Truly Madly Yours (24 page)

“I’ll take your word for it.” He took a step toward her, and she held up her hand like a traffic cop. “I don’t want to go there with you, Nick. I thought you came up here to look at the note Helen left me.”

“I did.” He stopped when her palm hit his chest. Cool leather pressed into her hand. “But you make it a real hard to think about anything but your zippers.”

“You're a big boy. Try to concentrate.” Delaney dropped her hand and moved past him to the refrigerator. “Wanna beer?”

“Sure.”

She twisted off the tops, then handed him a pumpkin beer she’d bought at the microbrewery. He looked at the designer brew as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it. “It’s really good,” she assured him and took a big swallow.

Nick raised the beer to his lips, and his gray eyes watched her over the top of the bottle as he took a drink. He immediately lowered the beer and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary that’s foul.”

“I like it.” She smiled and took an extra long swig.

“Do you have any real beer?” He set both the bottle and the note on the counter.

“I have a raspberry ale.”

He looked at her as if she were suggesting he chop off his testicles. “Got a Bud?”

“Nope. But I have a Coke in that bag.” She waved her bottle toward the plastic sack then moved past Nick to the living room.

“Where did you find the first note?” he called after her.

“In the salon.” She switched on a light above the stereo, then moved to a table lamp next to the couch. “Actually, you pointed it out to me.”

“When?”

“The day you changed my locks.” She looked over her shoulder as she pulled the lamp’s chain. Nick stood in the middle of the room chugging the Coke she’d bought at the Value Rite. “Remember?”

He lowered the bottle and sucked a brown drop from his bottom lip. “Perfectly.”

Unbidden, the memory of his lips pressed to hers and the texture of his warm skin beneath her hands flooded her senses. “I was talking about the note.”

“So was I.”

No he wasn’t. “Why do you think Helen is responsible?”

Delaney sat on the couch, carefully making sure her satin skirt didn’t slide to her crotch and make her a porno star. “Who else could it be?”

He set the Coke on the coffee table and shrugged out of his jacket. “Who else would want you gone?”

Delaney couldn’t think of anyone besides Nick and his entire family. “You.”

He tossed his jacket on the arm of the sofa and looked at her from beneath lowered brows. “Do you really believe that?”

Not really. “I don’t know.”

“If you think I sneak around threatening women, why did you let me in your apartment?”

“Could I have stopped you?”

“Maybe, but I didn’t leave those notes and you know it.” He sat next to Delaney and leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. He’d rolled the sleeves of his chambray shirt up his forearms, and he wore a wristwatch with a worn black band. “Someone’s real upset with you. Have you given a bad haircut lately?”

Her eyes narrowed, and she set her pumpkin beer on the coffee table with a heavy thump. “First of all, Nick, I never give bad haircuts. And second, what do you think, that some infuriated psycho is running around leaving me notes because I trimmed her bangs too short or over processed a perm?”

Nick looked across his shoulder at her and laughed. It started low in his chest and grew louder, feeding Delaney’s temper. “Why are you so pissed off?”

“You insulted me.”

He placed an innocent hand on the front of his shirt, pushing the soft fabric to the side and exposing a slice of tan chest. “I did not.”

Delaney lifted her gaze to his amused eyes. “You absolutely did.”

“Sorry.” Then he ruined the apology by adding insult to injury, “Wild thing.”

She punched his arm. “Jerk.”

Nick grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him. “Has anyone told you that you’re a great-looking hooker?”

The scent of sandalwood soap and warm skin filled her senses. His strong fingers sent tingling pinpricks up the inside of her arm, and she tried to pull away. He let her go only to grab her boa in both his hands and tug her closer. Her nose bumped his, and she felt herself sucked into his smoky gaze. She opened her mouth meaning to say something stinging and sarcastic, but her brain and voice betrayed her and what came out instead was a breathy, “Gee, thanks, Nick. I bet you say that to all your women of the night.”

“Are you my woman for the night?” he asked just above her mouth, holding her with nothing more than a string of fluffy pink feathers and his smooth voice.

She didn’t think she’d said that, or meant that, or something .. . “No. You know we can never be together.”

“You should never say never.” The feathers brushed across her cheek and neck as he slid one hand to the top edge of her bustier. “Your heart is pounding.”

“I have pretty high blood pressure.” Her eyelids were heavy and she felt the tip of his tongue touch her bottom lip.

