Zack growled and lifted her into his embrace, high enough for her to wrap her arms and legs around him.
Slowly, he walked them across the room. “Such as whether you want to be on the top or the bottom.”
She smiled and crushed her lips to his in a ravenous, openmouthed kiss.
“How about both?” she invited, her tone husky.
In complete agreement, they tumbled onto the bed.
• • •
It was ages later before they broke apart, flushed and replete, their bodies all but humming from a near overload of sensory pleasure. Stretched out side by side across the tangled sheets of the wide king-size bed, they lay with eyes closed, hands clasped.
Madelyn gave a luxuriant purr. “
Umm
, that was amazing.”
“Amazing, huh?”
“Definitely worth staying up late for on a Wednesday night.”
“Well, they don’t call it hump day for nothing, you know.”
She gasped and rolled her head toward him. “My God, Zack, you are outrageous. And incredible.”
She started chuckling.
“No doubt the reason you can’t resist me.”
She shifted to lean her forearms against his chest. “Incredibly awful is what I meant,” she said.
He gave her a light pinch on the bare flesh of her thigh.
In retaliation, she pressed her fingernails into his side.
He sucked in his stomach and arched away. “Hey, watch where you put those things.”
“Or what?”
“Or else,” he growled playfully. “That’s what.”
“Now, now, don’t start anything you can’t finish.” She rolled away from him.
“Who says I can’t finish? I finish everything I start.” He lunged across the bed after her.
“Not now, you don’t,” she laughed, eluding him. “I’m hungry and I demand to be fed.”
“Food, is it?”
“Yes, a big thick steak and a salad, I think. Followed by a towering slice of cheesecake with cherries on top.”
Now he was getting hungry. “I suppose I could eat.” He tucked his hands behind his head. “Call room service and order something for us.”
She bounced out of the bed and onto her feet. “No,
you
call room service. I’m going to shower.”
“Slave driver,” he complained. “All right, but then I’m coming in after you.”
“No way. I want my dinner and it’ll end up getting cold if you join me. Remember what happened the last time we showered together?”
He did, fondly. “I promise I won’t do anything but wash.”
She pinned him with a knowing look. “
Nuh-uh.
That’s what got us in trouble last time, since I’m the one you washed. I’m locking the door behind me.”
“You’re cruel, you know that?” he called to her retreating back.
Grinning, he picked up the receiver to dial room service.
He was hungrier than he’d thought and ended up ordering steaks and salad for them both, cheesecake, a pitcher of ice water, coffee for him, and tea for Madelyn.
While she showered, he tugged on his pants, then straightened the rest of their clothes, hanging them neatly in the closet.
Their meal arrived just a couple of minutes before Madelyn padded out of the bath, wrapped inside a large fluffy white robe. She hadn’t lied about being starved, and dug enthusiastically into her meal. Zack ate his own dinner at a more moderate pace.
Halfway through, though, she slowed and leaned back in her chair, pushing her plate to one side.
He pointed a fork toward her partially eaten steak. “Aren’t you going to finish that?”
“I’m leaving room for dessert.”
“Waste of a damned fine piece of meat, if you ask me.”
“Would you like it?”
“At these prices I would.” He stabbed the expensive cut of beef and transferred it to his plate.
“I had no idea you were so frugal.” Madelyn ate a bite of her cheesecake, taking a moment to savor the taste. “You know, it just occurred to me, I really don’t know that much about you, even after all these weeks.”
He shrugged, finishing his own steak and starting in on hers. “What’s there to know?”
“Well, basic things, I suppose. Where you grew up, for instance.”
“Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh.”
“What was it like, your hometown?”
“Small. Blue-collar. Nothing special, just a town.”
“And college? Did you attend one in Pennsylvania?”
“No, I went to NYU. At least that’s where I finished up. Did a tour in the army first, right out of high school. I was stationed over in Germany. It gave me the chance to earn some money, take a few classes, and see a little of the world.”
“Now, that’s exactly what I mean. I had no idea you’d done any of those things.”
“And what about you, Madelyn? Which one of the Seven Sisters did you attend?”
She paused for a long, telling moment before she confessed. “Wellesley, but we’re not discussing me.”
He smiled and ate another slice of steak.
“How about family? Any brothers and sisters?” she persisted.
“One. A sister.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Is she older, younger? What’s her name?”
“Her name is Beth and she’s four years younger.”
