The Notorious Groom (Desire)

by Caroline Cross

  But she was most surprised by his relationship with his daughter. Although she’d already convinced herself that he must be a good father or Chelsea wouldn’t be half as wonderful as she was, in the past few days Norah had come to understand that he not only cared about the child’s welfare, but he actually liked her as a person. Given her own strained relationship with her grandfather, who’d felt that children should be unseen, unheard and unquestioningly obedient, it was a revelation.

  Of course, Eli was no paragon. Although he was polite enough, he’d also made it quite clear he had no intention of changing his life-style to protect her sensibilities. If it was hot, he went shirtless. If he got thirsty, he drank a beer. If he wanted to eat pizza or turn up the stereo or murmur outrageously suggestive things that made her ears burn and her palms damp—he did.

  Today, however, was a new day, she reminded herself. No matter what outrageous thing he did or said, she was going to retain her dignity.

  If he claimed she looked ravishing, she would smile and say thank you.

  If he brushed against her while purporting to read the paper over her shoulder, she would pretend not to notice.

  If he told her again how much he wished she would paint his room, she would not make the mistake of asking what sort of scene he had in mind.

  And if he reiterated his claim that being married seemed to be putting a crimp in his sex life, she would simply nod and murmur something noncommittal.

  She would not blush or stammer. She would not drop the newspaper. She would not spill her coffee. Above all else, she would not foolishly babble that she was sorry and ask if there was anything she could do to make it better.

  Her cheeks warmed as she recalled the way he’d smiled at that last.

  She raised the paper a little higher. Watching out of the corner of her eye, she tensed as he walked in her direction, coffee cup in hand. She didn’t relax until he moved around the table and sat down across from her.

  He took a noisy sip from his mug. “Good coffee,” he said conversationally.

  “Yes.”

  “Want me to get you a refill?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “How about another muffin, then? It looks like yours is almost gone.”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” Acutely aware of his nearness, she turned the page and pretended to be absorbed in an article about a proposed change in the timing of Kisscount’s three traffic lights.

  “Is my ad still in there?” He was running a week-long notice announcing the reopening of Wilder’s Automotive at its new location.

  “Page three.”

  “Good.” He took another sip of coffee, then motioned toward the window. “Quite a change in the weather.”

  “Umm-hmm.” A front had moved in overnight, and the sunshine of the past few weeks had been replaced by rain.

  “It’s not supposed to last. At least, that’s what they said on the news last night. It’s supposed to clear up by this afternoon.”

  “Yes. It says that in the newspaper, too.”

  “Too bad.” He reached over, broke off a morsel of her muffin and popped it into his mouth. “I like the rain. There’s nothing nicer than to wake up to a pearly overcast sky and hear the rain pattering against the leaves and dripping off the eaves, the fresh, damp scent blowing in on the breeze...”

  Norah stared blankly at the newspaper, totally taken aback by his unexpected eloquence.

  “Except maybe to experience it at the same time you’re making love, moving nice and slow, savoring every moment...”

  Outside, a slight gust of wind whispered through the trees, sending a splatter of rain against the window. For one scandalous second, she could actually see what he was describing: the silvery light, the fluttering curtains, a pair of bodies sensuously twined in the sheets, one of them big and bronzed, the other pale and small—

  Oh, dear. A wave of heat went through her. Instinctively her gaze flew to Eli’s face. For one endless second they stared at each other. And then—as if he’d known all along exactly what she’d been thinking—a faint smile lifted the corners of his chiseled mouth.

  Norah tossed down the newspaper as if it had burned her and sprang to her feet. “I... have to go.” She snatched up her dishes and carried them to the sink.

  “Hey, Boo, calm down.” There was an unmistakable note of amusement in his voice. “It’s only seven-thirty. The library doesn’t open until ten. What’s the rush?”

  “I told you. I have some paperwork I have to get done.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll just go throw on some clothes, and run you over.”

