Chance Meeting (37 page)
And here she was, forty-five minutes later, still heaving up her guts. The faint creak of the door, accompanied by the subtle shift of air signaled the presence of someone entering the bathroom, but Lizzie was beyond caring. From behind her huddled form came the sound of running water, then of something passing through it, interrupting its flow. Abruptly, Lizzie gagged, her stomach muscles contracting violently once again, though she’d long passed the point where even a single greasy french fry remained in her system. Weakly, she sat back on her haunches. And felt the cool press of a moistened washcloth against her clammy forehead. She made out the outline of a large masculine hand. Her eyelids fluttered shut. “Go away,” she moaned, attempting to turn her head away. Sam’s hand merely followed her. “Shush. Here, take this pill, but don’t drink too much water. It’ll only start you up again.”
Lizzie’s eyes opened just enough to see the fat pink tablet lying in the palm of Sam’s hand. “I can’t swallow anything. Go away and let me die in peace.”
“Nope. Come on, Lizzie, this is going to make you feel much better. Good enough so you can yell at me all you want.”
“That a promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
Weakly, her fingers closed around the pill, pushing it into her mouth. The rim of a water glass hovered, and she tilted head to drink from it. Sam allowed her one sip. In tired anticipation, her eyes closed, waiting for the next bout to hit.
Next to her, she felt Sam’s body shift. What felt like a knee brushed her shoulder. He was sitting on the rim of the bathtub. Leaning toward her, he began moving the washcloth around her face, its cooling dampness refreshing, heavenly.
Lizzie frowned, her face scrunching against the cloth. “What are you doing here?” The question came out muffled. Batting the cloth away, she repeated it.
Sam’s quiet laughter mixed with the sound of running water. “Ty wanted to come,” he said, once more bathing her features with the freshly dampened cloth. “But I insisted. I told her, quite convincingly, too, I’m the only one who could get you so annoyed you’d forget about puking. How am I doing, by the way?”
“You get an Aplus for effort. You’re free to leave now.” She really did not want to be sick in front of him.
“Don’t worry, you can thank me later.”
“You, Sam, are a man doomed to disappointment.”
“This is idiotic. I do not need a chauffeur, caretaker, baby-sitter, hand holder, or whatever cockamamie title Sam wants to give himself. I am perfectly capable of driving back to Cobble Creek tonight without
him!”
After all, it was Sam who’d gotten her into this mess in the first place. If she hadn’t been doing her best to bury her lustful feelings under a mountain of fat, grease, and sugar, she also wouldn’t have been wrapped around the base of the toilet, wondering whether she’d live to see another day. Lord, she hadn’t eaten stuff quite so lethal since before Emma was born. These days, she was strictly a steamed-vegetables-over-brown-rice sort of gal. If she really wanted to go wild, maybe a sprinkle of sesame seeds or a dash of soy sauce. Sometimes, all she ate were Emma’s colored leftovers. Since motherhood, her system’s tolerance for high-calorie junk was practically nil. She’d known it, yet had shoved all that food into her body on top of a gargantuan breakfast of french toast. Her folly was wholly deserved, but that didn’t mean Lizzie had to admit to it, did it?
Ty scooted by Lizzie, busy fixing weak mint tea and dry toast. Although Lizzie’s rioting stomach seemed to have settled, she looked wrung out from the ordeal. Ty wished she’d stop balking. “Be reasonable, Lizzie. You’ve been sick for the past hour. You’re pale as a ghost, and you’ve got a three-hour drive in front of you. If you really need to be back by tomorrow and can’t spend the night here, then you should at least take Sam up on his offer. He can drive you in your car and pick up his own next weekend. He’s coming back for another computer session with Mrs. Miller, anyway.”
So much for counting on Ty to support her, Lizzie thought petulantly. They were all ganging up on her, even Emma, whose immediate acceptance of Sam felt alarmingly close to betrayal. And Steve, who’d only known her for a few hours. The look he’d given her was downright disapproving after Lizzie had curtly declined Sam’s offer to drive her back to Bedford.
Didn’t they understand? She needed to remain independent. And giving even an inch to Sam Brody would mean his taking the proverbial mile. Amile that covered a whole lot of ground Lizzie wasn’t willing to relinquish.
She hated the varying degrees of censure in their expressions. As though she were some naughty,
spoiled, irresponsible child.
