Time to Pretend (9 page)

One thrust, and he was inside her before she could will her eyes to open. She watched him in the mirror, fascinated by the image of his long, lean body, and the cock pumping into her. The heat in her pussy contrasted with the coolness of the table under her, just as the solidity of the wood juxtaposed with the feel of his hips slapping against her ass.

He was magnificent.

Silently, she thanked him for giving her this, for giving her these visual memories. Then the moment was gone. The throbbing between her legs turned to liquid fire. A moan began low in her throat, and sharp screams spilled from her lips. Biting her lip didn’t help. The sounds came out anyway. She wanted a pillow in which to bury her face, but Daniel didn’t give her that. He didn’t want her passion hidden or muffled or silenced. He went to great lengths to make sure she couldn’t do those things.

“Yes, Lainie, yes.” He moaned, and her name was a reverent plea.

His hips pumped faster, driving her to a place where she was nothing but the sharp pleasure spiking through her body. “You’re mine, Lainie, completely mine.”

At that moment, she was, and she was okay with it.

The climax took her hard and left her trembling and weak. Daniel scooped her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs.

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“We’ll rest a bit.” He kissed her forehead. “Please tell me you have more condoms.”

She laughed softly. So he didn’t have an endless supply after all.

“Yes, Daniel. I have more, but they’re not neon green.” His mouth opened and closed, and his olive skin turned a shade ruddier, but he said nothing. She couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or excited.

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Chapter 6

She was gone when he woke up. Vague memories of her delicate hand shaking his shoulder surfaced at the back of his mind. She had been dressed for work. Had she asked him if he wanted the alarm set?

Cracking one eye, he noted that sunlight streamed through curtains that were more decorative than functional.

More dreamlike memories came back. She had made coffee.

He sat up and planted his feet on the carpeted floor. His place was all wood, and so was Evan’s. He often made mental notes to buy a rug for under his sofa-sleeper, but he never followed through. Carpet would be nice in the winter. He couldn’t sleep with socks on, and he hated cold floors.

Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he stumbled into the bathroom.

His clothes were draped over the towel rack. He probably should have told her he was a solid sleeper. He wondered if she had been frustrated or amused by her inability to wake him.

Had she waved a mug of coffee under his nose? It wouldn’t have mattered. Over the years, his parents had tried different things to wake him up for school. The only thing that consistently worked was taking away his covers and dropping snow on his skin. Smashing Sophia’s sno-cone maker wasn’t something he regretted.

Okay, when Sophia began sneaking into his room and putting makeup on him while he slept, that had worked, too. She took pictures and showed them to his friends at school. More than one of them told him that he would make a pretty girl. While he did exact revenge on both Sophia and his friends, he learned to be wary of anyone touching his face while he slept.

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He wondered if Alaina had tried touching his face. How long would it take her to learn that a simple caress would rouse him, but she could jump on his body and nothing much would happen? If things worked out like he wanted, Evan would be able to tell her long before she would have the chance to figure it out for herself.

His survival instincts took him downstairs to the kitchen where he poured a mug of coffee and popped it into the microwave. Alaina had left a note on the counter.

Daniel - Cereal in the cupboard. Milk in the refrigerator. Coffee
in the pot. Stay out of the attic. Please lock the door when you leave.

Alaina

It wasn’t what he expected. The cool tone of the note woke him faster than the caffeine. She hadn’t alluded to the passion they shared until late into the night, not even a little bit. She hadn’t mentioned seeing him again. Logically, he knew he would see her the next evening when she came for the group therapy session.

Perhaps she knew he would realize that, and she didn’t feel the need to remind him. She wasn’t one of those needy, clingy types. She was confident and logical. That was it.

He remembered feeling uncertain like this after the first time he’d slept with Evan. They had been sixteen, experimenting with expressing desires neither of them had ever put into words. Daniel hadn’t wanted to compromise their friendship. Nervousness had twisted his stomach until he saw Evan the next afternoon, and his friend had greeted him with a slap on the shoulder and a reminder that basketball tryouts were after school.

Daniel made an omelet. The dishes from their dinner were in the sink. The sauce on the plates had dried to a crusty firmness. He set them to soaking and took a shower.

Then, in direct opposition to her note, he hauled his ladder into the house and climbed into the attic. Pulling away vapor barrier and
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insulation, he found evidence of a former leak. The roof had been repaired haphazardly under the section where the shingles had taken flight. The rest of the roof was hidden by insulation. He pulled it away in several spots where it looked as if water had damaged it, and he found rotten, wet wood.

How had a claims adjuster done an accurate inspection without removing anything? Daniel snorted in disgust and headed to inspect the rooms directly below.

The open door of the first room down the hall from Alaina’s beckoned. Peeking inside, he noted the blue walls and the cowboy theme. It made him feel slightly nostalgic. His cowboy phase held fond memories. Once, his father had even taken him to a rodeo. It was the best birthday gift he’d ever received.

He sank down on the chair at Zach’s desk. Her eight-year-old brother had his own room at her house. This was no guest room. The bedspread was rumpled, as if a child had hastily straightened it out before running down to breakfast. Dirty clothes sat in a laundry hamper in the corner. A paperback novel lay face down on the desk, splayed open to mark a page. This boy meant a lot to Alaina. One of the pictures on the refrigerator had labeled her as
Mom
. Given the relative ages of her parents and the comments Alaina had made, she more than likely had a parental-type relationship with the kid. He was a huge part of her life, and she’d never once mentioned the boy to him.

She had definitely placed Daniel firmly in the “temporary” category. He needed to change that perception. He was good with kids. Sophia had commented on the fact several times.

