Fast & Loose (22 page)

She thought about all the times she’d worked with him when she’d been going out with other guys. All the times she’d talked to one of the other female bartenders—while Rufus was within earshot—about a date she’d had the night before with some wealthy guy she’d managed to snag. She thought of the times she’d come into the bar with a date when he was working. And she thought about how he must have felt on those occasions. She’d always known Rufus had a thing for her. But she’d never realized it went as far as this.

She told herself she should apologize. But that might just sound patronizing. So all she said was, “I didn’t know it was like that.”

He shrugged. “Now you do.”

Something about the way he said that made it seem like he was tacking on an unvoiced,
So what are you going to do about it?
But really, what he was probably thinking was,
So what am
I
going to do about it?

They stood there in silence for a moment, each clearly having no idea what to say. There was something heavy and uncomfortable hanging between them that was thick enough to hack with a meat cleaver, but damned if Bree could identify exactly what it was. Tension, maybe. Embarrassment. Confusion. All of the above.

“Maybe I should go,” she finally said. She even went so far as to take a small step backward, into the hall.

“No,” Rufus said quickly, completing three giant steps to catch up to her. “No, you shouldn’t. I promised you dinner. And I always deliver.”

She took another step backward into the hallway, a larger one than was probably necessary to let him pass. If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. And if he seemed to take a larger step than necessary to get around her, well…Bree pretended not to see it.

She followed him to the kitchen, which, like the rest of the house, was cozy and well appointed with everything anyone could need to feel comfortable. The furniture here was older and well used, too, but sturdy and nice. He had all the essential appliances like a coffeemaker, toaster oven, and microwave, and a few that surprised her—espresso maker, bread machine, food processor.

“I didn’t know you liked to cook,” she said, remarking on those last two.

He shrugged. “It’s not a passion,” he said. “I just like to be self-sufficient.”

“Next you’ll be telling me you grow your own food in the backyard.”

He colored a little at that.

She laughed. “No way.”

“Just tomatoes and peppers. Those
are
passions. And maybe a few herbs, too.”

“Do you have a microbrewery in the basement?”

Now he laughed, too. “No. But there’s some Red Stripe in the fridge.”

Her favorite brand. What a shocker.

He went to the fridge and pulled out two of those, along with a ceramic bowl in which, she discovered, he was marinating a couple of steaks. After opening the beers, he pushed a button on the portable CD player on the counter, and the room was filled with mellow guitar.

He tilted his head toward the back door. “Keep me company while I light the grill. It’s such a nice evening, I thought we could eat out. Literally.”

The hours that followed were some of the most pleasant Bree had spent in a long time. She didn’t do enough of this, she thought as Rufus brought a couple of after-dinner coffees out to the deck for them to enjoy. By now, the sun had dipped behind the trees, and the sky was stained with the last orange and gold remnants of daylight. The mellow guitar music had segued to sexy saxophone, and when she sipped her coffee, she realized Rufus had laced it with Frangelico—another favorite. As she leaned against the deck railing beside him, she could feel what little tension was left in her body gradually easing away. Even more important, the anxiety that normally gnawed at her brain began to evaporate, too.

“You have a really nice place here, Rufus,” she said softly as she watched a rabbit in the far corner of the yard nibble at a patch of clover.

“You sound surprised,” he replied just as softly.

She set her coffee mug on the deck railing and turned to face him. “I guess I kind of am.”

He turned to face her, too, but still cupped both hands around his own mug. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess you just never struck me as the home and hearth type.”

He hesitated only a moment before saying, “Maybe that’s because you never tried to find out what type I am.”

“True enough,” she admitted.

He dropped his gaze down to his mug. “And now that you know what type I am?” he asked.

Oh, that was a question Bree really couldn’t let herself answer. So she lifted her mug again, drank deeply of the rich brew, and said, “How do you manage it? Owning a home like this doing the kind of work you do? I barely manage to make ends meet by month’s end. But you have this great place, and all these creature comforts, even though you always seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t need much to be happy.”

