he stumbled into the bathroom to toss cold water on his face, Marco’s thoughts turned to Brian and Val. Married just four years, they had already separated and reunited twice.
The problem was that, like him, Brian was a physician. A pediatrician who’d just started a practice of his own, he often worked more than eighty hours a week. And that didn’t take into consideration the hours in the middle of the night that he was on call. With a new baby to care for, it was no wonder Val often felt overwhelmed and neglected as far as attention from her husband was concerned. For his part, Brian justifiably felt torn between the pressures of the practice he’d built to assure his family’s financial security and the emotional demands of that family.
Marco was thankful for one thing. The day he’d promised to never forget the human side of medicine, he’d also promised that he would never marry. The marriages of too many physicians ended as a result of the very issues with which Val and Brian were now struggling. Issues they would continue to struggle with in the future. If, that is, they stayed married.
During those rare times when the thought of a wife and family to come home to became too tempting, all Marco had to do was think of Brian and Val, and his weakness would vanish. The one thing he never questioned were the promises he had made. His determination to keep them remained steadfast.
So why, even though he knew it was inappropriate, couldn’t he stop thinking about the light in his landlady’s unexpectedly bewitching eyes? And why couldn’t he stop hoping that she wasn’t entertaining a gentleman caller, that some other man wasn’t this very minute running his fingers through her beautiful, long hair?
Gretchen stood with her back pressed to her closed front door. Her heart thudded and her cheeks felt hot.
“‘Well, good night,’” she muttered in disgust. “Is that all you could think to say to him? What about, ‘You make my toes curl and my heart pound, and I was wondering if there was any chance I could do the same to you?’ Or, ‘I made a promise to my best friend that I’d have a wild, crazy affair. You game?’”
Groaning, she buried her head in her hands. She really was hopeless. Having a wild, crazy affair with any man, let alone one as virile as Marco Garibaldi, wasn’t going to be easy. In truth, she had to face the fact that it might prove downright impossible.
Gretchen felt herself grow as hot as the air outside as she remembered the way her tenant had looked, his thick, nearly black hair tousled, his well-muscled legs and broad chest on view in a way she had never glimpsed before beneath his loosely belted bathrobe, his smoky, heavy-lidded eyes half-closed from exhaustion. Heaven help her, if he had smiled that slow, crooked grin of his, she would have melted into a puddle at his feet. And the heat would have had nothing to do with it.
There was no denying that he possessed all the qualities Jill had stipulated. Just as there was no denying that, since Jill had put the notion into her head, having a wild, crazy affair with Marco Garibaldi was just about all Gretchen could think about.
She had always pictured herself as the PTA-baking-cookies-and-sewing-Halloween-costumes type of woman. And, if no man ever gave her a chance to exercise those skills, she gave a bang-up presentation before a board of directors and could summarize a company’s financial situation in thirty words or less.
When asked for a résumé, seductress and temptress had never made the list. For heaven’s sake, she wore high-necked cotton nightgowns in the summer and flannel pajamas in the winter. She never slept in the nude, something—if that loosely belted bathrobe was any indication—she suspected Marco Garibaldi was quite comfortable doing. Face it, she knew as much about having a wild, crazy affair as she did about flying a rocket to the moon.
Her recent encounter with the doctor in question more than bore out that conclusion. She hadn’t exactly gotten off to a rousing start, so far as seduction was concerned. Although she could have sworn that, for the briefest of seconds, she’d actually seen a flare of interest in his eyes. She’d even imagined that he’d reached out to her. Of course, the minute he’d all but tripped over his feet in his haste to get away from her, she’d realized how mistaken she’d been.
Good thing Jill hadn’t given her a time limit to accomplish everything she’d promised she would do, because something told Gretchen her powers of seduction needed a complete overhaul.
She was making headway on the rest of her promises, though. Over the three weeks that had passed since she’d listened to Jill’s tape, she’d done a lot of thinking on how she would spend the money Jill had left her. To date, she’d solicited bids to have the years of grit and grime covering the outside of her duplex sandblasted away and to have the bricks themselves repointed. Next week, central air-conditioning would be installed, and she and her tenant could throw away the window units that were working overtime in this heat. While the expenses could hardly be called impractical, it was money she normally wouldn’t have spent.
She’d also filled out an application to compete in a piano competition in Morgantown, West Virginia, next November. The age cutoff was thirty, which meant she would just squeak in under the wire. This truly was her last chance to find out whether she had any talent, and, if she was accepted, she had only a little more than four months to prepare. She was nervous, but she was also excited.
Filling out the application and writing the check for the entry fee had been the easy part. Much harder had been sitting down at the piano itself.
Though she’d kept the upright in tune, she’d rarely played it these past years. She didn’t know why, other than that when she’d given up her dream she’d also given up playing. She’d even, after her parents died, had the piano moved from the living room into the spare bedroom on the second floor. Out of sight, out of mind, she supposed.
Tonight, however, the minute she’d rolled back the lid from the keyboard, she’d lost herself in the wonder of the music. It had been obvious from the first note that she had a long way to go before she was ready to compete. But, oh, the joy of playing again. She’d forgotten how wonderful it felt to run her fingers over the keys and the sense that always filled her when she sat down to play—that the world was a wonderful place and that all things were possible.
She’d played the same piece over and over again, a Beethoven sonatina that was perfect for stretching lazy fingers. Marco Garibaldi had thought she was playing a CD. Surely that was a good sign. Surely that meant she hadn’t grown irredeemably rusty and that she had a chance.
Yes, she decided as she pushed off the door and turned to see that it was properly bolted, she was making progress. She was doing everything she could to keep the promises she had made.
Everything, that is, except try to find a way to seduce her tenant. She’d been putting off the hardest task for last, which was totally unlike her. When it came to work, she had always done the thing she least wanted to do first, getting it out of the way so she could enjoy the tasks that made her job such a pleasure.
She supposed she was dragging her feet because she had little confidence that she would succeed. Also, she’d never been lucky where affairs of the heart were concerned. An engagement had ended when she’d decided to care for her dying father. Subsequent relationships had all been unsatisfying. When Jill got sick two years ago, Gretchen had abandoned dating altogether, in order to spend as much time as possible with her friend.
She thought of the men she’d dated: sedate, sensible, dependable. Or, as Jill had so succinctly put it, dull, dull, dull. Then she thought of the women she’d seen on Marco Garibaldi’s arm. Beautiful. Vibrant. Vivacious. Anything but dull. She’d have to do something drastic, if she was ever going to compete with them.
Just
