“Sorry,” he said, pretending he had not intentionally orchestrated the encounter.
She smiled forgiveness and turned her attention back to the movie. Craig took advantage of her preoccupation to study her profile, fascinated by the soft curve of her cheek, intrigued by the way her nose tilted just the tiniest bit at the tip, giving her a kitten cuteness, which should have been at odds with her sexiness instead of enhancing it. She was so sweet, he wanted to lick her like a lollipop until she melted.
He managed to keep up with the story line of the movie despite the distracting way her shirt draped over her breasts, molding their roundness with sufficient detail to make a man dizzy for want of filling his hands with them. He held out until the charming, aged Brewster sisters were trying to serve up another portion of lethal elderberry wine before he shifted restlessly and stretched his arm along the back of the sofa—behind Holly’s head.
The movie was every bit as funny as Holly had told him it would be. Cary Grant, playing drama critic Mortimer Brewster, juggled his aunts’ homicidal antics, his sadistic Frankensteinian brother and bodies competing for space in the window seat.
Craig and Holly grinned, chuckled and belly-laughed. They relaxed, gravitating ever nearer to each other. Holly’s left shoulder nestled against his ribs. His hand dropped to her right shoulder, cradling and caressing. Her hair was silky under his chin and smelled lightly of flowers. He thought that if he didn’t kiss her soon, he would expire from sheer anticipation.
His opportunity came at long last near the end of the movie as Mortimer drew his new bride into his arms and kissed her to keep her quiet about the bodies in the basement. “Now there’s a man who knows how to handle a woman,” he said.
Holly answered with a sigh, “Cary Grant always knew.”
“Think I’ll borrow his technique,” he said, closing his arms around her.
Holly hadn’t the will to resist as his mouth covered hers, then became greedy as her lips softened and yielded. He was warm, strong, male; gentle but persuasive. She cradled his cheek in her palms then slid her hands higher, threading her fingers into his hair as the kiss deepened. He tore his mouth from hers to drag damp kisses along her jaw en route to her neck. A sensuous whimper of arousal escaped her as his hot, questing lips explored soft, sensitive skin. His hands were splayed across her back, supporting her, holding her close.
Holly lowered her hands to his shoulders and slid her arms around him, leaning across his lap, to the chagrin of Buttercup, who leaped away with a mewl of protest and cast them a disgruntled look over her shoulder on the way out of the room. “We’ve hurt her feelings,” Holly said breathlessly.
“She’ll get over it,” Craig returned in a rasp. His mouth found hers again. He seemed to be touching her everywhere, and every place he touched her throbbed with pleasure.
“Is this when we get to roll on the floor?” Craig asked hopefully.
Holly groaned her regret and drew her hand forward to cradle his cheek. She gazed into his eyes. “This is when I take you home.”
His groan was deeper, more prolonged and more filled with regret than hers had been. He stroked her hair away from her face. “That girl in the movie was an amateur compared to you. Your eyes are doing me in.”
“I think it’s the other way around,” she said dreamily. “Your eyes—” Smiling gently, she traced each of his eyelids with her forefinger. “They’re so blue.”
His smile was bittersweet frustration. “You’re torturing me.”
She craned her neck to kiss him briefly on the lips. “Time to go, bucko!”
* * *
OUTSIDE, the night was unnaturally black, the sky starless and overcast. The air held the heavy stillness of impending rain. After commenting on the chances of a storm, they passed the short trip to his house in comfortable silence that extended a minute or so past the time that Holly parked at the curb and turned off the engine. A distant street lamp provided the only light inside the car.
“Thank you for catching my skink,” Holly said finally. Hearing a whisper of movement, she turned her head and found Craig looking at her.
He grinned. “Thank you for the movies.”
Another silence ensued before Holly said, haltingly, “You were a good sport about—”
He lifted his shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. “You made the ground rules clear the last time you brought me home.”
“Some men might have pressed their advantage.”
