Guilty Pleasures (7 page)

The rush Polly felt was as if ice had passed across her skin. Goose bumps shot over her arms and legs. Deep inside she trembled. “You can’t say something like that,” she whispered. “You can’t.”

“I just did.”

“But you shouldn’t.”

“I did.”

“You don’t think you could love me. Crumb! That sounds mad.”

“There’s nothing mad about me.”

“There has to be. I’m a stranger.”

“I’ve watched you for weeks.”

“But you don’t
know
me.”

“I’m going to.”

This was the stuff of movies, not Polly Crow’s life. He sounded—obsessed?
Oh.
“I’ve got to go.”

“I’ve scared you. Again.”

“Please let me leave.”

“If I do, I’ll have blown it. You’ll never let me talk to you like this again.”

How
right he
was. “No.” How much she wanted him to be
wrong. How much she wanted…
what did she want? They were strangers. He was a fantastically beautiful stranger, but facts were facts. He behaved as if he was obsessed with her— like the whisperer on the answering machine.

“Polly, forget I just made an ass of myself by saying something you can’t be expected to take seriously. Just tell me you’ll see me again. And again. And again.”

“I’m a—”

“Please?”

“I’ve got a son.”

“I know. I’ve seen you with him. He looks like a nice kid.”

“The best. He didn’t have an easy time of it when he was little. Now he’s my life, and I intend to make sure he knows it. No one’s ever going to be more important to me than Bobby.”

“Little boys grow up into men. Then their mommies had better have someone else to love.”

“I’m used to being alone.”

With his forefingers, he followed the tendons down her wrists and over the tops of her hands. “I’m used to being alone, too. I do it real well. No challenge anymore. I shouldn’t have assumed you didn’t have a husband just because I haven’t seen him.”

Her hands trembled. “I don’t have a husband.”

“Somehow I didn’t think you did. What did you mean about numbers? And scrambling numbers? You’re talking about someone making crank calls, aren’t you? A man?”

He was steadily lulling her into careless trust. “It doesn’t matter what I meant. Some things go with the territory. They aren’t nice, but they don’t worry me.” The occasional fib could be excused.

“You could have fooled me. You were as jumpy as a cat. Come to that, you still are.”

“I’m never jumpy. You catch me off guard is all. One minute
you’re nowhere, then
you’re right in front of me—or
behind
me.”

“Sorry. In future I’ll whistle or something.”

“Don’t!”

“You don’t like whistling?”

“It’s creepy.”

“Yeah?” He seemed fascinate
d by any revelation about her,
no matter how insignificant. “Do you like to swim?”

“Sure.” Polly couldn’t swim, but it embarrassed her to admit as much.

“Ever done any diving?”

“No.”

“Would you like to learn?”

“I don’t know.” Even if his eyes were cold—or remote, maybe—he looked at her as if she was important. “Here comes Belinda.”

“If some crank’s making calls, I want to know about it, Polly.”

Now he sounded possessive as well as obsessive. “There’s nothing you need to know.” He’d actually told her—a woman he was speaking to for only the second time—that he thought he could
love
her. “Belinda! You didn’t have to bring food, too.”

“Of course I did, child.” If Belinda was a day over forty-five Polly would be amazed, but she often treated Polly as if she were her granddaughter. “Taste this.” She set down a tray, placed cups in front of Polly and Nasty, and poured pink tea from a black pot scattered with silver stars and moons.

Polly drank some of the sweet, fruity-tasting brew and watched Nasty over the rim of her cup. At times like this it might be nice to have his gift for expressionless stares.

“What do you think?” Belinda asked. She tossed her long, dark, single braid behind her back. “Be honest with me. I’ve been working on this a long time.”

“Interesting,” Nasty commented.

Polly pursed her lips to contain a giggle.

“You’re the first to try it.”

“We’re honored,” Nasty said, still deadpan.

Belinda set a plate of small, dark red cookies on the table. “These are made of the same ingredients. Baking intensifies the color.”

