Sleeping Beauty (10 page)

A soft, startled whimper caught in the back of her throat as her head tilted in an unconscious plea for him to deepen the kiss. She'd never imagined it could be like this. That there could be colors and lights and this smokey sense that she was floating somewhere outside herself. Her hands came up between them, her fingers curling into the thin cotton of his T-shirt, holding on to him as the only solid thing in her universe.

Her surrender flashed through Neill, making his blood sizzle with the need to have more—more of her sweet taste, more of her soft sighs. She swayed toward him, and his hand flattened on the small of her back, drawing her away from the door as his other hand burrowed into her hair, scattering pins until it tumbled over his fingers in a honey-colored wave of silk and curls.

More, he thought, dragging her closer, feeling the soft swell of her breasts against the width of his chest. He could have it all. She was as pliant as a willow wand, trembling in his arms. His, all his.

The very strength of his need to possess her set warning bells jangling. It was too much, too soon. He'd never wanted like this, hungered like this. Not for a woman he'd met barely twenty-four hours ago. Not for any woman. Ever. A man didn't get to thirty-five without some experience of desire, but he'd never been fond of one-night stands and faceless sex. He liked to know a woman before they became lovers. Yet here he was, teetering on the brink of taking this woman where they stood, her back against the door, her legs around his waist The image had him rock hard even as he forced himself to ease back, ignoring the blood thundering in his ears, the primitive voice urging him to take what could be his.

Anne felt her heels settled back on the ground, then the solid panel of the door against her back. He kept his hands on her shoulders, steadying her, as if she might tip over without that touch. And she just might, she decided, feeling her mind spin in lazy circles. So that's what it was all about, she thought Her tongue came out, brushing across her lower lip as if the taste of him still lingered there. Neill groaned, his hands tightening almost painfully for an instant before releasing her completely. She felt him step back and forced her eyes open, staring at him.

"I didn't mean for that to happen," he said. The words were edgy with surprise and sexual frustration.

"You didn't mean to kiss me?" She should be upset or embarrassed or outraged or...something. She didn't know what, but she was sure that she should feel something besides this pleasant floating sensation.

"I meant to kiss you. I just didn't mean to take it so far so fast." And not half as far as I'd like to take it, he thought, looking at that soft mouth and those big gray eyes. "You're too trusting," he muttered.

Anne hit the ground with a thud. Too trusting? He had no way of knowing just how wrong he was. How could he, when she'd walked into his motel room as casually as if she did this sort of thing every day? She thought of her mother's constant harping on the potential evils that lurked, ready to devour unsuspecting females without warning. She thought of all the dates she hadn't gone on, all the kisses she'd never had, all the nights she'd spent alone because she wasn't trusting enough, and she didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

Neill watched the emotions flicker over her face—surprise, annoyance and something that could have been bitter humor. He didn't know what he'd said, but he regretted that it had erased that look of dazed awareness from her eyes. On the other hand, maybe it was just as well, he thought. If she'd continued to look at him like that, he might not have been able to resist the urge to take things quite a few steps beyond where they'd stopped.

"Anne, I—damn." The jangle of the phone cut him off. "That's probably my brother," he said. "I left a message for him earlier today, and he always did have lousy timing. Hang on and I'll get rid of him."

"That's okay." Anne groped behind her for the doorknob and gave him a quick, impersonal smile. "I should be going anyway."

"I want to—" The phone rang again and Neill glared at the plain beige instrument.

"No, really. I have to go." Without giving him a chance to say anything else, Anne slipped out the door, pulling it quietly shut behind her.

It was only as she slid behind Lucy's wheel that she realized she'd forgotten all about paying him for her half of lunch.

Anne's fingers moved steadily over the keyboard, her eyes on the notepad propped up beside the computer monitor as she transcribed her employer's handwritten notes. She'd worked as a secretary to the bank's vice-president, Richard Lawrence, for almost four years, and today was the first time she'd had cause to regret that he was both neat and a creature of habit. Today she would have welcomed the distraction provided by having to decipher an illegible scrawl or being kept on her toes by unreasonable demands. But her day was following its usual placid pattern, and the closest she'd come to a challenge was rescheduling an appointment.

It allowed her too much time to think, and what she kept thinking about was the scene in Neill's motel room the night before. She'd already spent a good part of the night thinking about it, finally falling asleep long after midnight. When the alarm went off, she woke heavy eyed, unrested and irritated with herself. It was just a kiss, she reminded herself as she showered. Never mind that she'd never been kissed like that, had never really believed that kisses like that existed outside the pages of a novel; it was still just a kiss. And she was old enough, if not experienced enough, not to turn a brief encounter into a major experience. She'd thought about it enough, she decided as she poured herself a bowl of cereal. Now she was just going to put it right out of her head.

Easier said than done, she admitted three hours later, as she hit the backspace key to correct her thousandth typing error of the morning. It wasn't just the kiss. It was the knowledge that she'd gone to his motel room, tracking him down like a teenager stalking a rock star, and then used a pathetic excuse like forgetting to pay her half of the lunch tab. The memory of it was enough to make her want to bang her head on the keyboard. As if that wasn't humiliating enough, she hadn't even given him the damned money. He probably thought she'd just been angling to be kissed. And, God help her, maybe she had been. Worse, she was aware of an undeniable regret that it wasn't likely to happen again.

Anne stared unseeingly at the monitor, her fingers lax on the keyboard. It didn't seem fair, she thought wistfully. Last night, when Neill kissed her, she'd understood for the first time what all the fuss was about. She'd found Frank's kisses mildly pleasant—or at least not objectionable—but they'd been forgotten as soon as they were over, just as Frank was pretty much forgotten as soon as he was out of sight. Months ago, she'd come to the conclusion that her tepid reaction was probably an indication that there was something wrong with her. Who was she kidding? She knew there was something wrong with her. How else to explain the fact that she was twenty-five years old and had never had so much as a close encounter with lust?

