No More Mr. Nice Guy (10 page)

“Al—?”

His lips sealed hers, the kiss of a kidnapper, a pirate. Her coat was pushed off, landed in a whoosh at her feet. Her arms seemed to be hanging in midair, too startled to know what to do with themselves. Then they were over her head, as Alan pulled off her yellow sweater. It must have hit a lamp shade, because she heard something rocking back and forth. Her bra went in the direction of the door. Her brown slacks slid down over her hips and were hurled somewhere, making hangers clatter together in a most abandoned way.

Removing pantyhose took two hands. In this case, it took two hands and a mouth. Alan kissed each inch of her as he peeled the nylon down. Her knees buckled. A smooth, cool bed was right there to take care of that problem, except that the coolness was another problem. She seemed to be shivering everywhere, inside her toes, on the surface of her skin, in her ears, her brain, her fingertips.

Her kidnapper did nothing to help her. Her kidnapper seemed to have several pairs of hands, because while Brooks Brothers garments were hitting the floor, a set of hands never abandoned her. Kisses landed indiscriminately on breast, navel, thigh.

A half hour before, her mind had been on speech, an urchin named Aaron, the appeasement of a growling stomach. She was a responsible woman in the middle of a workday. That was sanity.

This was the shadow of a man in darkness, the naughtiness of a motel room, the danger in knowing there were people passing just outside the door, their voices raised in normal conversation. “You’re craz—” she started to say, but his mouth molded on hers. She tasted mint, warm wetness, the flavor of desire.

“Open for me,” he whispered. “Now, Caro.”

Her legs wrapped around him, sealing him inside her. A whirlwind of darkness swirled in front of her eyes. She could hear the beat of her heart, feel the beat of his. His breath was fierce, harsh. She wasn’t sure if she was breathing at all, but her skin was suddenly as hot as fire, as delicate as a cotton puff.

Energy flowed through her in a lambent rush, a slick, lazy, powerful energy. She felt…taken. Taken with fierce, sharp strokes, possessive strokes, I’m-going-to-have-you, no-more-talk strokes. Wicked, wild speed. She marveled at what he could make her feel, do, think, want, need. A man in love had so much power.

A woman in love had so much more.

An hour later, the doors to the school clicked shut behind her. Carroll glanced quickly at her watch, and stumbled. A minute after one. She unbuttoned her coat as she hurried down the corridor, empty as classes were just beginning, and tripped again. With a frown, she looked down at her legs as if they belonged to a stranger.
Look, we learned to walk at a year old. Do you think we could manage to remember the basic procedure?

“Carroll?” Mrs. Williamson, the school secretary, rushed toward her. “About those evaluations Mr. McCarthy wanted to discuss with you on the new students? He wondered if you had a few minutes to spare now instead of at two.”

“No problem—just give me a second to get rid of my coat.” She hung it in her classroom, and grabbed her brush and a small mirror from her purse.

Her reflection startled her. Her cheeks had color that didn’t come from the cold day outside. Her brown eyes had an unforgivable sleepy glaze. Her lips looked carmine, and she wasn’t wearing a speck of lipstick. And she didn’t need to look down to know her legs were still wobbly.

You have an appointment with the principal,
she reminded that face.
Shape up.

Her stomach growled. A sign of normalcy, but not much of one. She could still feel the slight dampness between her legs, still imagine the texture of his lips against her breasts. The flush on her face deepened.

“Carroll, Mr. McCarthy—” The secretary was at her door again, this time looking frantic.

“Yes,” she said. She was in the school, she tried to remind herself. She had to remember—immediately—exactly why she had a meeting with the principal. She had to remember how to walk in a straight line.

Impossible, on all accounts.

Never, ever in her life had she imagined a man who loved her enough, wanted her enough, needed her enough to throw caution and common sense to the wind…and to make her do it, too.

But enough, Alan,
her heart whispered. For a lifetime, she was willing to explore sexual adventures with him. She was just becoming increasingly frightened because he wasn’t mentioning lifetimes.

After all this time, did he really want nothing more than an affair?

Friday night, seated at her kitchen table, Alan looked innocently unaware of the trap Carroll had set for him.

It didn’t look like much of a trap, but then, that was the point. She’d served him ordinary beer as an aperitif, something he used to like before he got into tequila and champagne. She’d urged him to wear jeans and a sweatshirt—the kind of clothes they used to relax in after a hard week’s work. The menu included no Spanish, Hungarian or Tibetan delicacies. In fact, she’d whipped up a simple meat loaf and mashed potatoes, something he used to like before he got into cactus paddles.

