by Kara Lennox
They weren't right for each other, he knew that. He was too old for her, for one thing. She would be wanting to start a family in the next few years. He'd pretty much written off that idea for himself. Him, with a baby? Pretty ludicrous.
But tonight they'd been too lonely people who'd found each other. They'd behaved responsibly. And for a few hours, they'd each been a little less lonely. He hadn't made any promises or given her any reason to expect more than he could give.
Maybe they would make love again, or maybe they wouldn't. But there was no reason to let one slightly rash decision ruin their friendship.
But even as he turned the possibilities over in his mind, he knew he would have to be careful. There was something about Phoebe that made him want to open up, to share things he'd never shared with anyone. He felt this tremendous urge to pull his heart right out of his chest and hand it over, to put it right into those pretty, not-so-helpless hands of hers.
On that path lay trouble.
Phoebe's body relaxed into sleep, still lying partially on top of him. He shifted her gently to the side. Her even breathing didn't break. A sound sleeper, then.
He slipped out of bed, and without turning on a light he straightened up the room, putting all his dirty clothes in the bathroom hamper, laying hers neatly over the back of a chair. When Phoebe woke up tomorrow and saw this room for the first time, she might experience some morning-after regrets, but at least she wouldn't think she'd gone to bed with a slob.
Maybe he'd make her French toast in the morning.
* * *
Phoebe awoke in the dark, disoriented for a few minutes until she realized where she was. The memory of her lovemaking with Wyatt put an immediate smile on her face. Wow. She'd never experienced anything quite like that before.
It wasn't just the physical aspects of lovemaking, which were admittedly spectacular. It was everything else—his concern about coming on too strong, the fact that he'd thought about protecting her, his frantic search for a condom, his determination that she enjoy the experience as much as he did.
She'd felt comfortable with him, without the usual self-doubts, without that troublesome "icky" feeling she'd gotten in the past when she'd made love to someone she shouldn't have. Everything had felt … right.
He stirred beside her, throwing a possessive arm over her, but he didn't wake. She snuggled deeper into the covers and sighed. She'd meant it when she told him she enjoyed afterglow even more than the sex act itself. For her, it was a warm sense of oneness with her partner, with the whole world.
Unfortunately, it didn't last forever. Harsh reality returned, and in this case it was harsher than usual.
She'd gone to bed with her boss.
In L.A. she'd spent a lot of time and energy rationalizing the fact she was sleeping with her producer, hoping futilely she hadn't deep-sixed her acting career. Sleeping with Joel hadn't been the career-buster, though. Breaking up with him had.
Was her situation any less dire with Wyatt? At least she could feel pretty confident Wyatt wouldn't spread smut about her. She couldn't see him using their intimacy against her. He just wasn't the harassing type.
But she felt she'd somehow betrayed Rolland and Helen. They'd said to "be nice" to Wyatt, and they obviously had some sort of romantic match in mind between her and their grandson, but she didn't imagine they'd approve of a one-night stand.
One night.
It was obvious that was all she'd get. Wyatt had been pretty clear he didn't want any attachments. There was a reason he was a confirmed bachelor at thirty-nine. Her confidence bolstered by a sudden burst of need, she'd come on pretty strong, and he'd responded. She couldn't blame him for anything.
Herself, she could blame. Loneliness was no excuse for throwing herself at a man. Just look what that sort of behavior had done for her mother—a string of men who never stuck around, and zero self-worth.
There were worse things than being without a man, she told herself, as she had so often told Olga. She'd known when she'd set her lofty career goals that she would be making some sacrifices. One of them was forgoing love, marriage and family, at least for a while. Just because this temporary intimacy with Wyatt made her realize what she was missing was no reason to second-guess herself or change her plans.
She had to get out of here. She didn't think she could bear what came with the harsh morning light. Apologies, awkward escapes into the bathroom, halting goodbyes, insincere promises. She would rather keep memories of their night together untainted by such unpleasantness.
