Banjo Man (2 page)

The shuffling behind the closed door had barely
reached her ears when the lock clicked and the door was flung open.

Laurie’s mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Facing her, with but inches between his bare chest and her trembling self, was an incredibly handsome, very sleepy-looking man, lazily tugging up the zipper on his faded jeans.

If she were ever going to faint, now was the time to do it. How nice simply to pitch over onto her face and wake up to find Ellen standing there, instead of… instead of this unimaginably gorgeous half-naked man.
Come on, knees
, she prayed,
do your thing.

But nothing happened.

Of course not, a tiny voice inside her mocked. How can you faint when you’re so busy staring at his chest? But there was nothing on it! And it was right there in front of her, such an amazingly virile chest, the skin dark and smooth, dusted with dark, curly hair. And there were so many muscles: the sculpted curve of muscle across his upper chest, the flat, hard band of muscle flowing down between his ribs to his navel, and then the lean muscular patch of belly visible inside the zipper’s open V. Oh, Lord … what in the world was she doing?

Laurie’s eyes flew to his face and met a sleepy, amused grin. “Well, that was quite a once-over, ma’am,” he drawled. “Do I get my turn now?” He winked and tugged his zipper higher, buttoned his jeans, and settled them comfortably low on his lean hips. His eyes never left Laurie’s face.

Every nerve in Laurie’s body seemed to flame. Her head began to spin, and black spots as big as whales swam before her eyes. Well, she thought resignedly, better late than never. And as her eyes clung to the fading image of the man in front of her, her knees gave way.

The stranger caught her to him, and held her tightly there, pressed against his sleep-warmed body. “Hey, hold on. Are you okay? Hey—” He curved one arm around her back to hold her slender weight, then used his free hand to brush the damp, clinging strands of hair off her pale cheeks. “I was only teasing. My bark is definitely worse than my bite!”

He stared down at the trembling girl in his arms, and a strange tightness closed his throat. She was lovely, with a beauty as fragile and haunting as the heroines in the old ballads he loved. Cursing himself silently, he tipped up her chin and drew a hand gently across her brow. When he spoke aloud, his voice held a husky gentleness. “Hey, there, I’m sorry, sweet thing; I didn’t mean to frighten you. I’m no dangerous sex fiend, just a half-awake banjo player with a rough sense of humor.”

Laurie heard the words from far away, as if she were floating somewhere high overhead, or deep beneath the waves. She tried to answer, to assure him that she was absolutely fine and didn’t mean to be so silly, but she couldn’t quite find her voice. Her lashes fluttered open, revealing huge gray eyes filled with dismay and embarrassment, and her gaze brushed his face like a butterfly’s wing.

Rick Westin felt the touch of that gaze, and reacted to it instantly. In one strong sweep he had Laurie up in his arms, cradled against his chest. He pushed the door open all the way with one hip, and strode into the room. For a moment he hesitated in front of the sofa, but shook his head and went right through the living room and into the only bedroom.

The blankets were thrown back, the sheets wrinkled from his weight. The pillow still bore the imprint of his head. Without a word he bent, placed Laurie on the bed, and sat down on the edge
next to her, his jean-clad thigh agonizingly close to Laurie’s bare arm.

Squeezing her eyes closed, she crossed both arms over her breasts, her hands clenched into small, shaky fists.

Rick laughed. “You look like you’re ready to give up the ghost, darlin’. Relax. You’re safe here, I promise.” But there was a husky sensuality in his voice that made him sound anything but safe. “Relax,” he ordered again, prying her hands loose and running his palms slowly down her arms in what was meant to be a comforting gesture.

Little did he know the effect he was having on Laurie O’Neill.

“I—I don’t think I can relax like this,” she said with a gasp, struggling toward the far end of the bed. “Maybe if you went away … or if
I
got up and went away … or something.”

“Then you’re feeling a little better?”

“No, I don’t think so. I can’t breathe, and … and my heart’s pounding.”

“I know. I can feel it.”

“Ohhhh,” Laurie groaned, not wanting to be reminded of just how close their bodies were. “Let me go. I think I can stand up now.”

“Sure?”

“No! I’m not sure about
anything
, except that I’m tired and miserable, and I must be lost—”

“Why?”

