Love Is a Four-Legged Word (14 page)

“So,” he said.

“H ... holding hands is good,” she managed to get out of a suddenly constricted throat.

He took both her hands in his and slowly pulled her to him. “How about hugging? Some harmless hugging?” he said, his face very close, his voice deep and husky.

Her softness yielded to his hard strength, her nipples tingled and firmed as she pressed against his chest, then wound her arms around his back.

“Hugging is good, too,” she said, finding it difficult to breathe.

He slid his hands up her arms and shoulders, found the tender nape of her neck, and pushed his hands up through her hair over her suddenly sensitized scalp and right through to the very ends of her hair. The slow, sensuous movement felt amazing. She closed her eyes to savor the sensation as he did it over and over again until she felt the consistency of the molten chocolate in Serena’s bathtub.

“Head massage is good, too,” she murmured finally, opening her eyes to look up into his face. “Very good,” she added.

His eyes were intent on her. They were beautiful eyes for a man, brown and warm with thick black eyelashes. And she was fascinated by his mouth—firm, well sculpted with that slight curl on his upper lip that she found so darn sexy.

“Maybe .. . maybe kissing would be good, too.” She sighed in surrender and, finally, lifted her mouth to his.

The kiss wasn’t just good, it was bliss, his lips firm and warm, his tongue doing wonderful things to hers, practiced but tender, sure but sensual. She pressed closer to him, reveling in the sensation, thrilling to the feel of his heartbeat, deepening the kiss, tasting chocolate, breathing the intoxicating citrus male scent of him.

Eventually, she surfaced. “Kissing is very, very good,” she murmured before going back for more.

His hands, warm and exciting on her bare skin, slid under her T-shirt. She welcomed them as he cupped her breasts over the sheer silkiness of her bra, gasping as he circled her tense nipples with his thumbs. She was melting, yearning; aware she didn’t want to go any further than this—it was way too soon—yet not wanting him to stop.

Knowing she should leave the warmth, break the kiss, she pulled away. He held her tightly for just a second, let her feel the evidence of his arousal, then released her.

Maddy didn’t want words. She just wanted to stand, resting her head on his shoulder, hearing nothing but the thudding of his heart and his ragged breathing, and try to get her own breathing back to normal.

She knew her definition of a kiss would never be the same again, and she tried not to think about what that meant. All she knew was that being in Tom O’Brien’s arms was utter heaven. And that liking it so much was terrifying her.

Getting too attached to him and then losing him would be hell. She didn’t want that kind of upset at this stage of her career. Couldn’t take that kind of risk. She’d gone to pieces after her engagement to Russell was broken. Had come dangerously close to getting sacked from the restaurant where she’d worked at the time. She couldn’t afford for that to happen again. Not when she was getting so close to her goals at
Annie
magazine. And not when she was feeling so uptight and uncertain about Brutus, Jerome, and the scary press intrusion in her life.

With her head on his shoulder, she couldn’t see his face. She cleared her throat. “You ... you never told me about your plan. You know, the one that didn’t allow for kissing. Even though there is photographic, front-page proof that we already kissed.”

“You don’t want to hear about my plan,” he said, caressing the back of her neck.

“Yes, I do.”

“Not now you don’t.” His voice was hoarse.

She lifted her head from his shoulder to meet his gaze. “Seriously, you said you’d tell me about it.”

Why was he being so evasive? Maddy pulled away from him, suddenly aware that it was important she knew about his plan before she kissed him again. She would not let herself be distracted by the tantalizing way he was stroking her ear.

“It’s no big deal,” he said. He started to shrug his shoulders and then abruptly stopped himself. Curious. An old football injury causing him pain on the upward shrug, perhaps?

He set his shoulders square. “It’s just my plan for my life.You know, goals, ambitions. I make a new one every five years.”

She felt incredulous. “You actually write it down? A plan for your life?”

“On my PC, yes. And linked to my BlackBerry of course.” He looked uncomfortable at his admission, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“You’re not serious?”

“I’m very serious.”

Suddenly Maddy felt like she wasn’t getting enough air. She sucked in a deep breath.

“So you stick to this plan? Without deviating?”

He nodded. “That works for me.”

“And the plan doesn’t include kissing?”

Tom raked his hand through his hair until it stood on end. “Maddy, it’s all about work. My goal is to make partner. That’s what’s most important to me.”

It’s all about work.
That certainly put her in her place with a painful jolt. “You ... didn’t answer my kissing question.”

“Of course it doesn’t say no kissing, just—”

“I get it,” she interrupted.“Just no kissing of the serious kind.”

“Well, yeah, I guess you could say that.” He didn’t seem aware that he was raking his hair again. But she had lost the urge to smooth it back into place.

“I see,” she said slowly. “The dirty
C
word. You know, commitment.”

“Maddy I’m not against commitment. Just not right now.”

“Not in this particular five-year plan, you mean.”

He rammed his fists to his side. “Maddy, now is my time. I want to make partner. My work has to come first. I can’t throw in the towel right now. I can’t afford to be sidetracked.”

“By a relationship you mean?” She couldn’t help the slight note of accusation from creeping into her voice and was angry with herself because of it.

“You’re making it sound worse than it is. Maybe it’s different for girls. Maybe your work is not as important to you as it is to guys. You know, with babies and stuff ...” His voice faltered away.

She gasped. How much worse could it get? Her work not as important as his just because she was female? In what year of the Middle Ages had she landed?

He went to put his arms around her again; she stepped back. Her hip banged on the edge of the dressing table, but she barely felt it. She laughed, hoping it sounded lighthearted, knowing it was anything but.

