Moonlight and Shadows (17 page)

Lila was different, though. He had a list of
dos and don’ts for her a mile long and no reason whatsoever to
believe she’d follow any of them.

First of all, he thought she should be
teaching kindergarten, not college. Actually, he thought she should
be teaching kindergarten boys. She could teach all the girls of any
age she wanted. College boys had too many ideas to suit him, from
the insipid Trey Farris, to the cocky Ace, to the preppy Porter.
The lady obviously had no idea of the broad base of her appeal.
With so many men after her, it was a miracle she’d ended up with
only one affair.

He did not count himself as an affair. He
wasn’t giving up that easily or walking away with that little. He’d
found something special in her. She had her feet on the ground, her
life in order, and yet she retained a special innocence that was
incredibly appealing. That first time he’d kissed her, he’d felt a
pull on his soul, a need to touch her and share the magic
surrounding her.

Danny had seen it. He’d capitalized his fame
on the shimmering aura of Lila Singer. Jack wanted to capitalize on
it, too, in the most personal ways imaginable. He wanted her
inspiration for his own. He wanted to love and protect her and give
her his heart in return.

He took a deep breath and looked out his
windshield at the softly lit house. All he had to do was convince
her to give him a chance. What the hell, he thought. At this point
he’d settle for half a chance.

* * *

The ringing of the doorbell startled Lila
into jumping off the barstool by the breakfast counter. The chair
fell over and she scrambled for a minute to set it aright. She
hadn’t expected him to use the front door. She wondered what it
meant.

Probably nothing, she admonished herself. He
was just being polite.

She smoothed her culottes and straightened
the placket on her blouse. He was just being polite, she repeated
silently. Or was he being formal? And how did she fit formality
into an evening with the man she’d spent a morning making love with
just before she’d ran off?

Life had been so simple before Christmas
Eve. Why had she gone and made it all messy and complicated and
full of possibilities and promise?

She stopped in front of a gilt-framed rococo
mirror in the hall and ran her fingers through her hair, fluffing
the curls into place. Large eyes stared back at her.

“Why couldn’t you stay out of trouble for
one more day?” she whispered to her image. “Was that too much to
ask?”

Yes, her heart answered, and it might have
told her more, but the doorbell rang again.

After a calming breath, she took the
necessary four steps to the door and opened it.

He looked great, better than great. He
looked like everything she’d ever dreamed of in a man, and a lover,
and a mate. She was hopeless.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he echoed with the slightest smile
curving his mouth.

It took her a moment to absorb the smile and
the warmth of his gaze, but as soon as she did, she remembered to
invite him inside.

“Come in . . . please.” she said, making a
welcoming gesture and moving out of the way.

As he stepped by her, she did a completely
unpremeditated and purely subjective appraisal of him, her gaze
skimming him from top to bottom. Dove-gray jeans encased his long
legs, ending at cream-colored cowboy boots tipped in dark brown
that had seen their share of wear. The jeans were worn, too, giving
them a soft sheen, and she fleetingly thought about brushing her
fingers across them.

She quickly clutched her hands together and
waited while he shrugged out of his leather jacket. The action
revealed a black chamois shirt and brought to mind a similar
movement he’d made on Sunday when he’d bared his chest.

When, she wondered in silent irritation, had
she slipped into such a sophomoric, one-track frame of mind? There
had never been another time in her life when so many of her
thoughts had revolved around sex and the male body. She certainly
hadn’t had such thoughts about Robert, which might explain why the
one time she had gone to bed with him she’d cried through most of
it and enjoyed none of it.

“Something smells great,” he said, laying
his jacket across a chair arm.

“Oh, yes, well, I whipped up a little
dinner.” She stuck a smile on her face to cover her lie. She hadn’t
whipped anything up. What she’d done was re-whip what her mother
had served her the previous night. She didn’t know if she was
trying to impress him, save him the cost of another night out, or
ensure a modicum of privacy for their talk. Whatever their talk
turned out to be about, she was sure they’d need at least a modicum
of privacy, maybe more.

