The Notorious Groom (Desire)

by Caroline Cross

  “Okay.” Chelsea sounded crestfallen for all of a second before she quickly perked up. “Oh! Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “Norah got her learner’s permit today.”

  “She did?”

  “Uh-huh. It’s got her picture on it and everything, just like a real driver’s license, so she can practice. Only she can’t drive by herself. She has to go with another grown-up.”

  “I knew that,” he said lightly, taking a bite of fried chicken.

  “So you’ll take her, won’t you, Eli?”

  “Chelsea!” Norah dropped the empty soft drink can she’d just picked up and rounded on the child.

  Eli’s daughter looked over at her. “What?”

  Norah noted the child’s guileless expression, then glanced over at Eli, who appeared to be absorbed in his food. She looked back at Chelsea. “It’s very nice of you to ask your father for me,” she said carefully, “but there’s no reason to bother him. You know I’ve already made other arrangements.”

  Chelsea’s face screwed up in a comical look of disgust. “With Mel?” She shook her head. “She’ll teach you all wrong.” She turned to her father. “Won’t she, Eli?”

  Eli’s fork froze briefly, then continued on its way toward his plate. “Well, I don’t know. Mel’s not that bad a driver.”

  “But you always say she’s an accident waiting to happen. That only Joe and an insurance agent could love her. That letting her get behind the wheel is taking your life in your hands and—”

  “Okay, okay,” he interrupted hastily. “You’re right. Maybe she isn’t such a good driver.”

  “Then she can’t teach Norah, can she?”

  “No. I guess not.” He stared down at his plate a moment before he finally looked directly at Norah. “So how’s Saturday?” he said brusquely.

  “Well, I—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “It’s fine,” she said faintly.

  Her mission accomplished, Chelsea jumped to her feet. “Come on, Sarah! Let’s go get our pajamas on and get our sleeping bags.”

  “Okay!” Clearly glad to be free of the adults, her friend jumped up, and the two dashed toward the house.

  “Brush your teeth and wash your faces and hands,” Norah called after them.

  “’Kay!”

  Eli laid his napkin on the top of his half-eaten food, pushed back his chair and stood himself. “I think I’ll go see if I can catch the end of the Mariners game,” he said, putting the plate on the tray and climbing to his feet.

  “Eli, wait.”

  He glanced over at her, his expression wary. “What?”

  She hesitated a moment, then closed the distance between them. “Could we talk for a minute?”

  “I really do want to see the game—”

  “Please?” Looking into his cool blue eyes, she suddenly wasn’t so sure this was a good idea. But then again, there were some things she felt simply had to be said.

  “Fine.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Go for it.”

  “Thank you.” She took a deep breath. “First, I don’t believe I ever thanked you for Monday.”

  “You want to thank me?” he asked incredulously.

  “Well, yes. I really appreciate your taking the time to teach me to drive.”

  “Oh.” His expression evened out. “Forget it. It was no big deal.”

  “It was—it is—to me. But that doesn’t mean you have to take me out again on Saturday—”

  “Look, we’ve already been over this. So if that’s all you wanted to discuss...” He took a step toward the house.

  “No!” Without thinking, she moved sideways, putting herself between him and the door. “Wait. Please. Th-that’s not—” She stopped and collected herself. “That’s not what I want to say.”

  “Then what is it?” he demanded impatiently.

  “It’s just...I’m sorry about what happened between us the other day.”

  He was silent a moment. “I’m not surprised,” he said finally.

  “You’re not?”

  “No. I kind of figured that making out in a Corvette wasn’t your style.”

  “What?” She stared at him in consternation, then began to shake her head as his meaning sunk in. “No. Oh, no. Surely, with your experience...I mean...you must know how much I liked it. It—the kissing and...and everything—was lovely. I very much enjoyed it.”

  He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, his expression impossible to read. “Oh.”

  “I realize that doesn’t speak particularly well of my character. But I’m afraid you must assume at least some of the responsibility since you’re the one who uncovered the...libidinous... side to my nature.” She paused, glad for the darkness since she could feel her face getting warm. “What I want you to know is that I truly do respect you. You’re a wonderful father and a good provider and I would never, ever try to coerce you into doing something at odds with your principles.” She drew herself up a little straighter. “It was wrong of me to assume that just because I’d changed my mind, you weren’t sincere in wanting a nonsexual relationship and I...I hope you can forgive me.”

  He stared down at her, his blue eyes hooded.

  She stared back, a little quiver of uncertainty skating down her spine as she realized she didn’t have a clue what he was thinking. Still, she’d come too far to turn back now, and she was determined to see this through She tentatively offered him her hand. “Friends?”

  His gaze shot from her face to her outstretched fingers, then back.

  In the instant that he hesitated, her imagination went wild. She envisioned him grabbing her by her outstretched hand, hauling her into his arms, and making a mad, passionate declaration of love to her beneath the bright summer stars—

  “Friends,” he agreed curtly, derailing her foolish fantasies.

