She could feel the hammering of his heart and nodded.
“I feel that way because you’re a woman. A special woman. Can we agree on that?”
“I guess even I can’t deny the power of empirical evidence.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“It’s a yes, most definitely a yes.” She moved closer, letting the length of her body mold to his.
“That being the case, let me use a hackneyed line—which I apologize for upfront but frankly, I’m too talked out for fresh thinking—are you still in the mood for romance?”
Lilah squeezed her lips together. She felt tears welling in her eyes, but she wasn’t sad. She reached up and pressed her hand atop his. “Sometimes the best things are hackneyed.”
He let out a deep breath. “Thank goodness.” He hesitated. “But you know, I have one request.”
She slanted her head and waited.
“Do you mind if we don’t…don’t, you know…”
“Have sex? You don’t want to have sex?” She was taken aback. After all that outpouring of emotion, the physical proof of his desire.
“No, no, no.” He shook his head emphatically. “I definitely just want us to be together.”
She felt a rush of relief. She hadn’t blown it.
“It’s just that I want this to be special, without the ghosts of old memories floating around. Here, in this room?” He waved his hand around. “Call me overly sensitive, but there’re still too many old school vibes. So, would you mind terribly if we spent the night instead at my apartment?” He crinkled up his brow.
“A sensitive male? I’m supposed to object to a straight, sensitive male?” She almost laughed, but she thought it might bruise his ego. “No problem. Let me just collect a few things.” She hurried into the bedroom to locate her toiletries and some clothes, then stopped and turned.
“One question?” she asked a smile on her face.
He raised his eyebrows.
“Is your bed extra-long?”
“Lilah, the last thing you’ll need to worry about is the length of my bed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE BED. And he wasn’t.
Truthfully? Lilah didn’t notice much about his apartment, except that it was upstairs in an old house. That it had wood floors—she knew this because she kicked her shoes off and was barefoot. That there was the sound of street noise—until he closed the double-hung window. And that the bedroom was in the back.
The bed was unmade, but the sheets smelled fresh. She hadn’t the faintest idea what color they were, though, or how many pillows he had or, indeed, where her clothes fell as she stripped on one side of the bed and he did on the other.
He pulled back the top sheet. She knelt on the mattress. Her heart pumped so hard she practically felt it straining against her throat. Excited, anxious, she watched him remove several foil packets from the bedside table. More excitement…more anxiety.
From the other side of the bed, he slid on his knees across the sheets. Then he reached up and ran a finger along her chin, the length of her neck to her collarbone. He circled one breast, his fingernail adding a light scrape to her nipple.
Lilah felt an immediate contraction deep within. She closed her eyes. And didn’t open them until he had guided her down and began exploring her body with an almost reverent delight and an inexorable slowness that verged on sweet torture. She gulped for breath. “I can’t wait,” she gasped. Her nerve endings were going haywire.
“All good things come to those who wait,” he murmured and his lips began to follow the path of his fingers. “I want this to be right for you.”
Her head sank back into a pillow. “Any more right and I’d die.” She hiccuped when his mouth touched the juncture of her thighs. “There’s one favor I have to ask.” She gulped air.
He looked up. “Are you all right?”
She inhaled deeply. “More than all right. It’s just…just…can we leave the whole patience thing for later?”
He scooted up her body and placed his hands on either side of her head. “Anything to oblige the lady.”
Their lovemaking was quick, ferocious, each taking freely, each giving back more.
And when it was over, Lilah lay exhausted in Justin’s arms, her heart hammering in her chest—the only muscle in her body capable of movement.
She was sure she’d be up all night.
She fell asleep instantly.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, Lilah rolled over in bed. She awakened to the sound of running water. Maybe from the sink in the bathroom? she wondered. She looked across for Justin, patting the sheets next to her. He wasn’t there. And she had a moment of panic.
But then she saw him. Padding back barefoot, comfortably naked. In his hand he held a water glass. He slid under the top sheet. “I was trying to be quiet. I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I’m not,” she smiled, enjoying the warmth that radiated from his body.
“Water?” He held the glass to her.
“Thanks.” She nodded and took it, then handed it back when she was finished.
He took a large gulp before setting it down on the table.
Somehow the act of sharing a water glass seemed every bit as intimate as their earlier lovemaking—maybe more so, given its casualness. And that intimacy made her realize that she couldn’t lie anymore.
“Justin?” She pressed her lips together.
He turned back and waited.
“There’s something I need to confess.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re secretly married to some dashing aid worker in Africa?”
She shook her head and tried to smile. But this conversation was too serious to avoid by giving way to levity. It was also hard, really hard.
She cleared her throat. “You know how I told you that I had reservations about coming back?”
“We’ve been all through that, I thought?”
