Beauty & the Beasts (16 page)

He hopped up. “That sounds really weird. You’re, like, my dad’s age.”

“He has parents, too, you know.”

“Well, yeah, but—” Garth’s brow crinkled “—they’re my grandparents!”

She held open the door for him. “But they’re Mom and Dad to him.”

“Yeah. I mean, I know, but…”

Madeline grinned at him. “I can’t imagine my mother as a little girl, either. Wait’ll you meet her.”

Garth was a model of politeness during the introductions. In turn, Mrs. Howard only gave his earring and shaven head one startled glance, then smiled graciously.

During dinner Madeline was secretly amused by the boy’s frequent intense scrutinies of her mother. Eric, if he noticed, didn’t comment, and had enough sensitivity not to remark on Garth’s unexpected display of manners. Mrs. Howard went out of her way to include him in the conversation. Madeline gradually relaxed.

Maybe that was why her mother succeeded in taking her by surprise.

“You remember Elizabeth,” she said to Madeline,
“my friend from high school? She’s still here in Seattle, and we were talking yesterday. She suggested she and I take a little trip. She called Lake Quinault Lodge, they still had rooms available midweek, so we’re off on Monday! I hope you don’t mind, Madeline.” She smiled conspiratorially at the others. “I thought my daughter could use a little break.”

Truer words had never been spoken. Madeline refrained from agreeing aloud.

“And a little adventure sounded like fun,” her mother continued. She gazed around with satisfaction. “I’ve never been there, but I understand the lodge is very nice, and the woods worth seeing.”

“Dad says it’s a rain forest,” Garth piped up. “We went over there last summer. It’s really cool! You won’t believe how big some of the trees are.”

He went on, enthusing about the moss that hung from branches and carpeted the ground, and the huge rotting trees that lay on the forest floor. Madeline didn’t really listen. Clearly neither did Eric. His meaningful gaze had captured hers, and the faintest of smiles flickered at the corners of his mouth.

A shiver of half-apprehension half-excitement feathered down Madeline’s spine. He was thinking, as she couldn’t help doing, as well, of how long it had been since they’d been alone. Really alone. Since Garth’s arrival, they’d seen each other a dozen times, but either Garth was with them or they were meeting for lunch in a crowded restaurant. The one afternoon they were at the shelter at the same time, the housekeeper and Joan had also been there, and two other volunteers had come to round up the cats that needed
attention. Not exactly intimate. And then her mother had arrived.

But now his eyes promised they’d find a way to be alone. She knew he didn’t have only a quiet dinner or a kiss on her doorstep in mind. Nor could she blame him. She thought about the same thing every time she watched his loose-limbed walk, melted at his smile, shivered at his touch.

She even thought she was ready. Sort of. She had a sudden image of swimming lessons when she was a kid: to pass advanced beginner’s, she’d had to jump from the high dive. Once up there, she’d looked down and panicked. But the other kids crowded the ladder behind her, and rows of parents sat watching in the stands. Her own mother was there. She couldn’t chicken out! And so she closed her eyes and jumped.

This was a little like that. Everyone else had already jumped. Her friends were married, or divorced and dating. The volunteers at the shelter all casually mentioned their husbands or the soccer or basketball games their children had played in. Before she hadn’t envied them. Recently she’d been shocked to realize she did.

So here was the moment. If she wanted a solitary life, she could keep standing up on that high dive all by herself. If she wanted what everyone else had— a husband, children, a
family
—then she had to jump sooner or later.

Just like then, she didn’t know if it would hurt when she hit the water. But maybe she’d be lucky. Maybe it wouldn’t.

Maybe Eric wasn’t dating her, wasn’t looking at her now with molten eyes, only because she was “even prettier.” Maybe he was falling in love with her.

As, she thought with shock, she was with him.

CHAPTER NINE

“D
ESSERT?”
T
HEIR WAITRESS
at the small seafood restaurant smiled. In the background, conversation hummed.

Eric raised a brow at Madeline. She considered trying to stuff in a piece of cheesecake as a delaying tactic, but decided that might backfire. Chickening out was one thing; getting sick all over her date was another. She shook her head.

