City Girl (13 page)

She didn’t say no.

His first kiss was a mere brushing of his lips over hers. Even that tentative skimming touch sent her pulse rate into overdrive, and she shivered. He closed his eyes and kissed her again, and this time she placed a hand on the back of his head, holding him to her. She parted her lips for him, admitting his tongue and meeting it with her own. When he drew back, her vision was blurred, but not so far gone that she couldn’t see the bemused, questioning gaze he turned on her.

A smile curved his chiseled mouth. “You were right to recommend friendship. I really like your style.”

“I . . . like yours, too,” she whispered, and suddenly what had started as a lighthearted game became deadly serious. Her heart pounded hard in her chest as Kirk’s smile faded and his eyes grew dark with desire. She clenched her hands in his shirtfront, trembling against him as he took her mouth in a deep, searching kiss. He must have found what he was looking for, because he made a soft, pleased sound in his throat. Tangling his hand in her hair, he tilted her head back and kissed her scar again, then her throat, her ears, her eyelids, before returning to her mouth.

Liss tingled all over—from her palms, spread across his chest, to her legs, tangled with his; to her belly, where his hard arousal pressed.

Even when the kisses stopped and they lay there enveloped in their small, secret world, breathing raggedly as they gazed into each other’s eyes, it took her several moments to be able to whisper, “Was this in your how-to book?”

“There are no instruction books for what’s happening,” he said hoarsely. “You send me right out of control.”

His words, the expression in his eyes, the tone of his voice, frightened her more than anything ever had in her entire life. Her heart raced. Her breathing grew labored. She put her hand on his chin and held him away. She didn’t like the idea of his being out of control, not when she was so close to being the same.

“No, stop,” she said. “Let’s stick with being friends. The usual kind. Don’t, please,” she added when he tried to kiss her again. “Don’t play your seduction games with me! I’ve been out of circulation a long time. I don’t know the rules anymore.” Moreover, she’d never learned any rules that could help her with a man like this, one who showed and said so positively what he wanted, what he expected of her. One who would, and did, demand equal participation.

He drew her hand to his lips and kissed her palm, then held it against his chest. “This is no seduction game, Liss,” he said tautly. “This is basic man-woman stuff and the rules haven’t changed any. You know them as well as I do, but if you want them spelled out for you, I’ll oblige. What we have here is more than a simple attraction I can walk away from. I don’t merely want a few kisses and some laughs. I want you.”

Again, he’d shocked her by being blunt. This time, though, she refused to retreat. “No,” she said firmly.

“No, what?” he asked quietly. “I haven’t asked for anything.” He paused. “Yet.”

Liss shook her head to clear the dizziness, then reached up both arms to push the underlay back, giving her more light and air. The dizzy sensation remained. He hadn’t asked anything. He’d simply made a statement. He wanted her. His steady gaze had told her it was true even before he’d said the words. She tried to shift her body away from his, away from the other, more potent evidence.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, though, “ he said. “It means we have a much more important reason for being friends.”

“Don’t,” she said, then cleared her throat and added with greater conviction. “Don’t want me, Kirk. I didn’t come here looking for anything like this.”

He helped her hold the floppy rubber stuff back, his gaze never leaving her face. “I know that. I wasn’t expecting it either, but now that it’s happening, why should we deny it?”

She wondered what he’d say if he knew that nothing remotely like this had happened to her before, that no man, not even her husband, had had the power to turn her to molten liquid inside the way he did. She wondered if he could tell that she wanted him just as much as he obviously wanted her. His eyes were dark, unreadable, and she had no idea what he was thinking, but then she stopped trying to figure it out because he was kissing her again with her full cooperation as the underlay enveloped them once more.

Minutes later, she said, gasping for breath, “I don’t think friends should do things like this to each other.”

“Of course they should,” he said, his voice a low growl. ‘When they want each other the way we do. “ And Lord, did he want her! Kirk thought. He wanted her now. He wanted her bad. He wanted her close. He slid his hand from her nape to her back, then her waist, pulling her in against him again. He saw from the glow in her eyes that she liked what she felt and had wants of her own, though they might be buried under her natural caution. He could understand that, knowing she’d been hurt, knowing it must be hard to trust again.

