Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire)

by Amy Jo Cousins

  “It’s the symphony and then a late dinner. And you’ll like it, I promise you.”

  “You may have only known me for a couple of months, Reed, but even that short of a time ought to have made it clear to you that I am not exactly the symphony kind of girl.” She pulled her hand free and grabbed her drink, taking a healthy swig. “Put me in a blues bar or a jazz club and I’m right at home.” She smiled at the thought. “Hell, and there’s nothing better than getting hot and sweaty dancing in a jam-packed reggae bar until dawn.”

  “I can think of a better way to get hot and sweaty, and you could even call it dancing.” The devil danced in his eyes as he ran a bare foot up her leg until his toes wriggled in her lap. She swatted at him.

  “Stop distracting me. My point is that I’m not a pearls-and-cocktail-dress–wearing, fluty-music–liking woman.”

  “You pulled a suit out of that disaster you call a closet. I’m sure you’ve got a dress stuffed in there somewhere.”

  “That’s not the issue.”

  “Fine.” He settled back in his chair, all limbs back where they belonged. She nodded decisively, glad she’d made her point. “I dare you.”

  She gritted her teeth, willing her mouth shut. It was a no-win contest. She gave up in a huff. “My brother talks too much,” she muttered. “One of these days I’m going to tell you his real name, and we’ll see how he likes it then.”

  “Why, Addy, whatever do you mean?”

  She eyed her bottle and wondered if the two inches of cola left in the bottom would spray far enough to wipe the grin off Spencer’s face if she shook it up enough.

  “Only Tyler knows just how powerless I am to resist a dare.” She’d plot her sibling’s revenge later, and it would be painful. She was losing this round, but she wanted something in return. “Fine. The symphony and dinner. But then you have to come with me on an outing of my choosing.”

  “Done.” She could see that he wasn’t worried.

  “A Cubs game. Wrigley Field. Bleacher seats.”

  “No problem.”

  “A day game. Middle of the week.”

  “Aw, Addy, you know my schedule…”

  “And—” she’d save the best for last “—you can only drink Old Style. Three cans, minimum.”

  “Cans?” When he grimaced and gave a wistful glance to where his glass of cabernet rested on the table, she knew she’d hurt him.

  “Giving up?”

  “Not a chance.” He toasted her with the wineglass. “I’m sure my stomach will eventually recover. Here’s to new experiences.”

  She leaned forward to clink her bottle against his crystal glass and covered up her frown by taking a sip.

  Damn. Now she was going to have to go out and buy a dress.

  Addy had always prided herself on knowing where her skills lay and knowing how to delegate authority. The combination of these two traits meant she knew exactly what to do in this crisis.

  She called Maxie.

  Her sister met her at lunchtime on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Oak Street, the mecca of Chicago for high-end shoppers. Maxie strolled up arm in arm with Sarah. They kissed hello and Addy said she was glad that Sarah was joining them.

  “I brought her—” Maxie jerked her head at Sarah “—so you’ll believe me when I tell you that you look stunning in floor-length crimson satin. I don’t want you trying to run home with a boring black tea dress.”

  “I don’t even know what a tea dress is,” Addy moaned, already dreading the idea.

  “Then you’re lucky I do. Let’s shop.”

  “Okay, but I only have an hour.”

  Maxie stopped dead in her tracks and looked at her in disbelief. She pulled Addy’s backpack off her shoulder, rummaged in it for a moment and dug out the cell phone. She handed it to Addy.

  “Cancel your afternoon appointments. Now. I’m not screwing around here.”

  In the end, Addy decided that it hadn’t been too awful. If not for the frequent moments of finding herself standing in her underwear—thank god she’d worn some—in a room with her sisters and various other strange women, listening to them analyze her body and what would look good on it, she might even have found it fun. And the dress she’d gone home with was certainly not black or boring.

  The night of the event, she stood in front of her bathroom mirror, struggling with her earrings—she couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn earrings—and wobbling on one high heel–shod foot as she tapped around blindly with the other toe on the floor, looking for the second shoe by touch. Spencer was waiting downstairs and she was late.

  She managed to get the earring in, a thin dangling bar of brushed gold, at the same moment that her toes found the other shoe. She stepped back and looked at herself in the mirror. Her feet already hurt. Suffering for beauty, Maxie called it.

  She hoped it was worth it. She’d be limping again by the time the night was over.

  Her reflection stared back at her. Strange. She recognized herself, but it was as if someone had stripped her down to the skin and then superimposed the look of another woman over her bare body. Her hair, normally wild with tangled curls, was pulled back in a simple knot at the nape of her neck. Careful makeup made her eyes seem enormously dark, while her lips were stained a deep wine color. The dress, a warm, deep burgundy with a subtle sheen of gold, fell from a thin strip of fabric on her left shoulder in a low drape across her breasts and a lower drape on her back in a clean sweep to the floor. The slight flare toward the bottom would allow her to walk normally, her sisters had promised.

  She gave herself a wake-up shake and then double-checked to make sure her dress hadn’t fallen off. Time to go.