There was nothing for it but to try Belinda’s offerings. The taste was similar to the tea, but stronger.

“Good,” Polly said. Not great, but not bad. Sometimes kindness became more important than comfort anyway. “What are they?”

She held her breath and felt Nasty do the same.

“Cherry,” Belinda said. “I dried them myself. And honey, lots of honey.”

Polly stifled a giggle of relief.

“And ginseng, and powdered deer antler,” Belinda continued. “The libido is bound to find a new wellspring of vitality. You will let me know if I’ve got the proportions right?”

“Will do,” Nasty said promptly. “Won’t we, Polly?”

Belinda raised her chin regally. “I’m going to call the tea, Ever Ready.”

Polly’s laughter joined Nasty’s. She popped a whole cookie into her mouth.

Umbrage expanded Belinda’s considerable bosom. “Why that should amuse you, I can’t imagine. No matter. I have a little gift for you, Nasty. What a very odd name that is.”

“It suits him,” Polly said, smiling into her tea and feeling increasingly bold. She’d try to forget his ridiculous declaration. “He likes to do and say awful things to get people’s attention. Very nasty.”

“Really? How unusual.”

Nasty waited until Polly looked at him. “If that’s what you want to believe?” He gestured submission. “How about one of those diving lessons? We’d start in a nice, warm pool.”

“I’ll think about it.”

Belinda dug into a concealed pocket and produced another
small hemp bag. This she dropped, very deliberately, into Nasty’s lap.

He looked at it.

So did Belinda.

So did Polly.

“A gift,” Belinda said. “It could not have been for anyone but you.”

“How kind,” Nasty said.

“Because you belong to Polly.”

“Belinda!” Polly choked and coughed.

“Thanks,” Nasty said, all serious gratitude. The bag still rested on his fly. “My very own supply of sexual stamina.”

“Oh, no,” Belinda said. “You don’t need any more of that. Your talisman is quite different. It’s called, Inspiration. Men can be such unimaginative lovers—not that I suppose you are. But tuck that little bag under your pillow and remember the magic word.”

Nasty and Polly waited.

“Foreplay,” Belinda caroled.

In the thick silence that followed, Polly picked up a second cookie and took a bite. She dared another peek at the bag on Nasty’s lap and choked—again. The bag jerked and slid sideways.

Nasty grabbed it and scooted his chair under the table. And then he drank his tea as if he loved it and held out his cup for more.

Something caught Polly’s attention. A curving iron staircase led from a back comer of the store to the second floor. The movement she’d seen was willowy, gray-haired Festus getting to his feet and climbing down. She hadn’t even noticed him sitting up there on the steps.

Fortunately, today Festus wasn’t robed as the warlock he fancied himself to be. A gray silk shirt and soft, gray corduroy slacks fell in folds around his tall, thin body. He advanced on the group by the stove and said, “Glad to see you, Polly,” but didn’t look glad at all.

“Hi, Festus,” Polly said, disturbed by the concern in his blue eyes. “Belinda says you’re having fun with the new dome.”

“Fun?” His narrow nostrils flared. “Fun is for dabblers. My study of the stars is of an entirely different nature.”

“Yes,” Polly said. “Well, Festus, this is Nasty Ferrito.”

Festus took a pair of ho
rn
-rimmed glasses from his shirt pocket, perched them on the end of his very long nose, and peered at Nasty. “Athletic-looking specimen,” he remarked. “One of those, are you? Ballplayer, or whatever?”

“Festus,” Belinda hissed. “He’s from the shop that sells the water things. Room Below, it’s called.”

“Whatever.” Festus turned all of his considerable intensity on Polly. “If I’d known you were going to be here I could have said so.”

“Who wanted to know?” she asked.

“He didn’t catch up with you then?”

Belinda shifted irritably. “For goodness sake, Festus, you might as well get on with it. I’m sorry, Polly. I should have mentioned it as soon as you came, but I do so like the look of your new beau—and I don’t see why
convention
should stop a woman from enjoying herself.”

