Bundle of Joy (4 page)

Caroline, stomach rumbling at the thought, sighed. "One of Sam's Torta Rusticas."

"Torta Rustica?" asked Donohue. "What's that?"

"Meat loaf," she mumbled.

"You're kidding."

"A very fancy meat loaf," she said, trying not to smile. "Not the usual fare by any means."

"Meat loaf is meat loaf."

"That's like saying wine is wine."

"You took the words right out of my mouth." He looked as if he were holding back a grin and not altogether succeeding at it.

"There's a world of difference between Thunderbird and Pouilly-Fuisse."

"Like the difference between the two of us," he observed.

Ah, there it was: the killer grin a weaker woman would gladly die for. Caroline was glad she was above such obvious temptations. "Exactly," she said coolly. "Like the two of us."

"I'd still kill for a burger."

Suddenly Caroline leaped to her feet. "It's not a burger with fries, but I have something that'll do in a pinch." She hurried to the far corner of the room, pushed aside two fur coats and uncovered a grocery bag from Food Town. "Cheese, stone wheat crackers, and champagne." She raised the bottle in a gesture of triumph. "And what do you think of that, Charles?"

He hadn't been called Charles since before he joined the navy, but the name sounded kind of nice rolling off her elegant and eminently kissable lips. "Better than C rations," he said with the right note of casual interest. "You make a habit of storing midnight snacks in here?"

"I had to pick up a few things at Foodtown this afternoon," she said with a self-conscious laugh. "This seemed as good a place as any to stash them."

A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. "Your date must be wondering where you are."

Was it her imagination or did she detect more than a slight note of curiosity in his voice? "I don't have a date tonight, Charles."

He looked at the Brie, the fancy crackers, and the champagne. "You bought all this stuff just for you?"

She nodded, busying herself with opening the package of crackers. "I believe in surrounding myself with the finer things in life." She paused, then looked up at him. "Go ahead. You're about to laugh at me, aren't you?"

He filched a cracker and made short work of it. "Why do you say that?"

"Because men like you usually think the finer things in life are an extra six-pack and the Super Bowl."

"Nothing wrong with that."

"Nothing particularly right about it, either."

"You really are a snob, aren't you, Bradley?"

"The name's Caroline and yes, I suppose I am." She'd worked hard to acquire the accoutrements of the "good life" and wasn't about to make light of any of them. Especially not to a man like Donohue.

"Some women would take a burger and a ballgame over dinner at the Ritz any day."

"And they're welcome to both," said Caroline magnanimously. "I, however, shall stick with the Ritz."

Donohue took the bottle of champagne and wedged it between his knees. "Bet they don't do it like this at the Ritz," he said, proceeding to pop the cork.

"I wager you're right," she said, wishing they had some glasses. It was hard to imagine an elegant maitre d' with a bottle between his knees.

Her mouth dropped open in amazement as Donohue took a swig right from the bottle. "Good stuff."

She was speechless as he handed her the champagne.

"Try it," he said.

Gingerly she wiped the mouth with the back of her hand, ignoring his low, masculine chuckle. Tipping her head back she brought the bottle to her lips the way she used to drink Pepsi when she was a kid. The bubbles filled her mouth and throat and she sputtered then swallowed. "Delicious," she said, aware of the golden liquid trickling down her chin and onto her t-shirt. She extended the bottle back toward him. He didn't move. What on earth was the matter with him?

#

The droplets of champagne were beaded along the curve of her mouth, her delectable chin, spotting the rounded upper slope of her breasts. He wanted to lick them off her, drop by drop, until he tasted nothing but her rosy skin beneath his tongue.

"Charles?" She extended the bottle toward him again. "Is something wrong?"

Get a grip on yourself, man.
He blinked hard, grabbed the bottle, and took another long swig. "Drinking on an empty stomach's a killer." He motioned toward the cheese and crackers with the half-empty champagne bottle. "We'd better eat something."

"Can't hold your liquor, is it?" she asked, taking the bottle and indulging in another dainty sip. And then another. "You surprise me, Charles, being a bartender and all."

"Cook," he said, tearing his gaze away from the subtle rise and fall of her chest in that snug t-shirt. "I'm a cook."

"Well, this may not be up to your professional standards, but help yourself to cheese and crackers."

He did, with gusto. A long time ago he'd learned about something called sublimation. It seemed that this was a case in point, substituting the taste of champagne and crackers for the taste of her mouth beneath his.

She brushed a stray lock of blond hair off her cheek with a carelessly graceful gesture that seemed to pierce his heart with the beauty of it. Champagne was dangerous stuff, to turn a practical, hard-hearted man like him into a poet. But then she was the stuff of which poetry was made--all delicate, shimmering loveliness with the hidden spar
kle and strength of a diamond. .

He grabbed for the bottle.

#

Caroline didn't know what she was enjoying most: the champagne, the Brie, or staring into Donohue's green eyes.

Of course, green was too vague a term to describe the amazing color. Charlie's eyes weren't emerald or jade, but the deep, luminous green of a forest shot through with sunlight. Thickly fringed with lashes of the darkest jet, his eyes seemed to blaze with heat that found its target somewhere deep inside the pit of her stomach.

She giggled, a most unlikely sound coming from the sophisticated Caroline Bradley of Princeton. "I, for one, can hold my champagne quite well, thank you very much." She took a dainty sip right from the bottle, and this time she didn't bother to wipe the mouth first with her hand. "I wish we had utensils," she said. "Utensils are what separate men from animals. Did you know that one of the first steps in human evolution was learning how to use eating utensils?"

