“I can't come like this. And not again. Not so soon.”
“How do you know? Have you ever tried it?”
Jen shook her head, finding herself aroused already. She gasped as his fingertip eased across her.
“Then let's try. What's the worst thing that can happen?”
“You could suffer a tragic penis-related accident.”
“Not a chance. I'm lying in bed on my back.”
“I could fall off the bed and break something and be left in a compromising position, thereby providing entertainment for paramedic personnel.”
He shook his head. “I won't let you fall. Promise.”
Jen believed his promise, at least. “People don't come simultaneously. It's a myth.”
He arched a fair brow. “They said the Amazon warrior princesses were a myth. I'm thinking they had that wrong.”
“So all myths are up for re-evaluation?”
“Why not?”
Why not. It was all too easy to be seduced by this man, by his confidence and his curiosity. Jen leaned forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders. He smiled up at her, undeterred. “Okay, love slave, I'll bet you an orgasm that you're wrong on this one.”
“Chicken,” he said, his eyes sparkling. “Make it three orgasms and you're on.”
Jen laughed and he moved inside her, making her gasp. Maybe he was right. “Deal,” she agreed, not really caring whether she won this bet or not.
And that, she suspected, was Zach's point.
* * *
The phone was ringing.
Jen was half-asleep, but waking up too fast for her preferences. The ring of the phone was insistent, nudging her out of warm, cozy and contented slumber.
Where was her mother?
The phone rang again, close at hand. Jen opened her eyes, didn't know where she was, but saw the phone on the floor beside the bed. Good enough. She pounced on it, if only to shut it up. “Hello?”
There was a pause, as if the person on the other end hadn't expected a woman to answer the phone.
That was when Jen recognized her surroundings. She realized she was in Zach's bed, in Zach's apartment. It was morning. The bedroom was filled with radiant sunlight. The sky that she could see was a brilliant blue, and Jack Frost had done his creative painting on the windows. The frost sparkled coldly against the azure of the sky.
She snuggled deeper beneath the blankets at the sight and realized at the same time that she felt remarkably good for someone who had spent most of the night having enthusiastic sex.
Maybe because of that.
“Hello?” A woman said. “Did I call Zach Coxwell's place?” She said the number quickly.
“I think Zach's gone to walk the dog,” Jen said, her cheeks burning at the obvious implication of her answering the phone. Her gaze fell on the alarm clock on the window sill. It was eight-fifteen. “Could I take a message?”
It was pretty obvious what she was doing in Zach's apartment this early on a Thursday morning, and no one was going to assume that it was to play secretary. Jen was embarrassed to have even this stranger be aware of it.
The caller wouldn't be a stranger to Zach, though, and Jen wondered who she might be.
The woman laughed. The sound was friendly and Jen relaxed a bit. “Would this be the elusive Jen?”
Zach had talked about her?
“I'm Jen, although I'm not sure I'm that elusive.”
The woman laughed again. “And here I was doubting your existence. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm Maralys Coxwell, by the way, married to Zach's oldest brother.”
Jen sat up straighter. “The one who shops vintage?”
Pleasure filled Maralys' tone. “Yes! Why, do you shop vintage, too?”
“Uh hmm. So, what's your favorite shop?” This was Jen's trick for understanding other women, because if you knew where they liked to shop, you knew a lot about their income, their taste and even their assumptions.
“Easy. My friend Meg's place in the North End: Twice Loved. It's between a bakery...”
“And an Italian take-out place. I love that store.”
“Me, too,” Maralys admitted. “I try to stop by at regular intervals to remind Meg to breathe.”
“She does talk fast.”
“But really has a heart of gold. You know, if you're ever looking for something special, you should tell her. She's good at hunting.”
“Thanks. I'll remember that.” Jen heard the door to the corridor, then the sound of dog toenails on the floor. “Sounds like Zach is back. It was nice meeting you, Maralys.”
“Wait a minute. You're not done meeting me yet. Didn't Zach ask you?”