Until last night

Last night she'd finally gotten a glimpse of what all the shouting was about. And it had to happen with a man who was going to be gone in a matter of days. Was already gone, for all she knew. David could have gotten the motorcycle fixed, or Neill could have caught a ride with someone, or even hitchhiked From some of the things he'd said at lunch, it was clear he'd traveled a lot. It didn't seem likely that a man who'd been to Paris and Budapest and who knew where else would find much to interest him in Loving, Indiana.

Anne both underestimated her own appeal and overestimated life on the road. Neill had already decided that he'd had enough of the latter, but the former...the former definitely had some potential. Being a man, he didn't spend as much time analyzing those moments in his motel room as Anne did, but, unlike Anne, he didn't even bother telling himself that it had been "just a kiss." He was thirty-five years old, more than passably good-looking, and, also unlike Anne, he'd had more than a few close encounters with lust. But not since his hormone-driven teenage days had a single kiss left him with barely a fingernail hold on his self-control.

The unexpected strength of his reaction caught him off guard, left him aching and aroused his curiosity, which his mother had often told him was his besetting sin and sure to get him in trouble one day. He'd lain awake nearly as long as Anne had, hands behind his head, his eyes on the opposite wall, where he could just make out the faint gleam of Bela Lugosi's teeth, and considered the possibility that his mother might be right. Certainly a cautious man might have made arrangements to beat a hasty retreat. But cautious men led such boring lives, and he was enough of a fatalist to feel compelled to stick around and see what happened.

Despite the fact that it was late when he finally went to sleep, Neill woke early. After one look at the clock, he closed his eyes again and pulled the pillow over his head. He'd never been a morning person, and he had no desire to start now. But after fifteen minutes it was obvious that, like it or not, he was awake. Cursing halfheartedly, he crawled out of bed. Maybe it was because he was in the middle of farm country, he thought as he stumbled over to the kitchenette to start water boiling for coffee. Probably some undiscovered neuro-toxin drifting in from the cornfields, enforcing farmers' hours on an unsuspecting citizenry.

By the time he'd splashed water on his face, finger-combed his hair and taken his first sip of scalding instant coffee, he was resigned to being awake, if not particularly happy about it. He thought about turning on the TV to watch one of the morning news shows but didn't reach for the remote. He wasn't in the mood to hear a rundown of the latest wars, murders and political misdoings. Instead, he flipped open the laptop and began skimming the pages he'd written the night before, half expecting to find them absolute trash.

The next time he looked up, there was an unappetizing oily film floating on top of the nearly untouched coffee in the cup next to him. His shoulders and neck ached from hunching over the keyboard, and he had to blink several times before he could focus his eyes on the clock next to the bed. It was almost eleven, which would account for the hollow where his stomach used to be.

Groaning, he shoved his chair back from the table and stood up. God, he couldn't ever remember working like this—with the words pouring out of him nearly as fast as he could type. The story was still barely begun, but it was starting to take shape both in his mind and on the page. He still didn't know where it was going or what he would do with it when it got there, but the story was there, and he didn't think it was going to go away until he'd given it a voice.

The words tugged at him, tempting him to continue, but his head was buzzing a little from the long hours of concentration, and his stomach was sending up polite enquiries about the condition of his throat. Besides, he'd had plans for lunch, he remembered.

By lunchtime, Anne had managed to accomplish roughly half as much as she usually did. As a bonus, she'd also snagged her hose on the comer of her desk, broken a fingernail and absentmindedly entered the same report into the computer twice, under two different names.

"Having one of those mornings?" Marge Lancaster stopped next to her desk and gave her a sympathetic look.

"Is it still morning? Are you sure it isn't time to go home?" Anne asked ruefully.

"Sorry." Marge leaned one plump hip against Anne's desk, easing the weight on her feet. Her coms were killing her, and new shoes weren't helping any, though they were pretty as all get out, she thought, tilting her head slightly to admire the navy pumps with their pretty blue-and-white bows.

"New shoes?" Anne asked, following the older woman's gaze.

"Got them mail order last week." Marge said, smiling down at them.

"They're very pretty!"

"Aren't they?'' Marge sighed and flexed her toes, barely restraining a wince. "Of course, they're uncomfortable as the dickens, but I never could resist a pretty pair of shoes. At my age, you'd think common sense would overrule vanity, but it doesn't work that way. Harold and I have been married forty years, come December and, trath to tell, I could probably wear a couple of cow pies on my feet and he wouldn't notice but for the smell, so I can't pretend I torture myself to give him pleasure."

Anne laughed. When she came to work at the bank. Marge had been the one to show her the ropes. Officially, she was secretary to the president, but everyone, from the janitor to the president him-self, knew she could just as easily have run the place herself. She was on the far side of fifty, frankly gray, plump, matronly, with a heart of gold and a mind like a steel trap.

"Oh, now if that doesn't make me wish I was thirty years younger," Marge said with a sigh, looking toward the front of the bank.

Anne turned to follow her gaze and felt her heart thud painfully against her breastbone. Neill was standing near the glass doors, talking to the guard.

She'd spent the entire morning and most of the night trying to convince herself that she'd exaggerated his looks, exaggerated her attraction to him and, most of all, exaggerated that kiss. Given another week or two, she might even have believed herself, and then he walked in and just looking at him scattered all her calm, logical thoughts to hell and gone.

"Now there's a man I wouldn't mind offering a loan," Marge said, watching Neill's progress across the bank. After that first glance, Anne didn't look. She couldn't.