“I’M A MESS,” Gail groaned.
“And I’m proud of you,” Molly said as she turned from the front door after waving off the last of the Daddy School students and their children. Some of them appeared even messier than Gail, their skin and clothing spattered with soil or paint, their hair matted, their shoes saturated—but all of them had been grinning when they’d flocked out of the building.
Gail wasn’t grinning. When she called herself a mess, she wasn’t talking about mud and grass stains. She was talking about her soul.
What was Murphy doing to her? What sort of strange power did he wield over her? Why did her body seem to sing whenever he touched her? He wasn’t touching her with love or affection, or even respect. He was touching her with mud.
Not that love was ever going to enter into anything that occurred between her and Murphy. Right from her first meeting with him, she’d loathed him with a passion that wasn’t quite rational but was very real. The fact that he could kiss her with such sublime effectiveness while lying on a pile of paper under her desk, that his mud-enhanced caresses in the play yard of a preschool could scramble her nervous system, that he could look so utterly free and exuberant and confoundedly virile while giving his son a piggy-back ride...
Gail was not an erotic person. Her experiences with sex ranged from mildly unpleasant to monstrously awful, and she was content to leave it at that. Or, at least, she had been content until...
Until Murphy.
She didn’t have to relive his kisses and touches to feel unsettled inside. All she had to do was recall the silver radiance in his eyes as he gazed at her, a glow that spoke of need and certainty and raw desire, and her body underwent a transformation. Parts of her anatomy pulled tight, and other parts went soft and pliant, as if her entire being had become elastic, stretching and bending and aching to wrap around something.
For God’s sake, all she’d done was watch Murphy lug his kid around on his shoulders. And she’d kissed him the other day. And she’d felt his weight on her, and her weight on him, and a few other things.
“I’m a mess,” she repeated as Molly scooted past her to her desk in the school’s entry. “Look at me.”
Molly did. On her left ring finger, she wore a thick gold band and on her right wrist a simple charm bracelet, both tokens of her husband’s love for her and hers for him. Gail didn’t want love tokens. She didn’t want love. She didn’t even know why the concept of love kept invading her thoughts. She hoped her sister couldn’t read her mind, which was in a much messier state than her clothing.
“You look kind of cute,” Molly teased. She, of course, was the picture of good grooming in her crisp camp shirt and spotless jeans.
“I notice you weren’t rolling around in the muck,” Gail accused. “Neither was John. How come he’s not coming to Daddy School anymore?”
“He graduated,” Molly said simply. “When necessary, I give him private tutorials at home.”
“I’ll bet,” Gail muttered. She gazed down at her disheveled attire and groaned. “I can’t get into my car like this. I’ll ruin the upholstery.”
“A little mud won’t ruin it,” Molly argued. “But if you want, there’s a shower upstairs. You could wash up and...” She stepped into a small storage room off the entry. “I’m sure I’ve got a change of clothes here somewhere, if you want to borrow it. It won’t be too bad a fit.” She pulled a fresh T-shirt and a denim skirt out of a cabinet. “The shirt should fit you fine. The skirt might be a bit short, but that’s no big deal.”
“Thanks.” A shower was exactly what Gail wanted—scalding water, soap, more scalding water and then fresh, dry clothing. She needed to scrub herself until she’d washed away not just the dirt and grass but the disturbing sensations Murphy had churned inside her. She wanted to feel clean and pure.
Molly locked the supply cabinet, then pulled a key from her key ring. “I can’t stick around. John and I promised Michael we’d take him to the toddler flick at the library this afternoon. They’re showing the original 101 Dalmatians. Would you mind locking up?” She handed the key to Gail.
“No problem. What do you want me to do with the key?”
“It’s a spare, so you can drop it off whenever. If you want to run it by the house later and we aren’t home, leave it on the molding above the back door. Can you reach that?”
“I think so.” Gail smiled at her baby sister, who stood two inches shorter than her, a height differential she used to tease Molly about when they were younger and things like height seemed terribly important to them. “Can you reach it?”
