She heard him sigh, a deep exhale thick with satisfaction, and she closed her eyes, waiting to fall like a stone back to earth, preparing for the shock of impact.
But Johnny’s arms were around her, holding her, keeping her safe. And she realized she wasn’t going to crash.
At least not for a year.
TWELVE
THE PHONE RANG as the first streaks of dawn were lighting the sky outside the bedroom windows.
Chelsea felt Johnny reach for the receiver. “’lo?” He spoke softly, trying not to wake her. She heard him swear softly. “Did you try calling Carlos?” Another pause. “Yeah, I figured you did, but … How about Bobby?”
With his hair rumpled, his eyes sleepier than usual, and a night’s growth of beard on his face, he looked impossibly sexy. He looked like someone she would wake up next to in bed only in her wildest dreams.
“It’s me or no one, huh? Can you get the truck loaded for me?” He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Look, Doreen, I know you’ve got stuff to do in the office, but last night was my wedding night, and my bride’s not going to appreciate me deserting her this morning for any longer than I absolutely have to, and—Yes, I said bride.” He laughed softly. “Yeah, I’m married. Wild, huh? She’s incredible, and I’m going to be in a big hurry to get back to her, so if you guys in the office can at least load the truck—”
Chelsea shifted, stretching her legs, and he turned to look at her, an apology in his eyes. “I’m sorry, I was trying not to wake you.” He spoke into the phone. “Hold on a second, Doreen.”
He covered the receiver, leaned forward, and kissed Chelsea on the mouth. “Good morning.”
She smiled at him, snuggling closer and sliding her leg across his. “Rumor has it I’m incredible.”
“Oh, yeah.” He kissed her again, longer this time, and she could feel his body’s instant response. “It’s no rumor—it’s the cold, hard truth. You’re totally off the scale.”
“Do you often get phone calls from women at dawn?”
He grinned. “Only from women named Doreen, who work at Meals on Wheels.”
She ran her fingers lightly across his chest, delighting in the feel of his muscles and the soft, springy hair that covered them. “She wants to take you away from me, huh?”
“Just for a couple hours. I’ll be back before you know it.”
“Do you really have to go?” She let her hand drift lower, and he closed his eyes.
“If I don’t, some of these people won’t eat for a day.” He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “But I sure as hell can be late.” He brought the phone back to his ear. “Doreen? I’ll be there. In forty-five minutes.” He laughed. “I know it usually takes me ten minutes to get over there, but today it’s going to take me forty-five, capisce?”
As he reached to hang up the phone Chelsea straddled him and lightly ran her cheek against his morning beard as she kissed her way to his mouth. “Since I’m the one who’s making you late, maybe I should come along and help you with your deliveries.”
He lifted her chin with one hand and looked searchingly into her eyes. “Really?”
“I’d like to—if it’s all right with you …”
There was a softness in Johnny’s eyes as he gazed up at her. “You are incredible.”
Chelsea shook her head. “No, I’m not. You are. You want to make sure the people on that route get their food today. My motives are purely selfish. I want to get you back here, in bed, as soon as I can.”
He kissed her and she closed her eyes, aware that she had nearly revealed too much. She’d nearly told him the real reason she wanted to make his deliveries with him. She’d nearly admitted that she wanted simply to be with him. It was better to let him think her reasons were based on sex rather than some deep emotion she couldn’t even begin to identify—some deep emotion she refused to identify. And it would be better for her if she kept her straying emotions securely out of Johnny’s reach and firmly in control.
She kissed him again, closing her eyes, knowing that when it came to Johnny, her control was in short supply.
“You’re late.”
Johnny turned to look at Chelsea and smiled. “I know, Mr. Gruber. But Evan got sick, and I was called in to drive the truck at the last minute. I got here as soon as I could.”
They’d made over a dozen stops, and almost every person they’d brought food to had informed Johnny that he was late. And every time they told him that, he’d looked at Chelsea and smiled, and she knew he was remembering, in detail, exactly why he’d been late.
She could hardly wait to go back home and make him late for his work at the restaurant too.
The old man squinted at Chelsea. “You training a new girl?”
“No, sir,” Johnny told him. “This is Chelsea. My wife.” He still laughed whenever he said that. “I brought her over here to meet you.”
Chelsea shook Mr. Gruber’s hand. At one time he’d been remarkably tall, but time had made him stooped and thin, and now he was a narrow tower of a man. His hair was pure white and it grew thick and full. The thick lenses of his glasses made his eyes seem huge in his wrinkled face, but they were still a vivid shade of blue.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” she said.
“Pretty girl,” the elderly man told Johnny, shuffling into the kitchen, leaning heavily on a thick, wooden cane. “Your wife, huh? How’d you manage that one?” He laughed, a dry wheezing cackle.
“Wow, you’re really a laugh riot today, Mr. G,” Johnny said good-naturedly as he put a wrapped sandwich and a plate of microwave-ready food into the refrigerator.
“No, no, I’m just teasing, just teasing. Can’t think of anyone more deserving of such a pretty girl’s love.” He turned to Chelsea and shook one finger at her. “You take good care of my friend Johnny.”
“I will.”
