Only Forever (3 page)

She hung her coat carefully in the closet and put the shoes back into their plastic box. Soon she was in bed, but sleep eluded her.

She kept imagining what it would be like to lie beside Nick DeAngelo, in this bed or any other, and have him touch her, kiss her, make love to her. Just the thought made her ache.

Sometime toward morning, Vanessa slept. The telephone awakened her to a full complement of sunshine, and she grappled for the receiver, losing it several times before she managed to maneuver it into place.

“Hello,” she accused, shoving one hand through her rumpled hair and scowling.

After knowing him such a short time, it seemed impossible, but she recognized Nick’s laughter. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re not a morning person.”

Vanessa narrowed her eyes to peer at the clock and saw that it was nearly nine o’clock.
She was glad Nick had called, she decided, because that gave her a chance to cancel their date. “Listen, I’ve been thinking—”

He cut her off immediately. “Well, stop. You’ve obviously in no condition for that kind of exertion. I’ll be over in ten minutes to ply you with coffee.”

“Nick!” Vanessa cried, afraid of being plied. But it was too late, he’d already hung up and she had no idea what his home telephone number was.

Grumbling, she got out of bed, stumbled into the bathroom and took a shower. By the time Nick arrived, she was clad in jeans and a blue bulky knit sweater and was fully conscious.

She greeted him at the front door, holding a cup of therapeutically strong coffee in one hand. “You didn’t give me a chance to tell you on the phone, but…”

Nick grinned in that disarming way he had and assessed her trim figure with blatant appreciation. “Good, you’re dressed,” he said, walking past her into the house.

“You expected me to be naked?” Vanessa wanted to know.

He laughed. “I’m allowed my share of fantasies, aren’t I?”

Vanessa shook her head. Nick was impossible to shun. He was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, and he had the look of a man who knew where he was going to spend that chilly, sun-washed Saturday. “Come in, come in,” she chimed wryly as he preceded her down the hallway to the kitchen. “Don’t be shy.”

He grinned at her over one shoulder. “I’ve never been accused of that,” he assured her.

Vanessa had no doubt he was telling the truth. She gave up. “Where are we going?”

“Running,” he said. “Then I thought we’d take in a movie….”

Vanessa was holding up both hands in a demand for silence. “Wait a minute, handsome—rewind to the part about running.”

Nick dragged his languorous brown eyes from the toes of her sneakers to the crown of her head. “Bad idea? You certainly look like someone who cares about fitness.”

She sighed and poured her coffee into the sink. “Thank you—I think.”

“I guess we could skip running—just for today,” he said, stepping closer to her.

Vanessa’s senses went on red alert, and she leaped backward as though he’d burned her. “On second thought, running sounds like a great
idea,” she said, in a squeaky voice, embarrassed. “You seem to have a lot of—of extra energy.”

He favored her with slow, sensuous grin. “Oh, believe me,” he said with quiet assurance, “I do.”

Vanessa swallowed. It was beyond her how accepting a single blind date could get a person into so much trouble. She swore to herself that the next time Janet and Paul wanted to introduce her to someone, she was going to hide in the cellar until the danger passed.

“Relax,” Nick said, approaching and taking her shoulders into his big, gentle hands. “You are one tense individual, Value Van.”

Vanessa blinked. “What did you call me?”

“I’ve gotten kind of caught up in this cable marketing thing,” he replied, his dark eyes twinkling. “I thought you should have a professional nickname, like your friend Markdown Mel. The possibilities are endless, you know—there’s Bargain Barbara, for instance, and Half-price Hannah…”

Vanessa began to laugh. “I never know whether to take you seriously or not.”

He bent his head and kissed her, innocently and briefly. “Oh, you should take me seriously,
Van. It’s the rest of your life that needs mellowing out.”

She gave him a shove. “Let’s go running,” she said.

They drove to the nearest park in Nick’s Corvette. He led the way to the jogging path and immediately started doing stretching exercises.

Vanessa eyed him ruefully, then began, in her own awkward fashion, to follow suit. “One thing about dating a jock,” she ventured to say, breathing a little hard as she tried to keep up with his bends and stretches, “a girl stays skinny, no matter what.”