Molly smiled back, serene. “Of course not. That’s what I’ve got John for.”
“Ah.” Gail nodded. “I figured there had to be some reason you married the guy.”
Molly gave Gail a playful poke in the shoulder, then rummaged in her purse for her sunglasses. “I’ve got to run. There are towels on the shelf next to the shower.” She gave Gail’s cheek a breezy kiss, then swept through the door and outside, obviously eager to race home to the man she loved.
Gail gazed through the glass door, wondering about the bounce in her sister’s step, the glossy shine of her hair, the joy that seemed to hum inside her. Molly had always been bubbly and cheerful, even as a child. Gail had been the serious, earnest Saunders sister, while Molly had loved frolicking, being creative, climbing trees and designing paper-doll clothes. When they’d played make-believe, Molly had always been the one to come up with the setting and the roles: “Let’s pretend we’re pirates and we’ve been kidnapped by an army of crocodiles. And they’re hiding us on a chocolate plantation. We’ve got to escape and save the chocolate!” Gail would eagerly play along, a little envious of her sister’s imagination but thrilled to be a part of her fantasy.
But then, Gail had always assumed it was Molly’s job to save the make-believe chocolate from the crocodiles, and her own job to save the world. With such an important mission in life, Gail couldn’t be given to flights of fancy the way her sister could. And then, one night, Gail had discovered that she was a part of the world that needed saving. She’d managed to save herself, but...
But she couldn’t imagine having the bounce in her own step that came so naturally to Molly. She couldn’t imagine herself suffused with Molly’s joy, imbued with her cozy contentment. She couldn’t imagine marrying a man, whether for his ability to reach the top of the door frame or his love, for stability or security. She couldn’t imagine it at all.
Why was she even thinking about it?
Murphy.
Vexed that that insufferable fat-cat lawyer had stolen back into her thoughts, she stormed up the stairs, determined to scour every last trace of him off her skin and out of her soul.
***
SHE WASN’T HOME.
He should have expected as much. After showering himself, power-washing the kids, and arranging hasty play-dates for them, he’d driven to the address he’d found listed next to Gail’s name in the Arlington phone directory, parked in the driveway, and rung the bell. He’d heard it echo inside the house, but she didn’t answer. He’d rung it two more times, then cupped his hands around his eyes to cut the glare and peeked in through the window beside the door.
The place looked empty. It was a nice, well-maintained ranch-style dwelling, with dark-red shingles and white shutters framing the windows. The house was small. Living alone, she didn’t require anything bigger.
Through the window to the left of the door he could see a rectangular living room featuring a hardwood floor partly covered by a pale area rug, a boxy sofa that would probably be more comfortable for someone her size than his, and a fireplace flanked by built-in shelves adorned with ceramic pieces. He strolled around to the back for a different view; through a rear window he saw a kitchen, clean but lived-in, with a pot standing on one of the burners and a book open face-down on the table. The drapes were shut at the other windows, so he couldn’t peek into her bedroom, which was probably just as well. He had plenty enough to fantasize about without visualizing her in her bed.
He’d rather visualize her sprawled out beside him on the damp, loamy, spring-scented earth. He’d rather visualize her with her shirt so wet he could see the outlines of her bra, her nipples swollen against the fabric, her hair tangled and her bottom soaked. Oh, yes, her bottom, damp...from the recent rain, or from the mega-force attraction that zapped between him and her.
He shouldn’t have come here. Not because he felt obligated to court her in some old-fashioned way—he was sure they were already well past that—but because he’d dumped his kids on other people, meaning that now he owed those people an afternoon of watching their kids, and for nothing. She wasn’t home. The last window he came to looked in on her garage, which was vacant.
