No More Mr. Nice Guy (2 page)

She did no such thing, of course. “I didn’t mean to desert you for so long,” she said lightly. “My sister sidetracked me and—”

“Of course she did. You two haven’t seen each other in months. I expected that.”

And understood. Alan always understood. Understanding was such a rare quality in a man, but just once Carroll wished he were slightly less understanding and more inclined to steal her off to a corner and kiss her senseless.

Actually, she would have killed him if he’d done any such thing.

Really, it would be tremendously helpful if someone would simply pour a bucket of cold water over her head before this ridiculous mood went too far.

“Carroll?”

She lifted her head and smiled, forcing herself to remember the thread of conversation. “Nancy definitely dropped a bomb on the family when she came home with Stéphane, engaged, no less. And to put a wedding together in less than a month…”

“Why do I get the feeling that your sister has always had a habit of starting earthquakes?”

“Tidal waves on occasion,” Carroll admitted. “That’s just Nance. We’re nothing alike. She’s always been the wildly exciting one in the family.” Her glance wandered to her sister as Nancy walked into the room, her red lips tilted up to her fiancé in laughter. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she, Alan?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you think so?” Carroll’s eyes jumped back to his, but Alan wasn’t looking at her sister. He was staring down at her.

“You’re the beauty, Caro, don’t you know that?” he said quietly.

She laughed, embarrassed by the compliment. “I’m not jealous of my sister,” she assured him. “I’m proud of her. She has such courage; she’s so full of life, so vibrant…”

Her mother interrupted them. Outside it had started pouring, and people were beginning to leave; Maud was in a tizzy, unable to find a single spare umbrella. Carroll found them, and after that she could hardly desert her mother with the party mess to handle alone. It was an hour later when Alan brought her coat and they went in search of Stéphane and Nancy to say a last good night.

They discovered the engaged couple wrapped together in the hall just off the kitchen. Carroll exchanged an amused glance with Alan, but that odd feeling was there again. Standing next to Stéphane and Nancy was like intruding on the radiance of fire. They shot sparks off each other that could light up a sky. Alan’s gentle hand on her shoulder suddenly felt as exciting as flannel pajamas.

Which was an unfair, shallow comparison, cruel to Alan and completely unlike herself.
Carroll, can’t you stop this? Please stop this…

But the nagging unease refused to disappear. Maybe Carroll had never wanted a roller coaster, but she was suddenly afraid to have missed the ride. In her heart and head, she didn’t want an impatient and demanding lover, she wanted the gentleness and compassion she knew she would find with Alan. Still…just once in her life, just
once,
she would like to feel reckless and uninhibited and wanton, to know what it was like to feel wildly, crazily, insanely in love.

By one in the morning, the rain had stopped. Shivering, Carroll climbed into Alan’s car and huddled until he came around to the other side and started the engine. Leaves were still clinging to the trees in mid-October, all shades of rust and crimson by day. By night, the leaves glistened black and silver, and a total stillness pervaded the quiet neighborhood. Alan’s sedate town car purred the few miles to her apartment.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Alan commented.

“Just tired.” Carroll slipped off her shoes and curled her legs under her for warmth until the heater started working. It was exactly the kind of thing she could do so naturally with Alan, one of the tiny things that made up loving him. Real love, not idiotic fantasies.

“Sure that’s all?” Alan asked. “You look troubled about something. Your sister?”

“There’s nothing, really. Just a long day. Nance could always burn the candle at both ends, but I’m afraid I’m doomed to be the yawn-at-ten type.” Her sleepy tone was wry, yet somehow lacked her usual easy humor. From the beginning of the relationship, she’d been totally honest about herself with Alan. People could get hurt if they had mistaken illusions about what they wanted and needed in a lover. Only tonight, just tonight, the honesty she’d built with him yawned in front of her like an abyss.

Alan, what if you’re feeling cheated? Truly sexy lovers don’t yawn at ten. They also don’t curl up on car seats like kittens. A truly sexy lover would probably be half on your lap as you drove, prepared to strip for your private show before lovemaking…

Even the thought was enough to bring an embarrassed flush to her cheeks. Alan would probably commit her to an asylum if she tried nonsense like that.

“Something,” he said firmly, “is on your mind. You don’t care for your brother-in-law-to-be?”

“Did
you
like Stéphane?” she countered.

Alan answered thoughtfully, “Well enough. He’s obviously intelligent, successful at what he does, sure of what he wants. I suppose I respect any man who marches to the beat of his own drummer.”