Many of the parents who watched their kids’ lessons had commented as well. Kids didn’t intimidate Daniel, so why did the prospect of meeting this one little kid with Alaina’s almond-shaped eyes scare the hell out of him? Simple. If Zach didn’t like him, then neither he nor Evan had a chance with Alaina.

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With a sigh, Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose. First, he needed to figure out what kind of damage the leaks in her roof had caused.

He found wet drywall on the outer walls in Zach’s room and the empty dining room directly below. There was more damage than she thought. The longer she waited to make these repairs, the worse the damage would be. He had spied a notepad on her kitchen counter with the name and number of the contractor and insurance agent. It wouldn’t hurt to call to find out what was going on. Evan’s company needed to be the ones to repair everything. They would deal with the inevitable argument when it came.

He still didn’t know what he had done to upset Alaina the night of their ill-fated date. She had knocked him on his ass the moment they met, and she hadn’t even known. Sophia hadn’t noticed, for that matter, which was unusual. Sophie was fairly observant. Of course, she had been busy with her own problems at the time.

When he first met Alaina, he hadn’t been sure she was a good fit for the group. She had greeted him coolly, in a wholly detached manner, a manner which had disappeared the moment she introduced herself to the group of wary women eyeing her from a safe distance.

He found that her reserve was reserved for him alone.

Did she know he had been the one to research and write the grants that brought her there in the first place? They bore Sophia’s signature, but he had done all the paperwork. Did she know the grants providing child care each week were his doing?

It wasn’t that he wanted her gratitude. He just wanted her to know more about him. Daniel was under no illusion that she knew the man he really was. Besides Evan, nobody did. He wanted that to change.

He wanted her to know him as well as Evan knew him. He didn’t know how he would accomplish that without telling her about his sexual relationship with Evan. Daniel shook those thoughts from his mind. That was a problem for a later date.

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His search brought him to her office. The moisture creating blisters in the ceiling didn’t hold his attention. That went to the wall of diplomas and recognitions, each bearing the name
Alaina C. Miles
.

He wondered at the initial. His own diploma, granting him a degree in political science, listed Daniel David DiMarco. It was shoved in a drawer somewhere.

They hadn’t given him the choice of using his middle initial. How had she managed that?

Pictures filled the other walls in her office. Most were professional in nature. Everyone in them was dressed for a formal or semiformal event. Various people, but mostly Alaina, were holding plaques. They were award ceremonies. Many of the photographs showed her with other people. In each picture, they were arranged for the photo. There were no spontaneous shots anywhere.

One small two-by-three picture, the frame hung off to the side like an afterthought, captured his attention. He pulled it from the wall to see it in better light. It was a younger Alaina. She looked like she was barely out of high school. She posed with people who were obviously her parents, given the familial resemblance.

Alaina stood next to her mother. Both women had the same auburn curls. Sunlight glinted from them, highlighting the red over the brown. Both of them wore forced smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.

Her father stood behind the pair, towering over them like a cross to bear. He was tall and handsome. His shoulders were broad and muscular. His expensive, designer shirt fit perfectly, and the arm he draped over his wife’s shoulder featured a Rolex. His plastic smile puzzled Daniel.

Neither of the women sported jewelry of any kind. Alaina always wore earrings and a necklace. She frequently accessorized with bracelets and rings. Daniel frowned. The only picture he found of her family didn’t show people who seemed to like one another.

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Then he noticed the mortarboard in Alaina’s hand. She looked fresh out of high school, so he figured it was from when she achieved her undergraduate degree. Even now, she looked younger than her physical age.

He set the picture back on the wall, careful to put it back how he found it. Somehow, he doubted she ever looked at it.

A title on her desk drew his attention. He hadn’t meant to snoop through her things, but he never before knew her exact area of study.

He knew it wasn’t domestic abuse or rape. She did say one time that her Wednesday sessions were a departure from her usual work.

The title had him flipping through all the papers on her desk, and then sinking down to sit in her very comfortable chair to rest his head in his hands.

She was researching serial dating, infidelity, emotional abuse, and the links between the three. That gave him pause. Did she lump him in with serial daters and, by default, emotionally abusive men and cheaters?

His eyes wandered to the portrait hanging not far from her desk.

He could barely see it. Given her short stature, Alaina wouldn’t be able to see it at all. Her father’s hard eyes glared at him.

Slouching down, he tried to view the room through Alaina’s eyes.

The keyboard sat on the desk in front of the comfortable chair. Large, framed photographs of Zach would be the first thing she saw when she looked up from the keyboard. The flat screen monitor sat off to the right.

With a sigh, he pinched the bridge of his nose. Her office raised more questions than it answered. Alaina was nothing if not complicated. His father always said that anyone worth the time wasn’t going to be easy to win over.

He ambled toward the kitchen. There were some phone calls that needed to be made.

* * * *

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Alaina slowed her car as she approached her house, and her jaw dropped open. Men on her roof ripped up shingles. A huge, rented dumpster completely blocked her driveway. All of the street parking close to her house was filled with huge pickup trucks. She drove past her own house to park in front of a friend’s house three doors down.

She emerged from her car with her mouth still open. What the hell was going on? The contractor hadn’t called to say he was going to begin the job. The insurance company hadn’t approved anything.

Alaina was still waiting on two more bids.

Understanding dawned rather slowly. This was Daniel’s doing.

This was exactly the kind of thing she hated about the men to whom she was invariably attracted. What was it about biology that demanded some kind of virile alpha male even though the sociological factors necessitating them were long gone?

Why couldn’t she find an intelligent, thoughtful, enlightened man who could make her thighs quiver the way Daniel did?

Like he had done the one night she actually went out on a date with him, Daniel had taken control of the situation. The contact numbers of the various companies she needed to reach in order to coordinate the repairs to her roof and interior were all neatly written on a notepad sitting in plain sight on her kitchen counter.