Until She Met Daniel (24 page)

“Perhaps you could get your parents to understand.” Daniel gave her a sympathetic smile. “Of course, the downside would be spending enough time with them to explain it.”

Mandy laughed. “Sure, but it's probably worth a try. Maybe they could help Vince to understand it, too. I don't hate him or anything. If we hadn't gotten married, we could have stayed friends.”

“And your parents wouldn't be badgering you to get back with him.”

“Too true.”

* * *

W
ATCHING
M
ANDY
'
S
 
MERRY
 
smile gave Daniel an aching pleasure.

It was almost impossible to see her as George and Elenora Colson's daughter; she was fairy dust, and they were dreary clay.

The fanciful thought surprised him, but spending time with Mandy was like taking a refresher course in imagination.

Unfortunately, his imagination suddenly started having a field day, picturing places where they could make love...like in his Jeep, or on the beach a few miles away.

Damn, she was a bad influence on him. He reminded himself he was a responsible city manager and father of a six-year-old daughter...and that sex on a beach got sand in some very uncomfortable places.

“Is something wrong?” Mandy asked. “You look as if you're in pain.”

“No.” Daniel forced a neutral expression onto his face. “Just calculating how much more time to give them at home.”

“Did Celia's husband come with her?”

“He planned to, but something came up with his election campaign.”

“I didn't like him,” Mandy confessed. “But then I'm biased against people who aren't nice to my friends.”

Friends.
Daniel clung to the word. He and Mandy could be friends.
Only
friends. She would be a good friend, for as long as she stuck around. Somehow she'd kept a good relationship with both Chris and Susan Russell in the midst of their marital problems—God knew
that
couldn't have been easy. And from comments she'd made, he guessed she kept up with friendships she'd made during her travels.

Daniel glanced at his watch. “I still have several hours before I go home. Maybe I'll go back and work at the office.”

“You're welcome to come over to my place and watch a movie. Sam doesn't have to know you were there.”

He swallowed, his good intentions crumbling. “Sure.”

 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

M
ANDY
 
HAD
 
KNOWN
 
what would happen when Daniel accepted the invitation to her place.... As soon as they went through her front door, he pulled her into a kiss so deep it made her dizzy.

His hands tugged her blouse free from her tiered black skirt, then he murmured something and pushed the skirt down, catching her lingerie with it, lower and lower until it dropped to the floor. Bending, he grasped her waist, lifting until her toes left the ground, and the clothing with it. With a grin, he bent to pull off her shoes.

It was an odd feeling to be bare from the waist down. Daniel caressed the skin over her hips, and she was drawn back to the moment in his kitchen when he'd nearly driven her mad with a few simple squeezes of his fingers. Her own fingers were clumsy as she fumbled at his belt buckle, finally getting it undone so she could pull it free from the belt loops.

“You'll have to kick them off,” she gasped when she'd worked his pants downward, adrenaline rushing through her veins.

“Delighted.”

A moment later, they tumbled onto the couch, Daniel moving over her...when he groaned. “Just a second,” he muttered. He lunged back to his pants and groped in the pocket, pulling out some small square packets from his wallet.

The delay seemed to take forever.

“I hope you have more than one of those this time,” she managed to say as his weight settled over her.

“I should be embarrassed to admit it,” he said, “but yes, I do.”

* * *

M
UCH
 
LATER
, D
ANIEL
 
heard the faint sound of the town's tower clock chime nine. He was lying on his side, with Mandy snuggled tight against him.

Her long hair spilled everywhere—over her shoulders, his chest, the couch—like a silk web. Earlier, their lovemaking had been hot and wild, not the right time to satisfy his curiosity to touch her hair. Now he reached up to find some locks and ran them between his fingers. The tresses were as soft as they looked; no wonder she had so much trouble keeping it restrained.

“Are you going to play with my hair all evening?” Mandy's voice mumbled against his chest.

“Sorry.” He quickly dropped his hand on the couch.

Mandy stretched, and in the low light from a table lamp, he saw her breasts flex in a way that made the blood rush to his lower anatomy. A voice in his head reminded him he'd abandoned his intentions to keep things casually friendly between them. Well, the friendly part had been maintained.

Yeah, right.

If he was as strong and resolute as he'd like to believe, he wouldn't have restocked his wallet with condoms in the first place.

Mandy sat up and looked at him with interest, and Daniel grew even harder. With her index finger, she touched the tip of his erection and raised an eyebrow.

“Got something to cover that?” she asked saucily.