Carroll turned her head. “Maybe he marches a bit too fast? Alan, do you think he’ll be faithful to my sister?”

Alan’s eyebrows shot up in surprise at the question. “Is that what you’ve been worried about? That he won’t make her happy?”

“He’s a good-looking man. Maybe too good-looking. Used to a lot of bright lights and glitter, traveling around the world…”

“Your sister isn’t exactly a stay-at-home type herself.”

“No,” Carroll agreed absently. Nancy liked excitement, and if there wasn’t any readily available, she was good at creating it. So unlike Carroll, who had always found excitement in a fire on a snowy evening, who got high on a simple breeze on a spring day, who felt utter exhilaration in a storm. Carroll made no apologies about who she was, but comparing herself to her sister was like comparing violets to orchids.

Alan pulled into the parking lot of her apartment house, and turned off the engine. “Still thinking about the two of them?”

“No, not really.” She sighed. “Pay no attention to me, would you? I seem to be in the silliest mood. Believe me, it’ll go away with a good night’s sleep.”

She stepped out of the car, and shivered. The black streets still shone wetly from the rain, and the night had turned bitter. Alan lifted an arm and tucked her into the warmth of his shoulder. Held close, she felt her restlessness almost disappear. Being held by Alan, touched by Alan, was to be cocooned in safety and warmth, safe from all the bitter winds.

When he paused at the front door, she lifted her face for the kiss she knew was coming. His lips came down gently on hers, wooing, cajoling. His taste was familiar by now. Alan’s kisses were good; they were always good. His smooth-shaven cheek, the shape of his mouth, the softest swirl of his tongue inside her parted lips…she loved being kissed by Alan.

When he raised his head, his eyes shone down on her like stars on a midnight lake. She saw the question in them. It wasn’t a question for tonight; it was late and both faced a normal busy workday in the morning. Still, the faintest trace of impatience was there on her features. He’d made it increasingly clear he wanted to spend his life with her. How long was she going to make him wait before inviting an intimate relationship between them?

She didn’t know. She didn’t know, couldn’t think, and was tired of trying. Instead of pulling back as he undoubtedly expected, she laid her cheek on his shoulder and nuzzled closer for just a minute more, needing something she couldn’t name.

“Caro?” His fingers sifted soothingly in her hair. His warm breath fanned her temples.

“I love you,” she said fiercely. “Kiss me, Alan. Please. Just…”

“Sweetheart, tell me what’s wrong.”

“Nothing. Just…”

There.
His palms framed her face, and his mouth claimed hers with a sudden force that was distinctly un-Alan. She wrapped her arms around his neck, closed her eyes and willed a little of the magic she so desperately wanted to be there.

In a moment, she didn’t have to will the magic. It was simply there. Alan, always so careful with her, always so patient, always so honorable in courting her, turned thief. Impatient, frustrated thief. Heavens, who would have guessed it?

Her head reeled back from the pressure of his mouth. His tongue stole between her lips and dipped inside. That same tongue that had always invited the gentle swirl of tastes now possessively claimed the sweet corners of her mouth with dizzying speed. Her coat buttons flew open; he hadn’t asked permission. Neither the cold wind that whipped all around them nor the dark night was as shocking as the feel of Alan’s hands roaming willfully under her coat, igniting fires that made her tremble wherever he touched.

“Please” had always been part of his lovemaking before. Not frustration, not urgency, not…danger. Never a hint that he could conceivably want her beyond control, never that he was hungry just for her, only for her. New sensations swamped her, emotions she’d never expected. Her unsettled mood disappeared. The night disappeared. Alan disappeared, and the man in his place boldly rubbed a thumb over her nipple; sought the vulnerable pulse in her throat with his mouth; deliberately, provocatively molded her body to the length of his until she could clearly feel his arousal, the heat of him, the primitive need in him.

She shivered violently, and then abruptly he stopped. His mouth lifted from hers, and she could have sworn he was a stranger. Alan’s eyes didn’t have that smoky glaze; Alan’s features never had that threatening harshness; Alan’s breath never had that hoarse raspiness. Then, gently, he folded her close and simply held her, forehead to forehead, and he was definitely Alan again.

“I’m sorry, Caro,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“You didn’t,” she said softly.

Faster than she could believe, he severed the closeness, buttoned her coat and turned up her collar against the cold. His touch seemed calculated to show her that she was safe, that there had been no marauding thief moments before, that she’d dreamed that Alan. “It’s late,” he said practically. “Both of us have to be up early in the morning.”

