A Woman Like Annie

by Inglath Cooper

  Jack cut the lights, and they drove by the entrance, pulled over on a stretch of grass with a side view of the loading dock. Just as it had earlier, the truck backed up, the two men getting out and opening the warehouse door, then setting about the business of unloading.

  Jack reached across the seat, popped open the glove compartment and pulled out a camera. His elbow brushed her knee on the trip back. Annie’s reaction was instantaneous, that of someone who’d just walked into an unexpected stretch of electric fence.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “That’s all right,” Annie murmured, drawing up like a sand crab bent on escape. Only she had no place to go. Their eyes met for a moment, held, and something sparked between them, jolting through her with kick-start force.

  Would he kiss her again? Did he want to?

  She found herself hoping for yes as an answer to both, but he settled back in his seat, and the moment was gone, regret settling over her, seeping through skin and sinew.

  He fiddled with the camera, checked for film. “Wait right here, okay? I’ll be back.”

  “You’re not going down there, are you?”

  “No. Just close enough to get a few shots as evidence.”

  “What about the flash?”

  “I’ll take them fast. Can you get in the driver’s seat and be ready to take off?”

  “You have sleuthing in your blood, don’t you?”

  “Does that mean you think I’m good at it?”

  “So far.”

  “Wish me luck,” he said and ducked out of the car.

  Annie got out and went around, sliding behind the wheel. She set the chronograph on her watch, then sat watching it tick off seconds, each one raising her adrenaline level to another peak. When they’d added up to twelve minutes, the tight little ball of panic in her stomach began to unravel.

  She couldn’t see him anywhere out there; the night was tar-paper dark. What if they’d seen him? What would they do? Did they have guns?

  Don’t be ridiculous, Annie. Early Gunter may have turned out to be a thief, but he’s not a murderer!

  No sooner had doubt waged an assault on that particular assertion than the passenger door popped open and Jack jumped inside.

  “Let’s go!” he said.

  Annie fumbled at the key, her fingers suddenly their own worst enemy. She turned it—finally!—shoved the gearshift into first and floored the accelerator.

  They spun in the grass, then the tires caught the edge of the asphalt and shot them forward. Annie grappled with the wheel, the car veering right, then left like a sailor headed back to ship after a night in a port bar.

  “Whoa,” Jack said, “you’re good at this. Where’d you learn to drive like that?”

  “School of scared spitless.”

  Jack made a snorting noise and laughed a good belly laugh.

  In spite of the fear that still had her in a choke hold, Annie smiled at the sound. “Did you get the pictures?”

  “Enough I think,” he said, exhaling another chuckle and settling back in his seat.

  “Do you think they saw you?”

  “Pretty sure they did.”

  Annie punched the accelerator, hurtling them down the country road, aware of the injustice to the posted speed limit, but at the moment it seemed the lesser of two evils. “Are they following us?” She threw an anxious glance at the rear view mirror.

  “Don’t think so. They wouldn’t stand a chance of catching us anyway.”

  She shot him a look. Saw the amusement on his face and let up on the accelerator. “Well, they could have been,” she said.

  “Yep.” Another smile.

  Warmth settled over Annie. A sense of something good and right. Of gladness for the company of a man who seemed to find things to appreciate about her. She could not remember the last time she had felt this way. Had she ever?

  Silence stretched out between them for a mile or a few. It didn’t matter because it was comfortable silence, companionable silence.

  “Think they recognized you?” Annie asked after a while, tapping a thumb against the steering wheel.

  “I doubt it. Might have gotten a look at the car.”

  “Hmm. So what’re you going to do with the pictures?”

  Jack sighed. “Wish I’d been wrong on this.”

  “What makes people justify embezzling?”

  “Maybe they feel they’ve been shortchanged somehow. That they’re owed something.”

  “But it’s wrong.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “So what are you going to do?” she asked again, softly this time.

  “I don’t have a lot of choice,” he said, regret in his voice.

  “They haven’t left you with any. That’s for sure.” The Porsche devoured a few more miles, and then Annie said, “Does this change anything for the future of C.M.?”

  “I don’t know, Annie,” he said.

  It wasn’t much as hope went, but something inside her lightened with the words. Jack’s answer held something it had never held before. Uncertainty.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  IT WAS NEARLY MIDNIGHT when they pulled into Jack’s driveway. Glad for the flexibility of her babysitter, Annie knew Mrs. Parker and Tommy both had long since gone to bed. The few times Annie had been out late for whatever reason, Mrs. Parker had slept in the guest bedroom, and since Annie didn’t know what time she would be home tonight, they’d agreed Mrs. Parker would spend the night and go home in the morning.

  Annie had driven the rest of the way home, the last part of the drive mostly silent, with a few bits of conversation sprinkled throughout.

  Now that they were back, awkwardness settled around them, filling even the nooks and corners of the previous ease with which they’d laughed and talked and kissed, yes, kissed.

  The night had served to make her forget about the situation with J.D., if only for a little while, and she had needed that.

  “Thanks for going with me, Annie.”

  She reached for her purse, dug inside for her own car keys. “Could have done it on your own.”

