Truly Madly Yours (31 page)

In the end, he pulled her to her feet and retrieved a condom from the pocket of his jeans. He placed it in her palm. “Suit me up, wild thing,” he said.

“Good morning.”

She wasn’t sure, but she thought she felt him kiss the top of her head. “What time is it?”

“About eight-thirty.”

“Crap.” She rolled to her side and would have fallen to the floor if he hadn’t grabbed the top of her arm and thrown a bare leg over her hips. A thin floral sheet was the only thing separating them. She raised her gaze to the same pink canopy she’d awakened to most mornings as a girl. The twin-sized bed was small for one person, let alone one person and a guy Nick’s size. “I have a nine o’clock appointment.” She gathered her courage and looked at him, her worst fear confirmed. He was gorgeous in the morning. His shoulder-length hair fell to one side and a shadow of a beard darkened his jaw. From beneath his thick lashes, his eyes were too intense and alert for eight-thirty in the morning.

“Can you cancel it?”

She shook her head and glanced around for her clothes. “If I leave within the next ten minutes, I might make it on time.” She returned her gaze to his face and caught him staring at her, looking as if he were either memorizing her features or inspecting for flaws. She could feel her cheeks grow warm, and she sat up, holding the sheet to her chest. “I know I look like shit,” she said, but he didn’t look at her as if she were half dead. Maybe for once in her life she’d lucked out and didn’t have dark circles. “Don’t I?”

“Do you want the truth?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” He reached for her hand and kissed her palm. “You look better than you did when you were a Smurf.”

A wrinkle appeared in the corners of his eyes, and Delaney felt a rush of warm tingles tickle her fingertips and spread across her breasts. This was the Nick she loved. The Nick who teased as he kissed. The man who could make her laugh even as he made her want to cry. “I should have asked you to lie,” she said and pulled her hand away before she forgot her nine o’clock appointment. She spotted her clothes thrown on the floor beside her. With her back to him, she reached for them and got dressed as quickly as possible.

Behind her the bedsprings dipped as Nick rose to his feet. He moved about the room, retrieving his clothes from the floor, completely unconcerned by his nudity. With a sock in one hand, she watched him shove his legs into his Levi’s and button the fly. Beneath the harsh morning light, Nick Allegrezza was one hundred percent prime American beefcake. Life wasn’t fair.

“Give me your keys, and I’ll warm your car for you.”

Delaney shoved her foot in her sock. No man had ever offered to warm up her car for her, and she was touched by the simple gesture. “In my coat pocket.” After he left the bedroom, Delaney washed her face and brushed her teeth and hair. By the time she locked the house behind her, the windows of Henry’s Cadillac were clear. No man had ever scraped her windows, either. Her new snow tires shined a polished black against the backdrop of silver and white. She felt like crying. No one had ever cared about her safety and well-being, except maybe her old boyfriend Eddy Castillo. He’d been an exercise freak, concerned about her diet. He’d given her a Salad Shooter for her birthday, but a kitchen appliance didn’t compare to snow tires.

She didn’t ask when she’d see Nick again. He didn’t offer. They’d spent the night as lovers, yet neither of them mentioned love or even dinner plans.

Delaney arrived at her salon moments before her first client, Gina Fisher, who’d graduated a year behind Delaney in school and had three children under the age of five. Gina had worn her thick hair to her waist since the seventh grade. Delaney cut it to her shoulders and gave her long layers. She brushed in red highlights and made the young mother look youthful again. After Gina, she cut the hair of a girl who wanted to look like Claire Danes. She had a walk-in at eleven, then closed the salon at noon so she could finally take a shower. She told herself she wasn’t waiting for Nick’s call or the sound of his Jeep, but of course she was.

When she hadn’t heard from him by six that evening, she jumped in the Cadillac to do a little Christmas shopping. She hadn’t bought a gift yet for her mother and ended up at one of those high-priced tourist traps that catered to the Eddie Bauer crowd. She didn’t find anything for her mother, but she did blow seventy bucks on a size fifteen and a half flannel, the same exact gray of Nick’s eyes. She had it gift-wrapped in red foil paper, and took it home and sat it on her dining room table. There were no messages on her machine. She pressed call return just to make sure, but he hadn’t called.

She didn’t hear from him the next day, and by Christmas morning, she was feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. She got up the nerve and dialed Nick to wish him Merry Christmas, but he didn’t answer. She thought about driving by his house to see if he was home and avoiding her. In the end, she drove to her mother’s to visit Duke and Dolores. At least the two Weimaraners were happy to see her.

By noon, she’d fallen into a zombie state watching
A Christmas Story
, relating to Ralphie as never before. She knew what it was like to want something she wasn’t likely to get. And she knew what it was like to have a mother who made a kid wear a horrid bunny costume, too. Just as Ralphie was about to shoot his eyes out with his Red Ryder B-B gun, the doorbell rang. The Weimaraners lifted their heads, then laid them back down, proving they weren’t much good as watchdogs.

Nick stood on the porch in his leather jacket and Oakley’s. His breath hung in front of his face as a slow sensuous smile curved his lips upward. He looked good enough to roll in sugar and eat whole. Delaney didn’t know whether to let him in or slam the door in his face for leaving her hanging the past two days. The shiny gold box in his hand decided his fate. She let him in.

He shoved his sunglasses in his pocket and pulled out a piece of mistletoe and held it over her head. “Merry Christmas,” he said. His warm mouth covered hers, and she felt the kiss to the soles of her feet. When he pulled back to look at her, she placed her palms on his cheeks and brought him down for more. She didn’t even bother to hide her feelings. She wasn’t so sure she could have anyway. She ran her hands over his shoulders and across his chest, and when she was through, she confessed, “I’ve missed you.”

