Be My Baby Tonight (7 page)

“I mean, no rings. Don’t play dumb jock with
me, Tim. I sat behind you in school, remember? Straight A’s. If I
say no rings, then you know I mean—no rings. Not for you, and not
for me.”

At that, she pulled off the cheap ring and
tossed it over her shoulder. It landed in a potted plant strung
with little white fairy lights. “See? All gone.”

“Damn.” Tim jammed his fists on his hips,
glared at her. “Send a girl to California, and she comes back one
of those women’s libbers. You could have warned me.”

“Gender equality, Tim, and don’t tell me your
mom wouldn’t have washed out your mouth with soap if you’d said
women’s libbers
within earshot. She took me to a Gloria
Steinem lecture my junior year in high school, remember? Poor
woman, surrounded by men who left the seat up.”

Tim rubbed at the back of his neck, almost
sensing his mother standing behind him, telling him that good
manners and women’s rights were two different things, so he’d
better still open doors for his dates or she’d know the reason
why.

One tough lady, his mom.

“All right, Suze, I get it. And I’ll get a
ring. Just don’t shoot me if I lose it and have to get another.
Tell me, are you going to take my name? I’d really like it if you
took my name.”

“Nut, of course I’m taking your name,” she
said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth. “Come on. I’m
thinking matching gold bands. We’ll get you two.”

“You two ready now?” the saleslady asked,
looking bored as they walked back to the counter. “We only sell,
you know. We don’t buy.”

“Man, we must look worse than we think,”
Suzanna whispered to him as the saleslady went into the back room
once Tim had brought out his American Express card and plunked it
on the glass. “No limit,” he’d said, pushing it toward her. “Here,
take it. Go check.”

Tim looked down at his wrinkled slacks and
the golf shirt he’d slept in on the plane, wondering how he’d
gotten light blue fuzzy stuff all over his shirt. Then he turned to
Suzanna, who looked just fine, damn it, in kelly green slacks and a
soft yellow blouse—her matching Jacket left behind in the
plane.

“You look great,” he told her honestly. “The
green matches your eyes.”

“And for a while, earlier this morning, my
complexion,” Suzanna said, and he remembered how difficult it had
always been to compliment her. She just didn’t believe in herself
as much as she should. Never had.

“Mr. Trehan?”

Tim and Suzanna turned at the sound of the
man’s voice. “James Freethy, Mr. Trehan,” he said, holding out a
hand sporting a diamond the size of a pigeon’s egg. “I’m the
manager, sir. How may I help you?”

Tim smiled at Suzanna as if to say,
See?
That’s mare like it.
“Hi, Jim. I’d like to introduce you to my
wife, Suzanna Trehan.”

“That’s James, sir.” He nodded to Suzanna,
who nodded right back at him. “Madam.”

“Yeah,” Tim then continued, “Suzanna Trehan.
We were just married, sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

“We get a lot of that around here, Mr.
Trehan,” James Freethy said with a small smile.

“I’ll bet you do. So... rings. Wedding rings
for both of us. Gold, the lady said. And a diamond ring, just for
her. What’ve you got?”

“Our selection is quite extensive, sir. Shall
we begin with the wedding rings? Then, if I might make a
suggestion, I believe an exceptional three-carat emerald ring I’m
thinking of, surrounded by the finest diamonds, would be perfect
for Mrs. Trehan. Match those lovely green eyes.”

“Keep talking, Jim,” Tim said, leaning on the
glass counter. “I think we’re playing in pretty much the same ball
park.”

“Ball park, sir? Would that be baseball? I’m
afraid I don’t know much about sports.”

“Neither do I,” Tim said, keeping a straight
face. “But it sounds good when we say stuff like that, doesn’t
it?”

“Yes, sir,” James Freethy said, looking at
Suzanna, who was coughing into her hand to cover a laugh. “Now,
I’ll leave you alone to look at this tray of wedding rings, and go
retrieve the emerald from our safe.”

“He doesn’t know you,” Suzanna said once
James Freethy was gone. “I don’t think the hotel manager did,
either. Are you insulted?”

“Relieved, to tell you the truth. Mort wants
to break the story.”