“He said he’s had trouble getting you at the condo. He tried to reach you at Hole Point. No luck. The studio told him to try Another Reality.”
Polly felt light-headed. She also felt Nasty watching her. “Sounded nice enough. Obviously can’t wait to get his hands on you again.”

Belinda’s furious,
"Festus,"
drowned out Polly’s nervous gasp.

“Any hope of you getting to the point?” Nasty asked Festus. “You may be having
fun
with this. Polly isn’t—and I’m not amused, either.”

“Neither am I,” Belinda said.

“Such a fuss,” Festus muttered. “Fuss about everything. Who else would be coming back to look for you? Desperate
to put things right again. Hardly able to wait to see Bobby. Sam, of course. Your husband.”

Polly closed her eyes.

“He said you made a mistake, but everyone gets to make one mistake. He just wants to help you put it behind you.”

F
our

C
ell phones were a blessing and a curse.

Nasty stretched out on the V-berth in his forty-five-foot ketch, and resigned himself to an interrogation, Roman Wilde style. Roman didn’t pull punches.

“So tell me all about it,” Roman said.

Dusty had talked. Damn Dusty, anyway. “You called me,” Nasty said. “You’ve gotta be the one with something to tell.”

“Don’t play dumb with me,” Roman growled. “Dusty called.”

“You amaze me. He did? Why would he call you? Aw, shucks, I expect he wanted to ask about Junior. Ain’t that cute?” Wait till he got his hands on the old troublemaker.

“Sure he wanted to ask about Junior. He calls every week and checks on her. And on Marta. He’s an equal-opportunity grandpa.”

Roman and his wife, Phoenix, had two little girls now, the youngest about eighteen months old, but Dusty had spent a lot of time with Junior and almost none with Marta. Sometimes he tried to hide his partiality, but not often.

“How’s Montana?” Nasty asked scrambling for safe ground. “Funny, I still can’t peg you as a fledgling rancher.”

“I can’t peg you as running a dive shop, but you do. Tell me about this—”

“How’s that foolish woman who married you?”

A sigh gusted into Nasty’s e
ar. “Phoenix is wonderful. Phoe
nix
is always wonderful. She loves
bringing
the
kids
up
her
e.
I don’t deserve her.”

“You’re right there, old buddy. Never could
figure
out
what
she sees in you.”

“Neither can I,” Roman said, t
oo affably. “You aren’t pulling it off.”

Still wet from the shower,
and buck naked, Nasty scooted
down the bunk, propped his crossed feet on the bulkhead, and locked his knees. He deliberately looked away from his left ankle. “You do know this is expensive, don’t you?”

“Huh?”

“
Long-distance.”

“I called you, friend.”

“On
my
cell phone. My bill, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“You don’t give a
…
Da
rn
, you’ve got a way of making me digress. You don’t care how much this call is costing you. What does matter for some reason is getting out of telling me about this woman you’ve fallen for. Dusty says you’re pining away because of something you won’t tell him.”

“Dusty talks too much.”

“Dusty says he’s worried about you. You’ve been avoiding him for three days.”

Nasty yanked a pillow beneath his head. “This isn’t simple, Roman. Give me a chance to think.”

Three days since he’d left Polly with her friends at Another Reality. Three days when he’d tried to figure out why she’d told him she wasn’t married if she was.

The only reason for her to say she wasn’t married would be because she was interested in him and thought he’d be put off by discovering she had a husband. When he’d forced the first meeting she’d mentioned telling her husband. He’d said she didn’t have one because he couldn’t find any record to suggest otherwise. Another point that irked him. He didn’t make careless intelligence mistakes like that. He’d have been dead a long time ago if he had.

Water still glistened in the hairs on his legs. That water was
cooling, and it didn’t feel great on a not-very-warm morning. “
I
need to get dressed,” he told Roman. “We’ll have this conversation later. Dusty’s worrying about nothing. So are you.”

“Are you telling me there isn’t a woman? You haven’t turned into a groupie over the star of
Polly’s Place?”

