Big Guns Out of Uniform (19 page)

Nick made a sound, a low, dark rumble in his chest, and shoved a hand into his jeans pocket, fishing out a condom. She watched hungrily as his clever hands worked the sheath down his erection, now rock-hard. It took only seconds, but it seemed like forever. Then Nick lifted her effortlessly, allowing Delia to settle herself onto his shaft with a soft, satisfied sigh. The chair's mechanics squealed in protest as she rode him. Her body was restless, needy. She pressed her lips to his throat and felt him shiver.

Good.
Oh, God, it was so good. Her eyes still closed, Delia licked her lips and surrendered all her thoughts. Nick kissed her again, hot and deep, plumbing her mouth with his tongue until, by the dim glow of his desk lamp, they found satisfaction yet again. Then quietly he carried her back to bed and drifted off to sleep with her in his arms.

When next she awoke, the big red numbers said 5:07.

Monday morning.
Delia felt an ache of disappointment in addition to the ache between her legs. Nick Woodruff had just about worn her out. Her extraordinary erotic encounter with him was over, and in less than three hours, she'd be back on campus, facing a roomful of bleary-eyed graduate students. Quietly she slid from the bed, stretched her sore muscles, and dressed. Nick still slept deeply, facedown with the sheets tangled about his waist. Good Lord, he looked fine. Still, Delia let herself out of the house, wondering what she'd been thinking, to spend her Sunday having sex with a stranger.

Except that Nick wasn't a stranger. In fact, Delia felt as though she'd known him for ages. And now she was left standing on his back porch, her legs dimpled with goose bumps, half afraid she was going to get her heart broken—and by a man she hadn't even liked especially well three days ago.

Well, she liked him fine now, that was for sure. Delia set a fast pace across the grass toward her house, wondering if she'd see him again. Well, of course, she would
see
him. He had her car. But at this point in the relationship—the relationship they were
not
having, she reminded herself—what should she do next? Thank him for a lovely evening? Send him flowers? Delia laughed, her breath fogging faintly in the cold air. None of her grandmother's old etiquette lectures seemed applicable here.

The street lamp from Greenway Circle cast just enough light to keep Delia from breaking a leg in the murk. Once inside her house it was a little easier to forget about Nick. After brewing a pot of coffee, she showered, dressed, then spent an hour on her lecture notes, something she should have done last night. At seven sharp she grabbed the phone and called Becky Jo for a ride to work, and soon she was back in the thick of her dull, ordinary life.

But as the day wore on, the lack of sleep caught up with Delia. Her morning dragged, and by the time her show went on the air, it was all she could do to feign interest in her guest, an epidemiologist studying the resurgence of syphilis on high school campuses. The first three calls were routine, all of them terrified teenagers who wanted to follow up on the discussion. Then Frank signaled a change of topic. The epidemiologist snapped open a copy of
Newsweek
and kicked back in his chair. Delia motioned Frank to send the next call through.

“Well, hey there, Dr. Delia,” said a dark, sexy, and
very
familiar voice.

“What?”
Delia's stomach lurched, and she almost knocked over her coffee cup. “I mean, good afternoon. Welcome to
Let's Talk About Sex.
Tell us who you are and where you're calling from.”

“Yeah, sure, this is, um,
John,”
said the sexy voice. “From—er, from—”

Nick had obviously forgotten to plan the geography part. But Delia's shock had passed. “It's not a trick question,
John,”
she interjected in her huskiest voice.

“From Portland,” he said hastily. “Portland, Oregon.”

Delia adjusted her earphone. “Fabulous!” she managed. “I didn't realize this show had been picked up in Portland!”

“Not Portland,” he said swiftly.
“Houston.
I mean, I'm from Portland. But I'm visiting my great-aunt in Houston. See? So I'm calling from Houston.”

Frank was gesturing at his caller ID now and jerking a finger across his throat. Delia waved him off. “Well, I'm sure glad we got that straight, John,” she said. “I hope you and Auntie are having a great time down in Houston.”

“Yeah, sure, we're doing okay,” he said, dropping his voice to a sexy whisper. “Anyway, I had a real important question. Something that's just driving me insane.”

“Well, we can't have that,” said Delia in her most
tut-tut
voice.

“That's what I thought,” he answered. “So I wanted your advice. See, I met this girl. No,
woman.
She lives next door. And, well, last night, we had this totally mind-blowing sex.”