He started to laugh, the sound beginning somewhere around his feet and moving upward, gathering in volume. "Where the hell did you go to school? The Shirley MacLaine University of Advanced Crystal Reading?"

She drew herself up with as much dignity as she could muster given the circumstances. Good Lord, but he was an attractive man. Words she never used, like "hunk" and "stud
-muffin," popped into her mind and out again. "Forks and spoons are responsible for western civilization as we know it," she said, making it up from whole cloth as she went along. "If it weren't for cutlery, we'd still be baying at the moon."

He started to say something both profound and witty but instead found himself staring at the dimple in her right che
ek. Funny thing. He'd seen her scores of times before tonight but never once noticed that incredible dimple before. That dimple was a work of art in the perfect canvas of her face.
In vino veritas
,
the saying went. It suddenly seemed to Charlie that not only truth was found in the grape, but madness as well.

He took another sip and gave her a loopy smile. Not even the fact he was turning into a human icicle bothered him. Who would have imagined madness could feel so terrific?

#

Caroline didn't notice the loopy smile or the Arctic temperature.
She'd been happily occupied with the task of memorizing the impressive muscles barely hidden beneath his t-shirt. Why had she never noticed how silky and thick his jet black moustache was or just how dazzlingly white his teeth were? She prided herself on being an observant person and it boggled the mind that such important details had somehow slipped by her.

"Aren't these crackers wonderful?" she asked, crackers being an infinitely safer topic of conversation than anything else she could come up with.

"Delicious," he said, his gaze lingering on her mouth.

They ate in silence except for the crunch of crackers and the last gasping bubble of champagne. Yet, it wasn't a silence like the one earlier, a silence fraught with anger and mistrust. This silence resonated with something else, an emotion infinitely more dangerous had either one of them been able to recognize it for what it was.

But then, how many people actually recognized their future even when it was staring them right in the face? Oh, somewhere down the road a man and a woman could usually pinpoint that moment in time when the gods smiled upon them but that realization usually came after many years and many, many tellings of the story of how they met and fell in love.

This was all too new for Caroline and Charlie. They had no common history, no shared memories except of brief greetings at O'Rourke's Bar and Grille and of a general lack of interest. The magic between them was new as the moment, as real as the beating of their hearts. And it went far deeper than the hazy glow of champagne would lead either one of them to think later on.

iii

They finished their impromptu picnic supper a little after eleven. A wave of drowsiness washed over Caroline and she stifled a yawn. Her lids, however, were half-lowered and Charlie thought he'd never seen a woman look sexier or more vulnerable in his life. The combination was lethal. He had to find a physical outlet for his volatile emotions and fast.

He got up and started unpacking the fur coats from their boxes, hefting minks and sables over his arms as if they were a pile of sweatshirts. "Might as well get some work done," he said. "Where do you want these?"

She got to her feet with a motion so graceful and feminine that a lump formed in his throat and he looked away. The cold air must be affecting his thinking.

"This way." She led him past racks of dazzling dresses resplendent with sequins and beads and needlework so amazing that even Charlie could recognize how special it was. "Over here with the foxes."

He found himself eyeball-to-eyeball with a fox fling. "I had an aunt who used to wear stuff like this," he said, handing Caroline one of the coats so she could slip it onto a cedar hanger. "I hated it then and I hate it now."

"Mercifully outdated," said Caroline, draping a square of muslin over the poor fox's face. "Thank God you don't see things like this very often these days."

He handed her another coat. "Something pretty outdated about wearing dead animals on your back, don't you think?"

She gave him a glance that he couldn't quite read. "That's why I have so many of them, Charles. Few people wear fur these days. They're giving them away and taking a tax write-off."

"But people still rent them?" Charlie saw the world in black and white. Grey areas of moral ambiguity never ceased to puzzle him, like the difference between buying a fur coat or renting one for the night.

Caroline made room on the rack for the next pile of coats. "For your information, I'm not planning to rent these to anyone. I'm donating them to a women's shelter in October. Not that it's any of your business, you understand, but that smug look on your face is beginning to get on my nerves."

"Good for you, Bradley," he said, ignoring the jab. "I wouldn't have figured you for the charitable type."

"And I wouldn't have figured you for the type who cared one way or the other about much of anything."

"By the time the night's over, we should know everything there is to know about each other."

She gave a mock-shudder in response but he couldn't help noticing the twinkle in her eyes or the way her lush mouth tilted with a smile. "Heaven forbid! Proximity does not a friendship make, Charles. Remember that."

She has a sense of humor,
Donohue noted with surprise.

He's a lot smarter than I thought,
Caroline was pleased to realize. Who would have figured rough-and-tumble Charlie Donohue would care one way or the other about the fate of furry creatures? It was a side of him she liked a great deal. Perhaps it was the champagne at work, but she found herself wondering what other surprises were hidden beneath his macho exterior.

Charlie feigned a matador's pass with a ranch mink stole and Caroline chuckled as he parodied a close call with an angry bull.

I like her laugh,
he thought as she rescued the stole from him. He especially liked her mouth, all soft and inviting and female. Definitely female.

I wonder if he's a good kisser,
she mused. Again and again her eyes were drawn to his mouth, his lips firm and enticing, made even more so by contrast with the jet black moustache that was practically an invitation.

By ten after midnight they had emptied all the boxes in the room and put the coats and stoles, the flings and the jackets, safely away. Then they polished off the rest of the champagne and crackers, even though the temperature in the vault seemed to be plummeting with each second.