Worth the Weight (12 page)

Clean? What kind of girls had he dated, she wondered, taking his words literally.

He seemed embarrassed by his sentimentality, which
she
found sweet. He kissed her again. Softly at first, like the kiss at the theater, gentle and pure. But the kiss abruptly heated as Lizzie, deciding turnabout was fair play, sucked
his
tongue into her mouth. And continued to suck on it.

His hips began to rock again. Faster now, his hands settling hard on her hips, pinning her in place. He needn’t have bothered, as Lizzie was going nowhere, meeting his thrusts with her own soft body.

His right hand slid from her hip to her waistband and started to unbutton her fly. Warning bells went off in
her
head, and she knew she was standing at the point of no return. Much as her body ached for some unknown release, she couldn’t let this progress any further. She brushed his hand away, careful to place it back on her hip, not slap it away completely.

He
gave her hips a gentle squeeze, conveying his understanding. “I won’t push, Liz, but I want to make you feel good.”

Not knowing how he could make her feel any better than she already did, she said nothing, just let herself bathe in the soft colors that wrapped themselves around her as
he
returned to her breasts, suckling her harder. His right hand began to move again and she stiffened, only slightly, but
he
picked up on it.

“Sshh, it’s okay, Liz, I’m staying outside your pants. They’ll stay zipped up, I promise. Okay?” He nuzzled her breastbone, breathing in the aroma of her cleavage. She was glad she’d spritzed some Love’s Baby Soft right there earlier, never imagining it would get a close-up sniff.

“Okay.” It was a whisper, a sigh.

“Mmmm, that’s right, babe, we’ll take it slow. But, let me take care of you, Liz, I can do it through your pants.”

Her mind reeled with images of what he could possibly do to her through her pants and how this would “take care of her”. Orgasms were something beyond her realm of sexual comprehension, a lofty image of things to come, later, when she was no longer a virgin and was proficient at sex play.

His hand, which had stopped as he explained himself to her, ran its way down the outside of her thigh, right along the grain of the corduroy, smooth
ing
as he went down to her knee,
then turned to the inside and slowly made its way back up.

The soft cotton of her Levi’s rubbed the inside of her legs. His hips moved faster, nearly bucking against Lizzie and her mind swirled at the vibration it caused coupled with the pulling of
her tender nipples by his mouth. “
Finn
.
Finn
,” she moaned. Her head rolled from side to side on the arm of the couch. She was just about to throw her damn rules out the window when she heard a noise, suspiciously like a door opening and closing, coming from the kitchen. “
Finn
.
Finn
,” she repeated his name, but this time she took his shoulders in her hands and shook him.

“I know, Liz, I’ll get you there
.” He was panting hard. Lizzie couldn’t imagine where he planned on taking her, but they were going nowhere now because whoever was in the house was hastily making their way across the kitchen.

“No.
Finn
. Someone’s here.” When her words didn’t permeate his one-track mind, she shook him again
.
“Someone is here, in the kitchen. I need to get my blouse on. You need to...stop.”

As the words began to make sense to
Finn
, the overhead light snapped on. His head shot up, over the arm of the couch to see who was there. Whoever was in the doorway would be able to see the lower half of their bodies, but the arm of the couch restricted viewing of their heads or chests, which Lizzie profusely thanked God for as she stumbled to right her bra and button her shirt.

Finn
stayed on top of her and monitored her progress, apparently willing to shield her body with his until the task was done, which
she
was grateful for.

“Gran. I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“Apparently not.” There was no censure in the voice, Lizzie thought. Maybe even mild amusement. Certainly a different tone than would have come from
her
parents should they walk in on the same scene. Was it the difference between her parents and this woman, or the fact that
Finn
was a boy to her girl, or that he was twenty? Regardless, she said a silent thank you that this woman apparently was understanding of the situation.

She peeked under
Finn
’s arm, over her own shoulder, around the side of the couch to see a slight woman who didn’t look old enough to possibly be
Finn
’s grandmother. She was dressed in jeans (unheard of in grandmother-wear to Lizzie), a western-style shirt with snap buttons and boots...cowboy boots.

Just as their gazes met, the older woman’s warm and friendly, Lizzie’s huge and terrified, a movement came from behind the woman that caught
her
eye.

A girl of about nine or ten stepped out from behind the grandmother and gawked at
Finn
and Lizzie, automatically processing what the naughty two had been doing. She was a towhead blonde, with cherubic, full cheeks and a mischievous mouth that curved into an “I caught you - I caught you” smile.

“Shit,”
Finn
said softly. He looked down to see that Lizzie was covered. “Liz Hampton, this is my grandmother, Clea Robbins. And the little imp to the right is my sister, Phoebe.”

Chapter Eight

√ Get pedicure

√ Call Sybil

“Looks like you’re doing some pretty deep thinking there, Liz,”
Finn
said, jarring
her
back from wherever she’d gone. He had a pretty good guess where that was. To the only other time she had been in this room, the night of their first date. That night held special memories for
him
too, but he seldom let himself indulge in them.

She stood in the middle of the room, an untouched wine glass twirled between her fingers, her gaze far off and a look on her face that
he
could only categorize as melancholy.

When he’d come downstairs, clean-shaven and newly showered and dressed, he didn’t want to break her spell. So he indulged himself and just watched for a moment.

