Always Friday (9 page)

The feigned innocence in his tone made her look back at him.
“Would you happen to be the somebody?”

He grinned. “I couldn’t let some bozo buy it so he could sit
and drool over your face and fantasize about blue-haired sea nymphs nibbling
his toes.”

Tess widened her eyes and pursed her lips to fight back a
giggle. “Nibbling his toes?”

He shrugged and his grin widened devilishly. “It’s my
fantasy.” His hand slipped a little lower.

As his hand slid along the outer curve of her hip, she
almost came unglued. “Daniel,” she whispered, scolding. “There is a room full
of people here.”

He sighed and moved his hand. She giggled over the rim of
her champagne glass.

“Did you buy the one of your grandmother too?”

Daniel shook his head and gave her a look that almost fused
her beads. He leaned over and whispered, “My grandmother doesn’t turn me on.”

“Oh, there you two are!” Martha Craven bustled over,
smiling, and with her hands clasped beneath her chin. “Isn’t this a grand
affair? I want you to come meet a lovely couple here from Dallas, the Turners.
They bought the painting of me.” Whispering, she added, “The one of Olivia hasn’t
sold yet, and I think she’s a little miffed.”

Martha steered Dan and Tess back into the mainstream of the
party. They met the Turners, then they listened to the harpist who sat in a
corner amid the potted ferns and ficus trees. Later they sampled the buffet,
presided over by an ebullient Ivan in a green polka-dot ascot and Olivia in a
silk caftan painted with the markings of a monarch butterfly. They met and
mixed and smiled until after midnight, when the last of the many guests and
patrons left the gallery.

“Tired?” Dan asked as he drove Buttercup home.

She nodded and leaned her head back against the seat. “But
it’s a good tired. Didn’t Hook look smashing in his red silk pirate’s shirt? I’m
so happy for him. Every one of his paintings sold.”

“The gallery made a nice commission too.”

“Yes, I’m so pleased for Nancy.”

“Your partner?”

Tess nodded. “She can use the extra money. She’s divorced
and has three small children to support.”

“How did you two get together?”

“I met her when I was doing some volunteer work for the
battered women’s shelter. Oh, Dan, if you could have seen her then, it almost
broke my heart. She was so cowed and dispirited. It was awful. Now she hardly
looks or acts like the person I met a few months ago.”

When they pulled into the drive and stopped, Daniel reached
for her hand. “So you brought Nancy and the three kids home with you?”

“Only until we organized the gallery and she could find a
place of her own. She’s almost finished her degree in art history, you know.
She’s a very bright lady.”

“Gram told me you found Luis living in a box in an alley
behind the Strand. I’ll bet you were the kind of little girl who brought home
stray kittens and puppies.”

Tess laughed and snuggled close to his side. “I tried, but
it didn’t work out very well. I’m allergic to cats and dogs.”

Dan was quiet for a moment. Then he lifted her chin and very
gently kissed her. “Am I one of your strays, Tess?”

She only laughed again at his teasing and lifted her face to
his.

*    *    *

It was a glorious sunshiny morning—a perfect beach day. Dan
deposited Tess’s bagpipe into the back of a miniature pedal-driven surrey
covered with a red and white striped canopy.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather rent some roller skates?”
Tossing one long end of her fringed, tie-dyed scarf over her shoulder
aviator-style, she hitched up the legs of her screaming yellow jumpsuit and
climbed in.

“Not me. Olivia told me that’s the way she broke her hip.”
He grinned as they headed down the side of the boulevard. “Pedal, woman, or I’m
going to get a hernia.”

Tess laughed and started pedaling.

Tess and Dan had spent almost every moment of the past
several days together. They had toured historic homes and museums, visited Sea-Arama
and watched the dolphins and sharks. They had ridden the carousel and the
Ferris wheel at Stewart Beach and had played Monopoly and Scrabble, and in the
evening they had gone to a couple of old movies at the Opera House. Unfortunately,
most of the time they hadn’t been alone. And Tess decided it was tough to start
a romance when four chaperones watched their every move.

Today was different. It was theirs. Aunt Martha and Aunt
Olivia were tied up with their monthly, all-day Kaffeeklatsch; Hook was working
in his studio; and Ivan was giving a workshop on French sauces in Houston.

