldn’t keep. It was enough that right now, at this moment, they both wanted the same thing. They both wanted to explore this wild, reckless longing that had sprung up, unanticipated and unwanted, but undeniable in its fierce intensity.

  Ken Hutchinson had somehow sneaked into a heart she’d been so certain had turned to ice. It was enough that there was fire and passion back in her life again, that she felt desirable and alive. She needed this proof that no matter how badly she had failed as a stepmother, she had not failed as a woman. She would deal with the consequences soon enough and she didn’t want that process complicated by a longing to believe words spoken in haste. She had convinced herself of one thing—Ken was an honorable man. If he hadn’t mentioned a wife by now, one didn’t exist. She supposed she should have asked directly, but this was one time she was going to go with her gut instinct.

  Ken drove with a sort of savage intensity, his brow knit in concentration as he guided the four-wheel drive SUV over narrow roads with a thin, dangerous coating of ice. The trip seemed to last forever, fraying Beth’s nerves more with each mile. She concentrated on the road, because she feared if she thought about the step they were about to take her resolve would falter. She didn’t want to be robbed of a chance to experience just once the pleasure of making love to a man whose loyalties and attention weren’t divided by other obligations as Peter’s had been from the outset of their relationship.

  She caught Ken’s quick, sideways glance, then felt his gloved hand wrap around her own and squeeze reassuringly. “I could slow down or change direction,” he offered, and won her heart completely.

  “I’d have to shoot you if you did,” she retorted lightly, drawing a smile.

  Within seconds his expression sobered. “I’m serious, Beth. This doesn’t have to happen today or even tomorrow. It will happen, though.”

  Grateful for the option to say no, she declined it nonetheless. “Today,” she repeated with more assurance, reading into the promise of someday a statement about his availability being uncompromised.

  He nodded and turned his full attention back to the slippery road for the remainder of the drive.

  It was late afternoon by the time they pulled into Beth’s driveway. Low, dark clouds promising a new snowfall and an early dusk hung over the horizon, shutting out the last pale rays of sun.

  Inside the house, Ken immediately set about lighting a fire, while Beth tried to settle her jitters in the kitchen. She opened a bottle of crisp Chardonnay and poured it into her best crystal wineglasses. She put a bunch of grapes on a tray, along with a round of Brie and an assortment of crackers. To that she added a fat green candle, scented with evergreen, telling herself it would seem as if they were making love in a forest clearing or in the final, magical hours of Christmas Eve. Then she chided herself for the whimsical, romantic thought.

  The only thing she couldn’t bring herself to do was to slip upstairs and shed her dusty clothes and trade them for delicate, lacy lingerie. Somehow it seemed as if that would be too calculated, hastening a process that deserved slow, deliberate and ever-more-thrilling seduction.

  After setting the tray on the coffee table, she found herself suddenly at a loss. Ken was stretched out on the carpet in front of the fire. The sofa was too far away for any sort of intimacy. It seemed as if even conversation would grow stilted across that chasm. And surely no quiet secrets or whispered words could be shared.

  Ending her dilemma, Ken held up a hand and tugged her down beside him.

  “I like your house. The warm colors suit you,” he told her, brushing a stray tendril of hair back from her face. “It feels like a home.”

  Beth’s breath snagged in her throat, but she managed a shaky “Thanks.” Even that much was a struggle with every touch assaulting her senses. She felt one pin come out of her hair, then another and another, until the careful knot she’d twisted on top of her head that morning was undone. Ken’s gaze was rapt as he ran his fingers through the curly strands until they had tumbled free to her shoulders.

  “It looks exactly the way I’d imagined,” he whispered. “Why do you always wear it up?”

  Beth shrugged as if the styling of her hair were of no consequence, even though she knew that she had chosen it deliberately because it seemed less feminine, less likely to entice masculine attention. “It keeps it out of my face when I’m working.”

  He looked doubtful. “Are you sure that’s it?”

  “What else could it be?” she asked, even though she knew herself that it wasn’t the whole truth, but merely as much as she was willing to admit.

  “I thought maybe it was like all that bulky tweed and those prim blouses you wore when we first met.”

  Startled by his perceptiveness, she met his eyes, then looked away in embarrassment.

