As If You Never Left Me Part 6

Who was he kidding? He could promise, but he'd touch her anyway. As much as possible. Maybe it would be better for them both if he just stayed here.

Maybe if he had another pillow ...

He sat up, peering down the short hallway. A small nightlight burned next to the bathroom door, which was good because otherwise the tiny house was pitch-black. He'd never lived anywhere without streetlights, and the immensity of the darkness here had caught him off guard. There must not be any moon to speak of tonight. He'd never thought much about that, either.

Joely's bedroom door was closed. He hadn't heard anything from that part of the house since he'd finished tucking himself in. She'd probably dropped right off to sleep, sprawled all over her comfortable bed. He wondered if there was another pillow stuffed into that miniscule linen closet.

He pushed back the blanket and quilt and tiptoed across the room, feeling gooseflesh crawl down his back. The chill had surprised him, as well. It had been fairly warm today, and he hadn't expected the temperatures to drop off as much as they had. Another one of those weird mountain things, he supposed.

He was s.h.i.+vering by the time he got to the linen closet. Carefully, he turned the k.n.o.b and opened the door. It squeaked a little and he grimaced, looking toward Joely's door. Surely she hadn't heard that. He poked his head into the closet, squinting in the darkness, and made out the lump of a pillow.

"Aha!" he whispered, and dragged it out. It had a pillowcase on it and everything. What luck.

He saw the shadow move out of the corner of his eye. It was a person, and it wielded something large and probably dangerous. He wheeled automatically, lifting the pillow to protect himself.

"Get out of my house! What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing in my house?" The screeching voice was barely recognizable as Joely's. Rey cringed, waiting for her to hit him, but whatever she had, she was only brandis.h.i.+ng it.

"Joely! Joely, it's me!" He peeked around the edge of the pillow. She barely had her eyes open.

"Get out get out get out-" Her litany suddenly broke off. She shook her head and lowered her weapon, which proved to be a golf club. She reached toward the wall switch, and a moment later, the hallway was flooded with light. Cautiously, Rey lowered the pillow.

Joely regarded him with bleary eyes, blinking against the sudden light. "Oh," she said. "Sorry."

He looked at the golf club in her hand. One of his old Big Bertha wood drivers, if he wasn't mistaken. "Good G.o.d, Joely, you could have killed me with that thing!"

To her credit, Joely looked chagrined. "I said I was sorry. I was having a dream and I heard you in the hallway and I woke up. I'm not used to having somebody else in my house."

"No wonder, if this is the way you treat your houseguests." Suddenly, he realized there was more of interest here than his old golf club-and he'd been wondering for a while where that had gotten off to. Joely had on dark purple flannel pajamas. s.e.xy ones, with lace trim around the neck and sleeves. The top b.u.t.ton had come undone and Rey could see the inside curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She looked tousled from sleep, much as she'd used to look after s.e.x. Except for the red sheet marks on her face, but that didn't detract from the effect enough to stop Rey's c.o.c.k from springing to abrupt attention.

He was at a great disadvantage, standing there in nothing but a pair of white cotton briefs. Joely, apparently seeing the s.h.i.+ft in his gaze, looked right at his crotch.

"Forget it, Rey." She spoke the words directly to his burgeoning erection, which ignored them completely. Then she spun on her heel, dragging Rey's golf club behind her, and went back into her bedroom.

"G.o.d, this sucks," said Rey, and headed back toward the couch. He should have known better than to think he could be this close to her without suffering for it. He wanted to be with her, not just near her.

Now he'd never get back to sleep.

There was no sleeping for Joely, either. She lay awake in bed, tossing and turning, smas.h.i.+ng and resmas.h.i.+ng her pillow, muttering to herself and generally becoming thoroughly involved in an intense case of insomnia.

She couldn't get the image out of her head-of Rey in nothing but his underwear, c.o.c.k straining against the thin cotton. She had been able to see every detail-the curve of it, the demarcation between shaft and head. She hadn't seen him that thoroughly aroused since a few months after their honeymoon. Standing there in the cold hallway, she'd wanted to put her hand right under the straining cotton of his fly and go to town. If she had, she'd probably be sleeping right now, satiated and snoring.

Instead, she was all alone in a big bed, punis.h.i.+ng her pillow for her own stubbornness.