Each day, it seemed to Tess, another of Dan’s frown lines
disappeared. He was laughing more, relaxing more. Only rarely did she catch a
glimpse of the obsessive sobersides she’d met that day on the pier. She was
certain that a month ago he wouldn’t have been caught dead in the cornflower
blue sweatsuit he was wearing now. He was growing tan and faint sun-streaks
highlighted his hair. Although it hardly seemed possible, he had become more
handsome. And more desirable. Her toes curled just looking at him.

“Wake up, woman, and start pedaling. I’m doing all the work.”

Tess laughed again and resumed pumping.

After they lunched at one of the seafood restaurants that
faced the Gulf, they decided it was warm enough for sunbathing and went to the
car to fetch towels and lotion.

They found a secluded stretch of beach, deserted except for
a few sandpipers scampering back and forth as the waves gently teased and
retreated along the shore.

“This looks like a good spot,” Tess said, giving her towel a
snap to spread it on the warm sand. “We’ll probably have it all to ourselves.
The weather’s too temperamental for the tourists at this time of year. One day
it’s cool or drizzly and the next it’s hot as Hades.”

Dan spread his towel beside hers, kicked off his shoes, and
shucked his shirt and pants. Tess tried not to stare. She really did. She meant
to be blase and super-cool. But she’s never seen him without a shirt, without
pants. Her mouth went dry, and her knees started doing their rubber band number
again.

He was dynamite. The bathing suit, an abbreviated boxer in
light blue, hung low on his lean hips and stretched over well-muscled thighs
dusted with sandy colored hair. His shoulders were broad and a patch of light
brown curls lay across pectorals that told her Daniel Friday hadn’t spent all
his time behind a desk.

She gaped at him. When she managed to drag her gaze from the
corded plane of his abdomen to his face, his eyes were crinkled with laughter
and a smile played at the edges of his mouth.

“Like what you see?” he asked.

“Is the pope Catholic?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Tess Cameron, there’s
nothing coy about you.”

She cocked her head and frowned. “Does my lack of subtlety
bother you, Dan?”

He shook his head, very slowly. “The only thing bothering me
now is the waiting.”

“The waiting?”

He nodded and the right corner of his mouth made a slow
ascent. “It’s my turn to play voyeur.” Standing with feet apart, hands resting
on his hips, he gave her a look that could have melted her zipper.

And that must have been what happened.

In her imagination, she pictured herself drawing the zipper
of her jumpsuit down in a fluid, tantalizing motion. With one shrug of her
shoulders, the fabric would slide slowly down her body and pool at her feet.
She would gracefully step out of it, smile seductively, arch her back, and he
would be struck dumb with the wonder of her scantily clad body.

The zipper stuck.

She tugged and yanked, but the little sucker only chewed
further into the material. “Damn!” she muttered, yanking harder.

“Here, let me try it.” Dan moved her sweaty hands, patiently
worked the fabric free, and slid the zipper down. “There.” He stepped back and
resumed his pose.

Mortified, Tess managed something she hoped resembled a
smile and shrugged her shoulders. The jumpsuit slid only as far as her elbows
and trapped her like a straitjacket.

If he laughs at me, I’ll kill him.

Sober-faced—though his tight lips twitched suspiciously—Dan
watched every awkward contortion, until she finally managed to free her arms.
The garment slipped to her ankles revealing a silvered, pale pink suit with
high-cut legs, very little back, and no middle at all.

Dan’s eyes widened, and she heard him suck in a breath. Tess
smiled seductively, arched slightly, and took a step forward.

If Dan hadn’t grabbed her, she’d have plunked nose down in
the sand.

She’d forgotten to take off her sneakers.

“Oh, God, I could die,” she groaned as she hopped around on
one foot, then the other, trying to pull the tight pants legs over her shoes.
She stopped her hopping to glare at Dan. “And if you laugh at me, Daniel
Friday, I’ll emasculate you with a rusty knife.”

A series of strangling sounds came from Dan’s throat, but he
didn’t crack a smile. “Sit down, honey, and let me untie your shoes.”

