by Luanne Jones
She only warmed again when she wondered if Will might be looking up there, too. Or maybe he’d gotten up to fix a late-night snack or to go over the pages of notes he’d made about the renovations.
The man had not skimped on either his time, generosity, or expertise. He’d measured and figured, paced things off, and knocked on every inch of wood in the place. She’d watched in awe not because the work was so hard or so important but because Will did it so well. What on earth was more intriguing, exciting, and downright sexy than watching a man doing what he did best?
He’d placed phone calls to old friends and called in favors from cohorts. No one turned him down, and most offered to go above and beyond his requests for no other reason than it was Will doing the asking. That in itself said something about him.
Goose bumps rose on her bare arm. She let her breath out in a low, moaning sigh.
She could see him in her mind’s eye, head bent over the yellow pads, a pencil in his thick, strong fingers. See him toss that pencil aside and tip his head back until the black waves fell to brush his tight, broad shoulders.
She flexed her fingers. How many times in the past two days had she wanted to go up behind him and sink her hands into those knotted muscles? To knead and rub and work until he let go of the day’s tensions—and she had chased away whatever ghosts had caused him to take on her pointless cause in the first place. Just to help him.
No, that was a bald-faced lie. What she had wanted was to touch him. To put her hands on the man who had rekindled a fire in her she had long forgotten. The fire of a woman wanting a man, to be sure, but so much more than that.
A fire for life, for believing things could change even for a woman like her, even in a place like Hellon. He had given her a glimpse at hope. His presence had roused the girl she used to be from a very long, safe-but-empty sleep.
And tomorrow, after he went over his recommendations in detail with her, he would go back to Memphis for good.
She ran her hand up her bare arm and shivered, though with the aging air-conditioning system in the apartment, she felt anything but chilled. She pulled her knees up to her chest. She curled her toes into the sheet. She rested her chin on the cool satin of the snowy white nightgown Cozie had given her as an if-you-don’t-pamper-yourself-who-will? gift. One spaghetti-thin strap fell off her shoulder.
She supposed she should feel ridiculous for wearing the thing. It had stayed untouched in the gift box since the day after her divorce. Why bring it out now? On the last day for her last chance to…
“Last chance to what?” She couldn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t dare. The old single bed groaned as she lay back down but the sound did not still the echo of remembered words.
“Last chance.”
“It is about sex.”
“I think you have a damn fine ass.”
“I’m not as inflexible as y’all think I am. I have the ability to change, too.”
She sat up like a bolt of lightning had just coursed through the bedpost. Her skin felt all afire, and her pulse fluttered like a kid caught knee deep in no-good.
“Rita, you are a damn fool,” she murmured, knowing that as “self” talk went, she could have chosen a better message.
Before she could think or say another word that might talk her out of it, her feet hit the floor. The same instant she snagged up the old hospital gown she used as a bathrobe. Halfway to the stairwell door she thought of going back to root around through the stacks of still-packed moving boxes for her one and only frilly robe.
“No.” If she did that, she might as well climb back in that single bed and pull the covers over her head. She’d never get the nerve up twice to head for the door and start down those steps and…
“What?” She only wanted to see Will. To thank him in some small way for what he’d done for her. To look into his eyes and feel alive one more time.
The soft cotton slid over her arms, and two seconds later she paused with her hand on the knob. Last chance or not, she couldn’t go barging down there wrapped in nothing but her nightgown and her need to spend just a little more time with Will. She had to have a backup. Some reason for her to go down there besides her silly fantasies about a man who, for all she knew, was snoring up a storm dreaming of the women he would have when he went back home again.
“Cake.” Of course. It was absolutely the perfect cover.
Guilt had gotten the better of her sometime in the late afternoon and she had done up some single layer, small red velvet cakes. One to appease Pernel. One to send over as a courtesy to Miss Peggy. One for Will to take back with him to Memphis. And the fourth and final one for medicinal purposes to use like a poultice on her heart full of regrets once he’d gone.
No white-chocolate crowns, no hand-dipped strawberries. That’s how she convinced herself it was no big deal to do it. To tell the recipients that she expected nothing from the gracious, but insignificant, gesture.
If she could pull off explaining that with a straight face, she could certainly get herself downstairs on the pretext of a midnight snack. She crept down the steps, her hand trailing along the wall so that she wouldn’t have to flip on the light.
She could do this, she told herself in the bravest bout of “self” talk ever. She could do anything. She could even change…a little…for a while…and still find her way back to her cherished secure lifestyle.
Her foot hit the cold, bare floor of the kitchen. She would be all right. She would pull this off. She was, after all, so very, very hungry, and down in this dingy shell of a restaurant was the only thing that could satisfy her.
“Looking for something?” Will nudged the refrigerator door open just enough to catch Rita in its light.
“Oh! I…I came for…” She lurched to one side, a flash of white, then only an outline in the darkness. “Don’t move. Give me a minute and I’ll just…”
He heard her bump into the big stainless-steel sinks. She let loose a milquetoast swearword, then lurched the other way, toward the wall.
