Blame it on Cupid (11 page)

Jack had always willingly offered her a solution for that, at least on the extremely occasional basis she called. Truthfully, he hadn't seen her in months and hadn't exactly planned to—but when he answered a call and heard a woman's voice, his heart leaped to the too-fast conclusion that it was Merry. Merry's voice. Merry's face on the other end of the line. Merry, putting that crazy happy zip in his pulse. And when he realized how insanely and inappropriately he was starting to feel for his worrisome neighbor, he immediately told Heather yes.

The way Jack saw it, nothing in his life had been normal since Merry moved in next door. So it was time he got back in the saddle. Literally. And if Heather's acrobat exploits couldn't get his mind off his next-door neighbor, nothing could.

He was still upstairs, freshly showered and shaved, trying to choose a shirt from his closet, when he heard the excited knocking downstairs. Heather was either extra-eager or extra-early. Maybe he wasn't—but with the wild sleet storm building over the last couple hours, he was relieved she was off the icy roads and here safe.

Swiftly he grabbed a chamois shirt and finished buttoning it as he jogged down the stairs. “Coming,” he yelled as he heard the exuberant knocking again. He only wished he felt the same exuberance. He was trying. Damn it, she was a nice woman. Fun. She was the rare kind of woman who openly admitted a need for sex, for just plain wanting to scratch an itch sometimes without a pile of complications. Nothing wrong with that. No one was getting hurt. It was honest. Real.

It was just that sometimes he had the oddest feeling that he was lonelier the next morning than if he'd woken up solo.

Still, he forced a welcoming smile on his face as he crossed the kitchen. He'd never been prone to that kind of crappy introspection before. It was one of the aberrations bugging him since his next door neighbor had moved in. He could shake it. It was just going to take some discipline, some self-control. Some mindless sex.

He swiftly opened the back door with a humorous, “Good grief, where's the fire, Heather—?”

Only to abruptly realize there was no Heather. The two characters on his back porch looked like cartoon caricatures. His heart rate recognized Merry in theory—but reality was that this goofy visitor was wearing no coat, just an oversized T-shirt over her clothes and bare feet in flip-flops—even in the driving sleet—but her clothes weren't the shocker. Her eyes, her gorgeous dark eyes, were the only thing normal about her. The rest of her was blotched with something. Paint? Yellow, orange, purple, green, red. In her hair, on her face, her fingers, the shirt.

The fleeting thought blew through his head that this was exactly why he needed sex. With someone. Anyone. Because if his heartbeat could thump like a puppy's tail at the sight of this woman, he needed help. Soon. Fast.

Naturally he tore his eyes off her immediately. Her sidekick had to be Charlene—who he should have easily recognized, considering he'd known her for a solid handful of years. But he hadn't seen her close-up since she'd chopped off and spiked her hair, and she was as drenched in paint as Merry, except that the kid at least had the brains to drape some towels over her shoulders for warmth.

He could barely phrase a sputter, much less a coherent question. “What on earth—?”

“Jack, I hate to bother you, but we're in a terrible mess! I don't know what happened, but the lights went off. And so did everything else. And—”

“We lost
all
power,” Charlene clarified.

“Which wouldn't have been so bad except that we were right in the middle of painting. So we couldn't clean up and we couldn't touch anything and everything's still all wet! We were even afraid to put on coats, for fear of ruining our coats and shoes with paint. And I don't have a clue what's wrong. Or what I should do—”

“I told her where the circuit breaker box was,” Charlene interrupted. “But she said she barely knew the difference between a fuse box and a boom box.”

“We couldn't see to go downstairs anyway. I hate to bother you! But I just don't know what to do. Who to call, or—”

Jack never got it, why females felt they had to talk nonstop when there was a problem. He did the obvious, grabbed both of them and pulled them in out of the cold. “Okay, you two, one at a time—”

“Jack, the kitchen is a terrible mess. And we can't just leave all the wet paint and paint cans open. But—”

“But when all the power went off so fast, it was too dark to see. I know where Dad kept flashlights. But we'd been painting with our feet. Some. It's hard to explain. But we couldn't just walk across the carpets—”

“Skip all the detail, okay? Where's the breaker box?”

