Blast.
What choice did she have but to talk with him and get it over with, Lydia wondered? She knew he meant what he said. Experience had already proven Morrison wasn’t going to leave her alone until he decided to do so. Maybe if she just allowed him to torture her with conversation for fifteen minutes, she could order him to leave afterwards and he’d just go?
Sighing over not being sure how to vent the frustration she was feeling, Lydia swiped the flowers from Morrison’s hand, pleased to startle him a bit by doing so. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him farther inside as she closed and locked the door behind him.
“Before you take one step farther, I want to know who let you into my gated community. If I’m no longer safe here, I damn well want to know about it,” Lydia said fiercely, folding her arms across her chest to wait.
Morrie put both hands in his pockets. “I threatened to break your developer’s legs if he didn’t help me find you. He owed me a favor for screwing with the memory of our first real kiss. I don’t count the one at my place that you were too shocked to enjoy.”
Lydia rolled her eyes, choosing to ignore his blow-by-blow depictions of their kissing history in favor of tackling the real problem in her life. Yet another man had betrayed her.
“That damn Harrison Graham. I should have known. Fine. I’ll deal with him later,” Lydia spat.
“Damn Graham. That’s a perfect name for him. So how can I help revenge us?” Morrie asked.
Ears ringing with the “us” remark, Lydia ignored the question and stomped towards her kitchen with the massive bouquet of mixed flowers clutched tightly in one hand.
Morrie followed her, sighing at the revealing fit of Lydia’s exercise clothes, making himself focus instead on how comfortable her house felt. He trailed after her, ending up in a kitchen that looked way too clean to ever have been used for its intended purpose.
“Nice house,” he said conversationally. When she didn’t answer, Morrie promptly decided to ask what he really wanted to know about the pristine, but almost sterile room he was standing in at the moment. “So when was the last time you cooked in here?”
Lydia shrugged as she filled a large crystal vase at the sink. Not bothering to unwrap the flowers, she just shoved them wrapper and all down into it. She’d take care of them later if they didn’t end up in the trash.
“I assume you didn’t come to discuss my lack of cooking talent. You have two minutes to state your business before I throw you out,” Lydia ordered.
Morrie walked to the granite-covered island in the middle of the room, sliding onto one of the bar stools he found there, hoping it would hold his weight.
“The bet was a harmless joke with a very small audience for it, but I’m sorry if you felt like Harrison and I were making fun of you,” Morrie explained. “When ‘Damn Graham’ said you’d never let me kiss you, I admit I got all offended and did the guy thing by accepting his bet. But the truth is I won because I have faith in our attraction to each other. I hope that counts in my favor.”
“Why have you invented a whole delusional scenario where you and I have some sort of romantic connection? The reality is we do not have any connection at all. We just volunteered on a project together,” Lydia said.
“We went to dinner and had a good time. You came to see me when you knew I was hurting. It won’t kill you to admit you like me, Lydia. Now I can see you might feel the need to hurt me back to get even for the bet, but if you continue to proffer the weak-ass argument about this attraction being only in my imagination, you’re not going to like my rebuttal,” Morrie warned.
Lydia gave him a look that sent most running away from her. “Threats? Now you’re using threats?” she asked, her voice rising with indignation.
“No—I am making promises to show you that we are meant to be,” Morrie said firmly. “I believe this kind of interest in another person is a rare gift that doesn’t happen every day. Granted, I haven’t figured out yet what Ha’Shem intended when he brought a woman like you into my life, but stop trying to run me off with your caustic personality because I’m not giving up on you—or us. Yes, I said
us
, Lydia McCarthy. If the fact that you’re not Jewish hasn’t changed my interest in you, then there’s really not much else that’s going to, even if I have to help bury you while you’re still lying to yourself about how you feel about me.”