She slipped out of bed. Unlike Wyatt, she couldn't move around his bedroom in total darkness, so she opened the door onto the hallway and turned on the bathroom light. The ambient glow was just enough that she could locate her clothes … neatly folded over the back of a chair.
Now, she was sure that wasn't how she'd left them. With a shrug, she dressed. Wyatt didn't even stir. She couldn't just leave without a word, she decided. Though he would no doubt be grateful he didn't have to deal with an awkward morning after, it seemed cold to just leave without acknowledging how great last night had been, even if it was a mistake.
He had a small desk in one corner of the bedroom. In the dim light she rummaged around until she found a pen and a scrap of paper.
After thinking a few moments, she scribbled a few breezy words. He would know she was okay with what had happened and that she expected nothing. That should put his mind at ease.
She placed the note on her pillow, watched him sleep for a few more minutes, then slipped out.
* * *
Chapter 8
« ^ »
Wyatt awoke feeling incredibly well-rested. He hadn't slept that soundly, or that long, in months. Sun streamed through the window, a novelty for him, given that he usually was out of bed before dawn.
Then he remembered the reason for his sense of well-being. In a word, Phoebe.
He reached out to her but encountered nothing but empty space where she ought to be.
Coming more fully awake, he sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. But that didn't help. The bed was still empty beside him.
"Phoebe?" he called out.
No answer.
Then he saw the note. Hell. A note was bad news. A note meant he'd been kissed off. Unless she'd run out to get bagels or something—but he didn't hold his breath.
He forced himself to read the damn note:
Dear Wyatt:
Thanks for a wonderful evening. I have an early morning appointment, so I let myself out. See you Monday.
Phoebe
Hell. An early appointment? Doing what? With whom? In a fit of unreasoning anger, Wyatt tore up the note. Immediately regretting his fit of pique, he found the bit of paper that had Phoebe's name on it and clenched it in his fist. This was the only tangible evidence that she'd been here.
A note. A damn note.
He ought to be grateful, he thought as he dragged himself out of bed. He'd been wondering what came next, and she answered that question for him. Nothing. Their lovemaking had obviously had little impact on her. She expected them to just go about their lives as they had before.
Wasn't that what he wanted, too? Of course it was. No complications, no recriminations, no clinging female reading unintended meaning into every word, every gesture.
But, damn it, he'd wanted to make French toast for her.
* * *
Phoebe sat on her balcony, sipping coffee and reading the paper. Some appointment. But she'd thought it would sound nicer if she had an excuse for leaving in the middle of the night. Better if it didn't look like she was running scared.
And she was, she realized. She was downright terrified by what she'd done. She'd broken one of her unbreakable rules by sleeping with her boss. It might have felt right at the time, but now the regrets just piled one on top of the other.
What if they found it too uncomfortable to work together anymore? What if Rolland and Helen found out? She'd never be able to look them in the eye again. The warm, fa
milial relationship they'd developed over the years would disintegrate. The Madisons might love her, but their first loyalty was to Wyatt, and they wouldn't be quick to forgive her if they perceived that she'd slighted him in any way.
She was grateful for only one thing. Since Wyatt had gone off on the tangent of believing she was spending her days at the university looking for potential husbands, he never got around to asking her the real reason she'd been at ASU.
Maybe he wouldn't.
The phone interrupted her grim musings. She'd left the balcony door open to bring some fresh air into her apartment, so all she had to do was step inside to grab the receiver. The thought briefly crossed her mind that Wyatt might be calling her, and a silly giddiness gripped her heart—until she realized it was her mother on the line.
"Addy. You didn't call me back," Olga Phelps said in her odd accent, which held Danish overtones generously imbued with the results of thirty years of living in New Jersey.
"Oh, Mama, I'm sorry. I got in too late last night to call, then this morning I completely—"
"Did you have a date?" Olga asked breathlessly, Phoebe's transgression forgotten.
