Love's Little Instruction Book (26 page)

“You should go in,” he said flatly. “It’s getting late.”

She reached for the handle that would open the door but turned back to look at him one last time. Slowly, she moved across the seat toward him, laying her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek.

He turned his head away sharply. “For the love of God, Denise, just go. Please.”

She nodded. “All right,” she agreed. She moved back across the bench seat and opened the door of the truck. “I’m sorry.” And then she was gone.

For the first time ever, Dave didn’t stay to make sure that Denise made it safely inside. He turned the engine over, put the truck into gear and drove off into the night. Three blocks later, he pulled his truck onto the side of the road, put his head into his hands, and cried.

The next day, Dave walked into Ghoulie’s house and tossed the book he’d been reading onto the coffee table. “That’s it, guys. I’m not going to read any more of these.”

Both Kirk and Ghoulie stopped what they were doing and looked at him in surprise. “What happened?” Ghoulie asked.

Dave shook his head. “I fucked up.”

“Fucked up, how?” Kirk asked.

He blew out a disgusted breath. “I didn’t read the signs right. I don’t know. I got caught in the moment, I guess. I asked Denise to marry me.”

“And she turned you down?” Kirk said.

“Yeah.”

Ghoulie drew in a long breath. “I’m sorry, Dave. I know that you really loved her.”

“I should have known better. No way would a girl like her want to shackle herself to a guy like me.”

“Is that what she said?” Kirk asked cautiously.

Dave’s lips turned up joylessly. “She gave me the old ‘it’s not you, it’s me.’”

“Maybe it was.”

“Yeah, right. It was a stupid idea from the beginning.”

Kirk and Ghoulie looked at each other. “It wasn’t a stupid idea,” Ghoulie insisted. “If it was stupid, you never would have had these months with her. She cared about you, Dave, and we all know it.”

Dave rubbed his face. “I don’t know.” He looked up at the two of them. “I don’t know how I’m going to face her at work on Monday.”

“One day at a time, buddy,” Kirk advised him.

Ghoulie looked at him thoughtfully. “Do you regret the time you spent with her?” he asked.

Dave looked back at him. “What?”

“Do you regret the last six months that you spent with her? Because I was just sitting here thinking, if, God forbid, Shelby were to leave me tomorrow, I’d hurt like hell, but for all the rest of my days, I’d be glad to have had the last eight years with her.” He gave Dave a wobbly smile. “Everything ends, that’s just the way things are. The trick is to get the best you can while you have the opportunity.”

Dave looked at him and sighed as he told himself that, just for a little while, he had had the best.

• • •

“What do you mean you turned him down?” Presley demanded, her parrots-sitting-in-hoops earrings swinging wildly as she shook her head at Denise in disbelief.

Denise winced. “I don’t want to be married again. Ever. That’s all.”

“But, Geez, Denise, this is
Dave
. He’s a great guy. He’s head over heels in love with you. Hell, if he were Jewish,
I’d
marry him!”

“Yeah, well, I’m not you,” she told her.

Presley seemed momentarily at a loss for words. “Dave must be devastated.”

“Probably. I haven’t seen him since he dropped me off Friday night.” Denise sighed. “Oh, Presley, I feel like shit.”

Presley sighed. “Are you sure you gave him the right answer?” she asked.

“I think so. I don’t know. I hate to disappoint him, but I don’t want to be married again at this point in my life.”

Presley watched her thoughtfully. “I can’t say that I’ve always understood why you do the things you do,” she told her. “God knows, I never would have walked away from a fortune in alimony. But if this is the choice that you feel like you had to make, then it was the right one.”

Denise’s shoulders slumped. She felt like shit, and was grateful to have Presley’s support rather than her criticism. Because God knew, she felt bad enough about having disappointed Dave all on her own.

