Stryker's Wife (Man of the Month)

by Dixie Browning

  He could tell her right up front that, while he didn’t love her, he really did like her. He enjoyed her company. He admired certain things about her and suspected he might admire a few more if he got to know her better, and that they’d both tried the other route and had the scars to prove it.

  But that didn’t mean he didn’t want her sexually. He wanted her so damned much that about all he’d been able to think of for the last hundred miles or so was getting into her bloomers.

  The truth was, he’d thought about it all week long, after he and Frog had walked her back to the motel last week. He’d been kicking himself in the butt for not kissing her. He’d wanted to, God knows, but not with a smart-mouth kid looking on and probably offering a running critique of his technique.

  So the question was, would she be at all interested in marrying a stranger for the sake of a fourteen-year-old kid who had the table manners of a barbarian, a few questionable habits—a kid who outgrew or wore out everything he owned almost faster than it could be replaced, but who was bright and lovable and worth any amount of effort to salvage?

  Not to mention the sake of a one-eyed, gimpy, thirty-eight-year-old ex-coastie who was barely treading water, financially speaking, but who had a hell of a case of the hots for a certain woman and was aching to do something about it.

  Six

  They must have eaten something, because she didn’t have that same hollow feeling inside her that she’d felt earlier, but for the life of her, Deke couldn’t remember what it was. Mostly because by the time they headed back to the motel, she had an altogether different kind of hollow feeling. This time it was her knees. And her head. And the space inside her stomach that seemed to be filled with fluttering butterflies, all trying desperately to escape.

  They had talked at first—Kurt had told her more about Frog and about how the two of them had come to be together.

  “You might say I inherited him when I bought the boat. I guess that makes us sort of like family.”

  She already knew Kurt’s parents were both dead and that he had no brothers or sisters. She knew how that felt, too, because she was pretty much in the same boat herself. “Speaking of boats,” she said, trying to ignore the way the timbre of his voice affected her nerve endings. “What do you suppose the storm’s doing?”

  “Gone out to sea, I hope. When we get back to the room, I’ll tune in and find out.”

  When they got back to the room. The single room. Dominated by two big beds. The thought of those beds, no more than a few feet apart, ripped to shreds any possibility of polite dinner conversation. After a while, Kurt asked if she wanted any dessert, and she didn’t. A little while later, after she had carefully folded her paper napkin and laid it across her plate, she asked if he needed anything else from the mall while they were out, and he said no.

  Expecting to pay for her own dinner, she opened her wallet, but Kurt turned and said quietly, “Put it away.”

  “Oh, but it’s not as if—”

  In a voice as calm and even as if he were reading from the telephone book, he told her that he fully intended to pay all her expenses in exchange for her help with the boat that morning and the use of her car, and she might as well get used to it.

  This time she got only as far as, “Oh, but—”

  With one hand against her back, he directed her outside. Tight-lipped, they buckled themselves in and headed down the highway toward the motel. Deke was seething, and it wasn’t entirely from anger.

  It wasn’t at all from anger, she admitted with a quiet sigh of defeat. Things were getting entirely too complicated. At the advanced age of twenty-seven, when any woman worth a grain of salt had learned to deal with a potential sexual situation without making a federal case of it, she hadn’t a clue. Not a single clue.

  At the motel, Kurt unlocked the door and switched on a light. Then they both spoke at once.

  “If you want to shower first—” he said while she was saying something about the weather channel.

  So Kurt switched on the TV and Deke grabbed the small basket of complimentary toiletries and then they sat, one on the foot of each quilted-chintzcovered bed, and watched the latest hurricane update. “Not as bad as it could have been,” Kurt observed laconically, which proved that he, at least, had been listening.

  Deke hadn’t heard a word. She’d sat there staring at the screen like a zombie and missed the whole thing.

  This is crazy! she told herself.

  Tell me about it, self replied dolefully.

  You don’t even know this man. He could be a serial killer for all you know!

