No More Mr. Nice Guy (7 page)

I think,
the little voice said patiently,
this has gone far enough. Go home, Alan.

Actually, the spirit of it was beginning to get to him. He wanted Caro. He wanted Caro with every breath he took these days. He breathed, dreamed and thrived on wanting her—it was not just a sexual need but a driving force that colored every hour in each day. He wandered to the side of the building, searching for a ladder.

There was no ladder, but there was an empty trash can. He stared at it for a moment, then carefully, quietly took off the lid, turned it upside down and carried it back to the oak. Once he was standing on it, it was only one long heave into the belly of the tree.

Branches snagged his jacket, and for a moment he lay winded, irritated beyond measure that he could be this badly out of shape. Still breathing heavily, he looked up. The yard light glowed brightly enough for him to see her window through the thick-fingered branches. They would hold his weight; that wasn’t a problem. Not having climbed a tree in many long years was the real problem, and his attitude toward heights had always been less than enthusiastic.

He shimmied forward along the strongest branch. A limb caught at his jeans; another tried to tangle in his hair. He lost his hat. In time, though, in methodical good time, he gained enough yardage so that he could reach out and touch her window. After that, he took several seconds to catch his breath and wipe the dampness from his brow.

He finally worked up the courage to rap once, then twice on the pane, very softly. So softly that he couldn’t believe it when the window was promptly thrown open.

By eleven that night, Carroll had been buried beneath three comforters in bed with a heating pad on her stomach. She was freezing. Nightmares were dancing on her walls.

It had been years since she’d missed a day of work. The only reason she hadn’t gone in that morning was that she hadn’t been able to sit up without cringing.

Now she didn’t really feel that bad. Actually, she felt increasingly wonderful, lightheaded and free and dreamy. Moonlight filtered in the window, making increasingly strange shapes on her bedroom wall.

Moonlight and dreams gradually blended together. She was making love with Alan under the cool trickle of a waterfall. Both of them were naked, their flesh slick and cool…instants later, the waterfall and Alan were gone and something dark and terrifying was chasing her in the night, chasing her with a torch, so hot, so hot…and then the weirdest dream of all, of a tall, dark stranger rapping on her window. Silly, her bedroom window was on the second floor, but the rapping continued, and in the dream it seemed perfectly natural to float out of bed, fly to the window and throw it open to the crisp, cold night and her ravisher.

“Hi there,” Carroll said seductively. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Wonderful air as cold as ice rushed over her overheated skin from the opened window. She shivered from her toes to her soul in response. She’d had ravishment dreams before, but never as good as this one. The tall, dark stranger was turning into Alan, the best part of all. Some kidnapping dreams could pall when her seducer wasn’t real. Alan was deliciously real. He was also taking far too long to climb in her window.

“
Waiting
for me?” Dark eyes peered in, dazzling her with their intensity.

“All my life,” she said blithely. “Hurry. I love you.” Anticipation danced in her bloodstream. Exhilaration, laughter and champagne danced along with it. In the dream, she’d had liters and liters of champagne and no inhibitions at all. Heat was pouring from her nerve endings, pure female, lusty heat. She slipped her fingers through her hair, shaking the tousled mop in seductive invitation.

There was another slight hesitation, then one jeaned leg slid through the opening, then a long, bent-over body. “I love—” then the last leg “—you, too.” The window slammed behind him. Breathing heavily for a moment, Alan rubbed his hands on the backs of his jeans to rid them of bark and leaf debris, then stood there in silence. His voice finally pierced the darkness, low and hoarse. “Caro, I
do
love you. I’ve loved you for so long. I know this must look crazy…”

“No!”
Her ravisher was shy, delighting her. “It’s not at all crazy.” She rushed forward on the thinnest carpet of air, slipping her arms around his waist. His jacket was freezing against her long flannel nightgown, for an instant shocking her, disturbing the sensations she was enjoying in the dream. Her fever-clogged brain refused the intrusion of reality. “Nothing’s crazy between the two of us. Take me, Alan!”

