Beguiled Again: A Romantic Comedy (21 page)

Cecilia felt herself flush with chagrin. “It was only a game, Peter.”

“But you helped him.” He didn’t need to finish what he was thinking. Cecilia saw it written in the pained confusion on his face: You helped him beat me.

She sprang from the sofa and crossed to put her arms around him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right. It wasn’t fair.” She felt his hard, thin shoulders refuse to relax against her, and felt a pang of guilt.

“I want my su’pwize,” Anne-Elizabeth demanded, tired of games she didn’t understand.

Jeff seemed to relax a bit. “Coming right up,” he said, and dropped down beside her. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope once again. He extracted several oblong folders. “Take your pick, milady.”

She fingered the corner of first one, then another, unable to make up her mind.

“Come on, let me,” Brad said, reaching.

“Nope,” Jeff said, blocking his hand. “Ladies first.”

So of course Anne-Elizabeth took extra time studying the folders, which she couldn’t read, while Brad bounced from one foot to another behind her. Finally she pulled one out and opened it, bemused.

“Next?” Jeff offered his hand to Brad, and he grabbed one. Before Jeff could even offer Peter a chance, Brad was screaming at the top of his lungs, “Playoff tickets! Mom, he got tickets to the Mavs’ home games next week!”

“What?” Cecilia grabbed a folder. “Good gravy, Jeff! Where on earth did you—why, you must have paid a fortune! Both games? I can’t believe it.”

“It’s all a matter of knowing who to call,” Jeff responded humbly, pressing a folder of tickets into Peter’s hand. “And if there’s a game six, we’ll be there, too.”

Cecilia looked into his velvety brown eyes and saw such pride, such pleasure, it brought a warm glow to her insides. “You shouldn’t have,” she murmured.

“I thought the kids would be pleased,” he said. “Besides, I owe you a Lakers game, don’t I?”

“Wakers?” Anne-Elizabeth asked, her face suddenly brightening.

Brad stopped celebrating long enough to stare at his mother in horror. “You aren’t gonna let her wear—”

“That’s my fav’wite shirt.” Anne-Elizabeth beamed.

“Oh, Mom,” Brad groaned. “I’ll die. I’ll just die.” He aimed a fierce scowl at his sister. “If she wears that shirt, I’ll kill her.”

“You will not kill your sister,” Cecilia responded firmly. “Annie, why don’t you let me buy you a pretty new green shirt?”

Anne-Elizabeth set her full lips into a firm line and shook her head violently.

“Blue?”

Again, belligerent refusal.

“A new purple one, without letters or numbers on it. Plain and pretty?”

This time Anne-Elizabeth gave a reluctant nod. “All wight.”

It was then that Cecilia noticed Peter—or rather, she noticed that he had left without saying a word. His tickets were on the floor. Jeff stooped to pick them up, his frustration evident in the set of his shoulders, the way his eyebrows met in a tense, straight line.

“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him,” Cecilia said. But somehow she knew that Peter would be more difficult to reason with than her daughter. There were some hurts a new purple shirt just couldn’t begin to fix.

Like having your mother help someone else make you look dumb.

She closed her eyes against the strain. How could she make him see that he and Jeff weren’t in a contest and that she wasn’t the prize?
 

~o0o~

Saturday morning at 7:00 Cecilia closed the front door behind her and leaned against it, yawning. She’d worked late the night before, then gotten the kids off to the airport at dawn for their flight to San Antonio. Even though Robert and Monica had seemed to have everything under control, she hadn’t left Love Field until the commercial jet was aloft and out of sight.
 

She sank to the floor beside Ralph, using a cushion for a pillow. It had been years since they’d napped together, but his quiet snuffles and soft fur were just the comfort she needed.

She had hours, blessed hours, alone before Jeff was coming, and all she wanted to do was relax.
 