Will immediately sucked in his gut. Sucked in his gut? He held back a curse at the sudden attack of vanity. Not like him to fear she would suddenly flip on the overhead light and see him standing there in nothing but a pair of boxers and a smile. Not that he had one of those low-slung beer bellies a lot of other men his age were developing. He didn’t have love handles either…exactly. However, he did notice this last year or so that he’d begun working on a set of let’s-be-friends-and-see-what-happens handles that no amount of morning crunches could dissuade.
His body was still hard and fit, but it wasn’t chiseled and lean. He wasn’t eighteen anymore. It showed in the mirror and in the way young girls no longer looked at him with worship in their eyes. Hell, young girls hardly looked at him at all these days. That didn’t really bother him as much as he thought it would. But dammit, if Rita was going to see him in any kind of state of undress, he wanted her nothing less than awestruck.
So he sucked in his gut. He squared his shoulders. And he let the fridge door fall shut. That put them both in the silvery, forgiving light of the moon shining in the window. “What did you come down here for?”
His question stopped her in her tracks. She stood, a silhouette against the window with her outstretched hand a hairbreadth from the light switch.
“I didn’t…you see I…” She pulled her arms in close to her body, her hands clasped in front of her.
Her inability to come right out and say what she wanted, the way she left the possibilities lingering in the air, and her sudden shyness only notched up his anticipation.
“I…well, I…”
“Yes?” He hoped that did not sound as snake-oily to her as it did to him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You what, Rita? You wanted something?”
Framed in moonlight, she nodded.
Of course she’d come down here wanting something. He’d wanted something himself. Wanted it for a time now if he’d admit the truth of it. But he’d told hims
elf it wasn’t right.
Rita deserved better than a quick roll in the hay brought on by the normal prickling of male hormones from sharing close quarters with a woman. She deserved better than a man who could only give her a night now and again, nothing more. Nothing permanent. He knew that and honored it. Despite his reputation, he still had a very real sense of honor. No one deserved that kind of respect more than Rita.
However, her coming to him changed everything. He’d never sweet-talked her. He’d never promised her anything but what he’d already given her. She could not have any expectation of him beyond whatever he gave her on his last night in town. “What do you want, Rita? Say the word. Just say it.”
“Cake.”
“I thought s— What? Did you say…?”
“Cake.” It came out stronger this time but carried no less impact on his overinflated ego.
“Cake?” He put his hand to his forehead and groaned. What was he thinking? That she had crept down in the middle of the night, when she felt sure he’d be asleep in another room to what? Jump his bones? “Of course. Yes. Cake. You came down for cake. That’s…that’s logical…what else? It’s a kitchen, isn’t it? A kitchen with cake in it. Why wouldn’t you want…”
“And you.”
“Wha—I beg your pardon?”
“In all honesty, cake was the last thing on my mind tonight.”
“What was the first thing?”
“You. I couldn’t sleep for thinking.”
“About?”
“About? Mercy, Will, about everything! About the twists my life has taken and the turns on every road ahead. Mostly about all these unsettling urges that having you around these last few days has put in motion. It’s all clash and whirl like a fearful storm, and all I want is to quiet it down so I can get back with my life the way it ought to be.”
“How you going to quiet that storm, Rita?”
“I can only think of one way.”
“And?”
“I can’t believe I am saying this to you, to Wild Billy West.”
He started to protest her choice of nickname, but she never gave him the chance.
He heard the whisper of her gown only moments before the cool fabric swirled against the bare part of his legs.
Only her fingertips brushed over his bare chest.
Heat and cold swept over his skin all at once.
She tipped her head back to look up at him. “I know I shouldn’t even say this. It’s not the kind of thing I’d ever dreamed I’d do.”
He fit his arm around her and splayed one hand on the small of her back.
She wet her lips.
He moved in close enough to look into her eyes. He wanted there to be no doubt, no misunderstanding when she answered his question. “How you going to quiet that storm? What did you come down here to find, Rita? What?”
“A little taste of heaven, Will.”
“Heaven?”
“That’s all. A little bite of bliss—nothing more.”
“I’m still leaving tomorrow, you know. I will be back in town from time to time, of course, but—”
“You think you have to tell me you’re not the type to stick around?” She lowered her head for only as long as it took to clear her throat, then she raised her chin and smiled. “Just one night, Will. I know that. I don’t want anything more, honest. I just wondered if you would even want that much…with me, that is?”
He would have laughed at the innocence of that question, but he didn’t dare risk making it seem a joke to him. “One night? With you?” He stroked his thumb along her temple and let his fingers tangle in her soft brown hair. “Rita, that would be a little taste of heaven.”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.” He traced his finger downward from the warm apple of her cheek to the hollow of her neck, where her pulse beat like a hummingbird’s wings under his touch.
“But I’m…surely I can’t be your type.”
“My type?”
“The kind of girl you usually…I’ll bet you’ve dated some of the most beautiful women around.”
“All women are beautiful, Rita.”