He was acting like a randy adolescent, cruising to her house on an impulse. He was worse than a randy adolescent, actually. As a randy adolescent, he had never chased a girl unless he was absolutely convinced he was in love with her. That he could fall in and out of love in the blink of an eye had never bothered him. He would set his sights on Lisa Davis, for instance...Lisa Davis, with the red hair and the C-cups. He’d figure out where Lisa was going to be and make sure he was there before she arrived—the gym, the deli down the street from the school, the food court at the mall. He’d avoid saying hello to her until after she said hello to him, and then he’d smile nonchalantly, as if he didn’t care, and they’d go through this mating dance a few times at the deli or the mall...and then, no more than a few weeks later, he’d be in the back seat of his ancient Pontiac with her, becoming intimately acquainted with those C-cups. Or Alexis Bartley, the homecoming queen who would always call on him when she was having trouble with her boyfriend, and she’d weep on his shoulder and ask him just to hold her, hold her until she felt better... But while he was busy holding her and making her feel better, he was positive he loved her, at least as much as he had loved Lisa Davis just weeks before.
Well, he didn’t love Gail Saunders. And she didn’t have C-cups, and she’d never asked him to hold her, hold her until she felt better. She was a thorn in his side, a pebble in his shoe, a lawyer pressing a nuisance suit—and she didn’t like children.
So what the hell was he doing at her house?
He was thinking that bra sizes no longer seemed particularly significant to him. He was thinking that even though she’d never asked him to, his holding her had made them both feel better. He was thinking that, after watching her build a sand castle with his daughter, laboring over the details, fussing to make it perfect for Erin, he no longer believed her when she swore she didn’t like children.
He turned to survey her back yard, which was modest and tidy, about half of it consumed by a slate patio beneath a roof extension which offered shade to a pair of lounge chairs, a gas grill, a redwood table and assorted planters filled with flowering vines. Honeysuckle hedges bordered the property, and a hose lay in a neat coil near the door leading into the garage. No signs of whimsy marred the area—no plastic frog-shaped planters, no pink flamingos, and naturally no toys. He wondered whether she spent much time enjoying her patio.
How could she? She worked in that austere little back room at the P.D.’s office, defending murderers, being tough. She didn’t have time to enjoy anything.
He circled back to the front of the house in time to spot her Volvo sedan coasting to a halt at the foot of her driveway. His car was occupied the driveway, blocking her access to the garage.
She pulled to the curb and climbed out of her car. He swallowed a groan as she stalked around the vehicle and into view. Her hair hung loose, sunshine clean and glossy around her face, and her body was scantily covered by a white T-shirt and a skimpy denim skirt. She carried a handled plastic bag filled with something lumpy—probably the wet, soiled clothes she’d been wearing at the Daddy School. His gaze traced the incredible length of her slender legs down to her bare feet and then back up again, and up, and up.
Admiring her legs in that too-short skirt made him feel even more like a randy adolescent. Before he could make a fool of himself—before his body could make an obvious fool of him—he forced his eyes higher, back over her hips, up across the cotton shirt to her face. She was scowling vividly.
“Hi,” he said in a chipper voice.
She moved across the front lawn in resolute steps, as if to establish dominance on her home turf. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Good question. The honest answer—that he had come to convince her that something was going on between them, something hot and luscious that he wanted to explore further—would not do. Her forbidding expression all but proclaimed that she wasn’t in the mood for a sexual overture.
He resorted to a safer invitation. “I wanted to see if you were interested in going to Erin’s soccer game.”
“Why would I want to go to Erin’s soccer game?” she asked, still approaching.
He couldn’t help it—he had to check out her legs again. He had to observe the way her calf muscles flexed with each step, the way her knees bent, the way her thighs stretched sleek and firm. The skirt was ridiculously short, and each step made it ride up a little higher. As long as she was wearing such a tantalizing skirt, he could forget that she hated children.
“She has a late game today. Four o’clock. She’s a dynamo on the field, and I thought, maybe...” Her stony stare silenced him.
“How did you find my house?” She drew closer, still frowning.
“It was a miracle,” he deadpanned. “A total miracle. I opened the Arlington phone book, and there, next to Saunders, G., this address was printed.”
The sun streaked her hair with platinum and painted her cheeks pink. She reached the front porch and planted her hands on her hips. His brain clicked into overdrive; he had to find the right way to get this discussion moving in his direction. He was a lawyer. He could do it.
