She’s glad he’s here, though. He can tell by the look in her eyes.
Her eyes…
They look bigger, rounder; her lashes thicker, darker.
It’s makeup, he realizes in surprise. She’s wearing makeup. She’s outlined her celadon eyes in smoky shadow and mascara. Her lips are frosted in a pale pink sheen.
Makeup.
And her hair looks different, too: straighter, silkier-looking, partially pulled back but hanging around her eyes in wisps that beg his touch.
Obviously, she took extra time to make herself look gorgeous.
Was that for his benefit?
It’s not as though she’s all dressed up, though. She’s got on a sleeveless green ribbed turtleneck that matches the shade of her eyes. It’s tucked into a pair of jeans.
Those jeans, Sam notes—the ones she was trying on in the store the other day.
Face it: she looks fantastic. And you can’t wait to get closer.
“Let me help you with that light,” Sam offers, hurrying over to her.
“It’s okay, I’ve got it.”
No, she doesn’t. Her fingers reach just short of the fixture. For him, it’s within easy grasp even standing with his feet flat on the floor.
“Here, let me see it.” He takes the bulb from her, conscious of her fingers grazing his in the process. “Did you check the wattage?”
“This is the same as the one that burned out.”
“Then it’s good.” Can she see his hand shaking as he inserts it into the socket and turns it?
All the while, he’s conscious that his body is practically encircling hers; that when she’s standing on the crate like this, her face is closer to his than it would be otherwise. All she’d have to do is turn her head…
And he could kiss her.
He hears himself swallow, then let out an audible shallow breath. He’s hoping he can stay just like this, close to her, turning this lightbulb until he works up his nerve…
But then suddenly he can thread the metal base no farther. It’s time to let go of both the lightbulb and his wayward fantasy about putting his arms around Meg, turning her toward him, and kissing her.
Unless he just goes ahead and does it. Right here and right—
Too late. She’s starting to climb down from the crate.
“Need a hand?” He takes a reluctant step back. He doesn’t want to move, but she’s about to step into the spot where he’s standing. Of course, he could seize this golden opportunity to let her descend right into his arms—
But the logistics of pulling it off smoothly might be awkward.
Dammit. Why does he feel like a boy again, uncertain how to act around a girl?
“No,” she says.
No?
He realizes she means it in response to his query about whether she needs a hand. That seems like ages ago.
“I’m okay,” she says, and the crate promptly wobbles. She laughs. “I mean, maybe I do need a hand.”
Holding his breath, he extends one. Still on uneven footing, Meg grabs it.
Wow.
If Sam didn’t know better, he’d think he had just somehow been zapped by a short in the light socket: a potent current just ran up the length of his arm.
“Whoa,” Meg blurts, jerking a little.
So she felt it too.
The question is, what is she going to do about it?
No…
The question is, what are you going to do about it?
She lands lightly on her feet, close to him, still holding on to his hand.
You could kiss her.
The wisteria barrier is nearly opaque; the street is deserted anyway; Cosette is safely upstairs.
Safely, because she won’t catch them kissing…
And safely, because with her there, he and Meg can’t be tempted to take things further than kissing.
Meg’s fingers are warm clasped in Sam’s hand; he can smell the light, clean herbal scent of her lotion or shampoo or whatever it is that’s wafting tantalizingly to his nostrils.
You have to kiss her.
It’s now or never.
Kiss her, or let go.
Sam reaches out and rests his other hand on her bare upper arm.
She looks down at it, up at him.
The question in her gaze is fleeting; she must have seen the answer in his.
He bends toward her face. She tilts her head instinctively and he tilts his in the opposite direction.
Their lips meet, glide, meld.
Somewhere in the back of Sam’s mind is a fact that is both reassuring and frustrating: that these kisses and caresses are no prelude to lovemaking. Not this time.
Her mouth opens to his delving tongue, and a shower of sparks rain through Sam. He deepens the kiss, swaying her against him, boldly allowing her to know just what she’s doing to him.
He’s a ravenous guest at a lush banquet, uninvited to stay for the main course. Knowing his fierce hunger isn’t meant to be sated with an exquisite feast, he savors this delectable appetizer.
His hands slip up to cup Meg’s face gently; he dips his head to taste her luscious mouth over and over again, filled with wonder, filled with need.
But his appetite has been whetted, not appeased, and he craves her more than ever. His willpower is waning; he’s intoxicated by the dizzying combination of her ethereal song and her willing flesh. He wants to show her she isn’t alone in her desire; that it’s okay for her to feel the way she does about him. That he feels something too, something glorious and terrifying and completely unexpected.
She flinches a little, pulls back, and he drags heated lips from her mouth.
He opens his eyes and is walloped by the wanton expression in hers.
“What are we doing, Sam?”
“We don’t know,” he says raggedly, with a trace of a smile, “but we can’t help it.”
Then he kisses her again.
Every time Sam’s lips collide with hers, Meg is lost all over again.
