Chapter Fourteen

“I guess that session didn’t help you much,” Matt said as they walked back to her apartment.

They paused at the street corner to wait for the light to change, their shoulders touching, and Betsy thought about how skittish she’d been before their first lesson, just touching shoulders with him. Now she looked forward to it, almost couldn’t wait to do it with him…touch shoulders and so many other things. “No, I guess it didn’t help a whole lot.”

“Sorry.”

The light turned green, and they crossed the intersection, shoulders still brushing companionably, the way his shoulder had brushed against Rob’s. But it didn’t mean the same thing. She shrugged away his apology. “Don’t worry about it.”

The meeting had helped her in one way. It had defined his relationship with Rob more clearly. Their ease with each other…their joking sense of camaraderie…most of all, Matt’s pissed-off reaction when Rob talked about a past love.

Lots of jealousy there. And that told her everything she had to know about Matt’s feelings. So even if he didn’t want a permanent relationship with Rob, he must still care deeply about him to have been so annoyed.

If only Matt felt that deeply about her. What would it be like if he did? They could have more of those gentle cuddling sessions, and when she was feeling deliciously naughty, she could surprise him by doing a crazy high-kick in a lacy black garter belt and killer heels as he came through the door.

Betsy blinked and cut the thought off when she realized the wrong road her mind had taken. No, not Matt, she corrected. Tyler. She wished Tyler felt that way about her and that she could sizzle for him in a sexy garter belt and heels.

“Going to rain.” Matt’s comment mercifully distracted her from the stupid mistake her mind had made.

She glanced at the sky. He was right. It had been overcast for most of the day, but now the clouds hung low, looking dark, bloated, and very threatening. Then a crack of thunder echoed from somewhere far away, and Betsy burrowed deeper into her jacket. “No umbrella.”

Matt nodded. “Me either.” He moved closer to her, as if his nearness would somehow protect her from the rain.

It felt good to her, and she leaned in against him as their pace automatically quickened, their steps picking up the same rapid tempo. She sighed. “I carried one to work with me today. But when I came to see you, I forgot to bring it.”

He smiled. “No surprise. Bumping into Mrs. Lattimer in her avenging-angel mode would make a memory expert forget even the most basic things, like protecting himself from the rain.”

A second clap of thunder sounded, and a single drop of rain fell onto Betsy’s cheek. “I think it’s already started.” She brushed it away.

Matt laughed. “Sweetheart, you are one perceptive lady.” Stopping at a sidewalk newspaper box they were passing, he reached inside and pulled out a free neighborhood paper. “Your new rain hat.” He turned to her with a wicked smile and plunked it on her head.

Betsy scowled at him as the pages fluttered around her face. But it was what her mom always did when caught in an unexpected rainstorm without an umbrella, so she kept it there, lifting her hand to anchor it in place as another raindrop came down and landed on her nose. “Very funny.” She wasn’t willing to give up her scowl, even though it was funny.

Matt nodded. “You’re right. Not that funny and definitely not effective. Got a better idea.” He touched her arm as more raindrops splashed down, falling faster and faster until, finally, the clouds opened up, and the drops turned into a torrent. “Come on. We’ll run for it.”

“Six blocks?”

He grinned. “Or I could carry you, since your marathon skills seem to be deficient.”

She glared at him. “We’ll run.”

Matt nodded, still grinning as he quickly unbuttoned his jacket and spread it open. “Good.”

Turning it into a tent to protect her, he pressed her body against his side and tucked her under the material. Then they ran the six blocks to her apartment, with his arm around her and their downturned heads almost touching as he held on firmly so she wouldn’t skid or fall on the wet sidewalk.

When they reached her building, they trotted up the front steps and burst into the foyer, dripping on the floor like a couple of shaggy dogs who’d escaped from an unwanted bath. But somehow, Betsy was more exhilarated than exhausted by the run, and she couldn’t help smiling at how silly they must have looked sharing the same jacket and sprinting like a pair of idiots through the pouring rain.

“That was fun.” She untented herself from beneath his jacket, and they walked to the elevator, shaking water from their clothes, pushing sodden hair out of their eyes, and leaving puddles in their wake.