“Yes, I’m sure it seems like I’m beating a dead horse, but, but… There’s something else.” She looked to the ceiling and noticed for the first time the old-fashioned pendant light in the middle of an ornate rosette. She shook her head. There was no point delaying. “The other reason—probably the bigger reason if I have to admit it—and after what…what we shared, I am obliged to admit.” She paused, then rushed on. “The award? The one you nominated me for?”
He nodded and shifted to sit up against the headboard, the sheet covering him from the waist down.
Lilah rested on her elbow and propped her head up with her hand. “I don’t deserve it. I mean, okay, I started this nonprofit organization and it has helped Congolese women. I know because I’ve seen the proof. And I still believe in it—more than ever maybe, given the atrocities still going on there. But the thing is…” She hesitated as she attempted to put her feelings into words. “As much as I believe in it, the truth of the matter is I just can’t get as excited about it as I used to. These days I’m just going through the motions—it feels like I’m not fully committed to it anymore, even though I want to be. I really do.”
She sniffed. “So I sit around thinking—when I’m not trying to juggle the finances to keep things afloat and cut through multiple layers of red tape to make things happen…when I’m not doing all that that someone else could do a much better job than I. I mean, I almost feel criminal, especially now that Sisters for Sisters is generating all this interest and people come to me with their ideas.”
She rubbed her forehead. “I guess I just feel overwhelmed. Like I want to run away from the whole thing. But I can’t. I’m caught. So then I feel guilty and depressed that I’m not holding up my end. That I’m letting other people down who really need me. And even if I do somehow manage to do the right thing
, that it’ll never be enough given the enormity of the problem.” She paused. “Does any of that make sense?”
He frowned in thought before offering her a tight-lipped smile. “Completely.” He slid his arm around her shoulders and pulled her over to sit next to him.
She scooped up the sheet and tucked it under her arms to cover herself. Then she turned her head to face him. “Really? Because I’m not sure I understand it.”
“How can I explain?” He set his jaw and narrowed his eyes. Then he looked down at her upturned face. “You know that line of Humphrey Bogart’s from Casablanca?”
She placed her hand against her chest. “Do I know his lines? You forget I was vice president of the film club? ‘Play it, Sam?’ ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’? Somehow, they don’t seem to be germane to our discussion though.”
“Germane? God, that’s so you.” Justin laughed. He held up his hand in peace when he saw her frown. “No, I’m not laughing at you. I’m just delighting in you. But listen.” He shifted over so their thighs were touching.
Lilah thought the contact probably diminished her focus, but it felt too good to say anything.
“I’m talking about the last scene at the airport,” Justin went on. “When he tells Ingrid Bergman that she has to be with her noble war hero husband? He says something like, ‘It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.’”
She could picture the rich black-and-white images as he spoke. “Oh, my God, it was so tragic.”
“But so wrong.”
“Wrong? You’re saying that one of the greatest romantic lines of all times is wrong?”
“Absolutely. He’s totally got it ass backward. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, you have to start with the problems of one person, then build from there.”
He reached around and cradled her shoulders in his arm. “Listen, I think you—and I—have reached turning points in our lives. The problem is, we’re both committed to our careers even though we’re also totally frustrated at the moment, which in your case translates into blaming yourself and feeling guilty. And in mine, makes me blame the world and want to punch someone.”
“So what do we do? Since punching’s out of the question.”
“Unfortunately, I think you’re right about that one. What I think we have to do is keep the faith, so to speak. Keep our options open, and not get all worked up because we don’t have a ready solution at hand. Which all requires a very subtle mix of opportunism and patience. Patience is key.”
Lilah shifted her weight so she could turn her shoulders and face him head-on. “This is the gospel according to Justin Bigelow?”
He made a face. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No, of course not.” She paused and smiled. “Well, maybe just a little. But tell me.” She stared at him, her chin slightly cocked. “When did you become so wise? Or were you always this way, but I was too blind to see it?”
Justin shrugged. “Boy, would I like to say I was always this way. But in hindsight, I think I probably demonstrated about as many introspective tendencies as most twenty-year-old males—in other words, close to none. No, as far as I can tell, any wisdom I’ve gained over the years comes from kindergarteners. I have grown to realize that nothing—and no one—is as honest, sometimes cruelly, and intuitively insightful as a five-year-old.”
“Out of the mouths of babes, huh?”
He nodded.
“I think you’re being overly humble.” She pushed back the sheet and shifted so that she straddled his naked body. “Someone wise—no names—told me not so long ago not to underestimate myself. I think the same holds true for you.” She rubbed her knuckles against the stubble on his cheeks. “Have I told you that I think you’re incredible?”
“No, but, you know, the ways things have worked out—” he looked around the bed “—kind of gave me the feeling that you cared for me.” He kissed her hand.
