By the Book (22 page)

“Irate?”

“No.”

“Outraged?”

“No. Not really.”

“Then I don’t know.”

“I don’t either,” she said, giving him a small smile. “What is it that those people have that makes them speak up when someone cuts in line in front of them? I would assume they were in more of a hurry than I was, or had an emergency, or left their kids in the car, or something—not that they were just being rude for the heck of it or that they should be at the end of the line no matter what. You see how I am? See how my mind works?”

He could tell she was serious about this. “But I like the way your mind works.”

“Well, I don’t,” she said, leaning back, away from him. She didn’t want his approval. She wanted him to understand. “I’m sick of letting old men go ahead of me in line and watching them win the Anniversary Jackpot. And I’m sick of letting my brother use my apartment like a flophouse every time he gets too drunk to find his way home. I’m sick of people stealing my vacation spots and my parking spaces and my leftover food. And I’m sick of standing aside when someone else shows an interest in a man I’m interested in or a job I want or ... or anything else I want—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up a second. What about this man you’re interested in?” Now he was leaning back, away from her and very confused. She’d said they needed to talk but ... No, he couldn’t have been that wrong about her. He just couldn’t have been.

“That’s what started all this,” she said. She hadn’t meant to get into this can of worms, but now that it was open, why not tip it over and dump everything out? “Well, it wasn’t the only thing, it was like the fuse on the end of a stick of dynamite. You smiled at Vi from across the street and for just a few seconds I thought you were smiling at me and ...” She glared at him. “I wanted you to smile at
me,
Jonah. I wanted you to see
me.
But I knew that would never happen once you met Vi, because she’s so—What? Why are you laughing?”

“Because I did see you. I—”

“No, don’t. Don’t try to make me feel better. Just listen to me. Stop that,” she said when he sat there grinning at her. “I’m serious about this, but if you don’t want to hear what I have to say ...”

“No. Sit. Please. I’m sorry. Go on,” he said, bowing his head so she couldn’t see the joy in his eyes, laboring to control his smile. “I want to hear it all.”

Mildly miffed that he was having such a good time at her expense, she slowly started again. “I understand why men are attracted to bold, self-confident women like Vi. I do. And I don’t blame them. I like Vi. I like the way she goes after what she wants. I like that she’s not afraid to try new things and say what she thinks and do whatever crosses her mind. I’d be like that if I knew how. I just didn’t know how—until I found the little green book.”

“The little green book?”

“Well, it’s not even a book really,” she said, and quickly explained how and where and why she’d gotten her primer for personal growth. “You’re not laughing again, are you?”

“No.” He said it emphatically to convince them both. “I’m not laughing.”

“And I’m not saying it’s a Bible or anything like that,” she said defensively. “Sometimes it isn’t possible to scratch where it itches at the exact time you’re itching.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” she said, feeling a rush of heat in her cheeks. “Some of the steps in that little book were great. Like attitude, I love having an attitude, it’s like pretending you’re somebody else—except it’s hard to use on old ladies or cats. And thinking positive and saying no. Nothing else, just no. And being blunt with people, saying exactly what’s on your mind, even in a nice way. It made me feel so powerful. In control. Even turning left and going that way, which is really just doing the exact opposite of what you’d normally do—that was exciting.”

“Then what’s the problem? It doesn’t matter where you learned these things, as long as you learned them. There’s nothing wrong with being assertive and self-confident.”

She shook her head and looked down at her hands again. “That’s not what I learned though. That’s what I thought I was learning, what I wanted to learn, but ... I wasn’t using each step to improve myself. I was using them against other people. People I like. People I love, who are not always convenient to love.” She looked up to see if he knew what she meant by that. His fathomless green eyes were soft with understanding. “I went from being too nice to being not too nice at all. Look what I did to Felix.”

“What happened to Felix wasn’t your fault,” he said firmly.

“No. Not all of it. But my part of it was done, not out of love for my brother, but very selfishly to eliminate his problems as quickly as possible because he was being a problem to me. I used positive thinking and a whole lot of attitude to bully him into Krane’s hands. Felix tried to tell me how dangerous he was, but I wouldn’t believe him.”

