Читать книгу A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father: A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father - Karen Templeton - Страница 8

With more regret than the world would ever know, Eli put some distance—not enough, but some—between him and the woman currently responsible for an erection so hard his ears were ringing.

“Honey—you don’t really want this.”

Her answer to that was to unzip her running suit top and struggle out of it, tossing it over her shoulder, her exercise bra no match for her nipples’ attempts to punch right through the stretchy fabric. “And if you don’t touch my breasts within the next two seconds, I may have to kill you.” When Eli shook his head, she clamped her hands around his face and stared him right in the eye. “They hurt, Eli. I hurt—”

“And you’re going to hurt ten times worse if we do this.” She smacked his shoulder. “What the hell—?”

“Since when do you become honorable?” she said, smacking him again, although her hundred pounds—if that—were barely gonna make an impression on his one-eighty. “Geez, Eli—you sleep with anything with hooters! So how come you choose now to rustle up some scruples?”

She gasped when he grabbed her wrists, jerking her into silence. Bringing their faces within kissing distance again, he ground out, “I do not, and never have, slept with every woman who came on to me. And I sure as hell am not gonna take advantage of somebody who’s only looking for a little stress relief!”

Her swollen mouth set, Tess locked gazes with him for a long moment, then reached up and took off her bra. Eli groaned. And stared. What? Like he was gonna look away? Then he frowned.

“They’re bigger.”

“Yeah, two kids’ll do that. So. You got condoms or what?”

“Yeah, I got condoms. But you hate me.”

That seemed to sober her for a moment. Then, smiling, she thrust her hands through his hair and kissed him again, open-mouthed and hot and slow and thorough, and his scruples packed up their little bags and began to shuffle off, sighing. Day-um, the woman could kiss. Then she finally came up for air, pressed her forehead to his and ground certain eager body parts to his equally eager body parts and said, panting, “I’m drunk and mad and horny and half-naked. Could you please just shut up and go with the flow here?” And it occurred to him that he’d hurt her a lot more by rejecting her than simply doing what she wanted.

At least, that’s the story he was going with.

So he wound her more tightly around him and stood, carrying her into the bedroom, not even bothering to pull back the covers before he dropped her on the bed and ripped off her bicycle shorts and cotton panties, realizing he was more than a little pissed off himself as he stripped off his own clothes and yanked open the dresser drawer.

“So, you want me to just—”

“Yes,” she hissed, getting to her knees to yank him onto the bed. Snatching the condom out of his hand, she shoved him on his back, straddling him, sheathing him. A moment later they were joined, her long nails gouging his shoulders as she rode him, tears streaming down her cheeks, splashing onto Eli’s chest, making him madder still. He thrust up into her, hard, no finesse, making her moan and hiss and cry out.

Then he lifted her up and off, making her moan again—from distress, most likely—only to flip her onto her back and plunge into her…and she clutched the wrinkled bedspread in her fists and arched into him, whimpering, her lower lip caught between her teeth a moment before she crossed her ankles at the small of his back and drove him higher, tighter, even though he knew he must be hurting her, if it’d been a year or more since she’d—

She sank her teeth into his neck, not hard enough to draw blood—he didn’t think—but hard enough to make him jerk, then she licked the spot and blew on it, and he thought he’d lose his mind even as he did lose control, driving into her over and over and over until she screamed, clutching at his back as she tried to get on top of the orgasm.

But damned if he would let her, pushing her up, up, up until she had to curl forward to keep from banging into the headboard, shuddering his own release into her interminably pulsing warmth.

Afterward, annoyed, he collapsed on top of her, panting, fully expecting her to shove him off, get up, get dressed and demand he take her home. Instead she wrapped herself around him, all sweaty and smelling of woodsmoke and girly shampoo and sex, and whispered, her teeth grazing his earlobe, “How long until you’re ready again?”

Floored, Eli pushed back enough to look at her. “You’re not serious?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, dragging her nails down his arms, making him shudder, making things stir he wouldn’t’ve thought anywhere near ready to stir again, “I’m just getting started.”

“Tess…you don’t—”

Her fingers clamped around his arms, stopping him, her expression gone from postorgasmic mellow to oh-no-you-don’t in two seconds flat. “Yes. I do.” Her eyes glittered. “Burn this feeling out of me, Eli. Please.”

Despite himself, his heart flipped over at the agony in those shiny eyes, at the soul-deep ache she had no idea how to ease. For some people—like his brother, like Tess—the end of a marriage was every bit as devastating as an actual death. But when he shifted to stroke his thumbs along her temples, she struck his hands away.

“No. I don’t want you to make love to me.”

