No More Mr. Nice Guy (6 page)

“I may have.”

“You didn’t,” he assured her. “How about the second boy you went out with?”

“Don’t really remember,” Carroll admitted. “The next one I remember was…” She hesitated. Why were they talking about this? And the tequila must have gone straight to her head, because she hadn’t thought about such things in years.

“Tell me,” Alan encouraged.

“Oh…a boy named Mark.”

“And you were how old?”

“Sixteen or so.”

“First love?”

She flushed. “No, it was nothing like that.” Her fingers splayed on the silk folds of his shirt. Beneath, she could feel the warmth of Alan’s chest, the solidity of muscle, the comfort of his heartbeat. There was nothing she couldn’t tell Alan. “In high school, the boys called me ‘the challenge’ behind my back,” she said dryly. “It seems I built up a reputation for being a Goody Two-shoes. Anyway, Mark was tall and good-looking and strictly bad news—no decent girl in school would date him. Everyone knew he only wanted one thing.” Carroll chuckled, offering Alan a mischievous smile. “In short, he was the best chance I ever had to get into trouble and I blew it.”

Not from where Alan was sitting. “I take it you didn’t go out with him?”

“Oh, yes, I did. I even knew the football team had made bets on whether or not he would score. Darn it, that was partly why I accepted the date.” Carroll idly ran a hand through her hair, remembering. “Alan, you probably can’t understand this…”

“Hey. Give me a try,” he coaxed lightly. Surely, she wasn’t afraid he would judge or criticize her? He would never do that. He did wonder fleetingly if the bastard was still alive.

“Well…” She laughed, a little nervously. “You know how you are when you’re sixteen? You think nothing can hurt you, you’re sure the whole world is out there waiting for you to explore it, and you want to try everything at least once. I was so tired of that ice-maiden label, Alan, and maybe I just wanted to see what I was missing. I had big visions of a wild date. Maybe doing things I’d always wanted to do, like staying up until dawn, like climbing the sandstone mountains at Shades Park by moonlight, like canoeing on the Wabash at midnight.”

Alan mentally stored those tidbits. “So what happened?” he encouraged.

“He took me to a drive-in movie and spilled popcorn all over me,” Carroll said dryly. “Somehow that got us laughing. I think that spoiled his whole image as the football-team stud. I didn’t even get a kiss at the door, no pass, nothing, but believe it or not, we had a terrific time. A few days later, he even punched some guy who dared to ask how he’d made out with me. Darn it, the guy acted like my big brother for almost a year.”

“Did he?” Amused now, Alan discovered an eyelash that had fallen on her cheek, a tiny black crescent of silk against cream-soft skin. He brushed it away with the pad of his thumb and then leaned back, studying her. His eyes turned thoughtful. “So…you were stuck with being a ‘good girl’ a little longer.”

“Yup.”

“No other chances to stay up until dawn?”

“Plenty in college, when I used to study all night. Seeing the dawn that way just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“No,” he agreed absently. For that matter, climbing around the sandstone hills in Shades State Park by moonlight struck him as a good way to get killed. Which left him only the last of her fantasies to act on.

Regretfully, his gaze wandered over her slim form, over the soft slope of her breasts draped in black cashmere to the curve of her hips in white. Caro wasn’t tipsy, but she was definitely relaxed. He allowed himself one long moment of imagining her body without the black-and-white garments, all supple and lithe and willing and bare, then abruptly surged to his feet and reached down for her hand. “Up,” he urged.

“What?”

He switched on a lamp, bent over to blow out the candles and reached for her hand again. “I think it’s time you canoed on the Wabash at midnight.”

Her lips parted in surprise. “Alan, I was just talking. It was just a sixteen-year-old’s fantasy, for heaven’s sake! We don’t have to—”

“I’m afraid we do,” he announced firmly, and hoped she didn’t hear the regret in his voice. Possibly the last thing on earth he wanted to do was head out into a cold night in a canoe, but that wasn’t the point. Doing something absolutely special for Caro was the point. Tequila might have loosened the forgotten fantasy from her tongue, but a bulldozer couldn’t have stopped Alan from following through with it.

“You can’t be serious,” Carroll said incredulously.

He was already heading for the computer. It wasn’t going to be all that easy to find a canoe livery open after dark in late October. “Think you can manage to fit into a pair of my old jeans for a few hours?”

***

The old codger waved them off from the riverbank. “Now, don’t worry about a thing, you two. Just remember, now, three miles down the river you’ll see the blue light—a big thing, no way you’ll miss it. I’ll be gone on home, mind you, but you just tie the canoe up secure when you’re done, and the gate’ll be open so you can get your car out.”

