MARRIAGE MATERIAL Page 13

  Yeah, right. He heard the litany of justifications with cynicism.

  He could justify himself all he wanted. The fact was, he wasn't going to leave her alone because he wanted her. It was that simple. It wasn't for her at all.

  He spent half his time in a pleasurable haze, wondering what she was doing, what she was wearing, how it looked on her, the other half remembering how blisteringly passionate she had been. How richly she had responded. He had one vision of her, her head thrown back, her hair scattering over his fingers, as he moved his mouth on her throat.

  It aroused him massively.

  In fact, as much as he liked women, this kind of round-the-clock arousal was new for him. When he was younger, Valerie had whipped him into a frenzy at times—but there had always been a deliberation about the way she did it. He'd never been entirely sure she really enjoyed him. Even when she thrashed and hollered, he'd suspected a lot of it was sheer playacting.

  It was hard to believe Tamara was even related. There was a guilelessness about Tamara he found refreshing, and there was no doubt in his mind that her response to him—that soft cry, that trembling, rocking, falling apart—had been utterly genuine.

  His blood was fevered by the time he could call her Sunday night. And he was more crushed than he would have admitted to anyone when she declined his invitation. She sounded tired, and made apologies, but the fact was, she was too swamped with schoolwork to go out.

  He thought he sensed a little reserve in her manner, but put if off to her preoccupation with school. He also reminded her to call Marissa.

  Every night for the next week, he called. The story was the same all week long. She was too busy. She had too much homework. She couldn't spare the time. By Thursday, his persistence embarrassed him, and he called Marissa instead.

  "Hey, good-lookin'," he said. "I have a favor to ask you."

  "Only if I can ask one in return," she countered.

  Lance felt the tension that had built in him ease a little. Marissa was a sunny, cheerful woman, and he loved the way she made him laugh. In spite of what Tamara had implied, Lance also knew Marissa was not the slightest bit attracted to him—she liked big, burly, hairy biker guys. Her father would approve far too much of Lance for him to be even remotely interesting. "Anything you want, doll."

  "You first."

  Lance drew an eye on a piece of paper in front of him. "Has Tamara called you by any chance?"

  "She did. I helped her with her accounting." She chuckled. "I have to tell you, this woman does not have a head for figures."

  Lance carefully added eyelashes to the almond-shaped eye. "So I guess she's really been swamped?"

  "Are you going to get to the point anytime soon?"

  "I want to go see her at the bar tomorrow night, but I don't want to be too obvious about it. I think—" he cleared his throat "—maybe I'm getting the brush-off."

  Marissa laughed softly. "I get it. You want some female there to balm your bruised ego if she tells you to get lost."

  Lance grinned. "Exactly."

  "I can do that. But I can tell you, she wants you bad, big boy."

  "Yeah, right. What's your favor?"

  "I need someone to take me to a dance at the country club in a couple of weeks."

  "The country club? I thought you scorned all that rich-girl stuff."

  Marissa sighed. "The fact of the matter is, I'm sick to death of the sideways comments about diet and exercise from a certain blond bimbo in my acquaintance, and I want to shut her up." She made a frustrated little noise. "Mine's an ego favor, too."

  "I'll make a spectacle of myself, adoring you."

  Marissa giggled. "And you will, too."

  "It'll be fun." He straightened. "Just let me know the date and time and I'll pick you up."

  * * *

  With the quick switch of weather so famous in the mountains, the season changed suddenly. On Thursday, Tamara had to leave her coat in the car when she got to work, and it was warm enough that she wished she'd remembered to wear something cooler than a heavy sweater.

  By lunchtime on Friday, a cold wind had blown through, bringing with it a thick muffling of threatening clouds. By Friday night, it was snowing. Thick, white flakes that promised an early, lucrative beginning to the ski season.

  It meant that work Friday night was slow. Very few of the locals would chance the roads on such a night, and those who did had designated drivers. A handful of ski-hopefuls drank margaritas in the early part of the evening, but even they grew worried when the snow didn't let up by nine, and left for their exclusive condos up the road.

