Love Me Tonight - Four Erotic Romance Stories for Valentine's Day - Boxed Set (10 page)

Perhaps it was a trick of the lights in the salon, but the new color did bring out gold flecks in Tessa's brown eyes. Andrew's touch had worked its manly magic as well, putting a natural blush on her cheeks. When she stood and walked to the counter to pay, she had to look down at her feet to keep her balance, as she could hardly feel them.

As the receptionist processed the transaction, Andrew came and stood near them, looking less tall now that she was standing, but still strong and handsome.

Something was different.

He'd removed his wedding band. It had flashed all around her head, and there was no mistaking it was not on his hand now.

“Tessa, I'd love to see how the color washes out,” he said.

“I'm sure it'll be fine.” She tucked her wallet into her purse and pulled out her leather gloves, preparing for the January weather outside.

“I usually have lunch at the diner across the street on Wednesdays. Perhaps you'll come by this week, so I can see you again.”

“What time?” Her voice sounded high and shrill, and it seemed like everyone in the salon was listening, their movements in slow motion.

Andrew tucked his hands into his pockets, shrugging his shoulders in adorable modesty. “One o'clock. After the lunch rush.”

Tessa nodded. “Wednesday.”

She turned on her suede boot heel and left the salon quickly, gloves loosely held in one hand.

The cold winter air hit her like a sobering splash, and she walked quickly up the snow-covered sidewalk.

At the end of the block, she remembered her car was parked in the opposite direction, so she circled all the way around the block rather than pass by the windows of the salon.

The haircut was on Monday, and on Tuesday, Tessa worked a half-day at her job, where her new hair created a riot—or, as close to a riot as they'd ever had at the small library.

Patrons and co-workers alike oohed and aahed and cooed and sighed over Tessa's short, bouncy blond locks.

“You look like a news anchor,” said one woman with four children, all by different fathers. They were one of Tessa's favorite families, with more love than money, their cheerful faces a rainbow of cultures.

The youngest, a gap-toothed boy named Huey, said, “You look like the lady on the bus bench,” referring to the town's highest-profile real estate agent.

Their mother, an exhausted-but-positive woman named Heaven, gave Tessa a knowing look as they sorted through the kids' book choices at the counter. “So, who's the new man?” she asked.

“I'll let you know when I meet him,” Tessa said, tight-lipped as ever.

Heaven wouldn't leave the counter, though, so Tessa broke down and told her.

It felt good to spill over, gushing all the details about the handsome hairdresser, the mysteriously-removed wedding band, and to hear back that everything Tessa felt was normal. Just normal. And also wonderful.

“Sweet beginnings,” Heaven said. “How can a girl resist?”

“I'm no girl!”

Heaven looked her up and down, her gaze pausing on Tessa's freshly-painted fingernails, sporting color for the first time in a decade.

With a wry smile, Heaven said, “If you feel like a teenage girl, then that's what you are. When we're kids, we work so hard to grow up, to get to that place where we have all the answers, but it doesn't exist. That place is no more real than the leprechaun at the end of rainbows.”

“I thought I had the answers,” Tessa said. “But now I don't even know what the questions are.”

Heaven gathered up the books and stuffed them into canvas bags, her lips drawn into a serious line. “If you don't go meet him for lunch tomorrow, I will be crushed.” She held up her hand, showing her sparkling engagement ring, courtesy of baby-daddy number four. “Never give up on love. Never give up on yourself.”

“I'll go,” Tessa said, though an hour earlier, she'd decided against it.

Because of Heaven and her diamond ring, Tessa went to the diner on Wednesday, arriving at five past one because she'd sat in her parked car for ten minutes, fussing with her hair and makeup.

The diner was still full from the lunch rush, and she looked over the crowd for Andrew.
He wasn't there.
No, he wasn't there, and gravity pulled at her without mercy.

A man's voice came from beside her, “Looking for someone?”

It was Andrew, and he'd been reading the newspaper on a bench. His eyes twinkled, as though he'd planned this whole thing, just to disappoint and then surprise her, to see that look on her face. The wedding ring was nowhere in sight, so she forgave him for being so amused.

A waitress came over, clicking the button of a pen like she was tallying up some number nobody else saw. “Table for one?” she asked Tessa.

Andrew stood and leaned in to Tessa, touching shoulders with her through his leather jacket. “Table for two,” he said.

The waitress raised her eyebrow and gave Andrew a surprised look. “About time,” she said, leading them to a four-seater booth by the window.

