Hidden Treasures (15 page)

He lowered the bottle and lifted her hand, instead, folding his long, strong fingers around it. “Erica,” he said quietly.

His eyes continued to burn into her, but his mouth curved in a smile, as if to remind her that none of this was serious or significant.

It felt way too serious and significant to her. She rose to her feet, scrambling for a polite way to go when saying goodbye was the last thing she wanted to do.

He stood, as well, his hand still surrounding hers, warm and hard. “Don’t tell me you’re leaving.”

“I’m leaving.” He didn’t tighten his grip on her hand, yet she seemed unable to slide it free. “Jed, what happened last night—”

“Was fantastic,” he said completing the sentence.
“Come here.” He pulled her toward him and wrapped his other arm around her.

“Jed.”

He brushed his lips against her forehead. Unwanted heat spiraled down through her.

“Jed, really. Let’s not get started.”

“We already got started. We’re just continuing,” he said, as calmly as if they were debating semantics.

“Let’s not continue then. You’re going to leave Rockwell, Jed. I’m going to stay.”

“So?”

“So, what’s the point of continuing?”

He touched his mouth to her forehead again, a simple, devastating kiss. “The point is,” he murmured, his body as warm and hard against her as his hand had been, “we’re two adults, and we’re attracted to each other, so why not take advantage of the situation?” He lifted her hand to his mouth and grazed her knuckles.

Oh, God, he was good. Way too good. Erica might have degrees from Harvard and Brown, but she was pretty ignorant when it came to men this good. This
bad
. All her book learning, all the seminars and lectures and symposia she’d attended within the ivy-covered walls of her esteemed schools, had failed to teach her how to distinguish bad from good at a time like this.

“I’ll feel awful afterward,” she said, sounding like a skittish teenager.

“No, you won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” He slid his free hand down her back to her waist and then back up again. She imagined his hand directly on her skin, rather than stroking her through layers of clothing, and the notion made her shudder. As long as he was touching her, she wouldn’t feel awful.

“I meant after you’re gone.”

“Why? We’re not talking marriage, Erica. We’re not talking commitment and forever. Just something nice and sweet and in the present.” He kissed her forehead again, then the tip of her nose and at last her mouth, her waiting, eager mouth.

She tasted wine on his lips. She tasted heat and sex. Why not? she thought. Why not just this nice, sweet, present thing? Afterward could take care of itself.

She reached up to cup her hands over his shoulders. He deepened the kiss and she clung to him so she wouldn’t do something awkward, like lose her balance and collapse—or start arguing about the propriety of what they were doing, what they would likely be doing in just a few minutes if this kiss didn’t cool down fast. She held on tight and let him kiss her, and kissed him back.

He sighed, obviously sensing only her acquiescence, not her ambivalence. His tongue slid deep into her mouth and he pulled her even tighter, tangling his fingers into her hair, pressing his thighs against hers.

She heard music, soft and tinkly, a few bars of what sounded like an old Pearl Jam song performed on a glockenspiel. She’d never heard bells from a kiss before, but she thought that if they signaled her being swept away by passion, they might play something a bit more romantic than Pearl Jam.

Jed leaned back. She heard the same few bars of the song again. “Damn,” he said, breaking from her and moving to the refrigerator. He leaned against the counter there, breathing deeply for a moment, apparently struggling for control. On the counter next to his hands sat a cell phone. It emitted another Pearl Jam riff in gentle bell tones. “I should have ignored it,”
he muttered before hitting the button and lifting it to his ear. “Jed Willetz,” he snapped into the phone. She tried to read his expression as he listened to his caller: first irritation, then bewilderment, then anger. “Derrick Messinger?” he growled. “How the hell did you get this number?”

A
DD TO ALL THE THINGS
Jed already didn’t like about Derrick Messinger—his phony-looking hair, his phony-sounding voice, his ego-driven, sensationalistic reports on totally stupid topics, his sweeping into town like a whirlwind of attitude—the fact that he had somehow gotten hold of Jed’s cell phone number and phoned just in time to interrupt one of the most luscious kisses Jed had ever experienced. Right now, Messinger held the number-one spot on Jed’s deserves-to-die-a-painful-death list.