  Two steps out the bathroom door, she turned back. She took the men’s watch off her wrist and left it on the counter. Grabbing her ridiculously tiny clutch purse and the matching silk shawl she was sure would do nothing to keep her warm, she headed downstairs.

  From the top of the stairs, she spied Spencer glancing at his watch. When he put one foot on the first step, she knew he was coming up to get her. She cleared her throat gently. He turned and looked up. Then took a step backward, staring.

  She walked carefully down the stairs, feeling like Cinderella making her entrance at the ball. From the look on Spencer’s face, she came to the conclusion that this was not at all a bad thing. Maybe she should try to do this dressing-up thing more often.

  At the bottom, she stopped in front of him. She’d been afraid to find him in a tux, which would remind her too much of a prom. But he was perfect in a black suit with a dark gray shirt and darker tie. He raised a hand to her, palm up, and she placed her fingers on his. When he drew her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckles, his eyes never left hers. The silent moment made her so tense that she finally laughed, not wanting to take herself too seriously.

  He smiled at her without a word and lifted her hand up, turning her in a slow circle in front of him. Three hundred and sixty degrees later, she was a little dizzy and the silence was killing her.

  He saved her, as always.

  “You’re beautiful.” He trailed a finger against her neck, across her bare shoulder and down the length of her arm. “Overwhelmingly so.”

  She knew she was blushing and searched for something to say to lighten the moment. Once again, he had the words she didn’t.

  His brow quirked and she could see him stifling a grin as he asked his question.

  “What exactly is holding that dress up?”

  “You don’t want to know.” She’d been amazed by the tricks Maxie had taught her. “Suffice to say, it might as well be chewing gum.”

  “And what’s underneath it?”

  That one she knew how to answer. She took a step forward and pressed herself against him while she drew his head down to whisper in his ear.

  “You know I always go commando, baby.”

  She remembered for the rest of the night his groan and the low laugh that followed it. When he handed her the si
ngle rose whose color matched her dress, or handed her into the limo waiting outside the house, she kept those sounds in her mind and told herself not to be nervous. Introductions to the second couple over champagne in the lobby outside their box seats passed in a blur. Before she knew it, the house lights were dimming and they were sitting down in velvet-covered chairs.

  She glanced down at the program in her hand as the enormous room fell silent. The first piece was by Bach, a double violin concerto—words that meant absolutely nothing to her.

  Then the music began and she forgot that she didn’t know what she was listening to.

  The two solo violinists stood at the front of the stage before an orchestra that barely registered with her. Their bows flashed with movement. Their fingers danced wildly over strings, their heads nodded strongly with the music. And she could hear it.

  She could hear them dancing.

  One violin chased the melody high and then higher still, the music of the other violin spiraling beneath as the sound of the first tumbled over the top and fell rippling down until the music rose again and the second violin pushed the sound higher. Sometimes they dueled, each topping the other in rapid succession, and then they flirted, melodic fencing with one instrument chasing the other’s music. When they slowed and the battling melodies turned into lovers, one sound sliding and curving around the other, she blinked and felt the tears spill at the beauty of it.

  She felt Spencer take her hand in his, lace his fingers with hers, but she didn’t look at him. Just held on tight.

  The final movement jumped into sudden life. In her mind’s eye she saw her great-aunt, young and passionate as the musicians on the stage, bent with fire over the violin that now hung on Addy’s wall. Addy’s breath caught in pain and her heart ached. The music was rushing to a finale she could feel in the tips of her fingers. When the last notes came to a sudden, perfectly timed halt, she was too stunned to applaud.

  She felt the pressure on her arm as Spencer leaned over to her.

  “I’m thinking about her, too.”

  Addy shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about it. That anyone could give this up…

  When the music started again, she gave herself up to it and pushed all thoughts of the woman who’d abandoned her music, and Addy’s mother, down deep. By the time the musicians took their bows to crashing applause, she joined in the clapping, feeling only her enjoyment of the sound.

  Even dinner turned out to be more than pleasant, the older couple they were out with being both charming and funny. When they said good-night and Addy told them she was glad to have met them, she meant it. And in the limo, too much champagne making her sleepy, she didn’t hesitate to curl up against Spencer’s side as he stroked her arm gently.

  “Maybe I’m a little bit of a symphony girl,” she admitted in a whisper to his lapel. His hand squeezed her shoulder.

  He held her hand entering their home and she walked with him up the stairs. At the top, she moved toward his room, willing for once—no, wanting—to enter it with him, but his hand pulled her in the other direction and she walked down the length of the hallway to her bedroom.

  They’d never made love in her room. She stood with him next to her bed and reached up behind her head to undo the knot of her hair. It spilled out over her shoulders and she dropped the pins to the floor. He helped her lift the dress off over her head and then it, too, fell to the floor. Then she helped him undress, until he stood as naked before her as she stood before him.

  They lay down on her bed and she moved with him, so slowly that the world seemed to stop on its axis and pause for them. She told him that his hands on her touched her the way the music had, and his kiss on the trembling skin of her stomach spoke of something more than sex. When she fell apart in his arms, he held her. When she felt herself drifting into sleep, she held him.

  And knew that he wouldn’t leave her before the morning.

