The Fixer Upper (12 page)

Why was he posing such personal questions? Did stripping the underside of her mantel give him the right?

The way he asked, though, gently and with a lilt of amusement underlining the words, calmed her down. This was his idea of getting-to-know-you, nothing more. “No,” she said, deciding to go along with him for now. “I don’t date much. How about you?”

He poured some ale from the bottle into the frosted mug the waitress had provided. “I’ve only been in New York City for a few months,” he reminded her. “I haven’t had time to meet anyone down here.”

“But in Vermont—”

He let out a snort.

“Not much of a social scene in Vermont?” she asked. She liked being the one pitching the questions rather than getting beaned by them.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it a scene,” he said, “but yes, folks date in Vermont. I sure as hell tried.”

She couldn’t believe a man with his charisma would have any trouble dating, if that was what he wanted to do. “What happened?”

He took a drink of beer. “Eric and I were living in Woodstock, Vermont—the same town as my in-laws. My wife had grown up there, and she and I moved there after we finished college and got married. It’s a great town. I started a business renovating old houses and barns. We had Eric. Then one day, Deborah suffered a brain aneurysm and died.”

“It must have been horrible.”

“It wasn’t a barrel of laughs.” He sipped a little more beer, and Libby drank some wine. “After about a year, Eric and I decided it was time to start living again. So I invited a woman out to dinner. And call me crazy, but I asked my in-laws to babysit for Eric.”

“What’s crazy about that?” Libby asked.

“What was crazy about it was that my in-laws didn’t think it was time for Eric and me to start living yet.” Ned scooped up a handful of peanuts and tossed them one at a time into his mouth. “They were furious that I’d dare to go out with a woman who wasn’t Deborah. They found out from Eric what restaurant I’d gone to, and the next thing I knew, my mother-in-law was standing at our table, telling my date all about what a wonderful wife Deborah was, how much we all missed her.” He laughed, although Libby noticed a flicker of pain in his eyes. “Needless to say, my date and I lost our appetites. Afterward, I had a huge fight with my in-laws. They thought I was some kind of heartless bastard for wanting to meet women. They thought I should spend the rest of my life mourning Deborah. Don’t get me wrong—I loved her very much. But she was dead.”

Libby nodded to show she understood and sympathized with what he was saying. “It sounds as if your wife’s parents weren’t ready to start living yet.”

“Not even close to ready,” Ned confirmed. “I went out a few more times, and every time, one of them showed up—at the movie theater, at the restaurant, wherever. I took a lady up to Middlebury College to watch a hockey game, and my in-laws showed up at the arena. I went out a few times with one woman, a music teacher in town, and my mother-in-law intercepted her in the school parking lot to tell her I was still in mourning for my wife, that I was terribly wounded and didn’t really know what I was doing. The next time I phoned her, she suggested it would be better if we didn’t see each other for a while.” He shook his head. “I realized that if I hoped for my life back, I’d have to leave Vermont.”

“So you moved to New York?”

“Yeah. A friend of mine from college had a renovation business—Greater Manhattan Design Associates—and he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.” Ned washed down a few more peanuts with a swig of beer. “Deborah’s parents are good people. They just couldn’t accept that Eric and I were handling her death differently than they were.” He stretched in his seat and bumped her feet with his under the table. An apologetic smile brightened his face as he shifted his legs. “Actually, it was Eric who got us both back on track. He looked at me one day and said, ‘I’m tired of being sad all the time. Is it okay to stop being sad?’ And I realized I was tired of being sad, too. Deborah’s parents obviously weren’t tired of being sad. We decided we had to put some distance between them and us.”

“New York is quite a distance from Woodstock, Vermont.”

“It’s not that far,” he argued.

“I wasn’t talking about miles.”

He grinned. “Right. Eric and I have come a long way.”

“And now you want to date.”

His gaze met hers and his smile widened. “Now I want to be right where I am, having a drink with you.”

Did that mean this was a date? He’d just told her more than any guy would tell a woman on a first date. They were two friends having a drink, that was all. If Libby allowed herself to think of this as a date, she’d start measuring each silence the way she had in the elevator, and paying too much attention to his dimple, which had disappeared when he’d talked about his wife and in-laws, but was once again punctuating the corner of his smile.

