Anything for Her Marriage

He carefully, but quickly, removed her to the floor, then yanked the comforter and sheet back up over his bare shoulders, taking in the pristine simplicity of this room as compared with the living room. Ivory walls, nearly bare floors save for a couple of floral-patterned rugs, linen tab curtains over the wooden blinds. A couple of paintings, a hand-painted chest and a cheval mirror pretty much did it. The bed was the only really fancy thing in the room, its black wrought-iron headboard nearly matching the gate in the living room.

Memories of Nancy’s hands, clamped to that headboard, shot through him.

A shiver raced over his skin. Cripes, it was cold. And it did not escape his attention, morning-fogged though his brain might be, that the naked, sweetly scented woman with whom he’d shared this bed last night wasn’t nestled against his chest, all warm and soft. His body groused a little in regret. His brain, which was rapidly clearing, was extremely grateful.

He glanced at the clock by Nancy’s bed: 7:14. The light filtering through the open blinds was weak, pale, like someone recovering from a lengthy illness. He felt much the same way—wiped out, depleted, unsure of his footing.

Petrified. Sated, yes, but petrified.

She was something else. He blew a stiff whuh of air through his lips, remembering how a single well-placed caress had taken her over the edge before they’d even fully undressed. He’d never known a woman to be that responsive, could be that responsive. Had never known a woman’s cries of fulfillment could make his heart burst like that. The way she looked at him afterward….

“Bless you,” her smile had said.

Minutes later, she’d taken—no, welcomed—him inside her, trembling with eagerness, a fierce need to share…comfort…succor. She was an erotic combination of madonna-lover-friend-stranger who resurrected old, forgotten fantasies while forever obliterating them as well. And he’d been just as eager, just as fierce, plunging deeply, then deeper still, until she gasped again with expectant pleasure. Her fingers were soft and smooth against his face as she rose to meet him over and over and over until it was no longer the warmth of her body enveloping him, but her very soul. The explosive power of his own release shattered him, and he cried out, his eyes shut against a haze of crimson as her sweet, exquisite convulsions ferried him back to earth.

When he’d recovered enough to look at her face, she was beaming, inordinately pleased with herself.

And for him.

He hadn’t had the heart—or maybe it was the guts—to leave. Or the willpower to turn down an encore. Or three.

Now he groaned, sat up in the bed. Not that he was surprised, mind, but didn’t it figure that the woman with whom he’d just had the greatest sex in his life was the one woman he didn’t dare have it with again?

He wasn’t a complete fool. Nancy’s generosity came at a price: she fully expected to get as good as she gave. And she damn well deserved it, too. Just as he’d suspected, she withheld nothing. A fount of emotions, in all shapes, sizes and colors, she said whatever popped into her head, did whatever struck her at the moment, made love with an abandon and ingenuousness that took his breath away.

Oh, sure, she said this was just a one-time thing. But he saw that hope in her eyes. That need.

The sooner he stopped this, the better. This—she—would never do. Not even for a fling, contrary to his body’s imploring. The risk was far too great.

Nancy Shapiro represented everything he’d learned was foolhardy from the time he was a little boy. In a way, he almost envied her, but he could never be like her, letting his emotions run riot like that. Passion was an excess, a human weakness he had to strictly control. Love inevitably, inexorably, led to pain. And anger—the flip side of love—only led to acts or words almost invariably regretted, but rarely forgiven.

There was little to be gained by giving passion its head. Hadn’t he been able to hold on to his sanity through the divorce only by remaining calm and rational, by not reacting to Claire’s accusations and histrionic outbursts in his lawyer’s office? Had he opened the Pandora’s box of resentment and betrayal and pain that tried a hundred, a thousand, times to leech past his defenses, to remind him of things best forgotten, the already tense proceedings could have easily degenerated into a dogfight. For his children’s sake, he had refused to let that happen. It simply wouldn’t have been right.

So maybe his life wasn’t perfect. But whose was? Keeping things on an even keel was far preferable to a roller-coaster ride of emotional mayhem…and that’s what a relationship with Nancy Shapiro would be. He’d known it from the beginning, and last night had only reinforced his conviction.

Keeping her in his life would be like letting someone store a ticking bomb in his garage. Even though his last earthly thought would probably be of last night, never were two people less suited for each other.

The little calico had circumnavigated the bed, jumped back up on Nancy’s side, and was making sure strides back in Rod’s direction. Whoever coined the term “pussyfooting” had clearly not met this cat. Before she could stake her claim, however, Rod untangled himself from the creamy sheets and stood, immediately shivering in the still chilly room.

He made a quick trip into the adjoining bathroom, then dressed, furtively, aware of Nancy’s voice drifting in from another part of the house.

In a half hour, he told himself, it would be all over. But right now, he felt as if someone had taken a pumpkin scraper to his insides. He stepped from the room, dislodging Bruiser from the nest he’d made in the lining of his jacket before slipping it on, then followed the sound of Nancy’s voice to the kitchen.

She was on the phone, her back to him, the extra-long cord stretched to the max across the room. A Dr. Seuss nightmare of a cat with a mane and extravagant leggings, but otherwise shorn, sat on the counter, batting at the coiled cord, while two others were exchanging mild words over whose turn it was at the food dish.