“You know, I might not have a written plan for my life but, like you, my work is very important to me. Even if I am a girl.” She couldn’t resist a note of sarcasm on the final phrase. “They’re making a television show for
Annie
magazine, and I’m in the running to be the on-air cooking presenter.That is, if I don’t get fired because of the Brutus publicity.”

“Maddy, that’s great.” His enthusiasm sounded 100 percent genuine. Which only slightly mollified how she felt about his statement. “You’d be fantastic on television.”

“Well, the eggs might have been broken but the cake’s not baked yet. I still have to prove myself.”

“They’d be crazy not to give the job to you. That brownie was out of this world. So was the fudge cake.”

“Even if you did moan about the cholesterol.”

“It was worth it,” he said. “Every crumb.”

“Thanks,” she said. “I know I’m good at what I do, and I’m determined to get the job.”

She stepped back from him, suddenly conscious of how close they still stood. She took a deep breath. “Unlike you, I wouldn’t see a special person as a ‘distraction.’ I figure you can have both a commitment and a career. Eventually. When you’re both ready that is, and right now I’m not.”

He tried to say something but she spoke over him.

“But maybe that
is
a girl thing.You’re not the only man I’ve known who thinks the way you do. I’ve told you about my family. And my ex-fiancé expected me to put his job before my ambitions.”

She decided not to mention the underpants thing.

Tom looked uncomfortable. There wasn’t a dimple in sight. “Maddy, I just meant that sometimes there are more important things for women that men don’t—”

She spoke over him. “I know exactly what you meant.” She took another deep breath. “That kind of attitude is why I broke off my engagement. And that’s why I’m sticking to the two-date rule. I’m avoiding that other
C
word—complications. So you see, we’re not really that different.”

“So?” he said, his brow furrowed. “We’re both into our careers. But we’re attracted to each other. If we both went into this with our eyes wide open, it needn’t affect either of our plans. So why not—?”

“Complicate things further? I don’t think so. This whole business with Brutus is complicated enough. Besides,” she added, “you’ve reached your use-by date.”

If she hadn’t felt perilously close to tears, she would have laughed at the look on his face.

“My use-by date?”

He looked so bemused she had to resist the urge to hug him. But he had both a plan that didn’t include commitment, and an insanely outdated view that a woman’s career was less important than a man’s. And she had resolved that her career was more important than ironing a man’s underpants.

So far Tom O’Brien, with his rigid five-year, no-serious-kissing master plan, gave every indication that he was no different from Russell. Or from her father and brothers, who had expected her to drop everything in favor of their needs. To put her own needs on permanent hold.

“Remember the two-date thing?” she asked.

He frowned. “Your two-date thing you mean? Yes, I remember. But how does that apply to me? We haven’t dated.”

That threw her for a moment. He had a point. She had to think hard. “You’re right. Technically. But we have kissed—on two separate occasions.”

“That doesn’t count, surely.”

“It counted to me and I’m the one doing the counting.”

Tom stared at her. “Well, in that case, if you want to get pedantic about it, I kissed you more than twice.”

He certainly had. Maddy went warm inside when she thought about that. How many kisses? She’d been too busy enjoying them to calculate. “You’re right,” she conceded. “But ... but we’re playing by my rules. We’re talking ... we’re talking kissing occasions here.Two kissing occasions equals two dates. And that’s where I cut out. Sorry.”

Maddy didn’t dare look at Tom. If she did, she’d find herself back in his arms and unable to think beyond the next kiss. She schooled herself not to give away anything of what she was feeling on her face.

She was cool and she was tough—the Two-Date Queen, Ms. No Complications, the Martha Stewart of Tomorrow. Getting that magazine job and then that television show was what she wanted, not a fling with someone who didn’t count a relationship as anything important in his life.

She hardened her heart. Tom would be too easy to fall for. It was way easier to cut it off right here. “So two dates equals two kissing occasions equals one use-by date totally expired,” she said, finally daring to look up at him.

Tom felt like he’d been tackled from behind. Agreed, there had been two of what she called “kissing occasions.”
Kissing occasions
, for crying out loud! Only Maddy could come up with a phrase like that. But he hadn’t realized that they would count against him in her date tally.

Hell, here he was trying desperately to stick to the five-year plan that had served him so well but getting waylaid by unwelcome hallucinations about red-haired babies. Not to mention fantasies of Maddy in her surprisingly sexy underwear.

Abiding by subsection 2c was getting more difficult by the minute. So difficult that he had been forced to face the fact that Maddy in his life meant he might have to make amendments to the current plan before it expired. For the first time in fifteen years of rigidly-adhered-to schedules.

She was beautiful, she was sexy, and she was smart. Not to mention funny, cute, and just a little bit crazy. But no woman was going to mess him around like that. The five-year plan was to be enforced again to the letter. And he wasn’t going to be around to see what Maddy thought about it.

She was looking up at him with a mixture of trepidation and defiance. But the bomb proofing around his heart was back in place.This time with double reinforcement.

He didn’t meet her gaze. “Right,” he said, “your rules. Two ... two
dates
, over and out.” He couldn’t bring himself to utter the phrase
kissing occasion
.“From now on it’s strictly business.”

“I’m good with that,” she said.

He stepped toward the bed, picked up her suitcase, and hauled it over to the doorway. “Anyway, in light of the press’s interest in us kissing, it would be advisable not to be seen together.”

“Absolutely,” she said. He sensed rather than saw that her chin was tilted skyward.