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He carefully, but quickly, removed her to the floor, then yanked the comforter and sheet back up over his bare shoulders, taking in the pristine simplicity of this room as compared with the living room. Ivory walls, nearly bare floors save for a couple of floral-patterned rugs, linen tab curtains over the wooden blinds. A couple of paintings, a hand-painted chest and a cheval mirror pretty much did it. The bed was the only really fancy thing in the room, its black wrought-iron headboard nearly matching the gate in the living room.
Memories of Nancy’s hands, clamped to that headboard, shot through him.
A shiver raced over his skin. Cripes, it was cold. And it did not escape his attention, morning-fogged though his brain might be, that the naked, sweetly scented woman with whom he’d shared this bed last night wasn’t nestled against his chest, all warm and soft. His body groused a little in regret. His brain, which was rapidly clearing, was extremely grateful.
He glanced at the clock by Nancy’s bed: 7:14. The light filtering through the open blinds was weak, pale, like someone recovering from a lengthy illness. He felt much the same way—wiped out, depleted, unsure of his footing.
Petrified. Sated, yes, but petrified.
She was something else. He blew a stiff whuh of air through his lips, remembering how a single well-placed caress had taken her over the edge before they’d even fully undressed. He’d never known a woman to be that responsive, could be that responsive. Had never known a woman’s cries of fulfillment could make his heart burst like that. The way she looked at him afterward….
“Bless you,” her smile had said.
Minutes later, she’d taken—no, welcomed—him inside her, trembling with eagerness, a fierce need to share…comfort…succor. She was an erotic combination of madonna-lover-friend-stranger who resurrected old, forgotten fantasies while forever obliterating them as well. And he’d been just as eager, just as fierce, plunging deeply, then deeper still, until she gasped again with expectant pleasure. Her fingers were soft and smooth against his face as she rose to meet him over and over and over until it was no longer the warmth of her body enveloping him, but her very soul. The explosive power of his own release shattered him, and he cried out, his eyes shut against a haze of crimson as her sweet, exquisite convulsions ferried him back to earth.
When he’d recovered enough to look at her face, she was beaming, inordinately pleased with herself.
And for him.
He hadn’t had the heart—or maybe it was the guts—to leave. Or the willpower to turn down an encore. Or three.
Now he groaned, sat up in the bed. Not that he was surprised, mind, but didn’t it figure that the woman with whom he’d just had the greatest sex in his life was the one woman he didn’t dare have it with again?
He wasn’t a complete fool. Nancy’s generosity came at a price: she fully expected to get as good as she gave. And she damn well deserved it, too. Just as he’d suspected, she withheld nothing. A fount of emotions, in all shapes, sizes and colors, she said whatever popped into her head, did whatever struck her at the moment, made love with an abandon and ingenuousness that took his breath away.
Oh, sure, she said this was just a one-time thing. But he saw that hope in her eyes. That need.
The sooner he stopped this, the better. This—she—would never do. Not even for a fling, contrary to his body’s imploring. The risk was far too great.
Nancy Shapiro represented everything he’d learned was foolhardy from the time he was a little boy. In a way, he almost envied her, but he could never be like her, letting his emotions run riot like that. Passion was an excess, a human weakness he had to strictly control. Love inevitably, inexorably, led to pain. And anger—the flip side of love—only led to acts or words almost invariably regretted, but rarely forgiven.
There was little to be gained by giving passion its head. Hadn’t he been able to hold on to his sanity through the divorce only by remaining calm and rational, by not reacting to Claire’s accusations and histrionic outbursts in his lawyer’s office? Had he opened the Pandora’s box of resentment and betrayal and pain that tried a hundred, a thousand, times to leech past his defenses, to remind him of things best forgotten, the already tense proceedings could have easily degenerated into a dogfight. For his children’s sake, he had refused to let that happen. It simply wouldn’t have been right.
So maybe his life wasn’t perfect. But whose was? Keeping things on an even keel was far preferable to a roller-coaster ride of emotional mayhem…and that’s what a relationship with Nancy Shapiro would be. He’d known it from the beginning, and last night had only reinforced his conviction.
