Promises, Promises

by Shelley Cooper

  “You’re not going to, are you?” he asked.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Seduce me.”

  Was that regret she saw in his eyes? “No,” she replied, trying to inject some determination into her voice.

  “Is that no just for tonight or for forever?”

  She wished she knew herself. “Definitely for tonight, and probably for the future.”

  “You do have a promise to keep, you know,” he reminded her.

  If ever she’d lost sight of exactly how virile the man was, and how susceptible she was to that virility, it was brought home with the force of a hurricane. “I know.”

  “Proximity not enough anymore?” The question sounded idle, but the look in his eyes was anything but.

  She drew a long, bracing breath. “It wasn’t enough then,” she said quietly. “Why should it be enough now? Isn’t that why you turned me down?”

  “Yes,” he said ruefully, “I guess it was.”

  “Nothing’s changed, Marco. My ambivalence, as you call it, is still alive and well.” And growing by the second.

  Why was she fighting it? she wondered. Especially now that Marco had admitted he was ready, willing and able. Was it simply because she was no longer dressed in the outfit that had given her so much courage, and that, without it, she had no faith in her powers of seduction? Maybe it was because there was a baby present, a baby who needed Marco’s undivided attention. Or maybe it was something as simple as that she was an out-and-out coward.

  No, she finally decided. No matter how hot and bothered he made her feel, what she wanted was a wild, crazy affair of the heart. Nothing Marco had said so far had led her to believe that he was offering anything more than a one-night stand. She fully intended to keep her promise: when the time, the place and the man were right. The whole point of the promises she’d made to Jill was to avoid regret, not create it. Until she knew better, she had to think of Marco Garibaldi as one walking, talking hunk of regret.

  “Isn’t it time to go to bed?” she asked. A rush of heat colored her cheeks. “What I meant,” she amended quickly, “is that it’s time for you to put Kristen to bed. She can barely keep her eyes open.”

  She handed the sleepy child back to him and nearly ran to the door. “See you later.”

  “Wait!” he called after her.

  Reluctantly she turned to face him. “Yes?”

  “Before you leave, could you help me with a problem?”

  “What kind of problem?” she asked warily.

  “It’s about Kristen’s sleeping arrangements.”

  On this topic, at least, she felt as if she were on safer ground. “I think I saw a portable crib in that pile in your living room. Just set it up in your bedroom. It should only take a few seconds.”

  “But what if she wakes up in the middle of the night?”

  To Gretchen, the answer was obvious. “You change her diaper, give her a bottle and put her back to bed.”

  He shook his head. “That won’t work.”

  It worked for 99.9 percent of the population, she thought. Why was he so certain he was the exception to the rule?

  Folding her arms across her middle, Gretchen arched her eyebrows. “Why not?”

  “I’m a sound sleeper. I sleep through everything. And I do mean everything.”

  She stared at him in amazement. “You’re a doctor, and you’re that sound a sleeper?”

  “Believe it or not. Doctors come in light sleepers and sound sleepers and those who are in between, just like every other occupation.”

  “Don’t you ever sleep at the hospital?”

  “Of course. When you work sixteen-hour days, catnaps are a must.”

  “When you take these catnaps of yours, don’t you have to keep one ear open, in case of an emergency?”

  “Ideally, yes.”

  She didn’t understand what the problem was. “Well, just consider this an emergency. Sleep with one ear open. If you hear her fuss, take care of her.”

  “You don’t understand, Gretchen,” he explained carefully, as if addressing a person who was extremely dimwitted. “In case of emergency, the hospital knows better than to beep me. Instead, they send someone after me. Even then it can take several minutes to rouse me.”

  “You must be a very good doctor,” she murmured, “for them to go to the trouble.”

  “I am,” he stated with quiet confidence.

  “You couldn’t sleep through my pi…CD music last month,” she pointed out.

  “That’s because I hadn’t fallen asleep before the music started. Remember that earth tremor we had a couple of years ago? The one that rattled the dishes in the cupboards and left paintings hanging sideways?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Slept right through it.”

  “I suppose this means alarms don’t work for you. Just how do you manage to get up in the morning?”

  “I have an internal alarm clock that wakes me up at precisely 5:00 a.m., regardless of the time I go to bed the night before.”

  She tilted her head and studied him. “Tell me, Marco. Why didn’t you think of this before you agreed to baby-sit?”

  “It was a last-minute thing. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

  Neither had she, when it came to him. “I see.”

  There was something going on here, Gretchen realized. Something more than just his concern about Kristen waking in the middle of the night.

  “You’re terrified of being alone with her, aren’t you?” That’s why he hadn’t commented on her Freudian slip; why he’d tried so hard to keep her from leaving.

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Wouldn’t you feel the same, if you were me? Look at the way I handled her earlier. A lawyer could easily build a strong case against my being left alone with her.”

  She gazed at the child in his arms. Kristen had given up the battle for wakefulness and was sleeping peacefully, her head on his shoulder.

  “You’re doing just fine now.”

  “What about when she wakes up? What about the rest of the weekend?”

