The Bottom Line (7 page)

For the last year, she’d been something of a hermit. Not that it was all her fault. A person sure as hell didn’t feel like socializing when she was in the midst of recovering from a mastectomy and suffering the side effects of chemotherapy.

Everything had happened so fast, she wasn’t sure she’d truly accepted all the ramifications. The loss of her breast. The early menopause brought on by the meds. The fear of what the future might or might not bring.

She hadn’t cried much, although she’d worked her way through the five stages of loss her oncologist had warned her about.

Denial only lasted a day. Confronted with all the evidence, staying in denial for too awfully long would have been absurd, especially when the doctor was urging her to act quickly.

Anger got her through the surgery. It was so much easier to face the pain and the loss by being pissed off. Being a teacher made her empathize with people and treat them well. Not after her surgery. She’d bitched at the nurses, thrown sarcastic comments at her surgeon, and greeted her visitors, her friends, with smart-ass quips or sullen silence.

Bargaining was supposed to be the third stage. Just like denial, it had been fleeting. Mallory had only asked for a favor from God once. Now that she thought about it, she felt ashamed for that request being born of vanity. The day she started chemotherapy, she’d prayed that she’d beat the odds and keep her hair. Long and sleek, the color of sable, that hair had always been the thing that made her pretty.

Exactly one week after her first dose of the toxic yet lifesaving drugs, chunks of her hair had come off right in her hands as she’d shampooed. That brought bargaining to a swift conclusion.

Depression was next. Her time in that awful stage had been short but intense—a crying jag the three days after Jay had her served with divorce papers. Jules had ended that nonsense by taking her out on a clothes-and-makeup shopping spree that ended at a bar with a never-ending supply of raspberry margaritas. With Jules’s help, Mallory had drowned her depression. Her other friends took a similar tack when she finally bit the bullet and shaved the tufts of hair not affected by chemotherapy. The hair grew back, as everyone promised, but it was a different shade of brown and tended to curl.

Acceptance.
She’d reached that the day she’d made herself take off her shirt and stare at her new body in the mirror. Since her breasts had always been on the small side, the changes weren’t all that jarring, not nearly as awful as she’d expected. Her insurance was going to pay for reconstructive surgery.

And that, as she always said, had been that… until last night when Ben Carpenter had tried to touch the fake breast that she’d used to fill out the empty A-cup on the left side of her bra.

She’d overreacted. Juliana was sure to scold her when they had lunch on Monday. It was a bit amazing her phone hadn’t been ringing all night with texts or calls from her. At least Mallory would have a reprieve Sunday, unless Jules started firing curious text messages her way.

Then again, Juliana had been worried about Mallory falling for Ben too quickly. So like her to flip-flop on her opinion. Jules always chalked it up to being a Gemini and having two sides to her personality.

Had Ben gone home when Mallory ran away?

For all she knew, he might still be sitting outside her house.

A quick peek out the window disproved that hypothesis.

What did he think of her now? Would he send an e-mail that said he couldn’t finish the work he’d started on her house? They didn’t have a written contract or anything…

This was all her fault for letting emotions get the better of her. With a bit of luck, he might simply think she’d been freaked out over him trying to get that intimate after nothing more than a few weeks of deciding to get to know each other better. She was pretty sure a guy touching a woman’s boob wasn’t a big thing to most people. From the way Juliana, Danielle, and Bethany talked about dating, there were a lot of men out there who thought sex was a natural conclusion of a first date. Not that the Ladies Who Lunch agreed. Mallory’s friends had discriminating taste in guys, which meant they didn’t date all that often.

After the date she’d had tonight, she doubted she’d ever have another with Ben Carpenter.

She snorted before stroking her hand down Rascal’s back again. His rumbling purr always made her smile, even through the worst of the worst. How many times had she been too weak to do anything except sit on the cold tile of the bathroom floor and wait for another wave of dry heaves to make her lean over the toilet and pray she’d survive chemotherapy? Every single time, her cat had been there, rubbing against her, warming her feet, letting her know someone still loved her.

Even if her husband didn’t.

Fuck you, Jay Hamilton. You and the horse you rode in on.

Mallory leaned down and rubbed her nose against Rascal’s, one of the affectionate cat’s favorite things. His purr grew louder, forcing a smile on her lips.

That smile faded when she thought about Ben again.

She had entertained fantasies about him, erotic fantasies. All she thought she would ever be to him was a skinny lady who needed help fixing up her mess of a house.