As she spoke, he continued to study his coffee, never once looking up at her. When he finally did lift his gaze to hers again, he seemed more tired than he had before. He seemed distant. He seemed disappointed. Nevertheless, he played along.

“I am a guy who doesn’t need a lot to be happy,” he told her. “A roof over my head that doesn’t leak, a steady income that allows me to live above the poverty level, the love of a special woman I know will be by my side forever. That would do it for me.” He lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “Two out of three ain’t bad, I guess. Unfortunately, it’s that third one I don’t have that I consider most important.”

“Rufus…”

“Look, Bree, I’m not trying to put you on the spot. But the same way you’ve always been honest with me about what you want, I want to be honest with you about what I want. It’s only fair.”

To both of them, she supposed. It couldn’t have been easy for Rufus the last two years, caring for her the way he did and she not reciprocating. Why should he make it easy on her? Especially since, thanks to that little interlude in her kitchen last week, she’d given him some small hope that she returned his feelings. Of course, she did return his feelings. That was the problem. She just couldn’t afford to, that was all.

Instead of pressing the subject, which a lesser man might do, Rufus went back to the original topic. “I’ve worked at one job or another since I was thirteen,” he told her. “First cutting people’s lawns and washing their cars and babysitting. Then, when I turned sixteen, I started working real jobs. Sometimes two if I could swing it. Where my friends in high school graduated and went to college, I went to work.”

“Why didn’t you go to college?” she asked.

“Didn’t want to,” he said matter-of-factly. “I never liked school, except for playing basketball. I knew I’d hate college, too, unless I could go on a basketball scholarship, and that didn’t happen. Work I didn’t mind so much, so I went for that. I’d been saving my money since I was a kid, so I kept on. Like you said, it doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. I didn’t spend that much. Eventually, I had enough to put down on a house with a mortgage that doesn’t run me much more than paying rent would.” He looked back at the house. “It wasn’t this nice when I bought it. I’ve put a lot of work into it.” He smiled when he realized he’d used the word
work
again. “Different kind of work,” he said, “but still enjoyable.”

“But you could have made a lot more money if you went to college,” she said. “You could’ve gotten a better job with better prospects.”

“Oh, like you?” he asked. But there was nothing bitter or sarcastic in his voice. It was just a very good point.

“Yeah, okay, but still,” she said. “You could’ve majored in something besides English.”

He shrugged again. “I didn’t want to, Bree. People who go to college get all bogged down in getting ahead, and getting promoted, and getting the company car, and getting the corner office…getting, getting, getting. I didn’t want to fall into that lifestyle. I just wanted to be able to work at a job I enjoy, then come home at the end of the day to a house I can call my own and to the woman I love. Maybe add a golden retriever to the mix at some point. And maybe, someday, if the planets are aligned correctly, a coupla kids, too.” He met her gaze levelly. “What more is there than that?”

He already knew the answer to that, but she repeated it, anyway. “There’s taking care of your mom,” she said quietly. “There’s needing to know she won’t wind up in some craphole where they don’t give a damn about her. There’s knowing that after she took care of you for twenty-five years, you have an obligation to take care of her.”

“It doesn’t take a million bucks to do that, Bree.”

“Do some reading on the health care industry, Rufus. It takes even more.”

She couldn’t do this, Bree thought. She couldn’t stand out here on this gorgeous, gentle night with this gorgeous, gentle guy and try to justify not being with him. Because there was no justification for that, not really. And if she gave in to what she wanted to do at the moment, it would just make things harder tomorrow—for both of them.

“Look, thanks for dinner,” she said quickly. “But I have to go.”

“Bree, no.”

“This has been a really nice night, and you’re a good guy—no, a great guy—but I have to go, Rufus.”

He opened his mouth to object again, so she gave in to a lesser impulse. Pushing herself up on tiptoe, she covered his mouth with hers—briefly, intensely, hotly. She skimmed the tip of her tongue along his bottom lip, stole a quick taste of the corner of his mouth, then pulled away.

“Thanks again,” she said breathlessly. “For everything.”

