Dream of You (19 page)

             
He ducked his head and kissed her neck, her throat, right over her pulse point, down at the hollow of her throat. Ellie threaded her fingers through the soft, springy licks of his hair, a shiver stealing through her as he pulled down her bra straps.

             
If she was going to balk, it would have to be now. If she changed her mind, she had reached decision time. Jordan didn’t want to make out a little, didn’t want to work around clothes or personal boundaries.

             
Neither did she.

             
Her bra hit the hardwood floor with a muffled sound and his hands slid up her ribs and cupped her breasts. Her hands went back to his hair and curled to fists as his lips trailed down over her collarbone. Lower…

             
“Come here,” he said, and faster than she could protest, he picked her up around the waist and took her to the bed.

             
Too fast
, a tiny hard-to-hear voice of reason whispered against the back of her mind. But it was drowned out by the sound of her own pulse as Jordan sat down on the edge of the mattress and she straddled his lap, skirt hiking up around her hips as her knees hit the bed. Her shoes fell off her feet, clacking against the hardwood, and she sunk her nails in the taut, ropy muscles of his shoulders as he ducked his head to her breasts.

             
Too fast
turned to
too long
– it had been far too long since she’d been this aroused. Her desire felt selfish, but it felt
good
too; good like the heat of his tongue as he took her nipple into his mouth. Good like his hands sliding up her thighs under her skirt.

             
When he pulled her down to the bed and rolled them so he was on top, the last wink of muted sunlight caught the glittering intensity shining in his blue-green eyes. His bare chest to hers, Ellie could feel their pulses pushing against one another. He was smiling though.

             
“Christ.” He flexed his hips into hers and her thoughts turned religious too. “You alright?”

             
“If you have a condom, then yeah.”

             
His grin widened. “In my back pocket.”

16

              “
W
here’d you put the coupons?”

             
“In my wallet.”

             
Jo pulled Tam’s wallet out of the back right pocket of his jeans as they walked down the bread aisle at Kroger, found the bundle of coupons, and put it back.

             
“You getting into my pants used to be a lot hotter than this,” he commented, “as were the days when I didn’t push the cart.”

             
“Grocery shopping isn’t sexy,” she said, voice still laced with fatigue and nausea. He had a point, she thought but wouldn’t say; there had been a time, when they were younger and juiced up on secret sex, when even something as simple as shopping together had sent happy curls of excitement licking through her like steam. Married, pregnant, minus the enchantment and plus morning sickness, it was just a necessary exercise. “Do you want to push the cart or go get my yogurt?”

             
“Gotta tell ya, that sounds equally pussified,” he lamented with a sigh. “But I’ll stick with the cart.”

             
“I’ll be back.”

             
She still felt like dog shit, but she was learning when she could and couldn’t eat. She was a zombie shuffling around in public in sweats and a lopsided ponytail, yes, but she wasn’t vomiting at the moment, and that was progress. Jess thought her degree of sickness meant the baby was a girl. Jo thought it was punishment for getting pregnant without the financial means to house a family.

             
She left Tam to decide which kind of cinnamon raisin bread he wanted and headed for the coolers at the back of the store. Halfway there, she felt a touch on her shoulder.

             
“Miss?”

             
The man standing behind her looked early to mid-sixties, balding on top, graying above his ears. He had a remarkably plain face – leathered and spotted across his forehead by sun, creased heavily at the corners of small, dark eyes. He’d probably never had a strong jaw, but age had softened it further. But he was tall and broad. Dressed in paint-splotched jeans and flannel, he could have been a contractor, a bus driver or custodian. An unremarkable, commonplace sort of man with a large nose and big, blunt hands, in one of which he held the coupons she’d just taken from Tam’s wallet.

             
“I think you dropped these,” he said as he offered them over.

             
“Thanks.” She took them back with a quick, polite smile, and wondered if she was paranoid, or if he lingered a half second too long before he nodded and walked off.

             
You’re losing it
, she told herself as she pulled up in front of the wall of Yoplait that stared at her from the other side of the cooler door. And she was, a little bit. She’d mixed up dog and cat food all day at work; had nearly given a Doberman a shot of cortisone instead of the kennel cough vaccine he needed. She wasn’t eating much which was making her tired and cranky, light-headed. A few fries short of a Happy Meal.