“Every minute I spend with you is special, Holly. I wouldn’t do anything stupid to jeopardize our friendship.”
“I think we both know that whatever’s going on between us goes beyond friendship.”
“You noticed, too,” he said, the words tinged with sarcasm.
“No more than I’d notice a freight train rushing through my apartment.”
Tension charged the atmosphere in the compact car.
“We’d be crazy to get in over our heads,” Holly said at last, unable to bear the heavy silence. “You’re the first man I’ve kissed since Craig died. I’m still working on letting him go. And you—”
“I’m the last man in the world any woman should get involved with.”
The intensity with which he spoke revealed the depths of his frustration. Holly was glad the street lamp was far enough away that she could see only a faint glimmer in his eyes, and not the true measure of sadness that haunted him. Otherwise, she might do something very foolish.
Very foolish and very wonderful, a little internal voice tormented her.
“Maybe not the last man,” she said. “There was a pervert who used to lurk around the children’s section. I’d take you over him any day.”
She’d hoped the note of levity would ease the tension, but he remained serious as he challenged, “How do you know I’m not a pervert? For all we know, I could be a serial killer.”
“Or married,” Holly said, voicing her greatest fear. Although logic told her that serial killers were often quite charming and seemingly innocuous, her heart told her that the man on the seat next to her would never intentionally hurt anyone. But if he was married...
“I’m not married,” he said.
“If everything you’ve told me is true, then you couldn’t possibly say that with such certainty.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I can’t be certain of anything. And maybe I don’t have any right to ask a woman to take my intuition on faith. But—” A harsh groan tore from his throat. He leaned closer and cradled her face in his palm as his eyes locked with hers. “I’ve given this particular matter a lot of thought, Holly, especially, since I met you. And the only conclusion I’ve come to is that I couldn’t possibly be married to another woman and be drawn to you as strongly as I am.”
“But you don’t know why you’re drawn to me. It could be because I resemble someone you care about.”
“I know exactly why I’m drawn to you,” he said. “And it has nothing to do with any other woman.”
Holly spread her hand atop his. “It would be so easy to believe that.”
Her chest ached with the desire to believe it.
“I may not know my name, or where I came from, but I’m...me,” he said. “I think a certain way. I have to believe that I have a certain set of ethical standards that govern my life, regardless of what I call myself or where I live. I lost my memory, but not my morals. Do you remember when I told you about being in the hospital, thinking of that soap-opera character named Craig getting lucky and hoping I could, too ?”
Holly nodded.
“I wouldn’t think that way if I were married,” he said. “Marriage means one man, one woman and a lifetime commitment. I don’t have to think about it. That’s my attitude toward it. If I were married, it would be for keeps. I wouldn’t play around, and I wouldn’t be thinking about getting lucky. I might not remember my wife’s name any more than I remember my own, but I would damn well remember that I was married.”
He read the skepticism in her eyes. “I don’t blame y
ou for thinking I’m nuts. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve lost my mind as well as my memory.”
“It’s not your sanity I was questioning,” she said, lowering her head to hide her face on his shoulder. “It’s mine.”
She sensed his surprise even in the darkness. “When I met Craig—the man I was engaged to—I was afraid to get involved with him. He was a cop, and I knew what could happen.”
A shudder vibrated through her. “But I fell in love with him, anyway, and—” She broke off and drew in a breath before continuing. “My heart shattered into a thousand pieces when he died. Now it seems to be patched together with bailing wire. I don’t know if I could put it back together if it got broken again. And yet—”
She lifted her head and peered into his eyes. She didn’t move as his face slowly descended to hers, as his mouth claimed hers in a kiss that was brief but intense. And then, as he moved away from her with a regret that almost palpable, a bolt of lightning streaked white-hot through the black sky.
Almost as one, Holly and Craig shivered at the violence of the unexpected flash. Holly wondered if it was static electricity alone that made her scalp prickle or if it was partly pure, unadulterated fear. She was desperately close to falling in love with him, and she had as much as told him so.