Then she turned and hurried through the back door, through the comfy kitchen and relaxing living room, across the cozy front porch and down the flower-lined walk, ignoring Rufus’s petitions for her to come back. She braved a look at the house and saw him standing on the front porch watching her, one arm braced against a column, still holding his coffee in the other hand. The lights inside the house fairly glowed behind him, bathing him in an otherworldly amber light. Any sane, smart woman would be on that porch with him, looping one arm through his, curling the other around his waist, pulling him close in a way that told him she never planned to let him go.

Bree turned the key in the ignition. She threw the car into gear. And then, with only one quick look back, she sped away.

WHEN COLE TOLD LULU HE WANTED TO GO DO
something fun, this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. Not that he hadn’t been to artsy functions before, but this one was a little weird, even by southern California standards.

He looked at the four…Well, he supposed
artists
would be the right word, since they were four people and Lulu had told Cole this was an art gallery. But at the moment, he was hard-pressed to be able to actually identify them as people. Certainly, he wasn’t able to tell what any of their genders were, even though they were all stark naked. In fact, the only way he knew there were four people on the platform in a corner of the tiny darkened gallery was because each was painted a different color. A different Day-Glo color. None of which complemented the others. One was sort of pink. One was kind of orange. The third was in the green family—barely. And although Cole had never actually seen the color puce before, he was pretty sure that was what the last color was. Up ’til now, though, he’d always thought the existence of puce was one of those urban legends whose validity nobody could prove.

Their bodies, however, complemented each other very well. In fact, they complemented each other so well that Cole was keeping one eye on the door at all times, just in case the vice squad raided the place.

Well, okay, maybe it wasn’t so weird by southern California standards—he was pretty sure he’d seen something almost just like this on Venice Beach once where all the bodybuilders worked out—but it was still definitely weird.

“It’s performance art,” Lulu said softly beside him, evidently sensing his, ah…bewilderment? Yeah, that was it. Bewilderment was a much better word for what he was actually feeling. “The human body and its natural movements as an art form,” she continued.

Okay,
that
he could see. Not in this particular performance piece, since what they were doing wasn’t what he would call natural, on account of it had to be painful to keep your legs in that position for any length of time, but he could see it elsewhere. In fact, he’d been seeing Lulu’s body and its natural movements as an art form ever since she’d opened the door at Bree’s apartment. The way she looked tonight…

Well. Let him just say that, had Michelangelo been around today, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would be all Lulu, all the time. As would be the walls of the Sistine Chapel. And the floors of the Sistine Chapel. And the nave, apse, and transept, too. Never let it be said that Cole Early hadn’t paid attention in his Art History 101 class. And had the Sistine Chapel been painted to look like Lulu, he would have changed his major pronto.

She just looked so beautiful. He’d thought she was pretty the first time he saw her. And all the other times, too. But with the addition of a little color and a little sparkle, Lulu Flannery came alive. Tonight, she looked as colorful and vivacious as the house she called home. And since leaving the party, she’d begun to act more colorful and vivacious, too. The moment he’d suggested they leave the reception, the color had come back to her features, and her smile had become less strained. As they’d driven to the art exhibit she’d told him she wanted to see, she’d gradually warmed up even more. But it was only once they entered the funky little gallery housed in what she’d told him was an old fire station on Main Street, that Lulu had really come alive.

Surrounded by the art and artists that made up her world, Lulu was clearly in her element. He’d actually felt her physically relax as they entered the darkened room, and she seemed to genuinely breathe more easily in this rarefied air. It was funny, because the atmosphere had had the opposite effect on Cole. While he considered himself a chameleon in many ways and could make himself at least look at home in just about any environment, this one eluded him.

It wasn’t that Lulu’s friends and colleagues were unwelcoming. On the contrary, whenever she’d introduced him to someone, they’d been warm, friendly, and open. None had pestered him about his trainer status, either, even though many knew who he was. He ought to feel more comfortable here than he had in any number of other situations this week. But the whole creative vibe was one that made him a little nervous. That artistic types could create something that was often transcendently beautiful out of virtually nothing was just getting too close to the whole Meeting His Maker thing.