A month, he'd said. There was no way she could have him in her house for a month and not drag him, at some point, straight into her bed, get him naked and have her way with him. So she had to decide, and soon, whether to go along with his plan. To let him be her husband again, in thought, word, and deed, or to send him packing back to New York.

She smashed her pillow again and looked at the clock. Four hours from now, she had to get out of bed and go to work. Maybe Perry could tell her what she should do. She had a feeling she knew exactly what Perry would say.

Closing her eyes, she pictured again the clean lines of his bare torso, remembered what his skin felt like under her hands. Remembered what it had been like to make love to him, to let him inside in every possible way. The thought of sending him away brought tears to her eyes. So did the thought of letting him stay.

She looked at the clock. Three a.m. It was going to be a long night.

To her own surprise, she did eventually fall asleep, which she discovered when the ringing phone woke her. Barely conscious, she rolled over and picked up the receiver on her bedside table.

"Joely, I know you're not awake," said Perry before Joely could jump-start her voice. "Just look out the window."

Joely rolled half over to peer over the headboard of her bed, tweaking the curtain aside. "Oh, my G.o.d." Her tone was more reverent than upset.

"Yep. Don't bother coming in. I'll call Virginia and tell her we won't be there."

"Okay. Thanks, Perry."

She turned the phone off and leaned her chin against the headboard, looking out at nearly eighteen inches of snow. And it was still coming down, so thickly she could barely see the small barn that held her studio, only twenty yards or so from the house.

Smiling, she settled in to watch for a while. She loved to watch the soft drifting of snow from the low, gray clouds, piling silently in her yard, filling the valley with white. It made her want to sing "White Christmas," even though it wasn't even Halloween.

A sudden noise interrupted her reverie. Startled, she started to reach for the golf club, then remembered. Rey. How could she have forgotten? Especially after she'd nearly brained him last night. And standing there looking at him and his big, pretty c.o.c.k in his skivvies... Sometimes her brain amazed her with its ability to forget things. Self-preservation, she supposed, particularly in this case.

She swung her feet out of bed and stuffed them into her fluffy slippers. The wooden floors would be cold. Grabbing her heavy, terrycloth bathrobe on the way out, she went to check on Rey.

She found him a little sooner than she'd expected. He was in the bathroom, occupied. The door, which had a bad latch and loose hinges, was slowly swinging open.

Joely couldn't resist a look. He was still in nothing but his shorts, s.h.i.+vering visibly. Unfortunately, he had his back turned to her, making it impossible for her to see what he had in his hands. That was too bad. She hadn't seen it in a long time, and she was wondering how accurate her memory was. "Getting a little casual, aren't we?" she said. "I closed the door," he protested. "You have to pull it shut pretty hard. The latch doesn't always catch."

"Well, I wouldn't know that, now, would I?"

Joely smiled. Rey seemed almost embarra.s.sed. That would be a new experience for him. "Shall I close it?"

"Yes, please."

Obligingly, though reluctantly, she shoved the door closed, making sure it stayed closed this time.

In the kitchen, she started water for tea, reflecting on how nice it was to have time to linger over it. She

stoked the fire in the stove, as well-something else she rarely bothered with in the mornings, because she usually headed straight to work. It felt good, though, to hold her hands in the growing warmth and think about nothing. Nothing to worry about today, no plans to make, nowhere to go. Maybe she could work on some of those sketches she'd started, though it didn't look like she'd be able to get to the workshop- Then it hit her. She was going to be stuck in this house all day. With Rey.

This was not necessarily a good thing.

The bathroom door squeaked and Rey came back out. There was a strange cant to his gait. It was the

contorted, uncomfortable walk of a man too macho to let himself s.h.i.+ver. He made his way into the living

room and sat on the couch, kicking open his suitcase. "At least it's warmer in here," he muttered, then did a double take, squinting at Joely. "You're not dressed. Don't you have to go to work?"

"Look out the window." In the kitchen, the teapot whistled. Joely went to answer its call.

Rey pulled on his jeans, then picked up a sweats.h.i.+rt and went to the sliding doors leading to the small

deck. He opened the blinds and stared.

"When did that happen?"

"Last night. It was in the weather forecast. Would you like some tea?"

Shaking his head, he continued to gape at the back yard, as if the snow might disappear if he looked at it

long enough in disbelief. "They said two to three inches. This is closer to two feet."

