Читать книгу Anything for Her Marriage - Karen Templeton - Страница 9

“I’m not asking you to marry the man, Nance.” The blonde popped yet another miniature quiche into her mouth. “Just talk to him.”

Nancy stifled a sigh. Just think—she could be home, curled up with the cats, watching Dick Clark and stuffing her face with Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Instead, she was hiding out in her best friend’s kitchen, guzzling white wine and aching to ditch her shoes. Two hundred bucks, and the things hurt like hell.

“And say what, exactly?”

“Well, how should I know?” Elizabeth Sanford rearranged the hors d’oeuvres on the dish in front of her with one hand, the other rubbing the bulge underneath her emerald velvet maternity tunic. “But we’ve got to do something. Did you get a good look at him? Lord. He looks as if his dog just died.”

Oh, yeah. She’d looked. There he’d sat in one corner of the burgundy leather sofa, all alone and all in black. Rod Braden. Gorgeous, wealthy, brooding. A man she’d secretly lusted after off and on for nearly four years, ever since the day she and Elizabeth had met him when they were both working for the same Realty agency in Detroit. Stayed out of the way for nearly two years while he and Elizabeth quasi-dated, a relationship that died a quick, painless death once Elizabeth met the man who became her husband. With Elizabeth safely out of the picture, Nancy even sort of made a play for Rod, only to quickly realize that goal had “lost cause” written all over it.

Not being the beating-her-head-against-a-brick-wall type, however, she’d shrugged it off, and life went on. Since then, Rod had been in and out of a second marriage, then suddenly moved to Spruce Lake, Michigan, setting up permanent housekeeping in the old mansion Elizabeth had sold him—with a straight face, no less—as a summer home some time back. And Nancy had even shrugged that off, too, figuring what did Rod Braden’s life have to do with her?

Then she walked in an hour ago, caught him staring all sad and lonely like that into the fire, and the thought came, “It’s the dawn of a new millennium—do you know where your libido is?” Followed closely by, “Oh, hell.”

Two glasses of wine later, she was still waiting for the booze buzz to override the sexual whatever-it-was buzz so she could join this party and act like something resembling a normal person. Or better yet, pass out. Her right little toe already had.

“Well?” Elizabeth said, shoving another tidbit into her mouth.

When the going gets tough, the tough change the subject. “You know, if you don’t stop eating like that, you’re gonna weigh five hundred pounds.”

“Hah! You’re just jealous because I have boobs now and you don’t.”

Nancy smirked. Not that she’d turn down an extra cup size, should anyone offer, but mammary inadequacy was the least of her problems.

“And you’re not wriggling your way out of this.” Squinting, Elizabeth nodded at the low-necked, high-hemmed, velvet scrap of a dress Nancy had picked up cheap because it was the only size three left. “If nothing else, that outfit alone’ll jump-start his heart. Shoot, my eyes bugged out when you walked in tonight. You rent those legs, what?”

Elizabeth’s husband, Guy, burst into the kitchen, a pair of empty platters in his hand, a diamond stud glinting in his ear. He glanced at the plate in front of his wife. Sighed. “Uh, honey—isn’t the idea to fill the plate?”

She looked down, gasped at the four lonely goodies left on it. Guy chuckled, then kissed Elizabeth on top of her upswept hair. “I knew there was a reason we bought twice as much food as we thought we needed,” he said, then replenished the plates, giving Elizabeth a wink and a grin as he backed through the swinging door to the living room, balancing all three plates in his hands.

Nancy tried, really tried, to ignore the needles of envy that pricked her heart, and her conscience. She’d had no idea, when she’d relocated to Spruce Lake a couple months ago to take Elizabeth’s place at Millennium Realty, the small agency Elizabeth ran with her mother and Guy, just how much her friend’s bliss would point out the pathetic emptiness of her own life. Not that she wasn’t thrilled for Elizabeth, but seeing her and Guy together twisted a knife in her lonely, underused heart. Oh, sure, intellectually, she knew a woman didn’t need a husband and children. But the fact was, there were times Nancy envied Elizabeth so much it hurt.

“Hey!” Elizabeth duck-walked from behind the counter, grabbed Nancy by the wrist. “If you’re gonna go gloomy on me, you can go do it somewhere else.” She pushed open the door, shoved Nancy out into the living room. “Now go ye forth and schmooze.”

Nancy turned to find herself face-to-face with a gently swinging kitchen door.