My friend Johnny. At every delivery stop, there had been someone—someone elderly or someone ill—that Johnny had made smile with his cheerful banter and friendly jokes. It was clear to Chelsea that he brought them far more than nourishing food.
He brought color into the grayness of their lives—the same way he’d splashed a psychedelic swirl of emotions and sensations onto the monochromatic sameness of her own life.
“What’ve we got for breakfast today?” Mr. Gruber asked Johnny.
“Standard fare, Mr. G. Cornflakes, bran flakes, crisp rice, or—drumroll please—instant oatmeal!”
“I think I’ve got some fresh eggs in the icebox. If I ask very nicely, might you scramble me a pair of eggs?”
Johnny laughed. “You know I will, Mr. G, but you also know as well as I do that what you really want is a bowl of instant oatmeal with brown sugar on top.”
“Come to think of it, you’re right,” the old man mused. He grinned at Chelsea. “I’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth.”
“You have an entire mouthful of sweet teeth, old man,” Johnny teased, setting about making the oatmeal.
“At my age, it’s a wonder I have any teeth at all!”
“At your age? What, do you really think eighty-four years is some kind of accomplishment or something, Mr. G? You want to boast about your age, you should wait until you hit a really big number, like one hundred. Then you can say things like ‘at my age.’”
Chelsea smiled, recognizing that this conversation was one the two men had probably had every time Johnny came to visit.
“Do you know, Chelsea works just a few blocks away from here, Mr. G,” Johnny said.
“Oh,” the old man said darkly as he sat down to eat his bowl of oatmeal. “That’s not good.” He turned to look at Chelsea. “This neighborhood isn’t what it used to be. I’ve lived here thirty years—no, forty years now—and I don’t go out at night anymore. It’s not safe.”
“Fifty-four years,” Johnny reminded him. “You moved in right after World War Two, remember? You were just out of the service.”
“That’s right. Martin was just a baby, and—” He broke
off, a look of confusion crossing his face. “I don’t know why he won’t write. I told him to write when he’s away at camp. …”
“How’s the oatmeal, Mr. G? Did I put enough brown sugar on, or do you want to add a little more?”
“This is delightful, thank you.”
The old man ate quietly, suddenly subdued. Whoever Martin was, he deserved to be strung up for not writing or visiting.
Johnny kept up a steady stream of conversation as he made short work of a pile of dirty dishes in the sink. But nothing he said seemed to bring Mr. Gruber out of his introspective mood.
“Ready for a quick game of cards?” Johnny asked, when Mr. Gruber had scraped his bowl clean.
Mr. Gruber carefully set his spoon down next to the empty bowl. “Not today, I don’t think. I’m a bit tired. If you don’t mind, I’ll head in for a nap.”
In the course of the past few minutes the old man had seemed to age a dozen years.
“How about I give you a hand into the other room?” Johnny asked quietly.
“Thank you.”
As Chelsea watched, the older man let Johnny help him out of his chair, and together, they walked slowly down the hall to the bedroom.
“I’ll give you a call later to remind you to put that dinner in the microwave,” she heard Johnny tell Mr. G.
“All right, Martin.”
“Should I pull down the shades or do you want to be able to look out the window? I know you like to watch the clouds. …”
“Leave them up, thank you.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later—probably not for another few days, so be nice to Bobby or Carlos or whoever comes out here. No fair trying to win their paychecks with your card games.”
“All right, Martin.”
“It’s Johnny, Mr. G,” Johnny said softly. “Johnny Anziano from Meals on Wheels. Remember?”
Johnny headed down the hall toward Chelsea, and she could hear the old man’s voice, quavering now, calling after him, “Martin, call me if you’re going to be late. …”
Johnny briefly closed his eyes and shook his head very slightly. “It’s Johnny,” he called back. “And I will call you later.”
Chelsea followed Johnny out the door and waited while he carefully locked both bolts. He stood there for a moment, just staring at his keys, and when he finally glanced over at her, he looked impossibly sad.
“He seemed like he was having a good day, but …”
“Why won’t Martin visit?” she asked softly.
“Because he died when he was fourteen years old.” Johnny sighed, shaking his head slightly. “I can do everything for Al Gruber but the one thing he truly wants. I can’t be Martin.”
Chelsea knew at that moment, as she gazed into brown eyes made even darker with compassion, that she had been fooling herself for days now. She knew with a certainty that rocked her to the core that despite her pretending otherwise, she had fallen desperately in love with her husband.
“Johnny, will you kiss me?” she whispered.
He smiled then. It was a small smile, but it was real. “Always,” he murmured, pulling her into his arms.
He tasted like coffee sweetened with sugar and cream. He was both gentle and demanding, both sweet and full of passion, both powerful and yielding. He was smart and funny and kind and sexy. She loved the sound of his voice, the husky catch to it when he was turned on. She loved the way his smile could light up an entire room. She loved the way he watched her when she talked, the way he listened to her so intently, every cell in his body alert as if what she had to say truly mattered. She loved the way the laughter in his eyes could dissolve into instant, searing heat. She loved everything about him.
She loved him.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Johnny breathed into her ear. “I have to be at work in a couple of hours.”
