Joker's Wild (11 page)

Days before she’d demanded that he leave, and he’d ignored her request. Then he’d gone, and the house had become a tomb, until the phone had rung, and the angry voice had demanded to know where Joker was hiding out. She’d imagined terrible things. Suppose he didn’t come back? She really would be alone.

As the hours dragged by she became restless. Finally, she’d folded herself back into the small red car she’d spent her first paycheck on and driven to the nursing home. She’d even managed to get into Gran’s room and settle into a chair before Gran woke from her nap. Gran was glad to see her, but she hadn’t fooled Allison for long. After several glances around the room, Allison had answered her unasked question.

“Joker isn’t here, Gran. He had some business to take care of today. Did he tell you that he was building a room on the house off the dining area?”

“Yes … sun room will be … nice.”

“You approve?” Allison tried to keep the sound of dismay from her voice.

“Yes. Joker knows best.”

She wanted to ask her grandmother why she sold the house, but she took one look at her and knew she couldn’t. Asking about money was totally out of the question. She settled instead for questioning her on Joker’s rebuilding plans.

“Gran, you like Joker, don’t you?”

“Yes … good person. You?”

“Yes,” Allison admitted, “but, do you think it’s a good idea to let Joker spend his money on me? I mean, well, he didn’t even discuss it with me. He
just cut a gaping hole in the wall and went to work. Is he always so stubborn?”

Lenice Josey’s eyes lit up. She nodded her head and managed a half smile. “Always … if he loves you.”

“Loves me? Don’t be silly. He’s a man who loves dirt and rain and moonlight. He probably loves worms and insects too. If he doesn’t, well, he’ll just blink his eyes and they won’t be there.”

“Yes. Joker’s … special man.”

When one of the staff members came to change Gran’s bed, Allison managed to slip out the door without calling attention to her crutches. She planned to call back later and make an appointment to discuss Gran’s condition with her doctor. She couldn’t leave everything up to a stranger, even if the stranger was a special man.

And Joker was a special man. Ever since she’d stepped into that gazebo, her world had changed. She’d come there seeking solitude and had run into a man intent on invading every part of her life. He was so different from Mark. Mark was temperamental and demanding, the man she’d spent the last years of her life trying to please—and he’d never smiled the way Joker did. They never had taken time to play in the rain or cook hamburgers on a grill. Every part of their life had been spent on working toward perfection of an illusion.

Only now did she understand the truth. Illusion came from inside. It couldn’t be manufactured or orchestrated. It was a reflection of the soul’s most intimate desire. Joker had known that instinctively. Joker, who saw only beauty, was showing her the eyes of her soul.

Allison had to do something in return.

The Bolton Boys Ford dealership came into view as she drove. It occupied the corner where the ice rink used to be. Allison pulled in. They paid her cash for her car and arranged to have someone drive her home. She hadn’t stopped to think why she was doing it. She’d just sold the car, collected the money, and gone home to wait for Joker.

One company problem led to another, and it was late afternoon before Joker exchanged his motorcycle for his van and returned to the estate. He knew Mac Webster and his workers would be gone, but he hadn’t expected to find Allison’s MG missing from the driveway. Allison couldn’t be gone. She wouldn’t have left without telling him. Joker felt a slash of pain invade his chest as he raced inside.

“Allison …”

“… Allison! Allison!”

There was no answer. Joker’s pain seeped into every one of his pores and turned into an icy fear as he tore up the stairs into Allison’s room and jerked open the closet door.

“Thank God! She left her clothes.”

“I doubt they’ll fit, but whatever turns you on, big guy.” The amused voice came from behind him.

Allison, wrapped in an oversize bath towel, was standing in the bathroom doorway supporting herself on one crutch. Her hair was still damp, though it was obvious that she’d been drying it. She’d been in the shower and hadn’t heard him call. She hadn’t left. Joker breathed a long sigh of relief. “Your car is gone. I thought …”

“Yes.” She made her way over to the bed and sat down clumsily. “Where have you been all day, Joker? I was … worried.”

She was worried about him. His heart rate took
off again. He could smell the fragrance of the soap she’d bathed in. Through the terry cloth towel he could see the clear outline of her nipples. Even as he walked across the room and stood beside her, he didn’t understand the great need he felt to hold her. “Why?”

“A man called here looking for you. He said that you were doing some work for him and that you were late. He sounded angry and said if you didn’t get over there, he’d send Chief Newton for you.”

King, no doubt. His brother had just vented his displeasure that Joker wasn’t there and hung up. Solemnly Joker lifted her and sat down on the bed, placing her knee across his thighs with the intention of examining it. Just touching her set off warning bells in his head, and he tensed his muscles.
Take it easy. She doesn’t know how you feel.

“I didn’t know what to tell him.”

“Who?”

“The man who called. I was afraid that you’ve been spending time helping me when you should have been somewhere else.”

There was a catch in her voice. She’d tried to protect him. Joker felt a great wave of tenderness wash over him, and he shifted her so that she was in his arms. She curled against him and hid her face in the curve of his shoulder. Her body seemed to belong there.

She felt fragile, as though he were holding some delicate shell. Her heart was thudding against his chest, and he knew that he was in trouble again. The sweet scent of her invaded his senses, and he squeezed his eyes shut as forbidden images captured his imagination.

“Hey, don’t worry, Beauty,” he said, making swirls across her shoulder with one hand and grasping her knee with the other. “He wasn’t serious. It was just my brother, being cute. I had some family business to oversee, which I did. Nobody is going to bother us here.”
Don’t touch her,
he told himself.
Don’t start something you can’t finish. She’s in need of simple comforting. Forget that she’s nearly nude and burrowing herself against you as though you were her last refuge.