“And don’t even think about coming back in here!”

Nancy sighed. Life was much better when she’d been the pushy one.

She finished off the wine, setting her glass on somebody’s abandoned paper plate on top of the piano, then smoothed sweaty palms down the front of her dress. Where, she wondered through the muzzies, had the twenty-plus years gone since Stanley Cohen’s bar-mitzvah dance, when Debby Liebowitz double-dared her to ask Norman Sklar to dance? To this day, though, she had no idea if she had or not. Funny, the way the mind blots out traumatic memories. She tugged discreetly at her underwire bra, which she could have sworn was growing teeth.

“You still there?” she heard from behind the door.

“Bite me,” she whispered in reply, and was rewarded with an evil giggle. She told herself it was boredom keeping her there. Her social life since moving here was not what one would call rip-roaring. Of course, one reason she’d left Detroit was to get away from a singles scene that, from the perspective of a burned-out thirty-four-year-old, had grown very tired. Like a fool, she’d naively thought the camaraderie of small-town living, of being close to Elizabeth and her new family— Guy had three young children already—would help ease the constant ache of being alone.

Wrong. Think Pleasantville on steroids. Which meant Nancy felt more a fish out of water than ever. And her mother, bless the dear thing, clearly thought aliens had sucked out her daughter’s brain. Who moved someplace where who knew what kind of men lived? As it was, Belle Shapiro had yet to forgive Nancy for letting one husband slip through her fingers, never mind that the creep considered himself exempt from mundane concepts like…oh, fidelity?

“But,” Belle had conceded eventually, “maybe this is for the best. If you never have children, you won’t know the heartache of having a thirty-something unmarried daughter throw her life away. No, it’s true—I wouldn’t wish such pain on anybody, least of all my own daughter.”

And the woman wondered why Nancy only called once a week.

But back to the here and now, where she was bored and pleasantly snockered and, okay, ravenous for male attention. She watched as, seemingly oblivious to the chatter of two dozen other guests in the room, Rod leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. His long, graceful fingers absently hugged a wineglass as he communed with the fire, which acutely defined the sharp angle of his brow, the clefted chin, and a mouth worth bronzing. His lips were fuller than usual for a man, yet not the least bit effeminate. His eyes and hair were nearly the same color, neither brown nor gold, but something in-between, the cut-and-styled-one-strand-at-a-time hair liberally threaded with gray at the temples.

She took another swig of the wine.

He started when Cora Jenkins, the agency’s office manager, laid a hand on his shoulder, her teeth strikingly white against her dark skin as she smiled, then apparently introduced her date to Rod. He seemed to shake himself, but immediately offered a hand and a smile to the distinguished gray-haired man, as well as a few words spoken in a low voice that, even at this distance and tangled in the threads of other conversations, threatened to turn Nancy inside out. Still.

She twined one wayward curl around her finger, her brow furrowed. Two things thirty-plus women weren’t supposed to get: zits and crushes.

Uh-huh.

Like she really needed this pair-of-tortured-souls-adrift-in-the-night routine. A pair of tortured souls who had absolutely nothing in common, who probably couldn’t sustain a conversation for more than twenty minutes without tripping over some major issue. The man was the epitome of upper-crust conservatism, while Nancy was…not. He probably didn’t even like cats.

Oh, come on. This had nothing to do with cats or backgrounds or anything else. The fact was, polite or not, he’d blown her off. More than once. So—excuse me?—whence came this urge to wrap her arms around the man and tell him everything was going to be okay?

The wine, the heat, the sensuous mingling of perfumes, food aromas, laughter, all fed a gentle whirring in her head that quickly burned a tingling path along her skin…and somehow propelled her across the room to stand in front of someone far too perfect for the likes of her. Women like Nancy just didn’t hook up with fair-haired, racquet-club-raised Golden Boys. Women like her—

He looked up, and the hurt and loneliness and disappointment in those golden eyes yanked her soul up by its bootstraps.

Women like her had no business fantasizing about a relationship with a man like Rod Braden. Then again, she never saw a man who looked more like he could use a little kindness right now. A little feminine…understanding.

Come to Mama, she thought, and got all warm and fluttery inside.

Rod smelled her perfume before he saw her, briefly wondered how—or why—he’d picked out her scent among the dozen or more in the room. He’d apparently startled her: her mouth was open, as if she’d been about to say something. Instead, she lifted a hand to her lips and dissolved into laughter.

