She reached him and topped off his half-empty glass without asking for permission. “We might as well finish the bottle. You don’t have far to drive.” Her mischievous glance slanted up to the garage apartment.
Smiling, he nodded at a wrought-iron bench sheltered under the spreading tree branches. “Want to sit for a while?”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure. I forget how lice it is out here once the sun goes down.”
As if on cue, an ornate gas lantern installed belind the bench flared into life. They settled onto opposite ends and sipped their wine.
Lamplight flickered over her arresting face and lighlighted details: the almost straight dark brows idding to an impression of serious intensity; the elegant thin nose that made him think of royalty; the
prim little mouth that could prune up in displeasure or spread in a smile so dazzling he forgot his own name. Robert had cut her black hair into a youthful tousled cap. Mesmerized, he watched a blush rise up her graceful neck.
“You’re staring,” she murmured.
“I was wondering whether you look like your father,” he lied smoothly. “Will I recognize him at the party, or will he be the one holding a rose in his teeth?” Her floating laugh buoyed his spirits.
“I’ll introduce Father to you. I don’t resemble him except for my nose. That’s the only Hamilton feature I inherited.”
“Then your mother must’ve been very beautiful.”
This time her blush reached her roots.
He suddenly wanted to know everything about this confident, bashful woman. “You know, I’ve heard more than enough about the pretentious Hamiltons. What about your mother’s side of the family? Tell me about her.”
Every line in her body grew taut. She took a small sip of wine.
He frowned. “I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories. You said she died when you were young, so I thought…Oh hell, I guess I didn’t think, period.”
“If s okay. I’m not used to talking about her, that’s all. Father never did, and he never answered my questions about her, so eventually I stopped asking.”
Joe cocked his head. His own mother still talked about his father as if Big Joe might walk in any minute and pop open a beer. “You really don’t know anything about your mother?”
Two spots of red stained her cheeks. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you said your father wouldn’t answer your questions. Does that mean you talked to one of your mother’s relatives?”
She shook her head.
“A friend, then, or someone she went to school with?”
“No.”
“C’mon, Catherine, what’s the big mystery? Did you find her secret diary in the attic? Get an anonymous letter? Dig up her bones planting flowers in the yard—”
“No, no,
no.
Would you please just drop the subject?” She was breathing hard and avoiding his eyes, her turmoil as genuine as it was baffling.
A thought clenched his fists. “Has your father warned you not to talk about this, Catherine?”
She choked on a laugh and groaned, “No-cko.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I can tickle it out of you. Two minutes with these babies—” he wiggled his fingers “—and you’ll sing like a canary.”
Raising her wineglass, she drained the last sip and faced him with an expression of pained resignation. “Three years ago I hired a private investigator to crack down my mother.”
“Track her down? You mean her family?”
“No, I mean her. She isn’t dead, Joe. That’s something my father made up to save face with his friends. I follow along because it’s…simpler.”
It was his turn to drain his wine. Finished, he set both their glasses on the ground, slid across the bench and took her hands in his. Something told him she’d
need his support now just as much as he’d needed hers earlier.
“Okay, doll, give it to me from the top.”
“It’s a boring story.”
“Does it have anything to do with caviar, grammar, art, French cuffs or fruity bouquets?”
She managed a small smile. “No.”
“Then I won’t be bored. Go ahead. Shoot.”
Her story didn’t bore him—it broke his heart. He tried to keep a neutral expression while she described a childhood devoid of love but filled with rules and codes of behavior. Every wrong utensil picked up from beside her plate, every musical note fumbled on the piano, every
B,
instead of an
A,
on her report card brought stern reprimands and comparisons to her mother’s inferior intelligence and breeding.
Joe looked down at the delicate hands he held and felt a fierce urge to shield her from further pain. “So you knew your mother was alive?”
“Not until I was sixteen. Before then, my mother was this secret part of Father’s past we didn’t talk about in public. I could tell some people felt sorry for me that my mother had died, but I was glad she was dead. I
hated
her for making Father ashamed of me.”
“What happened when you were sixteen?”
Her mouth thinned. “For years I’d buried myself in libraries during summer vacation to help Father with his research papers. Getting published in reputable journals was essential to his career. Anyway, it was pretty tedious work to track down the obscure information he wanted.”
Remembering his own summer days of hot sunshine, sweaty baseball games and cold plunges into
swimming pools, Joe asked, “How’d you stand being cooped up?”
