A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father: A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father

“I didn’t name her, okay? Some lady we were working for, it had been her mother’s cat, only the old lady died and her daughter was allergic. Damn thing glommed on to me from the moment I walked into her house, so she asked me if I wanted her.”

“And you actually said yes.”

“She’d already asked, like, ten people. It was me or the pound. Anyway, look at that face—how could I say no to that face?”

Another laugh. “And you actually call her Maybelline?”

“Actually, I call her Belly. For obvious reasons.”

Sitting on the arm of the sofa and purring loud enough to rattle skulls in a five-mile radius, Belly shot an offended look in Eli’s direction, although with one eye partly closed and her snaggleteeth on full display the effect was kinda lost. One ear was half-bitten off—Eli didn’t want to know what she’d tangled with, or what condition she’d left the other guy in—and it’d been a while since she’d let him brush out the knots in her fur. He supposed maybe she didn’t give the best first impression.

Now, sensing some lovin’ in the offing, she jumped down and trotted over to Eli, her saggy belly swaying from side to side. In one swipe, Belly coated the bottom of his jeans with a half inch of cat fur. Eli scooped her up to roughly scratch under her chin, getting her motor going full throttle. Cat did love her chin rubs.

“You. With a cat. Unbelievable.” Tess grinned, for a second looking almost like the girl he used to know. A moment later, though, she swiped the red Netflix envelope off the end table next to her, slipping out the sleeved disk. “Bond, huh?” she said, and Eli thought, Why are you still here?

Because she was making him feel maybe not so protective, which was in turn making him twitchy. He scratched the cat harder.

“Not just Bond. Craig’s Bond.”

“I’m a Brosnan girl, myself.”

“Get out.” Please.

“What can I say?” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I like suave…oh, hell—”

Cat went flying when Eli lunged forward to catch Tess as her knees buckled. She molded herself to his chest—what the hell?—only to immediately shove away again, shaking her head. Good call.

“You need to sit,” he said, trying to make her sit.

“I don’t need to sit. I’m fine, I’m—”

Tears bloomed in her eyes before she pushed past him to the door. Except she wobbled again, crashing into an armchair.

“For God’s sake, Tess—!”

She wheeled on him. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve watched a movie with another adult?”

That thud he heard in his head would be any hope of getting her out of his house before one of them did something stupid. Because clearly whatever she’d been keeping locked up inside her was only now lurching to the surface. And, since she was there to begin with at his insistence, dumping her now probably wouldn’t be cool.

Yeah, this would be a good time for the evil, scum-sucking side of his personality to kick in. If he’d had one. “You’re more than welcome to stay and watch—”

“That’s not the point!” Tess cried, charging him. Flailing a bit. “The point is…” She stopped, shaking her head, looking a little wild-eyed. “The point is, that there is no point! To any of it!”

She’d started pacing his living room like she was fixing to lift off any moment. Maybe not the best time to interrupt the flow.

“You know what I felt when Ricky said he wanted a divorce? Relief. That I could finally stop holding my breath, because it was over. He was officially no longer my responsibility! No more lying awake at night, worrying…no more wondering when he’d be home, if he’d even make it home…no more going around with a fake smile plastered across my face, pretending that everything was just hunky-dory when all I wanted to do was hit something, somebody, only to find out he’d fallen out of love with me! All that worrying for nothing, Eli! Nothing!”

She closed in on him, fists raised; although she couldn’t have hurt him if she tried, Eli grabbed her wrists, then wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight as all hell broke loose, as she railed against her husband for leaving her and the kids for months on end, for coming back from Iraq only to leave her for good. Then, somehow, they were on the couch, and he was holding her in his lap—just trying to comfort her, stop the emotional hemorrhage—when he all of a sudden realized they were kissing, seriously kissing with tongue and everything, and while on one level he was enjoying it and all, in the back of his mind he thought, Dude—seriously messed up.

And wasn’t now a helluva time for the growing-up thing to kick in?

So he wrenched their mouths apart and said, “This is just you being drunk and upset,” and she said, “Yeah, so?” and planted another one on him, and blood rushed hither and yon, doing what rushing blood will do, and it occurred to him watching movies wasn’t all Tess hadn’t done with another adult in a long time.

