Take Me Home (28 page)

The next morning, Tim again woke her by waving a fragrant mug of coffee under her nose. Dressed in a pair of plaid cotton pajama pants, he sat on the bed, kissed her, and offered her whatever she wanted for breakfast, but the darkness was back in his eyes. He kept looking at her as though she might grow fangs and bite him, and not in a sexy way.

“Tim, what is it?” she asked, putting her hand on his arm. She tried a weak joke. “Did I call you by the wrong name in the throes of passion?”

She saw him think about brushing the real question aside, and then he dropped his head, staring down into his coffee. “No, you’re pretty good with names,” he said. He combed his fingers
through his hair. “I reckon I’m just unsettled by how fast we’ve gotten close.”

Claire pushed herself upright against the pillows. Last night, he had spoken Anais’s name to her for the first time. A weird jumble of feelings—shock, sympathy, a strange gratification—had held her silent for too long, and the moment had passed. Maybe he wanted or needed to talk about his wife, but couldn’t find a way to bring it up again.

“I don’t think I responded very well last night when you mentioned your wife’s name,” she said, wishing he would look up. “I mean, I know what happened with her—”

“No one knows what happened with my wife.”

“All right, I know the bare facts of what happened. I can only imagine what you suffered—are suffering. I’d like to help.”

“That’s a real nice offer, but I don’t think I should take you up on it,” he said, standing up while keeping his back to her. He towered above her, and she could see the tension knotting the muscles of his shoulders. After a silence, he looked back at her and said, “You
have
helped me. It’s easier to think about her now.”

“Maybe you should talk to Willow. She’s good at keeping secrets, and very sympathetic.” Claire knew this might be her only chance to discuss the topic, so she decided to try every angle she could think of.

“As much as I respect Sharon’s views on the subject, I’m not going to spill my guts to a horse.”

“Maybe Willow isn’t your whisper horse. Maybe you just haven’t met the right one yet.”

He turned then, his face a mask of exasperation. “Claire, a horse isn’t going to change anything.”

“I know that.” She wasn’t going to let his skepticism stop her. “It’s what you say to the horse that changes
you
. Putting your situation into words gives you a new perspective.”

“Words are meaningless. Actions tell you what you need to know.”

She gasped as she began to comprehend how deep his pain must run.
How would she feel about herself if Milo had committed suicide rather than divorcing her?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t really understand until just now.”

“Then you’ll understand why I don’t think Willow will be of much assistance.” He stalked over to the window and took a swallow of coffee.

She slipped off the bed and padded up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her cheek against the warm, bare skin of his back. She felt him breathe in sharply.

“Claire, when you touch me, I don’t know what helps or doesn’t help.”

“It has to help,” she said, thinking of herself and how cherished she felt when she was with him. “What could feel better than this?”

“I can think of several things,” he said, putting his mug on the windowsill to turn in her embrace. He tipped her chin up for a long, coffee-flavored kiss. “We did a few of them last night.”

With a sense of unease, she let him put an end to the discussion. She could almost feel the shadow of his dead wife falling between them. When he slid his free hand down to cup her bottom, she put her hands on his chest and pushed. “Easy, buster! I have to get to Holly’s house in less than an hour.”

“We can manage that,” he said, hooking his hand under her knee and pulling it high up on his thigh while bending so his erection rubbed right between her legs.

That was all it took to awaken the craving to have him inside her. She yanked open the fly of his pajama pants and freed his cock. He wrapped her other leg around his waist and carried her over to the bedside table. Dropping her feet to the floor, he pulled a condom from the drawer and rolled it on. She hitched one leg
up on his thigh so he could drive himself up and inside her. She flexed her hips as his fingers stroked her in a matching rhythm, and an orgasm slammed into both of them almost simultaneously.

“We may have set a new world record,” she gasped as he slipped out of her, causing an aftershock to shudder through her body.

He held her tight against him as their breathing slowed to a normal rate. “You’re right about one thing. Nothing feels better than this.”

S
EVERAL HOURS LATER
, Claire sat at the glass-topped desk in the main room of the gallery. It was a typical slow Tuesday, so she had plenty of time to think.

Her relationship with Holly had reached a milestone this morning: her sister had allowed Claire to drive the girls to school for the first time, saying she would stay home and rest so she could pick them up at the end of the day.

Frank remained a touchy subject. Claire recommended that Holly bring Paul up-to-date on yesterday’s events. She knew restraining orders weren’t worth much, but she thought it would be good to have one in place. However, Holly vetoed that, saying she didn’t want to provoke Frank further.

Claire let that go, since the police seemed pretty willing to offer Holly protection even without a legal document. In fact, Robbie McGraw had been sitting in an unmarked car parked two houses down when Claire drove up in the morning. She had waved and made a mental note to bring muffins the next morning.

She thought through all of those issues several times, trying to ward off contemplation of her relationship with Tim. She got up to straighten one of the Len Boggs paintings, and wiped down a black metal sculpture that showed every dust mote. She sat back down and sorted through a pile of junk mail Davis had left on the desk.

Then she folded her hands on the cold glass and gave in to Tim, staring at the Annie Nelson photo directly across from her without seeing anything in it.

Their relationship felt like a dance. A tense, steamy tango, full of advances and retreats. She was having a hard time keeping up with the choreography.

Had she pushed too hard by bringing up his dead wife a second time? As they grew more and more intimate, it seemed impossible not to. Yet Tim had been politely withdrawn as he drove her to the veterinary hospital this morning to pick up her car. It was a strange contrast to the explosiveness of their lovemaking.

