Thanksgiving

  “I know better than to burn applesauce.”

  “That puts you one up on me, Mrs. Hunter. Welcome aboard.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Welcome aboard’?”

  “We’re a family. You’re Mrs. Hunter. What would people say if we didn’t spend Thanksgiving together?”

  “I’m not Mrs. Hunter. We’re not a family. I don’t give a flying moneky what people say—”

  “Please.”

  It was the first time she’d seen him totally serious, and it left her speechless. His eyes were unsettling when they were teasing, but they were devastating when they were serious, and he’d spoken in a husky whisper that could have pursuaded her to do almost anything.

  Pat was even more surprised than Megan. The unnerving truth was that he couldn’t imagine a Thanksgiving without her. He knew it was crazy, but he actually thought of her as Mrs. Hunter. He suspected it was because all day he’d been fantasizing about her performing wifely functions—most of them in her satiny nightgown.

  A real, old-fashioned Thanksgiving with Pat and his family and little Timmy, Megan mused. The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. It would be wonderful to have a Thanksgiving feast in the little restored house with the huge fireplace.

  “Are you really going to make all your own food?”

  “Will you help me?”

  “Of course I’ll help you. It’ll be great. We can have pumpkin pie and homemade cranberry sauce and spoon bread.”

  Pat poked at his veal. It was still frozen inside. “Do you honestly think we can cook a real meal?”

  “Piece of cake.”

  Timmy slumped down, still bound to the back of the chair with the apron. His eyes were closed in sleep and his mouth was slightly parted.

  Megan and Pat smiled as they shared a moment of parental affection.

  “I think I should be getting him to bed,” Pat said, untying the sleeping child while Megan got the big blue blanket. He wanted to bed Megan, too, but he didn’t think that would be such an easy task.

  She wrapped Timmy in the blanket and handed Pat his jacket. “Don’t even think about it,” she said.

  “You read minds?”

  “That thought was pretty clear. Don’t get carried away with this Mrs. Hunter stuff. I’m through with men.”

  He studied her for a moment. Her expression was somber. “Through with men forever?”

  “Forever.”

  “You’re not…um, you know.”

  She blushed. “No. I’m completely heterosexual, and I’m absolutely healthy. It’s just that I’ve decided marriage isn’t my cup of tea.”

  Pat had an invitation for casual sex on the tip of his tongue when he realized that wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t even want to joke about it. Did that mean he was falling in love? This was serious, he thought. This was depressing. How the hell had this happened? The rabbit. He was going home to strangle the rabbit.

  He shifted Tim to one arm and scowled at Megan. “Are you going to wear that sexy nightgown again tonight?”

  “No. I’m wearing long underwear and a flannel granny gown. An ugly one.”

  “Good,” he said through clenched teeth. He cradled her neck in his free hand, kissed her full on the lips, and left, slamming the door behind him.

  Megan stood in the empty foyer and wondered how she’d managed to lose control of her life so easily. One minute everything was clean and uncomplicated, and then, wham, her mind was cluttered with babies and sexy pediatricians and roast turkeys. The worst part was that she was actually enjoying all this. Megan, you’re such a jerk, she told herself. Have you forgotten about the bag hanging in the closet upstairs? Have you forgotten about Dave? And what about Steve? And Jimmy Fee, the little nerd?

  Okay, she thought, she’d allow one man into her life. Tim. The other man would henceforth be referred to as “Dr. Hunter.” And no more of that Mrs. Hunter stuff. And no more kisses! She’d set her alarm tonight, and tomorrow she’d get up at five o’clock and be fully clothed before Dr. Hunter arrived.

  Chapter 3

  Megan’s eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright in bed. She snatched the small clock radio from her nightstand and squinted at the green digital numbers. Five-thirty, and Patrick Hunter was pounding on her front door. Damn! She must have shut the alarm off in her sleep.

  She threw the window open and shouted, “Hold your pants on, for crying out loud. I’ll be right there.” And she’d be dressed, too, she thought. No more repetitions of the morning before.