“Just coffee,” he said, never taking his eyes from hers. The waitress departed.

During dinner Madeline had—almost—been able to forget the unspoken ending to this evening. Eric had been affable, relaxed, willing to discuss anything, his sexual intensity banked. But now…

Madeline swallowed hard. Conversation. That was what they needed. If they talked, she wouldn’t think. Imagine. Discover that anticipation could teeter like a seesaw between excitement and terror.

“Do you know,” she said chattily, “we’ve gotten through an entire dinner without talking about your son or my mother?”

“Uh-huh.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth without altogether taking shape. He saw right
through her. He must. “That was the general idea, wasn’t it?” he said lazily.

“I suppose…” Seizing gratefully on the arrival of the coffee, she thanked the waitress too profusely and took an immediate sip. And burned her mouth, at which Eric’s smile grew.

Dammit, no matter how amused he looked, that glow in his eyes remained, and she felt his sexual awareness like a space heater set too close.

“Garth is doing wonders with the kittens,” she said, trying to appear unruffled.

“The kittens are doing wonders with Garth.” Eric appeared momentarily distracted. “He still spends most of his time in his bedroom, but he doesn’t have those damn headphones on all the time. And he tells me about the kittens’ progress with reasonable civility. Even invites me in to visit them once in a while.”

“He’ll come around.”

Eric grunted. “I worry about what’ll happen when the kittens get adopted.”

She worried about that, too. The first time was the hardest. Eric’s son was younger, tenderer, than she’d been when she said goodbye to her first foster babies. “Do you want me to hold off? He could keep them all summer.”

“Then he’d be even more attached.” A twisted smile replaced the frown. “And
I
would have two more cats.”

“There are worse fates.”

“I think I have enough. Especially considering…” He clamped down on that one.

Thank God. What if he’d been about to say,
Especially considering how many
you
have?
If they got as far as combining households—

Don’t think about it,
she told herself.

She lifted her coffee cup and discovered it was empty. A leisurely second cup was unlikely to be on Eric’s agenda. Fed by a burst of adrenaline, her heart took an uncomfortable leap.

Eric smiled and lifted one hand. The waitress appeared like magic. Of course. “We’ll take the check now,” he said.

Madeline had never felt so many complicated emotions, had so many unprovoked physical responses, all at once. She wanted nothing more than to have Eric kiss her until she couldn’t think at all; at the same time she was praying he’d drop her off at her door without even a hint that he come in. She wanted to stay the friends she’d come to think they were; but she also wanted him to say,
I love you.

The truth was, she conceded ruefully, she couldn’t make up her mind. Or perhaps she wanted everything and was afraid to go after it.

But does it have to be tonight?
that insidious cowardly voice whispered.

She drew in a ragged breath, squeezed her hands together—and saw in alarm that he was laying some bills in the open leather folder and rising to his feet.

“Ready?”

No, she was not ready. Far from it! But she managed to smile and get to her feet. “I need to stop in the ladies’ room.”

“Sure.”

He steered her out with a hand at the small of her back. So little, that touch, but it sizzled through her silk blouse, made her every nerve quiver. The door to the rest room looked like a rabbit’s hole did to a rabbit when the shadow of an eagle floated near.

There was, of course, a limit to how long she could linger. She couldn’t even brush her hair, because she’d twirled it into a French roll. She didn’t carry her makeup, so she couldn’t touch that up. She simply washed her hands and stared at herself in the wall of mirrors.

She looked like her normal self. Maybe a little paler than usual, maybe her eyes were larger, darker, her breaths shallow. But no one who didn’t know her well would notice a thing. Her linen slacks were elegant; her amber silk blouse draped her breasts seductively. Too seductively, she thought, suddenly anxious. She turned this way and that, studying herself from different angles. Anxiety clogged her throat. Oh, no. She’d given the very signals she’d hoped to avoid. She’d thought to look businesslike. Reasonably attractive. Friendly.

All
he’d
been able to see across the table no doubt was the plunging neckline, the fabric clinging to her breasts, the shimmer of amber.

