She smiled wryly. “Surprisingly, for a lot fewer hours and for work that requires no brains at all I’m earning nearly twice as much as I ever did in the classroom. I’ve always wondered why some football players earn more than most brain surgeons, and exotic dancers-mermaids included—more than teachers. It seems incongruous that people are so willing to pay to be entertained and so chary when it comes to the important issues like medicine and education.”
“It doesn’t seem fair, does it?” he said.
“No, but I must confess that the hours suit me and I like the extra pay. It’s nice being home with Amber during the day. From the time she was only a couple of months old I’ve had to work. These past two years have been a real joy because I can spend so much more time with her. Of course, it’ll be different starting In September when she’s in school all day.”
“You’re going to miss her, I know,” he said. She was sure he did know, this man who had been forced to live apart from his own child and who, even though he now had that child with him, was still far apart from him in all the ways that counted.
“Yes, I’ll miss her like crazy, but it’s something all parents have to go through, and it’ll mean less strain on my mother. She likes to pretend she’s just fine, but I worry about her.
“She needs a life of her own too. She’s certainly young enough to marry again if she had the chance to get out and meet people instead of being tied down with my child most evenings.”
For a moment he was silent, looking down at his lap. He set his coffee cup down. Then, with a quick glance up at her, one she was beginning to think characteristic of him, he said, “And what about you? You’ve been a widow a long time. Have you been alone all those years, or have you thought about marrying again?”
She shrugged. “Once or twice.”
“But?” His glance was keen, and this time it stayed pinned on her face.
“But it didn’t work out. It was just one of those things. When I moved up here we drifted apart. Nothing earthshaking. No heartbreak or anything. Just an ending and a little...sadness.”
He nodded as if he understood. “What about you?” she asked. “You said you were divorced what, nine years ago?”
“That’s right. Lorraine was the Corville’s only child, and we grew up together. I think we married more to please our parents than to please ourselves. When we both realized how bored we were with each other, we parted with no hard feelings on either side.” Well, few hard feelings, he amended silently. Lorraine was one of those who had thought him heartless and ungrateful for failing to live up to their fathers’—and her own—expectations.
“You said that seven years was a long time to be widowed. Nine years is even longer to be alone. Have you been?”
He looked somewhat taken aback at the bluntness of her question, but then he smiled. “Okay, I guess I deserve that. I pried and you answered. Like you, I haven’t been alone the whole time, but there’s never been anyone special. I don’t see myself ever getting married again. I’m forty now. I think maybe I was meant to be a bachelor.”
She shrugged. “I see.” She didn’t, but what could she say? She refilled their cups.
“You said ‘once or twice,’” he reminded her. “You only told me about the once. What about the twice, Jillian?” He knew he had no right to probe, but, dammit, he wanted to know.
Again she shrugged. “It was about two years after Lance died. Maybe it was too soon. The breakup was my doing not his. But it still hurt.”
He took her hand and curled his fingers around it. “More than just a drifting apart then? More than just a little sadness.”
“More than that,” she admitted, captured by the intense blue of his gaze.
“But it’s over.” He wasn’t asking. She hesitated. She could lie and say that it wasn’t, use that as an excuse for not seeing him again. But they had shared that kiss last Saturday, and she had invited him in tonight, and he had to know that it was over, that she wasn’t pining for another man.
“It’s over,” she said, her gaze all caught up in his, her voice a mere thread of sound.
All he said was, “Good,” as he drew her into his arms and bent his head to hers.
She welcomed his kiss even though part of her was telling her to resist this temptation. But the feel of his mouth was like a benison, a balm. And when his hands began to move over her body, she made a soft, encouraging sound and ran her hands into the thickness of his hair.
It felt so good, their coming together. His mouth on hers was hard and hot, and as he dragged her across his lap, she could feel the hardness of his legs, the strength of the arms that held her, the gentleness of his hand as it moved to her breast. Nothing had ever felt quite as good, quite as right, and she wanted it to go on and on.
With a soft cry, she opened her mouth to him, welcoming him into her willingly as he deepened the kiss. Her entire body reacted to his tongue’s penetration; her lower belly quivering with spasms, her nipples peaking and straining and yearning for the solidity of his chest against them. As if sensing her need, he turned her and lay down with her. Her hands found their way to the back of his shirt, discovering hard, rippling muscles under the softness of the cloth, and she stroked the taut planes of his waist, her fingers curling in sensuous pleasure, which wanted to give as well as to take.
He tugged his shirt free of his pants, and she breathed his name. His mouth left hers and moved down her throat and across the top of her chest. He lifted himself half-off her as he quickly undid the buttons on her blouse and pushed it down her arms. She kept her eyes shut, her fingers gently raking the skin of his back. She was dizzy with wanting him, hot and trembling and vitally aware of the hardness of his need as it pressed against her lower body.
This was happening so fast, too fast, her mind tried to tell her, but she hushed it, wrapping her arms around him as she dragged in a great gulp of Mark-scented air.