“Because you couldn’t possibly be sleeping here if this is where
I
’
m
supposed to be staying. Ellen wouldn’t do that to me. She couldn’t! She’d have warned me—” Laurie wailed.

“Whoa! So you’re Ellen’s long-lost friend! Listen, she figured you’d changed your mind, when you didn’t call. So she let me con her into staying overnight. You see”—he rambled on, seeking to soothe her with the steady, comforting timbre of his
voice—“I found this great mutt of a dog on the road last Sunday and brought him home, and now I’m having my place bombed for fleas. The dog’s at the vet’s, being similarly treated, and I needed a place to stay tonight. Ellen had graveyard duty in the Emergency Room, and you weren’t here, so everything worked out fine. Or was
supposed
to, anyway. There.” He stopped talking and pushed her gently back against the pillow. “Now you know you’re not lost. What can I do about tired and miserable, hmmm?”

When he smiled, Laurie felt shivers dance up her arms. Before she had only been aware of his body, that surprising, shocking seminakedness, the darkly tanned flesh. Now, as if for the first time, she saw his face. He had rather wild dark hair, a lot of it, and very dark eyes, a strong, sensual mouth, and a sharp cleft in his chin, half hidden by the heavy shadow of beard that darkened his jaw. But it was his eyes that hypnotized her; they were a brown so dark and warm it needed another name. Cocoa, she mused, or chocolate, or coffee.

Nervous laughter bubbled in her throat. “I must be hungry.” She gasped, struggling to get hold of herself. That had to be the explanation: hunger and exhaustion, and shock! What else could explain these crazy thoughts and feelings that were tumbling around inside her?

The banjo player, studying her with those piercing dark eyes, accepted her words as answer to his question. “Well, sweet thing, I can take care of that! A Westin special, coming up!”

He brushed his fingers lightly across her cheek, rose to his full, lanky height, and headed for the kitchen. At the doorway, he turned to Laurie. “You stay there, now. No funny business. I don’t want to come back and find you fainted dead away on the floor.”

“Really, you don’t have to worry about me, or fuss over me, or anything,” she whispered, pushing herself up onto her elbows. “I’m okay. And just a cup of tea or a glass of milk would be fine. Don’t go to any bother, please.”

“I don’t know,” he answered softly, “but I think I’d like bothering over you. You remind me of some little bird that’s been blown about on the wind and needs a place to rest.”

“I am not!” she retorted, startling herself with her uncharacteristic burst of anger. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she glared at him, her gray eyes wide and flashing. “I’m not a little bird. No, not at all. I’m a grown woman, out on my own, and I can take care of myself. If I can drive from western Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C., without brakes, I can do anything. And I intend to. And I don’t want to be mothered or smothered or … or—”

“Whoa!” His rich laughter filled the room. “Fantastic. You can bet I won’t make that mistake again. And believe me, mothering and smothering were not what I had in mind. I’ve just got a feeling that tonight might be the luckiest night of my life. I owe Ellen a kiss and Arlo an extra scratch behind the ears. Now, you just sit still, and I’m gonna fix you one of my special midnight snacks. Well”—he chuckled, glancing at the clock—“make that a three
A.M.
special, comin’ up for … Hey! you know, I don’t even know your name.”

“I’m probably better off that way!” Laurie tossed back, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of her mouth totally against her will. “My name is Laurie O’Neill. Pleased to meet you. And you are …?”

“…  even more pleased to meet you!” Flashing a rather wolfish grin, he moved swiftly from the doorway to her side. He captured her hand between the two of his.

Messages sparked up the nerves of her arm, warning her startled brain about the deceptive strength of his hands and the surprisingly sensual rasp of the callused pads of his fingertips against her palm. His touch was cool, but her entire arm blazed with hidden warmth. She pulled her hand away as though she’d been burned. “No, I meant your name,” she insisted with ill-restrained exasperation. “Is Westin your first, last, or only?”

“Ah … an old-fashioned girl who likes formal introductions. Well”—he offered her his hand and a wry grin—“I’m Rick Westin. Banjo player, balladeer, and collector of all kinds of American bits and pieces: songs, stories, people, and places. Satisfied?”

Laurie tucked both hands warily behind her back. “Yes … mostly.”

Hunkering down at the side of the bed, he rested his palms on his denim-clad thighs and lifted one dark brow in question. “All right. What else do you want to know?”

