Patsy knew she was in trouble when she opened her eyes and saw the expanse of bed in front of her, felt the strong, warm bands around her waist and felt Kenny’s hard body pressed against the length of hers. Evidently, she’d rolled toward his warmth during the night. And apparently, he hadn’t pushed her away. What was she going to do now?
She touched the warm arm around her waist and marveled that such a strong, hard man could be so tender with Wendy. And with her. Feeling bold, she traced her slim fingers over his ring finger, starting at the nail and traveling down to the base, which was covered with the simple gold wedding band she’d given him. An involuntary shiver wracked her body and she sucked in her breath, praying Kenny wouldn’t wake up.
When he didn’t awaken, she relaxed, but she didn’t resume her exploration of his body. She knew her weakness for him could turn a pleasurable examination into a passionate encounter that she wasn’t ready to deal with. She grew more ready every day, felt more confident of Kenny’s growing feelings for her, but she was still pretty sure he hadn’t finished grieving for Leah. She knew it was senseless to wait for him to get over Leah before giving herself fully to him, but she did want his grief to be behind him. And she was prepared to wait until it was.
Patsy closed her eyes, stopped analyzing her situation and allowed herself to enjoy the uncomplicated closeness she shared with Kenny. She felt protected in his arms as she always did in his presence, but she also felt contentment, a feeling she hadn’t named before. There was something right about being in bed with him like this. Holding each other. She knew it wouldn’t be long before they could enjoy their closeness without reservation.
She drifted back into a peaceful sleep, telling herself there was plenty of time left before she had to get up.
Even after he knew she’d fallen asleep, Kenny didn’t move. Every part of his body was hard and begging. And if he moved now, one part of his anatomy would press against her. Flannel gown or no flannel gown, she’d feel him, and that would surely wake her up. And she’d be embarrassed. He’d be embarrassed, too, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want her to find out that he’d known the very moment her soft, alluring woman’s body had rolled next to his throbbing male one.
But he had. He closed his eyes and savored the memory. At first he’d thought it was a dream, and he hadn’t wanted to open his eyes for fear of ending it. But he’d opened them anyway and found it wasn’t a dream. Patsy was real and alive and as comfortable in his arms as if they always slept spoon-fashion.
He closed his eyes, content for now to hold her close. When he felt himself begin to drift off, he deliberately loosened his hold on her so that when she awakened the next time, she’d be able to get up without concern for waking him.
Kenny dribbled left, leaned in, then faked right. When Derrick moved right, he charged to the goal for a layup, an easy two points.
Derrick, panting hard, leaned over and rested his hands on his knees. “What’s wrong with you, man? You’re a demon today.”
Kenny didn’t bother to answer. He stepped outside the boundary behind the goal and tossed the ball in. He hadn’t come here to talk. He’d come to release some of the energy that had been building up in him since he and Patsy started sharing the same bed four nights ago.
He ran forward, determined to keep Derrick from getting a shot. All Kenny had to do was pretend Derrick was Patsy. No way was she going to drive him crazy and no way was Derrick getting to the goal. The ten-to-two score in this lunchtime game of one-on-one indicated his approach was working.
Kenny’s eyes studied Derrick’s right hand, then his left as the ball moved back and forth. When he caught Derrick’s rhythm, he moved in and stole the ball.
“Damn,” he heard Derrick say as Kenny charged toward his own basket.
Swoosh! Another goal.
“No more,” Derrick called when Kenny stepped out of bounds and tossed the ball to him. He caught the ball and dropped down on the court, the ball between his legs. “What’s wrong with you, man? This is only a game.”
Kenny didn’t want to talk. He wanted to play. He still had enough pent-up energy to light New York City on Christmas Eve. No way could he go to court strung this tightly. “Come on, man. Stop being such a poor loser.”
Derrick shook his head. “No way. If I’m going to die of exhaustion, it won’t be from a game of basketball.”
Kenny rested his hands on his hips and stalked over to Derrick. “Is sex all you think about?”
“Who said I was talking about sex?”
Kenny didn’t bother to answer. He reached for the ball, but Derrick removed it from his grasp. “Patsy giving you trouble?” he inquired with a grin.
Kenny cursed. Was it that damn obvious?
“It’s all your fault,” Derrick continued. “You shouldn’t have given her the option of not sleeping with you. Look at you. As mean as a grizzly bear. And just because you aren’t getting any loving from your dear, sweet wife.” He laughed.
Kenny wanted to grab Derrick’s neck in both his hands and squeeze. Instead, he dropped his hands from his hips and joined his friend on the floor.
Derrick looked over at him. “I guessed right, huh?”