“Huh?” Merry said.

So he redirected the question to Charlene. “In the basement, like I told her. Only it was too dark to see down there without a flashlight, and we had the same problem, not wanting to track paint everywhere we walked—”

Both females lifted their paint-splotched feet to illustrate. He didn't need more information. “First off, I'll go over and figure out what happened—”

“I'll come with you,” Merry said immediately.

The sick, wayward side of his mind murmured,
I only wish.
How insane was that, to discover sexual potential in the middle of chaos? He told himself to get a grip and keep it. “Neither of you are going anywhere with no coats and no shoes.”

“We put on slippers. Or flops. We just didn't want to wreck a real pair of—”

“I get it, I get it.” Possibly his crazy neighbor's behavior was infectious, because he found himself making sweeping gestures with his hands, like she did. Anything to communicate above the din. And then he had another thought. “Water-soluble or oil-based?”

“Huh?”

Again, he redirected the question to the brains of the pair. “Charlene, what kind of paint?”

“Water-based.”

“Well, there's one relief.” Quick as a flash, he grabbed some towels from the laundry room and dropped them on the floor. “I'm guessing this is going to take me a minute. And you two likely won't want to stand here with paint drying all over you. Charlene, you've been in the house before, so you can show Merry where the showers are, up and down. Just use the dirty towels to keep the paint off the floor, all right? And then Charlene, go in the boys' rooms and grab a couple of sweatshirts to put on.”

“But—”

He couldn't imagine a single “but” from Merry that he wanted or needed to hear. “Maybe the problem will be as simple as a blown fuse. One way or another, I'll find out. But I'm bound to be a few minutes, no matter what. So it just makes sense for the two of you to get warm and dry.”

“But it's not your problem, Jack. I didn't mean to drop it in your lap—”

Yeah, well, she had. And it was the stupidest thing, but before he headed out the back door with a flashlight…well, the darn woman looked so upset and
stressed
standing there with all that crazy paint on her, her heart in those big eyes. He didn't mean to, but somehow his hand reached up. He cupped her face, the side of her head, paint and all. It was just…he couldn't just disappear with her still looking so damned woebegone and upset.

And her eyes tilted immediately up to his when he touched her. “It'll be all right,” he said firmly. “I promise. Just chill.”

“Okay,” she whispered, but her gaze was still glued on his like something else was happening.

When nothing else was happening, for damn sure, and wasn't about to.

He tromped across the yard, thinking that he might as well pave a cement walkway between their back doors if these disasters were going to be a daily occurrence. He realized in a blink that his right palm was damp—because of paint, from touching her. He realized in another blink that he felt a wild surge of longing and wanting from touching a woman with a yellow-and-purple splotchy cheek.

Icy rain slashed his face as he glanced up, suddenly aware of a giant shadow on her roof. Swiftly he jogged past her back door and hustled into her backyard. He saw the problem immediately. A pair of birch trees framed the deck off the back. Typically everybody loved the white bark of the birches, but Jack knew wood, knew the trees tended to be fragile, never lived long, caught every passing tree virus there was. So maybe the one had been weak. Whatever. Sleet had formed around the limbs, snugger than a condom, and at some point the weight of the ice added up and the big limb had just snapped. The branch had crashed onto the main electric line running into the house and fell on the roof.

Of course, being able to diagnose the problem didn't mean it was solved.

The electric company had to be called. And he needed to get in the girls' house, check out the back rooms, see if the branch had caused enough roof damage to cause a leak. It was damned scary to think of either Merry or Charlene anywhere close to that live wire.

He headed for her back door, tripped on the step in the dark and swore—even though he marveled that she'd at least remembered to close the door for once.

He immediately switched on his flashlight. Crisis or no crisis, he slowed down long enough to take one long, meandering, disbelieving look at the disaster in the kitchen.

