Ladies' Man (4 page)

“So, how’d you get an agent so quickly?” he asked, once more able to look into her eyes.

“It’s usually one of these weird vicious-circle things,” she said. “You know, you can’t get an agent until you land a job, and you can’t get a job until you have an agent?”

Sam nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

“Well, I lucked out last spring. I was in the right place at the right time, and—trumpet fanfare please—I was cast in a national TV commercial. After that, I got to pick my agent. I picked a good one.”

“What’s the commercial for? Have I seen it?”

Ellen shook her head. “Probably not. It’s supposed to start running some time this summer, but I don’t think it’s out yet. It’s one of those awful laundry detergent commercials. I play a mom who’s mistaken for her teenage daughter because her clothes are so clean. Or something.”

“There’s no way you’re old enough to have a teenage daughter.”

Ellen just smiled.

“So…what if you do get this soap opera job? Would you leave Yale?”

She answered him as honestly as she could. “If it were simply a question of what
I
wanted to do, yeah, maybe I would. When I first started out, I loved teaching, but…” She shook her head. “These past few years I’ve been dragging myself to work. I’m afraid I’m burned out. I feel like I’m wasting my students’ time and money. I feel so ineffective and exhausted and why am I telling you this? You don’t want to hear this.”

Sam squeezed her hand. “Hey, don’t try to second-guess what I do or don’t want to hear. This is obviously something that’s bothering you, and, as a matter of fact, I can relate.”

Without his devil-may-care smile, he looked harder, older, and remarkably world-weary.

“To tell you the truth, Ellen, I’ve been trying to deal with burnout too. It’s hard to walk away, though, when the precinct’s staffed with too few people who know what the hell’s going on and too many people who don’t.” He laughed, but it was a harsh, brittle sound. “And of course, there’s my father. I don’t know how the hell to tell him I’m tired of living his dream. And what do I do if I do leave? I’ve got to weigh all
that
baggage against the fact that I feel like I’m not getting the job done. I’ve started wondering if maybe I’m a risk to the men and women I’m working with, and…It makes for some sleepless nights, if you know what I mean.”

“I know
exactly
what you mean,” Ellen whispered. “How can I give up my tenure and my position at Yale for a short-term contract as an actress in a soap opera? If the job doesn’t work out, then what? I’ve got bills to pay.” College educations to help pay for. Lord, the thought was terrifying. “Yet at the same time, I’ve got to think about the kids I’m trying to teach. They deserve a teacher who wants to be there with them. I’m hoping this summer in New York will give me what I need. Maybe I don’t need a major change in my life.” She snorted. “Other than the obvious change I got when I kicked Richard out. I’m hoping I just need a vacation.”

“Maybe what you need is a summer romance.”

Their gazes locked. Ellen could feel her heart pounding, feel the recent memory of his lips against hers. And then he touched her, lightly trailing his fingers through her hair, along her cheek, down to her chin.

All of his charming, cheerful, lighthearted facade was still stripped away, leaving bare the emotions on his face and the stark heat in his eyes. “Maybe this summer we’ll both find what we’re looking for,” he added quietly.

What awful things had he seen with those seemingly ancient eyes? Ellen had to wonder what had happened to make this man doubt himself so completely. Or maybe it wasn’t any one specific thing. She’d watched her share of police dramas on TV, and she’d turned her head away at the sight of ghastly, awful crimes. But that was just fiction. Sam’s life was real. He lived the awfulness and the danger every single day.

He tugged her closer, and she went into his arms, lifting her mouth to his.

Again his lips seemed so familiar, his kiss like coming home. It was the strangest thing. Because for years no one had touched her but Richard.

She’d been scared to become sexually involved again after her divorce. For the past three years, she’d stayed far away from men because she’d been afraid that she wouldn’t care for another man’s touch. She was frightened she’d regret her decision, terrified she’d be forced to face the fact that she’d left the only man she’d ever wanted. Richard, despite his failures in the fidelity department, had been an extremely accomplished lover.

But she had been wrong—really wrong.

She wanted Sam with a dizziness that made her glad his arms were around her, holding her tightly, keeping her from falling.

His kisses were familiar and at the same time so utterly different, so passionate, so alive. He kissed her fiercely, possessively, with a scarcely contained desperation.

