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“Need any help?” she asked, her voice actually civil.
He nodded toward her attire. “You’re not exactly dressed to be unloading boxes.”
She straightened her collar, and again, he was assaulted by her delicate scent. “If you can wait until this afternoon, I can give you a hand with that. I’m only working a half day today.”
He shook his head. “That’s okay. Most of it’s probably too heavy for you.”
She frowned at him. “Oh, so now I’m not only stupid, but I’m weak, too—is that it?”
He closed his eyes and sighed heavily, and wondered if there would ever be a time when the two of them could converse without every word being misconstrued as an insult. “No,” he told her. “That wasn’t what I meant at all. These boxes are loaded with books and other instruments that are bulky and heavy. Too heavy for you.” As an afterthought, he added, “Thanks anyway.”
As if she needed to prove something to him, however, she pushed past him and reached for one of the boxes nearest the door. He started to reach for it, too, but something in her posture warned him off. Rosemary hefted the carton into her hands, staggered some under its weight, then moved awkwardly toward the grass.
As she bent to place it on the ground, however, she began to teeter forward. And Willis, recognizing the box as the one holding a number of glass lenses that were irreplaceable—at least in Endicott—quickly moved to her side to take it from her. She glared at him when he did, but he set it effortlessly on the ground.
“It’s very expensive, very specialized, very scientific equipment,” he told her.
Her eyes widened in obviously feigned admiration. “Ooo, very scientific, huh? Like what? Like Magic Rocks and Sea Monkeys and stuff?”
He ignored the question. “It’s equipment I wouldn’t be able to replace with a simple trip down to Buck’s hardware store.”
“Fine,” she bit out. “Forget I offered. Jeez, Willis, I was just trying to be nice. But don’t worry—I won’t be stupid enough to do that again.”
She started to stalk off, and impulsively, he followed her, reaching out to snag her wrist with loosely curled fingers before he even realized what he was doing. Rosemary spun around with the force of a cyclone and jerked her hand back, cradling it in her other as if she had been burned. The look in her eyes when she met his gaze very nearly overwhelmed him, so brimming with anger and sadness was it, that Willis took a step backward in defense.
“Don’t you ever do that again,” she told him, backing away from him as she did.
“What?” he asked, genuinely confused. “All I did was take your hand.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“But—”
“Just stay away from me, Willis,” she said, backing up a few more steps.
“What, you can’t even stand my touch?” he snarled. He shook his head in confusion, his own anger swelling to life now. “Hey, you were the one who came up to me, not the other way around,” he reminded her.
“Yeah, and it was a pretty dumb thing to do, too.” She took another step backward, her eyes clouding even more.
“Rosemary...” he began, taking an experimental step forward.
Why he bothered he couldn’t imagine. He’d never made an effort to smooth out the feathers he ruffled on her before. But there was something in her eyes now that hadn’t been there fifteen years ago when he’d challenged her. Back in high school, Rosemary had always fought him with every ounce of indignation she possessed. Now, however, it was almost as if she were giving up when the battle hadn’t even begun.
And before he could say whatever it was he had intended to tell her—which, frankly, he couldn’t remember now—she turned her back on him and began stalking once more toward her garage.
“I have to go to work,” she announced stiffly.
As he stood there watching her mutely, she unfolded the doors on the aged garage and, in no time at all, was backing out of the driveway in a shiny red convertible that Willis found in no way surprising. That was Rosemary. All flash, no substance. Great body, but no head at all. Impulsive, spontaneous, breezy, fun-loving. Everything he wasn’t. Everything he tried to avoid.
Yet everything he’d always ended up looking for in another woman, and had never been able to find.
Dammit.
Rosemary March had ruined him for other women, and he hadn’t even had the opportunity to experience her. In spite of the fact that she was the last kind of female he should be attracted to, she’d been the first one he’d had a crush on, the first one he’d lusted after, however stupid it had been for him to want her.
And somehow, that had defined his taste in women for the rest of his life. Although he’d tried to establish relationships with good, solid, intelligent women—attractive women at that, and women who appreciated what he had to offer intellectually, women who likewise challenged his own IQ—he suddenly realized that he was doomed to want spirit and fluff, instead. Like Rosemary March.
