Molly (7 page)

“Samuel, let’s not fight today.”

His smile was bittersweet. “Were we
fighting?”

“Not quite, but almost. When I really fight,
I throw things.” She took a sip of coffee, then grinned impishly at
him over the rim. “Cheap things, though. I’m no fool.”

He chuckled, and suddenly he realized how
easy it was to laugh with Molly. Leaning back in his chair, he
relaxed a little.

“Agreed, then. We won’t fight. I’ll be going
soon, anyhow.

“You’re leaving?”

“I have a briefcase full of work at the
hotel.”

“Before you go would you mind doing something
for me?”

“Anything that doesn’t involve your lethal
water hose.”

“I promise; this won’t get you wet.” Feeling
happy and mischievous, she set her coffee cup down and picked up
the red satin dress. “Would you mind putting this on?”

“That’s not my quite my style.”

“You needn’t look so horrified. I don’t have
kinky games in mind. I just need a dummy.”

“The last time anybody checked me out, I
didn’t qualify.”

“A dressmaker’s dummy.” Laughing, she stood,
holding the red dress out for his inspection. “See. I’ve ripped out
the side seams so you won’t have any trouble at all getting into
it.”

He eyed the dress suspiciously. “And then
what?”

“And then I can tell exactly where to put all
this.” She picked up a handful of beads and feathers from the
table.

Samuel had never done anything remotely
connected to sewing before. And he would have been horrified if
anybody had suggested he take part in a dressmaking scheme. But
Molly was standing there with dirt on her face, looking expectantly
at him with those big blue eyes, and he knew there was no way he
would turn her down. At the moment, if she had asked him to stand
on his head and recite the Gettysburg Address backward, he would
have tried.

“If word of this gets back to Florence, my
reputation is ruined.”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?”

“Against my better judgment. Exactly what is
it I’m supposed to do?”

“All you have to do is stand still.”

It sounded simple enough. Samuel pushed back
his chair and stood.

Molly sized him up. “I never realized how
tall you are.”

He smiled at her. “Should I apologize?”

“No. Just bend over.”

He ducked his head and she moved in close
with the red satin dress. She smelled of rich loamy earth and fresh
summer flowers and something else—something so intoxicating he
forget everything except the woman standing in front of him.

She slipped the dress over his head.

“What is that scent you’re wearing?” His
voice was muffled by the red satin.

“What?”

She lifted the folds of the dress and stuck
her head under the skirt. They stood face-to-face under the cover
of red satin. His head was slightly inclined and hers was tilted
upward.

Samuel sucked in his breath and Molly wet her
lips with the tip of her tongue. He cleared his throat, and she
blushed. They stared at each other, vividly aware of the currents
passing between them.

“I didn’t hear what you said,” she
whispered.

“I said...” Her eyes were so intensely blue
they made him forget.

“Yes?”

Her breathless voice started his heart
racing.

“That fragrance. what is it?”

“It’s called Night of a Thousand
Splendors.”

Night of a Thousand Splendors.
At
the moment, he could envision at least nine hundred ninety-nine of
them. And all with Molly. He leaned so close he could almost taste
her lips. It was his dream that saved him. Suddenly he saw himself,
as besotted and foolhardy as his father, completely taken in by a
beautiful, flamboyant woman.

He straightened. “Don’t you think this dress
is a little small for the two of us?”

Her laugh was shaky. “My goodness. How like
me to get sidetracked.”

Hastily she ducked down and out of the dress
and pulled it completely over his head. Her eyes were bright and
her cheeks were flushed. She tugged and pulled on the dress,
adjusting it to his big body, talking nervously as she worked.

“I guess you’ll find that out about me,
Samuel. I distract easily. Just one little word sets me off on a
tangent. I completely forget what I was doing in the first place.”
As she smoothed the dress over his chest, she felt the tensing of
his muscles. A tremor started somewhere deep inside her and she had
to struggle to keep it out of her voice. “The day you came—my
goodness, was it only yesterday?—I was digging up the flower bed
and suddenly I wound up in a water fight with the dogs. And then
you
came along...”

