“Working?” her voice, soft and achingly familiar, washed over him. She stood in the doorway, her dark hair curling around her head as if she’d been sleeping. She wore blue-and-red-plaid flannel pajamas, and damn if he didn’t think she looked sexy as hell. She was being incredible, and he was looking over divorce papers. He put the papers into his briefcase, hoping she didn’t notice his guilt-flushed cheeks.
“How long are you going to stay in here?” she asked. Normally, that question was laced with sarcasm and scathing disinterest. Tonight, it was simply a question. And he wasn’t certain if that bothered him even more.
She looked around the room. “I think we should turn this into a playroom. If memory serves, we’ve never had a guest stay in here. Except for you.”
“I like having my own space.”
“It could be an office. Or a den. We could put a big screen TV in here. Surround sound. A media room or something. Or I could make this a sewing room.”
“You don’t sew.”
“I could start.”
“Laura, you can hardly sew on a button.”
She folded her arms under her breasts, and damn if he didn’t notice how nice and full they looked. He’d always loved her body, even when he wasn’t sure if he loved her. “We could knock down that wall and make the kitchen bigger.”
He tried not to smile and tried even harder to stop himself from wanting her.
“Let me be frank, here,” she said, her voice tinged with amusement and impatience.
“Okay, you’re Frank.”
Her face lit up, and she gave him such a brilliant smile he couldn’t help but smile back. “Brian. I’d forgotten how funny you are.”
“Yeah, Letterman called the other night. Laura, just say what you came to say.”
Well, Laura thought, he asked for it. “I’m horny.” She covered her mouth with a hand in mock horror. “Did I say horny? I meant to say lonely.”
Brian laughed, his good ol’ belly laugh that she hadn’t heard in decades. He had such a goofy-sounding laugh, unmistakable, full of abandon, so Brian.
“Come on, we can ruin our marriage another day. How about you taking care of your husbandly duties. Hmmm?”
He looked tempted, she had to give him credit for that. But the fact he was able to slowly shake his head was pretty disheartening, in more ways than one. Because a funny thing was starting to happen to her old, damaged heart. It was beginning to remember why she’d fallen in love with Brian all those years ago. It was beginning to fall in love all over again.
The ache inside had nothing to do with her libido—well, not entirely—but with a stunning and disquieting need to be held. She couldn’t remember the last time a man, any man, had held her, had wrapped his big body around hers, had nestled against her back, had pulled her close. She only knew that it had been Brian, and she wanted that again.
“Brian,” she said, and watched as he stiffened slightly. “I want to sleep with you tonight. Just sleep.” She could feel her eyes begin to burn, and his image blurred slightly. She wouldn’t beg. Or maybe she would.
“Laura.”
“It’s been so long, Bri. You can’t imagine. Just hold me tonight.” Before I go, before I die, before you die, I need for you to hold me against you. “Think of it as an early Christmas present.”
He stared at her, hard and cold, with a fury that almost frightened her. “Why are you doing this to me?” he demanded.
“Because I’m not giving up. I am not going to let us go.”
“Maybe we’re already gone.”
Laura ducked her head so he wouldn’t see how much those weary words hurt—and they hurt way more than she would have thought possible just a few days ago. Her throat was so tight, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to talk, so she remained silent, staring at his slippers neatly placed by the bed.
He sighed. “Okay. I guess it won’t kill me.”
Laura gave him a watery smile. “The night’s half gone anyway, so it hardly counts.”
“It counts,” he said, but he sounded less hostile now, less forced.
He followed her into their room, his bare feet padding lightly on the hardwood floor. Laura climbed into bed and held back the covers for him. He lay down beside her on his back, not touching her, his hands folded across his stomach. She laughed.
“What.”
“This does not count. The coffin thing you’ve got going there isn’t going to cut it, buddy. You’ve got to spoon.”
He groaned, but turned to his side and pulled her close. God he felt good, all warm and strong. And safe. She hugged his arm across her and smiled.
