by Tami Hoag
“Don’t ask me how long it’s been since I’ve parked with a man,” Kelsie said with humor in her voice.
Grinning, Alec slid across the seat and put his arm around her shoulder. “How long has it been since you’ve parked?”
“I think Nixon was president.” They both laughed.
“Then it’s been too long,” Alec declared, lowering his mouth to hers for a slow, sweet kiss.
It didn’t matter that she’d nearly forgotten how to kiss a man; she let Alec lead, and it seemed he’d been born to do just that. His mouth moved on hers, gentle and coaxing, rewarding her with a low groan as she allowed his tongue access to the warmth beyond her lips.
Alec shifted on the seat, trying to position them both so he could pull her against him, a move he had mastered in his teenage days that eluded him now. He settled for changing the angle of the kiss and running his fingertips into the baby-soft tendrils of hair that hadn’t made it into her ponytail. He kissed the corners of her mouth, her chin, the tip of her nose, the eyebrows he found so irresistibly sexy, then pulled back a bit to gauge her reaction.
She was undecided. Not about Alec’s talent at kissing. She was undecided as to whether or not she should allow herself to fully enjoy it. It seemed like it could quickly become addictive. Then, too, her lack of experience haunted her. What was she supposed to allow him on this first date? What was he expecting, and what would he think if she gave more or less? She could still remember when kissing on the first date had been considered scandalous.
“You’d better not try getting me in the backseat, buster,” she warned.
Alec laughed and gave her a quick kiss. Her uncertainty and that hint of vulnerability in her eyes made her a refreshing change from the women he’d been dating since Vena. Everything about Kelsie was unique and fascinating to him.
She glanced over her shoulder and out the window. “I keep expecting to see officers Baines and Johnson peering in at us.”
“We’re out of their jurisdiction,” he said, running a forefinger down the short slope of her nose.
“Yeah, but they just might be out looking for something weird to break up their shift.”
Their shared laughter mingled with the latest tune from Bruce Hornsby singing through the speakers.
Alec leaned back against the seat, smiled, and shook his head as he recalled the wild events of the night before. “I will never forget that experience as long as I live. It was kind of fun.”
Kelsie groaned. “Speak for yourself. You didn’t get kayoed by Black Bart.”
“Aw, poor sweetheart.” He leaned over and touched the lightest of kisses to her black eye. “Does it hurt?”
“Only when I squint.”
“I’ll make it up to you. Let’s go to my place for dessert.” He had to laugh at the look she gave him. “Dessert, honest, it’s not a line. I promise not to ravish you. I make a hot fudge sundae that’ll knock your socks off.”
“Never say hot fudge to a chocoholic.” She moaned.
“You’re a chocoholic?”
“Confirmed and incurable.”
“Mmm. You shouldn’t have let me know your weakness, Kelsie. I will take full and unfair advantage of that if need be.”
She scowled at him. “You’re ruthless.”
“You bet. How about that sundae?” He smiled, bobbing his eyebrows.
Regret and guilt collided in Kelsie’s stomach. She wished she could say yes, felt guilty that she wished she could say yes, felt guilty about Jeffrey being home with a sitter, felt regret at knowing her evening with Alec was almost over, regret that it could be no more than an evening.
For form’s sake, she checked her watch. Her sigh was genuine. “I can’t, Alec. I really should get home. I need to spend a little time with Jeffrey before he goes to bed tonight. He’s had a rough day.”
Alec bit his lip to keep from saying something imprudent. He was actually feeling jealous of a nine-year-old boy, he realized, thoroughly ashamed of himself. He had to remember Kelsie’s sense of responsibility. He had had to move heaven and earth just to get her to go out to dinner with him; it probably wouldn’t be wise to push for more. Not this time.
“Okay,” he said, forcing the corners of his mouth up. “Next time we go for the sundae.”
“Alec—” Kelsie began.
He turned to her, pressing a forefinger to her lips. “Don’t tell me there isn’t going to be a next time. Did you have fun with me tonight?”
She nodded, trying to concentrate on the conversation instead of on the way he touched her.