“Molly.” He grasped her shoulders gently,
interrupting her flow of words.

“What?”

He smiled down at her. Betsy, his father’s
lover, had been beautiful—probably still was, for all he knew—but
she had never been enchantingly innocent. In spite of what Molly
did—posing nude and having her body sculpted and painted for all
the world to see—she looked as innocent and fresh and appealing as
an untouched rosebud.

He reached up and tenderly touched her cheek.
“You have dirt on your face.” Gazing deeply into her eyes, he wiped
away the smudge.

Molly was accustomed to the companionship of
men. In Paris she’d had a least a dozen suitors—all handsome men
who loved to dance and laugh and play lively games. But none of
them were like Samuel. Not one had that haunted look in the eyes,
as if all the demons in hell were in pursuit and only she could
save him. And not one of them had that exquisitely tender
touch.

She closed her eyes and let the feel of his
hands wash over her.

Samuel’s hand lingered on her face. Her skin
was dangerously soft. He found himself wanting to press face
against hers and inhale her

No woman had ever made him feel that
way—sentimental and passionate at the same time. He’d made damned
sure of that. Or had he? Had he really kept women at a proper
distance in his life, or was it all fate? His mother, a woman of
foolish romantic notions, had always told him that fate was just
waiting for the right moment to send that one special woman his
way. He’d thought it was hogwash and had told her so.

Molly made him wonder.

He circled his thumb against her cheek one
last time.

“There. That should do it.”

“Thank you.” She reached up and put two
fingers on the spot he had touched.

“Anytime.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew how often
I dig in the dirt—and how often it ends up on my face instead of in
the flowerpots where it belongs.”

He gave her a long look that took her breath
away. “Perhaps I would, Molly.”

It took her a full two minutes to recover.
Finally she backed away and picked up a pincushion and a handful of
brightly colored feathers.

“Time to get to work. Now you just hold
still.”

“That’s what you said the last time, before
we got sidetracked.”

“No sidetracking this time. It will all be
strictly business. I promise.”

She reached up to pin a feather on the
neckline of the dress, and her hand brushed against his chin.

He put one hand over hers. “Do you break
promises as easily as you break rules, Molly?”

“No. I never break a promise.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

He placed a finger on her throat where her
pulse was beating the wings of a wild bird.

“I could take that as a challenge,
Molly.”

His hand moved to her lips, and she parted
them to let his finger slip inside.

“Hmm.” Molly could no more have controlled
her sound of satisfaction than a cat could control his purring.

“My God, Molly.”

Samuel pulled her into his arms, heedless of
feathers and beads and propriety. The pincushion dropped to the
floor, and pins and feathers went flying all over the kitchen.

Neither of them heard the doggie door bang
open. Mickey and Minnie, prancing into the kitchen for their usual
midmorning snack, found the feathers, and the chase was on.

They ran between Samuel’s legs twice before
he even noticed them.

Finally Mickey, blinded by the mouthful of
feathers that floated up into his eyes, banged heavily against the
backs of Samuel’s knees. He became aware that he’d been kissing
Molly for some time now, and probably would have gone on kissing
her for a very long time.

He was clearly in danger. In an effort to
save himself, he resorted to teasing.

“If I’d known dressmaking was this much fun,
I might have taken it up years ago.”

Molly pressed her hands to her lips while
Mickey barked, and Minnie nipped at her heels. For the first time
ever, she wanted to swat them.

“What have you done?” She addressed her dogs,
but her question was as much for Samuel as for her pets. What he
had done was press all the right buttons and made her forget
everything except the moment.

She bent over the dogs and began to pluck
feathers out of their mouths.

“How can I create a ravishing frock if you
two eat the feathers?”

A yellow feather dropped out of Mickey’s
mouth and floated to the floor. Suddenly Molly saw a vision of her
mother, smiling, her hair bright in the sun. If it hadn’t been for
Samuel’s kiss, the feather would have been nothing more than a
feather. But now she was vulnerable, and it was symbolic of the
mother she had loved and lost.