“Yes.”

“Caro, you know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

“Yes.”

“You told me you were free on Saturday. That hasn’t changed, has it?”

She shook her head, still bewildered by the lightning-fast change in him, bewildered by feelings he’d ignited that lingered in the shadows like the embers from a fire.

“Maybe—just for fun—we could go look at houses on Saturday. You wanted to see that two-story colonial…”

“Yes, I’d love to.” They’d been looking at houses on Saturday mornings for weeks now.

He smiled then. “We both drank more champagne than we’re used to tonight. That’s all it was, Caro. Don’t worry about it. I would never rush you. You know that, don’t you? And there’s nothing to be afraid of. Ever. Not with me.” His lips swiftly brushed hers before he turned to open her door.

“Alan…”

“No,” he said brusquely, as if wary of hearing anything she had to say. “Just sleep well, kitten. And I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Less than ten minutes later, she was dropping a nightgown over her head. A minute after that the lights were off. But she had trouble falling asleep. In the space of an evening, her safe world had suddenly become unbalanced, threatened. Nothing was the same.

Alan dipped a brush into the old-fashioned shaving mug, and then methodically slathered the white foam on his cheeks and throat. A steaming mug of coffee sat on the bathroom vanity next to him. The smells of soap and steam and fresh-brewed coffee were part of the shaving ritual he rarely varied. This Tuesday morning was no different, except that when he lifted the razor to his throat, he glanced at his face in the mirror and abruptly set down the shaving tool.

His eyes were sick with worry.
You’re losing her.

The mirror didn’t have much comfort to offer him. The shaving foam couldn’t hide an ordinary all-American bone structure, and the shower had slicked back his hair, revealing the hairline he’d inherited from his father…and his father, at sixty-four, was bald. Alan had a full head of thick brown hair, but the genetic fate was inescapable. In a couple of decades, he was likely to lose most of it.

But the threat of baldness wasn’t the point. His looks just weren’t the type to excite a woman. Children and dogs liked his face just fine. In fact, children and dogs followed him around on a regular basis…but not women. He had the face of a man who drove a conservative car, wore appropriate clothes, took good care of his parents, and planned to live in a handsome, two story house in the suburbs with 2.2 children and a swing set in the yard.

And that face was a map of the man he was. He liked kids and dogs. He liked his parents. He had no deep dark secrets, no dramatic past, no dangerous edges to inspire or attract a woman. He’d never rushed a woman to bed who wasn’t ready, and the first time he’d made love he had suffered more from nerves than his girl had.

None of that would have particularly bothered him, if it hadn’t been for Carroll’s odd mood the evening before. Truthfully, her unusual behavior hadn’t surprised him. Probably he’d been waiting for the ax to begin falling for weeks. He’d seen her studying her sister’s fiancé at the party, a man who couldn’t be more his diametric opposite. And though Caro couldn’t know it, he’d studied Stéphane as thoroughly as she had, right down to his sandalwood and musk aftershave.

Alan picked up his razor again, stared at it, and this time firmly set it down. Teeth clamped together, he wiped off the shaving foam with a damp washcloth. His face was clean but whisker-stubbled when he was done. He took a sip of coffee, stared at that beard and then deliberately walked with the mug in his hand to the bedroom.

After pulling on pants, then a white shirt, he glanced at the clock by his bed. Seven o’clock. In an hour, patients would begin filtering into the office. For Jimmy Johnson, he’d have to put on that ridiculous cartoon shirt; it was the only way he could get the three-year-old to talk to him, tell him where he was hurting. Other mornings, Alan took that kind of thing with humor. A neurosurgeon could maintain an air of dignity maybe, but a pediatrician, never. Cartoon shirts came with the territory; so did smiley stickers on his stethoscope, but Alan had no illusions. A pediatrician wearing Mickey Mouse ears couldn’t compete with a suave, debonair, exciting kind of man.

Dressed, he finished his coffee, peeled a banana in the kitchen because he knew darn well his nurse would demand to know if he’d had breakfast, pocketed the article he’d meant to read last night on Reye’s syndrome, and hurried to the car.

The town car’s engine was sluggish about getting started, just as he felt. The morning was cold and dreary; leaves were stuck to his windshield by a promising-winter wind. Carroll would be getting up right around now. Her skin was pink-soft early in the morning; her eyes stayed sleepy until she’d had a second cup of coffee. He knew what she looked like in the morning because they’d had breakfast together a dozen times.

They just hadn’t slept together.

