Kisses From Heaven (3 page)

“You’re certainly safe as church this evening then,” he interrupted her blandly. There was a sea of humor in his narrowed green eyes as she sputtered for the appropriate put-down. “You’re old enough,” he said dryly, “and you’ve got the looks. Or is that what terminated that short-term marriage of yours?”

“How on earth did you even know I was—”

“Gramps,” he said helpfully. “On that long ramble between the bar booth and the back of the van.”

“For your information, Mr. Busybody, seven years ago I separated from my husband of six months because he didn’t like to work and I did, and the only thing that held us together that long was our sex life. Is there anything else you wanted to know?” Loren snapped furiously.

“Actually…”

“Actually, I think it’s past time you were headed home.”

“
Actually,
I think it’s time you checked on your grandfather.”

When exactly had that craggy half-smile altered to something else? Suddenly, there was naked appraisal in his eyes when she stood up, as if he were just now letting her know that he had noticed every detail of the powder-blue outfit. And suddenly he had grooves on his forehead she hadn’t noticed before, an iron chin of assurance… Telling this man he had a lot of nerve would be like bouncing a marshmallow off a steel wall. She felt an unfamiliar instinct of danger, suddenly aware not only that he had managed to find out almost everything about her in a very short time, but that she was not entirely immune to his humor, to his lazy way of taking charge, to the…look of him. “Listen,” she said firmly, “I
am
going to check on my grandfather, but when I come back—”

“I’ll call the taxi as soon as you return,” he assured her, and she stared at him momentarily before stalking out of the room and heading upstairs.

Her fingers massaged an ache at the back of her neck as she walked. This Black Friday was beginning to take its toll on her. She leaned against the doorway to her grandfather’s room, the hall light casting a soft halo on his sleeping shadow. Exhaustion hit her at once, like the bullet of a sniper.

William Shephard was sleeping the sleep of the innocent. His wife had no longer died on a Friday fourteen years ago. His son and daughter-in-law hadn’t been killed in a yachting accident. The family business sustained for nearly a century had not disintegrated in his hands. He was curled up like a child, and as Loren looked at him, she felt a pit of pain inside trying to burst. Gramps was seventy-four, and she loved him, and she was totally powerless to help him.

Her eyes closed, and the days ahead stretched out in wretched weariness in her mind. Two weeks of double work were coming up at the plant, and every day of the fortnight was filled to the brim with other people’s troubles. The scene at that horrid bar still grated on her nerves; how she hated the sleaziness of the place, all the men’s eyes on her… Her failures suddenly pressed in on her—her marriage, for one, Gramps, for another; and surely somehow she should have managed to control Angela, force to her sister to accept some badly needed discipline…Then there was the house. Everything seemed to be going at once, and there was just no way her salary could be stretched far enough to meet every need…

She could manage, she’d told Buck. Well, she had and she could; nothing was going to get her down. Nevertheless…

She walked slowly back down the stairs and pushed open the revolving door to the kitchen. Buck was leaning back against the counter, his hands shoved lazily in his pockets. He projected an easy, careless strength, a ton more than any one person needed, and not only brute power, but also a mental steel that just seemed to come with the man. She suddenly coveted that strength desperately and could feel something inside of her start to slip that she just never let slip…

“I want you to go now.” She intended to sound very firm, to use the dismissive tone for which she was famous at work. Instead, even to her own ears, her voice sounded hoarse and even pleading.

He was across the room in two seconds. “The hell you do,” he growled.

Loren couldn’t imagine how it happened. She
never
cried, and once the tears started, she was horrified when they wouldn’t stop. Her throat clogged up, and her eyes simply kept flooding…she was just so exhausted; it had been such a wretched, wretched day. Suddenly, Buck was there, encouraging her face to his chest, offering a comfort like riches in his silence and the gentle strength of his arms. He scooped her into his arms, found his way by some streak of fate to her favorite rocker in the library, and cradled her to his lap in that dark room, and rocked. One long arm circled her close, his fingers resting on the slim curl of her hip; the other hand very slowly smoothed back her hair, over and over.