  But then, all she’d known about Mark before she’d married him was that he dressed well, he hated cats, liked jazz, drove an expensive car and drank only imported wines.

  And he’d been a great kisser.

  She had never seen Kurt in anything but khakis. He was a beer man, not a wine man, but for the sake of a boy whose father had been a bully and a boozer, he’d admitted that he limited himself to one a day. As for his car or truck or whatever he drove when he wasn’t driving a boat, she suspected it was in little better condition than her own. Worse. At least hers was still running.

  He was a boatman who had been kind to a seasick woman while she was in shock after learning about her late husband’s infidelities. A man who, to his credit, was trying his best to make a home for a needy boy.

  As for his kissing abilities…

  She turned to look at him, only to discover that he was watching her. “Did you say something?” she croaked.

  They were separated by approximately six feet of blue carpet, which should have been enough space to mute the effect he had on her circulatory system, but it wasn’t. “This is silly,” she muttered.

  “You mean the fact that all either one of us can think of is what it would be like…?”

  “What what would be like?” she snapped, and then felt the slow rise of heat sizzle all the way to the top of her scalp.

  “What it would be like to make love,” he said with that unflappable calmness that drove her up a wall.

  And while she was still catching her breath from that, he said, “I’m going to kiss you, Debranne. I won’t go any farther than you want me to, but if you have any objections to being kissed, I’d appreciate it if you’d say so now.”

  She caught her breath and even managed a gasp of laughter. “You mean like, speak now or forever hold your peace?”

  He nodded gravely. “Something like that.”

  Neither one of them moved, but there were currents flowing around them. Oh, lordy, yes! And he was evidently as aware of those currents as she was, because for a calm, reliable sort of man—a man who looked so comfortable on the bridge of a boat—he was beginning to look remarkably uncomfortable in the plush atmosphere of a luxury motel room.

  Rising, he came to stand before her, his feet braced apart as if they were aboard the R&R on a wildly rolling sea. His fists were planted on his hips, and she thought if this was his notion of a romantic approach, then he had as much to learn as she did.

  But then she noticed the smoldering look in his eye, a look that belied his seeming calmness. Taking heart from that, she searched for the words to tell him she was smoldering, too.

  Stand up, you wimp! Meet him halfway! What are you waiting for—an equal rights amendment?

  She was shy by nature, but she was working hard to overcome it. She was old-fashioned in some ways—a lot of ways—but she was working on that, too. Mark had swept her off her feet, and she’d been a perfectly willing victim, because it had been time. Past time.

  Mark had certainly not asked her permission first. “Well, if you’re going to do it, I wish you’d just…go ahead and do it,” she grumbled, and to her intense embarrassment, Kurt threw back his head and laughed.

  God, she was something! he thought. Instead of joining her on the bed, he reached down and pulled her to her feet. She barely came up to his shoulder. Being horizontal together would have been more convenient, but h
e didn’t want to spook her. All he had in mind tonight was warming her up—a few kisses, nothing really heavy, just enough heat to start her to thinking about a relationship between them.

  Then, on the way home tomorrow, he would spell out the parameters of that relationship. What he needed from it, what he could offer in return. Sex was important—in fact it was getting more important every minute he was with her—but at the moment, he needed her more for something else.

  Forcefully reining in his physical desire, Kurt reminded himself that she was a widow with no family. A single woman who was being forced to pull up stakes and who was struggling to make a living with a couple of part-time jobs and whatever her writing brought in, which couldn’t be much, considering she couldn’t even afford a decent set of wheels.

  What he was offering her was a fair deal. No more, no less. But then, whatever else he was, he had always considered himself a fair and honorable man.

  Not to mention a man who was embarrassingly aroused and trying hard to ignore it. Nor was it only because he’d been a long time without a woman. He didn’t want just any old woman, he wanted this one.

  Steady as she goes, Captain. Come alongside gently now. Before she knows what you’re about, you’ll have her boarded, battened down, all systems secured.