She must have been asleep for over an hour, when she shifted her weight, wiggling her toes to discourage the fly that had lighted on her foot. Yellow rays of morning sunshine filled the room. She rolled to her back and covered her face with her forearm, stretched, yawned, then curled onto her side.

She was halfway between sleep and awareness, fading deeper into dreams, when the fly landed on her thigh. Before she could rouse herself enough to brush it away it was gone again, then was back again, licking the tender skin behind her knee.

“What,” she rasped, flipping over and straight into Jeff’s arms. Chagrin flooded her as he settled in beside her on the floor. What time was it?

“Go back to sleep,” he said firmly, using two fingers to close her eyes, even as his other hand slithered under her blouse. “You don’t talk back that way.”

“The hell you say.” She moved to bat his hand away from her body, but suddenly pulled it closer to her as his fingers danced lightly over the underside of her breast.

“Where...where did you come from?” she asked groggily, arching against the floor and into his hand as he tweaked her nipple. “I... I don’t remember sending out for this.”

“I’ve been lurking in the ivy, waiting for some unsuspecting virgin to leave her window open so I could slip in and have my way with her.” He let his free hand slide down her bare thigh, then back up again. “The virgins in this neighborhood are a cautious lot, I’m afraid. I had to settle for the loose woman—”

“Brazen hussy,” she corrected on a sigh as his fingers skimmed and teased and tormented. "And I had Ralph to protect me."

“Brazen hussy who left her front door unlocked. Again. And Ralph can be bought off with treats.” His voice was stern, but his actions weren’t as he nuzzled her neck, and she tilted her head back to give him more room. “I’m determined to break you of that habit.”

“This...is...not...the way to...do it,” she finished in a rush as his fingers worked their way under her shorts, her bikinis, and stroked the full, rounded flesh of her bottom. “Oh...”

“My,” he finished for her.

“We’re on the floor,” she whispered hoarsely. “Mm-hmm.” Her blouse having somehow gotten worked up around her neck, his lips had found something other than speech to occupy them.

“Jeff,” she groaned, “you’re getting very unpredictable. Very untrustworthy.”

His lips worked magic on her breasts. Each moist tug seemed to pull something deep inside her, tightening into an ache between her thighs, until she broke away long enough to peel her blouse over her head, then melt back into his arms.

“Not at all.” He raised his face to hers and grinned. “I put Ralph out and locked the door.”

A giggle started low in the back of her throat and grew. “I can’t believe this.”

“Believe what?”

“Believe that... Oh, goodness.” She felt her cheeks flaming. “All those years ago, I had this fantasy. You were so solemn, so studious, so stuck up.”

“I was not!”

“You were!” She laughed at his consternation. “You were! I just knew you were waiting for someone to— Oh, I know it sounds dippy, but I was fourteen years old, for pete’s sake. I thought you were waiting for someone to teach you how to laugh. To light up your life. To be your sunshine. And I was determined to get the job.”

“An understatement if ever I’ve heard one,” he growled playfully, drawing circles on her abdomen.

“Who would have ever thought—” she felt a gentle smile curling her lips “—that all these years later
you
do that for
me?
Make me laugh, remind me to loosen up once in a while.”

“Who would have thought?” His hand stilled on her stomach, his eyes darkening. “Cecilia, I want to do more for you. So much more.”

She touched his lips, traced them with her fingertip. “It’s enough, Jeff, it’s more than enough.”

“Not for me,” he said. He wove his fingers into her hair and pulled her closer, until her face was inches from his own.

She couldn’t breathe.

“Cecilia, I love you.”

Her eyes closed; she almost swayed at the sound of his words. A tremor of dread and anticipation swept through her. I love you. Words she’d never dared hope to hear from him. Words he wouldn’t speak lightly, for he did nothing lightly.
I love you.
He was waiting for her to respond, but the words he wanted to hear were trapped inside. She spoke the only commitment she could make, the only words she could say. “Kiss me..."

His arms circled her bare waist. He began nibbling her shoulder, sliding kisses up her neck. Then his hands moved to skim over her ribs to cup her breasts, his fingers long and strong and dark against her pale ivory skin.

