She shook her head, flushing faintly.
He smiled, just as faintly, bemused at her shyness.
“Can I tell you what a beautiful body you have?” he murmured teasingly.
She shook her head again.
“What an incredible lover you are? What I felt like when I was inside you? I never wanted to leave you, sweet. I never wanted it to end. It was as if I’d always known how it could be and I couldn’t stand to let go of you…”
She snuggled her cheek in the crook of his shoulder, her arms still loosely around his neck. He kissed her again, rubbing his face against her cheek until she smiled, feeling ticklish, forgetting her shyness.
“On the other hand…” He nudged up her chin again so he could look in her eyes. “I’m not too pleased at getting quite so carried away. There are four couches in this house and three beds, Misha. Would you like to tell me how we ended up on the carpet?”
That roused her, her lips irrepressibly curling up at the corners. “You’re a disgrace as a sophisticated bachelor,” she said gravely. “What good are all the recessed lights and the elegant couches if you’re really a teenager with a libido that gets ahead of you? Honestly, Matthew. What happened to all that formidable control, the authoritative decision-maker…”
“It’s all your fault,” he growled.
“Yours.”
He shook his head. “I couldn’t think. It was your fault I couldn’t think.”
“That’s your business, thinking. Brilliantly outthinking criminals.”
“No, I outthink prosecuting attorneys.”
He chuckled and leaned over her, placing a languid kiss exactly between her third and fourth rib. “What’s criminal, Misha, is what you do to me. How you took fire…”
And she had, she thought fleetingly. But it had never been like that before. Never had she associated lovemaking with such intense passion, such abandoned fire, such desperate need, such perfect synchrony. She’d learned the rules with Richard a very long time ago, but had never played the game. At nineteen, she had known nothing about loving. She remembered suddenly how much she had lost then, and realized with frightening awareness how much more she could lose now.
She was falling in love with Matthew, and that made her more vulnerable than she had ever been in her life.
It was four in the morning; the fire had died; the air grew cool on her skin; and all she wanted to do was sleep. Instead, she admitted to herself that it was past time to go home.
Chapter 6
“Mom!”
Lorna’s eyes flew open, focused vaguely and rejected the harsh winter sunlight beaming down on her bed; then she closed them again.
“Mom! Aren’t you even going to thank me for letting you sleep in until eight o’clock?”
Eight o’clock? When she hadn’t gotten to bed until five? Her eyes stayed closed against the virtuous appeal in her son’s voice. Johnny hesitated.
“I tell you what. I’ll make us both breakfast-”
Resolutely, she pushed the covers off her body, freezing-cold air replacing her warm cocoon and forcing wakefulness on her. The last time Johnny had volunteered to prepare breakfast Lorna had spent four hours cleaning up. “I’ll make it,” she said groggily. “You want pancakes or bacon and eggs?”
“French toast.”
Naturally. She stumbled over to the closet, shrugged on a robe and slippers, and joined her son in the kitchen. She put butter in the skillet to melt while she dipped the thick pieces of French bread in beaten egg, her head feeling distinctly like steel wool. Old steel wool. Johnny’s usual Saturday-morning exuberance was enough to make her wince. There was something about a weekend that always seemed to bring out the restlessness in a child. Cartoons were blaring from a television set in the other room; a fleet of matchbox cars stood in a line on the kitchen table; and for some unknown reason Johnny was tossing a football up in the air as if the snow weren’t three inches thick outside.
“Freda says if you want me off your hands for the day, she’s willing to take the two of us over to the Science Institute. There’s a thing there about whales. Then maybe she’ll take us Christmas shopping. Can I go?”
“Sure.” Lorna smiled at him as she set his plate on the table. “Only not like that.”
“Like what?”
She explained patiently. “Your socks don’t match, that sweatshirt has three holes in it and your jeans are patched. Why don’t you put on your gray pants.”
He made a face as if she’d suggested he take castor oil. She sat down across from him and took a life-giving gulp of coffee. She was actually waking up, more the pity.
Matthew was miles away, undoubtedly sleeping in the expensive condominium where he must have taken his share of women to sleep with him over the years. Women who didn’t have to wake him up in the middle of the night to take them home to their offspring. The evening of music and laughter and lovemaking seemed a year ago, a precious dream.
Reality was a cramped orange-and-almond kitchen, a towhead son with a cowlick, a houseful of toys to clean up and a translating job to do this morning. Guilt was raging in her head like an out-of-control fever, alternating with shame, as she poured herself a second cup of coffee. How could she have forgotten Johnny? How could she have slept with Matthew, the first evening they’d spent together, acting just as loose as he’d thought she was when she was nineteen? Was that any way to build trust? Matthew had nothing to lose in an affair, while she had everything to lose. Her self-respect, for example. Johnny could be pulled into the middle…
“What are you so quiet for?” Johnny demanded, with his mouth full of food. “Were you out late last night?”
“I came in early, actually,” Lorna answered. Which was, of course, the truth. Early this morning.
“Was he nice to you?”
Lorna stood up and took her son’s empty plate to the counter. “Very nice. We heard some music,” she said flatly. Please leave it, sweetheart.
Johnny studied her covertly as he swiped at his mouth with a napkin. She could visualize the slight frown on his forehead even if she wasn’t directly looking at him. Oversensitive as he was, she knew Johnny sensed that something differentiated Matthew from the other men she had dated. He just didn’t quite know what to do about it. “How come you let me call him Matthew?” he asked finally. “Everyone else, it’s supposed to be Mister this or Mister that.”
She forced herself to look directly at her son. “His last name is Whitaker, Johnny. Didn’t I mention it?” His jaw dropped, with a host of questions all ready. She thought, I can’t handle this. “It isn’t as common a name as Smith, but it’s not uncommon either. It just happens we all share the last name.” If he asked her directly if they were related, she would probably cry. Though she didn’t feel ready to tell him the whole truth, she could not conceive of telling her son a blatant lie. See what you got into, she told her conscience.
“You gonna see him again?” Johnny asked.
“I may.”
He sighed, scowling at her petulantly. Lorna usually had more laughter and conversation for him; she enjoyed her son. He got up from the kitchen chair to go back into his bedroom to change for his outing, but he hesitated, fidgeting in the doorway. “Did he like me, Mom?” he asked carefully. “I mean, from the time he had dinner with us.”
Her heart wrenched, tying itself up in knots. “Did I get my morning hug, urchin?” she asked suddenly, and claimed it, wrapping her arms around her son and holding him tightly, until he squirmed. He grinned up at her.
“You two don’t know each other well enough to like or dislike each other, Johnny,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing to worry about. You come first with me, got that? Nothing and no one is ever going to make a difference for us. Now go change your clothes before Freda gets here.”