With a Little Luck (7 page)

“Now that we have everything cleaned up, it’s time I was leaving,” she declared.

“Can’t you stay a little while longer?”

“No, it’s late,” She removed her brown coat from the chair back and slipped it on.

Toby brought her the umbrella. “Thanks for coming, Eve.” He stopped for an instant as a thought occurred to him. “Maybe I should call you Miss Rowland, since you’re a teacher,”

“I’d like it better if you called me Eve,” she replied, and started toward the entry hall.

“Okay, Eve,” he grinned, and walked with her.

As she passed the living room, her gaze was automatically drawn inside. Luck was sitting up, rubbing his hands over his face as though he had just wakened. The movement in front of him attracted his attention. He glanced up and became motionless for an instant when he saw Eve.

Because of the clouds blocking out the sun, there was little light in the entry way. Eve didn’t think about the dimness as she started to speak, smiling at the grogginess that was evident in his expression.

But Luck spoke before she did. “Don’t scurry off into the darkness…brown mouse.” There was a trancelike quality to his voice.

Her steps faltered. She had escaped recognition for so long that she had stopped dreading it, Now that he remembered her, she felt sick. Tearing her gaze from him, she hurried toward the front door. As she jerked it open, she heard him call her name.

“Eve!”

She didn’t stop. She didn’t even remember to open the umbrella until the slow rain drenched her face. There was water on the ground. It splashed beneath her running feet as she hurried toward her car.

Four

A STARTLED OUTCRY was torn from her throat by the hand that caught her arm and spun her around. Eve hadn’t thought Luck would come after her — not out in the rain. But there he was, standing before her with his naked chest glistening a hard bronze from the rain, the sprinkling of chest hairs curling tightly in the wetness. The steady rain beat at his dark hair, driving it onto his forehead. Reluctantly, Eve lifted her gaze to the blue of his eyes, drowning in the full recognition of his look.

“You
are
the girl I bumped into outside the tavern that night,” Luck stated in final acceptance of the fact.

“Yes.” The hand holding the umbrella wavered, causing Luck to dodge his head and duck under the wire spines stretching the material.

His gaze swept her face, hair and eyes. “I thought I’d conjured you out of a whiskey bottle. I don’t know why nothing clicked when I met you.” A frown flickered between his brows, then vanished when his gaze slid to her coat. “It must have been the combination of the shadows and the brown coat…and the fogginess of sleep. Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“And remind you that I was the brown mouse?” There was bitterness in the laughing breath she released.

“What’s wrong with being a brown mouse?” The corners of his mouth deepened in an attractive smile. “I recall that I happened to like the brown mouse I met.”

“A brown mouse is just a small rat. It’s hardly a name that someone wants to be called.” This time Eve worked to keep the bitterness out of her voice and turn the comment into a joke for her pride’s sake. She succeeded to a large degree. “You certainly don’t want to remind someone of it if they’ve forgotten.”

“It’s all in the eye of the beholder, Eve,” Luck corrected with a rueful twist of his mouth. “You see a rat, and I see a soft furry creature. You are a strong sensitive woman, but you aren’t very sure of yourself. I wish you had stayed that night. It all might have turned out differently.”

How could she say that she wished she had, too, knowing what she knew now. Hindsight always altered a person’s perspective.

“Dad!” Toby shouted from the opened front door. “You’d better come inside! You’re getting soaking wet out there!”

“Toby’s right.” Her gaze fell to the rivulets of rainwater running down the muscled contours of his bare chest, ail hard sinew and taut sun-browned skin. His blatant maleness spun a whole new set of evocative sensations. “You’re getting drenched. You should go in the house.”

“Come in with me.” Luck didn’t let go of her arms, holding her as he issued the invitation.

“No. I have to go home.” She resisted the temptation to accept, listening to the steady drip of rain off her umbrella, its swift fall in the same rhythm as her pulse.

His mouth quirked. “That’s what you said then, too.”

“It’s late. I — ” The sentence went no farther as the wetness of his palm cupped her cheek. Eve completely forgot what she was going to say, her thoughts scattered by the disturbing caress of his touch.

“Dad!” Toby sounded impatient and irritated. “You’re going to catch your death of pneumonia!”

It was the diversion Eve needed to collect her senses before she did something foolish. “You’d better go.” She turned away, breaking contact with his hand and lifting the umbrella high enough to clear his head. There was no resistance as she slipped out of his grasp to walk the last few steps to the car.

“We’ll see you again, Eve.” It was a definite statement.

But she wasn’t certain what promise it contained. “Yes.” She opened the car door and slipped inside, struggling to close the wet umbrella. Luck continued to stand in the rain, watching her.

“Do you think it will be sunny tomorrow?” he asked unexpectedly.

“I haven’t been paying any attention to the weather forecast,” Eve replied.

“Neither have I,” Luck admitted.

HE WAS INDIFFERENT to the slow rain falling on him as he watched Eve reverse the car at a right angle to turn around in the drive. The incident had not been a figment of an alcoholic imagination. The woman he’d thought he had only dreamed about had actually been under his nose all this time.

The one good feeling he’d experienced in six years had happened when he had held her in his arms, but he hadn’t believed it was real. Even now Luck wasn’t sure that part hadn’t been imagined. Comfortable didn’t describe the feeling it had aroused. It was something more basic than that. It had been right and natural with his arms around her, feeling the softness of her body against his.

The woman had been Eve. It was strange he hadn’t realized it before. She was quiet and warm, with an inner resiliency and a gentle humor that he liked. A smile twitched his mouth as Luck remembered she had a definite will of her own, as well. She wasn’t easily intimidated.

“Dad!”

He turned, letting his gaze leave the red taillights of her car, and walked to the house, wet feet squishing in wet shoes. A smile curved his mouth at the disapproving expression on his son’s face when he reached the door.