She couldn’t even do that gracefully. The jumpsuit, wrapped
around her ankles like shackles, swished back and forth in the sand as she took
shuffling baby steps to the towel. She bent her knees and rocked back on her
bottom with a thump. Falling to her back, she looked up at the clear blue sky
and wished for a giant tidal wave to crash over her and wash her off the face
of the earth.

Dan knelt, put her feet across his thighs, and began to
untie her shoes.

“Oh, Lord,” she groaned.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“Need you ask? I’m humiliated out of my mind.” Tess flung
her arm over her eyes. “I’m always such a klutz when I get nervous. Instead of
looking glamorous and sexy, I was flopping around like a wounded chicken.”

Dan tossed her shoes aside and his hand slipped along the
outer curve of her calf. He laughed softly. “I’ve never seen a chicken with
legs like these.” His hand slid upward to her thigh, then down toward her ankle
again. “So long and beautiful. And very, very sexy.”

Dan’s gaze swept over the length of her from red toenails to
lush dark hair. Nothing about her sweetly curved body escaped his attention,
and he felt himself becoming aroused. Lord, if Tess only knew what she did to
him. He’d been attracted to her from the moment he’d first seen her on the
pier, and every day the lure of her grew stronger. Never had he wanted any
woman the way he wanted Tess. Everything about her enchanted him, delighted
him, stirred a deep hunger in an empty spot somewhere inside him.

“Do you really think so?” she said. “It’s hard to think of
myself as sexy. I looked like an undernourished flamingo until I was seventeen.
I towered over everybody and was always stumbling over my own feet.” She
wiggled her toes.

Before today, he’d never seen the vulnerable side of Tess.
In fact, he’d have bet anyone that she was never ruffled by anything or had a
single self-doubt. Her nervousness and awkwardness in getting out of her
clothes had only made her more endearing. And it made keeping himself in check
even more difficult. He was obsessed with her.

Taking a deep, fortifying breath, Dan pulled the bright
yellow jumpsuit over her feet and laid the garment beside the sneakers. “You’re
beautiful, Tess. And sexy. Surely you’ve been told that before.”

His fingers ached to wander over her soft skin and explore
every golden dip and plane. He could imagine the silken texture of her belly
and her breasts. Almost of its own accord, his hand came up and reached toward
her. Cursing himself for his own weakness, he snatched it back and curled his
fingers into a fist to resist the urge.

For his own sanity, he’d been trying to convince himself
that he could limit their relationship to a friendship or a casual flirtation.
Now he realized such a notion was a dangerous delusion. He was very close to
falling in love with Tess, and allowing himself to touch her the way he wanted
to would be inviting emotional disaster. He knew he was only an object of her
enormous compassion. And it humiliated him. He would not be another downtrodden
soul Tess had dragged home to tend.

Gently, he moved her feet from his thighs, stretched out
prone on his towel, and turned his face from her.

Tess raised herself up on her elbows and frowned at the back
of Dan’s head. She didn’t understand his behavior. She didn’t understand it at
all.

“Dan?” His reply was a half-grunt. “Is there someone back in
Pittsburgh?”

“There are lots of people in Pittsburgh.”

She sighed. He wasn’t going to make it easy. “I mean is
there someone special . . . a woman . . . someone you . . .”

“No,” he said quietly. “There’s no one.”

“And you find me attractive?”

“Yes.”

“Then why are you acting so peculiar?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tess rolled her eyes heavenward in a silent entreaty. “I
could carry on a more enlightening conversation with a pelican.” She rummaged
through her bag and pulled out a bottle of sun screen. When she drizzled a long
streak down Dan’s back, he jerked. When she straddled his hips, he jerked
again.

“What are you doing?” His tone was short.

“I’m putting lotion on you so that you won’t blister,” she
said in her most patient voice. Using both hands, she began to spread the thick
liquid over his back. “I thought you were learning to relax. You’re as tight as
a tick.”

Loving the feel of him under her hands, she smiled and ran
her thumbs along the edge of his spine. He tensed even more. The muscles of his
neck and shoulders were as knotted and lumpy as flophouse pillows. His legs,
she noticed as she moved to apply lotion to them, weren’t any better. She
kneaded and massaged, but the muscles bunched tighter.

“Want me to do your front?” she asked.