“Ellen, that whole situation was a mistake made by everyone involved. And your part in it may just be the only good thing to come of it.”

“In what way? My brother looks like a truck backed over him. What good can come of that?”

“Well, for one thing, Officer Ingles said Felix nearly went insane when he heard you’d been within a hundred yards of Krane. You forced him to do the right thing by calling in the cops to protect you.”

“To protect me?”

“Your testimony in court would be something Krane would never allow, especially if Felix happened to die as a result of his beating.”

“You mean, he ... I ...”

He nodded. “He would have had to kill you too.”

“And my mom and my sister?” She covered her face with her hands. She hadn’t once considered this aspect of what she’d done, and the enormity of it was too horrible to envision.

He gently pried her hands away, holding them in his as he said, “That’s not going to happen. It was never going to happen. Felix wouldn’t let it happen. He did the right thing. And now he’s in a safe place, drying out. This could be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

“Or the worst.”

“I don’t think so,” he said, and he was probably right, she conceded. If what happened with Krane wasn’t enough to set Felix on the path of the sober and righteous, then he was heading for something much, much worse. When she remained silent, contemplating what might have been, he finally tucked a finger under her chin to raise her eyes to his. They were thoughtful and wise and caring. “You made a mistake, Ellen. We all make mistakes.”

She gave a slight nod. “I know. I just don’t think I’ve ever made quite so many in one week before. It’s ... overwhelming,” she said with a small smile. “Even little Mrs. Phipps. I told her no, over and over again. And not because I didn’t want to have tea with her, but because I was using all my lunch hours shopping for her. And she was just lonely, just using the groceries as an excuse to get me to come have tea with her. I should have guessed. I should have told her it wasn’t necessary and just had tea with her most afternoons, maybe shopped for her once a week or something. We could have worked things out if I hadn’t acted so selfishly.”

“Mrs. Phipps loves you. She’ll understand. She’ll forgive you. It was just another mistake and you’ve learned from it, so it wasn’t really a mistake.” She looked at him and he grinned. “It was a learning experience.”

“Oh,” she said, smiling, wishing she really could see more of the humor in it. He was right though, about making mistakes and learning from them. Being brave and daring enough to take what she wanted from the world was new to her; she was bound to make a few mistakes at first. Even the little green book advised aiming straight and choosing battles carefully. Maybe she just needed more practice. “And what about the mistake I made with you?”

“Meeting me wasn’t a mistake,” he said, beaming at her.

“No, but pretending to be something I wasn’t was. Pretending to be bolder and more self-confident than I was, so you wouldn’t know how nervous I was or how excited I was to be with you.” She looked down at the teal blue silk draped gracefully over her legs. “Carrying this thing around in my purse, planning to seduce you the first chance I got. That was ...”

“You had this in your purse?”

She nodded, shamefaced. “I just wanted to prove to myself that I could have someone like you in my life. I wanted you to think I was as sophisticated and capable as the other women you’ve known. That I wasn’t just some too-nice person who had a quiet little job in a quiet little bank in a quiet little town that you could forget the second you were back in Washington.”

“You had this in your purse?” he asked, his mind stuck on the idea.

“Yes.”

“You were planning to seduce me?”

“Yes.” The look on his face made her smile and released a thousand tiny butterflies in her stomach. “We had dinner with Felix instead.”

He groaned and made a face that caused her to chuckle while he reached out to rub the silk between his fingers, his knuckles grazing the warm, soft skin above her sternum. Her heart started beating so fast, she thought she heard it whirring.

“I love this color,” he said.

“I know.”

His gaze met hers, held it in an unbreakable bond that would link his soul to hers for all time. Despite the turmoil in her heart at present, below it lay the rock-solid base of love and kindness she was born with, and the peace and acceptance he’d yearned for all his life. There was no way for her to hide it, or change it, or destroy it. It would temper every step she took in life and reshape the world as he knew it.

