Love Overdue Page 7

  “I think you’re going to have to dance with me,” he said.

  “Have to?” she replied with a smirk. “Why would I have to?”

  “Because I came here to party with pretty girls,” he answered. “And that’s what I want to do. But you sparkle so brightly I can’t even see anyone else.”

  “Sparkle?” she asked and then, realizing what he must be referring to, D.J. put her hands on her hips and deliberately pushed her bikini-covered breasts forward. “It’s called sequins,” she pointed out.

  He smiled. “That, too.”

  She was almost paralyzed as he raised one long tanned finger to the spot where the ties for the halter top crossed her collarbone. Then, never touching her skin, he gently traced the direction of the strap down her chest all the way to the hollow of her cleavage.

  The electricity was there again, but this time it was more like a lightning strike, and in places typically kept safe from that sort of thing.

  “You don’t need sequins,” he said. “You sparkle from deep inside.”

  The bottom fell out of D.J.’s stomach. Her knees turned to Jell-O. She felt suddenly sober and didn’t like it. She’d come so far, and she wasn’t going to allow fear to back her down. Desperately, she clung to her sexy vamp persona. She tossed her hair and gave him her best impression of a worldly-wise grin.

  “Be careful,” she warned him. “If you get too close you might get glitter all over you.”

  His eyes narrowed with arousal, then he grinned and pulled her into his arms. “I’m willing to take my chances.”

  As a new song began, D.J. felt her hips moving to the beat. “I think you 're going to have to dance with me," she said. All around them people jumped and gyrated, when suddenly he brought his mouth down to hers. As their lips touched, the voltage sizzled through her, hot and quick and scorching. She kissed him back with all the expertise she could muster and with all the enthusiasm of the starving. The kiss was everything she’d ever imagined and more, so much more. She didn’t want it to end, she didn’t want to let it go. She persisted, making the most of the moment. It was exactly what she needed, and she tried to make it last.

  When they finally came up for air, she felt drunker than any champagne could make her.

  “Wow.” She felt more than heard him breathe the word against her temple.

  She could have easily said the same, but why waste words? Instead, she edged closer to him, letting the desires of her body do all the talking. They swayed together to music that may as well have been in their heads.

  “This is so what I’ve needed,” he whispered. Her arms were wrapped around his neck. His hands low on her hips. She wiggled against him, encouraging free rein. A moan escaped from deep in his throat and she felt a brush of lips against her hair. Then he pulled away slightly, as if needing to put distance between them.

  “You’re incredible,” he told her. “I don’t want to scare you off by moving too fast.”

  She couldn’t let him cool down. This was her night and there was no room for breathing space. D.J. smiled with all the enticement she could manage as she released him long enough to push his hands lower on her buttocks. “There is no such thing as ‘too fast’ for me right now.”

  He stopped dancing. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Nine

  152.2 Perception, Emotions & Drives

  It was more than his mother’s roast beef that had drawn Scott home for the evening. He told himself that it was important that he check out his mom’s new tenant. And he was always up for a home-cooked meal. But he’d heard enough talk in town about the new librarian that he was as curious as anyone else. His mom’s invitation simply made the introduction easier and more straightforward.

  Without bothering to knock, he opened the backdoor screen and entered the bright, eat-in kitchen of his boyhood home.

  He was surprised to be welcomed by the skittering sound of nails on tile. With only a couple of playful barks, an unexpected but enthusiastic ball of black fur rushed up to him, tail wagging and tongue hanging out.

  “Well, hi there, puppy,” he said, squatting down to punctuate his greeting with some neck scratching. The little dog was cute and friendly. Maybe that’s why he was inside. As far back as Scott could remember, his mother had not allowed animals in the house. Even on the most bitter cold winter nights growing up, he’d had to sneak Blondie, his cocker spaniel, upstairs under his jacket. This terrier pranced around as if he owned the place.

  He looked up to see his mother stirring something on the stove. Standing opposite her was a younger woman looking very much the librarian stereotype with her stiff expression, boring gray suit and hair bun.

