Boy, her hair was beautiful when the sun caught its light and she let it fall around her shoulders!
And Karen had been invited to a play date with a girl from her class. He didn’t have to pick her up for another hour.
A whole hour that they could be using for kissing and touching and a whole lot of—
“It’s like this,” he said, putting a toe on the first porch step. She glared but he refused to back off. “Mayor Pincham thinks you’re not my type.”
She shrugged.
“Lasser, my boss in the Chicago office, must have told him about some of the women I’ve kept company with in the past.”
“So?”
“Usually blond. Always curvy. Big hair. Short skirts.”
“Okay.”
“But we’ve done a couple of suspicious things—gone to Tanglewood, down to Chicago, spent a lot of hours together…with you as a babysitter.”
“Uh-huh.”
He stepped up onto the second porch step, thinking that she looked pretty when she was mad. The freckles on her nose seemed darker, her eyes narrowed so that their amber color glowed, and her breasts swelled up over her crossed arms as if she were wearing the tightest, randiest corset from the lingerie catalog found in every mailbox across the country.
“The point is that he’s asking me to take you as a neighborly act.”
“An act of pity.”
“If you want to put it that way, yes.”
“Charity, in other words.”
“Sure.”
“Go perform charitable acts elsewhere.”
He followed her into the house, slipping into the foyer just before the front door slammed.
“Yeah, but if I don’t show up with you, it looks a little strange. And when you add that to the suspicious acts, bingo!”
“Bingo?”
“Lefty also said that his wife didn’t like parties with an uneven number of the sexes.”
“What if I said no?”
“Why would you? Can’t you see that your saying no is even more suspicious than your saying yes?”
“No, I really can’t,” she said drily. “Can’t you make a few phone calls? Go through your black book?”
“What do you know about my black book?”
His question gave him away. Her glance was brief and withering.
“Okay, I called a few women. That’s when I came up with a few women who would say no. But if you hadn’t told me that I wasn’t allowed to go public with this relationship, I would have asked you first. With or without the mayor telling me.”
“No you wouldn’t.”
“Yes, I would.”
“I’m not blond.”
“True.”
“I’m not curvy.”
“No. Can’t say you are.”
“I haven’t got big hair.”
“I’m starting to like natural curls.”
“And I don’t have a short skirt.”
“Shame about not showing off your legs.”
“And willing?”
“You were pretty willing.”
“Were.”
“I’m willing enough for both of us,” he said, pulling her straight off her trajectory in the direction of the kitchen and right into his arms. “I’ve got an hour. You do, too.”
“I thought you said that making love once would get me out of your system.”
“I was wrong. How ’bout you?”
“I’m just fine, thank you.”
“Sure you are. Come on, Stacy, come upstairs with me.”
She opened her mouth to protest. He knew what a woman of her kind should say. And he deserved every word. Of all the nerve! Outrageous! Taking advantage! Not treating this matter with due seriousness! And in the afternoon!
Her shell-pink lips worked themselves around indignation and condemnation for a good minute without a sound. And then her twin front teeth bit down hard on her lower lip.
“I’m learning that a woman’s breasts should fit right in my palm,” he said, slipping his hand up her cashmere-soft T-shirt.
Her head dropped forward onto his chest and he felt the thunderous heartbeat.
“Really?” she asked at his collarbone.
“Really,” he said.
IT WASN’T FAIR.
It absolutely wasn’t fair what he could do to her.
With just a caress and a word, a suggestion and a kiss—a fire started in her belly, one that couldn’t be quenched unless he was inside her.
Although she led him up the steps to her bedroom, it was clear he was in charge. Shamefaced to be so compliant, she could hardly meet his eye when he kicked the door shut behind him. And yet, when he undid the top two buttons of his jeans, she couldn’t raise her eyes. But the sight of his manhood straining against denim declared he was as much under her spell as she under his.
Armed with all her womanly power, she dawdled. Fingered a dusty crystal perfume bottle that had been a Christmas present from her sister several years past. Brought a brush up to her hair and put it back on the dresser. Tugged her T-shirt up over her shoulders and tossed her hair with something approaching insouciance. Let one bra strap drop and then another.
He stared, slack-jawed in his admiration.
She reached back and undid a trio of hooks that kept her bra in place. Her breasts, small though they were, swelled with longing, their pink nipples taut and aching. She splayed her hands across her stomach and undid the top button of her jeans.
He’d had enough.
In two quick strides, he took her, zealously claiming her mouth with his. Possessing her breasts with his large, callused hands. Grinding his hips into hers until he found the shallow space between her legs and there he planted his knee, spreading her thighs. She was wet, she was aching, she was ready for him.
She strained against him, and they both lost their balance, tumbling onto the bed with its cheery quilt and its warren of lace and linen-covered pillows.
He eased her out of her jeans and, so that he wouldn’t waste a moment, pushed his down far enough so that she could sit astride him. At first, she felt uncomfortable—her wetness, his hardness seemed not to match.
But he grabbed her firmly at her buttocks and guided her body so that he entered her.
And then he did not move.
She was grateful when her hair fell across her face so that he could not see her uncertainty.