  She heard the sound of his chair scraping back. Alarm splintered through her. She whirled. “No!”

  He stopped pushing in his chair and looked over at her. One dark eyebrow shot up. “Why not?”

  Because I obviously can’t trust myself not to make a fool of myself when we’re together. “Because you shouldn’t leave Chelsea here alone.”

  “I’ll leave her a note. Not that she’ll need it. It’ll only take a few minutes to drive over and back. Most likely she’ll sleep right through it.”

  “But... what if you miss your customer?”

  “I won’t”

  “But I...I need the exercise.”

  His eyes raked over her, making her achingly aware of her inadequate figure, but he didn’t comment. “Look, it’s raining—remember?”

  As if she were likely to forget. Thanks to him, she doubted she was ever going to view rain in quite the same way again. “That’s okay. I have an umbrella.”

  He took a deep breath, dangerously straining the cotton covering his chest. “Well, if you won’t let me take you, why don’t you just take the car? I don’t need it today and—”

  “No. I couldn’t.” Afraid if they talked any longer she would say something she shouldn’t, she grabbed her book bag, purse and umbrella off the counter where she’d set them earlier and backed toward the door. “I want to walk. But thanks.” She turned and fled.

  She was halfway down the hall before Eli’s voice caught up with her.

  “Hey, Boo. Was it something I said?”

  The sunlight beat hot and steady against Eli’s back as he shifted the big cardboard box sideways and tried to slide it onto the Corvette’s abbreviated back seat. For once, the forecasters had been right. The weather had cleared up by afternoon, and the temperature had climbed into the eighties.

  He wiped a film of perspiration from his forehead. “You’re sure it’s all right for you to take this stuff?” he said to Chelsea.

  His daughter nodded “Uh-huh. I told you. I called Norah at work and asked if I could take some of the dress-up clothes to Sarah’s, and she said that would be fine.” Twisting sideways on the front seat so she could see him, she went on blithely, “She said she was sorry she probably wouldn’t be home in time to say goodbye, but to tell Sarah hi. And to have fun. And that she’d see me tomorrow and that maybe, if it was okay with you and Mr. and Mrs. Akquard, Sarah could spend the night here next time.”

  Eli grunted, gave the box a final shove and straightened. Flipping the bucket seat back to the upright position, he climbed into the car. “She said all that, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  He shut the door, started the engine and looked over at her inquiringly. “I don’t suppose you bothered to explain that you and Sarah like to stay up half the night? Or that it wouldn’t be any fun if you didn’t raid the kitchen at least twice? And that you both like to tell ghost stories until you’re so scared that the least little sound makes you scream like a pair of banshees, keeping awake any tired adult who’s foolish enough to try to sleep?”

  She pursed her lips and considered. Finally she shook her head. “Naw. I may be just a kid but I’m not stupid,” she informed him.

  Eli couldn’t help it. He laughed. “You’re not ‘just’ a kid. You’re a pain in the as—”

  “Eee-li!”

  “—pirin.”

  “Oooh!” She made a tsk
ing sound and tried to look severe, except that her mouth twitched, giving away her amusement. “You are a bad dad. A very bad dad,” she repeated, clearly pleased with her cleverness.

  He smiled. “I know. But at least I don’t owe you a quarter.” His smile widened as she chortled. He put the car into gear and they rolled down the long driveway, past the carriage house and out through the gates, slowing for the turn onto the main road. Even though it was five-thirty on Friday night, traffic was light. In only a few seconds he was headed toward the subdivision on the other side of town where Sarah lived with her parents.

  “You know what?” Chelsea asked.

  “No, what?”

  “Norah’s never been on a sleepover. Isn’t that weird?”

  Eli glanced over at her. “How do you know that?”

  “‘Cuz I asked and she told me. She said her grandfather wouldn’t let her. He didn’t ‘approve’—whatever that means. And he wouldn’t let her have anybody come spend the night at Willow Run, either.”