Phoebe decided it wouldn't hurt to tell Olga the truth, or at least some portion of it. She would never meet Wyatt, and her fondest wish was for her daughter to meet and marry a nice man—since the movie star thing hadn't worked out.
"I got together with a neighbor," Phoebe said, sounding deliberately cagey.
"Who? What neighbor?"
"Wyatt Madison. You know, I've told you about Rolland and Helen Madison?"
"The nice older couple."
"Right. Wyatt's their grandson."
"How old is he?" Olga immediately asked.
"Oh, about thirty-eight or thirty-nine, I think."
Phoebe thought her mother would declare that was too old, and then Phoebe could reassure her that nothing was going to come of their "date." But Olga surprised her.
"That's perfect. Old enough to be settled, and to know how to treat a lady. What does he do?"
Phoebe didn't dare tell her. If her mother discovered Phoebe knew a TV producer, Olga's dreams for Phoebe's show business career would revive in a heartbeat. "He works in, um, public relations," she said, which was almost true. Certainly he dealt with the public.
"And the date went well?" Olga asked, the question dripping with insinuation.
"He's very nice, but I don't think we'll be seeing each other socially anymore. He's a workaholic, and my life is pretty full—"
"Oh, that reminds me why I called in the first place. Adelaide Phelps, how could you keep your new job a secret from your own mother?"
Phoebe cringed. She'd been hoping she could indefinitely postpone telling Olga about "Heads Up." Now Olga would be after Phoebe to get herself back into the limelight, to use this window of opportunity to revive her dead acting career. She'd always viewed Phoebe's move to Phoenix and her job at the spa as a stopgap measure, a brief respite until she landed another TV or movie role.
"How did you…?" Phoebe began.
"I was watching 'Heads Up,' and I saw your name in the credits. How long have you been doing that?"
"Just a few days. It was only temporary at first—I didn't think it was worth mentioning. But now I've got the job permanently. I was going to tell you about it." In five or six years.
"So what's it like? Do you get to meet movie stars?"
"So far, just Taylor Shad, and it wasn't very pleasant." She shuddered at that memory.
"Do you have much sway with the producer?"
Now there was a loaded question, Phoebe thought. "Could you get booked onto the show as a guest?" Olga went on, more and more excited. "You are a TV star, after all."
"'Heads Up' is about trends. They book hot people, not has-been actresses from third-rate TV programs. Anyway, I'm not interested. I just want to do makeup."
"That's a real ambitious career you got there."
Phoebe sighed. They'd been through this argument before. She had once told her mother about going to college, but Olga had laughed at Phoebe's lofty career plans. "Addy, honey, you're whistling into the wind," she'd said. "No one born with your face and body should waste it on bio-whatever." So Phoebe hadn't mentioned it again, and she wouldn't, not until she had the diploma in her hand. Maybe not until she'd started her company and had a product on the market with her name on it, something Olga could show to her friends. Now that Olga would understand.
"If you don't want to be on the show," Olga said, "that's your choice. But what about me? Could you get me on 'Heads Up'?"
Now it was Phoebe's turn to laugh. "Mama, the show is about cutting-edge trends. What could you possibly do that would qualify?"
"Well, I don't know. I've been making these wreaths, you know, for your front door? I custom design them. I even made one for a man—he wanted troll dolls all over it."
Phoebe didn't want to demean her mother's handiwork. Olga did do some beautiful crafts. But that was hardly newsworthy. "I'm sure it was wonderful," Phoebe said. "How come you haven't made one for me?"
"Just wait your turn, young lady. You have a birthday coming up, and I've got some ideas."
Phoebe actually looked forward to receiving her mother's gift. The wreath would be one-of-a-kind and memorable, she was sure.
A terse knock on her door startled her. "Oh, Mama, there's someone at the door."
"The neighbor man? What's his name again?"
"Wyatt. I'm sure it's not him," Phoebe said as she headed for the door.
"I'll let you go, honey. We'll talk next week. I want you to tell me all about that TV show. And I want you to talk to the producer about my wreaths."
