Charmingly Yours (A Morning Glory #1) (19 page)

“I’m Methodist,” she said, rising on her elbows. “I sing in the chapel choir.”

“Are you a good singer?” he asked, twining her hair around his fingers. She loved the way she felt when he touched her.

“Not really. They needed some warm bodies and—”

“You have a very warm body,” he said, pulling her to him and kissing her. Late-afternoon sun fell soft through the window, lending a hazy, contemplative mood. Melbourne hopped onto the foot of the bed, curled up and commenced purring. Moscow was nowhere to be seen.

“Sal?” she said, laying her cheek against his chest, threading her fingers through the hair on his chest. “I don’t want this to end.”

His head jerked toward her. “I don’t, either.”

“Why did I have to find you here? This was supposed to be fun, just sex, you know?”

He nodded, growing still.

For several minutes they lay there, tangled together. Her heart yearned for him, but she knew the reality of their worlds were too far apart.

“With this pillow thing and Trevor Lindley, would you consider staying here in New York City?” His words held hope, like a feather teetering on a window ledge, clinging but the inevitable ever near.

“I can’t stay here. I have a store and my family and friends. I wish I were unfettered, but I’m not.”

He let loose a sigh. “And neither am I.”

She sank into him again, tears scratching her throat. This was all they’d ever have—a two-week love affair. They’d have to pack forever into the next few days.

But what if . . .

Impossible.

Sal had a life here and she had a life in Mississippi. Reality and romance were two different things. This wasn’t a movie where against all odds, two lovers catch hold of forever.

“I need to work on my pillows, but maybe we can get some grub first? I’m starving,” she said, shutting the door on the doubts, hopes, and things she could do nothing about.

Sal pulled her so she lay on top of his body, all the parts lining up where they should. “But first we work up an even bigger appetite with an encore performance?”

Rosemary wiggled her hips. “Nice refractory time, bud.”

“Bud?” He laughed and rolled over, pinning her beneath him. Melbourne
took an accidental kick and yowled his displeasure. Rosemary giggled. “He really hates you now.”

“Eh, like I’d let go of you to soothe a stupid cat.”

“Don’t let Halle hear you say that. She thinks her kitties are little princes.”

“Why are we talking about cats when we could be doing other, more pleasurable things?” he asked, nuzzling her neck. “You smell delicious.”

“I showered.”

He laughed against the column of her neck. “I adore you.”

Powerful words to any woman. Rosemary had never thought she’d hear them. Oh sure—she had a grainy image of the man who would eventually adore her, a gentle hope that something such as mutual adoration existed, but she’d never expected it to happen at that very second.

She wanted to lock the moment in the shadow box of her heart, placing it carefully in the largest square to be taken out and admired when the days were long and cold. Those words were so precious to her. To be adored.

“I love you,” she said, clasping him to her.

He froze, and she felt him swallow against her skin. “Don’t say that.”

Lacing her fingers through his hair, she felt tears prick her eyes. “Why not?”

“Because if you say it, it makes it real. And if it’s real, we’ll hurt when it’s over.”

“I can’t—”

“No,” he interrupted, his dark gaze finding hers. “Don’t. We can’t. Take it back.”

Rosemary said nothing. Instead she cradled his face between her palms, shaking her head because she couldn’t take the words back any more than she could deny she’d fallen in love with him. Next weekend they would be over, but Sal would always own part of her heart. He was the first man she’d ever loved, and like the scar on her knee from her first bike wreck, he’d always mark her.

“Oh, Rosemary. Don’t,” he said, his voice raspy with emotion.

Then he kissed her and she imagined the kiss held all he felt and all he would not say. That’s the thing—you can’t hide what you feel in a kiss. The unspoken words, the yearning, the anguish—all of it was in that kiss. She opened herself to him, teeth scraping teeth, tongues tangling. The sweetness emoting into passion.

