Nancy Monroe looked from one man to the other. If she forced her smile, she did it very well. “Well, if you do go to Washington, Paul, be sure to give Tris our love, won’t you?” She turned to Bette. “Tris is Paul’s cousin. James’s sister’s girl. She and Paul were always close. When they were children …”
Nancy Monroe went on, skillfully drawing Paul and his father into the newly directed conversation, and any lingering tension dissipated.
Nearly an hour later, as they said their thank-yous and goodnights at the door, Bette thought James Monroe was about to question his son once more, but his wife touched him lightly on the sleeve, and he let it fade.
As Paul pulled the car out of the drive, it was obvious he, too, had seen the interplay.
“Parents trying to push their kids into making the same mistakes they did,” he muttered.
“I always thought parents tried to prevent their kids from making the same mistakes they did,” she commented mildly.
He frowned at her, then seemed to relax. Before he turned back to the road, a quirk of humor lifted his mouth. “That’s one of those lines all parents are taught to feed their kids, along with clean up your plate, don’t play with that or you’ll poke your eye out and someday you’ll have children of your own and you’ll understand.”
“Ah, the famous ‘School for Parents’ where they learn one thousand and one ways to say no.”
He laughed, and the sound warmed Bette.
She’d brought him laughter. She’d changed his mood from bad to good. She couldn’t remember doing that for someone before.
Instinctively, she reached for him. But she let the gesture fall short, her hand dropping to the seat between them.
“That’s the one,” he answered. Without taking his eyes off the road, he settled his right hand over hers where it lay on the seat.
The rest of the drive was accomplished in easy silence.
Easy was about all Bette felt capable of at the moment.
Occasionally, the wheel demanded both of Paul’s hands, but his right always returned to hers. Resting her head against the top of the seat, she watched the lights go by without bothering to focus. She felt surrounded by the scent of pumpkins, straw, dried leaves and Paul Monroe. She was replete with delicious food and the satisfaction of laughter.
Languor seeped into her, until she wondered if she’d have control over as simple a movement as raising her arm.
When they reached her house, Paul drove the car directly into the garage, turned off the engine, pressed the button to close the automatic door and shifted to face her. She tipped her head just enough to see him.
“Bette?”
His voice came, husky and near. He trailed the knuckles of his right hand down her neck, then pushed her hair back, behind her shoulder. Her cocoon of languor took on heat and sensation.
She should be thinking ahead, considering what might come next. She couldn’t. She should be alert, prepared. She wasn’t. For once the present moment filled the screen of her mind so fully that there was no room to preview the future.
“Bette.”
Slowly she shifted until she could see his features, strong and marked by lines of humor in the slash of artificial light slanting in through the garage window. She didn’t believe she had enough energy to move, but somehow she must have had, because she felt the soft prickle of his stubbled jaw under her palm.
Then she experienced all the energy in the world. It suffused her, pouring into her skin and bones and blood when he turned his head against her hand and inscribed a circle with his tongue.
Her arms rose, seemingly of their own accord, to his shoulders. He moved in front of her, so the light cut a path across his face, half-bright, half-dark. She could see nothing other than his face before her. There was nothing else she wanted to see.
He leaned into her, so she felt the weight of his body against hers.
“You have the most amazing upper lip,” he murmured as he took it between his own, pulling gently, then testing it with his teeth.
“Family trait,” she finally got out when her lungs had produced enough oxygen to fuel the words.
He shook his head slightly, and since he still had his mouth on hers, she felt it as a change of texture, a sliding and melding. “No. I think it’s a sign of great hidden sensuality.”
He kissed her, not hard, not deeply, but thoroughly. A kiss that seemed to muffle every sound in the world except their breathing and their heartbeats, that seemed to stifle every thought in her head except the urge to get closer, to give more to him.
Lifting his head at last on a low, quiet groan, he rested his forehead against hers.
“That’s something else,” she told him when she could once again control the motor skills necessary to form the words.
“Hmm?”
“The sign of hidden sensuality - that’s something else.”
He ran the back of his knuckles down her throat once more, this time beyond the hollow at its base, across the edge of her collarbone and softly along the rise of her breast. “It sure is.”
It took three deep breaths to regulate her lungs into some order, but when she did, she doggedly finished.
“It’s a gap between the two front teeth.” For emphasis, she tapped her own closely spaced front teeth. “Like that old actor Terry-Thomas had. A gap -” another tap ” - is supposed to be the sign of great sensuality.” And another tap.
She wouldn’t have thought he could move so fast, but before she finished the final tap, he swooped in as if to kiss her and instead caught her finger in his mouth and pulled it in. Her eyes drifted closed. Her heartbeat skittered. Her breathing stopped.
His tormenting mouth released her finger and she tried to straighten herself. “Paul, I -”
He simply shifted his torment from her finger to her mouth, slipping his tongue through her parted lips, and drawing a moan that vibrated in her throat. His palm went to her neck, as if to absorb that vibration, then skimmed the sensitive skin, following the path his knuckles had traced.