Holding his hand, Chelsea let him lead her down the four flights of stairs and out to where the Meals on Wheels truck was illegally parked in a loading zone.
“I’ve been thinking about what Mr. Gruber was saying,” he told her as he unlocked the truck. “About this part of town being dangerous at night.” He helped her up into the passenger seat, then crossed around in front of the truck.
Chelsea reached over and unlocked his door.
“Thanks,” he said, climbing in. “So I was thinking, if you ever want to work late, you know, past dark, maybe you could call me at the restaurant, and I could pick you up on my way home.”
“I work late almost every night,” she told him.
“Then I’ll meet you over there almost every night,” he told her as he pulled out into the traffic.
“You don’t have to do that.” She didn’t want him to do that.
“Yeah, I know—but I want to.”
“It’s out of your way.”
“It’ll take me an extra ten minutes. Big deal. Your safety’s worth that to me.”
“If it’s late, I call a cab, and wait to unlock the door until I can see it out the front window,” Chelsea said coolly. She was a grown woman, and she could take care of herself.
He glanced at her and laughed. “Uh-oh, I’ve conjured up the Ice Princess. I’m in trouble now.”
“That’s the second time you’ve called me that,” Chelsea told him, exasperation tingeing her voice.
“I’m just teasing,” he said. “You sometimes get a certain tone in your voice, and you start shooting icicles out of your eyes. It’s just really different from the way you are the rest of the time, it’s kind of funny, that’s all.”
Icicles from her eyes … She’d always thought that her father had had what she called “Siberian eyes.” At times colder than cold. Was it possible that she did the same thing? “God, do I do it a lot?”
“No. Just when you’re mad. Or scared—you know, when you’re feeling threatened.” He glanced at her again. “Like right now.”
Chelsea nodded. “I don’t want you to pick me up every night after work, as if I’m a child that needs to be taken care of. I don’t want that kind of relationship.”
“I’ve noticed your resistance to the idea,” he said dryly. He pulled up to a red light and turned to look at her appraisingly. “Promise me you’ll do the thing with the cab?”
She looked back at him. “I promise you that I’m smart enough and old enough and experienced enough to take care of myself.”
“That’s not quite the promise I wanted, but I guess it’ll do,” he said with a smile.
Chelsea found herself smiling back at Johnny, marveling at the way he’d taken a potentially volatile situation and defused it. Of course, the fact that he’d backed down had surely helped. If he had insisted on picking her up and driving her home every night, there would have been figurative bloodshed.
But he respected her enough to recognize that she could take care of herself. And he seemed to know that when it came to protecting her independence, she would not negotiate.
Chelsea watched the morning sunlight reflecting off his face, accentuating his rugged features, making his dark hair gleam. On the other hand, maybe she would negotiate. In fact, it was entirely likely that if she wasn’t careful, she would find herself giving in.
Because she loved him that much.
She was hit with a wave of panic, and she tried to calm herself, taking a deep breath and letting it slowly out. It could be worse. She could very well be in love with a man who insisted on imposing his rules upon her.
But she was lucky—Johnny wasn’t like that. And maybe, just maybe, he was the one man she could live with as equal partners, both giving and sharing. Maybe, she could stay strong and refuse to let herself love him so much that she would give up her self and her dreams just to be near him. And maybe—and she knew that she was asking for an awful lot of miracles here—if she were really lucky, over the course of the next year he’d come to love her too.
“Can we go home now?” she whispered.
Johnny smiled, and he put the truck in high gear.
He tried Chelsea’s number at work, assuming since she went in late, she’d be there still, working late.
He was right—she picked up on the first ring. He paused in his signing, afraid the sound of her voice would make his hand shake.
“Spencer/O’Brien,” she said shortly. She sounded overworked and overstressed and not very friendly.
“Hi, it’s me. Is this a bad time to talk? I can call you later if you want. …”
“John. Hi.” Her voice warmed up considerably. “No, it’s no better or worse than any other time. God, I’m glad you called.”
Johnny took a sip of his coffee, feeling the jolt of the caffeine mingling jazzily with the electric feeling he got just from talking to Chelsea on the phone. Talking to his wife on the phone. She was his wife. He laughed aloud in pleasure at the bizarre thought. “I was wondering if you had plans for later. I figured since we only had lunch at three, you wouldn’t have eaten yet.”
“Are you asking me to dinner?”
The next stack of letters were form letters to their food suppliers, and he could sign them one after another without having to read each one through.
“You bet,” he told her. “Do you think you can catch a cab over to the restaurant in a few hours? I promise I won’t make you eat anything that ever had a face.”
Chelsea laughed then lowered her voice. “I’d rather meet you at home. Right now.”
Home. This wasn’t the first time she’d referred to his condo as “home.” Johnny felt a rush of happiness. His condo was their home. And she wanted to meet him there. Now. It seemed almost too good to be true. “I can’t get away right now, but you know I would if I could.”
“Are you absolutely sure you can’t just sneak off? I’ve had a truly awful afternoon, and …” She sighed, and when she continued, her voice suddenly sounded so sad. “All I want is for you to hold me.”
Stand-in Groom Page 14