Nasty tended to forget the show was nationally syndicated. He’d rather forget permanently. He didn't like thinking about so many people watching Polly.

“You’re not very talkative,” Roman said.

A possessive woman wouldn’t make the cut with him, Nasty thought. He couldn’t expect Polly to feel less protective of her independence.

“Hey, Nasty?”

“Yeah. I’m here. So far
I
haven’t clawed my way up any fences to get at her, screaming and crying all the way,” he said. “And I haven’t sent her my underwear.”

That announcement shut Roman up—momentarily.

“What are you talking about?” he asked at last. “Who said anything about sending underwear?”

“Isn’t that what groupies do?”

Roman cleared his throat. “I’ve never been a groupie.”

“Neither have I. Give my love to Phoenix and the girls.”

“Not so fast,” Roman said. “What about this woman?”

“You never did know when to leave things alone.” Nasty made a fist over his eyes.

“Nasty?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“The woman?”

He ran his fingers through his short, thick hair. “It’s none of your goddamn—crumb!” Polly didn’t like bad language.

“Huh? What did you just say?”

Nasty stared up at the deckhead. “I’m losing it—starting to sound like her.” Geez. “No, no, forget I said that. I’m in perfect control.”

A clattering sound came from up top.

“Buddy?” Roman said. “I don’t think we should put this discussion off.”

More clattering. Nasty covered the mouthpiece and shouted, “Who’s there?”

Seven launched herself through the cabin door and landed on Nasty’s belly. He winced as twenty pointy little claws dug into his skin.

“Nasty?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Nasty said into the phone. “I’m here. Cat’s in one of her mad moods. My belly’s never going to be the same.”

Seven walked delicately up to settle on his chest. He heard a female voice call, “Hello?” probably from the steps down to the saloon. He lay absolutely still.

“Nasty?” Roman said again.

Nasty whispered, “Shut up.”

“Hello?” the very familiar female voice said once more, much softer, and even more unsure than the first time. “Are you here?”

He’d tossed his clothes in the hamper. His wet towel was in front of the open door to his cabin. “Shit,” he said, with feeling.

“Something’s going on there.”

He lifted the phone and glared at it.

“Um, Nasty?” she whispered this time, a hoarse, nervous whisper that reached him clearly in the quiet interior of the ketch. The only other sound was of water gently lapping at the hull.

“Answer me,” came from the phone, agitated. “Are you in trouble? I’ll call Dusty.”

“No,” Nasty whispered into the phone urgently. “Hold on. Just shut up a minute.”

He heard Polly say, “I knew I shouldn’t have come,” then the sound of her feet on the carpeted deck in the saloon.

She was leaving.

“Polly! Hey, Polly, don’t go.”

“Polly, huh,” Roman said with too much amusement in his voice. “What’s she like in the flesh?”

“Later,” Nasty told him, “and don’t call me. I’ll get back to you later.”

“Why—”

“Later,” Nasty said. “Do this for me, friend. Don’t call back, okay?”

“Okay.”

Nasty hung up. “Polly! I’m in here. Polly, don’t leave, please.”

“I’m not.
I
thought you weren’t”—she stared at him, open-mouthed, from the doorway—“I thought you weren’t here,” she finished faintly.

“Ah, excuse me. I just got out of the shower.”

“Uh-huh.” She held his gaze as if looking into his eyes would make them both believe he wasn’t naked.

“I got a phone call.”

She nodded, kept on nodding.

He smiled at her and rolled his hips, very slightly, away. “Roman Wilde. He’s a very old friend. We were in the service together.”

Great, now all she’d have to do was glance, and she’d get a perfect moon view.

“The service?” Her voice cracked. She looked toward the skylight. “You were in the service?”

“Navy.”

“Um, I’m sorry, I must be embarrassing you. I thought you called me in. I’ll go.”

He laughed and winced at the hollow sound of it. “Embarrassed? Me? No way.”

“Of course not. But I’ll just
…
I’ll come back another time.”