  He was still holding her in his arms. The bed was temptingly close. “Be still, woman,” he growled when she started to squirm.

  God, it was tempting—that bed. But his leg was hurting like the devil, and he had the beginning of a headache. There’d been a time, not too long ago, when a little pain wouldn’t even have slowed him up. He must be getting old.

  And she was too damned young, he reminded himself. Twenty-five? Twenty-three? She’d told him, but at the time it hadn’t seemed important.

  Now it did. He was damned near thirty-eight. She deserved someone her own age, someone who still had a few romantic ideals left. But then she looked at him with those big, innocent brown eyes, and he clean forgot about aching, aging body parts and lost ideals.

  For someone so small, she was surprisingly strong. Her arms were wrapped around his waist, and her fingertips dug into his back as if she meant to hang on come hell or high water. The swift surge of possessiveness that swept over him left him shaken. There was no room for emotional involvement in the deal he had in mind. Sex, yes. Mutual benefit, sure.

  But nothing of a deeper nature. He was no good at that sort of thing.

  He watched her eyes grow darker. Saw the neediness there. She was as vulnerable as a day-old bird. Kurt knew he ought to back off, but he just couldn’t make himself do it. And so he kissed her.

  Her mouth was incredibly soft, her lips warm and faintly moist. She kissed with her mouth closed, and that in itself was a novelty. He savored her for a while—the taste and texture and warmth of her, and then he said, “Open your mouth for me, angel.”

  And she did. The sweet, spunky, soft, prickly little darling opened to him the way a flower opened to the sun, and all thought of any practical, mutually beneficial arrangement flew right out the window.

  A long time later, he lifted his head and struggled to recapture his wits. She had her own unique taste. Kurt suspected it was a flavor to which he could easily become addicted. That might just become a problem, but it was a problem he would deal with when and if the need arose.

  Right now, something else was arising, and dammit, he’d forgotten to stop by a drugstore!

  So much for Semper Paratus.

  Deke squirmed, trying desperately to get closer. He was crushing her against him, one big, hard palm flattened on her bottom, the other one stroking her back, and she had both arms wrapped as tightly as she could around his waist, but the fit wasn’t quite right. Her legs were too short. She wanted to feel him against her where she ached the most. It had been such a long time since she had felt this heavy, hungry urgency.

  And never, ever—not even on her honeymoon—had she felt like tearing off her clothes and having her way with a man.

  “Whoa,” he said softly, his deep voice coming from somewhere above her head. “We’d better slow down.”

  Slow down? Was this all there was? Why? Was there something wrong with her that turned men off once they got close to her?

  Deke could have wept. First Mark, and now Kurt. And this time it hurt, it really did!

  Of course, she was no great beauty. Never had been—never would be. She was allergic to most makeup, so usually she didn’t bother. She was still wearing her old yellow sweatshirt and the same black slacks she had worn every time he’d seen her. As a fashion statement, it missed casual chic by a mile, and it didn’t even have the advantage of being quaint and feminine.

  Unfortunately, what was underneath was no better. Mark had bought her lots of fancy, lacy, frilly underwear that had irritated her skin. She’d worn it for as long as it had mattered, but once he’d lost interest she had gone back to her plain white cotton. At least it didn’t itch.

  Kurt said something under his breath. She thought it was a swear word. He looked as if he might have a headache. Something was certainly hurting him. He took his hand from her back, ran his fingers under the knotted tie at the back of his head and then jammed them under his belt.

  She wanted his hand back where it had been. She wanted to reach up and untie his eye patch and soothe away the pain. She wanted to say, “Come lie with me and be my love,” only she couldn’t remember the rest of it—something about sharing all the pleasures.

  But she didn’t dare. Not unless she could make that darned mail-order course kick in. So instead she said, “I think I’m getting a headache,” which was supposed to be his line, not hers. He was the one who’d suddenly lost interest, after all.

  “Yeah, me, too. Must be the barometric pressure.”