             
She didn’t realize how long she stared at the yogurt until Tam’s reflection came into view in the glass and she watched him lay a hand, and then his chin on top of her head. “It’s a big decision, I know,” he said, and she grinned.

             
“None of it sounds good.”

             
“That’s because it’s yogurt.”

**

“Oh my God.”

              “You don’t have to call me that.”

             
Ellie swatted him and it was a
smack
of her fingertips against his damp chest. “Smartass,” she said, her voice the deep, clear sound of satisfaction.

             
“That’s not what you said about my ass. What was it again?”

             
They were stretched out side-by-side on top of her white, marshmallow comforter, naked, sweat drying in the dark. The moon wasn’t up yet, but there was a security lamp down below in the driveway and it radiated a hazy yellow light up to the window. When Jordan rolled his head to the side, he saw Ellie beside him, her arms up above her head, a gold ring rimming her silhouette; the pert slip of her nose, the flat stretch of stomach and hipbones, the swell of her breasts and the tight buttons of her nipples. She was, in a word, gorgeous. And under the shyness and blushing, she was a girl who dug her heels into the mattress and lifted her hips to meet his, her nails carving grooves in his biceps. That luscious, old Hollywood body was even better without the clothes, the soft, feminine parts of her fitting in the hollows of his own stark, hard body.

             
He’d slept with one of his students, and though he kept waiting for the shame to drop, it never did.

             
Ellie rolled toward him as he watched, raising up with one arm propped beneath her head. Her breasts fell against his arm. The whites of her eyes gleamed as she rolled them. “I
said
, it was cute.”

             
“Oh. You couldn’t come up with anything better than that? Aren’t you a writer?”

             
“Ha,” she said, voice flat, but smile dazzling. She was – like he was a little bit, if he was honest – high as a damn kite on how great the sex had been. “Insult the chef, and you don’t get to eat. You hungry?”

             
“Starving.”

             
He watched her bottom lip get pulled between her teeth and decided he liked it better when it was his teeth. “Do you eat salad? With chicken on it? It’s chick food, I know.”

             
“I’ll eat anything,” he said and slid a hand down the flat of her belly that she caught with a laugh.

             
“Yeah, but if you want
food
, you have to - ”

             
The metallic
thunk
of a car door closing echoed down in the drive and Ellie swore.

             
“What?”

             
“Paige,” she groaned, sitting up and pushing her hair off her face. “I promised her I’d help her bake tonight.”

             
And just like that, Jordan felt his little timeout from reality slipping away, the world crashing back in the form of a big-mouthed, pink-haired chick who came in the back door hollering, “Ellie!” at the top of her lungs.

             
The Ellie in question was already off the bed and moving toward the closet, her skin like rich, white cream in the dark.

             
“I’m sorry,” she said as she pushed the door back and began pulling out clothes. She ducked into a long, dark sweatshirt that hung down almost to her knees and snapped out a pair of what looked like black leggings. “I’m still cooking, though, I swear.” There was a mix of hope and doubt on her face, like she was afraid some spell had been broken too. “Come down when you’re ready.”

             
She left him with a long glance and a smile that said “please.”

             
He had to give her credit for that smile; she was realistic enough to know the odds of him staying were slim. Worse than slim, really. He’d walked in the door and gone straight for the goods; he hadn’t paid for dinner or a movie or flowers. Forget cheap date, she’d been a free date. And wasn’t that what he’d been telling himself for weeks? He’d needed to get laid.

Mission accomplished.
This was the part where he offered some weak-ass excuse and checked out. She was eighteen and sweet, she’d be wounded, but it wasn’t as if he’d promised her anything. She shouldn’t have any expectations.

Jordan
slid off her bed and found his clothes, dressed. He raked a hand through his hair and realized it was a lost cause. He could smell the sex on himself. Whatever.