  “It was nice to have the company.”

  The words had the ring of sincerity and something else, too. Unspoken though it was, clear reference to what had happened between them earlier. Annie heard it, felt it. Reveled a little in remembrance of it. Deliberately, during this last half of the night, she’d kept her thoughts away from those kisses, shooing them off with a determined mental broom, aware all the while, that later, in her own bed with the lights out, she would replay the scene. Relive it frame by frame. “I don’t think it’s exactly the right thing to say about a stakeout, but I had fun,” she said.

  “So did I.”

  They sat a while longer, let that settle, like cotton tossed to the wind, landing where it would. For Annie, it landed in her heart’s corner, where seeds of happiness seemed intent on taking root in spite of the little voice that kept reminding her what a bad sister she was.

  Who would have thought, a week ago when she’d been conjuring up all sorts of personalities for Jack Corbin, the man intent on draining dry a large part of Macon Point’s livelihood, that she would end up here? With the very real desire to follow the path they’d started earlier tonight. See where it would end.

  “Would you like to come in, Annie? Glass of wine?”

  The questions hung there between them, enfolded in a thousand implications. A lethal blend of weakness and desire shot through Annie, finding little barrier in either muscle or resolve.

  Just one. “Okay,” she said.

  He led the way to the front porch, unlocked the door and flipped on the foyer lights, wall sconces bathing the entrance in warmth. Jack led her into the kitchen, turned on another light and said, “Wait right here, I’ll be back.”

  He disappeared through a door that went to the basement, judging from the sound of his footsteps on the stairs.

  Annie stood by the window, looking out across the backyard. The horses were at the fe
nce, staring at the house as if waiting for something. What was she doing here? Playing with fire. Hard to deny that.

  The logical side of her brain said, “Go home, Annie. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.” The not-so-logical side said, “How often does a man like Jack ask you into his house for a glass of wine?”

  Not very often, and she didn’t see it changing in the future.

  Annie did not think of herself as a sophisticated woman when it came to this kind of thing. She had married the only man she’d ever dated, never slept with anyone else. She was not by contemporary standards “experienced.”

  The realization did little, however, to still the feelings set astir inside her by the far too appealing way Jack kissed.

  Heavens, could he kiss. Just the recollection of it made her mouth tingle, set into motion a cauldron of warmth that spread out from the center of her chest, intoxicating as any wine.

  The basement door opened. She swung around, clearing her expression of memory.

  He held up a bottle. “Port?”

  “I’ve never had it.”

  “Try it?”

  “Sure.”

  He went to an antique hutch in the corner of the kitchen, and pulled out two small wineglasses. He rummaged through a couple of drawers, found a corkscrew and opened the bottle, then poured them each a measure.

  He handed her a glass and held his up, clinking the edge of hers. “To unexpected surprises, Annie. You have been an unexpected and very much appreciated surprise.”

  Annie tipped her glass up, a response completely eluding her. She turned to the window, grasped her glass between both hands, not knowing what to do with the words. “The horses. Do they always hang out at the fence when they see you come in?”

  “I have to confess it’s not me they like so much as the sugar cubes I’ve been giving them every night.” His smile was chagrined, nearly boyish. Annie’s heart did another flip.

  “Then we better take some out,” she said.

  Jack retrieved a yellow box from the pantry at the far corner of the kitchen. He held the back door open for her. They followed the brick walkway across the yard to the pasture. The horses whinnied at the sight of them. Stopping short of the fence, Jack set his wineglass on the ground, then shook loose some sugar cubes, holding out a hand for each horse.

  They munched, both nodding their heads for more. Jack poured some out for Annie to give them, and she loved the feel of their soft muzzles against her palm.

  She glanced up, found Jack’s gaze on her, deep and penetrating as if he saw not what the rest of the world saw when they looked at her, but straight through to the heart of her, to her needs and wants, to what made her unique as a person. Special, even. As if he saw something in her no other man had ever taken the time to look for.

  He leaned in then, slipped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him. It felt like the most natural thing in the world, as if, finally, she had found the man for whose embrace she had been custom-made. That was how well they fit, how right it felt to be against him, enfolded within lean, strong arms, secure, anchored.

  And his kiss, ah, that. Annie had never before understood how a woman could lose her head, get so caught up in a man’s embrace that she forgot to be careful, forgot to be cautious when one or the other was called for.

  Now, she understood.

  Caution was a filter through which all the arguments for sensibleness could be sifted. Sensibleness could be awfully boring.

  Annie did not want to be sensible. Or boring. She’d been both for far too long.

  Her wineglass slipped from her hand, fell to the ground.

  Jack stepped back against the fence, brought her along with him in one deliberate motion. One boot on the bottom rail, he pulled her to him again, wedging her between his legs with an insistence that spoke of urgency and need, flattering both, this new angle taking to another level acknowledgement of their physical attraction.

  Annie slipped her arms around his neck, opened her mouth to his, asking him to deepen the kiss. And he did, with a low sound of possession that sent a most feminine thrill of satisfaction straight out from the very core of her. She had never been kissed like this, wooed by a man’s mouth to the point that all thought of anything remotely resembling resistance just fell apart into a million pieces, no longer identifiable.