“Not even close,” Kenny retorted.
“You can’t tell me Patsy’s not the reason you’re playing like a madman.”
Kenny gave a heavy sigh. “We’re sleeping together.”
“All right!” Derrick said, slapping his friend on the back. “It’s about time.”
Kenny shared that sentiment. It was definitely about time. Too bad Patsy didn’t see it that way.
“What’s wrong with you then? You weren’t playing ball out there, you were waging war.”
“Patsy and I are sharing the same bed, but that’s about it.”
“Sharing the same bed and nothing else?” Derrick repeated.
“That’s what I said.” Kenny told Derrick about Wendy’s incident at school and its outcome.
Derrick shook his head. “I don’t believe it. I really don’t believe it. It’s unnatural to sleep with a woman, especially your wife, and not make love to her. Don’t you know anything at all about women?”
Kenny shot his friend a bold glare. “I know enough to find a woman to share my life.”
“But not enough to get her to make love with you,” Derrick finished for him. “Do you want me to give you some pointers?” he asked with a straight face.
Kenny moved to get up. “Forget it, man. You’re no help.”
Derrick grabbed his friend’s arm to keep him in place. “Come on, man. I’m only kidding.”
“This isn’t a kidding matter, Derrick. I’m dying.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“Oh, but it is.” Kenny still felt the softness of Patsy’s warm body as it had pressed against him this morning. Four days! This morning made four days that Patsy had rolled into his embrace during the night. God, how he wanted her. He knew he’d burst into flames if he didn’t have her soon. “Patsy can’t seem to stay on her side of the bed,” he told Derrick. “And she’s driving me crazy.”
Derrick laughed, but another killing stare from Kenny cut his laughter short. “Why don’t you just tell her how you feel?”
If only it were that simple, Kenny thought. “I can’t. I promised her I’d give her time. I told her I wouldn’t push her. I want to keep my word.”
“The way I see it,” Derrick began, “you can continue to suffer in silence or you can be honest with Patsy. Tell her how you feel. She might be as frustrated as you are. There has to be some reason she can’t stay on her side of the bed.”
Kenny considered his friend’s words. He knew Patsy enjoyed being in his arms; that wasn’t the question. No, the question was whether her mind was ready to agree with her body. Did she trust him enough to make their marriage a real one?
Kenny looked at his watch, then stood up. “Gotta go, man. I have to be in court at one-thirty.”
“Tell her how you’re feeling, Kenny,” Derrick called after him.
Kenny seriously considered his friend’s suggestion.
When Patsy climbed into bed four nights later in a pink version of her trademark flannel gown, he wondered how many colors the dratted garment came in. He’d seen shades of blue, white, green, red, yellow and now pink in the eight days they’d been sleeping together. He guessed she’d have to start repeating colors pretty soon.
Her scent wafted over to him, not allowing him to pull his eyes away from her. She’d washed her hair tonight. The fresh sheen told him so. She never wore rollers to bed, for which he was grateful. Her becoming hairstyle was maintenance free and she didn’t even curl it in the morning, just brushed it into place. Obviously, the only moving she did during the night was to roll into his arms, because when he woke up, her hair was still in place—a fact that annoyed and tantalized him. He dreamed of planting his hands in that hair and destroying some of its tidiness.
“Did you and Derrick play ball again today?” she asked, once she was settled on her side of the bed.
He wondered why she didn’t just roll into his arms now, since that’s where she’d be before the night was over. He knew it and she knew it. So why were they playing this game?
“Yeah,” he answered. “We played today.”
“It’s getting to be a habit, isn’t it? Maybe I should start working out so I can keep in shape.”
Kenny didn’t think she needed any exercise. She was firm where she needed to be firm and soft where she needed to be soft. “You’re in good-enough shape.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Things start going south when you get close to thirty-five. I’d better get active now.”
His eyes automatically went to her breasts. Thank God she wore a light bra to bed each night. Though he was sure she didn’t need to, he knew if she didn’t he’d be dead by now. He throbbed just thinking about waking up with his hand covering the hard pebble at the tip of her breast. He groaned.
“Are you all right?” she asked with concern. “Maybe you and Derrick are overdoing it. You shouldn’t push yourself too hard, Kenny.”
He knew she thought his groan was from his aching muscles. Well, a muscle was aching, but it wasn’t the one she was thinking about. “Maybe you’re right,” he answered.
“I know I’m right. I can see you and Derrick out there now. You’re both too macho to admit you’re tired, so you probably run each other too hard.” She smiled over at him. “Maybe you should play Derrick on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and me on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I could use the workout and you could use the break. How about it?”