“Didn't Zach ask me what?” Jen met Zach's eyes as he came into the bedroom. He was still wearing his leather jacket and carried two steaming take-out cups of coffee. Roxie followed him, sniffing with pleasure at the bottom of the brown paper bag he also carried.
Zach shrugged in response to Jen's glance, obviously uncertain what she was talking about.
“He was supposed to invite you to Christmas dinner,” Maralys said. “In fact, he's supposed to
bring
you to our Christmas dinner, since you're engaged and all. Didn't he tell you yet?”
Jen held Zach's gaze as she arched a brow. “No, Maralys, Zach didn't tell me about Christmas dinner.”
At the mention of his sister-in-law's name, Zach winced.
Meanwhile, Maralys kept talking. “Well, I don't mean to surprise you, Jen. As you can imagine, we'd all love to meet you. I assume you are engaged again, seeing as I've, um, caught you at Zach's.”
Jen fumbled for a plausible thing to say and couldn't come up with one. So she agreed, and tried to sound confident about it. “Of course, we're engaged again. We just had a little misunderstanding.”
Zach looked at her and she shrugged, trying to communicate âwhat else could I say?'
“Every good relationship has to suffer an interval,” Maralys said. “Lucky for you, yours didn't last eighteen years like ours did.”
Jen had nothing to say to that.
Meanwhile Zach crossed the room and put the two coffees down on the headboard. He reached into the pockets of his jacket, removed a handful of creamers from one side and half a dozen packages of sugar from the other. He looked enquiringly at Jen, offering her choice of additions with a gesture. She nodded for both, and held up two fingers.
“Double, double,” he said quietly. “Good choice. This place's coffee could be used to clean carburetor parts.”
Jen put her hand over the receiver. “You make it sound so tempting.”
“They're close so it's hot. That's a big plus. Maybe the only plus.”
“We meet mid-afternoon,” Maralys said into Jen's ear. “Although of course, everyone would understand if you had your own family arrangements that day. Do you have a family dinner?”
Jen felt put on the spot. Should she mention Christmas Eve at her Gran's? Or would that sound like she was agreeing to come to Coxwell's? She watched Zach mix coffee, unable to read his thoughts. He didn't seem to be thrilled that she was talking to Maralys.
Had Zach been intending to ask her to Coxwell's himself?
Or not?
Or was he intending to ask somebody else?
Zach tugged two keys on a ring from the pocket of his jacket and dangled them from his fingertip. It was the jacket he'd worn the night before to impersonate Elvis, so she assumed the keys were for the motorcycle.
“Well?” Maralys prompted.
Jen was sufficiently distracted to admit more than she should have. “Actually, we celebrate on Christmas Eve,” she said, realizing too late what she'd implied.
“Great!” Maralys said with such enthusiasm that Jen had to hold the phone away from her ear. “Then we'll see you on the 25th.”
“Um, I guess,” Jen said, uncertain how to read Zach's grim attitude. She shrugged at him and he came to take the receiver.
“Thanks a lot, Maralys,” he said and didn't seem very pleased about the transaction. He sat on the bed beside Jen and offered her the double-double coffee with his other hand.
Jen sat an increment away from him, not sure what to think. She picked her shirt off the floor and put it on, feeling very naked all of a sudden.
And a bit cold.
“I assume you called about the keys to the bike,” Zach said with some impatience. “And only accidentally got to meddle in my life.”
Maralys said something and he grimaced. “I've no doubt that you would have done it on purpose if you could have. Look, I didn't leave the keys because it was too late to knock and leaving them in the mailbox seemed like a good way to get the bike stolen.” He paused. “Yes, I know that James would have killed me if anything had happened to his baby. He made that pretty clear.”
He listened for a moment and Jen stirred her coffee. It was disconcerting how he concentrated on the conversation and barely looked at her.
But then, she had assumed that his pursuit had been only about sex. She shouldn't be surprised that having sex should have diminished his interest. She got out of bed, patted Roxie, and went to the washroom with her bra and her fake boob.
It would be easier to face the morning with her props in place.
* * *
Trust Maralys to screw up his timing.
