A Holiday Fling (13 page)

"If you’d proposed I might have said yes, but that wasn’t the right time, my love," she said seriously. "We were at the beginning of our careers. We needed to grow into our adult selves. In the last dozen years, I’ve met tons of men, dated a fair number, fancied myself in love a time or two. Now that I’ve looked over the field, I know the best when I see him. I’m ready to swim into deeper waters. Are you?"

He winced. Heaven was being offered, but not yet within reach. "I have to go to Argentina next week, and I’ll be there for at least four months, probably longer."

"I’m going to be madly busy for the next few months as well. But if we dig out our appointment books, surely we can find a time to start living together."

For the first time, he really believed that she meant it.
She really meant it!

"No living together." He thought of his mother, who wanted him to marry a nice Ohio kind of girl. She’d freak at the sight of glamorous Jenny—then fall in love with her. "I’m from the Midwest, you know. If I’m going to take you home to meet the family, it will have to be marriage."

She bit one enchanting lip. "Are you sure you wouldn’t rather live together for a year or two? We’re both going to have to do some adjusting. I want to keep the cottage and spend a fair amount of the year in England. In fact, I’ll have to for the future Revels productions. You might not want that. And we’ll both have to cut back on our professional obligations if we’re ever going to spend any time together."

These were serious issues, so he considered them for about three seconds. "All true, but doable. I love the idea of having a home in England and a home here. I love the idea of
this
home. I love your family, and having Plato trot around carrying his buggy whip. I love the idea of taking fewer jobs so I can spend lots and lots of time with you.

"Most of all, I love you." He caught her gaze with his. "I don’t want to go into this with one hand on the doorknob so I can back out if we hit a few rough spots. I want the real thing, Jenny—an old-fashioned, till-death-do-us part marriage."

Her shining smile could have lit up the whole London Underground. "How deliciously Neanderthal. Very well, we shall marry. My family will be over the moon. My mother and Patricia have been making pointed comments about how much they like you and how well you fit into Upper Bassett." She growled deep in her throat as she kissed him again. "But before we start looking for wedding dates, can we play Tarzan and Jane?"

"Sure," he said obligingly. "Which role do you want?"

Bubbling with laughter, she rolled off the sofa, taking him with her onto the thick carpet. "You can be Tarzan this time. Then it will be my turn."

Tenderly he cupped her face between his hands. "You’re so beautiful, Jenny. So heart-stoppingly beautiful."

Some of her sparkle faded. "Appreciating beauty is a big part of what you do, Greg, but I hope to heaven you don’t think you love me because of my looks. Will you leave me when I get gray and plump and wrinkled?"

Startled, he recognized the insecurity under her words. He studied her beloved face. She wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup and fine lines showed at the comers of her eyes. It wasn’t the face of a film icon, but a real woman—the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

"I’ll love every wrinkle and gray hair and soft curve, and give thanks for the chance to see them develop. If I were struck blind tomorrow, I’d still laugh at your jokes and rub your back when you’re tired and talk to you long into every night because I love your ideas and humor and kindness and... and your general wonderfulness." He kissed her as if she were made of the finest porcelain.

"I hate that we’re not going to see each other for months. Maybe you can arrange your shooting schedule to come down for a few days? We can have a Groundhog’s Day holiday fling."

"I’m sure Marcus will be able to arrange for me to have a few days with you, since it will improve my morale so much. But no more holiday flings, my love," she whispered. "Every day with you will be a holiday."

The End

Page forward for

Seduced by Sloth

A Short Story

Seduced by Sloth

A Short Story

by

Mary Jo Putney

New York Times Bestselling Author

It was too... damned... hot. Sweat pouring off her after a five-mile run, Kerry Roland wavered to a halt and leaned against the wooden fence running behind the row of townhouses. Her house was only half a block away, but at the moment that seemed like light years.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d gone for her run first thing in the morning, before the July heat got too bad, but she’d had to go into the office for several hours. Now it was Saturday afternoon with the sun high in the sky.