“I feel so ridiculous,” she burbled miserably.

“There’s nothing ridiculous about crying,” he said gently. “You’re unhappy, Loren. Good Lord, I don’t know how you handle all of it—”

“I am
not
unhappy!” she thundered between sobs.

“All right. You are
not
unhappy,” he echoed patiently.

With some effort, he dredged up a handkerchief from his back pocket, first mopping her face and then holding it over her nose. “Blow,” he ordered.

She was mortified. “I do
not
have to blow my nose!”

“Of course you do.”

“You’ve been driving me crazy from the minute I set eyes on you!” she accused him and, snatching the handkerchief away from him, blew her nose. “You think I regularly invite strangers home? It’s all your fault. You…confused me. And I
never
cry.
Certainly
never on some—”

“Stranger’s lap?” he supplied readily.

“You may find all of this very funny—”

“Loren, it’s obviously not a rational day for you. You might as well give in to your feelings…”

She tensed like a coil when his head came down. Their lips met at an awkward angle, a whispery tease of softness in the dark. His fingers twined in her hair, encouraging her neck back, and the next kiss was less sweet, with a coaxing hunger as his mouth covered hers, his hand on the smooth arch of her throat. She was very still, an instinct of danger rushing through her bloodstream, an awareness of how potent the blend of darkness, the man, the moment and the weakness inside her was. His lips lifted, brushed hers again more lightly. “You’re no virgin, Loren,” he said hoarsely. “Give me your mouth. You know what I want, give it to me.”

Though gently spoken, the order startled her. In her world, she was the one who gave gently spoken orders. While she was figuring out what it felt like to have her own game turned against her, his mouth fastened on hers, arching her neck back, his tongue searing inside her parted lips. The dizziness was so unexpected that she reached up to grasp his head, his hair vibrantly alive in her splayed hands, the texture so rich it curled around her fingers. One of his hands roamed from her thigh to the soft roundness of her hip, molding her closer to him.

She didn’t shy away until he moved up, caressing her ribcage. One of her slim hands tried to cover his then, tried to push him away. She was sensitive about her small breasts and always had been. And there was another reason she shied instinctively…

His hand didn’t seem to understand denial. It soothed and gentled and coaxed and teased all the surrounding flesh, and finally closed in on what it wanted at the same time that a helpless little murmur escaped from her throat. Her breast, so tender and vulnerable, seemed to swell in an effort to fit his huge hand. Like lightning, she felt suddenly let loose, the pressure of her mouth matching his as her fingers tightened in his hair, a tension she knew he could feel in her thighs.

He knew. He was not the kind of man to worry about silver when he’d found gold. He coveted that response, kneading her soft breast until she was trembling, until her back arched for the touch of him and there seemed nothing but sweet wildness in her veins. He was too smart, her stranger. If he’d go back to caressing her thigh, she could go back to feeling like warm melted butter. As it was, she felt on fire, and he was deliberately fanning those flames, obviously taking pleasure from her pleasure…

There was moisture on his forehead when he stood up and slowly lowered her to her feet. When she was steady, he severed all contact abruptly, breathing heavily as he left the room.

Loren stood still in the darkness. She felt like hot honey inside, and the sensation left her bemused and a little ashamed. Buck was back in a moment, holding two coats, and they put them on in silence.

It was freezing outside, black-cat dark, moonless. Tree limbs stretched stark and naked to the sky, the ground was still layered with snow except for the drive itself. She expected…she didn’t know what. Some comment from him, something awkward.

It just wasn’t that way. They walked in the silence, pulse rates forced to normal, breathing deeply of the frigid air. Even before she was cold, he had enfolded her just beneath his shoulder, snuggling her warm and close, but there was no longer any danger in his closeness.

“You’re so damned small,” he complained.

She smiled up at him. It was all going to feel very wrong at some point, but it didn’t just yet. His arms felt like a gift.