His hands flat on either side of her head, Eli frowned at her. “You just want sex?”

“I just want sex.”

“You just want me to make you feel good, is that right?’

“You got a problem with that?” she said, brows arched.

“Fine,” he said, not sure why he was still pissed. “There any ground rules I should know about?”

Her pupils darkened. “None. I trust you.”

“And why in the hell would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, tearing up once more. Damn. An instant later, Mad Tess was back. “But just for a moment, you made me…forget.” Her hands clamped around his face, she pushed against him, a tight smile pulling at her mouth when he responded. “Make me forget again.”

Eli reached for another condom, thinking tonight was giving a whole ’nother dimension to that Good Samaritan thing.

Nothing, Tess thought as she jerked awake the next morning, starts a girl’s day out right like waking up to a Freddy Krueger scalp massage.

Swearing, she detached Maybelline—who hissed back—and bolted upright, immediately realizing that precipitous changes in altitude were to be avoided at all costs for the foreseeable future. And that she was naked in Eli Garrett’s bed.

And nope, there was no “Did we…?” about this. Because they had. Oh, yes, indeedy, they had. Several times, in fact, before her anger was spent and many, many moons’ worth of sexual frustration exorcised.

Groaning, Tess yanked the top blanket out from underneath the cat, stomped to the bathroom and did her thing, only to scream when she returned to the bedroom to find Eli standing there, dimples at a hundred percent, her sports bra dangling from one hand.

Growling, she snatched it out of his hand, scanning the room for the rest of her clothes. “That blanket sure looks better on you than it does on me,” she heard behind her. As she irritably pondered how many times he’d undoubtedly used that line, he added, “Sleep well?”

She had, actually. Like the dead. “Guess I dozed off,” she muttered, mincing past him to look on the other side of the bed.

“Honey, you passed out.”

“I did not!” she said, twisting around, the velvety blanket’s rasping across her nipples instantly hardening them. Or maybe that was Eli’s knowing smirk.

“Like you would’ve voluntarily spent the night in my bed?”

Okay, there was that, she thought, clumsily dropping to her knees to look under the bed. Her head rebelled. As did her stomach. Especially when the damn cat decided to go after her bare toes. Yelping, Tess again jerked upright, catching her head in one palm before it rolled off her neck. Although the cat would probably love it. A new toy to bat around the room, yay.

Still cradling her head, she carefully hauled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed, wishing Eli would take pity on her and leave her to wallow in her mortification alone. But no.

Her stomach boinged when she felt the mattress shift. “Touch me and die.”

And of course, that brought a warm, gentle palm to the top of her head. “Your head hurt?” Eli said softly, and many unkind thoughts leaped to her brain, mostly along the lines of how desperately she wanted Eli to not be kind. Or warm. Or gentle. Not now, at least. Last night had been another story. Last night had been—

“Oh, they haven’t invented a word for how my head feels right now,” she muttered. Just like there was no word for women who finagle their high school exes into pity sex. No, wait—actually, there were several. None of them flattering.

Her cell phone rang.

From her jacket pocket.

In, apparently, the living room.

She glared at Eli. Who kept on grinning. “Would you like me to get that for you?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

And during the approximately nine seconds he was gone, Tess found and put on the rest of her clothes, scattered willy-nilly about the room though they were. Eli returned and handed her the phone. And her jacket. Tess’s heart nearly stopped when she saw Enrique’s cell number.

“Everything okay?” she barked when he answered.

“Just what I was gonna ask you. Since you’re not here.”

Tess paused. “‘Here’ being…?”

“The house. Where the hell are you? When you didn’t answer your phone I called your aunt. She’s probably on her way over already.”

Was there an award for Worst Morning After Ever? ’Cause Tess was at least a shoo-in for the finals. “You’re supposed to have the kids until tonight—”

“Julia was up half the night, I think she missed you. So I figured I may as well bring ’em back since they were so miserable.”

“They?”

“Okay, Micky, maybe not so much. But I’m not gonna drive up there and back twice in one day, am I?”

“For God’s sake, Enrique—you only see them one weekend a month as it is—”

“Yeah, I know, I’m disappointed, too. So where are you?”

“At…a friend’s. Since I thought I had the day to myself.”

Turning, Tess caught Eli’s frown. “I’ll be home soon,” she muttered, dialing Thea Griego’s number when Eli stomped off.

And it’s a beautiful day in Bozoland, she thought as Thea picked up, her “Tess? What’s wrong?” delivered in the groggy voice of the mother of a one-year-old still not entirely down with the concept of sleeping through the night.

“Please tell me I didn’t just wake you up.”