No, it was sex, not lovemaking. She couldn’t claim to love Tim, although sometimes she felt on the verge of it. He was a spectacular lover, a rock in a crisis, and a knowledgeable collector of art. It was actually amazing she
wasn’t
in love with him.

Maybe the push-pull was deliberate on his part. When he felt she was getting too emotionally entangled, he pushed her away. In a way, he was doing her a favor. They both knew she was leaving in the not-too-distant future. Keeping their relationship uncertain would minimize the pain of parting.

“Who am I kidding?” Claire moaned as she contemplated returning to her empty apartment in New York. “I’ll miss him enormously.” She allowed herself a giggle at her choice of words. “Especially since he’s so enormous.”

“Care to share the joke?”

Claire jerked around to see Paul walking toward her as the gallery’s front door swung closed behind him. “Oh, you startled me!”

“Talking to yourself is the first sign of insanity,” he said, dropping into the chrome-and-leather chair beside the desk. He stretched out his long legs and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“No, answering yourself is.”

“Then I’m totally off my rocker,” he said with his flash of a grin. “Are you free for lunch?”

“I have to wait for Davis to come in before I can leave.” She looked hard at Paul. “Didn’t we have this conversation up at Chief Chipaway?”

“It’s just a friendly lunch. No evil intentions or ulterior motives.”

“You’re a politician and a lawyer, so I don’t believe you for a second.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s right, I picked the two least respected professions on earth.”

“You could try selling used cars.”

“Funny. One warning, though. If you start throwing yourself at me, I’ll take you up on it. No more Mr. Nice Guy.”

“Thanks for the heads-up.”

“Am I late?” Davis Honaker appeared out of the back hallway, his white hair perfectly combed and his beige linen trousers ironed to a knife pleat. “Paul, you son of a gun, I didn’t know you were an art lover.”

Paul stood and shook hands with the older man. “I’m interested in that horse painting you have locked up in the back room,” Paul said with a wink at Claire. “I’ll give you two hundred for it.”

Davis snorted. “Two hundred
thousand
wouldn’t even begin to touch it.”

Paul whistled. “I’ll settle for a postcard, then.”

“No postcards,” Davis said. “We tried to get permission, but the artist’s agent said no. Can I interest in you some Len Boggs note cards? They were Claire’s idea, and they’re selling like hot-cakes. Very tasteful and a nice little bit of cash flow between the art sales.”

“Thanks, but I do all my writing on yellow legal pads,” Paul said. “Can I steal Claire for lunch?”

Davis’s expression turned speculative as he looked back and forth between them.

“We’re old friends from high school days,” Claire hurried to say.

“Just have her back by two,” Davis said.

Claire glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes after noon. Usually, she took half an hour for lunch. She sighed at Davis’s matchmaking. “Let me grab my bag, and I’ll be right there.”

When she returned, Paul escorted her out to a gleaming black Corvette. “I brought my car today because I want to take you on a guided tour.”

“She’s a beauty,” Claire said, running her hand along the low, sleek line of the roof. “But I remember you always said your first sports car would be a BMW.”

“When you’re in politics, local or otherwise, you buy American.” He held the door open for her.

“I like this car. It makes a completely different statement than a Beemer. It says, ‘Look at me because I’m pure speed and power.’ The BMW is just another sports car.”

“And you wonder why I tried to kiss you by Chief Chipaway.” He said it with the kind of grin that robbed it of provocation.

“What sort of a tour are we taking?” Claire said as Paul got in and eased the car onto the street.

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about today’s Sanctuary. Being the former mayor, I thought I’d show you a few.”

The Corvette rumbled down Washington Street. “You’ve already noticed the old cracked cement sidewalks have been redone in brick.”

“Yeah, they’re not so great for walking in heels,” Claire teased.

Paul ignored her, waving his hand toward a sparkling fountain centering a green square of grass. “Remember when that was a run-down parking lot?”

“I do.”

“And you used to complain that Sanctuary didn’t have a bookstore,” he said, pointing to the display of colorful book covers in the bay window of Books, Books, and More Books. “Not to mention our permanent theater, right down around the corner in the former five-and-dime store.”

Claire looked out at the Victorian storefronts lining the main street. Buildings that had been neglected when she lived here were now shiny with new paint and restored trim work.

“There’s the new library, an annual concert series at Union Hall, and of course, Davis’s gallery adds more artistic culture to town.”

Claire slanted a teasing look at Paul. “It is so funny to hear you talking like a...a chamber of commerce video. You used to complain about Sanctuary even more than I did.”

He looked out at the buildings scrolling past, and she saw pride in his gaze. “I discovered there was a lot to like here, and I could change some of the things I didn’t like.”

“Now that’s the kind of attitude we need more of in politics,” Claire said. “You’re a good man, Paul.”

“There’s the kiss of death,” he said, making a wry face. “You only hung out with me because I was a motorcycle-riding, hell-raising troublemaker.”

“No, I hung out with you because I saw the future mayor behind the tough facade. And maybe a little bit because you rode a motorcycle. I had my goody-goody reputation I needed to overcome.”

“Even hanging out with me couldn’t overcome that,” he said as he turned onto Battle Street. Once a residential neighborhood, the immaculately tended Victorian houses now sported discreet signs offering professional services from accountants, lawyers, and dentists. They seemed to be vying with each other for the
most colorful flower beds and window boxes. Paul parked halfway down the block in front of an especially exuberant garden. The sign read,
Tammy’s Place, Bring Your Appetite and We’ll Satisfy It
. “Remember Tammy Hodges? She was a couple of grades behind us in school.”

Claire dredged up the image of a girl with a mass of frizzy brown hair, freckles, and braces. “She used to bring homemade ice cream to school all the time. It was delicious.”