Just Around the Corner

CHAPTER ONE

THE KISS WAS as powerful as he was. As dangerous.

And beckoning.

Her arms crept around his neck, her lips pressing against his as excitement uncoiled in her belly. This was insane.

And she didn’t want it to stop.

Phyllis had spent the entire day with Matt Sheffield. Seen him in action. And still knew absolutely nothing about him.

Because he wanted it that way.

Which made him even more desirable. Because she wanted it that way, too.

Dr. Phyllis Langford didn’t need a man in her life—especially this man. Didn’t need to know him, to get tangled up in the shadows she’d read in his eyes, the aloofness in his body.

What she needed was exactly what he was giving her. Lips that knew their destination, that didn’t hesitate. Hands that touched her lonely body, igniting fires banked too long.

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said, her mind still engaged enough to recognize that much.

“Mm-hmm.” The moan tingled against her lips. His tongue penetrated her mouth, and Phyllis thrilled to his aggression. He felt so damn good. And it had been such a long time…. He placed her against the theater’s sound-booth console in the performing-arts center at Montford University, where they’d spent the day working on a “Patterns of Abuse” presentation she’d be giving at a “Psychology In the University” seminar in that very theater later that month. The big window in front of them looked out over the dark and empty auditorium. The controls beneath them pushed into her back.

“Not here,” he said suddenly, pulling her up and urging her toward the couch at the opposite end of the room.

The couch she’d been eyeing off and on all day, her mind filled with lascivious thoughts.

She’d just never dreamed her inappropriate and completely far-fetched fantasies would ever achieve reality there.

Hadn’t really even decided she wanted them to.

His hands skimmed along her sides. Those same hands had been manipulating computer keys and technical equipment all afternoon. His lips left hers only long enough for breathing, and then they were consuming her again. Obliterating thought as he used his body to guide her on another erotic journey.

In spite of the sweet tension building inside her—the kind that made a woman forget she was a nice girl and allow anything as long as she found the satisfaction that was almost within reach—she might still have been able to stop him if he hadn’t seemed as completely absorbed as she.

His hands weren’t quite steady as they slid beneath her red chenille sweater. His breathing ragged, he kissed her chin, her neck and then was at her lips again.

Phyllis accommodated him. Lifting her mouth to his, she raised her body off the couch to let him slide her sweater up, exposing her belly. Her breasts ached for his touch, ached to be covered by those big capable hands. She arched against him.

God, she needed this. To feel desirable. To know she could drive a man to distraction. Maybe because losing the weight hadn’t been enough to give her back the confidence she’d lost. Maybe because all her friends had this. Every single one of them was in love….

For a brief moment, as she lay there with her newly flat belly exposed, Phyllis panicked. Why had she thought of love now? She wasn’t going to get involved again. Not like that. Not when hurt was inevitable.

And then she remembered. She wasn’t in danger. Matt Sheffield wasn’t the type to allow involvement.

Everyone in Shelter Valley respected his “hands off” signals. She’d only lived in the town a little more than a year—nothing like the four years he’d been the Fine Arts Technical Coordinator at Montford—yet she was much more a part of this community than he was. Other than the classes he taught, the events he oversaw, he kept to himself. He seemed to welcome neither personal conversation nor invitations. It didn’t take a psychologist to figure out that the man was off-limits.

His lips burned her neck and then her belly, as his hands finally slid up over her breasts, cupping them, squeezing gently, the sensation excruciating in its intensity.

“Please,” Phyllis was begging before she could stop herself.

“Please what?” he rasped.

“Please make love to me.”

“I intend to, pretty woman.” He took a condom out of his wallet before reaching for the button at the waistband of his jeans. “Believe me, I intend to.”

He’d called her pretty.

They were the last coherent words Phyllis processed for a long time.

The next ones, uttered by her after silent, awkward moments of pulling on clothes that had been hastily discarded, were, “Well, goodbye.”

“We used a condom.” Phyllis looked across at her friend one Monday in the middle of October, her disbelief—and confusion—apparent.

Cassie Tate Montford, happily wearing maternity slacks and a blousy top as she entered her sixth month of pregnancy, looked as if she didn’t know whether to smile or cry.

Phyllis didn’t blame Cassie for her indecision. The two women had several things in common: their interest in pet therapy, their commitment to Shelter Valley…and their red hair. Now, apparently, they shared something else, as well.

Something Phyllis hadn’t planned on at all.

“You’re sure?” Cassie asked.

“I’m sure,” Phyllis said, nodding her head, feeling more like a lost little girl than the Yale graduate she was.

They were in the sitting room at Montford Mansion, sharing cups of homemade hot chocolate, courtesy of Cassie’s mother-in-law, Carol Montford. This was a rare moment of privacy for both of them. Mariah, Cassie and Sam’s adopted daughter, was still at school. And Sam was at work, refurbishing homes, providing better-than-new living conditions for people who occupied the inadequate housing outside Shelter Valley. These places, built in the late 1890s, had fallen into disrepair as subsidized government housing, and Sam was renovating them at a reasonable cost to their current owners.

“So you’re pregnant…. This might not be badnews, you know,” Cassie said slowly, the tremulous smile seeming to win the battle of expressions on her beautiful face. “Babies are such blessings in so many ways. Raising a child is one of the greatest accomplishments possible. And you’ll never be alone….”

Phyllis shook her head. “I’m not alone,” she said, surprised by the sudden ache she felt at Cassie’s pronouncement. “I have plenty of people to love. Plenty of people who love me.”

Cassie was one of them.

“Of course you do,” her friend said, her brow creased in a frown. “But no one who shares the ups and downs of daily life with you.”

Phyllis couldn’t argue with her there. She’d had that once, though. And in her case, being alone was the better option.

“I’m guessing you haven’t told Matt.”

Phyllis shook her head, her short, flyaway red curls the only vibrant thing about her.

“How do you think he’s going to take the news?”

“Not well,” Phyllis said, shrugging.

“Something, somewhere sucked all the love out of that man,” Cassie said, her sweet brown eyes concerned. “He’s been in town four years and has never—not once—accepted an invitation to anything. Not only does he always reject our hospitality, even at Christmas, but he’s never attended any community function when he’s not working. He was probably the only person in town who didn’t attend the Fourth of July celebration last summer.”

“I know,” Phyllis said, wishing the chocolate that was warming her thick ceramic cup could warm her, too. “He’s so…detached, and that’s what made him so safe to begin with. I wanted sex, not involvement.”

Cassie seemed to have more to say, but she sat there staring at Phyllis, instead. Phyllis could only wonder what her friend was thinking. And decided maybe she didn’t want to know.