Beauty & the Beasts (17 page)

“I’m not one of your patients.”

He pulled back a few inches. “My patients?” His mouth quirked. “Oh. Can’t ‘skittish’ refer to people, too? Don’t worry. I didn’t mistake you for a horse.”

Laughter helped. So did the next kiss. They parted only long enough to stumble out of the car and meet around by the front bumper. He’d never before done more than brush the sides of her breasts. Now he did, molding them with his palms, stroking them, kneading gently. Her hands, in turn, found their way under his shirt to his bare hot skin. Muscles rippled under her touch, and the sense of power was a marvelous aphrodisiac. He groaned, low and harsh, and yanked her to him for another deep kiss.

Every now and again they took a step—she was dimly aware of that much—
but
she was still befuddled when he prodded, “Key?”

She gave a dazed look around. They’d reached her doorstep and she hadn’t noticed. Thank God she’d had the presence of mind not to leave her purse in his car; she dug blindly through its contents. Keys. They had to be in here somewhere. Eric’s mouth on her neck didn’t help, but her hand at last closed on their jagged edges.

“Here,” she whispered.

He had to back up while she fumbled for the house key and inserted it into the lock. She turned the knob, and they nearly fell in, staggering and then regaining their footing.

Humor threaded the ragged sensuality in his voice. “If we’d gone down on the floor, we wouldn’t have gotten back up.”

Even as she chuckled, her breath caught. “I wouldn’t have cared.”

“Good.” His hands gripped her buttocks and he pressed her tightly to him.

The feel of his erection against her belly awakened long-buried desire. Her hips lifted, sought a natural resting place.

“If we don’t make it to your bedroom in the next thirty seconds, it’ll be too late,” he growled. “Last door?”

She murmured wordless agreement.

He didn’t give her a chance to lead the way. With startling abruptness, he lifted her off the floor. She gave a squeak, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck.

“I don’t want to let go of you,” he told her, his eyes glittering with pale green fire.

She touched his mouth, which slanted into a purely male smile that did nothing to lessen the impact of that gaze. Her fingers trailed to his jaw, shaven but rough, then to the long grooves carved in his lean cheeks.

“Don’t let go of me,” she said as he shouldered open her bedroom door, sending cats scattering from her bed and out of the room.

Eric lowered her onto the comforter. In a voice that had the texture of corduroy, rough and velvety at the same time, he said, “Never.”

A thrill quivered through her.

And then his gaze swept over her with the possessiveness of a man claiming something as his own. “God, you’re beautiful.”

She wanted to hear, “I love you.” But she had to admit he was beautiful, too. As he unbuttoned her blouse and pushed it aside, she did the same to his shirt, fumbling with the last few buttons. He gave a sound of satisfaction at the same moment she did. His fingers felt callused against the tender skin of her breasts. That texture, like the grittiness of his jaw and the roughness in his voice, only heightened her excitement.

Oh, his shoulders were wonderful, broad and smoothly muscled under tanned skin. No mat of hair disguised the contours of his chest; he was sleek and brown and warm under her exploring hands, and his heartbeat drummed as frantically as her own.

“Your breasts are perfect,” he murmured, and bent to kiss first one nipple, then the other, before drawing one into his mouth. The vibrations of his voice played on her skin as he freed his mouth enough to nuzzle her. “I knew they would be.”

She chilled a little, but the pull of his mouth had an electric effect on her body. Her hips lifted and pushed against his thigh, braced between her legs, and he gave a soft laugh of triumph before suckling her other breast. This time she felt his teeth, and she cried out from the intense pleasure of it.

But then, oh God, then, he reared up to gaze at her, a fierce grin of male satisfaction on his face. With the air of a connoisseur, he stroked circles on
her belly with his fingertips. “Your skin is incredibly soft. How the hell do you stay so white, so silky?”

She said nothing, only stared up at him.

He reached behind her head and deftly pulled the pins from her hair, tossing them to the carpet, sifting her curls through his fingers. “Your hair is glorious.”

Still she gazed up at his face, so taut and male, but his face had become
their
faces, and his words, his compliments, bled together with
their
words,
their
paeans to her beauty, never to
her.

He wasn’t different. She’d been fooling herself.

