by Lynn Turner
“Need a day to rest up before you start your new job?” she teased.
“No, it just so happens I have some personal business to take care of,” he replied vaguely.
Despite his claim that he could let himself out, Lacey walked him to the front door, Neil’s arm around her shoulders, and hers linking her to his waist. As much as twenty-four hours ago she’d have felt uncomfortable, maybe even threatened, by such closeness, but now it seemed perfectly natural.
“By the way, did I mention that Bob Anderson will be here one day next week?” Neil asked as they reached theentryway.
“Bob will?” Lacey’s voice held pleasure. Bob had been Neil’s personal assistant almost from the day he’d gone into business, and she’d gotten along well with him on the few occasions they’d met.
“Mm-hmm. He’s bringing some paperwork I need to look over. I imagine he’ll only stay the day. He’s handling the transition period for me while the new management takes over.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t want to supervise that yourself,” Lacey remarked, and his lazy smile spoke volumes even before he answered.
“I’d originally intended to, but after that first trip back here I suddenly had more important things on my mind,” he reminded her gently.
He drew Lacey into his arms, and her hands quite naturally lifted to his chest, then slid over his shoulders and around his neck.
“I’m proud of your restraint,” she told him. “You haven’t dropped one hint about spending the night,”
Neil’s smile came through in his voice. “I figured I’d better not push my luck, that’s all. Don’t think for a minute it hasn’t been on my mind.” Then his voice deepened and grew serious. “You took a big step tonight, Lacey, and I’m grateful.”
“Don’t be,” she said with a touch of wry humor. “To be honest, I was thinking of myself as much as of you.”
“I hope you mean that, baby.” He inhaled deeply, then looked down at her with a bittersweet smile. “It’s like being sent into exile, leaving the three of you to go out to that empty old barn. Give me something to take with me, Lacey, something to keep me warm for a while.”
She stretched up on tiptoe, pulling his head down as her eyes closed and her lips parted invitingly. Neil’s arms immediately tightened, while his mouth and tongue worked their sensual magic until she was responding mindlessly. When he finally released her they were both trembling,
“I’d better get out of here before I forget my good intentions again,” he said roughly. “What time do you want me here Monday morning?”
Lacey’s lips twitched as she told him, “Between seven a.m. and a quarter after,”
“Seven! Good grief, what time do you go to work?”
“I open for business at precisely eight o’clock. Of course, if you don’t think you can be up that early—”
“I’ll be here,” Neil muttered with a frown. “Somehow I get the feeling I’ve been suckered… by a master.”
“It was your idea to take over for Mrs. Moore,” Lacey reminded him, “and after all, you are the one who told her to go visit her niece.”
“All right, all right! Seven!” he repeated glumly. “Nobody goes to work that early. It’s practically the middle of the night.”
He was still grumbling when Lacey, with an amused grin, pushed him out the door and closed it behind htm. The coming week should test his resolve to the limit. If he was still determined to be a family man by the end of it, she thought she just might be willing to accommodate him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They argued more during the following week than in all the time they’d known each other.
Monday it was over the state of the house when Lacey got home from work.
“It looks like a pigsty,” she fumed as she stalked around the family room. “What did you do, spend the whole day seeing how big a mess you could make in this one room?”
“It’s not that bad,” Neil claimed with a scowl. “And we’ve only been here a couple of hours. We spent most of the afternoon at the farm.”
“NeiJ, Hurricane Hilda couldn’t wreak this much havoc in just a couple of hours,” she snorted as she flung a mud-splattered size-eight T-shirt at him. He caught it in one hand, his brows drawing together.
“You’re really in a foul mood,” he muttered. “Okay, maybe you had a rotten day, but that’s no reason—”
“My day was just fine until I got home,” Lacey snapped. “How would you like to come home to this7” Her hand swept the cluttered room in one disgusted gesture, taking in the clothes draped over furniture, toys, shoes and tube socks littering the floor, and sweating Snoopy glasses leaving rings on the tables.