"Not quite. Do you want tea, Rey?"

He yanked his sweats.h.i.+rt on. "So you're just going to stay home and lose a day of business?"

Joely left a cup for Rey on the kitchen counter in case he wanted it and walked back into the living room with her own tea. "That was the Denver forecast. We're not in Denver."

He went back to the suitcase for a pair of socks. "Can you afford to lose a day of business?"

She shrugged, checking the stove. It was heating up nicely. "It's a snow day. Like school. n.o.body's going to be out shopping for knick-knacks in this, anyway."

"I guess that's true." He looked at the stove, then held his hands out to it casually, as if he were just experimenting. Joely hid her smile behind her teacup. "Is there any coffee?" Rey went on. "I could use a cup."

"I made tea," said Joely.

"Oh. Okay."

He went into the kitchen to make himself some tea.

It hadn't quite registered with Rey until this morning exactly how small Joely's house really was. He'd thought maybe there was another bedroom or a study or something lurking around a corner, but there wasn't. Kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, deck, garage. That was it. Oh, and that tiny linen closet.

That was good, though. Because it would be extremely hard for her to get away from him.

Things had already gotten comfortably domestic. He helped himself to cereal out of the cupboard while she drank her tea and ate toast with that all-fruit jelly she'd always liked. She thumbed through a magazine while she ate, not talking to him but not really ignoring him, either.

The whole scenario was far more comfortable than he'd expected.

"So what do you usually do when you're snowed in?" he said suddenly. The silence was comfortable in its way, but it was starting to worry him. He'd never get anywhere with his planned seduction if they just sat around doing their own thing all day.

She looked up from the magazine. "I thought I might work on some sketches. It'll be hard to get to the workshop through the snow. Once it settles down a little, Rob from up the road will come by with his snowplow and clear the road and the driveway."

"Really. Rob, huh?" Was Rob a new wrinkle in the situation?

"Yeah, the whole neighborhood pays him a sort of retainer, salary, whatever, and he clears all our driveways for us, plus the road. The county doesn't maintain this stretch."

"I see." When you lived in the middle of nowhere, he supposed, you had to come up with arrangements like that. Heaven forbid the city or county or whatever would do it for you. He thought about the big snowplows that cleared the streets at home, and about alternate side of the street parking. That kind of thing probably wouldn't work on these narrow, winding roads.

Sipping his own tea, he looked at the black woodburning stove and wondered if she'd ever tried to cook anything on it. "It's like a whole different world out here, isn't it?"

She shrugged. "In some ways. But it's really not all that strange." She turned back to her magazine.

Not that strange. She had to burn wood to keep her house warm, and pay somebody to plow the road. Her house was made of logs, and the TV weatherman couldn't predict the weather for her piece of his viewing audience. No, this wasn't strange at all. h.e.l.l, it was so much like New York City, who could tell the difference?

Chapter Five.

Joely sat at the kitchen table and sketched for a time, trying to pretend Rey wasn't sitting across from her. Not the easiest task.

He'd gotten his computer out and hooked into her phone line so he could catch up with the news. Apparently, the idea of trudging down her driveway through eighteen inches of snow to get the paper didn't appeal to him. Of course, that was a.s.suming the paper was even there. Given the conditions, Joely suspected it wasn't.

So, between the scratching of her pencil and the tapping of his keys, they filled the silence companionably.

It didn't seem right, though, to sit and say nothing. There were fourteen months of silence between them already-shouldn't they find some way to address that?

"What are you working on?" Rey said suddenly. He got up to unplug the modem cable from the phone jack on the wall, then sat back down and folded the top of his laptop down.

Joely tweaked a line she'd been fussing over before turning the sketchpad to show Rey. He perused the picture. "Nice. This goes with the one you drew at the hotel."

She nodded. Finally happy with the vase she'd sketched, she'd tried variations of the columbine design on a bowl and mugs. "I like to do things in sets. Sometimes somebody even buys them all together."

He nodded thoughtfully. "And yet they work as single pieces as well, so if somebody only buys one, you can still sell the rest."

"That's the plan." She turned the book back around, eyeing the drawing again. "These mugs. I'll probably price as a set of four, though."

"You know what you need?"

There was a loaded question. "A million dollars?" A good lawyer in tight blue jeans?