Hell.

He pulled out his last condom and managed to get it over himself. But she pushed him down flat and lifted her knee over the other side of his hip. The taut curve of her breasts commanded his attention and he caught one rosy nipple between his lips. Mandy gasped, shifting down so his hardness entered her. He put his hands on her soft round hips and helped set a rhythm that sent waves of pleasure over his body until she finally collapsed on top of him.

* * *

M
ANDY
 
DROWSED
 
BRIEFLY
, then felt Daniel carefully shifting her to the couch.

“I need to get home,” he said, and though she knew he had to leave, she felt curiously bereft.

His lips moved over hers in a slow, deep kiss. “See you in the morning,” he murmured. “Don't forget we have to talk before the council meeting tomorrow night.”

Then he was gone and she hunched into a ball on the cushions. Great, they'd made love—more than once—and his last words before leaving were about work.

She might as well face it; she'd fallen in love with Daniel Whittier, an uptight guy intent on climbing the ladder of city administrative success. If he ever got married again, he'd want someone who'd be a political asset. That definitely wasn't Mandy Colson. They might generate a lot of sexy heat together, but that was part of the problem. He didn't want a shallow dish like Celia, but he also didn't want someone volatile and passionate. He'd made that clear enough at dinner.

Calm, gracious, settled—
that's
what he'd be interested in. Not a “peripatetic” woman with commitment issues who moved from job to job and town to town. Before Willow's Eve, six months had been the longest she'd stayed anywhere. Not that she'd ever shortchanged an employer. She'd done her best, for however long she was on the job. But whenever a boss had tried to give her a task that required an extended commitment, it had been her cue to decline and start packing.

It was hard to face, but the whole thing made her understand why Daniel was reluctant to get involved, and why he didn't want his daughter getting too close to her. Mandy had lived in more places than she could recall, and Samantha needed stability.

* * *

C
HRIS
 
FOUGHT
 
A
 
storm of confused emotions at the latest city council meeting. Several people had spoken, and now Polly Gallagher stood explaining how important the mill was to her family. Susan was taking notes and Joe Jensen sat across the room, arms crossed over his chest, smiling genially as Polly described how her eldest son had remained in Willow's Eve, but her daughter was now living with her husband in Santa Rosa, and her youngest son in Redding, because there hadn't been jobs to keep them in town.

Most of their young people had been forced to leave, and it was a reminder that Chris's own son almost certainly wouldn't return to Willow's Eve for more than visits. He should have realized this was one reason his wife was so concerned about the water project.

“I know some people don't like the mill,” Polly said, casting a quick glance to where most of Chris's supporters were sitting with him, “but this way, we can still have some of our family here.”

What was he supposed to do, accuse her of being an environmental rapist?
Hardly.
Polly was a member of their church and had supported his efforts to install low-flow toilets in the restrooms and put solar panels on the parsonage.

Career opportunities were limited in Willow's Eve, and expanding the paper mill
would
create more jobs. Susan didn't have to be in support of her father to recognize the town was struggling. She'd even pointed out once that the town didn't have to grow; it just had to stop shrinking.

But it was the other things she'd said that had begun to haunt him the most, along with the look on her face as she'd said them. Had he really ignored her feelings all these years? Looking back, Chris recalled times when Sue might have tried to tell him how she felt, but he hadn't paid attention. He'd assumed they were coming to a compromise on everything, but had they really? Perhaps she had simply chosen not to disagree aloud.

Mostly when he'd thought about Susan and her parents, he had dwelled on the irony of falling in love with a wonderful woman whose father was an environmental disaster.

Now he uneasily recalled how much the nineteen-year-old Susan had wanted to leave Willow's Eve. She'd been home for the summer after her first year of college, and even on their first date had mentioned the loneliness of being the only daughter of the town's major employer. Obviously, he hadn't listened that closely, even then. Hell, he could have asked for a transfer to another national forest. But he hadn't, and Susan had stayed because she loved her husband and that was where he worked.

As the meeting ended, he walked over to where his wife was gathering her notes. Unfortunately, he couldn't stay; he'd given a ride to the Parsons and they were waiting for him.

“Sue?”

She looked up warily. “Yes?”

“Can we talk?”

* * *

A
SURGE
 
OF
 
hope hit Mandy when she saw Chris and Susan standing together. Even better, the expressions on their faces weren't as angry as usual.

They didn't talk for long and didn't leave together, but they hadn't looked as if they were arguing.