She swept the drenched newspaper rain hat from her head and considered tossing it on the floor to get rid of the thing. But the prospect of a vengeful Lorena Lattimer demanding her eviction for littering immediately rose in her mind, so she folded the dripping mess at her side to hold it there until she reached her apartment.

At the elevator, Betsy leaned against the wall, looking up at Matt while he pressed the button and looked down at her.

He looks good. Even with the hair plastered to his skull, and a rivulet of rain running down the side of his face, he still looks good.

“You have a drop of water hanging from the tip of your nose.” She smiled at him.

He brushed it away and moved closer to her. “And you have drops of water all over your face.” He smiled back, then he brushed the tips of his fingers against her cheek. The movement was soft, slow, gentle, as though she were a precious thing to be handled carefully.

She stopped smiling and stared at him, and he stopped smiling too, and came a step closer, boxing her in with her back against the wall.

She held her breath as he slipped his hand under her chin and tilted her face toward him. Then his thumb stroked upward along her jaw, making her heartbeat throb fast and hard throughout her body. The touch sent goose bumps shivering across her skin and made her yearn for things she knew she could never have.

“Matt,” she said as he smoothed hair away from her brow.

He nodded, and continued stroking her hair. “Yes?”

“I—” She stopped abruptly, not knowing what else to say.

I’m starting to feel strange around you, and I don’t know why. I only know it’s making me nervous, and that can’t be good. No, she definitely couldn’t say that to her friend’s lover. So she took refuge in the only other subject she could think of. “I thought I’d go shopping for my party dress tomorrow after work. Want to come along and help?”

His hand fell away from her hair, and for a split second some unreadable emotion flitted across his face. But then he smiled. Not a broad smile, but one that seemed genuine enough. “Your party dress,” he murmured. “The dress that will make you sizzle for Tyler.”

He put an odd stress on sizzle. Betsy wasn’t sure what it meant, but she ignored it and nodded. “That’s the one. I’m going to try Weller’s Department Store. It’s located at—”

“I know where it is. Rob took me there last weekend so I could find a birthday present for my dad. Sure, I’ll come and help you sizzle for Tyler.”

Again, his voice underlined the word in the same strange way. She frowned. Maybe she should ask him what was going on with his sudden obsession with making a verbal meal out of it. But the sound of the elevator door opening stopped her, so she just said, “Elevator’s here,” and moved past him to get inside.

By the time they reached her apartment, she’d decided not to force the point. If the man wanted to play silly gymnastics with a word, let him.

Unlocking her front door, she opened it a crack, then turned to him again, wondering if she should ask him in, then quickly deciding against it. It was too late, they were both too wet and…hell…she could still feel the way his hand had brushed across her cheek, how gently it had smoothed the damp hair from her brow. If she asked him in now, she might ask him for a lesson, too, and she couldn’t do that, not when Rob, his real lover, was waiting for him at home. But she also wasn’t going to send him out there, unarmed, to drown on the trip back.

“Wait here. I’ll get you an umbrella,” she said.

Matt shook his head. “Don’t bother. I’m so wet now, a little more water couldn’t hurt me, and if it gets too bad, I can always take a cab.”

Betsy nodded. “All right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then. In front of the store. Around six.”

“Six o’clock at Weller’s. I’ll be there.”

There was a damp spot on his forehead, and she longed to brush it dry, the way he’d dried her cheek. But she didn’t. She just smiled to let him know she appreciated his help. “Wonderful. Goodnight.”

And before he could answer, she slipped into her apartment and locked the door, leaning against it as she listened to his footsteps move down the hall. A minute later, they faded into silence. Betsy closed her eyes, only half aware that she had lifted her hand to touch the place on her cheek where he had brushed the rain away.

Then she remembered how completely in sync he was with Rob. A real love match there, even if it wasn’t a permanent one. Strangely deflated, she pushed away from the door, and the water dripping onto her shoe reminded her she was still holding Matt’s newspaper rain hat. “Crap,” she muttered, grimacing as she held it gingerly in front of her and quick-walked into the kitchen to deposit it in the trash bin.