If he would just stop for a moment, just give her time to think…
But he won’t stop.
It’s like he can’t stop.
There’s something different about him today; a bold intensity that caught her completely off guard. She never in a million years expected him to show up here, take her in his arms, and kiss her senseless.
If she had thought there was a chance of that, she’d have run away.
Instead, here she is held fast against him, struggling to keep from losing herself in pure sensation.
You can’t let that happen.
You have to keep your head.
Her mouth feels bruised and swollen from his kisses; her breasts, crushed against his hard chest, ache with fervent need. With a sigh, she arches her neck, throwing her head back as he nuzzles her throat, her fingers twining in his hair.
“This is crazy,” she whispers more to herself than to him.
“What’s crazy?” he murmurs against the tender hollow beneath her jaw.
“I told myself I wasn’t going to sleep with you ever again.”
“I told myself the same thing. And we won’t.”
“Then what are we doing?”
“Kissing. That’s all.”
“You really think you can stop at this?” she asks, and hears herself add brazenly, “Because I know I can’t.”
“Yeah, but nothing’s going to happen now, with your daughter up there.”
That stops her cold. She pulls back, looks around worriedly. “Up where?”
“Upstairs. In her room.”
“She’s not up there. She’s in Manhattan.”
“What? No, she can’t be. I just saw her.”
Again, she looks around. “Where?”
“In her window, I thought.”
“No, she took the train to Grand Central at one-thirty. I watched her get on myself, and she just called a little while ago and said she’d made it there.”
Sam swallows hard. “When is s
he coming back?”
She can tell he’s afraid to ask; that in turn makes her afraid to answer.
“Tomorrow.” Her voice is hushed. “Why? Where are Ben and Katie?”
He says nothing for a minute, but he doesn’t have to. Something has ignited; she senses that when she looks at him; his expression is more telling than anything he might say.
“My kids are in Larchmont,” Sam informs her succinctly when he finally does speak. “Until tomorrow.”
Later—hours later, when twilight falls through the uncovered windows of Sam’s bedroom to bathe them in its alabaster blue glow—he feels as though he’s awakened from a long sleep.
In reality, he should be exhausted, ready for sleep. It’s been a long—and acrobatic—afternoon and evening. He and Meg found their way over here from her porch, because it wasn’t as though he showed up at her house prepared, condoms in his pocket and sex on his mind.
Well, maybe the last part was true… but he never really thought it could happen.
When he realized that it could, and was about to, he at least managed to find the presence of mind to bring her to his place. They’ve since put quite a dent in the supply of condoms he’d stashed in the bathroom cabinet.
Thank you, little brother. How right you were about being prepared, just in case.
Yes, Sam is pretty worn-out after all that.
But how can he possibly sleep when he’s exhilarated?
He can’t stop looking at her, touching her—maybe he just needs the tactile evidence that this is real. Or maybe she just feels too good.
He toys with her hair spread on the pillow, skims the curve of her bare hip, strokes her cheekbone with the back of his fingers.
No longer feeling like a shy schoolboy, he isn’t afraid to stare into her eyes; nor is she hesitant to return the gaze.
I can lie here forever, he thinks. Forever, just watching this woman, touching her, treasuring her.
Never before has Sam experienced intimacy this profound: not in his marriage, certainly not with the girls who came before. This… this physically, spiritually, emotionally pure connection… this is the intangible, evasive something that was missing all those years. This is the source of his marital restlessness; it’s what he subconsciously sought all those years. It’s what people dream about, talk about, write about, sing about.
Would he, could he, ever have found this completion with his wife?
No. If it wasn’t there from the beginning, it never would have been.
He knows that as instinctively now as he sensed, back then, that there should be something more to marriage, more to life.
He was right. How about that.
So what next?
What do I do about this?
Now isn’t the time to figure it out.
Coherent reason never led two people to fall tumultuously into each other’s arms and tumble into bed. It isn’t a part of this interlude, and can’t be.
Illogical passion… that’s what brought him and Meg together, that’s all there should be here with them now.
Sam strokes her face, memorizing the tapered arc of her eyebrows, and every faint freckle on her nose, and her lips, their rosy tint, though every hint of gloss has been kissed away, swollen from his mouth against them…
Incredibly, impossibly, Sam is beginning to feel the stirring of arousal once more.
Meg laughs when he pulls her close. The laugh trails off as he kisses her deeply. It’s the intimate, self-assured kiss of a lover.
“Again? You’re insatiable,” she whispers as he rolls onto his back and hauls her with him. She bends to nuzzle a silken path from his mouth to his neck to his chest.
“So are y—” His breath catches in his throat and words are lost to him as her mouth finds his nipple.
She coaxes it to rigid attention. He groans at the sensation and at the memory of what she did to him with that moist mouth earlier, when her feather-soft hair was trailing sensually across his thighs as opposed to his pecs.
