“I’m not listening to yelling, Thom. Not now. Not ever. I expect you to pick her up on Saturday at noon. Have her back here by seven. I have nothing else to say.”
Once she snapped the phone closed, she whirled around, her smile brighter than glass. “I’d turn off the cell phone but I can’t. There could always be a call related to Molly.”
“Same problem here. I can duck calls with the answering machine, but I don’t want Teddy to have any problem getting hold of me.” He felt a sudden restlessness. The kind of thing he felt when he was about to do something he shouldn’t. She sashayed back to the chair, crossed her legs, all her movements classy and elegant-not a put-on, just apparently how she always was. The call from her ex should have been another turnoff. She was complicated, and so was her life and problems. Every encounter he’d had with her so far indicated she was high-maintenance, trouble, no one and nothing that he could possibly want in his life.
But damn it. She was so upset her hands were shaking.
She noticed him looking at her hands, and immediately said, “It’s no secret to anyone. I hate confrontations. I’m terrible at them. My job used to be in advertising. Everybody called me tough. I was tough, I swear. But that was my business life. In my private life, well, you could say I flunked the course in fighting altogether.”
“Amanda-?”
“What? Oh. I know. I’m talking too much. I pretty much don’t drink at all for just that reason. One glass of wine and out it all spills. My life. And this was such a trying day-”
“And you’re nervous around me.”
“-and I’m nervous around you.” She blinked. “I’m not. I don’t know where that came from.”
He hunched forward, motioned her closer.
She hunched forward with a curious frown.
He said, “Here’s the thing. I’ve got one priority for this summer. Teddy. To get him set up. To make this a home. Check out the preschools and pediatricians. Find some kids in the neighborhood, locate the parks, the library, the stuff he can get involved in. That’s my whole job this summer. And there just can’t be any women in that picture.”
“Okay.”
“He’s still ripped about the divorce. Sometimes I think it’s because he never saw his mother and I argue. We never did, not in front of him. I thought that was how you were supposed to behave, but now-crazy as it sounds-I think it’s part of the problem. He’s got it in his head that Nancy left because of not wanting him, that he was somehow at fault. What Nancy pulled was a downright turkey move. But I can’t change that or fix it. All I can do is try to settle my kid into the happiest, most stable life I can. To put it in blunt terms-”
“Do,” she encouraged him.
“I’ve given up sex forever. Now it has occurred to me, in the past couple of days, that ‘forever’ might not be a precisely achievable goal. But through this summer, I really need to do the celibate thing. No entanglements. No distractions. My world has to be my kid.”
“Whew!” She let out a long breath, tossed him a smile-not that glassy, classy smile but one so real it jammed the air in his lungs. It was that sexy. That natural. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that. Mike-I’m in exactly the same boat.”
“Yeah?”
“We’re on the same page. I just made the no-sex vow the same way.” She laughed, inviting him to. “The best thing about the divorce was figuring out how many wrong roads I’d been taking. I had every advantage a girl could have, was pampered and spoiled from the get-go, fell for the whole fairy tale that I was something special. I could have had a sign on my forehead that said Me-Me-Me.”
“That sounds pretty harsh.”
“It’s the total truth. I thought my ex was the Prince Charming in the story. Never once looked further than the surface-until it all crashed. So…I’ll likely look for a job in the fall. I don’t know what kind. I’ll work that out after Molly starts preschool. But I’m determined that this summer be about her. I want her to be about everything that I’m not. More self-reliant. More capable. I want her to take more pleasure in accomplishments than in material things. Which means…”
“Somehow I sense the punch line is coming.”
“Yes. No men for me. Indefinitely probably-but definitely not this summer. I need to figure out the stuff I was doing wrong. Change. Change into being more of the person I want to be. Oh, God, it’s so boring hearing someone talk about this kind of thing, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I just wanted to be clear-”
“Amanda.”
“Yes.” He’d leaned forward, with such a serious expression, that she leaned forward, too.
“It’s pretty obvious we’ve been worried about the same thing, don’t you think? Both of us have these…life plans. About not getting involved with anyone right now. About needing to concentrate on nothing but parenting for a stretch. So we both agree…it’d be a real pain in the keester if you and I…” He motioned with his hands.
She nodded vigorously. “It would just be completely awkward.”
He filled in more. “It’d be complicating. Unsettling. Exactly what neither of us want right now.”
“I couldn’t possibly agree more!”
He nodded. “So let’s get this over with, okay? We’d better find out how dangerous the problem is before figuring out how to handle it.”
Chapter Four
Granted, Amanda had had almost two glasses of wine-and before dinner, besides. So she realized she was a little addled, but she was still astonished when Mike-out of the complete blue-pulled her onto his lap.
The last she knew, they’d been talking, not flirting.
The last she knew-positively-they’d been talking about celibacy. His intention to be celibate. Her intention to be celibate. Their completely agreeing with each other.
So the fire started from nothing, came from nowhere. The smolder and snap of sparks suddenly caught, and just as suddenly spread. The heat startled her nerves, her skin, turned her senses incredibly tender. Smoke clogged her brain and fogged her vision. Sirens echoed in her ears-not sirens communicating danger, but a siren song calling mesmerizing, wicked things to her.
It was just a kiss, for Pete’s sake.
She’d been kissing boys since she was fourteen. She’d been married. There wasn’t a reason in the universe that this one should be so different.
But it was.
He was.
He’d kind of tumbled her onto his lap. His mouth had found hers before she’d found her balance. It was just all suddenly…there. The solid warmth of his body. The strength in his thighs and chest, the manly smell of him, the swoop of his arms creating a natural cradle.
And then there was the whole problem with his mouth. His lips were softer than butter. He offered a skim of a taste, then settled in, in a tangle of his taste and hers, the combination unexpectedly explosive.
She figured she should raise her hand and express a little outrage…but she couldn’t seem to conjure any up. Objections appeared in the back of her mind, but never showed up at the front door.
This wasn’t nice.
He didn’t kiss nice.
He kissed as if he wanted to swallow her whole.
As if no touch, no kiss, no woman had ever ransomed his attention as she did.
Thrills shot through her blood as if she were on a roller-coaster ride.
She shifted, accidentally jamming her elbow into his ribs-but she had to look at him, had to catch her breath. His eyes were as glazed as hers. His breath coming as heavy. His frown just as dark.
But that made no sense. She went back for another kiss, to figure out what was really going on. A kiss-a few kisses-couldn’t rock a girl’s world. It had to be something else. Maybe some unusual kind of allergy attack. Or maybe pheromones were raining down from the sky. There had to be something that could be logically explained if she just studied it long enough.