скачать книгу бесплатно
“I thought I was so in control, touching you, turning us both on, but you were the one in control, weren’t you? You were the one with the secret.”
“No,” she whispered, but she wasn’t telling him she hadn’t had a secret, she was trying to stop the flood of memory that was as warm and thick as desire.
“When I got up to touch your panties, you weren’t wearing any.”
Oh, how she remembered. The feel of the air wafting up her skirt, the wanton knowledge that she’d stood by while he’d finalized paperwork at a car dealership, while they’d driven public highways, and all the time, underneath her cotton sundress, she’d been bare-assed.
“We were in the backseat so fast I ended up with bruised elbows and knees. We never did take off our clothes, did we? I ended up flipping that skirt up, pulling down the top of your dress to reach your breasts. You were always so sensitive there.” He laughed softly. “We were like a pair of kids going at it.” He sighed, obviously realizing that this little trip down memory lane wasn’t working. Her thighs didn’t ease open, though he couldn’t possibly know what torture it was to hold them closed against him. “God, I loved you.”
“But not enough,” she said, her voice so soft she wasn’t sure if he’d heard her.
“Do you think we rushed into marriage too fast?”
She turned her head, wondering where he was going with this train of thought. “We knew each other a year. I guess I wish we’d waited. Long enough for me to realize you weren’t the kind of guy to stick with one woman.”
He pulled his hand back into his own lap and she fought the urge to grab it and put it where she needed, so urgently, to be touched.
“I wish I’d waited long enough to get a handle on those demons you carry around with you.”
“What demons?” she snapped. How like a man to cheat on her and then try and pretend she was the one with the problem.
“The demons that stopped you being able to trust.”
She was not going to have this conversation again. She’d moved on. “If I’m so full of demons, what are you doing still trying to get into my pants?”
A sigh of pure frustration rolled through him. “Hell if I know.”
6 (#ucb064ee0-dac0-5837-aba9-6a9e4082d1b3)
THE READING TERMINAL MARKET was crazy. Naturally. It was a Sunday afternoon and every yuppie with a craving for organic arugula or some fresh monkfish had made tracks down here. Karen had a love/hate relationship with the market. While she loved this place simply for the fun of people-watching, she also suffered as only a woman who loves food and tries to live on fifteen hundred calories a day can suffer.
Since she’d barely slept thanks to Dex and his antics in her car last night, she felt weaker than usual. The worst part had been driving him to his hotel, with all the steamy atmosphere between them churning around with a lot of emotions. Anger, frustration, and a bitter kind of longing that hurt more than all the other feelings put together. How could she still want the man so much?
Dex was her ex. He had to remain that way if she had any chance of hanging on to her hard-won self-esteem.
She’d half thought he’d invite her up to his room and was ready to let him have it when he did. Somehow, the fact that he didn’t say any more than, “Thanks for the ride. Night,” was an added insult. He didn’t even ask her up to his room so she could annihilate the guy with a few well-chosen words that she’d been practicing for blocks.
How unfair was that?
The bakery smells were so good. There were blocks of cheese bigger than house steps and she wanted to buy one and gobble every succulent morsel. She loved cheese, every fat-saturated ounce. Hard cheese, soft cheese, runny cheese, blue cheese. Oh, stop it. She averted her eyes. She really shouldn’t be here.
But Ron had suggested the locale for their first coffee date and, under instruction from Dee, she’d agreed without quibbling. Now she was here she wished she’d quibbled big-time. She wanted to turn tail and head home. Apart from being exhausted, cranky and cheese-obsessed, she’d probably dressed all wrong for a first date with a stranger. Her jeans were casual, but she’d pushed her feet into high heels instead of giving them a well-deserved Sunday rest, and she was worried that the green sweater was too low-necked. The last thing she wanted to do was stick her boobs in some poor man’s face, so she’d added a scarf at the last moment, and now wished she could go home and start over.
Dee had made her promise to let her hair down, which she’d first assumed was some kind of veiled allusion to being open for sex with a stranger until Dee had clarified that she actually meant she should leave her hair unpinned and unconfined. “You have such great hair, that gorgeous red color and the natural curls.” And since Dee seemed to know what she was doing in the online dating world, Karen had been persuaded.
Now she suddenly felt like a country-and-western singer with too much of everything. Big hair, big heels, big breasts, big butt.
She was a few minutes early, because it was her way, and stopped to stare unseeing at a booth selling nothing but spices. She never should have agreed to this date with Ron the CPA.
Somehow, this was all Dexter’s fault. If he hadn’t got her so riled up she never would have agreed to a date with some guy she met over the Internet.
However, she realized that whatever her reasons for being here, she wasn’t about to stand this man up. It wasn’t his fault she was an idiot. So, they’d have coffee. An hour of her life would be wasted, and then she could get back to attempting to make something of the years left to her.