“The truth is, I came to apologize,” he said.
Her frown faltered the tiniest bit.
“I didn’t know your sister was going to make us wallow in the mud. It was really...” He shrugged, hoping she would supply the right word.
“Messy,” she suggested.
“Really messy.” He grinned. “It occurred to me that you’re doing this Daddy School thing because I goaded you into it, and thanks to me, you’ve probably ruined the clothes you were wearing this morning.” He glanced down at the plastic bag she was holding, and then at the clean outfit she had on. He noted the way the cotton of the shirt draped over her bosom, the way her trim hips shaped that damned skirt with its abbreviated hem—and he jerked his gaze back up to her face once more. “I’ll pay for the cleaning costs.”
“Cleaning costs?”
“For all the crud you got on your clothes this morning.”
Her frown faded considerably. She held up the bag, then tossed it onto the porch and shrugged. “It’s just some old shorts and a T-shirt. Nothing that needs dry cleaning.”
“Are you sure? I mean—I feel responsible.”
She smiled. He searched her face for signs of doubt, but saw none. It was a lovely, genuine smile. “That’s very generous of you. But it isn’t necessary. I can just throw the clothes in my washing machine.”
“You sure you don’t mind?”
For the first time he noticed that she had a dimple, a shy, delectable dot at the corner of her mouth. “Oh, I like this,” she said, her voice as smooth and sweet as warm honey. “Murphy the hot-shot lawyer wants to do my laundry.”
“I don’t want to,” he said, returning her smile. “I’m just offering because I’m such a nice guy.”
At that she laughed. Her laughter aroused him more than the sight of her legs, her bare feet, her sleek shoulders and womanly curves. More than her beauty, more than her intellect, more than her sharp wit. Her laughter was a drug, an aphrodisiac, and it spilled from her without restraint. Her eyes were laughing. Her fingers, free of their plastic bag, were laughing. Her damp, shiny hair was laughing. Her cheeks, her chin, her breasts.
He was bewitched by her laughter. Enthralled by it. He needed to capture it, devour it, absorb it.
Before she had a chance to stop laughing, he bowed and covered her mouth with his. He tasted her laughter on his lips.
“Murphy,” she whispered. It was a statement, not a protest. She leaned back slightly, tilting her head so she could peer up at him. Her eyes weren’t laughing anymore, but they were glittering.
“Gail,” he whispered back, then brought his arms around her. Still she didn’t resist. When he flattened his hands on her back, one down by her waist and the other just below the nape of her neck, she didn’t object. When he drew her to himself, she didn’t fight him. When he slid his hand under her cool, damp hair, cupped the back of her head and angled it to receive another kiss, she closed her eyes and parted her lips, offering herself.
If he were a randy adolescent, he probably would have started shaking with a combination of ecstasy and panic. But he wasn’t a randy adolescent, thank God, and panic wasn’t any part of what he was feeling as he bent to take her mouth. He slid his tongue between her teeth and deep inside. She seemed to freeze in his embrace, as if startled by his invasion, and then she relaxed, her hands creeping up his arms to his shoulders, where they came to rest, tentative, trembling slightly.
Maybe she was panicked. But she was no randy adolescent, either—and he had every intention of kissing her panic away. He would love her so magnificently she’d forget what panic was. He would make her come so many times the only tremors she’d know would be the earth moving.
Her tongue stirred to life against his. Her fingertips brushed the sides of his neck and her body swayed toward him. No, she wasn’t panicked, not anymore. She was with him, all the way.
He skimmed one hand up and down her back, in at the slope of her waist, out at the flare of her hip. The other hand he wove through her hair and forward until he could touch the edge of her jaw with his thumb. As if she had a spring-lock hidden there and he’d somehow released it, her mouth opened wider.
He groaned. He felt her against him, her slender body nestling against his, her belly pressing into his belt buckle. He slid his leg between hers, wishing he’d thought to wear shorts so he could feel her, naked skin to naked skin. She moved one of her legs, rubbing her knee against his thigh, and he groaned again and scooped his hand low, around her bottom, moving her against the taut muscle of his thigh. She let out a small moan.
