Slow Hands (3 page)

While Sam slid into a nearby chair and swung a leg casually over the arm, Clare digested his explanation. Disbelief warred with amusement. “You can’t go home after midnight because your own butler will attack you?”

“Well, not intentionally. He’d assume I was a burglar,” Sam quickly added with a grin.

“Oh, well.
That
makes all the difference.”

“I knew you’d understand. Now it’s my turn. Where do you go for ice cream?”

Sam draped himself over a chair like a discarded quilt, his ease contagious. Clare leaned back and settled in, her crossed leg swinging gently and her hands folded on her thigh. “I don’t go for ice cream.”

“Ah.” Sam nodded and touched his palm to his forehead. “I knew that. I’ll bet you’re the kind of woman who sends her husband for ice cream.”

“What a great idea,” Clare agreed enthusiastically. “Except I don’t have a husband to send.”

Every muscle in Sam’s body tensed, and he realized he was angry with her. Angry because she didn’t have a nice, safe husband. Angry because he liked her too much already. He didn’t want to schedule his love life around production meetings and budget projections. He didn’t want his breakfast table littered with spreadsheets and graphs. He didn’t want to hear “Hold that thought while I make one more call.” And he didn’t want Dave snickering I-told-you-sos.

He knew exactly what dating Clare would be like, because he used to be the one with the schedule. He used to be the one snuffing out the romantic candles and turning on the light so he could read marketing proposals. While he was busy being busy, his girlfriend walked out and his father died.

When Clare’s eyes widened, he knew some of his anger was showing in his facial expression. Sam undraped his leg and leaned his forearms on his thighs. He watched her closely as he said, “You wear a wedding ring.”

Immediately she reached for the plain gold band and twisted the ring on her finger. “It was my mother’s.”

Sam had a grip on his emotions now, and the guilty
look in Clare’s eye prompted him to say, “You wear it on your left hand.”

“Doesn’t fit my right.”

“Isn’t that handy!”

Freezing, Clare said, “Excuse me?”

“Isn’t that handy,” Sam repeated as he leaned back in his chair and studied her. “Most women would have had the ring sized or put it on a gold chain. But not you. You wear a wedding ring on your left hand and let people draw their own conclusions.”

“What’s your point, Tucker?” she asked softly.

“You use that ring to keep men at a distance.” Sam pulled his chair up so that his thighs straddled her legs again. “I guess relationships are something else you don’t have time for.”

Seething, Clare flicked her eyes first at one long jeanclad thigh and then the other before raising her gaze to his face. She hated this feeling of exposure she got every time Sam invaded her space. She felt stripped naked and vulnerable beneath his patient gaze. Without warning, her pulse threatened to race out of control as she realized she wasn’t seeing patience in his gaze.

She saw restrained hunger as he asked, “Is there any part of your life that you don’t organize and control?”

“Ever had an impulse you
didn’t
act on?” Clare shot back before she could stop herself.

His long, slow smile took her breath away. “Some of my favorite impulses are the ones I don’t act on. Waiting is sometimes half the fun. Think about it. Anticipation and foreplay. One’s mental. One’s physical. Together they’re mind-blowing.”

Bells, whistles, and warning lights went off in Clare’s head.
Foreplay.
Her heart slammed against her ribs and
her chest constricted. Instinctively, she reached for her appointment-filled day planner as if to reassure herself that there was a real world outside the intimate circle the man in front of her had created with his body and provocative words.

Sensing her withdrawal, Sam twisted her own words and asked, “Ever had an impulse you
did
act on?”

Clare’s chin came up. “Not that I’m particularly proud of.”

“Well, at least you admit to having impulses.”

“Are you done?” Clare asked, refusing the bait and eyeing the door. Without words she made her desire to leave very plain.

Sam scooted his chair back and watched her graceful exit. But when the door clicked softly behind her, he promised, “Lady, I’m just getting started.”

“Last night? You want to know how last night went?” Clare asked, and leaned back in the no-nonsense executive chair that matched the functional furniture in her office.

Dave Gronski, owner and founder of Racing Specialties, grinned and shut the door. “Yeah. I’m your employer. I paid for the class. I’d like a report.”

Feeling testy, Clare snapped, “I’ll put it in a memo.”

“Oooh!” Dave stretched out on her sofa, “Not so good, huh?”

“Why don’t you ask your buddy?”

A chuckle rumbled across Dave’s ample belly, which had been considerably larger thirty pounds ago. “How long did it take you to figure that out?”

“About three seconds. He called me Clare.
Before
we’d been introduced. Dammit, Dave. Did you have to give him a description? Didn’t you trust me? I told you I’d show up for class.”

“I didn’t give him a physical description.”

Clare tossed her mechanical pencil on a stack of computer
printouts and steepled her fingers. Dave appreciated the value of plain speaking, and he was considerably less volatile since his heart attack a few months back, but Clare doubted his tolerance extended to being called a liar. She contented herself with pressing her lips together and looking at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Honest, Clare.” Dave, mischief written all over his face, tucked his thumbs behind his paisley suspenders. “I didn’t even tell him the color of your hair.”

“Then how did he know me?”

“Lucky guess. Now, how did last night go?”

“Probably not as well as you wanted. Something about me rubs that man the wrong way.”

“No kidding,” Dave murmured. Clare thought he looked like the Cheshire cat would have looked if he’d swallowed Alice’s canary.

“I tried, Dave. Really. But every time I thought things were going well, I’d say or do something that put him on edge. For the life of me, I don’t know what I did.” Casually, she picked up the pencil and rolled it between her thumb and forefinger. “If things weren’t bad enough, I got stuck with him as my class partner.”

Dave’s eyebrows arched toward the ceiling. “Partner?”

“You heard me.”