But he’d come looking for her at the mixer and cooked her that wonderful supper the night of open house. Then he’d asked for a bona fide, old-fashioned date.

That gave her warm fuzzies all over until she remembered her overreaction to his touch.

If she hadn’t freaked out, he probably wouldn’t have thought anything beyond assuming she padded her bra. Instead, she’d shoved him away as though he’d burned her. No doubt he’d driven away, heading right back to the hall to play Twenty Questions with Jules or Robert.

Would they tell him the truth?

Maybe. Maybe not.

What did it matter anyway? The best Ben could ever be to Mallory was a rebound guy. Jules had told her the first man a woman connected with after her divorce could only be a stepping-stone to other relationships. A rebound guy wasn’t ever supposed to be permanent. So even if she and Ben clicked in a way Mallory knew was unique and more than a little special, nothing could come of it.

Leaning over, she flipped off the lamp and lay there in the dark, watching the new ceiling fan slowly spin. She’d known the exact model she wanted the moment she saw it at the store. The blades were a beautiful shade of chestnut that complemented her furniture. As soon as Ben had put it in, she’d quickly discovered the soft humming noise helped lull her to sleep.

Now she always thought about him right before she drifted off.

Rascal moved closer, spun in a complete circle, and then settled up against her side.

Mallory closed her eyes, wishing she could wind back the clock to before she’d skittered away like a frightened bird darting at the first noise. If Ben had been destined to be her rebound guy, she would have at least enjoyed the time they could have spent together.

And from the way the sparks flew when they kissed, he’d probably have been a hell of a lover.

Now she’d never know.

It was better that way.

Sipping coffee on the porch, Mallory looked out on her backyard.

This was the first year she hadn’t planted a garden since she and Jay moved in eight years ago. She’d been thrilled to have a yard after years of being in cramped apartments. When she was still living with her parents, she and her mother would plant seeds that gave the family fresh food in the summer. As the tomato plants exploded with fresh tomatoes, they’d make salsa and Italian sauces to use all winter long. One of the many joys of growing up in rural Illinois.

The large square of dirt had gone untended for the better part of the year. Now it was a mixture of weeds that surely included some poison ivy. She’d have to clean the mess out soon, which meant she’d catch a nasty case of poison ivy rash and end up on prednisone and anti-itch cream. But next year, she could plant her tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplants again. Some okra and kohlrabi, too.

And flowers.
She hadn’t planted her spring flowers, either. Purple had always been her favorite color, especially the rich purple of well-tended petunias, which could keep producing flowers lasting into the fall. There was a flower bed on each side of the big porch, and there were ceramic pots of many different sizes at spots throughout the front landscaping. Flowers planted there usually bloomed the whole summer to give her home a splash of color.

Instead of gardening, spring had been full of doctors and hospitals and pain. Flowers had barely crossed her mind unless someone brought a bouquet when they visited. While she’d appreciated their thoughtfulness, watching the beautiful flowers wilt and die made her sad, the opposite reaction of what the giver intended.

Perhaps this year she should plant pink petunias. Somehow that seemed more fitting—her way of supporting the pink ribbon movement. Her friends all wore pins showing their support of her, but Mallory had never worn one. She’d wanted to play things low-key. Her only pink ribbon was a rather innocuous magnet.

Thankfully, the worst of the symptoms had hit during summer, so her students hadn’t been forced to watch her decline right before their eyes like all those bouquets. Once school started, people surely whispered, but she looked more and more like the old Mallory, so the speculation soon fizzled out.

No. She wasn’t going to plant pink petunias next summer.

Maybe one day, far in the future when she no longer felt embarrassed talking about her disease, she’d find herself participating in breast cancer awareness walks and wearing pink ribbons. She’d acknowledged her illness with the magnetic ribbon on the back of her car. Since she’d placed it there after her mother died, no one would think it marked her own struggle.

Snapping up, she almost splashed herself with coffee as a thought startled her.

The ribbon! Ben had to have seen the ribbon!

That didn’t mean anything, though. No, he couldn’t have connected her running away with a silly car magnet. He knew about her mother’s death, and most men weren’t observant enough to connect that many dots.

The doorbell made her startle again, partly because she wasn’t used to the new tune it played and partly because she wasn’t expecting Sunday-morning company. She set her cup on the table as Rascal jumped off the other chair and followed her to the front door.

Pulling aside the curtain, she froze. Ben stood on her porch, holding a bouquet of multicolored flowers and looking as sheepish as a boy of sixteen on his first date. His gaze found hers, and a lopsided smile formed on his lips.