She rose up on tiptoe, sealing his cold lips with her own. With brazen freedom, she rocked her pelvis against him, let her wanton fingers rush through his hair and tighten. It took no time at all to warm his lips, no time at all for her kidnapper to pick up the spirit of devil-may-care seduction.

In the darkness, she could hear his change in breathing, reveled in it. Huge hands caressed from her back to her bottom and stopped there, holding her dancing hips still, molding them high and hard against him. His tongue dipped into her mouth, providing her with moisture she hadn’t known she was desperate for.

“Caro…ah, Caro. You just can’t know…”

Such wonderful hands he had, dozens of them. Roaming her back, sliding over her slim shoulders, brushing with teasing pressure on her breasts, up to that softest hollow in her throat. “Caro,” he breathed again, and she felt deliriously high. She’d wanted this for so long. Those fingers of his touched her face as he kissed her and kept on kissing her, a whispery touch that explored her cheeks, her closed eyelids, her forehead.

“Caro?” A flat hand suddenly pressed itself against her forehead.
“Carroll!”

He tore himself away from her so fast she was left bereft, her arms still reaching for him. Her bedside lamp was switched on, and her dream took an abrupt, nightmarish turn. No decent dream would leave her stranded, wearing a long, bulky nightgown with white athletic socks. She immediately lunged for the light and switched it off. The darkness was better, but not quite as good as before. Something was going wrong very fast.

Actually, everything was going very wrong very fast. She was no longer blazingly hot but chilled. A fit of trembling took her body by storm, and she felt damp and dizzy, but no longer nice-dizzy. A knife seemed to be lodged in her brain, slicing away, and her ravisher was no longer murmuring sweet nothings but a steady refrain of “dammit, dammit, dammit” as he moved around the room.

He changed the litany momentarily to “Caro, just
stay
there,” when he pushed her into a chair.

She heard the sound of his jacket flung against the wall, the incredibly loud switch-on of the overhead light. She winced at the cruel blaze of light. Confusion made everything surrealistic, like part of a dream. It
had
to be a dream. Logically, she simply had to reach for that champagne high again, that delicious heat…and there wasn’t anything logical about Alan stripping the sheets from her bed and swearing colorfully as he unplugged the heating pad.

One instant he was on the far side of the room, and the next instant he was kneeling in front of her, his dark blue eyes relentless, piercing, as fathomless as those of the pirate lover in some historical novel. He was furious, the rational part of her brain told her, but that dreaming part of Carroll heard his voice, gentle, tender, as soothing as velvet. “I’m going to take your nightgown off, love. You’ll be far more comfortable in a dry one.”

Maybe true, but the nightgown he’d pulled from her drawer was old, faded and insufferably prim. “I’d prefer,” she whispered, “the pink one with lace.”

“Pardon?”

“The pink one. Alan, I’m
not
making love to you in
that
nightgown.”

“Ah. Sweetheart, when we make love you won’t be wearing anything, so it hardly makes any difference. And in the meantime, raise your arms.”

She wasn’t inclined to comply. Another
dammit
escaped under his breath before Alan could stop it. He lifted her arms and tugged off the long, damp nightgown. Beneath it, she was bare and shivering.

Horror rushed through her. “Turn around!”

“Caro, this is
me. Me.
Relax,” he said impatiently.

“It isn’t that. It’s the socks. No way am I going to be naked except for socks.” She bent down too quickly; the knife sliced clear through her skull. Stupid. How stupid. There was suddenly no dream to cling to, just this horrid thick dizziness, a body that felt battered, and somewhere, yes, an obstinate trace of vanity. She really did want the darned socks off.

His chuckle startled her, and so did the swift brush of lips on her forehead, followed all too rapidly by her arms being slipped into the fresh nightgown.

“I can—” she started to say, but he was paying no attention.

“Hush. Let me. And someday,” he said gently, “I’m going to make love to you with just your socks on, to show you how silly you are. You’re sexy to me no matter what you’re wearing, kitten, and you always will be. Now try to think clearly.”

She was thinking clearly. That was the problem.

“Where’s your thermometer?”

She couldn’t think
that
clearly.

“All right. I’ll find it. Now, have you taken aspirin?”