“And?”

“And we’re supposed to research ice cream joints for Saturday’s field trip. Dave—” She propped her elbows on the desktop. “Let’s rethink this class idea. You know that if I don’t work Saturday, we won’t be ready for the new computers.”

“I don’t care if we’re ready or not,” Dave said bluntly, and got up to leave. “I’ll give you credit, Clare.
Five years ago you walked into my office and told me there wasn’t a job you couldn’t do. Well, you’re the company controller now, and you can do every job around here, up to and including rebuilding a racing carburetor, but—”

“That’s my point! It took a lot of hard work, but we are finally making some money around here. I don’t want to blow it now. That’s why it’s so important for me to be
here
doing my—”

Dave cut her off. “Clare, no. You can do every job, but you can’t do them all at once. Not twenty-four hours a day. I think one stress-induced heart attack per company is more than enough.” Dave pulled open the door. “By the way, I like the new guy. Can we keep him?”

Clare hedged with a smile, “If he learns how to spell.”

“Buy him a dictionary.”

The big man wandered out of her office, having said what he came to say. He might sugar-coat his words with praise, but Clare understood the message. He had no intention of allowing her addiction to work to go any farther.

Alone again, she tried concentrating on the back-order printout. Initialing the report should have been a simple task, but she stared at the list for half an hour while Tucker’s voice whispered to her,
People don’t volunteer to work two weeks for bosses they dislike. One maybe because they need the reference, but not two.

Clare pushed the intercom. “Joshua, come in here.” As an afterthought, she pushed the button again. “Please.”

“William!” Sam bellowed, and hung over the second floor railing. There were times when he could positively choke his butler. Now was one of those times.

With great dignity the elderly man entered the marble-floored foyer below Sam and stopped. Before answering, he carefully adjusted a vase of flowers on a small table that dripped crocheted lace. To an innocent bystander, William might look like the perfect butler—starched white shirt, bow tie, pale parchment skin, hair peppered with gray, and a concerned facial expression that promised discretion.

But Sam knew better. Beneath that calm exterior lay one of the sharpest tongues on God’s green earth. Forty years of employment with the Tucker family gave William the freedom to speak his mind, and he considered the Tucker children especially in need of guidance and wisdom. William didn’t care that Sam was pushing thirty-three, or that his sister, Pamela, was closing in on thirty-five. William had known them since they were babies, and that was that. He might look like a butler, but he sounded more like a Dutch uncle.

“William—” Sam struggled to control his voice. “Have you seen my boxer shorts?”

“Why? Have you lost them?”

“No, I haven’t lost them!”

“There is no call to raise your voice. I asked you a question, that’s all. You leave those wild things all over the house as if you were raised in a barn.”

Sam ground his teeth. He was well aware of William’s opinion of his boxer collection. The gospel according to William said that gentlemen came home before midnight and wore white underwear instead of
wild prints and neon polka dots. “William, what have you
done
to my boxer shorts?”

Folding his hands behind him, the butler considered the question for a moment. “Done?”

Exasperated, Sam waved a pair of shorts decorated with billiard balls. “Someone has sewn name tags in every pair of boxers I own. I haven’t had name tags in my underwear since I went to summer camp twenty years ago!”

“Ah,” William ackowledged as though light dawned in his memory. “I had Rebecca do that. I was worried about you losing them, seeing as how you can’t find the clothes hamper.”

Sam silently counted to ten before he said anything, and then realized that while he was dressed in a bath towel, nothing he could say would sound the least bit dignified. Disgusted, he snapped the shorts against the railing and walked away. When he entered the master bedroom, he grimaced. Yesterday’s clothes still lay where he’d dropped them—first when he’d changed for class and then again when he’d stripped for bed.

The floor of his room might as well have been a chess game played with cast-off clothing. Crumpled socks represented pawns. Cowboy boots and tennis shoes became castles. Blue jeans were knights, and boxers in paisley and plaid were well-guarded kings.

He stared at the clothes, realizing what a difference a couple of years could make. Two years earlier his father had still been alive—grieving over the loss of his wife, but alive. Two years earlier Sam’s clothes had hung neatly in closets or been carefully tucked away in drawers. He’d used a custom-made valet for his cuff links and ties. His priorities had been different then too, Sam reminded
himself as he dressed quickly. Back then he’d wanted a trophy wife, top-of-the-line golf clubs, and an expensive house on the eighteenth hole.

After his father’s death he’d spent a year and a half in a guilt-driven depression before his sister finally made him see that he couldn’t change the past. He could, however, change the future. So he’d found a buyer for his export company—a buyer who also paid him a healthy consulting fee each year.

Changing the habits of a lifetime had taken another six months, but in doing so he discovered what he wanted out of life. He wanted family—kids, a big dog, and someone comfortable to wake up with. He wanted holidays and fights over the Sunday paper. He was thirty-three years old and ready to settle down.

Which was why he had no business falling in lust with one of his work-obsessed students.

Sam grabbed the boots from the floor and cursed his luck and Clare McGuire. They amounted to the same thing. Clare wasn’t the type to fight over the Sunday funnies. Probably didn’t read the comics. Probably didn’t even talk at the breakfast table. Everything about her was wrong for a man looking for a family.

Then why does she get to you?

“Hell if I know,” Sam answered himself, and strode purposefully out of the house. The large oval of etched glass rattled in the front door as he slammed it behind him.

Sam didn’t feel the smallest twinge of guilt, but he was certain the game of hide-and-seek Clare had been playing was about to end. For three days he had tried to
get her on the phone. If he called her at home, the machine answered. If he called her at work, her male secretary, Joshua, answered, made an excuse, and took a message that went straight into the garbage can. However, today’s message couldn’t be crumpled and tossed.