On Pins and Needles

by Victoria Pade

  And to be honest, she’d believed Josh when he’d explained that while he’d been embarrassed to be left at the altar by his former fiancée and to have to explain why to people, he hadn’t been ashamed of the woman herself. Which was some thing else Megan couldn’t say of Noel.

  No, she hadn’t thought of Noel as ashamed of her until Josh had pointed it out, but once he had she’d known that that was precisely what Noel had been—ashamed of her clothes, of her hair, of her jewelry, of her family, of her job. Ashamed of her. Which was why he’d wanted so badly to change her.

  And that was the bigger issue, wasn’t it? A man wanting to change her.

  But had she made more of that with Josh than was actually there?

  Meat in the refrigerator and a chair in front of the television?

  Okay, yes, alone those were small things. But—

  But what? she asked herself as if she were in an argument with someone else. There were no buts about it, meat in the refrigerator and a chair in front of the TV were definitely small things.

  But at the time she’d felt as if those small things were just harbingers of bigger things to come.

  Only now that she thought about them with some perspective, she had to admit that he hadn’t been asking for any changes in her personally, just in some accommodations for him.

  Compromises—that’s what he’d said he was suggesting and now that she re considered, that’s all she thought he was suggesting. But she’d taken it a step further on her own and decided he was asking her to make the kind of sacrifices Noel had wanted of her.

  So maybe that initial panic she’d felt Saturday when Josh had begun to talk about wanting to be with her every night, every morning, had colored what she’d heard from then on. Maybe that was more what she’d been reacting to than Josh himself or what he was actually proposing.

  Because in truth, Josh himself was not the man Noel was. Yes, Josh was conservative and a little leery of things that were off the beaten track. But he wasn’t intolerant. And wasn’t that what was really important? Tolerance of what she believed in and not trying to change her?

  It seemed like it was.

  So why had she turned him away? she asked herself.

  But she knew the answer. Fear. Plain old ordinary fear that he would hurt her again the way Noel had hurt her.

  But did she really think she had anything to fear from Josh? she asked herself.

  She didn’t. Not when she actually thought about it.

  And not only didn’t she have anything to fear from him, she missed him so much she was miserable. She was more unhappy even than she had been when she and Noel had split up.

  And there was only one reason for that.

  Because in the short time she’d been with Josh she’d fallen in love with him.

  More in love with him than she’d ever been with Noel.

  But what about Josh? Was that how he felt about her? Was that what he’d been alluding to when he’d talked about wanting them to be together?

  What else could he have meant? Just that he liked her a lot?

  Well, okay, maybe. But deep down she didn’t believe that. She believed that he had the same feelings for her that she had for him and that she’d made it so hard on him on Saturday morning that he hadn’t gotten around to saying it.

  Or at least that’s what she hoped.

  But one way or the other she would never know unless she swallowed her pride and went to him. Unless she told him the truth about what an idiot she’d been and how she felt about him.

  And if he didn’t feel the same?

  She’d be crushed.

  But even the possibility of being crushed couldn’t keep her from at least going to him, talking to him.

  Because if she didn’t go to him, if she didn’t talk to him, then there wouldn’t be any chance at all.

  And as strong as her feelings for Josh were, they just had to have a chance….

  Megan and Nissa had driven into town in Nissa’s car so Megan opted for walking the few blocks from her office to the court house where she hoped to find Josh. But she walked it in a hurry, her heart beating triple-time the whole way and a sort of prayerful chant repeating itself in her mind for Josh please not to think she was as nutty as his former fiancée to have rejected him so out-of-hand….

  When she got to his office there was no one at the reception counter or behind it at his secretary’s desk. Megan hoped she hadn’t missed him, that he hadn’t already gone home for the day or out on police business. Now that she’d made up her mind, she wanted this hurdle over with.

  So even though there was no sound coming from Josh’s office and she couldn’t see anything through the glazed glass in the upper half of the door, she went around the counter, passed Millie’s desk and knocked.

  “In,” came the command from the inner sanctum and Megan’s pulse picked up more speed still.

  She took a breath, breathed it out, and opened the door.

  Josh was inside, his hips propped against the front of his desk, his legs stretched out and crossed at his ankles, arms folded over his uniform-shirted chest.

  But he wasn’t alone. In the two visitor’s chairs were men Megan knew had to be his brothers from the re semblance she couldn’t help but notice when they turned to look at her.

  “Megan?” Josh said, shock in his voice but no warmth she could discern.