Brian frowned. He did not want to be in this bed holding a woman he’d convinced himself he didn’t love and certainly didn’t want. But here he was, holding her to him, trying not to become aroused by her soft round bum, breathing in her clean shampoo smell. This sucked. Big time. Why the hell was she doing this to him? And why was he letting her? He’d told himself a hundred times that he was through, that he didn’t love her.
But he did. Damn if his heart wasn’t swelling inside his chest, making him feel like the biggest fool God created. He ought to go on Dr. Phil as a loser husband who got walked over time and time again by his wife only to take her back if she smiled at him. Or started to cry.
Laura’s angry, hysterical tears annoyed him. But those unshed tears tonight, the ones that never fell but just made her eyes look luminous and so sad he’d wanted to drag her into his arms and never let go, they got to him.
Almost against his will, he pulled her even closer, squeezing his eyes tight when she let out a soft sound and he could feel the blood rush almost painfully to his groin. She moved her bum slightly against his erection, and he clenched his jaw.
“Brian.”
“I’m sleeping.”
“Not all of you,” she said in a sing-song.
He let out an exaggerated snore and felt more than heard her chuckle. His arousal didn’t mean anything other than the fact that he was a man who hadn’t had sex in way too long. Man with woman, erection. Anyone could do the math.
Just why his heart was as swollen as his dick, now that was another thing entirely.
Laura woke up to the sound of the shower and Brian’s soft humming. She felt incredibly rested. Sublime. Almost as if they’d had a nice night of satisfying marital sex.
Now, that was a thought. If she and Brian ever decided to get around to getting naked, it sure as heck wouldn’t be marital sex. She’d never been a sex-crazed person. She’d enjoyed sex, had her share of blissful moments, but it had been years—years—since she’d been with a man. And now she was old-lady horny in a young woman’s body. A dangerous combination given that a young, extremely hot male was just a few feet away. Naked. Soapy. Wet.
Laura bit her lip, then slipped out of bed and tiptoed across the cold wood floor toward the bathroom. The master bedroom bath was one of the nicest rooms in their small Cape Cod-style house. They’d taken away a closet to enlarge the master suite’s bathroom, putting in a big claw-foot tub and a separate glass-lined shower. Clear glass.
Laura eased the door open and took her first fully naked peek at her husband in more than twenty years. And forgot to breathe.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. Her memories of Brian were foggy indeed if she didn’t remember this beautiful male bod in front of her. She probably just hadn’t appreciated his beauty back then, his youth, his unbelievable maleness. Brian wasn’t exactly sculpted, he was too beefy for that. But he was—exquisite. His broad shoulders narrowed down to his nicely defined waist that led to a set of muscled buns that were finer than fine.
“That’s it, soap up.” She licked her lips, feeling things her body hadn’t felt in a very long time, letting her eyes trail down the length of him.
“Getting a good look?”
Her eyes shot up to find him staring at her but with far less ardor than she was staring at him. “I was . . .”
“You were . . .” he led.
He narrowed his eyes and turned to face her, his hands on his hips.
“The view’s pretty good from that side, too.”
“Get out,” he growled, but it was a good-natured growl.
CHAPTER EIGHT
December 19
Heather Harlow’s well-toned, well-dressed body thrummed with excitement. He’d asked her out to lunch, a public lunch.
“This is it,” Heather said, leaning over to her best friend and fellow secretary, Janice. “He asked me out.”
Heather didn’t work directly for Brian, so she figured it was okay to have an affair with him. They’d been flirting for months, but lately things were getting much more intense. He was the first guy who really listened to her as if what she was saying was interesting. It wasn’t an act, she knew that. And the way he looked at her made her melt inside, his eyes piercing through her, doing more than any other man’s caress. If he didn’t kiss her soon, she was going to die.
They hadn’t even touched in more than the most casual of ways. And yet, she loved him. She loved the way he cared so much about his family, even the way he was willing to try so hard with his loser wife. This guy knew the meaning of commitment. She knew he never would have an affair unless he’d made the decision to file for divorce. He’d shared everything with her, all his pain, his strength. Everything but his body.