“Believe me, Liss, I see how this complicates things, but there’s not a hell of a lot I could do about it if I wanted to, and I don’t want it to stop. Every time I see you, bang! there it is again. It isn’t something that’s going to go away, and whatever it is, we’d be a hell of a lot more comfortable discussing it in bed.”

“No!” Liss shoved her hands against his chest, struggling not to succumb to the desire that urged her to listen to him, to give in to him, to her own needs. “Whatever it is, it will go away if we simply leave it alone, let it die a natural death. We have to share this house, but it doesn’t mean we have to share a bed. You have plenty of others you can get that from and—”

“Dammit, I thought we’d disposed of that topic! What if I don’t want it from anybody else? What if you are—” He broke off, then went on, leaving her wondering what he’d been about to say.

 “ I knew before we even got to the lawyer’s office that this could happen if we had a chance to be together. Then, because I didn’t know what Brose’s will would mean to both of us, I tried to ignore it because I live here and you lived there. But now, Liss, we both live here. And we share these feelings. Why, then, shouldn’t we share a bed?”

“Kirk . . . “ She bit her lip, reminding herself of what he’d said as they’d watched the sunset Monday afternoon. There were no women in his life at his invitation. Yet doubts still assailed her. “ I think we should at least try friendship first.”

“We can,” he said. “We will. Friendship,” he whispered roughly, “and this.” She sighed and buried her hands in his hair, pulling his head down for her kiss.

Chapter Six

The waffle like underlay cushioned Liss’s back. Kirk’s hardness pressed boldly into her as he lifted himself over her, pinning her beneath his weight. The scent of new rubber filled the air, not quite overriding the scent of his skin. Liss knew she should move away, knew she should fight off the numbing desire that weakened her muscles, addled her brain, mesmerized her and kept her right where she was, her arms around his neck, her legs entwined with his. She wanted to deny that she felt as strongly as he did, but she couldn’t, not even to herself. Her heart hammered hard and heavily as she dragged her mouth free of his so she could explore the texture and taste of his throat. His voice, low, intense, spoke in her ear, asking, promising, praising. She ached with a terrible intensity for release of the coiling heat that his words, the feel of his body, the scent of his skin, had fired within her. He slid a hand slowly, sensuously from her back to her front, under her shirt, and cupped a breast in his palm. Her nipple sprang erect and she gasped, a sound he captured and contained within the depths of his kiss.

She leaned into his kiss, wrapping her arms around his torso and opening her mouth at his insistent probing. He shifted sideways, undoing her bra and sliding her shirt up. Her entire body quivered at the touch of his fingers on her naked stomach, then her breast. When he captured the hard nipple between his fingers, tugging on it, she moaned; when he bent his head and took her in his mouth, she let her breath out in a silent sob. He reached down and took one of her knees, drawing her leg up, pulling her tight, tighter to his loins. As his hips thrust suggestively, she went hot all over and released a soft, agonized cry of yearning and surrender.

“Harrumph!”

For a moment, neither Kirk nor Liss knew what the sound had been, what it meant, why it was intruding into the sensual heat of their desire. Then, when it was repeated, louder, Liss knew. With a choked gasp, she broke free of Kirk’s arms, pulled her shirt down, shoved the rolls of underlay back, scrambled to her feet. She stared in horror at Mrs. Healey, who stood in the doorway, hands on her ample hips, cane dangling from one fist.

“Working hard, I see,” she said, pinning Liss under her cold gaze until Kirk, too, arose from the floor, pushing at the pad as it coiled and writhed around him.

“The, uh, underlay wouldn’t lie down,” Liss said unnecessarily, then wished she hadn’t even tried to make excuses. Mrs. Healey simply poked her nose in the air and looked at her down it.

“But you, of course, would?” she said with a sniff. “And with anybody, by the looks of it. Anywhere. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, young woman! A widow, a mother, participating in such disgusting, animalistic behavior! Have you no respect for your husband’s memory? No respect for the sensibilities of your innocent children, either of whom could have walked in at any moment? You—”

“Now just one minute,” Liss said warningly, “my children are upst—”

Mrs. Healey, however, once started, was not about to be silenced. “No! You wait just a minute, young lady! I’m not finished. Take my warning,” she went on, waving her cane at Liss. “I won’t tolerate any funny business between you two. Ambrose put me here as chaperone for a good reason. I’m a God-fearing, churchgoing woman, and as long as I live here, there’ll be no immoral conduct between you two or anyone else in this house.”

