Blame it on Cupid (26 page)

“I know. I try to be patient. She can't help it.”

Since that was all the kid said, Jack started to relax, crouched back down to rub stain into the underside of the shelf. But then he realized, she'd shut up. And she was still sitting there like a miniature Green Beret, tense and waiting.

“What was the thing you wanted to ask me?”

“It was a hypothetical.”

“Okay.”

“It's a pretty scary hypothetical. That's why I needed to ask you. Just you. I wouldn't bother you otherwise, Mr. Mackinnon. Honest.”

“It's okay.”

“Well…this is the thing. Let's say…I have a hypothetical friend. And this hypothetical friend got a phone call, okay?”

Jack kept rubbing, but he'd stopped paying any attention to the wood project. The joking look on Charlene's face had completely disappeared. “Okay.”

“And the voice on the other end of that hypothetical phone call said, ‘I don't know who that bitch is that you're living with—'Mr. Mackinnon, I just said ‘bitch' because the woman on the phone used that word. Hypothetically. I wasn't trying to be—”

“Honey, I don't care what words the woman used. Just tell me what else was said.”

“Hypothetically.”

“Okay! Hypothetically!”

“She was pretty…weird. Hypothetically. Kind of angry sounding. I said, ‘who is this?' And hypothetically, she said, ‘I'm your mother. Not that bitch. She doesn't have any right to live in that house. You're my daughter. Not hers.' And then she hung up. Hypothetically.” Hot tears welled in Charlie's eyes, although they didn't fall. “I hated the phone call. I got all scared and shook up. Hypothetically.”

Jack tossed down the rag and aimed for the sink and solvent, wanting the stain off his hands lickety split. “It would have shaken me up, too. Did you tell Merry?”

“That's just it. I don't want to tell Merry. She'll get all upset. I don't want her to know. But what if that woman was my mother? Hypothetically. Could she make me go with her? Could she take me away? I mean, she didn't call and say, ‘Hi, I'm your mother and I've missed you all these years.' Like she was someone I could want to know. Or could have wanted to be my mother. Instead, she just started out with the bitch talk. And when I got into bed and tried to sleep, I got scared that maybe she'd hurt Merry. Or take me. And then I couldn't sleep. And I have to get back, because Merry might realize I'm gone. But I was hoping you could tell me what to do.”

Oh, yeah, Jack thought. He needed this on a Tuesday night. With four teenagers in the house, he couldn't leave—even for a few minutes, not if he valued his property or his sanity. He also couldn't leave Charlene to cope with this problem alone—even though it was none of his business. And he couldn't get any further involved with Merry, without suffering “guilt times three.”

My God. Trying to be a cold-blooded man who minded his own business and quit getting suckered into other peoples' lives was a full-time job. Didn't he learn anything from his ex-wife? When you were nice, women—especially women—took you for a doormat. Stomped all over you. Usually in heels.

But this particular female had fuzzy orange slippers and her daddy's soft dark eyes. He said, “Of course I'll tell you what to do, short stuff. Quit worrying. We'll take care of this.”

She brightened up immediately, heaving a sigh of relief that was bigger than she was.

Which was nice, Jack thought. Except the hero hat she'd just given him weighed damn heavy, considering he didn't have a clue how to make this right or what to do. Worse yet, he needed to figure both those things out. Pronto.

T
HE SOUND WAS BARELY
audible. If Merry didn't know better, she'd think someone was hurling peppercorns at her bedroom window. She probably wouldn't have heard it at all if she'd been asleep, but since she was lying there, already suffering nail-biting insomnia, she was more than happy to climb out of bed and check it out.

Talk about a reason to wake up fast.

It was almost as good as a fantasy, finding Jack in the moonlight. He was dressed all in black, dark sweatshirt and pants, scowling up a storm—and balancing precariously with one booted foot on the basement sill just below her bedroom window.

When she lifted the window, he started heaving himself up—but not before hissing in a disgruntled tone, “I'm too damned old to be pulling shenanigans like this. Particularly after midnight. At my age.”

“Well, then. Why are you?” she asked, although truthfully she was charmed. Whoever got the fairy tale come to life, with the knight climbing heights to save her? Of course she didn't need saving. And this particular knight almost got stuck in the window—his shoulders were uncomfortably wide for a double-hung window. Thankfully, there was some squish room.

“Because…I needed to talk to you. About something that wouldn't wait.” He hopped in on one foot, angled the other leg in, closed the window, and then almost got tangled in a trap of lingerie straps on the chair. It wasn't her fault. She'd have vacuumed and dusted and cleaned up if she'd known she was going to entertain a guy after midnight on a weeknight, but as it was, she wasn't apologizing for her lingerie messes. And he was still talking anyway. “I had to wait until the boys were asleep. And then until I was sure Charlene was asleep, too. And I can't believe I'm sneaking around like a kid myself—this is
crazy.
Speaking of which, why in God's name are you sleeping in this crammed, small spare room instead of the master bedroom?”

