One More Time

by Deborah Cooke

  “Very funny. Maybe you could feel sorry for the injured and keep your voice down.”

  She laughed, as he’d known she would. “But your wounds are self-inflicted, from the look of you. It’s tough to feel very sorry for you.” She bent to kiss him, but he turned aside so that her lips just brushed his cheek. “Shy boy,” she teased. “I thought you were an illusion when I came out the door.”

  “No illusion.”

  She still used the same perfume—he recognized it right away. “Was it at least a good party?”

  “The ending was a bit of a downer. I was mugged.”

  “No!” Her eyes widened with shock and Matt was surprised to feel so little response in his body. There had been a time when that expression on Sharan’s face had awakened even the dead parts of him.

  “Yes, it’s true.” He moved and winced at the pain in his back. “I was stupid and paid for it. I’m sorry. This wasn’t how I planned this…”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s good to see you, Matt, no matter what shape you’re in. It’s been too long.”

  He averted his gaze, feeling uncomfortable with the glow in her eyes. “Thanks for the coffee. You’re a lifesaver.” He took an appreciative sip of the coffee and was startled by the taste of chicory.

  “I remember how you love your coffee.” Sharan sat down on the chair opposite. She seemed to be assessing him. “Are you staying long?”

  “I don’t know. My brother’s in jail and I need to find out what I can do for him.” Matt frowned. “And I guess I’ll need to cancel my credit cards and go back to the hotel.”

  “Oh, you can’t stay in a hotel! Not when we haven’t seen each other in so long!” Sharan eased closer, the move making her skirt hem slip up a few inches. “You have to stay here. I insist.”

  It wasn’t hard to be persuaded to do what he had told himself he wanted, though Matt made a token protest. He suspected that his reasons for accepting weren’t fully aligned with her reasons for offering. Not anymore, though that didn’t make a lot of sense.

  It’s tough to think things through with a whopper of a hangover.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t want to be any trouble…”

  Sharan stood up and waved off his protest. “Old friends aren’t trouble. Especially not you.” She put her hand on his thigh, slid it a bit higher, and her voice dropped. “It’s good to see you, Matt.”

  “Well, I don’t feel that good right now.”

  She laughed again. “That will improve. In fact, I can help.”

  Matt swallowed as her eyes darkened with intent. Her hand slid closer to his crotch, caressing and stroking all the way. She leaned close, studying him before bending to kiss him.

  “Ah, no, don’t do that. I’ve got to brush my teeth…”

  Sharan laughed and let him pull away. “Is that all? Or has marriage taken all the wind out of your sails?”

  “It was a one-two punch that took that.”

  Sharan glanced at her watch, then stood and brushed down her skirt. “Well, I have to go to work. See you around five or so?”

  “Work?” Matt straightened. “Wait a minute. I thought you came down here to paint, but you make it sound like a job.”

  “I do have a job.”

  “But you’re the original free spirit…”

  “It’s expensive being a free spirit.” Sharan laughed curtly. “The art market isn’t that good right now. So, I do another kind of painting and get paid by the hour. No big deal.” She smiled though it didn’t reach her eyes. “I work at the place that makes floats for Mardi Gras.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you…”

  “Oh, it is now. Yesterday I painted sixty-five neon green palm leaves. Today, I think we’ll get into the gold ones.” She raised her hands. “It’s fabulously exciting stuff.”

  Matt was disappointed by this confession and a bit disoriented. “You were the one who was never going to sell out,” he felt obliged to remind her.

  She laughed lightly. “Well, I needed a place to live. Banks don’t lend money to unemployed artists who can’t sell their work. Life sometimes takes you places you never thought you’d be.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Matt muttered, not thinking about Sharan’s painting. He looked down at his suit and winced at its condition. “I must look pretty rough.”

  “A sight for sore eyes. So, will you stay?”

  “Yes, that would be great.” So, why didn’t he sound enthused?

  “Will you make dinner?”

  Matt forced a smile. “I guess I could.”

  “Good, here’s the keys to the house.” She tossed him a key ring, which Matt in his current state barely managed to catch, then issued instructions. “There’s more coffee in the pot, milk in the fridge, sugar in the cupboard over the coffeepot. Use the phone if you need to. Towels are under the sink in the bathroom if you want a shower—”

  Matt laughed that she could even consider that optional and she smiled.

  “I have an account at the corner store down the way if you need anything. And yes, whatever you make would be wonderful. I’ll bring dessert: in fact, I am dessert.” She winked, then pivoted and bounced off the porch.

  I am dessert. It was exactly what she had said to him every morning when they had virtually lived together in college. Matt blinked, certain he must be imagining things. There had been a time when it had thrilled him.

  Just how hung over was he?

  Sharan blew him a kiss, just as she used to, and then her car was backing out of the driveway.

  It was like watching an old video. One that starred a guy who looked a lot the way he had looked once, but otherwise had little in common with him today. He knew that for the privilege of sleeping with her, she’d demand no fewer than three orgasms.