They perused their menus, placed their orders, and received their first cups of coffee.

“Divorced?” she asked.

“Widowed.”

“Same.”

“Cancer,” he said.

“Heart attack.”

“Sugar?” he offered the container of brightly-hued packets her way.

“Just cream.”

“That stuff'll kill you,” he said, smiling.

“Best to go with a smile on one's face.”

He shook two packs of sugar, stacked them, and tore them both open at the same time.

“Amen to that,” he said, pouring in the sugar.

“Have you always cut hair?”

“Started when I was in the army. When I finished with the military, I had a barber shop for a while, with the twirling barber's pole outside and everything.”

“Did all the veterans hang out there?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“But you shut it down to run a salon?”

He chuckled into his coffee. “We had some good times, but the city is always evolving. I sold the place a number of years ago. The salon, where I met you, was my wife's, and after she passed, I came in to tidy things up before selling.” He took a slow sip, savoring the gray-hued diner coffee as if it were something more special. “Turned out I like working in a fancy salon. I upgraded a few skills, and now I get to tinker with beauty all day.”

“
Tinker with beauty.
I like that.”

“The other day, you said you worked at the library?”

She looked up, searching the acoustic tiles on the ceiling for her memory. The haircut and coloring was a blur now, but she must have been talking.

“I tinker with literature. And young minds.”

“We're very fortunate,” he said.

She glanced to the space on the booth's bench beside her. “So we are,” she said.

Their clubhouse sandwiches arrived, the scent bringing Tessa the reassuring sensation of hunger. She could deal with that human need, right now.

What seemed insurmountable was the other thing she now desired: Andrew's hands, on her body. He'd touched her hair and scalp, bringing out feelings that seemed too youthful to be real, but they'd lingered. The last two days, she kept looking at herself in the mirror, only it was Andrew's eyes she imagined seeing her.

Even now, as they ate sandwiches in comfortable silence while the diner hummed around them, she was aware of little else but his gaze. He drank her in as he savored his toasted sandwich, though when his gaze dropped to her bosom, his expression became troubled.

Tessa wanted to see just how troubled she could make that gorgeous face of his.

After lunch, Andrew had an idea for dinner, later in the week.

They had dinner.

After dinner, he suggested a drive to a nearby town, on the weekend.

And so it went, for three weeks.

The dates now ended with a kiss, but not much more.

Was Andrew her boyfriend? Tessa's friends giggled over the notion, and that word—
boyfriend
.

“He's your
lover
,” her friend Diane said.

Tessa's other good friend, Justine, said, “Who needs labels? Tell him to get into your bed and rip your clothes off already.”

“I don't want to rush,” Tessa said, though she envied those who rushed, who jumped in, who grabbed hold of each other like the cure for time.

By Valentine's Day, Tessa was through with waiting, and if there was to be more waiting, she would be through with Andrew as well.

Instead of enduring the crowds and questions at a restaurant, she invited Andrew to her house for dinner.

Just so he wouldn't get the wrong idea—that this was another platonic date—she wore a short dress, far too much makeup, and a pair of red shoes that would be bold for a woman half her age.

“New shoes?” he asked as he came in the door.

“What do you think?”

He leaned forward and touched the sparkling buckle with his fingertips. He straightened up slowly, running his fingers up the side of her ankle and her calf, across her knee, then along the hemline of her dress, also red.

“Yes, new shoes,” he said, now upright and looking at her lips, but not her eyes. “And I think the dress is new as well. You have that brand-new look about you tonight.”

She laughed. “At my age, that says a lot.”

He pulled her into him as he leaned back against the door he'd just come through. “You make me feel brand-new, Tessa. That says a lot about the ravishing woman inside the dress.”

With a lift of his chin, he summoned her lips to his.

Desire swirled up, along the lines he'd traced on her leg, and through the area between her legs. Her hips pressed against his, communicating everything she dared not say. His hands found her buttocks and pulled her up and into him as his tongue pressed into her mouth, their breathing matching and becoming one.

Gasping, she pulled back. The oven timer was beeping.

“Dinner first,” she said.

“Yes, dinner first,” he agreed.

He'd seen her house once before, but now he looked around with more familiarity on their way to the dining room, commenting on the artwork on the walls and the original wood trim throughout the home. Tessa and her husband had painstakingly stripped and sanded much of that woodwork, though lately she'd been considering painting it a cream color—something her husband would never have approved of.