No More Mr. Nice Guy (8 page)

She picked up her purse.
Carroll, he’s seen you for three days running and given you every free minute he’s had. Give the man a break.

Actually, she had every intention of giving him a break. She’d back out lickety-split if he showed the first sign of simply wanting solitude, but she had to see him. She had a very distressing picture in her head of Alan sitting alone in a dark apartment through the long hours of the night, needing someone and with no one there. The picture wouldn’t go away.

Besides, there was the question of health. His health. Alone with only his own cooking talents, there was no telling what he’d feed himself. On the way, she picked up some food from a takeout Chinese restaurant.

Balancing two bags filled with white cartons, Carroll rapped on the door of Alan’s ground-floor apartment and waited. When there was no answer, she turned around and again identified Alan’s red sportscar in the lot. He was definitely home. Frowning, she cocked her head to look through his living room bay window, but the view from the steps revealed only that all the lights were off and that his favorite recliner was unoccupied.

After knocking one more time, she tried the doorknob and pushed. The door wasn’t locked. Inside, she found only dusky darkness and total silence. “Alan?” she called softly, and stepped in.

Adjusting the packages in her arms, she switched on a lamp to dispel the late evening gloom, then continued to the kitchen. From the doorway, she saw him, his elbows on the kitchen table and his face in his hands.

Her heart ached as if she were the despairing one. Loving him made his hurt hers. She didn’t need to know the nature of the problem. Actually, she didn’t need to know anything at all. “Hey, you,” she said softly.

His head jerked up instantly. His shoulders squared, exhaustion was banished from his features, and an almost-smile touched his mouth as he stood up. She could have kicked him. More than that, she could have kicked herself, for so belatedly realizing how often and successfully he hid his real feelings.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” Alan said.

“Of course you didn’t hear me. I was tiptoeing—and don’t worry that I’m going to stay. You said you were tired—so am I,” she lied. “Which was when it occurred to me that you might not feel like fixing a meal. So…” She motioned to the bags full of Chinese food. “I’ll get the plates and silverware. Beer?”

He shook his head. “I’m out. I think there’s some milk.”

“That’ll do. Want to eat in front of the TV?”

He hesitated. He honestly wanted no one anywhere around him, least of all Carroll. He wasn’t in a romantic mood. He felt as exciting as yesterday’s newspaper, and he doubted he could follow a conversation, much less be the kind of man any woman would want for company.

In that short time he’d hesitated, though, Carroll had whisked past him. She turned on the lamps in the living room and tuned in to the news on TV. Then she pushed aside the coffee table and dragged the huge pillows in front of the couch to serve as footrests.

Five minutes later, she was stealing war sui gui from his plate. It was the first chance he’d taken to really look at her. Her legs were curled under her, and she wasn’t wearing a trace of makeup. Her hair was freshly washed, and soft little spikes wisped around her face. “I’m leaving right after the news,” she promised him.

When the news was over, she mentioned that she was leaving right after the rerun of a favorite movie
.
But when that was over, she was busy rinsing the dishes in his kitchen. She returned to the living room carrying his mail and the paper. Handing him the front page and sports section along with the mail, she took the women’s section and crossword and flopped down in his recliner.

“I’m leaving right after this,” she told him.

By then, he knew well enough that she wasn’t leaving. She didn’t say a word, his brown-eyed witch, just lay in that chair with her legs dangling over the side and scratched on the puzzle.

At ten she made popcorn—unhealthily, lavishly slathered with butter, exactly the way he liked it—and propped herself against a pillow at his feet, frequently lifting the popcorn bowl so he could reach it. Some dumb blood and guts movie
 
was on TV. The hero hadn’t changed from the first airing. He remained unwashed, misunderstood and macho.

“Caro…” Alan said finally.

She shushed him, bringing the first smile to his face in hours. Not that she didn’t have a right to enjoy the movie, but she was staring in fascination at the commercial for a deodorant. Such a maneuvering woman. And as if he’d invited her there, she suddenly stood up, stretched and made it look perfectly logical for her then to resettle next to him on the couch. Her fanny close to his pelvis, her cheek pressed to his shoulder. Her eyes never once left the screen.