“And your parents?”
He went still. “What about them?”
“Well, what are they like? Where do they live? What do they do?”
“My father doesn’t do anything, not anymore. He’s dead. My mother . . . last I heard she lives somewhere in Florida.”
“The last you heard?”
Something icy slid into his eyes. “Yes, the last I heard. Is the interrogation over now, or was there something else you wanted to know?”
Her spine stiffened at his tone. Hurt, she stirred her coffee in a circular motion, her eyes lowered. “No, I don’t want to know anything, not if you don’t want to tell me.”
“Look, it’s not that, not exactly.” He sighed and set down his fork. “I don’t much like talking about my past, that’s all. It’s nothing personal.”
She pushed her dessert away, barely touched. “Fine. I won’t ask again.”
He picked up his glass of ice water and drank half, then set it down with a snap. “All of us didn’t grow up in a nice house in the suburbs with a loving family and lots of money. Some of us lived in a cramped, run-down hovel where you sweltered in the summer and froze in the winter ’cause the heat only worked half the time. The months your dad was sober enough to remember to pay the bill, that is.
“You didn’t have to listen to him after he’d crawled down deep into a bottle of cheap brew,” he went on, jabbing his fork into the remaining piece of medium-rare steak on his plate.
“Blubbering on hour after hour,” he continued, “about how he would have made it to the Show, played big-league ball if he hadn’t gotten robbed after only a year in the minors. How his coach was a narrow-minded son of a bitch who didn’t understand the pressures a family man was under. And you didn’t have to listen to him sob about how he’d given up his dream for a wife and kid he didn’t want. For a mistake he’d made one night as a teenager in the backseat of a car.”
She reached out a hand. “Zack—”
He ignored her and went on. “You didn’t breathe a sigh of relief every time you left for school, savoring the calm, the peace of knowing you didn’t have to listen to your parents argue and fight and scream at each other, for a few hours anyway. You didn’t have to watch your mother take off with some out-of-town insurance salesman, then have to explain to your six-year-old sister why she wouldn’t be coming back again—ever. You didn’t get the hell out of some backwater town you hated, the second you could. Swearing never to return, never to look back. Did you ever have to do any of those things, Madelyn, in your perfect little world?”
She jerked back her head as if he’d slapped her, then pulled in a breath. Visibily, she composed herself. “No, I didn’t, but that doesn’t mean my world was perfect. And it doesn’t give you the right to criticize or condemn me.”
A tense silence fell between them.
“I’m sorry your childhood was so unhappy,” she offered in a stiff voice.
“Don’t be.” He shrugged. “My sister and I did all right. It could have been worse. Our folks didn’t beat or molest us or anything like that. And somehow Dad always managed to hang on to his factory job, keep a roof over our heads, such as it was.”
Until bitterness and alcohol had worn him into an old man long before his time, Zack thought. Put him into an early grave.
He looked across the table at Madelyn, so fresh and pretty.
And yes, so innocent in her way.
What was he doing? Where had all that meanness come from? Erupting like a monster from somewhere deep inside. Why had he told her so much? Revealed parts of himself, secrets he’d never revealed to anyone else before?
Suddenly tired, he rubbed a pair of fingers over the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I decided to take this out on you. It doesn’t usually bother me.”
She folded her napkin and put it carefully back on the table. “I guess I pushed a button. It . . . it’s getting late. Maybe I should go.”
“You don’t need to go. We’ve got the room for the whole night.”
She climbed to her feet. “We’ve also got work tomorrow. It’ll be easier for me to get dressed and ready in the morning if I’m at home.”
As she started past, he caught her by the wrist. “Stay,” he said.
“I think it would be better if we both had some time apart. A chance to sort through our thoughts.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “No.”
He tugged her across his lap, wrapped an immovable arm around her waist. “You’re not walking away from me, not tonight.”
He pushed the robe off one shoulder and buried his face in the curve of her neck, possessively taking her naked breast in his hand. “I’m not done yet. Not nearly done wanting you.”
Then his mouth was on hers, demanding a response, demanding her surrender.
• • •
For the space of a few endless seconds she struggled, trying not to give in to the fire already starting to burn inside her body.
Then she yielded, meeting him, matching him touch for touch, kiss for kiss, taking him with the same raw power with which he was taking her. Anger and hurt faded beneath the force of her desire.