Seven chose that moment to stroll down and settle in his lap. Nasty closed his eyes.

“Yes, well, good-bye then,” Polly murmured.

“Please don’t leave. I want to talk to you. Maybe you could find some place to sit down out there and wait?”

“It’s not a good time.”

Nasty pushed up onto his elbows. When he put a hand on Seven, those claws went to work again. He sucked in a sharp breath.

“What’s the matter?” Polly took a step toward him. “You’re hurt!”

“No, I’m not. I’m fine.”

Her gaze shifted, as he’d known it would, to the cat. Seven peeked back at her over his hip. “Nice cat,” she said, swallowing loudly enough to sound like a trigger snick.

Nasty fell back. He fell back, draped a forearm over his eyes, and laughed. Seven’s weight departed abruptly. Nasty kept on laughing. He fought for breath and wiped tears from his eyes.

Polly’s rapt attention was on his face again. She pointed over her sho
ulder. “I’ll…
I’ll wait in there, if you’re sure
that
’s okay.”

He found enough air to say, “Yes. Yes, please.”

She spun away, the wrong way, and bumped into the bulkhead. Her faint, “Oh,” was all Nasty heard before she rushed from the cabin.

Swinging his feet to the floor, he listened closely, afraid he’d hear her leaving the boat. If she did, he’d run after her— with or without clothes.

He didn’t hear a sound.

She’d come looking for him. She’d found out which boat was his and where it was moored and actually come.

The nearest locker yielded a pair of wrinkled jeans shorts. He tore them out, stuffed his feet through the legs, and hauled them up—and gritted his teeth when he closed the zipper too carelessly.

He ducked his head and stepped through the doorway. Polly stood in the middle of the saloon with Seven brushing around her ankles.

“Hi.” She gave him a wiggle-fingered little wave. “Your partner told me where I might find you. I should have called, but
I
didn’t think there were phones on boats.”

“Cell phone,” he said. “Radio works, too. And you can hook up phone lines when you’re at moorage.”

“I see.” She saw him, from head to toe, and parts in between, and then she blushed. “I don’t know much about boats.”

“What do you think of this one?”

“It’s very nice. I didn’t know you could have wood-burning stoves, and”—she indicated the teak and brass and leather, and Oriental carpets—“and all this. Like a comfortable house. You’ve got great taste.”

“Thanks.”

Yellow butterflies were scattered across the high-waisted white dress she wore. When she shrugged her shoulders, the waist became a sweet halter for her pretty breasts. He’d like to see her breasts, to hold them, to do what it would take to make them respond to him.

“Look, I really apologize,” he told her in a rush. “When you live alone you get careless about things like clothes.”

“Oh, you don’t have to apologize.”

“Yes, I do. I’m sure I shocked you.”

“Not at all,” she told him. “No, I wasn’t shocked.”

He wrinkled his brow. “You weren’t? I thought you might not be too thrilled to be confronted with—”

“No, really! Honestly, you looked very nice.”

They stared at each other. Nasty couldn’t keep the question out of his eyes. He saw the confusion in hers.

“Perhaps you want to say you didn’t really mean that?” he suggested.

“No”—her tilted smile was wry—“no, I don’t. I shouldn’t have said it, but it’s true. Doesn’t that make me a forward woman?”

“It makes you exactly what I felt you were. You’re a woman who tries to say it like it is.”

“You can say that after the other day?”

Nasty checked the old ship’
s clock on the bulkhead above the
shelves of b
ooks. “It’s noon. We could… No, you don’t
drink anything but tea, do you? I’ll make tea if you’ll drink it.”

“I like white wine.”

“I’ve got white wine.”

“I guess it must be fate then, again?” She slid into the dark green leather banquette that curled around three sides of a teak table. “This is so lovely. Have you lived here long?”

“No.” The wine was cold—thank god. “Since last year.”

“Longer than I’ve been in Kirkland.”

“Yo
u’ve been here almost a year.”

Her chin came up. “You’ve done some homework on me.”