“So, that’s my story. What’s yours? You don’t have a dead husband making you sad.”

“No, I’ve got a live one making me crazy,” she joked, then laughed. “Not really. We get along most of the time. It’s one of those civil divorces.”

“If you’re going to get a divorce, that’s probably the best kind to have.” Ned shifted again, leaning forward this time. “So why don’t you date much?”

Two friends having a drink together
, she reminded herself. As long as this was nothing more, he could ask a question like that. “It’s hard to find the time to meet anyone,” she acknowledged. “My sister-in-law tries to set me up with guys.”

“Your brother’s wife?”

She laughed. “No, my ex-husband’s sister. I won custody of his family in the divorce.”

Ned digested that news with a philosophical shrug. “I hope that’s okay with you.”

“They’re great,” she said. “Yentas, one and all, but I don’t mind. Vivienne—my sister-in-law—is always meeting single men in her synagogue. Now that she’s married, I guess she figures they shouldn’t go to waste, so she tries to foist them on me.”

“And you turn them all down?”

“It never gets that far. I don’t have the time or energy for the whole thing. If someone really clicked with me, then
maybe…” She faltered, realizing that someone
had
clicked with her. He was sitting across the table from her right now. He wasn’t a nice Jewish guy from the synagogue, and he had a son applying to Hudson, and
they were just friends having a drink.
She settled herself with a sip of wine and said, “If I weren’t basically happy with my life the way it is, maybe I’d put more effort into changing it. At the moment, I’m trying to put my effort into keeping it the way it is.”

“You like being single, huh?” Even if Ned was relatively new to New York, he’d probably met more than a few women desperate to get married. Libby might seem like an oddball for not sharing their desperation.

“Being single is fine. It’s my apartment I’m trying to hold on to. If things remain civil enough between me and my ex-husband, I should be able to do that.” She explained to him about the last remaining rentals in the building going co-op, and about her determination to buy her apartment so she wouldn’t lose it. “One thing about New York—finding a great apartment that’s also affordable is a hell of a lot harder than finding a husband. Or a wife.”

“So, if I salvage your fireplace, I’d be doing it for you, not for this management company that owns the apartment now.”

“If I can buy it. I’m hoping my ex-husband will help with the financing.”

“That would be generous of him.” Ned drained his mug of beer. “I’d rather rehab the fireplace for you than for some stranger in a suit. I’d do it anyway, for the fireplace’s sake—”

“The fireplace’s sake?” Libby burst into laughter. “Do you think the fireplace cares?”

Ned smiled, but he didn’t laugh. “Yes. I do think it cares. It wants to break free of that paint and be all that it can be.”

He was serious. Libby stopped laughing. He obviously
had a passion about his work. She admired that, even envied it a little. She loved her colleagues at the Hudson School, and the students—whom she was helping to be all that they could be by choosing them for admission to the school—but she couldn’t imagine doing what she did free, just for the love of it. No one listened to a five-year-old who wasn’t a blood relation sing an aria from
Madama Butterfly
for the love of it.

She finished her wine, and Ned asked if she’d like another. She checked her watch and shook her head. They’d been gone nearly an hour. “We should get back,” she said. “I promised Reva we wouldn’t be out too long.”

Ned conceded with a shrug. He summoned the waitress and paid for their drinks.

The night had cooled considerably during the time they’d been indoors. It wasn’t yet cold, but autumn carried a preview of winter in the breezes that lifted off the Hudson River and gusted down the side streets. Broadway was still hopping; the crowd in front of the chi-chi bistro appeared to have doubled in size, and the sidewalks teemed with people walking in brisk, committed steps. Central Park on a sunny afternoon was full of amblers, but Broadway on a Friday evening attracted mostly marchers.

Libby didn’t feel like marching. Reva expected her home, and she’d get there soon enough. But talking to a man about grown-up matters was a rare pleasure, and Libby saw no reason not to prolong the pleasure as much as she could. If she let Ned work on her fireplace, the talking could continue. She wished she could afford to pay him so she wouldn’t have to think of his labor as a bribe.