He found himself playing with her hair, a strand at a time. It smelled like spring and felt like silk. Her skin was warm when he tucked her to his side, her head on his chest, her thighs close to his. Her breathing was as even and regular as a ticking clock.

He closed his eyes, suddenly needing her next to him the way he needed air, water, food. Her being there didn’t change anything. He still felt grief well up in him like a flood, like a cold, dark wall too high to climb. He needed to deal with those feelings alone, the way he’d always dealt with them, but if Carroll had tried to leave, he knew he would have stopped her.

She didn’t try to leave. In time, she simply reached for his remote control switch and turned off the sound. The climax of the picture was a streak of color and action, undoubtedly a tribute to misunderstood macho men everywhere. He barely noticed, wasn’t even aware she’d turned off the sound.

“I delivered a little boy around five years ago,” he said quietly, just as if they’d been having a conversation.

Carroll didn’t turn around to face him. “You’re not usually involved in obstetrics, are you?”

“No, this was an emergency. I can still remember the day this scrawny little man bolted into my office as if demons were after him, claiming his wife was in labor and there wasn’t time to get her to the hospital. They lived right across the street, and the hospital isn’t that far from here—I tried to tell him to calm him down, but he wasn’t listening. He
couldn’t
listen; he was coming apart at the seams. And he was right, she’d been in labor for hours but had thought it was another false alarm—the contractions were irregular, Caro; there wasn’t time.”

“A healthy baby?”

“Very. I’ll never forget what a hurry that boy was in to rush into life… Jonathan Roberts was his name. He was my patient from that day. I watched him grow. He was such a pistol, never gave his parents a moment’s rest. Nothing halfway about him; with Jonathan it was always all or nothing. Colic and the terrible twos, nasty little temper and big brown eyes. Ever know a kid to get kicked out of nursery school?”

Carroll turned then, quietly, her eyes on Alan’s face. “No,” she said lightly. His features were calm. He showed no sign of pain or emotion. He showed nothing at all. From the tone of his voice, he could have been matter-of-factly discussing the weather.

“Jonathan managed it. He was bright, but such a devil. He would have started kindergarten this year. Except that in July, his mother brought him to me for a checkup.”

She said nothing, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. Alan wasn’t looking at her. His fingers were threading in her hair, over and over, his touch impossibly gentle. Nothing had changed in his expression. Only because she was intensely aware of him could she pick up that slight shakiness in his fingers. And his tone… When he started talking again, the words took an effort.

“I sent him to a neurologist, a friend of mine. I wish I hadn’t been absolutely sure what was wrong, but I
was
absolutely sure. At one time, I considered specializing in pediatric neurology, even did my internship in that field. Barker’s the best man there is, but I knew when the boy went in that his chances were never better than fifty-fifty.”

“Alan…” she whispered.

“A good doctor,” Alan spat out, flat and hard, “remains objective about these things. A doctor who loses his objectivity has no business practicing medicine. That’s a simple fact. In time, we’ll know more. And in the meantime, we help those we can. That’s the way it has to be. No exceptions.” He added absently, “I was waiting for Barker when he got out of surgery with the boy this afternoon.”

She didn’t ask what had happened. She knew. Tears welled up in her eyes as she reached for Alan. As if her slightest touch triggered a fuse, the muscles in his face tightened, the color drained from his face and his eyes were a blaze of anger and frustration and bitterness and grief.

“Dammit,”
he said fiercely. “Damn everything. Dammit all to hell. There was nothing I could do.”

Though her touch had been gentle, Alan instantly withdrew from her. Physically, he moved only inches away, jerking himself up to a sitting position with his face averted. Emotionally, though, Carroll could feel the distance he was determined to create between them. The glare of lamplight showed his rigid profile and the lines of strain and frustration on his face. His eyes were remote, as blue as ice, a thousand miles away from her.