Keeping her in his life would be like letting someone store a ticking bomb in his garage. Even though his last earthly thought would probably be of last night, never were two people less suited for each other.
The little calico had circumnavigated the bed, jumped back up on Nancy’s side, and was making sure strides back in Rod’s direction. Whoever coined the term “pussyfooting” had clearly not met this cat. Before she could stake her claim, however, Rod untangled himself from the creamy sheets and stood, immediately shivering in the still chilly room.
He made a quick trip into the adjoining bathroom, then dressed, furtively, aware of Nancy’s voice drifting in from another part of the house.
In a half hour, he told himself, it would be all over. But right now, he felt as if someone had taken a pumpkin scraper to his insides. He stepped from the room, dislodging Bruiser from the nest he’d made in the lining of his jacket before slipping it on, then followed the sound of Nancy’s voice to the kitchen.
She was on the phone, her back to him, the extra-long cord stretched to the max across the room. A Dr. Seuss nightmare of a cat with a mane and extravagant leggings, but otherwise shorn, sat on the counter, batting at the coiled cord, while two others were exchanging mild words over whose turn it was at the food dish.
Under other circumstances, he would have laughed. The gloriously sexy creature of a few hours ago now looked like a Muppet. Not only was she dressed in a scruffy, furry robe in an amazing shade of lurid pink, her feet encased in a pair of heavy white socks, but she’d done nothing with her hair, which stood out from her head like Medusa’s snakes. The fact that Rod found her disarray arousing only reinforced the treacherousness of the situation. He stood at the door, mildly aware he was eavesdropping.
“Ma… Ma!” One hand came down onto the counter, sending at least two cats fleeing for their lives. “That’s not true, and you know it!”
Uh-oh.
“I was going to call you, but you always beat me to it.” Normally, her New Jersey twang was soft-edged enough not to really notice it. This morning, however, it was out in full force. Frowning, she reached up to her windowsill, plucking off a dead leaf from an ivy plant. “I know it was New Year’s Eve. Which is why I wasn’t home? What? You expect me to call you from my cell phone in the middle of a party. Oh, please don’t start in again about this….”
Her head dropped back; he saw her take a deep breath, then sag against the counter. “How many times we gonna go over the same ground? I moved here totally of my own free will.” She covered her mouth with her hand, then let it drop. “What’s in Jersey for me, Ma?… Well, I’m sorry, but I think I’m a little old to be living with my parents—”
Rod sneezed—there was enough cat fur floating in the air to make coats for a small country—and Nancy spun around. The frown on her face vanished, replaced by that incandescent smile.
Damn.
“Okay, okay…” She raised her hand, her mouth open, trying to get a word in edgewise. “Ma—I gotta go… Okay, okay, I promise, I’ll call you later… No, I don’t know when… No one’s asking you to stay by the phone, Ma. Look, I really have to go…yes, I promise… Yeah, Ma. I love you and Daddy, too.”
She hung up the wall phone, but didn’t let go right away. Her forehead braced on her arm, she seemed to be working on getting her respiration back to normal. Funny. Rod and his father had never had fights. Not like that.
“I take it you and your mother aren’t on the best of terms?”
Her laugh into her sleeve was harsh. “Let’s just say her concept of maternal devotion includes the terms manipulative and suffocating.” She turned to Rod. “My ex may have had little to recommend him, but he at least got me out of Jersey and away from Belle the Wonder Maven.”
She’d started to smile again, but apparently something in his expression—stark terror, perhaps—cut it off at the pass. Her arms tucked themselves against her ribs as she jerked back to look out the window, began the nervous chatter of the night before. “I told you the snow wouldn’t amount to anything. I don’t think we even got an inch of fresh last night—”
“Nancy.”
She bent her head slightly, the wild curls slipping forward as if to offer her comfort. “Last night was really good,” she said, one hand knotting, then unknotting, on the counter. “Actually, last night was indescribable. And to think I’d been afraid—” She cut herself off, faced him again. A shaky smile warmed her lips even as confusion simmered in her eyes. “Let’s not screw it up by talking, okay?” She pushed herself away from the counter, walked over to the refrigerator. “I have eggs, at least,” she said, opening the door. “How do you like them? Or there’s frozen waffles, I think.” A cloud of frost tumbled from the freezer when she opened it and started poking among all those green boxes.
