by Lois Carroll
“What is it, Carolyn? And if you’re about to tell me you didn’t like what you were just experiencing in my arms, I won’t believe you. You’re a warm and passionate woman and I think you want me as much as I want you. And we’re two mature available adults above the age of consent who care for each other. So what’s wrong?”
With one curled finger under her chin, he tipped her head up until she had to look at him.
“You do know how much I want you, don’t you, Caro?”
The use of the diminutive of her name made her smile. “No one’s ever called me that before. I thought it was just used in books. I like it.”
“Good. You’re smiling again. But I know something’s bothering you. What is it, sweetheart? I want to know.” He held her trembling hands in his big ones. When he got no immediate verbal response, he added softly, “I need to know.”
She looked down at their hands. Though her fingers were long, her hands looked small in his big powerful ones. His were able to work magic when they touched her. But could she ever do the same for him? She wanted so much for him to feel the magic too.
“Mac, things are getting… Well, we’re together a lot and… I mean, when I’m alone with you, I can’t… You just touch me and I… Sometimes you only have to look at me and I…”
However she started, she couldn’t seem to finish. With a deep breath to fortify herself, she started again, only this time she looked into his eyes, searching for the answer.
“Mac, the fact is…you scare me to death.”
“I scare you?” he asked, his eyes wide with surprise. Then they narrowed and his voice lowered and gained an edge. “Sure. I get it.” He pulled his hands back from hers. Leaning back against the couch, he ran a hand through his hair and slapped it down on his thigh. “You hate the fact that I’m a cop. It’s the gun thing and seeing the scars and knowing about my being shot. And you’re worried about Terri. I guess it all finally sank in, huh, Carolyn? I knew it would someday, but I hoped–”
She stopped him the best way she knew how: by kissing him firmly on the mouth. She’d heard the frustration and disillusionment in his voice. He hadn’t called her Caro this time, and he was jumping to wrong conclusions by not giving her a chance to finish what she had to say.
She kept her face close to his, her hand on his cheek. “Will you be quiet, Chief, and let me finish? You’re supposed to wait for all the evidence to be presented before leaping to conclusions.”
He looked into her eyes for a moment as if debating whether or not to do as she asked. Without looking away, he nodded. “Okay, counselor. Let me have it all.”
“Mac, you scare me not because of what you are or have been. I wouldn’t change that because I…I care for you…very much…just the way you are.”
Carolyn took his hand and held it between hers. “But that’s what scares me. I know it sounds like double talk, but what scares me is not you, it’s how much I want you.”
Chapter Nine
A broad smile appeared instantly on his face. “Then we haven’t got a problem.” His arm went back to rest on the back of the couch behind her.
“Mac,” she said in a warning tone. She wasn’t done yet and wanted him to listen.
“I’m leaping again, huh? Okay, go on, counselor. Let me hear the rest.”
She watched as he tried to erase the smile that kept curling the edge of his delicious lips. She struggled to concentrate on what she had to say and not on his lips.
“Last weekend, when we stopped at the local Lovers Lane, you said you hadn’t been to one for twenty years.”
He nodded and waited for her to go on.
She paused when she found the admission harder than she imagined. She shifted her position a little. What would he think? She inhaled deeply and charged ahead.
“Well, I…I’ve never been to one before. Never. When I went down the wedding aisle dressed in white, I was as naïve a virgin as you could find anywhere. My mother’s idea of sex education was to hand me a library book on anatomy with the comment that I should know that stuff sooner or later. I learned the rest in school from teachers who would rather have been doing anything than teaching sex ed and from my friends who weren’t clear on the difference between fact and fiction.”
Carolyn felt her leg under her beginning to go to sleep, so she shifted again. Mac seized the opportunity to put his arm around her and hold her against him. She held his free hand in her lap and idly stroked the back with her fingers, watching the little black hairs bounce back up.