“You were always a really bad liar.” Then before Delaney knew quite how it happened, she was in Nick’s lap and his mouth was all over hers, in a kiss that started sweet but quickly shattered Delaney’s pitiful resistance. He had a hand on the back of her head, the other on the outside of her thigh, caressing her through black hose. His slick tongue stroked hers, urging a hotter, more passionate response, and she gave him a kiss that sent a shudder of raw lust through them. She slid her hands up the sides of his neck and worked the rubber band from his ponytail. The beret fell from his head as she combed her fingers through his cool, fine hair. She felt his fingers drift up her garter to the edge of her skirt, drawing a line of fire that heated the insides of her thighs and flamed the hunger deep in her abdomen. Then his fingers dipped beneath the black lace and elastic and he grasped her bare flesh. She shoved one hand inside the open collar of his shirt and touched his shoulder where he was warm, his muscles hard, but it wasn’t enough and she tugged at the buttons until his shirt lay open. He was hard and smooth, his skin hot and slightly damp. Beneath her bottom, his thick erection pressed into her and she squirmed deeper into his lap. His fingers bit into her thigh, and she felt his deep groan beneath her palm.

He moved one hand to her waist, and his strong fingers squeezed her through the thin satin. A moan stuck in the top of her chest as his palm slipped upward, over her breast, to her throat. His knuckles brushed her collarbone and across the edge of her bustier. Then he slid his sensual mouth to her throat and his hand inside the tight satin top. He cupped her bare breast, and Delaney arched, pressing her hard nipple into his hot, hot palm. Her hands moved to his shoulder, and she grasped the soft fabric of his shirt in tight fists.

She ached all over and, with her last shred of sanity whispered, “Nick, we have to stop this.”

“We will,” he murmured as he pushed the bustier practically to her waist and lowered his head. He brushed his lips across the pink tip of her breast, then sucked it into his mouth, his tongue hot and wet and relentless. His big warm hand slipped between her thighs and he pressed his palm into her sensitive flesh. Through her damp cotton panties, his fingers felt her, and she squeezed her legs together, locking his hand in her crotch. Delaney eyes closed and his name escaped her lips, part moan, part sigh. It was the sound of need and desire. She wanted him to make love to her. She wanted to feel his naked body pressed to her. She had nothing to lose but self-respect. What was a little self-respect compared to a quality orgasm?

Then his mouth was gone and cool air swept across her breast. She forced her eyes open and followed his fiery gaze to her glistening nipple. He slid his hand from her thighs and picked up one end of her boa, slowly brushing it across her sensitive flesh. “Tell me you want me.”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Say it anyway.” He looked up, his eyes heavy with lust and determination. “Say it.” The feathers made another downy pass across her breasts.

Delaney sucked in her breath. “I want you.”

His gaze skimmed her face, then settled on her mouth. He placed a soft kiss on her lips and pulled her bustier back in place, covering her breasts once again.

He wasn’t going to make love to her. Of course he wasn’t. He had a lot more to lose than she did. “Why do we keep doing this?” she asked when he lifted his mouth. “I never mean for this to happen with us, but it always does.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I wish I did.”

“Unfinished business.”

She took a deep breath and leaned against him.

“What are you talking about? Unfinished business.”

“That night at Angel Beach. We never got to finish what we started before you ran off.”

“Ran off?” She felt her brows lower then rise up her forehead. “I didn’t have a choice.”

“You had a choice and you made it. You left with Henry.”

With as much dignity as possible under the circumstances, Delaney removed herself from his lap. Her left shoe was missing and her boa was stuck inside her bustier. “I left because you were using me.”

“Exactly when was that?” He stood and towered over her. “When you begged me to touch you all over?”

Delaney tugged her skirt down. “Shut up.”

“Or when my head was between your legs?”

“Shut up, Nick.” She yanked the boa free. “You were only out to humiliate me.”

“Bullshit.”

“You used me to get back at Henry.”

He rocked back on his heels and his gaze narrowed. “I never used you. I told you not to worry and that I’d take care of you, but you looked at me like I was some kind of rapist and left with Henry.”

She didn’t believe him. “I never looked at you like you were a rapist, and I would have remembered if you’d said one nice word. But you didn’t.”

“Yes I did, only you chose to leave with the old man. And the way I see it, you owe me.”

She picked up his jacket from the back of the couch and threw it at him. “I don’t owe you anything.”

“You better not be around here on June fourth, otherwise I’m going take what you’ve owed me for ten years.” He shoved his arms into his jacket and walked to the door. “And paybacks are a real bitch, wild thing.”

Delaney stared at the closed door long after she heard his Jeep tear out of the alley. Her body still burned from his touch, and the thought of some sort of sexual payback didn’t sound all that unappealing. She turned back toward the room and picked up Nick’s
txapel
from the floor. She raised the beret to her nose. It smelled of leather and wool and Nick.

