Dating A Silver Fox (Never Too Late) (30 page)

Morrie used a knuckle to tilt her chin up as he studied her naked pain. “Yes you do. Got any urges to eat my brains?”

“Not at the moment,” Lydia said flatly, trying to joke back with him, failing at that too. “There’s a bottle of wine on the counter breathing. I need to go wash my face. Why don’t you pour for us? Make mine a big glass. Fill it all the way to the brim even if it takes half the bottle.”

Morrie nodded and let his arms drop away even though he was reluctant to let her go without first finding out what was wrong.

“Take your time,” he said. “I can wait a while longer.”

“Maybe you can, but I think I’m tired of waiting. I just realized we’re all going to die one day,” Lydia said, sniffling at the irony as she walked off.

Morrie scratched his head and headed to the kitchen wondering how to get her to tell him what had upset her so much.

***

One of things about Lydia that Morrie liked most was her ability to be quiet for long stretches of time. He’d never been around a female who was comfortable with silence. With Lydia he didn’t have to fill every second with conversation—normally.

Tonight though her silence bothered him. It was filled with something earth-shattering that she was determined to hold inside.

She had returned to the kitchen with her face scrubbed clean and naked hurt still evident in her eyes. Instead of making another swan, she’d slid the remaining one to his plate and wadded up a fresh napkin from the cabinet drawer beside her own. When he tried to hold her hand, she pulled it away and picked at rice she was obviously not going to eat.

To distract her from whatever seemed to be distressing her, Morrie filled the silence with retelling the stories Harrison had shared about his wife.

“Do you think all Harrison’s wild stories were true?” Morrie asked, trying not to stare at Lydia’s bare face.

It wasn’t that she looked bad. It was that she looked fragile without her make-up. He decided he definitely preferred her haughty and slightly mean to somber and crying, but he couldn’t bring himself to pick a fight or say anything to make her feel worse.

In fact, he wasn’t sure what to do with the quiet, subdued woman beside him.

“Despite the usual load of crap Harrison dumps into conversations, yes—all of that is probably true about Doris and him. He ran over her prize golf clubs and she took his hostage until he’d replaced hers with another top-of-the-line set. That’s practically in the written history of the country club. Doris was an attorney when they met, and everyone was a bit afraid of her, including him. I was just graduating high school. Their age difference was considered scandalous—well, their age and the fact Doris was divorced,” Lydia said. “His parents had a fit when Harrison decided to marry her instead of some debutante half his age.”

“What did you think about them—I mean, personally?” Morrie asked, curious about the young Lydia, the one before the disappointments of her marriage.

“My family hung out at the country club all the time. I actually caught Harrison kissing Doris outside in the gardens, and his hands were everywhere on her,” Lydia said on a short laugh, staring at her own hands as she tried to remember the distant past. “I admit it was a bit of an education for me to watch them. But at the time, I was more interested in controlling my fate than learning about what went on between men and women. I hadn’t met a boy that interesting.”

“Now I’m really interested in your story,” Morrie demanded. “What could possibly have worried eighteen-year-old Lydia more than boys?”

“The reason I saw them making out in the first place was that I was hiding in the garden myself. I was mad at my parents for sending me to a private girl’s college instead of the university. I wanted to go to Princeton, but they were afraid I’d be corrupted by all the hippies there. It was the sixties,” Lydia said with a frown as Morrie laughed. “Sounds silly now, doesn’t it?”

“No. It sounds like parents,” Morrie said. “One of the biggest fights Evelyn and I had was over Jane going to Harvard instead of Princeton. Harvard exceeded our budget. We knew we couldn’t afford all four years there. I said I’d take an extra job to pay for the fourth year if that’s what Jane wanted. Evelyn said Jane would get just as good an education at Princeton, which was of course right.”

“So who won?” Lydia asked, almost laughing.

“Jane did,” Morrie said firmly, following the pronouncement with a proud smile. “Her mother and I were still arguing about it when she finished her cum laude business degree in three years from Harvard. She wasn’t interested in boys much then either. After graduation though, there were a couple years of serial dating while she flipped her first business. Then that damn Nathan Waterfield came along and convinced her to marry him.”

Lydia laughed at the idea of Jane being smart enough to finish Harvard in three years. She secretly hoped the young woman developed some equal intelligence about men. There was no need for anyone to do what Lydia had done. And she suddenly decided it was too bad no one had been able to help her when she was young. It was the closest she ever remembered to feeling sorry for herself.

“Do you ever remember the past and feel like it happened to someone else?” she asked.

“Sometimes,” Morrie said truthfully. “My faith values oral traditions and stories of lessons learned, but I don’t look back much myself. I prefer to look forward. The last time I looked back, I ended up talking to Regina for two years. Regret doesn’t work well for me on any level.”

“I hear you. Do you ever find yourself thinking of the day when there won’t be any more looking forward?” Lydia asked. “I had sort of an epiphany about it just before you got here.”

Morrie studied her face. “The possibility of a bleak and empty future was on my mind a lot until I met you. I wasn’t expecting to find myself physically attracted to a woman at my age. It was the best surprise I’ve had in a lot of years.”

“But Morrie—people our age die all the time,” Lydia said. “The future is very bleak.”

He put his hand on one of hers where it rested between their plates.

“You that worried about Harrison?” Morrie demanded. “Tell me the truth, woman. Are you like secretly in love with that bastard?”

“Oh god no,” Lydia denied, laughing at the idea of her being secretly in love with anybody.

The idea of being secretly in love with Harrison struck her as even funnier. She had just never thought of him that way, probably because she had recognized the love Harrison felt for Doris had been unique.

And it didn’t happen that way for everyone. It had never happened for her until Morrison Fox had shown up to torture her. Now here she was sitting in her kitchen holding hands with him. It was as close to unique as she had ever come in her life.