Neil shifted uneasily under her accusing glare. “All right, I admit it could be a little neater.” He ignored Lacey’s hoot of disbelief at such a blatant understatement. “But I still say it’s not as bad as you’re making out. You’re nit-picking. I think I did really well for the first day.”
“Oh, you do, do you?” Lacey challenged with one hand on her hip.
“Listen, lady,” Neil’s temper rose to match hers. “The boys weren’t even fed or dressed when you left this morning!”
“I distinctly remember telling you they might not be,” Lacey countered. “This is their summer vacation, Neil. Why do you suppose I have a sitter come here! If I’m going to drag them out of bed at the crack of dawn and have them fed and dressed by seven-thirty, I might as well take them to a day-care center, and then they wouldn’t get to see their friends all day.”
She took a deep breath and tried to bring her irritation under control,
“What did you give them for lunch?”
“Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.” The answer was curt. Neil wasn’t used to being spoken to like an employee who’d been called on the carpet; in his experience, the shoe had always been on the other foot.
“Did you eat here or at the farm?” Lacey asked in a more conciliatory tone. Maybe she had been a little rough on him. After all, this was a whole new experience for him.
“Here. The kitchen’s not quite finished out there.” Judging from his tone, Neil wasn’t placated.
Lacey sighed. “I guess I’d better start dinner. You’re welcome to stay.” Then a slight, grudging smile curved her mouth. “Of course, you’re also welcome to hang around afterward and help clean up this mess.”
She headed for the kitchen without waiting for an answer, but came to an abrupt halt in the doorway, an expression of horror on her face. Her kitchen! Her beautiful, spotlessly clean kitchen! It looked as if one of those cook ware parties had been held in it, only whoever had done the cooking obviously hadn’t seen fit to clean up after himself.
“Now don’t blow your stack,” Neil muttered be hind her, and Lacey whirled on him.
“Out! Out of this house, before you destroy what’s left of it,” she ordered furiously.
“I meant to wash up, but we started a game of Chutes and Ladders, and I just—”
“Out! Before I throw one of those filthy pans at you! How could anybody dirty half a dozen pans and three skillets fixing soup and sandwiches!” she railed in angry disbelief.
“Some of it’s from breakfast,” Neil admitted guiltily, then backed out the door when she reached for the handle of a ten-inch skillet encrusted with burned cheese. “All right, I’m goingl Maybe you’ll have calmed down by tomorrow morning.”
She had, but a visit home at lunchtime to supervise his culinary efforts found the three of them sitting at the table wolfing down double-decker cheeseburgers, French fries and large Cokes from the take-home window of a fast-food restaurant. Lacey’s mouth went tight as she picked up the grease-soaked waxed paper container for an order of fries.
“I don’t feed my children junk food,” she said tersely.
Neil’s mouth formed as thin a line as hers as he came off his stool and took hold of her elbow to half drag her out of the dinette and down the hall. The twins looked on curiously and kept m
unching at their burgers.
“There’s just no satisfying you, is there?” he snarled when they reached the entry. “Yesterday you flew into a rage because the kitchen was a little messy—”
“A little messy!” Lacey choked.
“So today I bought lunch rather than risk dirtying up your precious kitchen, and now you’re harping about that! Since when are hamburgers junk food, I’d like to know!”
“The hamburgers / make are not junk food,” Lacey informed him haughtily. “Because I know exactly what’s in them. Can you say the same about those things you’re feeding them? And those French fries are swimming in grease, which is loaded with cholesterol, not to mention the soft drinks! I know you can afford an enormous bill for dental work, but I’d like to see them keep their teeth as long as possible!”
‘Their teeth aren’t all going to drop out of their heads from drinking a couple of Cokes, are they? And as for junk food, I didn’t hear you complaining about your pal Mussolini buying them pizza!” Neil accused.
“For your information that was the one and only time he’s ever brought food into this house!” Lacey stormed back at him.