He thought she might be just this side of drunk, but when she cleared her throat and looked directly at him again, her deep brown eyes were clear and sparkling, even if her face was flushed.

“That’s not fair,” she said, obviously tamping down a new round of giggles. “I was trying to come up with some wickedly clever line, and you screwed me up.” She sucked in a deep breath. To quell nerves? “So. How’re you doing?”

Loaded question. He took another sip of wine, considering how to answer, even more seriously considering why things that had been comatose not ten seconds before were stirring now. That voice of hers probably had something to do with it—low, sensuous, and far too rich to come out of a body so slender that she probably didn’t dare venture outside on blustery days. He smiled. He couldn’t help it, any more than he ever could help the braided feelings of terror and attraction Nancy Shapiro’s presence sparked, had always done from the first time they met, right before he’d starting dating Elizabeth. Her natural ebullience, the way her emotions crackled around her like summer lightning, at once exhilarated and appalled him. Wasn’t that he didn’t like her. He did. More than she knew, more than he’d ever before admitted to himself. But she was too lively, too witty, too bright, too…much. This was a woman, he suspected, who threw things during a fight, who slammed doors and burst into copious tears and got in a person’s face, demanding immediate and honest answers.

Living with someone like Nancy would be an invitation to a coronary. He’d always preferred cool, together blondes—soft-spoken, genteel women who never raised their voices. That both his ex-wives and any number of also-rans, including the woman in whose house he now sat, were cool, soft-spoken blondes…well, perhaps he really wasn’t in the mood to ponder such things too hard this evening.

Any more than he was in the mood to ponder why Nancy Shapiro had such an unsettling effect on him. Why he wanted to see if he could span that deceptively fragile waist with his hands, if she kissed as irrepressibly as she laughed. Which made no sense, since Rod didn’t want to touch or kiss Nancy or get close enough to do either anytime before the next millennium. He wanted peace, not passion. To be left alone to nurse the wounds left from this last marital debacle in a nice, cozy cocoon of self-pity, maybe to have a chance to salvage what was left of his tattered relationship with his children, who had spent the holidays skiing in Aspen with their mother and her latest boyfriend.

So why was he here?

And why was Nancy frowning down at him like that?

He realized her hands, tipped with long, glossy nails nearly the same burgundy as that bit of a dress she wore, were planted on her hips. Or where her hips would be, if she had any. Humor sizzled in those molasses eyes as she said, “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to stare at people?”

Despite his rotten mood, he grinned again, surprised to realize his cheeks actually ached a bit from the effort. The firelight sent streaks of molten amber through her curls; his fingers itched even as need warmed his belly.

“The way you have your hair fixed tonight,” he heard himself say, “it’s very flattering. Really shows off your eyes. Did you know—” he hurtled into the compliment with the recklessness of a kid on a sled after a foot-high snowfall “—in this light, they’re nearly black?” He shook his head. “Extraordinary.”

Extraordinary was right. What the hell was that all about? Something trembled, deep inside him, as he took a sip of the same glass of wine he’d been nursing for nearly an hour, watched those eyes grow huge with astonishment. Her hand went to her mouth again, and she turned away for a moment. He couldn’t tell in the firelight, but he thought she might be blushing. Then she laughed again, softly this time, before twisting around to plop down beside him.

No! She wasn’t supposed to…

He wasn’t supposed to let her….

So why’d you give her the compliment, lamebrain?

Good question.

Now her perfume tendrilled through his bloodstream, the sweet-spicy scent threatening to dissolve what little common sense he had left. And somehow, they fell into a natural, easy conversation, about nothing, really. Elizabeth and Guy, the weather, the party, if he knew the couple standing next to Maureen Louden, Elizabeth’s mother. Nancy was one of those touchy types, her hand often landing on his sleeve as they talked. Not that he minded. She got him to laugh, several times. And he enjoyed the sound of her laughter, too.

He was enjoying her.

She bent over to adjust the ankle strap on one of her black silk high heels; her back was flawlessly clear underneath a pair of crisscrossed spaghetti straps, her fragile-looking spine smooth as a string of pearls. Her boisterous hair teased her shoulders, teased his libido even more.