She was hot. He was hotter. He nudged the skirt up with his knee, felt her heat through the denim of his jeans, and came damned close to losing it right there, on her front porch. His hands clenched; his pulse pounded inside his chest, and he realized that, somehow, with this woman, he was responding just as crazily as any randy adolescent who’d just discovered how fantastic sex could be.
He had to bring things down a little, at least until they could get behind closed doors. Slowly, reluctantly, he loosened his hold on her and pulled back, allowing himself a lingering nibble of her lower lip before he eased his mouth from hers. She shuddered, and he closed his arms snugly around her let her rest against him.
“Can we go inside?” he asked, his voice so husky he could barely hear himself.
“Murphy, what are you doing to me?” Even though he had her wrapped up in a bear hug, with her face buried against his chest, he could hear her just fine.
“I’m making love to you.”
“No.”
“I’m not?” He drew back, and as she shifted to peer up at him her hair brushed against his chin. He wanted her hair to shower down all over his face. He wanted her on top, with her hair tumbling into his eyes and her legs straddling his waist, and her breasts where he could see them, and touch them, and...
“No, you’re not. This is not happening.”
“Oh.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “It’s not happening.”
“No.”
“We’re both just...hallucinating it,” he said, playing along. “We’ve slipped through a reality warp and into an alternate universe. In fact, you’re not you and I’m not me. We’re two other people—who are going to go inside and make love in this house which exists in an alternate universe.”
She almost smiled. “No.”
“Okay.” He took another breath and struggled to come up with an equally satisfying scenario. “You’re holding out for an expensive date. Dinner tonight at Reynaud—” he named the priciest restaurant in Arlington “—followed by dancing beneath the stars. Then I drink champagne out of your shoe, and then we screw each other silly.”
“No.”
“Okay.” He shaped his face into a pose of concentration. “You’re holding out for marriage.”
“No!” She methodically extricated herself from him, removing her hands from his shoulders, taking a step back and staring in apparent amazement at her legs, which had less than a minute ago been intimately entangled with his. “I’m not holding out for marriage.”
He still felt her warmth against his thigh, the pinch of her hands clutching his shoulders. He still tasted her on his tongue. “What?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound impatient. “You don’t want me to wine and dine you, you don’t want me to marry you... Tell me what you want me to do.”
She made a face, then swiveled away from him and spent several seconds straightening out her clothing—not easy to do since her fingers were still trembling. “You know what I want you to do?” She gave a short laugh and turned back to him. “I want you to take a long walk off a short pier.”
He opened his mouth and then shut it, trying to fathom the source of her sudden hostility. He knew she wasn’t crazy about him—in certain contexts. But this context was different, and she’d certainly seemed pretty crazy about him just moments ago, when they’d been kissing like fiends.
His confusion must have been plain in his face. She sighed, squared her shoulders and aimed her sharp little chin like a weapon at his face. “I know what’s going on here, Murphy,” she explained. “You’re trying to seduce me.”
“Okay,” he said carefully, wondering what the hell she was getting at. “I’m trying to seduce you. No argument there.”
“I don’t want you seducing me,” she railed, clearly exasperated. “It’s a sleazy tactic, and it’s not going to work.”
“Tactic?” He began to sense where she was heading, but he wasn’t inclined to make things easier for her by following her there, completing her thoughts for her. If she wanted to make a point, she was going to have to come right out and say it.
She did. “You think you can seduce me and I’ll drop Leo Kopoluski’s libel suit.”
His mouth popped open and shut again, as he groped for the words that could turn her anger around. He didn’t want to lie, but he wasn’t exactly sure of the truth, either—other than the one crystal-clear truth that he wanted to take Gail to bed and set a record for the most phenomenal sex in the history of the species. This did not seem like an outlandish goal, given the wild heat they managed to generate merely by kissing.