Having set such a clever trap, she only wished she knew what it was for. All she wanted to do was talk to Alan after dinner, seriously talk. And somehow she hoped that would be easier if Alan hadn’t changed quite as totally as she was afraid he’d changed.

Even so, she was both relieved and startled at Alan’s reaction to the meal. He took one look, enthused, “Looks terrific!” and plunged in as if he’d just ended a four-week fast. More slowly, she settled in the chair across from him and passed a plate of steaming blueberry muffins.

“Caro, I’m going to weigh three hundred pounds after this meal,” he scolded.

“Devil’s food cake with chocolate frosting for dessert.”

He looked at her with the expression of a man who enjoyed pain. She giggled, and then it most oddly occurred to her that she hadn’t simply giggled around him in weeks. “So tell me again what else the woman said,” she said.

He shook his head. “I still don’t believe it. Here are her three kids sitting side by side on the examining table, absolutely peppered with chicken pox—Carroll, do
not
let me have another muffin—and she’s wondering if there’s a little rash going around. It never once occurred to her to let the school know—all right, Caro, one more, but absolutely
none
after that—and you realize what this means for the next six weeks? Parents panicking and the schools worrying about epidemics…” He looked up suddenly. “You’ve had chicken pox, haven’t you?”

“Ages ago.”

“Still, in rare instances, it strikes the same person twice, so it isn’t wise to expose yourself to it. Take an extra good look at your urchins before you start drilling those
l’
s and
s’
s.”

“Just like you’ll be extra careful with the kids parading in and out of your office?”

“It’s not the same thing,” he said firmly.

She rose, picked up their empty plates and paused to kiss him on the nape of his neck. He smelled like a fresh shower, like a bracing soap and a man’s shampoo. She was vaguely aware he’d forgotten his sandalwood and musk, and was even more vaguely aware that she was glad. “It’s
exactly
the same thing.”

“Come back here and do that again when you’re within grabbing distance.”

She brandished the cake on a blue Wedgwood plate in front of him. “This is a test,” she announced. “You can grab either me or the cake.”

“Do I fail the test if I take the cake now and grab you later?”

“Men,” Carroll told the cake as she cut it, “are all alike. Here all this time I thought he loved me for myself, when all along…”

It was tough eating the cake while she was pinned on Alan’s lap. He fed her pieces that were far too large, then licked the crumbs from her chin, then managed to steal bites from her plate. He also stole chocolate-flavored kisses.

And the whole time she was laughing, she was trying to find the right words to say. She didn’t want to hurt him. She didn’t want to destroy the relationship they had together.

She was just increasingly afraid that if she didn’t say something soon, she was going to end up living in a barn with a man who wasn’t her husband. That the place was going to be decorated in zebra stripes, sportscars were going to line the driveway, and out-of-wedlock children were going to be raised on cactus paddles and quail in thyme sauce.

“Alan?” she said finally.

He found yet another crumb on her chin and flicked it off with the pad of his thumb, following this up with a kiss. “Did I tell you I got tickets to the ballet in Chicago for next Tuesday?”

“Ballet?” She laughed because, darn it, his nuzzling was tickling her, but the thought of another week of late nights made her feel exhausted before it had even started. “Alan, you
hate
the ballet.”

“I love you, sweet.”

“And I love you, but that’s exactly what I’d like to talk to you about—ballets and nightclubs and dancing and…” She took a breath and tried to make her tone sound teasing, casual. “Alan, you know, there was a time when I thought you seriously disliked all those things—”

For an instant, she was sure she saw a flash of bright blue guilt in eyes, but then it was gone, and Alan was suddenly talking fast and low as he teased the shell of her ear. “Nonsense. I love nothing better than doing exciting things with you, sweet—and we have to go dancing again. Someplace quieter this time. With soft lights and a postage stamp–size dance floor where I can hold you closer than you should be held in public, and you can drink just a little too much champagne.”

“Alan—”

“You can get very silly when you drink too much champagne.”

“I know I can. But—”

The phone jangled. She looked helplessly at Alan before sliding off his lap to answer it. Running a hand through her hair, she snapped an abrupt hello into the phone, then realized it was his answering service. “For you.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d left her number, and she knew well what a call in the evening meant. Still…she was the one who should have been upset. Instead, Alan leaped out of the chair as if his fanny had just connected with tacks, and alarm put a frantic glint in his eyes. “Don’t worry. I’m
not
leaving tonight,” he promised her as he took the phone.