Their shock faded into nervous laughter.
“Remind me never to think impure thoughts about you again,” Craig quipped.
“I think that was our cue to call it a night,” Holly said.
* * *
THE FIRST RAINDROPS hit the windshield as Holly turned into the parking lot at her apartment complex a few minutes later. She made a mad dash to her door, slamming it closed behind her as a flash of lightning showed through the windows and a rumble of thunder shook the walls.
She would have loved a long, leisurely bath, but the storm precluded it. Anyone raised in Florida, the lightning capital of the country, knew to stay away from plumbing during thunderstorms. So she thumbed her nose at fate just enough to brush her teeth and wash her face, then put on a satin nightgown, climbed into bed and watched nature’s light show outside her window while the rain pelted the roof.
She pulled the covers up under her chin and listened to the wind, the thunder and the rain. Even as a child, Holly had loved storms; she loved the feeling of being inside, safe and dry, while a storm raged just beyond the walls. Tonight, despite the crisp coolness and fresh, clean scent of the bedding, she did not feel so safe. Instead, the turbulence of the weather seemed like a manifestation of her state of mind, an echo of the confusion and fear, the indecision, the sorrow she still felt over Craig’s death.
Body aching with the desire for a man’s touch, she reached out and took her beloved childhood teddy bear, which ornamented the unused pillow on her bed, and hugged it tight against her. But gone were the days when Teddy could make all the night demons disappear. Closing her eyes against the strobelike light play against her windows, she saw Craig Ford’s face as they laughed together watching the movie. She saw the trouble roiling in the depths of his eyes. She tried to remember, but could not, the details of another Craig’s face, the rugged male face she had loved so dearly—the face she had expected to find on the pillow next to hers for a full and natural lifetime.
How long she tossed and turned before falling into a troubled sleep, she couldn’t have measured. It might have been minutes or it might have been hours. So she didn’t know how long she’d slept before the chimes of the doorbell roused her, but she noted in her stuporous state that the faint light of dawn glowed through the windows as she left her bedroom to answer the door. Rain still peppered the roof, but the storm had spent its violence and mellowed into a steady shower.
By the time she’d padded into the living room, she was awake enough to register alarm over the unexpected summons to the door at such an hour, especially in such inclement weather. Just then, the doorbell chimed again, startling her. She made a conscious effort to walk softly so that she did not tip off the person outside that she was approaching the door. She decided use the peephole and dial 911 if she didn’t recognize the visitor.
Holding her breath, she stood on tiptoe and peered through the hole, half expecting to see someone big and fierce. But the face she saw was familiar.
The man on her doorstep wasn’t wearing a hat; his hair, drenched and dripping, clung to his head. His clothes were saturated and plastered to his body. His skin was also wet; it glistened in the pale morning light. He looked exhausted, troubled and vulnerable. And desperate.
Observing him without his knowledge, Holly shared his desperation, and flung open the door.
“Craig!” she said. “How did you—”
He tilted his head toward a dilapidated bicycle wedged against the railing behind him. “I had to see you. I had to...”
His voice trailed off as she reached for his hand and guided him inside. She was in his arms the instant the door closed, offering her mouth to him as she threw her arms around his neck. The embrace was like a spark to dry leaves, the kiss like flame to gasoline.
He was breathless as he dragged his mouth from hers to rasp, “I thought about it all night, Holly. You have too much past, and I don’t have any at all. It balances out in some crazy way.”
6
STILL EMBRACING, with Holly leading the way, they stumbled to the bathroom. Holly peeled off Craig’s shirt and tossed it into the bathtub. Then she plucked a towel from the towel bar and blotted his bare skin, pausing when she discovered an angry, ragged scar running from his left shoulder to his ribs. She lifted her gaze to his questioningly and he shook his head sadly. “It’s anybody’s guess. It’s not from the accident.”
Holly draped the towel over his head and dried his hair, massaging briskly.