“I had fun too.” He smiled gently. “And we can have fun together again. There’s no law against Kelsie Connors going out for a little fun once in a while.”
No, she thought as he drove her home. The danger was in making a habit of it.
FIVE
“YES, FOLKS, IT’S a zoo at Big Olie’s Car Carnival this weekend!” shouted a portly man wearing a safari suit and standing next to a zebra. He puffed on a huge cigar, stared into the television camera, and continued. “Come on down! Bring the kids! Free popcorn! Free elephant rides! Everything’s free except the cars!”
The zebra sat down as the commercial came to an end.
“Blasted striped jackass,” Big Olie, the car salesman, muttered.
The zebra’s handler took the reins and coaxed the animal to stand, as Kelsie stepped forward. “Big Olie, I think the radio remote people want you in the showroom with the myna bird,” she said, gasping for air in the cloud of his cigar smoke.
“Have that camel ready for the next TV spot,” he ordered, waddling off across the car lot.
“It’s a llama,” Kelsie said, stroking the zebra’s nose, knowing the man neither heard nor cared.
She rubbed at the start of a headache in her temples as she asked the handler to show the zebra to the hundred or so kids waiting none too patiently in line by the service department. The young man Neillson’s Petting Zoo had sent to handle Ubu the llama assured her he would have the animal ready and in place by the time Big Olie came back.
Kelsie leaned back against a late model sedan out of the customer flow and tried to catch her breath. She’d been working without a break since six-thirty in the morning, coordinating the “zoo” for Big Olie’s sale. Big Olie was an exceedingly unpleasant man to do business with, but he’d hired a dozen animals for the entire day, which made all the aggravation worth the prize-winning headache she felt coming on.
“Kelsie, we need some help over here with the lion!”
“Be right there!” she called back.
“Kelsie, where do they want the kangaroo?”
“Has anyone seen the scoop shovel?”
“Has anyone seen the boa constrictor?”
Kelsie closed her eyes. “I’d sell my soul for a Snickers and five uninterrupted minutes to eat it,” she whispered to herself.
Another thing that was adding to her headache was the fact that in spite of being run ragged and having twenty people pulling her in twenty different directions all at once, she still couldn’t keep thoughts of Alec from creeping into her mind.
He’d called three times during the week to try to talk her into going out with him. She’d refused each time, citing perfectly legitimate reasons why she couldn’t see him. The joke was, she did see him. She saw him every time she closed her eyes. She saw him in her dreams.
What was this foolishness going to get her? Nothing but heartache. Despite what Alec said, she didn’t believe they could have even a casual relationship. No matter how determined he was, he couldn’t change the fact that she had responsibilities that took up all of her time.
Even if she could somehow finagle more free time to go out with him, what would come of it? She doubted Alec had given much thought to the reality that he wouldn’t be getting involved only with her, but also with her children and an extended family of animals. They were a package deal. Once he realized that, would he still be interested? When he decided no, who would be the one to get
hurt? She would, and she didn’t have time for a broken heart.
One corner of her mind refused to listen to reason, however, and it was driving her crazy. How many times in the last week had she told herself it was futile to attempt to have a relationship with Alec?—hundreds, at least. Yet there he was when she closed her eyes, his face indelibly stamped on her memory: his dark hair with its subtle highlights of red, the high cheekbones, the blue eyes with their disturbing, intent gaze, the interesting, expressive mouth with its wide, perfectly symmetrical smile and the dimples that flanked it.
With a weary sigh Kelsie opened her eyes to banish the image. It didn’t go away. She blinked twice before she realized it was no figment of her imagination. Alec stood in front of her with his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, the breeze lifting his hair. He smiled at her, and, as if by magic, produced two candy bars on one outstretched palm. She looked up into eyes the color of serenity—deep, calm blue. A wave of warmth washed over her. “Alec, is it really you or am I hallucinating?”
His dimples winked at her as he flashed her a grin. “It’s really me. Are you saying I’m the man of your dreams?”