“If I’d known,” he said, “I would have
brought some wine.”

“I have wine,” she assured him. In truth,
she was already on her second glass. It was supposed to calm her
nerves, but it hadn’t.

The awkwardness of the moment increased
exponentially for every tenth of a second she spent looking up at
him, until it reached the unbearable point.

“Well, yes,” she managed to choke out, her
gaze dropping to her eye level and his chest. “Why don’t we go
ahead and eat.”

That wasn’t right, she thought. She knew
that wasn’t right. People were supposed to chat before dinner, not
drop their coats and chow down.

Things had definitely gotten worse. If he’d
never kissed her, she might have maintained her control. But he’d
kissed her right off the bat, less than half an hour after a very
polite business introduction, and things had been going downhill
ever since. Leaping into bed with him had only quadrupled the speed
of her slide into chaos.

He followed her into the dining room, while
she tried to fit in some cocktail conversation.

“How long have you been doing sculpture?” A
great question, she praised herself, but she should have asked it
days before. At the time they’d both had something else on their
minds, though.

“I had an art teacher in high school,” he
said. “He also doubled as the remedial reading teacher. We spent a
lot of time together, mostly in a standoff, or with him sending me
to study hall or giving me detentions, until I finally broke him.
Do you need some help?” he asked.

“Please,” she replied, leading the way into
the kitchen. “Broke him?”

“One day he just got fed up. He snapped,
threw a book at me, bounced it off my head. Sure got my
attention.”

She gave him a concerned look as she handed
him a pair of potholders. “Did he lose his job ?”

“Nobody ever knew.”

“You didn’t report him?” She opened the
oven—and pointed to the two casserole dishes. “They both need to be
set on the table.”

“Nah. I was a cocky little jerk. He should
have kicked my butt a lot sooner. His name was Art. Get it?”

“Art the art teacher?”

“We called him Art-Art”

She lifted the salad bowl out of the
refrigerator, shaking her head. “You must have been a terror, a
teacher’s nightmare.”

He shrugged. “There wasn’t a lot in school
to hold my interest, not until Art taught me how to weld coat
hangers together.”

“You two became friends?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Let’s say we
decided not to waste each other’s time in the reading lab. When it
was just the two of us, we hid out in the shop.”

As he carried the second casserole dish into
the dining room, Lila took the bread out of the oven and arranged
it in a linen-lined basket.

“This stuff really does smell great,” he
said, lifting the lid off one of the hot dishes. “And it looks
great. I love spaghetti. What’s this other one called?”

Lila hesitated for a moment in the kitchen,
her hand resting on the bread basket. She didn’t make the stuff, or
call it by name. She just heated it up. “Uh . . . it’s an old
family recipe, made with eggplant.”

“Looks great,” he repeated.

She let out a sigh of relief. He didn’t want
details.

“Maybe you could give me the recipe.”

He wanted details, probably more than she
had. Her total set of instructions consisted of “one half hour at
three fifty.”

“Sure,” she said, grabbing the bread basket
and walking into the dining room, determined to change the subject
before they got to the point where she was sneaking off to her
bedroom to call her mother.

“So,” she began after they were seated. “You
started out welding coat hangers. When did you graduate to half a
ton of steel?”

“. . . And after I’d welded up all the rusty
junk lying around my dad’s farm, I started looking for something
new and shiny, like steel.” He glanced up from his plate, grinning.
“Over the last couple of years the pieces have gotten bigger and
bigger, a lot bigger than I ever thought they’d get. I finally had
to build the garage.”

“Have you ever shown your work?” Lila asked,
leaning forward with her hand cupped in her chin. She’d become so
fascinated by his story, she’d forgotten to be nervous.

“A couple of people here and there have seen
a few of my sculptures,” he said, shrugging nonchalantly. “It’s not
something I do for other people.”

“And it’s not a hobby,” she added,
remembering his reply to her question on the subject a couple of
weeks earlier.

