Once Around (17 page)

"
So who is she?" Courtney went on between drags.

"
What makes you think there's someone else?"

"
Experience, darling. Nobody says good-bye unless there's someone waiting in the wings."

"
Nothing serious," he said, thinking of Molly Chamberlain. "The lady isn't free yet."

Courtney leaned back against the headboard and laughed softly.
"Then that should make her just about perfect for you."

You would think so. Molly understood his world. She
'd lived in it. She knew what was expected. She was beautiful, warm, and sexy. Not even her pregnancy changed the effect she had on his libido. No normal man could look at her and not want to take her to bed. She seemed to enjoy his company, too. Their lunches always ran overtime, and she prolonged their good-byes with questions he'd answered hours before. Not that he minded. She was easy to be with, undemanding.

There was just one problem.

The lady didn't want him.

#

Heavy autumn rains swept in the next day. Rafe called Molly and told her he'd be working another job until the weather shifted again. She sounded vaguely annoyed but not terribly disappointed: He would have liked it better the other way around.

The job was a simp
le enough one. He was part of a kitchen renovation crew, replacing cabinets and counters, installing a new double sink and dishwasher. There were four of them on the crew, and with luck they could finish up within the week. At first he'd resented the rain for keeping him away from Molly, but as the days passed, he began to think maybe it wasn't such a bad thing.

Maybe the rain would act like a cold shower.

Nothing else had worked. Not exhaustion, sublimation, aversion therapy. He'd tried everything he could think of to banish Molly Chamberlain from his mind but he'd failed every single time. if he hadn't known better, he'd have thought he was in love with her. That was ridiculous, of course. Not even he was that big a fool. If he was going to fall in love with a woman, he'd make sure that: this time around he fell in love with one who liked him. She didn't have to like him a lot—he wasn't demanding—but it would be nice if she could manage to stay in the same room with him for more than three minutes without running away.

Molly couldn
't seem to manage that. They'd barely exchanged more than a handful of sentences since the day she gave him the extra ticket to the charity dinner. He could still see the regret in her eyes when he stuck it in the pocket of his work shirt.

He was glad he wouldn
't be around to see the relief in her eyes when he didn't show up.

Chapter Nine

On T
hursday morning, two days before the dinner-dance, the rains finally stopped. Molly was finishing her first cup of decaf tea when the telephone rang.

"
It stopped raining," Jessy said in her deceptively soft Southern drawl.

"
About time," Molly said, popping two slices of whole wheat into the toaster. "I was about to ask Rafe to build us an ark."

"
I have a few hours free this afternoon," Jessy said, sailing right over Molly's joking remark. "I thought maybe we could visit that store you told me about, the one with the used clothes?"

Molly leaned back in her chair and suppressed the urge to stare at the telephone in amazement.
"I didn't think you were interested," she said. "When you didn't follow up on it, I just assumed—"

"
I've been real busy," Jessy said. Her tone was both apologetic and defensive. "If you can't, I'll—"

"
No." Molly pushed aside the stack of papers next to her teacup. "I'd love to show you the consignment shop. How about I pick you up in front of the hospital around twelve?"

She
'd been working nonstop, it seemed, for weeks now. The assignments were coming steadily, and the way to keep them coming in was by being reliable and accurate. She read thrillers, romances, Westerns, mysteries, and literary novels and offered up her opinions for pay. She'd also done a fair bit of copyediting and a few back-cover blurbs for some series mysteries her publisher put out. Her work engaged her mind but didn't engage her heart, which was exactly the way she liked it. Right now her heart belonged to her baby.

When she and Jessy had that surprising conversation about the baby Jessy gave up for adoption years ago
, Molly had wondered if that would open the floodgates for more talks like that. She was hungry to share confidences about her pregnancy, the kinds of things she would have shared with Robert if he had only stayed around.

Who was she kidding? It wouldn
't have mattered if Robert had stayed around. The baby was of no interest to him and .never had been. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't imagine him placing his lips against her swollen belly or laughing as the baby kicked against him when they made love. Maybe no man would. Maybe that was just a common female fantasy, right up there with Prince Charming and the knight on the white charger. Maybe pregnant women all over the world fell asleep to fantasies of men who wanted them more as the months passed.

She finished breakfast then went
upstairs to shower and dress. She stripped off her nightgown and tossed it in the hamper, then caught a glimpse of herself in the enormous mirror over the vanity. Her hair was pinned loosely on top of her head. Stray tendrils curled down around her face and shoulders. But it wasn't her hair that surprised her: it was the way her body looked. Her breasts were high and round and very full. Her nipples had darkened to deep rose, a stark contrast to her pale skin. She still had a waist, not as narrow as it had been a few months ago, but it was still there. Her hips seemed rounder, more womanly, a more secure cradle for her blossoming belly. And there was no doubt her belly was blossoming. She could see the faintest network of veins beneath her taut skin and traced one with the tip of her finger.

The touch sent shock waves through her body. She drew her finger across her belly once again
, aware of a tightening sensation deep inside that had nothing to do with the baby sleeping peacefully within her womb. She placed her hand fiat against the swell, letting her palm absorb the softness of her skin and the heat, and her eyes widened as she watched herself in the mirror. She trailed her fingers lower until they slipped into the cushion of auburn curls between her legs.