“It’s a story? Our marriage is a story?”

Tim ran his finger over her furrowed brow.
“We’ve covered that, Suze. You already know it is. But we’ll get
through it, I promise. And Mort will do the heavy lifting for us.
He always does.”

“If you say so, Tim,” Suzanna said, then
sighed. “I feel like I’m on a roller coaster. You know what I
mean?”

“Yeah,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I
know, babe. I know.”

It ain’t braggin’ if you can back it up.

— Dizzy Dean, pitcher

“I don’t think James liked you,” Suzanna said
as Tim shoved the key card in the door of their suite ninety
minutes later.

“Who?”

“James, Tim. The guy who sold you this rock I
didn’t ask for but am very happy to be wearing.”

“Oh, you mean Jim. I didn’t notice,” he said,
pushing open the door. “Wow! Would you look at this, Suze. You
could bowl in here.”

Suzanna stayed where she was, entertaining
thoughts of Tim carrying her over the threshold, then gave it up as
another girlish dream that had bitten the dust. “Let’s see,” she
said, walking past him, through the massive foyer, and into a huge
round room with raised platforms, marble pillars, enough gilt to
redo the dome at Notre Dame, and a sea of white couches. “You’re
right. Wow.”

“The manager told me it’s usually reserved
for high rollers,” Tim said, walking around, opening doors, peeking
down hallways. “And how about that view?” he commented, pointing to
the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the city, all the
way to the mountains.

“I’m speechless,” Suzanna said, trailing one
hand over the back of a snow-white couch. “It’s a good thing we
decided to have those steaks downstairs, I’d be afraid to eat in
the middle of all this white.”

“Yeah, I remember. Suze the slob. You used to
wear everything you ate. But you were okay downstairs, so I guess
you grew out of that one, huh?”

“I still have lapses,” she admitted, heading
for the windows and the view. There was a bedroom in here
somewhere, probably more than one of them, and she was feeling
distinctly nervous. Maybe she shouldn’t have said no to the wine
Tim had wanted to order with their meal. “With chocolate ice cream,
mostly. Mom used to beg me to try vanilla.”

That’s it, keep it light. A little joke, a
little laugh, a little seltzer down your pants. Something like
that.

Man, this wasn’t as easy sober.

She jumped slightly when Tim spoke from
directly behind her. “Seen enough yet, Suze?” he asked, tickling
her ear with his breath.

She nodded. Nodding was good, when a person
was trying, without much success, to pry her stupid tongue off the
roof of her mouth.

“Good, because I’ve found the bedroom.”

The next thing she knew, she was being held
high in Tim’s arms, and he was heading toward one of the hallways.
Her head buried against his chest, she tried to mentally explain to
her heart that two hundred beats a minute was probably overdoing
it, when Tim put her back on her feet, held her loosely locked
inside his arms.

“Open your eyes, Suze,” he said, kissing her
forehead. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

She already didn’t believe this, any of this,
but she opened her eyes anyway, then gasped. She pulled free of his
arms and began walking around the huge room.

Enormous round bed on a raised platform.
Sheer draperies hanging all over the place. More gold-veined
mirrors than she’d like to think about.

She stopped as far away from the bed as she
could manage. “My god, Tim. This is like something out of the
Arabian Nights.
Or maybe
Aladdin.
Disney goes porno,
I don’t know. Wow.”

She looked at him, and he had already
stripped off his knit shirt, was smoothing down his hair as he
grinned at her. Oh, lordy, but the man had a body...

“How about a nap?” he asked, walking over to
the bed and yanking clown the bedspread in one strong pull, sending
the pillows scattering.

“You slept on the plane,” she reminded him.
He was working on his belt buckle now, and she wondered if there
was any water in this suite, because her mouth had gone as dry as
the desert.

She pressed her fingertips to her temples.
What was the matter with her? They were married. Legally, if
tackily married. And she was the one who had hinted that there had
been a definite lack of romance about their marriage so far.

That was why they were here, in this movie
set for Debauchers ‘R Us, instead of safely on the casino floor,
betting Sam’s twenty bucks.

It was her fault. It was all her fault.