“A freeloader, huh7 I should’ve guessed.”
“Look here, Neil,” Lacey ground out furiously. “Paul knew I’d be working late that night, and he was trying to help out, that’s all.” She added tersely, “He realizes how difficult it is to be both mother and breadwinner at the same time, and he was trying to make things a little easier for me!”
“Well, what the hell do you think I’m doing here?” Neil demanded loudly.
“Keep your voice down!” she shouted back at him. “If filling them full of sugar, cholesterol and Lord knows what kind of chemical additives is your idea of helping, I think they might be better off on their ownl Diet is very important during a child’s formative years, and I won’t have you wrecking their health just to save yourself a little work.”
“Wrecking their health!” Neil echoed in disbelief, “Lacey, you’re positively paranoid about this health business. You’re blowing this whole thing completely out of proportion. You sound tike one of those nuts who go around eating roots and berries and look like walking scarecrows.”
Lacey’s cheeks flamed because she suspected he was at least partly right. She probably was overreacting, but she persisted out of sheer stubbornness more than anything else.
“Thank you very much,” she retorted. “I guess you’d rather I didn’t care, and fed my children the kind of nutritionally empty junk most kids eat today? Sugar and cholesterol have a cumulative effect.
Neil, in case you didn’t know. I guess it wouldn’t bother you at all if one or both of them dropped dead of a heart attack before he even reached middle age7” He blanched, and a thin ring of tension appeared around his compressed lips. “That’s a rotten thing to say,” he rasped.
He turned away abruptly, and the intensity of his reaction shamed Lacey enough to cool her temper.
“I know it was,” she admitted. “I’m sorry, Neii.” Then she sighed heavily. “This just isn’t going to work. Every time we’re together, we argue. We don’t seem to agree on anything anymore. I guess we’ve just both changed too much.”
Neil spun back around, his anger revived. “Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped impatiently. “You think other married couples don’t fight? That’s part of being married—you fight, and then you make up.” His sudden grin took her by surprise. “We’ve got the fighting part down pat. Now all we need to work on is the making up.”
Lacey shook her head doubtfully, but she couldn’t completely repress the tiny smile that tugged at the comers of her mouth.
Wednesday’s fight was much less heated and shorter in duration. It started when Lacey arrived home to find that Neil had gone out and bought a home video-game system and then hooked it up to her television. He and Scott were taking turns blasting away at a horde of space creatures before they could land and conquer the earth, while Todd waited patiently to play the winner. “I thought you weren’t going to spoil them with expensive presents,” she observed as she came up behind him.
Neil didn’t turn around; he was too busy trying to avoid destruction by the invading aliens. “It’s only one present, and it’s supposed to be educational,” he murmured absently. Apparently answering wrecked his concentration, because the next instant his laser cannon disappeared from the screen with the same sound an overripe watermelon would make hitting the pavement, and he muttered a disgusted oath. ‘■Neil!”
Scott looked up with a grin. “It’s okay. mom. He always says that when he gets zapped.”
“Oh, he does, does he7” Lacey asked as she glowered at Neil. He unfolded himself and came off the floor with a shrug and an unrepentant grin.
“Take it easy. They haven’t started to repeat it.”
“We’d get our mouths washed out, that’s why,” Todd remarked soberly as he moved up to take his father’s place.
Lacey clapped a hand over her mouth to contain a burst of laughter, and then Neil was pushing her out the door and up the stairs. Her shoulders shook under his hands, and when she stopped and turned she saw that he was barely containing his amusement, as well. His arms came around her, and she collapsed against him in helpless, silent laughter.
“I ought to wash your mouth out, too,” she gasped as tears ran down her cheeks. “You’re absolutely impossible,”
Neil leaned back to wipe the tears away with cool fingers. He was smiling in a way she’d never seen him smile before: like a man who has everything he’s ever wanted in the world and can’t believe his good luck.
“I know,” he ‘chuckled. “Thank goodness I’m so lovable, too. Listen, why don’t we all go out for dinner. My treat.”
