Blame it on Cupid (22 page)

Hell. They hadn't remotely touched any critical body parts. There was just something about that woman that annihilated his previous conceptions about life, rational thinking, sanity—and that wasn't even counting what she did to his hormones. Furthermore, she'd opened a whole box of curious questions that she hadn't even started to answer—but temporarily, there was nothing he could do.

Some mother grabbed him and locked him behind a table, serving punch. She said the kids tended to spill less if the adults poured the cups. Merry took over the Valentine cookie table again, which was clearly an endless job, because kids that age could mainline a dozen at a time.

He assumed he'd get back to Merry quick enough, only things seemed to keep happening. The first was when two snot-nosed squirts tiptoed toward the back exit door—as if even the most brainless adults wouldn't guess they were sneaking out to smoke.

Right after he came back in, he aimed straight for Merry, only to see her hightailing it toward the dance floor. Initially he couldn't see why, but then the sea of bodies parted. Who'd have guessed pipsqueaks that young had a clue how to French kiss? But it was the behavior of Merry, The Morals Police, that completely charmed him. He had a long, lazy vision of her naked, wearing police boots and a holster, talking the criminal youngsters into behaving with her soft-spoken voice and big eyes.

And right after
that,
he heard some kind of scuffle on the side of the bleachers. Boys, after all, would be boys. Once the squabblers were separated, the chaperones all clustered in a frenzy to discuss their punishment, but overall, the two knock heads had only torn a shirt and bruised each other's egos. Add unpredictable hormones to too much sugar—and girls all dressed up—and naturally a few tempers were gonna fray. Jack told both boys to get a brain, keep a low profile and stay away from each other or he'd bash their heads for them.

Their beef was resolved easily enough, but then the chaperones had to get broken up before they talked it to death.

Finally he had a chance to search out Merry again—only to find her bearing down on Charlene. The kid was standing in the open doors, catching the fresh air, talking to the tall guy she'd been dancing with earlier. When Jack realized Merry was going to interrupt them, he finessed the bodies on the dance floor at a fast jog and did his job. Grabbed her. Swung her into his arms again.

“So…” he said. Which was all he could manage, until he'd rearranged her hands around his neck, and his around the flare of her hips again.

“Jack. It's a fast dance again.”

He didn't explain, because there was no point in repeating himself, and by then he figured she knew the score. He didn't know how to fast dance and that was that. So he just did the sway thing. And so did she. Who cared what music they were playing anyway? “So why did you quit jobs if you liked them? I didn't understand what you meant, about leaving every time you got attached to something.”

“I didn't understand it for a long time, either.” She smiled at him. One of those smiles that went woosh to his brain. “You dance so darn well. It makes me think you'd make love the same way. Easy. No performance stress. Just…get into it…with all your senses. Heart, eyes, textures, smells, touches—”

He squinted down at her. “Mer…are you trying to drive me crazy?”

“Maybe a little. I just keep wondering…you must have noticed how this comes up, every time we're together? Pun intended. It's more than your spirit rising. So…are you going to take it the next step, or are you just gonna tease me to death?”

“Ms.
Olson,
there are
children
around here.”

“None of whom can hear me. Neither of us are doing anything inappropriate.”

“
You
are.” Okay, maybe she wasn't physically. But she sure as hell was doing some illegal stuff with her eyes.

“All I did was ask you a question. If you don't want to make love with me, that's totally all right. We can just keep ignoring this…thing between us. I can do denial. There's no real reason we have to
do
anything about it, for heaven's sake—”

Jack would have answered her. He had no idea what he would have said, but he would have answered her. Only a woman's voice said, “Merry!” and suddenly a trio of moms were volunteering her to start the clean-up.

The dance was over?

How the hell could the dance be over? He just
got
there. He'd known from the get-go that every second of this evening was going to drag incessantly, and instead…he glanced at his watch. Three hours had actually passed. His eyes narrowed as he watched Merry blithely clap paper cups together and chuckle with the other women.

Unless he was mistaken, she'd just offered to sleep with him.

It was possible he was mistaken. Every time he was around her, he seemed to be so confused he couldn't see or think straight. But all the same…a guy could generally wake up from a coma, erect and ready, for the promise of sex. At least he could. If he wanted the woman.

And he sure as hell wanted Merry.

 

W
ELL
,
YOU COULD LEAD
a horse to water, Merry mused, as she listened to Charlene's chatter on the way home.

And that's all she'd been trying to do. Lead Jack into thinking—about her, about them. A woman couldn't get what she needed or wanted in life by snoozing in the backseat. Not these days. And certain risks, Merry was willing to take. Certain hurts, she was willing to risk.

But at this precise moment, the opportunity to jump Jack seemed as remote as a trip to Tahiti.

“Dougall is so, so stupid,” Charlene said, which was a refrain of the same song she'd been singing the whole drive.

“I thought I noticed you dancing with him several times?”

“Yeah, well. What we were mostly doing was arguing. About Space Zest. It's one of those world-building games,” she added, as if knowing full well Merry wouldn't have a clue what the context of the name was. “I beat him. But he claims he got to a higher level. Like yeah, right. I know exactly how smart he
isn't
because I see him in math class—”

“I thought Dougall was in eighth grade.”