“Don’t love me, Rosemary,” he begged, dropping his mouth to her breasts, his fevered breath hot against her skin. His hands slipped to her hips, anchoring her, pressing his will into her flesh. “Don’t.”

“Too late,” she whispered against his hair. “It’s too late.”

And it was.

Chapter Seventeen

The week passed.

A beautiful week full of laughter, sightseeing, sex, and good food. Sal took her to all his favorite places to eat. They took the ferry to Staten Island and drank beer. Well, he drank beer. Rosemary pretended to drink hers. They walked the High Line, the elevated linear park on the unused railroad high above the city, stopping for lunch in the Meatpacking District. He wiped Rosemary’s tears when they visited St. Paul’s Chapel of Trinity Church, across from the Sept. 11 memorial, and he watched her marvel at George Washington’s pew, which he hadn’t even known existed. Through her eyes, he saw his city.

He took as many days off as he could, ignoring his father’s stink eye each time he put in for vacation. On the days he had to go in, Rosemary worked on her designs. She spent one entire day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art using the art hanging in their galleries as inspiration for her own designs.

Twice they took tea with Gilda, who freely gave her advice but was careful not to overstep Rosemary’s artistic vision.

“The idea of naming them after the boroughs is interesting, but not ideal,” Gilda said, examining the five pillows propped up against the huge mural on her wall. “Manhattan and Brooklyn aren’t bad. But who wants to lay his head on the Bronx? Connotation is everything, dear.”

Rosemary tilted her head, her ponytail swinging, making her look younger than her twenty-seven years. “Good point.”

Sal shifted in the beanbag and tried not to spill the tea. He wasn’t much of a hot tea drinker anyhow, but he didn’t want to scald his balls. “Why not something that fits you, Rosemary?”

She looked over at him with a question in her eyes. “Me?”

Gilda snapped her nicotine-stained fingers. “What I said all along. You are part of the sale.”

“I don’t see how—”

“You’re old-fashioned, southern, and small-town. Use that,” Sal said, lurching from the beanbag, struggling to look graceful. Failing.

“I’m not old-fashioned. Not really,” Rosemary said.

“It’s not a bad thing. Let’s tie it in with your pillows—vintage, retro, yesteryear. Why not Yesteryear by Rosemary Reynolds?” Sal suggested.

“And I could name the pillows for southern cities. Or places in southern cities. Like this one.” Rosemary lifted the pillow with the tiny yellow and black brocade bees paired with deep purple, green, and red. “Vieux Carré. Or French Quarter.”

Gilda clapped her hands together. “What about this one?” She picked up the pillow quilted with Wedgwood blue ticking, gray flannel, and deep-green sprigged muslin.

“Low country?”

Gilda nodded. “I don’t know what that is, but I like the sound.”

“It’s the lower part of South Carolina and Georgia. I can add a nice linen braid as trim, which will give a coastal feel,” Rosemary said, excitement in her voice. “I love this idea and I bet Trevor will, too.”

“I’m going to buy the first one. I like this one,” Gilda said, lifting one that had brighter color blocks. “What are you going to call this one?”

“It looks like this place,” Rosemary said.

“South of SoHo?” Sal said.

Rosemary bit her lower lip. “No.”

“No?” Sal asked.

“I think that’s the perfect name for my pillow collection. Way better than Yesteryear.” She beamed at him, running to him to throw her arms around him. “You’re so brilliant.”

He kissed her and Gilda made a snorting sound.

Rosemary had spent the rest of the evening in her cousin’s loft, sewing and humming a song he’d never heard before but that sounded suspiciously country. He’d sat on the sofa and watched the Yankees lose to the Texas Rangers, perfectly content to pretend such domestic bliss.

And that’s how the week went—moments of sweet rightness with the darker shadow of reality chasing them. There were moments of silliness and even more poignant were the moments of naked vulnerability. Like when Rosemary told him about her friend Lacy.