“Okay,
John,”
said Delia slowly. “Let me get this straight. You had sex with your elderly auntie's next-door neighbor?”

Nick paused for a moment. “Right.”

Frank was making circles around his ear with his index finger now, so Delia shot him the bird. “And was your question about sexually transmitted disease, John?” she asked. “I mean, I'm duty-bound to remind you that having sexual relations with someone you don't know well is risky. Are you afraid you may have contracted something?”

“Oh, yeah, I contracted something, all right,” said Nick. “The chronic itch to do it again. And I was thinking maybe tonight? So I was just wondering, you know, what you thought might be the fastest way to talk her into that.”

Delia squeezed her eyes shut. “Well, this doesn't exactly sound like a question about healthy sex, John.”

“Oh, it was healthy, Doc,” said the sexy voice. “Trust me. It felt real healthy. That mentally cleansing, next-to-nirvana healthy, if you know what I mean?”

“O-
kay,”
said Delia. “I'll bet Auntie was glad to hear that.”

“Uh, I guess. But it's a secret, see? Which makes it even hotter, if you know what I mean.”

“A hot, secret affair with the next-door neighbor?” said Delia dryly.
“Hmm.
Now, your question would be—?”

He paused for a moment. “Well, say you were in her shoes—”

“Your aunt's?”

“Who?” Nick hesitated. “No, no. The woman. Next door.”

“Okay, John, I'll bite.”

“Well, that's good to know, Doc,” he said. “But what I wanted to ask is, if it was
you,
what would you do?”

“Well, this isn't exactly my field of expertise,” Delia managed. “But I guess you could just call her up and ask.”

“Hmm,” he said thoughtfully. “And what do you think she'd say?”

“Well, gee, John, you sound like such a charmer,” said Delia into the microphone. “How could she say anything but
yes?”

D
elia did say
yes.
In fact, she said yes with an almost startling frequency over the next two weeks. Their hot, secret affair stayed a secret, and only got hotter. Then Nick finished overhauling her engine, and late one Saturday night, Delia drove her car home.

But Nick hadn't finished with her, she soon discovered. And while he still never talked about his job or the future, he did return to SBI headquarters and began working long, irregular hours. Often he made short business trips. There was one to New York, a couple of day-hops to Charlotte. Delia traveled a lot, too. And so real life started to interject itself into their sweet, sensual idyll.

Delia, half heartbroken, kept expecting him to end their fling, or let it dwindle to nothing. But he didn't, and she couldn't find the strength to break it off, even though it was supposed to be “just an affair.”

Nick continued to call two or three times a week, inviting her over for evenings that inevitably ended in wild, crazy sex. The weather grew cool, but they did not. Sometimes Nick was a dark, dominant lover, plunging her into that murky chasm of passion and need, then leaving her gasping. Other times he was sweet, almost quaint, in his attentions. The worst of it was, no matter how she got it, the sex just kept getting better. And more satisfying. And more seductive. And Delia kept slipping deeper and deeper into desperation, into the awful fear that soon, in the throes of one of her many multiple orgasms, she was going to fling herself at Nick's feet and beg him for some sort of commitment.

But Nick's only in this for sex,
Delia kept warning herself.

Only that thought wasn't working anymore. Delia was falling in love, the head-over-heels kind, even though her head kept telling her heart that she barely knew Nick. She was beginning to feel like some desperate sorority girl, sneaking about, looking for some kind of sign that he might be serious about her. What such a sign might be, Delia did not know. A plane ticket down to Georgia to meet Daddy and the sisters? A jewelry box from Bailey, Banks, and Biddle stuck in his sock drawer? Hearts and arrows doodled on his grocery list? For a woman screwing a man who didn't want a relationship, she was pathetic and she was stupid.

Thanksgiving came, almost without Delia's realizing it. Out of duty, she flew to Pennsylvania to see her parents, who were as dour, conservative, and humorless as ever. They asked probing questions about Neville's new wife, frowning at the news of Alicia's pregnancy as if it had been Delia's fault her marriage had ended childless. She missed Nick more with each passing day, and by the time she got back to Durham, Delia was losing patience with herself.

Her house had been cleaned from top to bottom, Neville had finally hauled away all his junk, and on November first a shiny new
FOR SALE
sign had been staked on her front lawn. The real estate market was hot, and she'd already refused two low-ball offers for the house. Her realtor was now salivating over an almost-done deal from a retired neurosurgeon—and he was paying
cash.