As he watched the little red sports car with the gorgeous brunette at the wheel disappear around the corner with far more speed than was prudent, Willis realized something else, too. It wasn’t that he was destined to spend his life wanting women like Rosemary March. No, he was condemned to spend his life wanting her. Specifically. Ironically. Erotically. Eternally.
Dammit.
A woman who had nothing to offer him beyond the physical, who would challenge him in none of the intellectual ways he wanted and needed to be challenged. A woman he could certainly be satisfied with sexually, but who would do nothing to fulfill his other, metaphysical, needs. A woman who would make his daily life hell because he would constantly be tied in knots wanting more than she could ever hope to give him.
A woman who would never even like him, let alone love him, he reminded himself. So what was he getting all worked up about anyway? It wasn’t like Rosemary would ever return any overture he might make. Thanks to some of the things he’d said and done to her fifteen years ago, she would despise him for the rest of her life. Worrying about a future with her was pointless, because he didn’t have a hope in hell of having a future with her. Not that he truly wanted one anyway.
He expelled a restless breath and scrubbed a hand viciously through his hair, then turned back to the task at hand. He had a lot of unloading to do, he reminded himself, and a lot of unpacking, too. And not just of the material things he’d brought with him on this particular journey, either. Willis was carrying around a lot more baggage than he’d realized, and he’d brought it all back home to Endicott. Yeah, he had a lot of sorting and unpacking to do while he was in town. And a good bit of it was in no way scientific.
For an intelligent man, he thought to himself, he sure did do some stupid things.
Rosemary pulled into her driveway after work and sat in her car with the motor off, staring at her front door. She was actually dreading to enter the house she’d loved all her life, fearful of what she would find inside. Visions of the new-and-improved Willis had assailed her all day while she was at work, making her lose her place and forget what she was doing. She’d done nothing but make mistakes—dumb mistakes—the whole time she was working. And she’d felt like an idiot as a result.
Because all she’d been able to do, instead, was daydream about Willis. Willis draped over her sofa with the Sunday sports page. Willis sharing a cup of coffee with her in the morning before she left for work. Willis mowing the grass in the backyard. Or changing a spark plug on her car. Or lifting a baby high above his head with a laugh. Or leaving the bathroom amid a puff of steam, wearing nothing but a loose towel wrapped around his waist.
She squeezed her eyes shut as that last scene unfolded in her brain. Boy, was she desperate. The first guy that wandered into her house, she had him nailed down for husband-and-father material.
Rosemary would have been lying if she said she didn’t want to settle down with the right man. But she just hadn’t met the right man. Most of the boys she’d gone to high school with had left town to go to college, and they’d either stayed gone or come back with wives or fiancées. And the few single newcomers who had managed to wander into Endicott just hadn’t been her type. She would have loved to be married and raising kids by now, had she found someone who wanted to share such a future with her.
But this was Willis she was fantasizing about now, she reminded herself ruthlessly. Willis, for God’s sake. Willis!
Willis who hated her guts and made her feel like an imbecile. Who dismissed her with all the consideration of a mosquito about to be squashed. Who would do nothing but make her feel like less and less of a functional human being if she was ever stupid enough to get involved with him.
Not that he had offered her any indication that he wanted any kind of involvement, she reminded herself. Oh, no. On the contrary, he’d made it clear from the get-go that he thought she was still the simpleminded, slack-brained know-nothing he’d pegged her as back in tenth grade. And considering the idiocy of her daydreams at work, she wasn’t entirely sure she could disagree with him at the moment.
Of course, there could be a perfectly logical explanation for her fantasies, she reminded herself hopefully. Comet Bob was looming out there on the horizon, and everyone in Endicott knew that Bob was responsible for creating a cosmic interference that wreaked all kinds of havoc with the townsfolk, not the least of which was driving together romantically two people who were normally at polar opposites.
Yeah, that was it, she told herself. The comet might just be within range enough now to be putting everyone under its cosmic influence, herself included. It was entirely possible that Rosemary was simply succumbing to a galactic disturbance over which she had absolutely no control whatsoever. The reason she suddenly found Willis at the center of her romantic fantasies wasn’t that she was honestly attracted to him, but that she’d simply been pulled into the sphere of Bob’s influence.
