Anything for Her Marriage

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.

Nancy shifted to lean heavily on the edge of the counter, bending over to remove her shoes, which she carried out of the room. Again, he followed, until he realized she was headed toward her bedroom. “I’ll be right back, but I just cannot deal with this torture instrument—” she pointed in the general direction of her bosom “—a second longer.” She disappeared into the room, leaving her door open a crack. “Anyway, about the cats,” she called from the other side. “See, I couldn’t have any in my apartment. So I figured, when I moved here—” a groan of undisguised relief drifted from behind the door “—I’d get me a cat. One cat, maybe a cute little kitten, you know?”

Clad in an oversized red sweatshirt, gray leggings and thick socks, she padded back out into the living room, pulling her hair back into one of those funny long clips. Had she given up on the seduction idea, or was she wearing a black lace teddy underneath her outfit?

Curious woman.

She crossed the room, rubbing at a spot high on her rib cage. “So, anyway,” she said, stopping at the kitchen door, one hand on the frame, “I get to the pound—there’s a small one, right outside town—and they had these six grown cats. No kittens. And I realized, since there didn’t seem to be a run on the place, the ones I didn’t take would be…” She lowered her voice. “You know.”

Rod leaned back against the arm of the sofa. “So you took them all.”

“What else could I do?”

What a gal. “So where’d the seventh come from?”

“Wouldn’t you know—a stray wandered up onto my porch the day after I brought these guys home. It was either take him in, or send him to that place.” She shrugged. “Um, coffee’s ready. You want it in here or out there?”

Impulsive. Kindhearted. Crazy. Oh, yeah…he definitely needed to leave as soon as possible. “Kitchen’s fine,” he said.

Her smile shot straight to his groin.

Did he have any idea how nervous she was? How close she was to making a fool of herself? He had to hear it in her nonstop prattling—she could hear her mother saying, “For God’s sake, Nancy, give it a rest!”—see it in her incessant movement. Distractedly, she pulled a pair of crockery mugs from the cupboard.

Why can’t you do anything right, Nancy? Why can’t you be like Mark?

No. Her brother wouldn’t lower himself to a cheap seduction, that was for sure. But then, having married the Jewel of Scarlet River, New Jersey, the summer after he got his master’s degree in Computer Engineering—a real degree—and then in due course presented his parents with two adorable grandchildren, her brother probably didn’t find himself in the position of being sex-deprived on a regular basis. Not if Shelby Garver was anything like Nancy remembered, at least. Her mouth quirked up into a half smile. Her mother should only know.

“Nancy?”

Rod’s voice brought her back to the land of the somewhat-living. “Sorry. Lost in thought.”

Instead of sitting, he took the mugs from her hands, set them down, poured the coffee. A small, insignificant thing. But since no one had done anything for her since she was about five, she was fascinated to discover how much the gesture pleased her.

“Sugar?” he asked.

“And milk, yes,” she said, reveling in letting him serve her. He fixed the coffee, handed her a mug. He took his black, she noticed. She also noticed the crease in his brow as he regarded her over the first sip.

He set down the mug, linked his arms over his chest. “You look like someone who needs to talk.”

She nearly laughed. Oh, yeah, right…like he was going to relate to being the child who always screwed up, no matter how hard you tried. So she shook her head. “Not about that. Besides…” She moved over to the table, took a seat. “It’s my house. I get to grill you.”

One side of his mouth hitched north. “Oh, really?” He scraped back the other chair, dropped down into it. Somewhere along the way, he’d removed his jacket. Now she was faced with a mind-boggling array of torso muscles encased in soft, luxurious, black-as-sin cashmere. Hoo, boy. “You’re pretty sure of yourself,” he said, his voice rumbling through her senses like a lazy freight train.

She wasn’t sure of anything. But she smiled, took a swallow of coffee. “I’m a salesperson, remember?”

“Damn good one, too, from what Elizabeth tells me.”

The first flicker of pride she’d felt in ages warmed her blood. “I used to be.”

“Used to be?”

“It was easier in Detroit, I guess. I’m starting over out here. And I was doing a lot of commercial stuff. Now it’s mostly residential, which yields less return for time invested.” Then she laughed, slapped the table. “Hey! You shifted the conversation to me when I wasn’t looking—”

His hands shot up, as did both corners of his mouth. “Oh, no. You did that to yourself.”

“Piffle. You knew exactly what you were doing!” Laughing, she leaned forward, pointing at him. “Let’s get one thing straight—I’m the manipulative one here, got that?”

Rod leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest again. He wasn’t frowning, exactly, but he sure wasn’t smiling, either.

“And why is that?” he asked softly. “Why do you feel you have to force things to go the way you want them to?”

Her own laughter died as the old, chronic hurt twisted her heart. “Because,” she said on a deep breath, daring to meet his gaze, “single women have to take care of themselves. And since the world at large ain’t too keen on giving its women what they need, forcing things to go our way is generally our only option.”

He didn’t seem to take offense. “Survival instinct?”

“Maybe.”

He surprised her by reaching across the table, capturing her hand in his. “Platinum butterfly,” he said, lifting her fingers to his lips. Just as soon as she collected a few brain cells, she was going to ask him what he meant. He beat her to it. “Durable, exquisite, delicate, all at once.” He let go of her hand, leaned back again. “Quite a combination.”

The calico cat jumped out of her way when she shot up from the table, not knowing where she was going.

“I really must be out of practice,” Rod said behind her. “What did I say?”

Arms folded across her stomach, she paced the tiny kitchen, the cat mewing in sympathetic confusion at her feet. “I’m not sure. It’s just that…” She blew out a stream of air, then faced him, twisting a strand of hair around her finger. Stupid, the way she felt dizzy like this. “Oh, man…this is going to sound corny, but no one’s ever called me exquisite before.”