Her heart leapt to a faster cadence, something that also happened whenever he came to work each evening. Since he’d seen her through the skinny side window, there was no way she could pretend she wasn’t home. Whether she wanted to have an awkward conversation or not, it was going to happen. Now.

Mallory opened the door and waited for him to say something.

His gaze dropped to her cat. Rascal had gone right to him and started rubbing against his leg. Ben picked Rascal up and set him back inside. Then he walked into the house, making her back up a few steps. He seemed to swallow up all the space.

“I came to apologize.” He thrust the bouquet at her.

She took it, giving the single rose in the arrangement a quick sniff. “These are beautiful, but you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

“I scared you away.”

Unable to bear his close scrutiny any longer, she headed down the beautiful walnut floor of her foyer into her mess of a kitchen. She grabbed a white vase from a cabinet, filled it with water, and arranged the flowers.

He stood on the other side of the island, bracing his hands against the old-fashioned butcher-block countertop that would get switched out sometime soon. “Can we talk about stuff?”

Mallory shrugged, carried the vase over to the kitchen table, and found a place to set it down among all the books, mail, and newspapers. Since he hadn’t worked on the kitchen yet, she’d let it go back to a disaster after he’d cooked for her.

As he completed each room, she treated it as though she were spring cleaning and made that room like new again, probably as a way to
feel
new again. This was her fresh start. Jay was gone. The cancer was gone.

Good riddance to both.

The only change she dreaded was when he finally got around to the kitchen because she’d have to deal with all the stuff she’d accumulated over the years. There were still a few things in boxes because they’d been wedding gifts too weird to use.

Garage sale time.

When she turned around, she bumped right into him.

He settled his hands on her shoulders. “I really want to talk about… everything.”

Working up her courage, she lifted her chin to stare into his eyes, fearing she’d see what she feared most—pity. Pity meant he knew. Pity also meant he didn’t understand.

But it wasn’t there. His brown eyes definitely weren’t full of pity… and yet she couldn’t place the exact emotion she found. She dropped her chin to her chest.

Ben lifted it back up with his knuckle. “I didn’t know about the cancer, which makes me as dumb as a box of rocks.”

“So Juliana told you.”

“No.”

“Robert, then.”

“Not really.”

“Then how did you—”

“I figured it out while I stood on your driveway, wondering why you ran away and wanting to know what I’d done wrong.” His smile melted something deep inside her.

She shook her head, grateful his hand fell away from her chin to settle back on her shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she insisted.

“I did. I didn’t pay enough attention. When I touched… I mean when I tried to touch… I should have known.” He caressed her upper arms.

Desire raced through her, settling between her thighs. She didn’t know what to think of that reaction, since it conflicted so much with her postsurgery body.

After the mastectomy, she’d taken meds that wiped out her own natural estrogen production. Her sex drive had dropped to zero. Zip. Nada. Not as though she had much of a chance to test it out, but the urge was gone, and she’d feared it might have disappeared forever. Her beloved Rabbit vibrator, the one Bethany gave her years ago as a gag gift, had gone into hibernation along with her libido. The fact that she’d kept and used it spoke volumes of the lack of sex in her marriage.

Funny, she’d never given that problem much thought. Was it because she hadn’t wanted Jay more often? Or was it because he’d been a rather selfish lover?

Probably both.

But Ben had reawakened her sex drive. With a vengeance. At that moment, it took all of Mallory’s self-control to keep from sweeping the mess of newspapers and bills to the floor, grabbing him by his shirt, and forcing his back against the table. Then she’d straddle his hips and let nature take its course.

A nervous giggle slipped out as that visual tumbled around her brain.

Ben frowned. “What’s so funny?”

She shook her head, biting her lip so she wouldn’t laugh again.

His features hardened. “You’re laughing at me?”

That quickly sobered her. “No. No, Ben. Not at all.”

Thankfully, Ben let his shoulders relax and his eyes regained their normal warmth. “At least you’re smiling now. I’m really sorry, Mal.”

“I told you… you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then how about we start over?”

“What?”

“How about we start over?” He took a step back and held out his hand. “Hi, I’m Ben Carpenter. I’m a friend of Robert’s, and he thought we might want to go out on a date.”

“Don’t you mean
another
date?”

“All right. Another date. You know… that thing couples go on to see if they might have some stuff in common?”