She was about to toss it away when the thick, black border at the bottom of the back page caught her attention. It surrounded an announcement laid out in equally bold, eye-catching print. The paper was limp with rain and wrinkled from the way she’d crushed it in her hand, but still readable.

Smiling, Betsy plopped down at the kitchen table, wet clothes and all, to give it a closer look. Smoothing a finger over the page, she read through the text twice and nodded.

Appeal to the tenant leadership’s vanity, Rob had advised. Appeal to their greed and desire for the limelight, was Matt’s contribution.

“Thank you, gentlemen.” A bubble of hope rose inside of her and the seed of an idea began to form. Before going to work in the morning, she’d swing by the newspaper box again and pick up a fresh, dry copy of the paper. Then she’d have to come up with a suitable pitch, and as soon as she felt brave enough, she’d have to do the scariest thing of all—face the good leaders of the tenants’ association with her counterproposal to eviction.

They’d probably tell her to stick her suggestion in her ear. But at least she’d have given it her best shot, and she supposed no one could be expected to do more than that when confronted by a force of nature like Lorena Lattimer.

****

Matt paused in the doorway of Betsy’s building and looked up at the sky. It was leaden but, thankfully, the rain had stopped, so he ditched the idea of taking a cab. Instead he bounded down the steps and began walking back to Rob’s place, striding briskly along the street and forcing himself to concentrate on the shop windows he passed so he wouldn’t think about the way Betsy had looked at him for just that one brief moment when they’d stood at the elevator.

If she’d invited him in, he would have suggested another lesson, one that lasted for days.

Which would have been a mistake.

She was already on his mind too much for it to be healthy—definitely while he was awake but, even worse, while he slept.

He’d dreamed about her again last night. Not about some unrecognizable, one-size-fits-all female, but about Betsy Kincaid herself. Her face, her body, those luscious breasts of hers. It was all as clear to him as if she were right there in bed beside him. Or under him or on top of him. Which were the two places he really loved having her.

He wasn’t sure what it meant, her always there in his nighttime head, but he knew it couldn’t be good, and it would have to stop.

He frowned.

But how did you keep your subconscious mind from serving up unwanted images and channeling them into a night filled with magnificent wet dreams? There was only one solution he could think of. He’d have to stop sleeping. Yeah, that was the ticket.

Unfortunately, giving up sleep would mean he’d be more or less brain-dead at work. Which probably also meant he’d wind up losing every case he worked on and send his legal career right into the toilet.

With a groan, he thrust his hands into his pockets and turned down the street where Rob lived, wondering if he’d made a mistake in agreeing to help her buy a dress.

No. It was the right thing to do. He’d package her in the sexiest getup he could find, send her off to screw with Tyler’s brain instead of his, and be done with her forever.

****

When Betsy left for work the next morning, the tenant leadership was gathered in the lobby handing out flyers.

Lorena Lattimer happily thrust one at her as she passed. “Information about our next meeting, It’s scheduled for a week from Wednesday, and we’ll be discussing our recent communications with management about the building’s vandalism situation.”

Mae Keegan fluttered a smile at Betsy. “I’ll be bringing my prize-winning Black Forest layer cake and my peach pie with the special cookie crust.” She patted Betsy’s hand with the reassuring affection that one sugar addict shows for another. “I know you’re going to enjoy them.”

For his part, Evan Huffnagle gave her his usual cold-fish look and nod, the one that said, you are not a babe, and I am not interested in ogling you.

Not that Betsy cared, so she nodded a cold-fish greeting politely back to him, smiled brightly at Mae, and calmly returned Lorena Lattimer’s challenging look. No quaking for her this time. Not that she felt brave. But she was working on it, getting a little better every day. By the night of the meeting she vowed she’d be able to present her plan with the same kind of ballsy panache she intended to display when she faced Tyler at the company party.

“I’ll be there,” she told Lorena as she stuffed the flyer in her bag and left the building.

****

“Either more great sex or you ate a pound of chocolate last night,” Flo said when Betsy entered the office an hour later.

Betsy stopped in front of the reception desk and stared at the woman. “What?”

“You’ve got that walk going again.” Grinning, Flo sat up straighter and moved her shoulders in a sexy little shimmy. “In spades. And the only times I’ve ever seen that walk is after great sex or great chocolate.”