How long had it been since she’d felt needed like this?

There were other differences too. The way he smelled. Like Richard, he wore a cologne, but his was less spicy, more natural. It was lighter, fresher, more elusive. His lips were softer, his beard sharper, his hair silkier, his arms bigger.

Sam was both bigger and smaller than Richard. He was shorter than Richard by at least three inches. But while Richard had been slender, almost willowy, Sam was muscular and powerfully built. His legs were stronger, his chest broader, his shoulders wider, his arms harder, his hands larger. It was a strange sensation to feel those strange arms around her, to feel those strange hands exploring her body, touching her breasts.

Sam pulled back, breathing hard. “We’re almost at the deli. But suddenly I’m not so hungry anymore.”

Ellen looked into the eyes of this man who wasn’t Richard as she extracted herself from his arms. “I’m not either,” she admitted, losing herself in the crackling blue fire burning there. She smiled and began putting on her sandals. “But someone’s got to buy Ron his sandwich.”

FOUR

R
on still thinks you’re T. S. Harrison,” Ellen told Sam as she unwrapped one of the Reuben sandwiches. “He told me he used his car phone to call his wife and tell her he was driving you around. He was so excited, I didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.”

She was sitting across from him, her sandals once again kicked off, her legs tucked up underneath her. As Sam watched, she took a bite of her sandwich. She held it up and used her tongue to catch some of the Thousand Island dressing spilling out from between the bread.

He was staring. He knew he was staring, but he was mesmerized by her mouth. He couldn’t think of anything besides how much he wanted to kiss her again.

That wasn’t entirely true. He
could
think of one other thing—the condom he had bought from the vending machine in the deli men’s room. It was burning a hole in his pocket.

He wasn’t really sure why he’d bought it. Maybe it was the way she’d kissed him right before they arrived at the deli. Maybe it was wishful thinking.

He’d spent most of the past few hours believing that if he was going to get lucky with Ellen Layne, it wasn’t going to happen tonight. But then he was standing there in front of that vending machine, and he had a sudden, incredibly sharp, amazingly clear image in his head of Ellen, in his arms, minus most of her clothes, stretched out in the backseat of that limousine. So he bought a condom. God forbid he be caught without one.

He kept an entire box of them in the glove compartment of his car. But his car was all the way across town, in the precinct parking lot, where he’d left it all those hours ago, before he’d gone out to the airport to do a favor for T.S.

It seemed like a lifetime ago. It was before he’d known he would sit in traffic for two hours, trapped in a small space with the most attractive woman he’d met in a good long time.

It was before Ellen.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” she asked.

Sam unwrapped his sandwich. It smelled good. As he took a bite he realized he was ravenous. He’d never tasted anything so delicious in his entire life, and he’d eaten at Carnegie Deli plenty of times before.

It was odd—as if all of his senses were heightened.

“So you and T.S. stayed close even after grade school?” Ellen asked in between bites of her sandwich.

Sam nodded. “We both played on the basketball team in high school.”

“I think I read somewhere that T.S. went to NYU. Did you go there too?”

“No, I, uh, didn’t.” What was the big deal? So what if she was a professor at an Ivy League university. So what if he had nothing more than a high school diploma. “I didn’t go to college.”

Ellen was surprised. “But you seem so…I don’t know, so well read, I guess.”

“I love to read—I always have. But when I was a kid, I loved baseball more than homework, and when it came time to apply for scholarships, my grades weren’t worthy of any financial aid. And my old man only had enough money saved to send two of us three kids to college. It would’ve been me and my brother because we were the oldest, but I knew how badly Joni, my sister, wanted to go….” He shrugged. “The rest is history.”

Sam took another bite of his sandwich, aware that she was watching him, her brown eyes searchingly intense, as if she were trying to read his mind.

“What about how badly
you
wanted to go?” she asked quietly.

She
could
read his mind. He shook his head, talking with his mouth full. “I really didn’t want to go.” He swallowed. “At least not as much as Joni did.”

“But what if someone had insisted? Would you have gone if you were given a scholarship?”

He smiled. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. I
did
want to go. I just…wanted Joni to go more. It was no big deal.”