Under other circumstances, he would have laughed. The gloriously sexy creature of a few hours ago now looked like a Muppet. Not only was she dressed in a scruffy, furry robe in an amazing shade of lurid pink, her feet encased in a pair of heavy white socks, but she’d done nothing with her hair, which stood out from her head like Medusa’s snakes. The fact that Rod found her disarray arousing only reinforced the treacherousness of the situation. He stood at the door, mildly aware he was eavesdropping.

“Ma… Ma!” One hand came down onto the counter, sending at least two cats fleeing for their lives. “That’s not true, and you know it!”

Uh-oh.

“I was going to call you, but you always beat me to it.” Normally, her New Jersey twang was soft-edged enough not to really notice it. This morning, however, it was out in full force. Frowning, she reached up to her windowsill, plucking off a dead leaf from an ivy plant. “I know it was New Year’s Eve. Which is why I wasn’t home? What? You expect me to call you from my cell phone in the middle of a party. Oh, please don’t start in again about this….”

Her head dropped back; he saw her take a deep breath, then sag against the counter. “How many times we gonna go over the same ground? I moved here totally of my own free will.” She covered her mouth with her hand, then let it drop. “What’s in Jersey for me, Ma?… Well, I’m sorry, but I think I’m a little old to be living with my parents—”

Rod sneezed—there was enough cat fur floating in the air to make coats for a small country—and Nancy spun around. The frown on her face vanished, replaced by that incandescent smile.

Damn.

“Okay, okay…” She raised her hand, her mouth open, trying to get a word in edgewise. “Ma—I gotta go… Okay, okay, I promise, I’ll call you later… No, I don’t know when… No one’s asking you to stay by the phone, Ma. Look, I really have to go…yes, I promise… Yeah, Ma. I love you and Daddy, too.”

She hung up the wall phone, but didn’t let go right away. Her forehead braced on her arm, she seemed to be working on getting her respiration back to normal. Funny. Rod and his father had never had fights. Not like that.

“I take it you and your mother aren’t on the best of terms?”

Her laugh into her sleeve was harsh. “Let’s just say her concept of maternal devotion includes the terms manipulative and suffocating.” She turned to Rod. “My ex may have had little to recommend him, but he at least got me out of Jersey and away from Belle the Wonder Maven.”

She’d started to smile again, but apparently something in his expression—stark terror, perhaps—cut it off at the pass. Her arms tucked themselves against her ribs as she jerked back to look out the window, began the nervous chatter of the night before. “I told you the snow wouldn’t amount to anything. I don’t think we even got an inch of fresh last night—”

“Nancy.”

She bent her head slightly, the wild curls slipping forward as if to offer her comfort. “Last night was really good,” she said, one hand knotting, then unknotting, on the counter. “Actually, last night was indescribable. And to think I’d been afraid—” She cut herself off, faced him again. A shaky smile warmed her lips even as confusion simmered in her eyes. “Let’s not screw it up by talking, okay?” She pushed herself away from the counter, walked over to the refrigerator. “I have eggs, at least,” she said, opening the door. “How do you like them? Or there’s frozen waffles, I think.” A cloud of frost tumbled from the freezer when she opened it and started poking among all those green boxes.

Now Rod knew why one-night stands weren’t his thing. Torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to bolt, he said, “I’m not hungry. I’m also not leaving this house until you hear what I have to say.”

The door slowly swung closed. Her fingers still clamped around the handle, she said, “Isn’t this backward? I mean, isn’t it usually the woman who wants to talk?”

“Isn’t it a little late for us to be thinking in terms of convention?”

She huffed a sigh. “Good point.” Then turned. “So talk already.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, looked out the window for a second, then back at her, avoiding those eyes, already littered with fragments of hope. “Okay, look—originality’s not my strong suit, especially before 8:00 a.m. So—cliché number twenty-seven. Last night was very special.” He stepped close enough to brush a corkscrew curl away from her face; it sproinged right back. “Like you.”

The ginger tabby jumped up on the counter, brr-upping at her. She picked it up, cuddling it against her chest. “But?”

“But…nothing’s changed. This isn’t going to develop into a relationship.”

Her calmness scared him, because it seemed so against her nature. She rubbed the side of her nose, not looking at him, then retucked her arm against her middle.

“It’s not that I didn’t know this, going in,” she said, almost to herself. “Even had a list of reasons why you and I would never work.” Now she tilted her head. “Unfortunately, three-quarters of those reasons no longer seem to make sense this morning. So, just because that’s the kind of gal I am, I have to ask, why?”

He wished he was dead. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But you can’t change the rules after you’ve played the game.” Man. Talk about sounding lame. “You even said as much, that you just wanted the one night.”

“And you said you didn’t do casual sex.”

“I don’t. And it wasn’t.” Her brows rose. “Just because it was an isolated incident doesn’t mean I considered it casual.”

“I see. So, I’ll ask again, since you still haven’t answered the question—why, exactly, is this a one-time thing? I mean, we’re both single, and I assume you found me at least attractive enough to do it with once. No, wait—it was four times, wasn’t it?”