For a few seconds, she felt helpless. There was so much she wanted to say…that there was nothing Alan could have done, that he hadn’t even been involved in the operation, that he was the best of doctors because he
did
care. She said nothing. Words could never be adequate, not for this.

And she couldn’t bear those eyes. Instinct made her reach for him again. Though he stiffened, though she felt that sharp sting of rejection very clearly, she still ventured closer…close enough to touch her lips to his.

“Look,” he rasped. “Forget I told you any of it, would you? Just—”

She heard the leave-me-alone tone in his voice. So he didn’t want comfort? He was so very sure he didn’t want comfort. Pressing her hand to the back of his head, she touched his lips with hers again, and so fast, like the touch of flame to tinder, found fire.

Oh, Alan,
she thought fleetingly.
You didn’t really think I’d let you be alone right now?

His mouth groped blindly on hers, and she found herself crushed, enclosed very suddenly in steel manacles. His right hand clenched in her hair, and his other arm wrapped itself tightly around her—too tightly—as if she were a treasure trying to escape him, as if she would spring free if he gave her a moment to breathe.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

Her mouth was acquiescent beneath his, accepting the fierce pressure of his lips and inviting more. It wasn’t a kiss of passion but the kiss of a man lost and trying to find something to hold on to. She tasted frustration and grief. She tasted a man who could accept neither very well, a man who would never accept loss easily. All she could do was be there. Willingly, her mouth cushioned his. Willingly, she absorbed the bruising seal he made of their lips until she could barely breathe. He didn’t seem to notice, and she certainly didn’t care.

His hands were suddenly everywhere, desperately seeking skin. Needing warmth. She felt her sweatshirt being pushed up, then the tug of her bra until the catch sprang open.

Her spine sank into the cushions as they both fell back. Where he was rigid, she offered her own softness. For the anger and pain exploding inside him, she returned supple pliancy. And when his palm too roughly kneaded a breast, she arched to make that breast easy for him to touch. His leg sliced between hers. She simply clamped her legs around him, wooing him closer.

Blood pounded in her veins, but no fear. If Alan had no control, she had all the power of a woman, of instincts, of loving. Lamplight flooded his face, then shadow. Her eyes absorbed every changing expression on his face. She saw sorrow and blind loss, and felt the intense aloneness of a man who just didn’t know what to do with the pain. His eyes were squeezed closed and his breath hoarse and uneven. So generous in giving to others, Alan was so damned harsh to Alan.

Slipping an arm under his, she managed to find the first button of his shirt, then the second. Then the third. The instant her palm slid over his bare chest, his body went rigid. His eyes shot open, and he pushed her hands away. “God.
No,
Caro.”

“Yes.”

“
No.
I never meant…Caro, I would never hurt you. Dammit, I don’t know what I was thinking of. Never like this…”

“Yes. Just like this,” she whispered patiently, and unfastened the remaining buttons before pushing his shirt open.

Again, he dragged her hands away. “Never rough. Not with you. That’s never what I want for you, and the first time…”

“Yes,”
she said fiercely. “I told you all about my fear of first times. Only you can forget it. We can go through all that tomorrow night, or next year, or when we’re a hundred and three.”

“Carroll—”

“Hush.”
She could have cried with frustration. The fastening on his slacks wouldn’t give.

And he wasn’t helping. He didn’t do anything to interfere with her unhooking the catch at his waist, but he was totally still for a moment or two. Not long, and then he suddenly dropped a kiss on her mouth. A soft kiss that made up for all the rough ones. A beguiling kiss that sent a trickle of champagne fizzling up and down her veins.

Her fingers stopped their fumbling. Instants earlier, she’d been in a terrible hurry to get his clothes off, to get her clothes off, to have the man inside her where she could hold him as close as a woman could hold a man. Sex had nothing to do with it. She would just as willingly have climbed mountains or turned cartwheels if she’d thought it would erase the grief and frustration and anger in his eyes. Loving Alan was the only thing that mattered, and the last thing she’d paid attention to had been her own sexual feelings.