He took her there, on the chair, without gentleness or mercy, forcing her to accept everything he had and more. No longer quite himself. No longer entirely rational.
And she let him, urging him on, letting him spread her, fill her, pushing her senses high, then higher still, until she felt as if she were soaring, flying free without need of wings or a net.
When the passion was over, when they’d both come back down to earth, hearts no longer threatening to hammer from their chests, lungs filling normally with air, he carried her to the bed and lay beside her on the sheets.
In a move of blatant possession, he looped an arm and leg around her body as if still worried she might try to leave.
• • •
A brief while later, Madelyn stroked her hand down the warm, supple skin of his naked back and listened to his breathing.
Gentle.
Even.
Asleep.
She thought about their conversation, about everything he’d told her, and his demands afterward. She thought again about the way she’d given in to him and the strength of their mutual passion.
No, whether she liked it or not, she realized, she wasn’t done yet with wanting him either.
And it worried her–the knowledge that she might never be again.
S
he found the movie ticket in her coat pocket the next day. It was for a show scheduled to play that evening at an older theater in Brooklyn.
The ticket must have come from Zack. She knew of no one else who might have left her such a thing. But when had he had the time to buy it? she wondered. More important, how had he managed to slip it into her coat without her knowledge? She’d barely been out of her office all day.
A yawn caught her and she raised a hand to cover her gaping mouth. Today had been tough. Made tougher by the scant hours of sleep she’d gotten last night.
Just after five this morning she’d slipped from the bed, needing to return home and change into something suitable for work.
Zack had been awake.
She’d sensed him watching her as she’d dressed in the sliver of light shining around the bathroom door. He’d said nothing. Neither had she. Then she’d let herself out of the room.
At work, responsibility had set in with all the subtlety of a brick crashing through a plate glass window. One demand after another, calls and meetings and impossible deadlines piling up until she’d been about ready to scream.
Desperate for a break around eleven, she’d escaped outside for a breath of fresh air. Or at least what passed for fresh air in the city.
That’s when she’d found it, a stiff rectangle of paper, a one-by-four-inch featherweight intruder hiding in the pocket of her coat. For a long moment she’d considered its meaning and the man who’d left it for her. Then she’d tucked it away and returned to the office.
The film’s previews were rolling, the theater dark, when she walked inside at half past six. The wide set of wooden double doors, with their long, thin slits of window, swung shut at her back.
Momentarily blinded, she stood in the aisle to give her eyes a chance to adjust. A handful of people sat scattered in the hundred-seat-capacity room, making it an easy task to pick out the back of Zack’s head and his broad shoulders a few rows down.
She moved forward and, with barely a sound, eased into the seat next to his.
He didn’t speak right away. “I wasn’t sure you were coming,” he whispered.
“Traffic was heavy,” she whispered back.
He’d bought a giant tub of popcorn. He nudged it toward her, balancing it on the armrest between them. Madelyn took a handful and began to eat, one kernel at a time. The movie opened with a sweeping flourish of music, credits forming and re-forming over rugged hills of green and miles of cloudless indigo sky.
Zack angled his head toward hers. “Your day okay?”
“Long. Busy. The usual. How was yours?”
“About the same,” he said. “Too many meetings.”
She paused. “The movie ticket surprised me. How’d you manage to slip it into my pocket with no one seeing, including me?”
“Handy skill I acquired in my youth.”
She decided it wisest not to probe further, knowing what she now did of his past. Instead she ate a few more kernels of popcorn.
Silence settled between them, filled by the voices of the actors on the screen. “So are you going to tell me why we’re here?” she asked.
“To watch the movie.”
She studied him in the screen glare for a long moment. He seemed tense, uneasy, troubled. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t.” He sighed and rubbed a hand across one thigh. “I wanted to talk and not on the phone. Since the office was obviously out of the question, I chose this.”
A woman two rows ahead turned and shushed them.
Madelyn waited a minute, then lowered her voice as much as she could. “What was it you wanted to talk about?”
“Last night.” He paused as if he were trying to find the right words. “I wanted to say . . . well . . . to tell you . . . that I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
“For being too rough. I didn’t hurt you, did I? Is that why you left so quickly this morning?”
She turned to him, reaching for his hand. “No. How could you think that? I left because I needed to go home and change clothes for work. You didn’t hurt me. You couldn’t.”