  “You could consider it practice for future fatherhood,” she offered.

  “I don’t need the practice.”

  She felt a shaft of irritation. Was he being deliberately obtuse? “You just admitted that you’re terrified of being alone with her, Marco.”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” he replied. “I don’t need the practice because I’m never going to be a father.”

  Gretchen just stared at him. This was turning into the strangest conversation she’d ever had with a man.

  “Accidents do happen, you know,” she felt compelled to point out.

  “Not if the women I choose to be intimate with don’t want children, either. We both take precautions.”

  For some reason the remark set her teeth even more on edge. And here she’d started to feel sorry for him and the predicament he found himself in. What she couldn’t understand was how she could be aroused by his mere presence at the same time that he irritated her to the point where she wanted to throttle him.

  “Does that include your future wife?” she asked sweetly.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Then how can you guarantee you will never be a father?”

  “A lot of women react like I’ve sprouted two heads whenever I answer that question honestly.”

  “Women who were thinking of getting involved with you, you mean,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Well,” she said briskly, “since I’m not thinking of getting involved with you, you needn’t worry about my reaction. So tell me, Marco. How can you guarantee you will never be a father?”

  “That’s easy. I’m never getting married. There is no future wife. I believe that a child needs two parents, and I’m what, in polite circles, they call a confirmed bachelor.”

  His words drove home how right her earlier caution had been. Marco Garibaldi had nothing to offer her beyond the brief pleasure of being held in his st
rong, capable arms. Unfortunately, she wasn’t totally put off by that realization. She would just have to work on it some more.

  “I’ve always wondered what it meant,” she quipped, “when a man says he’s a confirmed bachelor. Does it mean he’s joined a secret club? Do you have an induction ceremony, like they do in most religions, when young men and women come of age?”

  Instead of answering, he looked from one shoulder to the other.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, her irritation growing.

  His expression was deadpan. “Searching for my other head.”

  She couldn’t help herself; she burst out laughing. With the arrival of her laughter, her tension melted away. Why was she so prickly around him tonight, so quick to take offense, so hasty to look for hidden meanings beneath every word? It really was foolish of her to behave so idiotically. There was nothing between them. She shouldn’t be upset that he wasn’t the paragon she’d built him up in her mind to be. He’d done nothing to her. He certainly hadn’t led her on. If anything, she was the one who had led him on.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m feeling a little on edge this evening. So tell me. Do you give your confirmed-bachelor speech to a woman before you go out on your first date with her?”

  “I believe in being up-front and honest,” he explained.

  “Is that what you call it?” she murmured.

  He looked closely at her. “What would you call it?”

  “An easy out.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that way you can always lay the blame at the poor woman’s feet when she becomes too demanding.” She tilted her head back and placed the back of her hand across her forehead. “‘I’m sorry,’ you’ll say, in very dramatic fashion, of course, ‘but I did tell you in the beginning that I was a confirmed bachelor.’”

  She lowered her arm and leveled her gaze at him expectantly. “Am I right, or am I right?”

  He laughed. “Let me guess. You’ve heard the speech before.”

  She hadn’t personally. But she’d known quite a few women who had. Instead of answering, she asked, “I assume, way back in the dark ages, when this conversation started it had a point?”

  “Before we got sidetracked, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “We seem to be doing that a lot tonight, don’t we? I wonder why.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” she lied. She knew exactly why. They were both wondering how it would be between them. She suspected that it would be pretty darn terrific, better than anything she’d experienced so far, anyway. Which was probably why she couldn’t let it go. And why she felt disappointed in him when he acted like the person he really was—a flesh-and-blood man, with all his inherent foibles—instead of the icon she’d imagined him to be.

  The Marco Garibaldi she’d built up in her mind was the perfect gentleman, the perfect lover and the perfect friend. And, once he married, he would also be the perfect husband and father. Small wonder, as she learned more about him, that he fell short of her expectations. The pedestal she’d created for him was so high off the ground, it was a wonder he didn’t get a nosebleed.

  Gretchen sighed. Maybe a little honesty would clear the air.

  “It’s all my fault. I was the one who put sex between us. Now it won’t go away, no matter what we think, do or say. It’s always there, like this invisible wall.”

  He nodded in agreement. “It’s practically all I can think about.”

  “Me, too,” she admitted.

  “What should we do about it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Doing nothing hasn’t helped so far,” he said.

  “Maybe not. But if I indulged my every craving for chocolate, I’d be as big as a house. Some things are just best left alone.”

  “And you think this is one of them.”

  “Don’t you?” she asked. “Seems to me I recall this conversation where we both agreed that the sanctity of the landlady-tenant relationship should not be breached.”

  He gave a reluctant sigh, then grinned at her unrepentantly. “You can’t blame a guy for trying, can you?”

  No, but she could blame him for being too blasted sexy for her own good. “I’ll give you an A for effort.”

  He looked disappointed. “Just an A?”

  Once again she couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, an A-plus.”

  She was flirting with him, she realized. And he was flirting back. The amazing thing was how good it felt. How easy. How right. If she let it, flirting with Marco Garibaldi could become as addictive as smoking.