“Come here.” He strains to pull her up, needing to kiss her, but she laughs and resists, moving on to lick and tease his other nipple. Sam closes his eyes and gives in to the seduction, to the feeling of her erotic mouth and warm skin sliding over his body.
Finally, she sits up on her knees, straddling him, and lowers herself onto him.
With a moan of pleasure he reaches up to cup her bare breasts as she rocks in seductive rhythm. Their eyes are locked, bodies joined, and as Sam nears the brink, emotion surges in his soul to threaten laughter, or maybe tears. It’s something somewhere in between the two that escapes him as he skyrockets over the edge, clinging to her, taking her with him.
“Meg,” he gasps, still shuddering into her quaking flesh. An errant thought spills into his brain, then from his lips. “Oh, my God… I—”
No!
Like a dam, a shred of reservation catches the phrase and holds it back.
He can’t say that.
Even now, with reason all but obliterated, he comprehends that it would be a mistake.
Because it’s too soon? Or because it can’t possibly be true?
Who knows?
Sam is in no frame of mind to analyze why he can’t say those three words to her; he just knows that he can’t, shouldn’t.
With a sigh, she settles against him, blissfully oblivious to his conclusion.
Her body is stretched out to fit alongside his, her head rests against his still-racing heart, and her fingertips lightly play his chest as if to accompany a silent song.
Maybe that’s why he can’t say it… or believe it.
Maybe the outpouring of emotion he overheard in her song might have triggered in Sam something more profound than raging desire.
It might have triggered something more powerful, something he isn’t capable of claiming, or sharing.
Ironic, then, that it came along now, when he wasn’t looking for it—not anymore.
Yes, just when he’s finally reached a place where his life is humming along, where his kids are functioning, where they’ve settled into a world in which they all belong… this happens to him.
She happens to him.
But you don’t mess with stability. Not after the tempest the three of them, Sam and his kids, have endured.
Period.
Still… what if there could be something better for us? Something more than just humming along, functioning, settled?
Yeah, what if…?
Get a grip, Sam. There are always going to be what ifs.
As in: what if you take a chance and go for it with Meg, and you turn the world upside down again for all of you?
It’s not just about what Sam wants, or needs.
It hasn’t been about that since he became a parent. As a single father, he’s responsible for three lives. He doesn’t dare take on anything—anyone—else. Not with his children’s well-being at stake.
Meg lifts her head to look at him, smiling, unaware that he just came this close to transporting their relationship into entirely new territory, then backed away.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
He is, he realizes as he nods. Not just hungry. Ravenous.
For food, yes, but also, still…
For her.
Physically sated, he’s wrestling with a deeper craving unfurling within him now, begging to be nurtured.
He finds himself thinking of the potted rose Katie gave her mother on that long-ago birthday.
If you ignore something, if you starve it, it will eventually wither and die.
“I’m hungry, too. Do you want to go out to eat?” Meg asks, sounding reluctant.
“Do you?”
“I’m starving.”
“We don’t have to go out,” he says, afraid that if they do, they’ll go their separate ways when the meal is over.
He isn’t ready for that yet. He wants this one night with her; one night to make love to her without reservation and hold her as she sleeps, one morning t
o wake with her in his arms.
This is all they have; their kids will be back tomorrow, and life will go on.
“I’ve got stuff in the fridge.” He sits up and pulls her with him. “I’ll make us something to eat.”
She smiles.
She, too, wants this night.
Does she, too, realize it’s all they have?
“That would be good,” she says, and swings her legs over the edge of the bed, bending to find her hastily discarded clothes.
Watching her, admiring the graceful curve of her spine and the sweep of her hair, he knows that tonight will never be enough.
That, without her, for the rest of his life, he’ll be plagued once again not just by restlessness—but by helplessness.
Because now, he won’t wonder what it is that’s missing.
Now, God help him, he’ll know.
Chapter
14
Meg? It’s Mom!”
“Mom!” Breaking into a smile, she’s glad she just dropped her paint roller and flew through the house to answer the ringing telephone.
Had Cosette been here, Meg would have been inclined to let it ring right into voice mail, thinking it was going to be another prank call she’d pick up to find nobody there.
That’s been happening a lot the last few days.
There’s no breathing, no hang up, nothing like that. Just… dead air. It’s unnerving.
Especially because whenever those calls occur, the caller ID window comes up blank.
Why would—how could—that possibly happen?
It could happen if a ghost were making the phone ring, that’s how. Meg did some reading on the Internet and learned that some people—experts in so-called paranormal activity—claim that spirits can manipulate energy to affect household devices like radios, televisions… and telephones.
Meg doesn’t believe it, necessarily. She just wishes the strange calls would stop.
Cosette isn’t home on this Wednesday afternoon—she’s winding down her first day at her new school—and Meg has been anxious about her all day. Her first thought when the phone rang was that it might be about her daughter, in some kind of trouble again.
“What are you doing?” her mother asks. “Did I catch you in the middle of something?”
“I’m painting Cosette’s new room, actually.”