“I am worried about Harrison, and I do care about him, but he’s—” she stopped to grin at Morrie’s irritated expression. “Morrie, you can’t possibly be jealous of Harrison Graham. If you really are, never tell him. His head is big enough already.”

“I didn’t say I was jealous. I’ve never been jealous over a woman in my life—I don’t think,” Morrie declared. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Lydia laughed again. “Let’s just say Harrison isn’t my type.”

“What is your type?” Morrie asked.

“I don’t know really. I never had one until—” Lydia stopped again, this time to watch a smile spread from Morrie’s eyes to his mouth, slowly but completely taking over his expression.

Then his eyelids drooped until a sigh escaped her.

Lydia stared at him for a heartbeat or two. His half-lidded gaze on her unpainted face both unnerved her and thrilled her. Then it occurred to her Morrison Fox might actually be the last big risk she ever got a chance to decide whether or not to take in her life.

“Until what? You never had a type until me?” Morrie prompted, wanting to hear the admission.

“No. I never had a type until you,” Lydia agreed. “It seems like all roads lead right back to you.”

“Baby, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since I met you,” Morrie exclaimed.

“Fine. Want to spend the night again?” she asked flatly.

Morrie dragged his gaze away for a moment, searching inside for guidance. No answer was obvious in his heart, but there was certainly something else pointing the way.

“What exactly are you offering? And why?” he asked softly, reaching out a finger to trace her cheek as she rolled her face against his palm, closing her eyes in pleasure.

“I’m offering you a chance to banish some ghosts,” Lydia said in a whisper. “You are the first man I’ve ever sincerely asked to bed. Are you really going to make me beg?”

Morrie nodded solemnly, turning his chair to her, bracketing her face in both his hands. “Yes. I’m absolutely going to make you beg, and then I’m going to show you just how amazing making love with the right person can be.”

Lydia closed her eyes at the intensity in his. “Just promise you won’t hate me if it turns out badly.”

Morrie leaned into her then, hands trembling as his mouth slanted across hers. He let the kiss explain his passion. Her hands came up to his wrists and gripped them firmly as he pulled away.

“Again,” she ordered.

He obeyed without hesitation, tongue slipping by lips and teeth on its way home inside her mouth, stroking the edge of hers until tiny moans echoed around them. Tearing away to look for his sanity, he almost fell out of his chair when strong hands moved to his shirt and jerked him forward against her, giving him little option but to respond with another heated press of his mouth to hers.

“Bedroom or cold tile floor,” he demanded. “I’m officially tired of waiting.”

“Me too,” Lydia answered honestly, moving back and sliding off the stool to the floor. Her legs weaved a little and she had to grab the back of the stool to keep standing. “Wow—that’s never happened to me before, but I get dizzy a lot around you. Maybe I need to check my blood pressure.”

Morrie sighed at her innocence. It could be a damn long night unless she turned out to be a quick study. “It’s sexual arousal weakening your legs.”

“Oh,” Lydia said, her face growing warm. “I didn’t know it could do all that.”

Morrie took her hand and tugged her behind him. “Come on, make-out school is now in session. Your instructor this evening is Morrison Fox. He has forty-seven years of experience and close to forty of those with the same woman. Do you have any questions about the class before we begin?”

“Can I have some more wine first, Mr. Fox?” Lydia asked on a giggle, feeling his answering chuckle as he bumped against her.

“No. That big glass with dinner was twice your usual. I prefer the woman I intend to seduce to be sober,” Morrie said harshly, dragging her now as he started searching for the right bedroom. The house had four or five. “Which one is the room with the ghosts?”

“Duh—the one with the biggest bed,” Lydia said, biting her lip as he focused the half-lidded gaze on her sassy mouth. “What?”

“I can already see you’re going to be a troublesome pupil with that smart mouth of yours. You need to learn to use it more wisely,” Morrie told her, backing her against the wall to kiss her again.

She felt his body tremble against hers, and moments later his level of excitement became very obvious. Panic surged but she battled it back, pulling him closer and feeling him tremble again. Before Morrie, it had never occurred to her that a man could feel what she felt, but his reactions were making her wonder about her assumptions.

“Can I touch you now?” Morrie demanded against her neck, his hands already sliding up her sides.

“Yes,” Lydia said, purposely jutting out her breasts to make it easier. The groan he made as his hands cupped her breasts made her laugh out loud. “I’m not laughing at you. I swear—I’m just—amazed to like this so much.”

He squeezed both breasts hard and when she called out at the pressure, Morrie dove into her mouth, tongue slashing across hers as she squirmed against him. The woman was hot, he thought. She was going to be dangerous when she figured it out. He released her mouth and heard her gasping.

“Feeling sick?” Morrie asked. “Tell me the truth.”

He squeezed her breasts again and felt her hands coming up to cover his.

“No, but my legs,” she complained, and heard Morrie laughing as his hands slipped away.

Lydia watched him stumble away from her and laughed. “Do your legs get weak too?”

“Not exactly,” Morrie said wickedly, reaching to grab one hand again, this time dragging her inside the room. “But I am having trouble walking now because of you.”

Everything the man said was funny to her tonight. Maybe it was the wine, but she laughed again, not really caring.

Then it occurred to her that walking in his excited condition might be a challenge. Imagining what that would be like had her laughing at herself for never having wondered such a thought before now. Though he routinely irritated the crap out of her in the process of what they jokingly called her ‘education,’ Morrie had sort of demystified men for her with his insistence of explaining not only his reaction, but her part in causing it.

She took a deep breath as Morrie tugged her hand, drawing her inside the room and into whatever destiny had thrown them together. She was panic-stricken, but she was also relieved.