Mr. Right Next Door Read online

Oh, could she relate to that! “Jeremy kept falling asleep with it in his mouth, and I’d either forget to check for it or I’d run my finger around his mouth and not find it, and then he’d wake up the next morning with it in his hair.” She shook her head, smiling despite the tears.

  “How’d you get it out?” he wanted to know, loosening his hold a bit.

  “I’ve tried everything, peanut butter, ice, machine oil, sand. Nothing really works but cutting it out. We practically had to shave his head once. I thought, ‘Now he’ll remember to spit it out!’ Then when I had it down to a kind of fringe around the hairline, he said, ‘Leave it there, Mom! Leave it there!’ He just insisted. He thought it was so cool! So I sent him outside to play, thinking the other kids were going to laugh and jeer at him and that, finally, would teach him a lesson.” She shook her head. The laughter crept up on her, spilling out when she least expected it.

  Morgan squeezed her. “Go on. What happened?”

  She still marvelled at it. “Two, three days later, I notice all the kids in the neighborhood are going around sporting these really short haircuts with this long, ugly fringe around the hairline. One of the boys’ mothers actually said to me, ‘We just can’t get it to look like Jeremy’s. What hairstylist do you take him to?’”

  Morgan chortled, his arms looped easily about her, one hand spread possessively over her ribs. “Sounds like he was a trendsetter, one of those totally confident kids so secure, so loved, that even if the other kids had teased him it wouldn’t have fazed him in the least.”

  “I guess so,” she said, lost in her memories.

  “Sounds like you were a very good mother,” Morgan told her softly. “Sounds like you were able to make up for his father’s lack of involvement.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked, praying that he was right.

  “Absolutely. You must have been remarkably devoted. Jeremy sounds like a very happy boy.”

  “They said he didn’t feel any pain,” she whispered, speaking of his death. “They said he never knew what happened, he couldn’t have had time to be afraid.”

  “He wouldn’t have,” Morgan said. “The body is designed so that shock delays both emotional and physical pain. He would have been gone before he could feel any of that.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it when they first told me, because I couldn’t feel it yet.”

  “Yes.”

  “But I’ve felt it every day since.”

  “Yes,” he said again, conveying in that one word a world of understanding. And then, very deliberately, he kissed her. His hand settled on her throat and gently slid upward to push her head back and cup her chin, tilting her face to his so that his mouth could settle, oh, so lightly, over hers. For a few sweet seconds he kept the pressure light, his lips clinging tenderly to hers. She didn’t try to stop him, didn’t want to stop him, and he must have sensed that, for he gently pulled his mouth from hers, cleared his throat, released her safety belt, and proceeded to turn her upside down and inside out. Before she even knew what was happening to her, he had her on his lap, his hands under her sweater, and his tongue down her throat. And still she couldn’t do anything but hang on and let it rip.

  Rip it did, right along every nerve ending, burning and soothing in the same flash and leaving a desperate awareness in its path. She had not consciously, willingly felt so much in years, and she realized with mingled dismay and relief that she needed it, craved it. Him. What she needed, what she wanted, was him. But how...why...what if...? All the questions and doubts were right there, ready to ambush her...and she made the decision to push them away, to be normal again, even if it meant being needy and desperate and foolish.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and fought back with every feminine wile she possessed—and had him panting and trembling within seconds. For the first time in a long time, she truly felt that she was in control, and she knew suddenly that control was what she’d been working so hard to achieve. Funny how she may have found it just by letting go. But she was in no mood to analyze. She was in the mood to feel, and what she wanted to feel was Morgan.

  With only that thought in mind, she straddled him, negotiating her position clumsily in the confined space until she could rest on her knees, her legs spread wide to span his thighs. He released his hold on her, but refused to relinquish her mouth, cupping her face with his hands to prevent her from pulling away, not that she wanted to. She wanted just the opposite, in fact, and when she pushed his jacket off his shoulders and began forcing the sleeves down his arms, he finally seemed to understand and broke the kiss just long enough to get out of it and yank his T-shirt off over his head.