He urged her into bed, a feat that didn’t take much coaxing. He seemed to have stolen all her blankets except the comforter, which wasn’t enough to keep her warm. She tried to tell him, but he popped a thermometer into her mouth.

Five thousand years from now, when she regained her sense of humor, she was going to tell Alan that he was rapidly losing credibility as a ravisher. He grabbed her hand, but it wasn’t a loverlike hold. His two fingers were pressed to her wrist, and with the other hand he was smoothing back her hair. She pushed her hair forward again, the way it was supposed to go. Otherwise, it would stand straight up. Nothing more ghastly than hair standing up every which way; she looked bad enough.

“Would you stop fighting me,” he scolded, and released her wrist. “And if I ever discover you’ve gone to bed with a plugged-in heating pad again, you’ll be in big trouble.”

She didn’t know when he’d dropped the gentle voice, but when he read the temperature on the thermometer he looked vaguely as if he might shoot her.

“A hundred and three degrees. A hundred and three degrees, and you didn’t call me!”

“I feel fine,” she assured him.

“You feel like
hell.
”

“A little,” she admitted. “Alan, don’t go…”

“I’m not going anywhere. You may be. Now answer quick, and no more nonsense. Throat sore?”

She shook her head.

“Your stomach?”

She shook her head.

“Caro,” he said patiently, “you had a heating pad on. Did you have stomach cramps? Have you kept food down? Diarrhea?”

He’d folded back her blanket and was poking her lower abdomen, paying no attention to the mortified flush that climbed her cheeks. The pallor beneath the flush seemed the only thing that fascinated him.

“
No, no,
and
no!
Stop that. Darn it, Alan, every kid in school has the same stupid flu. A high fever and aches and pains and that’s it. I am
fine,
and my glands are
wonderful,
thank you.” She pushed his hands away from the swollen nodules in her throat.

“My four-year-olds make better patients than you do,” Alan informed her, and stood up, readjusting the covers around her chin. “I’m going to get you something to drink and some aspirin… What’s that?” He motioned to the glass by her bed.

“Whiskey with honey and lemon. My mother’s cure for everything that ails you.”

“You didn’t drink any.”

“I hate whiskey.”

“Never drink it when you have the flu,” he muttered. “Just puts sugar in the blood, kitten. Worst thing you could do. Now, stay there.”

He wagged his finger at her, as if he thought she might rush off. She couldn’t imagine why she was happy he was there. He was treating her like one of his four-year-old patients; she did
not
want the glass of orange juice he bullied her into drinking, and embarrassing fragments of an extremely silly dream were gradually filtering back to her. She tried to apologize, but all Alan could talk about was how relieved he was that her fever was breaking. She’d been a lot happier when the fever was raging. Now she felt truly awful.

Still, when he turned out the light, she panicked. “You’re not going home?”

“No.” In the darkness, he shucked off his clothes and slid into bed beside her. Gently, he turned her on her side, facing away from him, and tucked her spoon-fashion against his chest and bent knees before pulling the light cover up to her chin. With a sigh, he settled down. His arms slid firmly around her waist. “I guarantee,” he murmured, “to keep you warm, Caro.”

Fuzzy, woolly darkness enclosed her. She suddenly didn’t feel nearly as bad, just sleepy and a little achy and impossibly cuddly. Her eyes closed, and she nestled her back more firmly against Alan’s bare chest. His beard nuzzled her neck for a moment as he bestowed a surprise of a kiss, and then there was silence.

Just before she fell asleep, she murmured, “Alan, did I dream all of it?”

“Hmm?”

“I dreamed you climbed in the window.”

“Caro,” Alan said gently, “you were delirious.”

“But I know I locked the door. I always lock the—”

“Ssh. Sleep now. You need rest.”

Carroll stretched, yawned and sleepily opened her eyes…then blinked. A shaggy bear seemed to be lying next to her. A huge, warm shaggy bear with disheveled brown hair and a brown beard and alert blue eyes. “G’morning,” she said groggily.

“Feel better?”