  “So, that was it,” he said softly. “Why were you trying to hide? Didn’t you realize that no matter what you wore, no one could mistake you for anything other than a very attractive, very sexy woman? Why would you even want to disguise that? Who made you afraid of your own sensuality?”

  Beth didn’t want to think about the past or the failures that had driven her to retreat from relationships. She only wanted to think about here and now. About this man and being held in his arms. Who better to reassure her than a man who wasn’t looking for commitment, a man whose amorous adventures had been bandied around town ever since his arrival? She wanted passion, not love. Or so she told herself.

  Without saying a word, she reached out and cupped a hand behind his neck and drew his head forward until their mouths met. As she’d hoped, that gesture was all it took to end conversation, to drive out thoughts of anything else.

  The slow, experimental kisses soon exploded into desperate, frantic need. Ken, who up until now had seemed endlessly patient, suddenly indulged only in caresses meant to inflame. The swift, sure strokes of his hands drove out everything except the way her body was melting under his touch.

  Clothes miraculously disappeared, leaving firelight to dance across bare flesh glistening with a sheen of perspiration. There was no time to linger over the masculine perfection of his body, because her own was filled with this increasingly urgent demand.

  “Do you like this?” he murmured, his fingers slick with her own moisture.

  A nod, because there was no breath to speak.

  “And this?”

  “Oh, yes,” she whispered, the words choked.

  “Tell me, Beth. Tell me what you need.”

  She moaned softly and because the words still wouldn’t come, she showed him, guiding his hands and then his body until he was deep inside her and the world was spinning, topsy-turvy around them.

  It seemed like forever before the spinning slowed and the world righted itself. But even though her senses calmed to something more like normal, Beth knew that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  As impossible as it seemed, as untimely as it was, she had just discovered magic.

  Chapter 8

  Ken wondered if there was anything more complicated in the entire realm of human relationships than waking up next to a person for the very first time after a night of making love. He studied the woman curled up next to him in the cramped bed meant for two people who never budged all night. They had done considerably more than that, he thought, smiling at the memories. And Beth continued to look radiant and desirable, even asleep.

  What a delightfully sexy, unexpected treasure Beth Callahan had turned out to be! He had no idea where things with the two of them were headed. In fact, if anyone had suggested just a few short days ago that he would contemplate an affair, much less anything more serious, for years to come, he would have arg
ued vehemently against the possibility. Hell, he’d told himself that in no uncertain terms. But with every day that had passed, he’d become increasingly certain that Beth was too special not to see what the future for them held.

  Only days ago his life had seemed too chaotic and unsettled, his daughter in need of too much attention, to bring anyone else into their lives. He had anticipated a long road toward physical and emotional healing for both of them. Instead he suddenly seemed to be looking ahead, not back. The career-ending injury to his knee seemed less and less important except as an inconvenience or irritant. The breakup of his marriage saddened him, but apparently hadn’t incapacitated his desire to reach out to another woman, after all.

  Quite probably, the very fact that Beth clearly hadn’t expected or wanted this to happen, either, had made it possible. After years of being married to a woman who’d manipulated everything, no matter how trivial, finding a woman as straightforward and honest as Beth had broken through his defenses. There wasn’t one single shred of doubt in his mind that she wanted nothing from him—not his money, not the reflected light of his celebrity, most likely not even his permanence in her life. To his astonishment, he realized he trusted her more after these past few days than he had ever trusted Pam.

  Not that that was saying much, he conceded ruefully. It hadn’t taken him long to realize that his ex-wife would use any tactic it took, other than a straight-out request, to get what she wanted. Apparently it was some sort of game for her. A psychologist would probably point out that a woman with Pam’s insecurities couldn’t believe that asking alone would bring the desired results.

  What no one had ever explained to Ken’s satisfaction was why a woman as beautiful and intelligent as his ex-wife, a woman who had come from a loving home, would lack self-assurance in the first place. Perhaps he should have tried harder early in the marriage to find out, but he hadn’t and it was too late now. Maybe Pam would find in Hollywood what she hadn’t found with him—her self-esteem.

  Though he knew very little at this moment about what his future held, he did know that the one thing he would not tolerate in a woman again were lies and subterfuge. Beth Callahan seemed incapable of either. Just being with her put him at ease, knowing there was no need to look for hidden agendas behind every word and act.