She paid attention to them now. Silky flames lapped at her nerve endings until her skin felt like toast, hot on the outside, buttery-soft within. Every place he’d touched roughly he was now comforting. His palm stroked up and down her spine, a no-hurry whisper caress that made her shiver. His lips sought the pulse points in her wrist, her temples, her throat, courting her slow, lazy, sleepy heartbeat. Maybe her heart wasn’t even beating?

It had to be. She was very definitely alive. Her vision was momentarily blocked when he slipped her sweatshirt over her head. He was looking into her eyes when he dropped it, such an intense look that her skin burned and she couldn’t seem to look away. Alan pushed the loose bra straps from her shoulders, then ducked down, nudging them the rest of the way with his cheek, his mouth, the soft licks of his tongue.

Bare, her breasts that had been so roughly caressed were now wooed with the warmth of his hands. He teased the tip of her right breast between two fingers, then methodically, meticulously ensured that the left received equal attention. His beard…she really couldn’t bear his beard. It scraped and tickled and bristled, and he rubbed it deliberately in the hollow between her breasts.

She was suddenly in a hurry again, only this time for completely different reasons. “Alan…”

He shifted up, silencing her. Her lips were sensitive from his earlier kisses, maybe oversensitive to any touch now, but she’d never felt a kiss like that from Alan. Zero gravity. Earthquakes. Impossible things. She told herself that her inhibitions would undoubtedly return any minute. For now, she soared for his kiss. Wantonly, she pushed aside his shirt so she could rub her breasts against his chest, reached down with mindless abandon for the fastening on his pants again…and still couldn’t manage it.

“Alan. You have to help.”

“You’re doing—” his kiss whispered over her collarbone “—just fine.”

“It’s some kind of hook. I’m afraid it’ll rip—”

“Let it.”

The hook came free in her hand. Alan rewarded her with yet another kiss, and they were suddenly both shedding pants, shoes, whatever it was that still separated them.

The thing was, she wasn’t Carroll. Carroll was welcome to go teach speech on Monday morning; she was someone else entirely. His wonderful couch was far too soft. The carpet was better. She felt the graze of crinkly wool against her back, then her side, then on no part of her body at all because she was on top of him. And he suddenly convulsed with laughter, bewildering her.

“Caro,”
he rasped, “
not
on the nipples, you…”

She promptly licked his nipples again, suffered wonderful retribution when he applied his tongue to her navel, turned her over with consummate ease and kissed the dimple on her fanny. She paid him back in kind by kissing the back of his knee. Any minute now, she’d get serious about this. Sex was a very, very serious business. She’d always known that.

And it suddenly was very serious, because smiles met smiles from inches away, touched down in a kiss like no other kiss, made the smiles disappear but not the specialness. Simple light became brilliant light. Laughter hushed. And an ache rocked through her, fierce and compelling, not funny at all.

He eased inside her. She’d been empty forever, was suddenly full, so much so that she thought he was hurting her…but it was just the ache, growing until she thought it would split her in two. The gentleman above her might have been delicate enough to close his eyes…but he didn’t.

And she watched him as he watched her. Their limbs interwove, her legs wrapped around his, and her hands relished the slick, smooth warmth of his skin as he started the rhythm. She knew the song. Although she’d never heard it before, she knew the song. It soared in her veins, on her skin, through the night. She ached from the wanting, from the need that brazenly claimed her flesh, her heart. A civil war could have taken place outside the window, and still she watched his eyes.

His eyes were love-blue, a color she’d never come across before.

She loved his eyes.

Ecstasy rippled through her with the brilliance and light of a firecracker, never expected, not like this. She felt his flow of life, heard his harsh, helpless cry, tasted love in the kiss he gave her. Such a gift. Such a celebration.

“Kitten, I’m too heavy for you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’ll crush your ribs.”

“You have my permission.” But she reluctantly opened one sleepy eye. She didn’t know what time it was, but it was late enough for Bela Lugosi to be on the tube. Actually, the carpet was a little scratchy, and the only parts of her that were warm were the ones Alan was covering. “We just made love on the floor,” she remarked.

“You noticed that?”