“For you to do that, I’d’ve had to have been—” Thea yawned “—asleep.” In the background, little Jonny happily squawked. “And you’re calling when the sun’s not even up yet, why?”

“Omigod, it isn’t, is it?” Tess said, realizing that until that very moment, she hadn’t thought her embarrassment level could spike any higher. She’d been wrong. “I have a huge favor to ask,” she whispered. “First off, I need you to swear to anyone who might ask that I was at your place last night.”

Silence. “Why? You kill somebody?”

“Worse,” Tess muttered. “So will you?”

“Long as it doesn’t involve the word ‘accessory’ in some way, sure, but—”

“And is there any way you could come pick me up and take me back home?”

More silence. “Um…pick you up from where?”

Somehow Tess doubted Thea’d buy her having spent the night by the side of the road. “Eli Garrett’s.”

“Lord, now I know I’m not awake yet. I could’ve sworn you said—”

“I did.”

That got a far-too-gleeful cackle. “This just keeps gettin’ better and better.”

“Can you pick me up or not?”

“Do I have to put on makeup?”

“God, no.”

“Then I’ll be there in a few. Hang tight, honey.”

Tess had no sooner shut her phone than she heard behind her, “I’m not good enough to take you home?”

She turned. And while Eli’s insouciant smile and slouch against the door frame with his hands in his pockets might’ve said Like I give a damn, the sting of hurt in his eyes told another story entirely. What the hell?

“Oh, right,” Tess said, dropping onto the edge of the embarrassingly rumpled bed to lace up her running shoes. “Like there’d be any way to explain to Enrique why you were bringing me home at the crack of dawn.”

“He’s there?”

“Brought the kids back early, yup.” Slapping her hands on her thighs, she looked up. “Lucky me.”

“Guess that makes two of us,” he said, and Tess almost—almost—cringed at the bitterness spiking his words. “Because God knows I’m the last person you’d want to be associated with—”

“And don’t even go there,” Tess said, getting to her feet. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me not having the energy to deal with Ricky this early in the morning. It’s also about me feeling like an idiot. Not because I slept with you, but because I…fell apart—”

He grinned. Not one of his best, but bright enough. “Several times, as I recall.”

“Shut up,” Tess said, her face flaming, her nether regions tingling. Damn them. Fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. “I used you, Eli. And I feel like crap about it.”

His grin died. “And didn’t I tell you this is exactly how you’d feel this morning? Although when you first came at me I sincerely doubted you’d be around for longer than twenty minutes—”

She grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at him. It went wide and scared the bejeebers out of the cat.

“It’s not meant as a put-down, okay?” Eli said, swiping the pillow off the floor, tossing it back on the bed. “You were obviously upset. And a little drunk. I knew what you were asking for, even before you made it more than clear my hunch’d been dead-on. And if you noticed, I had no problem stepping up to the plate.”

Too true, Tess thought as Eli came farther into the room, making her back up. A little. “Even so, I gave you plenty of opportunity to change your mind, to let me take you home before things got out of hand. Or maybe you don’t remember—”

“I remember,” she murmured, shutting her eyes.

“You know,” Eli said after a moment, “maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad if you’d just be honest about what happened last night. It was what it was. If I don’t have a problem with that, why should you?” At the sound of Thea’s old Jeep Cherokee pulling up in front of Eli’s house, he nodded toward the window. “There’s your ride,” he said, snatching a hooded sweatshirt off the back of a chair and tossing it over. “It’s cold. Put that on.” Then he stomped off, boots pounding against the old wooden floor.

“Eli, I’m sorry—!”

Too late.

Soon as she heard stuff banging around in the kitchen, Tess scurried down the hall and through the front door, yanking on the hoodie as she practically flew into Thea’s passenger seat. No fewer than three dogs of various sizes, shapes and lineages poked their heads through the gap between the bucket seats to offer greetings and/or condolences.

“Geez, mutts,” the tiny blonde—wearing a down vest over wrinkled pink pajamas—said, shoving back assorted canine heads, “give the poor woman a break.” She surveyed Tess for a few moments through a pair of perky round sunglasses before looking back out the windshield, her mouth twitching. “Rough night?”

Tess slumped down in her seat, snuggling farther into the warm, Eli-scented sweatshirt. Rats. “I seriously owe you for this.”

“Think that’s the other way around, cookie,” Thea said as she backed out of Eli’s drive. “Considering the backside-saving you did a couple months ago when everybody got the flu except the baby.”

“Where is junior, anyway?”

