Moonlight and Shadows (18 page)

“If you’d give me some guidelines,” he said,
“maybe I could stop saying the wrong thing.” He spoke lightly, but
he was damn serious. She was like water running through his hands,
an ethereal mist he couldn’t catch in his fingers. Every time he
thought he had her, she slipped away. Her husband probably hadn’t
had to do anything special to her to make his photograph. She
was
the queen of the woodland fairies—a dream impossible to
hold on to.

“It’s not you,” she said, lifting her head
and pretending to be doing something in the sink. She didn’t fool
Jack.

“If it’s Christina, or the mermaid, they’re
both gone. That’s why she came back, to get the mermaid.
Apparently, she’s running a little low on cash, and Rico had told
her he’d sent a copy of the sculpture to me in a fit of remorse.
Sort of a let-bygones-be-bygones gesture after she left him. She
figured I didn’t really want it, and she was right.”

“Must have left a big empty spot in your
bathroom,” she said.

“Actually, it kind of helped the place. I
gave her the copper seaweed too.” At her lack of response, he
continued talking, pausing occasionally in case she had something
to add to the conversation. “One of these days, I’ll get around to
chipping out all those seashells . . . should have done it a long
time ago. Christina and I never did have the same taste in
interior—”

“It’s not Christina or the mermaid,” she
interrupted, turning to face him. “It’s you and me together.”

He mulled her statement over for a couple of
seconds, then said, “I like you and me together.”

“So do I,” she admitted. “Maybe too
much.”

He was starting to get confused again, and
he didn’t know if he should keep that news flash to himself or tell
her. He chose a roundabout route. “How about Sunday? Did you like
us too much on Sunday?”

Predictably, the color rose in her cheeks,
and she nodded. “Far too much.”

“Good,” he said quickly. At least he hadn’t
been wrong about that. He began to feel better—until she spoke.

“We’ve been far too physically attracted to
each other from the beginning.”

“I like physical attraction,” he countered,
feeling himself losing ground. He hastily tried to shore up his
case. “I like it a lot, especially with you. As a matter of fact, I
don’t remember ever liking physical attraction as much as I liked
it on Sunday.”

“Me either.” she confessed.

He took a step forward, but her next words
stopped him.

“And I think it’s a very shaky basis for a
relationship.”

“Well,” he improvised slowly, taking another
step, “so do I, but I think . . . I
know
we have more in
common than physical attraction.”

“Not much,” she said, her voice taking on a
resigned tone as she dug into her skirt pocket. “I made a list, and
it’s darned short.”

“A list?”

She sorted through the scraps of paper in
her pocket and shot him a quick glance. “Sex and chocolate.”

Sounded good to him.

“And art,” she added. “Or, rather, you have
an interest in art, and I seem to have a subconscious interest in
artists, since I was obviously attracted to you before I knew you
were a metal sculptor.”

He didn’t know what to say. Unfortunately,
she did.

“It’s not enough, Jack.”

Why not? he wanted to know, but he phrased
his question differently. “How many things in common would be
enough?”

“Enough for what?”

She was getting quick, he thought,
momentarily caught off guard. He wanted enough things to get her
back in bed, that was for sure. But he also wanted enough things to
get himself an open invitation to dinner, and breakfast, and lunch.
He was tired of eating alone, and if tonight was any indication,
she could cook circles around him.

He wanted enough things so that his heart
didn’t go into cardiac arrest every time he got close to her, for
fear she’d skip out on him. He wanted enough things to make her
happy, to light her face with a sweet glow of contentment . . .
forever.

“Enough for marriage,” he said, not
surprising himself, but shocking the daylights out of her.

“Marriage?” she gasped, one hand landing on
her chest.

“Yes. Despite one not-so-good try at it, I
still like marriage. I believe in it, and I think you do too.
Please add that to your list.”