“I’ve all but offered myself on a platter, here. No need to fall back on cheap, corny lines to try to win me over, you know.”
“I’m not the kind of man who has ever had to resort to cheap, corny lines.” His fingers moved lower, skimming the lace of her gown over the achingly soft swell of her pale, full breasts.
“’Course not,” she murmured.
“You are beautiful to me.”
“How can I be?” She tugged at the cloth around her shoulders to pull her makeshift robe closed at the throat. “I’m a mess. A total mess.”
“You’re unpretentious.”
“I don’t have buns of steel.”
“Who the hell wants to curl up next to steel?”
“My thighs are…”
“Goddess thighs.”
“Oh, right.” She laughed, her hand on her hip. “Like in those old paintings of the goddesses frolicking buck naked in the woods or lounging on fainting couches with their clothes half falling off?”
“No.” He took her hand and kissed her palm, then the underside of her wrist. “Goddess thighs—where I long to surrender myself in helpless adoration.”
“Oh.”
“Rita, there are thinner women than you.” He took the front of the hospital gown in both hands.
“Undoubtedly.”
“There are women with a whole lot less mouthy attitude.” He gently peeled the gown back off her shoulders, down her arms.
“Poor things.”
“And there are definitely women with better fashion sense.” He released the gown, and it crumpled to the floor. “But they don’t have a thing on you.”
“I hardly have a thing on myself,” she whispered, raising her hand to cover the inviting valley between her breasts.
“You are a banquet to my eyes, woman.” He pulled her hand away and kissed her wrist, just where her pulse pounded closest to her soft, fragrant skin. “Just looking at you makes me…”
“I think the line here is shut up and kiss me.”
He stepped in until not even a shaft of moonlight would fit between them. “I plan to do a lot more than kiss you.”
“Then you’d better get started. We only have this one night, and it’s already half over.”
Chapter 8
EVERY BLUSHING DIXIE BELLE WOULD ADVISE:
Never think while aroused. It’s like waiting an hour after you eat to go in swimming. You try using your brains while in this condition, you might just give yourself a cramp.
He pressed his body to hers, shut his eyes, and sighed like a man come home from hell itself. He kissed her temple, her cheek, then nudged her head to one side and placed a hot, lingering kiss on her neck.
In that moment she surrendered everything. Her fears, her worries, a lifetime of self-doubt and herself—if only for this one extraordinary night.
“I don’t…” He nuzzled her bare shoulder. “I didn’t carry any…protection, Rita.”
“I have plenty.” She tipped her head back and gloried in his attentions. “The key is in the cash drawer.”
“If that’s a euphemism I don’t know it.” He pulled away, his eyes dark and his naked chest rising and falling in a hard and heavy rhythm.
“The machine is in the men’s room, the key to it is in the cash drawer.” She went up on tiptoe to whisper into his ear, her hands on his shoulders. “I’ll be waiting in the bed.”
A smile made do for his answer.
She hurried away, not looking back. Tonight of all nights there was no looking back.
“Crazy…” she sang out the beginning of her favorite Patsy Cline tune.
“Did you say something?” Will called from the nearby men’s room.
“Never mind.” She finished the verse in a breathy hum, hurrying along to her destination.
She stopped only long enough to grab matches and some cand
les from behind the lunch counter. She had always loathed the tacky things Pernel had insisted sit at the center of every table. She hated the thick, orange-red glass. She hated the netting that covered the teardrop-shaped globes. And she especially hated the burnished amber glow they gave off because it reminded her of the yellow porch lights meant to chase the bugs away. She lay on the bed and lit the candles surrounding it. One by one they cast the dingy room in forgiving, sultry light, and she decided they were the loveliest things on earth.
Will’s footsteps stopped. The bed dipped on one side under the weight of his knee.
“Candles, huh?” He kissed the nape of her neck, then lower still and lower along her spine. His hand reached around to cup her breast in the satin coolness of her clinging gown. “Nice touch.”
“I could say the same for you.” She blew out the last match and met his gaze with a backward glance.
He kissed her shoulder, asking only with his eyes if she was sure.
She faced him and slid one strap of her gown off in answer.
He kissed the spot where the strap had held the fabric over her body. He hesitated, let out his breath, then slid the other strap off.
The gown fell to her waist. She did nothing to cover herself. She did not apologize for being so far from the picture of perfection. She felt no need to do either because she saw in his eyes the one thing she always dreamed of being—wanted.
She murmured his name.
He nuzzled under her chin.
She shivered. Urgency welled inside her.
If he shared that drive to rush toward the sweet surrender, he did not show it. He bent farther, slowly kissing, nibbling. When he paused, eyes shut, and laid his cheek against her bare breast she felt cherished in a way she had never known before.
She wound her fingers into the careless waves of his hair and kissed the crown of his head.
He raised his head. He brushed her hair out of her eyes.
She blinked and parted her mouth but had nothing to say.
He rested the pad of this thumb on the center of her lower lip and grazed his fingers along the side of her face. “You are so beautiful.”
She flattened her hand to his bare chest, her smile trembling. “You are.”