Especially when she mumbled, “Please tell me you’ve got condoms.”

Chapter Two

With more regret than the world would ever know, Eli put some distance—not enough, but some—between him and the woman currently responsible for an erection so hard his ears were ringing.

“Honey—you don’t really want this.”

Her answer to that was to unzip her running suit top and struggle out of it, tossing it over her shoulder, her exercise bra no match for her nipples’ attempts to punch right through the stretchy fabric. “And if you don’t touch my breasts within the next two seconds, I may have to kill you.” When Eli shook his head, she clamped her hands around his face and stared him right in the eye. “They hurt, Eli. I hurt—”

“And you’re going to hurt ten times worse if we do this.” She smacked his shoulder. “What the hell—?”

“Since when do you become honorable?” she said, smacking him again, although her hundred pounds—if that—were barely gonna make an impression on his one-eighty. “Geez, Eli—you sleep with anything with hooters! So how come you choose now to rustle up some scruples?”

She gasped when he grabbed her wrists, jerking her into silence. Bringing their faces within kissing distance again, he ground out, “I do not, and never have, slept with every woman who came on to me. And I sure as hell am not gonna take advantage of somebody who’s only looking for a little stress relief!”

Her swollen mouth set, Tess locked gazes with him for a long moment, then reached up and took off her bra. Eli groaned. And stared. What? Like he was gonna look away? Then he frowned.

“They’re bigger.”

“Yeah, two kids’ll do that. So. You got condoms or what?”

“Yeah, I got condoms. But you hate me.”

That seemed to sober her for a moment. Then, smiling, she thrust her hands through his hair and kissed him again, open-mouthed and hot and slow and thorough, and his scruples packed up their little bags and began to shuffle off, sighing. Day-um, the woman could kiss. Then she finally came up for air, pressed her forehead to his and ground certain eager body parts to his equally eager body parts and said, panting, “I’m drunk and mad and horny and half-naked. Could you please just shut up and go with the flow here?” And it occurred to him that he’d hurt her a lot more by rejecting her than simply doing what she wanted.

At least, that’s the story he was going with.

So he wound her more tightly around him and stood, carrying her into the bedroom, not even bothering to pull back the covers before he dropped her on the bed and ripped off her bicycle shorts and cotton panties, realizing he was more than a little pissed off himself as he stripped off his own clothes and yanked open the dresser drawer.

“So, you want me to just—”

“Yes,” she hissed, getting to her knees to yank him onto the bed. Snatching the condom out of his hand, she shoved him on his back, straddling him, sheathing him. A moment later they were joined, her long nails gouging his shoulders as she rode him, tears streaming down her cheeks, splashing onto Eli’s chest, making him madder still. He thrust up into her, hard, no finesse, making her moan and hiss and cry out.

Then he lifted her up and off, making her moan again—from distress, most likely—only to flip her onto her back and plunge into her…and she clutched the wrinkled bedspread in her fists and arched into him, whimpering, her lower lip caught between her teeth a moment before she crossed her ankles at the small of his back and drove him higher, tighter, even though he knew he must be hurting her, if it’d been a year or more since she’d—

She sank her teeth into his neck, not hard enough to draw blood—he didn’t think—but hard enough to make him jerk, then she licked the spot and blew on it, and he thought he’d lose his mind even as he did lose control, driving into her over and over and over until she screamed, clutching at his back as she tried to get on top of the orgasm.

But damned if he would let her, pushing her up, up, up until she had to curl forward to keep from banging into the headboard, shuddering his own release into her interminably pulsing warmth.

Afterward, annoyed, he collapsed on top of her, panting, fully expecting her to shove him off, get up, get dressed and demand he take her home. Instead she wrapped herself around him, all sweaty and smelling of woodsmoke and girly shampoo and sex, and whispered, her teeth grazing his earlobe, “How long until you’re ready again?”

Floored, Eli pushed back enough to look at her. “You’re not serious?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, dragging her nails down his arms, making him shudder, making things stir he wouldn’t’ve thought anywhere near ready to stir again, “I’m just getting started.”