“Because we're not touching Charles's stuff right now. Until Charlene is ready.” Apparently they were going to speak in whispers. And not turn on a light. Still, she could see his tousled hair in the drift of moonlight from the window, see him standing there, tall and hands-on-hips rattled, trying to catch his breath. She'd never seen him rattled before.

“That's silly, Merry. You're entitled to some space, for heaven's sake.”

Like he'd come here to talk about her choice of sleeping rooms? Right. She sank on the lumpy couch bed, sitting cross-legged. “It probably is silly. As far as her dad's things, I just want to cater to her. But I could have moved upstairs. I just didn't want her sleeping down on this floor alone. And I didn't care.” She wanted to shake her head like a puppy, see if she could clear the muzzy space between her ears. She couldn't seem to stop feeling charmed by his climbing in the window, just like the knight in Rapunzel.

“Well…” Suddenly he seemed to get serious, pushing a hand through his hair. He started pacing, immediately stopped when his foot collided with something silky and feminine. On a new note of panic, he plunked a hip on the foot of her bed. “Look…Merry—”

“Oh, no.” She got it suddenly. An unpleasant flash. The obvious reason he must have come over in a panic like this.

“Oh, no—what?”

“Listen, Jack,” she said in a rush. “Sometimes kids put impossible demands on you. You know how it is. Didn't you do it when you were little? Ask an adult to keep a secret, to keep a confidence—?”

Even in the shadows, she could see Jack visibly start to relax. “Whew. You already know what I was coming to talk to you about.”

She nodded, thinking of Cooper. “But I swear, I was going to tell you as soon as I had a chance. I just haven't caught you alone since the night…” She hesitated.

“The night we made love.”

Maybe he'd caught his breath, but suddenly she couldn't catch hers. Her heart had replayed their lovemaking endless times already. And with him on her bed, in the dark, no matter how fully clothed he was…suddenly those memories were between them softer than stardust and smiles.

“You've had your boys there nonstop. And I couldn't bring up the secret with the boys around,” she said.

He suddenly cocked his head and said slowly, “Wait a minute.”

“Wait for what?”

“This conversation isn't making any sense. You're saying exactly what I came to say. That I was going to tell you the so-called ‘secret,' but I just hadn't had a chance, because I couldn't talk about it when any of the kids could have overheard.” He shoved a hand through his hair again. “My head's going in circles as if I'd had too much to drink. When I haven't had a thing.”

“I didn't think you had,” she assured him.

But Jack looked even more confused. “I mean it, though. I came to tell
you
that
I'd
felt put on the spot. About keeping the secret. About trying to be honest with the kid, valuing the confidence. But believing you needed to know about the situation.”

“Well, I do know the situation, Jack. Because Cooper told me—”

“Huh? How the hell did Cooper know about her mother?”

“Huh? What mother?” Merry had initially felt self-conscious, wearing nothing but an old camisole and underpants. If the atmosphere were romantic, she'd rather be in satin tap pants and a push-up bra with lace. But since it wasn't, she'd just as soon be wearing concealing sweats, like he was. Now, though, she forgot that self-consciousness and started looking as confused as he did. “I feel like we're talking in circles.”

“Ditto on the circles. How did Cooper come into this conversation at all?”

“Because I thought that's who we were talking about,” Merry said wryly.

“Not me. That isn't who I was talking about.” But Jack suddenly scratched his chin. “I think I'm starting to get it. You mean…
Cooper
told you a confidence. Something you didn't tell me.”

“Yes. I already said that.” Merry's head was beginning to spin. “It was too serious a thing to keep from you, Jack, but just like we were both discussing, neither of us have had a second alone since the night we—”

“Made love.”

It was the second time he'd filled in that blank. It seemed easy enough for him. But Merry could feel her body flush with awareness. Her breasts, her thighs, cripes, even her belly button, remembered his touch with exquisite clarity. She wanted again. Wanted him. Jack seemed so alone, so not in touch with his own sense of honor and his giving nature and how wonderful he was.

She had to fight tooth and nail to get her mind tracked to the conversation. “All right, if you didn't come over here to talk about Cooper, then…”

“I came over to tell you about Charlene. She told me something in confidence several hours ago. It was really important to her that I not tell you…but it kept gnawing at me, that this was something you needed to know. And things have been so hectic that I couldn't be sure of finding time to tell you alone, unless I—”

“Climbed in the window,” she finished for him.

“Exactly.” He sighed. “So have we finally got that straight now?”

She knee-walked over to him on the mattress, thinking that nothing was straight. For that matter, if he knew something serious about Charlene—her whole life was that girl right now. Nothing was more important than Charlene.

But Charlene was asleep. And there were a lot of hours before her alarm clock was going to go off in the morning.