His mouth made soft sounds against the tops of her breasts, skirting the lacy edge of her bra, and she strained up toward him, needing more, but he lifted his head and whispered her name as he spread her hair over her bare shoulders. “Jillian. Beautiful mermaid. Look at me.”
She opened dreamy eyes and met the deep blue of his gaze, her lips parted and moist. He kissed her with little darting movements before taking her lips in another powerful, searching assault that made her moan deep in her throat. She nearly cried out when he slid his hard body off hers, but he wasn’t leaving, only making it easier to touch her. He lifted his head, watching her face as he undid her bra and slid the cups off her breasts to run a tantalizing circle around each already hard nipple with one fingertip. She had to close her eyes again to stop the look of enchantment on his face from sending her out into orbit.
“No,” he whispered. “Look at me. Don’t hide your pleasure from me.”
“Mark...I don’t...I’ve never felt like this be—” Her breath rasped in and out as, eyes wide, she met his ardent gaze. Then she gasped, her lips parting as his cool hand cupped one warm breast. He looked down then, watching his thumb rub across the bursting peak, seeing the pink flush rise up her body. Bending his head, he kissed her almost reverently as his other hand cupped and stroked and teased the other nipple.
“Please...” The single word hovered between them as their gaze met and clung, and then she said it again, “Please, Mark!” and sobbed with relief when his mouth closed over one aching nipple, wetting it, heating it, pulling at it. He moved to the other one, his hand sliding down over her body, across her belly, curving over the small rise of flesh and bone at the juncture of her thighs, and she sighed as she moved her legs apart to allow his hand to stroke more firmly.
“Jilly? Jilly, are you home, dear?”
Her mother’s voice broke the two of them apart as if they were truly guilty teenagers. She snatched her blouse around her and gasped for breath as he sat up, gaping unbelievingly at the staircase down which the voice had floated.
Chapter Five
&n
bsp; “I’M DOWNSTAIRS, MOM,” SHE managed to say, while Mark stood up, turned his back, and tucked in his shirt.
“What in the world are you doing down there at this time of night?” Her mother’s voice was coming closer.
“I...having coffee with a friend. Is everything okay?” While she talked, she did up her bra and her blouse and was sitting erect, if wide-eyed, when her mother came down the stairs in a pink quilted bathrobe, her graying hair tangled, her glasses perched crookedly on her nose.
“Why, Mark! How nice to see you again,” she said, obviously surprised to find him sitting in the big chair at the end of the coffee table, a cup of coffee in one hand. She smoothed her hair down and turned to her daughter.
“No, nothing’s wrong, dear. I just woke up and found the kitchen light on and you not in your bed.” She yawned, patting her mouth with the back of one hand.
“I’ll say good night, then, now that I know you’re safe.”
When she had gone, Jillian carefully stacked the used dishes on the tray, and Mark, very subdued, carried it upstairs for her. She went with him to the door, and they stood there once more under the glow of the yellow porch light, saying nothing, just looking at each other, each one wondering exactly how “safe” things were between them.
“I only meant for that to be one, brief kiss, Mermaid, just a taste to see if you were still as sweet as you were last Saturday. It was too soon for anything like that to happen, wasn’t it?” He looked deep into her eyes. “But if your mother hadn’t gotten up...” His voice was a low rumble. “Are you sorry she did?”
She couldn’t speak. She only leaned forward and let her forehead rest against his chest. For just a few moments his arms came around her, his cheek lay on top of her head. They stood like that, both afraid to make another move, both too shaken by what was rushing through them to risk ruining it, to dare to give it a name, even in their own minds.
Then he gently set her back from him, lifted her lace with one palm under her chin, and said, “I have to leave now. I’m going back to town.”
“Right now? Tonight?”
“Yes.” He stepped down the stairs on light feet and was nearly at his car when her voice came floating out of the night to him.
“Drive carefully.”
He turned and smiled at her. In the glow of the yellow bulb, with her hair all loose around her head, she looked like an incandescent fairy.
He smiled. “I’ll do that, Mermaid. Thanks.”
She laughed softly. “I could always send a taxi to follow you,” she offered, but he just blew her a kiss, and then he was gone.
She didn’t see him again or even hear from him for the rest of the week.
By the time her last Saturday night show was over and she was ready to leave work, she knew that he hadn’t come up for the weekend. He hadn’t called, and her escort had been the friendly taxi driver on Friday. Even now, as she pulled out of the lot, the taxi was behind her like a faithful guardian angel.
She was glad of his presence, though, and was careful not to lose him or change her route home. She liked having him there. It was a reminder of Mark—not that she really needed one.
When she pulled into her drive, and the taxi swept on by, she got out into the steady drizzle that had been falling since noon. If it didn’t quit, Amber’s picnic was going to have to be postponed yet another time. She sighed. It didn’t seem that either she or her daughter were destined to get what they wanted out of life.