  She felt a pang of disappointment as he offered a careful, cursory squeeze to her hand, then released it as if she’d burned him.

  “Are we done?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Maybe I can still see the last few minutes of the game.” Without another word, he skirted around her and headed for the house.

  Norah turned to watch him go, her eyebrows knit with confusion. She knew she must be mistaken, but there at the end he’d definitely seemed on edge. Much more than he had before. There had been a tight look around his mouth and a nerve ticking on one side of his jaw. It was as if he’d been operating under some sort of tremendous strain.

  Which made absolutely no sense. After all, if anyone had a right to be tense, it was her. She’d just offered friendship to the man she loved, and promised to respect his desire for a chaste relationship, when what she really wanted was a chance to explore her newly awakened sexuality.

  She walked over to the table and picked up the tray, feeling slightly disgruntled and more than a little mystified.

  She turned it over in her mind.

  He didn’t want to make love to her. And he’d just made it clear he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of being friends.

  So what did he want?

  As she walked slowly toward the house, she admitted she didn’t have a clue.

  Eight

  “You’re sure you have to know how to do this?” Eli asked, scowling at the driver’s training manual.

  He swiped his hand across his damp forehead and glanced over at the woman behind the wheel. The day was sweltering, so hot that not even the air flowing through the Corvette’s open windows felt refreshing. Not for the first time in the past hour, he wished the car had air-conditioning. And that he was somewhere, anywhere else.

  Blissfully unaware of his dark thoughts, Norah nodded at his question, making her thick, silky braid slide up and down her delicate back. “That’s what Robert said. He said he couldn’t tell me what would be on the test, but that it wouldn’t hurt to practice the correct way to back around a corner.” One hand on the wheel, she leaned over, rested her wrist against the back
of his and riffled through the pages. “See,” she said, when she found the right diagram. “You have to stay within eight inches of the curb.”

  A faint, exotic scent teased his nose. “You better watch where you’re going,” he said abruptly.

  She gave him a quick, questioning glance, then straightened and returned all of her attention to the road. “Okay.”

  There was a brief silence. “Who’s Robert?”

  “The new licensing examiner. He used to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles in Lake Oswego, but he needed a change of scenery after his divorce.”

  “Huh.” He closed the training book with a slap. “This eight-inch curb stuff seems pretty damn stupid to me.”

  “Maybe.” She shrugged, the movement emphasizing her full little breasts beneath her baby blue, scoop-neck T-shirt. “I’m just telling you what he said.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ve been driving for years, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve backed around a corner.”

  She didn’t reply. After a moment, however, she glanced over at him. “Eli?”

  “What?”

  “We could go home if you’d rather,” she said quietly, her expression troubled.

  “No. If Robert says you need to know how to do this for your test, then you should learn how to do it.” He nodded. “Turn into the church parking lot. We can practice there.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I just said so, didn’t I? But for Pete’s sake, don’t grind the gears like you did when that car shot in front of you earlier.”

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  Eli looked away, wondering why he was being such a bastard. Why didn’t he just tell her the truth—that she was doing great, taking to driving like a duck to water?

  Instead, he couldn’t seem to quit sniping at her, as if it were somehow her fault that he’d had such a bad week.

  For four days he’d been trying—and failing—to figure out what was wrong with the fuel-injection system on Ezra Lampley’s Cadillac. And this morning he’d gotten so impatient he’d carelessly bent a fuel line when he was pulling it off an injector. Now he was going to have to order a new one, which would no doubt eat into whatever small profit he might make.

  Of course, that would fit right in with his insurance company’s apparent plan to bankrupt him. Although Ms. Jenkins, the Security-TrustCo adjuster, had recently confided that something seemed to be happening “at a higher level”—whatever the hell that meant—he had yet to hear a word about when he might see some money. Every time he asked about it, they hedged. Every time he thought about it, his temper got a little hotter.

  And then there was Chelsea, who’d been invited to go to the ocean for a few days with Sarah’s family. It was the first time she’d ever received such an invitation, and though he’d tried to explain that he didn’t think she was old enough to make such a trip and that he was afraid she might get homesick, his darling daughter had wheedled and begged and generally driven him crazy until he’d reluctantly agreed to let her go. So, bright and early this morning, his cheerful, excited, independent child had gone off in the Akquard’s car, leaving him to stand on Willow Run’s front steps waving goodbye with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  Of course, all of it—the bent fuel line, the insurance company’s stonewalling, Chelsea’s taking a vacation without him—paled next to the frustration that was building inside him the longer he spent trapped in the car with Norah.

  The truth was, it was killing him not to touch her. He’d nearly dropped his teeth when she emerged from the house this afternoon dressed in that softly clinging T-shirt, which demurely outlined the delicate curves of her breasts, and those little white shorts that made her legs look like a Las Vegas showgirl’s.

  Yet it wasn’t her clothes—or the mouth-watering way she looked in them—that kept drawing his eyes back to her. No, that was due to the little speech she’d made the other night. The one about how much she’d liked kissing him. And how he’d single-handedly helped her to discover her wanton side. And how she respected him too much to ever pressure him into doing something that went against his principles.

