Dream On (Stories of Serendipity #2) (17 page)

“How are you feeling this morning?”

“Not great.  I’m not talking to you, today.”  She moved to close the door between them, but his giant boot was suddenly in the way, as he grasped her arms and gently pushed her back inside the house.  He closed the door behind him and stood towering over her, holding her with his magnetic eyes.

She was aware he was staring at the neckline of her robe, which had opened a little, showing the tops of her pendulous boobs
.  She pulled the neckline shut and cinched the belt of her robe tighter.

His eyes focused back on her face, “Why aren’t you talking to me today?”

“Because my brain doesn’t work right now.”

“We need to talk about last night.
 I would have talked to you then, but you were too drunk to have a logical conversation.”  He sounded pissed.

“Well, you were too busy with Stephanie,” she spat the name, “to have any sort of conversation, either.”

He sighed with frustration, running his hands through his hair.  “No, I wasn’t. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.  Nothing happened with her.  She was throwing herself at me, but I was waiting for you.”  His voice was getting louder, more insistent.

“You arrogant bastard.
 I don’t want her leftovers.  I will never ever again touch a man who has been with her.  So you just turn your happy ass around and get the hell out of my house.”  She started to push him toward the door.

“Nothing happened.
 You don’t have her leftovers.”

“Oh yeah?
 Then who did you go home with last night?”

“You.”
 He said quietly.

She studied him.
 His steely gray eyes had softened and looked at her, pleading.  His hand reached up and cupped her cheek.

“I brought you home last night
and put you in bed.  I called up to the school this morning to check on you, but they said you had stayed home sick, so I came by to make sure you were okay.  Are you okay?”

“No.
 Please leave.”  She tried to push him out the door, again, but it was like moving a giant boulder, and he didn’t budge.

“Tell me why, Alyssa.”
 His voice was soft, like a caress.

“I thought I could do this with you, but I can’t.
 Your history...I can’t compete with those women.  I’m not like them.  I can’t do it.  I’m sorry.”  She hadn’t felt like apologizing until she looked up into his face and saw his mouth turned down in anger, his eyes hard, gray orbs penetrating straight through her.

“I don’t want you to compete, Alyssa.
 I tried to tell you the other day.  That’s exactly what those other women are - history.  They are in the past.  I want you.”  His voice had gone husky at the last part, and Alyssa’s knees weakened.

“I’m not ready for this.”

“I know.  I’m waiting.  I’ll wait as long as you need me to, but in the meantime, we have a date tomorrow night.  I’ll be by to pick you up at seven.”

“O-Okay.”
 She squeaked the word out, her voice suddenly deserting her.

“Get some rest today, okay?
 I’ll take care of your car.”  He brushed his lips against hers lightly and walked out the door.

Alyssa wa
tched the door close behind him and decided to take his advice and go back to bed.

Chapter 14

Friday’s pep rally involved musical chairs, with assorted students, teachers, and coaches, including Coach Ridley.
 Alyssa ruthlessly darted to chairs when the music stopped, managing to stay in the game until she and Coach Ridley were the last two players.  They circled the last chair haltingly, trying to linger in front of the chair, then race around behind it to get back in front before the music stopped.  As she was dawdling in front of the chair, she looked up at Coach to see an amused expression on his face.  That was their position, when the music stopped. Deftly, Coach Ridley piggy backed the chair and landed in the seat a nanosecond before Alyssa sat her butt in his lap.  Mortified, she tried to stand up, but to her consternation, and the cheers of the entire high school, he had grasped her hips and held her down, so she remained in his lap long enough to feel a hard ridge in his pants.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”
 He whispered in her ear.

“Get your hands off of me right now, Cody.”
 Alyssa gritted between her teeth.

He released
her, and she jumped off his lap and stomped away, trying not to let her emotions show.  Teenagers were parasites who fed off their teachers’ emotions.  She couldn’t let them know how upset she was at coach, or it would be all over the school in a matter of seconds.

The rest of the day went smoothly, as she had her students writing essays about school spirit, and what it meant to them.
 They tackled the assignment with as much vigor as possible, since everyone had an opinion on pep rally days.

Seventh period, a knock on her door interrupted her last stack of papers.
 It was Coach Ridley.  Trying not to be encouraging, she looked at him.  “What?”

“I came by to apologize for my inappropriate behavior at the pep rally.
 I’m sorry.”
  “Apology accepted.”  She bent her head back over her papers.  He cleared his throat.

“Did I screw up?”

“Yes.”  Alyssa didn’t look back up.

“So, you won’t go out with me tomorrow night?”

“No.”

Silence followed.
 Alyssa looked up to see he was gone.  Sighing with relief, she went back to grading papers.

When four o’clock came, she packed up her bag and went home to get ready for her date with Dalton.

Alyssa wasn’t sure what to think about this man.  He was sexy, and she was...Alyssa.  Single mother, English teacher, not sexy.  Her friends kept telling her she needed sex, but she had had sex, and it wasn’t all that great.  

She flushed at the memory of her dreams of Dalton.
 His kind of sex seemed like it would be great.  Maybe that’s what she needed.  She certainly wasn’t going to be able to have a real relationship with him, but maybe she could do the sex thing?  She would date him, with the end result being sex with Dalton, but she would have to work herself up for that.  She wasn’t much for casual sex, but she had the idea that with Dalton, sex would be anything but casual...

Looking through her closet, Alyssa realized she didn’t have a stitch of clothing suitable for a date with Dalton.
 She felt a ridiculous desire to dress sexy and knew he liked things like bustiers, leather, and short skirts, but she didn’t have a single thing in her wardrobe that fit the bill.  Finally deciding on a little black dress, Alyssa pulled out her sewing kit.  When she had bought the dress a couple of years ago, she had modified the neckline so it wouldn’t show so much cleavage.  