Now Rod knew why one-night stands weren’t his thing. Torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to bolt, he said, “I’m not hungry. I’m also not leaving this house until you hear what I have to say.”
The door slowly swung closed. Her fingers still clamped around the handle, she said, “Isn’t this backward? I mean, isn’t it usually the woman who wants to talk?”
“Isn’t it a little late for us to be thinking in terms of convention?”
She huffed a sigh. “Good point.” Then turned. “So talk already.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, looked out the window for a second, then back at her, avoiding those eyes, already littered with fragments of hope. “Okay, look—originality’s not my strong suit, especially before 8:00 a.m. So—cliché number twenty-seven. Last night was very special.” He stepped close enough to brush a corkscrew curl away from her face; it sproinged right back. “Like you.”
The ginger tabby jumped up on the counter, brr-upping at her. She picked it up, cuddling it against her chest. “But?”
“But…nothing’s changed. This isn’t going to develop into a relationship.”
Her calmness scared him, because it seemed so against her nature. She rubbed the side of her nose, not looking at him, then retucked her arm against her middle.
“It’s not that I didn’t know this, going in,” she said, almost to herself. “Even had a list of reasons why you and I would never work.” Now she tilted her head. “Unfortunately, three-quarters of those reasons no longer seem to make sense this morning. So, just because that’s the kind of gal I am, I have to ask, why?”
He wished he was dead. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But you can’t change the rules after you’ve played the game.” Man. Talk about sounding lame. “You even said as much, that you just wanted the one night.”
“And you said you didn’t do casual sex.”
“I don’t. And it wasn’t.” Her brows rose. “Just because it was an isolated incident doesn’t mean I considered it casual.”
“I see. So, I’ll ask again, since you still haven’t answered the question—why, exactly, is this a one-time thing? I mean, we’re both single, and I assume you found me at least attractive enough to do it with once. No, wait—it was four times, wasn’t it?”
“Nancy, for God’s sake, don’t do this to yourself. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Funny. I could have sworn I was in the bed, too.”
He plowed one hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration he generally never allowed himself. By the time he was six, his grandparents had drummed into his head that people of their station were expected to do the right thing, to take the high road. And, thus far, despite a few personal casualties along the way, he’d succeeded in meeting those standards. Now, however, he found himself in the unenviable position of realizing that no matter what decision he made, it wasn’t going to be right. That someone was going to be hurt. The stunner, though, was that he might be the someone, as well as Nancy.
But he did owe her the truth. “Nancy, listen to me. Please. I just can’t get involved with anyone. I’ve been married twice, and both times I failed miserably.”
“You failed?”
He hadn’t expected the oblique defense. “My ex-wives would say so, yes.”
Nancy snorted, then clutched the cat more tightly, burying her face in its fur. After a moment, she said, “Tell me something. And I’m only asking for a simple yes or no answer, not the gory details—you ever have a night like we just had with either of your wives? Or anyone, for that matter?”
She’d backed him into a corner. He pushed his way out again, convinced this was one time telling the truth would serve no purpose.
“Last night was spectacular, Nancy. But not unique.”
He’d hit home, watched what he knew was a fragile ego shatter. “I see. Well…guess that puts me in my place.”
“Honey—” desperate, now “—I’d think you’d be the last person to consider basing a relationship on sex.”
“And if that’s all that was,” she retorted, “we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Or I wouldn’t be, at least. I’ve had sex, Rod. Maybe not as much as some women my age, but enough to know that what we had last night went so far beyond the physical that I can’t even remember exactly what happened.”
To hear his thoughts echoed nearly did him in. But to admit he felt the same way would only undermine his resolve to save her from far worse pain down the road. “Then you were the only one.” He crossed his arms, cringing at the hurt in those deep, dark eyes. But he dug himself in deeper, hoping like hell he’d come out on the other side in more or less one piece. “I remember every detail, plain as day. And there were some great details, granted. But what you’re talking about, if I understand you, is not something I’ll ever experience.”
Not again in this lifetime, at least.