  “Really.” Even to his own ears, Eli’s voice sounded odd, noncommittal and interested at the same time. Which pretty much reflected how he felt.

  “Yeah. Norah says it was because he was older, and he didn’t like noise, and he thought other kids might mess things up or break stuff. But I think he was just mean. He wouldn’t let her do lots of things.”

  “He wouldn’t, huh?”

  “Nope.” The nine year old wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “She couldn’t have a dog or cat or even a goldfish. And she couldn’t go swimming at the public pool ’cuz he thought she’d get a disease. And she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup or jeans—or go out on dates.”

  While Eli was willing to concede that some of those restrictions seemed pretty extreme, he thought it was probably good that Norah hadn’t been allowed to date. Given her lack of worldliness, she would have been an easy mark for anyone the least bit unscrupulous.

  Not that he intended to discuss that with his daughter. Just the idea made him shudder. “You don’t wear makeup,” he said instead.

  Chelsea shot him an exasperated look. “I don’t now. But I get to later. You said so. You said I could when I was in junior high, remember?”

  It was a promise he’d made when she was seven, when it had seemed she’d be small forever. Now, just two years later, she suddenly seemed to be growing up awfully fast. “Yeah. But you can forget dating until you’re—oh, I don’t know—thirty, maybe?”

  “Thirty! No way! That’s so old it’s practically your age!”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Very funny.”

  “I thought so,” she said smugly.

  He turned into the Akquards’ cul-de-sac and pulled up in front of their modern, nicely landscaped, split-level home. Eli had always liked the neighborhood, so it was a surprise to find that after only a week at Willow Run the houses seemed crowded together.

  Chelsea got out of the car. “You know what, Eli?”

  “What?”

  “You’re okay—for an old bad dad.”

  “Yeah? Well, you’re okay, too, kid. Maybe I’ll let you date when you’re twenty-eight.”

  “Oh, Eli.” She rolled her eyes, grabbed her bag and skipped toward the house as Sarah came out, leaving him to follow with the dress-up box and Chelsea’s sleeping bag and pillow. He stayed a few minutes to visit with Sarah’s mother and to meet the kittens, dutifully admiring Oliver Twist and repeating his promise that once the little orange tabby was weaned it could become part of the Wilder family.

  It wasn’t until after he was back in the car and halfway to town that it occurred to him that he probably should mention Oliver’s imminent arrival to Norah, just to make sure she wasn’t allergic or something. Of course, if Chelsea’s information was right and she’d never had a pet, she might not know. Still, it couldn’t hurt to ask.

  It was strange, he thought, squinting despite his sunglasses as he took a left onto Main that had him facing into the sun. He’d known Boo practically his whole life, but it wasn’t until the past few days that he’d ever really thought of her as a person. The whole time they were growing up, she’d just been plain Bunny-Boo Brown, the straitlaced, socially inept granddaughter of the richest man in town—and the perfect target. He’d never wondered why she was so awkward and easy to fluster. Much less considered that maybe, in its own way, her childhood with old man Brown had been as difficult as his with Uncle Leo. He’d been too busy making sure nobody felt sorry for him—or thought he gave a damn that his mother had run off with some guy and abandoned him.

  But that was then. And this was now. And he had to admit that Chelsea’s disclosures about Norah were making him think.

  As a parent he put a premium on providing his own daughter with a sense of security, of giving her roots and structure. It was why, despite his own turbulent upbringing, he’d decided to leave Seattle and come back to Kisscount when Leo had unexpectedly left him the garage. And why he’d elected to stay and try to rebuild if possible after the garage burned down. In a slightly convoluted way, he supposed it was also partly why he’d agreed to this temporary marriage to Norah. He felt strongly that Kisscount’s slower pace and sense of community were best for Chelsea, who had understandably craved stability after being dragged from pillar to post for her first five years of life by her mother.

  He’d never stopped to think that too much of a good thing could be as bad as too little.