He’d known the minute he met her that he wanted to marry Carroll. It wasn’t something he could explain. Like a burst of sunlight, she could suddenly make him laugh. Like a fire in a winter storm, she could thaw the chill and weariness of an impossible day. And like a spear of lightning, she could arouse him by doing nothing more than sitting in his car, curled up like a kitten on the seat next to him, a fur collar brushing her cheek and her eyes softer than rainbows.

He hadn’t pushed to sleep with her because he was terrified. There was only one other woman he’d ever considered marrying, a woman who had gradually drifted from his life, moved on to greener pastures. He hadn’t necessarily failed with Jena London, because he’d never wanted, needed or loved her the way he loved Carroll, but now she came back to haunt him.

She’d accused of him of being methodical. He
was
methodical, and when he was with Carroll, he became even more systematic. He’d tried to be extra careful. He didn’t want to risk losing her, and Carroll was clearly wary of jumping into an intimate relationship.

“You haven’t shaved,” June Goodman said the minute he walked in the door.

“Correct,” he told his nurse as he took off his coat. “Afraid you’ll have to get used to it. I’m growing a beard.”

“How nice.” June gave him that all-men-occasionally-require-patience smile and followed him into his office. “Did you remember to have breakfast this morning?”

“Of course I had breakfast.”

“A
serious
breakfast. Not just a banana.”

She fussed around him, showing him the patient files for the day, informing him of lab results that had come in late the previous day. June was fifty-two, stocky, bossy and occasionally insufferable. He gave her regular raises only because she was irreplaceable.

Finally left in peace, he perched a hip on the edge of his desk and opened the file for Hannah Michaels, a four-year-old who’d been shifted into first place this morning because she had a dangerously high fever.

He tried to concentrate on Hannah, and could only concentrate on Carroll. He’d kept every male hormone under control until those few short minutes last night when frustration had overruled his better sense. When she’d responded like wildfire, she’d startled, delighted and badly upset him. He’d thought she
wanted
him to control his emotions. He’d been so careful to show her patience, gentleness, affection, respect, to so painstakingly build a relationship before he pressed for sex.

Wasn’t that what a woman wanted?

Of course
it wasn’t what a woman wanted, he thought glumly. Nice men were boring. Nice men weren’t…heroes. Women wanted romance, excitement, surprises. They didn’t want to be saddled for the rest of their lives with a man who was practical and honorable and boring. A woman had a right—and maybe even a need—to be swept off her feet.

Only he didn’t know how.

Actually, he didn’t have the least idea how.

Learn,
said the uncompromising voice in his head.
You’ve got four days before you see her again…

A quick rap on the door startled him. June’s head appeared around the corner. “Hannah’s in two.” She paused, looking at him. “Have you told Carroll you’ve decided to grow this beard?”

“No,” Alan said irritably, trailing after her.

“Just wondered.” June smiled at him as they reached the examining-room door. “You can always shave it off before you see her again,” she said reassuringly.

One day, he was likely to throttle the woman for her busybody ways, but then, he wasn’t the throttler type. Which was the point. Types. Types of men. He wasn’t the
type
to grow a beard; he wasn’t the
type
to seduce a woman. Fact was, maybe over the past two years he’d turned into just a little too much of a fuddy-duddy
type.

He pushed open the door to the examining room, the child’s file in his hand. A frantic young mother was pacing the floor. A tiny girl with far-too-bright eyes and pale cheeks was sitting placidly on the examining table, a giant baby doll next to her.

“You can look at my throat, but you have to give
her
all the shots,” the little one told him uncompromisingly, pointing at the doll.

Alan didn’t miss a beat. “How many do you think she’ll need?” he asked gravely.

“Three or two.
I
don’t need
any,
though.”

He nodded, then put the stethoscope in his ears. “I understand. She’s afraid of shots…but she’s not scared of having me listen to her heart, is she?” he asked.

The child hesitated, then smiled. “She is, but I’m not. You can do me first.”

Flexibility, he thought absently. In his work, he’d never had a problem being flexible. And with Carroll—
for
Carroll—he’d simply learn to be.

When the doorbell rang, Carroll hurried through the hall to answer it, still trying to fasten an amber button earring. The catch had always been difficult. She hadn’t yet managed it when she opened the door. “I’m so glad you’re early; I was just—
Alan?
”

The earring post popped out and bounced on the carpet behind her. She bent down to find it, muttering embarrassed imprecations, with one eye on the scruffy-looking stranger at the door. Alan didn’t wear leather moccasins. Or jeans and cord jackets and black shirts open three buttons down over a naked chest. Or sport quarter-inch-long whiskers that implied the man had had a week-long hangover. Or stand like that, looking…well…
macho.

