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Oh, never mind. This train of thought led nowhere he had any desire to visit, thank-you-very-much.
“Aunt Nancy? Where’s Mama?”
From nowhere, a pajama-clad urchin with dusty-blond hair appeared in front of them. Guy’s youngest, he figured. A brief pang of bittersweet longing to have his children back as babies, to see if he could do better this time, mingled with a profound sense of relief at not having to. Hannah was sixteen, Schuyler thirteen going on forty. Rod hadn’t been much better at fathering than husbanding. One day, maybe he’d figure out where he’d gone wrong.
But not tonight. Tonight he had about all he could handle convincing himself he didn’t want to take Nancy Shapiro to bed, to bury his face in all that hair, to seek, in those delicate, graceful arms, a few hours’ surcease from being a major screwup.
“Hey, sweetie,” Nancy crooned to the child, who scrambled up into her lap, pushing up the already short dress to danger level. Unconcerned, she propped her feet on the edge of the coffee table, allowing Rod a ringside view of her legs—thin but surprisingly shapely, and sexy as hell in sheer black stockings that glittered whenever she moved. When he tore his eyes away from her gams, however, he noticed the expression on her face as she cuddled the little boy.
He tore his eyes away from that much more quickly.
“Mama’s in the kitchen, honey,” he heard her say, and the I-want-one-of-these tremor in her voice was unmistakable. “You want me to get her?”
“C’n you take me to pee?” he said. “The bafroom’s all dark.”
There went the laugh. “I think we can handle that.”
He felt them get up, watched as Nancy carried the child out of the room. For a skinny woman, she had the cutest fanny he’d ever seen.
A few minutes later, she returned, sans child, but didn’t sit. Instead, she stood in front of him, twisting a silver ring on her right index finger, as if trying to get up the nerve to say something. Someone turned up the music; people raised their voices accordingly, and she rolled her eyes. Then she grinned, and leaned over, close enough for him to feel her breath on his cheek, see the slight swell of breasts peeking above the low sweep of the dress’s neckline that by rights should be too small to arouse anyone. She smelled…edible.
“I, for one, am not in the mood to watch everybody else get kissed at midnight,” she said. “So whaddya say we get out of here, go get a cup of coffee?”
He looked at her as if she’d suggested they go skinny-dipping in the lake a few blocks away. “I don’t think—”
But she shook her head, sending that riot of hair into a tizzy. “Forget thinking. It’s New Year’s Eve, and who said we have to suffer everyone else’s happiness?”
She had a point. She also had the greatest mouth in the world. Generous. Spellbinding.
And she had a point.
Nodding, he pulled himself off the sofa, retrieved their coats from the den, then ushered Nancy outside without even saying goodbye to their hosts.
Nancy gasped in the glacial blast that mugged them the instant they hit the porch. The light snow needling their cheeks was nothing, but damn it was cold. Underneath her black velvet swing coat, she couldn’t stop shivering.
Not just because she was cold, though.
“At the risk of sounding tacky,” Rod said next to her, his breath nearly opaque in front of his face, “my place or yours?”
She tried to laugh, but the sound froze before she could get it out. “I’m too snockered to d-drive,” she chattered, “b-but I live just on the other s-side of the lake. If we go there—th-that is, if you t-take me there—I can walk b-back over here tomorrow and p-pick up my c-c-car.”
He nodded—she was beginning to see a pattern here—then led her to his car, a gleaming silver luxury model sedan that had been the focus of a huge media blitz last year. His media blitz, she figured, when he was still head of marketing for Star Motors. Before he let her in, however, he shrugged off his topcoat—made, no doubt, from wool plucked from the under-side of some hardy beastie that grazed on grasses found only on the most remote mountain range in the world—and slipped it around her shoulders.
She wanted to crawl inside this coat and live here for the rest of her life. Well, actually, she wanted to crawl inside his car first, because the coat didn’t cover her feet, which had turned instantly into two-hundred-dollar popsicles.
They got in. Then they sat there. His car smelled of fine leather and his cologne and some indefinable rich smell she could easily get used to. Nancy had no idea what Rod was thinking, but she was thinking… Actually, she was shivering too hard to think, but ohmigod was in there somewhere.
She’d just invited Rod Braden for coffee. And he’d accepted. Somehow, she squelched the laugh threatening to blow her cool. She also remembered she had worked up the chutzpah to ask Norman Sklar to dance that night all those years ago. And that he’d accepted. She hadn’t felt like this since that night—apprehensive, excited and damned smug.
If a tad perplexed. Rod hadn’t said anything, or even started the car. Confined in a small space with him, he seemed…
She sighed inwardly. You know you’re in trouble when you can’t remember the last time you had sex. Hell, she only vaguely remembered who she’d last had sex with. Not that her list of partners would impress anyone, but what a pitiful comment on her thirty-four years that—if she was generous, mind—the best she could muster were two forgettables and one adequate. And let’s not go into which one of those had been her husband for five years.