Everything inside her finally relaxed. Ben might not have come right out and declared it didn’t matter if she had one breast, nor did he say that her cancer wasn’t going to scare him away. But the fact he was still standing in her kitchen, asking her to go out again, was every bit as good as if the words had spilled out of his mouth.

“I’d like that,” she replied.

He brushed a quick kiss over her lips.

She wanted more but kept quiet because she wasn’t sure what he would think if she let him know exactly how much she wanted another of those deep, wet kisses.

Let the second-guessing begin.

That was the hardest part of getting to know a new man: constantly worrying about what he thought and analyzing everything he said and did.

Did Ben want her to be brazen? Did he want her to play coy? Did he want the virgin or the whore?

Why were men so damn complicated?

Mallory glanced down at her T-shirt and yoga pants. “Since I’m not really dressed for it now, when did you want to go on this date?” She smiled. “Can’t be on a weeknight. I have this guy who comes to work on my house those evenings. Wouldn’t trust him all alone with my stuff.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Heard he’s pretty dependable.”

“Yeah, but…” She let her gaze wander the pathetically dated and disheveled kitchen. “With all these high-end fixtures, he could assume I have money stashed away somewhere.”

“Or he might not be interested in your money at all. He could call pretending to be sick one of those evenings… especially if he has something better to do.”

“Then I’d just have to dock his pay.”

“Since it’s Sunday, how about tonight?”

Was he still teasing or serious? “Tonight?”

“Sure. Some great new movies are out this week, and we won’t have to fight the Saturday crowd.”

“Or we could go out for a nice supper and come back here and watch one of my movies. When I was sick—”

Oh, shit.
Would Ben begin to pity her if she talked about her cancer?

They were trying to establish a relationship. At least that’s what Mallory thought they were doing. She didn’t want his sympathy to play a part in whether he learned to care for her or not.

And screw a duck if she didn’t suddenly realize she already cared for him.

How had
that
happened so fast?

“Mal? What were you gonna say? When you were sick… what?”

His concerned tone brought her back to the conversation. “When I was sick, my friends gave me a pile of DVDs to keep me from being too bored while I recovered from the mastectomy.”

There.
She’d said it. Now she needed to wait for his reaction.

It wasn’t long in coming. “When I fell off a roof and broke my leg, I was grounded to my recliner. Got so bored I thought I’d lose my mind.” Neither his tone nor his words contained a note of sympathy.

She couldn’t stop herself. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Soundly.

* * *

Ben groaned, his breath knocked out of him when Mallory jumped him. Before he could react, her mouth was on his.

As though he’d let such a wonderful opportunity pass him by. He returned her ferocious kiss, rubbing his tongue over hers when she thrust it into his mouth.

God, he loved how she didn’t hold back. With the exception of her hasty exit the night before, Mallory was unabashedly passionate, never waiting for him to be the first to deepen a kiss.

He gave as good as he got, drinking in her taste and her wonderful scent as the kiss went on and on. The touch of lips. The caress of tongues. The exchange of breaths.

Easing her back, Ben trapped her against the island. As he continued to ravage her mouth, he glided his hands down her arms and her sides to settle on her waist. Unable to stop himself, he held her tight while he ground his pelvis against her.

His cock was so hard it ached. Were Mallory Hamilton any other woman, he’d be carrying her upstairs. He harbored no doubts she’d allow it. From her uninhibited response, the way she undulated her hips to rub against his erection, she’d not only allow him to make love to her. She’d eagerly participate.

Until he got anywhere near her chest.

As much as he wanted her, he had to slow down. Not only did she need to know that he liked her, the whole package of Mallory, he also needed to take it at a more relaxed pace. The woman needed time, and he’d be sure she got it. He had no intention of being her rebound guy. When he made love to her it would be because she wanted him every bit as much as he wanted her.

There was a lot to consider, but while she was kissing him, his logic disappeared.

Easing back, Ben breathed hard and fast. “God, Mal… you’re the best kisser I’ve ever known.”

Her lips were swollen and red when her fingers flew to touch them. “R-really?”

First hurdle: helping her find her self-worth after her divorce. Her ex had to have been the biggest asshat in history. “Absolutely.”

Second hurdle: convincing her she was still desirable, even after what cancer had done to her body. “You have no idea how hard I’m fighting myself not to take you upstairs and make love to you.”

“I-I’m not… ready,” she whispered in a voice choked with emotion.

“I know.” Ben smiled and then tapped her nose with his fingertip. “Besides, it’s too soon.” Then he stepped back.

Her eyes were wide as saucers. “Too soon?”

“Yeah. Too soon. You know it, too.”