Nick started off down the path after rolling his eyes once, and Vanessa was forced to follow at a wary trot. “Are you saying that I’m not a fun guy?” he asked over one shoulder.

“What could be more fun than this?” Vanessa countered, already gasping for breath. She’d dropped her exercise program during the divorce, and the effects of her negligence were painfully obvious.

When they reached a straight stretch, Nick turned and ran backward, no trace of exertion visible in his manner or voice. “So, how long have you been a member of the loyal order of couch potatoes?” he asked companionably.

“I hate you,” huffed Vanessa.

“That really hurts, Value Van,” Nick replied. “See if I ever buy another pair of Elvis Presley bookends from you.”

There was grass alongside the pathway, and Vanessa flung herself onto it, dragging air into her lungs and groaning. She couldn’t believe she was there in the park, torturing herself this way when she could have slept in until noon and sent out for Chinese food.

Nick did not keep running, as she’d expected. Instead he flopped down on the cold grass beside her and said, “I appreciate the offer, but we haven’t known each other long enough.”

Vanessa gave him a look and clambered to her feet. “Tired so soon?” she choked out, jogging off down the pathway.

At the end of the route, which Vanessa privately thought of as The Gauntlet, the ice-blue Corvette sat shining in the autumn sunlight. She staggered toward it and collapsed into the passenger seat while Nick was still cooling down.

When he slid behind the wheel, she barely looked at him. “What did I do to Janet to make her hate me like this?” she asked.

Nick chuckled and started the car. “I’ll answer that when I’ve had a shower.”

Vanessa’s eyes flew open wide. Showering was an element she hadn’t thought about, even though it seemed perfectly obvious now.

Nick’s expression was suddenly serious. “Relax, Van,” he said. “It’s a private shower, and you’re not invited.”

To her everlasting chagrin, Vanessa blushed like a Victorian schoolgirl. She was a reserved person, but not shy. She wondered again what it was about this man that circumvented all the normal rules of her personality and made her act like someone she didn’t even know.

“It never crossed my mind that you might expect me to share a shower with you,” Vanessa lied, her chin at a prim angle, her arms folded.

“Liar,” Nick replied with amused affection.

He lived in a condominium on the top floor of one of the most historic buildings in Seattle, and the place had a quiet charm that surprised Vanessa. She had expected a playboy’s den with lots of velvet, chrome and smoked glass, but the spacious rooms were decorated in earth tones instead. There was an old-fashioned fireplace in the living room and a beautiful Navaho rug graced the wall above the cushy beige corduroy sofa.

“Make yourself at home,” Nick said casually,
ducking through a doorway and leaving Vanessa to stand there alone, feeling sweaty and rumpled and totally out of place.

She went to the window and looked out on busy Elliot Bay. A passenger ferry was chugging into port, large and riverboatlike, and Vanessa smiled. In the distance, she heard the sound of running water and an off-key rendition of a current popular song.

The view kept her occupied for what seemed like a long time, but when Nick didn’t return after ten minutes, Vanessa began to grow uneasy. She approached the big-screen television in one corner of the room and pushed the On button.

Immediately the Midas Network leaped out at her in living color, life-size. She turned the set off again and began to pace, tempted to sneak out before this nonrelationship with Nick De-Angelo grew into something she couldn’t handle.

She was just reaching for the doorknob when his voice stopped her.

“Don’t go,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to hurt you in any way, Vanessa. I swear it.”

She couldn’t move, couldn’t drop her hand to her side or turn the knob and make her escape.

“Something really important is happening here,” he went on. “Can’t you feel it?”

Vanessa let her forehead rest against the cool panel of the door. “Yes,” she confessed in a strangled voice, “and that’s what scares me.”

He stepped closer to her and laid his hands very gently on her shoulders. She was filled with the scent of his clean hair, his freshly washed skin. “I won’t let anything happen that you’re not ready for,” he promised, and when he turned her around to face him, Vanessa was powerless to resist.

She looked up at him with eyes full of trust and fear, and he let his hands drop to her waist. He was careful not to hold her too close, and yet she was achingly aware of his total, unreserved masculinity.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he said matter-of-factly. “That is, if you’re ready.”

She slid her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe, exhilarated and, at the same time, terrified. “I’m ready,” she answered, her mouth only a whisper away from his.