Wasn’t that ironic! She was the only one among them who had a child, who had the care and responsibility of a daughter twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week . . . Her shoulders slumped in sudden defeat.
Of course, she was going to let Sam drive them back. Never would she risk an automobile accident with Emma in the backseat just because she stupidly refused to admit how woozy and exhausted she felt. Walking over to where Sam sat with Emma, quietly reading Emma’s favorite book about a mouse named Maisy, Lizzie spoke, her tone subdued, “I’ll go take Emma to the potty one more time. Come on, Em,”
and lifted her daughter out of Sam’s lap. “We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
Their eyes met, then Lizzie looked hurriedly away, disliking the understanding she’d glimpsed in Sam’s.
T
he house emptied of Lizzie, Sam, and Emma, kisses, hugs, last-minute instructions, and waves of good-bye exchanged, Ty knew a sudden nervousness, a sudden longing to escape, to be safely ensconced in the backseat next to Emma, the easy acceptance of old friends soothing and effortless. She could flee from this man standing by her side and all he represented. Her voice came out a nervous croak. “I, uh, think I’ll take a bath.” She was staring fixedly into the distance, as if even now she could make out the long-gone Volvo.
“I’ve finished with that list. Added a few names. If you like, we can go over it before dinner and hash out the details for the clinic.”
“All right.” Dinner. Alone with him. No wall of angry silence separating them. Ty’s palms felt clammy. This time, the urge to run irresistible. “I’d better go.”
His beautiful partner was a bundle of nerves and doing her damnedest not to show it. Steve knew her well enough now to read the distress signals. Her eyes had grown bigger and bigger as Sam maneuvered the car, one hand on the wheel, the other waving a casual farewell out the rolled-down window. Steve had caught her surreptitiously wiping her palms against the seam of her faded jeans, the slight stammer in her speech when she addressed him. And if by chance he’d been too dense to decipher those clues, Ty had lit up the stairs as though her tail was on fire, practically tripping over herself in her hurry to get away from him.
He couldn’t blame her; he was nervous, too.
With anticipation.
It was thrumming through his system, making his skin itch, his heart ricochet against his ribcage. The kind of adrenaline rush he usually experienced before his number was called in a speed class. He was pumped, no doubt about it.
But for the first time in his life, Steve was going to err on the side of caution. If he came on to Ty like gangbusters right now, she was going to spook. Better to let the passion build slowly between them, so she’d be with him every step of the way.
How did a woman dress when she suspected, feared, and fervently hoped there was a ninety-nine-pointninepercent chance she’d be making love in a few short hours?
Ty could ace a number of quizzes on the proper attire for all sorts of social functions—everything from corporate business meetings, to state dinners, to charity balls, to evenings at the opera followed by midnight champagne and oysters at a four-star restaurant. But what did one wear to a simple dinner, t?te-?-t?te, in a farmhouse on eastern Long Island?
Did she go for the vamp look? Something so blatant it screamed, like a car alarm at three A.M., “Take me, I’m yours”? Hugely embarrassing if it turned out she’d misread the signs and, besides, not her style, anyway. But she definitely wanted an outfit that would pack a wallop, some sensual
vavooom.
Something that would have Steve willing to walk through fire just to touch her. There was the rub: she was going for
subtle vavooom,
much harder to achieve than in-your-face
vavooom.
She turned the spigot, adding hot water to the tub. The frothy layer of fragrant bubbles had begun to thin somewhat while Ty lay back against the porcelain rim, mentally reviewing the contents of her closet. Why hadn’t the proper outfit for a situation like this been addressed at her boarding school in Switzerland? An utter waste of four years. If things hadn’t been quite so crazy this afternoon, Ty could have hauled Lizzie in front of her closet and pleaded with her to pick out some ensembles—just in case—but that was hardly fair to someone who’d been bent over a toilet for a gut-wrenching hour. Besides, it was up to Ty to figure it out.
Groaning loudly, Ty sank under the warm water, completely submerging herself. Feeling the soothing warmth around her, she briefly entertained the notion of simply staying put, lulled by a warm, watery bed. In all likelihood, she was getting bent out of shape over nothing. Steve hadn’t actually made any overt sign that he intended or even wanted to make love to her tonight.