As before, he ended this caress with a fleeting brush to the first swell of her breast. She felt an ache there, an ache of deprivation, and it brought a sound to her lips that she was grateful his mouth muffled.
But he must have heard it because his hand returned to that spot, pressing lightly, then circling until he cupped the weight of her breast in his palm. Through the folds of cotton and the slide of lace, she felt the rub of his thumb.
His touch fueled her ache the way someone tends a fire, keeping it burning steadily yet brighter and hotter.
She felt her hands dispensing with the buttons of his shirt. When she reached the waistband of his jeans and paused, he jerked the tails out with one impatient hand, and she finished the task.
She didn’t have a chance to hesitate. He brought her hands to his chest, spread them wide against his taut skin, then pressed them tight by trapping them between their bodies as he leaned into her.
His fingertips stroked a path from her collarbone down, across the smooth skin where it curved, and lower. Then he turned his hands and skimmed the backs of his fingers over the same tingling territory, only to start again. The draped folds of the V neck retreated a little with each movement. She felt her breast swelling and rising against the lace of her bra. She shifted restlessly. He stroked down, his fingertips easily sliding under the lace, not quite grazing where she most wanted the touch, then skimmed up. And started again.
Under the lace, his fingertips tempted and teased. If he didn’t touch her, and soon -
Her breath came in on a gasp and released on a moan. His fingers had found the peak, already pebbled and proud. They lingered, stroking and circling.
He muttered something, then twisted, turning their bodies so she no longer rested against the seat, but across him, in the circle formed by his right arm and his body.
“Paul, I don’t think … I don’t think this is a good idea.” The habits of a lifetime formed the words, though sh
e felt unconnected to them.
“We’re well beyond the idea stage, Bette. Don’t you think?”
He gave her no chance to answer as he returned to her mouth, but she must have been well beyond thinking, because she found her arm straying from his back to his shoulder, and some part of her knew it was to allow him greater access.
Her bra strap slid over her shoulder. She didn’t know if it was her movement or his that was responsible, but she knew the result immediately. His hand curved around her inside the loosened lace, treasuring the weight of her breast, his thumb caressing her nipple. She heard his moan mingled with her own.
He wrenched his mouth from hers, and their breathing came in oxygen-depleted gasps. His lips formed openmouthed kisses to her jaw, her throat, her collarbone.
She knew what would happen and she wanted it. Oh Lord, she wanted it.
Sensation was all that was left in the world. The sensation of his mouth on her breast, his hand sliding across the curve of her thigh. The pull on her nipple, the feathering touches near the juncture of her thighs, were promises of the rhythm, of the touches she most desired. The desire rose in her throat, escaping as his name, a soft moan of a syllable.
“Paul.”
He raised his head, and she felt the force of his look, demanding she meet it.
No teasing, no amusement in those eyes now. Just intent desire.
But he had reined that all in. Barely. For the moment. For long enough to ask her. For that was the other thing she saw in his eyes: a question. He left it up to her.
She could say no and he would abide by that, but he wanted her. Now.
The weight of the decision crushed her with something like disappointment. If he hadn’t stopped, if he hadn’t left her to answer - But he had.
They had to stop.
But she’d hesitated too long. His mouth met hers, his tongue passing the restraints of her lips with bold certainty. The exploring was past.
His tongue set up a rhythm that echoed in the brush of his fingers against her. The stroking, thrusting excitement of it foretold how their bodies would match in another union. And that thought pushed her closer to him, tightened her fingers on him until her nails pressed into the hard flesh. But it also let the future slip back into her mind, to voice its demands and expectations.
This single moment couldn’t be separated from what could follow - would follow - if they didn’t stop.
They had to stop.
The union her body craved would mean a blending of lives to her. But to him? How could someone who refused to look beyond the moment give her the permanence she needed?
He couldn’t. She knew that. As she knew that if they made love, in the end, she would feel so much pain.
Ah, but first there would be such pleasure.
Under her touch, his muscles contracted, and she shivered at the controlled power. Such a delicious aching pleasure …
If they didn’t stop … soon …
He groaned and shifted, so he could slip his hands beneath the lace edge of her panties.
No. No, she had to stop it - now.
“Paul.” She broke away. “No.”
She had to stop … She had to stop before -
“No.” She pulled away from him and reached for the car door handle.
- before she couldn’t stop.
*
SHE REFUSED TO hide just inside the door as she had the other times. In the living room she gathered the real estate listings, straightening them inefficiently with hands that trembled and shoving them haphazardly into a folder.
When she heard a sound at the door, she froze. He was just outside. She could practically feel him there, standing and looking at the solid wood door with its rectangles of high windows.
He hadn’t said anything, done anything when she’d wrenched away, hurriedly straightened her clothes and snatched the keys from the ignition, barely pausing to say, “I have to go, Paul. Good night.”
If he rang the bell - demanding an explanation - would she have the strength not to answer?
