Ladies' Man (6 page)

Ellen watched him breathe. His nostrils flared slightly with each breath he took. He had remarkably handsome nostrils. In fact, his nose—and his entire profile—was worthy of an epic poem.

She’d noticed that the first time she’d glanced at him. In the airport newsstand. Only a few short hours ago.

Dear God, what had she done? She’d just made love to a stranger. Ellen felt a rush of tears fill her eyes, and she turned her head away, resting her cheek against his shoulder.

She’d used this man as completely as he’d used her, but her use went beyond mere sexual gratification. She’d used Sam to try to rid herself of Richard, once and for all.

Richard. Lord. She hadn’t thought of him, not even once, while she and Sam had been making love. After the differentness of Sam’s kisses, she had been so certain she would compare every touch, every caress, every sensation.

But Sam had succeeded in focusing her attention securely on
him
, keeping her thoughts far from Richard.

Richard who? she thought, smiling as she blinked away her tears.

She opened her eyes and found herself looking directly at the steps that led to the public library. She tilted her head slightly, and there they were. Lit from the streetlights. The stone lions.

Ellen snorted with laughter, and Sam lifted his head. “What?” he asked.

“Look.”

He leaned over and saw the lions.

What were they going to do next? Ellen knew precisely. They were going to laugh. Giddily. Breathlessly. Deliriously.

She pushed herself up and off of him as he began to laugh too. She laughed as she straightened her skirt and he cleaned himself up, efficiently, expertly, and zipped up his pants. She fastened her bra and buttoned her shirt, tucking it in, still laughing.

“Well, that was just about perfect timing,” she said, wriggling back into her panties.

She would have sat across from him, but he reached out and took her hand and pulled her down close to him, his arm around her shoulders. He tugged her chin toward him and covered her mouth with his in a deliciously sweet kiss.

When he pulled back, he searched her face rather intently. “You okay?” he asked softly.

Ellen couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’ve never even remotely done anything like this before,” she admitted.

“I assumed as much,” Sam told her, “considering I’m only boyfriend number three.”

She glanced at him. “I’m not sure one night, in the back of a limo, makes you eligible for the title of boyfriend.”

“How about two nights in a row, dinner at a real restaurant this time before we go to my place—or yours—and make love in a real bed?”

Ellen shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. I think I need some time to recover.”

For a brief moment he looked as if he were about to argue, but then he nodded. “Fair enough.”

She was definitely twisted—she absolutely didn’t want him to argue with her, but at the same time, she couldn’t help feeling a little bit hurt that he hadn’t even tried to change her mind.

She looked at her watch. “Wow. I had no idea it was so late.”

Sam could recognize a hint when he heard one. Despite the fact that he wanted nothing more than to ride around with Ellen in his arms until the sun came up, he knew that she was ready for him to go. He’d dropped many a similar hint himself in the past—
Would you look at the time? I really should go
….

That didn’t necessarily mean anything bad, he tried to reassure himself. It
was
late. Ellen was no doubt also thinking of the driver, who’d been in the limo as long as they had, but who had been having a whole hell of a lot less fun.

He pulled her close to him again and kissed her, his confidence restored at her immediate response. Despite the fact that she didn’t want to have dinner tomorrow night, he had to believe from the way she was kissing him that she would definitely want to see him again. Who was he kidding? Of course she’d want to see him again. Women almost always did.

He wasn’t conceited—he was simply able to acknowledge the truth. There were many things he wasn’t particularly good at, but seducing a woman—charming her and giving her pleasure throughout an entire evening—now,
that
was one of his strengths.

Sam sat forward slightly, looking out the window, catching the numbers of the cross streets as they went past. “We’re not far from my place.” They were even closer to where his car was parked in the precinct lot, but he’d had quite a bit of that champagne and he didn’t want to drive. Besides, he didn’t really want to go, and this would add another three minutes to this incredible, outrageously wonderful evening.

Ellen picked up the phone, buzzing the driver. “Hi, Ron,” she said. “We’re going to drop Sam off now.”

Except Ron would know the instant he pulled in front of Sam’s building that Sam wasn’t T. S. Harrison. Someone who pulled in a seven-figure advance the way T.S. did wouldn’t live where Sam lived. It didn’t seem fair to burst Ron’s bubble before being able to introduce him to the real T. S. Harrison. That would happen soon enough, but definitely not tonight.

Sam gave Ellen a much more upscale address a few blocks away from his place, and she relayed the information to Ron. The evening was warm and dry; Sam wouldn’t mind the walk.

They arrived there much too quickly, and he slipped on his jacket and sneakers, straightening his hair one last time as Ron opened the door for him.