“You’re sopping wet,” Toby accused. “You wouldn’t let me run out there like that with no coat or anything. You tell me I’ll catch cold. How come you can do it?”

“Because I’m stupid,” Luck replied, because he couldn’t argue with the point his son had raised.

“You’d better get out of those wet clothes,” Toby advised.

“I intend to.” He left a watery trail behind him as he walked to the private bath off his bedroom where he stripped and put on the toweling robe Toby brought him. “Why was Eve here?” he asked, vigorously rubbing his wet hair with a bath towel.

“She came over to help me make cookies. They’re good, too.” A sharp questioning glance from Luck prompted Toby to explain. “I called and asked her to come over ’cause I was having trouble with the directions and you were asleep.” Then it was his turn to tip his head to one side and send a questioning look at his father. “How come you called her a brown mouse?”

“It turns out Eve was the one I talked to that night and referred to as a brown mouse,” he shrugged, and tossed the towel over a rack.

“I thought you were drunk that night.”

“I had a few drinks, more after I met her than before. Which probably explains why I wasn’t sure whether it had happened or I had imagined it.”

“But why did you call her a brown mouse?” Toby didn’t understand that yet.

“It’s a long story,” Luck began.

“I know,” Toby inserted with a resigned sigh. “You’ll tell me all about it some other time.”

“That’s right.” A smile played with the corners of his mouth as he turned his son around and pushed him in front of him out of the bathroom. “Is there any coffee made?”

“Yeah.” Toby tilted his head way back to frown at him. “I just hope you remember all the things you’re going to tell me ‘some other time.’”

In the kitchen, Luck filled a mug with coffee and helped himself to a handful of the cookies stacked on the table. “What did you and Eve talk about?” Settling onto a chair, he bit into one of the cookies and eyed Toby skeptically. “Did you really make these?”

“Yeah,” was the defensive retort. “Eve told me how. She says you learn best by doing. She’s a teacher. Did you know that? I mean a for real teacher. She teaches music.”

“No, I didn’t know that,” Luck admitted.

“We talked about that some and a bunch of other things.” Toby frowned in an attempt to recall the subjects he’d discussed with Eve. “I told her you were thinking about getting married again.”

Luck choked on the drink of coffee he’d taken and coughed, “You did what?!!” He set the mug down to stare at his son, controlling the anger that trembled beneath his disbelieving look.

“I mentioned that you were talking about getting married again,” he repeated with all the round-eyed innocence of an eight-year-old. “Well, it’s true.”

“No,
you’ve
been talking about it.” Luck pointed a finger at his son, shaking it slightly in his direction. “Why on earth did you mention it to Eve? I thought it was a private discussion between you and me.”

“Gosh, dad, I didn’t know you wanted to keep it a secret,” Toby blinked.

“Toby, you don’t go around discussing personal matters with strangers.” He ran his fingers through his damp haft in a gesture of exasperation. “My God, you’ll be blabbing it to the whole neighborhood next. Why don’t you just take an ad out in the paper? Wanted: A wife for a widower with an eightyear- old blabbermouth.”

“Do you think anyone would apply?” Behind the thoughtful frown, there was the beginnings of a plan.

“No!” Luck slammed his hand on the table. “If I find out that you’ve put an advertisement in any paper, I swear you won’t be able to sit down for a week! This marriage business has gone far enough!”

“But you said — ” Toby started to protest.

“I don’t care what I said,” Luck interrupted with a slicing wave of his hand to dismiss that argument. “I’ve played along with this marriage idea of yours, but it’s got to stop. I’ll decide
when
and
if
I’m getting married again without any prompting from you!”

“But face it, dad, you should get married,” Toby patiently insisted. “You need somebody to keep you company and to look after you. I’m getting too old to be doing all this woman’s work around the house.”

“You don’t get married just for companionship and someone to keep house.” Luck regretted his earlier, imprecise explanation of another’s role. It had started this whole mess. “There is more involved than that. A man is supposed to love the woman he marries.”

“You’re talking about hugging and kissing and that stuff,” Toby nodded in understanding.

“That and…other things,” Luck conceded with marked impatience.

“You mean sex, like in that book you and I read together when you explained to me how babies were made,” his son replied quite calmly.

Luck shook his head and scratched his forehead. “Yes, I mean sex and the feelings you have toward the woman you marry.”

“Would you consider marrying someone like Eve?” Toby cocked his head at a wondering angle. “You said looks weren’t everything.”

“Why did you say a thing like that?” he challenged with irritation. “Don’t you think Eve is an attractive woman?”

“Eve is all right, I like her, but — ”

“No buts!” Luck flashed. “Eve is a lovely young woman and I don’t want you implying otherwise with comments like ‘looks aren’t everything.’ It’s thoughtless remarks like that that hurt people’s feelings.” He should know. He had already wounded Eve when he called her a brown mouse, even though he hadn’t meant it to be unkind. “Don’t ever say anything to slight her!”

“Gee, dad, you don’t have to get so hostile,” Toby admonished, and defended his position. “Eve just doesn’t look anything at all like the blonde we saw on the beach the other day. That blonde could have been the centerfold in
Playboy
magazine.”

Luck started to ask where Toby had gotten his hands on a magazine like that, but he remembered his own curiosity at that age and decided not to pursue the issue at this time. Instead he just sighed, “I’m not interested in marrying a woman who has staples in her stomach.”

Toby jerked his head and frowned. “Why would she have staples in her stomach?”

“Never mind.” He lifted his hands in defeat. “The whole subject of women and marriage is closed. But you remember what I said about Eve,” he warned. “I don’t want to hear you making any disparaging remarks about her.”

“I wouldn’t, dad.” Toby looked offended. “She’s nice.”