  When he pulled her head back down to his, she laughed and let her hands roam over the solid muscles of his chest and arms, marveling at the crispness of reddish brown hair and the warmth of his skin. He made a sound deep in his throat, and his arms came around her again, pulling her tight against him. She slid her hands over his shoulders and pushed them down between his back and the back of the seat, all the way down to the waistband of his jeans and downward still to the tautness of his buttocks. Groaning, he slid to the edge of the seat and arched his back, pushing upward against the apex of her thighs. Electricity lanced through her. He thrust both hands beneath her sweater and flattened them against her back, pressing her breasts to his chest, a most unsatisfactory arrangement, as far as she was concerned, and yet one that he seemed unwilling to rectify until she pushed her hands stubbornly against his chest.

  He growled a complaint as she pulled her mouth from his, but when she grabbed at the hem of her sweater, he leaped to help her get it off, and when it was gone, he reached around her for the hook of her bra. She raked the straps over her shoulders herself and, holding his gaze with hers, let it fall away as she settled once more onto his lap and slowly leaned forward. He reached up and tangled his hands in her hair, pulling her down to him.

  The first shock of skin against skin took her breath away, and then the spreading warmth of her breasts as she pressed them against his chest had her gasping and dragging in great gulps of air, until his mouth found hers, fastened and pulled her into him, so that she could no longer tell where he left off and she began. His hands dropped down to knead the bare skin of her back, imparting warmth and desire and an exquisite sense of belonging somewhere and to someone at last, even if it was only for the moment. Her tongue danced with his in a sensuous ballet of sliding, parrying thrusts, while her wandering hands gave his permission to roam.

  Their every movement spread tingling, burning awareness that pooled in the pit of her belly. Bubbling, liquid desire. Heaven and hell in one all-encompassing moment. He found the heavy swells of her breasts and lifted them, cupped them, stroked them to throbbing peaks until she thrust against him, quivering and seeking hotter, more intense heat. He wrapped her in his arms and tried to crush her into the pores of his skin, and she willingly let him try, so much so that it was some time before she realized that he was slowly, inexorably pulling away.

  When finally his hands settled lightly at her waist and he laid his head back against the seat to catch his breath, she knew that it was over. She flipped her hair out of her face and drew back, her forearms resting atop his shoulders, to speak a question with her eyes.

  Sighing, he smoothed her hair with his hands. “When we make love,” he explained huskily, “it will be just that, love and nothing else.”

  She knew what he was telling her. She might be willing, finally, to just feel alive again, but he needed more. She stroked her fingertips against his temple and answered him as honestly as she could. “I can’t promise you that.”

  “I know,” he said, “not yet.”

  “Maybe never.”

  “And maybe tomorrow,” he said, “if you have the courage.”

  Courage. How long had it been since she’d been willing to take the slightest risk, to chance the smallest pain? But even the most craven of cowards had to begin somewhere. She kne
w suddenly that if she had the merest chance of accepting what he tried so valiantly to give, she had to begin now. But not with him. She had left too much undone and unrisked before she’d met him. It was time to go back and take the paths she had rejected before. Then maybe she could work her way back to Morgan.

  “I’m going to spend Thanksgiving with my family,” she said suddenly.

  If he was surprised, he gave no indication of it. Instead he smoothed his hands up her back and said, “We’ll miss you, Pop and I. I’ll miss you. I’ll always miss you.”

  His kiss, this time, was reassuring and supportive, with only a hint of the passion he had just shown her. It made it all right, somehow, that she was sitting half naked astride his lap in a truck that wasn’t quite as far off the road as it should have been. He helped her dress, hooking up her bra and pulling her sweater over her head before tugging on his own T-shirt and jacket. Only when they were fully clothed again did she slide off his lap and twist into her own seat. He stayed beside her, smoothing her hair with his hands and smiling, his gaze moving over her leisurely, admiringly, until she began to blush and then to laugh because she seemed to have it backward.