“Ellen,” he started, but she touched his lips with one finger.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she told him, leaning forward to kiss him good-bye.

“Yes, I do,” he countered. “Because I still don’t have your phone number.”

Something flickered in her eyes. “If you really want my phone number, you can probably figure out how to get it.”

Sam laughed. “Are you serious? You’re not going to give it to me?”

She glanced away from him. “I don’t want you to feel obligated to call me.”

She didn’t think he was serious about wanting to see her again. Well, she was wrong. He was going to get her phone number from T.S. and call her.

But first he was going to give her the time and space she’d asked for.

If what she’d told him was true, he was the first man she’d let into her life after what had to have been a devastating end to her twelve-year marriage. He couldn’t relate—he’d never even had a twelve-
week
relationship—but he
could
understand how she might want a little time to sort her feelings out.

And he had plenty of time. She was going to be in town for the entire summer.

He kissed her again—a long, lingering kiss designed to keep her thinking about him in the days to come.

“Thanks for having dinner with me,” he said softly, pulling away, intending to climb out of the car.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy. He couldn’t keep himself from kissing her again as he felt the unmistakable tug of desire. He wanted her again. Already. It was not a surprise. She looked incredible, sitting there with her hair slightly mussed, the top buttons of her shirt undone just a little too far, a soft, dreamy, sleepy satisfaction in her gorgeous brown eyes. He wanted to wake up with her next to him in his bed.

“You better go,” she whispered, her fingers in his hair.

“I know.” Sam had to bite his tongue to keep himself from begging her to have dinner with him tomorrow night.

He backed out of the limo, holding her hand until the last possible second.

Ron was standing patiently near the car door, and he closed it, nodding to Sam. “Good night, sir.”

Sam extracted some money from his wallet. Ron had been driving all night, and he definitely deserved a hefty tip.

“Good night, Ron, and thanks,” he said, pressing the bills into the driver’s hand as the two men shook.

Ron glanced at the money. “Oh, no, sir, I couldn’t…”

“Yes, you could,” Sam insisted.

“Thank you, Mr. Harrison.”

As the driver climbed behind the steering wheel, Sam gazed at the limo’s window, knowing that even though he couldn’t see her through the privacy glass, Ellen could see him. And when Ron started the engine, the window slid down.

Ellen’s dancing brown eyes and sparkling smile seemed to light up the night. “Good night, Sam,” she called to him as the limo pulled away. “I loved seeing the lions.”

Sam laughed aloud as he watched the taillights of the limo disappear.

To hell with space and time. He was calling her tomorrow.

FIVE

M
om! Telephone!” Ellen’s thirteen-year-old son, Jamie, came sliding into her bedroom, skidding across the highly polished wood floor in his socks, posing like a surfer, holding out the cordless phone.

She took the phone from him, covering the mouthpiece with her hand. “Who is it?”

“Some guy wid a New Yawk accent,” Jamie imitated with comic perfection.

Sam didn’t have
that
much of an accent. But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t expecting him to call. She didn’t
want
him to call. “Hello?” she said.

It wasn’t Sam. It was Lydia’s agent, calling with information about a second audition for Monday afternoon. Ellen wrote it all down in an appointment notebook she kept on her desk next to her laptop computer, as Jamie attempted clumsily humorous figure-skating moves, still sliding with his socks in the center of the room.

“Audition?” he asked as she hung up the phone.

“Yep.”

“Who’s it for?”

“Lyd.” Between the three of them, they’d been kept pretty busy, going from one audition to the next. Both of Ellen’s kids had been acting and modeling since Lydia had pointed to the kids on
Sesame Street
and said that she wanted to do that. Jamie had tagged along to several of her early modeling sessions and had signed on soon after.

Since they’d been in New York full-time, there had been more opportunities. They’d gone on every one of what Ellen called “long-shot” auditions, cattle calls, for which they would not have made the drive down from Connecticut. But since they were in the city, they went.

“Not me?” Jamie asked, clearly disappointed. “Are you sure I can’t read for the part anyway?”

“You tell me,” Ellen said, lifting her eyebrow to look at her son. “Can you play a fifteen-year-old girl?”

Jamie pretended to consider it. He probably hadn’t showered yet this morning, and his light brown hair stood up straight, reminiscent of Bart Simpson’s. His round wire-rimmed glasses were crooked, as usual, perched atop his freckled nose. His eyes were a beautiful shade of blue-green, rimmed by lashes nearly twice as long as his older sister’s—didn’t it figure? He had just turned thirteen this past May, but he was small for his age and still auditioning for nine- and ten-year-old roles. Nine- and ten-year-old
boys
’ roles.