She felt the desire to try to distract Dalton.
 She wasn’t sure why, since she wasn’t at all ready to have sex with him, but she liked the hunger in his eyes when he looked at her, and she felt the need to feed that hunger.  So, with her scissors, she carefully undid the seam she had painstakingly sewed into the dress two years ago.  She contemplated shortening the length of the skirt, but decided she probably didn’t have enough time to do that.

Alyssa dug out her old Nine
Inch Nails CD from high school and turned up the player to get herself into more of a “Dalton mood” while she dressed.  As she danced around her room, getting ready, she decided this was about as sexy as she could get.  She didn’t intend to be a tease, but she felt a strong inclination to make Dalton work hard for what he wanted.

When she heard the knock at the door, the butterflies in her stomach fluttered, but her new sexy self told them to pipe down.
 Alyssa took immense pleasure in the look on Dalton’s face when she opened the door.

His eyes widened, as Dalton’s gaze swept down her
body, from her face to her legs and back up to her breasts, lingering there before returning to her face.  He swallowed hard.  “You look...amazing.” Another swallow.

“Thanks.”
 She flashed him a small smile, suddenly feeling shy under his scrutiny.  “Shall we?”

“Absolutely.”
 He followed her to the car, opening her door for her.  She caught him staring at her legs as she lifted them into the car.  For some reason, it didn’t bother her like it had with Cody.  With Dalton, she felt a rush of pleasure at his attentions.  

When he got in on his side of the car, she was openly staring at his profile as he leaned forward to start the car.
 As he reached back for his seatbelt, he caught her staring at him.  “What?”

“Nothing.
 I was just looking at you.”  Her gaze spontaneously swept from his face, down his arms, to his strong hands, sitting loosely on the steering wheel.

“Well, by all means, don’t let me stop you.” He smiled a crooked grin at her, while he put the car in gear.

She couldn’t tell if it was her newly altered dress, or an adrenaline rush from the dancing she had been doing in her room, but Alyssa felt a shameless boost of self-confidence.  Her frank gaze continued to assess him.  Sitting this close to him, inside his car, she was overwhelmed with his masculinity.  His bulk, his body, his smell, all overpowered her and left her awash in sensations.  She tentatively reached a hand out and brushed his forearm, which rested on the gearshift.

He tensed, and looked at her warily. “Just touching, now?” Usually low and smooth, his voice had risen slightly.

“Mmm-hmm.” He was wearing a black pin-striped dress shirt and had the sleeves rolled up to display corded forearms, one of them tattooed.  She ran her fingertips lightly over those muscles, tracing the veins.

“Tell me about your tattoo.”
 Her fingers were tracing the outline of the ram on his arm.

“I’m an Aries.
 It’s a tattoo of the ram.  I like to meet life head-on.  When I got the tattoo, I was really into astrology, and the ram’s horns are a symbol of fertility.”  His voice got lower. “I was a little full of myself.”

Alyssa digested this information, and it made her feel a little uncomfortable to be dating somebody who would tattoo fertility symbols on his body.
 As she thought about it, she decided his confidence in his sexuality could be good for her.  She was silent.

“Alyssa, are you okay?”
 

Alyssa took a deep breath.
 She might was well be up front with him.  Lord knows what he already knew about her from his dreams.  “I just told myself I wasn’t going to be nervous tonight.  I told myself it was mind over matter.  So here I am, not being nervous.  I’m acting out my impulses.”  She realized she was babbling, and her heart was pounding in her chest, but if she was going to do this, she couldn’t hold back. “I’m confronting my fears.”

He laughed.
 “You’re scared.”

“You’re terrifying to me.  I
t’s like living next door to a house where a murder happened.  I want to know more.”

He entwined his fingers in hers, resting their hands on his lap while he drove to the restaurant.
 “Tell me what to do to ease your fears.  I don’t like you being scared of me.”

“I think it’s a fear of the unknown that’s my
biggest issue.  So talk to me.  Tell me about yourself.”

“Well, I grew up here on a ranch on the north side of town.
 My mom was a housewife, who was very involved with my sister and me, devoted to my dad, and baked constantly.  It seems like she always had cookies in the oven when we came home from school.  After graduation, I went to SFA and got a degree in Ag Science to come back to work with Dad.  I talked my parents into letting me move to Dallas for a little while first to sow some oats, and I got caught up in the lifestyle and forgot to come back.  I should have moved back years ago, but I didn’t want to comply too willingly with my parents wishes.”  His voice got quiet.  “Now Dad’s sick and isn’t expected to make it, and I blame myself for that.  If I had moved back when I was supposed to, he wouldn’t have been under the pressure he’s been under.” He was quiet for a moment before squeezing her hand.  “Your turn.”

“Okay. I grew up in Tyler, and went to University of Texas at Tyler.
 I really wanted to stay there, but I met Steven my senior year of college and we got married and his job brought him here.  I got a teaching job, we had kids, and we divorced.  That’s about it.”

“Why did you guys divorce?”

“In the beginning it was just irreconcilable differences, but in the end it was Stephanie.”  She really didn’t like talking about her marriage.

“Ahh...That explains a lot about the other night.”

“What does it explain?”

“Well, you seemed so hurt, and I couldn’t understand the pa
in.  I can understand the anger but not the pain.  You were hurting that night, and you don’t deserve that.  I wanted to kick the guy’s ass who hurt you, but it was me, and I didn’t know how to deal with that.”  He pulled the car into the restaurant parking lot and reached behind him into the back seat to retrieve a bottle of wine.  “Is this place okay?  Italian?”