“Thank you again for everything,” Carroll called after him. A moment later, he was out of sight and she leaned comfortably back against Alan. “Nice old man, wasn’t he? Not many people would have been willing to go to such trouble for strangers.”

Privately, Alan saw the codger a little differently, but then, privately he’d slipped the man a few bills, each one emblazoned with Ben Franklin’s face. The old guy’s shrewd eyes had lit up like Christmas lights. As he’d driven them to the landing, he’d repeated again and again that the two of them could use his canoes any time, any season, and any hour of the day or night.

It didn’t matter. Sitting straight, Alan dipped the paddle into the smooth, quiet waters of the river. Carroll was half sitting and half reclining on a cushion, cradled between his legs, her head against his stomach. When she tilted her face up, she was smiling. “I’m afraid he thought we were nuts, Alan.”

“Probably.” He added teasingly, “One of us
does
look like a vagrant.”

“What’s this? You don’t like my outfit?” His jeans fit her just about as well as his corduroy jacket, and his old tennies stayed on her feet only because she had put on three pairs of socks. She could hardly have worn the outfit she’d had on at dinner for this venture, and to drive to her place for other clothes would have wasted time.

“I love your outfit,” he assured her.

Which was odd, Carroll thought. He looked at her as if black cashmere sweaters couldn’t begin to compete with oversized jackets and baggy jeans. Really, it was a very strange sensation, to be in love with a man who had such serious vision problems.

And she was so in love with him. Initially, she’d hated the thought of disrupting their evening, and couldn’t believe he was serious. But Alan had made it clear he loved the idea; they’d laughed so much on the way here; and darn it, it
was
something she’d always wanted to do. More than that, who else could she have done this with but Alan?

The Wabash could be a murky gray-green by daylight. At night, the river was black and smooth and mysterious. Steam whispered off the surface in wispy puffs, and the steep banks were shrouded in brush and trees.

On a very rare occasion, nature could forget about bringing on winter and freezing temperatures and threatening clouds and do something incredibly special with a night in October. This was one of those nights. The stars were low and clear and bright, thousands of them winking against an ebony sky. She could smell the trees, the water, the night itself. The air was almost warm, and the faintest breeze whispered in her hair.

The lights of Lafayette sparkled above them on both sides. Traffic sounds and even voices carried on the river. Civilization was right there, so close, yet they were totally alone, cocooned in silky darkness. The only sound she clearly heard was the steady, rhythmic dip of the paddle.

A half hour must have passed before Alan lifted the paddle and simply let them drift downstream. One never took a current on a river for granted; Alan knew that from the hours he’d spent in a canoe as a kid, but for a few moments there could be no possible danger. “Is this what you had in mind when you were sixteen?” he murmured.

She tilted her head back to look at him. “A thousand times better. Isn’t it special, Alan?”

“Very.” But it was Carroll he was staring at. Her face was glowing by moonlight, and her eyes were magic. “Next time, don’t save up those dreams,” he chided her teasingly. “Bring them out of hiding so we can do something about them.”

“I felt silly,” she admitted.

“For confessing to dreams?”

“I always thought you would laugh.”

“Never, Caro.” He couldn’t wait any longer to drop a kiss on her mouth.

The kiss was upside down, making them both smile just before lips touched lips. Shortly after that, she decided she could get very used to upside-down kisses…but she didn’t have to. Careful not to disturb the balance of the canoe, he turned her and lifted her a few inches so her head was on a level with his shoulder. That way her eyes could meet his, and his arm could move where it belonged, around her, and his mouth…

His mouth wooed and beguiled and tempted her, teaching her all sorts of new dimensions in the oldest of arts. There were follow-me sorcerer’s kisses and confectioner’s sugar kisses and lazy, slow, languid kisses.
We have forever,
his lips promised her. She saw stars, the craziest glow of blue light, the loving shine of his eyes.

Inexorably, the river flowed beneath them; they paid no attention. The flow and movement became part of them; Alan’s husky murmur seemed part of the mist, her answering laughter a blend with the moonlight. In time, they stopped, and Carroll simply lay in his arms, eyes closed.

Alan took up the paddle again. “We should reach the landing soon,” he said regretfully.

Her eyes blinked uneasily back open. “Alan?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think there’s any chance we passed that blue light the man told us about?”

“Honey—did you see it?”

“I…” It was a little tough to explain that she’d gotten blue lights and stars and loving confused for a short time.

Abruptly, Alan turned the paddle to slow the canoe. “When?” he said briskly.

“Back…umm…when neither of us was paying too much attention.”