“I’m an actor,” he said with exaggerated gestures, “but even for me, a fifteen-year-old girl would be a stretch. Besides, I’m probably too short,” he added à la Groucho Marx, sliding back out of the room.

“Do you know where Lydia is?” Ellen called after him.

“Up in the ballroom, practicing her saxophone,” he called back.

Up in the ballroom. Jamie wasn’t kidding. Bob’s town house was like something out of an old movie starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. The house—if you could call it a house and not a palace—was five stories high, with both an elevator and a sweeping marble staircase winding its way up to the top floors.

The ballroom—and it was indeed a huge, wooden-floored ballroom complete with glittering chandeliers and a stage large enough to hold a full orchestra—was three flights up from the guest bedrooms. It was on the top floor, with what at one time had been a magnificent view of the surrounding city. Nowadays the view wasn’t much to brag about, with the skyscrapers that had gone up blocking the river, but the ambiance and old charm still remained. Bob had taken care to have the entire house restored exactly as it had been in the early 1930s—with the exception of the extremely up-to-date security system he’d had installed. But the security system was nearly invisible. Stepping through the front doors was like going through a time warp.

And Bob was kind enough to share his beautiful home with Ellen and her kids for the summer.

Their summer of madness, she and Jamie and Lydia had called it back in Connecticut. They each had made a wish list of things they wanted to do while in the Big Apple for the summer. Jamie had wanted to visit the Museum of Natural History at least a dozen times and bum as many free tickets for as many Broadway shows as possible off of Bob, who was frequently sent comps. Lydia had wanted to shop for secondhand, ultrachic clothing in the Village, take jazz saxophone lessons with a real, live New York City jazz musician, and have at least one audition for a part in what she considered a
real
movie.

And Ellen…Ellen had wanted to leave her teaching job far, far behind, to check out the possibility of a career change, to investigate this acting thing that her kids had been doing so naturally for so long. She had wished for time to be totally selfish, to do things entirely for herself.

She’d gotten one hell of a jump on
that
part of it the night before, that was for darn sure.

Not only had she had an evening of totally hedonistic pleasure with a young, sexy, gorgeous man she barely knew, but she’d also allowed herself an after-midnight soak in her attached bathroom’s Jacuzzi and a good, long, thoroughly selfish cry.

The kids had been asleep when she’d first gotten home, thank God, and she had crept up to her room feeling remarkably blue. It was odd, considering she’d spent most of the evening laughing.

Ellen hadn’t been crying over Sam, that was for certain. For God’s sake, she didn’t know him well enough to cry over him. She’d told herself that enough times to be almost thoroughly convinced.

One thing she did know was that despite his dinner invitation and his attempt to get her phone number, she wasn’t going to see Sam Schaefer ever again. She’d known that from the very start. In fact, that was one of the reasons she’d actually allowed herself to become intimate with him.

She wasn’t ready for a real relationship right now, she told herself firmly. After Richard it was possible that she would never be ready again. But she’d known just from looking at Sam that he wasn’t a real relationship kind of guy. He was a Romeo. A Lothario. A real ladies’ man—in love with all women and no one woman.

Add to that part of the equation the fact that Ellen was nearly ten years his senior, and the solution was obvious—this was not a relationship that would work.

Not in a million years.

But together they’d had one incredible, passionate, perfect night.

Ellen gazed at the telephone. He wasn’t going to call. She straightened her shoulders. And even if he did call and even if—and this was a ridiculous and impossible thing to suppose—even if Sam wanted a relationship with Ellen that would last more than a few hot, steamy, incredible nights, she would be a fool and a half to become involved with him.

In the first place, he was too much like Richard. Handsome, charismatic, and probably just as incapable of fidelity. She’d been there. Done that.

In the second place, Ellen liked Sam too darn much. Unlike Richard, he had a solid sense of humor. He didn’t take himself or life too seriously. He was irreverent and funny and quick to laugh at her jokes. He didn’t humph and grump and say, “Be serious, Ellen,” the way Richard used to do.

And he had all that gorgeous blond hair and those exquisite muscles.

No, she’d gotten exactly what she’d expected from Sam Schaefer—a single night of incredible lovemaking. A solid night of hot sex.

And her tears last night hadn’t been because she’d known she wouldn’t see him again. No, her tears had been from her sense of closure. Last night she’d finally put an end to her long, failed, farce of a marriage. She’d cried because she’d married Richard believing in forever, and she’d been betrayed by him most cruelly. She’d cried only because she’d been so very wrong.

Not because she wished she were ten years younger or Sam were ten years older. Not because she wished for something warm and loving and permanent with a stranger—something that would never be.