  There against the board fencing, they necked like teenagers, their skin heating up beneath the cool night air, his hands winding through her hair.

  She could have stayed right here, just like this for the rest of her life and been quite happy about it.

  “Annie, you feel so good.”

  “So do you,” she said, the words the mildest of testimony to his effect on her.

  Jack lifted the bottom of her sweater, his palm fitting to the curve of her waist. She felt his question, answered him with the slightest turn of her body; she wanted him to touch her, thought her heart might stop beating if he didn’t.

  He touched her breast, his hand closing round its fullness, thumb circling the tip through the lace of her bra. Like warm caramel, Annie went soft and liquid, drawn to him as if he had all the answers to every question she had not thought to ask.

  Now, she not only wanted to ask them, but know the answers to each one as well.

  “Annie?” Jack pulled back, brushed the back of his hand across her cheek, tipped her chin up with one finger.

  “Hmm?”

  “I’d really like to take you upstairs and make love to you.”

  “Jack?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I’d really like for you to take me upstairs and make love to me.” Was that her voice, soft and husky? Had she really said that?

  He waited a few seconds, as if giving her time to take it back. A dozen reasons for doing so scattered through her conscience. This is the man your sister wanted. You’re a mother, Annie. What are you thinking?

  But she was a woman, too. With wants and needs of her own. And for whatever reason, fate had steered them all toward this man, this moment. And she simply wanted.

  So she didn’t take it back.

  Jack dipped down, scooped her up. Annie slipped her arms around his neck. She was a tall woman. She’d always envied petite women for the fact that they never had to worry during moments like this whether the man might regret his gallantry.

  But judging from the precision of Jack’s stride, she might have weighed no more than a bag of feathers. She felt feminine in a way that has nothing to do with a woman’s shape or size, but with the fact that she is the focus of one man’s desire.

  Across the yard they went. Through the back door. Then the kitchen. And up the wide staircase.

  She should say something. Because, really, shouldn’t this feel awkward or terrifying at the least?

  It didn’t. It felt right, as if this night could not have ended in any other way.

  At the top of the stairs was a very long hallway. He turned into the second room on the right and kicked the door shut behind him.

  Only then did he put her down, not, she quickly discovered, from sudden onset exhaustion, but an apparent immediate need to kiss her again. Annie kissed him back. Kissed him with honest, openhearted emotion. Vulnerable though it made her, it was what she felt. A more sophisticated woman might have tempered it with coyness or something at least resembling mystery.

  But that wasn’t Annie. And she’d never been very good at trying to be something she wasn’t. Still, old doubts weren’t easily dispelled. “Jack?”

  “Jack here.”

  “I…” Awkwardness locked the words in her throat. “I’ve never thought of myself as very gifted in this department. I mean J.D. and I never had much fun together that way.”

  “Does that mean the sex wasn’t great?”

  Annie started to sidestep the question, then opted for honesty again. “Actually, that would be a generous assessment.”

  “Annie,” he said, his palm curving around her neck, his smile appre
ciative in a way she couldn’t quite pinpoint, knew only that it softened the edges of her apprehension. “Then you weren’t with the right man.”

  She was going to wake up at any moment. It would be the middle of the night, and the TV would be blaring. And this would all be just a very nice dream.

  But then he kissed her again, and all thoughts of why or why not, of anything other than the here and now drifted out of reach. And there was only this. This man who kissed like he’d been made for that sole purpose, brought feeling whirling up from every extremity and centered it at her heart’s core.

  For a long time, they stood by the moon-draped bed, kissing, finding their way. He lifted her sweater, pulled it over her head, dropped it on the chair beside them. “You’re beautiful,” he said.

  The words sent another wave of warmth coursing through her, and for the first time in her life, she felt beautiful. She put her hands on his chest, began unbuttoning his shirt, the backs of her fingers grazing the skin beneath, each touch tightening the knot of desire between them until she could no longer draw full breath. She felt as if her very bones had weakened, might no longer hold her up.

  But Jack swooped her up again, placing her, this time, on the poster bed in the center of the room. Annie sank into the thick down comforter, unable to take her gaze off him.

  “Are you sure, Annie?”

  Annie didn’t want to think about tomorrow or yesterday. What might have been or what might be. Just this. And what they had found in this night. “I’m sure,” she said.

  THEY LAY ENTWINED, Annie’s head on his chest, one leg curved around his.

  The moon had lifted its beam, aimed it at the corner of the room, draping the bed in shadow.

  “Annie?” Jack’s voice was husky around the edges.

  “Annie here.”

  “You’re gifted.”

  She tucked her face against his chest, smiled against his bare skin. And one thing she now knew to be true. Jack was right. She had not been with the right man.

  LATER, MUCH LATER, they made use of the closet-size shower in Jack’s bedroom, turning an ordinary daily ritual into something so pleasurable, it was nearly impossible for Annie to get dressed and leave. Likewise the kiss he left her with after walking her out to the car and tucking her inside.