Madeline was suddenly cold. Her muscles tightened and her hands curled into fists.

Above her Eric noticed and he stiffened; his gaze sharpened. Her hair slipped unnoticed from his fingers.

“Is something wrong?”

“Yes.” The word was bald, as icy as she felt. “I can’t do this.”

“You
what?”

“Would you please get up?”

He swore and rolled to one side. “What the hell…?”

“Nothing’s changed, has it?” Madeline said bitterly, scrambling from the bed. “I should have listened to my instincts in the first place.”

“Instincts? Goddammit!” he roared. “Tell me what’s going on!”

Feeling naked in a way she hadn’t two minutes ago, Madeline turned away from Eric as she shrugged into her blouse. “Only one thing counts,
doesn’t it?” she said. “You want a beautiful woman to show off, a beautiful woman under you in bed. You’re just like all the other men I’ve ever met!”

Eric uttered a sharp profanity and jackknifed to his feet. “You
are
beautiful! What do you want me to do—poke your hipbones and tell you you’re bony but I’ll have you, anyway?”

Facing him, she cried, “I want you to see something besides my ‘perfect’ breasts! What if they
weren’t
perfect? What if they were drooping or covered in stretch marks? Would I qualify as a potential bed partner next time? Oh!” Infuriated and sick, she spun around again, shutting out the sight of him. “Garth was right!”

“What?” Teeth set, Eric caught her arm and pulled her to face him. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

“He said you dated me because I was pretty,” she said, wrenching herself free. “Fool that I am, I told myself it wasn’t true.”

“You
are
pretty!” His voice rose to a bellow. “That doesn’t mean I don’t admire your soul, or whatever the hell I’m supposed to be commenting on when I have a hard-on for you!”

Hot and cold at the same time, she clutched her blouse together. “You never did answer my question. What if my breasts weren’t perfect?”

He grabbed his shirt from the bed and, with quick angry movements, yanked it on. “I wouldn’t have wanted you of course! I’m so goddamned perfect myself I won’t settle for anything less in a woman. You know me—I have to have the best of everything.”
He stopped after having shoved three buttons through random buttonholes. Slinging his tie around his neck, he went on with icy contempt, “Yeah, I drive a Rolls, buy my clothes at Brooks Brothers. Nothing but show-quality purebred pets for me. Hell, I may make my living treating other people’s mangy animals, but I wouldn’t have one in my house! I admit it. You’ve got me pegged.”

She pressed a hand to her stomach to quell her nausea. “You know I don’t mean—”

“No?” He stopped in her bedroom doorway and gave her a look so scathing, she had to close her eyes. “Then just what
do
you mean?”

Even if she could have answered, he didn’t give her a chance. When she opened her eyes, he was gone. The front door slammed so hard pictures on the wall vibrated. Eyes saucer-wide, Maggie shot into the room and dove under the bed.

The car engine gunned in the driveway, roared as he backed out. A moment later the sound receded as he drove away. Out of her life, in every way that counted.

Starkly she wondered which was worse—to think she’d been right, or to think she’d misjudged him totally?

She began to cry, standing there in the middle of her bedroom, the sobs shaking her, the tears streaming unchecked down her face.

Dear God, what if he
had
loved her?

D
AD HAD CABLE
TV. If you could call it that, Garth thought incredulously, flicking through the choices
with the remote. It took him about ten seconds. There were only fifteen channels, instead of the fifty or so he was used to. He settled on a Jackie Chan movie he’d seen before, but it was still kind of cool to watch him whirling and just levelling all these bad guys by kicking them in the chops. The fact that the movie was half over didn’t matter; it wasn’t like the plot mattered. Or the dialogue.

He turned his head at the scrape of a key in the front-door lock. A second later Dad came in.

Garth opened his mouth to say hi, but the word never came out. Dad’s expression was terrible, as if somebody had just died or something. His eyes stared zombielike, like he hadn’t even noticed the TV was on, or his own son was sitting there. Every line on his face was deeper, harsher.

“Dad?” Garth said uncertainly.

His father’s head turned, but still blindly. “Yeah?” he said in this dead voice.

“Are you all right?”