Lydia fisted her hands at her sides, staring at her kitchen ceiling, swallowing hard as she fought the burning in her throat and eyes. Her tiny flickers of feeling for him weren’t comparable to the flames Morrison was saying he already felt. What was he expecting from her? He was asking too much, whether he knew it or not.
In a panic to find a way to stop him, the truth she’d never told another soul just came pouring out.
“Why, Morrison? Why do you want me? No one else ever did. Not my parents. Not my husband. Until recently—not even my own daughter. My grandson is the only human who ever. . . oh never mind. Can’t you just let this go? I just don’t understand why you have it in your head that I’m someone in your life when we both know I’m virtually a stranger to you,” Lydia said vehemently. “You’re imagining things that aren’t there.”
Morrie stood and slapped his hands hard on the granite surface of the island. “My feelings are
my
damn feelings. You may choose to ignore them, but you will not say they don’t exist. I’m sorry you want something coldly logical, or evidentiary, or that fits that warped idea you have about not being worthy of being wanted like a real woman. Later, I might come up with something convincing enough for even you to accept, but for right now I’m just going to state the obvious, which you will just have to take at face value.”
“Morrison, really—”
“Shush and listen,” he ordered. “I’m not finished. I like your how your ass looks in your clothes and think you have the nicest legs of any woman I’ve ever known. When you showed up at my door last week, holding you in my arms chased death away from my life when it was knocking again too loud to ignore. Your embrace brought shalom to me, Lydia McCarthy. Being with you
always
brings me peace, as contrary as that seems to everyone who knows you.”
“Oh God, Morrison. Please—will you just stop—” Lydia wailed, her face flushing so hard, it felt like it was on fire.
She retrieved the dishtowel from the rack beside the sink and buried her face in it, unable to look at him after his passionate speech. He liked her ass. Was that supposed to be charming? Maybe it was. What did she know of such things? Nothing. She knew nothing. That was the problem.
When Lydia was quiet for several minutes, Morrie walked softly to stand in front of her. “Lydia? Are you okay?”
He watched the dishtowel shaking from side to side and fought not to laugh. She had taken him from anger to laughter again in under a minute, and now he wanted to hold her and tell her it was going to be okay. His compassion made him feel like he was already her husband. One way or the other the woman was always stirring him up.
Then he heard it. Sobbing. She was sobbing and trying not to let him hear. The sound ripped through him. Morrie groaned before stepping into Lydia to wrap her in his arms. Prayers ripped out of his heart as he pressed her against him, her sobbing increasing no matter how soothing he tried to be.
“Lydia—talk to me. Are you going to be okay? This is a good thing between us. All this arguing—it’s just a way to clear the obstacles out of the way.”
She mumbled something, but Morrie missed it. Frustrated, he pulled the dishtowel away to better hear.
“Say it again, I didn’t hear you the first time,” Morrie ordered softly.
“
I said
—I’m not good enough for you and you know it,” Lydia said tightly, sniffling in efforts not to cry. “I’m not like a normal woman. I haven’t ever been normal.”
“That’s not true,” Morrie said, his gut tight as he saw pain in her tortured gaze, pain that ran deep after believing herself unworthy of pleasure or love for so long. They were so far from where they needed to be, so far from where they deserved to be with each other.
“That’s simply not true, Lydia. You are perfect. You just never saw that about yourself before, but I see it all the time. Other people can try to deny it all they want, but I make them pay up their damn twenty dollars no matter what they say. I think you’re amazing.”
Laughing at his reference to the bet with Harrison, Lydia bent to touch her forehead to Morrison’s chest, instinctively putting her arms around him in the process. It felt strange and wonderful, and just as comforting as she had imagined.
“Morrison—I haven’t held a man in my arms in more years than young Walter Graham has been alive. And whether you believe it or not, I was actually content with my life before you showed up to harass me. Now every day is a maelstrom of chaos.”
“A
maelstrom of chaos.
That is very poetic, but I believe I like my wine making analogy much better,” Morrie declared.