The buzz alone from two feet away was already more exciting than any of her actual experiences. She wasn’t sure whether that was more of a comment on Rod or her, but she decided analyzing it would serve no viable purpose.
She jumped when Rod cleared his throat. “Where’s your place?”
“Oh. Right.” She gave him directions; the three-minute drive passed in silence. But now she noticed a sharpness to the buzzing that put her on guard, made her wonder if she’d edged closer to losing it than she’d realized. Had she misinterpreted politeness as actual interest? Wouldn’t be the first time, God knew. By the time he pulled up in front of her lakefront bungalow, she decided she’d let her imagination run away with her. From her.
“Look,” she said on a sigh, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked you to leave with me. I guess the wine impaired my reason more than I’d thought, but it’s obvious you’d really prefer to be alone, so if you want to back out, it’s okay—”
“Nancy,” he said softly, and she turned, chiding herself for getting off on just the way he said her plain vanilla name. She’d left her porch light on so she wouldn’t kill herself trying to come in later; the feeble light illuminated features that, before tonight, she’d only seen radiate grace and confidence. “If I hadn’t wanted to come with you—with you—I wouldn’t have. God knows, I didn’t want to be at that party, but I don’t really want to be alone, either.” His lips tilted into a sad smile. “Done that enough this past little while to last a lifetime.”
Her heart had become stuck somewhere at the base of her neck and was now pounding uncomfortably. She shifted, looked out at the puny snowflakes twirling in his headlights, which he’d yet to turn off. “Yeah. I know how that goes.” She shuddered in the cold, swung open the door. “Well, come on, then. The inaugural meeting of the Spruce Lake Lonely Hearts Club is about to begin.” She hesitated, leaned back into the car. “Um, I have cats.”
Rod chuckled. “There’s a cure for that, you know.” She rolled her eyes. “How many are we talking about?”
“Seven.”
He just stared at her, then said, “Just don’t ask me to clean out their boxes.”
“Not a problem.”
They got out of the car, icy pellets pricking their faces as they walked up to her door. Her smooth leather soles skidded on the filmy layer of snow underfoot; Rod caught her before she fell, keeping his hand on her elbow the rest of the way. Underneath his coat, she shivered, imagining what it would be like to cuddle against that solid chest.
Naked.
She pushed the thought away, then sighed when it came right back like an eager dog with a stick in its mouth.
All these years, she’d entertained fantasies of what it would be like to have Rod Braden do more than smile politely at her, imagined being alone with him, receiving his undivided attention. Well, she didn’t have to imagine that any longer. So, um, how far did she dare push her luck?
Oh, come on. Since when did she rely on luck to accomplish anything? If you want something, you go after it. Okay, so maybe that philosophy had more than its share of holes, but it sure as hell beat waiting around for life to fall into your lap. Maybe tonight wasn’t her only shot at upping the ante with Rod Braden. But maybe it was. Why heap more regrets on the already towering pile she’d accumulated over the years?
She took a very…deep…breath.
“And another thing—” she fumbled for her key in her Judith Lieberesque purse, managed to get it in the door “—I haven’t quite decided yet whether or not to seduce you.”
Talk about your stunned silences.
“Well,” she said to the doorknob, since someone had to say something and apparently the honor had fallen to her, “I don’t hear retreating footsteps, so I guess that’s a good sign.”
What she heard was a short, startled laugh. “Are you always this forthright?”
Still staring at the doorknob, she nodded. Then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her to him, the look in his eyes…oy.
Something told her she wasn’t the only person standing here who went after what they wanted.
Chapter 2
Considering they were standing outside in the dead of a Michigan winter, his mouth should have been cold. It wasn’t. It was warm and soft and scrumptious. Crème brûlée scrumptious. The thought began to pick at Nancy’s wine-and-lust sodden brain that this was one of those kisses that could easily lead to Other Things. Okay, so she’d been the one to bring up Other Things to begin with, but still. This might turn out to be a pretty memorable New Year’s, after all.
It had been a long time since anyone had paid this much attention to her mouth, other than her dentist, and he definitely did not count. Rod’s kisses—somewhere along the way, she realized they’d shifted into plural—were as tender and magical as moonlight. And had zipped past adequate some time ago.
Nice, she thought, letting one hand stray up to that what-a-waste-on-a-man hair. It was soft. Glorious. Like the kisses, which just kept a-comin’…and then were suddenly over. Her heart knocking against her ribs, she licked her lips, expecting him to pull back. Instead, he tucked her underneath his chin, against his chest. Just…held her. Like she mattered.
She refused to faint.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she couldn’t help the laugh.