“This is what she left me,” Rosemary had said, opening the drawstring of a small ditty bag.

“A bracelet?”

“She prized this thing. Her grandmother gave it to her on her tenth birthday and then took her to New Orleans to the zoo. That was her first charm—this little alligator.”

“But why did she leave it to you and your friends? I don’t get it. I mean, it’s nice and all.”

“Like I said, she wanted us to do something she couldn’t. Travel, take a class, buy something . . . as long as it was something we’d dreamed about doing but had never gotten around to.”

“And you dreamed about coming to New York City?”

She shook her head. “Not really. My cousin called me a few weeks afterward and asked me to do this. I’d once told her I’d love to come visit. I didn’t mean when she wasn’t here.” Rosemary gave a laugh, sighing when he took her foot and started massaging her instep. She set the bracelet on the coffee table. “But I knew it was an opportunity to experience a world I’d never tasted. It was a chance to be someone other than who I was.”

He understood more than she knew. “So what are you supposed to do? Wear the bracelet?” he asked, sliding his thumbs up the sole of her foot. She had an elegant foot, thin with cute toes painted the same ladylike pink she wore on her fingers.

“I could, but that doesn’t feel right. It’s like she gave it to me to help complete. I’m supposed to find a charm and put it on once I’ve completed my part. Then I pass it on to Eden or Jess.”

“Interesting bequest,” he said, moving his hands to her trim ankles and then up to the pretty calves.

“It’s so Lacy. She loved romantic notions and quests.”

“Like you?”

She had closed her eyes but now she sat up opening them. “You can see that about me, huh?”

“I like that about you. Some people would have taken the seed money she left you and put it in the bank or spent it on something that wouldn’t lead to adventure. You were willing to chase a dream.”

“Because Lacy couldn’t. I owed her that much.” Rosemary’s eyes took on a sheen. “Life’s not fair. I know that. I mean, we’re living that right now. We found each other, but—”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you—what kind of job can I get in Morning Glory?”

Rosemary laughed. “Don’t tease me that way.”

But part of him wasn’t teasing. Why did they have to wait for Sunday like a death row inmate awaited his date of execution? It didn’t have to be an ending. Sunday could be a beginning . . . if he had the guts to pursue it. “Maybe I’m not.”

She sat up and took his hand. “We agreed on a two-week love affair. Are you saying you’re trying to change the rules?”

Did he? Maybe.

He’d given a lot of lip service to his parents about making his own decisions. But the thing he didn’t want to admit was the truth hanging around in much of his mother’s words. He didn’t make good decisions. From using his college money on a truck to dropping out of culinary school to Hillary, he had a track record for fucking up. When he’d met Rosemary two weeks ago, he’d been running from growing up, looking for someone or something to help him forget the confusion of his life, to stave off the inevitable. Rosemary was supposed to be temporary, a vacation from reality. He hadn’t expected her to change him.

And what about her?

She said she loved him, but was it sustainable? He knew enough to know she hadn’t much experience with men. Falling in love was all good and well those first few weeks when everything was sloppy kisses, hand-holding, and happy smiles. But he’d seen firsthand how the glow wore off. So many of his relationships had started the same way—hot, passionate, but cooling as real life elbowed its way in. And that’s something he and Rosemary hadn’t had—a pin to prick the bubble of make-believe they’d been floating in. Real life threw punches and pushed you down.

From the beginning they’d known the score.

Just a few days ago while they were eating in Washington Square Park, watching people walk their powder-puff dogs and take drags on their cigarettes, she’d told him she would always remember these two weeks, storing them in her memory as precious as a baby curl or prom corsage. That some days she would take out the memory of his smell, the feel of his hand in hers, and she would roll around in it. Poetic words, but words that stuck to their unwritten policy. What he and Rosemary shared wasn’t about a lifetime. They were about a moment.

“Sal?” she asked, jerking him from his contemplation.