“He is. Come
on,
Merry. You know I'm in the eighth-grade math class. And it's so much better. Because in my class, everybody was calling me a nerd. In the eighth grade, I'm not so far ahead so it isn't so embarrassing. Anyway, Dougall…”

Dougall took up another full fifteen minutes of dialogue—long enough to get them home, to get coats thrown on chairs and shoes shucked at the door and milk poured. The telephone rang just as they were headed back to Charlene's bedroom, annoying Merry no end. Charlene never opened like this, much less chattered like a nonstop magpie, so she hated interrupting it with a phone call.

More annoying yet, there was no one on the other end of the line. Or someone was
there,
but they didn't speak. Merry hung up, vaguely aware that the same thing had happened yesterday—a call where no one talked, just hung up—but it wasn't like it was a heavy breather or porn call. She put it out of her mind, caught up with Charlie in her bedroom, still carrying the glass of milk.

Charlie had already peeled off her dance clothes and pulled on the giant old T-shirt of her dad's that she slept in. Now she bounced on the bed and snuggled up, accepting the milk from Merry. Merry perched at the foot and kept on listening.

“So…like suddenly this girl walks up, all mad and red in the face. Says, ‘Hey, Dougall, you came with me, remember?' As if I were usurping her, you know? And yeah, he had to come with someone because otherwise he wouldn't have been at the sixth-grade dance, but it wasn't
my
fault he was talking to me. He started it!”

“So did you know the girl?”

“Oh, yeah, Tiffany. She isn't in most of my classes, but I still know her. She wears this color, like this blue-aqua. Because it's the Tiffany logo color, you know, like for the jewelry store. Does that tell you enough about her?”

“Oh, yeah.” Merry wanted to bounce on the bed a few dozen times. The whole conversation was enough to bring tears to her eyes. They were having a real-life girl conversation. A bonding conversation. It felt better than winning the lottery.

“She has big boobs already. And a Tiffany bracelet. And she puts a lot of junk on her eyes. The guys all call her a slut-in-training.” Charlie glanced at her with a pause, as if waiting for a scold on the
slut
word.

“That sounds pretty darn accurate,” Merry said instead, but she was thinking how the whole Dougall thing was starting to add up. The fight. The hurt feelings. The denial. The explosion of excitement and conversation. Was there anything more painful than a first crush? And this whole outpouring affirmed that Charlie's style choices had nothing to do with gender issues but were just about her dad.

When she could get a word in, she tried to delicately bring up another girl subject. “Charlie…some of the moms were talking about bras. It seems a lot of girls in your class are wearing those training bras now, so I thought maybe—”

“Not me.”

“All right.”

“Every time I hear the term ‘training bra,' all I can think of is ‘what are we training?' Horses? I mean, how do you train boobs? Besides which, I'm not growing breasts. Ever.”

Merry didn't say, you already are. But since they were already sneaking into mighty touchy waters, she tried, “Being at that dance reminded me of how I felt in sixth grade. It seemed right around then all my friends were talking a lot about sex….”

“My dad told me everything I ever need to know,” Charlie said flatly.

Damn, Merry thought, she'd screwed up again. Charlene shut down faster than a slammed door. She didn't suddenly turn rude. That was never Charlene's way. She just finished her milk and answered any further questions in monosyllables and finally just said that she was “way tired” and wanted to crash.

Merry ambled out, climbed into a robe, washed her face and moisturized, then wandered back into the kitchen. She puttered around for a few minutes, too wired to sleep even though it was almost midnight. After a bit, she tiptoed back to Charlene's room, and found her dead to the world. She really
was
beat. Merry snuggled the blanket closer under her chin, turned off the bedside lamp, and then tiptoed back to the kitchen again.

She should go to sleep herself, she kept thinking. But her mind kept spinning over the night's events. So many things had gone well for Charlene tonight. It seemed she'd finally broken out of her shell, enjoyed the dance and the other kids—whether she realized it herself or not.

But every loving instinct in Merry worried that the child was still buried under her grief. She still hadn't cried. She mentioned her dad often enough, but usually as some kind of defense. There was pain there. Anger, too, Merry mused.

She'd already read a bunch of parenting books, and another bunch on grief and kids coping with grief. Wearily Merry leaned against the counter and closed her eyes. If it were another kid, she'd push harder for the counseling route, but darn it, Charl was one of a kind. She had her own way of thinking through things, and more complicated yet, she was smarter than most books and most people. What she needed…

Was a mom.

And that was the real problem. Merry just wasn't sure what a good mom would do in this situation. Charlie had never had an active mother—and Merry hadn't, either. So between the two of them, it was something like the blind leading the blind. She just wished there was some magic rule book so she could know if she were taking the right steps…or the wrong ones.

A knock on the door made her jump in surprise. Before she could possibly jog over to answer it, Jack bolted in. “Don't you ever lock your door? Ever in this life?”

Well. He was certainly in a fine mood.

“Aren't your boys home?”

“Yeah. They're sleeping like logs. Didn't even wait up to find out what happened tonight. How about Charlene?”

“She dropped like a stone.”

“I saw your light on….”

She nodded, not unhappy he'd come over, just unsure what all the attitude was about. He stomped in like a bull who'd been cooped up for a couple of years with no fresh air, had a scowl on big enough to put the
O
in ornery. Something was sure wrong.

He peeled off his jacket, tossed it on the chair. It slumped to the floor. He didn't seem to give a damn.

“So I knew you were awake. And we sure as hell have a conversation to finish.”

“We do, huh?”

“Don't you smile at me.” A finger pointed at her, royal as a king's. “The only reason in
hell
I haven't jumped you was because I didn't think it was a good idea. For you.”