She was on the phone, her back to him, the extra-long cord stretched to the max across the room. A Dr. Seuss nightmare of a cat with a mane and extravagant leggings, but otherwise shorn, sat on the counter, batting at the coiled cord, while two others were exchanging mild words over whose turn it was at the food dish.
Under other circumstances, he would have laughed. The gloriously sexy creature of a few hours ago now looked like a Muppet. Not only was she dressed in a scruffy, furry robe in an amazing shade of lurid pink, her feet encased in a pair of heavy white socks, but she’d done nothing with her hair, which stood out from her head like Medusa’s snakes. The fact that Rod found her disarray arousing only reinforced the treacherousness of the situation. He stood at the door, mildly aware he was eavesdropping.
“Ma… Ma!” One hand came down onto the counter, sending at least two cats fleeing for their lives. “That’s not true, and you know it!”
Uh-oh.
“I was going to call you, but you always beat me to it.” Normally, her New Jersey twang was soft-edged enough not to really notice it. This morning, however, it was out in full force. Frowning, she reached up to her windowsill, plucking off a dead leaf from an ivy plant. “I know it was New Year’s Eve. Which is why I wasn’t home? What? You expect me to call you from my cell phone in the middle of a party. Oh, please don’t start in again about this….”
Her head dropped back; he saw her take a deep breath, then sag against the counter. “How many times we gonna go over the same ground? I moved here totally of my own free will.” She covered her mouth with her hand, then let it drop. “What’s in Jersey for me, Ma?… Well, I’m sorry, but I think I’m a little old to be living with my parents—”
Rod sneezed—there was enough cat fur floating in the air to make coats for a small country—and Nancy spun around. The frown on her face vanished, replaced by that incandescent smile.
Damn.
“Okay, okay…” She raised her hand, her mouth open, trying to get a word in edgewise. “Ma—I gotta go… Okay, okay, I promise, I’ll call you later… No, I don’t know when… No one’s asking you to stay by the phone, Ma. Look, I really have to go…yes, I promise… Yeah, Ma. I love you and Daddy, too.”
She hung up the wall phone, but didn’t let go right away. Her forehead braced on her arm, she seemed to be working on getting her respiration back to normal. Funny. Rod and his father had never had fights. Not like that.
“I take it you and your mother aren’t on the best of terms?”
Her laugh into her sleeve was harsh. “Let’s just say her concept of maternal devotion includes the terms manipulative and suffocating.” She turned to Rod. “My ex may have had little to recommend him, but he at least got me out of Jersey and away from Belle the Wonder Maven.”
She’d started to smile again, but apparently something in his expression—stark terror, perhaps—cut it off at the pass. Her arms tucked themselves against her ribs as she jerked back to look out the window, began the nervous chatter of the night before. “I told you the snow wouldn’t amount to anything. I don’t think we even got an inch of fresh last night—”
“Nancy.”
She bent her head slightly, the wild curls slipping forward as if to offer her comfort. “Last night was really good,” she said, one hand knotting, then unknotting, on the counter. “Actually, last night was indescribable. And to think I’d been afraid—” She cut herself off, faced him again. A shaky smile warmed her lips even as confusion simmered in her eyes. “Let’s not screw it up by talking, okay?” She pushed herself away from the counter, walked over to the refrigerator. “I have eggs, at least,” she said, opening the door. “How do you like them? Or there’s frozen waffles, I think.” A cloud of frost tumbled from the freezer when she opened it and started poking among all those green boxes.
Now Rod knew why one-night stands weren’t his thing. Torn between wanting to comfort her and wanting to bolt, he said, “I’m not hungry. I’m also not leaving this house until you hear what I have to say.”
The door slowly swung closed. Her fingers still clamped around the handle, she said, “Isn’t this backward? I mean, isn’t it usually the woman who wants to talk?”
“Isn’t it a little late for us to be thinking in terms of convention?”
She huffed a sigh. “Good point.” Then turned. “So talk already.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, looked out the window for a second, then back at her, avoiding those eyes, already littered with fragments of hope. “Okay, look—originality’s not my strong suit, especially before 8:00 a.m. So—cliché number twenty-seven. Last night was very special.” He stepped close enough to brush a corkscrew curl away from her face; it sproinged right back. “Like you.”
The ginger tabby jumped up on the counter, brr-upping at her. She picked it up, cuddling it against her chest. “But?”
“But…nothing’s changed. This isn’t going to develop into a relationship.”
Her calmness scared him, because it seemed so against her nature. She rubbed the side of her nose, not looking at him, then retucked her arm against her middle.
“It’s not that I didn’t know this, going in,” she said, almost to herself. “Even had a list of reasons why you and I would never work.” Now she tilted her head. “Unfortunately, three-quarters of those reasons no longer seem to make sense this morning. So, just because that’s the kind of gal I am, I have to ask, why?”
He wished he was dead. “I’m sorry. I truly am. But you can’t change the rules after you’ve played the game.” Man. Talk about sounding lame. “You even said as much, that you just wanted the one night.”
“And you said you didn’t do casual sex.”
“I don’t. And it wasn’t.” Her brows rose. “Just because it was an isolated incident doesn’t mean I considered it casual.”
“I see. So, I’ll ask again, since you still haven’t answered the question—why, exactly, is this a one-time thing? I mean, we’re both single, and I assume you found me at least attractive enough to do it with once. No, wait—it was four times, wasn’t it?”
“Nancy, for God’s sake, don’t do this to yourself. This has nothing to do with you.”
“Funny. I could have sworn I was in the bed, too.”
He plowed one hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration he generally never allowed himself. By the time he was six, his grandparents had drummed into his head that people of their station were expected to do the right thing, to take the high road. And, thus far, despite a few personal casualties along the way, he’d succeeded in meeting those standards. Now, however, he found himself in the unenviable position of realizing that no matter what decision he made, it wasn’t going to be right. That someone was going to be hurt. The stunner, though, was that he might be the someone, as well as Nancy.
But he did owe her the truth. “Nancy, listen to me. Please. I just can’t get involved with anyone. I’ve been married twice, and both times I failed miserably.”
“You failed?”
He hadn’t
