Moonlight Man (12 page)

That evening, she pulled a face as she parked the car and wished she and Jeannie hadn’t had to spend all that money last winter on a new roof. She’d really wanted a covered carport instead. Getting out, head ducked against the driving rain, she opened the trunk.

Juggling parcels, she fumbled to get her key in the lock, only to have the door swing open in front of her. She was greeted by warmth, good aromas, and strong arms sweeping her burdens away.

He set everything on the counter, gathered her up in his arms, and swung her around. “I missed you,” he said.

She sighed. “I missed you, too, and expected you to show up at the library. I had a lonely lunch.” She look aggrieved, her lower lip jutting out just a tiny bit. He bent, nibbled on it, then kissed it.

“I know what libraries are like,” he said. “And the head librarian would not have appreciated the things I’d have said to you, possibly even done to you, once I had hauled you back into the obscure poetry section. So I stayed away.”

She sighed again. “I noticed.”

“But I’m here now,” he pointed out.

“I noticed that too,” she said, sliding her hands into the hair at the back of his neck. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. It seems to me I left you here sometime about sixty-five or seventy hours ago.”

“At least that,” he agreed, undoing the buttons on her coat, shoving it off her shoulders, and flinging it onto the kitchen table. For a long time they stood there wrapped in each other’s warmth and scent, kissing, murmuring. Then before she really noticed what he was doing, he had slid the zipper down the back of her dress and unhooked her bra.

She started to object, but he caught her mouth with his and silenced her while he took both dress and bra off her, stepping back just enough for them to fall to the floor at her feet.

She broke their lingering kiss and glanced down at the pool of clothes. “What are you doing?” She knew what he was doing. It just seemed sensible to have these things confirmed. After all, she might be wrong in her assumptions. Suddenly, she was looking at the top of his head.

“I’m undressing you.” His lips moved over the taut skin on her stomach as he spoke. He had dropped to one knee and was gently pulling down her panty hose and panties. Holding on to his shoulders, she lifted first one foot, then the other, shuddering as his mouth did incredible things to the insides of her thighs. She moaned when he put one of her feet on his raised knee and clutched her bottom, tilting her pelvis upward, his breath hot, his tongue probing.

“Marc!” It was a gasp of shock and pleasure. Her fingers dug into his shoulders as she stared down at him. He was doing this to her right in her own kitchen. All her clothes were off, all the lights were on, and he was still fully dressed! “If I have to be undressed … so do you,” she managed to say, but he shook his head.

“This is so much fun,” he murmured, and continued. Her knees wobbled, her mouth fell open, and she gasped for breath. If she let go of his shoulders she would collapse, but her hands grew as weak as her knees.

“Marc … stop. I’m going to fall down!”

He stopped, lifted her, laid her on top of her coat on the table, and continued his sensual assault. “Marc! This is … ahh, so … wonderful,” she finished in a hoarse whisper, replacing the word “depraved,” which she had been going to use. She bucked and arched against his restraining hands as she climbed the high mountain and then slid down the other side. After a long moment, she smiled slowly and said, “You’re really nice to come home to.”

Lifting her off the table, he wrapped her coat around her and cuddled her close. “It’s really nice to have some—to have you come home to me,” he said. “I like to show my appreciation.”

He’d been going to say “someone”, that much she knew. She was thoughtful as she shoved her arms into the sleeves of her coat, then nestled back against him. “You certainly know how to go about it!” When was he going to tell her about the wife and child he had lost? She wanted to know, especially now that she had told him all the terrible parts of her past. But she hesitated to ask. What, after all, did this relationship mean to him? He had never said exactly. He’d said once that he loved her. He’d made some vague comments about the future, but that was a nebulous term which could mean anything from a few weeks or months to … eternity. But if he’d tried for eternity once and had it snatched from him, maybe he wasn’t willing to try again.

“It was all a plot,” he said. “I’ve been planning it all day.” That wasn’t quite true, he reflected. He had spent most of the day over in his own house making long-distance calls, learning much, but not enough to tell Sharon about.

