Читать книгу Over His Head - Carolyn McSparren - Страница 9

NANCY TOOK LANCELOT out in her backyard on a leash at about eleven that evening to do his business. He kept pulling her toward her front yard and the lane, grumbling with annoyance. “Lancelot,” she commanded. “I know you want to go home, but Helen and Bill don’t live across the street any longer. You’re staying with me for the foreseeable future.”

He peered up at her in the light from her porch as though he didn’t believe her for one minute.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re smarter than I am?”

Eventually he finished, waddled up her back stairs, waited at the refrigerator until she gave him a bite of cheese—his evening treat was important to him, Helen had said—and settled into his basket. As she climbed into bed, she realized Poddy and Otto weren’t waiting for her. She peered around the corner of her bedroom door and saw them curled up against Lancelot’s belly. “Deserters,” she said, then grabbed her pillow, beat it into submission and propped it under her head.

As tired as she was, she should have slept instantly. No such luck. She felt guilty, as she always did when she was bad-tempered.

Tim Wainwright must think she was the world’s biggest bitch. She’d certainly snarled at him like a junkyard dog. She rolled over on her stomach and pulled her pillow over the back of her head. Then she rolled over on her other side. She couldn’t get comfortable. Finally she lay on her back, stared up at the ceiling and let herself actually contemplate Tim Wainwright as a male being, something she’d been consciously avoiding.

She still carried the scent of him in her nostrils. She hadn’t been that close to a sweaty male in much too long. Time was when she and Peter used to shower together every night after the horses had been bedded down. She could still remember the feel of his strong hands kneading the kinks out of her shoulders, sliding down her body…

She hit her pillow with a couple of vicious blows. Peter was long gone out of her life. Lord knew how many other women he’d scrubbed since she’d divorced him. She still read about him in the horse magazines as his newly developed riders won trophies and awards.

“I have to thank my trainer, Peter Lombardi, for finding—insert horse’s name—for me and training us. We owe this win to him.” Or variations on that theme. The riders in question were always young, frequently blonde, invariably rich, occasionally talented. She still felt smug that he’d never found another rider who was as talented and fearless as she’d been, who could ride his green horses over fences and make them look like champions. Someone who could ride his crazy jumpers over fences that made the average rider sick with fear.

He’d never married any of the rest of them, either. Well, not so far.

She sat up and leaned against her headboard. She wasn’t the least bit sleepy. She crawled out of bed, padded into the kitchen and pulled out the milk jug. Even in summer, a cup of hot chocolate was a guaranteed soporific. After all, she lived in an air-conditioned cottage.

She mixed herself a mug and slid it into the microwave. Two percent milk, nonfat chocolate powder. Unfortunately she’d never discovered a nonfat, nonsugar marshmallow. As she took out her steaming cup, she turned and saw Lancelot’s little eyes watching her. “Oh, nuts,” she said and poured a little chocolate into a saucer, blew on it, then set it down in front of him. The cats weren’t allowed to have chocolate, but they didn’t like it anyway, and Lancelot wouldn’t be caught dead sharing. He set to with pleasure.

She took the hot chocolate out onto her front porch, sat in one of the old white cane rockers and pulled her feet up under her. The temperature had dropped to a respectable eighty degrees, and there was a fresh breeze blowing through the leaves of the big oak that shaded her roof. She blessed her mother’s genes that kept the mosquitoes from biting her.

The house across the street was dark. She wondered where Tim slept. She hoped he didn’t wear pajamas. She’d always thought men who slept in both top and bottoms were kind of wimpy and old-fashioned, but then she thought of male teachers as pretty wimpy on the whole. Hers certainly had been. Teaching high school must be a real comedown for somebody like that. She wondered if he was running away from some sort of scandal.

The kind of strong muscles she’d felt when he’d wrapped his arms around her didn’t come from sitting behind a desk all day talking about Shakespeare and Tennyson. He must run, swim, lift weights—something to keep in shape. That kind of man probably slept nude.

The rocking chair seemed to have increased its speed. She shuddered and throttled it back. When the vision of an attractive man laying naked in bed brought her nipples to full attention and darned near tossed her out of the rocking chair on her nose, she knew she’d been alone in her own bed far too long.

One of the few good memories from her marriage was sleeping curled against Peter’s naked back. Peter only wore pajamas to bed when Poppy, her stepdaughter from hell, or as Nancy called her, “The Worst Seed,” stayed over.

Tim Wainwright apparently was raising at least two bad seeds of his own. Maybe three if Eddy was as weird as he seemed.

More reason to avoid the entire family. “If you’re lousy at something,” Dr. Mac always said, “quit doing it and take up something you’re good at.”

She felt incompetent to deal with other people’s children, and was absolutely, positively the world’s worst stepmother. She hoped she hadn’t scarred Poppy for life, although Poppy had inflicted some deep wounds of her own. Nancy swore she’d never give anyone a chance to slice and dice her again, nor did she intend to be responsible for even partially rearing anyone else’s kids.