But he didn’t ring. And in another endless moment or two she heard his car pull away from in front of her house. When that faded to silence, she let out a deep, long breath and went to the door. She opened it cautiously.
There on the step sat a trio of pumpkins, a round one, a tall one and a squat one. When she started laughing she knew she was in trouble.
Oh, she was in a lot of trouble.
Chapter Five
*
BETTE WHARTON WAS everything Paul could ask for in a business associate. Polite, professional, cordial, accommodating.
She was also elusive, unattainable and distant. She was driving him crazy.
She managed to be tied up on another line each of the four times he called Monday. Each time her assistant, Darla, asked if she could be of help.
Finally, Darla pointed out they needed his decision on which assistant he wanted as his permanent temporary. With less than his usual good humor, he muttered that they should send him whomever they felt like.
So, starting Tuesday morning, he had Janine Taylor to place his calls to Bette Wharton several times a day. And he had Janine Taylor to tell him with polite indifference that Ms. Wharton was not available at the moment, several times a day.
Wednesday, he had an appraisal to do for a gregarious Lionel train collector in a small city about two hours away, but he called three times with the same results. The fourth time, when he’d finally pried himself clear of the collector and was on his way back, he got the recording that said her office had closed for the day. After quick calculations of train schedules, he took a chance and called Bette’s home number, acquired from information.
On the fifth ring, he heard her breathless “Hello,” and his blood started moving as if it had been dammed up for the past three days.
“Bette, it’s Paul. How about some dinner tonight?”
The pause was long and telling. He thought he could hear her resolve hardening. “No, thank you, Paul.”
That was all. No explanation, no nothing. She’d left him nothing to grasp on to.
“You have plans?” He tried to make it sound understanding.
“I’m sorry, Paul. I don’t think it’s a good idea -” She broke off so abruptly, he knew she remembered Sunday night and what else she hadn’t considered a good idea. That gave him renewed hope, which he needed after her next sentence. “I don’t care to see you, Paul. Good night.”
The click was nearly as soft as her voice.
He stayed irked all that night and the following day. Irked enough not to get much sleep and irked enough to resist the temptation to call her the next day. But not irked enough to kill the urge to see her.
Part of him wondered at that.
But it was a small part, easily drowned out by the parts that wanted to discover the secrets in her eyes, to make her laugh when she thought she should frown, to feel the heat of her passion so it fueled his own desire like a race car’s high-octane. He’d be damned if he’d meekly fade out of her life.
It was the challenge that attracted him, he reminded himself.
When he arrived at Top-Line’s office a few minutes after six Thursday evening, he was told Ms. Wharton had left for a meeting with a client.
He looked from Darla’s bland brown eyes to the closed door of Bette’s office, and back. He pivoted on one heel and walked out. Marching out the blocks with punishing steps, he reached the broad sidewalk of Michigan Avenue and turned right toward Mama Artemis’s with some vague intention of finding a spot where people would be glad to see him.
A client. A meeting with a client. A client like him? A meeting like the one they’d had a week ago, full of laughter and exchanged glances and the implicit possibility of more?
He startled a few people by stopping abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk and swearing vehemently. “A client? She’s meeting with a client?” Most of the people kept walking, parting and passing him like a rock in a stream,
although he thought he noticed a few trying to hide smiles. They were all women.
*
“YOU CAN COME out now. It’s safe, he’s gone.”
Darla clearly intended irony, but Bette had a nasty feeling in the pit of her stomach that if Paul Monroe had stuck around, she wouldn’t have been safe.
“I don’t know why you don’t just go out and have some fun with the guy.”
“I told you I -”
“Have a schedule to keep.” Darla completed the sentence in unison with her.
Bette frowned. “Besides, Darla, you were the one saying just a few days ago that all Paul Monroe looked fit for was funny business.”
“I didn’t say that’s all he was fit for, unless you include certain other activities under the heading of funny business.” Heat swept into Bette’s cheeks, more in memory than embarrassment. “A woman would have to be blind to miss that man’s potential in that area, and I may be married, but I’m not blind. Besides,” Darla added with a pugnacious tilt to her chin, “I’ve never seen anyone in more need of funny business than you.”
“Really, Darla, I -”
“Really, Bette,” she mimicked. “You work too hard. You schedule your life down to the minute and you don’t leave any time for fun.”
“That’s not true. How about this weekend? I’m going on a trip -”
“Only because your mother made you feel guilty when you said you couldn’t go.” True, but Bette wasn’t about to admit it out loud. “And if you can look me in the eye and tell me you haven’t already packed three days’ worth of work and arranged a couple business meetings up in Minnesota, I’ll eat my hat. Better yet, I’ll promise to keep quiet about the whole matter.”
Bette said nothing. Did the Fifth Amendment hold in dealing with scolding assistants?
“Humph.” Darla produced a sound somewhere between disgust and triumph. “All I have to say, young woman, is you better start penciling in time on that schedule of yours for exactly the kind of funny business Paul Monroe can provide, or you’re going to be old before your time.”
Good Guy Heroes Boxed Set Page 126