But Alan’s grin surfaced when he crouched down beside her, immediately finding the amber earring and leaning toward her to fix it in her ear. “Chaotic morning?” he asked gently.

The masculine scents of sandalwood and musk drifted toward her, faint, startling. “Not really. Mom and Nancy both called this morning, both tearing their hair out over this wedding. Then…”

Actually, lots had gone wrong with the morning, from trouble with Nancy’s wedding plans to a toaster on the blink. Those kinds of problems didn’t bother Carroll, but she’d been desperately anxious to see Alan this morning, to make things normal between them again.

She’d had a long week to think since her sister’s engagement party…and she could have kicked herself since. Like secrets stored in an old attic trunk, she’d discovered a few memories that should have been jettisoned years ago.

Five years ago there’d been another engagement party—her own. At the time, everyone she knew was pairing off; Tom had been part of her life for a year, and they’d both done a good job of telling each other they were in love. The first time in bed should have convinced them otherwise—how dreadful could a first time for any two people be?—but it hadn’t. And the incident at her engagement party had been nothing, just the accident of seeing Tom talking with another woman, laughing in a way he’d never laughed with her, eyes shining as they’d never shone for her…

She’d had the sense to give him back his ring, and she’d had the empathy to know just how badly she’d hurt him. So much went into her present wariness of marriage—fear that she hadn’t the spark to hold a man for the long term, apprehension that she might thoughtlessly hurt someone else, an awareness that she’d talked herself into believing a relationship existed that never had. Wildly in love, she hadn’t been.

Nancy’s engagement party had roused all the old fears—foolishly, she saw now. Her relationship with Tom hadn’t gone wrong because she hadn’t been wildly in love, but because she’d never been honest with herself or him. Only Alan wasn’t Tom—how could she have forgotten that? With Alan she
had
been honest. If she didn’t feel some crazy-in-love-type nonsense, she at least had a realistic relationship with him, based on love and sharing and mutual interests—everything that really mattered.

And this morning, she wanted nothing more than to show him that she was her sensible self again, a woman with both feet on the ground. Silly moods and old fantasies had been banished for good. Alan deserved better than a woman yearning after pipe dreams. She offered him her best serene smile…just in time for Alan to take sudden advantage of his proximity to give her a kiss.

It was just a hello kiss. Alan always gave her a hello kiss, but his lips felt different today, surrounded by the rough, ticklish beard. And he tasted different, with a roguish promise of mint, and that taste set off a little hum in her head that she hadn’t been anticipating at all. As determined as she’d been to start this outing with honesty and common sense and no nonsense, she found her pulse fluttering like a hummingbird’s.

“You look beautiful this morning,” he told her.

She glanced down, at the old white cords and thick gold sweater she’d donned for their Saturday morning outing. She didn’t look beautiful. Her hair might look extra nice, but that was hardly enough to rate the compliment. And if she’d been dressed in sequins, she doubted that Alan would normally have noticed. Speechless for a second and a half, she responded carefully, “Alan, are you feeling all right?”

“Just fine.” He motioned boyishly to his chin. “Like the beard?”

“Hmm,” she said expressively. First thing in the morning was no time to hurt anyone’s feelings. She’d never deliberately hurt Alan’s feelings.

She had little time to mull over the beard, because Alan was thumbing through her hall closet, getting her coat for her. “I know I promised you we’d look at that colonial house, but there’s another place I’d like you to see, too. You’ve got the whole afternoon free, haven’t you?”

“Yes.” For a minute, she couldn’t imagine why he was standing there holding her kid jacket open. Belatedly, she realized he was doing it for her. Heavens.

Swiftly, she slipped into it, a flush on her cheeks that deepened when his hands slipped inside her collar, smoothing it when it didn’t need smoothing, touching her in such a way that his fingers caressed the soft skin at the nape of her neck.

Breathless, she slipped ahead of him outside, with one last glance at her pumpkin-and-cream living room. She’d planned on making fresh coffee and serving him doughnuts, because Alan loved doughnuts, but somehow it didn’t seem the time. It just didn’t have the feel of an average Saturday morning.

She
knew
it wasn’t the average Saturday morning when she looked in the apartment’s lot for Alan’s town car and saw only a metallic-red Italian sportscar… “Alan?”