Not wanting to pry, she hurried to her office. There was a tap on her door a few minutes later.

“You saw?” Susan asked.

“Yes, you and Chris were talking, not yelling. That seemed positive.”

Susan nodded. “He says he wants to start having real discussions instead of arguments. We'll see.”

“But that's good, isn't it?”

“Probably. No matter what, it's better for Evan if his parents aren't at each other's throats.”

“Do you think Chris wants to get back together?” Mandy asked, hopeful.

“I think it's what we both want, but there's a lot of stuff we've never dealt with. That's going to make it harder.”

Mandy grimaced. “Somehow, I thought the marriage you guys had was perfect, or as perfect as any marriage can be. It kind of gave me hope that...” She shrugged.

“Maybe it was in some ways, but mostly because we ignored the problem of living in Willow's Eve with ‘Big Joe Jensen' as my father. It would have been best if we'd moved away so it wouldn't be such a constant boulder in the middle of the road. But we didn't and now we can't pretend it away any longer.”

“You want go for ice cream or something?”

“No, I'm bushed. I'm going home for an early night. See you in the morning for coffee.”

“I'll bring the pastries.”

Susan left and Mandy sat, depression settling over her. It was encouraging to see Chris and Susan making progress. At least they weren't yelling at each other, or maintaining a stony separate silence, which might have been even worse. But there weren't going to be any easy fixes for them, or for the town.

The thought kept dogging her that if a couple like the Russells couldn't work things out, it was hard to see any hope for her and Daniel. It was stupid. She'd already accepted the impossibility of them getting together.

She stared at the picture frame Samantha Whittier had given her on Thanksgiving Day. Inside was a photo of Mandy and the little girl together, a photo Joyce had snapped on Sam's birthday. Mandy ached when she looked at it. In the picture, Samantha was snuggled close as they smiled into the camera. It was the kind of picture a mother and daughter might have taken, or maybe that was simply Mandy's imagination.

Children.
She'd love to have two or three kids, but she didn't want to mess up the way her parents had. And she'd want her children to have a dad. Seeing Sam with Daniel was enough to convince her of that. Whatever hang-ups he might have, he was nothing like her own father.

Guilt rose as Mandy thought about her parents. She loved George and Elenora, but being around them was painful. Maybe if she
didn't
love them it wouldn't be so hard.

Her brothers didn't seem to have a problem visiting. Of course, they'd conformed to what their parents expected. If Jess and Parker didn't like their roles as dutiful sons, with perfectly conventional lives, they'd never said anything about it. Yet Mandy suspected there had to be a spark of something real beneath their starched facades.

“Hey, Mandy.”

Startled by the unexpected voice, she looked up to see Daniel, and the yearning sensation hit her all over again. Maybe it was because she'd been in Willow's Eve longer than she normally stayed in a place, but she was beginning to reconsider the idea of marriage and family and all the things that you couldn't have if you moved every few months.

Perhaps her parents had guessed how she might be feeling. Was that why they'd made a last-ditch effort to push her back into Vince's arms? Even as she thought it, the absurdity of it struck her. George and Elenora Colson were brilliant in their respective fields, and helpless in relationships. And they lived on the other side of the continent. Besides, Mandy suspected she wouldn't be thinking this way if it wasn't for Daniel Whittier and his daughter.

“What's up?” Daniel asked.

“What do you mean?”

“There's an odd look on your face.”

She shrugged. Daniel had a habit of knowing when she was upset or distracted, and while it might be a desirable trait in an intimate male companion, it was alarming around someone she wanted to stop caring about.

“I was just thinking about my folks,” she said. “I...uh...think it's interesting you didn't like them.”

He stretched and yawned. “No offense, but I didn't see much to like,” he acknowledged candidly. “They come off as very rigid and determined to control you and their world. I admit liking a measure of control myself, but they're beyond extreme.”

Mandy scrunched her nose. “
Accountability
was one of their favorite words when I was a kid. If anything went wrong, the next question was, ‘Who is responsible?'”

“Unless there's a lesson to be learned like teaching a kid not to burn themselves, assigning blame is less important than dealing with whatever went wrong. Besides, things go wrong. It isn't always a case of fault.”

“I know, but they can't accept that. My parents feel someone is at fault...and rarely think it's them. I think they believe that if you do everything right, you have power over a situation.”

“So if things didn't go the way they wanted, there was a guilt trip waiting for someone?”

“Yeah, and it usually seemed to be me. That may not be true, but it
feels
true.”