He was not the kind of man who experienced velvet ripples. Up and down the spine or anywhere else. Ever. “Well…”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. She did. “You’re off. Me, too. Want to get the rest of this done and get home. But if by some crazy chance we’re ever in the store at the same time again, maybe we should just switch lists. I’ll do your food. You do my…”
“Whatchamacallits.”
Another shared smile—why did it always have to feel as if he’d shared something private with her? But then she took off and so did he. He made a fast trek through frozen foods and was just aiming for the checkout—relieved he hadn’t run into her again—when he realized he’d forgotten to make a quick run through the book section. There was a new Iles and Coben out.
He found both books at the end-cap. Discounted, just as he’d hoped. Only he spotted her there again. Apparently she bought books with the same exuberance she bought everything else, because there were tomes heaped on her grocery stack. Soccer For Dummies. Mechanics For Dummies. Geometry For Dummies. Wicked. Three Harry Potters. Talking To Your Preteen About Sex. College Planning. Even You Can Learn Computer Skills.
He intended to skid right by. Forget the Iles and the Coben, just get the hell out of the store.
But it itched on his heart—how damned hard she was trying with the child. She wasn’t just a fish out of water. She didn’t seem to have a clue how to swim. And when he wheeled closer this time, she was absorbed in the book about parenting advice on sex, flipping through the pages, a scoop of hair making a comma of dark satin on her cheek.
He said, “They knew more at ten than we knew at twenty-five. It’s one of the scarier parenting things.”
She glanced up, this time not looking surprised to see him. “I heard her talking to someone on the phone. Another kid. About how some thirteen-year-old had given a blow job to some other thirteen-year-old on the school bus. I almost collapsed on the floor. I’m not that old, but I don’t remember kids doing stuff like this. At least not that I knew anything about. She doesn’t take the school bus, but my God. I didn’t even know what to say, much less what I was supposed to do about a story like that.”
“You think it’s tough raising a new daughter? Try raising sons.”
“I don’t think it’s easy for either gender. But whatever you’re doing…it’s totally right. Your boys are great.”
“That opinion’s sure mutual. My boys took one look at you and decided you were cool.”
A flush spotted her cheeks. “I really like them both, Jack. They’ve been over to car-talk with Charlie a couple of times. They’re so good with her, treat her like a little sister, but they don’t talk down to her. And they just seemed to accept me. The way you have.”
His boys had done just that, accepted her, Jack knew. But he hadn’t.
And something just snapped in his head. He knew what she’d been doing. Him, too. Both of them had been playing the moth game, maybe not exactly flirting, but still edging closer and closer to the flame. And when Jack stepped forward, he kept thinking that they might as well get the burn over with.
She had to quit looking at him with those idealistic eyes. With that open welcome in her smile. With that you-are-one-sexy-guy posture. Or he was going to get sucked in. So maybe it was an impulse, but it was real enough. Get the burn over with; quit with all that dangerous fluttering toward temptation.
So he grabbed her—with her hand still on the book about sex and adolescence, with the grocery store neon lights as unsexy as knees. And maybe no one else was in the book aisle at that moment, but like any other evening, there were people all over the store. Someone could show up at any second. Maybe a neighbor. Maybe someone at the school. For damn sure, it’d be someone neither wanted to be seen by.
So when he hooked her arms—book and all—around his neck and aimed for a kiss, he was thinking fast and dark. He was thinking, just get this completely over with right now, put the kaputz on her believing him a good guy, on thinking those inviting smiles were okay. He was thinking…
Well, he was thinking. But then the whole deal got murky.
Something noisy hit the floor. The book she’d been holding. Then some more books.
He ground his mouth on hers. Nailed her lips good. He was thinking frustrated, annoyed, thoughts, he was sure of it.
Only, for Pete’s sake, the taste of her was like some exotic nectar. Wild and sweet. Alluring. Confounding. She arched against his body, leaning into him, her eyes closing as if she were lost in the moment. Lost in him.