Trust Maralys to shove him into a situation that he wasn't sure he wanted any part of. Zach had been hoping, actually, that Jen would invite him to her family's place at Christmas and the entire Coxwell festive ordeal at Grey Gables could have been missed.
Now that couldn't happen.
Zach sat on the bed and drank his coffee, not really tasting it, after he'd hung up the phone. Jen seemed to be taking a lifetime in the washroom, but then, how long had it been since he'd been waiting on a woman? He didn't like how quiet she had gotten, or how spooked she had looked when Maralys had popped the question, and he knew he could have eased her into the concept of meeting his family better than Maralys had done. Jen must have felt cornered, and he knew she didn't like that much.
Trust Maralys. She was about as subtle as a whack in the side of the head with a two-by-four. This was not the morning he'd planned. No doubt about it: any favor he owed James for lending him the bike was officially forfeit.
His coffee was almost gone and Jen's was stone cold when she came out of the washroom. She avoided his gaze and reached for her pants. “There was a new toothbrush in its package,” she said, her tone cautious. “I hope you don't mind that I used it.”
“No, that's fine. Did you find everything you needed?”
She shrugged. “More or less.” She fastened her pants, then pulled on her socks as if she couldn't wait to get out of his apartment.
Zach felt about as smooth as a piece of steel wool. “I thought maybe we could go for breakfast this morning. There's a place around the corner...”
Jen forced a thin smile, a pale shadow of the one she usually flashed. “Sorry. I've got some things to do today.”
“Right.” Could this get any more awkward?
Jen paused before she left the bedroom. “Look. I'm sorry I answered the phone. I was half-asleep and just grabbed it without thinking. If I'd been awake enough to realize where I was, I would have just let the machine get it.”
“It's okay,” Zach said.
“No, it's not.” She looked straight at him for the first time. “You're annoyed that Maralys asked me to Christmas dinner. Message received: I'm out of here.” She turned to leave, and had grabbed her coat by the time Zach realized what she was saying and went after her.
“Wait a minute. That's not it.” He caught her elbow and she regarded him warily. “Okay, I'm not happy that Maralys leapt right in, but not because she invited you. I just don't like the way she did it. I was going to ask you, but in my way.”
Jen's skepticism faded a little. “Am I supposed to tell you that you're cute when you try to squirm out of a tight corner?”
“Am I?”
“Not nearly cute enough.” She shoved her other arm into her jacket and reached for her boots. “It's okay, Zach. I get it. You're off the hook.”
“But I don't want to be off the hook! I wanted to invite you for Christmas dinner.” He shoved a hand through his hair and tried to find a rationale that she would understand. “If only to have someone relatively sane to talk to.”
Jen's lips twitched. “Relatively? Thank you very much.”
“You know what I mean.”
“You've got a helluva way of flattering a woman into agreeing with you.” She didn't look as ready to run, though, and Zach knew he was making progress.
Sort of.
He leaned against the door frame, blocking her exit in the process. “The thing is that I haven't given you a very good impression of my family, so I wanted to work up to inviting you to Christmas.”
“It's December 20th, Zach. Just how long were you going to take to work up to this?”
“It's December 20th? Already?”
She laughed under her breath and pulled on her boots. “You don't fool me. You know what day it is. You just weren't going to ask me. Stop trying to pretend otherwise.”
Zach went with the truth, as damning as it might be. “Okay, caught. I wasn't sure I would ask you.” Jen glanced up with surprise. “But not for the reason you think.” He leaned closer and dropped his voice, his gaze unswerving from hers. “I like you, Jen. I like you a lot. And the fact is that meeting my family, even forewarned, could scare the bejabbers out of any thinking woman.”
A cautious smile curved her lips. “Presumably I'm in that camp.”
“You're the warrior queen,” he said, watching the tension ease from her gaze. “This dinner could easily nix our whole deal here, and even though you do owe me a family extravaganza, I'm not quite ready to nix this deal.” He shook his head. “And to be totally honest â”
“You can do that?”
“When I have the right motivation.” He looked at her hard, trying to tell her that she was exactly that motivation. “To be totally honest, I don't even want to go for Christmas dinner myself.”