  “I assume this guy belongs to you,” he said, rising to his feet. He crossed the room in two steps and offered his hand. “I’m Scott, the son. If I know my mom, she’s already told you way too much stuff about me.”

  From the wide-eyed look on the woman’s face, one would have thought that his mother had mistakenly given the impression that he was an ax-murderer.

  Belatedly D.J. shook his outstretched hand. That was the moment when recognition sparked in him.

  “Have we met somewhere?” he asked, looking at her more carefully.

  Her cheeks seemed to flush slightly. “Huh?”

  He took the two steps across the tile to plant a quick kiss on his mother’s upturned cheek.

  “This is D.J., our new librarian,” his mom said. “She’s renting your bachelor apartment.”

  “It’s not my apartment, Mom. It’s in your house.”

  “Yes, but everything about it reflects your personality.”

  Scott had merely tried to make himself comfortable while he was waiting to restart his life. He was pretty sure that if the apartment reflected anything, it was the numb loneliness that he’d tried to drive away by living there. However, he wasn’t willing to reveal that.

  Instead he turned his attention back to the attractive young woman in the room.

  “You look so familiar,” he said. “I’m thinking that we’ve met.”

  “Uh...” She still hadn’t managed a proper sentence, and wore a deer-in-the-headlights expression.

  “Did you grow up in western Kansas?”

  “Wichita. I mean my parents lived in Wichita.” Scott shook his head. “I haven’t spent much time there, though maybe I ran into you someplace.”

  “No, no I don’t...I...”

  “Are you a KU grad?” he asked. “I spent about six years eating pizza in Lawrence.”

  “Uh...no, no.”

  “She went to SMU,” his mother piped in. “Summa cum laude. And graduate school at Vanderbilt.”

  “Wow, impressive,” Scott said. “So you wouldn’t have been hanging out among my scholastic shirkers group.”

  “Nonsense,” Viv corrected. “Don’t let him try to fool you, D.J. He was president of his Rho Chi chapter, that’s the honor society for Pharmacy.”

  He shrugged. “She’s my mom,” he teased in sotto whisper. “Bragging about me is a way of life.”

  The woman didn’t crack even the smallest smile. Instead she sucked down the rest of the wine in her glass.

  “I did do some traveling to national meetings and such,” Scott continued. “Maybe we ran into each other on neutral ground somewhere.”

  That suggestion was met with an immediate, forceful response.

  “I’m sure I’ve never seen you before in my life.” The last part of her statement was definitive to the point of denial. Scott had to take her word for it. Perhaps she merely looked like someone he knew.

  “Well, whatever. It’s very nice to meet you today. And Mom’s roast beef is just a bonus.”

  D.J. was still looking at him with an expression of near panic. He heard the rumor that Amelia Grundler was intent on spreading, that the new librarian was an old friend of Vern’s, thereby suggesting that she might be a lesbian. Maybe that was the uncomfortable vibe he was picking up. Of course, picking up those vibes had never r
eally been a skill of his.

  “Scotty, get D.J. another glass of wine,” his mother said. “And you two go in the living room and get acquainted.”

  His mother never called him “Scotty” anymore, but he hoped, for the scared librarian’s sake, that the diminutive made him seem less threatening. He had the distinct impression that she didn’t want to get acquainted, but he obeyed his mom, pouring them both a cool glass of sauvignon blanc. He allowed her to lead the way to the front of the house. As he followed, he had a strange sense of deja vu concurrent with two weird disconnected impressions, sexy and not tall enough.

  He puzzled this craziness in his own mind. Not tall enough? Tall had never been a prerequisite to sexy. And anyway, D.J. did not strike him as sexy—and that had nothing to do with her height. It was the genuine coldness that radiated from her.

  She ignored the comfy sectional couch in order to seat herself on his mother’s antique slipper chair. It was very low to the ground and, while beautiful, was not particularly comfortable. Scott sat down on the couch opposite and it was as if he towered over her.