“Back there somewhere, between the dogs.” Startled, Tess twisted around to see the bundled up baby happily snoozing in his car seat. Thea cackled again. “Wow. This is just like high school, gettin’ a girlfriend to cover your butt so your mother won’t find out you went to some party you weren’t supposed to.”

“Yeah, well…I never did that.”

“Never?”

“You weren’t raised by a rabid Latina. My mother had spies everywhere.” Because that was a lot easier and less messy than personal interaction. Gah, at this rate her brain would melt before breakfast. “I couldn’t even look at a boy that my mother didn’t hear about it before I got home.”

“That sucks.”

“Tell me about it.”

Chuckling, Thea tucked a strand of barely combed, pale blond hair behind one ear as they pulled out onto the still-dark highway, the early-morning sun furtively peering through the pinons and live oaks choking the roadside. “So…what happened?”

Tess rolled her eyes in the blonde’s direction.

“I got that,” Thea said, shrugging a dog head off her shoulder. “It’s the how-in-the-hell? part I’m kinda vague on.”

Shivering, Tess zipped the hoodie up higher. “So Ricky had the kids, right? Seizing my freedom, brief though it may have been, I went for a run, it started getting dark, Eli nearly ran me over with his truck, next thing I know I’m in his living room, stripping.”

“Sober?”

“No.”

“Ah.” After a reflective moment, Thea glanced over. “I’m assuming there were bits between the almost getting run over and the stripping?”

“A lot less than you might think,” Tess mumbled, then slumped down farther, palming her face. “I’ve never done anything even remotely like that in my entire life.”

“Yeah, it must be hell, being perfect all the time.”

Tess’s eyes flashed to her friend. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Honey, you know I love you—but sometimes it’s like you’ve set these impossible standards for yourself, like you’re afraid anybody might find out you’ve got weak spots. So instead of occasionally releasing steam like any normal person, you let it all build up until you do something stupid.”

“Like having meltdown sex with my old high school boyfriend.”

“That would definitely qualify.” Thea reached over, giving Tess’s wrist a squeeze. “These things happen. No sense beating yourself up over it.” She paused. “Although if you end up pregnant, that could be awkward.”

Tess let out a dry laugh. “No worries there. My period’s due in a couple of days. Which probably at least partly accounts for the meltdown. And we used condoms.”

“Condoms?”

“Shut up.”

“So,” Thea said, clearly ignoring that last thing, “does this mean you and Eli, are, you know. An item?” Tess glared at her. She shrugged. “Had to ask.”

“Would you recycle a high school boyfriend?”

“Good point. But maybe…”

“What?” Tess said, on guard.

“You could just…you know. Do the fling thing. Why not?” she said to Tess’s snort. “He’s hot, he’s personable, he’s obviously good with his hands…”

“You are so dead. And anyway, wasn’t it just last year you were saying that Eli wasn’t exactly the ripest apple on the tree?”

“True. But since he’s now my stepdaughter’s brother-in-law—”

Tess rolled her eyes.

“—I’ve gotten to know him some. Sure, he’s still a goofball, but…” The blonde’s eyes flashed to Tess. “He’s not a kid anymore. There’s a lot more beneath the surface than you might expect.”

“Whether that’s true or not, I’m not exactly keen on becoming another notch on Eli Garrett’s bedpost.”

“Hate to break it to you, honey,” Thea said as she pulled into Tess’s driveway. “But you just did.”

And damned if she hadn’t helped Eli do the carving, Tess thought on a sigh as she got out of the car, giving Thea a dejected little finger wave before she drove off.

“Mama!” Miguel dashed out the front door, throwing his small self into her arms like he hadn’t just seen her the day before. About to drown in her own self-reproach, Tess yanked him close, breathing in that sweet-musky scent of little boy, thinking Never, never, never, never again as curly-topped Julia—not to be left out—carefully clung to the porch railing as she navigated the stairs. Singing “Jingle Bells.” Sort of.

“Told you they missed you,” Enrique said from the doorway to the stucco-and-brick facade house, his hands bunched in the pockets of his Arizona Diamondbacks baseball jacket. For an instant a trick of the light made him look like the man she’d once loved with all her heart, only to torque back into the bastard who’d shredded that heart into a million pieces. A moment later her Aunt Florita—frowning, arms crossed—appeared behind Enrique in spiked boots and tight everything else, despite her lack of boobage and surfeit of years.

“I’m so sorry,” Tess said, to anybody and everybody, her arms full of her children, her heart of remorse. She kissed both kids, then rose, grabbing little hands before starting up the flagstone walk. “Obviously if I’d known,” she said to Ricky, “I would have made other…arrangements.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, then frowned. “Nice sweatshirt.”