No? Heart sinking, she started collecting the dessert dishes.

“Randy Jenkins,” he said when he hung up a few moments later. “I know darn well it’s just another case of chicken pox, which I told his mother—”

“Alan, it’s all right,” she said soothingly as she fetched his coat. It wasn’t all right, exactly, but their talk would just have to wait. One didn’t date a pediatrician without knowing the pitfalls, and whining about spilled milk never put it back in the pail.

“Caro, I can’t leave
now.
”

She raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You can come back here right afterward, can’t you? And you know I understand.”

“Believe me, honey, you
don’t
understand,” he said heavily, and raked a hand through his hair. “Maybe I could call Mrs. Jenkins back.”

They both knew he wasn’t calling Mrs. Jenkins back, and that he was leaving. Even if the boy only had a hangnail, Alan would worry about him until he saw for himself that the child wasn’t seriously ill. She wasn’t at all surprised to see Alan suddenly jam his arms into his coat sleeves and grab his keys, but she
was
surprised that he was so upset about something he obviously couldn’t help. “I’ll be back absolutely as fast I can. I
promise,
”
 
he said heatedly.

“Alan, is something wrong?”

“Nothing, absolutely nothing. Just don’t leave here, okay? Promise me, Caro.”

“Fine.” She couldn’t keep the bewilderment out of her tone, and then he was gone.

Shaking her head, Carroll closed the door. After she finished the dishes, she flopped on the couch with a book, but her mind was still on Alan’s strange behavior.

She tried for an hour but couldn’t concentrate on the mystery in her hands. Every time she glanced up, she saw flowers. Gardenias spilled out of their vases on the mantel; daffodils were starting to droop over her coffee table; the fresh roses he’d brought yesterday filled every spare nook and cranny.

Her apartment smelled like a cross between a country garden and a funeral parlor, and the look of all those flowers suddenly brought on an anxiety attack. Snapping the book closed, Carroll sprang to her feet, stuck her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and starting pacing.

She’d been pretty selfish.

Or blind. For weeks, Alan had been sending flowers, taking her places, doing things—and for all those weeks she’d quietly accepted those attentions and blithely taken them as signs of love from Alan. They
were
signs of love, she mentally reassured herself, only maybe she’d been eagerly picking up those signals and ignoring others.

Was she losing him?

Had he been trying to tell her that he was bored at the thought of quiet evenings at home with her? That he’d never valued the comfortable little talks they used to have? That he did love her in a certain way, but not in a way that included children and swing sets and an SUV and…well…a lifetime?

Maybe he’d always wanted a more exciting woman. Maybe he’d done all those things because he wanted her to be a different kind of person. Maybe he’d kidded himself into believing she
was
different—that she thrived on dancing all night and receiving flowers, and that she had dozens of adventurous fantasies like canoeing at midnight. Maybe he wanted a woman to climb into
his
bedroom in the wee hours?

And darn it, she supposed she could do something like that if it would really please Alan, but it wasn’t the point. The point was that maybe she’d kidded herself into believing she was the right woman for him.

Feeling gloomy and low, Carroll stopped pacing and curled up in a chair, desperately wishing she had answers. She needed to concentrate…and concentration became more and more difficult because of the haunting sounds coming from her back courtyard. Guitars?

Obviously, the wind. Frowning, Carroll rubbed two fingers on her temples and tried to think…but the throb of guitars persisted.

Irritably, she stood up and stalked through her kitchen to peer through the window over the sink. Her jaw dropped in surprise. Four men stood outside in the courtyard, dressed in black and wearing sombreros. They were looking at
her,
and the minute they made eye contact they bowed their respects.

Lights blinked on all over the apartment complex, and her throat was suddenly dry as she threw open the window. The musicians, nodding and smiling, sauntered toward her and stood in a semicircle looking up at her, never missing a note. She didn’t know the name of the song, but it was distinctly Spanish, romantic and soulful. Wrapping her arms around herself against the frigid night air, she tried to look appreciative. Oh, Alan, she thought helplessly.

When the song ended, she enthusiastically applauded and called out her thanks, praying that would be the end of the serenade…but the guitarists immediately burst into a wild flamenco number. Inside the apartment, she heard the jangle of her telephone. Making an apologetic motion to the musicians, she rushed to answer it, combing her hair distractedly with her fingers.

“No, Mr. Bartholomew. Honestly, I had no idea. I’m sorry they were disturbing you…”

She returned to a tango. She tried to explain in sign language that as much as she loved their music, she wanted them to stop, but one of the men kept shaking his head, smiling at her, calling out about how romance and love and music were everything.