As he descended
the stairs, he could hear Ellie and Paige’s voices as indistinct murmurs beneath the
hiss
of something cooking. The smell was incredible – limes and spices and grilling meat. He hit the foyer, silent as he always was, and could see the girls through the heavy moldings and sashes of the door that led into the kitchen. They couldn’t have looked more different, but they moved around one another like the oiled cogs of a clock; Ellie was at the stove top and Paige was amassing all manner of bowls and rubber spatulas at the island. The tidy room he’d entered before had been transformed. There were egg cartons and milk jugs, canisters dusted with flour fingerprints. It was a feminine sort of kitchen chaos with which he was very familiar. And in her too-big sweatshirt, skillet steam curling her hair, Ellie was the picture of stability and domesticity that should have sent him running.

His intention was to keep walking, straight out the front door like the sleaze ball he’d become over the last several years.

Instead, he went into the kitchen.

“Well hey there, C
oach,” Paige flashed him a not-so-sly, not-as-coy-as-she-thought-it-was smile over the top of a canister of what looked like sugar. “What are you doing here?”

“Cut it out,” Ellie said before Jordan could say a more flavorful version.
“He doesn’t think you’re funny.”

“You don’t know that. I am
so
funny.”

“And clearly you
so
don’t have self-esteem issues,” Jordan said flatly as he went deeper into the room, magnetically drawn toward the scent radiating off the stove. He ignored Paige’s feigned display of hurt and sidled up to Ellie. Her half-hidden little smile was the result of their proximity, he knew, but it had something to do with him staying too. Not only had he thought of bailing, but she’d expected it. “What did you put on that?” he asked of the green-speckled chicken on the grill pan that she was flipping with tongs.

“Lime, cilantro, parsley, garlic and just a smidge of olive oil,” she said with the sort of familiarity that meant she’d made this more than a time or two. She flipped the last one and set her tongs aside on a spoon rest that was a blue ceramic cat. Her eyes lifted up to his and he was relieved to see that all her initial nerves and hesitancy were gone. She looked like he
felt, mellowed out and gratefully tired, but there was a certain curiosity radiating off her, like she was wondering what his next move would be.

Like she expected him to disappoint her.

He hadn’t disappointed on the track that morning and suddenly, he had no intention of doing so here either.

“
Whatcha think?”

“If it tastes like it smells, you
oughta transfer to culinary school.”

She rolled her eyes in a move he was coming to learn was standard.
“It’ll be done in ten minutes tops.”

“And then you’re helping me,” Paige said from behind them.

“Yes,” Ellie sighed. “And then I’m helping you.” She shot him an apologetic look.
She’s like an infant
, she mouthed.

He grinned.
I noticed
.

“Okay, Romeo.” H
e felt what he suspected was Paige’s elbow dig into his ribs. “Too many cooks in the kitchen.”

“Paige,” Ellie sighed. “Why?”

“Because he’s in my way!”

At some point, Jordan thought to himself, he needed to thank his sisters for not being anything like this pink monstrosity. But for the moment, he found an empty chair over at the table covered in boxes and resolved to watch a very hot girl make him dinner.

**

             
“Pop?”

             
“Pop of Paige Cakes,” Paige said, full to bursting with the pride she had for her baby. A baby that, given the hours she spent in an apron, Ellie was pretty invested in as well. “And if you abbreviate it, it’s P.O.P, so see? It’s the same all the way around. Pretty cool huh?”

             
The cake boxes were in the floor and the three of them were at the table, dinner plates pooled with salad dressing and dotted with lettuce scraps stacked off to the side. Paige was being her usual self: she was a tsunami, crashing over people whether they wanted her to or not, bringing out the best or worst of the victim’s patience.

             
Jordan, she was surprised and pleased to see, was humoring her friend quite well. His dry sense of humor was a good contrast to Paige’s…Paige-ness, and he seemed to get a kick out of frustrating her. It was an approach Ellie might have used herself if she wasn’t locked into her best friends forever pact.

             
“It sounds…” Jordan pretended to chew it over. “Pink.”

             
“Exactly!” Paige was sitting on her legs, elbows on the table, and bolted upright. “You get it. See, El, he gets it. Okay, you have to try my latest and greatest.” And off she went like a hummingbird over toward the covered cake plate tucked under the microwave.