“Oh, lady,” Craig said, the words issuing forth in a sensual rush.
Holly followed his gaze to her chest. Her satin gown, wet from his clothes and translucent as tissue paper, clung to her breasts like a second skin. Her nipples were swollen and firm and perfectly delineated by the pale pink fabric. She gasped as he lifted his hand to cup her left breast, chafing the sensitive tip with his palm.
“If I don’t taste you—” He broke off, leaving the consequences of such a dire fate undetailed as he bent to take her right breast into his mouth. He drew on it through the frail satin, flicking his tongue across the beaded nipple.
Holly leaned against the doorjamb for support and wondered how she could have forgotten how sweet it was to have a man kiss her breasts when she remembered her intimate moments with Craig so well. With a languid moan, she closed her eyes and rested her hands on his shoulders while his mouth stoked the flames of desire spreading through her.
He pressed closer, backing her against the wall until his hardness tormented her with the knowledge that he was as aroused as she.
Her thumb grazed the top edge of his scar and she tilted her head to trail the rough ridge of scar tissue with tiny kisses. She heard his sudden inhalation of breath as he slid his hands between the wall and her buttocks and pulled her hard against him.
“There’s no other woman,” he said. “There can’t be. I couldn’t feel this way about you if there were.” He sealed the declaration with a probing kiss.
Holly felt soft, swollen, boneless, on fire. She clung to him for support, wanting—needing—more from him. She wedged her hand between them to find the waistband of his pants.
Ending the kiss abruptly, Craig covered her hands. “Point of no return, Holly. If you have any intention of stopping—”
She stared into his eyes for what seemed an eternity before grabbing the waistband and yanking open the snap above the zipper. It gave way with a pop that echoed through the small room like “Yes!” shouted across a mountaintop.
She guided the zipper down with a deliberate lack of speed, taking pleasure in the guttural growl that emerged from his throat as she applied subtle pressure to the hot, rock-hard flesh straining against the confinement of his briefs.
; After opening the zipper, she hooked her thumbs inside the waistband of his pants, underwear and all, and peeled the soaked fabric down his legs to his ankles. Kneeling, she untied his shoes and he stepped out of them, one by one, and then out of his pants. She drew back her hand to toss them into the bathtub with his shirt, but he looped his hand around her wrist to stop her.
Grabbing the trousers by the band, he searched the back pocket for a small plastic bag folded into a flat rectangle. “I did some shopping on the way over. Just in case.”
Holly blushed and diverted her gaze. Although she had a box tucked away in in the drawer of her bedside table and would have insisted that he use a condom, she found it impossible to face that little plastic bag—until he took the pants from her and hurled them into the bathtub, then cupped her chin with his fingertips and guided her face up. Their gazes met and locked. “Just in case,” he whispered. “God, Holly, if you knew how much I want you—”
“What makes you think I don’t?” she asked, surprising him by coiling her fingers around him and squeezing gently.
He was kissing her before she could register that he had moved. Tasting and plundering. Searching and exploring. Conquering and claiming.
“I can’t stand up anymore,” she wheezed, pulling her mouth from his with effort.
“I’m not so steady myself,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck with moist lips.
Holly inhaled sharply and wrapped her arms around his waist as he caught her earlobe between his teeth and his breath fluttered into her ear. “Holly?”
“Hmm?” she breathed. Her eyes were wide open but she saw him only through a haze of passion.
“Honey, where’s the bed?”
“Bed?” she murmured blankly.
He draped his arm across her shoulders. “We’ll find it.”
The bedroom door was open, the bedside lamp on, gently illumining the rumpled bedding. An artist could not have set up the scene better. The work could have been titled Invitation to Lovers.
They stopped next to the bed where the covers were peeled back. Craig tossed the condoms onto the far side of the bed and cradled Holly’s head in his hands, combing his fingers through her hair. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to do this? And then you came to the door with your hair all mussed. You’ve got to be the sexiest woman alive.”
Look into My Eyes Page 7