  Tamara took the chance to reorganize her area, cleaning out half-used bottles of sweet and sour, reordering cans of piña colada mix and kosher salt and new sponges. The few customers lived close and would walk home.

  As she worked, humming along with the jukebox, Tamara congratulated herself for sticking to her resolve to stay away from Lance. It hadn't been easy. Every time she heard his voice—that sexy, cheerful, hungry voice—over the phone, she wanted to beg him to come over to her house right that instant. She wanted to agree to anything he asked if he'd only promise to kiss her again, touch her, let her touch him.

  But she resisted. She pleaded an overwhelming load of homework. She heard his disappointment with a finger of mingled sorrow and relief, and stuck to her guns. She lasted all week without giving in.

  Sooner or later, he'd get the message.

  She told herself she needed to put some distance between them before she revealed the truth about Cody. She needed to have some sense of control over herself and the wild attraction she felt toward him before she could take that chance and make herself so vulnerable again.

  Someone dropped coins in the jukebox and Willie Nelson sang about a good woman who loved a man she didn't understand. Tamara smiled ironically.

  As if on cue, the front door burst open, allowing a swirl of cold wind and suicidal snowflakes into the room. And as if he were a creature of the wind, Lance Forrest walked in with it.

  Every single one of the careful rationalizations Tamara had built up over the long week disappeared—melted like snowflakes under the warmth of his presence.

  He was beautiful. There was just no other word to describe the shining presence of such a man. His sun-fingered hair shone with a fresh washing, and fell around the collar of his worn jean jacket in defiance of any attempts at styling. As he came in with Marissa, he threw a casual arm around her shoulders and made a joke, and the pose made him seem even taller and leaner. The days outside on the job in the bright mountain sunlight had given his face a deep tan that made his eyes nearly glow.

  And he moved like some creature of the forest, negligently at ease in his own skin, utterly sure of his place in the world.

  To her despair, Tamara's hands trembled, and she had to wipe her palms against her jean-clad thighs. Why couldn't she ever remember how he really looked? If she could remember exactly, it would be easier to keep herself guarded, to review that perfection over and over in her head until it lost its power.

  But it was impossible to remember it all. The way he moved, the way he smiled, that shining aura he carried, like a saint from a Renaissance painting. Distractedly, she wiped the bar with a towel and wondered if the models for those painted saints had been men and women with Lance's sex appeal.

  They didn't take a table. Of course not. Instead, they walked to the bar. Lance tossed a leg over a stool and leaned on the bar. "Hi," he said. His bright blue eyes shone in unmistakable approval, and a strange, uncertain expression that pierced Tamara right through the heart.

  "Hi," she said, putting cocktail napkins down on the bar in front of both of them. "What can I get for you?"

  Marissa set her purse on the bar. "Just a Coke for me." She waved at someone across the room. "I'll be right back."

  Both Tamara and Lance watched her head toward a table where a gigantic biker in black leather and chains sat by himself. He smiled happily when he saw Marissa coming, a
nd jumped up to give her a bear hug.

  Tamara chuckled. "Looks like you lost your date."

  "She's not my date, exactly. She's here to make you jealous." He smiled. "Is it working?"

  Tamara swallowed the truth, which was that it worked all too well. "If it's me who is supposed to be jealous, I'm afraid not."

  The sudden flash of emotion in his face stung her a little. He lowered his eyes and plucked at the napkin. "Well, it was worth a try."

  Trying to ease that wounded expression, Tamara said lightly, "It would be foolish to get too attached to a ladies' man like yourself, now, wouldn't it?"

  "I guess so." He straightened. "Get me a beer, will you please?"

  She gave him a bottle of beer and prepared Marissa's soft drink, then carried it to the table where she sat. On her way back, she was conscious of Lance watching her, his gaze washing over her body with an almost palpable touch that lingered with warmth on her mouth and breasts and thighs. She tried to ignore it, but there was no ignoring his hand when he reached out and snagged her around the wrist before she could go back behind the bar.