It was still raining on Tuesday when she went back to work, but by the time she came out again, the clouds had big, black, starry holes in them and silver edges all around. She watched for the taxi, saw its headlights, and the two of them drove home. When it pulled away and she was about to get out, she saw a car door open across the street and sat very still, watching Mark approach.
She didn’t try to get out of her car. She felt too weak. He opened the door and crouched beside her. Hi.”
“Hi.” Her voice was a thready little sound. “Hungry?” His expression said he was starved—for her.
“Yes.” A picture formed in her mind of them on the couch in the rumpus room. What if her mother I hadn’t called out but had just come down? What if her mother had stayed asleep? Mark had asked her that question, and she hadn’t been able to reply. She still wasn’t sure in her own mind if she would have let things go much farther. But given the way he’d been touching her and the way she’d responded, she didn’t know for sure if she would have been able to stop even if she’d wanted to.
That thought made her even weaker. She didn’t know if she dared to invite him in again, because she knew that this time, even if her mother did wake up, she would be extremely careful not to come downstairs, not to let them know she was awake. She had apologized the next day in case she’d “interrupted” something and had laughed at Jillian’s blush, saying, “Good heavens, Jilly! You’re a grown woman! Surely you don’t think I’d disapprove?”
Mark was smiling at her. “How about going to that all-night restaurant?” he asked. “If scrambled eggs are your thing, I think they could oblige.”
He paused. “And if they can’t, I can. We could be at my place in under half an hour.”
And there, she knew, they would not be disturbed. Slowly she got out of the car. “The restaurant, please.”
The scrambled eggs came with bacon and home fries and sourdough toast, but very little of it got eaten. They were too involved with each other as they talked and talked.
The conversation ranged from her marriage, which had been happy if tragically brief, to his, which had been not quite as brief but in its own way equally tragic. They discussed Chris and his inability to adapt to living with his father full-time.
They touched on religion and politics and books and movies, discovering some very similar tastes. Some subjects could, if permitted, lead to heated arguments, and others, if followed, easily could have led to heated exchanges of a different nature. Those latter topics they skirted very carefully, especially the subject of what had occurred Thursday night of the previous week.
Jillian learned that Mark’s hair had started to turn white when he was twenty-five and that, yes, it was a family characteristic. He hoped his son wouldn’t inherit it. She hoped he would, because she found his salt-and-pepper hair so wildly attractive.
Finally Mark stood up and took Jillian’s hand, dropping money on the table as he led her back to the quiet luxury of his car. Silently they drove to her place, and just as silently he turned her into his arms and kissed her for a long, sweet time.
“You’re becoming very important to me, Mermaid, and I can’t see as much of you as I want to, not with me in the city and you up here. What are we going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t really think there’s a lot we can do.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Jillian. There are many things we can do. I think we’re just going to have to be...creative.”
After another kiss, which she thought was one of the most creative ever because it created such a wild and wonderful turmoil in her blood, he let her go, and they walked to the house.
On the porch, he drew her into his arms and held her, not kissing her, just looking down at her as if trying to memorize her features.
“I’ll be back, Mermaid. Your hours may be playing hell with my work and sleep schedule, but believe me, I’ll be back.”
And he was. Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday. They went to “their” restaurant each time and spent an hour or two together, talking, learning about each other. He told her about the “elves” who worked on Elfshop Toys, the mentally handicapped who otherwise wouldn’t have a means to make a living, a way of showing themselves and the world that they were productive citizens. He told her of his deep pride in them and his hope that in time he would be able to expand the shop and branch out all over the country.
When he drove her back home, each night they spent many more minutes sitting in the car in
the driveway, acting like teenagers until they ached so badly with need that they gasped for breath.
On Saturday night, his face beaded with sweat, he said, “Let me come in, Jillian.”
“I can’t. You know I can’t.” She pulled herself out of his arms and wrapped her own around herself the way she did, he now knew, when she was tired or upset or frightened.
“I want you.” His voice was hoarse. “If you won’t let me come in, will you come home with me?”
“Mark...I—” She bit her lip, and he leaned over and kissed her.
“Don’t do that. If anyone gets to nibble at your lips, it’s me. Jillian...we can’t go on like this.”
“I know.”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I want to spend tomorrow with you. All day. And all night.”
“Mark...” It was hard to speak and hard to refuse him, because she was denying herself something she knew she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything before. “I can’t. Sunday is my day with Amber. The only full day I ever have with her. It’s important, Mark. I promised her a picnic. It’s been put off for three weeks now, once because she was sick, once because I was too tired, and once because it rained. I can’t do it to her again. I—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and would have tried again, but he put a gentle finger over her lips.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I understand. Go on in, sweetheart. You’re too tired for this now.” For another moment he looked at her as if trying to read something in her face, then stepped from the door and got out to walk her up onto the porch. He took her key and unlocked the door. There, just inside the living room, he turned her and kissed her again, hard, before breaking away from her and giving her a slight push.
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