Sixteen-year-olds got lost in the moment. Not grown-ups. With grown people it was about sex. Satisfaction. Of course you gave in to the mood when it was appropriate, but that wasn’t the same as falling under some immature, amateur, dad-blamed spell.
Her naiveté was yet another difference between them.
He shifted a leg. Had to, or risked falling. He hadn’t broken off that punishing kiss yet. He was about to. But for that second or so…for that minute or so, he felt stirred into a wicked, forbidden soup, swirling around the taste of her, the wrongness of her, the texture of those plump, firm breasts teasing against his chest, the arch of her back making a meld of her pelvis rocking against his.
Her arms, that had been so tidily lassoed around his neck, suddenly weren’t. Her hands were gliding down on his back, pressing, sliding down to his butt. Then pushing in, pushing his groin tighter against her pelvis.
Inviting murder and mayhem. Or worse. Right there in the grocery store. In public. With all those lights.
He couldn’t very well end the kiss right then, when it was so completely obvious that she hadn’t learned a thing. You don’t poke a sleeping bear. You don’t go into dark alleys alone. You don’t entice a guy unless you’re inviting the consequences.
That was the kind of stuff he was trying to make sure she understood. Stuff her mama should have taught her. Or a guy, a lot earlier than this. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but darn it, get this over with and then she’d know. Then she’d be safer. Then she wouldn’t poke any more bears.
Lights blurred. Under that thin shirt of hers, he could feel the suppleness of her skin. Feel the glossy softness of her. The scent of her.
The shape of her mouth, not too big, not too small, just devourably just right.
The tiredness of a long day seemed to float off, forgotten. His irritation with the grocery store, gone. The troubling mystery of Cooper’s recent behavior…well, that wasn’t gone, his kids never totally disappeared from his mind, but right then the problem had definitely disappeared from the docket. In fact, there was nothing on his immediate docket but—
But that lesson he wanted to teach her.
Right.
A sigh groaned from his mouth to hers.
His hands snaked down her spine, down to her fanny. Lots of clothes between them. Not enough. Too many. Either way, it didn’t matter, because any touch was better than none. Any way he could grind against her—and be ground against—was better than not. Any way he could keep their lips glued, her flavor locked against his tongue, was worth fighting for, even if it meant a loss of oxygen, a loss of sanity, a complete loss of lucidity.
Her skin was softer than silver, the heat coming off her more erotic than nakedness—at least almost. Every kiss, every squeeze, made him imagine her naked. Prone. Rolling on the moonlit grass, somewhere in summer, somewhere there was no one and nothing but her. Just her sounds, her textures, her smells. Just that lustrous hair under his fingers, that winsome mouth, that wicked, willing invitation in the rock of her hips against him.
Some thumping noise jolted him, jolted her into opening her eyes. Something seemed to have fallen. Like a major stack of magazines. He noticed, sort of, but mostly he noticed her liquid eyes, her breathlessness. “Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice.
“Um…sort of,” she responded with complete honesty, her voice as dusky as a whisper. She seemed to gather herself, realize where they were, see the fallen books and mag
azines. “Good grief.”
Yeah, he thought, she’d finally gotten it. How dangerous they were together. The price you paid for teasing the tiger. Or the bear. Whatever.
He couldn’t help feeling a little bad that now she looked so…vulnerable. “I’ll take care of all this stuff that fell down,” he said firmly.
He bent down, and so did she, but he reached the scatter of magazines and books first. He picked them all up, pushed them back on the shelves.
They all fell down again.
“You’re sure you’re all right? I could walk you out,” he said.
“No, honestly. I’m fine.”
“I don’t know what to say—”
“You don’t have to say anything,” she said gently. “I had a feeling that was coming. Maybe not this minute, in this silly store. But that it was going to happen sooner or later.”