Nick stared at his computer screen, going over the budget he’d projected on a home on the north shore of the lake. The foundation had been poured before the ground froze, and the roof put on before the snow. The home was close to completion, but the owner had decided on different fixtures throughout, and the finish carpentry was way over budget. Since business was slowing down, Ann Marie and Hilda only worked mornings. He and Sophie were alone in the building.

“Uncle Nick.”

“Hmm, what?” He deleted several figures, then typed in the new cost.

Sophie took a deep drawn-out breath and sighed, “You’re not listening to me.”

He glanced from the screen to his niece, then returned his gaze to his work. “Sure I am, Sophie.”

“What did I say?”

He added a restocking fee and reached for a calculator on the edge of his desk, but when he glanced at his niece again, his hand stilled. Her big brown eyes looked back at him as if he’d stomped her feelings beneath his work boots. “I wasn’t listening.” He pulled his hand back. “Sorry.”

“Can I ask you something?”

He figured she hadn’t dropped by his office on her way home from school to watch him work. “Sure.”

“Okay, what would you do if you liked a girl and she didn’t know you liked her.” She paused and looked somewhere over the top of his head. “And she liked someone else with really great clothes and blond hair and everybody liked her and she was a cheerleader and everything?” She returned her gaze to his. “Would you give up?”

Nick was confused. “Do you like a boy who dresses like a cheerleader?”

“No! Geez, I like a boy who
dates
a cheerleader. She’s pretty and popular and has the best body in eighth grade, and Kyle doesn’t know I’m alive. I want him to notice me, so what should I do?”

Nick looked across his desk at his niece, who was all shiny braces and had her mother’s Italian eyes that were way too big for her face. She had an enormous red pimple on her forehead that, despite her best efforts, would not remain concealed with the makeup she’d slapped on it. Someday Sophia Allegrezza would turn heads, but not today, thank God. She was too young to worry about boys, anyway. “Don’t do anything. You’re gorgeous, Sophie.”

She rolled her eyes and reached for her backpack sitting on the floor by her chair. “You’re no better help than dad.”

“What did Louie say?”

“That I’m too young to worry about boys.”

“Oh.” He leaned forward and grabbed her hand. “Well, I would never say that,” he lied.

“I know. That’s why I came to talk to you. And it’s not just Kyle.
No
boys ever notice me.” She dragged her backpack into her lap and slumped in the chair, a lump of misery. “I hate it.”

And he hated to see her so unhappy. He’d helped Louie raise Sophie, and she was the only female he’d ever felt completely free to show affection and love. The two of them could sit and watch a movie together or play Monopoly, and she never pried into his life or hung on to his neck too tight. “What do you want me to do?”

“Tell me what boys like in girls.”

“Eighth grade boys?” He scratched the side of his jaw and paused to think a moment. He didn’t want to lie, yet he didn’t want to spoil her innocent illusions, either.

“I thought since you have a lot of girlfriends, you would know.”

“A lot of girlfriends?” He watched her pull a bottle of green fingernail polish from her backpack. “I don’t have
a lot
of girlfriends. Who told you something like that?”

“No one had to
tell
me.” She shrugged. “Gail is a girlfriend.”

He hadn’t seen Gail since a few weeks before Halloween, and that had been a week ago. “She was just a friend,” he said. “And we broke it off last month.” Actually, he’d broken things off with her and she hadn’t been pleased.

“Well, what did you like about her?” she asked as she added a coat of green polish over an existing layer of navy blue.

The few things he’d liked about Gail, he could hardly tell his thirteen-year-old niece. “She had nice hair.”

“That’s it? You would date a girl just because you liked her hair?”

Probably not
. “Yep.”

“What’s your favorite hair color?”

Red
. Different shades of red all streaked together and tangled up in his fingers. “Brown.”

“What else do you like?”

Pink lips and pink boas. “A good smile.”

Sophie looked up at him and grinned, her mouth filled with metal and mauve rubber bands. “Like this?”

“Yep.”

“What else?”

This time he answered with the truth. “Big brown eyes, and I like a girl who can stand up to me.” And, he realized, he’d developed an appreciation of sarcasm.

She dipped the brush into the polish and went to work on her other hand. “Do you think girls should call boys?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“Grandma says girls who call boys are wild. She says you and dad never got into trouble with wild girls because she never let you talk on the phone when they called.”