Denise stood in the kitchen folding still warm clothes from the dryer. This was actually one of her favorite household chores, especially on cool, rainy days like this one when the clean, soft cloth warmed her hands as she worked. It was a gray Saturday on all counts: weather-wise, romance-wise, and even household-wise. Her mother was staying over for the weekend at a conference sponsored by the New Jersey chapter of Romance Writers of America. The house was quiet and lonely and she had entirely too much time to think.

She missed Dave. It was funny, but she missed Dave more than she’d missed Jason at the end of her marriage. She supposed that it was because she’d had a long time to fall out of love with Jason. They’d probably been drifting apart an inch at a time for years before Jason had finally sought out the “companionship” of his receptionist. But with Dave … She sighed. With Dave it felt like the end had come out of nowhere, blowing them both to hell with the sudden ruthlessness of a lightning bolt.

She missed him. There was no way around it. She missed his smile, his sense of humor, his tenderness. She missed the way he held her after sex, the way he always squatted down to listen when kids were talking, the way he cooked. She glanced at the freezer full of frozen diet dinners. God, she missed his cooking!

It would have been easier if she could have dwelled on his bad points, and he did have a few, but she knew that they were just peccadilloes. He was a good man at heart, and he did love her, she was sure of it. His only great fault was that he hadn’t understood how much her independence had meant to her. He saw marriage as the next logical step forward in his life, while for her it would be a step backwards.

She couldn’t blame him for not wanting to go on as they were. Maybe he didn’t exactly have a biological clock the way she did, but kids and family meant a lot to him, and didn’t it make sense that he’d rather have all that now instead of later? He had offered her everything he had, starting with his heart, and she’d said that she wanted something else instead. No wonder he didn’t want to be with her anymore. Even at WMTR, they avoided each other and at the weekly staff meetings, they sat on opposite sides of the room and made it a point not to look directly at each other. She couldn’t blame him, but she sure as hell grieved the loss of him.

She had finished folding clothes and was matching and balling socks when the doorbell rang.

It was Dave. He stood out there on the porch they had painted together, wearing a taupe colored jacket with the collar turned up and his hands thrust deep into the pockets. Raindrops glistened like diamonds atop his tight curls and he looked absolutely miserable. Dark circles shadowed his hazel eyes and there was no hint of a smile on his face. He peered in at her grimly through the screen door.

“Dave,” she said, reaching for the latch.

“I know I should have called first,” he told her a little hoarsely. “But … ” His voice trailed off and he shrugged. “I was already at the end of your street before I thought of it.” He glanced at her hand on the latch, then back up at her face. “Can we talk?”

“Sure,” she said, finally pushing the latch. “Is the porch swing all right?”

He nodded and she stepped onto the porch.

• • •

He followed her around the corner to the swing and waited until she sat down before taking his place next to her.

He had been practicing speeches in his head all the way over, but now he couldn’t seem to find the words to start. He wanted to touch her, to slip his arm around her and hold her close while they rocked, or just to take her narrow hand in his and hold it. But he didn’t feel he had the right to do either now, and thought he might upset her if he tried, so instead he pressed his palms together and slipped them between his knees.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said finally, speaking in a strangely flat voice while staring at the railing. “I know that I put you on the spot that night, and you’re right — you told me early on how happy you were being single and I … I should have respected that. It’s just that … when we were together, it always felt so right and … I thought that there was enough of a relationship … that you loved me enough that … ” He was stumbling over his words badly now. Denise put her hand on his knee to stop him. He turned and looked at her with bleak, red rimmed eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “In a way it’s the highest compliment a man can give a woman. I’m just sorry that at this point in my life, I couldn’t accept the compliment.”

“A part of me still doesn’t want to be here,” he admitted. “I think … there’s nowhere left for this relationship to go, we should stop here and let it end with whatever dignity we can salvage.”

Denise felt her heart in her throat. “Is that what you want?” she asked neutrally.

Dave drew in a long, slow breath and stared up at the white painted ceiling. “I think I’d embarrass us both if I kept pursuing you. I think that if I had an ounce of self-respect, I’d see the writing on the wall and would move on, find another job someplace and a woman who has the same feelings about kids and marriage that I do.”