  "Lance," she protested. "I'm working."

  "There's no one here." He didn't let go, only spread his fingers over her knuckles. "You want to tell me what's going on?"

  "What do you mean?" Tamara forced herself to look into his eyes. A mistake. She stood too close, and now she could read the puzzled little hurt, the passion, the yearning that burned in his irises. Irises that up close reminded her of a marble she'd once had, a blue one with floating streaks of amber. There was a whole universe contained in the bright, sharded color.

  He lowered his lashes. The tips were bleached golden, and showed clearly against the slash of sunburned cheekbone. His lower lip looked a little burned, too. Vulnerable.

  "You know what I mean," he said, holding her hand in both of his, his index finger restlessly moving over her nails. "If you want to give me the brush-off you could just do it and spare me making a fool of myself like this."

  From this angle, Tamara could see the burnished crown of his head, and she ached to put her hand against the thick hair, ached to feel it on her fingers. She ached to kiss that sunburned lip. "You scare me to death," she heard herself say. "You're way out of my league."

  "No, sweetheart," he said, and finally looked at her again. "You've got it backward. I'm the one way out of his league here."

  And then, as if it were a movie, as if there weren't a dozen people around, he looped a hand around her neck and pulled her down to kiss her.

  Caught off balance, Tamara nearly tumbled into him. She caught on his shoulders, trying to steady herself enough to pull away, to somehow extract herself. But his lips were hot with sunburn, and he hadn't forgotten anything about kissing in two weeks' time, and she felt bewitched by the glorious taste of him. He claimed her possessively, hungrily, with such mastery that she forgot why it mattered that he was kissing her here, in a public place, while she was on duty.

  There was only Lance, so big and so hungry, smelling of soap and a hint of aftershave and the evocative scent of the pine and sky and night that hung in his thick, clean hair. Against her palms, his shoulders were powerful and broad, and his strong thighs clasped the outside of her legs in an intimate embrace.

  She didn't want to stop kissing him. His mouth was a wildly delicious place, and she wanted to explore all of it, wanted to stay forever clasped in the sinuous dance of their tongues. The more she tasted, the more she wanted to taste, the farther she slipped into the narcotic spell he cast over her senses. He smelled right. He tasted right. He felt right—

  She shoved away, ducking her head to hide the shame that flooded through her. "Stop," she whispered, backing away. She covered her mouth, let her hair fall over her furiously hot face. "I can't believe—"

  "Can't believe what, Tamara?" he said in a dangerously low voice. "That you want me the way I want you? Can you please tell me exactly what is so wrong about that?"

  She yanked her hand away and whirled, taking refuge behind the bar. But once there, she couldn't remember what to do. It all looked so alien. She chanced a scan around the rest of the room, but nothing seemed to have changed. No one seemed to have noticed—or maybe they just didn't care—that the bartender was smooching with a customer.

  "Tamara," Lance said. His voice was firm and low. "Stop running away and just face me with it, whatever it is."

  For a moment she resisted. She tried to imagine there was some way out of this tangle of emotion. But there wasn't. Setting her teeth, she took a deep breath and moved to face him across the bar.

  "You want the truth, Lance? This is the truth." She gestured to encompass the bar. "This is my life. I'm a bartender. You are one of the richest men in the county, maybe even the state. You're footloose and fancy-free, with no intention of ever settling down, and I'm a single mother with a child to raise." Once she got going, she couldn't stop. "I think you're one of the sexiest men I've ever seen, but that's not enough for me." She stopped, and rushed on. "I can't afford you."

  He said nothing for a long space of time, only looked at her with an unreadable opaqueness on his face. Finally he pursed his lips, stood up and dug out a sheaf of bills. With strange control, he placed the bills on the bar, smoothing each one as he counted it. "I'll leave you alone, then," he said. "Have a nice life."