“W
ant a shower now?”

Vanessa, her energy drained by the kiss, had sagged back against the door when it was over. Her eyes opened wide, however, when Nick’s words registered. “I beg your pardon?”

He turned and walked off toward the open kitchen, looking too good for comfort in his jeans and cut-off shirt. His stomach muscles made hard ripples when he lifted his arm to open a cupboard door, and Vanessa felt vaguely dizzy.

At that moment there was only one thing in the world she wanted more than a shower. She followed him, careful to keep the breakfast bar between them. “I don’t have any clean clothes to put on,” she ventured to say.

Nick shrugged. “Some of Gina’s things are still here. You’re about her size, I think.”

The name made Vanessa round the breakfast bar. “Gina?” she asked, looking up at him.

He kissed her forehead. “My sister,” he assured her.

The relief Vanessa felt was embarrassing in its scope. “I’ve never had to shower on a date before,” she confessed.

Nick chuckled at that. “Never?”

Vanessa looked up into his dancing eyes and felt a painful tug somewhere in the region of her heart. She wanted to appear glamorous and sophisticated, but the truth was far different. She’d never been with any man besides Parker, and, when and if she went to bed with Nick, it was going to be almost like reliving the first time. At last she shook her head and answered, “Never.”

He started to put his arms around her and then stopped. “Do you like Chinese food?” he asked.

Vanessa nodded.

“Good. You’ll find the clothes and the shower down the hall—first room on the right. I’ll go get our lunch while you’re changing—okay?”

“Okay,” Vanessa answered, not knowing quite what to make of this man. She knew Nick was attracted to her, and yet when he had an advantage, he didn’t press it.

The room Nick had directed her to was large, though it obviously wasn’t the place where he slept. There was a private bathroom, however,
and Vanessa locked herself in before stripping off the clothes she’d worn to run in the park.

When she finished showering, she found the promised clothes in closets and bureaus and finally helped herself to a jumpsuit of navy corduroy. She buttoned it to her eyeballs and was just entering the living room when Nick returned with cartons of fragrant sweet-and-sour chicken, chow mein and fried rice.

He smiled and shook his head when he saw the jumpsuit. “Feel better?” he asked.

Vanessa felt a number of things, and she wasn’t ready to talk about any of them. She went to the cupboards and opened doors until she found plates for their food. They ate at the breakfast bar, perched on stools, and Nick insisted on using chopsticks.

“Show off,” Vanessa said, spearing a succulent morsel of chicken with her fork.

He surprised her by laying down his chop-sticks, reaching out and unfastening the top two buttons of the jumpsuit. “The weather’s getting nasty outside,” he commented, “but it’s warm enough in here.”

Vanessa blushed, embarrassed. She knew Nick thought she was a hidebound prude, but
she didn’t have the nerve to prove she wasn’t. Not yet.

He leaned over and gave her a nibbling kiss on the lips. “Everything is okay, Van,” he promised her quietly. “Just relax.”

A light rain spattered the windows, and Nick left his stool to light a fire on the hearth. The crackling sound was cozy, and the colorful blaze gave that corner of the room a cheery glow.

Something Vanessa could not name or define made her leave her place at the breakfast bar and approach Nick. She knelt beside him, facing the fireplace, and said, “I’m not like you p-probably think I am. It’s just that you scare me so much.”

He turned to her, smiling softly, and slid four fingers into her hair, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “I won’t tell you any lies, Vanessa,” he replied. “I want you—I have since I turned on the Midas Network and saw you standing there with a toll-free number printed across your chest—but I’m willing to wait.”

“Wait?” Vanessa asked. Nothing in her relationship with Parker had ever prepared her for this kind of patience from a man. He had to want something. “You’re admitting, then, that there is a plan of seduction?”

He laughed. “Absolutely. I intend to make you want me, Vanessa Lawrence.”

Vanessa figured he had the battle half won already, but she wasn’t about to say that to him. In fact, she didn’t say anything, because Nick DeAngelo had rendered her speechless.

He got up, leaving her kneeling there by the fire, and returned after a few minutes with two glasses of wine. After handing one to Vanessa and setting his own down on the brick hearth, he glanced pensively toward the rain-sheeted windows. “Do you want to go out to a movie, or shall we stay here?”

