Rachel Gibson - Tangled Up in You

He’d moved to the bed and pulled her up so she knelt before him. “I’m going to make you pay for laughing at me.” And he had. All night long, and when she’d woken this morning, she was alone. Again. She would have liked to have woken and seen his face, his blue eyes looking at her, all sleepy and sated, but it was better this way. Better to keep a distance even though they’d shared a night as physically close as two people could possibly get.

While Snowball chowed, Maddie picked up the mouse with a paper towel and carried it to the garbage outside. She called a local veterinarian and made Snowball an appointment for the first week in August. Her low-carb granola bars had teeth marks on the outside of the box, but the bars looked okay. As she took a bite, her doorbell rang.

Through the peephole she gazed at Mick, standing on her porch, looking showered and shaved and relaxed in a pair of Levi’s and an untucked striped shirt over a wife beater. She ignored the little tumble in her stomach and opened the door.

“How’d you sleep?” he asked as a knowing little smile brought out his dimples.

She opened the door wide and he stepped in side. “I think it was around three when I finally passed out.”

“It was three-thirty.” He walked past her and she shut the door behind him. “Where’s your cat?” he asked as they moved into the living room.

“Eating breakfast. Are you scared of a little kitty?”

“Of that Tasmanian furball?” He made a rude scoffing sound and pulled a little stuffed mouse from the front pocket of his jeans. “I got her some catnip to mellow her out.” He tossed it on the coffee table. “What are your plans?”

She planned to work. “Why?”

“I thought we could drive to Redfish Lake and get a bite to eat.”

“Like in a date?”

“Sure.” He reached for the terrycloth belt and pulled her toward him. “Why not?”

Because they weren’t dating. They shouldn’t even be having sex. Dating couldn’t happen no matter how her stomach tumbled or her skin tingled.

“I’m hungry and I thought you might be hungry too.” He dipped his head and kissed the side of her neck.

She moved her head to one side. She did have to eat, though. “Why Redfish Lake?”

“Because they have a good restaurant in the lodge there, and I want to spend the whole day with you.” He kissed the side of her throat. “Say yes.”

“I’ll need to get dressed.” She pulled her belt from his grasp and turned away. As she entered her bedroom she called out, “How far is Redfish Lake?”

“About an hour and a half,” he answered from the doorway.

She hadn’t expected him to follow her and she looked over at him as she grabbed a pair of underwear from a drawer. He leaned against the doorframe, and his eyes watched her, moving with her hands as she pulled up a pair of pink silky panties. His gaze felt very intimate. More intimate than when he kissed the insides of her thighs and his eyes turned that certain sexy blue. Intimate like they were a couple and it was normal for him to watch her dress. Like this relationship was more than it really was and more than it was ever going to be. As if there were a chance at tomorrows and the day afters. She raised her brows up her forehead. “Do you mind?”

“You’re not going to get all modest, are you? Not after last night.” She continued to stare at him until he sighed and pushed away from the doorframe. “All right. I’ll go get your cat stoned.”

She watched him leave and tried not to think about tomorrow or the days after and things that could never be. She dressed quickly in a pink cotton sundress. She pulled her hair back in a claw and gazed in the mirror as she put on a little mascara and lip gloss.

In the harsh light of day, with her sexual desire sated and her emotions tightly under control, she knew she had to tell him she was Madeline Jones. He deserved to know.

The thought of telling him cramped her stomach and she wondered if he really had to be told at all. Last night she might not have been real tactful when she’d brought up other women. She’d obviously made him mad, but the fact was, Mick Hennessy was no more a one-woman man than his father had been. Or his grandfather. Even if he wasn’t seeing anyone else right now, he would get tired of Maddie. He’d move on sooner or later, so why tell him today?

If anything, she should clear up her mortifying outburst last night. She wasn’t a woman who got all weepy and cried on a man’s neck. Perhaps she hadn’t broken down like some women were apt to do, but for her, it was a loss of control that embarrassed her. Even twelve hours later.