How many times in the past had he pretended not to notice her interest? How many times had he told himself he wasn’t interested? Yet, here he was, lonely and horny and in no position even to think what he was thinking about this lovely, lively woman who was all wrong for him, even as her very presence threatened to cause a major testosterone explosion. Hell, even if she had been his type, it was probably a pretty safe bet she was looking for a husband. Whereas he was definitely not in the market for a wife. At this point, he doubted he could even deal with a mistress. Not that he’d ever had one before, but…

Oh, never mind. This train of thought led nowhere he had any desire to visit, thank-you-very-much.

“Aunt Nancy? Where’s Mama?”

From nowhere, a pajama-clad urchin with dusty-blond hair appeared in front of them. Guy’s youngest, he figured. A brief pang of bittersweet longing to have his children back as babies, to see if he could do better this time, mingled with a profound sense of relief at not having to. Hannah was sixteen, Schuyler thirteen going on forty. Rod hadn’t been much better at fathering than husbanding. One day, maybe he’d figure out where he’d gone wrong.

But not tonight. Tonight he had about all he could handle convincing himself he didn’t want to take Nancy Shapiro to bed, to bury his face in all that hair, to seek, in those delicate, graceful arms, a few hours’ surcease from being a major screwup.

“Hey, sweetie,” Nancy crooned to the child, who scrambled up into her lap, pushing up the already short dress to danger level. Unconcerned, she propped her feet on the edge of the coffee table, allowing Rod a ringside view of her legs—thin but surprisingly shapely, and sexy as hell in sheer black stockings that glittered whenever she moved. When he tore his eyes away from her gams, however, he noticed the expression on her face as she cuddled the little boy.

He tore his eyes away from that much more quickly.

“Mama’s in the kitchen, honey,” he heard her say, and the I-want-one-of-these tremor in her voice was unmistakable. “You want me to get her?”

“C’n you take me to pee?” he said. “The bafroom’s all dark.”

There went the laugh. “I think we can handle that.”

He felt them get up, watched as Nancy carried the child out of the room. For a skinny woman, she had the cutest fanny he’d ever seen.

A few minutes later, she returned, sans child, but didn’t sit. Instead, she stood in front of him, twisting a silver ring on her right index finger, as if trying to get up the nerve to say something. Someone turned up the music; people raised their voices accordingly, and she rolled her eyes. Then she grinned, and leaned over, close enough for him to feel her breath on his cheek, see the slight swell of breasts peeking above the low sweep of the dress’s neckline that by rights should be too small to arouse anyone. She smelled…edible.

“I, for one, am not in the mood to watch everybody else get kissed at midnight,” she said. “So whaddya say we get out of here, go get a cup of coffee?”

He looked at her as if she’d suggested they go skinny-dipping in the lake a few blocks away. “I don’t think—”

But she shook her head, sending that riot of hair into a tizzy. “Forget thinking. It’s New Year’s Eve, and who said we have to suffer everyone else’s happiness?”

She had a point. She also had the greatest mouth in the world. Generous. Spellbinding.

And she had a point.

Nodding, he pulled himself off the sofa, retrieved their coats from the den, then ushered Nancy outside without even saying goodbye to their hosts.

Nancy gasped in the glacial blast that mugged them the instant they hit the porch. The light snow needling their cheeks was nothing, but damn it was cold. Underneath her black velvet swing coat, she couldn’t stop shivering.

Not just because she was cold, though.

“At the risk of sounding tacky,” Rod said next to her, his breath nearly opaque in front of his face, “my place or yours?”

She tried to laugh, but the sound froze before she could get it out. “I’m too snockered to d-drive,” she chattered, “b-but I live just on the other s-side of the lake. If we go there—th-that is, if you t-take me there—I can walk b-back over here tomorrow and p-pick up my c-c-car.”

He nodded—she was beginning to see a pattern here—then led her to his car, a gleaming silver luxury model sedan that had been the focus of a huge media blitz last year. His media blitz, she figured, when he was still head of marketing for Star Motors. Before he let her in, however, he shrugged off his topcoat—made, no doubt, from wool plucked from the under-side of some hardy beastie that grazed on grasses found only on the most remote mountain range in the world—and slipped it around her shoulders.

She wanted to crawl inside this coat and live here for the rest of her life. Well, actually, she wanted to crawl inside his car first, because the coat didn’t cover her feet, which had turned instantly into two-hundred-dollar popsicles.

They got in. Then they sat there. His car smelled of fine leather and his cologne and some indefinable rich smell she could easily get used to. Nancy had no idea what Rod was thinking, but she was thinking… Actually, she was shivering too hard to think, but ohmigod was in there somewhere.