Phoebe stifled a groan as she ended the call. Once Olga got her teeth into something like this, she wouldn't let it go. Phoebe could just imagine Wyatt's reaction if she asked him to put her mother's wreaths on 'Heads Up'!
She pulled open the door, expecting to see Elise or Daisy or Frannie. They usually got together on the weekend for some type of exercise session. No one else she knew would pop in unannounced— Except Wyatt, apparently. She looked down at her ratty bathrobe and bunny slippers, then at him in his sweatpants and T-shirt, his face unshaved, his hair still mussed from sleep—from her running her fingers through it. They could have been poster children for the Rumpled Saturday Morning disease.
Then she saw the plate he was holding, which was heaped with something that smelled awfully good.
Her stomach rumbled.
He thrust the plate at her. "I made French toast, and I had some left over."
Reflexively she took the plate, but she was too surprised to respond. Without another word, he turned and tromped back to his apartment.
For a few moments, Phoebe just stared. What was that all about?
She retreated into her kitchen and, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, poured some syrup over the French toast and ate it. It was fantastic. Who'd have thought Wyatt could cook? Although, she did remember the Madisons saying something about their grandson being a whiz in the kitchen.
He'd seemed a little angry. Of course, when he'd seen her in her bathrobe he would have realized she didn't have an appointment He'd caught her in her little white lie.
Was he insulted? Had she hurt his feelings by leaving in the middle of the night? She had a hard time picturing that. Still, she thought back to her checkered past. Once or twice a guy she'd thought she cared something for had slipped off into the night without a backward glance. And yes, it had hurt, briefly.
But those were guys she'd naively thought she might have some sort of future with. Surely Wyatt didn't have any such illusions about the two of them.
Still, now she felt bad. She'd been trying to protect them both from any further involvement, which might lead to more discomfort, heartache, disillusionment. And instead, she'd somehow angered or otherwise disappointed a man she very much wanted to remain on good terms with.
* * *
Wyatt felt like an idiot
. He had no idea why he'd marched over to Phoebe's with that plate full of French toast. It had seemed important at the time that he make her understand she'd disappointed him by sneaking off in the night. A man who did something like that would be considered a tomcat of the worst order.
After he gave her the toast, though, he realized he'd been acting like a lovesick nut. Neither of them had made any promises. In fact, each had taken pains to make it clear to the other that they weren't looking for long-term anything, which pretty much relegated their lovemaking to one-night-stand status.
So why had it felt so different from other instances of casual, noncommittal sex in Wyatt's past?
By Sunday morning he'd almost put the episode into some kind of perspective. That was before he ran into Phoebe in the Mesa Blue weight room. He'd just finished a morning run, and he'd decided to visit the well-appointed weight room for some resistance training, which he'd been neglecting of late. He found Elise, Daisy and Phoebe working out to an aerobics videotape.
"Oh, hi, Wyatt!" Elise said cheerfully, while Phoebe studied an interesting spot on the ceiling. "Want to do flex-aerobics with us?"
"Ah, no thanks," he said, sitting down on the bench at one of the weight stations. He couldn't just leave; it would be too obvious that Phoebe got to him. So he sat there and endured seeing her in a neon-green leotard. It was a perfectly modest garment. But it revealed every one of her delicious curves, and when she jumped and stretched to the peppy music, she jiggled in all the right places.
Wyatt had to force himself to keep his eyes on the wall in front of him.
He moved to the bench press, where he could lie on his back and look up. He loaded enough weights onto the thing that he would really have to focus to lift it, then concentrated on his reps. Five … ten… His muscles burned, and sweat dripped off his face. Twelve…
Gradually he became aware that the music had stopped. So had the feminine chatter. Thank God. He'd outlasted them. He sat up and wiped the sweat off his face, then almost fell off the bench. Phoebe sat not five feet away, solemnly watching him.
"What are you doing here?" he blurted out, as if she didn't have a perfect right to be in the weight room.