“My wedding was a lot of years ago and I know it’s hard to believe, but my husband didn’t know much more than I did. We were definitely not a part of the free-love generation of our younger days. Anyway, the point is… Well…” She paused and looked up at him. “This is terribly hard to tell you.”
Mac smiled. “Just say it and get it over. It’s easier that way. I promise I won’t bite or laugh or cry or whatever it is you’re afraid I might do when I hear it.”
She smiled, which she was certain was his intended reaction. “Okay, so, I have a hard time talking about sex.” Her smile disappeared. “But you should understand that sex wasn’t something I ever looked forward to. Richard worked odd hours, all hours, really. Our sleep schedules didn’t even coincide much of the time because he had to be in the lab at certain intervals for his experiments. Then after discovering I was pregnant with Terri, well…”
She stopped and inhaled deeply. “When I got pregnant, the basic reason we had for having sex was fulfilled, so we sort of… We just didn’t do it much anymore. He spent more and more time at the lab and I worked long hours getting The Costume Nook established. Not long after Terri was born, Richard got sick. Not many months later he was gone.”
Carolyn pressed her lips together between her teeth. “Since he died…” She stopped and raised her face to the ceiling. She took another deep breath and started again. “Mac, you’re the first man to even ask me out on a real date more than once or twice. There aren’t a lot of eligible men floating around this town. And frankly, any man from here or elsewhere whom I’ve dated…I wasn’t interested in repeating the experience.”
She gathered her courage and looked up into his eyes. “What truly scares me is that being with you is so different. You kiss me or just touch me and my arms ache from wanting to hold you. You’ve set a match to the dry pine needles of my heart. When I’m this close to you I feel like I’m on fire. And…Mac…I’m very afraid of fire. A burn is very painful.”
“Oh, Caro, there’s so much more to making love than what you’ve known it to be. So much more. Please, please don’t be afraid. I would never hurt you, and I promise I won’t rush you.” He gathered her into his arms and held her close. “When you’re ready, we’ll make love together, and it’ll be beautiful. I promise you that, too.”
“But what if–”
“There won’t be any buts or what ifs–not if you go with your feelings. It will be better than you’ve ever dreamed.” He leaned down and kissed her temple. “And it will be soon.”
“I…I want to make love with you, Mac.” Tears pricked in her eyes as she looked into his face. “And I want you now,” she whispered. “Will you make love with me? You said you couldn’t say no to me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I want this evening together to remember the rest of my life.
He looked at her for a long moment and then swept her into his arms and onto his lap. Their kiss this time was almost frantic. Her lips still touching his, she boldly undid the buttons and yanked his shirt from his jeans. She tried to pull it off, but Mac had to help because he couldn’t raise his injured shoulder far enough. Just when she thought she was successful, the shirt cuffs, which were too tight to fit over his hands, held on to his wrists like soft handcuffs.
“Now I’ve got you where I want you,” she teased with a dramatically villainous laugh.
“Handcuffed, huh? Never fear, my lovely. I always have a spare key to my cuffs
hidden on me.” With a quick flip, the shirt was over her head and behind her back. Now she was his prisoner. Unbuttoning his own cuffs was easy while he kissed her.
“This tickles,” she said with a little giggle, running her flattened fingers across his bare chest. “The hairs on your chest…I never thought they would tickle.”
Mac groaned with delight. “Oh, Caro, there is so much I want to pleasure you with.” The little sounds she made in her throat when he kissed her only seemed to encourage him.
When Carolyn next looked into his eyes, she knew her decision had been the right one. With a smile she couldn’t erase, she rose on unsteady legs and held out her hand to Mac. He rose and put his hand in hers.
“You’re sure, Caro? It’s…ah, it’s been a while for me, too. Frankly, a good long while. I don’t know how strong my control will be once we walk down that hall.”
“I don’t want control, Mac, and I can’t wait any more.”
Without another word, she led the way to her bedroom.