Her arms fell limp to her sides as he suckled her right breast, then her left, then her right again, each time greedier, more demanding. Every nerve twisted and ached, wanting to give in. Her hands trembled as she unbuttoned the waistband of her shorts and slid them slowly to the floor. His hands tugged the thin, silky fabric of her bikinis, slid them down her legs. Reflexively she lifted her foot to kick them off. That movement, slight as it was, provided him the opportunity he was seeking as one hand encircled her and held her still and the other explored the tender flesh between her thighs with studied precision.
 

He knew what he was doing.
 

Gracious
, he knew what he was doing.
 

He was relentless, stroking her moist heat until she turned her face into her own shoulder to muffle the whimper and trap it in her throat as she felt herself swelling toward release. But then his hands were gone and she gasped her frustration.

His lips closed over hers, savage and demanding. Her mouth opened, drawing him in, meeting him with equal demand, equal frustration. She took great gulping breaths of him, soaked the feel of him into her pores, the sound of his harsh breathing and pounding heartbeat, the taste of desire and passion.

“Jeff,” she whispered hoarsely, pulling him to the bedroom, to the bed. He stripped off his shirt; she fumbled with his trousers. The zipper snagged halfway down, and before he could carefully, sensibly fix it, she’d slipped her hand beneath the waistband of his shorts and lower, until her fingertips found him. A choking sound came from his throat and he fell over her. The old iron bed frame squeaked under them as he braced himself above her on outstretched arms while she stroked and explored. He was trembling; she could sense him about to pull away, and instead she withdrew her hand and stroked the flat, hard muscles of his belly.

She had let him love her. She had taken and taken and taken. This time she wanted to give.

“Lie down,” she said, and he collapsed beside her, attempting to pull her with him, but she sat up, instead. “Shhh...” She straddled his thighs, her fingers patiently unsticking the zipper. He stroked her hair, her shoulders, his fingers rigid. When finally the zipper slid down, he raised his hips and she tugged off his trousers, working them down his legs until they landed in a heap on the floor. And then she reversed her path, stroking his legs, his thighs, with teasing fingertips and with moist kisses. Slowly she eased back up to him, over him, until her fingertips grazed the hem of his shorts. His iron-hard thighs flexed at her touch as she slid a hand under the soft, cool fabric and found the hard distended heat that awaited her.

“No,” he said as he realized her intention, but she didn’t listen, refused to give herself a chance to change her mind. She found the opening of his shorts and freed him, kissed him tentatively, felt him shudder, and gave herself over to the desire to give pleasure for pleasure. Remembering his loving, she held back nothing, even when his fingers twisted in her hair.

Then he was pushing her away from him, groaning, grabbing her by the shoulders and rolling with her, pressing her against the mattress as he eased slowly into her, holding back, even as he moved within her, relentlessly bringing her with him to the brink of completion. Her hands ran down the taut, bunching planes of his back to the small of his spine, riding his hips as they plunged, then withdrew, and plunged again. She clutched him, exploding with him in a radiating pleasure that spiraled through her to the outermost tingling reaches of her body. She thrust against him until her body had nothing left to give, accepting his driving passion until it was almost a pain. And still he moved and still she clasped, until nothing remained but the tears welling in her eyes, the heartache welling in her soul, that this had to be temporary, fleeting, could have no permanent place in her life.

He didn’t roll away. He stayed over her, wrapping her in his arms and rocking slowly, gently, sorrowfully, dragging the act beyond its natural bounds, and she let him, sucking her cheeks in to keep from losing it all together. She wouldn’t break down. She wouldn’t cry in his arms. And, heaven help her, she couldn’t explain, that what he gave her was so momentous, so devastating, she was left without hope of ever loving or being loved again.

I can’t
, she said silently.
I can’t keep pretending you’re the whole world until I believe it, until I can’t live without you
.