  But the prospect of delivering them—and any ensuing pleasure of his own—didn’t have the same appeal Matt had expected it to have. They’d broken up because he couldn’t understand her drive to create, and she couldn’t understand that he didn’t feel the same urge. Now that he did feel that urge, he’d expected to have common ground with her.

  He’d always admired her, cutting her own path, making her own way. She always got up and kept going, no matter what happened to her. He looked around the porch of her house and couldn’t imagine that Katrina had ever struck here. Sharan always made things come out her way.

  Or so he’d thought.

  But now she had a job, a nine-to-five job, a grunt job. That was something he could never have imagined the Sharan he knew doing. He felt as if he’d crashed into the life of a stranger. Given that, he was a bit disconcerted by how readily Sharan had welcomed him into her life and, by extension, into his bed.

  Since when had he become so conservative?

  Since he’d gotten married?

  Since he’d married Leslie?

  Since he’d been mugged and beaten up maybe. Matt snorted and got to his feet, thinking of Leslie’s lingerie collection. She might be monogamous, but she wasn’t conservative, not once you got beneath the schoolmistress uniform.

  Matt strode into the house in search of coffee and a shower. He was restless, impatient and irritable, though he couldn’t pinpoint why.

  This, after all, was what he believed he wanted.

  Funny that it felt all wrong.

  * * *

  Beverly Coxwell had had it up to her eyeteeth with death.

  Death was, in fact, showing the social graces of that inevitable guest who doesn’t have the grace to leave the party when he should. You know the one, the guest who stays through dawn, the last one alone on the dance floor, the one regaling his yawning host and hostess with old jokes when they’re yearning for bed.

  With events of this week, Beverly had almost forgotten that she had agreed to attend the reading of an old friend’s will. She might have skipped that ritual, conveniently “forgotten”, if Marissa’s lawyer hadn’t phoned to remind her first thing Thursday morning.

  So,
she went, albeit in bad humor. She parked her Jag a bit more aggressively than was customary for her. Beverly swung out of the car with impatience. She really didn’t know why she had to be here.

  Having known Marissa seemed a slender credential.

  Marissa Fitzgibbons had always been a nitpicking pain in the neck in life and death apparently hadn’t changed that. How many people included a list of those who must be present for the reading of their will? Beverly didn’t doubt that the lawyers would be checking off the attendance list at the door. And what would happen if she skipped out, just headed down the street for a latte instead? Would Marissa haunt her?

  Beverly decided she didn’t want to find out. It would be like Marissa to get tetchy about noncompliance.

  The two women had met when they had both served as volunteers on the refreshment committee for the tour of gardens hosted by the horticultural society. Beverly had been incredulous to learn that Marissa had stipulated in the memo to the caterers that the chives in the egg salad sandwiches had to be cut to 1/16” lengths or less—she had discovered this when she came upon Marissa poking through the sandwiches to confirm that her order had been followed to the letter.

  Or to the sixteenth.

  Beverly glanced back at the car out of habit, suddenly seeing Robert when he’d triumphantly presented it to her. He’d been like a boy again, a kid with a new toy, so anxious to show her all the features and gizmos that she’d never use. She could almost hear him, could see the rhododendrons in bloom around the driveway at Gray Gables, could feel him come to take her hand in his excitement.

  Then Beverly blinked and he was gone.

  Funny how you could forget something like that. Funny how you could even forget a surprisingly spontaneous kiss in your own driveway, one that sent you both stepping backward in astonishment, left you eying each other as if you were strangers. Strangers was almost what they had become by that point in time.

  Funny how you could miss someone, even though you hadn’t gotten along in years. Beverly knew she missed the knowledge that Robert existed, not his company, which had been irritable and impatient and unpleasant the vast majority of the time. She had failed him and he had made sure that she had known it, virtually every time their paths crossed.

  And she knew she would miss him more than she did now, before she could begin to miss him less. She knew she missed the sense that everything was under control, which Robert always exuded—whether it ever had been true or not was anyone’s guess.

  Funny how she’d been able to drink when Robert was alive, because he had managed everything, but she wanted to drink now, because no one would be managing anything in the foreseeable future, because she would have to manage things herself for the first time in a long time. A little nip of sherry would have set her straight on this morning, but Beverly was trying desperately hard to be sober.

  She didn’t want to answer to her son James for any weakness.

  And she really didn’t want to be numb again. The only problem was that the damn stuff tasted so good.

  One day at a time, she reminded herself.

  Moments later, she stepped into the empty elevator redolent with the scent of food. Beverly fought a smile. She hoped to God that the chives were chopped properly, or Marissa might feel obliged to rise from the dead.

  Now, that would be interesting.

  But what was about to happen, unbeknownst to Beverly, would be just as interesting.

  Maybe more so.

  * * *

  A memo had been slipped under Leslie’s office door, copied onto vivid pink paper so that there was no chance of missing it. She bent and picked it up, not needing to guess who it was from.

  She got it in one. The head of the history department wanted suggestions for new courses for the fall. He wanted his staff to “sex up” the curriculum, which was where Leslie stopped reading.

  The illustrious Dinkelmann was apparently determined to destroy scholarship as it had endured for centuries and to do so by the end of the week.