He swallowed, thinking of other things he had to tell Sharon. He thought, not without pride, that he had managed to distract her quite successfully from asking the question he had been sure would be on her mind when she came through that door:
If you are still a lawyer, and it never ceased being fun, then why aren’t you practicing law?
That distraction, however, had not been a calculated act on his part, but one that just flowed naturally from their first kiss after she got home.

He knew the question would come. He just didn’t know how he was going to handle it when it did.

“Something in the oven smells heavenly,” she said, finally pulling out of his arms and bending to gather up her abandoned clothes.

“Roast beef,” he said. “This time of year, with all the turkey and leftovers, I start to crave red meat.” He pounded his chest. “Red meat. Makes a man out of a man. Puts hair on your chest!”

“Whew!” she said. “I think I’ll make
you
a turkey sandwich. You sure don’t need red meat.” Holding out her hand to him, she asked with what he found touching shyness and a hint of wistfulness, “Will it be ready anytime soon?”

He let her lead him toward the stairs. “No time soon at all.”

She gave a happy sigh. “That’s good. Because I don’t think I’ll be ready for it anytime soon.” Neither of them were.

“Hi, Mom!” When the phone rang, she untangled herself from Marc and sheets and blankets, rolled over, and lifted the receiver. Jason’s happy tones made her glance over at Marc and she blushed as if her son were able to see rather than just hear her.

“Hi, love. Are you having a good time?”

“Oh, yeah! Excellent!” He went into details about the day they’d had, and then put Roxy on. She was just as exuberantly happy about her unexpected ski vacation.

“Gramma Zinnie makes cookies as good as Marc’s,” she said, and indeed, it sounded as if she had a mouthful and was speaking around it.

“‘Gramma Zinnie’?”

“That’s what she and Grandpa Harry want us to call them ’cause we don’t have any real grandparents and they don’t have any real grandkids, but when they do they’re going to be our cousins and they’ll be calling them that so we may as well start now and get them used to it.”

Sharon was still shaking her head and trying to sort out all those pronouns, when Roxy handed the phone over to Zinnie.

“You don’t mind, do you?” asked the older woman.

“No. No, Zinnie, I think it’s wonderful the way you and Harry have adopted my kids. And me,” she said with a lump in her throat.

“We’ve come to love you all,” Zinnie said, sounding a bit throaty herself. “To get two daughters and two grandchildren through the marriage of one son has been the highlight of our lives. But we were wondering if you’d like to come up and join us New Year’s Eve. If you left right after work, you could be here by early evening, and with the next day being a holiday, and the day after that a Sunday, you could get in a couple more days of skiing. You could also,” she added slyly, “ask Marc to come along.”

Sharon sighed and glanced over at Marc, who was lying with his hands behind his head, gazing at her. “Zinnie … I’d love to, but I can’t. I have a date for New Year’s Eve.” She watched Marc’s gaze narrow and looked quickly away from him. “I’d break it if I could,” she said to Zinnie, but mostly for Marc’s benefit, “but it’s one of those long-standing agreements, and I really can’t get out of it.”

“Oh, well. Never mind,” Zinnie said brightly. “Maybe next year. Wouldn’t that be fun? Jeanie and Max, Rolph and somebody, you and … somebody, and us and, of course, the kids.”

“Yes,” said Sharon sadly, watching Marc stand up and gather his clothes before going into the bathroom. “Maybe next year.” They talked for a few minutes longer, while the sound of the shower pounded in her ears, then Sharon hung up. Marc came out of the bathroom, looked at her blankly, as if he’d never seen her before, and went downstairs.

She showered, changed into a comfortable caftan, and shoved her icy feet into fleece slippers. In the kitchen, Marc was carefully slicing the roast.

They said little, and ate even less, then left the table. She thought he might go home, but he followed her into the living room, sitting down well apart from her, looking into the flames of the fire.

Finally, he glanced over at her, his golden brown eyes expressionless. “I’d have thought things had changed,” he said in a flat tone. “That you’d cancel a date with another man, no matter how long ago you’d made it, under the circumstances.”

