Hoodwinked (13 page)

He turned then, his face a little paler than it had been, and moved back to her with the smoking cigarette in one big hand. “I'm afraid of marriage,” he said gently. “My parents spent twenty years together, and few of them were happy. They always said they'd been in love at the beginning, but they weren't at the end.” His big shoulders rose and fell. “I don't know that I could adjust to another person in my life. Or
more than one.” His dark eyes met hers. “On the other hand, I'd like very much to make you pregnant,” he said huskily. “And that scares the hell out of me, do you know that?”

She felt her body tremble as the import of the words sank in. He didn't sound like a man who wanted a quick affair. He sounded like a man with commitment on his mind.

“Are you shocked?” he asked with a faint smile. “So am I. I've never said that to a woman in my life.”

She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “I'm glad,” she whispered.

He sighed, feeling velvet webs spinning around him. It was inevitable, he supposed. He touched her dark hair in its tight bun. “How about putting up that hoe and getting into something dressy?” he asked. “We'll fly down to Galveston and get some seafood.”

She laughed. “You crazy man,” she said, snuggling against him. “And I suppose you could fly us there in your own airplane and we could go out on your yacht and fish for the seafood ourselves?” She didn't see his face, which had gone white. She laughed again and hugged him. “I like your sense of humor. But I'll be very happy with Long John Silver's fish and chips. You can sit and talk to Bagwell while I get dressed.”

She moved away and he followed her, scowling. This was going to be more complicated than he'd imagined. After that test flight on Friday, he wouldn't be able to keep secrets from her. Everything would be made public, including his identity. He cursed under his breath. If only she'd been a liberated, sophisticated woman, he could have taken her to bed and worked her out of his system. But she was the kind of woman he'd dreamed of all his life, and he wanted things with
her and of her that he'd never wanted before. It was going to lead to tragedy in the end, if he couldn't level with her in time.

He took her to one of those fast-food places and they ate fish while he glanced around him with interest. He'd known of places like this, of course, but they weren't usually part of his life-style. His dark eyes lingered on the ordinary people sitting in small groups. Men in suits, women in knit pantsuits, teenagers in skimpy summer clothing. Some of the older men and women wore their life stories in the wrinkles and lines on their faces. There were laborers and farmers and seamstresses; secretaries and young executives. He stared at them and felt suddenly as if he'd missed the boat. He'd lived dangerously, and he'd lived well. But these people knew life as he never really had.

“Deep thoughts?” she asked gently.

“Very deep.” He sipped his black coffee. “Do you come here often?” he asked and was genuinely curious.

“About once a week. Some days it's chili, others it's hamburgers—on the weekends, I mean. I eat in the canteen or take my lunch at work. I try to be punctual,” she said with a smile. “I think we need to give a day's work for a day's pay, however out of style that sounds.”

He smiled. “Oh, I approve wholeheartedly,” he murmured. “And I'm certain MacFaber would agree.”

“Poor old thing,” she said, her eyes softening. “He must be very alone. He has no family, you know, and his mother died last year.”

He lowered his dark eyes to his coffee. “He's filthy rich. I imagine he can buy love.”

“Not the real thing. Only an expensive imitation of it.” She slid her hand to Jake's and touched it lightly, hesitantly. Her eyes met his dark ones and she shivered at the intensity in them. “I never knew what love was…before,” she said.

He didn't hear the buzz of conversation around them. He only heard her voice, saw her face. His head spun at what she was admitting to him. His fingers slid around hers and contracted hungrily, and she smiled at him with eyes that worshiped him. He felt like getting on the table and dancing, but he only smiled back at her.

Those were words he'd never said and meant. It surprised him that he could almost have said them to her with genuine feeling. But he kept his silence. He had a foreboding about Friday. He had to find a way to tell her before then.

After they ate, they went to a matinee, walked around the shopping mall twice, and finally wound up at the bowling alley. But all the lanes were full, so they sat and drank coffee and watched.

