by Phoebe Conn
He caught her in his arms and leaned back to bring them both down into the soft, cool carpet. “Let’s not take the time to go upstairs,” he begged between fervent kisses.
She slid down his chest and buried her tongue in his navel. “What stairs? You’re all I need. Although the pants with Velcro sides would be nice.”
He chuckled through her tickling kisses and eased his hips out of his Levi’s. “I’ve never danced for such a small audience, ma’am, but you’re easily the most appreciative.”
She helped him discard his jeans, then slid her hand into his briefs and wrapped her fingers around his rock-hard penis. “Did dancing always turn you on like this?”
“Hundreds of screaming women will turn on any man.”
She leaned forward to draw him deep into her mouth, sucked lightly, and then paused to whisper, “I had no idea. I thought it was just a hoot to guys.”
“That too,” he admitted in a gruff whisper. He wound his fingers in her hair and pulled her back down onto his shaft.
She listened to his breathing quicken and changed positions slightly to lap at his balls. She adored him and liked everything about his body, the width of his shoulders, the flatness of his belly, and the musky scent of his desire. She thought him a perfect male specimen and enjoyed pleasing him with her hands and lips. She teased him too, her touch light and slow, and then hard and fast until, desperate to remain in control, he shoved her away.
“You are too damn good at that,” he vowed in a husky moan.
Rather than admit how thrilling a tutor Sam had been, she helped him remove her clothing with sufficient haste to keep them both on the sizzling edge of release. He fumbled with the condom, so she rolled it down for him. She straddled him then and slowly slid down his cock to take him deep. She rocked her hips to find the perfect fit, then rode him with a rolling insistence that quickly had him bucking beneath her.
He found the sweet spot where their bodies met and rubbed in time with her graceful lunges. Their eyes held through the mist of soaring rapture, but then neither could see nor hear but only feel the shattering descent into the utter madness of perfect bliss. Lost in their shared climax, Catherine collapsed in Luke’s arms, and too content to move, she welcomed sleep.
He fought to float with her, but his conscience speared him with anguishing doubts. He had again taken more than he had any right to ask and rather than pleasant dreams, he lay on a bed of his own sharply whittled spikes. That he needed Catherine’s intoxicating affection so badly made him want to shout and curse; but unable to murmur even the softest word of endearment, he lay awash in a painful pool of regret.
The sweet sound of guitars gradually invaded Catherine’s dreams. Enchanted by the stirring music, she yawned lazily and stretched, then recognized the contours of Luke’s muscular body and rolled to his side. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to crush you.”
“Hush. You don’t weigh enough to crush me, and your skin is so soft it feels incredibly good against mine. I’m sorry the mariachis woke you.”
Half expecting to find them in the room, she sat up and looked around. “I thought it was the radio, but they’re live, aren’t they?”
“Sure are. Someone must be serenading his lady love.”
“How wonderfully romantic, but I have to see who it is.” She pushed herself to her feet, felt dizzy and swayed a bit, but made it to the front window.
“They’re across the street and up a way. Their black suits melt into the shadows, but I can see the silver buttons on their trousers in the moonlight. They’re in front of Joyce’s house. Do you suppose Shane sent them?”
Luke propped his head on his hand to improve his view. She was silhouetted against the moonlight, and her gently rounded figure was as exquisitely beautiful as any marble goddess gracing the world’s finest museums. When he could catch his breath, he gave a low appreciative whistle.
“Maybe, but I sure hope he was smart enough to come along.”
She remained at the window for a long moment. She couldn’t catch the words of the mariachis’ song, but the haunting melody tugged at her heart. “He was smart enough not to give up, which ought to count for quite a bit.”
She came back to him and offered him a hand up. “I have strawberries for dessert if you like.”
He took her hand but rose only as far as his knees and nuzzled her soft, silken bush. He gripped her thighs lightly and licked. “You taste better than strawberries. Do you like this?”
She rested a leg over his shoulder to invite more. “You know I do. Don’t make me beg.”