Outside the snow fell soundlessly, covering the barrenness of November. Inside, under the thick quilt, Mac held Carolyn as she slept with her head on his chest, their arms around each other, her leg bent over his thigh. They’d made love, eaten some soup and French bread, and then made love again.
Mac stared at the wallpaper, but what he saw was Caro’s face at the moment she experienced her first orgasm. He would never forget the look of joy, of wonder. When it happened the second time, she’d cried. He felt her joy and knew how very much he cared for her.
So many of his days and nights since he became a cop had been filled with the unloving side of life. He never dreamed there was a place in his life for love. He sighed and let the wonderful new sensation wash over him. As good as those thoughts made him feel, thinking about his job situation and the unsolved problems in his past made him come crashing back to earth.
Suddenly he wondered why the hell he had let their relationship get this far. He couldn’t be falling in love with her. Love only led to heartache. A man in his position would only bring hurt to the one he loved.
Mac looked down at Caro’s face. In the light from the candle she’d lit on the bedside table, he could see she was smiling in her sleep. Mac smiled, too, as he remembered her lighting the candle. She said that at her age she would look better by candlelight. He did his best to persuade her she looked lovely in any light.
He willed the happy feeling of their lovemaking to wash back over him. Would the hate-filled world he had to work in allow the feeling to stay? Or would he forget it like he forgot who murdered his partner?
The silence in the darkened room was shattered by the insistent beep of Mac’s pager leaning on the base of the unlit lamp by the bed. His movements quick and automatic from years of practice, he grabbed it and depressed the button to display the message. The succinct word he uttered toward it as he turned it off elicited a small gasp from Carolyn.
“Sorry,” he said as he kissed her hair and then moved to slide from under her.
“What is it, Mac? What’s wrong?” She blinked her eyes and tried to wake up and focus on what was happening.
“It’s my beeper. I have to call the Sheriff’s office.”
“But it’s the weekend. I thought the Sheriff handled everything then.”
“Must be something going on in town he wants me to know about.” Mac slid out from under the quilt and pulled his jeans on. Sitting back down on the bed, he reached for the phone next to the lamp and punched in the number.
Carolyn pushed the two pillows together on the headboard and leaned against them. The quilt pulled up modestly to cover her breasts, she rested her hand on Mac’s upper arm. He smiled to encourage her to keep her hand there.
“Macdonald responding to your page.”
“Let me put Manny on the line,” the voice on the other end of the line said.
Mac reached to take Carolyn’s hand in his. He tried to let the new tension he felt from being forced to wait flow from his body. Why did they have to page him now? Mac rubbed the pads of her fingers and remembered how they had felt as she slid them all over his body.
A deep voice cut into the silence on the line. “Mac, I thought you’d want to hear this one right away. She was on the phone again just now, and this time she was about hysterical.”
“Who, Manny?”
“This woman has called three times now about the guy who broke into Carolyn Blake’s in Lakehaven a while back. She was going on about how he didn’t mean any harm, but now that she knew he did it, she didn’t know what to do.”
“Who was it that called?” Mac asked again.
“Well, she didn’t tell us the first time. She hung up ‘cause he came to her door. Then an hour later she’s back on the line, arguing with a male. She’s trying to get him to tell me all about what he did at the costume place. He says he ‘ain’t doing no such thing’ and the phone goes dead.”
“Damn, so you don’t know who it was?”
“Not ‘til the third call just now. I got the calls taped, and we were playing the first two back when Jean here thought she knew the voice. So when she called back I used the name Jean gave me and the woman responded. She wanted to talk to you, but she couldn’t call you ‘cause the station was closed for the weekend, and you weren’t in the book, being new and all.”
“Manny, enough! Who was it?” Mac had no patience left. This phone call had already spoiled something beautiful that should never have been interrupted, and Manny wouldn’t get to the point.