She’d just invited Rod Braden for coffee. And he’d accepted. Somehow, she squelched the laugh threatening to blow her cool. She also remembered she had worked up the chutzpah to ask Norman Sklar to dance that night all those years ago. And that he’d accepted. She hadn’t felt like this since that night—apprehensive, excited and damned smug.

If a tad perplexed. Rod hadn’t said anything, or even started the car. Confined in a small space with him, he seemed…

She sighed inwardly. You know you’re in trouble when you can’t remember the last time you had sex. Hell, she only vaguely remembered who she’d last had sex with. Not that her list of partners would impress anyone, but what a pitiful comment on her thirty-four years that—if she was generous, mind—the best she could muster were two forgettables and one adequate. And let’s not go into which one of those had been her husband for five years.

The buzz alone from two feet away was already more exciting than any of her actual experiences. She wasn’t sure whether that was more of a comment on Rod or her, but she decided analyzing it would serve no viable purpose.

She jumped when Rod cleared his throat. “Where’s your place?”

“Oh. Right.” She gave him directions; the three-minute drive passed in silence. But now she noticed a sharpness to the buzzing that put her on guard, made her wonder if she’d edged closer to losing it than she’d realized. Had she misinterpreted politeness as actual interest? Wouldn’t be the first time, God knew. By the time he pulled up in front of her lakefront bungalow, she decided she’d let her imagination run away with her. From her.

“Look,” she said on a sigh, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I asked you to leave with me. I guess the wine impaired my reason more than I’d thought, but it’s obvious you’d really prefer to be alone, so if you want to back out, it’s okay—”

“Nancy,” he said softly, and she turned, chiding herself for getting off on just the way he said her plain vanilla name. She’d left her porch light on so she wouldn’t kill herself trying to come in later; the feeble light illuminated features that, before tonight, she’d only seen radiate grace and confidence. “If I hadn’t wanted to come with you—with you—I wouldn’t have. God knows, I didn’t want to be at that party, but I don’t really want to be alone, either.” His lips tilted into a sad smile. “Done that enough this past little while to last a lifetime.”

Her heart had become stuck somewhere at the base of her neck and was now pounding uncomfortably. She shifted, looked out at the puny snowflakes twirling in his headlights, which he’d yet to turn off. “Yeah. I know how that goes.” She shuddered in the cold, swung open the door. “Well, come on, then. The inaugural meeting of the Spruce Lake Lonely Hearts Club is about to begin.” She hesitated, leaned back into the car. “Um, I have cats.”

Rod chuckled. “There’s a cure for that, you know.” She rolled her eyes. “How many are we talking about?”

“Seven.”

He just stared at her, then said, “Just don’t ask me to clean out their boxes.”

“Not a problem.”

They got out of the car, icy pellets pricking their faces as they walked up to her door. Her smooth leather soles skidded on the filmy layer of snow underfoot; Rod caught her before she fell, keeping his hand on her elbow the rest of the way. Underneath his coat, she shivered, imagining what it would be like to cuddle against that solid chest.

Naked.

She pushed the thought away, then sighed when it came right back like an eager dog with a stick in its mouth.

All these years, she’d entertained fantasies of what it would be like to have Rod Braden do more than smile politely at her, imagined being alone with him, receiving his undivided attention. Well, she didn’t have to imagine that any longer. So, um, how far did she dare push her luck?

Oh, come on. Since when did she rely on luck to accomplish anything? If you want something, you go after it. Okay, so maybe that philosophy had more than its share of holes, but it sure as hell beat waiting around for life to fall into your lap. Maybe tonight wasn’t her only shot at upping the ante with Rod Braden. But maybe it was. Why heap more regrets on the already towering pile she’d accumulated over the years?

She took a very…deep…breath.

“And another thing—” she fumbled for her key in her Judith Lieberesque purse, managed to get it in the door “—I haven’t quite decided yet whether or not to seduce you.”

Talk about your stunned silences.

“Well,” she said to the doorknob, since someone had to say something and apparently the honor had fallen to her, “I don’t hear retreating footsteps, so I guess that’s a good sign.”

What she heard was a short, startled laugh. “Are you always this forthright?”

Still staring at the doorknob, she nodded. Then his hands were on her shoulders, turning her to him, the look in his eyes…oy.

Something told her she wasn’t the only person standing here who went after what they wanted.