Lila stared at him in amazement. With three
short words he’d catapulted their relationship into the
stratosphere. The man didn’t know when to quit. First, he’d kissed
her when he had no business doing any such thing. Then he’d slipped
inside her life until they’d actually had a dinner date. Worse yet,
he’d made himself utterly irresistible. She’d practically chased
him into bed. Now he was talking about the ultimate commitment, the
lifetime, through sickness and health, till-death-do-us-part type
of relationship that she’d thrived on with Danny.

It still shocked her.

“I . . .” she began, but got no further. She
tried again. “I . . .”

“How many things would that take, Lila?” he
asked, moving one step closer, then another. “How many?”

“Umm . . .” She closed her eyes for a quick
second, trying to think. But it was impossible to think when he was
moving in on her. “Ten . . . or—or twelve,” she said breathlessly.
Her eyes popped open in the nick of time to keep him from kissing
her and completely undermining her good intentions. “Maybe twenty,
or twenty-five, or fifty. I don’t know. I never thought of it in
those terms.”

Her head was tilted up to keep him in sight,
and he wondered if she knew her neck was one of his favorite
erogenous zones.

“Well, let’s think about it for a minute,”
he said, letting his natural drawl smooth out the thought and slow
down the words. “We’ve already got sex, chocolate, art, and
marriage. Seems like a pretty good start. And let’s go with your
first estimation, ten things. Now I’m going to add quality
construction to make five, since we both have shown uncommon
interest in quality construction. That leaves five things to go. I
think we can come up with five things.” In five minutes or less, he
figured. Then they could get on to the first two things, something
chocolate for dessert after dinner, and some kind of sex for
dessert after chocolate. He had a lot of ideas.

“It’s not that simple, Jack. It can’t be.
Relationships take time, nurturing, structure, a support network of
values and interests, a—”

“How long did you know your husband before
you married him?” he interrupted, then winced. Lord, he hated
bringing the guy up.

“Two months.”

“Case closed.” And that would be the last
time he reminded her that she’d loved someone before she loved him,
he silently added, because he knew she loved him. She’d erased his
doubts on Sunday. All he had to do was erase hers.

“But—”

“Five things,” he said, holding up his hand
with fingers spread. “Give me a chance. I know I can do this.”

* * *

And he would have, that very night, if she
hadn’t come up with her own set of restrictions. All things of
common interest had to be matters of consequence. She would let him
get away with quality construction, but nothing else in a similar
vein would count. They’d both agreed, after a couple of bites of
her mother’s chocolate cheesecake, that chocolate didn’t suffer
from the same lack of importance. Lila accepted all compliments on
dinner and dessert with hardly a trace of guilt, but balked at
adding Italian food to the list. It was obvious, she’d said, that
between the two of them, they’d eat anything that didn’t eat them
first.

Then she’d gotten serious, painfully
serious.

“Given the combustibility of our reaction to
each other, I think it best if we refrain from . . . refrain from .
. .” Words had failed her, but Jack got the point.

“Sex,” he said, filling in the blank. Then
he wished he’d tried something else first, just in case.

“Yes,” she said, blowing out his last hope.
“If you want to give this relationship a chance, I think we should
try keeping company for a while.”

“Keeping company?” He thought he knew what
the term meant, but a little clarification couldn’t hurt.

“Yes. See each other occasionally. Date, if
you will.”

“I will.”

“Talk about things, get to know each
other.”

He nodded at every suggestion she made,
trying to be agreeable, but he already knew things about her that
made it impossible to sleep at night: how she felt in his arms,
warm, soft, supple, sleek; the taste of her on his lips; the scent
of her
.

He was back at her door the next night. If
they were going to keep company, he’d decided not to waste time by
waiting for the weekend. She’d ended the previous evening without
so much as a kiss. He was determined to do better that night.
Besides, he’d come up with another item for her list.

She opened the door, and his jaw went slack.
He didn’t believe she had a cruel streak, but neither could he
believe what she was wearing. Or rather, what she wasn’t
wearing.