His heart was still beating a bit too hard. His groin was still feeling a bit too primed for action. Across the room, Erica watched him, her lips glistening from the kiss, her eyes slightly unfocused, her chest heaving with each uneven breath. He ought to disconnect the damn phone and carry her upstairs to bed.

But Messinger was talking, babbling in his trademark baritone, smooth but with an edge of excitement, the sort of delivery that could make the opening of a gas station sound as though it was part of a horrible plot to destroy the world’s population of sperm whales. Messinger’s words spilled out of the phone so fast Jed couldn’t make much sense of them. Then again, his mind was miles away—or, more accurately, about ten feet away, across the room where Erica stood.

“How did you get this number?” he asked again when Messinger paused to catch his breath.

Messinger chuckled. “I’m an investigative reporter, Mr. Willetz. I know how to find things out.”

The steam in Jed’s brain slowly dissipated. “My father,” he grunted. He’d given his cell phone number to his father last year, when advancing age had begun to stake its claim on Jed’s grandfather, so his father could contact him if the old man started to fail. John had died three months ago, and Jed had assumed his father would have forgotten the phone number by now, or at least forgotten where he’d placed the scrap of paper on which he’d jotted it. Apparently Jack wasn’t quite as stupid as Jed had counted on him to be. “How much did you pay him?”

Messinger only chuckled again.

Jed didn’t join the laughter. “It better have been a lot,” he muttered. “If he sold my number cheap—”

Messinger shut down the chuckles with an abruptness that proved how fake they’d been. “I know there are other reporters nosing around town,” he said, “but let’s face it, I’m the marquee name. I’m the one with the resources to put together a class story about Rockwell.”

Given how little class Rockwell had, Jed doubted that. “If you want to do a story, be my guest. Just don’t expect me to help you.”

“Mr. Willetz.” Messinger paused for dramatic effect, then said, in a creamy, let’s-get-friendly voice, “Jed. You’re the story’s lynchpin. You’re the son of one of the town fathers.”

If Jack Willetz was a town father, Jed was the secretary of state. “Give me a break,” he snapped. “You
want to kiss butt? You’re wasting all those smooches, buddy. I’m not going to be a part of your class story.”

He pulled the phone away from his ear, searching with his thumb for the off button, but Messinger’s voice drilled through the air and he lifted the phone back to his ear. “You live right next door to her. If you don’t want to contribute to what’s going to be a fair, balanced report—”

About what?
Jed wondered. How fair and balanced the citizens of Rockwell were? How fair and balanced that dirt-crusted old box Erica had dug up was?

“You’re in a position to facilitate a meeting with my people and Erica Leitner. All we want is to talk to her, to expand our coverage of the phenomenon she unearthed in her backyard garden.”

“It’s not a phenomenon. It’s a box.”

“The thing is, Erica Leitner is the person I need to reach, to get the unvarnished story from the source, as it were. But she’s not home right now.”

Jed gazed at Erica. She’d regained some control over herself. Her cheeks were no longer flushed; her breathing, no longer ragged. She got busy carrying the dirty dishes to the sink, but he could tell she was listening to his end of the conversation. “Am I supposed to know where she is?” he asked Messinger.

“That’s not what I’m saying. The thing is, we want to narrow in on her and the box, to create a layered, textured report. Who she is. Where she lives. What the box represents.”

“It’s a box,” Jed reminded him again. “It doesn’t represent anything.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Jed. It represents
everything
.” Messinger said this with such authority Jed almost believed him. Then he caught himself. To
say the box represented
everything
was bullcrap, the inflated words of a man who inflated stories so he could satisfy his inflated ego.

“I’ve got to go,” Jed announced into the phone. Erica had turned on the water and added a squirt of dishwashing soap to the sink.

“Fine. I’m sure we’ll be speaking again. Meanwhile, if you happen to see your neighbor, please tell her I’m going to get her.” With a smug, silky laugh, Messinger hung up.

