Mine 'Til Monday (12 page)

Someone was shaking her. Not urgently. The hand on her shoulder moved more like it was idly rocking a boat floating in the ripples of a pond.

Dorothy smiled before she opened her eyes, and caught her breath when she did. It hadn’t been a dream. Mud was there, kneeling beside her, the morning sun bathing him richly in gold. He was grinning, a crooked sort of grin that looked as though he’d tried to suppress it but quickly given up.

Her smile widened, and she reached to touch his face, running her fingers along the rough stubble of his chin.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.

“Oh, heavens. I’m sure I’m far from beautiful this morning. I deserve all the dark circles and gray hairs I earned last night.”

“I’m not even going to respond to that ridiculous statement,” Mud said, but respond he did. He kissed her, brushing his lips against hers, then tasting more deeply.

“I’m going for a run,” he said.

“You’re certainly not moving very fast,” Dorothy teased. Her joy at finding him by her side when the night had surrendered to the new day—it was something more than joy. It was the erasing of lingering doubts, the release of dreams she hadn’t dared to wish. Emboldened, she reached around his neck and drew him back to her.

“I wonder if the jogging trail could wait a bit,” she murmured thickly against his ear.

He responded in a low moan. “Hell, Dot, I figured you’d be out for the count this morning. You’re a tiger, you know it? A man-eater.”

She giggled as he mumbled into the hollow of her throat, then eased his way down to her breasts, burrowing under the warmth of her blanket.

“One thing, though,” came his muffled voice as he lazily circled her nipple with his thumb. “Would it be too much to ask to move to an actual bed? I’m just an old athlete gone to seed. I can’t handle these couch gymnastics anymore.”

As it turned out, his body was capable of a repertoire that thrilled her through the stolen moments of the morning.

“No shower?” Dorothy made a face at Mud as he paused at the doorway. She hadn’t stirred from the nest of sheets in the bed they’d collapsed into.

Mud grinned and flexed his muscles, their outline evident in the thin fabric of the tank and running shorts. “I’m too manly,” he intoned deeply. Then: “—and I want to wear...you. On my body. As long as I can get away with it.”

Dorothy blushed crimson and turned her face into the pillow. When he talked like that, not bothering to mask the desire in his voice, staring straight into her eyes—when he talked like that it was almost more than she could stand, a thrill so powerful she thought it might ignite her flesh.

“Have a nice run,” she muttered primly into the soft cotton.

“I will.” He loped across the room and ran a hand along the curve of her shoulder, dipping in at her waist, arcing across her hip. “Will you be, ah, receiving when I return?”

Dorothy attempted to disguise the shiver of delight.

“Unfortunately not. I think I’d better be a big girl and go talk to Miranda.”

“Afraid she’s going to send the butler to bounce us out?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I just—well, I consider her a friend. I did, anyway. I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t try to...well, to apologize.”

Mud’s hand rested on her thigh. “You’re doing the right thing,” he said softly. “Good luck with the old girl.”

He lifted her hand to his lips and gave it a gentle kiss. Dorothy didn’t open her eyes as he tugged at the tangle of sheets and then floated them down, light as clouds, to settle against her bare skin.

Then he was gone.

She lay there for a long while, feeling the sun inch along her body. The sheets felt like a caress, arranged by Mud’s hands, and she breathed deeply of them, hoping to find a trace of him there. After a while she stretched luxuriously and rolled over, opening her eyes to a swath of sapphire blue sky out the broad window.

She couldn’t stop smiling. Being with Mud, loving Mud, last night had been like a fire and a downpour and a tornado all rolled into one, an awesome combustion of a desire she didn’t know she was capable of. This morning was different. She tasted of him slowly, concentrating on the exquisiteness of their union, where before she’d drunk voraciously, almost desperately.

Somehow, this morning, she’d been able to trust herself to him, to hold him as a lover, one who’d return to her again.

When he’d come to her before leaving for his run, there was something new between them, something a little bit comfortable and broken-in. She’d felt his eyes upon her body and hadn’t burned with shame; instead she felt as though she’d given him that right, that gift, and now they celebrated the gift together.