Which meant that right now Merry could freely concentrate on something else that deeply concerned her.

When she first leaned in to a kiss, Jack momentarily stiffened—as if he'd never expected the move. That went for two of them, because she'd never expected to make the move, either. Yet right then, she knew, irrevocably knew, that this was the right thing to do.

She expected to get hurt from inviting more closeness with Jack—but she'd expected that from the start. She couldn't imagine Jack wanting a long-term relationship with someone like her—someone who had to look pretty ditzy and impulsive and unserious, compared to a man like him. But this moment wasn't about the future. It just seemed important to her, right then, to love this man. To appreciate him. To communicate something to him, with him, that neither seemed able to do with words.

When her lips sank on his, she felt him sigh all the way through her fingertips. He didn't want this, all right. He didn't want her kisses…like he didn't want to win the lottery. Like he didn't want a harem-filled dream. Like he didn't want to be loved.

She was above him, for that first kiss, because she was still kneeling on the mattress, leaning over to find his mouth…to take his mouth. But her knees started to buckle. She had to sink back on her heels for balance, but she kept her mouth still softly glued on his, her arms slowly slinking around him.

Even though the room was dark, she closed her eyes, just wanting to savor this extraordinary sensation, the shivery sense of wonder that touching him invoked. Last time they'd come together like a fiery comet, all speed and steam. This time, her fingertips glided over neck, shoulders, arms. Not seeking to hold. Seeking to caress, to rub, to knead and know.

And his skin yielded beneath her hands as if no one had just touched him in forever—not for the joy of touching him. Not for the simple sensual pleasure of enjoying the texture of his flesh, the way it warmed for her. The way it gave for her. The way his breath caught, sharpened, for so little provocation.

She'd fought belonging all her life. She'd fought feeling tied to anything. But it was different, feeling loved. At least feeling loved by a man she had fallen so helplessly in love with herself.

She pushed at his sweatshirt, severed the kiss long enough to peel the fabric over his head, and by then was already aiming for another kiss. This one was deep enough, hard enough, rich enough, to topple his balance.

The couch mattress was thin, its springs mean-sharp, the wall so close that Jack could easily have cracked his head—if she hadn't pulled him onto her, out of harm's way. Her one leg dangled over the side, maybe so did his. But the logistics right then didn't seem to matter.

His chest was bare under the sweatshirt, his heart pounding, hard and fast, making her breasts tighten and swell against him. For another two seconds she was still wearing a camisole. For another three seconds after that, she was still wearing underpants.

Bad mattress or no, one of the few things she'd brought from home was her own pillow and down comforter. Jack didn't seem to appreciate those, either, because they graced the floor along with her clothes faster than silver. Faster than secrets. Faster than he could hook his leg around and twist her beneath him.

As if she minded.

One thing she was far more skilled at than Jack, though, was sloth. With him, she liked the idea of making laziness a whole art form. She looped her arms loosely around him, tucked her legs up with a little squeeze action, rolled her pelvis in a slinky dance move. He seemed to know that dance, know that rhythm, because he said against her throat, with the groan of a man in pain, “Damn it, Merry. Quit it. What are you trying to do to me?”

How could she quit? Given that kind of appreciation?

No matter what was wrong in her life…being loved mattered. Loving mattered. She believed that, with her heart, with her soul. She didn't
need
anything from Jack. But feeling loved…just changed things. Made her feel stronger.

Made more things seem possible. And one thing that struck her as imminently possible, just then, was turning a traumatic night into a night of softness and love and fierce-hot sensuality. In fact, it struck her as an ideal moment to take her feminine powers out for a long, lazy spin…

“You're so
not
a good woman, Merry,” Jack hissed at her.

“Oh, thank you.” And yeah, she'd dipped down for a taste. She wasn't normally quite that uninhibited, no matter how much she liked to sell herself outwardly to others, but with Jack…well. It was so much fun. Destroying him. Taking that fine, strong, so serious mind and turning it into a sponge. And it was so easy…

All it took was loving him. Enjoying his body. Taking her time to nip and taste and rub and entice. A kiss here. A tongue there. She gave him a little boob rub…a new idea, one she hadn't thought of before, just pressing her boobs to his chest and then winding her way down, having her breasts guide the way down that long, long torso.

He muttered something harsh and guttural…and for the first time in days, she felt a burst of laughter bubble in her throat. Life definitely hadn't been going too smoothly lately…but damn.

Life wasn't just about problems—or it shouldn't be. It should be about moments like this. When a woman could be with her man. When nothing was going on in the universe but loving. When a woman could vent all the positive psychic energy on her guy that she could possibly conjure up.

Her theory worked just fine until said guy spun her around and leveled her, flat and hard, into the mattress. The face, looming over her in the darkness, looked as sharply carved as a marble statue, but the eyes blazed, dark and hot.