“Me? Yeah. I’m okay.” He came around the couch and sank down heavily, then didn’t say anything else, just stared at the screen. A commercial for beer had replaced Jackie. Dad didn’t even drink beer that Garth had ever seen.

“You…you look kinda weird.” He was scared now. Had something happened to Mom?

Dad bent his head suddenly and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Garth had a feeling he was squeezing really hard.

“Madeline and I seem to have parted ways.” His father gave a ragged sound that he maybe meant to
be a laugh. “That’s like saying the vet at the county animal shelter is ‘putting animals to sleep.’ I seem to have made a major misstep, and I still don’t know where I put my foot wrong.”

Garth sat silent, shocked. His father was always so
solid,
like he never made mistakes and things never went wrong. Now he looked as if he’d been clobbered, only not in a way Garth understood.

Dad kept talking, but not to Garth. Maybe he’d forgotten he was there. Or hadn’t really noticed in the first place.

“She despised me all along,” he muttered. “Am I such a scumbag?” He gave his hair a yank that must have hurt. It seemed to remind him of something, because for the first time he turned his head and his eyes zeroed in on Garth. The look in them was angry and confused. “Did you tell her I was dating her only because she’s pretty?”

“No! Why would I say that?” Garth answered in bewilderment. “I mean, she
is
pretty. Really pretty.” He swallowed. “But she’s cool, too. I mean, she’s nice. And the stuff she does for cats is—” he struggled for the right word “—well, it’s special.”

His dad groaned a word he’d never said around Garth before. And then he just sagged into the couch cushions, head back, eyes closed. “I, uh, I really liked her,” he said thickly.

Dad wouldn’t cry, would he? The idea horrified Garth. “But can’t you fix things?” he asked hastily. “Tell her you’re sorry for…well, for whatever you did?” What
had
his father done?

“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Dad gave him this twisted smile. “But who knows?”

Garth’s thoughts jumped forward. “What about Chev and Ron?” he asked anxiously. “She won’t want to come and see them, will she.”

“Probably not.” A sigh seemed torn out of Dad’s chest. “No. But she’ll call you. Just don’t tell her she’s beautiful.”

“Why not?” A memory flashed, and Garth’s eyes widened. “I…I think I already did.”

His dad gave him this strange look. “What’d she say?”

He frowned, trying to remember exactly. “I guess she said thanks.”

“I should be so lucky.” Dad shook himself. “Oh, hell, let’s go to bed. Unless you’re really watching that.”

Now Jackie Chan was hanging out of a helicopter. Garth shook his head and picked up the remote.

After brushing his teeth and medicating and feeding the kittens, Garth turned out his light and climbed into bed. He rolled onto his stomach, reached one hand into the shelf of the headboard and found Ron. No, Chev—the fur was downy, instead of silky. He scratched gently, undemandingly, until a soft comforting purr began.

A spurt of anxiety brought his eyes wide open, staring into the darkness. Madeline wouldn’t take the kittens back, would she?

But she’d said she didn’t have any other foster homes right now. Even if she was mad at Dad, she
wouldn’t take it out on these guys, he decided. He couldn’t imagine she would. The fear receded.

But like the tide leaving shells, a few lumps of unhappiness stayed in his stomach. Even if she let him keep Chev and Ron, probably she wouldn’t take him to the shelter anymore. He’d been a whole bunch of times now. He looked forward to going! Probably Dad would drop him off once in a while, but it wouldn’t be the same when Madeline wasn’t taking him. She wouldn’t even be there!

Garth still glowed with pride, remembering the way she’d applauded when he petted Smudge. And the way she smiled when she noticed him cuddling this really sweet cat named Peanut, who was also ugly and skinny and losing hair and kind of smelly. He guessed some people didn’t like the stink he left on your clothes. And when she saw how great Chev and Ron were doing, her face just lit up.

He’d never wanted to please anyone as much as he did her. He could see why Dad liked her so much.

Garth wanted to see her. But the idea of Dad marrying her scared him. Look what had happened with Mom. All she could think about or talk about was Chuckie. Garth didn’t matter that much anymore to her. Chuck had been nicer to him at first, too, probably because he was trying to impress Mom.

He frowned. Was that why Madeline had been so friendly?

“No,” he whispered. “She likes me. I know she does.”