Mac hadn’t realized how tense the call was making him, until Carolyn rose to her knees behind him to massage the tension from his neck and shoulders. He raised his head and leaned back against her breasts.
“You won’t believe this, but it was Mavis Ashton, the lady at the county records office. Have you met her yet?”
“Not in person. Ellie has done most of the contact work with her. But the way she described Mavis, she’d be the last person I’d expect to be mixed up in a burglary.”
Mac heard Carolyn’s gasp as her hands stilled. “Mavis Ashton?” she whispered toward his upturned face. Mac nodded and continued to listen on the phone.
“Didn’t sound like she was in on it,” Manny continued. “She’d just found out who done it, and her civic duty was dictating that she call, no matter what the hour.”
“She couldn’t have picked a worse one,” Mac mumbled.
“Not to worry, Chief. She wants to talk to you at nine in the morning at your office. Says she can get the guy to go there then and not before.”
“You don’t think she’s in any danger from the guy now?”
“She said she wasn’t, but here’s one more wrinkle for ya.” Manny chuckled in a way that made Mac feel uneasy. “You’ll get a kick outta this part, Mac, if the rumors I hear about you and Carolyn are true. Mavis wants her, the owner of the costume place, to be there too. Don’t ask me why,” he quickly added, anticipating that would be Mac’s next question. “She said they–that’s her and whoever this guy is–they knew Carolyn would understand in case you didn’t. Then she said she’d see you both there tomorrow at nine, and she hung up on me again.”
Carolyn was still behind Mac and must have felt the tension returning to his shoulders because she started massaging the muscles again.
“I don’t like bringing in a civilian into a questioning, especially when she was the victim of the crime,” Mac responded. He hoped he sounded neutral to take Manny’s thoughts away from his curiosity about the rumors, but at the same time he wanted to know what they were. He hated the thought of Carolyn’s name being bandied about.
Manny was not easily led astray. “Listen, I’m sure you figure it’s none of my business, Mac, but I’ve known Carolyn for a lot of years ‘cause she helps us with the costumes for the children’s show at the hospital each year. I think she’s one special lady what with all she does for this community. But then from what I know of you, you just might be the best thing for her.�
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Damn. Did everyone have an opinion about him and Carolyn dating after just a few weeks? He felt a strong urge to protect her from any discomfort she would feel because of other people talking about them.
Mac let the sheriff know the subject was closed. He thanked him and said he would take care of the nine o’clock meeting. He requested copies of the phone call tapes and hung up. He stretched and tried to let the stress he felt flow from his body by rotating his head in a circle while Carolyn continued her massage.
“Mavis Ashton says she knows who broke into your shop and wants to meet with us in the morning,” he offered.
“Mavis knows who did it? She is the last person in town I would picture hanging out with criminals. Wait a minute, you said us.”
“Yes. She specifically asked that you be there.” Mac told her about the morning meeting as he rose and walked to the window. He parted the drapes and looked out toward the street to see the noise he’d heard while on the phone had been a snowplow making a pass down the street. It doubled the ridge of snow at the end of the drive, but the street was passable now. He turned back to Carolyn, letting the drape fall closed.
She was tangled in the sheet, sitting on one leg with the other bent and her head resting on her knee. Her hair was tousled from their lovemaking, and he wanted nothing more than to get right back into bed with her.
He sat beside her and ran his hand up and down her bare back. She looked up at him and he saw her creamy breasts peeking above the sheet. He was startled by a fresh tightening in his groin. In a couple of months he would be forty years old. Here he was feeling like he was twenty again. He leaned over and kissed her soundly.
“You’re even more beautiful after you’ve made love.” He straightened up. “This isn’t easy, but I’d better take advantage of the plowed street and get to the apartment. Neither one of us wants Terri to come bounding in here and find me in bed with you.” Carolyn nodded and Mac heard her sigh.
“Tomorrow, can Terri stay at Christie’s long enough for you to come down to the station at nine?”