On that optimistic thought, she made her way to the busy coffee shop and immediately spotted Ron, who was standing near the entrance, obviously as punctual as she was.
He looked exactly like his photo. Exactly like a CPA. And suddenly she relaxed. He was reassuringly unassuming, no other women were covertly studying him or overtly drooling. He was the kind of man who wouldn’t forever be tempted to stray, which had to be a good thing.
She forced a smile to her face and walked up to him. “Hello, you must be Ron. I’m Karen.”
They shook hands. He seemed pleased by her punctuality, insisted on buying her a coffee and they settled at a table.
For a moment, neither spoke. Finally he said, “You’re very punctual. It’s a quality I admire.”
Oh, how old-fashioned he sounded. What was she even doing here? Her mind flashed back to the night before, when she’d been humiliatingly close to parting her thighs and doing her ex-husband in the parking lot. Something had to change, and fast. She smiled at him. “I feel the same way.”
Now that she looked at him, she saw that behind his glasses he had warm gray eyes. He was fairly forgettable until you took note of those eyes. He was dressed neatly, in jeans that bore such sharp creases she suspected he ironed them, a polo shirt he’d probably bought at Costco or Sam’s Club and a well-worn leather jacket.
Another pause ensued, while they both took refuge in sipping coffee, and finally she blurted, “I have no idea how to do this. I’m so sorry, it’s my first time.” She sighed, sensing the genuine niceness of this man, and opened up even more. “In fact, it’s been a long time since I had any kind of a date. I’m so out of practice I have no idea where to begin.”
It was as though her confession took all the awkwardness out of their date. Ron nodded with sweet understanding. “It sucks. Really.”
She was surprised into a spurt of laughter by his sad admission.
Then realizing how that must sound, he added, “I don’t mean meeting you, but online dating is a new skill you have to learn.” He shrugged. “I’ve been doing this for a few months now and I find the hardest part is that people often, when they write their profiles, put a description of what they wish they were like rather than something that’s actually true.”
She thought of the way she’d fudged her height, claiming to be five-four, and tried very hard not to blush.
“The worst thing for me was the bad spelling and grammar. I don’t think I’m too fussy, but if a man can’t spell relationship, I really don’t think I want to have one with him.”
“True. For me the biggest turnoff is women who are so obviously looking for the father of their future children that they all but ask you for a sperm count.”
Once again she laughed, sensing that maybe he wasn’t quite as dull as he appeared. “I’ve tried very hard to be honest,” he said.
“You told me all about your work,” she reminded him, “but very little about yourself.”
“There’s not much to tell. I’m thirty-seven. Single, I’m a CPA.”
“Whoa,” she said. “We’re getting back to your résumé again.”
“Sorry. I’m not one to wear my heart on my sleeve.”
“Whereabouts do you live?” she asked, seeking for some topic that they could talk about.
“I’m within walking distance of Independence Hall,” he said and she wondered if he was being deliberately vague in case she turned out to be a stalker or crazy person.
“Wow. In Society Hill? That’s a nice area.”
He paused for a second, then said, “I inherited the house from my mother. It’s a Federal-style town house. She recently passed.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said with ready sympathy. She couldn’t imagine life without her mother, who was both nosy and annoying and the person who loved Karen most in all the world.
“Cancer,” he said. “It was very hard.”
She heard the almost hidden quiver in his voice and impulsively reached over to lay a hand on his. Because she didn’t know what to say, she said nothing, merely offered her silent support.
After a second, he said, “My only regret is that she didn’t get to see me settled, with grandchildren. It was her dearest wish.”
“I’m sure she was very proud of you.” She searched for something else to say. “Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No, I’m an only child.” And she received the impression that he’d been his mother’s pride and joy. She didn’t ask, but she suspected he’d never left home, had nursed his mother through her final illness and now, lost and alone, was trying to find a substitute.
“How about you?” he asked, obviously determined to steer clear of painful subjects.
“I’m divorced.” She didn’t think he wanted to hear the ugly details. Well, who would? So she merely said, “I’ve been single for almost five years now. I run my own wedding planning business.”
He began asking her precise and intelligent questions about her business and she felt that it was a relief to both of them to discuss something as impersonal as business.
At the end of an hour, she knew two things. One, Ron was a genuinely nice man, she suspected he was an excellent accountant, and two, she felt not the tiniest spark of attraction.
They exchanged business cards and agreed to meet for lunch one day soon. She had no idea whether either of them would follow up, but she was toying with the idea of hiring him for her business.
They shook hands at the end of their coffee date and he headed one way while she turned in the opposite direction.
She was trying to decide whether the coffee date had been a success or a disaster, when a voice hailed her, “Karen.”