“What? That wasn’t your best effort?”
This was where he was supposed to laugh, too. He didn’t. And that brought her head up to see into his eyes. “You’re right,” he said in a voice as soft as the kiss they’d just shared. “I’m not exactly the world’s happiest human being tonight. I’m also not exactly the most principled.”
Brows went up. Brows went down. “Meaning?”
“Meaning, men like me aren’t supposed to spend all evening wondering how a woman kisses.”
Somehow, she managed to stay cool. “And this is supposed to upset me?”
That got a smile. And a whisper of a caress along her jaw. “Doesn’t a woman expect a man to be interested in her mind, not her lips?”
She backed up. An inch, maybe. “And you’re from what planet? Besides, it’s kinda hard to be interested in my mind when you haven’t yet had a chance to get to know it. My lips, on the other hand…” Nancy cocked her head, frowning. “Just how were they, anyway?”
He ran his thumb across the lower one, the black leather of his glove smooth, erotic. She quivered. “Five-star,” he said, and she grinned.
“So…does this mean—?”
His own mouth tweaked into a smile at that. “It means you have great lips, that I wanted to kiss you and I’m damn glad I did. And I’d like that cup of coffee now, if you don’t mind, before I freeze my butt off.”
She pulled away, not sure what to think. “And we’re just going to go inside my house and have coffee and act all normal after a kiss like that and I basically announced I’d like to jump your bones?”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
Shaking her head, she finally unlocked her front door. “Sounds nuts to me.” But since the alternative was sending Rod back out into the cold, wretched night, she figured she’d play the hand dealt her. At least she’d gotten a little necking out of the deal. And a hug. God, she’d forgotten how good hugs felt.
She flipped the switch by the door, illuminating the pair of hand-painted lamps on either side of the sofa. A chorus of meows greeted her as a motley group of animal-shelter refugees stalked, scampered and minced over to give her what-for for leaving them.
“If I’d realized I was having company, I’d’ve stuck name tags on ’em,” she said, checking the thermostat just as the heat clicked on, anyway. When she turned, Rod was holding Bruiser, a gray-and-black long-furred behemoth with a serious attitude problem, whose motorboat purr she could hear across the room. The cat wore a goony expression not unlike Elizabeth’s for Guy.
“Man, you work fast.” She folded her arms, stared at the animal, who was giving her this Nanny-nanny-boo-boo look. “This is surreal. Bruiser hates everybody. He even flinches whenever I try to touch him, and I saved his tush.”
The cat bumped Rod’s jaw and upped the volume on the purring. “Maybe,” Rod said, his mouth doing something wonderful and sexy and would you believe she was now envying her own cat? “Maybe he lets me hold him because I don’t come on too strong. You know…I gave him a chance to come to me?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Meaning?”
But all he’d do was grin at her. Just like the damn cat.
Reckless. That was the only word for it. It was also a word Rod never, ever applied to himself.
Until tonight.
A single glass of wine and Nancy’s perfume couldn’t possibly account for how being with this woman made him feel. Yet there it was. And here he was, having just shared a purely need-driven series of kisses the likes of which he hadn’t experienced since he and Cindy Lawrence had grappled in the back seat of her father’s Caddy when he was fifteen. Strike that. Hot though they may have been, the kisses of a pair of hormone-crazed teens had nothing on what he and Nancy had just shared. The woman just gave a whole new slant to the concept of “good things in small packages.”
He was, he realized, completely mesmerized. Fascinated. Her exuberance, her cards-on-the-table attitude had infected him, drugged him, invigorated him.
Still, thanks to Elizabeth, Rod knew enough of Nancy’s situation to realize the woman wasn’t quite as carefree as she seemed. She, too, bore the scars of a failed marriage, of a succession of relationships that never panned out. Her gregariousness could very well be a cover for vulnerability—and that meant risk.
A risk he wasn’t at all sure he dared take, was even less sure he wanted to avoid. In any case, where was the harm in sharing coffee and cat fur, perhaps easing each others’ loneliness for a couple of hours?
“Nice place,” he said, letting down the now-bored cat. He scanned the joyfully cluttered room as the pride of felines gave him the cautious once-over from their assorted perches. The air was slightly damp, heavy with steam heat, redolent of old house and coffee and her perfume. But not, he noted with profound relief, of cat box. “You decorate it yourself?”
She shucked off both coats—a startlingly seductive move—laying them carefully over a lushly purple velvet sofa in the middle of the room. The glance she tossed in his direction confirmed his suspicions: that, for all her bravado, her self-confidence had taken one too many hits this past little while. “Very funny.”