  Inexplicably, her face was an angry thundercloud.

  Scott offered what he hoped was a conciliatory smile. Perhaps her first day on the job hadn’t gone so well. And maybe dinner with his mother had been received as more obligation than invitation. Viv was open and generous and extroverted. It would never have occurred to her that her roast beef might be viewed as an ordeal to be survived. Being a public employee in a small town was tricky on lots of levels, but especially so as a command performance by a well-meaning member of the library committee. So he pasted a curious but neutral expression on his face and waited for her to direct the conversation.

  D.J. said nothing, but was practically chugging her wine. At this rate, she’d be drunk by dinner.

  That should loosen her up, at least, he thought.

  As the silence lengthened, Scott took pity on them both and forged into the standby topic for uncomfortable conversants everywhere.

  “There was lots of blue sky today,” he said. “Absolutely gorgeous, although I’m sure the farmers would love another rain before we get too close to harvest.” She continued staring at him with an expression that suggested he’d just revealed an interest in dissecting kittens and serving up their livers with a nice Chianti. He noticed her glass was now empty.

  “Let me get you some more wine.”

  Scott escaped the living room silence, making his way to the refrigerator.

  His mom looked up expectantly. “She’s nice, isn’t she?”

  Scott didn’t have the heart to disagree with her. “Yes, Mom, she’s great.”

  “It’s so much fun having a new person in town,” she said. “I’m sure you two will have a lot in common.” That hope was not particularly realized over the next painfully slow hour and a half. He found that even the taste of his mother’s cooking couldn’t seem to lighten D.J.’s black mood. As his conversation appeared to be unwelcome, he used his mouth for chewing and allowed Mom to carry the bubbly chatter. She was an expert at that, and it worked well enough, but he would not have described Ms. Jarrow as being particularly sociable.

  While they chatted, he used the opportunity to observe this woman that his mother seemed over-the-moon about. She was medium height, slim enough, well-groomed and orderly. That was the word that came to his mind. Orderly. The business suit was neat, barely tailored and adequately disguised any curves in her figure. Her hair was pulled up in a knot on the back of her head that was more functional than attractive. She was probably wearing makeup, he thought, but not enough that he was actually sure. And her eyeglasses were standard bookworm issue. She looked, he decided, exactly how a librarian was supposed to look, almost as if she’d come from central casting. But there was something oddly familiar about her that he couldn’t seem to shake. She reminded Scott of somebody, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on who it might be.

  At least she’d switched to water when they sat down to the table. He’d begun to worry that the library committee had hired a lush, though despite the amount she’d drunk, she did appear coldly sober.

  His mother was talking almost nonstop, mostly about him. This was, he imagined, not D.J.’s favorite subject, but she did manage to listen politely. Not once even did she cast a stray glance in his direction—which made it extremely easy for him to watch her.

  She had very formal table manners. Neatly cutting her meat. Forking small, manageable pieces into her mouth. She was controlled. Scott added that word to his impression of the new librarian. Orderly and controlled.

  “There are not that many young, single people in town,” his mother was saying. “Scott will have to fill you in on what they do for entertainment.”

  When the interminable meal was finally over, she tried to help with cleanup.

  “No, no, no,” his mother insisted. “You’re my guest. Besides I prefer cleaning things up myself. You two young people run along.”

  “Uh...well, I...” It was pretty clear that D.J. was grasping for an excuse.

  “Scott, show D.J. the moonrise across the wheat fields. I’ll bet she’s never seen anything like it.”

  “I’m not sure when exactly...” he began.

  “8:46 p.m.,” his mother told them and then glanced at the kitchen clock. “Hurry up, I don’t want her to miss it.”

  Scott felt he had no choice. He offered D.J. what he hoped to be a friendly, unthreatening smile though it felt stiff and uncomfortable. He gestured toward the door and then followed her out. He had to do what his mother expected of him tonight if he didn’t want to hear about it for days afterward. But the woman couldn’t have made it plainer that she’d taken an instant dislike to him. Maybe she simply didn’t like men. Or maybe he reminded her of some jerk who shot spitballs at her in third grade, but he was not sure that moonrise gazing was going to make it any better.