“Never,” he promised, and he lost himself in pleasuring her while the mariachis strummed their love songs on her neighbor’s lawn.
She slid her hands through his hair to hold on, but his tender invasion made it difficult to stand. He slipped two fingers inside her to deepen the thrill, and she angled her hips to press against his mouth. She tried to remember to breathe, but his delicious tonguing made coherent thought impossible. Then, with a sweet, gasping moan, she found paradise again in his arms.
After midnight, they fed each other plump strawberries and, still sticky with the juice, fell into her bed and made love again. She kissed him good-bye when he left for home before dawn, and, drugged with his good loving, she didn’t wake again until mid-morning.
Smoky was asleep on the foot of her bed, and thinking Luke must have let him in, she sat up to cuddle her pet. Her stomach then objected so violently to being jerked upright that she barely made it to the bathroom before becoming ill.
After the last painful retch, she sat on the floor and leaned back against the cool porcelain bathtub. Smoky had followed her into the bathroom, and she raised a shaky hand to tickle his ears. “Just give me a minute, fella, and I’ll serve your breakfast.”
Yet the mere thought of cat food sent her stomach into another heaving flurry. She was never sick and couldn’t understand why she was so ill now. She’d baked the chicken thoroughly, but perhaps she hadn’t rinsed the strawberries as carefully as she should have. Of course, Luke was a terrible distraction, but she refused to blame him for the carelessness that must have caused her illness.
She hoped he hadn’t spent the morning with his head in a toilet, but she didn’t feel up to calling him to inquire as to his health. Instead, she stretched out on the bathroom floor and closed her eyes. Smoky nudged her arm, and satisfied she would stay put, he lay down beside her.
When she awoke from a brief nap, she felt well enough to stand and brush her teeth. She splashed water on her face and ran a quick comb through her hair. She stared into the mirror above the sink and decided she still looked a bit green, but perhaps she’d merely become overtired.
When the queasiness suddenly returned, she sank down on the edge of the tub and attempted to ignore Smoky’s insistent meow. She had to rest before risking a trip downstairs to the kitchen. Once there, she held her breath as she opened the can of cat food, but the aroma of tuna got to her anyway, and she vomited in the sink.
She made it back to bed with a wobbly, lurching gait and didn’t awaken again until noon. Fearing the nausea would return, she rose slowly, but after taking a moment to assess the situation, she felt fine. Certain Joyce would come by soon, she made her bed and opened her lingerie drawer to grab underwear.
She kept her personal calendar in that drawer, and the birth control pills she’d yet to resume taking. Her period wasn’t due for another couple of days, but a quick count revealed she and Luke had made love for the first time at the exact mid-point in her cycle. It had been the optimum time to conceive, but Luke had been so careful to protect her, she refused to believe that she’d been hit with a bout of morning sickness.
Still, that the awful possibility might exist terrified her. She sat on the side of her bed and fanned herself briskly with the calendar. It had to have been a bad strawberry, she insisted to herself, but even a believable excuse failed to dispel a growing sense of dread.
Once she’d filled the prescription
for the pill, she’d ceased to worry about a condom’s effectiveness, but could she have gotten pregnant that first time they were together? she agonized.
It was simply too horrible a thought to entertain, and not because she didn’t want Luke’s child, but only because she didn’t want it as an accident. That would be like stealing something precious from him that he hadn’t freely given. How could she ever make it up to him? It made her head ache to consider what his reaction would be, but it couldn’t possibly be good.
Since she’d gone off the pill after Sam died, her period was often a day or two late, so it might be a week before she knew if she truly had a reason to worry. That it promised to be a very long and anxious week made her shudder.
She gritted her teeth. “It was a bad strawberry,” she swore darkly, “nothing more.” But she was still shaken. She would have to tell Luke the instant she was sure she was pregnant, but she already knew his eyes would darken with an indescribable pain. He was too fine a man to blame her, but things would never again be the same between them, and they had been so good that she couldn’t bear such a dismal future.