Again the phone rang and, cheeks blotched red, Carroll rushed back inside. “Mrs. Roberts, I’m terribly sorry you were asleep. Yes, I know you work an early-morning shift even on Saturdays…”

The serenaders left a half hour later. Carroll had barely locked the door and flicked off the light before she heard a rapid knock at the front door. She flew to answer it, expecting Alan and not at all sure what she was going to say to him.

No pediatrician stood on her doorstep. The two strange men were dressed in blue, wore hip holsters and looked official. “Is this the place that had the outdoor music?” the steel-haired one demanded.

“I…yes, but—”

“We’ve had a complaint, miss.”

Just about then, she wished she’d simply die and go to heaven. Or hell. It didn’t make much difference. The officers were mollified with promises it would never happen again. Actually, they were highly amused by the entire incident.

Carroll wasn’t. She
wanted
to feel charmed, but this time it just wasn’t working. And it occurred to her that for weeks now, she’d only been
trying
to feel charmed by many of Alan’s romantic gestures. After all, what kind of woman got depressed over the gift of a ruby heart?

Her kind of woman, she thought miserably. She’d never wanted rubies or serenades. Just Alan. The Alan she’d thought she had.

She was sitting by the phone when he rang at midnight. His sober voice immediately squelched the first words she’d planned to say to him. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get back to you sooner, Caro. It wasn’t another case of chicken pox. I’m with Randy’s parents at the hospital—he has hepatitis.”

A dozen emotions were quickly shelved. “Oh, honey. He’ll be all right?”

“In time, yes, and he’s resting now—but, Caro, I’m likely to be here for another hour. Just go to sleep, would you, kitten? And I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes,” she agreed. And while she took a huge breath, there was a nervous cough on the other end of the line, then a second one. In the process of clearing his voice, Alan’s exhausted, grave tone was miraculously replaced by one of boyish shyness.

“Anything…unusual…happen tonight?” he asked casually.

She lifted the phone from her ear and stared at it.
Alan,
she thought wearily,
enough really is…enough.

Bone-tired, Alan pushed off the lights and climbed out of his car. Not a sound or movement disturbed the quiet street at this late hour. Jamming his hands in his pockets, head down against the cold, he aimed for his apartment door.

His memory was being buffeted by the smells of antiseptics, and Carroll. Of the look of a little boy finally peacefully sleeping in a hospital bed, and Carroll. Of parents too frightened to be rational, and Carroll. And the last thing he expected to find on climbing the three steps up to his door was…Carroll, a scarf wrapped around her throat and a white angora hat pulled low over her forehead.

He stopped dead, his heart pumping panic to every nerve ending. “Good Lord, what’s wrong? You haven’t been standing out here in this cold for lo—”

“I had to talk to you, and it wouldn’t wait,” she said crisply. “The child’s all right, Alan?”

“Randy—yes. I…” He fumbled with his apartment key, and then hustled her inside ahead of him. While he stood in the hallway removing his jacket, she moved inside, switching on lamps and tugging off her hat and scarf. But he couldn’t miss noting, when she perched on the edge of the couch, that she hadn’t taken off her coat.

She didn’t intend to stay. Anxiety hit his gut with all the delicacy of a Mack truck. “What’s wrong?”

“A great deal, I’m afraid,” she said quietly.

He tried, fast, to find a light note. “They were flat?” he said wryly.

“The serenaders were perfectly in tune, Alan. It’s you and I who don’t seem to be.” She added softly, “I know you’re tired. If you’d like me to make a pot of coffee—”

“No.” Coffee wouldn’t help. In fact, the smoothest of liquids probably couldn’t push past the total dryness in his throat.

He’d been so sure it was working…and he’d come as close to being a romantic hero as he could. He thought she liked the new Alan. He’d liked some parts of the new image himself, but there wasn’t a chance he could keep up the game for the next ninety years—even if he could stomach the food he’d been cooking, even if he could live with the impractical car, even if he could manage to stay up night after night and still do a decent day’s work the next day.

Which left Carroll loving a man he wasn’t. Or not loving the man he was. Or in the worst possible scenario, the one twisting in his gut, Carroll not loving him at all.

“
Please
sit down, would you?” He was just standing there, staring at her with those fathomless, gentle blue eyes of his. She sprang from the couch, as restless as a cat in a rainstorm and twice as miserable. She already knew she was going to make a mess of this. She could never say things well when she was upset, and she was unquestionably upset. Her stomach was in knots, and her palms were damp, and her heart was beating erratically…because anxiety always made her heart beat erratically.