Smiling at Lydia’s description of their passionate exchanges, Morrie bent his head to her neck and kissed the curve of her shoulder, sweeping his lips up to her ear as he skimmed over the warm skin he found there. Then he went back to the starting point, this time sweeping his tongue up making Lydia shiver in his arms and flinch at the intimate contact.
He used his greater strength to keep her captive when she would have moved away, the act of restraining her filling him with possessive male urges he hadn’t experienced in more years than Walter Graham had been alive either. Whatever he and Lydia were to each other, their relationship had a lot of power behind it.
And it was different than he’d had with any other woman.
“When you quiver against me like a nervous sixteen-year-old getting her first taste of intimacy, it’s really hard for me to believe that you aren’t interested,” Morrie said boldly, moving a hand to the front of her, cupping her breast as Lydia gasped at the contact.
“And look what I found,” Morrie bragged, moving to squeeze her aroused nipple between a thumb and finger, laughing when Lydia smacked him and pushed him out of her arms.
“A cold breeze has the same effect,” Lydia said hotly. “It doesn’t mean the rest will work out. Believe me, I know.”
“Really, well I’m starting to believe that I know better than you do about the matter. A hard nipple is some pretty potent proof of interest. Now I don’t know what the men in your life have told you, or what kind of stories you’ve been telling yourself all these years, but I’ll bet that twenty dollars I won off Harrison right now that there’s not a damn thing wrong with you or your plumbing. You just haven’t had the right partner up to now,” Morrie declared, lifting his hand and smacking his chest. “But guess what baby—
I’m here
.”
Lydia put a hand over her aroused breast, face flaming more as the hard nipple Morrison had caused pushed against her own hand. “This hasn’t happened to me in a very long time.”
“You seem the kind of person who needs a lot of proof. Want me to make the other one hard?” Morrie asked, grinning at the sight of Lydia holding her own breast.
“No,” Lydia said firmly, flushing more at his knowing look.
“Want me to make some other things happen? When you’re looking at buying a house, it’s always wise to check out all the fixtures just to be sure everything works,” Morrie said on a laugh.
“Oh my god, you’re so crude. So I’m a house now? Whatever happened to being wine? No—forget that. I don’t care. I just want you to leave,” Lydia said meekly. “Please. I need time to. . .think about things.”
“Kiss me good-bye then,” Morrie demanded. “I apologize for being crude. I’m sure all your faucets are fine. If you were a house, I’d buy you anyway. I’m an excellent plumber. Want to see my tools?”
“Will you please behave?” Lydia asked, indeed feeling like a teenage girl telling her boyfriend she wasn’t willing to “go all the way.” Her face flushed with embarrassment again.
Morrie stepped into her and pulled her into his arms for a friendly hug, bringing her up tight against him. It wasn’t his fault his erection hadn’t gone down yet. Lydia might as well start getting used to knowing she made him hard.
Lydia felt herself being squashed against Morrison’s body, squashed up against evidence of his interest in her. Panic set in and swept over her in a rush.
She wiggled out of his arms and rushed to the half bath in the foyer, barely making it in time.
After she had finished retching, she flushed the toilet a couple times and turned to find Morrison leaning in the doorway of the unclosed room. His expression was compassionate, but his voice was uncompromising and at odds with his gaze on her.
“Lydia, men get erections when they hold beautiful women they desire in their arms. I’m guessing that’s a truth no matter how old people get. Does me wanting you scare you that badly?” Morrie asked, intending to block the doorway until she talked to him about how she felt.
Lydia got a washcloth out from under the sink, wet it, and patted her hot face with it.
“Yes—you scare me—it all scares me. I warned you this was never going to work,” she said. “I used to have to take sedatives to sleep with my husband.”
Morrie walked around her into the tiny room, closed the toilet lid, and sat on it like he did it every day. “I want it to work between us without the sedatives. Do you want it to work? Because if you do, I have an idea.”