Even though Vanessa was still wishing that she’d stayed home, indeed that she’d never met Nick at all, she had no desire to leave the comfort and warmth of his fire. She was, in fact, having some pretty primitive and elemental feelings where he and his comfortable home were concerned. It was almost as though she’d been wandering, cold and hungry and alone, and he’d rescued her and brought her to a secret, special place that no one else knew about.

Vanessa shook her head. She hadn’t even had a sip of her wine yet, and it was already getting to her.

“Van?” Nick prompted, peering into her
face, and she realized that she hadn’t answered his question.

“Oh. Yes. I mean, I’d like to sit by the fire and watch the storm.” Even as she spoke, blue-gold lightning streaked across the angry sky and a fresh spate of rain pelted the glass.

Nick came back and sat down beside her on the rug. “Tell me about your life, Van,” he said, his voice low.

She immediately tensed, but before she could frame a reply, Nick reached out and squeezed her hand.

“I’m not asking about Parker—I know a little about him because we traveled in some of the same circles. You’re the one I’m curious about.”

Vanessa took a sip of her wine and then told Nick the central facts about her childhood; that her father had died when she was seven, that her very young mother had been overwhelmed by responsibilities and grief and had left her daughter with her parents so that she could marry a rodeo cowboy. There had been cards, letters and the occasional Christmas and birthday gifts, but Van had rarely seen her mother after that.

The expression in Nick’s eyes was a soft one as he listened, but there was no pity in evidence, and Vanessa appreciated that. Her childhood had
been difficult, but there were lots of people who would have gladly traded places with her, and she had made a good life for herself—generally speaking.

“You’ve always wanted to be on television?” Nick asked, plundering the white paper bag he’d brought home from the Chinese restaurant until he found two fortune cookies at the bottom.

Vanessa sighed and shook her head. “Not really. I wanted to be Annie Oakley until I was six—then I made the shattering discovery that there was very little call for trick riding and fancy shooting except in the circus.”

Nick grinned at that. “My childhood dream pales by comparison. I wanted to run my Uncle Guido’s fish market.”

Vanessa laughed. “And you had to settle for a career in professional football. My God, DeAngelo, that’s sad—I don’t know how you bore up under the disappointment!”

He had drawn very close. “I’m remarkable,” he answered with a shrug.

“I can imagine,” Vanessa confessed, and as he touched the sensitive, quivering flesh of her neck with his warm and tentative lips, she gave a little moan. “Is this the part where you start making me want you?” she dared to ask.

Nick nipped at her earlobe and chuckled when she trembled. “Yes. But that’s all, so don’t get nervous.”

“What about what you want?” Vanessa asked.

“I can wait,” he replied, and she knew she should push him away, but she couldn’t. The attention he was giving her neck felt entirely too good.

Presently his hands came back to the buttons of the jumpsuit. Vanessa closed her fingers over his, realizing with a sleepy sort of despair that she wasn’t wearing either bra or panties beneath the worn blue corduroy, but Nick would not be stopped. He was a gentle conqueror, though, and she had no more thoughts of fear or of escape.

She was lying on her back before the popping fire when he bared her breasts and watched the shimmer of the blaze and the flash of lightning play over them. Vanessa had never felt so feminine, so desirable.

With a low, grumbling groan, Nick lowered himself to chart the circumference of her breast with a whisperlight passing of his lips. Vanessa watched in delicious dread as he moved toward the peak he meant to conquer, in an upward spiraling pattern of kisses. A whimper of long-denied
pleasure escaped her as he touched her budding nipple with his tongue, causing it to blossom like some lovely, exotic flower.

Beyond the windows, lightning raged against the sky as though seeking to thrust its golden fingers through the glass and snatch the lovers up in fire and heat. Vanessa shuddered involuntarily as Nick’s hand made a slow, comforting circle on her belly, his lips and tongue continuing to master her nipple.

He’d said his goal was to make her want him, and he’d succeeded without question. Vanessa longed to give him the kind of intolerable pleasure he was giving her, to be joined with him in a fevered battle that would have no losers. But he was setting the pace, and Vanessa had no power to turn the tables.