But he could. Very easily, he thought. Didn’t she realize? She was a strong woman. Yet even strong women had fragile bones.
Soft bodies.
Tender hearts.
“I was angry,” he said. “I didn’t give you much choice.”
“We were both angry. If I’d really wanted you to stop, you would have stopped.”
“You’re so certain?”
“I am. Besides, I’m not a doormat. If you’d hurt me, Zack, I wouldn’t be here with you now. I’d never accept something like that from a man. Not any man.”
He considered her statement and recognized the truth of it. Madelyn wasn’t a woman who backed down or kept silent about things she believed needed to be said.
She laid a hand against his cheek, already grown rough with evening whiskers. “Making love is always good with you. Each time, it only gets better.”
He wrapped a hand around her wrist to press a kiss into her palm. “You told me you needed time apart. Do you still?”
“And if I said yes?”
He looked into her eyes. “I wouldn’t like it, but I’d give it to you anyway. If it’s what you really want.”
Something warm and waxen seemed to pool inside her, spreading through her body all the way to her heart.
And in that instant she knew. She just knew. He was the man for her.
Improbable as it might seem, she was in love.
With Zack Douglas.
She met his eyes in the flickering light from the screen, shook her head. “No. I only want to be with you.”
He set the popcorn aside to draw her close—as close as he could manage with the armrest in the way—then pressed his mouth to her own, gently, tenderly.
“Do you want to stay for the movie?” he asked.
“What movie?” she whispered.
He laughed.
Other patrons joined the first woman in another round of shushing.
“I don’t think we’re very popular tonight,” Madelyn said sotto voce.
“I don’t think so either. Maybe we should leave.” He linked his fingers with hers. “I’m not ready to say good night yet.”
“Me either.” Madelyn considered their options, the possible consequences. “We could go to my place.”
“That’s against the rules. Under no circumstances,” he quoted, “are we to meet at either of our apartments.”
“And we won’t, not after tonight. But it’s dark and cold and if you don’t mind parking a few blocks away, you can come around to the back entrance. No one will see you. Do you have a hat?”
“A hat?”
“You know, the thing that fits over your head to protect it from the weather. A few people wear them as fashion statements.”
“I would not be one of those people. No, I don’t have a hat.”
“Then keep your head down and walk fast. I’ll buzz you in.”
“No doorman?”
“Just electronic security.”
“All right. You ready?”
“Yes, but I don’t think we should leave together. You stay here, then follow me out in a few minutes.”
“No one’s going to see us here in Brooklyn.”
“You never know.”
“Unlikely, but all right. Let’s switch our departure schedule around, though. What do you say I go out first and wait? Then you leave a few minutes later. That way I can make sure you get to your car safely.”
“You’ll wait at a distance?”
“Of course.”
He kissed her again, then slid past into the aisle.
Alone in the dark, she watched the movie, or tried to. But she’d missed too much of the story to understand what was happening up on the screen.
Her own life felt a little like that right now, she realized.
Confusing.
Out of control.
She wondered what in the hell she was going to do about it.
• • •
“Did anyone see you?”
Zack shrugged out of his coat. “No. No one saw me.”
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be without running a police sweep of the neighborhood.”
“Sorry, I just—”
“Don’t want anyone to know,” he finished. “After all, it might sully your pristine reputation.”
“Pristine? Is that how people think of me?”
“In certain circles, you’re considered quite . . . wholesome.”
She turned away to hang up his coat. “And do you share that opinion?”
He came up behind and wrapped her in his arms, feathering kisses over her cheek before nuzzling a particularly sensitive spot behind her ear. “How could I? The past few weeks have taught me what a wicked woman you really are. So, do you want to be wicked out here or in your bedroom?”
Madelyn chuckled softly. “Why don’t we let a little anticipation build and decide after we’ve eaten dinner?” She stepped out of his arms. “All I ate for lunch was a quick salad and I’m starving.”
He sighed and trailed her into the small, square kitchen. “If you insist. What’s on the menu?”
“I don’t know.” She pulled open the refrigerator door to peer inside. “I usually fix something simple during the week. A sandwich or soup, maybe some leftovers from a meal I cooked on the weekend. For some odd reason, though,” she added tongue in cheek, “I haven’t had much time lately for cooking on the weekends.”