She just had to arm her libido against Tim Wainwright and the heady way his touch had made her feel.

She’d slept alone too long. She’d almost forgotten how it felt to have a man inside her, driving both of them higher until the explosion of pleasure took them over the top.

Hoo, boy. Enough of that.

She sighed and went to open the front door. Before she could get inside, she felt a sharp little foot on her instep.

“No! Lancelot.” She shoved him back, slipped in and shut the door. “You’re staying here, understand? Helen and Bill will come over to visit, and you’ll be going to your new home with them before you realize it.” She set her cup down in the sink, picked up his dish and put it to soak, then went and climbed back into bed. This time she absolutely, positively must get some sleep. Tomorrow looked like it was going to be one god-awful day.

SHE WOKE UP AT DAWN as always, even on Saturday. When she started to sit, she realized her neck was giving her fits. She’d been too tense the day before. Now she’d pay for it. She pulled on a sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of threadbare low-rider cutoffs and padded into the kitchen barefoot to take Lancelot out for his morning potty break.

Poddy and Otto slept curled together in the pet bed, but Lancelot wasn’t in the kitchen. “Lancelot, if you’re in the living room making a mess, I swear I’ll barbecue you,” she called. The cats each opened one eye, then went back to sleep. She rounded the corner and saw at once that the front door was ajar. She must not have latched it properly when she’d come back in. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She grabbed Lancelot’s leash and harness and ran out onto the front porch. He was nowhere in sight.

“Damn! I’ll bet he’s gone back home.” She raced down the steps, taking care to slam the door behind her so that Otto and Poddy couldn’t wander. The asphalt of the lane already felt hot on the soles of her bare feet, but she ignored it, hopping a couple of times when she stepped on pebbles, as she ran across Tim’s lawn to his back door.

She nudged the pet door with her toe. It moved, so he hadn’t locked it, although she didn’t think the Wainwrights had a pet. She bent down, swung it open and tried to see into the kitchen. Next, she tried the back door. Locked.

Most of the people in Williamston left their doors open when they were home.

She peered through the window in the door, shading her eyes to see into the gloom. No sign of Lancelot. He must be inside somewhere. He’d probably scare those children into catatonia.

She raced around to the front of the house, tiptoed onto the front porch and tried to see into the room the Halliburtons had used for their master bedroom. The curtains were drawn. She could see only a sliver of a foot of the bed.

Okay, Okay, she thought, what do I do? Bang on the door, ring the doorbell, wake those city folks up at five on a Saturday morning to tell them they have an intruder? Somehow she didn’t think they’d be pleased. Besides, Lancelot was her responsibility, and this was her fault.

Only one thing to do.

She went to the back porch again. “Please, Helen,” she prayed. “Please have left the spare key over the door.” She stood on tiptoe and felt around. Her index finger touched something metallic.

She dislodged it, saw the key fall, made a grab for it in midair and missed.

It clinked on the porch steps. She dived after it and caught it before it could clink again. Now on her hands and knees bent over the step, she wondered whether she’d actually have the nerve to use it.

She and the Halliburtons had looked after each other’s property a million times. They knew where she hid her spare key, and where the spare keys to her storage shed and car were kept in the kitchen. She’d watered Helen’s house plants when they were out of town, and taken in their mail and newspapers. Helen and Bill had fed the cats when she was gone.

But this wasn’t Helen and Bill. New owners often changed locks. Maybe the key wouldn’t even fit.

Tentatively she slid the key into the lock. It went in. She began to twist it slowly. It turned. The lock clicked.

Now what? Barge in, call out, “Yoo-hoo, it’s Nancy!” and assume Tim hadn’t had time to get a handgun permit yet? Technically she wasn’t breaking in, but she was definitely entering.

She took a deep breath, put her hand along the jamb to keep the door from squeaking, opened it and stepped into the kitchen.

The refrigerator door stood ajar. On the floor in front of it was a bottle of Perrier. Intact, thank the Lord. So far as she knew, Lancelot had not yet learned to open screw caps. She put the sparkling water back. The refrigerator was empty except for several more bottles of Perrier and a couple of big bottles of soda—also screw-on tops. Lancelot must have been extremely disappointed. He could open any pop-top can he could reach.

She closed the refrigerator softly and looked around for evidence of destruction.

The kitchen looked clean. Cluttered, of course. At least a dozen cardboard boxes sat on the counters waiting to be unpacked, but Lancelot hadn’t been able to reach high enough to pull any of them off in his lifelong quest for treats.

She stood in the archway leading to the living room and listened. For a moment, there was nothing but silence, then she heard a soft snore from across the living room and down the hall. Tim must be sleeping in the Halliburtons’ master bedroom. She prayed Lancelot had gone in there and not up the stairs to join one of the children.

Slipping silently across the wood floor, she edged around the boxes and furniture in the living room and started down the hall. The door at the end was open and the snoring was louder now.