Denise said nothing. She had seen this coming, but hadn’t wanted to admit it. Dave had been her friend, her lover, and her beloved. Surely it was worth anything to keep him? But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words to heal the rift. She needed to be true to herself more than she wanted to soothe him.

“But,” Dave continued, “I’ve gone over it a million times in my head and it always comes down to the same thing — I’m happier with you than without you.” He turned his sad eyes back to her face. “I want to go back to the way we were before. Do you think we can?”

She drew in a breath. She hadn’t expected this. “Is this what you want?” she whispered.

He took a long time before answering. “Yes.”

She studied him seriously for a long minute, then slid her hand from his knee and slipped it between his pressed together palms, lacing her fingers between his. She knew that that had been a qualified “yes,” that he was compromising his wishes to honor her own, and she ached for the pain that she knew that “yes” had cost him. “I missed you,” she said softly. “I missed you so much.”

He turned to her then and buried his face in the crook of her neck. Crooning softly, she took him in her arms, held him close, and wondered if they could ever really go back to the way they had been.

• • •

A long time later Dave raised his head and took her beautiful face between his hands and kissed her with a soft, gentle passion. “I love you,” he whispered against her lips. It was easier to say it this first time as they kissed and their eyes were closed.

“I love you, too,” she said softly. “So much.” But then she pulled away, rising to her feet. “Come inside,” she invited, extending her hand to him.

Without a word, he took her hand and let her lead him into the house. She closed the screen door softly behind them, and without a word led him by the hand up the stairs.

“Is Judy here?” he asked as she pulled him into her bedroom for the very first time. It was a neat and tidy room, with a bureau topped with a portable TV, a desk with a computer, and two nightstands bracketing a simple twin bed covered by a lacy white canopy and matching spread.

Denise shook her head. “She’s at a conference. She won’t be back until tomorrow morning.”

“Yeah?” he asked, dragging his gaze from the bed to the woman.

“Yeah,” she said softly, kissing him as she reached for the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head. She stopped his hands as he reached for the snap on his jeans. “Let me,” she told him. “I want to do this for you.”

With a sigh and a nod, he let his hands fall. She gave him a small smile and undid the snap, then
s-l-o-w-l-y
pulled down the tab on the zipper. Dave closed his eyes at the lessening of the pressure on his manhood. Damn, but he wanted this! She reached for his hip, but instead of pushing the material down, she pushed against his hip, levering him into a sitting position on her little twin bed. He braced his palms against the mattress and leaned back to look up at her, watching while she reached up to undo the buttons on her red camp shirt, beginning at the top and working her way toward paradise. A flash of pristine white peeped out at him from between the open flaps of red. He’d never seen her wear a white bra before, and he decided then and there that white was just about the sexiest color for underwear that there was. She doffed the shirt, draping it over the desk chair. He drew in a bracing breath.
Oh yeah
. White lace on olive skin definitely worked for him. She undid the button and zipper on her navy blue shorts next. More white, riding low on her hips. Just like he wanted to be.

Her pants slid unobstructed down her long, luscious legs. Barefoot, she simply stepped out of them and set them on top of her shirt. Wearing only her beautiful white bra and panties, she turned to look at him. Dave forgot even to breathe for just a moment as she got down on her knees in front of him and took his sneakered foot in her hands, carefully undoing the laces and sliding the sneaker off before setting the foot down and turning to its partner.

She stayed kneeling on the floor, cradling his bare feet in her lap and stroking them in a way that sent shivers all the way up his body. “It’s different with you, you know,” she said quietly. “The sex. It’s never just going through the motions. It’s always been special. Intimate.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss on one knee, then traced paths with her fingernails from his captive feet up the insides of his thighs, across his belly, and to his shoulders. Dave sucked in a desperate breath as she exerted a gentle pressure to push him flat on his back. Hoisting his feet up so that he lay supine on the bed, she leaned over him, scaling his body so that her white clad breasts barely brushed against him, ending her climb with a slow, searing, open mouthed kiss.