  She stepped into navy sweat pants, tucked her pink satin nightgown into the elastic waistband, and shuffled, half asleep, down the stairs.

  Pat stood in the open doorway and gaped at her. She was wearing another one of those slippery, man-eating nightgowns. This time it was a delicate pink, and she had it tucked into a pair of sweats. He licked his lips and nervously cleared his throat, but he couldn’t stop staring.

  She swayed drowsily and looked at him through half-closed eyes. “Well,” she said, “I guess it’s morning again.” The thin strap to her nightgown slid off her left shoulder, exposing yet another half inch of soft, smooth skin.

  Pat almost dropped the baby. “Oh, Lord, Megan,” he muttered, “how am I supposed to behave when you look like that?”

  She looked down at herself and sighed heavily. “Shoot. I forgot the top half of the sweats. I’ll be right back.” She lumbered up the stairs. “Mornings. I hate mornings.”

  By the time she got to her bedroom she’d forgotten what she intended to do there, so she went back to bed.

  Pat looked at his watch. Megan had been gone for ten minutes, and he didn’t hear any movement overhead. He’d made coffee and dragged a vanful of baby stuff into her house and still…no Megan. “Megan?” he called up the stairs. Nothing. “Megan, did you go back to bed?”

  Megan Murphy in bed, he thought. What a rotten break. Now he’d have to go wake her up. Just like Prince Charming. Maybe she’d be so sound asleep, he’d have to resort to something more drastic than a kiss. Maybe she wasn’t asleep at all. Maybe this was just a ruse to get him up to her bedroom. Of course! Lord, he was so dense. Why else would she answer the door in her sexy nightgown? She wanted him. She probably hadn’t slept all night, thinking about his kisses, and now she was ready to be loved. All right!

  He laid the sleeping Tim safely on the floor, climbed the stairs, took his tennis shoes off, left his leather jacket draped over the banister, loosened his tie, and opened the top button on his blue pin-striped shirt.

  He paused at her open bedroom door, marveling at her shining hair spread across her pillow. “Megan?”

  She turned and stretched in her sleep. The quilt slipped low, revealing an alabaster shoulder and the tempting swell of her breast. Pat watched her for a moment. “Hey, Mrs. Hunter,” he whispered.

  “Mmrph,” she answered.

  He sat on the edge of the bed. Lifting a silky fall of hair from her face, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on her sleep-softened lips. She opened her eyes.

  “Sexy lady,” he said, in a low, raspy voice.

  Sexy lady? she repeated silently. What the heck was that supposed to mean? She grabbed at the covers and pulled them up to her neck. “What are you doing on my bed? Did you just kiss me?”

  Pat felt the scalding heat rise from his shirt collar. “I thought…Oh, hell.”

  Her sweat shirt was draped over a chair by the window. He ripped the covers off the bed, yanked her to her feet, and pulled the sweat shirt over her head.

  “I’ve made you a pot of coffee. It’s in the kitchen. You remember where the kitchen is? That room downstairs? The baby is in the living room on the floor.”

  He swore under his breath and gathered her into his arms, then kissed her as if she were a rare delicacy to be savored and leisurely enjoyed. He held her at arm’s length and pressed his lips together. “Well,” he said huskily.

  She swayed toward him. “Well,” she parroted just as huskily.

/>   What a confusing mess this was, he thought. Megan was all bristly one minute, then warm and responsive the next. She was driving him nuts.

  “I have to go. I sent out a distress call last night and was able to gather up some stuff to make your life with Tim more workable. Also, I left a key to my house on the kitchen counter. I have office hours until eight o’clock tonight. Would you mind putting Timmy to bed and staying with him until I get home?”

  She nodded numbly, wondering who was ultimately going to get put to bed.

  “You’re not going back to sleep, are you?”

  “Not me. I have work to do. Work, work, work.”

  She watched while Pat let himself out the front door, then she padded into the kitchen. A nylon mesh playpen sat in the middle of her kitchen floor. A cardboard box filled with toys and a new giant box of disposable diapers sat on the floor beside the playpen. A collapsible stroller stood in one corner, along with a shopping bag of used but clean baby clothes and a navy diaper bag. On her kitchen counter were jars of baby food, boxes of cereal, graham crackers, juice, and a single, perfect flame-red rose.