As a couple. There, she’d given shape to that longed-for desire, allowed it to bloom full-formed in her mind. She and Mud were together. They’d loved over and over now; it wasn’t the number of times but the way they’d found such perfect fit in each other’s arms that gave her the confidence to claim him, in her heart, as hers.

“I love him,” she whispered, testing the sound of the words in the morning air.

In answer, a bird outside her window trilled a long, high note. Like Cinderella, Dorothy thought. The scullery maid who was turned into a princess, her love echoed by an entire flock of Disney birds.

“Thanks, little guy,” Dorothy called to the bird outside her window. Great, she thought, I’m talking to birds.

But...what the heck? She had a right. It wasn’t every day a woman fell in love, even if it was with the very same man she’d fallen in love with at least a hundred times before.

This time was something else.

Dorothy stretched again, then shrugged out of the sheets, rising up on an elbow to regard her body. Though her skin was a little red in patches, Dorothy liked what she saw. Compact curves, she thought approvingly; nothing flashy or overdone, but perhaps the sort of body that could please a man who knew what he wanted...

Dorothy laughed shortly and collapsed back onto the bed. Oh, this was really too much. Now he had her thinking she was in a league with the bombshells to whom he’d grown accustomed. It was amazing how being with him made her, somehow, more than what she was before. Made her beautiful, even. When she saw the way he looked at her, she could almost believe that she was the desirable, gorgeous woman that he claimed she was.

Dorothy shook her head to clear it, and sat slowly up. Time to talk to Miranda, to try to make things right again before she left. To apologize and admit that she’d committed a grave wrong. It wouldn’t be easy.

Even so, Dorothy couldn’t stop humming as she moved about the little cottage.

“Miranda,” Dorothy began, her voice faltering. She clutched at the bamboo handle of her purse, trying to remember what she’d planned to say.

Miranda’s assistant discreetly closed the door to her study, where he’d ushered her moments before. Tall, narrow windows were cranked open to let the fragrant breeze from the garden in. It lifted the papers on her desk, stirred the tall lilies gathered in a crystal vase.

“Sit down,” Miranda said, not unkindly. “And, I think, I’ll do the same.”

Walking around her immense cherry desk, Miranda took Dorothy’s hand and guided her to one of two overstuffed floral armchairs, sinking gratefully into the other one.

“I have got to give up those high heels,” she sighed, lifting her feet to the ottoman in an uncharacteristically relaxed pose. “I am a fool to try to party the way I once did. Although, I must say, I believe I monitored my champagne intake fairly well.”

Miranda arched her brow above her reading glasses and gazed directly into Dorothy’s eyes.

Dorothy flushed crimson and shifted uncomfortably in the cushiony depths of the chair.

“Miranda,” she said, “I don’t even know where to begin to tell you how sorry I am. I behaved reprehensibly—”

“Apology accepted.” Miranda lifted a slender hand and waved it dismissively. “And you simply must stop using all those syllables at this hour of the day, especially since everyone was up until the wee hours.”

Another searching gaze.

Dorothy sat in stunned silence, her heart thudding against her chest.

“You’re not...furious with me?”

“Oh, sure I am, a little,” Miranda laughed. “Actually, a lot, last night, anyway. But it’s hard to hold onto that kind of mad. Especially when an old bird like myself is smart enough to realize that it takes more than one fool to make a mess the size of this one.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

“What I’m trying to tell you, my dear—” Miranda reached for a small door in the carved end table next to the chair, peered inside, then shut it in disgust. “Why must I always quit smoking right before I need a cigarette the most? Anyway, what I think I wish to say is that if I hadn’t made such a fuss about, well, you know, family and marriage and so on, you wouldn’t have felt compelled to manufacture such a ridiculous situation to please me. After all, if I’d had any sense, I would have looked no further than your exemplary record.”

Dorothy realized she’d stopped breathing, and inhaled deeply. Miranda’s words collected in the air, almost incomprehensible to her. She wasn’t furious any more. “Exemplary record”...

“But I lied to you, Miranda,” she protested, her shame deepening as she confessed. “I took advantage of our relationship, of the things you shared with me about Walter, your life. I mean, those are important things, sacred things, and I had no right to use them to my advantage.”

Miranda shook her head slowly, a trace of a smile tilting the corners of her mouth.