Uncertainty gave way to movement. First forward and then so subtly back. Each time she moved against him, she felt a rewarding pleasure. Again and then again—when at last she lost self-consciousness and moved for her pleasure and only that, he lifted up the veil of copper curls. She sighed and then, as though from a far distance, heard her own cry of pleasure as he surrendered to her.
“WEAR WHAT YOU HAVE ON,” Adam suggested.
She glowered at the naked man lounging like a sated tiger on her bed.
“I don’t have anything on under this sheet.”
“The sheet doesn’t flatter. Go without the sheet.”
Shaking her head, she looked back into the far reaches of a closet that was not built for socializing. Jeans, overalls, work shirts, sweatshirts—all the things a woman needed to be a nurse to her father and an occasional gardener.
“Everyone’s used to seeing me in jeans,” she said, pulling out a clean, pressed pair that did not have bleach-stubborn grass stains or paper-thin knees.
“Yeah, but if you wear jeans, everyone’s going to get the wrong idea.”
“What idea?”
“They’ll think you’d get dressed up if you weren’t involved with me but wanted to be. If you don’t dress up it means you’re already involved with me and you’re trying to fool them.”
“Oh, really?”
“Deerhorn logic,” he said brightly. “I’m becoming a master of it.”
She pulled out a blue cotton dress with a Peter Pan collar that had taken her to church many Sundays. Rising from the bed, utterly unselfconscious about his nakedness, Ad
am took the hanger from her hand.
“No way,” he said. “This looks like you’re trying too hard to prove that you’re not being casual because you’re involved with me but—”
“Enough!”
“Besides, it doesn’t look like it’d be very flattering. Too long.”
She picked out a denim dress.
“Covers too much of your body,” Adam warned, pulling on his jeans. “Oh, by the way, don’t do a thing to your hair.”
She hadn’t actually planned on doing anything, mostly because she had only two arms—from what she could tell by watching Marion’s routine, it took a minimum of four to use a blow-dryer.
“Why not?”
“You have very ‘I’m having an affair’ hair,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Very sexy. I don’t know how I’ll ever manage to live with Vegas blow-out hair after meeting you.”
“‘I’m having an affair’ hair?”
He wagged his finger. “If you fix it up, everyone will know that you’re trying too hard to make it seem as if we’re not…”
“Get out,” she said. “You’re not any help at all.”
He shrugged. “I’ll go pick up Karen. Be ready in an hour. Why don’t you wear that black number you bought in Chicago? On second thought, don’t. It’s a terrible thing to see grown men drool.”
Stacy stared in the mirror for several minutes after he left.
“‘I’m having an affair’ hair?” she asked, piling her curls atop her head.
Too sexy, now that she thought about it. Then, pulling tightly back from her forehead until her eyes narrowed and her head hurt—provocative as a music video vamp—although that’s not how she had ever regarded herself when she pulled her hair off her face when she gardened.
Then, letting go of the curls, but that only made her sigh.
“I’m having an affair” hair.
Seemed impossible that the town of Deerhorn wouldn’t catch on.
She picked out a blue sundress, rejected it as being too fancy with its froth of lace at the bodice, and then decided it would be the sort of thing she’d wear to the Pinchams if she had been invited on her own.
Or would it?
She looked at the black strapless dress and shook her head. Too shocking. And then they’d know that the trip to Chicago hadn’t been strictly business.
She couldn’t understand Deerhorn logic—and she had lived here all her life!
“YOU’VE DONE something with your hair,” the mayor’s wife trilled after she had accepted Stacy’s garden-fresh sunflower bouquet as a hostess gift and had shooed Karen upstairs to where the children of the house were playing video games. She eyed Stacy speculatively. “Did you blow-dry it?”
“No,” Stacy said firmly. “I just brushed it like usual.”
“Seems different somehow,” Mrs. Pincham opined, leaning closer. “You aren’t dying your hair, are you now?”
“No,” Stacy ducked her head. “Having an affair” hair, huh?
“Because I just started—just to cover the gray,” the mayor’s wife confided, although Nancy Tigerman let everyone know that Mrs. Pincham had been getting highlights for the past seven years. “Maybe it’s your lipstick. That’s the first time I’ve seen you in makeup. Pink’s very flattering.”
“I think she looks quite pretty,” Adam declared.
Both women stared at him.
“Hmm,” Mrs. Pincham said.
“And you look quite pretty this evening, too,” Adam added.
“Well, thank you, and it’s very nice of you to bring Stacy.”
“My pleasure.”
Mrs. Pincham showed them into the living room where the Deerhorn police chief, the school superintendent of the county, Deerhorn Union’s minister and their wives were being served cocktails by the mayor. Flattering anecdotes were offered up about Stacy’s father and grief was expressed at his passing. Stacy carefully chose a seat by the window which did not allow for sharing.
Adam accepted a glass from Lefty Pincham and sat on the couch between two Deerhorn matrons.
Talk turned to the draft choices for the Green Bay Packers, but as soon as Betty Carbol and her husband, Fire Chief Carbol, joined the gathering, the conversation turned serious.