Her eyes were soft and so warm. “You know perfectly well it was a very big deal.”

“Yeah, right, I’m a real hero. Let’s talk about something else, shall we?” He reached for the open champagne bottle, filled both of their glasses, and handed Ellen’s to her.

“Thanks.” She took a sip. “You know you could go to night school. It would take you more than four years to get a degree, but—”

“Nah, I never know when I’m going to have to work nights.” He took another bite of his sandwich. “Hey, these things are good, aren’t they?”

She put her sandwich down, leaning toward him, gesturing with her champagne flute. “You said yourself that you’re considering leaving your job. You could go to school full-time. I think you’d really like it—even the homework.”

He sighed. “I don’t want to, okay? Can we change the subject—”

“How could you not want to—”

“I just don’t.” He drained his glass.

“Sam, if you don’t have the money saved, you could probably—”

“I’ve got plenty of money saved, I just don’t
want
to—”

“You wanted to ten years ago.”

“That’s right. Ten years ago. Ten
years
.” He refilled his glass. “I’m too old, all right? I’d feel silly—I’d be ten years older than everyone else in my class.”

“You are so wrong about that. I sometimes have people in my freshman English class who are older than
me
.” She was leaning forward so far, she was in danger of falling off the seat. Her brown eyes were blazing, her face aglow with her need to prove him wrong.

Sam met her gaze, wondering if she could see the fire that had just ignited inside of him, wondering if she could feel the air almost crackle around them with electric expectation and desire. “Why don’t you come over here and convince me?” he said softly.

To his surprise, she didn’t back away. Instead she smiled. She had an incredible smile—a smile that lit her entire face. Sam found himself smiling back at her.

“You really don’t like to talk about yourself, do you?” she asked. “You can probably get away with just that smile, am I right? That smile and a couple of distracting kisses, and you don’t need to say a single word about the things you really care about or the way you really feel.”

Sam couldn’t deny it. “So what do you want to know about me? I’m not sure I can put into words what I’m feeling right now, but I could probably manage to show you—”

“Don’t get cute. Just…tell me about yourself. Talk. Where have you been? What have you done? Did you join the police force right out of high school?”

That was an easy one to answer. “No, I spent two years in the Marines first. A recruiter came to our high school and made it sound as if we’d immediately be sent overseas, you know, stationed in Europe—cheese, wine, French girls, ooh la la…. My father was pushing for me to go right into the police academy. I think I figured it was my last chance to do something for myself. I wanted to see Paris and Rome. The Greek Isles.” He laughed. “I spent the first year in Kansas, the second in South Dakota. I hated every minute of it, but I was damned if I was going to let the old man know I’d made a mistake.” He smiled at her. “How was that? Personal enough for you?”

Ellen smiled back, taking another sip of her wine. “It’s a start. Keep going.”

“Are you sure it’s not time for a few of those distracting kisses?”

She laughed. “Definitely not. Keep going.”

“All right. Let’s see. I guess I can tell you that in retrospect, my two years as a Marine were a good thing. I made it through basic training—in fact, I got really strong, and that was good. Also, spending a few years away from home was very cool. It may not have been Paris, but the Badlands were incomparable. I made some good friends, learned a lot of Native American history, lived through a tornado or two, and totally pissed off my father in the process, which is every eighteen-year-old’s fondest desire. Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

“Then you came back to New York and joined the police force?”

“Correct for ten points. I went in, passed all the tests, and became a uniformed cop. I made detective five years ago, and…here I am.”

“Thinking about quitting.”

Sam winced. “We already talked about that. Are you sure you don’t want to discuss something easier, like old girlfriends?”

“I think there’s probably too many of them to talk about—we’d be here all night.”

Again, Sam couldn’t deny it. “When do I get to grill you about your old boyfriends?”

Ellen shrugged. “Ask away. I only had one. Adam Webster. He moved away in the middle of senior year. High school. We were in love, I really think we were, but his father got a job in Ohio. We wrote for a while, but…” She took a delicate sip of her champagne. “And then there was Richard, whom I married. Foolishly.”

Two men. There had only been two other men in Ellen Layne’s life. Sam couldn’t help but hope he’d be number three.

