Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  A small voice inside him had pleaded, Save yourself! Get out while you can! But he hadn’t been able to save himself. Attempting escape would have been pointless. He’d wanted Sharon too much.

  And now that he’d had her, he wanted her even more.

  She knew him, at least. He didn’t make a habit of bearing his soul, especially to women, but she deserved to know what she was dealing with. Certain things about him were never going to change, and she’d heard his explanation. She knew why he was the way he was.

  If she could be stupid enough to let him remain in her bed after everything he’d told her, he could be stupid enough to stay.

  Chapter Eleven

  He felt her shift against his shoulder, sigh and lift her head. Groaning, he forced his eyes open and squinted at the glowing red digits of the clock radio on the night table beside him. Six thirty-four.

  No one should ever be awake at six thirty-four on a Sunday morning. But she was pulling away from him, shoving herself into a sitting position. Not only was she awake, but she seemed on the verge of getting out of bed, which struck him as criminal.

  He pulled her back down onto his chest. “Ten minutes,” he mumbled, a major compromise. If he were truly demanding, he’d suggest a couple more hours of sleep, followed by a couple of hours of lovemaking.

  “I’ve got to get up,” she told him, even though she snuggled against him.

  “Why?”

  “Max.”

  Brett listened, but he heard no noise beyond the door, no indication that the kid was at large and on a tear. Stillness filled Sharon’s bedroom, and Brett thought it reasonable to assume it filled the rest of the house, as well. “He isn’t up yet,” he murmured. “You and I shouldn’t be up yet, either.”

  She laughed gently. “Trust me, he’s up.”

  “So, what terrible thing could happen if we stay in bed a little longer? What can he do? Go downstairs, get himself some Cheerios and watch cartoons on TV?”

  “Sure. Except that for him to reach the Cheerios, he’d have to climb onto the counter. And then he could fall off and break his neck.”

  Sharon evidently thought this would be a bad thing. Hell, Brett did, too. He didn’t want Max to kill himself. He just wanted Max not to exist.

  If Sharon ever found out he could entertain such an idea—even if only in jest—she’d kick him out of her bed and her life so fast the world would melt into a blur as he flew past. But this was merely one more reason why he didn’t like children: not just because they were pains in the ass but because they denied adults the right to linger in bed, groggy and affectionate, to cuddle up and mold themselves to each other, and maybe make love one more time and drift off to sleep for a little while longer.

  For God’s sake, six thirty-four on a Sunday. To get up now would go against the laws of nature.

  “You can stay in bed,” she said cheerfully, pushing herself back into a sitting position, the heel of her hand digging into his ribs. “Sleep as late as you want.”

  He didn’t want to sleep. Well, he did, but he’d slept so little overnight that he doubted a few extra minutes of shut-eye now would make much difference. What he wanted was her in his arms, soft and pliant and naked. What he wanted was the freedom to remain where he was with her, for as long as they both wanted to be there. What he wanted was for Max to disappear.

  Damn. He was really going to have to develop a new attitude if he hoped to make this thing—whatever it was—work.

  What was it? A night of lovemaking and slumber. And talk. Too much talk. A night of revealing a lot more of himself than he was used to.

  That was what had his sleep cycle so screwed up—all that talking about things he never talked about. To his amazement and regret, he’d loved opening up to Sharon. He didn’t talk to people the way he talked to her.

  He was apprehensive, but also exhilarated by the opportunity to give voice to thoughts he’d always been ashamed of. To confess his frustrations with his mother, his resentment of his siblings, the bitterness his childhood had left festering inside him, an old wound that had never completely healed. To be able to share it with Sharon was like winning a race barefoot. There was some pain involved, but mostly a sense of liberation and triumph.

  He didn’t want to give up the chance to be with a woman who could open him up that way and help him to heal. Not even her kid was going to scare him off.

  She was already out of bed. He watched her glide around the room, a pale shadow in the darkness. Her movements turned him on as much as her body did. Each step had purpose in it. She wasted nothing—her legs carried her where she had to go and then she stopped completely. No jiggling, no swaying, just a sublime motionlessness as she stood before her dresser, gathering herself. Once she had her intentions clear, she opened a drawer and pulled out fresh underwear. Then she shut it, spun around and vanished into her bathroom. Disappointment seized him like a cold fist at the fact that he could no longer see her.