He took her home late, pausing at her doorway to kiss her hungrily and hard.

“No, I won't come inside with you,” he whispered, touching his finger to her lips. “It's too risky.”

She looked at him worriedly. “Jake, I might be able…”

“It would be like raping you, don't you understand?” he asked with soft fervor. “Unless you felt right about it, I might as well force you. And I could never do that. Now go to bed. I'll come for you in the morning and we'll go to church. Okay?”

She smiled. “Okay.”

He touched the tip of her nose, winked, and walked away whistling.

The next few days were magic. They went everywhere together except at work, and she never seemed to see him there anymore. She asked him about it on Thursday afternoon when she got home from the office. He was in the yard, waiting, when she drove up.

“Aren't you at the plant these days?” she asked as she got out of the car.

He grinned. “I'm on vacation, didn't you know?” He kissed her softly. “And no, I'm not the culprit they caught messing around with MacFaber's jet, in case you were still wondering about me.”

She shook her head. “Oh, no,” she said softly. “I knew that days ago. I'm not sure how I knew, I just did.” Her eyes adored him. “I don't care who you are, or what you do.”

That was obvious and it made him feel ten feet tall. At the same time, it made him feel guilty as hell. He'd learned a lot about her. The most important thing he'd learned was that she didn't have a mercenary bone in her body.

He glanced at the sweat on her forehead and the glare of the sun. “Want to lie out and sunbathe with me for a few minutes?” he asked. “It's still hours until dark, but late enough so that we won't get burned.”

She smiled gaily. “I'd love it. I have a bikini I've never worn.” She colored. “It's a little too risqué for my taste…” Her smile faded. “On second thought, maybe I shouldn't wear it?”

He cocked an eyebrow and one side of his mouth lifted up. “Go ahead. I hate to tell you, but I don't
wear anything when I sunbathe. I don't like white streaks.”

She knew she wasn't breathing. She just looked at him, stunned.

“You don't have to look at me,” he promised wickedly. “And I'll wear a towel out. Will that satisfy your outraged modesty?”

“I've never sunbathed with a naked man…”

“There's a first time for everything.” He chuckled at her expression as he turned to go back into his apartment. “Ten minutes.”

She wasn't at all sure about this, but they'd grown very close in the time since she'd admitted how she felt about him. They'd talked and shared feelings, about the world and their own lives. He'd told her about his adventures before he'd come to MacFaber, about all the places he'd gone and the things he'd done. She'd listened, fascinated, because he'd lived as she never had. She wondered occasionally how it would be for a man with that kind of background to try to settle down, and it worried her. Wouldn't he be too restless, too used to adventure, to settle for a newspaper and the television in the evenings? Because, inevitably, the newness of marriage would wear off and it would become routine. Unless he loved her, she thought miserably, they might not make it together. Her love for him would hardly be enough in the long run.

She got into the brief black bikini that she'd bought on an impulse at a sale and stared at herself in the mirror. She had a good body, at least, even if she wasn't beautiful, and she blushed, remembering that Jake had seen almost all of it that morning. There was really no reason for her to be shy with him—except
that he was going to take all his clothes off, and she felt uncomfortable about that. But he'd talked about a family, and she had to start getting used to him.

She grabbed up the old blanket she used to sunbathe on and carried it outside, taking off her glasses on the way so that she wouldn't have a white streak over her eyes.

She spread out the blanket, grateful all over again for the very secluded backyard that was fenced as well as heavily wooded. No one ever intruded here—probably because the nearest development was a retirement complex for older people, and no children were allowed there.

She lay on her stomach and, minutes later, Jake came out with a beige towel wrapped around his lean hips.

She closed her eyes tightly, hearing his soft laughter as he dropped the towel and stretched out on his stomach beside her.

“Are you planning to have therapy after your wedding night?” he asked dryly.