Lacey smiled back as she looped her arms around his neck. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we have a pizza delivered, with every kind of junk we can get on it.”
“All right I” Neil said softly. His eyes glowed as he bent his head, and Lacey met him halfway, without the slightest hesitation.
‘They’re not fighting, they’re just kissing,” a disappointed voice said from the bottom of the stairs, and Neil lifted his head with a mock groan.
“Give me a break, you guys,” he complained. “How am I supposed to soften her up with you heckling from the sidelines?”
There were muffled giggles from downstairs, and then the electronic blips resumed as the twins went back to their game.
“Is that what you call this—softening me up?” Lacey asked as she kissed the slight indentation in his chin.
“Mmm, they’re supposed to be helping, but lately I’ve had the feeling we were fighting a lost cause,” Neil drawled.
“So the three of you have been conspiring against me,” she murmured as she stretched to lazily run her tongue around the outside of his ear.
“Are you mad?” Neil asked humorously. He bent his head to give her freer access to his neck and ear, and Lacey felt his quickened breathing against her skin. It suddenly occurred to her that she was flirting with him, something she thought she’d forgotten how to do,
“No,” she answered in a throaty purr, then gently captured his earlobe between her teeth. “What I am is hungry.”
Neil groaned as he hauled her up against him and mouthed the side of her neck. “Me too,” he admitted huskily.
“I meant for pizza,” The breathless quality of her voice ruined the light effect Lacey was trying for, and she suddenly had to fight against dizzying waves of weakness,
“I meant for you,” Neil whispered in her ear, and then his mouth was on hers, hot and urgent as his hands pressed her to him, forcing her to acknowledge his desire.
His kiss was devastating but all too brief before he tore his mouth away with a smothered moan. “But I’ll settle for piz2a, if I have to,” he murmured as he released her.
There was no way Lacey could answer the not-so- subtle question in that remark; his smoldering gaze was too knowing, too sexually aware. She
escaped with the excuse of phoning in their order, and her hands shook as she looked up the number for the Pizza Palace in the directory.
Paul had been right: Neil’s patience wasn’t unlimited, and from the way he’d just held her and kissed her, she knew it was fast running out. Any day now he would demand to know her decision; and if she made the one they both knew she was headed for, he would expect to resume their marriage with ail the rights he’d enjoyed before, including the unqualified right to make love to her.
While he’d been gentle and patiently tender so far, she remembered all too well how wildly abandoned he could be at times, and it was that thought that troubled her. If she agreed to be truly his wife again, she couldn’t expect him to exercise restraint indefinitely, and yet it was his loss of control she feared most. She knew it was cowardly to place all the responsibility for self-control with Neil, but the memories of that last night were still too strong whenever he held her, and she could feei the latent strength in his body.
She was subdued and quiet the rest of the evening, and Neil seemed to sense her mood. He gave his attention to his sons until they were tucked in for the night and he and Lacey had returned to the family room to clear away the plates, napkins and glasses. When the dishwasher was loaded he reached out to turn her toward him. His expression was solemn, his eyes hooded and unreadable.
“You know your time’s running out, don’t you?” he asked softly, one hand cupping the curve of her jaw.
Lacey nodded wordlessly. As Neil gazed down into her eyes, he sighed softly.
“You’re just one big mass of anxieties, aren’t you? I guess it wouldn’t do any good to tell you you’re borrowing trouble—that it won’t be the catastrophe you think?”
“We can’t know that until it happens, though, can we?”
“I know that I want you. And I know that you want me, but that you’re still afraid,” he said, his tone grave. “I don’t know what else i can do to reassure you, to make you believe me when I say I’d rather die than hurt you again.” He took an impatient breath when his voice roughened and grew harsh, then went on more calmly. “You’re just going to have to take me on faith, Lacey. When you get right down to it, that’s what marriage is all about— faith and trust. Either you trust me, or you don’t.”