She also wished she could afford to buy the colorful boots on display in the window of the shoe boutique two doors down from the tavern. She paused to study them: cowboy style, with multicolored patches of leather. “I’d
love to get those for Reva,” she said, imagining her theatrical daughter waltzing around in such a flamboyant pair of boots while practicing her
Tommy
solo.

Ned gravitated toward the window with her, then ushered her into the recessed doorway so they could study the boots from a different angle. “You should get them for yourself,” he said.

“Oh, please!” She laughed. They were not the sort of boots a mother should wear.

“They’d look great on you. Too bad the store is closed, or you could go in and try them on.”

“I’m sure they’re uncomfortable. The toes are so pointed.” Reva never cared if shoes were uncomfortable, as long as they were cool. But Libby was a huge fan of pain-free feet.

“They probably feel better than they look,” Ned said.

“You think so?” She twisted to see him and found him much closer than she’d expected. In the shadowed alcove of the store’s entry, his face was barely an inch from hers.

“Lots of things feel better than they look,” he said.

“Like what?” If he weren’t so close, maybe her voice wouldn’t have sounded like a rusty hinge.

He didn’t answer. He only gazed at her in the shadowed alcove. He’d been closer to her inside her fireplace, but then they’d been discussing fireplaces. Now she had no idea what they were discussing. Something about boots, maybe, or about things feeling good.

God, he was close. All he had to do was tilt his head the slightest bit and his lips would be touching hers.

He tilted his head the slightest bit.

Okay, so they weren’t just friends having a drink. That was her last lucid thought before Ned lifted his hands to frame her face, wove his fingers into her hair and turned the kiss from lips touching lips to something wonderfully, unexpectedly wild.

Had she ever been kissed like this before? She didn’t think so, and while she knew it wasn’t a wise idea—things would be a lot safer all around if she went back to the friends-having-a-drink premise of this outing—she wasn’t about to bring this kiss to a halt until she’d given the experience its due. Surely they could revert to being friends in a minute. Or five. Or ten.

The only time she noticed the nerve endings in her lips was when they were chapped and split—until now. Now that flesh seemed unnervingly sensitive, picking up changes in pressure and heat and moisture like a high-tech weather station. When Ned angled his face, her entire mouth hastened to adjust. Being kissed at
this
angle instead of
that
made everything entirely new.

Then there was her tongue. Or, more accurately, there was Ned’s tongue. Tongues were for tasting, right? For speaking and swallowing, vital functions like that. She hadn’t realized tongues were also for dancing, for teasing, for stroking. She hadn’t realized tongues were so downright phallic. But what Ned was doing with his tongue…

A shudder began at the back of her throat and rippled the length of her body. In all the years she’d lived in Manhattan, she’d never before felt like having sex with a man while standing in the entry alcove of a shoe boutique on Broadway. To be sure, they already
were
having some kind of sex. In case there was any question in her mind of that, he twined his fingers deeper into her hair and shifted his legs just enough to align her pelvic area with his.

His hips might have had no interest in her slightly spongy thirty-five-year-old tush when she and he had been tangled up inside her fireplace. But she had no question that his body was extremely interested in hers right now.

At some point within the next minute or so, she was going to have to breathe. She didn’t particularly want to. In
her mind, breathing seemed synonymous with ending the kiss. Both were good ideas. She just wanted to enjoy this bad idea for a few moments more.

Evidently, Ned needed to breathe even more than she did. He leaned back and sucked in a deep, ragged lungful of air. Then his gaze met hers and he smiled. “Well,” he said.

Well what?
Well, we’re in a hell of a lot of trouble here
, she thought.
Well, that was the most mind-boggling kiss I’ve ever participated in. Well, we’ve got two kids waiting for us back at my apartment, and one of them is trying to get into the school where I’m the director of admissions, and maybe you’re betting there’s some rule about a father’s kissing skills contributing to a kid’s chances for acceptance. Well, this might be your first kiss since you escaped your in-laws in black crepe, so you’re probably just flexing the old muscles to see if they still work. Well, this kiss probably doesn’t mean a damn thing.