“And how do you know that? You think, because you’ve never felt that way—and, by the way, neither had I before last night—you never will? Or can? So we’re not on the same rung of the ladder, yet. That’s not unusual, you know. I mean, given time—”
“Nancy! I can’t love you.” He’d practically bellowed the words, then immediately pulled back, reclaimed control. “Or anyone. I don’t want to get married again, don’t want more children—”
“Whoa, wait a minute—who’s talking about having children?”
“No one has to, honey. I saw the look on your face when you held Guy’s little boy on your lap, the way you baby these damn cats—”
“Leave the cats out of this.”
“Tell me you don’t want babies of your own, Nancy.”
He could see the tremors racking her from where he stood. After a long moment, she looked away.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Honey, I’ve got my hands full with the two kids I’ve got. And I’m past forty. The last thing I want is to start all over again. I simply can’t give you what you want. And deserve.”
“Oh? And what is that?”
By now, a veritable ravine had worked its way between her brows. He tried to take her hand; she snatched it away. “You need to be worshipped,” he said gently. “To be the center of some guy’s universe, and a mommy to an adoring batch of children.” He pressed one hand to his chest. “You’ve glommed on to the wrong guy, sweetheart. I’m incredibly attracted to you, yes. And, yes, it appears we’re sexually compatible. But I can’t love you. Cliché number thirty-two—you’re better off without me.”
Nancy turned her gaze to the window, her fingers continually stroking the cat’s fur. For several seconds, she didn’t speak. “Well,” she let out at last, “if you get to be honest, so do I.” She faced him, a damn-the-torpedoes look in her eyes. “I’ve fantasized about having you in my bed for a long, long time, Rod Braden. Not that I ever thought it would happen. But whaddya know? It did.” Her lips curved in a little smile. “And boy, you really know how to make those fantasies seem pale by comparison.”
She dropped the cat, faced him, her arms folded across her chest. “Okay, so I’m ticked you’re being so…whatever it is you’re being. But you know what? One night was more than I had two nights ago, more than I ever thought I’d have. It was a whole lot of fun, and for sure I wouldn’t mind a repeat performance sometime before I die. But since you just pulled the plug, I guess that’s that. However, I have not ‘glommed’ on to you. Once you walk out that door, that’s it. I won’t call you, or bug you or insinuate myself into your life. I’d’ve been more than happy to give this thing its head, see where it went…” She shrugged again. “But I’m not Lady Liberty. I don’t do torches. You’re right—if you can’t see and appreciate what we had, then I am better off without you.”
Surely there was something else to say, another cliché that would magically salve the wounds he’d just inflicted. Her eyes told him otherwise, however. Just as they told him he needed to get his sorry hide out of there, and fast.
With a nod, he left the kitchen, disentangling his coat from hers from where she’d left them on the sofa, before letting himself out into the bitterly cold morning.
Rod told himself he’d taken three hours out of his life to keep this doctor’s appointment more from his long-standing friendship with Arlen James, who’d been a family friend for as long as Rod could remember, than because of any serious concerns about his health. After all, he ate well, exercised, had never smoked, and hadn’t even consumed any alcohol since that glass of wine at the Sanfords’ party more than a week ago. Discipline and moderation had always been his by-words. Besides, losing control was not his idea of fun.
Neither was having a wretched blood pressure cuff cut off his circulation. At least this time Arlen’s grunt wasn’t accompanied by a pair of dipped, wiry gray brows. Not quite as dipped, anyway. “Good,” the doctor said with a nod, wratching open the cuff. “It’s down. Country air must be doing you some good.”
“Well, that should make you happy.” With a halfhearted smile, Rod rolled down his sleeve. “It’s been a calm week or so.” Notwithstanding his inability to eradicate Nancy’s face from his thoughts, the feel of her against his skin, the scent of her, still in his nostrils. “Of course, there’s no guarantee it’ll stay that way.” He reinserted the cuff link in place, snapped it locked. “I’ve got the kids every weekend this month.”
Arlen hitched his trousers up at the knees and dropped into the chair behind the metal desk in the examining room. The swivel chair creaked as he scooted it closer to the desk, the sound abnormally loud in the artificial silence made possible by triple-glazing and an impressive address. “Been sleeping well?”