“It’s beautiful on you,” he said, brushing the ends of her hair back over her shoulder, skimming the skin there as he went. “It would be a real shame to waste it.” He leaned forward and dropped sweet soft kisses down the curve of her neck and shoulder.

Little shivers raced across her skin. “But what about the way I misled you?” Her arms felt rubbery as she pushed at him. “What about the real me and the way I pretended to be somebody I wasn’t? What if you don’t like the real me?”

“Well, first off,” he said, brushing the thin strap from her shoulder—which she promptly replaced as he spoke—“I know the real you. I love the real you. And secondly”—he brushed the strap away again—“unless you’ve told me a flat out lie about yourself somewhere along the way, you haven’t deceived me or misled me, you were just embellishing.”

“Embellishing?” She wasn’t really asking a question, just repeating the word. He was tracing the heart-shaped contour of the gown as it crossed her breasts, and the nerve endings in her brain were shooting sparks and shorting out one by one. How could she ask questions?

“Mmm, embellishing,” he said, his finger in the valley between her breasts. They both watched as it began a slow ascent over the next slope. “Decorating the truth a little. People do it all the time to bolster their courage when they need a little extra. Like for job interviews or for meeting new people. Is this a mole or a freckle?”

“Um ... a freckle.” It could have been a tarantula for all she knew; her head was swimming with sensation and excitement as his fingers slid lightly over her shoulder and down her arm.

“I like it,” he said, pressing his lips gently to hers. Soft and sweet. He kissed the corner of her mouth, then one side of her chin, her lower lip, the little dip below it, watching as her eyes closed. His hand snaked under the gown and found her ankle. “Now me,” he said, slowly sprinkling kisses and moving his hand up her leg. “I prefer the ambush approach.”

“Ambush,” she muttered mindlessly.

“That’s right. When I want to meet someone, I watch them through the bank window for about a month. Watch the way they interact with other people. Watch the way they sit and stand and hold their head when they’re on the phone.” Her eyes opened slowly to meet his. “I notice how kind they are to people. How nice they are when they don’t have to be and ... I fall in love with them.”

“You do?” Her hand stopped his on her knee.

“Yes. I spend some time thinking maybe they’re too nice for someone like me, that they might not like me, but my love is so strong, I decide it’s worth the risk. Then I have a really hard time getting their attention. I wash the shop windows till they’re paper thin, hoping they’ll notice me. I hang out in the parking lot, hoping they’ll see me and smile, so I can run up and introduce myself. I smile when I think they’re looking my way, but they don’t see me—or they pretend not to. Then one day I get lucky. Flimsy grocery bags.”

“You did all that? You were watching me? Smiling at me?”

“For weeks.”

She started to laugh, looping her arms about his neck, pulling him near, closing the small distance between them. Their lips met in joy that turned swiftly to passion, their hands grasping, skin warming as blood turned to fire in their veins. He pressed her back against the railing with just his lips, supporting his weight on one arm while the hand of the other slid up her thigh like a cool summer breeze ... in fact, she
felt
a cool summer breeze.

“Jonah,” she said, turning her head from side to side, trying to evade his mouth and clear her mind at the same time. “We can’t do this here.” She started to laugh, and he kissed her again.

“I’ll give you a two-second start,” he said, wrenching his mouth from hers as he pushed himself away.

Her head was spinning. “Two?”

“One.”

Gathering silk in one hand, she used the other for support as she turned and scrambled up the stairs. He caught her half a second after she crossed into her apartment. His mouth was glued to hers before she heard the door close.

She could feel his feet shuffling out of his shoes while his hands raced from her gown to the front of his shirt and back again as he feverishly tried to get them both naked immediately. Breathless with excitement and lack of air, she fumbled with his belt buckle.

“I have a bed if you’re interested,” she said, laughing.

“I’m not,” he said, pushing his pants to the floor and two-stepping out of them; reaching for her, pulling her near, palming and pressing her breast, his mouth everywhere he could find skin. The aching need in her swollen breasts turned to pure pleasure, dripping and oozing over her conscious mind like sweet, warm syrup. Her thoughts bunched together, grew thick and sticky and unintelligible.