“Mud was right on all counts,” she said. “You really can be rather priggish, you know that?”

Dorothy’s mouth dropped open. “He said...that?”

“Oh, heavens yes, among other things. Gave me quite an earful, really.”

“But...when?”

“Oh, you know, before breakfast yesterday. It didn’t take much, really, to get him talking.” Miranda arched her brow in a crafty way. “One gets the feeling you’re just about his favorite subject.”

“But you said—”

“
I
said priggish,” Miranda nodded serenely. “Now those may not have been his exact words. Let me see, I think ‘heavy—handed on the principles thing’ is what he said.”

Dorothy’s heart plummeted. So that was what he really thought of her. She’d spent the better part of the last hour floating inches off the floor in a cloud of delight, convinced Mud adored her.

“Don’t look so glum, sweetheart,” Miranda chided, her grin a bit wicked now. “I think he also said you were stubborn, determined and tough as nails.”

“Well.” Dorothy’s voice wobbled a bit as she spoke. She swallowed. “Of course that’s, well, there’s a grain of truth, I mean probably more than a grain, perhaps a lot of truth to that. Mud is, well, an old friend, and he was just doing me a favor, fulfilling an obligation, is what it really is.”

Miranda’s expression abruptly shifted. The faint amusement evaporated, the glint of mischief melted into concern.

“You poor thing,” she said, leaning forward in her chair and laying a hand on Dorothy’s arm. “You’re really suffering, aren’t you?”

Dorothy shook her head sharply. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Over this darling man, of course,” Miranda said. “You know, for such a smart girl, sometimes you can be so remarkably naive. Shall I instruct you in the ways of men? At one time, I considered myself rather an expert on the subject. At least, I knew my way around one particular man, but they all are cut from essentially the same cloth, are they not? Oh, listen to me, going on. What I mean to say is that Mud is every bit as crazy for you as you are for him.”

“I am not—” Dorothy sputtered.

“Oh, come now, let’s not waste time on all that. Here’s your first lesson. When a man talks about a woman’s shortcomings as though he were describing the Mona Lisa, you know it’s love. Walter once told me that I snored ‘melodiously’, if you can imagine such a thing. Mud went on about what a trial you were to him on the golf course, and the whole time those blue eyes of his were utterly radiant and he could not stop grinning. I mean, the man couldn’t even take a sip of his coffee without getting distracted all over again and going on another tangent, all about you, Dorothy dear.”

Dorothy slacked back in her chair, blinking a few times and letting her breath out slowly. She’d been prepared for Miranda’s rage, for stony silence, for venom. But nothing could have prepared her for this.

“You really think...”

“Oh, indeed. That’s what had me fooled. And I like to think I’m not easy to put one over on. But you two sure seemed like you were in love. I admit the whole scheme had its problems, and I could tell something was not right, but the chemistry was there, I assure you of that.

“At any rate, it was a first-class attempt, but I’m glad it got bungled up at the end. Because, you see, I’d rather not have any secrets between us when you come to work for me.”

Dorothy’s eyes widened in astonishment. “When I...what? You still want me, even after everything I did?”

“Like I said, I realized I put undue pressure on you. Last night made me think. Do you know, after the party ended, I stayed up late with Walter. Now don’t go thinking I’m crazy,” she added, smiling nostalgically. “I just talk to his picture. Do it all the time, in fact. I think he’s listening, somehow.

“Anyway, there I was going on about what we had when I realize that all I’ve been doing was trying to get Walter back by re-creating what we had. But it can’t be done. Time goes on, things change, the way they’re meant to. I can’t go dragging my musty old idea of things into the present and expect them to work. Finesse is a five billion dollar company these days, not some little dream we cooked up over the breakfast table, not any more. I need you, Dorothy, to take Finesse into the future. I need your smarts, your drive, your creativity. What I don’t need to do is run your personal life for you.”

“I don’t know,” Dorothy said shakily. “I wonder if you might do a better job at it than I.”

“Oh, now,” Miranda said, extending her hand to envelop Dorothy’s in a warm grasp. “We’ll have plenty of time to solve your love life down the road. For now, I just want to know you’ll come to work the minute you can tie up your loose ends, and get down to the business of taking care of Finesse.”