At last Jed did what he should have done five minutes ago—pressed the off button. “Derrick Messinger said to tell you he’s going to get you,” he informed her.

She sighed and stared into the mound of suds in the sink. “That sounds like a threat.”

“You want me to run interference?” he asked, approaching her.

“How can anyone run interference? I’m not going to hide in my house. I can’t. I’ve got my job, I’ve got to finish planting my garden, and Dr. Gilman is arriving in town tomorrow. Poor Dr. Gilman. Derrick Messinger is going to pounce on him.”

“He’s a hotshot Harvard man. He can defend himself,” Jed predicted. Soapsuds skittered over Erica’s narrow wrists, leaving streaks of shine on her skin. He imagined she would look spectacular in a bubble bath. She’d probably look even better in a clear bath, without bubbles obscuring any part of her anatomy. He wondered how he could delete Messinger and Gilman from the discussion and get back to where he and Erica had been before the phone had rung.

As if she could read his mind, she said, “No.”

“No, what?”

She rubbed a sponge diligently over a plate. “No, I’m not going to sleep with you.”

He resisted the impulse to argue. Arguing wouldn’t get him where he wanted to go. “Okay,” he said, doing his best to sound agreeable. “We can just stick with kissing for now.” He slid his hand under her hair and caressed her nape.

She tossed down the sponge and turned to face him, backing up until his hand fell away. “Don’t, Jed. And don’t give me another line about how we’re two adults in the present. You may not like to think beyond the present, but I do.”

She reached for the sponge again, but he blocked her before she could lift it. “I don’t need you doing my dishes.”

“You helped with the dishes last night.”

“Yeah, well, that was the past. I’m thinking in the present.” Instead of returning to her neck, he cupped his hand under her chin, letting his fingers stretch along her cheek. Her skin was cool and smooth. “So maybe nothing more is going to happen between us. We’re still neighbors, right?”

“Temporarily,” she said in a taut voice.

“In the present. And I just protected you from
I’m Just the Messinger
, so you ought to be bursting with gratitude instead of acting like a fussy little virgin.”

“Bursting with gratitude?” She cracked a tepid smile. “What did he want, anyway?”

“He wanted to know everything about you—your blood type, your taste in music, whether you wear thong underwear.”

“Yeah, right.” Her smile grew fuller.

“He wants me to—what were his words? ‘Facilitate a meeting’ between his people and your people.”

“For heaven’s sake. If he wants to view the box, he can view it along with everyone else when Avery Gilman opens it. It’s not such a big thing.”

“He thinks it is.” He stroked his fingertips along her cheekbone, then traced a line down to her chin. “Just like you think our having a little fun together is such a big thing.”

“It is,” she said, her smile gone and a glint of anger flashing in her eyes. “One thing is about a box. The other is about…” She faltered.

“Sex?” he suggested helpfully.

“Intimacy. Emotions.”

“Fun.”

“That, too,” she conceded. “If I’m not going to help you clean the dishes, Jed, I should go home. I’ve got math quizzes to correct.”

“And I’ve got a bottle with some wine still in it.”

“Perhaps you can polish it off after I’m gone.”

“Drown my sorrows, you think?” He grinned. She was so flipping earnest, taking everything so seriously. “Should I go on a bender after you walk out the door?” He swooped down and dropped a light kiss on her mouth. She didn’t kiss him back, but she didn’t flinch and gasp and act like a fussy little virgin, either. “I think I’ll save the wine. We’ll share it the next time we’re together,” he said.

She looked as if she thought that might also be a threat. If it was, he hoped she preferred it to Derrick Messinger’s threat to “get her.” Jed wanted to get her, too, but in a way that would leave them both sweaty and smiling.

Her box wasn’t a phenomenon. But sex with her would probably be just that. She believed he was unable to think beyond the present, but as he released
her, as he walked with her out of the kitchen and down the hall to the front door, he was thinking plenty about the future. Tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, if luck was with him, he and Erica were going to experience something pretty damn phenomenal.

“S
O, YOU STRUCK OUT
with Derrick Messinger?” Erica asked Fern.