“Bad strawberry, bad strawberry, bad strawberry,” she repeated as she ran a bath, but as a mantra, the phrase didn’t hold nearly enough power to erase her mounting fears.
Catherine dressed in an old pair of shorts and faded T-shirt to work in her garden, but Joyce arrived before she’d pulled more than a half dozen weeds. “That was an excellent troupe of mariachis on your lawn last night. Did you invite them in?” she asked.
“I offered them refreshments,” Joyce explained, “but they were in an awful hurry to get home to Oxnard.” She was dressed in white cropped pants and a lavender sweater and again looked her best.
“I’ve never had a man make such an extravagant gesture to impress me, and I’m not just referring to the cost.” Joyce took her usual place at the patio table and waited for Catherine to take hers.
“That’s pitiful, isn’t it? Whenever I’ve gotten pissed at a guy and told him to go to hell, he’s disappeared with his tail between his legs, never to be seen again. Or he’s told me off, and I’ve been grateful to be rid of him. I’ve just never had a man apologize with a musical accompaniment. After Shane had gone to all that trouble, I couldn’t stay mad at him. Do you think I let him off too easy?”
“Don’t second guess yourself,” Catherine advised. “It sounds as though Shane’s apology was sincere, and you were right to accept it. It can’t hurt to have a forgiving nature.”
“It can if he takes advantage of it,” Joyce complained.
“I doubt that he’ll disappoint you again.”
Joyce swung her foot, bouncing her lavender sandal. “Well, he was very sweet last night, and we talked a long while, but we still didn’t make love. So in a way, he’s already disappointed me, but just in a different way.”
“You’ve complained so often of men who’ve rushed you into bed, I’d think Shane would be a refreshing change. Besides, it’s always wise to build a strong friendship before you go any further.”
“Is that a fact? And what were you and Luke doing last night?”
“I’ll not deny that passion was a part of the evening, but we’re also getting to know each other better. Barring unforeseen catastrophes, we should do all right.” Yet even as she spoke the upbeat prediction, Catherine feared the very worst sort of disaster might have already befallen them.
Joyce frowned slightly as she studied her friend’s faint smile. “If everything’s going so well, where’s that sappy grin you usually wear after a date with Luke?”
Catherine shrugged off the surprisingly insightful observation. “I had another great time with him, but I must have eaten a bad strawberry, because I threw up all morning. I’m just not up to full speed yet. That’s all.”
Joyce’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You were sick this morning? I’m the one who wants a family, and I swear if you’ve gotten pregnant without even trying, I’m going to leap off my roof!”
That Joyce had immediately zeroed in on such a dire possibility brought incriminating tears to Catherine’s eyes. She quickly blinked them away. “You live in a one-story house, so you’d probably just break your ankles. Let’s not jump to any other ridiculous conclusions, either.
“Luke is an incredible lover, athletic, graceful, and endlessly inventive in his approach. He simply wears me out, but I refuse to believe that I’m pregnant.”
Joyce sat forward. “Let’s go buy one of those home pregnancy test kits.”
“It’s much too soon for that,” Catherine insisted, too great a coward to chance learning the truth that day. “Now, when are you seeing Shane again?”
Joyce opened her mouth to argue, then apparently thought better of it and sat back. “He has a job in Burbank on Tuesday, and we’re meeting for lunch. I don’t ever want to go back to Oxnard, so it’s a good thing Shane’s down here fairly often.”
“Oxnard’s his home. You’ll have to go there eventually.”
Now it was Joyce’s turn to shift uncomfortably in her chair. “I suppose, but I’m going to put it off just as long as I possibly can.”
Catherine could easily understand that sentiment, but she thought Joyce could probably avoid going to Oxnard longer than she could withhold the truth from Luke.
Sunday night, Catherine was outside savoring the twilight when the telephone rang. Certain it was Luke, she dashed to answer before the machine caught the call.