She nodded and snuggled closer. Climbing mountains in Shades Park now seemed like a terrible idea, but the lead was gone from her head, and her body was no longer creaking and groaning. She simply felt on a basic empathic level with a mop. Her cheek burrowed against Alan’s bare warm chest. She saw no particular reason to move from that spot all day.

“You’re not wearing a stitch of clothes,” she mentioned.

“No.”

“Nothing.”

Alan reached under the covers, captured her wandering hand and pinned it against his chest. He never blinked an eye.

She smiled sleepily, and her eyelids drifted closed again. Vague memories of the night before began wandering through her consciousness, most of them running a fine line between mortification and embarrassment. Since she couldn’t pretend they hadn’t happened, owning up seemed like the only sensible choice. “I’m sorry, Alan,” she said quietly.

“Hey. Don’t be silly.” His thumb stroked her cheek. “Are you
ever
going to get ill like that again without calling me?”

“No, sir.”

“The fever’s gone, kitten.”

“And I feel wonderful.” To prove it, she slid her arms around his bare waist and sneaked a flannel-covered leg between his. She’d wasted hours, having him naked in bed with her and not even knowing it. And after all those months of postponing intimacy, she could no longer remember a single reason why. It felt perfectly natural waking up with Alan.

It felt even more natural to touch him. He was built along the lines of Gibraltar, strong and solid. The parts of Alan she’d touched before didn’t begin to make up the whole. He had sprinkles of wiry hair on his chest, not a lot of it. A flat abdomen, no rear end to speak of, strongly muscular legs. All of those parts appealed to her, but the whole was the surprise. Alan added up to a physically beautiful man. She’d never really thought about it before.

Nor had she ever realized he was so responsive to her touch. His pulse leaped when her palm touched his nipple. His skin warmed when her hands strayed down to his ribs and abdomen. And she found her hands gently pinned when they tried to stray lower. Blue eyes bore into her, focused on her mischievous smile
.

“When,” he murmured, “did the lady get so brazen?”

“I think she was brazen all along. Maybe she has always had a latent sensual streak, just waiting for a chance to break out.”

“I like it.”

“I’m glad.”

“If you weren’t still sick,” he said firmly.

“I’m not ill anymore,” she assured him.

“So you think. But you haven’t tried to get out of bed yet.”

“The last thing I want to do is get out of bed.”

“Caro…” Alan suddenly wasn’t smiling. He released her hands and leaned over her, pushing back her hair, studying her forehead and eyes and eyebrows and temples and cheeks, savoring, loving. “Once you’re well, once I seriously get you in bed,” he said quietly, “I may never let you out of it. Know that.”

A lump formed in her throat. She reached up to touch his bearded cheek. “I love you, Alan.”

“And I love you. More than I can ever seem to find the words to tell you.”

She shook her head. “I never needed words. But I needed—” she hesitated “—to be sure.”

“Of me?”

“Maybe of myself, of us.” She made her tone deceptively light. “I always wanted to be one of those assertive women who blithely jump into bed whenever they feel like it, who don’t hesitate to express their own sexual needs and feelings. There’s only a thin line between those women and me. I’d like to tell you that line has something to do with high standards, but in truth it has more to do with cowardice.”

“Cowardice?” Alan echoed.

She snuggled closer. “First times, darn it. First times aren’t fun. First times are made up of worrying that things won’t go well and worrying about what your partner thinks of your body, and worrying about doing the right things, saying the right things…”

For a moment, Alan was quiet; then he probed gently. “He hurt you, didn’t he, Caro?”

“Who?”

“A man. Sometime. Your first?”

She closed her eyes, feeling oddly shy. “It was years ago, and shouldn’t matter anymore, but ever since then… Love’s supposed to take away the inhibitions, but for me it makes them worse. It isn’t sex that scares me, Alan; it’s just that I worry about the first time. I just…didn’t want you to walk away.”

“Caro, look at me.” He gently nudged her chin up with his hand. “First times for a man are made of worrying he won’t perform to the lady’s needs and satisfaction. Worrying she’ll discover his paunch. Worrying he won’t find those particular things that turn her on, those things that happen so naturally between lovers who know each other.”