“You’re a damned fool if you think he’s going to leave that wife of his for you,” Janice said with an irritatingly knowing shake of her head.
“He’s meeting me for lunch today.”
“Honey, when a man meets you for drinks after work, that’s something to get excited about. When he asks you for lunch, it’s a brush-off.”
Heather shook her head. “Brian’s got class. He’d never ask me for drinks after work.”
Janice rolled her eyes. “I like Brian. I think he’s a good man. In fact, I think he deserves better than that wife he’s got. But I don’t think he’s ever going to divorce her.”
Heather leaned in closer. “He went to a lawyer. He’s got the papers. All he needs to do is file.”
Janice’s eyebrows shot up. “Really. And you know this for a fact?”
“He showed them to me. Janice, this isn’t a fling. I’m in love with him,” she said, her eyes watering. “And I’m pretty sure he feels the same way. We’ve talked about this, about being together.”
Janice blew out a breath. “I didn’t know things had gone so far.”
“We haven’t . . . you know.” Heather felt her fair skin blush. “We haven’t even kissed. Or touched. Not really. Not the way I want to. He’s so lonely and . . .”
“Gorgeous. A gorgeous, lonely man. God save us from them.”
Heather laughed. “In a few days, I’ve got a feeling he’s going to be a very happy gorgeous man.”
Laura looked down at her daughter’s mulish expression and couldn’t help but smile.
“My legs don’t work,” she said, pretending to collapse to the sidewalk.
Laura heaved her up easily and propped her on her hip, surprised how strong this young body of hers was. “Mary, you’re getting to be too big a girl for me to carry around,” she admonished, but she didn’t mean it, and Mary probably could tell.
“I’m a baby.”
Mary was a baby when it suited her, Laura thought, yet couldn’t help but be impressed by her daughter’s manipulative powers. She’d have to pull on the reins a bit in the future. . .
Her heart fell, as it always did, when she thought that there might not be a future. But every morning she woke up and found herself at home, she let herself believe that maybe this was a permanent assignment.
She’d gone into Southerton, a neat little New England village just south of Boston, to shop for Christmas outfits for the kids. That morning she’d looked in their closets and found nothing remotely appropriate for church. Laura remembered that she’d stopped going when the kids were little, but since she figured God gave her this second chance, the least she could do was go to church on Christmas Day.
She bought the boys little versions of what their dad wore to work every day: khakis, conservative tie, button-down shirt. Justin’s was blue pin-stripe and Zack’s white. For Mary she found a pretty little blue-and-maroon-plaid dress and hat set. They would all look adorable, and she could look up at God in church and say, See? I’m doing something right here. Can I please stay?
Laura walked down Lincoln Street, Mary on one hip, her shopping bags banging against the other, and headed toward the street’s few restaurants. Brian worked at a computer software company not far away, and she’d thought about dropping in and inviting him for lunch but had chickened out. Instead, she’d decided on a girls’ day out with clothes shopping and lunch at Friendly’s, a local ice cream chain with the best grilled cheese sandwiches on the planet. She had a major craving for a grilled cheese, and it had been years since she’d been in a Friendly’s restaurant for one.
“You hungry, squirt? Want a grilled cheese?”
“And French fries?”
Laura smiled down at her. “We’ll share an order. With vinegar.” Mary wrinkled her nose. “You’ve got to put vinegar on ’em.”
“Yuck.”
Laura was still smiling when she opened the doors, but stopped dead in her tracks when her eyes focused on the couple in front of them sitting in a booth, holding hands.
“Daddy!”
Daddy didn’t seem all that happy to see them. And neither did his redheaded girlfriend. He sat there, holding this woman’s hands across the table, staring at her all moon-eyed. Cheating on her with a woman who had a bad dye job and too much makeup. A man magnet if she’d ever seen one, with big boobs and a tiny waist. Even if she hadn’t been sitting there holding her husband’s hands, Laura would have hated her on sight.