  Outside it was fully dark and except for the sprinkle of stars overhead there was nothing to illuminate the path to the east side of the house. There was a real possibility of walking into something or stepping into a gopher hole. The librarian’s dog flitting around their footsteps only added to the problem.

  Scott would have taken it slow, but D.J. marched ahead of him into the blackness as if pursued. Good manners dictated that he keep up. By the time they reached the side of the house where the vista of wheat filled the distance, his eyes began adjusting to the darkness. She stood mutely staring out over the field. Scott found a couple of lawn chairs, but she didn’t sit, so he didn’t, either.

  The silence lengthened and he let it. There was something about being here in the dark with her that was unsettling. He felt sort of jumpy. Then he recognized that feeling as being turned on. He was here in the darkness with the unfriendly librarian and he was turned on.

  Jeez, Scott, you have got to get out more, he warned himself. If this keeps up, you’ll be hitting on the mannequins in the store windows.

  And then, as if desire weren’t an emotion bad enough to conjure up in this moment, he suddenly felt the familiar weight of loss and disappointment settle down upon him. Mostly he considered his life a good one, but it was not at all what he had planned. And sometimes he couldn’t help but miss that dream, that fantasy that he’d expected to be true for him.

  From the far edge of a distant stand of ripening grain, a full moon as big and bright as a Hollywood searchlight eased its way into the night sky.

  Scott’s throat tightened at the sight. He disguised his own sentiment with a forceful “Ahem.”

  “It’s called the moon illusion,” he announced, as if he were the authoritative voice-over in a celestial documentary. “For years scientists thought that the atmosphere or the curvature of the earth formed some sort of magnifier that made the moon appear so large on the horizon. But they’ve taken measurements to show that it actually appears exactly the same size when it’s high in the sky. It’s our brains that perceive it as being so much bigger.”

  “
Yes, I know,” D.J. said.

  Her tone was too sharp, efficiently jerking Scott out of the gauzy musings. Mawkishness was not particularly manly. And apparently, she was unmoved by lunar beauty. Made of sterner stuff than he himself.

  She turned to him. “I’ve had a long day,” she said. “Please thank Viv for a lovely dinner.” With that, the woman turned and walked away with a forcefulness that could accurately be described as stomping off, leaving Scott alone with the wheat and the moon and his own confusion.

  Ten

  176.6 Ethics of Recreation & Leisure

  Bolstered by coffee, D.J. arrived at work the next morning bleary-eyed. She had spent the night tossing and turning. She’d felt like pacing, but was afraid her downstairs landlady might hear... and might suspect.

  For the zillionth time her brain screamed, Why him? Why here?

  Like the Humphrey Bogart line from Casablanca, the unlikely coincidence was unwelcome.

  She had been so shocked by the sight of Scott, she’d hardly been able to speak.

  He was the guy. That guy. The hot guy.

  Sometimes she’d almost been able to convince herself that the incident had never happened. And in those times when the memories were too vivid to be denied, like whenever she’d see the moon on the horizon, she’d shaken off her feelings with a water-under-the-bridge analogy. In the category of youthful mistakes, hers had been short-lived, relatively harmless and with minimum consequences. She’d accepted her lessons and her regrets and moved on.

  Unfortunately, she’d unwittingly moved into her mistake’s hometown, his backyard, his childhood bedroom.

  D.J. groaned aloud as she climbed the circular stairs to her office.

  “Our librarian sounds a little grumpy this morning.” Suzy was seated on the floor, books and papers all around her.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Sorting out all my monthly reports,” she answered. “Amelia tells us all the time that bookmobiles are dinosaurs. I figure you’re going to want to look at cost/service analysis and decide for yourself. So I thought I’d have it ready before you ask.”