Tall Tales and Wedding Veils (21 page)

After rolling on a condom faster than he ever had in his life, he pressed her knees apart and plunged inside her. Ah, God, she felt good, still convulsing from her climax, her muscles tightening around him, driving him to thrust with fierce intensity. Seconds later, a climax slammed into him, tearing a deep growl from his throat and battering him with one shattering pulse after another. Finally he fell against her, his head bowed, trying desperately to drag in a good, solid breath.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll let you go. It’s just going to be a little bit.”

He lay there for several seconds, his cheek against hers, feeling her heart beating wildly against his chest. Finally he took a big, deep breath and sat up between her legs. He rested his hands on her thighs for a moment, then backed away and stood up.

He unlocked the cuffs, tossed them aside, and lay down beside her, pulling her into his arms. He felt as if he’d been mowed down by a freight train, and it was at least a full minute before his breathing slowed and his heart rate moved into the nonlethal range.

He turned to Heather. “And they both lived happily ever after.”

She sighed with satisfaction. “I just love a good story.”

“So you’re not mad about the cuffs?”

“I was never mad about the cuffs.”

“Just a little scared.”

“A little. Until my strong, handsome,
virile
knight rode up. Is there a sequel to that story?”

He laughed softly and pulled her closer. “What do you think?”

Tony couldn’t believe how good this was. Unfortunately, it was only for a few more weeks. But just as there was no reason to deprive themselves now, was there any reason they couldn’t still sleep together after they split up?

Then again, that would be weird. They would be divorced, but still having sex?

He decided he wasn’t going to worry about it now. Where Heather was concerned, he was going to live for the moment and think about tomorrow . . . tomorrow.

Chapter 19

D
uring the next week, Heather went to McMillan’s every night after work. First she ensured there were no sudden catastrophes she had to help Tony deal with, and then she went into his office to get some things done, whether it was planning for the grand opening, rearranging his filing system, or checking out his books to look for places where he could possibly save money. After a few hours, she left there and went to the apartment to take a nap before he got home so she’d be rested for whatever nighttime activity he had in store for her.

On the night he’d produced those handcuffs, at first she’d felt a shot of panic, thinking maybe Regina was right. Maybe she had married a sexual deviant. But before the night was over, she realized she’d never felt safer than when she was with Tony. After that experience, if he’d said,
Let’s do it in free fall from twenty thousand feet before our chutes open,
she’d be scrambling into the airplane.

From that night on, his imagination had known no bounds.

On Tuesday night, even though she told him it was unsanitary to use the kitchen table for anything but eating, he told her he’d throw that one out and buy a new one if he had to, but he
was
getting his way. By the time they’d finished, they’d emptied half a can of whipped cream and most of a squirt bottle of Hershey’s syrup, after which they moved the party to the shower.

On Wednesday night, Tony asked her if she’d ever made out in the back of a movie theater. When she said she hadn’t, he stuck in a sappy romantic movie he’d brought home, curled up with her on the sofa, and turned out the lights. As he proceeded to give the term
heavy petting
an entirely new meaning, she began to wonder if what she’d told Regina about his movie theater fantasies hadn’t been so far from the truth.

On Thursday night, she came home to see an old VCR hooked up to the television and a note attached to the remote:
A little nostalgia from my one year in a college dorm. Hit play.
She did, and she was shocked to catch Debbie right in the middle of doing Dallas. Being a nice girl, Heather flicked it off immediately. Then she thought,
Stop with the nice,
and hit
PLAY
again. By the time Tony got home that night, she was ready to implement a few of the strategies Debbie used to satisfy half the male population of Big D.

On Friday morning, she woke up to him sleeping beside her and thought,
You can’t do this anymore.
He was ruining her for every other man she might possibly want to sleep with in the future. She’d compare every one of them to Tony, and the poor guys would be left in the dust.
Stop now,
she told herself.
Or at least taper off so you start to get him out of your system. Tell him no tonight.

Then, as she was getting out of bed, he happened to wake up. He grabbed her, dragged her back, and she thought,
Forget tonight. I can’t even tell him no now,
and thoughts of kicking her dangerous new sexual addiction were sidelined. She just had to keep in mind that there was a reason Tony was so good in bed. He’d been with half the women on the planet, and he couldn’t wait for the day he could start going after the other half.