She
'd never touched herself like this before. Not deliberately. Three times in the last few weeks she'd awakened from a dream to find her hand trailing between her legs, her fingers damp and sticky. Her pubic hair was soft as coiled silk. She'd read that once in a manuscript. A man had likened his lover's mons to a fragrant pillow beneath his cheek. Ridiculous, she'd thought at the time. The image was too poetic to be believed.

She cupped herself ge
ntly. She felt warm and lush to the touch, dampening against her fingertips as she stroked lightly along the swollen lips. She lingered there, plying the supple flesh, discovering what felt good and what felt even better. Robert hadn't believed in foreplay. He'd rushed to the main event as if he was afraid she'd change her mind. There'd been no soft words whispered in the darkness, no poetry, no hot wet mouth pressed against her—

Her breath caught as she dipped one finger into her body. A voluptuous shiver rippled outward from her core as she watched her nipples tighten into rosebuds.

Rafe would do this, she thought as her body molded itself to the shape of her fingers. He would stroke her until she was wet and ready, then he would bury his face against her and drink her juices as if they were champagne. And when she was helpless with pleasure and desire, he would trail his mouth up over the swell of her belly to the valley between her breasts and the column of her throat until he found her mouth with his and she tasted herself, tasted him—

It came from nowhere. A quicksilver unfurling of sensation that spiraled up from her center then vanished
, leaving her flushed and embarrassed and filled with even greater yearning than before. A shimmer of what was possible. A hint of what she'd been missing.

She
'd asked the doctor about these feelings, and he'd handled it with the same practical honesty with which he handled everything else. Her body was performing the function for which it was designed, he told her. She was a woman in the prime of her life, brimming with good health and powerful hormones and basic needs. Her feelings were perfectly natural and to be expected.

In a more perfect world
, the man she loved would be there to share the bounty.

But it wasn
't a perfect world. She was alone, except in her dreams, and the only hand that touched her was her own.

#

Jessy grabbed a bagel and cup of coffee from the shop next to the consignment store then went outside to wait for Molly. She leaned against the side of her car and ate slowly, trying to imagine how it would feel to actually belong there. A steady stream of women marched in and out of the store—tall, elegant women who looked as if they stepped down from the cover of
Vogue.
They drove Saabs and BMWs and an occasional Mercedes, understated cars that didn't shout money,' but whispered it in tones more honeyed than Grandma Wyatt's biscuits.

She made a point of noticing things like that. Back home you wanted to make sure everyone knew just how much money you had in the bank.
Why wear one diamond ring if you had three more at home feeling all lonely and neglected? Rich folk piled on the jewelry and darn near wore their fancy clothes with the price tags still attached. And they'd never drive one of those ugly foreign cars, no since. Not while there were still Caddies in this world.

It was harder to tell the rich people from the regular folks around here
, but she was beginning to catch on, Not that she much cared who was who. As her mama used to say, "It didn't make no never mind" to Jessy if her patients were rolling in money or on Medicaid. What did matter to her was that she looked as if she were part of the former, not the latter.

She told herself that was the only reason she wa
s there, so she could find herself a few fine outfits to help her blend in with the rest of the Princeton gentry, but it was only part of the truth.

Twenty m
inutes went by. She finished her bagel and coffee' and strolled around the parking lot. Maybe Molly had forgotten about her. She was sure she wasn't number one on the woman's
To Do
list. It wasn't hard to imagine that something better had come along. Like Spencer. Her heart twisted. He was always calling Molly, asking her to lunch or stopping by the house under the pretense of having papers for her to sign. You'd have to be blind not to see that he was interested in her Jessy couldn't even blame him. What man wouldn't be dazzled by Molly Chamberlain? Rafe was. There was no reason why Spencer Mackenzie should be any different.

She wanted him to be different
, though. She wanted him to see her.

#

Molly whipped her car into the parking space next to Jessy's then jumped out. "You were supposed to wait for me at the hospital," she said, feeling more than a little put out. "I sat there for twenty minutes."

"
I'm sorry." The doctor's face reddened visibly. "I'totally forgot."
Ah totally fuhgot.

"
It happens," Molly said. They started across the parking lot to the secondhand shop. "So what are you doing out here? You should be inside, trying on clothes."

"
I was waiting for you," Jessy said, tossing a cup and crumpled napkin into the trash can near the curb. "And eating lunch," Molly observed.

"
That, too."

Molly was sure that was only part of the truth. The
good doctor's nerves were practically vibrating. Molly didn't get that nervous going to the dentist, and she
hated
the dentist. She swung open the door and motioned Jessy inside. "Now, there's no guarantee we're going to find anything for you," she said. "The stock changes all the time. Sometimes you're lucky, sometimes you aren't."

Jessy nodded. She looked like a poorly dressed. twelve-year-old. They had their work cut out for them and not much time.

#

Jessy had never seen anything like the way Molly shopped. She moved up and down the aisles with great deliberation
, touching some items, ignoring others, evaluating the different outfits according to some mysterious criteria that Jessy was sure she'd never understand.

A soft pink swirl of fabric caught her eye.
"This is pretty," she said to Molly. "I love pink."