“Mom! Mom!” Lydia shrieked, bursting into the room. “I saw it! I saw it!”

Ellen knew instantly what her daughter was talking about. “The laundry detergent commercial! Oh my God! It’s on?”

“It’s
hysterical!
” Lydia danced around the room, stopping only to give her mother a hug. “You look
so good!
It was on one of the
networks
, on a
national
show. We are going to make
so
much money in residuals!”

Ellen laughed at her daughter’s excitement. Fifteen-year-old Lydia was at the age where she downplayed everything, preferring to act ultracool. It was nice to see her jazzed, to hear her speaking in heavy italics, and to get a hug, however brief. Hugs from her nearly grown-up children were becoming more and more infrequent these days.

“You’re just
so excellent
,” Lydia enthused. “I just
know
you’re going to get that soap opera job after the producers see this.”

“How about you?” Ellen interrupted. “You’re in the commercial too.”

Lydia shrugged that off. “I’ve done commercials before, it’s no big deal for me, but for
you
…I had no clue you could act.”

“Well, where do you think
you
got it from?” Ellen teased. “Certainly not your father.”

Lydia rolled his eyes. “Daddy? He could be outacted by a plate of cottage cheese.” She glanced at Ellen’s appointment book, checking the information about the audition call that had come in. “Jamie said I’ve got something else for Monday?”

“Don’t get excited—it’s not a movie. It’s a commercial.”

Lydia pointed to Ellen’s notes. “Does this say ‘raisin bran’?”

“Yes, it does.”

“Oh, blech,” Lydia said. “I
hate
raisin bran.” She smiled brightly, falsely. “But tomorrow I’ll act like I absolutely
love
it.”

“I hear you say that, and it frightens me. What exactly are you learning from these experiences?”

“Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really want me to answer that?” Lydia wondered.

The phone rang.

“I think it was rhetorical,” Ellen said, “but think up a good answer in case I ask it again.” She pushed the talk button on the phone. “Hello?”

“Got your phone number,” a husky voice said. “But then again, I
am
a detective, I’m supposed to be able to track people down.”

Ellen’s heart lodged securely in her throat. “Sam?”

She looked up and directly into Lydia’s curious dark brown eyes. “Sam?” her daughter mouthed silently, questioningly, unable to contain a smile. “Who’s
Sam?
”

“I know you didn’t want me to call you right away,” Sam said apologetically, “but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you and—”

“I’m sorry,” Ellen said. “Can you hold on for just a sec?” She covered the mouthpiece of the phone and moved toward the door, holding it open for Lydia. “May I please have some privacy?” she asked her daughter.

“Privacy,” Lydia repeated, taking her sweet time to leave the room. “For
Sam
. No problem. Say hi to
Sam
for me.”

Ellen closed the door. On second thought, she locked it. And then she moved far away, across to the other side of the room, in case Lydia had any ideas about eavesdropping.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t alone, and—”

“That’s okay,” he said in his too familiar, too sexy voice.

Ellen sat down on the window seat, closing her eyes at the sudden onslaught of extremely arousing memories. His hands, his mouth, his body…

“I was hoping you might’ve changed your mind about dinner tonight,” he added.

“Oh,” she said. “No.” She took a deep breath and lied. “I’m sorry, I’ve…I’ve got other plans and…”

“I’ve got tomorrow off,” he said. “Maybe we could meet in the morning. Go for a run in Central Park before it gets too hot.”

Ellen opened her eyes. “I didn’t tell you that I like to run.”

“You didn’t have to,” he said with a laugh. “You have a runner’s legs. You have
gorgeous
legs—did I tell you that last night?”

“No,” Ellen said weakly.

“Well, it’s true. So what do you say I come by and pick you and your legs up around eight tomorrow morning?”

“I’m sorry,” Ellen said again. “Sam, I just don’t think—”

“I know I’m not giving you any time or space or whatever else it is you need to deal with your divorce, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about how perfectly we clicked last night, and, well, I really want to see you again.”

Ellen was silent. She was facing the biggest temptation of her life. Sam wanted more. It was a possibility she hadn’t seriously considered.

He wanted more, and she knew damn well that if she let this affair—if she could even call it that—go any further,
she
would be the one who would end up hurt. Because she knew exactly what would happen. She would see him tonight, tomorrow night, and for every night after that for a week or two. And then, just when she was starting to really care for him, just when she was starting to convince herself that the age difference wasn’t really that huge, he would stop calling. And she’d spend the rest of the summer feeling like emotional roadkill.

She swore, sharply, pungently. “Sam, don’t mess this up. Last night was perfect. If we add any more nights to it, it won’t be perfect anymore.”