  Come on, she cautioned herself. She was almost thirty years old. It wasn’t as if he was the first man she’d ever flirted with. Or the second. Or even the third.

  But if she were such an accomplished flirt, why had she had to go to Gary Curtis for advice? She certainly didn’t call it flirting, the way she’d propositioned Marco the day she’d taken him for a ride in her car. That was still, and would always be, in her mind an ambush.

  The sad truth was that all of her previous relationships, and that included her engagement, had been as staid and businesslike as she herself had been. Probably still was. How boring. It would probably have done her a world of good if, somewhere along the way, a heartbreaker like Marco had given her his I’m-a-confirmed-bachelor-and-I-don’t-want-to-get-involved speech, and she’d gone ahead anyway and thrown caution to the wind. Maybe if she’d had her heart dashed a time or two by a totally unsuitable man, she wouldn’t be so tempted to do so now, when she was old enough to know better.

  “Weren’t we trying to get back to the original point of our conversation?” she said.

  “What kind of sleeper are you?” he asked.

  She blinked. “Average, I guess.”

  “Do you sleep through thunderstorms?”

  “I usually wake a time or two. Why?”

  “Do you think you’d notice if a child stirred in the night?”

  Normally she was much quicker on the uptake. But tonight, in the presence of the one man who possessed the power to scramble the connections between her brain cells, she was amazingly slow.

  “You want me to watch Kristen for you this weekend,” she said flatly.

  “Not exactly. I know I have no right to ask you this, but I was hoping you would stay here and help me with her.”

  Gretchen felt a brief flare of pleasure that he had so much confidence in her abilities as a nurturer. On its heels came doubt. If she agreed, she’d be spending the entire weekend with him. Kristen would be there, but it would still be like living together—without the sex, of course. They would be bound to find out a lot about each other, both good and bad. Come Sunday night, she’d either be panting with desire or ready to kill him. Probably both. Either way, deep down, she wasn’t sure she was ready to totally obliterate the pedestal she’d put him on. He’d been knocked close enough to the edge as it was.

  “You want me to stay here?” she repeated.

  “Unfortunately, I turned the second bedroom into an office.” He nodded to the living room sofa. “I thought maybe I’d sleep there, and you could sleep with Kristen in my room.”

  She couldn’t sleep in his bed. That would be just too…intimate.

  “Tell you what,” she suggested. “Why don’t I take her to my apartment at night and bring her back here in the morning? Wouldn’t that work just as well?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t.”

  He was trying to spare her feelings, she realized. “I guess it wouldn’t look good if you gave your best friend’s daughter to someone else to watch.”

  “Put it this way,” he said. “I trust you. But Brian and Val don’t know you. And, despite how this might look, Val is the most protective mother I’ve ever seen. For her to actually agree to leave Kristen with me says a lot about her state of mind. And the state of their marriage.”

  “You think there’s a go
od chance they’ll turn around and come back, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do. But I hope they don’t. They need this time together. You’re not offended are you, that I won’t let you keep Kristen at night?”

  She made her voice brisk and businesslike. “Not in the least. She’s your best friend’s daughter. And I’m practically a stranger.”

  “You’re not a stranger, Gretchen.”

  “Yes, I am,” she contradicted. “After all, what do we really know about each other?”

  “I know one thing,” Marco said. “Kristen likes you, and you’re very good with her. For her sake, if not for mine, could you possibly find it in your heart to stay? If you do, you’ll earn our undying gratitude. Besides, it’s not like you’ll be far from home. Everything you need is just next door.”

  Everything she needed was here, was the thought that wouldn’t be denied. All she had to do was find the courage to reach out and take it.

  With a pang Gretchen recalled the schedule she’d so painstakingly created, and everything she’d planned to accomplish that weekend. Her week of living was slated to begin first thing in the morning. She’d put off doing the items on that list for too long, a lifetime, really. How could he expect her to turn her back on it now?

  He was just feeling overwhelmed, that was all, she told herself. A little more time in Kristen’s company, and he’d relax. Besides, no one could be as sound a sleeper as he claimed to be. They’d get along just fine without her.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at her continued silence. “I’ve been thoughtless. You probably have plans. Please, don’t worry about us. We’ll get by.”

  She made the mistake of looking at him. Though his words were sincere, he couldn’t hide the misgiving he still felt. It would take someone with a far harder heart than Gretchen’s to resist the appeal in Marco’s eyes.

  She gave one last, longing thought to her schedule, then dismissed it from her mind. She supposed she could start living on Monday. A little creative juggling, and she still could accomplish most of the things she’d intended to do.

  The bottom line was that she was a woman who needed to feel needed. Wasn’t that why she’d made all those promises to her family over the years? Marco definitely needed her help. Or, at least, he believed he did, which amounted to the same thing. She’d also promised to live for each moment, to treat life as an adventure. If spending the weekend with Marco Garibaldi—even with a baby to chaperone their behavior—wasn’t an adventure, she didn’t know what was.