“I’m saying this day has been the stuff nightmares are made of. I wasn’t so sure my mind hadn’t just conjured up a knight in shining armor to rescue me.”
“That happens to be my latest calling,” he said. “I’ll have my white charger brought around and we can ride off into the sunset.”
Didn’t she just wish? Standing there in shrink-to-fit jeans and a red sweater, the breeze feathering back his dark hair and mischief sparkling in his eyes, he looked ripe for running away with.
As she looked up at him, a rare thing happened. She suddenly felt completely, utterly overwhelmed. Kelsie Connors, who always had to be strong for everyone else, suddenly wanted to lean on someone. She wanted to lean on Alec, could easily imagine what it would feel like to have him put his arms around her and tell her everything would be all right. It was a scary feeling to want to let the responsibility fall on someone else, when she knew it was hers to shoulder.
“We knights in shining armor thrive on this kind of thing. Didn’t you know that?” he asked, glancing around at the chaos of Big Olie’s parking lot.
Kelsie shook her head. “I’ve never had a knight at my disposal before. I don’t know how to behave at all.”
That wily, dangerously male smile rode his lips as he looked down into her eyes. “There you go again, Kelsie, telling me things I can take gross advantage of.”
“I thought knights had a code of honor.” She smiled sweetly.
“I thought you didn’t know anything about knights,” he said, letting his head drop down a little nearer hers so he was no more than a whisper away from kissing her.
Without even thinking about it, she moistened her lips in anticipation. Alec smiled and took a step back from her, removing the delicious threat of intimacy for the moment.
“I spoke to your daughter on the telephone and she told me where you were and what you were going through. I thought you might enjoy a little pick-me-up,” he said, holding out the candy bars and chuckling at the desperate look she cast at the treat he’d brought her. “Let’s find a moderately quiet corner and enjoy these together.”
As usual, he’d made a perfectly innocent suggestion sound like arrangements for a lovers’ tryst. Kelsie groaned at that thought and the knowledge that she didn’t have time to eat four heavenly inches of chocolate and caramel. “I can’t, Alec. I’m going nuts trying to keep all this under control.”
“Why don’t you let someone else be in control for a few minutes?” he suggested, pocketing the candy and stepping closer again. He settled his hands on her waist and tried to drop a kiss on her lips but hit her cheek when she turned suddenly.
“Kelsie!” a voice shouted. “Someone has to come hold Randolph; I drank too much coffee this morning!”
Kelsie managed a weary smile as the rest of the zoo crew laughed. “See what I mean?” she said to Alec, squirming out of his grasp, almost glad for the distraction. His hands felt too darn good on her body.
“I can lend a hand,” he offered, following her down a row of cars, weaving through prospective victims of Big Olie’s hard-sell routine. “Just tell me what to do.”
That was the whole idea of his McKnight in Shining Armor campaign, wasn’t it? To help make life a little easier for Kelsie. He could certainly hang on to a leash of a chimpanzee or something. He didn’t have to know anything about animals to do that.
“I don’t know, Alec,” Kelsie said. “Randolph is a cat. What about your allergy?” She turned at the end of the row of cars and kneeled down. “Hi, Randolph. How ya doin’?”
“Oh, my lord!” Alec gasped, freezing in his tracks. “Kelsie, that’s a lion!”
“Of course he’s a lion.”
He watched in horror as she rubbed her cheek against the big cat’s head, her hands buried in the thick tawny mane. Every gruesome story he’d ever heard about models and actresses getting mauled by lions, every safari movie he’d ever seen came back to him in vivid Technicolor. “For crying out loud, don’t get so close!”
Kelsie laughed and ruffled the lion’s mane. “Don’t worry. He doesn’t have a tooth in his head. He’d be about a hundred years old if he were a human.”
Alec heaved a relieved sigh and backed away a step as his eyes began to itch and water.
“Maybe we’ll name our new cat after you, you big lug,” Kelsie told the lion.
“New cat?” Alec asked with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm.