Her breasts were moist and pleasantly swollen by the time he brought his mouth back to hers and consumed her in a kiss as elemental as the lightning tearing at the afternoon sky.

“Do you want me to make love to you, Van?” Nick whispered against her throat when the kiss had at last ended.

Vanessa could barely lie still, her body was so hungry for his. “Yes,” she admitted breathlessly, her fingers frantic in his hair. “Oh, yes.”

He gave a heavy sigh and circled a pulsing nipple with the tip of his tongue before saying the unbelievable words. “You’re not ready for that, darlin’.”

Although he’d spoken without a trace of malice, Vanessa still felt as though she’d been slapped. “You can’t just—just leave me like this….”

“Don’t worry,” he said, still toying with her nipple. “I don’t intend to.”

Moments later, he drew the jumpsuit down over her hips and legs and tossed it away. He kissed Vanessa thoroughly before trailing his mouth down over her collarbone, her breasts, her belly.

When he reached his destination, the lightning would wait no longer. It reached into the room, scooping Vanessa up with crackling fingers and bouncing her mercilessly in its palm. Only when she cried out in primitive satisfaction did it set her back on the rug in front of Nick’s fireplace and leave her in relative peace.

She was crying, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at the man who had unchained the lightning.

He covered her gently with an afghan as though she were a casualty of some sort and
kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said.

By the time Nick returned, Vanessa had rallied enough to get back into the jumpsuit. She was standing at the window, looking out on the gloomy spectacle of a city dressed in twilight gray, hugging herself. Nick stood behind her, putting his arms around her, and she felt the chilly dampness of his bare chest against her back and guessed that he’d taken a cold shower.

“Why?” she asked, not looking at him because she couldn’t. “I would have given myself to you. Didn’t you want me?”

“Oh, I wanted you all right.”

“Then why? Why didn’t you take me?”

“Because this is your time, Vanessa. Because I think you’re hiding somewhere deep inside yourself and you need to be coaxed into the world again. That’s what I want to show you—that it’s safe out here.”

She turned in his arms, sliding hers around his waist. He wore nothing but a pair of jeans and an impudent half grin. She rested her forehead against his cool, muscular chest.

“It was as though the storm came inside,” she confessed. “I’ve never felt anything like it.”

Nick simply held her and listened.

“I’m not some kind of neurotic, you know,” she went on. “And I’m not a prude, either.”

He chuckled, and his lips moved softly at her temple. “No prude would have responded the way you did.”

Vanessa looked up at him. “You were right earlier, Nick DeAngelo—you are a remarkable man.”

He favored her with a cocky grin. “You have no idea how remarkable,” he teased.

“I think I’d like to go home before I decide to find out,” Vanessa replied.

Nick didn’t argue, get insulted or try to convince her to stay. He simply put on a shirt and shoes, got her a paper bag for her jeans and sweater and drove her home.

“Will you come to dinner on Friday night?” Vanessa asked him, when they were standing in her kitchen and he’d just given her a goodbye kiss that brought faint flickers of lightning to her mind.

“Do I have to wait that long to see you again?” he countered, albeit good-naturedly.

Vanessa nodded. “I’m afraid so. If you’re around, I won’t get any rest at all, and when that happens, I don’t do well on television.”

Nick touched the tip of her nose with an index
finger. “Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll content myself with watching you sell cordless screwdrivers and videotape rewinders for a week, but be forewarned, when Friday night comes around, you’re in for another lesson on why I’m the only man for you.”

Vanessa felt a pleasant little thrill at the prospect and hoped he didn’t notice. “Eight o’clock,” she said.

He kissed her again. “Seven, and I’ll bring the wine.”

“Seven-thirty,” Vanessa negotiated, “and you can also build the fire.”

Nick laughed. “Deal,” he said, shaking her hand. And then he was gone, and Vanessa’s big, empty house seemed bigger and emptier than ever.

She fed Sari, who had been telling a long and woeful tale in colloquial meows from the moment Vanessa and Nick had entered the house. She had just tossed her jeans, sweater and underwear into the utility room when someone began pounding at the front door.

Thinking Nick had come back, she hurried through the house, worked the lock and pulled the door open wide.