  “Ah Dinkelmann, how do I despise thee? Let me count the ways,” Leslie muttered under her breath, tossing the metaphorical box labeled Team Player down into the void. Then she balled up the pink sheet and cast it in the direction of the circular file.

  Maybe she should start calling it the Dinkelmann file.

  A snicker and a scamper of footsteps alerted Leslie to the fact that she wasn’t alone. She pivoted to find the Harris-tweed-encased buttocks of Charlotte MacPherson, Dinkelmann’s biggest toady, disappearing around the corner of the corridor.

  Naomi was right though Leslie wasn’t just being watched: she was dead meat.

  In a very real sense, she had nothing more to lose and that—also in a very real sense—was a tremendous relief.

  * * *

  Matt did his best thinking in the shower, and in Sharan’s shower, he was thinking about Leslie. This wasn’t how leaving your marriage was supposed to work out, especially if you managed to get yourself into the house and the bathroom of a sexy woman who made no secret of wanting you.

  But Matt had never done things the easy way. And now he was thinking about Leslie. He couldn’t figure out where he’d gone wrong, how he’d misread her so completely, so he went back to the beginning again, back when they had met.

  It had taken him six weeks to find Book Girl, as Matt had begun to call her in his thoughts, six weeks to figure out that he should have looked first in the most obvious place.

  He’d found her in the library.

  Duh, as Annette would say. He still couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid.

  She was buried in a back corner, as if hoping no one would notice her, her hair tied back and her ankles pressed chastely together.

  She was as pretty as he remembered, and he had to stop to take a breath before approaching her. It didn’t matter: she was so buried in her studies that she was unaware of him.

  So, he looked. He took his time.

  The way she tucked a stray tendril of her hair behind her ear revealed how finely boned she was. Delicate, even though she was almost as tall as him. Her fingers were long and elegant, and there were a couple of freckles on her nose.

  She was wearing glasses, which he thought looked both solemn and adorable. She frowned slightly as she read, moving between the various books in the three stacks she had made, her pen flying as she made notes.

  She was left-handed, just like him, which gave him a ridiculous surge of pleasure.

  She was so deep in concentration that she didn’t even see him watching her, didn’t even hear him step closer, didn’t feel his presence when he stopped beside her desk. He cleared his throat and her pen never slowed.

  “Hi,” Matt said, feeling immediately that he could have thought of something more brilliant as an opening line. But Book Girl didn’t glance up, apparently assuming that he was talking to someone else.

  He bent lower. “Hi. How are you doing?”

  She looked up then, startled, her gaze flying over his features. For a moment, he was afraid she wouldn’t remember who he was, then she flushed, averted her gaze, then looked at him again. “Fine.” She removed her glasses. “So, how did the art exhibit go?”

  “I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You were right: I wasn’t that interested in it, after all.”

  She watched him for a moment and he guessed that she was remembering Sharan’s enthusiastic embrace. “You didn’t need to come and tell me about, um, your change of interest.”

  “I know. I just wanted to see you again.”

  “Why?” She almost laughed, her gaze sliding away then back to him. “Need help with an essay?”

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  Her smile turned rueful. “That’s usually the reason guys come looking for me. Especially the hunks.”

  Matt grinned, pleased. “I’m no hunk.”

  She lifted one brow, then went back to her books. She wasn’t reading, though, and she wasn’t writing either.

  He
had her interest.

  Matt leaned his hip on the desk. “I do all right on my own essays, so you don’t need to worry about that.”

  “Shhhhhhhhhhh!” came an indignant hiss from behind the bookshelves behind them.

  “You’re not supposed to talk in here,” she said in a whisper. “You’d better leave.”

  “Maybe we could leave together. We could have a coffee some place you’re allowed to talk.”

  Her eyes widened slightly, then she shook her head. “I have a test to study for.”

  “When’s the test?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “So, maybe I could meet you afterward. Where’s your class and when does it end?”

  She picked up her glasses, put them on, took them off again, then looked up at him as if she meant to lecture him. “Look, I don’t know who put you up to this, but…”

  Matt leaned his hands on the desk, bending so that he was close to her. “Nobody put me up to this,” he whispered, letting her see that he meant it. “I’d like to talk to you, over coffee, after your test today if possible.”

  “But why?”

  Matt grinned. “Because you’re cute. Why else?”

  She flushed crimson and her hands shook as she put her glasses back on. “Now, I know you’re joking. Go away already.”

  Matt opened one of his notebooks and tore out a page. He began to write his name and telephone number on it. “My name’s Matt Coxwell. I’m in the law school so you can ask anybody there whether I’m a rapist or serial killer.”

  “And if they say you are?”

  “Then they’re lying.”

  She chuckled at that, and he grinned.

  “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  She glanced over her shoulder and dropped her voice lower again. “You’ve got lousy references, then.”

  “A guy’s gotta do what he’s gotta do.” He met her gaze again. “Or you could just tell me where your class is.”

  “I don’t think so. What would your girlfriend think of that?”

  “If you mean Sharan—”

  “The blonde. The affectionate one.”

  “We’re not seeing each other anymore.”

  She thought about that, though there was still suspicion in her eyes.