  He’d brought her a rose. What a crummy thing to do, she thought. How was she supposed to remain indifferent to him when he brought her roses and made her morning coffee?

  Timmy woke up and let out a wail, and she rushed to the living room and picked him up. After kissing and cuddling him until he cooed, she carried him back to the kitchen.

  “This isn’t fair, is it?” she asked Timmy. “The good doctor is cute and sexy…and now he’s nice! I can’t deal with this. I’m only human. Why couldn’t the lousy rabbit belong to someone mean and stupid?”

  She put Tim into the playpen and poured herself a cup of coffee. Then she put the rose in a bud vase, grudgingly admitting to herself that she was inordinately pleased.

  Good thing her parents had moved to Florida, she mused. They’d take one look at Dr. Hunter and never stop hounding her. They meant well, but they were partially the reason for the Dave disaster. And they were definitely the instigators of the Steve fiasco. Lately, their hysteria had been traveling right over the phone wires. She was twenty-seven and didn’t even have a boyfriend. The end of the world. She could hear her parents nervously cracking their knuckles all the way from Florida.

  “You’d think they’d learn,” she said to Tim, waving her arms. “Some women aren’t meant to get married.”

  She carried the box of toys to the small outbuilding she’d converted into a pottery studio. Returning to the kitchen, she slung Tim under one arm and grabbed the playpen with the other. “This is going to be great, kiddo. I’m going to teach you how to make a teapot.”

  At six-thirty Megan let herself into Pat’s house on Nicholson Street and took an unhurried tour. The small cottage was part of the historic area. It wasn’t one of the eighty-eight buildings still standing from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it had been accurately reconstructed from its original eighteenth-century foundation. The exterior shell was precisely as it would have been in colonial times, and the interior had been adapted only slightly to modern living.

  Megan wondered how Pat had been lucky enough to get the little house. The private residences in the historic area were occupied, for the most part, by employees of Colonial Williamsburg, and the houses were at a premium.

  She knew this particular house had originally been an outbuilding, an eighteenth-century kitchen, and it still maintained that warm, country-kitchen feeling. The downstairs floor was wide plank, the walls creamy white with dark wood cupboards. One entire wall was devoted to the large brick fireplace and step-up hearth. A small pewter-and-candle chandelier hung directly over the front entrance. A larger chandelier had been placed in the middle of the room.

  The room was partially divided by the mahogany staircase leading to the upstairs. The small nook it created had been converted into a modern kitchen. A plump couch covered in a brick red and creamy white check faced the fireplace. A red braid throw rug covered the living-room-area floor, and a rocking chair sat invitingly close to the fireplace. Houseplants had been set in copper pots and wooden tubs. Megan thought it was the perfect Thanksgiving room. It practically shouted pumpkin pie and roast turkey.

  She tugged Timmy out of his new snowsuit and selected a dog-eared book from the diaper bag to read to him. She struck a match to the kindling in the fireplace and settled herself in the rocking chair with the baby on her lap.

  “You’re going to like this,” she said to Timmy. “It’s about a little red hen. You like little red hens?”

  Timmy sucked his thumb vigorously and watched her with big blue eyes.

  “Good. Me too. When we’re done with the book I’ll give you some juice and then it’s bedtime.”

  More than two hours later Pat found Megan in his kitchen up to her elbows in pie dough. She was wearing a pair of tight jeans, white sneakers, and an aquamarine sweater with a loose turtleneck, and the sleeves were pushed high on her arms. Her hair curled in wiry tendrils around her flushed face and cascaded over her shoulders in lush waves. Flour smudged her face and her jeans.

  She turned to him and smiled and laughed, and he heard his heart give one great thud. She was a perfect snowflake, a summer sunset, a wave breaking on virgin sand. She was exquisite, with a beauty that defied age and fashion. She was a woman, filled with life and vitality. The sexiest strumpet ever created, he thought, feeling a smile tug at his mouth.