  “Megan?” one of his brothers repeated with a hint of alarm in his tone as both of the other men sat up straighter and stared openly at her.

  “Millie wasn’t out front so I didn’t know you were busy,” Megan said, feeling the beginning of that treacherous panic that had gotten her into trouble a week earlier as she faced three men, not one of them looking as if they were glad to see her.

  “Did you come to stick more pins in him?” one of the brothers muttered sarcastically and without a trace of friendliness, clearly referring to sticking pins in Josh metaphorically and not in terms of acupuncture.

  “Scott,” Josh said as a warning. Then, in a more normal tone, he said to both brothers, “We’re about done here, aren’t we? I can see you guys later, at home.”

  “Sure,” the not-Scott brother agreed readily, while Scott continued to glare at her.

  The not-Scott brother stood and roughly nudged Scott with a poke in the arm to do the same.

  “We’ll see you at home,” not-Scott said.

  Megan wanted to crawl into a hole but since there weren’t any avail able she stepped out of the doorway to let the two other Brimley men go past her.

  And if she’d thought that Scott’s scorn was un nerving, it was nowhere near as bad as when she was suddenly left alone with Josh, standing in the doorway once more, the recipient of navy-blue eyes staring at her from beneath a frown that was much darker and more suspicious now that his brothers were gone and he was finished playing buffer for her.

  “Hi,” she said, knowing it sounded silly but unable to think of any other way to begin.

  Josh just inclined his handsome head in answer.

  And it was a handsome head. So incredibly handsome that it struck her all over again just how great-looking he was and made her stomach do a sensual little somersault.

  “Did you need some thing?” he asked then, all business.

  “To talk.”

  “Okay,” he said as if his agreement were conditional. “Do you want to come in to talk or do you want to talk from the door?”

  Megan stepped into the office and closed the door behind her.

  But that was as far as she went and Josh didn’t ask her to come any farther, or to sit down. Instead he continued to study her from beneath that frown, waiting, she thought, for her to say her piece and unwilling to help her out in any way.

  But she wasn’t sure where to start.

  “Don’t play games with me, Megan,” he said then, a force to be reckoned with.

  “I didn’t come to play games. I just…I’m not sure how to say what I came to say.”

&
nbsp; “Just say it.”

  “You scared me,” she blurted out. “I mean, last Saturday morning, what you were saying sort of threw me for a loop and I think I misjudged you.”

  Josh didn’t respond to that. He merely went on studying her. Waiting still.

  Megan decided she’d come this far, she might as well go the rest of the way, but it would have been easier if Josh had seemed more receptive. As it was, the whole time she told him about what she’d realized about him, about herself, he remained stony-faced.

  “I can’t stop being who I am. I won’t stop being who I am,” she said in conclusion when she’d covered everything. Well, almost everything. She hadn’t told him how she felt about him because she was worried what his lack of reaction meant and didn’t want to go too far out onto that limb.

  “But if you think you can take me the way I am…” She let her voice dwindle off, waiting herself now.

  Josh didn’t jump right in the way she wished he would have. For another eternal moment he just went on watching her as if weighing what she’d said against some thing she couldn’t imagine.

  But when he finally did speak, his words were music to her ears.

  “I love you, Megan,” he said matter-of-factly. “Just the way you are. I never asked you to be anything else.”

  “I know. I know. What you were talking about Saturday morning were only compromises. They weren’t what I took them for. I was just paranoid, I guess,” she said even as her mind was ringing with the fact that he’d told her he loved her.

  Then his body language opened up, too. He un crossed his arms and cupped his hands around the edge of the desk on either side of his hips.

  “So where do we go from here?” he asked, obviously not wanting to tap into that paranoia again and so leaving things up to her.

  “I don’t know. That every-night, every-morning thing sounds pretty good now.”

  “Does that mean you’ll marry me or is marriage asking too much and you just want to live together?”

  Her heart actually felt as if it were soaring. “Marriage isn’t asking too much. If you’re asking.”

  “I was asking last Saturday.”

  “And now that you’ve had a week to think about it?”

  Josh pushed off the edge of the desk and came to her, taking her into his arms. “Now that I’ve had a week to think about it I’m asking again. Will you marry me?”

  “I will.”

  “Because…”

  “Because I love you, too.”

  Apparently that had been the correct answer because it made him smile for the first time since she’d shown up there.

  “You have put me through one lousy week,” he complained good-naturedly then.