His mother was the only person he know who had the ability to see only what she chose and nothing else. Growing up, both Nick and Louie had found their fair share of trouble without the telephone. Louie had gone on to get a girl pregnant his last year of college. And when a Basque boy got a good Catholic girl pregnant, the result was an inevitable wedding at St. John’s Cathedral. “Your grandmother remembers only what she wants to remember,” he told Sophie. “If you want to talk to a boy on the phone, I don’t see why you shouldn’t, but you better ask your dad first.” He watched her blow on her wet nails. “Maybe you should talk to Lisa about all this girl stuff. She’s going to be your stepmom in about a week.”

Sophie shook her head. “I’d rather talk to you.”

“I thought you liked Lisa.”

“She’s okay, but I like talking to you better. Besides, she stuck me at the end of the bridesmaid line.”

“Probably because you’re shortest.”

“Maybe.” She studied her polish a moment, then looked up. “Do you want me to paint your nails?”

“No way. The last time you did that, I forgot to take it off and the clerk at the Gas-n-Go gave me a funny look.”

“Pleeaase.”

“Forget it, Sophie.”

She frowned and carefully screwed the cap back on her polish. “Not only am I last in the line now, I have to stand next to you-know-who.”

“Who?”

“Her.” Sophie pointed to the wall. “Over there.”

“Delaney?” When she nodded Nick asked her, “Why should that matter?”

“You
know
.”

“No. Why don’t you tell me.”

“Grandma said that girl over there lived with your dad, and he was nice to her and mean to you. And he gave her nice clothes and stuff and you had to wear old jeans.”

“I like old jeans.” He reached for his pencil and studied Sophie’s face. Her mouth was pinched at the corners like his mother’s whenever she spoke of Delaney. Henry had certainly given Benita reasons for bitterness, but Nick didn’t like to see Sophie affected by it. “Whatever happened, or didn’t happen, between me and my father, had nothing to do with Delaney.”

“You don’t hate her?”

Hating Delaney had never been his problem. “No, I don’t hate her.”

“Oh.” She stuffed the fingernail polish into her backpack and reached for her coat on the back of her chair. “Will you take me to my orthodontist appointment at the end of the month?”

Nick stood and helped her with her coat. Sophie’s appointment was almost a two-hour drive one way. “Can’t your dad take you?”

“He’ll be on his honeymoon.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ll take you then.”

As he walked her to the door she wrapped one arm around his waist. “Are you sure you’re never getting married, Uncle Nick?”

“Yes.”

“Grandma says you just need to find a nice Catholic girl. Then you’ll be happy.”

“I’m already happy.”

“Grandma says you need to fall in love with a Basque woman.”

“Sounds like you’ve been spending way too much time talking about me with Grandma.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re never getting married.”

He reached up and pulled a hunk of her smooth black hair. “Why?”

“ ‘Cause I like having you all to myself.”

Nick stood on the sidewalk in front of his office and watch his niece walk down the street. Sophie was spending too much time with his mother. He figured it was only a matter of time before Benita lured her to the dark side, and Sophie began to nag him about marrying a nice “Basque” woman, too.

He shoved his hands up to his knuckles in the front pockets his jeans. Louie was the marrying kind. Not Nick. Louie’s first marriage hadn’t lasted more than six years, but his brother had liked being married. He’d liked the comfort of living with a woman. Louie had always known he would remarry. He’d always known he would fall in love, but it had taken him close to eight years after his divorce to find the right woman. Nick didn’t doubt that his brother would be happy with Lisa.

The door to Delaney’s salon swung open and an old lady with one of those silver-dome hairdos ambled out. As she passed, she stared at him as if she knew he was up to no good. He laughed beneath his breath and lifted his gaze to the window. Through the glass he watched Delaney sweep the floor, then head toward the back with a dustpan. He watched her straight shoulders and back, and the sway of her hips beneath a sweater skirt that clung to her round behind. A heavy ache settled in his groin, and he thought about perfect white breasts and pink feathers. He thought of her big brown eyes, her long lashes, and the lust pulling at her heavy lids, her mouth wet and swollen from his kiss.

I want you
, she’d said, or rather he’d coerced her into saying it like he was some lovesick loser begging her to want him. Never in his life had he demanded a woman tell him she wanted him. He didn’t have to. It had never mattered if those words were whispered from a woman’s soft pink lips. Apparently it did now.

No maybes about it anymore. Henry knew what he was doing when he drew up that will. He’d reminded Nick of just what it felt like to want something he could never have, to ache for something held just beyond his grasp. Something he might touch but never really possess.

A few light snowflakes drifted in front of Nick’s face, and he walked back into his office and grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair. Some men made the mistake of confusing lust for love. Not Nick. He didn’t love Delaney. What he felt for her was worse than love. It was gut-twisting lust, and it was turning him inside out. He was walking around and behaving like a complete asshole with a monster-sized hard-on for a woman who hated him most of the time.