Smitten

Matt watched her with raised eyebrows. "Well?"

"I have to give this some consideration."

"Listen, if it's a morality thing about prenuptial sex I could fix it. We could get married. I know a justice of the peace who works on Sunday…"

"No!" Lizabeth cleared her throat and lowered her voice. "I'm not ready to get married. I had one bad marriage, and I don't want another. I don't want to rush into something I might regret later. Besides, I have a suspicion that if I said 'yes' to your proposal you'd take the first train out of town. You're playing with me."

There was some truth to that, Matt thought. He could afford to be bold about commitment, knowing she'd reject him, but he didn't think he'd take the first train out of town. Impossible as it seemed, even to him, he actually, wanted to get married. "Okay, so let's go over this then. You like me. You might even decide you love me after due deliberation." He was ticking each point off on his fingers. "You don't want to rush into another marriage. And you obviously don't want to rush into what might be an incredibly passionate but purely physical relationship."

Lizabeth gave a sigh of relief. He understood. "Yes."

"How far do you want to go?"

"Pardon?"

"I thought it would be helpful to set some boundaries. Just to make everything clear. So I know exactly how far I can go."

Relief turned to alarm. "Do we have to decide that now?"

"I don't want to make any mistakes. I assume kissing is all right."

"Kissing is fine."

He leaned across the table. "With tongues?"

She felt the flush beginning to creep up from her shirt collar. "Tongues are okay."

"How about touching? What body parts am I allowed to touch?" His eyes dropped to her chest. "Can I touch your breasts?"

Lizabeth unconsciously pressed her knees together. "I don't think this is necessary right now…"

"Can I take your shirt off? Can I-"

Lizabeth smacked him on the side of the head with the doughnut bag. "Listen up. I am not going to bed with you. As far as I'm concerned, anything up to that point is fair game, but I put the burden of stopping on you. You are totally responsible for maintaining my virtue."

"That's rotten!" Matt narrowed his eyes and grinned malevolently. "You're doing this because you have no willpower. You're putting the burden on me because you're afraid once you get going you won't be able to stop"

"Yup. That's true."

"Heh, heh, heh."

Lizabeth picked up her coffee cup and took a sip, looking at him over the rim. "You don't scare me. You're an honorable person and you're supposedly in love with me."

"Yes, but I'm also a desperate man."

"So you're telling me you'd take advantage of me when I was in a weakened position?"

"Damn right!"

Elsie came in for another doughnut. "What's going on in here?"

"We're making plans for a barbecue," Lizabeth said. "We're going to invite the whole neighborhood."

"I'm not going to have to cook for this, am I? Don't think I'm making potato salad for two hundred people."

Lizabeth shook her head. "Well ask everyone to bring something-a dessert or a covered dish. And well provide the hot dogs. We can borrow a couple of grills."

Elsie pulled a cherry Danish out of the bag. "Sounds like a pain in the behind to me. You got some good reason for having this shindig?"

Lizabeth hesitated, debating whether to confide in Elsie. Elsie wasn't known for her ability to keep secrets. Not that it really mattered this time. In fact, maybe it was for the best if the flasher knew he was about to be found out. "I thought if I got all the men in the neighborhood together I might recognize the flasher."

Elsie's eyes sparkled in approval. "You're from the Hawkins side all right. We don't just sit around on our butt. No sir, we go out and get the job done. You think we need to have a gun on hand in case he gets unruly? I'm real good with a gun."

"No guns!" Lizabeth stood at her seat, palms flat on the table, and leaned toward Elsie to make her point. "I don't want any guns in this house."

Elsie bit into her doughnut. "I suppose it wouldn't be neighborly to shoot him, anyway."

"And the police would frown on it," Lizabeth said. "They're not fond of vigilantes."

Elsie turned her attention to Matt. "Did you come over here just to plan a barbecue?"

"No. It's supposed to rain tonight, so I thought I'd take a look at the roof. I might be able to patch some of the worst spots."

Lizabeth caught her bottom lip between her teeth. "You don't have to go up on the roof to do that, do you?"

"Worried about me?" Matt asked, looking pleased.

"Of course I'm worried. The roof is a mess. The tiles are loose and the wood is probably rotted. If you fall off and get hurt they'll raise the rates on my homeowner's insurance."

He drained his coffee cup and rose. "I'll keep all that in mind."

'Do you need help?"

"You bet. I need someone to hold the ladder." He slung his arm around Lizabeth's shoulders and dragged her out of the kitchen. "Holding the ladder is a very important job. Not just anyone can do it. It has to be someone you trust."

"Uh-huh."

"And if you turn out to be good at holding the ladder, later on I might let you hold something else."

Lizabeth's stomach did a rollover. "I'm not sure I want to hear this."

He turned and pinned her against the front door. "Lizzy Kane, you have a dirty mind."

He was silently laughing, and his mouth was just inches away. She could feel his chest crush into hers, feel the soft denim of his jeans slide between her bare legs, feel his heart thumping behind his black T-shirt. "You set me up," Lizabeth said.

His face was a study in offended innocence. "Not true. I was thinking you could hold my shirt if it gets too warm on the roof, or you could hold my hammer while I carry the shingles." He leaned even closer, and his mouth settled onto hers in lazy possession. He slid his tongue along the inside of her upper lip and pulled away just enough to be able to look into her eyes. "You were the one who thought about holding more intimate objects," he whispered. "You want to know what I think? I think you want to hold my-"

Lizabeth made a strangled sound in the back of her throat.

"Something wrong?" Matt asked. "I thought talking was okay. I thought everything was allowed except the ultimate act."

She felt her temper flare. He was seeing how far he could push. Well, that was great. Two could play that game. "Fine," Lizabeth said. "You want to play hardball?"

He was close enough for her to feel the laughter rumbling deep in his chest.

"No," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind that I'd lose."

"Really? Scared of me, huh?"

"Yup. I'm in love with you, and that makes me vulnerable. If you wanted, you could squash me like a bug. You could trample my ego flat."

"I bet when you were a kid you got away with murder," Lizabeth said.

Matt propped the ladder securely against the house. "What makes you think that?"

"You know all the right things to say to disarm a woman. You probably had your mother wrapped around your little finger."

"Hardly. I was the fifth kid in a family of seven. Half the time my mother couldn't remember my name."

To Lizabeth it seemed like a bitter statement to make, but there was no bitterness in his voice. In fact, there was no inflection at all. The tone had been flat. Matter-of-fact. His eyes, usually so filled with feeling, were blank, and his face held the sort of vacuous expression that came with denial or followed unbearable pain. There's been a tragedy here, Lizabeth thought. And it has been dealt with and filed away. She didn't want to drag it out and open old wounds.

She silently searched for something to say, but found nothing. She wanted to hug him, but she wasn't sure if he'd like that. It was so much easier with children, she thought. You could ease their hurt with a kiss and by holding them close. You could tuck a little boy under your arm and read him a book and chase all the dragons away, but men were much more complicated. From her limited experience she realized men had a strange ego that one had to contend with. And they had weird ideas about what represented weakness. Her ex-husband had detested her protective instincts. Not that she wanted to judge all men by Paul, but it was all she had to go on.