Yeah, that was it, she thought again. Maybe she could just blame the whole thing on Bob.
Then again, maybe Bob had nothing to do with it, she thought irritably. Then again, maybe she was just developing a big ol’ whopping crush on Willis Random.
She leaned forward until her forehead rested on the steering wheel, then slowly and methodically began to beat her head against it in an attempt to pound some sense into her brain. The only person on earth who genuinely despised her, and she might just have a crush on him. Surely there were twelve-step programs for women like her. Maybe she should look in the Yellow Pages.
She stopped bashing her head against the steering wheel and looked up again, only to find that Willis was standing on her front porch watching her. She closed her eyes again, wondering if he’d witnessed her attempted self-inflicted lobotomy, then decided that the way things were going, he must have. Could her life possibly get any worse?
It had to be Bob, she told herself, meeting his gaze as levelly as she could. Yeah, sure, Willis was a prime physical specimen of manhood these days, but he was still a big jerk. There was no way she would normally feel affection for such a man. No way would she fall in love with someone who would always make her feel small.
Inhaling a fortifying breath, she opened her car door and unfolded herself from the front seat, then reached back in behind herself for her blazer. The September afternoon was warm, the sun hung high in the sky and Willis was looking at her with something truly hot and smoldering in his eyes. That look, more than anything else, she decided, was what caused the perspiration that suddenly seemed to be dampening her shirt.
He was angry at her already, she thought. And she hadn’t even walked in the front door yet.
“We have a problem,” he said by way of a greeting as she stepped up onto the front porch.
He was just now realizing that? she wondered. Gee, she’d had that one figured out way back in tenth grade. Some genius he was. But aloud, she only said, “Oh? What’s that?”
In response to her question, he frowned and jabbed a thumb angrily over his shoulder, toward the front door. Gingerly, Rosemary preceded him through it. Inside, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Sunlight filtered through the lace curtains on the bay windows, scattering rampant shadows over her grandmother’s hooked flowered rug and the antique furniture that was arranged exactly as it had been when Rosemary was a girl. Her cat, Ska, was curled up on the window seat in the shape of a Christmas ham, just as she always was this time of day, her silver-and-gray-and-black striped fur sleek and shiny.
“What?” Rosemary asked when she saw nothing amiss.
Willis pointed to the cat. “That.”
Puzzled, she asked, “Are you allergic to cats?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m not. That’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?”
“She is. She’s a bully.”
Rosemary couldn’t help the ripple of laughter that escaped her. “Ska? A bully? Don’t be silly. She’s the sweetest creature on the face of the earth.”
“Her name is Ska?” he asked, arching one brow in disbelief.
As always, after two minutes in Willis’s presence, Rosemary zoomed from defensive to combative in a nanosecond. “Yeah. Her name is Ska. You wanna make something of it?”
He shook his head. “I should have known. That was what you called that strange music you always listened to in high school.”
She took a step forward and settled her hands on her hips in challenge. “I still listen to Ska bands. All the time. They’re coming back now, you know. You wanna make something of it?”
Willis, too, advanced toward her, crowding her space. “No, I just want you to tell that animal to be a little nicer.”
As if realizing she was the topic of the conversation, Ska woke up and blinked her eyes at the couple, then stood and stretched. With a final flexing of her claws, she leaped down to the floor, then sauntered over to Rosemary, entwining herself around her mistress’s legs with much affection. Rosemary picked her up and scratched her behind the ears, and Ska settled into a contented, rumbling purr.
“I can’t believe you’re afraid of a sweet little kitty-cat,” she told Willis.
Willis frowned at her. “I’m not afraid of her. He is.” He gestured behind himself, toward a ventilated cat carrier surrounded by some of the boxes that had come out of his big...his big...truck thing.
“Who is?” she asked.
“Isosceles.”
Rosemary narrowed her eyes at him. “Excuse me?”