Rod hesitated just long enough to make the doctor glance up at him. “Well enough.”
“Work going okay?”
He shrugged. “Keeps me off the streets.”
Arlen stared at him for a moment, adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses, then abruptly rose. White coat flapping around his long thighs, he gestured toward the door leading out to his office. “Come out here. I want to talk to you.”
“Actually, I’ve got an appointment in forty-five minutes—”
A smile. “This won’t take long.”
Rod’s stomach clenched unpleasantly as he slipped his jacket back on, tweaked each cuff. “Sounds menacing,” he said, trying for upbeat.
Arlen paused at the door, then chuckled, carving a pair of gullies on either side of his mouth. “Oh, hell, Rod, I’m sorry. No dire news, nothing like that,” he threw over his shoulder as he strode out of the room, clearly expecting Rod to follow. “Sit.” He nodded at the mushroom-colored upholstered armchair that sat in front of an ornate mahogany desk, settling his lanky frame into the black leather chair behind it.
Rod sat, crossing his ankle at his knee, cautiously regarding the tanned, white-haired man in front of him, trying to calculate his age these days. He had to be easily seventy-five, yet looked no more than sixty. Arlen’s ties to Rod’s family went back further than Rod’s memory, that was for sure. And after his grandparents’ deaths, he remembered many times when Arlen and Molly James’s presence in his life had been the only thing that seemed to make sense in a world that by rights should have been downright idyllic. After Rod’s parents moved to Bloomfield Hills when he was ten, however, Rod had begun to sense an uneasiness between Arlen and his father he didn’t understand for some time, about things they hadn’t discussed for nearly twenty years, by mutual consent. Things that were behind him now. And he had no desire to resurrect ghosts.
The uneasiness humming in his veins at the moment, however, made him wonder if Arlen wasn’t about to. “Why do I feel like a kid who’s been called into the principal’s office?”
Arlen’s thin, sharply defined lips pulled up into a placating smile as he leaned forward, lacing together the consummate doctor’s hands. “I don’t know if this makes me old-fashioned or cutting-edge, but I’m not the kind of physician who treats the symptoms without addressing the cause. Yes, your blood pressure’s down, but not where it should be for a man in your condition.” He took a deep breath. “You’re stressed, Rod. And no, I don’t mean by the divorce, or the kids, or the new business, though they haven’t helped. This has been building up for years.”
And there they were. The ghosts. Some of them, at least. Well, two didn’t necessarily have to play this game.
His hands tented in front of him, Rod tapped one index finger on his lips, trying not to feel like a trapped animal. “Meaning?” he asked quietly.
“Meaning…I’ve been keeping track of your life since you were, what? Five or six, something like that. And I’d hoped, for your sake, after you got out of Claire’s clutches—well, I’ve never made it a secret what I think of her, although you got two great kids out of the deal—you’d finally get your head on straight. Work through some things. Apparently, I was wrong.”
Rod lowered his hands to his lap. Remained silent. The last thing he needed was a lecture, but Arlen was one of the few people in the world to whom he’d extend that privilege.
“I’d hoped,” Arlen continued, “that at least, you’d learn your lesson with Claire, make a better choice the second time. Instead, I’m wondering why you married Myrna to begin with.”
Admitting he’d often wondered the same thing would probably serve no useful purpose. Myrna had been perfect, on the surface—beautiful, monied, even-keeled, an ideal way to keep predators at bay without putting himself on the line. “I thought it would work,” was all he said. “But she…couldn’t deal with the kids, which I should have realized.”
The doctor made a move that was half nod, half shrug, then scratched behind one ear. “Be that as it may. But then there’s your work. Here I think you’ve taken some steps to get out of the rat race, but far as I can tell, all you’ve done is switch mazes. Now why is that, Rod?” Heavy brows formed a V behind his glasses. “Wasn’t it just a year ago you sat at my table and admitted how bored you’d grown with Star, how you were actually relieved when they decided to—what’s that term they used? Ah, yes—make your position redundant. Even I know you don’t need the money. If you still wanted to work, you could have done anything at all. Yet here you are, doing virtually the same thing you’ve been doing for fifteen years. Maybe I’m missing something here, but that sure as hell makes no sense to me.”