  Nine

  When the shriek of her alarm blasted her out of sound sleep the next morning, Addy bolted out from under the covers, certain she was late for a meeting. The strong grip on her ankle nearly tumbled her onto the floor.

  Disoriented, naked and half falling off the bed, she craned her neck around and spotted the trouble. She narrowed her eyes.

  “Trouble.” And indeed he was, lying there on his side, head propped on one hand and smiling in appreciation at the sight of her. Then she caught sight of the alarm clock suddenly silent under his other hand, and her grumbles transformed into shrieks.

  “It’s six o’clock! In the morning!” She double-checked the days of the week in her head. “On a Saturday!”

  “Yes it is.”

  She flopped over on her back and spoke to the ceiling.

  “So, Judge, sir, can you really consider it intentional homicide, considering the circumstances?” She answered herself as she felt the bed shaking at her side. “No, Ms. Tyler, you cannot. In fact, one can only consider it to have been involuntary manslaughter, at best.” She nodded, feeling righteous. “Thank you, Judge. I knew you’d see it my way.”

  Then she flung an arm over her face and tried to block out the light.

  “Easy, Counselor.” He rolled on top of her and pulled her arm down. She looked to the right and then the left. Anything to avoid his traitor’s face. Then she thought better and looked him in the eye for one last glimpse of him.

  After all, he’d be dead soon.

  Even sooner if he didn’t stop grinning at her.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be the one who hates mornings?” she asked grumpily.

  “I thought I’d wake you up early. Show you one of the benefits of what we grown-ups like to call ‘sleepovers.’”

  “What’s that?”

  He dragged blunt fingernails slowly down her side until his fingers rested on the flesh of her hip, flexing his hand on the joint between hip and thigh. She felt herself catching fire from his touch.

  “Morning sex.”

  The benefits of which, she was willing to concede a half hour later, were considerable.

  Addy was halfway through her second coat of paint on the upstairs bathroom that afternoon before she realized that by startling her out of sleep and turning the moment playful, he’d managed to take the hour she’d dreaded and make her enjoy it. He’d given her yet another gift.

  “Spencer Reed,” she said aloud, leaning her head against the wall—a spot not yet painted, thank God, she thought a moment later. She felt as old, or older than, the hills. “You’ll be the death of me yet.”

  And just like that, their patterns shifted again.

  Like a light switch flipping from off to on, her desire for him, her need to have him naked and in bed—preferably, but she’d settle for just naked and anywhere—went from being something she could confine to the middle of the night to a constant obsession. Instead of being cautiously glad when their schedules limited the time they could spend together, she found herself becoming remarkably cranky if she left without talking to him in the morning and returned home to find that he was still out.

  On one of the late nights when she stayed up, fighting sleep to be awake when he finally came home, she finished Pride and Prejudice. She slammed the cover shut with a loud clap and tossed the book to the floor, not sure what she was more irritated with: Spencer’s absence, the storybook happy ending or the ridiculous misunderstandings Elizabeth and Darcy went through because they couldn’t see each other clearly.

  “Novels,” she muttered, before shutting off the light and trying to sleep. She was still awake when Spencer came home and into her bed.

  And if their schedules weren’t bad enough, her family was worse.

  After weeks of giving the “couple” plenty of alone time at home, it now seemed that they were determined to drop by at all hours and it took forever to get them to leave.

  First Maxie showed up, in tears at having broken up with a boyfriend Addy didn’t even remember hearing about. She needed an entire night of tissues and red
wine to get her through the weeping and out the other side, where the absurdity of dating an actor who was entirely too close to his co-leading man could make her giggle again.

  Her brother came by after confronting the pub’s owner with his manager’s embezzlement, wondering if he’d be looking for a new job soon and looking for sympathy. Even Addy’s mother stopped in, after Spencer apparently had mentioned to her on the phone how much he’d loved the jambalaya all those Sundays ago. She brought an enormous pot of the spicy stew over with her, something Addy couldn’t remember her doing in all the years that Addy had been living alone, and of course they had to invite Susannah to stay for a while and share it with them.

  Meanwhile, Addy wasn’t getting laid, frankly, nearly as much as she wanted to. And the worst thing was that her family did all this coming and going without calling first, a habit she’d never had a problem with in the past. But she was seriously considering banning such behavior outright, particularly after Sarah rang their doorbell one Saturday afternoon, approximately two minutes before the view from the door window into the foyer would have gotten extremely interesting.

  Not to mention that she still hadn’t managed to get Spencer to a Cubs game.

  She was standing on the front walk in the dawn hours of a late-May Tuesday morning, drinking Diet Coke and threatening her garden with a fate worse than death if something green didn’t start pushing up out of the dirt soon, when she solved that problem at least.

  She heard Spencer come out of the house but pretended she didn’t, just so she could enjoy the pleasure of him walking up behind her and wrapping his arms around her.

  “You can’t talk a plant into sprouting for you, love,” he said in her ear. She ignored the shiver that ran through her at the casual word.

  “Shows what you know,” she said and leaned her head back for his kiss. She could smell the scent of coffee on him. “My book says that talking to your houseplants has been proven to make them healthier.”