Or for going to the grocery store either, she realized, casting a doleful eye over the meager contents on the shelves in front of her. She didn’t need to open the freezer to know it had even fewer items inside. Inspiration struck when she saw the bottle of maple syrup. “How about pancakes?”
“For dinner?”
“Yes. Or are you one of those people who believes breakfast should only be eaten in the morning?”
“Not at all. I practically lived on pizza during college. Cold for breakfast, hot for dinner, and whichever I had time for at noon. Pancakes sound great. Want some help?”
“Thanks, but I think I’ve got it covered.” Madelyn stocked the counter with eggs and milk and pancake mix.
Zack relaxed in a straight-backed kitchen chair to watch her work. That was when he noticed the pair of walnut-shaped green eyes observing him from beneath the table. He stretched down a hand, letting it hang unthreateningly at his hip.
A full minute later the inquisitive feline approached and gave his fingers a cautious sniff. Deciding she approved of the stranger in her house, the cat inched closer, allowing him to run his hand over the velvety length of her gray-and-white-striped fur. Then with a high, whisper-soft meow, she leapt onto his lap and began to purr, kneading her paws like tiny pistons against his thigh.
He petted her in leisurely strokes from head to tail. She lowered her eyes to pleasured half slits and increased the volume of her purrs.
“Who’s this little motorboat?” he asked.
Madelyn turned from the counter where she was beating eggs and milk together in a large bowl. The fork in her hand fell still as she took in the scene. “Would you look at that. Millie never makes up to strangers. She usually hides until they’re gone.”
Zack rubbed a finger beneath the cat’s grateful chin. “Sounds like a smart cat. She must know I’m not really a stranger. Don’t you, sweetheart? You know I’m not a stranger,” he murmured to the adoring animal.
Millie head butted his hand, then moved closer and leaned her body against his chest.
“That’s incredible. Even my cat can’t resist you.”
He looked up and grinned. “Women adore me; what can I say?”
Madelyn snorted and turned her back on him. She picked up the mixing bowl and began whisking the egg and milk mixture into the pancake mix.
Of course he was right, she thought. And she was the worst one of all, in love with a man who drew women to him like bees to clover. But she’d known that going in, hadn’t she? It was just that she hadn’t counted on the game turning so serious—at least for her.
She set a skillet on the stove burner with a tad too much force. The bang startled Millie, who jumped off Zack’s lap and disappeared into the other room.
He raised an eyebrow as he dusted a few cat hairs off his pants. “Something wrong?”
“No, not at all.” She turned on the heat under the pan. “Just thinking about—”
Yes, what could she say she’d been thinking about other than him?
“Work and the account I’ve gotten saddled with.”
“Which one is that?”
She slanted him a look, grateful he hadn’t seemed to notice her earlier hesitation. “The neon-colored chips from hell.”
“Oh,
that
account.”
“Yes. And don’t you dare grin. It isn’t funny.”
Zack sobered. “You’re right; it isn’t. Is the product really as awful as rumor would have it?”
“Worse. Far, far worse.” Pancake batter sizzled gently as she poured two circles of it into the buttered skillet. “Which means there’s no easy road out.”
“It won’t be pretty, I agree. Have you decided on your strategy?”
“Something other than quitting or fleeing the country?”
He looked amused.
Madelyn sighed. “Not really, and Peg’s no help. She’s been joking that we should suggest a new marketing campaign aimed at dogs. Apparently her current love interest has a beagle and Fido thinks they’re fantastic.”
“It’s Carmichael Foods, right? Who’s the account exec on that? Have you talked it over with him?”
She flipped the pancakes over to brown on the other side. “Yeah, I’ve talked it over. It’s Phil Novena, and you know what he’s like. He told me in that officious voice of his to remember that taste is a subjective thing. Just because I don’t like the product doesn’t mean other people won’t love it. So I’m supposed to keep my mouth shut and be creative. But how can I, Zack? No matter how great a job my team does, when these chips hit the shelves they’re going to tank.”
“Phil Novena’s a horse’s ass and everybody at F and S knows it. Of course, he’s a devious horse’s ass. Most likely the reason he’s risen as far as he has. Do you want me to see if there’s anything I can do?”
“No,” she told him firmly. “Thanks, but no thanks. I have to deal with this on my own, however unpleasant it might be.” She opened the oven door and slid the finished pancakes onto a plate warming inside. She straightened to pour another round of batter into the skillet.
“Whichever way you go,” Zack told her, “I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”