“I did, too.” Well. He took a breath. It felt darn selfish to just leave her in that state of intense arousal, by herself, not do anything to help her get over it. But then that was the point, wasn’t it? Teaching her a lesson? Making sure they didn’t keep risking this kind of crap. “I have to get home, Merry—”
“Of course you do. Me, too.”
So he stumbled away from her—at least until she called him back.
“Jack?”
He turned.
“Don’t you want to take your shopping cart?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
He got to the front, went through the checkout, forgot his wallet. Then realized it was in his back left pocket. In the parking lot, he momentarily forgot where he’d parked his truck.
He kept thinking, maybe it was cruel to do that to her in a public store like that. She was his neighbor, after all. And his hands had been all over her, even if they had been wearing all their clothes. When he was younger—he’d just been nicer, that’s all.
He opened the truck door, climbed in, then couldn’t fit the key in the lock. A minute later—possibly three—he realized that the black GMC only looked like his. It was someone else’s.
He stumbled back out, recarrying all his groceries and swearing at shopping in general. It was definitely a good thing they got that kind of dark, dangerous embrace thing over with, he mused.
She’d really learned a lesson.
He wouldn’t have to worry about her so much after this.
CHAPTER NINE
THE CHILLY RECEPTIONIST in Lee Oxford’s office had told Merry to have a seat fifteen minutes ago. Normally she’d have minded the wait, especially since she was nervous about the coming conversation with the attorney. But this morning, she was content to just curl up in a chair. Her mind was on Jack, had been since those crazy kisses in the grocery store two nights ago.
He’d been such a basket case, the darling. Who’d ever guess that a few kisses would shake up a sophisticated grown man so much?
Yet she’d seen him falling over his feet, then walking off without his cart. And in the parking lot, she’d watched him climb into the wrong truck—not that she’d ever tell him. It was just so adorable and endearing that a few kisses from her—with her—had affected him so strongly.
Of course, they’d affected her, too.
So much so that she was seriously considering jumping him. It was increasingly obvious—no matter how volatile he was when he responded to her—that he was too chivalrous to initiate an invitation himself. Merry had never experienced chemistry this powerful. She sure as Pete didn’t want to waste it. Because she was trying to be more cautious, though, she kept trying to think of reasons why she shouldn’t seduce him.
There didn’t seem to be any.
He was a good man. A hero. Trustworthy. A great dad. Honest. Helpful. Hot. He seemed lonely—she had the impression from the neighborhood that there were a fair number of women wandering in and out of his Friday nights—but no one who stayed. He was all alone in that big house most of the time.
It wouldn’t be a good idea for the kids to find them in bed together, of course, but that was a question of care and logistics, not a deterrent in itself. And she’d given up her entire private life. She had absolutely no private life, come to think of it. But she could hardly give up sex altogether until Charlene was grown up, could she? So a relationship overall seemed a good idea. For him. For her.
Or was she just giving herself an excuse for jumping him?
As much as she loved mulling the problem of Jack, though, the attorney’s secretary finally signaled that Lee Oxford was free. She popped to her feet, but dread immediately rolled in her tummy. She’d called Lee for this meeting, but that didn’t mean she really wanted to be here. Questions and worries just kept coming up that she couldn’t answer on her own.
Mr. Napoleon had shoes that gleamed like mirrors and bling for cuffs this morning. Like before, he had a smile that could charm a snake, and he might have kept her waiting, but now she was barely seated before he handed her a check.
“What’s this?” she asked in confusion.
“For the storm damage. The insurance settlement came directly to me.” He raised a brow. “Actually, I thought you’d be chafing at the bit to get the money before this. And you don’t seem to be drawing on your guardian account, so I assume there was a problem that you needed a fast resolution about there, too.”
Truthfully, she’d completely forgotten about all that. Sooner or later, she had to get around to paying some bills and all that, but right now, she had serious questions on her mind, not silly issues like money. “I have four questions,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“June Innes. Lee, do we have to do what she says?”