  He smiled at his mild dementia. She was a woman and she was getting dressed. That she had to use the bathroom was not the end of the world.

  Yet it felt like the end of a small, contained world, at least, the exclusive, childfree world of him and Sharon alone together in bed.

  Cursing, he threw back the covers and shoved away from the pillow. Her bed held no appeal to him if she wasn’t going to be in it. He found his jeans in a pile on the floor. Last night’s rain had dried out of them, leaving them wrinkled and stiff. He yanked them on and wished he’d thought to pick up a toothbrush when he’d raced out to buy condoms.

  Sharon emerged from the bathroom, clad in a bra and panties more utilitarian than sexy. On her, though, the simple cotton underthings looked alluring. He saw the soft curve of her belly, the roundness of her breasts, the elegance of her throat and her long, slender legs, legs that had wrapped tight around him, legs that had pulled him deeper inside her. His groin tensed at the memory.

  If he asked her to come back to bed with him she’d say no, so he didn’t bother. He simply snagged her as she headed past him, drew her into a hug and covered her mouth with his. She tasted like spearmint and smelled like plain soap, and his groin grew tighter still.

  She returned his kiss without any reticence. Oh, God, this was good. Even if she was a mother, with her kid allegedly running loose and wreaking havoc throughout the house, she could lose herself in a kiss for a minute, give herself completely over to it, take back as much as she gave. She leaned into him, nestling against his fly, and he cupped his hands around her bottom and arched into her.

  A long, steamy minute later, she eased back. “Don’t tempt me,” she whispered, smiling in a way that made him want to do nothing but tempt her until her resistance was gone.

  But that wouldn’t be fair. If anyone knew what kind of destruction an unsupervised toddler was capable of, he did. With a sigh, he released her and ducked into the bathroom, where it took another full minute for his muscles to relax enough for him to empty his bladder.

  No sense asking himself why Sharon Bartell was the one. She just was. “Things happen that we can’t explain,” his mother had told him when he was young and grief-stricken over his father’s death. “It can be something we don’t want, but it happens anyway, and we have no choice but to accept it. There’s really nothing else we can do.”

  Sharon had conquered him, and he had no choice but to accept that. Another woman might have been easier, better suited, more comfortable. But this had happened. He couldn’t explain it, but Sharon was the one.

  * * *

  Of course Max was up. Sharon didn’t have to hear him to know that. A mother’s connection to her child was intuitive; her cells started to vibrate whenever her child was on the move. The fact that Sharon had spent a long, luscious night making love with Brett didn’t change that fact.

  He could have gone back to sleep if he’d wanted to. She probably would have preferred if he had. At this early hour, half-asleep and grumpy—and more than a little horny, she’d
noticed—he was not going to be at his most tolerant. And Max was likely to be at his most intolerable. He was well rested and recharged, after all, ready to take on the day at full strength and top volume.

  Well, Brett was just going to have to deal with it. He’d known when he decided to spend the night with her that the morning would mean Max. He could have left at any time, but he hadn’t.

  Still, Max could be a handful.

  She paused in the doorway to her son’s empty bedroom. His blanket shaped a rumpled heap at the foot of his bed, and his teddy bear lay abandoned on the carpet at the center of the room. The night-light was still on. She switched it off, then headed down the stairs.

  “Hey, Max,” she called from the top of the stairway to the finished basement. “Mommy’s up.”

  “Mommy!” Max chirped. She heard his footsteps scrambling toward the stairs.

  “I’m in the kitchen. Are you hungry?” she shouted over her shoulder as she entered the kitchen. She worked quickly to prepare a pot of coffee, hoping that a freshly brewed cup might make the transition from lover to child-resistant guest easier for Brett.

  “I’m hungry!” Max announced as he stomped into the kitchen. His pajamas were designed with snaps to hold the top to the bottom, but he’d opened all but one snap and his tummy stuck out. He was growing, she realized. He’d need new pajamas—and probably new everything else, too. He seemed to grow so fast, she sometimes imagined she could see him adding inches right before her eyes.