Yep, Delia was moving on, quite literally. And it was pretty obvious Nick Woodruff wasn't going with her, no matter how much she might wish otherwise. Still, it was another week before Delia steeled herself to tell him. And even then it took a coronary bypass to do it. Not Nick's, thank God—though the way he went at sex some nights made her fear he might end up with one.

No,
this
coronary belonged to her colleague, Dr. Enrique Despiza. And it came at a most inopportune time, just as Enrique had been packing for a ten-day conference in Paris, a gathering of the world's most preeminent researchers in the field of human sexual behavior. He was to have been one of the key lecturers.

Delia, one of us must go,
he pleaded. A huge speaker's honorarium had already been paid, the money all but spent. Besides, the school had to be represented. And for Delia, he kept saying, it would be an unprecedented opportunity for worldwide exposure. But the only worldwide exposure Delia was worried about was the one she'd had on the hood of Nick's Triumph. Yep,
that
made career satisfaction pale, all right.

Still, the sight of her colleague struggling for breath, with one hand encircling her wrist and the other holding his oxygen tube, finally wore her down. Well, that, and the fact that she needed an excuse to leave Nick and Hidden Lakes behind, before she broke down into a blithering idiot. So, after calling her realtor, Delia beeped Becky Jo and told her to start looking for someone to sub on
Let's Talk About Sex,
then she went straight home from the hospital and dragged her suitcase from beneath the bed.

But all the while, she was really just bracing herself to go next door and do the hardest thing she'd ever done in the whole of her thirty-one years. Dump Nick Woodruff and get on with her life.

Besides,
she told herself as she went foot-dragging across her backyard,
it was just sex.
Sex was all Nick had ever asked for. She could not possibly be in love with him. Certainly, he was not in love with her. A couple of candlelit dinners, a dip in the hot tub, and a few good bounces on Nick's bed did not a grand romance make. She had been insecure after her divorce. She had fallen right out of Neville's bed and into Nick's—the dumbest, most emotionally confusing thing a woman on the rebound could do.

It was the first time she'd dropped in on Nick without calling. Through the bay window of his office, she could see him seated at his desk, intently studying something in his top drawer. She rang the bell, and Nick's head jerked up, his eyes wide with surprise. At once he slammed shut the drawer and circled through the kitchen to let her in.

“Hey, darlin',” he said, opening his arms and dragging her hard against him. “I wasn't expecting you.”

The last words were said softly, his lips pressed to her hair, but his voice sounded strained. In fact, now that she considered it, he'd been tense for the last several days. Delia looked up at him. “I'm sorry I didn't call. Should I have?”

Nick smiled. “No reason,” he said, setting her away to look at her. “Hey, everything okay?”

“No, not okay.” Delia shook her head, and he urged her toward the table. “Enrique had a heart attack,” she began as Nick popped open a couple of beers. Then she told him about the conference, and her unexpected trip to Paris.

Nick's eyes went dark with emotion. “So just like that, you have to go?
Tomorrow?”

Delia nodded. “It's my job.”

Nick got up and began to pace the kitchen floor, one big hand set at the back of his neck. “How long?” he demanded, his voice gruff.

Delia felt her frustration spike. “Jeez, it's my
job,
Nick,” she said again. “I'll be gone ten days, and it's the career opportunity of a lifetime.”

Nick turned to stare at her. “Ten days?” he said. “You'll barely make it home for Christmas. Can't someone else go?”

Delia had never heard his voice so cool. “Hey, look, I'm sorry if this is putting a crimp in your sex life,” she said. “So it's almost Christmas! What were you expecting? That I'd dress up like an elf and play sit-on-Saint-Nick's-lap?”

Nick's expression darkened. “Damn it, Delia, I don't appreciate your cynicism right now.”

Delia stared up at him. “Hey, Nick, I'm sorry,” she said, softening her tone. “I shouldn't be so sarcastic. But I came to tell you something else, too. I came to tell you…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I came to tell you that I can't keep doing this.”

His tread was heavy as he approached the table. “Doing
what?”

Delia opened her eyes. He was bent over the table now, his hands spread wide on the wooden surface. “Doing
what,
Delia?” he demanded.
“Being
with me? Is that what this is about?”