“I knew it was you,” she greeted him breathlessly.
“Am I that predictable?”
“No, not at all, and after seeing you dance, no one would accuse you of it.”
He chuckled along with her but then added a caution. “Whatever talent I might have as a dancer really does have to be our secret.”
“Well, when no one knows we’re seeing each other, why would they care what we do?” She held her breath. She’d thought he’d missed her and wanted to hear her voice, but perhaps he was simply concerned with maintaining his extremely proper image.
He was quiet a moment too long. “I don’t even want to go there. I just called to say I was thinking of you.”
“Thank you.” She’d been thinking of him too. “You needn’t worry, Luke. All your secrets are safe with me.” As were her own, she didn’t dare add.
Monday morning, Catherine reached over to shut off her alarm, and then sat up slowly. She took a deep breath and released it gradually; then, having suffered no ill effects, she risked swinging her legs off the bed to stand. She waited a moment, but still felt fine and went on into the bathroom.
Despite having gone to bed early, she still looked a little tired, but her skin no longer held a peculiar olive tinge. She leaned closer to the mirror and blinked. “It was a bad strawberry after all,” she concluded, but the words were easier said than believed.
Expecting to spend the day buying paint and working at Toby’s house, she dressed in jeans, an aqua T-shirt with a purple cat across the front, and tennis shoes. She remembered to take a hat, but when she arrived at Lost Angel, the mural project had already progressed further than she could have imagined.
Over the weekend, Toby and Dave had erected a scaffold and begun to trace the outer borders of a grid on the Victorian. She walked across the street to join them. Rafael and a dozen other kids were seated along the porch, eager to begin painting, while Nick did skateboard tricks on the sidewalk.
“You’ll all need clothes to paint in,” Catherine suggested. “Let’s have Pam unlock the clothes lockers so that you can find something to work in while I go and buy the paint.”
Rafael rose and took a step toward her. “It’ll be a real pleasure to get paint on some of the awful rags people donate. In fact, it would only be an improvement.”
“Hey, when we’re finished, maybe we can sell the stuff as Jackson Pollock’s old clothes,” Tina Stassy urged.
“That would be fraud, Tina,” Catherine warned. “Let’s just concentrate on painting the mural.”
“You’re all business, aren’t you?” Toby observed.
Catherine shot him a dark glance rather than reply.
He had his hair pulled back in a ponytail, but he was clad in jeans and a T-shirt which left his colorfully tattooed arms on full display. “Let’s take my truck,” he said. “We’ll need tarps, scrapers, sandpaper, brushes, rollers, masking tape, gloves, buckets to mix the paint in. It won’t all fit in your Volvo.”
“What makes you think I drive a Volvo?” Catherine asked.
“You just drove into the center parking lot,” Toby pointed out. “I’m an artist and observant. Now you take that convertible cruising by now. Someone’s spent a lot of time and money to restore that ’50’s Ford. I noticed them driving by several times over the weekend, and they’re up to no good.”
Catherine turned to watch the dark green car roll by. It had been lowered to suit the owner’s definition of cool. The cream-colored top was up and obscured her view of the occupants, but she thought Toby was probably right about their motives.
“Dave, what kind of car does Ford Dolan drive?” she asked.
Dave had been trimming the scraggly bushes at the front of the house to clear the way to paint. “He has a battered old truck. What made you think of him?”
“Just the mention of a Ford, I guess.”
While she was relieved Ford Dolan didn’t own the convertible, Toby’s slow, sexy smile convinced her she didn’t want to ride anywhere with him, either. Her own shopping list was tucked in her pocket, but his sounded more complete than hers.
She cleared her throat nervously. “We’ll be buying a lot. Maybe we should take two cars.”
Toby looked surprised but finally nodded. “Okay, if that’s what you want. Let me get you the address of the place where I’ve been buying my paint. I talked to the manager on Saturday, and he’s giving us a good price in exchange for allowing him to post a sign advertising his store.”