A gate in the fence swung open and a male face looked out inquiringly. "Ah, it’s you, Kerry. I thought the fence had been clipped by a car roaring down the alley too fast."

Hal Gordon was a neighbor she knew casually from the times her running intersected with his dog walking. "I didn’t hit it that hard, Hal!" She tried not to gasp like a beached whale. "I just decided to rest in the shade before going home."

"If you say so." He surveyed her panting form. "You look wiped. Want to come in and have some iced tea while you recover?"

She hesitated, torn. A pile of financial statements waited to be read at home, but with her boyfriend Troy away until tomorrow, the weekend would be quiet. It would be nice to chat with an actual human being for a few minutes. "That would be super."

Hal held the gate open for her. Dressed in casual khaki shorts and a blue polo shirt, he had wavy brown hair and gray eyes. Average height, average build, pleasant looking in an unobtrusive way. Not at all like Troy—but his back yard was Shangri-La.

"Awesome," she breathed as she stepped inside, her gaze sweeping over masses of flowers and shrubs, the shaded patio, and a miniature waterfall that tinkled musically in one corner. "I’ve been running down this alley for two years, and I had no idea what lurked behind your fence."

Ice cubes rattled as he poured tea from an insulated pitcher. "I bought this house for the landscaping, and I keep adding to it." He gestured for her to take one of the two shaded loungers, then stretched out on the other.

She sat sideways, feet on the ground and elbows resting on her knees as she recovered from her run. Hal’s basset hound, Bilbo Baggins, lay on his back in front of her, crooked legs in the air. She scratched the dog’s stomach. "This hound is as close to comatose as any animal I’ve ever seen."

"Sloth is his middle name. Isn’t he a great role model?"

"Not for my business." She swigged gratefully at the iced tea. "You’d never make it in corporate America, Bilbo."

The dog opened his eyes, yawned, then went back to sleep.

"As I said, he’s a fine role model," Hal said fondly.

"He is the essence of basset hound." She sighed. "I hate to admit that even though we’ve lived on the same block for two years, I don’t know what you do." If Hal hadn’t been the friendly sort who’d introduced himself when she moved in, she wouldn’t even have known his name.

"I teach high school science."

"I’m a teacher." Mentally she pulled herself back. "Or rather, I used to be."

"You didn’t like teaching? It’s not for everyone."

She stared down at her drink. "Actually, I really kind of liked it. The kids were a lot of fun, and I loved seeing them light up when an exciting new idea struck."

"Why did you quit?"

"I got tired of the lousy money." She shrugged uncomfortably. "And even more tired of all the people who said, ‘You graduated from Johns Hopkins with honors, and you teach in a public school?’"

"I hear that, too. So I ask who they’d rather have teaching
their
children—smart people who love teaching, or those who teach because they can’t do anything else?"

"Great answer. I wish I’d thought of it." Instead, she’d felt as if she was wasting her abilities. "Being a broker is pretty cool, though. Lots of challenges. Really keeps the adrenaline pumping."

"Is that why you run—to work off tension after a day of work?"

"Partly that, but more to keep in shape." Most of all, she thought, because Troy would be disappointed if she let herself go. Disappointed? He’d be horrified.

Hal settled more deeply into the lounger, a portrait in relaxation. "You and I had opposite career arcs. I started out on Wall Street, then became a teacher."

She blinked. "Why?"

"Because I like doing something that matters. Not to mention having the summers off."

"I miss that." She thought wistfully about the summer she’d spent hostelling around Europe, the time she’d worked on an Indian reservation in South Dakota, her cross country drive from Baltimore to Alaska and back. Low budget vacations, but fun.

Of course, now she could afford things like the luxury Panama Canal cruise she and Troy had taken this past January. The cruise had cost more than those three summer holidays put together. She’d loved watching porpoises and catching up on her reading, though Troy had twitched at being cut off from his e-mail. It had been the first vacation she’d taken that was more than four days long since she started working as a broker.