He expelled an impatient sigh, then strode over to the carrier in question, flipped open the door and withdrew a huge, hulking white cat that claimed a gorgeous, sleek coat of fur. “This,” he told her, clutching the monstrous beast to his chest, “is Isosceles. My cat.”
Now it was Rosemary’s turn to go on the offensive. “What the hell kind of name is ‘Isosceles’ for a cat? Don’t you realize that’s just asking all the other cats in the neighborhood to beat him up after school every day?”
“It’s a perfectly appropriate name,” Willis countered. “Every time he sits down, he forms an exact isosceles triangle.”
Rosemary arched her brows. “What did you do? Take out your compass and protractor and measure him yourself?”
Willis gritted his teeth. “You don’t use a compass for measuring triangles,” he told her. “They’re for drawing accurate circles.”
Rosemary felt her face flame, though whether in embarrassment or anger, she couldn’t have said. “So what?” she bit out defensively.
He shook his head in annoyance. “So that...that...that bully you call a sweet little kitty-cat has been after Isosceles ever since I brought him inside the house.”
“Well, duh,” Rosemary said. “Of course she has. This is Ska’s turf. She’s not going to just sit back and let some interloper overrun the place.” Unlike her gutless mistress, she thought further to herself.
“Well, just tell her to back off and give Isosceles a chance, all right?”
Rosemary gazed down at Ska, who looked back at her with a contented little smile. “Good girl,” she told the cat. “Don’t let that invading, know-it-all tomcat take over the ground you worked so hard to gain. Now go out there and make me proud.”
With a quick kiss to the cat’s muzzle, she settled her back on the floor and returned her attention to Willis. “There. That ought to take care of it,” she said as Ska trotted happily toward the dining room, tail held high.
Willis glowered at her, then held Isosceles aloft, meeting the white cat’s blue-eyed gaze levelly. “You do whatever you have to do to make her come around and treat you like the good guy you are,” he coached the animal emphatically. “You’re a guest here, not to mention smarter than the average cat. Don’t let her treat you like dirt.” He ruffled the cat’s ears affectionately before settling him, too, on the floor, and immediately, Isosceles skittered off in the same direction as Ska.
A moment of silence descended where Rosemary and Willis eyed each other warily, both of them clearly aware that there had been a lot more to those little feline pep talks than either had let on. Then a crash, followed by the angry whining and hissing of two cats, caused them both to race toward the kitchen.
Ska had Isosceles treed on top of the refrigerator, and both animals were batting wildly at each other with claws unsheathed despite the distance that separated them.
“He just better stay away from her kibble,” Rosemary muttered. “You mess with Ska’s kibble, you pay. Big-time.”
“Believe me,” Willis countered, “he wants nothing to do with her plebeian kibble. He’s on the Science Diet.”
She rolled her eyes. “I should have guessed.”
Knowing Ska would be fine on her own, Rosemary pushed herself off the kitchen doorjamb and made her way toward the stairs. More than anything, she wanted to slip out of her work uniform and into something comfortable. Then she reminded herself that as long as Willis Random was living under her roof, she wasn’t likely to find comfort in much of anything.
“Rosemary,” he called out just as her foot touched the bottom step.
She turned around to find him standing framed by the arch separating dining room from living room. Boy, he had great legs, she thought, letting her gaze travel from his boot-clad ankles to the muscular thighs extending from the brief khaki shorts.
“Hmmm...?” she asked distractedly.
“She won’t...hurt him. Will she?”
Rosemary tried to smile with some reassurance, but she only felt oddly melancholy. “Ska wouldn’t hurt anybody,” she promised. “She might mess with his head a little—just to keep things level—but she won’t hurt him.”
Willis nodded, but still didn’t seem quite convinced.
“How about Isosceles?” she asked.
He seemed stumped by the question. “What about him?”
“He won’t hurt Ska, will he?”
The expression Willis gave her was incredulous. “Are you serious? Do you honestly think he has it in him to do harm to her?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I do. He’s a lot bigger than she is. And you said yourself that he’s smarter than the average cat.”
“He may be smart, but he’s not mean,” Willis assured her. “He won’t hurt Ska. Don’t give it another thought.”
She nodded, but still felt unsettled for some reason. “Will you be around for dinner?” she asked.