Five feet from that door she saw the figure in the bed. Wainwright.

He was not alone.

Beside him, spooned against his belly, head on a pillow, lay Lancelot.

He was the one snoring.

Wainwright lay under a single sheet, his naked shoulders exposed, his arm thrown casually across Lancelot’s back. He was breathing evenly.

She got down on her hands and knees and crawled into the room.

“Lancelot,” she whispered. “Get down here.”

No response. She crawled closer. “Lancelot!” It was hard to whisper with menace, but she tried. “Get down here this instant.”

Lancelot raised his head and stared at her unperturbed.

“Now!”

“Wha…?”

She froze. Please, God, don’t let him wake up.

Tim sighed.

She shut her eyes and began to back out on her hands and knees.

“What the hell!”

He sat straight up in bed. No pajama top. No pajama bottoms, either. Apparently, he saw her on her hands and knees two feet inside his bedroom at the same time he registered that his bed buddy was not the houri he’d no doubt been dreaming about.

He didn’t exactly shriek. The sound was too deep and male for that. He gave a sort of combined gurgle and yelp and lunged sideways off the bed.

His feet hit the floor. He grabbed the sheet and held it waist-high in front of him, but not before she had a glimpse of a well-muscled hairy stomach.

For a moment he simply gaped at her.

“Hi,” she said, and wiggled her fingers at him.

Lancelot, thoroughly awake now and aware that he was sleeping with a stranger, squealed, fell onto the floor and tried to wedge himself under the bed. Since the bed was low and modern, he only made it as far as his snout.

“That is a pig,” Tim said, pointing to the bristly butt sticking up on the far side of the bed. He sounded very, very calm.

“Uh-huh.” Nancy sat back on her heels. She held up Lancelot’s harness and leash.

“I’m sure there’s a simple explanation why he was sharing my bed. Is it a he?”

She nodded. “His name is Lancelot.”

“And an equally simple explanation why you’re crouching at the foot of my bed at dawn.”

She nodded. “I was after Lancelot.”

“I see. Apart from the obvious question of how he wound up in my bed, it occurs to me to wonder if you’ve ever heard the term ‘doorbell.’”

Oh, boy. This guy was a good deal more annoying when he was in the right. She pushed herself up to a standing position and took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Isn’t that kind of you.”

“Well, you’re the one who left the pet flap unlocked.”

“My mistake. I should have realized I’d wind up in bed with a pig. Sorry.”

“Listen, you. It could have been a possum or a raccoon or God forbid a skunk. Not to mention a copperhead or a water moccasin.”

“I’m curious. Did you also crawl in the dog door? Frankly you don’t look as though you’d fit.” He ran his gaze from her head to her toes.

She wished she’d taken the time to put on her sneakers, let alone a bra and underpants. She felt her face flame. She knew damned well her nipples were standing out to here, and her shorts not only bared her navel, but covered precious little below it.

“No, I did not crawl in the pet door,” she said with hauteur. “I used the spare key over the back door.”

“Ah. The spare key over the back door. My, I wish someone had mentioned that to me.”

“Here it is,” she said and tossed it onto the rumpled bed.

“Thank you.”

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll put Lancelot’s harness on and take him home.”

He waved a hand, nearly dropped the sheet and clutched it in front of him again. At that moment, she realized he was standing in front of a full-length mirror that had been propped against the wall beside the bed. The sheet might be concealing the family jewels, but she was learning a good deal more about Mr. Wainwright’s backside than she had thought she ever would. It was an extremely nice backside. Better than nice. Great. She felt her temperature rising just looking at him. If only he knew.

She gulped and grabbed Lancelot. She had to get away from that mirror before he caught her staring and turned around to see what had riveted her. “Lancelot belongs to the Halliburtons, the tenants you evicted,” she said. “The poor baby’s staying with me because they can’t have pets in the poky little apartment they’re stuck with in Collierville, while they try to find a house they can afford closer to Williamston. He just wanted to come home where his people loved him.” She hoped she was laying it on thick enough. Although she doubted he’d care.

She clipped the leash to Lancelot’s harness, stood and began to haul him toward the bedroom door. “It won’t happen again. I apologize for our intrusion.”

“No problem.”

Now she had to turn her back to him. She knew her shorts weren’t much less revealing of her backside than what she’d seen in the mirror of his.

“Do you always go barefoot?” he asked.

“In the summer, often. Seldom in January.” Better than bare-assed, she thought, and despite all her efforts, began to snicker. “Come on, Lancelot, bad pig,” she said and pulled on his leash. He squealed and yanked back.

She made it all the way to the back steps before uncontrollable laughter broke the surface. She sank onto the back steps, hugged Lancelot to her and laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

At the same moment that Nancy began to laugh, Tim dropped his sheet and turned around. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing in the full-length mirror—and to realize what Nancy Mayfield had been looking at for the past five minutes.

That’s when he heard her laughing.