Funny, though, how he didn’t feel that way when he was around Lulu. Maybe because she was a maker he’d gotten to know beforehand. And maybe because she was a maker he wanted to get to know better.

“You don’t like it, do you?” she asked now, her disappointment in his pedestrianism clear.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I’m sure it’s brilliant. It’s just not my thing.”

She made an
Oh, well
gesture with her shoulders. “That’s okay. Art is subjective. But if you hate my stuff, will you promise to pretend you like it?”

“I
love
your stuff,” he said. “I already told you that.”

“I know, but I thought you were just pretending to like it.”

“No,” he assured her. “Like I said, I’m not the foremost authority on art, but it doesn’t take a genius to see how gifted you are.”

She smiled shyly at the praise. “Thanks.”

“In fact, I’d like to see more of it. Do you have a studio somewhere? I mean, I didn’t see anyplace at your house that looks like you work there.”

“No, I don’t work at home. I do actually have a studio. It’s not far from here.”

“When can I come by?”

Her smile fell. “Gee, I don’t know, Cole. I get kind of wiggy about having people in my studio. There’s a lot of work in progress there, and I don’t like sharing it with anyone until it’s done.”

“But seeing work in progress is so fascinating,” he objected. “Work in progress is so much more spontaneous and genuine than the finished product. It’s so much purer. In a lot of ways, the work in progress is more honest than the finished product.”

She arched her brows in surprise. “Wow. That’s really pithy. You sound like a real connoisseur.”

He laughed. “Actually, I was thinking about horses. About the whole process of going from foal to yearling to race status. That’s a different kind of work in progress, but you ask me, it’s still art.”

“I totally agree,” she said, brightening. “It’s performance art. Only in that case, it’s the horse’s body and its natural movements as an art form.”

He looked at the, ah, piece on the platform again. The four bodies were in a different position than they had been in before, but Cole had missed the actual motion. Did that mean he’d missed the art? Dang. Too bad.

“So can I come to your studio sometime?” he asked again.

She didn’t answer at first, but dropped her gaze to the glass of wine she’d been nursing since their arrival. Which, he supposed, was an answer itself.

So he added, “It’s just that you can learn a lot more about people when you see them in the environment they love most. The environment they’re most comfortable in.”

Finally, but still without looking up, she told him, “But that’s just the point, Cole. It’s not an easy thing you’re asking. Almost no one has ever visited my studio. I’m very protective of it. And of my art. They’re both like extensions of myself, you know? My art and my studio and my creative process…All of them are a big part of me, and I don’t share them that easily.”

“But you make your living selling your art, don’t you? You have to share it eventually.”

She nodded. “Yeah, but the only pieces that go out in the world are the ones I choose to put there. And only when I’m ready to share them with others. The only pieces I sell are the ones I know are perfect. Or as close to perfect as I can make them. It’s the flawed ones that I don’t want anyone to ever see. And my studio, Cole…” She rolled her eyes and shuddered for effect, an action he supposed was meant to be comical, but instead looked more fearful than she probably knew. “My studio is full of flawed pieces. My process is a messy process.” She dropped her gaze again as she continued, “A lot of times, I have no idea what I’m doing. A lot of times, I make huge mistakes.”

Cole curled a finger under her chin and gently nudged her head up so that she was looking at him. “But it’s the flaws, Lulu, that are the most interesting. And sometimes it’s the biggest mistakes that lead to the greatest discoveries.”

She said nothing in response to that, only met his gaze in silence. But her lips parted fractionally, as if she wanted to say something but was afraid to put voice to it. Thanks to the darkness of the gallery—and the even darker corner into which they had wandered—her pupils were wide and dark, yet somehow her eyes seemed brighter, too. Two faint spots of color bloomed on her cheeks as he studied her, and her breathing suddenly seemed to quicken, her breasts rising and falling noticeably above the scooped neck of her dress. Her spicy scent teased his senses, taunting him, tempting him, making him want things he really shouldn’t be wanting in a public place, even if it was a corner of that place that was dark. And secluded. And quiet.