“I was in Boise until late last night.” He shifted his weight to one foot and shoved the box at her. “This is for you. It took me a while to find it.”

She stared at the gold box and ran a hand over the smooth paper. “Maybe I should wait. I have a gift for you at my apartment.”

“No,” he insisted like a death row inmate who just wanted to hurry and get his sentence over with as quickly as possible. “Go ahead and open it now.”

Beneath her hands, the smooth paper ripped apart with one excited pull. Nestled in a bed of tissue paper inside sat a rhinestone crown like those given out in beauty pageants.

“I thought since Helen stole that homecoming crown from you in high school, I’d get you a better one.”

It was big and gaudy and absolutely the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling as she pulled the crown from its bed of tissue and shoved the box at Nick. “I love it.” The rhinestones caught the light and shot sparks through the foyer. She placed it on her head and looked at herself in the mirror next to the coat rack. The shiny stones were fashioned into a row of hearts and ribbons with one central heart bigger than the rest. She blinked back her tears as she raised her gaze to his in the mirror. “This is the best Christmas present anyone has ever given me.”

“I’m glad you like it.” He placed his big palms on her stomach, then slid them beneath her sweater to her breasts. Through her lacy bra, he cupped her, his fingers pressing into her flesh as he pulled her back against his chest. “On the long drive from Boise last night, I thought about you wearing that thing and nothing else.”

“Have you ever made love to a queen?”

He shook his head and grinned. “You’re my first.”

She grabbed his wrist and led him to the sunroom where she’d been watching television. He undressed her with slow languid hands and made her feel beautiful and desired and loved right there on her mother’s lemon yellow sofa. She ran her fingertips down his warm back and bare behind and kissed his smooth shoulder. She wanted to feel as she did at that moment forever. Her skin tingled and her body flushed. Her heart swelled when he kissed her sensitive breasts, and when he buried his hot erection deep inside her body, she was more than ready. He placed his hands on the sides of her face and stared in her eyes as he slowly drove into her again and again.

She stared up into his face, into his gray eyes, alive with the passion he felt for her, his lips moist from their kiss, his breathing labored. “I love you, Nick,” she whispered. He stilled for a moment, then plunged deeper, harder, again and again, and she whispered her love with each stroke until she fell head first into the sweetest ecstasy of her life. She heard his deep primal groan and the mixture of prayer words and curses. Then his full weight collapsed on her.

A twinge of unease settled in her chest as she listened to his breathing slow. She’d told him she loved him. And while he’d made her feel loved, he hadn’t uttered the words. She needed to know how he felt about her now, yet at the same time, she feared the answer. “Nick?”

“Hmm?”

“We need to talk.”

He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “Give me a minute.” He withdrew from her and walked naked from the room to rid himself of the condom he hadn’t forgotten since that first frenzied time in the closet at the Lakeshore. Delaney searched for her panties and found them under a rattan cocktail table. She stepped into them, and with each passing moment her unease grew. What if he didn’t love her? How could she stand it, and what was she going to do if he didn’t? He returned just as she’d discovered her bra behind a couch cushion. He took the bra from her hand and tossed it aside. He wrapped her in his embrace and held her against his chest, holding her tighter than ever before. Within his warm arms, with the scent of his skin filling her head, she told herself that he loved her. Even though she wasn’t good at being patient, she could wait for him to say the words she needed to hear. Instead she heard the squeak of wood and hinges, like the front door swinging open, and she stilled. “Did you hear something?” she whispered.

He put a finger to his lips and listened. The door slammed shut, galvanizing her into action.

“Holy hell!” She jumped from Nick’s arms and reached for the closest article of clothing, his flannel shirt. Footsteps tapped up the hall as she shoved her arms in the holes. Nick’s jeans lay somewhere behind the couch, and he stepped behind Delaney just as Gwen walked into the room. An eerie feeling of déjà vu climbed up Delaney’s spine. Her mother stood within a shaft of light, the sun shinning in her hair like she was a Christmas angel.

Gwen looked from Delaney to Nick then back again, shock rounding her blue eyes. “What is going on here?”

Delaney closed the front of the shirt with her hand. “Mom ... I. . .” Her fingers worked the buttons as an unreal feeling fogged her head. “What are you doing home?”

“I live here!”

Nick placed a hand on her abdomen and pulled her back against him, hiding his goods from Delaney’s mother. “I know, but you’re supposed to be on the love boat.”

Gwen pointed a finger at Nick. “What is he doing in my house?”

Carefully she finished with the buttons. “Well, he was kind enough to spend Christmas with me.”

“He’s naked!”

“Well, yes.” She spread the hem of his shirt wider in an effort to cover him better. “He... ah ...” She closed her mouth and shrugged. There was no help for it, she’d been caught. Only this time she wasn’t a naive eighteen-year-old girl. She was a few months shy of thirty and she loved Nick Allegrezza. She was a mature independent woman, but she would have preferred that her mother had not found them naked in her sunroom, “Nick and I are dating.”

“I’d say you’re more than dating. How could you do this, Delaney? How could you take up with a man like him? He’s a womanizer and he hates this family.” She turned her attention to Nick. “You put your hands on my daughter again, but this time you’ve fixed yourself good. You violated the terms of Henry’s will. I’ll see to it you lose everything.”

“I never gave a damn about the will.” His fingers brushed over the flannel covering Delaney’s stomach.

Delaney knew her mother well enough to know she’d make good on her threat. She also knew how to stop her. “If you tell anyone about this, then I’ll never speak to you again. Once I leave in June, you’ll never see me. If you thought you never saw me after I left ten years ago, you just wait. When I leave this time, I won’t even tell you where I am. When I leave, I’ll have three million dollars and I’ll never come back to visit you.”