“What about Chief Newton?” Allison asked softly as she felt his hand slide up her leg and rest on her thigh. Awareness of what she was feeling sifted through to her. She was tingling all over with a curious warmth that seemed to have no central source. Everywhere her body touched Joker’s, she felt her skin vibrating. Now he moved his hand back to her knee, and the tingling sensation accelerated. She felt as if her leg had been asleep and was coming back to life.

“Of course, I could be in trouble with Chief Newton. He doesn’t hold with compromising a lady. For that he usually starts with messing up a person’s face,” Joker ad-libbed flippantly. “Then if that doesn’t work, he goes on to other things, like chopping off fingers and toes, nothing too drastic, you understand, just little subtle suggestions to get your attention.”

Hell, what was he saying? He didn’t know. She’d turned his mind into mush, and he’d lost any sense of reason as he breathed in the sweet fragrance of her hair and touched the satiny skin that came to life beneath his fingertips.

“Don’t worry. Joker can always take care of himself,
and you, too, my Beauty.” His hand slid up her arm and came to rest on her breast.

She gasped. What was she doing draping herself all over this man, allowing him access to her body? No, that was wrong. She was inviting him to touch her. She took a deep breath and tried to push herself away. “I’m not worried,” she insisted.

“Ah shucks, and I thought you’d been sitting here all day missing me. I thought that’s why you might be glad to see me.”

“Well, I’m not. I don’t care if you go out and get your fool head cut off.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted her head for a moment, and smiled. “I was just worried about your fingers.”

“My fingers? You’re worried about my fingers?” His voice sounded unnaturally high. He wouldn’t want to do without his fingers either. Without his fingers he couldn’t touch the body he was holding. He couldn’t run his fingertips down her backbone or caress her upper arm or hold the small round breast beneath his hand. He couldn’t tangle his fingers in her damp silken hair and turn her face up to his. He couldn’t … Lord, what was he doing? The woman was turning him into a fumbling kid. He’d never wanted anything as much as he wanted to rip the towel from around her and press her back on the bed beneath him.

“Why shouldn’t I worry, you big dear man? Do you think you have a monopoly on worrying about people?”

“Nobody worries about Joker.”

She caught his face in her hands and held it so that she could look into his eyes, eyes that were veiled, moist, not piercing as they’d been that
morning in the garden, but slightly confused as if he were having trouble believing her. And she knew in that moment that he was as vulnerable as she. He was tough, yes. But he needed reassurance just as much as she did. And now she could give something to him.

“I do. How much money do we need, landlord?”

“Money? Eh … too much. Why?”

“Because you’re adding on a room when you should be repairing the house. I can’t allow that, Joker. Letting me stay here is one thing, but what you’re doing is too much. I figured”—she paused and took a deep breath—“that I couldn’t drive anyway, so I sold my car.”

She released his face and reached behind her. Joker heard the rustle of paper and felt her touch as she pulled his arm from around her, slid her fingertips along its brawny girth, and placed a stack of money into his palm.

“You sold your car? Why?”

“Don’t worry about that, just use the money. I can’t move in and let you support me without contributing to the expenses. I insist on sharing the costs. You take the money. It’s for you.”

“You sold your car to pay me rent?” Disbelief shattered what little control Joker had left. “You sold your car for me?”

“What are you, a broken record? Yes. I sold my car. I didn’t think it was going to be of much use to me. And anyway, that’s what … friends are for, isn’t it? You did say we were friends, didn’t you?”

“Ah, Beauty …” He couldn’t speak. He only wanted to hold her. “Why’d you go and do a thing like that?”

“You’ve been good to Gran, been here for her when
I wasn’t, I wanted to let you know how I felt, and I didn’t know how.”

“A simple thank-you would have been enough. You didn’t have to do this.” How could he tell her what a beautiful unselfish gesture she’d made?

“I’ve never been able to express myself very well, unless I’m on the ice, and that isn’t likely to happen again, so? Ah, hell, Joker, don’t make this any tougher than it already is. Take the damned money and get out of here before I do something dumb like cry.”

She’d touched some secret part of him, and he hadn’t expected that. He was the giver not the receiver.

A tenderness filled his chest and spilled over into his mind so that all he could feel was an incredible need to touch her—but that’s what he’d been doing, stroking her leg and hip while his lips placed light little kisses down the side of her face and behind her ear.

“Oh, Beauty, you’re an extraordinary woman. How good it will be to make you well so that I can show you exactly how wonderful you are, but I can’t accept this money. It would be dishonest.” He laid the stack of bills on the table and put his arms back around her. “I have to tell you—”

“Please, Joker,” she interrupted. “I have to give something to you, and you’re going to have to accept it.” She tightened her arms around his neck and turned her face back to look at him. In two days he’d invaded her life and her thoughts to the point that she couldn’t think of anything else.

And suddenly, all the bad memories went away. Her eyes fluttered open as he lowered his head, and
without any thought of refusal, her lips parted. Slowly, almost delicately his lips touched hers. She gave herself over to the taste of him, felt his restraint, and loved him for it. He nibbled around her mouth, sighed, and lifted his head.

“I’ve missed you,” he said huskily.

“Ummm. Do you give all your boarders such special treatment?” She tightened her arms around his neck and laid her face against his chin. His beard and mustache caressed her skin deliciously, and she was drawn deeper and deeper under his spell.

“Only those with great dark eyes and pixie faces,” he said, teasing, giving himself over to the joy of holding her.

Once he’d kissed her again, she was scarcely aware of what she was doing. Her heart beat wildly, and she was filled with joy. “You’re right,” she whispered dizzily, “you’ve turned this into a magic place.” The buttons on his shirt were suddenly open and the thatch of red-brown hair seemed irresistible. She moved her cheek against it and was rewarded when he involuntarily shuddered.