He still couldn’t get over what a beautiful woman she’d become. Not surprised, but certainly delighted. There was nothing girlish about her now, but the quality that had first drawn him to her remained. An innocence about her, a healthy dose of pleasantness that at that time in his life had been so lacking in the people he knew. Hell, it still was lacking. Except for Gran.

Definitely a glass-is-half-full person,
Liz
had straddled the fine line between being incredibly nice and giving, and letting people walk all over
her
.
He’d
never thought that
balance
was possible, and often bristled through life rather than being taken for a chump, but Liz pulled it off.

As she came out of the past, she met
his
eyes and gave him a deep, “I’m glad I’m here” smile, which he speedily returned.

“No. Not deep thinking. Just remembering.” She didn’t say what she’d been remembering, but he knew.

“That was a pretty intense night. Quite a first date.” He approached her, looked at her wine glass again, and decided to get himself a beer. From the kitchen he could still hear her reply.

“I didn’t know I could get that carried away with someone I’d just met. I didn’t realize it was physically possible to get that turned on that soon.”

Finn
’s grip tightened on the beer bottle as her words washed over him. “I didn’t either,” he admitted as he reentered the living room to find her settled on the couch. He plunked down beside her as she let out a laugh of disbelief.

“Come on. No way will you make me believe you didn’t get that randy that soon with the girls you dated. You’d been sexually active for
six
years.”

He frowned. “I never should
have told you I’d lost it at four
teen. You wouldn’t let go of that.”

“Well I didn’t know it that night. You didn’t tell me that till later.” She took a small sip from her wine and watched as
he
took a satisfying gulp from his bottle of Bud. “What do you mean ‘I wouldn’t let go of that’?”

“I mean that the idea that I had so much more experience than you both scared you and excited you.” He stayed on his side of the couch, but stretched out his legs, still encased in denim, but cleaner jeans than he’d had on in the barn. She had her legs crossed, her tan and shapely calves poking out from the bottom of her skirt. The left one was crossed on top of her right, and she gently swung that leg, causing her sandal to slide slightly down her foot, so that it was dangling from just her toes.
Finn
found himself hoping the damn thing would just fall off
already. What, was he becoming a foot fetishist now?

“Yes, I guess it did. It was obvious, even from that first night, that you knew what you were doing more than any boy I’d dated before.” There was a small smile on her lips and
he
imagined she was being drawn back to that long ago night on a couch right in this same spot. The smile disappeared and her brow furrowed. “But you’re right. Knowing you’d ‘done it’ for so long…” her voice trailed off.

“What, Liz?” his voice was gentle, coaxing. What made a frown, however slight, cross her open face?

“Every time you’d drop me off after I’d shut you down again, I’d panic that tomorrow I’d get the call. The ‘sorry this isn’t going to work out’ call.” Her voice was light, and the small smile returned
to her mouth, but didn’t reach
her eyes. And there was still that damn furrowed brow.

“And then
you did. G
et the call,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Her shoulders shrugged, as if her next words would be light, but
he
could read her. Always too sweet to let other people know she was hurting.

“Liz,” he waited until she met his eyes, “I
am
sorry.”

She started to raise her hand, into some sort of brushing-aside wave
he
guessed, but then her hand dropped back to her lap. Her head was nodding, more to herself than to
him
, as if it were important that she get this out. “I knew it was coming, knew I’d get the call any day, and yet…I was devastated. I was just so…devastated.” She watched him, but he got the impression that she had voiced the words more to herself than to him, as if finally coming to that conclusion.

He tried to speak, but what could he say? Besides, the lump in his throat wouldn’t allow any words to form.

Her voice had almost dropped to a whisper. “That’s the first time I’ve ever said that to anyone. That I was devastated. It’s the first time I ever truly admitted it even to myself.” She came out of her thoughts and smiled at him, her voice light once more. “And of course it would have to be to the one who devastated me. Sorry,
Finn
. Water. Bridges. It was a long time ago. A bad case of teen angst, that’s all.”

Should he tell her again how sorry he was? Should he tell her how he’d regretted his decision the moment after he’d made the call? Should he tell her that he thought about her on his wedding day? And how at the birth of his son, he thought that the woman holding his screaming, wiggling, bundle of a baby should have been her?

Would it matter?
D
id
it matter?
He
supposed not. And honestly, he had no intention of laying a lot of stuff on her and scaring her off. She was here a short time, and he was going to finally be with her. He’d had enough shitty stuff happen in his life, wasn’t he entitled to a little bit of goodness?

With a sigh and a lets-change-the-subject voice he said, “Are you hungry, Liz? Should I start the grill?”

“No, I’m not that hungry. Let’s wait on dinner.”

“Okay, we can wait, but I
am
feeding you tonight. We never did end up eating anything that night at the Commodore. I’m starting to think that you don’t eat.”

The force of her bark
ed laughter
surprised him. Was it laughter, or disbelief...it had a touch of scorn in it?

“I eat. Oh, believe me, I eat.” It was said with force, and disgust.

Oh, one of those. Another one of those crazy diet-conscious women who think they’re too
fat when they obviously aren’t. Sure, Liz was no stick, but she had the curves and fullness that becomes a woman. At least it had always been becoming in a woman to
Finn
. He loved holding a woman’s
full
hips and ass when he pounded into her.