Lunchtime, and the nurse’s office was quiet. No emergencies, bleeding or vomiting, no kids whining about headaches or stomach cramps minutes before their geography tests. Erica spooned cold, smooth yogurt into her mouth and acknowledged that it was tastier than the slop she and Jed had thrown together last night.

But of course the slop had only been a pretext for them to be with each other. It had only been a prelude to what had followed—and what
could
have followed if Erica had been a little more daring. Good God, Fern and every other woman of a certain age in Rockwell were allegedly willing to drop their panties for Jed Willetz, and he’d chosen
her
for that honor. Yet her panties had remained firmly in place.

Just barely.

“What makes you think I struck out with him?” Fern asked before taking a bite of her Muenster-tomato-and-lettuce sandwich. “In fact, what makes you think I was trying to hit a home run with him?”

Erica couldn’t reveal her source without revealing that she’d been with Jed. “It’s a small town,” she said vaguely. “Nothing remains a secret for long.” She wondered how long it would take before the whole town knew she and Jed had had dinner together last night.

Fern shrugged, apparently accepting this explanation as legitimate. She took another bite of her sandwich, then a sip from her box of apple juice, and shrugged. “I just thought it would be fun to mosey over to the Hope Street Inn and introduce myself. And I baked a banana bread as a kind of ‘Welcome to Rockwell’ present. On behalf of the town, you know? If we treat him and his crew nicely, he’ll be more likely to do a nice show about us. And banana bread is so easy to make.”

Not for Erica, it wasn’t. If she ever finished planting her garden, though, she’d be too busy learning how to bake tomato bread and zucchini bread to have time to bake banana bread.

“So I got to the inn,” Fern said, “and the man himself was sitting in that wingback chair by the bay window, you know which one? It’s got that awful chintz fabric covering it that looks like wallpaper from a little girl’s bathroom. Anyway, he had his cell phone in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other, and he kept making eyes at me, even as he was phoning just about every living person in town. Then this officious woman with short hair and a voice like a foghorn cornered me and started grilling me. She was his producer, apparently. Sonya, or Sofia, something like that. She wanted to know all the gossip in town.”

“Did you share it with her?”

“Of course not!” Fern pressed her hand to her chest, as if the mere idea made her apoplectic. “I only mentioned a few tidbits. The stash of girlie magazines in the basement of the library—for research purposes, they always say. And Elaine Hackett’s obsession with James Mason movies. That kind of thing. But I realized
this Sofia person wasn’t going to let me get close to Derrick, so I finally just left the bread and took off.”

“But he was making eyes at you?” Erica pressed her.

“I think so.” Fern took another sip of juice, then sighed. “Up close he doesn’t look as good as he does on TV. His hair—I don’t know. It doesn’t look quite real. I think it is, but it doesn’t look it.”

Erica almost blurted out that Jed had wanted to bet her that Derrick Messinger was wearing a toupee, but she caught herself in time. She didn’t want Fern to think she was spending time discussing things like Derrick Messinger’s hair with Jed.

“He’s the first new guy to venture into town in a while, you know? Getting acquainted with him might be more fun than trekking all the way to Manchester in search of a willing gentleman. If he offered to run away with me, I might be tempted. I’d finish out the school year first, of course.”

“Of course.” Erica scraped the bottom of her yogurt cup and swore to herself that if Jed offered to run away with her she wouldn’t be tempted. “So are you going to bring more home-baked goodies to the Hope Street Inn again today?”

“No.” Fern looked indignant. “One banana bread is all he gets for now. I don’t want him thinking I’m easy.” She munched on a bit of crust. “I’ll probably go back to the inn, though. This time I’ll offer only myself. He can get his bread elsewhere.”

“I’ll go with you,” Erica said.

Fern looked aghast. “No! If you come, he won’t even notice me!”

“He will so notice you,” Erica argued, surprised by Fern’s outburst. They had never been competitive that
way. When they’d traveled together to Manchester in search of a nightlife, they’d never vied for the attention of men. They’d never compared themselves with each other, fretting over which one was prettier or more attractive. Their friendship was too important to them to jeopardize it with jealousy.