“You’re early,” she said, her voice slightly
breathless. Big clips pinned her hair in lush disarray on top of
her head. Moisture dampened her throat and the bared slope of one
shoulder. A short robe of black silk splashed with white camellias
clung to her breasts and her hips, barely holding on, barely
covering.

“Or late,” he muttered, letting his gaze
roam at will, letting his memory conjure up the indelible image
hidden by the scrap of silk.

“Come in, please, before we both freeze to
death.”

He didn’t want to disappoint her, but
truthfully, he was in no danger of freezing to death.

“Oh, Jack. They’re beautiful.” Her eyes lit
up when she saw the flowers he’d brought. He thought they ran a
poor second to the camellias caressing the creamy softness of her
skin.

“Tiger lilies,” he said, closing the door
behind him.

“Thank you.” She gathered the huge bouquet
into her arms and padded into the kitchen, with Jack just far
enough behind to catch every sweet sway of her hips.

When she reached up into a cupboard to get a
large glass vase, he vowed to bring her flowers every night. Then
he grinned and ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head in
disbelief. He used to think he was a classy guy, a man of
integrity, but she brought out his primitive side, his primal
masculine instincts. Instincts of capture and conquering, of baring
her body to his gaze and taking her. He ought to be shot as a
reprobate.

But no one was going to shoot anybody, and
he wasn’t about to strip her clothes off at this point, so he
looked his fill and enjoyed the heightened awareness of his senses,
the waywardness of his imagination, and the initial stirrings of
arousal. He was a man in love.

“It’ll take me only a minute to finish
getting ready,” she said, running water in the vase and casting him
a glance over her shoulder. She quickly pulled the silk collar up,
and it just as quickly slipped back down.

“No hurry,” he assured her, not even trying
to resist the urge to touch her. With a sure hand he arranged the
robe over her shoulder and felt the unmistakable warmth of her
response. “I thought we’d try the Mexican place in the alley over
behind the bank.”

“I’ve been there. It’s great.” She bent her
head over the tiger lilies in mock concentration as she cut the end
off the stem of each flower.

“Yeah,” he said softly, letting his hand
drift down her arm. “Really great.”

What did he think she was made of? Lila
wondered. Steel? Well, she wasn’t, and she couldn’t take much
more.

Whirling around, she confronted him. “You’re
cheating again.”

A smile eased across his face, and his gaze
fixed deliberately on the opening of her robe. “So are you. Not
that I mind.”

She wasn’t mad. She was too breathless to be
mad. “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

Clutching her robe together, she practically
ran out of the kitchen, his words echoing behind her. “I think we
better count cheating, Lila. That’s a pretty important thing to
know about each other.” Jack grinned to himself. He was batting a
thousand. He’d gotten the list up to six things, and he hadn’t even
sprung the item he’d spent half the night lying awake to dream
up.

* * *

“Another margarita, please,” Lila said to
the hovering waitress, and wondered for the millionth time if she’d
overdressed for Mexican food. Her dress was slinky
with
tiny green and black
checks
, a sarong-style skirt,
and a self belt. Everybody else in the place was wearing jeans.

Jack sat quietly until the waitress left,
helping himself to salsa and chips while she finished delivering
their dinner. He’d felt only the tiniest twinge of guilt as Lila
had read the menu to him. She’d done it so professionally, her
Spanish accent equal to her French. He’d already decided to take
her out for Chinese to see what happened.

“And more sour cream, please,” she
continued, adding to her order.

“I’ll have another beer.”

“And a side of guacamole.”

“Maybe we should go into the restaurant
business together,” he said. “That would make seven.”

Lila shifted her attention to him, and the
waitress slipped away while there was a lull in the barrage of
requests.

“I’m disqualifying number six,” she
whispered, leaning across the table. “I
was not
deliberately
trying to seduce you. You were early.”

“You knew it was me,” he countered. “You
could have put a blanket over your head.”

“I was
fixing
my hair,” she insisted.
“And if I hadn’t known for sure it was you, I wouldn’t have
answered the door at all.”

“You’re shy. I’m shy too. That makes
eight.”

“Six.”