Hooboy,
she thought, eying the bed
once more.
Every once in a while, Suze—for a woman who thinks
she’s a practical, levelheaded, feet-on-the-ground sort—you bite
off way mare than you can chew.

And then Tim was standing in front of her,
his talented hands slipping her blouse buttons from their moorings,
and he was asking her in that teasing way of his, “So, are you
having fun yet?”

And she was answering, her voice low and—yes,
definitely—sort of sexy, “I could be having more.”

Omigod, did I just say that?
she
thought, panicked.
I couldn’t have just said that, could I? But
I did, I said that. Shame on me. Shame, shame on
...

Tim’s lips skimmed the side of her throat,
his tongue doing these talented things to her skin, the lobe of her
ear.

Shame, shame on
...

His hands were kneading at her shoulders now,
her bare shoulders, because her blouse was gone.

Her slacks had disappeared, too.

Her body felt cold, then hot, as he moved
against her, pressed his hard body against her.

Man, he hadn’t been kidding. He was pretty
good. She hadn’t even noticed when her bra and panties had bit the
dust.

He caught her sigh with his mouth, and on
contact, her body gave this small, involuntary convulsion of
delight.

And sudden hunger.

She wrapped her arms around him, drew him
closer, attempted to press her lower body even closer against his.
Slipped one bare leg through his, raised it slightly, pressed
again. Gloried in his arousal.

Shame, shame on... Oh, the hell with it.

They tumbled onto the bed together, his hands
everywhere, hers mimicking his as she skimmed his body, learned his
body, rejoiced in his body that fit so well with hers.

“You taste so good,” he said, then sluiced
his tongue between her breasts, sucked lightly on the side of her
throat. “And you smell good, too.”

She said something that disproved four
straight years of A’s in vocabulary. “Uh-huh.” And then she ran her
hands down his back, glorying in the ripple of his muscles as he
shifted above her, brought his mouth to her breast again.

All things considered, with her body singing,
her heart hammering, her breath catching in her throat, “Uh-huh”
was pretty damn articulate.

He moved his hand lower, slid it over the
flare of her hip, then concentrated for a moment on her navel,
circling it with one finger even as he pressed his palm flat
against her lower belly.

The pressure he created deep inside her made
her swallow down hard on the low moan that threatened to escape
her.

She moved her hips, raised them slightly as
she braced her bent legs against the mattress, wordlessly pleading
for more, more.

And then he was there, between her legs. His
hand, his fingers, touching her, opening her, stroking her, giving
all the proof she’d ever need that the man didn’t brag. He was more
than good. He was very, very good. A master of his craft.

Her hips went on autopilot, moving on their
own, pressing up against him each time he seemed to threaten to
leave her, stop what he was doing.

Heat, deep inside her. Building, building.
She clamped her teeth together hard, all her concentration on his
hand, on what he was doing to her. On his mouth, how it suckled on
her, how his tongue flicked at her nipple, sending wave after wild
wave of tingling awareness from her breasts to her belly, tying her
up in a huge knot that just had to be untied so that she could
break free. Soar.

And here it was, coming toward her as she
stood poised on the edge, waiting. Closer it came, that exquisite
tightness, that glorious pressure that built and built and built.
The hunger that consumed her.

A hunger she’d never known existed, until
Tim. Never even imagined.

She beat on his back with her fists, unable
to speak, unable to breathe, her heels digging into the mattress as
she thrust her hips high, then held them there for him. Open to
him, spread wide for him, eager for him.

More than eager.

Demanding.

No inhibitions, for he had teased them all
away.

No shame, because he wouldn’t allow
shame.

No second thoughts, because thinking was
something to save for another time, another place.

“Yes,” she breathed at last, as the tension
turned liquid. Turned blue and white behind her eyes. Flashed red,
and deep purple. The colors of passion, exploding all around her.
She was drowning in color, in sensation, in that tight coiling that
at the very last, frightened her.

His thumb on her, he slipped two fingers
inside her and drove them up, up.

“Yes!”

And it all came tumbling down, the mountain
of need, of want, that he’d built inside her. Tumbling, tumbling
down in a wild explosion of pulsing, rippling sensation.