“I was still trying to please Father at that point. But the summer I was sixteen my two best friends applied for a job working the concession at a movie theater. Scooping popcorn and filling cups with ice sounded tike heaven to me. I took home an application for Father to sign and he went ballistic. Same song and dance, only worse than ever. I finally started screaming back, asking him why he’d married my mother in the first place if she was so trashy.” Her brows drew together.
“And?” he prodded.
“And then he told me the whole sordid truth.” She searched his eyes anxiously. “You sure I’m not boring you?”
“I live for sordid truths. What did the pretentious bastard tell you?”
The tension in her face relaxed. She seemed pitifully grateful for his outrage on her behalf. “Before Father met my mother, he was teaching psychology at a small college in Connecticut and living with his elderly mother. He was the last male in the Hamilton family—his own father had been dead for years—and he hadn’t produced a son
or
made his mark in the academic world. One Friday he got restless and drove to New York to get away from it all.
“He met mother in a coffee shop on Fifty-seventh. She was an aspiring actress of course, waiting tables until her big break. Father blames the attraction on temporary insanity, and it must have been contagious, because by Sunday afternoon they were driving back to Connecticut as husband and wife. I was born exactly nine months later.”
Joe watched the tension creep back into her face and braced himself for the sordid part.
“He said he tried to make it work, but she was uneducated, unsophisticated…uncontrollable. She embarrassed him in front of his friends and colleagues and even made passes at the younger ones. When I was three, she took off with an actor performing at the local dinner theater and never looked back.”
Pretty sorry tale, but he’d heard worse. “Your father never divorced her?”
“About six months after she left, he traced her to New Orleans. She was alone by then and waiting tables. He offered her five hundred dollars to sign divorce papers giving him uncontested custody of me. She held out for a thousand.”
Now
the story was sordid. “And he told people she’d died?”
Catherine pulled her hands abruptly from his grasp and hugged her stomach. “Terrible, isn’t it? But he moved from Connecticut heading south through a series of college professorships. It wasn’t likely he’d meet anyone who’d known my mother. Widowerhood was so much more…dignified than divorce. I think Father actually believed the story himself after awhile.”
Catherine rose gracefully, walked a few steps, then stopped, her focus on something only she could see.
“What did you find out about your mother, Catherine?” She was quiet for so long, at first he thought she wouldn’t answer.
“She never remarried, so I don’t have stepbrothers or sisters. I used to wonder about that a lot. She manages a truck stop in Columbus. She was working
there long before Father and I moved here from Alabama. Columbus is just fifty miles away, Joe, can you believe it?”
Drawn by the longing in her voice, he stood up and moved to her side. “Maybe it’s fate.”
Her startled gaze rejected the obvious.
“Maybe you should go see your mother, talk to her, hear her side of the story.”
She shook her head violently. “No! If she’d wanted to see me, she could have contacted me just once…” Her voice broke on the last word and her shoulders bowed.
With a soft curse he pulled her into his arms and gathered her close, aching for the lonely girl who’d been abandoned to a cold son of a bitch for a thousand bucks. How had she turned into such a compassionate and loving woman? He struggled to keep the anger he felt for her parents out of his tone.
“You don’t know the circumstances, honey. Maybe she thought you wouldn’t want to see her. Maybe she was embarrassed. Hell, there’s probably a real good reason she didn’t contact you. But even if there’s not, I think you should find that out, too.”
Catherine burrowed her face deeper into his shoulder. “You think I should go see her?”
He suppressed a smile at her muffled voice. “That’s what I think. Not knowing is eating you up inside, like Vicky’s suicide was doing to me. And a friend once told me that running away isn’t the solution. You’ve got to confront your fear in order to let-it go.”
She stood quietly in his arms.
He rubbed her back in lazy circles, letting her think about what he’d said. He wasn’t in any hurry. Her head was the perfect height on which to rest his chin,
her body the perfect cushion for his harder angles and planes. Better than a brand-new mattress any day.
She stirred against his chest and raised her face. “Your friend sounds exceptionally astute.” The sass was back in her eyes.
He slid a playful finger down the slope of her nose. “Yeah. And she’s smart, too.”
As they grinned at each other like fools, like
friends,
a strange warming pleasure unfurled in his chest. It took a full minute for him to identify the feeling as happiness.
Her expression grew solemn, her bewitching green eyes huge. “Thank you for being my friend, Joe.”
His senses leapt to attention. The smell of her citrus shampoo, the feel of her breasts sliding up his chest as she rose on tiptoe, the sight of her raised mouth—he experienced them all as exquisite torture. Then her lips brushed his in a petal-soft caress.