  That was the trouble with her. She seemed to get so much backward, like being an adult when she should have been an adolescent and vice versa or becoming pregnant before she realized how deeply she wanted a child and pushing away everyone she most needed and wanted at the very moment that the need was most acute. She had a lot to get right, and she wasn’t sure where or what she would be after the attempt, but she knew now that she was going to try. She knew now that remembering meant more than she’d believed. She wanted—and Jeremy deserved—all of it, the good and the bad, the joy and the pain. That’s what she had to find a way to hold on to. She just didn’t know yet if she could do it and hold on to Morgan, too.

  Chapter Seven

  It was difficult, more difficult than she had even imagined. Her parents wept when they saw her. Troy and May, who had driven up to Kansas City from their home in Springfield, were entirely too cheerful and insisted on knowing why Morgan hadn’t come with her. She had to explain to everyone about Morgan. He was her landlord, okay, her friend. She didn’t know herself if he was anything more than that. Privately, she replayed that episode in the truck at the side of the road over and over in her mind, marveling that she’d had the courage to do such a thing, wondering if he was thinking about it, too. What did it mean, that moment? Ultimately, did it really mean anything?

  After Thanksgiving dinner, her mother and father wanted her to visit Jeremy’s grave with them, but she couldn’t do it. She hadn’t done it since the day they’d buried him. After they left, her younger sister Cayla, a schoolteacher who had not yet married, scolded her for being selfish and maudlin and ungrateful. Troy had defended her, pointing out to Cayla that she couldn’t possibly understand what it meant to love or lose a child. But Cayla’s condemnation hurt—and made her think. In the end she followed her parents to the cemetery and stood with them sobbing over Jeremy’s grave. They spent the remainder of the evening looking at photographs and talking about him. It was sometimes funny and sometimes heartbreaking. Cayla, no longer cowed by Troy’s lecture, pronounced the whole thing macabre, but Denise suspected that her little sister was in denial, and she wondered silently if her own experience with marriage and Jeremy’s loss had anything to do with Cayla’s defensiveness and the fact that she had never married. Of course, at twenty-eight Cayla was young yet. To Denise, Cayla seemed decades younger than her own thirty-five years.

  Or was it that Denise felt decades older than her true age?

  Denise spent the night in her old room in her parents’ house, then made ready to return home to Jasper after breakfast the next day. Leaving was surprisingly painless, despite the need to sedate Smithson and wrestle him into his carrier. He’d been his usual prickly self all during the holiday, but she had forgiven him his standoffishaess when he’d curled up next to her at night, as if sensing that she needed his warmth. When it was time to go, her parents hugged her and thanked her for coming. Nothing more was said about Jeremy, and no one suggested that she decide where to spend the Christmas holidays just then. Having taken her leave of her siblings the night before, Denise simply got into the car and started off. She headed south, but on the edge of the city limits she turned around and went back.

  She drove past the turnoff to her parents’ house and then took herself over the state line into Kansas and finally to the place where she and Jeremy had lived those last precious years together. The small frame house was gone, as were all the others that had comprised the block, to make way for an office building and parking garage. She hadn’t known that it was gone, but it seemed appropriate somehow. If Jeremy couldn’t live there, why should anyone else? She drove to the park where they’d spent so many hours. The swings and merry-go-rounds had been freshly painted and some picnic tables and new water fountains had been installed. She parked the car at the curb, got out and sat at one of the tables under the leafless trees, and saw Jeremy again, running and laughing, touching the sky with his feet as she pushed him in the swing, bawling when she cleaned the knee he’d skinned on the slide. She saw him dirty and smiling and happy with his friends. Finally, she rose and went back to the car. She had one more stop to make.

  The intersection where Jeremy and his friends had been hit by a van with faulty brakes had been changed, too. A traffic light had been erected where only a stop sign had stood before. A crosswalk had been drawn, and a bus stop had been added. Absolutely no clue remained to alert a busy world that once a precious little boy had died in the middle of the street. Denise sat on the bench at the bus stop dabbing at her tears with a crumpled tissue. A kindly middle-aged black woman joined her and asked if anything was wrong. Denise found herself explaining haltingly how Jeremy had died. The woman had lost a grown daughter at the hands of an abusive lover. The bus came and went. Their stories told, the two embraced and parted with smiles of commiseration. Denise had not even asked her name or told her own, but she had faced a demon that day and helped another woman face her own, the demon of senseless loss.