“Your divorce,” he said. “It’s pretty recent, huh?”

“In the scheme of things, yeah,” she said. “We were married for twelve years. Lord, I blush to think about how stupidly naive I was.”

“Sometimes the hardest things to see are the things that are right in front of your face.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“What’d he do? Have an affair?”

“I think maybe it’s time for one of those distracting kisses,” Ellen said.

Sam didn’t hesitate. He moved across the car and sat down next to her. She set down her glass and turned toward him.

“You’re good at this, aren’t you?” she asked.

He just smiled. And kissed her.

She seemed to melt into his arms. Her lips were heartbreakingly soft, her mouth as sweet as wine, and he felt a sharp hunger that made him want to kiss her deeper, harder. He wanted to inhale her, to drink her in. He couldn’t hold back.

Each time he’d kissed her, he’d meant to kiss her gently, sweetly. But each time, he’d felt this hungry need that he hadn’t been able to ignore. And that need was further fueled by the passion of Ellen’s response. It was all he could do not to sink down onto the seat with her soft body underneath his. He knew with a certainty that it wouldn’t take much for him to seduce her. A little more wine, a few more kisses, and that condom he’d bought would be put to good use.

He lifted his head. “Richard’s a fool. How could anyone cheat on
you?
”

She touched his face, tracing the scar alongside his right eyebrow. “Richard didn’t seem to be able
not
to cheat,” she told him. “He was so good at it, I probably never would have found out—if he hadn’t had to go into the hospital with a burst appendix. You have gorgeous hair.”

Sam refused to be distracted by her fingers running through his hair. “Please don’t tell me you ran into his mistress at the hospital.”

She stopped touching him, pulling back, out of his arms. Sam caught her hand before she moved too far away.

“It was nothing that dramatic,” she told him. “Richard was in the hospital for nearly three weeks—there were complications from his surgery, nothing too serious, a slight infection, but they wouldn’t release him until it cleared up. While he was there, I realized that all of our bills were really piling up. He had been in charge of writing the checks to pay our bills ever since we were first married, but I figured that would be the last thing he’d want to do after he got out of the hospital, so I thought I’d surprise him and take care of it for him. I was the one who got the surprise—from his credit card bills.”

She took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “There were weekly charges made to a hotel that wasn’t more than thirty minutes from our house.”

Sam knew exactly what was coming. He wanted to kill the bastard, but all he could do was hold Ellen’s hand. So he held it. And he listened.

“I knew right away that I was looking at something Richard wouldn’t want me to see—so of course, I looked further. He kept meticulous files, and I was able to go back nearly seven years through his records, and I could see…” Her voice wavered, but she cleared her throat and started again, her voice stronger this time. “I could see through his credit card purchases exactly when he’d started each new affair. He would buy her—whoever she was—something from a lingerie catalog. He would buy her a pricey piece of jewelry. There’d be a flood of charges to expensive restaurants for lunches and dinners. And of course, there were those hotel room charges—sometimes two, three, or even four times a week. He wouldn’t stay overnight. He’d just use the room at lunchtime or whenever. Maybe right after work.” She laughed, but it was a dry, humorless sound. “Then he’d come home to me.” She imitated herself: “Hi, honey. You’re so late tonight. Tough day at work? Poor baby, let me rub your back for you….” She closed her eyes. “God! What a bastard!”

“Finding out must’ve hurt so badly,” Sam murmured. “It must
still
hurt.”

“I feel really stupid,” Ellen told him. “How could I not have known? I seriously didn’t have a clue. And he’d been doing this for at least seven years. I had the proof in those credit card bills. That pattern of purchases was repeated, over and over, nearly eight times in the past seven years. And I have no reason to believe that if I had access to the years before that, I wouldn’t find a similar pattern.”

“What did you do?” Sam asked softly.

“First I threw up,” she told him with a crooked smile. “And then I packed up his clothes and kicked the son of a bitch out. I got a lot of crap for that—after all, the man was in the hospital at the time. Needless to say, I felt more than a little bit betrayed and didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. I filed for divorce that same day.” Ellen reached for her champagne glass and took a sip. “You know, I
do
have something to celebrate. Day after tomorrow is the third anniversary of my divorce.”