“Fucking
you, Nick,” she said, feeling something inside her wither and die. “Having meaningless, mindless sex with you. I mean, it's good, but I have obligations. I have to think rationally.”

Nick lifted both hands, slammed them on the table, then turned his back on her. “Maybe, Delia—just maybe—if you didn't think so damned much, if you didn't have your nose shoved in so many friggin' textbooks, if you didn't pick apart and analyze every goddamn thing a man does or doesn't do—then maybe our sex wouldn't be so fucking meaningless and mindless. Did you ever think of that, Delia? Did you?”

Delia drew back an inch. “Whoa, where'd
that
come from?” she asked. “Look, Nick, we knew this had to end eventually. I mean—didn't we? So maybe eventually should be now? I have to go to Paris, and as soon as I get back, I'm moving.”

“So you sold the house?” His voice was cold. Dead.

“I think so.” Delia bit her lip. “My realtor says I may have to move fast, so she's arranging for the bank to give me a loan against the equity for a condo in Chapel Hill.”

“In Chapel Hill,” echoed Nick, as if it were the backside of the moon instead of a ten-minute drive.

“Yes.” Delia tried to smile. “So I guess now I can even afford that new car,” she added a little sadly.

“So while you're gone, I should just shit-can the old one along with our relationship, Delia?” he asked. “Is that what you're saying?”

“God, no, Nick! You don't know how deeply I appre—”

“Delia, just don't fucking start with that gratitude crap, okay?”

“Yes. Okay. But I appreciate
you,
Nick. I really do. This has been special. A precious, wonderful time for me. I…I thank you for that. Don't say I can't, Nick.”

“Yeah,
special,”
he repeated. “Well, I'm glad I showed you a good time, darlin'.”

Delia just sat there, watching her beer fizz. “Look, Nick, I don't know what I'm supposed to say here,” she whispered. “This feels like a game with no rules. What do you want? What am I doing wrong?”

He was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was calmer, his tone softer. “Nothing, Doc,” he finally said. “You're right. And I know you've got obligations. I do, too. But it was good while it lasted, wasn't it? At least tell me that much.”

“Yes, Nick,” she said softly. “It was good.”

Nick shrugged and turned away again. “So, have a nice trip, Doc,” he said, bracing his hands on the kitchen counter. “A nice life, too. I'm sorry I'm being a jerk. And I'm sorry this is so easy for you to walk away from. But hey, I wish you well.”

Delia stood a little unsteadily and braced her hand on the back of her chair. “I never said it was easy, Nick,” she whispered. “I never said that.”

But Nick kept his back to her. And finally, not knowing what else to do, Delia walked out of Nick's kitchen, and out of Nick's life. Then she walked on home, blinking back tears, and started packing.

 

A
REAL CLOSE CALL.

Nick listened to Delia's departing footsteps and decided that that was what he'd just had. And it was as close as he'd ever come to making a complete fool of himself, too. Good God, he should have seen this coming.

For a long moment he simply stood with his hands clenched tight on the kitchen counter, willing himself not to do something unutterably stupid—like chase Delia down and drag her back inside the house. Instead, Nick tried to steady his breathing and focus on his brush with disaster. He had been kidding himself. He wasn't commitment material, and Delia had sense enough to know it. Besides, it was
just sex.
Not a relationship. Hadn't he once said as much to Delia?

Yes, and he'd never un-said it, either.

Okay, so maybe—just
maybe
—that was a part of the problem? Nick felt as if his fingers were digging into the damned Formica. Maybe there had been too much sex and not enough romance? Hell, men didn't know the difference. Maybe he should have wined and dined her a bit? Or taken her to Georgia for Thanksgiving? Or told her how he felt. Yeah, that one.
Door Number Three, dumb shit.

But the truth was, he hadn't been ready to share Delia, and it had taken him weeks to figure out how he felt. And when he had, it had scared the hell out of him. They had known each other less than two months. Everything had felt so fragile. So tenuous. So it had seemed better—
safer
—to just keep Delia to himself, to try to maintain what they had, and avoid the ravages of day-to-day life that could sometimes rip the heart out of even a strong, deep-rooted relationship.

And she was right, they both had obligations. Big ones. Demanding careers and a hard daily grind. And all they'd had together so far had been a time out of place, a fantasy. But he wasn't stupid. He'd known that was going to have to change. That eventually he'd need to brave the world and all its dangers with Delia. Still, he hadn't moved fast enough, had he?