And this time, the lovemaking was imbued with a tenderness that spoke of a comfort with each other, an openness, and a feeling that nothing else existed beyond the confines of a queen-size bed and their imaginations. And when Lilah eventually fell asleep in Justin’s arms, she felt subsumed by a peacefulness of mind and body and soul that she had never experienced before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
IT WAS THREE IN THE MORNING, and Press was running on fumes. His back ached. The muscles in his arms throbbed. Hauling kegs was not an activity for the weak. Then there were his facial muscles. Was it possible to strain facial muscles with an excess of smiling? Probably, simply, from having to respond to the constant requests—most of them polite, but some pretty snotty. Lesson learned, he chalked up mentally as he bent over a toilet to clean it. Alcohol, forced bonhomie and a sense of entitlement were a lethal mixture.
This was the fourth time he’d cleaned out the basement men’s room next to the pump room, and it was really starting to get to him. How—and why—in the world could someone take off the ceramic basin of a sink and smash it on the floor? he wondered.
“Hey, Press,” Tony said, from the doorway. “The Grantham cops are upstairs and they want to talk to you,” he announced. Then he regarded the busted sink and shook his head in disgust. “You guys have gotta be more careful. I tell you, after Reunions are over on Sunday, I’m closing the place down for a while.”
Press dumped the scrubber he was holding into a bucket. “The cops?” He tried to figure out what the cops wanted with him. It was well-known around town that there was friction between the cops and the college kids. The police thought the university students were a bunch of spoiled rich kids who believed they could get away with anything. Which, granted, was kind of true. But maybe if the cops used a little more tact in their encounters, the students might respond more diplomatically.
So now for some unknown reason he had the cops on his back. But first he had Tony to deal with. “Hey, listen, it’s not my fault that some alum went crazy.” He nodded in the direction of the sink.
“Well, you and your buddy were on duty, right? How did you miss all this?” Tony stomped away, clearly ticked off.
“It’s not like I’m the one who had all the fun tonight,” Press muttered under his breath. He blew air noisily out of his mouth and trudged up the stairs to the lobby. The wood-paneled room with its faded Oriental carpet conveyed a stately collegiate atmosphere. But the smell of stale beer permeated the air. And in the corner of the room, stacks of large black garbage bags bulged with plastic cups and remnants of the platters of finger food. Animal House was probably a more accurate description.
Two cops stood close together by the entrance, their hands on their hips and their caps on straight—all business. They had their backs to Press as he approached them.
“Can I help you, officers?” he asked politely.
The two men turned around. One kept his hands on his hips. His feet were placed apart as if ready to go on the attack.
Press focused on him, uneasy with the aggressiveness, but then something else caught his eye. A small gap had formed between the cops when they’d turned around, and Press was able to see someone else standing behind them. Someone tall, middle-aged, and looking decidedly the worse for wear.
His father.
The one word that entered his mind was unmentionable in company such as this.
The policeman to his left smiled all folksy like. “Mr. Lodge here was trying to drive home when we stopped his car,” he explained with a down-home slowness to his words.
The good cop, Press ascertained immediately.
“Naturally, seeing as it was Mr. Lodge, we didn’t want to cause any trouble,” the cop continued. He scratched his temple by his buzz cut.
“Naturally,” Press repeated. He tried to keep his t
one neutral, but inside, he was angry. “I suppose it wouldn’t look good to have a former mayor of Grantham get in any trouble?”
When Press was still young, his father had had an uncharacteristic stirring of civic spirit and had decided to run for mayor. It was about the same time his then not-quite-young-anymore wife—and Press’s mother—had been eager to assume a more prominent role in Grantham society. A Republican hadn’t won a local election in town for more than twenty years, but then a Lodge had never run for office before. It went without saying that Conrad won.
Nineteen months later he was having an affair with the new nanny—Noreen.
Four months later, he declined to run for office again.
That may all have been ancient history, but Grantham’s finest had been well schooled never to forget just who was important in town.
Press offered a curt nod of recognition to his father. Conrad overstraightened his back with the studied carefulness of someone who’d drunk far too much alcohol.
Press focused on “the good cop.” “I take it he said that I could drive him home, Officer?”
“Mr. Lodge did say there was a college student working here who could take him, but…ah…you should know that you won’t be able to use his car. He had a bit of a fender bender—took out the bumper and a front headlight after a telephone pole got a little too close.”
“Funny about those telephone poles,” Press responded.
His father seemed unaffected by the news of the accident. “I’m sure this young man will be happy to help out,” Conrad announced, his patrician lockjaw accent laid on thick.
So the hired help doesn’t even get a name, let alone an acknowledgment as being his son, Press thought.
Tony entered the room and dropped a couple of garbage bags onto the growing pile.
Press turned to him. “Listen, Tony, I’m going to have run a quick errand.” He nodded toward the gathering at the front door.
“Yeah, well, you do that. But then you better hightail it back here to help clean up.”
On Common Ground (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 17