He suffered the immediate, sure horror that the girls were spending the night at his place. It wouldn't kill them to sleep without electricity. And they were both bright enough to keep reasonably warm in a house that was warmed up to start with. But…he knew.

Anyone capable of making a mess this big, this monumental, this award-winning, just wasn't in the Girl Scout class.

He got the electric company's emergency number from Information and then wanted to be connected as he hiked toward the back rooms.

It was only then, out of the blue, that he suddenly remembered his date with Heather.

M
ERRY TURNED OFF THE
faucets in Jack's upstairs bathroom shower and grabbed blindly for a towel. Finally, she was warm again. Unfortunately being warm and clean didn't stop her from feeling lower than sludge.

She was used to people thinking she was a ditz. Used to people thinking she was an unpredictable, impulsive, not-always-responsible free spirit even. She knew her faults. But darn it, she never remembered feeling like such a failure before.

She stepped out of the blue-tiled shower, rubbing hard, and with her skin still damp, pulled on the University of Virginia sweatshirt. Jack said it belonged to one of his sons, which told her clearly that his twins mimicked his tall, lean build, because the sweatshirt reached unglamorously to her knees.

There was no way to shape up the rest of her appearance, either. His boys' bathroom medicine chest had tons of stuff—Band-Aids, first aid cream, rolls of gauze, several varieties of toothpaste and deodorant. Deodorant was good. But she had no comb, no underpants, no lipstick. No nothing—except for a heap of paint-stained clothes. Oh, and the guilt sucking at her conscience.

Finally,
finally,
things had been going great with Charlene—until the power went out. And now she'd embroiled Jack in their problems, as if she were one of those needy, helpless types. Which, come to think of it, she was, at least near anything mechanical or technical. Now she wished she'd argued louder about their not needing to take advantage of his showers and all—but the truth was, she was totally grateful to get the paint off her face and skin and hair. It'd been starting to dry. And itch.

Tufts of steam escaped when she opened the door to the bathroom. She turned toward the stairs, then spun around, realizing immediately that she had to be heading in the wrong direction. For sure, she hadn't passed that black-and-gray bedroom on her way up—she guessed it was Jack's bedroom, because it was huge, the bed big enough for an orgy or two. She almost paused, because darn it, she was mighty curious…but then she remembered the heap of guilt and chased downstairs in search of Charlene.

In the hallway off the kitchen, the girl was just opening the bathroom door, and the view made Merry stop dead. The U of V sweatshirt fit Charlene just as badly as it did her, but that wasn't the point. It was the first time Merry had seen her without the waxed brush cut. Her face, all pinked and fresh-clean, looked so vulnerable and innocent. Her little frame looked so feminine when it wasn't draped in fatigues and adopting a tough posture. And the fluffy, short mop on her head was paler than wheat, fair as silk.

“Aw, honey,” Merry murmured. “You're so beautiful.”

Wrong thing to say. Merry wanted to kick herself when she saw the squirt immediately stiffen up.

“I don't want to be beautiful.”

Okay, maybe they had a ton of immediate serious things to concentrate on, but Merry was still taken back by the comment. “Why?”

Charlene produced an even darker scowl. “My mom. I guess she was beautiful. I mean like, over the top. People couldn't stop looking at her. That's what Dad always said.”

“And you think that's bad?” Merry knew they were both standing in Jack's hallway, wearing nothing but sweatshirts, and they really needed to figure out their power crisis, but just then, nothing seemed more immediately important than this.

“I don't know if it's bad. I just know…I don't want to be like my mom. I want to be like my dad. I don't want to forget my dad for a minute. He was a hero. Strong. And safe. And he wasn't afraid of anything.”

And suddenly so much made sense to Merry. Charlie wasn't trying to be a
guy.
She was trying to feel safe. The way she'd felt when her dad was alive.

The kind of safe she hadn't felt since.

“When you feel like it,” Merry said gently, “I'd really like to hear more about your dad.”