  “Hungry, hungry, hungry,” he sang, marching in a circle around the small room. “Pancakes!”

  “No pancakes this morning.”

  “I want pancakes!”

  Sharon wasn’t in the mood to make pancakes. She was even less in the mood to clean the griddle, the blender and all the other utensils she’d have to use if she made them. And it was too hot. The sun had barely topped the horizon, but she could already feel its heat against the window.

  “Would you like a bagel?” she offered.

  “I want pancakes!” Max halted at the center of the room, planted his little fists on his hips and glowered up at her, his lower lip protruding ominously. “I want pancakes!”

  “I’m not making pancakes, Max. I’ve got bagels, cereal, toast, eggs—”

  “No eggs! I hate eggs! Eggs is yucky. I want pancakes.”

  Yesterday he’d eaten scrambled eggs without complaint. The only reason he suddenly hated eggs was that they weren’t pancakes. “I’m not making pancakes,” she repeated. Behind her the coffee maker on the counter let out a promising gurgle, and the room filled with the aroma of coffee. “I could cut up some banana for you, and mix it with some yogurt if you’d like.”

  “I hate yoga! I want pancakes!” He screamed it louder, as if increasing the decibel level would convince her to change her mind.

  “No pancakes. I’ll make you a bagel.”

  “No! No! No!” He flung himself onto the floor and wailed like a police siren. “Pancakes! No! I want pancakes!”

  Sharon let out a weary breath and started toward the refrigerator to get a bagel for him. She paused when she saw Brett filling the doorway, his brow dented in a frown. He glared at Max, then lifted his gaze to her. She read dismay and disgust in his face.

  What could she do? Apologize for what was, unfortunately, rather typical behavior for a boy in his final weeks of the Terrible Twos? Max wanted pancakes. He wasn’t going to get them. He was going to throw a tantrum, and he still wasn’t going to get them. Such was Sunday morning life with a toddler.

  “Would you like a bagel?” she asked Brett, the question barely audible above her son’s caterwauling.

  Brett’s frown intensified.

  “Or some earplugs, perhaps?” she joked.

  He didn’t smile.

  Get used to it, she wanted to say. This is my life. Except that she wanted him in her life, too—and this was the difficult part of her life, the part that might scare him away.

  “The coffee’s almost ready,” she told him, pulling a plastic bag of bagels out of the fridge and carrying it to the counter. “Let me get Max settled, and then I’ll get you something to eat.”

  Still frowning, he shook his head—whether to indicate that he didn’t want food or he couldn’t hear her she didn’t know.

  She sliced a bagel for Max, slid it into the toaster-oven, filled a sippy cup with milk and hoisted her son off the floor, holding him carefully so he wouldn’t kick her. She settled him into his booster seat at the table, and he tried to squirm out of it. “No! No! I don’t want yoga!”

  “I’m not giving you yogurt. I’m making you a bagel.”

  “I want pancakes!”

  “So you’ve said.”

  Max howled. Oh, it was terrible, disastrous, worse than death, worse than eternal damnation: a bagel instead of pancakes. His face was flushed, his breath wheezy, his nose dripping. She grabbed a napkin from the dispenser and wiped off the mucus. “No!” Max shrieked, twisting his face away. “No! No! No!”

  Sharon wished she could find his mute button. She wished Brett had stayed in bed for an extra hour. By the time Max took a bite of his bagel, he’d be fine. But until then, he was going to share his torment with everyone. Sharon had become inured to it, but Brett...

  She glanced toward the doorway. He was no longer there.

  Her impulse was to race after him, to apologize, to explain how Max could get sometimes. But she couldn’t leave the frenzied little boy. Right now, he was her top priority. In fact, ninety-nine percent of the time, he was her top priority. Last night had been a reprieve, an oasis of non-motherhood in the desert of her life. But this was the future she hadn’t wanted to think about last night. This was her reality.