  “I take it that’s why your brothers looked like they wanted to string me up.”

  “They’ll get over it.”

  “But I under stand your allergy is better. Don’t I get points for that?”

  “You cured my sneezing and broke my heart.”

  “Haven’t I fixed that, too, now?” she said, tilting her chin to look up at his ruggedly handsome face.

  “Mmm. Pretty much.”

  “Only pretty much?”

  He kissed her, a long, lingering kiss, as if that was what he needed to mend his broken heart. But then, as if it hadn’t been enough, he said, “I think I need a deeper balm.”

  “Oh? What did you have in mind?”

  He showed her by pulling her so close she could feel the hard ridge of his desire for her.

  “Here?” she asked with a scandalized laugh.

  “I think it’s what I need,” he reiterated with mock sincerity. “Then I can be convinced that you’re giving yourself to me, heart and soul.”

  “You’re evil.”

  He grinned to prove it. “I guess you better get used to the idea of marrying an evil man.”

  “There’s no lock on the door,” Megan said with a glance over her shoulder in that direction.

  “Millie’s gone for the day.”

  “What if someone else comes in?”

  “If they come in without knocking they deserve what they get.”

  “And here I thought you were conservative,” she said as he kissed a path down the side of her neck to the hollow of her throat and lit tiny sparks in her bloodstream.

  “Maybe it’s you who’s changin’ me.”

  “I don’t want you changed. I want you just the way you are, too.”

  “And I want you on that couch.”

  Which was just where he took her, to the over stuffed sofa that lined the wall opposite his desk, capturing her mouth again as he laid them both down, his body more on top of hers than not.

  But Megan didn’t protest. The sense of wickedness that went with doing something completely inappropriate in his office just added to the titillation.

  Not that she needed any more than she was getting as Josh unfastened the buttons that held her smock dress closed down the front and un clasped her front-hook bra, too. Certainly she didn’t need more titillation than she was getting when his hand closed over her already engorged breast and began to work his wonders with her nipple.

  But if she was going to be exposed she decided he was, too, and she didn’t hesitate to pull his shirt tails from his jeans, to undo his buttons and slip the uniform shirt off his shoulders so she could have access to his glorious back and shoulders and biceps and pectorals.

  By then the week-long hunger for him that Megan had been fighting grew bigger than she was and she lost all aware ness of where they were, of everything but Josh and being there with him, having him do all the things she’d lain in her bed and torturously relived each night since last Friday.

  But this was no torture as some where along the way his jeans came off and she came all the way out of her dress and her underthings. As his mouth and tongue and hands explored her, aroused her, nearly drove her wild. As she filled her own hands, her own mouth, her own senses with every inch of him until neither of them could stand not to be joined and he slipped into her as seamlessly as if he were meant to be a part of her.

  And together they rode the tidal wave of a passion set free. A passion they now could—and did—indulge in without inhibition. A passion that sealed them as one and gifted them with an ecstatic peak of pleasure so intense neither of them could do anything but hold on to the other and let it take them higher and higher, melding their bodies, their spirits, their lives into one.

  And when that passion, that ecstasy, had spent itself, they settled in the soft cushions of the couch, Josh on his side, the wonderfully heavy weight of his thigh across hers, as he kissed her again. A deep, replete, bonding kiss.

  “I do love you, Megan,” he whispered.

  “Weird nesses and all?”

  “Weird nesses and all.”

  “Good. Because I love you, too.”

  “Conservativeness and all?”

  She glanced down at their naked, entwined bodies. “Oh yeah, conservativeness and all,” she said with a laugh.

  “Besides, maybe you aren’t so weird,” Josh added. “I met Kate McDermot today and she told me to tell you she had an ultra sound and you were right—she’s having a girl.”

  “Of course I was right,” Megan said. But that wasn’t the only thing she felt confident about. As Josh kissed her once more, sweetly, slowly, and with passion rising between them again already, Megan also felt confident that despite their differences they really could have a future together as man and wife.

  Because in that moment when his mouth was plundering hers yet again, when his hands began the miracles they could work on her body, and his desire for her was making itself known, she knew without a doubt that none of their differences were greater than the love they shared.

  The love they would go on sharing for the rest of their lives.

  The love that would allow them to celebrate their differences, to revel in them, and to accept each other without ever asking for more.

  ISBN: 978-1-
4268-6955-6

  ON PINS AND NEEDLES

  Copyright © 2002 by Victoria Pade

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