Charlene might have answered, but they were both interrupted by the sound of the back door opening, and a woman's voice yelling out a cheerful, “Jack? It's me!”

Merry only had to turn the corner into Jack's kitchen to see the intruder—and, of course, to be seen. Her first thought was a silent uh-oh. And her second was that as uh-ohs went, this one was on a par with a zit at a wedding.

Merry might be slow at geography, but she grasped this situation in a millisecond. Jack had a date tonight. The woman was groomed to the teeth. She was just wearing slacks and a sweater, but the fit was Saturday-night, and Merry knew date makeup when she saw it—from the sex-red lipstick to the careless toss of curls. She'd also have bet the bank the woman had on lace underwear, likely a thong, likely a peekaboo bra with a front catch. The perfume alone would have clogged a man's good sense. Merry should know. She'd worn it for dates herself—at least when she'd been seriously interested in the guy.

“Who on earth are you?” the woman said, her jaw dropping at the sight of Merry's bare legs and wet hair.

Merry said immediately, “Please don't worry, it's not at all what you think—”

“Yeah, right.” The woman straightened like a poker, her pretty face turning cool. “I know Jack's adventurous, but I didn't expect anything like this. No offense. But I don't do threesomes.”

“Say what?”

And then the woman spotted Charlie, coming up behind her in a matching sweatshirt.

“Whoa,” the woman said. “Like, big whoa. Say hi to Jack when you see him. I'm gone.”

She obviously intended an immediate exit, but that plan was thwarted when Jack suddenly barreled in the back door. He looked at his date. He looked at Merry and Charlene in their bare feet and damp hair.

He sighed.

A babble of confusion seemed to follow. Jack tried to take the woman aside and explain, but the woman kept saying, “Look, it's obvious you have your hands full here. We'll just make it another time.” Which would have been reasonable except that her tone was as frosty as a north wind, so Merry tried to step forward and help.

“Really, we're just neighbors. We had a power outage. It was just all a mess, so Jack let us come in to take a shower, but we're going right home—”

Jack said, “Merry. Would you please not help?”

And the woman said, “I don't know who you are, but no one's talking to you.”

And then Jack said, “Hey. There's no reason to be rude. Plans got interrupted. That's all. No one asked for it, but there it is.”

“Damn right
there it is,
” the woman echoed, and then clipped out the back door with her spine so sharp it could have cut meat.

And then Jack sighed. Again. Merry immediately started up with, “I am
so, so
sorry—”

But he just looked at Charlene, and said, “What'd you think of that mess?”

Charlene had propped herself on the kitchen counter and seemed to enjoy watching the scene unfold. Now she shrugged and said, “Pretty murky. But I think you can do better than her.”

Merry blinked, surprised at both Charlene's intuition and opinion, but then she turned back to Jack. Somehow she had to make amends for causing all this mess. “Look, you can go after her. The lady. I mean, you can call her—”

“Is there anything I said to make you think I needed advice about my love life?”

Okay. He was naturally feeling a little testy. She lifted her hands in the universal make-peace gesture, but then immediately realized that the borrowed sweatshirt—even if it was bigger than a boat—still lifted up considerably when she raised her arms.

And his gaze flew down there faster than a politician could lie—which was considerably fast.

Merry fumbled, “Look, we'll just go home—”

“Afraid that's the one thing that's
not
going to happen. One of the big birch trees in the back fell on an electric line and your roof. I reached the electric company. They'll be out tonight, because the wire's live. So it'll be taken care of pretty quickly, but you won't be sleeping there tonight.”

Merry refumbled. “Well, okay. I guess I can just go over there and get my purse. We can drive to a motel. This was all we needed, really, a chance to shower, get the paint off us, but we can't just impose on you—”

“A motel is just plain dumb,” Jack said flatly. “The boys aren't here. Their rooms are empty, plenty of space. And then when the electric company's done its thing, you're right next door and can head home.”