Leo Kopoluski’s suit against the Gazette was a completely separate issue. It was garbage, and he’d be kidding himself if he pretended he didn’t want it to disappear. But that had nothing to do with his obsessive yearning for Gail. “You think I’d take you to bed to keep you from suing the newspaper?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He laughed and shook his head. “That suit has nothing to do with—”
“You just admitted you were trying to seduce me, Murphy.”
“Right.” Was seduction a crime? Did it so offend her delicate sensibilities? “I was trying to seduce you. At this point, I don’t think that’s a secret. I want to make love with you. And you want to make love with me.”
“No.”
“Admit it, Gail—you were seducing me right back.”
“I was not! I don’t know the first thing about seduction!” Her face flushed, but not with desire. She seemed almost embarrassed.
He couldn’t imagine why. She ought to be proud of herself, reveling in her power to reduce him to a creature of abject lust. “Of course you know about seduction,” he argued, wishing he could get a handle on what exactly was bothering her. Something was, and he didn’t think it had anything to do with seduction—or, for that matter, the damned libel suit.
Color drained from her cheeks. “No,” she said. “I don’t know about seduction.” She spun away and reached down to pick up the plastic bag with her wet clothes in it.
“You’re a lawyer,” he reminded her. “What do you think that means?”
She straightened up with a jerk and gazed warily at him. “It means I defend indigent defendants against unfair charges.”
“It means,” he argued, “that you go into court and you try to seduce the jury. Or the judge. Or the D.A. You go in and try to persuade them to see things your way, to believe what you believe, to view the world in a manner that will bring you and your client gratification.”
“Gratification!” She was actually pale, now, her eyes round with astonishment.
“Of course. That’s what lawyers do. We try to make everyone fall in love with our position, and we soften them up with verbal foreplay, and then we consummate the deal and call it a win.”
It was her turn to be rendered speechless. She pursed her lips, her eyes assessing, her brow furrowed. “You’re insane,” she finally said.
“No, Gail. What I am is a damned good lawyer. So are you. Which makes you a seductress in my book. Which is why—” he took a step toward her, and she shrank back “—you did such a fine job of seducing me a couple of minutes ago. And now, I’d like us to negotiate the terms so we can consummate this deal.” He smiled. “I want you, Gail. And you want me.”
“In your dreams,” she muttered, digging in the pocket of the tight-fitting skirt and pulling out a key.
“Honey, in my dreams we’ve gone well past wanting. In my dreams, you and I are naked and sweaty, and we can’t get enough of each other. We’re—”
“Good-bye, Murphy.” She jammed the key into the front door, jerked the knob and shouldered the door open. The screen door snapped back on its spring, and if he hadn’t leaped back it might have taken off the tip of his nose.
“We could be good together,” he called through the screen.
She peered out at him. “In your dreams,” she repeated. “In my nightmares. We are never going to be naked and sweaty. And as far as not getting enough of each other, well, I’ve already had way too much of you.” She slammed the inner door, leaving him to stare at the screen.
He swore. He blasphemed. He used terms that would provoke shrieks of reproach from Erin. And his ripe, rank language hardly came close to expressing how utterly annoyed he was.
What the hell was her problem? How could she be so warm and willing and—Christ!—so sexy one minute, and then turn it off so fast?
He couldn’t turn it off so fast. Even though he was infuriated to the point where he wanted to kick her freaking door in, he was also still exceedingly turned on. Not just his body but his mind was wickedly aroused. He didn’t simply want physical intimacy; he wanted to know what was going on in that mystifying brain of hers, what strange psychosis made her think she didn’t know how to seduce a man. He wanted to break the psychic code of a woman who could go from rosy-cheeked to ashen in no time flat, who could run away from the most intense kiss he’d ever experienced, who could act as if all that pleasure was simply too much for her to bear.
He was a lawyer, a professional at the art of seduction. He hadn’t gotten where he was by giving up and backing down. Following such pleasure to its ultimate destination was the only choice he could make. He and Gail were going to consummate this deal, one way or another.
But first, he was going to have to figure out what in God’s name she was so afraid of.