Desire flooded hot and insistent and harder than a baseball bat. He closed his eyes and made himself picture Catherine at the altar in a wedding dress.
She sank back down to flat feet. “I shouldn’t have done that, huh?”
“No, no. It’s fine.” Like hell. The groom standing at the altar in the penguin suit wasn’t Carl, but Joe.
She squirmed to get free and his eyes popped open. She looked delightfully flustered.
“Please let me go.”
He stared down at his hands clamped on her hips and willed them to move. A long minute later he met her embarrassed gaze. “I don’t seem able to do that.”
Her brows slashed down. “What do you mean, you don’t seem able? Just lift your hands and let me go!”
He shook his head and walked slowly forward, his hands steadying her hesitant steps backward. “I can’t let you go until I do something first.”
“What in the world are you talking about?” She stumbled and he discovered what a sweet little tush she had. “What do you have to do?”
Her back hit the wide tree trunk. He braced a palm on each side of her head and met her shocked eyes.
“This,” he muttered hoarsely, then lowered his head.
C
ATHERINE’S HEABT
went into fibrillation as she realized Joe’s intent. She flattened her palms against his chest and pushed, but she might as well have tried moving her brick house for all the good it did her. His face came closer, his devil-dark eyes glittering, his hard mouth softening.
She’d wondered for so long what it would be like to kiss him. Now she would finally know.
TQting up her face, she closed her eyes and gasped as his lips brushed the skin beneath her ear. Warmth radiated from his busy mouth in shimmering circles. Whatever he was doing felt wonderful, an erotic combination of gentle suction and soothing tongue. Her head lolled back against the tree and she realized he was not so much kissing her as branding her.
She might have protested if her vocal cords hadn’t gone limp—along with every other part of her body.
He made a low velvety noise in his throat and lifted his head. “I’ve wanted to do that since you swigged a beer in The Pig’s Gut.”
Her eyelids wouldn’t open all the way. She followed the line of his hard jaw and the satisfied curve of his mouth with her slumberous gaze.
“When you look at me like that…” His head dipped under her chin and he nuzzled the base of her
throat. “God, Catherine.” It was a groan. “Do you feel what you do to me?”
She felt the rough bark against her shoulder blades and the steel curve of his thighs against her own. She felt the rasp of his whiskers on her throat and the pounding of his heart beneath her palms. She felt the rigid evidence of what she did to him pulse against her belly, and the answering surge of heat between her legs.
She felt womanly and powerful and sexy, because this man thought she was. And that freed her inhibitions as nothing else could.
“I feel a lot of things, Joe. But I want to feel more.”
Sliding her palms down his T-shirt, she tugged the hem from his jeans, ducked her fingers underneath and found the naked skin of his back. They both drew in a sharp breath. She released hers in a wondering sigh.
She’d seen him bate-chested, known be was lean and perfectly proportioned. But, oh-h-h, to
touch
him. He was like sun-baked marble, hot and smooth and rippling with muscles, and so tall she had to stretch in order to reach his shoulders. The action flattened her breasts against his chest. He tensed, then pressed a string of feverish kisses over her neck, her jaw, her cheeks—everywhere but the lips that ached for his possession.
In retaliation, she withdrew her palms from his back and skated them up his stomach, intrigued by the silky prickle of hair that thickened the higher she went. She spread her fingers in delight and brushed two flat nipples in passing. His in-drawn hiss brought her hands wandering back to investigate.
She’d never indulged her curiosity during past romantic encounters. Shyness or awkwardness or indifference had always kept her from exploring. But with Joe she felt like a child given a fascinating new toy. She wanted to take him out of the box and examine all the pieces and play to her heart’s content. He bore her skimming hands with a control she didn’t question. This was Joe. He wouldn’t hurt her.
“Are you having fun?” he asked finally, his voice strange and thick.
She circled a pebbled disk with her fingernail and peeked up through her lashes. “Yes, I am, thank you. And you?”
The cords of his neck looked ready to snap. He made a gravelly sound in his chest and closed his eyes, his expression close to agony.
The she-devil within her wanted to test his limit, to push him over the edge. She inched her hand down his ridged abdomen and felt his muscles contract. Her boldness astonished and excited her. He seemed to be holding his breath, which excited her even more. The heel of her hand bumped over his belt buckle and reached its destination.
“Oh, my,” she murmured softly, his hard shape scorching her palm. She curled her fingers a teensy bit—
“Witch!”