“Picked it up at a yard sale,” she lied, ignoring her aunt’s raised eyebrow. “I know it’s way too big, but it’s cozy as all get out—”

“You cut your hair?”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking, Geez, now nothing gets past you?

He stared at her head for another couple seconds, then dug out his car keys. “One thing about hair, it always grows back, right? Hey, cabritos,” he called to the kids, squatting, “come give Daddy a kiss.”

Honestly, Tess thought, it was like a wire had worked loose in her ex-husband’s brain over the years. Sometimes the connections worked, and sometimes they didn’t. Mostly, though, they didn’t. And apparently hadn’t for a long time.

His children duly kissed and hugged, Ricky stood, gave her what passed for an apologetic look, then started out to his truck, only to turn when he got there. “Oh, I forgot—I can’t take the kids for Thanksgiving. I got…a conflict. That a problem?”

Tess crossed her arms. “For me? No.”

Ricky looked at his son. “You don’t mind spending the holiday with your mom, right?” Miguel shot Tess puzzled eyes, then shook his head. “See?” her ex said with what a poor imitation of his “old” smile. “So, Micky—you be good, okay? And I’ll call you—”

“Tonight?”

“Not tonight, maybe tomorrow. Soon, okay?”

The boy hugged his father’s thighs; to his credit, Ricky gave him another kiss before getting in his car and driving off. Flo wrapped her arm around Tess’s waist, muttering, “Pen-dejo,” under her breath. And Tess highly doubted Flo meant dumbass, the most PG definition of the word.

Then her aunt’s eyes dropped. The bandage had fallen off at some point during the evening’s activities; although Tess had cleaned the scrape up, she hadn’t bothered to redress it. “Dios mio—what happened to your leg?”

“I tripped over something while I was running,” Tess said slowly making her way up the stairs with an I-can-do-it-myselftoddler beside her. At the top, though, avoiding her aunt’s X-ray eyes, she swung Julia up to pepper her soft little neck with kisses, making her giggle. “No biggie.”

Once inside, she set her daughter down on the still-newish sculpted carpet she’d had installed before Enrique’s last leave, a warm beige that was perfect with the light tan sectional she’d bought at the same time, its built-in recliner positioned so he could watch football on the flat-screen TV she’d gotten him for Christmas.

Nobody could say she hadn’t tried. Nobody.

“Have the kids had breakfast yet?” she asked softly as old memories blurred uncomfortably into newer ones, a set of deep brown eyes morphing to hot, dark gold ones, welded to hers—

“Knowing Ricky? Probably not. How about you?”

“Um, no, I’m good for now,” Tess said, backing away from her aunt’s narrowed gaze, if not from the memories. “I had coffee and toast at Thea’s. You know how early they eat on the ranch—”

“You know, you don’t sound so good. Like maybe you’re coming down with something?”

“Nothing a hot shower won’t fix.”

“Sure, then,” Flo said, suspicion dripping from every word. “Take your time. I’ll feed the kids.”

Tess closed her bedroom door, thinking, You’re home now, everything’s back to normal, just put last night’s craziness out of your pretty little head…

And there were Eli’s eyes again, holding hers captive as he did things to her, for her, that, truth be told, Enrique had never even thought to.

Giving her head a hard shake, Tess twisted on the shower in the remodeled bathroom Ricky had hated on sight, saying it looked like somebody else’s house, never mind that they hadn’t lived here long enough that he should have thought anything one way or the other—

Moaning, Tess sank onto the whirlpool tub’s tiled edge. Because, in the cold light of day, she had to admit…she hadn’t been that drunk. Oh, she sincerely doubted she would have jumped Eli’s bones sober—as in, no way in hell—but she hadn’t exactly spaced what’d gone down after the bone-jumping part.

Or how many times.

Or how much, each time, she thought as she caught her haggard expression in the rapidly fogging mirror over the double vanity, a little more of the deadness around her heart she’d mistaken for stoicism had sloughed off, leaving in its place something tender and new and raw and frighteningly vulnerable. She really wasn’t upset with herself simply because she’d had sex with Eli. It was what having sex with Eli had done to her that had left her shaking. And shaken.

Tess stood and stripped, daring to trace with a trembling hand the still-reddened patches left by Eli’s late-day stubble across her belly and thighs and breasts. Who was this person who’d ceded so much control to another human being? Who’d known, at the time, exactly what she was doing? And who the hell was the man she’d allowed such power over her?

Worse, though, she thought as she jerked her gaze away from her reflection and stepped into the pounding shower, was that, mixed in with the regret…

Was the really scary feeling it could happen again.