A vision of Patsy in short shorts and a loose-fitting top filled his mind. No way could he handle her bumping against him, touching him, laughing up at him with those big brown eyes. No way.
“Kenny?” she asked again. “How about it?”
“I don’t know, Patsy. When would we play? You can’t make it at lunchtime, can you?”
She shook her head, and Kenny knew she was thinking of an alternative. “We can play after work. Yeah, we can go down to the playground.”
“What about Wendy?” he asked, grasping for some reason, any reason, to get that thought out of her mind.
“She’ll come with us, of course. She’d love it, Kenny. What do you think?”
I think you’re trying to kill me. “We’ll see,” he said. “We’ll see.”
After nine straight days of waking up with Patsy in his arms and pretending he didn’t notice, Kenny was at the end of his rope. He planned to talk to her about his dilemma as soon as she came out of the bathroom. Thank God her nightly ritual had dropped from her previous hour to about twenty minutes, though he still wondered what she was doing in there all that time.
Soon the door opened and she walked out, dressed in another one of those flannel gowns—this one in orange. Where in the hell did she get the darned things? he wondered. A harsh chuckle escaped his lips when he thought of her buying them in a lingerie shop. More like an army-surplus store.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, leaning against the headboard, ready for the nightly discussion that had become part of their routine.
“Nothing. I just thought about something.”
“Tell me,” she coaxed.
“It was a new knock-knock joke I’d heard.”
She raised her hand. “Don’t tell me. I don’t think I can take a knock-knock joke tonight.”
“Rough day?”
She shook her head and smiled. “Probably a very bad knock-knock joke.”
She looked so adorable it took all his self-control not to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless. “Ha, Ha, ha,” he said, not believing they’d been reduced to discussing knock-knock jokes. Talk about avoiding the tough topics. “Very funny.”
“Unlike your knock-knock jokes,” she deadpanned.
“Enough of knocking my knock-knock jokes.”
Patsy rolled her eyes. “Okay. Then, are you going to take me up on my offer of a game of basketball?”
No. He couldn’t add basketball to the torture of sleeping with her. “Why don’t you ask Marilyn? Derrick and I get a good workout. He’d be without a partner if I started playing you.” Actually, Derrick had threatened to stop playing with him if he didn’t tone down his game.
“You don’t want to play with me, do you, Kenny? Boy, I learn more about you every day. You’re sexist!”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. How else can you explain your unwillingness to take me on?”
Kenny couldn’t believe they were arguing over this inconsequential matter. “I said that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
He took a deep breath. “Us.”
“Us?”
Okay, maybe he’d been wrong to think she knew the meaning of the word. “Us, Patsy. You and me. Our marriage.”
“I know what the word means,” she said with too much of an edge in her voice for him to miss.
So now they were going to discuss their respective vocabularies. He didn’t think so. He covertly checked that all his buttons were fastened, then turned back the covers and sat facing her, his legs crossed Indian style. “We’ve been married two months now,” he began. “Do you have any regrets?” He hadn’t planned to ask that question, but he felt a sudden need to stall for time.
“No,” Patsy said hesitantly. “Why would you ask something like that? Are you having regrets?”
“Not a one,” he answered immediately, seeing the wheels turning in her head and not wanting them to churn up the wrong conclusion.
“So why are we discussing it? I was talking about a simple game of basketball.”
He mentally counted to ten before replying. He wasn’t going to let her get him off track. “Forget basketball for a minute, will you? We need to discuss our marriage.”
“No need to get upset,” she said. “If you want to talk about our marriage, we’ll talk about our marriage. What do you want to say about it?”
How damned frustrated I am sleeping with you every night, holding you in my arms every morning and not being able to make love to you. “Look, Patsy,” he began slowly, taking her feelings into consideration. “I think our marriage is working. It’s just about everything I hoped it would be.” Good, he told himself. Remain calm. State the facts. “In no time, you, Wendy and I have become a family. It’s hard to believe we’ve only been married eight short weeks.”
“That’s probably because we’ve known each other for so long.”
“I thought that at first, but now I’m not sure. The week that Wendy was in Florida with her grandparents was the first time we’d been alone, really alone, since before I married Leah and you married Theo. That week was different. Almost like we were rebuilding our relationship from scratch. Do you know what I mean?”
She nodded. “We started something new that week. A foundation based on our relationship with each other. Not you and me and Wendy. Not you, me, Wendy and Leah. And not you, me, Wendy, Leah and Theo. Just you and me.”
Her understanding gave him the courage he needed to continue the conversation. Maybe Patsy was as ready as he was to move to the next step. “We’re not kids anymore, Patsy. And we aren’t just best friends. We’re husband and wife.”