His thighs crowded forward, his head swooped down. He slid his fingers into her hair and captured her lips, holding her hard against his mouth. The warm invasion of his tongue sent an electric sizzle streaking to her toes. She yielded to his domination with a sense of feminine awe.
It was a deep kiss, a man’s kiss, as branding in its own way as the mark he’d probably left on her neck. Weakness spread through her limbs. She clung to his shoulders and would have fallen if not for the tree bracing her spine.
He lowered his hands without breaking the kiss and worked open the buttons of her blouse. Parting the silk, he peeled back a lacy cup with one blunt fingertip, bent his head and washed her in wet heat.
Catherine moaned. Never in her life had she felt like this, drugged with passion, oblivious to everything but the mindless needs of her body. Arching her back, she gave herself up to the building storm of sensations and trusted Joe to keep her safe. To anchor her to the ground.
Suddenly the whirlwind stopped.
Dazed, she watched him tilt his head and grow still. A sweep of air chilled her breast and she struggled to remember where she was.
“Damn!” Grasping her waist, he swung her around to the opposite side of the tree as if she weighed no more than a child. “Allie’s home,” he explained, easing her down onto her feet. He tucked in his T-shirt with savage thrusts. “Button your shirt and I’ll head her off at the pass.”
With dawning horror, she heard the slam of a car door and an exuberant, “Thanks, Mrs. Bass!”
She looked up only to be driven back against the tree by Joe’s hard swift kiss.
He raised his head and stared urgently into her eyes. “Don’t analyze this to death, Catherine.”
Before she could answer, he was gone.
She shivered as if a blanket had been ripped from her cozy bed in wintertime. Awareness returned. She
blinked down at her right breast, shocking and pale except for a few spots of redness. Whisker burns, she realized, jerking at the sound of Joe greeting his daughter in the driveway. She slipped up her bra cup and fumbled with her buttons.
If she and Joe hadn’t been interrupted…Her face grew hot with embarrassment at the realization she’d almost fulfilled her father’s predictions. Making love against a tree was in keeping with her mother’s legacy.
Allie chattered all the way up the garage-apartment stairs. She was preoccupied with her skating adventure, thank heavens, or she might have noticed the Jezebel huddled guiltily behind the tree.
Holding her breath until she heard the apartment door open and close, Catherine slunk to the bench, snatched up the empty glasses and wine bottle and managed to reach her kitchen door without anyone screaming, “Slut!”
Once inside, she collapsed in a chair and set her burden down. The four wine bottles sneered at her from the tabletop.
She glared back. “Okay already. So I won’t swallow my tastes from now on.”
An easy promise to keep. Much easier than the one she needed to make—which was never to repeat what had happened out there under the tree. Because no matter how wonderful Joe had made her reel, he’d also made his position clear. No commitments beyond his daughter. Certainly no wife. And Catherine wanted to be a wife and mother more than she wanted mind-blowing sex. She did, dammit.
Reaching for
the fume blanc,
she swigged a swallow straight from the bottle. Despite her best intentions
she relived the glorious feeling of kissing Joe Tucker. She’d wondered for so long what it would be like, and now she knew. But, dear God, she wished she didn’t.
T
WO DAYS LATER
, Catherine glared at the fabulous kisser blocking her exit from his small kitchen and wanted to kick him into Oklahoma.
“Look, you stubborn man. I brought the overnight bag Allie needs. I drank the Coke you served me. Now move and let me go home.”
Joe gave her old shorts and T-shirt a once-over. “You probably
should
change into something nicer. I’d hate to see you make a bad impression on your mother.”
“Well,
excuse me
for offending your delicate sen-. sibilities, but I was cleaning the bathroom when you called. As for my seeing my mother—” she stepped forward and tilted back her head “—if you don’t stop badgering me about her, I’ll have to put a curse on you. I can do it. I’m a witch, you know.”
“I know.”
His gaze sharpened and she caught her breath, shaken by the realization he wasn’t nearly as indifferent to her as he’d pretended since their kiss. She retrieved the threads of her anger and stitched on.
“My mother and I have gotten along just fine for thirty years without seeing each other. You are
not
driving me to Columbus today. No way, forget it, nothing doing. Capital
N
capital
O.
NO!” She set her hands at her waist. “Now, is that plain enough, or should I continue?”
Joe shouldered past her and opened the refrigerator door. The instant he pulled out a plastic container, Romeo and Juliet came running.
Catherine ignored her chance to escape. “Well?” she said loudly over the discordant meows.