Smoothly, swiftly, Alan turned the canoe around, shipped the paddle and unzipped his jacket. Traveling upstream was a little harder than traveling down. “Now, don’t get nervous,” he said soothingly. “It can’t be that far. We’ll find it.”

“I’m not nervous,” Carroll assured him.

“There’s nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not worried.”

“It just might take us a little longer to get home than we expected, that’s all.”

He dropped her off at home at three in the morning. Carroll was so tired she could barely manage to strip off her clothes and climb into bed. But when she did so, and when she closed her eyes in those last moments before sleep, she was still smiling.

Canoeing against the current hadn’t exactly been fun, and the old codger’s blue light was the faintest wink of color between trees, almost impossible to find. Still, that wasn’t what had mattered to Carroll. They’d laughed through all of it; they’d shared; the whole night had been delicious for her. And what the heck, it was downright exhilarating to know that her kisses had actually made Alan forget where they were.

Alan, driving home, was miserable. Some hero he’d turned out to be.

He’d blown the whole romantic adventure, and it was one he should have easily been able to pull off. He knew canoes. He knew better than to ignore landmarks; he shouldn’t have let their location slip from his mind for even an instant.

That wasn’t the whole problem, though. From cooking romantic dinners to setting up candlelight seductions to canoeing at midnight, he’d had high hopes of tricking Carroll into believing he had a little honest-to-goodness swashbuckler in his blood.

The problem was just that. Tricks. He didn’t want to trick her into believing he was what she wanted and needed in a man. He wanted to be that man.

Carroll usually enjoyed a Monday night visit with her family, but the kids had been horrendous all day, an icy rain had made the drive treacherous and her car was making ominous noises as though it wanted a new muffler. By the time she pushed open the back door to her mother’s kitchen, it was seven in the evening, and little devils were pounding in her head.

“Anybody home?” She peeked in.

“Caro, you’re going to have to talk with your sister!”

Maud was feeding plates to the dishwasher at a clattering rate. The teapot was whistling all by its lonesome on the stove, totally ignored. Not taking her eyes off her mother, Carroll shrugged out of her jacket and rescued the teapot.

Maud was dressed in a paisley blouse and camel skirt and the sling pumps she’d worn to work that day. She looked trim, whirlwind-efficient, far too attractive to be the mother of two grown daughters, and at the moment ready to climb the nearest wall. “We’ve run into a few more snags in the wedding plans?” Carroll asked sympathetically.

“It is
not
possible to put on this wedding with only two more weeks to prepare for it, and that’s that! Would you
please
go talk to your sister?”

“Sure, Mom,” Carroll said soothingly.

Nancy was in the living room. An absolutely exquisite white satin wedding gown was draped over the couch, a photograph album was open on the floor and four sample books from florists littered the tables. Dressed in a neon-yellow shirt with skintight black pants, Nancy was barefoot and pacing. The minute she saw Carroll, she stopped. “Thank heavens you’re here. You’ve got to talk to mother, Caro. She’s being totally impossible!”

“All right.”

“You’re the only one who could ever make her see sense.”

“Hmm,” Carroll said amiably, and wandered out of the living room toward the closed door of the den. She knocked once, then poked her head in. The TV was blaring the news; her dad had his feet up on his recliner with a pipe in one hand and the newspaper in the other. “Safe to come in here?” she asked.

David chuckled and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “I’m trying my best to stay out of harm’s way. Come in and give us a kiss. You look like a breath of sanity.”

“I am,” she said mischievously. No point in telling her dad she felt like bursting into tears. She bent to kiss his soft cheek. “Can you fill me in before I go back out there and face the lions?”

“They’re both totally irrational,” David Laker said simply.

“I could see that.”

“And over nothing. We’ve got the church, the hall and the dress. What more does anybody need to get married?”

“A blood test.”

David looked alarmed. “Lord, don’t mention that. It’ll be just one more detail they’ll find to argue over.”

“Hmm.” Carroll kissed him again, mostly because he deserved a reward for surviving in such an argumentative household over the years, and headed back for the door. “Come out and save me if you hear the sound of things being thrown.”

“I’ve already heard the sound of things being thrown. That was when I ducked in here. You can handle them, Caro. You always have.”

Chuckling, Caro wandered back out, mentally told the demons in her head to stop pounding, and rearranged her face into suitable sympathetic lines before reappearing in the living room doorway. Nance by that time had flung herself into a chair, and raised her head only long enough to give Carroll a dramatic look, full of pathos and despair.

“Do you see what I mean? She’s completely unreasonable.”

“Haven’t talked to Mom yet. Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong first?”