  It was the sweetest damn thing anyone had ever said to him, and it was driving him stark, staring crazy.

  Because the bottom line was he didn’t have any principles. He frowned. Okay, maybe that was exaggerating a little. Maybe there were one or two unorthodox ideals vaguely associated with his private code of honor.

  But he was damned if he could ever recall a time when anyone except Chelsea—and maybe Joe—had recognized it. And when it came to women, forget it. For as long as he could remember, every woman he’d been involved with, including Chelsea’s mother, had just assumed that because of his looks and sex appeal, not to mention his upbringing, all he was out for was a good time.

  But not Boo.

  Boo thought he was a good father. She thought he was a hard worker. She thought he was an upright kind of guy. She thought he had principles.

  And if he didn’t get out of this car and away from her in the very near future, he was going to do something so shocking—like drag her onto his lap and finish what he’d started nearly a week ago—that it would likely cost him her regard forever.

  “Eli?”

  “Hmm?

  “What should I do now?”

  He looked around, startled to find that she’d already turned in at the church, driven around to the back parking lot, stopped the car and was now looking at him expectantly.

  He took a quick look around in the second it took him to remember what it was they were supposed to be doing. “Pull up to the curb by the vestibule—before the drive starts to curve,” he said, pleased with the lay of the driveway, which rolled from the street in a straight line, took a ninety-degree right at the church’s back corner, went straight for twenty feet, then began to curve slightly to the left as it reached the vestibule. “Try to get as close as you can without scraping the tires.”

  “But how will I know how far away I am?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a judgment thing. I’ll help at first, but then you should start to get a feel for it.”

  “Okay.” She moved the car into place.

  “Now go to reverse, leaving in the clutch, and with your left hand on the wheel, turn and look over your right shoulder. When you feel comfortable, come off the clutch and give the car some gas. The trick is to go nice and slow and look behind you to where you want to go.”

  She nodded and took a deep breath, her right hand brushing his shoulder as she brought her arm up and twisted around. Craning her neck, the better to see out of the low-slung sports car, she released the clutch, letting her breath out in a soft huff as the car began to roll backward.

  Eli glanced over at her. He meant to look at her face, but somehow found himself staring at her breasts instead. A twinge like an electrical shock went through him as he saw that her nipples were semierect, the firm little points stretching the thin blue cotton. All he would have to do was shift his hand a few inches and—

  “Oh, dear.”

  He jerked his gaze up and saw Norah grimace a second before the back tire rasped along the curb. A second later the front tire made contact as well.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, not sounding like himself at all. “I thought I told you to take it easy!” He twisted around and leaned out the window to assess the damage—and to try to get a grip on himself, knowing he was overreacting. After all, wasn’t his motto don’t sweat the small stuff? So why was he going off like a rocket over something so petty?

  “I’m sorry,” Norah said.

  “Forget it,” he said roughly, still hanging half out the window. “The mags are fine. You only scraped some rubber off the tires.” He sat back down. “Just pay attention, will you?”

  She studied him for a second, her expression neutral, then she reached up and deliberately shifted her braid over her shoulder. When she had it arranged to her satisfaction, s
he said quietly, “Maybe we should pass on this today. It’s hot and I think we’re both a little tired.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Wimping out on me, Boo?”

  She gave him an unreadable look, then slowly drew herself up and stared straight ahead. “No. What do you want me to do?”

  “Pull forward—carefully.”

  Lips pursed, she followed his directions to the letter, managing to get away with a minimum amount of wear and tear on the tires.

  “Now start again.” He shifted closer to the window to make it easier to monitor her progress.

  With a minimum of fuss she put the car in reverse, twisted around again and slowly began to inch back.

  “You’re too far from the curb.”

  She made a slight adjustment to the wheel.

  “That’s better. But you’re going too slow.”

  Her eyes flickered in his direction, then back to the job at hand as she gave the car a little more gas.

  “All right. Good, good—whoa! Slow down! Dammit, you’re getting too close! No, don’t turn that way—”

  Giving him absolutely no warning, she braked, throwing him back against the seat. Stunned, he turned his head to look at her. She ignored him. Without so much as a glance in his direction, she put the car in first, pulled away from the curb, made a 180-degree turn and shot out of the parking lot.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, his temper igniting.

  She took a sharp left onto the road and accelerated, shifting with admirable expertise. “Going home.”

  Her quiet answer did nothing to calm him down. “Why?”

  “I told you. It’s too hot.”

  “What’s the matter? Can’t live an hour without air-conditioning?” For the life of him, he didn’t know what was wrong with him. Half an hour ago, all he’d wanted was to get away from her. Now his wish was being fulfilled and he was furious.

  “I guess not,” she said quietly, clearly not wanting to argue with him. “I’m afraid I’m getting a headache.”

  “Yeah? Well, you’re not the only one.”