“Your bed can’t be thirty feet away from here.” Her gaze focused on Alan’s face. A shock of hair had fallen over his forehead; he looked sleepier than she felt; and she really had to do something about that grin. “I’m pretty sure it’s your fault we never made it to the bed,” she said severely.

“Yours. You attacked me, remember?”

“You must have misinterpreted my actions. I’ve never attacked a man in my entire life.”

His tone softened. “Haven’t you, Caro?” He shifted off her, stood up, yawned and reached for her hand. Once he had her hand, he wouldn’t let it go. She had to trail after him, holding hands, from the living room to the kitchen to the hall, while he turned off the TV, lamps and lights, then locked up for the night.

His bedroom was dark. She’d seen it in daylight and knew the oak wardrobe and bureau were on opposite walls, that a writing desk was under the window, that his double bed was an oak-spiraled four-poster. She didn’t need to see. Alan guided her through the darkness, never releasing her hand. “Can’t let you go,” he said simply.

The texture of the spread they pulled down felt strange to her, somehow not what she remembered. And the sheets shocked her bare skin; the fabric was satiny and cold. Such things passed out of her mind as fast as they entered it. Alan wrapped her up as soon as they were in bed, not in sheets or covers, but in himself, in legs and arms and chest, in the smell and warmth of him.

“I love you, Caro,” he whispered.

“I love you, too.” She pressed a kiss on the curve of his shoulder. It seemed a good place to put a kiss. Shoulders could be terribly neglected. She made a mental note of all the places on him she was never going to neglect. “Alan,” she said softly, “I’m sorry. For you, and for your little Jonathan.”

His arms tightened. “I never meant to take it out on you, kitten.”

“You didn’t,” she assured him.

Both were sleepy, and both were certainly tired. The luminous dial on his bedside clock ticked one, then two. They were still talking. She’d known that he’d finished an internship in pediatric neurology once upon a time and only later opted to practice general pediatrics. She’d never known why he’d made that change. Now he told her. Neurologists had to treat hundreds of hopeless cases, too many little ones who couldn’t make it. Objectivity was something he expected of himself, but had yet to achieve.

She listened, but heard more than he was telling her. Alan had never talked to her like this, never revealed his vulnerabilities, his lost dreams. Thoughts filtered through her mind…that he was far too hard on himself; she was going to have to work on that. That she could picture him so well as a father—pray God only that he’d settle for less than a dozen kids—but that he was really going to be Silly Putty around them. She and Alan were going to have extremely spoiled children. The thought delighted her.

And Alan listened, hearing stories of her growing up that he hadn’t heard before, hearing more than the simple narratives. She came from a loving family; that was nothing he didn’t know. But how often Carroll had assumed the role of peacemaker between her sister and mother—that he hadn’t known. Suddenly, it was easy to understand why she’d adopted a practical, responsible role, keeping her dreams hidden. When they married, she was going to be free to dream, to be impulsive when she wanted to be. The thought delighted him.

Words grew softer, less frequent. “Sleepy?” he whispered.

She was, until she felt his palm on her spine, rubbing up and down, up and down, so soothing and gentle that there was no excuse at all for lightning suddenly to slash through her bloodstream. She reached for him.

In the morning, she woke up to the shock of sunlight. Alan was still sleeping, and she might have dozed off again if her eyes hadn’t focused on her surroundings. Groggy lethargy abruptly disappeared.

This wasn’t the room she remembered. They were sleeping on black satin sheets. His new spread was a zebra-striped fur. Wild African molas hung on the walls, all primitive slashes of color.

Good Lord.

Slowly, she snuggled back next to him.
Alan,
she thought humorously,
I can take the sportscar, and I can take the beard if I have to, but honestly…

Unease wandered through her mind, the same unease that had been nagging her for weeks. A blind fool couldn’t have missed the striking changes he’d made in his lifestyle. Carroll wasn’t blind, but neither was she delighted by some of the new touches. Waking up to zebra stripes every morning, a steady diet of caviar and squid in hot tomato sauce—no, but darn it, she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.