  So instead of going off in search of Brett, massaging his temples and assuring him that Max wasn’t his siblings and Sharon would never take advantage of him the way his mother had, she pulled Max’s bagel out of the toaster-oven, smeared some cream cheese on it, gave Max a chewable vitamin which he threw across the room, found it, wiped it off and gave it to him again, and then delivered his bagel, which had cooled off enough for him to handle it. He took a begrudging bite, sniffled dramatically, and stopped sobbing.

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and resisted the urge to find Brett. If he wanted to be with her, he was going to have to come back to the kitchen on his own. She couldn’t beg him to put up with Max. Nor could she promise that Max would never again throw a fit like the one he was winding down from.

  Brett knew the terms, and she could not coerce him into agreeing to them. She could only hope. Because if he decided he couldn’t abide by those terms, if he left her... It wouldn’t matter how many times she told herself he was wrong for her. Her heart would still break.

  She sipped her coffee black, then leaned against the counter and stared at the sunlight casting a white glare across the window. The steam from her mug floated up into her face; the fragrance filled her nostrils. She sighed, feeling her pulse slow and her stress recede as Max quietly munched on his bagel.

  “Where do you keep the mugs?” Brett asked.

  She turned to find him entering the kitchen. He still looked grim, but he’d come back. He had voluntarily walked into this room. Warmth washed her like the morning sun against the windowpanes.

  He’d come back.

  “Here,” she said, opening a cabinet and pulling down a mug for him.

  * * *

  “Levi Holt,” the voice at the other end of the phone said.

  Brett leaned back in his chair, gazed about his tidy, austere office and tucked his phone more securely between his ear and his shoulder. “Levi? It’s Brett. You got a minute?”

  “Oh, God,” Levi said. “Should I sit down?”

  “Why?”

  “If you’re calling me on a Monday morning, I assume it’s to tell me my investments tanked over the weekend and I’m flat broke.”

  Brett laughed. His poker pal Levi had invested a large chunk of change in Arlington
Financial funds. Under Brett’s management, those funds were doing just fine. “You can stay standing if you want. Thanks to me, you’re actually a bit richer than you were last week.”

  “In that case, sure I’ve got a minute. What can I do for you? You want me to build you a house?”

  Brett had called Levi for his expertise not as an architect but as a father. He felt his smile slip away as he surveyed his office again. The walls were a muted shade somewhere between gray and brown, the name of which only the decorator and possibly Janet knew. The carpeted floor was uncluttered, the furnishings elegantly simple, and the lamp shed an oval pool of light on his desk. He liked neat surroundings. He liked the absence of chaos. He liked the silence surrounding him; the hum of his computer and his own voice were the only sounds in the room. It was all so peaceful, so relaxing.

  “I wanted to talk to you about that Daddy School thing,” he said.

  Levi paused before asking, “What about it?”

  “Well, I went to a class on Saturday. I don’t know if one class is going to be enough for me.”

  “You can go again next Saturday. The class meets every week.”

  “What I meant was, I don’t think one class a week is going to be enough. Do you know if they’ve got an intensive program? One of those total-immersion classes, maybe, like the language schools offer.”

  “You want to become fluent in child-ese?” Levi chuckled.

  Brett didn’t. “That’s exactly what I want.”

  Again Levi hesitated for a moment. “This woman is special, huh.”

  “Yeah.” Brett sighed. He wished he could explain just what it was about Sharon that made him want to go the extra mile—although learning how to get along with her son seemed more like trekking a thousand extra miles. Simply remembering the ghastly Sunday they’d spent together—a Sunday Sharon seemed to think was on the whole rather pleasant—caused his head to throb. There had been the pancake outburst, the pooping-in-the-potty episode, the hysteria when a certain stuffed animal turned up missing, the giddy relief when the animal was found, the rambunctious snack-time, the walk to the playground, which was wet from the previous day’s rain, the snit when Sharon said he wouldn’t be safe climbing on wet apparatus, the furor over whether to go back home, the decision to go to the mall, which had an indoor play area that would be dry, the pleas for lunch at “McDon-o’s,” the lunch at a real restaurant where Max couldn’t sit still for more than five minutes at a time, and since there was no ball pit like the one at “McDon-o’s,” Sharon had occupied him by taking frequent strolls with him around the dining room...