“It won’t always be this way, you know,” he said finally. “Your grandfather, apart from his obvious problem, he isn’t well, is he?”

“No,” she admitted.

“And your sister will grow up. I look at her and thank God I’m not eighteen anymore. We offer up our weaknesses on a platter at that age; life’s way of ensuring we learn from experience, perhaps. You can’t test the waters for her, Loren, not the waters she needs to test.” He kissed her softly on the forehead and then stopped, burrowing her coat collar up around her neck before his arm circled her again.

“I hate money,” she murmured absently.

“Pardon?”

“You’re out of work, Buck, you can surely understand how hard it is to not have enough money. But we used to have too much of it in this family. Gramps stopped trying when he lost it. And Angela—only new clothes and stereos make her feel secure. My parents were killed on a boat that cost more than I make in ten years. Money…it sours people, confuses them…you can’t know,” she said bitterly. “My husband, too, was destroyed by it. Hal had more money than he knew what to do with. I tried to make our marriage work, but there just wasn’t anything there. It was always solve every problem with money…” She hesitated. “You’re different, Buck. I’m not trying to make something out of what happened in the library, so don’t…worry. I’m not a clinger; I know you’re about to walk out of my life, and that’s fine. But I’d like to tell you…”

“Loren—”

The gravelly voice sounded disturbed, but she thought she understood. “No. I don’t want to embarrass you. But you’re real, Buck. You’re not corrupted by that moneyed world… Sometimes I feel like a character in a Tennessee Williams play, trying to keep up this house when I know I can’t, caring for Gramps and Angela—”

“Stop it, Loren.”

She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth softly, barely noticing the sudden rigidity in his shoulders. “You haven’t got money, and I love you for that. I don’t want a love affair, and I haven’t the time or energy for it if I did. Just thank you, Buck. I needed your particular brand of man this evening, and you came through better than anyone I’ve known in a very long time.”

They had reached the end of the driveway now, and she extricated herself from his hold.

“You’re dismissing me,” Buck said, his tone almost amused.

She nodded, smiling softly. “Good night, Buck.”

The next morning Loren pulled on an old pair of jeans and an equally old dark sweatshirt and tied a bandeau around her hair. The thrilling agenda for this Saturday included washing windows and scrubbing the kitchen floor. All morning as she rubbed at the windowpanes with cleaning fluid, she kept seeing her reflection, the wildly curling hair around the bandeau, the raggedy shirt, her face a smooth cameo without makeup, all fresh-eyed and smiling. She looked ten years old. She didn’t care. The smiles just kept coming, over absolutely nothing.

She didn’t expect to see her giant stranger again. She didn’t want to see him. But that bizarre one-time encounter had left her feeling strangely lighthearted, as though her responsibilities had suddenly diminished, and her problems had become a little less monumental than they’d been the day before.

By one o’clock, she had a rag in her hand and a bucket of soapy water on the kitchen floor. Her jeans were damp at the knees when she stopped working for a minute and inadvertently glanced out the kitchen window. Frowning, she saw a gray pickup pull into the yard with Leeds printed on the side. Buck stepped out of the truck, wearing coveralls and carrying a package in his hands, and stalked toward the house with all the determination of the dominant male bulldozer that he was.

All Loren’s lazy smiles of the morning abruptly died. As he reached the door, a kaleidoscope of emotions rushed through her, none of which she quite knew what to do with. “Buck, what on earth are you doing here? I hope you didn’t steal the truck?” Loren accosted him as she half opened the door. His eyes turned that dark jade she’d seen when he was angry in the bar yesterday; he was staring at the bucket on the floor and then at her ragged blouse and damp knees.

“Obviously, I must have borrowed it for the day.” She frowned, lips compressed, not opening the door any farther. He gave a sigh that sounded like a pent-up north wind, waiting for her to let him in.

“Look,” she started carefully, “you must have misunderstood. I really don’t think…”

A long metal rectangle urged its way through the slit in the door and clattered onto the counter. Next, a package of metal parts joined it.