She lumbered closer and shook her cane under Liss’s nose. “If you can’t comport yourself with proper dignity, then I’ll have no option but to let your in-laws know that you aren’t a fit mother—”

“Hey!” Kirk’s voice sliced through the diatribe like an ax. He snatched Mrs. Healey’s cane and aimed it at the ceiling, rather than at Liss’s face. “‘Immoral conduct’?” he thundered. “After the way you and Brose lived, you can dare to talk about immoral conduct in others? Listen, you sanctimonious old—”

“Watch it, sonny,” she said, wrenching her cane free and poking his belly with it. “When I lived here with Ambrose, there were no children involved.”

“For your information, Liss’s children were not involved in any way with what we were doing,” Kirk said. “They are upstairs asleep in their beds, and what Liss and I do is none of your business. When you saw we were . . . busy, you should       have had the decency to keep on going. We are both adults and do not require a chaperone, and I won’t put up with any interference from you!”

“Children have been known to wake up,” Mrs. Healey said with self-righteous pedantry. She lowered her cane, nonetheless, perhaps intimidated by Kirk’s anger. “You wouldn’t have heard them coming any more than you heard me. “

“My kids make a lot more noise than you do when you choose not to pound your cane on the floor,” Liss said. “There’s nothing sneaky or snooping about Ryan and Jason.”

Mrs. Healey glowered at her. “Mothers need to take extreme care with their actions and reputations, especially mothers whose children have grandparents who might be rightfully seeking custody. So I suggest you watch your step from here on, miss. Very, very carefully, because I will be watching, too.”

She turned and stumped away.

“Oh, hell, I’m sorry,” Kirk said as Liss spun around, turning her back to him. Her shoulders were heaving, and choking sounds came from her throat. “Ah, Liss, don’t cry, sweetheart. I won’t let her hurt you or your kids. I didn’t mean for anything like that to happen, I didn’t intend to forget where I was, what I was doing. I’m not saying I’m sorry it happened, only that I’m sorry it happened where it did, and when.” He turned her around and lifted her face. “Please, look at me.”

Liss opened her eyes and stared up into his misery-filled face. She covered her mouth with a hand, but nothing could stem the giggles that burst forth. “Oh, Kirk! The look on her face! Wasn’t it priceless?”

“You’re laughing?” he exclaimed. “This isn’t funny, Liss!”

“It is, it is.” She laughed again. “Kirk, please, don’t look so tragic. Not much happened, and what did wasn’t your fault. Don’t worry about it.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t my fault?” he asked, jamming a hand through his hair. “Of course it was my fault! Damn! If that pious old bat makes trouble, do you know what it will mean to—” He broke off and sighed gustily. “I guess I’d better get back to work.”

Liss tried not to giggle again, but it bubbled forth in spite of her. “Boy, I bet your carpet-laying manual never covered anything like this either.”

He looked at her for another couple of seconds, clearly finding no humor in this situation. “Nothing I’ve ever read or done or imagined covered anything like this.”

He stomped out of the room and returned with the new carpet, which he unceremoniously dumped on top of the underlay. After he’d eased it into position, Liss flattened the loose end to the floor and began to roll it out. It controlled the underlay very well.

“Hold it away from the tack strip if you can,” he said. “I don’t want it getting hooked on the tacks prematurely or it will lie crooked.”

As he instructed her he picked up what he’d earlier called a “carpet kicker.” The rubber-and-metal device, when placed against the carpet surface and rammed with his knee, stretched the rug tight enough so that it reached the wall and could be forced down over the nails in the tack strip.

“Damn her!” He set the carpet kicker into place and slammed his knee into it. “I’ve punched out more than my share of dirty-minded men and boys for that kind of attitude when it was aimed at my mother, but I’ve never in my life even considered hitting a woman.”

For a moment, as he met Liss’s gaze, he looked positively fierce. “I came pretty damned close to wrapping that cane around her neck.” He smashed his knee forward and more of the carpet was forced into place. “You bring out some strong primitive instincts in me, Liss Tremayne.”