Betsy smiled. Neither. It was just that she’d figured out how to help the Donnellys, and she’d done it on her own. Well, almost on her own, with a little help from Rob and Matt and the all-important eureka words they’d thrown at her. “I’ll never tell.” She winked at Flo.

Flo’s suggestive laugh followed her as she turned and headed down the hall to her office. “You just did,” she called after Betsy, happily choosing wrong selection A instead of wrong selection B.

She rounded the corner and came face-to-face with new-hire April, the gorgeous brunette she’d once seen Tyler drape his oh-so-friendly arm around.

Granted, the girl looked hot in her short-short skirt and boob-enhancing sweater—the kind of hot that would turn Evan Huffnagle’s eyeballs into gaping cinders—but this time Betsy didn’t fold up and slink away to her office.

After all, this time she was the woman who had a plan for saving a family in need. Equally important, she was the woman with the sexually sated walk, and today, after work, with Matt’s help, she’d get a party dress to fit that walk.

So no folding and slinking for her. Instead, she gave the girl a bright, good-morning smile. “Hi, April, how’s it going?”

April flashed her own bright smile. “Good, really good. A lot of people here have been totally cool about helping me.”

Betsy nodded, and then the words slipped out before she could stop them. “Like Tyler, you mean? He’s usually totally cool about helping.”

“Definitely. Him, too.”

“Right.” Betsy struggled to keep her smile in place. “Really helpful guy.”

“Totally,” April agreed.

“Good-looking, too.” Oh God, her mouth was firing away on all pistons, and she couldn’t seem to control it. Betsy breathed a silent sigh. All right, so maybe the truth was, she was a sucker for punishment and just didn’t want to control it.

“Sure,” April said. “He’s okay, but…” She shrugged.

Betsy leaned closer. Something cosmically important was obviously about to slip through April’s luscious lips. “But what? I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

April hesitated, then glanced around as though making sure no one else was close enough to hear. “Well, he’s awfully blond.” She wrinkled her nose. “You know, too vanilla.” Moving closer to Betsy, she carefully lowered her voice. “You won’t tell anybody I said that, will you?”

Betsy shook her head and flashed a conspiratorial smile, liking April more and more the longer she talked to her. “Never. It’s just between us.”

April smiled back, not conspiratorially but totally relieved. “Thanks. First time I met you I knew I could trust you.”

“Uh-huh.” Betsy tried to seem pleased by what was meant to be a compliment. But, damn, it was also the story of her life. In school, her girlfriends had always trusted her, too. Mainly they’d trusted her around their boyfriends. Translation—they didn’t think she was sneaky enough, or sexy enough, to be able to steal a gorgeous guy away. “Well, it’s nice to be trusted,” she said lamely.

“Totally.” April nodded. “And you can trust me, too. I mean…you know, about everything. Even guys. The only kind I totally groove on are the dark, dangerous-looking ones. You know, dark eyes, dark hair, totally sexy dark stubble on his face. Like my boyfriend Marco. God, how that kind turns me on.”

Betsy stared at her. Okay, do not let this woman get within a mile of Matt. Then she released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. It didn’t matter, since Matt moved to a different sexual vibe. Totally. “Right. That kind can be sexy. Uh, totally sexy.”

“Damn straight.” April giggled like a ten-year-old with the body of a lingerie model. “You know, I’m really glad we had this talk.”

Betsy nodded. “Oh, me, too. We’ve got to do it again.”

“Definitely. See you later.”

She turned to go, and Betsy watched the woman hip-swivel her way down the corridor, looking as if she’d recently had some pretty hot sex herself. Way to go, Marco. Betsy walked into her office, smiling at what she’d just discovered.

So Tyler had struck out with the beautiful, brunette April. Poor baby. Of course, he was probably still burning up the sheets with the beautiful, blonde Lisa. But so what? Once he realized she could sizzle just as much as any standard-issue, blonde bombshell, he’d curse the day he cut her loose, drop to his knees, and beg for forgiveness.

And being the magnanimous person she was, of course she’d forgive him. After putting him through total hell first. Betsy grinned as she turned her computer on and got to work.