She glanced up to see Chelsea standing in front of her, a canvas bag of fresh food in her arms. Beside her was her fiancé, David, loaded down with two more bags. She was struck with how good those two looked together, two tall, gorgeous people who were so clearly meant for each other you could feel their bond.
After the greetings were over, Chelsea turned to her lover and said, “David, do you see that fish market way over there?”
He glanced at his woman with slightly raised brows. “You mean the one with the long lineup?”
“That’s the one. Can you go buy six spot prawns and a pound of fresh crabmeat?”
He glanced from one woman to the other. “You wouldn’t be trying to get rid of me, so you can do the girlfriend gossip thing, would you?”
Chelsea grinned at him. “Do you want what I can whip up with six spot prawns and a pound of crabmeat or don’t you?”
With a good-natured shrug, he said, “Goodbye, Karen.” And wandered off.
“That was rude. We’ll see each other at work tomorrow.”
“I can’t wait until tomorrow. Believe me, he’ll end up happy when his dinner is served. And I have to hear about your date.”
She made a wry face. “He was really nice. A truly nice man.”
“That sounds very unpromising.”
“It’s not his fault. I wouldn’t even be doing this if it wasn’t for Dee, my darling assistant who seems to think I’m in desperate need of a man.”
“She’s young, what does she know?”
Karen snorted. “She thinks she knows more than I do. Know what I found on my desk Friday morning?”
“What?”
“A box of condoms and a note from Dee reminding me to always play it safe.”
Chelsea had the kind of full-bodied laugh that made strangers stop and grin as though just being around her made them part of the fun. “What did you do with them?”
“I put them in my desk drawer. I have everything in there from hemorrhoid cream, which is good for minimizing puffy eyes on brides and their mothers before a photo shoot, to extra nylons, shoelaces, pins, tape, flower wire, film, batteries, hair spray, you name it.”
“And now you’ve got condoms.” She leaned closer so none of the fresh fruit and veggie shoppers would overhear her. “Maybe the CPA will get to sharpen his pencil after all.”
She snorted with her own, hardly dainty laughter. “Stop it. I’m thinking of hiring him to do my books. We talked a lot about my business, it was an easy subject for both of us and he asked intelligent questions.”
“Oh, poor guy. So the date was a disaster.”
She wondered what Chelsea was planning to do with that dark green spiky stuff sticking out of her bag and decided she didn’t want to know. “No, I wouldn’t say he was a disaster, just there was no big spark, you know?”
“Oh, yeah. I know. But maybe he’s worth giving another chance, seeing as sometimes people we spark off aren’t always good for us.”
“I so agree.”
Her friend drilled her with her gaze. “Speaking of bad news and sparks, how’s Dex the Ex?”
7 (#ucb064ee0-dac0-5837-aba9-6a9e4082d1b3)
DEXTER WAS A SUCKER for punishment. He knew it, could curse himself as much as he liked, but all the cursing didn’t stop him from pulling up in front of Karen’s office for the latest wedding planning meeting. He’d had to cut short an earlier meeting with the developers of the mixed use complex he was designing in order to be here. He’d been far more delighted to bag this project than he should have been and he suspected his level of satisfaction was related to the fact that he’d be spending a lot of time in Philadelphia for the next few months.
In missile range of the redheaded termagant he’d so foolishly married.
It wasn’t like his buddy Andrew and Sophie couldn’t have a perfectly good wedding without him playing assistant wedding planner.
And yet, here he was.
He pulled in to park in the office lot and there was Karen’s car. A surprising shot of lust pummeled him as he recalled their all-too-short time together Saturday night when her mouth had told him no even as her body shouted yes.
What was he going to do about this very inconvenient thing he still had for his ex-wife?
Until he figured that out, he supposed he was going to play assistant wedding planner.
He was a few minutes early and it didn’t look as if Sophie was here yet, but they’d booked the last possible appointment so they could both get in a day’s work. Probably she’d be here any minute.
Loosening his tie, he went into the office anyway. He glanced around but the cute British girl wasn’t at her station or anywhere in the front area of If You Can Dream It. He walked toward Karen’s office and heard her voice. He was conscious of the familiarity of that voice, the slight breathlessness that he doubted she was even aware of. His day had been successful, the client had approved the more expensive option, the one Dexter had hoped they’d go with since it was both greener and preserved the architectural integrity of the building.
There was a time he’d have rushed to tell her the good news and they’d have celebrated. Now they were all but strangers to each other. And yet he knew every timbre of her voice as well as he knew every inch of her body. It was crazy.
When he got to her doorway he paused there, enjoying the view. She was talking on the phone, her bare feet up on the desktop, a sight he suspected not very many clients were privileged to see. Her feet were small, dainty, the toes painted bright pink. Her floral skirt had ridden up revealing a shapely thigh.