  “That’s bound to be it,” she agreed eagerly. Too eagerly. “Wait right here—I’ve got something in my purse.”

  For a guy who’d just been let off the hook, Kurt felt remarkably unrelieved. His gaze took in her flushed face. There was a place on the side of her neck where his beard had scraped her delicate skin. Her hair, fine as cobwebs and the color of dry leaves, tumbled wildly about her face, as if she’d just woke up from a long, sex-filled night.

  Watching her dart across the room to the fancy fake-French dresser, Kurt thought, Judas priest, I’m losing my mind. “Deke—Debranne. Come back here.”

  She looked up and blinked, one hand clutching a purse no bigger than a paperback book. She looked wary, and he could have kicked himself for what he was doing to her. With some idea of leveling with her—giving her a choice of making love now and marrying later, or making love and not marrying at all, he reached for her. The sharp movement put his leg in a bind, and it gave way unexpectedly, tumbling them onto the bed.

  “Sorry.” God, what a klutz. He was embarrassed, half-angry and still painfully aroused. “It’s been a long day,” he muttered.

  She wasn’t trying to get away, but she wasn’t trying to get any closer, either. The wary look in her eyes would have been enough to make him back off if it weren’t for the damned bruised-rose-petal look of her mouth.

  “Did you hurt yourself? Is it your leg?”

  The TV was still droning on and on. Another front. Another tropical depression. Outside, it had started to rain as weather bands spun out from the center of the storm that had passed Swan Inlet at seventeen hundred hours and was drawing a bead on Cape Hatteras.

  “Just a twinge. Muscle cramp. It’ll be gone in a minute.”

  It would be gone if he took off his pants and kneaded the muscles until they stopped spasming, but he wasn’t about to do that. For one thing, he didn’t want her seeing the mess that chunk of aluminum cowling had made of his thigh.

  For another, he didn’t trust himself in the same room with her without his pants on.

  She held him the way a mother would hold a sick child. Actually crooned to him while she stroked his shoulder. And he let her do it, thinking that at the rate he w
as going, his love-making days might well be behind him.

  With his jaw clenched against more than one type of pain, Kurt was tempted to tell her that that wasn’t where her hands could do him the most good, but he didn’t. Pain or no pain, it wouldn’t take much to send him over the edge. His ego could do without that.

  Reaching past his hip to his upper thigh, he dug the heel of his hand into the hardened muscle again and again, gritting his teeth against the pain. It took pain to cure pain.

  There was a lesson in there somewhere, but at the moment, he was in no shape to go delving into any murky philosophical waters.

  We make one hell of a pair, he thought with grim amusement, watching her struggling valiantly to stay awake. They were lying entwined on top of an acre or so of flowered bedspread. He’d set the room thermostat lower when they’d gone out to dinner. She had goose bumps on her arms, and he enveloped her in a bear hug, strictly for humanitarian purposes, he told himself, knowing it was a bald-faced lie.

  The feel of two small bosoms pressing against his chest nearly finished him off. He eased a hand in between them and touched her there, and she opened her eyes and gave him a lazy-lidded smile.

  “Mercy, I didn’t realize I was so tired. Are you feeling any better?”

  “Worse.”

  Her smile faltered. She looked so concerned he cursed himself for what he was about to do. “Debranne—sweetheart, I told you I wouldn’t go any faster than you wanted to go, but unless you want to make love right now, one of us had better get off this bed. It’s been a long day, and my resistance is shot to hell.”

  “Do you want to move?”

  “Not particularly. I’m not sure I could if I tried.”

  “Well, I’m certainly not going anywhere,” she said flatly. She was a gutsy lady, but it seemed to operate in fits and spurts.

  It was all the encouragement Kurt needed. Slowly, hoping she didn’t freeze before he could warm her up again, he eased her sweatshirt off her arms and tugged it over her head. Next he went to work on the button at the waist of her slacks. After that, it was short work to shuck her out of her panties and a scrap of a bra.