“Marc …” She swallowed, moistened her lips. She felt sick. “I wish it could be different. But I already told Lorne that it would be our last date.” She remembered suddenly that she was also supposed to tell Lorne her answer to his important question. Of course she knew what it was going to be; no amount of “thinking it over” would ever change her mind, not even if Marc Duval hadn’t become her lover. “I tried to get out of it. But he reminded me that he had spent a lot of money for tickets, and …”

“I’ll buy the damn tickets from him,” Marc growled.

“I also said I wouldn’t let him down.” She bit her lip. “Lorne feels he has a … a position to uphold in the community. He considers himself one of the town’s leading citizens. He makes business contacts on social occasions and, well, he’d feel that I was insulting him publicly if I appeared at that dinner-dance with another man while he stayed home. Everyone who knows him knows we’re supposed to be there. Together.”

“I find I don’t really give a damn about Lorne Cantrell’s feelings at this moment, Sharon. It’s my feelings that are uppermost in my mind. And I hate the idea of my woman going out with another man, dining and dancing and kissing! I hate it!” he added vehemently, slamming his fist onto the arm of his chair, and she winced, staring at him, her eyes wide and dark.

Suddenly, his anger subsided. “Oh, hell, I’m sorry,
petite
.” He came and knelt before her, taking her hands in his. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Please, don’t look at me like that. Don’t be afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you. I just—”

It was as if he didn’t hear her, or maybe he didn’t believe her. He went on, still holding her hands, running his thumbs soothingly over their backs. “I’ll never hurt you, Sharon. I promise that solemnly. I am not a violent man. I’m just a man experiencing jealousy for the first time in his life.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I don’t want to make you feel that way. I don’t like hurting you, but this is something I have to do. I hate to break promises, Marc, and I did promise him, just last night, that I wouldn’t let him down. Don’t you think I’d rather be with you?”

He pulled her off the sofa and onto his lap, leaning back against the cushions, rocking her as if she were a hurt child, which in so many ways she was. Of course she hated to break promises; too many that had been made to her had been broken. She knew firsthand how it felt. “Yes,” he said, “I think you’d rather be with me. It’s okay,
ma petite
, I understand. I don’t like it, and won’t be happy to see you go out with him, but I won’t try to stop you. You are a grown woman, and you can make your own decisions. I know this is the right one for you, or you wouldn’t have made it.”

She drew in a tremulous breath and let it out slowly.
I love you
, she thought, and wished she could make herself say it. He had, but she couldn’t. The words were locked up inside her. And she didn’t know if he’d said it because he thought he should, when he was about to make love to her for the first, time, or because he really felt that way. He’d only said it once.

He had also said he might move on again come spring, so that nebulous “future” he’d mentioned might be very short. Maybe he still loved his wife. Maybe he always would. And there was still so much she didn’t know about him. Why, for instance, if he had enjoyed his law practice, was he establishing himself as a cookie-maker?

She longed to ask those questions and more, but years of experience had taught her that it was best never to push a man to do anything he didn’t want to do. And Marc, by his continued silence, had made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about his past. She shivered, even in the warmth of his embrace, remembering the look in his eyes when he pounded his fist on the chair, the fury with which he had said those words:
I hate it
! He said he wasn’t a violent man, but she knew every man had his breaking point, every man could become violent, if pushed hard enough.

She would never, never push.

Marc stood just at the door of the huge, crowded room. His eyes sought and found Sharon, a golden flame in her bridesmaid’s gown, shortened now to just above her knees, where the white fur trim swirled as she danced. His throat tightened as he saw Lorne Cantrell’s hand planted square in the middle of her back, against her skin bared by the vee of her dress, his other holding hers intimately close to his chest.

Drawing a deep breath, he forced himself to relax and searched the tables for his friends Candice and Norm, owners of one of the local stores that carried his line of cookies. When they’d learned he was to be alone tonight, they’d willingly offered him a seat at their table. Of course, he’d already overheard Norm telling someone else that his brother and sister-in-law, who had intended to join them, were not going to make it. It hadn’t taken much expertise to swing his subsequent conversation with Norm to the fact that he was dateless this New Year’s Eve, and regretting it, wondering what might be on in town that a lonely bachelor could attend.