Popping open the lid, Joe tilted the container in front of Catherine’s nose. “Fish stick for the road? Riding on an empty stomach can make you carsick, you know.”
She bit her lip, looked at his boots and shook her head. “Unbelievable.”
“No, it’s true. I blew beets all over the back seat when Dad wouldn’t stop for a burger on the way to-”
“Can I give you a little advice, Joe? Next time you clean your ears with a Q-Tip—” she reached out and patted his arm “—stop pushing when you meet resistance.”
The milling cats blocked her grand exit, or she might not have heard Joe’s low chuckle. Some of her irritation faded.
Romeo leapt onto the counter and swiped an impatient paw as far as he could reach.
Juliet plopped down and rolled to her back.
Catherine watched Joe look from the dainty black feline sprawled in adoring supplication on his boots to the huge belligerent tabby demanding a fish stick
now.
“No contest,” Joe told the tomcat, then bent to feed Juliet her treat first.
“Can I have one?” Allie yelled from the sofa.
Catherine moved into the main room. Softball camp had a two-day break between sessions, and the
excited girl sat packed and ready for her trip to the beach.
“Didn’t you have breakfast?” Catherine asked. “It’s an hour’s drive to Galveston, and the Basses may not stop for lunch right when you get there.”
“late.”
“Good. So what’d you have?”
Allie shrugged. “Oreos and a Coke.”
Catherine turned around and arched a brow at the girl’s eavesdropping father.
Joe ducked back into the kitchen.
Chicken.
Stifling a smile, Catherine walked to the sofa and sat knee to knee with Allie for a private conversation.
“You know, grabbing whatever’s handy to eat is okay every once in a while, but those four basic food groups your teachers talked about in grade school really
are
important.”
Allie rolled her eyes.
“No, I mean it. Growing bodies need plenty of milk, fruits and vegetables. They didn’t make you learn that stuff to bore you—that’s what memorizing the state capitals was for.”
A grudging smile pulled at the girl’s lips.
“I know it’s hard, honey, especially when you don’t have your Gram to grocery shop and cook for you and Joe anymore. But hey, if you’re this pretty, this smart and this good an athlete right now, just think what a balanced diet will do for you. Tommy will have to beat the other guys off with your Softball bat.”
Allie perked up. She’d confided in Catherine the day before about events leading up to Tommy’s undivided attention.
“Do you really think he’ll call me?”
“Honey, I think he’ll be camped out waiting on your doorstep when you get home.”
“Cool.”
Allie’s engaging grin produced a curious mixture of happiness and pain in Catherine. With her father flying from England in four days, her tenants would be returning soon to their own apartment. She studied the girl’s heart-shaped face and realized how much she would miss seeing it daily.
“Your hair has really grown since you’ve been here,” Catherine observed, brushing the girl’s bangs aside and holding them in place. “Time for a trim. It’s a pity to hide these beautiful eyes.”
The eyes under discussion filled with heart-wrenching neediness, an emotion Catherine understood all too well.
Releasing the silky strands, she rubbed the backs of her fingers against the girl’s cheek before lowering her hand. “I don’t mean to sound preachy, but it’s just that…well, I love you, Allie. If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be exactly like you. You’ve done a fine job of taking care of your father. But you need to take good care of yourself, too. Will you promise to do that?”
With every word Allie’s eyes had grown brighter. Now they welled with tears. “You’ll come see me after I leave, won’t you?”
Catherine silently vowed to give this remarkable girl her love and support for as long as needed. “Nothing could keep me away.” She dabbed her own eyes with the corner of her T-shirt, laughed self-consciously and patted Allie’s knee. “You’ll have fun in Galveston. Got your bathing suit?”
“Yep.”
“Sunscreen?”
“Holly’s mom said they have plenty.”
“Don’t forget to
use
it. Got your pajamas and two changes of clothes?”
“Yep.”
“Toothbrush?”
Allie opened and closed her mouth. “Be right back,” she said, jumping up and running toward the bathroom.
No longer able to ignore the prickling sense of being watched, Catherine turned.
Joe stood just outside the kitchen, his muscular arms folded, his long legs braced apart—his virility a beacon both drawing her to and warning her away from dangerous waters.
She met his dark possessive eyes and for one breathless instant was pressed against a tree, her mouth being taken as thoroughly as her body ached to be filled.
Allie jogged back to the sofa, snapping the sexual tension between the adults. “Good thing I went in there. I forgot my hairbrush, too.” She knelt on the floor and zipped the items safely into her borrowed luggage. Her ingenuous gaze moved from Catherine to her father and back.