She waited a moment, absorbed what he had told her, realized that it was the same for him as it was for her. “You don’t,” she ventured finally, “have a paunch. And I wouldn’t care if you had.”

“And you have a beautiful body, woman.”

“You haven’t seen it yet,” she reminded him.

“I saw it last night.”

“You weren’t even looking then. You were busy bullying me into wearing this horrible nightgown—”

“You have to be joking,” he said dryly. “You have a tiny mole just under your right breast.” His lips brushed her cheek. “A faint scar on your lower abdomen, less than an inch, the size of a sliver.” He kissed her throat, then traced a line of kisses up into her hair. “The tips of your breasts are a dusky rose, not brown. Tiny nipples. And on the inside of your left thigh…”

“Alan.” Color was rising in her cheeks faster than a river in a flood.

“It’s going to be fine between us, Caro.” He leaned back again and possessively tucked the covers around her. “If I’d known that was all you were worried about, we would have been in bed long before this.”

It wasn’t all. Carroll touched his cheek, remembering fears that the sexual spark wasn’t strong enough between them, wanting some kind of guarantee that what they had was enough to last for a lifetime, and yes, wanting something more than a love that had happened so easily.

The spark was there, hot enough to burn her. The compatibility and honesty were there; she could never have shared feelings like this with another man. And for weeks now she’d suffered that agony-ecstasy of being in love—a feeling she’d been afraid she’d never experience. “What about you?” she asked quietly. “Alan, you must have had doubts about me, about what we are together.”

“A few in the beginning—but you won me over awfully fast,” he teased lightly, but his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. A fear of first times might have been part of the reason she’d shied away from intimacy with him. He knew that wasn’t all. All along, he’d suspected that her strongest hesitations had to do with doubts about him and about her feelings for him. Now would be the best of times to coax her to talk about these feelings…except that the lady tucked so neatly beneath him still had ashen skin and eyes with a lingering fever brightness. “I hate to say this,” he drawled.

“What?”

He kissed her nose. “I have a date with little Susie’s adenoids in two hours. And you’re going to eat breakfast before I leave, which means…”

“You want me to let you up.” Her arms tightened firmly around him.

“And
after
I bring you breakfast in bed—” he gave her a playful tap on her behind “—we’re going to see how sassy you are when you try to walk. Two bits says you can’t make it to the bathroom and back without wobbling. And once I go, you have strict orders to stay in bed all day, doing nothing but sleeping and drinking fluids and taking aspirin. Caro, if I find you dressed when I come back at dinnertime, you’re going to be in big trouble.”

“You’ve been threatening me with big trouble ever since you came in last night,” she remarked with total unconcern. One eyebrow lifted suddenly. “Alan, you
did
come in that window.”

Alan slid out of bed and reached for his clothes. “We’re back to that again? Grown men do not come in windows.”

“I
know
the door was locked. And maybe I was a little muzzy-headed…”

“You were more than muzzy-headed. You thought you could fly.”

Carroll propped the pillows up behind her, never taking her eyes from his face. “You know,” she said slowly, “that was probably the most romantic dream I’ve ever had…a dark stranger suddenly appearing at my window on a black night.” She motioned him silent with her hand. “Yes, yes, I know. I just
imagined
it was you. And I guess I
was
pretty out of it, because I remember the strangest sensations. This incredible delight that a tall dark stranger would go to so much trouble. And this thrilling, breathless anticipation of being ravished, of not feeling the least bit threatened. Actually, maybe that’s not so strange. I mean, only a tall, dark stranger who loved me very much—who was capable of an incredible amount of love—could think up such a…” She smiled at his expression. “Never mind, never mind. I know it wasn’t you.”

Alan tugged his dark sweater on, shaking his head as he walked to the door. “I swear, Caro, you have a vivid imagination. You’ll do anything to keep me out of the kitchen, won’t you? I can handle scrambled eggs, I swear it.”

“Yes.”

“Furthermore, you should have storms put on those windows.”

“Yes.”

“A burglar could easily reach you by climbing that tree.”

“Yes.”