“Everything’s wrong. Everything. The caterer backed out with only two weeks to go before the wedding—”

“Don’t worry. I’ll find another caterer. What else?” Bending down, Carroll carefully lifted the gorgeous wedding dress and hung it in the hall closet.

“The veil. Mother wants me to wear her veil, and I don’t want to hurt her feelings, but it’s old-fashioned.”

“So it’s old-fashioned. Weddings are supposed to be old-fashioned. Besides, we both know you’re not going to hurt Mom’s feelings, so you wear the veil and love it. What else?”

“Caro—”

“What else?’”

“Flowers,” Nance said glumly. “I want to carry a single rose, and mother wants me to carry a traditional bouquet. Look—”

“I don’t have to look,” Carroll said patiently, and bent down to start closing floral sample books. “You want to carry a single rose; you carry a single rose. Now what?”

Photographers, decorating the hall, ordering the wedding cake, what kind of wedding cake, liquor or just wine for the wedding reception… “If only Stéphane were here,” Nancy wailed. “It just can’t all be done in two weeks. There’s no way.”

There was, of course, always a way. Nancy was reasonably calm by the time Maud marched into the room. A short time later, the three women were dissolved in laughter, the arguments forgotten. Spats had always been fierce between her volatile mother and sister, but they’d never lasted long, particularly when Carroll was there to play diplomat.

Though she loved her family, Carroll no longer felt up to playing diplomat, and knelt at the hearth to start a fire. She had been freezing all day. The little flames licking at the kindling felt good. Not warm enough, but good. Better yet would be to curl up on the couch next to Alan, her head in the crook of his shoulder, his arm around her waist, and her increasingly miserable body safe, snug and sheltered.

Better yet would be to marry the man. Unfortunately, the steady patter about weddings made her starkly aware that Alan hadn’t mentioned marriage in some time now. Or houses. Or children.

Just love.

Her smile came from nowhere…or maybe from the delivery of orchids earlier in the day. Anonymous, of course. And someone—some crazy stranger—had left a package on the front seat of her car the day before that. The package was huge, just as huge as the white velvet unicorn inside it. The frivolity of the giant stuffed animal touched her far more than the flowers. When she’d called to thank Alan, he’d denied everything, with a lot of throat clearing that made her smile.

Still, she firmly banished the image of Alan from her mind. Later. She certainly didn’t want to see him when her complexion looked like white mud and her body was begging her to retire from the human race.

“Well, I’m going to join David and let you two girls talk,” Maud announced. “Want me to make some hot cocoa first?”

“No, thanks, Mom,” Carroll said.

“It’s a better night for apricot brandy.”

Carroll winced, but Nancy had already bounced up. She brought a decanter and two glasses back from the kitchen, and poured brandy for both of them. “Everything fine with Alan?”

“Great.” Carroll looked at the orange liquid in the glass Nancy handed to her, then simply set it down.

“You two do anything special on Saturday night?”

“Yes,” Carroll said, and sneezed. “Believe it or not, after dinner we went canoeing on the river.”

“You
what?
Your Alan?” Nancy pivoted, took a very good look at Carroll and frowned. “You look terrible.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re not getting sick on us, are you, Caro?”

“I never get sick,” Carroll reminded her.

“Because we’re never going to get through this wedding if you come down with something.” Nancy’s tone rose in increasing alarm. “After two years in Quebec, I’d forgotten how Mom and I fight when we’re in the same house for longer than forty-eight hours. You can’t get sick.”

“I’m not, I’m not.” She sat up and tried to look perky. “Come on, let’s talk about the wedding.”

Nancy shook her head. “We’ve been talking about the wedding all day, every day for two weeks. Let’s talk about your Saturday night date. Better yet, let’s talk about
your
wedding.”

“He hasn’t asked.”

“A detail.” Nancy dismissively waved that aside with a gesture of her hand. “The important thing is whether you’re sure you want to spend the rest of your life with him.”

“I’m sure,” Carroll said quietly. The room was vaguely spinning, reminding her that weeks ago that was exactly what she’d been worried about, that Alan never made her head spin. He did now. Regularly. Being in love wasn’t unlike having the flu, one minute dizzy-headed, one minute traumatized by despair…in so many ways, Alan bewildered her lately.

He’d changed, and rationally she kept trying to convince herself she should be worried about the reason for those changes. The sportscar made no sense; Alan needed a practical car. She wasn’t all that happy with the idea of living in a barn; his beard left a chafing rash in embarrassing places; squid was never going to be her favorite food. She had no idea what he was going to do next.

Emotionally, though, she didn’t need to know what he was going to do next. Who really cared if the man took up gourmet cooking? He had prepared the dinner especially for her, and that was the point. Affection, respect and trust had always been part of their relationship. The past two weeks, in really talking together, doing all these different things together, those feelings had simply intensified, and love and the strongest of desires had been added to them.