Lee poured coffee from a sterling carafe for both of them. “Well, yes and no. She was appointed by the court, so she has the court’s ear, and she will be regularly reporting to the judge for at least a year. That doesn’t mean you have to do anything she says. But she does have the power to haul you in front of the judge, question your fitness, any time she wants.”
“That’s what I was afraid you’d say,” Merry muttered. “I don’t think she likes me.”
“You’re young and pretty. Of course she doesn’t like you,” Lee said wryly. “But she’s been doing the ad litem thing for the court for years. Most of her cases are elderly. She pulls a real tiger act for them, so I tend to label her on the good-guy team. But I have to say—I’ve never seen her in an adolescent case. I can’t believe she’d relate too well to today’s kids.”
“That’s my impression.”
“I also think she’s always on the side of the victim, which means that she’d inherently see you as a potential problem. She’s used to protecting old people from others who are trying to swindle or use them—so that’s how she’d tend to see you. As the person who’d be involved in this for Charlene’s money. She’d tend to be suspicious of you, even if you weren’t damned adorable.”
There were times Merry loved a compliment. But not from the attorney, and not now. “She just has very rigid ideas about how Charlene should be raised. And maybe she’s right. I’ve never been a parent. But I can’t see why I have to push stuff on Charlene—like discipline—unless there’s a reason. And she’s really adamant about Charlene seeing a counselor, but Lee, Charlene just as adamantly doesn’t want to.”
Lee leaned back with his coffee. “I hear you. But overall, I can’t make those calls for you, Merry. It’s on you.”
“Thanks.” She should have known, Mr. Armani wouldn’t stick his neck out, either to defend her or to offer advice that wasn’t related to his financial interests. “Okay. Easier question. What am I supposed to do about Charlie’s car?”
“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know. I mean—I already have a car. A good car that I love. And I can’t drive two. But Charlie’s car would carry around more kids, if and when I do more carpooling. So I just need to clarify—do I have permission to drive Charlie’s car? Or to sell it? I mean, what am I supposed to do?”
“God. If clien
ts would just bring me problems this easy to solve,” Lee said wryly. “Do whatever the hell you want. If Charlie’s car works better for you in the parenting role, you’re fully entitled to it. I’ll get your name on that insurance if it isn’t already. No sweat.”
“Okay.” She guessed that one, but now she fidgeted in the leather chair. “Lee, I’d like to redecorate Charlie’s room.”
“And you’re telling me this, why?”
“Because I’d need money to do it.”
“Merry, we talked about this. You have a whole checking account that regularly refills from Charlie’s estate. You don’t have to ask permission to use the money. You just have to keep receipts and be able to verify that the use is for the upkeep of the house, the issues related to Charlene’s life.”
“I know you told me that.” She rubbed two fingers on her temples. “But it feels like stealing.”
“Huh?”
She should have known Lee wouldn’t get it. Stacks of bills had been breeding by the phone in the kitchen. It just felt weird to use money that wasn’t hers, even though she knew she was entitled to pay the electric bill—and using the money on something “unnecessary” like redecorating was a lot less practical than electric bills. In principle, she should love living a princess’s life. The reality just seemed a little touchier. But she moved on. “Next question. Could I get a job?”
“You don’t financially need a job.” Lee’s tone reflected his opinion that they’d already covered this subject.
“I know I don’t. Financially. And I’ve been filling every hour I can with Charlie’s life, doing things at her school, volunteering every place in her life that I can get involved. But there’s still a lot of time in a day. Is there something illegal or problematic in my being her guardian if I also had a job?”
“If the job didn’t interfere with your full-time care of Charlene, I can’t imagine a problem. But you’ve got a helluva generous living allowance, so I guess my advice is…what’s your hurry with working? Hold your horses. Settle in for a few months. You’re always going to look better to the court if you look like a devoted full-time mom figure.”
Blame it on Cupid Page 14