“And as for a nice, demure woman having dreams like that…” He shook his head in despair. “You’ve shocked me. Seriously shocked me.”

“Sorry,” she said gravely. “Better wipe that grin off your face, Alan.”

“I’ll do that.”

But she heard his burst of laughter all the way from the kitchen.

She survived Tuesday, joined the living on Wednesday, and felt unquestionably human by Thursday…having little choice in the matter. Her momentum to get well arose from a man solicitously feeding her gourmet Vietnamese, Hungarian and Peruvian specialties. Not only was her kitchen never going to recover, but Carroll came back to life out of sheer hunger.

Just home from school on Friday, still wearing her coat, she grabbed a carrot stick from the refrigerator and munched on it as she dialed the number of Alan’s office. She’d already tried to reach him twice from work. Both times he’d been with patients.

The man deserved to be paid back for the care he’d given her for the past three nights. Her refrigerator was still stocked with more citrus juices than she could drink in a lifetime. He’d brought her daffodils. He’d bullied her into staying in bed as if she were some kind of invalid; then he’d beaten her at Scrabble. And if he hadn’t stayed with her those nights, at least he’d stayed until she fell asleep…and if she didn’t fall asleep at an hour early enough to suit him, he’d read her medical journals, the content of which was enough to cure the most hardened insomniac.

There wasn’t the slimmest chance she would let him know if she ever caught a sniffle again. Safer yet, she’d just stay permanently healthy. In the meantime, she had in mind repaying him by blowing her month’s budget on the most expensive dinner in town…as soon as she caught up with the man.

“I’m afraid he took off for the hospital,” June Goodman told her wearily. “That man is harder to track down than a roadrunner in the desert.”

“Are you expecting him back this afternoon?” Carroll asked.

“No, he canceled his last afternoon appointment before he went to the hospital—this was an emergency.” June paused. “Carroll?”

“Yes?” Her lips were already tugging into a smile. Alan’s nurse was irrepressible.

“I figured by now you’d have exerted some influence and gotten him to shave off that beard.”

Carroll chuckled, still munching on her carrot. “I keep thinking he’ll get tired of it.”

“Well, unfortunately, he’s decided that you like it. I told him if he was going to skate on ice that thin, he’d better be prepared to walk on water. Listen, you need any help from me, you just say so. I’ve been managing that man for six years now. The trick is nagging him, pure and simple. He can’t stand it.”

Carroll laughed again. “I never did perfect the fine art of nagging.”

“I know. That’s why he loves you. All right, now…I’ll leave him a message you called just in case he does come back here.”

Hanging up, Carroll decided to catch Alan at dinnertime. For an hour or two, it didn’t matter anyway. The apartment was begging for a vacuuming, and clothes were piled up in the hamper. She’d let things go while she had the flu.

Two hours later, the apartment was clean, and Carroll was blissfully luxuriating in a hot shower when the phone rang. Grabbing a towel, she hustled for the phone.

The caller was a man with a baritone so gloomy and distracted that she didn’t initially recognize it as Alan’s. “Sorry I missed you earlier, kitten.”

Abruptly, she stopped rubbing her wet hair with a towel. “Rough day?”

“Fine.”

He didn’t sound as if he’d had a fine day; he sounded as if he’d been in the front lines of a war. All the more reason, Carroll concluded, to take him out for a quiet dinner. But when she voiced the invitation, there was an unexpected hesitation at the other end.

“Caro, there’s nothing I’d like more…but I’m honestly beat. Will tomorrow be all right?”

“Of course,” she said warmly.

But it wasn’t. The minute she hung up the phone, she knew it wasn’t. Alan was entitled to time to himself, and he was also entitled to be tired, but the tone of his voice hadn’t been just weary or preoccupied. He’d sounded seriously depressed, and Alan wasn’t a moody man.

In her bedroom, she pulled on old jeans and a sweatshirt, then reached for a hair dryer. He’s entitled to a low day, too, just like the rest of the human race, she mentally informed herself, but fifteen minutes later she was picking up her car keys.
If he’d wanted to talk something out, he would have said so. Haven’t you ever simply wanted to be alone? Of course you have.