  He draped his jacket over a kitchen chair and peered into a big stainless-steel bowl on the table. “What’s this brown stuff?”

  “Pumpkin. I’m making a pumpkin pie!”

  He stood as close as he could without touching her and tried not to smile too broadly. “You’re a mess.”

  “I’ve had some problems.” She took a step back and bumped into the counter. Suddenly the kitchen was very small and much warmer. “The pumpkin stuff was easy, but the pie crust…Have you ever made pie crust?”

  He took off his tie and undid the top two buttons on his shirt. Little black hairs curled from the open V. “Nope. I’ve never made pie crust. Do you think it’s warm in here?”

  “I have the oven on, and the fire is going, and…” And her heart was racing, she thought. If he didn’t kiss her she was going to tear his shirt off and pin him to the kitchen floor. No! she shouted silently. That was wrong. That was not what she was going to do. Remember the bag? Remember Dave? She hit herself on the head with the wooden spoon.

  Pat’s eyes widened. “Why’d you do that?”

  “I deserved it.” She waved his question away and returned to her pie crust. “This is the third crust I’ve made. The first one had too much water and got slimy. The second one I rolled out too thin and it stuck to the rolling pin and my shirt. This one is going to be perfect. Look, it’s almost round!”

  Pat moved the pie plate closer to the dough, and together they maneuvered the crust into the pan. “Damn!” he said, his voice filled with admiration. “You did it. You made a pie crust.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “I’m proud of you.”

  Their gazes locked for a moment while they each pondered taking the kiss a step further.

  “No,” Megan said.

  “Yes,” Pat said. He pressed himself against her, snaking his arms around her waist.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Me too. Want to get married?”

  “No!”

  “Want to go to bed?”

  She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose. “You want to get conked with my wooden spoon?”

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Hmmm.” Of course she wanted to go to bed with him, she thought. If her attraction to him continued to grow, she might even want to marry him. Unfortunately, it was all impossible, and what she really didn’t want to do was fall in love with him. That would be totally painful.

  “Hmmm?” he repeated. “That’s encouraging.” He brushed his hips lightly against hers.

  She wanted to be
encouraging, she thought. She also wanted to erase the threat of nuclear war, eliminate hunger from the face of the earth, and find a cure for cancer. Unfortunately, none of those things was within her power.

  She placed the palms of her hands on his chest and pushed firmly. “I’m going to finish my pie, and you’re going to do the dishes, and then we’re going to sit down and talk.” He was much too lovable, and she was far too susceptible to his charms. She didn’t want to bare her soul to him, but he had to be made to understand that this was a working friendship, not a love affair. They were briefly bound together by Timmy and Thanksgiving. She didn’t want to jeopardize either of those things, but she was not going to bed with him.

  She fluted the edge of the crust, just as the cookbook showed, and poured the filling into the shell. Turning toward the oven, she allowed herself a moment of sexist ogling as she watched Pat, his back to her, rinse the dishes and load them into the dishwasher. His shirt sleeves were rolled to above his elbows, displaying strong, muscular arms. Despite the rigors of med school, he’d managed to keep in shape. He was nearly perfect, with broad shoulders, trim waist, a hard, flat stomach, and slim hips. His faded jeans clung to the world’s sexiest buns. She tried to picture him naked, but there were a few details beyond her imagination. She sighed wistfully and put the pie in the oven.

  Pat stowed the last bowl in the dishwasher and dried his hands on a kitchen towel. “Okay, what are we going to talk about?” he asked, reaching for her.

  She sidled away, putting the kitchen table between them. “Us. Mostly you.”

  He leaned against the counter and lazily folded his arms across his chest. His expression was serious, but his eyes were glinting with pleasure as he gazed at her. “What about me?”

  “You’re very attractive.”

  “And?”

  “And I like you. You’re fun, and you’re great with Timmy, and you’re nice to me.”

  His gaze didn’t waver, but his voice dropped an octave. “I like you, too, and I have an uncomfortable feeling this conversation is about to turn around.”