An hour and a half later, Heather was hurrying along the downtown sidewalk toward the building where she worked, her briefcase in one hand and a sack containing the invitations to the grand opening in the other. No doubt about it. Sex in the morning was off-limits from now on. Her legs still felt like wet spaghetti.

She’d printed the invitations in Tony’s office last night. If she mailed them this morning, people would have them in time to plan for the event, but not so early that they’d put it aside and forget about it.

She sidestepped a woman meandering along talking on her cell phone, and then a scroungy, sign-carrying panhandler. She wasn’t hurrying just because she was late. She had the final fitting for her bridesmaid dress that night after work, and she figured moving faster meant burning more calories. Yeah, that was dumb, but she’d had a dream the night before that only fifty calories had meant the difference between being able to zip the dress and not being able to, so she wasn’t taking any chances. Unfortunately, all the weight loss in the world wouldn’t make the dress any less ugly.

She slipped inside the building and went to the mail drop in the lobby. Setting her briefcase down, she fished out handfuls of the envelopes and stuffed them into the slot until she’d emptied the bag. She tossed the bag into a nearby trash can, then reached into a side pocket of her briefcase and took out one more.

The one addressed to Don McCaffrey.

She’d debated long and hard about it all the way to work, finally reaching the conclusion that if the worst happened—if he got the invitation and didn’t come—Tony would never know he had been invited in the first place. If he showed up after three years of not seeing his son, surely it would mean he wanted to reconcile, and eventually Tony would thank her for it. It would be okay either way.

With a deep breath, she stuck the envelope through the slot and let it go, sending it on its way with the others.

On Saturday morning, Tony and Heather got out of his car and walked down the sidewalk toward the formal-wear shop. Tony was more of a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of guy who opted for comfort over style, so the last thing he wanted was to put on a tuxedo. But the prospect of being in the wedding and therefore irritating Jason made it almost worthwhile.

“You’ll be proud of me,” Heather said. “Yesterday when I went to the final fitting for the bridesmaid dress, I could actually breathe in it.”

“You have me to thank for that,” Tony said.

“Excuse me? What did
you
do?”

“I put you on the sex diet. Works two ways. The activity burns calories, and if I keep your hands busy, you can’t eat.”

Heather stopped and stared at him.

“What?” he said.

“Leave it to you to take credit for
me
losing weight.” She shook her head and resumed walking.

“So you think it was all that rabbit food you ate?” he said, striding along beside her.

“I
know
it was all the rabbit food I ate. And Regina was so kind. She told me not to worry about looking fat in the dress, that I still had a week to lose another five pounds.”

“What are the chances she’ll trip on the train of her dress on the way to the altar?”

“A hundred percent if I stick out my foot.”

Tony grabbed the door, and he and Heather went into the shop. The tailor got the tux and sent Tony into a fitting room to try it on. When he emerged a few minutes later, Heather put her hand to her chest. “Oh, my God. You look
gorgeous.
”

Tony looked at himself in the three-way mirror. “I don’t know. Wearing a tux makes me feel like kind of a wuss.”

“A wuss? Are you kidding? Is James Bond a wuss? I don’t think so. Look at the girls he gets.”

“Hmm. Maybe you have a point.” Tony stood up straighter, flexing his shoulders and tugging at the lapels. “So you’re telling me that if I put on one of these, I’ll be a real babe magnet?”

Heather screwed up her face. “Babe magnet?”

“You know, I can get all the chicks.”

“Yeah, Tony,” she deadpanned. “You can get all the
chicks
now that you’re a
babe magnet.
”

Tony gave her a furtive smile. “I got you, didn’t I? You said I looked gorgeous.”

Heather turned to the tailor. “Give him high-water pants. The Pee Wee Herman look is in this year.”

The tailor, who had zero sense of humor, marked the pants for hemming at the appropriate length, then examined the fit of the jacket, which turned out to be just about perfect. He told Tony it would be ready in time for the wedding and sent him back to the fitting room.

He changed back into his jeans and T-shirt, then started to push the curtain aside to leave the fitting room. As he did, he glanced between the curtain panels to the counter at the front of the shop.

No. It couldn’t be.

His father?