Confusion and the need to breathe had her breaking the surface with an annoyed sputter. This was nuts, embarrassing, pointless, and ridiculous. Either they were going to make love or they weren’t, Ty so thoroughly flustered that the glaring obviousness of this particular insight wasn’t immediately clear. Her thoughts continued rattling about, like useless foreign coins stored in a tin box. Toweling herself off, Ty adopted the following mantra: the bath had left her squeaky clean, she smelled nice, she wasn’t about to dig yesterday’s jeans from the bottom of her hamper. That would have to suffice in terms of her ability to excite and seduce.
Almost an hour later, however, Ty’s room resembled ground zero for a natural disaster—correction: this mess was clearly woman-made. Heaps, piles, and trails consisting of bold splashes of color and texture marked the room, dizzying the eye. A Jackson Pollock of fabric and accessories. Yet, so far, Ty was only satisfied with her choice of bra and panties. Silk and lace from Italy, they were the color of a rich claret and as heady to the senses. Wearing them made Ty feel like sin incarnate. Definitely the desired effect, but at that point, Ty stalled, filled with indecision, looking around her, hoping for inspiration that had little to do with the divine and everything to do with the flesh. She heard the sound of her door opening and managed to grab the bath towel from her bed and shield herself with it.
“Sorry,” Steve said, not sounding sorry in the least to find her standing there, the towel scant protection. A smile played over his handsome features. “I knocked, not too loudly, I admit. Thought you might have fallen asleep.” Then, somehow, he was already close to her, inches away, and Ty hadn’t moved, a startled deer caught in the mesmerizing blue of his eyes.
“You getting rid of all your worldly possessions here, Ty?” His voice was husky, sending shivers along her bare skin.
“Oh,” she started. “You mean this.” With one arm holding the towel firmly in place, her other arced over jumbled clothes. “Well, I . . .” Ty swallowed, her thoughts scrambled, as mixed up as the egg batter Lizzie beat this morning. To such a degree that what was uppermost in her mind was a bubbling sense of relief, euphoria that she no longer had to figure out what to wear. From there, the simple truth tumbled out readily. “I was having trouble deciding what to wear.”
His gaze released her momentarily, casually inspecting the mayhem of Ty’s bedroom. Damn, had she been spending all this time figuring out what clothes could possibly enhance her beauty? For him?
While during those long, excruciating minutes he’d been going slightly mad with impatience just to
see
her. He’d busted three Ticonderoga pencils, snapped them into little pieces, waiting for her to show, watching the hands of the kitchen clock move with agonizing slowness. His lips quirked at the absurdity of the situation. “Got a little secret for you, sweetheart. You could be dressed in sackcloth and baling twine, and you’d turn me on.” His smile, warm and intimate, spread, setting sparks off inside her as his eyes roamed over the large fluffy towel hiding her, the thin maroon straps hinting at what lay underneath. “This works, too.”
Ty watched, transfixed as the gentlest of tugs from Steve’s finger around the edge of the towel had it slipping, then tumbling to the floor, as if of its own accord.
“This works even better,” Steve observed in a hushed voice, more a reverential whisper. With trembling hand and breath suspended, Steve touched her. She stood in silent offering, her eyelids suddenly heavy, languorous, as his body met hers. His fingers spread, slowly tracing the gentle slope of her breasts above the scalloped edge of lace.
She was devastating. Never had he known a woman’s beauty to affect him this way, to humble and arouse him until he had no thoughts but of her. The lines of her body were as smooth, as elegantly sinuous, as a marble statue. But where marble remained cool and unyielding, Steve’s fingers reveled in Ty’s supple resiliency, the pulsing heat of her skin. Craving more, lips joined hands, searching out the wild hammering at the base of her throat, the scented hollow between her breasts, that sweet haven where his medallion had nestled for so long. Beneath his mouth’s explorations and his hands caresses, Ty’s nipples peaked, straining beneath deep red silk and lace for his touch. Urgency drummed madly with the need to see, to taste. In their haste, his fingers, usually so clever, fumbled with the front clasp, then stilled at Ty’s moan. Her head was thrown back, exposing the length of her neck, her hair a dark mantle framing her ivory shoulders. She was a vision, a glorious pagan vision. Her moan ended in a soft gasp of surprise, for Steve’s hands had swiftly changed their course, wrapping about her legs, her back, lifting her effortlessly until she was cradled against his chest. His mouth covered hers, their tongues dueled in a searing kiss.