Her eyes had gone from sleepy contentment to alert concern. Auburn hair framed her pretty face with its peony-pink lips and jeweled eyes, brushing the tops of breasts hidden by a T-shirt that had something to do with grits.

“Sorry. Guess with Sunday looming, I’m having some—”

“Don’t say regrets,” she said.

“No, not that. It’s just hanging there over us, ready to fall. I hate the way this feels.”

She bit her lower lip, her eyes sad. “I know.”

He wanted to say, “And . . .” to see where she’d let the conversation go, but he didn’t. Because he didn’t trust himself. To make a good decision. To not beg her to stay. To not throw away everything that lay before him. He’d been pissed at his ma, but she’d planted the seeds she’d intended to plant. He wasn’t sure he knew what was right for his life, so he couldn’t toss his life and chase a whim. Not even for love.

If it was real love.

How did he know what love was anyhow?

So he decided to avoid the question. Such was his way. “You hungry? ’Cause I could eat.”

She nodded. “You know what I’ve been craving? The meatballs I ate at Mama Mello’s the first night I was in town. Want to take me back there?”

He didn’t. He didn’t want Rosemary anywhere near the censure of his father, his sister, hell, even the waiters. Rosemary was his escape. Mama Mello’s and his family were the anchors that held his feet to the ground. “I have to go in tomorrow for the lunch shift. You can come eat and then we’ll go to that club I told you about. Or we could go to my place in Brooklyn. You can stay with me for once. I cleaned up and even bought flowers for the table.”

“For me?” she grinned, leaning forward to kiss him. But then she pulled back. “What about Moscow and Melbourne?”

“They’re cats. Feed them, give them fresh cat litter, and pack an overnight bag. Saturday morning we’re going to the Brooklyn Flea.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s only the best flea market and artisan marketplace in the city. Very hipster. You’ll love it.”

Rosemary launched herself into his arms, covering his face with kisses. “You’re the greatest sex slave in the history of sex slaves.”

He caressed the ass beneath the shorts, thankfully not eliciting a hiss from the still tender tattoo site. Though he was perfectly willing to kiss it better again. “Which reminds me, I’ve been remiss in my duties.” He started tugging up her T-shirt.

Rosemary laughed against his lips. “We had sex this morning.”

“I thought you needed servicing every six hours,” he said, placing all his doubts, concerns, and expectations on the mental shelf where he was apt to place things that had no solution, and instead lost himself in the salty sweetness of her neck.

“Every six hours sounds about right,” she said, sliding her hand down to clasp the erection suddenly straining his gym shorts.

And so he made love to her, reveling in her body. The taste of her, the scent, the way she made mewling noises when she came, the way she looked deep into his eyes while he moved inside her. He memorized Rosemary, immersing himself in every sensation.

He couldn’t have known as he lay there on the couch afterward, watching her shimmy back into her panties, that the fairy tale they’d woven with threads of desire, make-believe, and hope would start to come unraveled the next day. Because Sal had forgotten reality did more than throw elbows and head-butt. Reality wore sly stilettos, had brash red lips and an Italian temper.

Yes, reality could be vicious.

Because reality didn’t play fair.

Friday morning came with Sal up early, taking the train to Brooklyn. Rosemary spent the morning and early afternoon completing the five prototype pillows Trevor Lindley had requested. She was still in disbelief he was interested, but overall, she could say she’d done her best with the designs. Extra time poking into secondhand stores and antique malls had netted some lovely bright embroidery for the Graceland pillow. And some of the trims and notions from Gilda’s huge supply lent a finished look. Her nerves jangled when she thought about Trevor and his team looking over them and finding them lacking, but she’d done all she could to create authentic, vintage throw pillows that portrayed who she was . . . who so many women were. Not every woman sipped cosmos, wore designer shoes, and partied until the wee hours. There were some who liked eyelet, old wood floors, and lemonade from a mason jar. Her pillows were for both kinds.