He started to say something else, something about perfection being overrated, because once you achieved it, what was the point of going on? Instead, before he even realized what he intended, he was dipping his head to brush his lips over Lulu’s, once, twice, three times, four. Then he was cupping her face in both hands and slanting his mouth over hers to kiss her more deeply. She covered his hands with hers and kissed him back, firing a shot of something hot and needy right to his core.

It was damned near close to perfect. But not quite. So what else could he do but go on?

The second kiss was even better than the first, maybe because this time they each took a step closer and their bodies touched as well as their hands. Or maybe this time it was because they were both a little more confident. A little more daring. A little more passionate. This time, Cole dropped a hand to her bare shoulder, skimming his thumb along her collarbone…back and forth and back again…softly, leisurely, methodically. He dragged his fingertips to the base of her throat, then brushed his bent knuckles up over her tender flesh until he could curl his hand over her nape and kiss her more deeply.

She was so soft, so warm, so responsive. He gently nipped her lower lip, making her gasp, rolling his tongue into her mouth when she did. She accepted him enthusiastically, opening her mouth wider, inviting him deeper still. As he intensified the kiss, he dropped his other hand, too, moving it down over her other shoulder, flattening his palm on the warm skin above the neck of her dress. Then he nudged it even lower, splaying his fingers wide over her breast.

For a long moment, they seemed suspended that way, his tongue in her mouth, her breast in his hand, the fire in his belly raging out of control. Then she was pulling away, tugging away the hand on her breast and ducking her head in a way that left his mouth at her temple. So he kissed her there instead. He understood. They were in a public place, even if it was a darkened corner, and there were people here she knew well, among whom she didn’t want to generate chatter. But that one embrace had only enflamed Cole with the desire for more, and there was no way he was going to spend the rest of the evening A) pretending it didn’t happen or B) pretending it wasn’t going to happen again.

So he lowered his mouth to her ear and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

He was prepared for her to say no, that they couldn’t leave yet. And he told himself if she did, he’d stay. For five more minutes, and then they were outta there. Instead, she nodded silently and laced the fingers of their clasped hands together. She said nothing to him as they threaded their way back through the gallery toward the exit, only smiled at the handful of people she knew and lightly bid them good night, sounding no more flustered by what had happened than she would be by reading the program they’d been handed at the door upon arrival.

They made the short walk to Cole’s car in silence, too. He watched her closely as he unlocked her door and handed her in, but she never once made eye contact with him. He watched her through the windshield as he rounded the front of the car to the driver’s side, but she kept her gaze firmly focused on her lap. Once he was seated inside, she lifted her gaze to look straight ahead. But still she said not a word.

So after starting the car, he turned to look at her and asked, “Where to?”

Still gazing straight ahead, she said, “Home. Take me home.”

Excellent, Cole thought. He couldn’t imagine a more perfect place to make love to her the first time—or the second or third—than the bedroom in her house that was both hers and his.

She turned to look at him then. “Bree’s apartment, I mean.”

Wait a minute. That wasn’t home. “Bree’s?” he said.

She nodded. “It’s been a long night. It’s time to go home.”

“Yeah, but your house is—”

“My house is being rented right now,” she told him. “For now, my home is at Bree’s.” His confusion—hell, his disappointment—must have shown on his face, because she added, “We can’t do what you’re thinking you want to do.”

The hell they couldn’t. Had it not been for the fact that they’d been standing in a public place, they’d be doing it right now. Aloud, however, he said, “I’m not
thinking
I want to make love to you, Lulu. I
do
want to make love to you.” She closed her eyes when he said it so baldly. In spite of that—or maybe because of it—he added, “And the way you responded to me back there, I think you’re more than thinking about it, too.”

“All I did was kiss you,” she said softly. “That doesn’t mean I want to fall into bed with you.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “But you didn’t want to stop what was happening any more than I did.”

“No,” she admitted.

“Then kiss me again.”

She closed her eyes at that, too. But she only said, “We’re in the middle of a parking lot, just as exposed as we were inside.”

Oh, the ideas that popped into his head when she said that. Instead of putting voice to them, though—instead of putting voice to anything—Cole threw the car into gear.