He loved her. Everything he’d done had shown her that. At core, Alan had her heart and, if he ever got around to taking it, her body. A whimsical smile curved her lips. “I’m going to marry that man,” she said firmly.

“Good.”

Heavens, she felt strange. The room really
was
spinning. “I’m going to marry a man who thinks I love stuffed animals, who serves me cactus paddles for dinner, and who wants to live in a barn,” Carroll said vaguely.

There was a moment’s silence before Nancy bounced up from her chair and came over to feel her forehead. “I thought so. You’ve got a fever.”

“He chased me around a medical conference. I don’t know if you can understand the monumental difficulties involved in chasing anyone around a medical conference…”

“I’m getting you an aspirin. Immediately.”

“He sat there for three hours, bored absolutely stiff, and practiced all those
s’
s and
l’
s.”

“Skip the aspirin. I’m calling Mother,” Nancy said firmly.

“Don’t go,” warbled the frail voice. The five-year-old was little more than two dark burning eyes surrounded by white—white sheets, white blankets and white walls in the background.

“Sweetheart, I promised you I’d stay until you fell asleep, and I will.” Alan glanced at the clock on the hospital room wall. It was Monday night and nearing midnight, something his limbs and eyes and head could have already told him. Around nine, weariness had settled over him like a pall, but he still hadn’t been able to leave the hospital.

Right after visiting hours were over and her mother had left, Susie had changed her mind about having her adenoids out in the morning. She’d decided definitely not to.

“One more story,” she coaxed now.

Three stories later, Alan was finally free to tug on his coat and escape the hospital. A still night and a sky full of stars greeted him outside. His car was the only one left in its row. As he started the engine, he told himself for the hundredth time that these late-night hospital visits were unnecessary. During the day, he always checked on the few pediatrics patients he had scheduled for minor surgery.

His problem, as he’d mentally told himself a dozen times, was that he didn’t have pediatrics patients; he had Susie and Johnny and Billy and Kim. For a short time, they weren’t their parents’ kids but his. An attitude that his mentors had tried very hard to purge him of in medical school—with absolutely no success.

At home, he shucked his clothes and stood for long minutes under a hot shower, which against all odds woke him up.

Lying in the darkness, fully awake, he stared at the ceiling and thought of Carroll. Sleeping alone was not fun. Sleeping alone was even less fun when a man knew there was a woman on the other side of the city who was more than willing to share her bed with him. Not at this hour, of course. He glanced at the luminous face of his clock radio. Two o’clock. No, hardly at this hour, but the principle was the same.

He’d spent two nights trying to think of some way to ensure that making love with him would be the most unforgettable experience of Caro’s life. It appeared he was going to spend a third night the same way.

The thing is, he lacked daring. Imagination. A true spirit of romantic devilment. Women wanted things like that. A true romantic hero would not think about the time or worry about interrupting her sleep. A true romantic hero took chances. He thought up much more exciting things than roses and gourmet dinners. He took his lady completely by surprise.

Abruptly, Alan sat up in bed and switched on the light. The mirror over his dresser reflected back a squinting man with disheveled hair, gray pajama tops and a determined scowl.
You’re crazy,
said a little voice in his head.
You can’t do that. Go back to bed.

Clean black socks were neatly folded in his drawer. He put those on after he’d pulled on a dark sweater and jeans. Yawning, he grabbed a jacket and stuffed his keys in his back pocket.
She’ll have the little men come to put you away. They’ll be smiling patiently and carrying a straitjacket…

He mentally suggested an anatomically impossible feat to his little voice, and persevered. A man had to do what a man had to do. Maybe the canoe trip had been a bomb, but he could make this work. Caro wouldn’t laugh at him. And if she took it in the right spirit, neither of them would be sleeping alone after this. Ever.

He refused to feel another qualm, until he reached Carroll’s building, parked the car and took a long look at the dark windows of her apartment. She
was
unquestionably asleep.

Sleepy, however, could be an advantage. She wouldn’t be quite so likely to think he’d lost his mind.
Stop that kind of negative thinking,
he commanded himself. Climbing out of the car, he took firm steps around the side of her building.

He knew which windows went to her bedroom. The trick was getting to them. He pivoted around to make sure no patrol cars were anywhere in sight, then let his eyes focus on the oak tree in her courtyard. No one could have asked for a sturdier tree, and there was a thick branch right next to her window. The trunk, however, grew six feet straight up before he could conceivably get a foothold.
If
he meant to climb the tree.