Kelsie nodded. “I volunteer a day a week at our local animal shelter. This week someone left the most adorable little fawn-colored kitten. Poor little thing, he looks like someone’s kids decided he needed a haircut and they did the honors with dull sewing shears.”
“So, naturally, you had to bring him home,” Alec concluded.
“He looked so lost, Alec. It just broke my heart.”
The look on Kelsie’s face was so irresistibly sweet, all Alec could do was make a mental note to call an allergist first thing Monday and make an appointment to get himself cat-proofed.
“What time will you be finished here?” he asked. “I thought we could grab a bite to eat afterward, maybe see a movie.”
“Oh, Alec,” Kelsie said with a sigh. Was he never going to give up? Did she really want him to? “When I finish here, the only thing I’m going to want to see is a bathtub and a bed.”
“Sounds great,” he said in the intimate way that made all her nerve endings sizzle. His lips turned up at the corners with the promise of a sexy smile. “Your place or mine?”
She felt weak as she imagined sharing a bathtub with Alec. She could remember from their first kiss how lean and hard his body was. It seemed only natural to speculate on what he looked like without clothes. Did he have tan lines? These and several more questions brought a blush to her cheeks, as if she thought he could read her mind with his penetrating gaze.
As Randolph’s handler returned, someone else called for Kelsie. She stood up, dusting off her khaki slacks, craning her head to see around the people in the car lot. “Oh, no, here comes Big Olie. It must be time for the llama spot.”
“Kelsie!” Someone called from the other direction. “I need a break, or I’m quitting!”
Kelsie ground her teeth. “Alec, if you really want to help, go relieve the guy with Gumby.”
“What’s Gumby?” Alec called after her as she strode toward the area where two local television stations had trucks set up to do live coverage of the gala event. Suddenly a long, bony hand covered with stringy red hair clamped down on his shoulder. Slowly he turned to face a very unfriendly looking orangutan. “You must be Gumby.”
Big Olie lit a fat green cigar and took the llama’s lead line from Kelsie.
“I don’t know if it’s wise to smoke around him, Big Olie,” she said with a worried frown, swallowing hard to keep from choking on the noxious fumes. “Llamas are very sensi
tive creatures.”
Big Olie snorted and scowled at her. “This cigar is my trademark, sweet cheeks. I don’t give a rip if this camel doesn’t like it.”
“Okay, fine.” Kelsie sighed, lifting her hands in defeat and stepping back as the cameramen prepared to start shooting.
“Big Olie here from Big Olie’s Car Carnival on Crosstown,” he began, puffing a cloud of greenish smoke around his head and Ubu’s. The llama blinked its huge brown eyes in surprise and raised its head ever so slightly. “It’s a zoo here at Big Olie’s today! Free—oh—”
“Cut sound! Cut sound!” one of the TV crew shouted frantically as Big Olie let loose a string of curses that would have put a sailor to shame.
Kelsie rushed forward to grab Ubu’s lead before the llama could bolt away from the man he’d spit all over.
“Get that stupid camel out of my face!” Olie shouted. Someone tossed him a towel, which he rubbed furiously over the front of his safari suit. “Get that monkey over here!”
Kelsie handed the llama over to one of her helpers and looked frantically around for Gumby.
“N-n-nice G-G-Gumby,” Alec stuttered as the orangutan shook him by the shoulders like a rag doll.
“Alec,” she called. “Please stop playing with the orangutan and bring him over here!”
She was becoming an obsession. Alec didn’t care. After a week of seeing what an ungodly schedule she maintained, he was more set than ever on rescuing her. Obviously she’d missed the chapter in the history book about Lincoln abolishing slavery. She’d probably been out working when the teacher had covered it.
It wasn’t just work. Alec reflected as he made his bed with military precision, then padded naked across the polished hardwood floor to his walk-in closet. He understood the hours she had to spend working and the time she wanted to spend with her children, but it seemed there wasn’t a committee in Eden Prairie she wasn’t a member of. The PTA, the Cub Scouts, the figure-skating club, the youth hockey mothers, the Humane Society, the League of Businesswomen, the garden club, the Daughters of Scandia. The list seemed endless.