“What is all this?”

“Payment for the free dinner yesterday,” Buck said easily. “The coil for your hot-water heater. A gasket for the faucet to stop dripping. And a fuse for the burner on the stove. Now will you let me in so I can install them?”

Loren flushed. “That’s very nice, but no thank you,” she said firmly. “For one thing, it would be an imposition on your time. For another, you surely figured out that I can’t afford to pay you. I appreciate the thought, Buck, but I really think it would be better all the way around if—”

She had to back up when he pushed the door open. When it closed behind him, there was the distinct reverberation of a near-slam. “Did anyone ever spank you when you were younger?” He handed her his coat, and she took it because it would have dropped on her wet floor if she hadn’t.

“Now just listen here—”

“I’m unemployed, remember? There are no jobs to be scouted out on a Saturday. So I’ve got nothing better to do, I wouldn’t expect payment even if you offered it, and you’re not going to stand there and deny you need a man around here.”

She glared at him furiously. She knew what he had come back for, and it wasn’t plumbing. She didn’t blame him for misunderstanding, and she wasn’t denying that she’d responded to him like some wanton little…whatever. Which was just the point. She needed no further complications in her life—she could barely handle what she had. “Just go away, Buck,” she said in a low voice.

With a wicked glint in his eye, he said, “I don’t think so.”

She shrugged off the bandeau, letting loose a bounce of disheveled rusty curls. “You don’t understand. The big thrill in my life is a bath on Sunday night. The rest of the days are filled from six in the morning until nine at night, and at nine I’m something between a zombie and a dead dishrag. Do you want to hear the schedule for today? Because I have a zillion things to do, and there’s no one else to do them.”

“I think you’re presuming a hell of a lot, but I’m certainly willing to discuss your bath habits—any time,” he assured her mildly, taking up the tool kit and parts packages. “It could just be that all I had in mind was fixing your hot-water heater.” He was on his way downstairs before she had the chance to say another word.

Sure, stranger, her mind replied dryly. She stood still for a few moments, staring at the cellar door, and then stubbornly got down on her knees to finish the floor. A half hour later she was done, but Buck was still in the basement. Angela had been in and out, discovered Buck’s presence, and had gone down to keep him company. Gramps had been in and out, discovered Buck’s presence, and had gone down to keep him company. The Shephards were a very gregarious family, Loren thought wryly.

Determinedly, she filled a wicker basket with cleaning supplies. When the ground-floor rooms were dusted, she headed upstairs, and when she’d cleaned all the bathrooms there, she headed toward her own room. She had on a fresh pair of jeans and was pulling a soft wool sweater over her head when she heard the rap on the door. A full second later, he opened it.

“I seem to be looking for a badly behaving hairdryer.”

Her coppery hair was wispy around her face from the static electricity of the sweater, and Loren knew he guessed she’d just pulled it on and was remembering exactly what was beneath it. He looked incongruous, that giant of a man in her mauve-and-white bedroom with its muted Monet prints. “Well, it’s not in here,” she said irritably.

Barefoot, she led the way to Angela’s room, a screaming shout of color and youth—posters of punk-rock stars, an unmade bed, clothes strewn all over furniture and floor. She sighed. “Finding anything in here… Look, Buck, you really don’t have to do this…”

“It certainly would be a pity if your sister had to lift a finger herself around here,” Buck said idly. “She gets off school at noon every day, you said?”

She flashed him a warning glance as she burrowed in the overcrowded closet for Angela’s broken hairdryer. “She’s had it rough, losing both our parents.”

“You didn’t lose the same two parents? She’s spoiled,” he said flatly.

“Fine,” Loren snapped. “Handle her then, Buck—you certainly did a good job yesterday. Take over the whole damn house if you want, but I have to go out and get the groceries for the week. I’ll say my goodbyes now.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’m getting a hell of a list from your two relatives. I may still be here when you get back.”