“I know that, Kenny,” she said with impatience.
“I know you know it, but how do you feel about it? Do you think that what we share is special?”
“Of course I do.”
Okay, Kenny, he told himself. Now’s the time. He cleared his throat, then said, “Does that mean you’re ready to make this a real marriage?”
Her eyes widened in surprise and his confidence slipped a little. Surely she’d known the conversation was leading to this point.
“Are you?” she asked.
“I don’t think you have to ask that. I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings.” Kenny knew what he said now would make her want to either move forward with their relationship or stay with the status quo. He continued slowly, wanting to make sure he stated his feelings clearly. “You’re my wife in every sense that a man makes a woman his wife, except that we don’t make love. You’re my confidante, my friend, my counselor. You’re mother to my child. Now I want us to come full circle. I want it all. I want you to become my lover.”
Patsy stared at the comforter, not speaking. Finally, she looked up at him. “You’re pretty sure about what you want, aren’t you?”
Definitely. “I guess I am.”
“What about Leah?” she asked quickly.
Kenny’s head jerked. He hadn’t expected that question. “What about her?” he asked, not able to keep the defensiveness out of his voice. “She was my wife, but she’s dead now. You’re alive. You’re here. The only way she’ll get into bed with us is if you let her. Are you going to bring her in here with us?”
Patsy sucked in her breath. “I don’t want to, but what if she’s already here?”
Kenny’s heart contracted at the fear he heard in Patsy’s voice. He took her hand in his and rubbed his thumb across her palm. “Trust me. She’s not here.”
“Are you in love with me, Kenny?”
His hold on her hand tightened, but he didn’t say anything. What could he say? He hadn’t thought about being in love. He wanted commitment from this marriage and he didn’t need to romanticize his relationship with Patsy by saying he was in love with her. He loved her and that was enough.
“Are you in love with me?” he asked, instead of answering her question.
She removed her hand from his. “That’s your answer—to ask me a question?”
He didn’t know what she wanted him to say. “I thought we agreed before we got married that the love we shared was enough.” She nodded and he continued, “Well, what we have now is even more than we had then. I think it’s enough for us to move forward, Patsy. What do you think?”
“I don’t know,” she said, stinging from the pain of having her words slung back at her in what she thought was a callous manner.
“Well, what more are you waiting for before we make this a real marriage?”
I want you to tell me you’re in love with me, she thought immediately. She was in love with him. She loved everything about him. Maybe she’d always been in love with him. Or maybe she’d fallen in love with him that day at the church. In any case, she wanted him to be in love with her. “I want to be sure you’re not going to break my heart.” She spoke the truth softly but clearly.
“What can I do to prove to you that I’d never deliberately hurt you?”
Nothing short of telling me you’re in with love me. “I don’t know.”
He sighed an old man’s sigh. “So where does that leave us?”
“Frustrated?” she suggested in an attempt to lighten the seriousness of the moment.
“But not for long,” he declared. “You may not be sure what you want, but I am. I’m serving notice on you today. No more Kenny, Mr. Nice Guy. I’m going to do everything in my power to make you want me as much as I want you.”
“You can’t seduce me,” she countered. “You said you’d wait until I’m ready.”
“Oh, you’ll be ready, all right,” he promised with a masculine gleam in his dark eyes. “You’ll be so ready I won’t have to seduce you. You’ll seduce me.”
The challenging glint in his eyes told her he meant every word he’d said.
“I guess we’ll have to see, won’t we?” she replied, not one to back down from any challenge.
“I guess we will.” He moved back under the covers on his side of the bed. “Good night, wife. Sweet dreams.”
She slowly reached for the lamp switch, then slid down under the covers.
“Patsy?” His voice called out to her from his side of the bed.
“Yes?”
“Don’t hold me responsible for what happens when you roll over to my side of the bed during the night.”
She sucked in a deep breath that he no doubt heard. “You knew?”
“Of course I knew. I was asleep, not dead. And I would have had to be dead not to feel the softness of your body against mine.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked in a breathless whisper.
“I didn’t hear you mentioning it. Anyway, I knew if I said something you’d try to stay awake all night, and then Wendy and I would have to deal with your bad attitude every morning.”
“So why tell me now?”
She felt him smile. “Since you’ve rolled over to me every night that we’ve slept in this bed, I don’t think I have anything to worry about. You might try to stay awake, but I doubt you can.”
Patsy couldn’t respond. She was too appalled that he knew she’d been in his arms each morning. He knew she’d been awake and that she’d chosen to stay in his arms rather than move away.
“Patsy?” he called again.
She took a deep breath. “What?”
“Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”