“Laura. Hey.”
Not a bad recovery, but she’d have to be an idiot to not know what she was looking at. Girlfriend immediately tucked her hands onto her lap and looked defiant and guilty. Just like the girlfriend of a married man would look when confronted by the wife.
“Mommy, let me down. I want to see Daddy.”
Her arms suddenly turning to rubber, Laura let Mary slide out of her arms and to the floor where she took off running into her father’s arms while Laura stood there stupidly holding onto the bags of Christmas clothes. Brian looked at her over Mary’s head, and Laura couldn’t begin to know what his expression meant, whether it was regret, guilt or anger, or a sickening combination of all three.
“Mary, we have to go,” she said woodenly.
“Laura, don’t go. Wait,” he said, standing up with Mary in his arms. His wife-cheating, two-timing arms.
Rage, hot-spitting and explosive, nearly erupted, and if it hadn’t been for Mary clutching her little arms around his neck, Laura’s hands would have been wringing that same neck. It shouldn’t surprise her to find him with another woman. But it did. Big time. All those years ago, and now, she’d never suspected he’d been cheating on her. Brian, good, solid, dependable Brian did not cheat.
Well, apparently he did.
“Brian, don’t go.” That from the skinny redheaded menace.
“You,” Laura said, pointing a finger at her, “have nothing to say about whether he stays or goes.”
The woman lurched back as if she was in danger of being assaulted, which, honestly, she was. “My God, I think she’s drunk. She’s drunk, Brian.”
Laura felt the world drop from beneath her feet and her anger turn to humiliation. She felt more betrayed now than when she’d walked in on them so cozily holding hands across the table. He’d talked about her. Complained about her. To this nobody, this woman who didn’t know anything about them or what they’d been through or who Brian was. She hadn’t been there when he was a student without a dime to his name, when going out for pizza was something he saved all week to do. She hadn’t been there when he’d cried when Zack had gott
en so sick that time and they’d had to bring him to the hospital.
“I’ve got to go,” Laura said, looking around her blindly. “You take Mary home.” She started backing out the door, knocking into a customer who entered the restaurant.
“Mommy, I want to go with you.”
“I have to go.” And she turned and ran out the door and kept running until her lungs burned from the cold December air. She stopped at the corner where a bundled-up African-American man was waving a bell looking for donations for the Salvation Army. She leaned up against the building, the cold brick holding her up, and stared at him for a while, listened to that bell clang and clang, and closed her eyes.
“You okay, miss?”
Laura opened her eyes to see the man’s concern, his genuine distress for another human in pain. She smiled and nodded. “I’m okay. Thanks.” I’m just about to lose it. I’m thinking that I don’t know what the hell is going on and what I’m doing breaking a heart over a man who’s been dead for two decades. Sure, I’m just dandy.
He looked at her a bit longer, as if he could read the crazy, frantic thoughts in her head, before nodding and going back to his bell clanging.
“Laura.”
She sagged against the building and looked up first at Brian, then at Mary, who seemed blissfully unaware that anything out of the ordinary had occurred.
“Nothing happened.”
She let out a watery laugh.
“You’ve got to believe me.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? Or drunk.”
He actually looked contrite. “I’m sorry she said that. I’m sorry you walked in there because nothing happened.”
She turned to face him. “Brian, what if you walked in on me holding some guy’s hands and looking dreamily into his eyes? Huh? Would you believe me if I told you that nothing was going on?”
“No.”
Laura tilted her head, her stance belligerent. “Then why do you expect me to believe you now?”
“Because I don’t lie.”
“Yeah. You and George Washington.” She held out her hands to take Mary, and he transferred their daughter to her without a word. “All this time I thought our marriage fell apart because of me. I was ready and willing to take full blame. But it wasn’t just me. You gave up, Brian. You left me out to dry. You failed our marriage and you failed me. Maybe if you’d just given me more time. Maybe if you hadn’t been so busy setting up your next girlfriend, we could have saved our marriage.”
Jingle All the Way Page 13