“No, really. It’s great.” And it was. Perhaps more secure than the woman herself, the room thumbed its nose at the world. It glittered and glowed and reached out and said, “Come to Mama.” He’d never even been in a place like this, let alone lived in one. His was a world in which designers ruled, paying lip service to clients who wanted to believe the big bucks they shelled out for “their” look counted for something. The result, therefore, of every place he’d ever lived was tasteful perfection, all show and no soul.
Not here. Nothing matched, everything was off-balance, yet somehow, it worked. Jewel-toned pillows and a crocheted throw fought for position on the sofa, which was flanked by a couple of upholstered chairs, sitting at odd angles atop a thick-piled Turkish rug. What looked to be someone’s turn-of-the-century black iron gate stood guard in one corner, in front of a pair of rich velvet draperies. White shelves, crowded with books in all sizes and shapes, many toppled onto their sides, as well as a herd of early-American folk-art animals, fit themselves in wherever they could find space among various little tables and side chairs, some of which were hand-painted in offbeat colors and patterns. Magazines and books lay everywhere there was a surface, many opened to whatever page she’d been on when something else caught her attention. Wedged between the bookcases and draperies was an eclectic collection of high-quality artwork—primitive landscapes next to delicate floral watercolors next to bold, contemporary abstracts. But all by itself, centered on one otherwise bare wall, was a three-foot high, extraordinarily fine, oil of a nude peering over her shoulder at the observer, one hand braced on her hip.
A nude with wild, curly hair just this side of auburn, eyes the color of rich ground coffee peering out from underneath dark, audaciously arched brows. And a smile calculated to make a man regret he was only looking at a painting.
Behind him, Nancy laughed. “Yeah, it’s me. My ex-husband did it, right after we were married.”
He turned to look at her. She stood by the doorway to the kitchen, her arms linked over her middle. She’d lost weight since she’d had the portrait done, he realized with a start, noticing that her skin was stretched tissue-thin across delicate, elegant features. Not that she looked ill, just…fragile.
Fragile was not good. Fragile brought out protective instincts he’d just as soon stayed buried. “Am I allowed to say this is very good?”
Another laugh. “His artistic abilities were never in question. Last I heard, some of his paintings were easily commanding six figures. Marriage, however…” The sentence drifted off. “Okay, coffee,” she said instead, then disappeared into the kitchen. For several seconds, while he surveyed other pieces in her collection, he heard cupboard doors being batted about, the refrigerator door opening, then shutting. One of the cats, a small calico, sidled over so she could ignore him. Nancy returned to the doorway, clutching two metallic-embossed bags in her hands. Backlight from the kitchen haloed her curls. “Regular or decaf?”
Something unfamiliar and frightening surged through him. He wanted to touch her. Kiss her again. Forget everything he’d ever learned about being a gentleman. He also wanted to hold her close, wipe away the hint of worry visible in the faint crease between her brows.
Not his place, he told himself. Not now, not ever.
He should leave. Soon.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, his desire to the back of his brain. “Regular,” he said, which got a lifted brow and an appreciative grin.
She disappeared again. This time, he followed, into a snow-white room with red-checked curtains at the windows, cobalt-blue countertops. Glass-paned cabinets revealed Blue Willow plates, a dozen all-purpose goblets, boxes of heavily sweetened cereals, crackers, cookies. He frowned. Lord—what kind of garbage was she putting in her system? She opened the freezer for a second—shaking her head, as if she’d made a mistake—and he caught a glimpse of neatly stacked microwave dinners.
With an annoyed sigh, he resumed his perusal of the kitchen, old and charming and broken-in. In spite of its flaws, something about the little house said “complete,” that the woman who lived here knew who she was, what pleased her, and anyone who didn’t like it could go jump in a lake. A challenge and a reassurance, Rod decided. And dangerous, because he felt immediately comfortable here. With her.
“Damn.”
His gaze shifted to Nancy, struggling to pry a coffee filter from the stack. He freed his hands from his pockets, held one out to her. “Here. Let me.” He half expected a feminist, “Forget it, I can do this myself” response. Instead, she practically smacked him with the package.
“Be my guest. Brain’s okay, but the coordination sucks…thanks,” she muttered when he handed her back both package and extricated filter. She flipped her hair over her shoulder; it didn’t stay. He watched the interplay of muscles underneath crossed straps as she filled the carafe with water. Thought of that painting. Told himself forty-one-year-old men didn’t get hard that easily.
A large ginger cat jumped up on the counter; she pushed it down again. Ah. Safe topic, guaranteed to keep the hormones in check. Sure, he liked cats as well as the next person, might even consider having one, in the right mood. One. Living in a zoo was something else again. “Aren’t seven cats a bit…much?”
She clicked on the coffemaker, laughed. “You’re more diplomatic than my mother was about it. But since nothing I do is right in her eyes, anyway, I don’t put a whole lotta stock in her opinion.” He heard pain in that statement, possibly unacknowledged, and felt an unexpected twinge of empathy.