“Well, it’s probably none of my business.…”

“Come on. Shoot.”

“How … how do you know Ellen?”

“You mean how? Or how well?” he asked bluntly.

Laurie went from pale to sheet-white. “I meant
how!
I’d never pry, or ask anything like that!”

“Why not? Everyone else would.” He narrowed his dark eyes and looked at her for a long moment. Then he added with calculated sarcasm, “I mean … you did find me in her bed.”

“Stop it! I didn’t think … think anything of it even for a moment. And I’d never make insinuations like that anyway; it’s none of my business. Ellen is a good friend, and I care about her. As long as she’s happy, well, that’s all that matters.”

Rick thought for a second that she was putting
him on, but no, nobody was that good an actress. This kid was sincere.

“Sorry.” He grinned, too pleased with his discovery to sound totally repentant. “You know, that’s nice, really nice. I told you this was my lucky night! Now I’m gonna get you that invigorating, rejuvenating one-hundred-percent-natural, high-energy, low-calorie, mid-octave whippersnapper of a Westin special. Stay where you are!”

He left Laurie seesawing silently between anger and amazement.

When he had disappeared safely into the kitchen, and could be heard clanking noisily through cabinets and drawers, Laurie dropped back onto the pillow in exhaustion. She lay still for a moment, her arms limp at her sides, her hands curled on the sheet like pink shells on white sand.

Slowly, she became aware of a disturbingly earthy, intoxicating scent. Furrowing her brow, she breathed in deeply, letting the smell fill her head and lungs. With surprise she realized it hadn’t drifted in from the kitchen, as she had assumed, but rose around her from the bed and pillow where she lay. It was vaguely familiar, but alien, too, and elusively avoided every label she tried to pin on it.

She closed her eyes, and drew another heady breath … and suddenly an image flashed on the dark screen of her closed lids: It was herself, so young—sixteen, maybe, or seventeen—curled half-asleep in bed, her own bed in her own bedroom back in the big white frame house in Pittsburgh, the bed with the canopy, and the faded roses climbing the wallpaper … and she was hugging something in her arms, something redolent of that same musky, arousing scent. Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Laurie concentrated on the memory, willing it into focus.

And there it was. She was hugging a sweater! Some boy’s letter sweater, white wool with a navy band at hem and cuff, and a big, proud B for the Bulldogs. The scent that filled her head then, and now, was a male smell, of after-shave and sweat and that secret, undeniably foreign and exciting scent of … sex!

Laurie leaped upright in bed, her body damp with the cold sweat of fear. For she remembered well what had happened next: her father’s footsteps in the hall and the bright glare of light, and his anger as he pulled the sweater away and crushed it in his hands. “That is all right for your sister; Katy doesn’t have your potential, Laurie, so she might as well waste herself on being boy-crazy. But not you! You are my gift, my brightest daughter. And I’m ashamed of you.
You
must save yourself for greater things.”

That was all.

The sweater was hanging on a hook by the front door the next morning, and Laurie picked it up and took it back to the boy at school without a word of explanation. Joe, that was his name, Joe Holzpath. A nice boy … And when she graduated, she left home and joined the convent, and her father and mother and all the aunts were so very proud.

Tears filled her eyes and spilled suddenly down Laurie’s cheeks. Wrapping her arms around her knees, she buried her face against her skirt and cried as she had not cried since that night years before. Her narrow shoulders shook with sobs, and her chest ached with their stifled force. Oh, what had happened to her life? All those days and years gone. But not wasted, oh, please,
no.
She had tried, she had been a good person, a good teacher, there was certainly meaning to it all, to what rested
in the past. Please, let there be some meaning to what was waiting ahead!

The sudden whir of the blender in the kitchen startled her back to the present. Wiping her face on the blanket, she stood up and tiptoed into the bathroom.

The girl who stared back at her from the mirror over the sink looked desperately in need of restoration. Her inexpertly cut hair was badly tangled and her skin was far too pale. Laurie splashed cold water on her face, borrowed a brush from the cabinet, and pinched some color into her cheeks. Then she practiced a smile. And when she was satisfied that it would stay where it was supposed to, and not quiver into a frown, she straightened her shoulders, tipped up her chin, and headed for Rick Westin and his red-eye special.