“Just say it, honey.” Alan’s voice was low.

She waved her hand helplessly, as if that could help her get the words out. “I thought…I
always
thought…I could be honest with you. From the day I met you, I thought we were capable of a special kind of honesty between us. Even from the very beginning, we could talk to each other—”

“We could and we can, Caro.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think I’ve been lying to you and you’ve been lying to me and—”

“I’ve never lied to you!” Alan said swiftly.

“No?” Her eyes were suddenly smarting with tears. “Then will you answer a few questions for me—with total honesty?”

His lungs released a sudden rush of air. She was at least talking—and not walking out. “Of course.”

“They’re really very simple questions.” Sticking her hands in her coat pockets, she tried to smile, and almost did. “For a Sunday dinner,” she said softly, “would you rather have a rib roast or squid in tomato sauce?”

Expecting the world to fall in, Alan wasn’t at all prepared for the irrelevant question. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Rib roast. Carroll. Dammit, if you didn’t like the serenade, just say so. I can see it was a stupid idea. Forget it and let’s just—”

“Do you like dancing, Alan?”

“I—sometimes.” He couldn’t take his eyes off her white face.

“You promised to be honest.”

“
Sometimes
I like dancing. Caro—”

“And ballet? And nightclubs? And you really like sleeping on black satin sheets? You don’t find them…slippery? And the wild zebra spread, Alan, tell me how you picked that out because it suited you.”

He felt cornered at the end of a long corridor. “Sweetheart,” he said in a low voice, “maybe I’m not quite so fond of those things as I let on, but—”

“I think you hate all of them,” she said sadly. “And I finally figured out why you did all those things, Alan, why you’ve been lying to me.” She took a long breath. “You were tired of me, weren’t you? You wanted an affair, not marriage, not quiet evenings at home. The thing is, it would have been so much less painful if you’d just
told
me what you were feeling, that you really wanted and needed a very different kind of woman than I am. Because, Alan, I’m not—”

Talking was proving to be a terrible idea. Holing up in a corner to lick her wounds was a better one, much less humiliating. She made the three swift steps to the door before Alan sprang in front of her, his face gray with pain and his voice impossibly gentle. “You are so dead wrong, kitten.”

She shook her head wildly, refusing to look at him. “I don’t think so. Suddenly, we’re having this affair. Suddenly, it’s all different.” She swiped at her eyes impatiently. “I think you always knew I wanted kids more than serenades. SUV’s, not sportscars.. And even the barn, Alan. It could probably be a terrific home for someone, something unusual and unique and tremendously innovative and creative…but I never saw anything that wrong with a house in the suburbs. With a standard old white picket fence—I just can’t lie, Alan. I
like
white picket fences. I’ve always liked white—”

“God, I love you.”

That was a perfectly awful thing to say, because it made tears gush from her eyes as if a dike had suddenly become unplugged. And Alan took most unfair advantage of her tears by moving forward, talking as he untangled the scarf from her hands, talking as he brushed the tears from her cheeks, talking as he firmly, gently started unbuttoning her coat. “I love you…so much. And I did everything, Caro,
everything
because I was afraid of losing you. I was trying to be…the man you needed in your life. The best way I knew how.”

She didn’t want to look at him, but his palms cupped her face, forcing her eyes to meet his. Even through a rainbow haze of tears, she could see the expression of the man she’d fallen in love with. A man she’d once believed would never lie to her…and whose sincerity was there now, in clear dark eyes, in a mouth rigid with anxiety, in the beat of the pulse in his temples. The fear in her heart eased, just a little. “But you were
always
that man. You never had to…make up things, or pretend, or…”

“But I did, Caro.” He took her hand, led her to the couch and doused the light that was glaring in her eyes when she sank down. “Weeks ago,” he said gently, “I wanted to ask you to marry me. I didn’t because I was afraid you’d say no—and it’s your turn to be honest this time, kitten. You would have said no, wouldn’t you?”

Her lips parted to instantly deny that…but then she couldn’t, not when she remembered back to the way she’d felt at the time. And before she could stop him, he reached up gently, soothingly, to brush the last of the tears from her cheeks.

“If you’d had the right feelings,” he said softly, “you wouldn’t have held me off from sleeping with you. You felt warmth—a part of love. But not all I wanted from you, and not all I wanted for you.”

She was suddenly staring at the wall, anywhere but at him. “But that was all a problem in me, Alan, not you,” she said painfully.