Tony stopped short, clutching the curtain, feeling every nerve in his body go numb. At first he thought he must be imagining it. It had been three years since he’d seen his father. Could this man just resemble him?

Then the man turned to glance out the window, and Tony knew for sure. Don McCaffrey. There was no doubt about it.

Tony watched as his father pulled out his wallet and handed the clerk a credit card. He may have left the Navy, but the Navy had never left him. He looked every bit as staunch and upright as he had for the past thirty years, and he wore the same stoic expression. As a kid, Tony could still remember craning his neck to look up at his father’s unsmiling face, searching for a glimmer of the kindness and understanding that had disappeared from his life on the day his mother died.

And finding neither.

His father signed the credit card slip. The clerk handed him the tuxedo that was hanging on the rack by the cash register. His father simply nodded thanks to the clerk, then strode out of the store.

Tony let the curtain slip out of his hand. He turned and leaned against the wall of the dressing room, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. He thought about all the times in the past three years when he’d almost picked up the phone and called, only to stop himself every time with the same thought.

Why hadn’t his father contacted
him?

As more time passed, Tony had actually started to think that maybe something had happened to his father, and that was why he hadn’t called. Irrationally, he almost hoped something had. At least then he could reach some conclusion other than the fact that his father never wanted to see him again.

But clearly nothing had happened to him. He was here today, preparing to go to some formal event that required a tuxedo, moving through his days with no thought at all for the son whose life he’d made miserable.

I don’t care. I don’t need him. I don’t need him ever again.

Tony stood there a moment or two longer, waiting for his heart rate to return to normal. Then he took a deep breath and pushed the curtain back. Heather stood up and smiled at him, and some of the sick feeling in his stomach went away.

“You took long enough in there,” she said as they walked to the door.

“Sorry. I couldn’t stop admiring myself in the mirror.”

Heather grabbed the door and held it open for him. “Go ahead. See if you can squeeze your big head through the doorway.”

He stopped and stared at her. “When did you become such a smart-ass? I missed the transition moment.”

“Right after I met you. You know what they say. You are who you associate with.”

As they left the shop, Tony was a little worried that his father might still be in the vicinity, but he didn’t see him anywhere. He felt a little silly trying to avoid him, but what was he supposed to do after all this time? Walk right up and say hello?

As they strode along, Heather yawned. Then yawned again. “I have some errands to run. Then I’m heading home for a nap.”

“Sleeping in this morning didn’t help?”

“If you had let me
sleep,
it might have. Tomorrow’s Sunday. I’m not getting up until at least ten o’clock, so it’s hands off. Do you understand?”

“Sorry. Did you say something? I didn’t hear you.”

“Tony? What am I going to have to do to get some sleep? Get out the fuzzy purple handcuffs?”

She gave him one last look of admonishment as they got in the car. He couldn’t help smiling as he thought about the night she’d tried to bolt from his bed, dragging that sheet along with her. And now she was talking handcuffs. She wasn’t at all what he thought she was in the beginning.

She was a whole lot more.

Sweet and naïve on one hand, smart and sassy on the other. She was the only woman he’d ever been with who took absolutely no crap from him, and he was starting to understand the value of having that kind of person in his life. And if he was true to himself, after seeing his father now, he was realizing the value of having
any
person in his life who was there from one day to the next.

The sex might not be forever,
he thought,
but when this is all over, we’re staying friends. I’m not losing that. Not ever.

Heather had told Tony how tired she felt today, but lack of sleep didn’t catch up to him until after the lunch rush. He could barely keep his eyes open. Since Kayla was staying until the dinner shift, he told her he was going home for a few hours to get some sleep. Saturday afternoons were slow, but Saturday nights weren’t, and he wanted to make sure he was up for it.

As he drove home, he imagined that Heather was already in bed napping. He’d just crawl right in beside her. Hmm. Maybe one thing would lead to another, and then . . .

No. You have to sleep. And that’s that.

A few minutes later, he parked his car next to Heather’s and went into the apartment. He tossed his keys on the kitchen counter, thumbed through his mail, then headed for his bedroom, only to hear a knock at the front door.

He walked back and opened it, and the moment he saw the woman who was standing there, he felt a rush of panic. She was tall and blond with spectacular breasts, wearing a navy blue uniform with little wings on her chest and pulling a suitcase on wheels.