“I'm just so sorry we're being so much trouble.” There was just nothing else to say. He didn't seem angry with her exactly. Just cranky. Naturally. She'd screwed up his date, messed his Saturday night up good.

“Yeah, well, I think Charlene had it right. Maybe you guys saved me from a fate worse than death with my date, right, kid?” He hooked an arm around Charlene's neck, and said, “You hungry?”

“Dying of starvation,” she affirmed.

“I've probably got stuff in the fridge. Peanut butter if nothing else. Lots of frozen stuff. Or…”

“Or we could order a pizza?” Charlene asked hopefully.

“That's exactly what I was thinking, short stuff.”

So they did a pizza, vegged out in the living room where Charlene and Jack turned on a blood-and-guts flick that they were apparently crazy about. Merry watched the two, slowly feeling herself calm down. The two of them got on like a house afire, maybe because Jack was a similar age to Charlene's dad. He was so good with her.

Because the violence bored her senseless, she had ample time to study his living room. Two couches were the prime pieces of furniture, located to watch a theater-size TV screen. A fireplace jutted in the middle of the room, with a wraparound sit-down hearth, all in a dark brick. One giant easy chair snugged up to a window. The room was spacious and comfortable, but very “guy,” no
tchotchkes
that needed dusting, for darn sure.

The first day she met him, he'd been carrying in boards from his truck, and now she discovered what they were for. Past the living room was another room, one step down, where he was building a library of shelves. French doors closed off the construction site, but she could see the sawdust, the power tools, the sawhorses and boards and all.

She wanted to explore more of the house, but at some point she must have fallen dead asleep during the movie, because she woke up to feel Charlene's hand on one shoulder and Jack's hand on the other. It was past midnight. Everyone was voting to cave.

Upstairs, Jack's sons had rooms on the same side of the hall, with a bathroom in between. Charlie took the blue one, and Merry crashed in the gray and white one closest to the stairs. She didn't remember falling asleep, didn't remember another thing until she suddenly woke up, startled to see lights flashing in the window.

The electric company had shown up. Jack appeared at the stair top at the same time she did.

“Not your problem,” she said sleepily. “I don't want to cause you any more trouble, Jack—”

But he motioned to her outfit. His look seemed to imply that the sweatshirt wasn't exactly appropriate attire for receiving guests or dealing with repairmen. She couldn't argue with that. She didn't have a clue what to say to the electric company guys anyway.

So he went out alone, and she stumbled back into his son's bed, but she was wide awake now, and getting more wide awake by the minute. Jack had been treating her like an affectionate but annoying little sister. She couldn't fault him, especially after she'd caused him no end of trouble since she got here. If she felt fierce twinges of longing and connection every time they were together, that didn't matter. She didn't expect him to reciprocate. She just wanted to
do
something to establish a more comfortable ground between them.

Minutes crawled by. Finally, the flashing lights of the emergency truck disappeared. She heard the back door open. She waited, thinking that Jack had to be exhausted and would be headed upstairs to bed any second now. But more minutes passed and she still didn't hear his footstep on the stairs.

Don't get up, she told herself…even as she was peeling back the covers and climbing out of bed. At the top of the stairs, she hesitated. She heard no sound below, but could see lights spilling in the hallway.

Don't go down, she told herself. Hadn't she intruded on the guy enough for one day? He likely wanted another encounter with her today like he wanted a hole in the head. But she tiptoed down, arms wrapped tight around her chest, feeling to blame for his not sleeping, wanting to fix it somehow.

The lamplight glowing in the living room revealed no one there.

She found him in the kitchen. A stainless-steel light fixture over the eating counter gave his profile a long shadow. He was splashing scotch in a glass, his dark hair rumpled. Her pulse kicked up an instinct of danger. Pretty silly, when she wasn't remotely physically afraid of Jack, but there was just something about those big, broad shoulders, the intimacy of just the two of them downstairs in the lonely hours of the night, that totally male shadow of his. Her pulse kicked up like her internal music had just switched on.