It disturbed her that he'd said “your” wedding night instead of “our” wedding night. He'd mentioned a baby, so didn't that mean marriage? Perhaps to him it didn't, and that raised even more disturbing questions.

She opened her eyes reluctantly, but all that wasn't blurred was his broad, dark face. “I don't know,” she said in a thin voice. “I'm sorry!”

“You'll get used to me. Here. Let me help you out of that.”

Before she could speak, his lean fingers were working at laces matter-of-factly, and seconds later, she was as nude as he was, her only coverings trapped
under her body. She tensed, but when he stretched back out and sighed, closing his eyes, she let the tension drain out of herself and felt for the first time in her life the unblocked kiss of the sun on her body.

“My goodness,” she whispered, feeling languid and oddly sensual.

“Heaven, isn't it?” he murmured. “I used to have so damned many hang-ups about this sort of thing that I couldn't enjoy it. But I spent some time on the Riviera, and you simply can't indulge in modesty on a yacht when everyone else is stripped down.”

Her head turned toward him and her eyes opened, wide and curious. “What were you doing on a yacht on the Riviera?” she asked slowly.

There was a pause while he lay there cursing himself silently and wondering how he was going to talk himself out of that stupid slip. There was faint suspicion in her eyes, and he could have kicked himself for what he'd said. Of all the times to let his guard down! What could he say now, without making himself out to be a liar?

“O
h, I get it,” Maureen said with a smile. “You worked your way across the south of France as a mechanic!”

“Exactly,” he said as smoothly as he could. “Nice guess.”

“Have you always been interested in mechanical things?” she persisted, trying not to notice the hard, perfect lines of the masculine body next to hers. Even his legs were tanned like the rest of him, and there was no white streak across his lower spine. He looked broad and fit and extremely sexy.

“I used to take things apart when I was a boy,” he murmured.

“I'll bet your parents loved that.”

He frowned slightly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Well, taking alarm clocks apart, and lamps and things.”

He shifted a little. “I wasn't at home. I was away at school.”

Her eyes watched his face. “At a boarding school?” she asked hesitantly.

“It was a school for delinquent boys,” he said shortly. “I got in trouble with the law when I was
about thirteen and my parents turned me out of the house.”

“Oh, Jake,” she whispered softly. She reached out a gentle hand and stroked his forearm. She could almost feel the pain radiating out of him at the memory.

“My God, you open me up,” he muttered. “I've never told that to another living soul.”

“Is it all right if I look smug, then?” she asked with a smile.

He sighed and rolled over onto his side to study her face, enjoying the way she tried not to look at him. She lost the battle, and despite her blurred vision she got an eyeful. She jerked her gaze back up to his face and tried to pretend that her face wasn't scarlet.

“Go ahead. Look at me if you want to,” he said gently. “I'm not self-conscious—at least not since I've dropped about fifty pounds,” he mused.

“I can't picture you being overweight,” she ventured.

“I was fat, honey.” He rolled over onto his back and stretched lazily, enjoying the sun on his body. He closed his eyes, giving Maureen the opportunity she was too shy to take while he was watching. He smiled, knowing how fascinating she found him.

And she did. Her eyes lingered helplessly. She'd seen men this way in a magazine that Charlene had brought to work, but never a man in the flesh. Jake was beautifully made. Thick black hair curled down his tanned body to powerful long legs and a blatant masculinity that made her feel weak all over. She'd had a taste of his lovemaking, and she imagined that in bed, he'd be every woman's secret dream. Her body began to throb in the oddest way as she gave her eyes
their freedom. He was close enough that most of him didn't blur, and she learned things about him that were faintly shocking when his body began quite suddenly to react to her frank appraisal.

He was studying her, propped up on his forearm so that he could see her face. She looked into his eyes and realized only then that she was propped up, too, and he could see every inch of her.

The strange thing was that she didn't want to lie down again or cover herself. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be like this with him.