  Tamara didn't know what she had expected. Maybe that he would argue with her, or give her one of those charming smiles and play some silly word game.

  She didn't expect him to just stand up and walk away. And she felt a deep, almost tearing kind of regret at the strange, abruptly controlled movements he made. If he were any other man in the world, she would have said he was trying to cover up hurt feelings. She would have interpreted that faint flush as one of embarrassment. She might have—

  "Lance," she said, helplessly, and stopped.

  He looked at her, his beautiful mouth pulled to a tight smile. "Forget it, Tamara. It's not that important."

  With a lump in her chest, she watched him thrust his arms into his coat as he walked, watched as he stopped to put a hand on Marissa's back and said something in her ear. Watched Marissa pat his hand and cast a covert look over her shoulder at Tamara.

  Watched him open the door and stalk out into the snowy night without a backward glance.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

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  Lance roamed his faceless apartment for hours, prowling the small, sterile living room with its rented furniture, to the kitchen with its single pot and plastic utensils, into the bedroom where not a single painting or photo broke the white walls. It was a sterile, lifeless place, and tonight it seemed to mock him.

  What did Tamara know about rich? Rich didn't mean a damn thing. She was the rich one, with her warm, fragrant home, with its comfortable chairs and easy grace. With her son laughing, and the smell of dinner cooking and music playing.

  And maybe that was the point. Maybe she sensed the sterility of his inner life and wanted no part of it. He stared at his bare walls and knew she'd never live anywhere for more than a week without putting her stamp on it somehow, without finding some way to make it comfortable and cozy and warm.

  God, he ached for her. Her smell, her taste, her laughter. Her warmth. Even after the humiliating experience in the bar, he couldn't stop wanting her. The yearning was vague, unfocused. It centered around having her close to him, holding her small neat body against his chest, in his arms. He just wanted to touch her. Kiss her.

  After four hours of pacing, he finally grabbed his coat and headed out into the night. Anything was better than pacing those same three rooms.

  The night was beautiful. The first snow of the year drifted from a leaden sky, only faintly tinged with pink from the town's lights. He held up his face to the fat, twirling flakes and rejoiced in the fact that whatever else had gone wrong in his life, at least he was home again. Home where he belonged, where it snowed. He'd missed the hell out of winter in Houston. H
e'd been longing to come home for three years before his father's death, but as soon as the telegram came, he'd known, instantly, it was time. People had urged him to reconsider, to think about what he was doing, but Lance didn't go about life like that. He acted on instinct, and he'd rarely been proven wrong.

  He ambled for a long time, walking the perimeter of the town. And it was no surprise to him to find himself on Tamara's walk, looking at her lighted living room window. She probably had not been home long—her car still ticked as it cooled, and there was only a light dusting of snow on the windshield.

  He stood on the sidewalk in the dark, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the glow of lamplight against her drawn curtains. Outside, the snow fell in utter stillness save for the lonely sound of a train whistle crying out in the night.

  Inside, he imagined she had brewed a cup of the lemony tea she'd given him once, and sat over her books. Maybe there were waltzes on the CD player. Cody would be asleep in his bed, tucked in and smelling of dampness from his bath. Or maybe she didn't have time to give him a bath on Friday nights. Maybe it was too late when she got home.

  In the vague area of his chest was an ache he couldn't name. The visions of her warm house made him feel things he didn't know he'd ever felt—at least not since he was a child. His mother had made a warm, safe place for her children, as much as she'd been able to, anyway. His father had not always been the easiest man to please.

  But then, his father hadn't been around much. He came home and raised hell, and went right back out again, and his mother smoothed things as well as she was able, making calm the stormy waters.

  Part of him was appalled that he was standing out here in front of Tamara's house like a lovesick teenager. It wasn't his style. But then, not much about this whole thing had been his style, had it?

  Snow dusted his hair, and his jacket, and still he did not move. Cold began to seep into his thighs through his jeans, and his ears and nose hurt. And he only stood there, staring at Tamara's neat, warm house.