  It was late in the evening before Denise arrived, exhausted, at the apartment. Smithson was awake and restless and demanding to be let out of his carrier. As she sat the carrier on the ground in front of the apartment and put the key in the lock, she noticed that Morgan and a tall, darkhaired young man were sitting on the porch of his house sipping cups of what Denise took to be coffee. She felt raw, vulnerable, too much so for a meeting with Morgan Holt, but when he rose and called out to her, she left the carrier where it was and walked over to say hello and be introduced to Radley.

  Both were wearing heavy sweaters over turtlenecks and jeans, but though they were dressed alike Morgan’s son did not particularly resemble him. His features were too narrow, his hair too dark, but he had the vibrant blue eyes bequeathed to him by his father and grandfather. Radley smiled and nodded his head almost shyly when introduced to her.

  “Care to join us for a cup of tea?” Morgan asked.

  She lifted her eyebrows at that. Morgan Holt did not strike her as the sort of man to drink hot tea. Seeing her reaction, Radley laughed and explained, “I still haven’t learned to drink coffee myself, and it’s too chilly out for cold drinks, but I always enjoy a cup of tea. My grandmother taught me to drink it when I was kid.”

  “I used to drink tea with my grandmother,” Denise told him.

  “Which brings us back to my original question,” Morgan said smoothly, holding his cup aloft. “Care to join us?”

  Denise shook her head, but before she could explain that she wanted nothing with caffeine for fear it would interfere with badly needed sleep, Radley said, “We were just talking about indulging in something a little stronger. Maybe you’d like to join us for a real drink.”

  Denise remembered all too well what had happened the last time she and Morgan Holt had partaken of “real drink” together and flatly refused. “No. No, t
hank you. I have to see to my cat and unpack and... Well, I wouldn’t want to intrude. Besides,” she added quickly, reading protest in Morgan’s eyes. “I’m tired.”

  Protest softened to compassion. “Rough trip?”

  She nodded. “But rewarding.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  “And your own holiday?”

  “Fine.” He frowned and shrugged. “Dad didn’t quite seem himself.” He smiled again. “But Radley was here, and that made all the difference. We had sort of an allmale Thanksgiving.”

  “Mom freaked,” Radley said matter-of-factly, “but it was kind of fun, Grandpa, Dad and me.”

  Denise didn’t know what to say to that, and apparently neither did Morgan, whose smile grew lame. In the midst of the silence, Reiver got up from his place on the welcome mat, stretched, yawned and padded down the steps. Denise quickly looked away from the sight of the big dog lifting his leg to relieve himself on the shrubbery that grew around the foundation of the house.

  She cleared her throat, pretending that she wasn’t embarrassed. “Well, I’ll just say good-night now. You two enjoy your evening.”

  Both Morgan and Radley were holding in chuckles. Morgan did a commendable job of straightening his face and said, “I’ll walk you to your door.”

  She bit her lip to keep from pointing out the obvious, that it was hardly necessary, given that her door was within plain sight. He came down the steps and took her arm, sliding his hand up into the curve of her elbow, then down the length of her arm until his big hand closed lightly around it just above her wrist. The contact was electric in the extreme. It was all she could do to keep from flinching as he turned her away from the porch.

  “Oh, nice to meet you, Radley,” she said over her shoulder, completely as an afterthought.

  He was grinning like the proverbial cat who ate the canary. “Same here, Denise, er, Ms. Jenkins.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him that he could use her given name if he liked, but just then Morgan’s hand slid over her wrist, bringing it palm to palm with her own. His long, strong fingers curled around hers. She swallowed the words, her breath catching in her chest. He led her along the walk. They were four or five yards from her front door when he said, “Are you okay?”