“Do you think you’ll have the school ready for September opening?” Mr. Pincham asked. “’Cause many Deerhorn families are having to make choices about whether to bus their children to the next county or register with our district.”
“I’m sure it’ll be done.”
“It’s already June. School was out a week ago. You haven’t come up with a plan we like.”
“I know,” Adam said. “I’ve had to hire the best baby-sitter in town so that I can work full days.”
All eyes turned to Stacy.
“Baby-sitting,” the police chief said, in the same tone he used with youths who might know a little something about graffiti on the back of the drugstore or a bike gone missing in the library parking lot.
“Eight bucks an hour,” Adam said.
“My son Bob could do it for five dollars an hour,” Mrs. Pincham sniffed, passing a plate of appetizers. “And besides, I’ve heard Stacy’s moving into Marion’s house to give her a little help with the boys.”
“But I can drive,” Stacy said. “And Bob doesn’t have his license yet.”
“I don’t see how that…”
“Karen signed up for ballet lessons in Geneva,” Adam interrupted. “And I’m not so good at keeping house. I don’t think any teenaged boy could clean and cook as well as Stacy.”
“And I don’t really mind,” Stacy added. “Anything to help get the school built.”
“Sure,” Betty Carbol said, in a tone that made everyone stare.
“Speaking of the school,” the fire chief said. “Can I ask how you’re installing the smoke detectors and sprinklers?”
“Yeah, and how will the security at the door work?” the police chief asked.
After a cocktail hour that became an informal village meeting, Mrs. Pincham announced dinner would be served on the patio.
With a warning glance to her husband, she also declared that there would be no further “business talk” about the school. Stacy helped Mrs. Pincham lay out platters of steak, vegetables, potatoes and bread. Betty poured water and iced tea at each place setting. The children were fed at the kitchen table by Bob, the eldest Pincham son.
“So how do you like Deerhorn?” the police chief asked.
Stacy took her place at the end of the table and unfolded her white linen napkin on her lap.
“It’s a wonderful town,” Adam said, smiling at each of its beneficent leaders in turn. When his eyes met Betty’s, she frowned and looked away. “It’s small, friendly, safe; a very good environment for raising children.”
“And I don’t understand why tourists don’t flock here,” Mr. Pincham complained. “What have other towns got that we haven’t?”
Several at the table agreed that it was a monumental injustice that nearby Geneva was booming while Deerhorn languished.
“It’s too bad that Geneva has picked up the tourist dollars and you haven’t You’re right on the lake,” Adam said. “And Tanglewood is a surprisingly sophisticated French restaurant. You have a lot to offer a weekend tourist.”
“I hear you and Stacy had dinner at Tanglewood a few nights ago,” Reverend Miller said, shoveling a forkful of steak into his mouth just as the toe of Mrs. Miller’s nice new pumps met his kneecap with a smack! “Hey, what’d I say?”
“Nothing that hasn’t been said a hundred times in the past two weeks,” Betty observed.
Chapter Fourteen
“They know.”
“No, they don’t.”
“They know.”
“No, they don’t Well, except for Betty. And if they did, what would be so terrible about that?” Adam asked. “You can answer that. She’s half a block ahead, she can’t hear us.”
They walked home from the mayor’s party amid firef
lies and the chuk-chuk-hiss of lawn sprinklers left out by forgetful homeowners. Karen had skipped ahead, jumping up in vain attempts to grab the lower leaves of drooping trees. Stacy and Adam had agreed that the dinner had been meant as an informal business meeting to discuss the school, and that he had done a good job of answering questions and encouraging comments.
“Really, what would be so terrible if a few people thought they knew?”
“My reputation.”
“Nobody I’ve met in Deerhorn seems so judgmental that they’d object to a single woman having a relationship with a man. How else would you have any children for the school I’m building?”
“This isn’t the kind of relationship that’s going to lead to marriage and children.”
“So it’s a slightly different kind. But I don’t like having to pretend. The police chief’s wife asked me if I would mind sharing you.”
“Sharing me?”
“She meant whether I would mind having you baby-sit her daughter on Wednesday afternoons.”
“Oh.”
“It took me a few minutes too,” Adam said. “Why does this relationship have to be a secret?”
“It’s not a relationship. It’s an affair. A two-times-only affair.”
“You’re not telling me—”
“I am telling you. Never again.”
“Wait a minute—you want me as much as I want you.”
“Yes, but I have more self-control than you do.”
“Not at particular moments.”
Stacy pursed her lips.
“Even if it happens a third time,” she said. “And I’m not saying it will, but if it does, it doesn’t make for a relationship. It’s an affair.”
“And what’s wrong with an affair?”
“Would you want your daughter to know about it?”
She had him there.
“There’s no other choice,” Stacy said. “I have to live in this town after you’re gone. I don’t want any talk about me.”
“I don’t like it,” he said firmly. “I just don’t like it.”
She stopped. Put her hands on her hips.
“This is the kind of affair that you’ve had in every town you’ve ever worked in. I bet sometimes you’ve been discreet and sometimes you’ve flaunted it.”
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