“No.” He grinned again, pouring himself more
wine. “It’s not a hobby.”

“Still, I bet you could sell some of the
pieces, especially your bronze work.”

“My bronze work?” He quirked an eyebrow.

“Sure,” she said, getting excited. “Even
people without an eye for art, real art, like your phoenix in the
garage, go for bronze castings.” Danny had never considered a
photograph complete until someone paid him. It was a measure of
success, he’d said. Not necessarily the most important one, but a
vital one.

“Bronze castings,” Jack murmured, pouring
the last of the wine into his glass and setting the bottle aside.
Suddenly he laughed. “You mean the mermaid?”

No, she hadn’t meant the mermaid. She
wouldn’t have deliberately mentioned that particular piece. She had
assumed he must have more bronzes of different subjects. “Well, yes
. . . or something else like it.”

He shook his head, still laughing. “Oh,
there’s nothing else quite like the mermaid.”

She silently agreed as she drank the rest of
her wine. Few women were built like his ex-wife. It bothered the
hell out of her, even though she knew comparisons were ridiculous,
unnecessary, unhealthy, and oh so human.

“Even if I did bronzes,” he continued, “I
doubt if I could come up with something quite as . . .” He paused,
searching for a word. “Quite as blatant as a half-naked woman
decked out as a mermaid. From the day it arrived, I always felt it
lacked a certain subtlety of style, a certain refinement of spirit.
But you’re right. The stuff sells like hot-cakes. I’ve heard the
artist does quite well for himself in California.”

“California?”

“Yeah, his name is Rico. It took me a long
time to figure out why he sent it to me. Christina and I had been
divorced for over a year when it came, so it was a little late to
make me jealous. But then, it was always a little late to make me
jealous where Christina was concerned.”

“Oh?” Lila said, dying of curiosity, but not
wanting it to show. It struck her that in all their time together,
the heart-to-heart confessions had always come from her. She knew
virtually nothing about the ups and downs of his emotional
life.

Their eyes met across the table and the two
candles she’d lit for no special reason, certainly not to create a
romantic atmosphere. He held her gaze for a long, quiet moment.

“I guess this is part of what we need to
talk about,” he said softly.

She nodded, not trusting herself to
speak.

“It must have been pretty awful for you to
find her in the house Sunday afternoon.”

She nodded again and wondered if maybe it
wasn’t absolutely necessary for them to talk about this after
all.

“I mean,” he went on, “there were still four
cookies left, and you left all of them for me without a word.” He
grinned a little grin, deepening the crease in one cheek. “I
figured something pretty terrible must have scared you off.”

She lowered her gaze to her plate.

“Christina’s timing has always been bad,” he
continued. “She started sleeping with old Rico weeks before she
remembered to tell me she wanted a divorce.”

Lila’s head snapped up. Jack wasn’t smiling
anymore.

“It happens.” He shrugged and took another
swallow of wine. After setting the glass back down, he twirled it
between his fingers. “The trick is making sure it doesn’t happen to
you.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be,” he replied evenly, glancing up
at her. “I’m not.”

“But you must have loved her.”

“I wanted her. There’s a difference.”

The words were spoken slowly, but they made
her heart race with something akin to panic. She knew there was a
difference, and she was afraid that wanting had more to do with
what was between them than loving, more afraid than she’d realized
until he’d said the words aloud.

She rose abruptly. “I’ll get dessert. We’re
having a cake, chocolate. Cheesecake actually. A chocolate
cheesecake.”

In the kitchen, she set her plate in the
sink and grasped the edge of the counter with both hands. Her chin
lowered to her chest, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

Jack had followed her, and he now stood in
the archway between the kitchen and the dining room, studying her
bowed head and the dark curls falling around her neck and
shoulders. She was very still, with her knee bent and the toe of
one boot resting behind the heel of the other. But the tension
emanating from her slender form was undeniable. He felt it across
the width of the kitchen.