A half hour into their drive to Redfish, she decided to clear it up. “Sorry about last night,” she said above the country music filling the cab of Mick’s truck.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry about. You got a little loud, but I like that about you.” He grinned and glanced at her through the lenses of his blue mirrored sunglasses before returning his gaze to the road. “Sometimes I don’t always understand everything you say, but you sound real sexy while you’re saying it.”

Somehow she suspected they weren’t talking about the same thing. “I was talking about getting all emotional at Hennessy’s.”

“Oh.” His thumb tapped against the steering wheel, keeping time to a song about a woman liking chrome. “Don’t worry about it.”

She wished she could take his advice, but it wasn’t that easy for her. “There are just certain girls I’ve never wanted to be. One of them is the emotional girl who cries all the time.”

“I don’t think you’re an emotional girl.” Air from the vents touched the dark hair about his forehead. “What are the other girls?”

“What?”

“You said there are girls you never wanted to be.” Without taking his eyes from the road, he turned off the CD player and spoke into the sud denly silent cab. “One is the emotional girl. What are the others?”

“Oh.” She counted them off on her fingers. “I don’t ever want to be the stupid girl. Nor the get-drunk-and-slutty girl. The stalker girl or the butt girl.”

He looked over at her. “The butt girl?”

“Don’t make me explain it to you.”

He returned his gaze to the road and smiled. “Then you’re not talking about a girl with a big butt.”

“No.”

“Oh, so I guess I don’t ever…”

“Forget it.”

He laughed. “Some women say they like it.”

“Uh-huh. Some women say they like to be paddled, but I’ll never know the pleasure of either.”

Mick reached across the center console and took her hand. “What about being tied to a bed?”

She shrugged. “I kind of like that.”

He brought her hand to his mouth and smiled against her skin. “I guess I know what we’re doing after I get off work.”

Maddie laughed and turned her attention to the scenery. To the pines and thick brush and the South Fork of the Payette River. Idaho might grow famous potatoes, but it also had spectacular wilderness areas.

At the lodge, they sat at a table that looked out at the blue-green water of Redfish Lake and at the snow-covered peaks of the Sawtooth Mountains. They ate lunch and talked about the people in Truly. She told him about her friends, and about Lucy’s wedding last year and Clare’s impending nuptials. They talked about everything from the weather to world events, sports to the latest West Nile virus outbreaks.

They talked about almost everything but the reason she moved to Truly. By tacit agreement they avoided talking about the book she was writing and about the night his mother had killed two people and then herself.

The day was relaxing and fun, and during those rare moments when Maddie looked into his eyes, her conscience reminded her that he would not be with her if he knew who she really was. She shoved it down and ignored it. She turned a deaf ear, and by the ride home, she’d buried her conscience so deep, it was just a faint whisper that was easily ignored.

After he got off work that night, Mick showed up on Maddie’s doorstep with silk neckties in one hand and another catnip mouse in the other. While he tied Maddie’s wrists, Snowball batted the mouse around, then later flagrantly disregarded the rules and passed out in Maddie’s office chair. Disregarding the rules was becoming a bad habit for Snowball. Just as Mick Hennessy was becoming a habit for Maddie. A habit she was eventually going to have to break, but there was a problem. Maddie liked spending time with him, in and out of bed, and that created another problem. She wasn’t getting a lot of work done. She hadn’t finished her notes or completed the timeline, and she really needed to do that before she sat down to write Chapter Two. She needed to remember why she was in Truly and get to work. No more dropping everything to have a good time with Mick, but when he called the next night and asked her to meet him at Mort’s after he closed for the night, she didn’t think twice. At twelve-thirty, she knocked on the back door wearing a red trench coat, four-inch pumps, and one of Mick’s blue neckties nestled between her bare breasts.

“Like the tie,” Mick said as he opened her coat.

“I thought I’d return it.”

He put his hands on her bare waist and brought her against his chest. “There’s something about you, Maddie,” he said as he looked into her eyes. “Something more than the way you make love. Something that makes me think about you when I’m pouring drinks or watching Travis strike out in T-ball.”

She put her arms around his neck and her nipples brushed the front of his polo shirt. Against her pelvis, he was enormous and ready. This was the part where she should tell him that she thought about him too, but she couldn’t. Not because it wasn’t true. It was true, but it was best to keep things platonic until he moved on.