  He did now. Driving on autopilot, he remembered Uncle Leo remarking in one of his rare, sober moments that Arthur Brown had gone a little off his rocker after he lost his wife and son. And Eli found himself thinking how it must have been for Norah, a little girl forced to live in a big isolated house with a difficult old man who told her how to act, who discouraged her from having friends, who denied her even the comfort of a pet.

  In light of all that, it no longer seemed strange that she was such a funny little thing. What was strange was that she’d turned out to be as nice as she had. And she was nice—despite her old-lady clothes and outdated sensibilities. As busy as he’d been this past week, it hadn’t escaped his notice that she was very good to Chelsea. Not only did she genuinely seem to like his daughter and enjoy spending time with her, but she wasn’t the stick-in-the-mud he’d expected. Given that she’d been willing to marry to save Willow Run, he’d been afraid she would be pain-in-the-neck fussy, fretting over popsicles dripped on the floors and handprints on the wall, coming undone over trampled flowerbeds and tent cities created by stringing her no doubt expensive bedsheets between the trees.

  But she wasn’t. And she hadn’t. Far from it. She actually seemed to get an odd sort of pleasure from Chelsea’s exuberant messiness and had been overheard to say to the mess maker—as she washed a floor or scrubbed a wall or tried to salvage a bunch of bedraggled flowers—that it was “no big deal.”

  As for the other, well, he’d been shocked as hell when he walked in from work one night to find Norah perched in a tree, helping Chelsea and Sarah add to their 200-count, combed-cotton metropolis. Barefoot, with her hair falling down, her skirt hiked up and her face flushed with laughter, she’d looked as soft as one of the Akquards’ kittens.

  Of course, at the sight of him, her laughter had drained away and she’d morphed into her usual prim, stammering, ill-at-ease self.

  He frowned, perplexed to find that the memory rankled slightly. It made about as much sense as the fact that every time he thought about their encounter this morning, he felt odd. Not guilty. Or even apologetic. Just...sorry that it had ended the way it had. After all, he’d only been teasing. And he never would have said what he had if he’d known she would choose the first rainy day in a month to develop a stubborn streak.

  Still, as he slowed and turned the car into the bank parking lot, he had to admit he didn’t like the way he was feeling.

  The question was, what was he going to do about it?

  Norah shifted her heavy book bag, pulled the door to her office shut and
turned toward the library’s main counter. “I’m leaving now, Andrea.”

  Managing to look both resigned and resentful, the blonde slowly looked away from the computer screen. “Already?” she said with a pout.

  Norah swallowed a sigh. “I’m afraid so ” She didn’t bother to point out that it was after six. Or that she should have departed more than two hours ago since this was supposed to be her “early” night. Or that the reason she hadn’t was because the entire day had been one long series of disasters, from a broken pipe in the bathroom to a lost shipment of books to a budget that refused to add up. Andrea already knew all that, just as she knew she wasn’t supposed to use the library computer to play Solitaire but was doing it, anyway. “Do you have any questions before I go?”

  Her assistant pursed her lips. “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re sure you have your keys?” It wasn’t an idle question. Twice Andrea had forgotten them on days when it was her turn to lock up.

  Nonetheless, the look she sent Norah was pained. “Of course.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “I suppose.” Andrea made a moue of distaste, then shrugged. “But don’t worry about me. You just concentrate on having a nice night, Mrs. Wilder.” She smiled with all the genuine sweetness of a saccharine packet.

  Norah automatically opened her mouth to correct her, then shut it, knowing it would do no good. She’d already explained to Andrea—and anyone else who would listen—that she was keeping her maiden name for “professional reasons,” but the message kept getting lost in the amazement over her marriage. As far as Kisscount was concerned, she was now Mrs. Norah Wilder—and would be forever, even after she and Eli divorced.

  It was just one more consequence of her union with Eli that she hadn’t thought out as well as she should have. Not to mention another example of the way her life had become so complicated. A line of Sir Walter Scott’s came to mind. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”