His expression indicated he was genuinely surprised by her question—maybe as surprised as she was to hear herself making the offer. “I...I guess so,” he replied. “I mean, if you want me to be.”
“Oh, no,” she countered quickly, wanting to dissuade him of that idea as quickly as possible. Even if it was true, she realized morosely. “It’s not that. Just... if you’re going to be here... I mean...”
Well, just what did she mean? she asked herself. She inhaled a deep breath and tried again. “I don’t know what you and my mom worked out with meals and all, but... What I mean is... I don’t usually go to a lot of trouble, but if you want to join me for dinner while you’re staying here, I...I guess I won’t mind.”
“Thanks,” he said, his expression revealing nothing of what he might actually be thinking. “I honestly hadn’t thought too much about where I’d be eating. I don’t know how often I’ll be able to take advantage of your invitation, but I appreciate it your extending it”
“It wasn’t an invitation,” she felt it necessary to clarify, feeling both stung that he hadn’t leaped on the opportunity and puzzled as to why she should care. “It just doesn’t make sense for you to drive all the way into town to eat, when there’s a perfectly good kitchen right here.”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s not an invitation. I still appreciate the offer.”
“It wasn’t an offer, either.”
He expelled an exasperated sound. “Well, whatever it was, thank you, all right?”
She nibbled her lip a little anxiously. “You’re welcome. Just let me know when you’ll be home.”
His lips curled into something of a smile, however stiff. “I think I can probably make it tonight.”
She nodded, her stomach clutching nervously for some reason. “Okay. I usually eat about six. If you’re here, fine. If you’re not here, that’s fine, too.”
“Fine.”
Silence hovered between them until it began to grow awkward. Then another loud thump from the kitchen, followed by an even louder feline wail, sliced through the room. Willis bolted toward it, while Rosemary stood at the foot of the stairs in bemusement, watching him go. She didn’t understand why she’d asked Willis to join her for dinner while he was staying with her. But there was one thing she did understand—too well.
It was going to be a long few weeks.
Three
At 6:30 that evening, a quickly cooling casserole was sitting on the stove, Rosemary was seated at the head of her recently dusted dining-room table, Ska was supping noisily from her bowl in the kitchen, Isosceles was still atop the refrigerator—and Willis was nowhere to be found. He’d left shortly after Rosemary had arrived home, without even telling her goodbye, and she had no idea where he was now. Obviously, someplace infinitely more important than where she was herself, she thought. But then, was that really such a surprise?
She stood and snuffed out the candles she felt foolish now for ever having retrieved from the china cabinet, and replaced them where they always sat, unused. She cleared the table of the colorful pottery dinner plates and crackled cranberry glassware she normally saved for special occasions, returning them, too, to their generally neglected kitchen cupboard. Then she swept the recently ironed tablecloth from the dining-room table and stuffed it back into the drawer where it had lain unused since the last time Rosemary had invited someone over for dinner—Kirby and Angie, four months earlier.
She sighed as she set the kitchen table—for one—with her usual plain white dishes and discount-store glassware on a plastic place mat. She wondered who she thought she’d been kidding, thinking dinner with Willis would be a special occasion. He hadn’t even considered it a big enough deal to call her and tell her he wouldn’t be there when he’d changed his mind.
And she’d actually prepared something. Something that hadn’t come out of a cardboard box or a plastic bag. Something with ingredients, for God’s sake Ingredients she’d had to drive to the grocery store to buy, because who in her right mind actually kept things like garlic and onions and cream of mushroom soup on hand?
Well, come to think of it, probably a lot of people, she realized. People who cooked their food instead of microwaving it, people who cared about the flavor of what they ate, people who spent more than four to six minutes boiling something for dinner. People who didn’t live alone.
She plopped a generous helping of the casserole messily onto her plate, slapped some greens into her salad bowl and splashed some iced tea into her glass. Except for Ska’s crunching, the house was unnervingly quiet, so Rosemary switched on the radio before she sat down. Mellow jazz music filled the kitchen, and a soft breeze rattled the loosely hooked screen door. But it was still too quiet. Funny, she’d never noticed that about her house before.