A tear slid her cheeks. She hated being weak
and vulnerable, even for a moment, and she tried to hide it by
chiding her dogs again.

“What have you done?”

Samuel squatted quickly beside her. Molly’s
tears affected him in such an astonishing way that he suddenly
dreamed of himself as a sort of Knight in Shining Armor, the sort
of man who would pick up a sword and do battle against anything
that hurt her.

“Hey, now, there’s no need to cry. I’ll help
you clean up the mess.”

“It’s not the dogs.” Her lips trembled, and
another tear slipped out.

“Molly?” Samuel cupped her face and gently
tilted it so he could see her eyes. “What, then? Tell me.”

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I promise.”

“Sometimes I’m silly. I see one thing and it
reminds me of another, and before you know it, I’m crying.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“I think there’s more.”

“You promised you wouldn’t laugh, and you
didn’t. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” Still he squatted, and
still he caressed her cheek. “Tell me why you were crying this
time, Molly.”

Molly hated lying, but on the other hand, she
felt the danger of telling him her true feelings. It was almost
like inviting him into her heart.

She decided to tell Samuel quickly and get it
over with. Then she would definitely, absolutely, get this
relationship back on a casual basis.

“It was the yellow feathers, Samuel. They
reminded me of my mother’s hair, and then I started thinking about
her death, and before you know it, I was crying.”

“I’m so sorry.” His voice was tender.

“Thank you.”

“You’re a complicated woman, Molly
Rakestraw...” His hands lingered on her face. “And a dangerous one,
too.”

“Dangerous?”

He wasn’t ready to give an honest answer to
that probing question. Instead he took her hands and lifted her to
her feet.

“With the pins. I’m not so sure I can trust
you not to attach a few feathers to my chest.”

While he spoke, he examined her face. She
seemed to buy his explanation. That was a relief. The situation was
close to being out of control. And he could
never
relinquish control.

“I promise I won’t attach feathers to your
chest.” She gave him an impish grin. “Unless I decide you look good
in yellow feathers.”

“I take back everything I said. You’re not
merely dangerous—you’re formidable, too.”

She wielded the pincushion like a sword.
“That’s because I have the pins.”

Their laughter lightened the mood. For the
next twenty minutes Molly arranged beads and feathers over his
chest, cocking her head this way and that, studying her handiwork
as if she were creating a Dior original. From time to time she had
him parade across the kitchen floor so she could get the full
effect.

He obliged. Not only did he do her bidding,
but he went even further and added a few steps of his own.

Molly laughed so hard, she cried.

They took a late lunch break, and then she
enlisted his help in repotting her plants.

“I know less about horticulture than I do
about dresses,” he told her.

“This doesn’t require knowledge—merely a
willingness to get your hands dirty.”

“I guess there has to be a first time.”

“You never played in the dirt, Sam?”

“I don’t think my board members would
approve.”

“They’re not here today and I’ll never
tell.”

“Then lead me to the dirt.”

She happily dragged three philodendrons off
the front porch and declared them puny. For the first time since
his childhood, Samuel got his hands in the dirt. And it felt
good.

He patted soil around a newly potted plant
and smiled at Molly.

“A man could get addicted to this.”

“I’ve always found digging in the earth to be
therapeutic.” She wiped a stray tendril off her face and got
another smudge of dirt on her cheek.

As he studied the smudge, he decided it
wasn’t repotting plants that was addictive; it was the woman. He’d
come for a business talk, then stayed all day. What kind of madness
was that?

“It must be getting very late.” That was as
good an excuse as any for leaving.

“I don’t know. I try not to think about
time.”

A woman like Molly could drive a man
crazy.

“I
always
think about time. And it’s
time for me to go.” He set the newly potted plant in the center of
the table, then started to the door. “Goodbye, Molly. Thanks for
lunch.”