Yes,
that nasty little voice in her head murmured,
and you don’t really mind him looking, do you?

“Oh, shut up!” she snapped, and stalked out of the room.

Eric was waiting, his pose relaxed, patient; he leaned back against a railing, feet crossed at the ankle, arms braced to each side. The way his jacket
hung emphasized his broad shoulders; the fabric of his slacks was pulled tight over the long muscles in his thighs.

Though the rest-room door closed silently behind her, his head turned as though he’d felt her body heat. He watched her come toward him, and he was no longer smiling. His eyes were narrowed, intent Hungry.

He still didn’t move. “Ready?” he said again, his voice low, husky.

Her uncertain nod apparently satisfied him, because he straightened, took her arm and propelled her toward the exit.

The drive home from the hilly seaside town of Edmonds was mostly silent. Her chatter had dried up. Eric pushed a CD into the player, and the clear piercing tones of a jazz trumpet filled the car. The music seemed to speak aloud her fear, her hope, her shimmering excitement and welling sense of inadequacy.

Letting the notes seep into her, Madeline closed her eyes.

What was so frightening about making love with this man? She wasn’t a virgin; she’d had a couple of relationships in the reckless period after she left home, full of anger. She hadn’t had time to date before; besides, late nights might leave bags under her eyes. Her attachment to a man, she’d thought bitterly then, might loosen her mother’s grip on her. So it had been inevitable, when she’d broken free, that she would plunge into all the experiences other girls had had in high school.

It was probably also inevitable that they would be
unsatisfactory. She was like a girl let free from a convent, a girl who knew nothing about the real world. The knight in shining armor didn’t ride up on his white steed; true love eluded her. And sex was thoroughly disappointing.

Worse yet, sometimes it seemed she’d escaped nothing. Her looks were still all that mattered. Her two lovers had told her she was beautiful. They’d let her hair cascade through their hands as though they were adventurers who had found gold. Her breasts were perfect, her skin porcelain, they said. They stared as they undressed her, and she could feel their greed.

Each relationship had lasted a year. She hadn’t had one since. She’d told herself she didn’t want another. All men cared about was a woman’s beauty.
She
was more than her hair and skin and legs. Underneath she was different, unrelated to the face she saw on television and in magazine advertisements.
She
had nothing to do with the veneer that was all any man saw.

She sneaked a glance at Eric’s profile, unreadable in the dark interior of the car. Passing headlights reflected glints in his pale hair, shadowed his eyes, made him somehow mysterious, a stranger.

She felt a tremor, resisted it. He wasn’t a stranger. He was different from other men. He did see beyond the surface to
her;
he cared about the same things she cared about.

Didn’t he?

By the time he parked in her driveway, she was light-headed from imagining the best and the worst
ten times over. Even so, her heartbeat sprinted when he turned off the ignition, abruptly silencing the trumpet. All she could hear was her pounding heart.

He turned to her, laid his arm along the back of the seat behind her. This much was familiar; now was when she always turned to him and lifted her mouth to meet his. She loved kissing him, being kissed by him. But other nights he’d walked her to her door, kissed her again, slowly, then murmured good-night and left. Tonight she knew he wouldn’t.

Unless she refused him.
You can,
she thought, to give herself courage. But she knew she wouldn’t.

His lips came down on hers, hard, hungrily. Her mind blurred. His hand stroked her throat, angled her head so his mouth could claim hers more completely. She gave a small whimper, and he groaned.

“May I come in?” he asked roughly.

Trembling, she whispered, “Yes.” Of course he could.

She’d been living for this moment. Doubts were gone, swept away by passion and a sense of inevitability.

“You know I want you.”

“Yes.”

A jolt ran through him, and his grip on her arms tightened for an instant. “I wasn’t sure…”

She wished she could see his face better. “Sure you want me?”

He made a sound in his throat. “I’ve always wanted you. I wasn’t sure you wanted me. You’ve been…skittish.”

She was still skittish. If only he’d kiss her again.
Talking gave her the space to think, to replay all of her “should I or shouldn’t I” debates. She couldn’t tell him that.