Rubbing her face against his hand, Sue watched him. And then turned to kiss his palm.
“Come over tonight?” she asked. “Later?”
After the kids were in bed. She wasn’t giving him any head start with the niece he’d yet to hold.
And he couldn’t be angry with her for standing by her principles.
He couldn’t stay away, either.
DRESSED IN NOTHING MORE than thin cotton pants and a red T-shirt, Sue was ready for seduction. She’d invited Rick over and it certainly wasn’t for dinner. She’d invited intimacy. She’d been making love to him on the phone night after night.
She was hungry for him.
And scared to death, too.
Standing in her living room, watching for him through a crack in the curtains, she thought about calling and canceling. She had the best excuses in the world stashed in her spare bedroom.
Babies.
They could always be counted on to need something.
They’d been rescuing her from intimacy for years.
But tonight, though she held her cell in her hand, she wasn’t dialing. There was something about Rick Kraynick. She didn’t get it.
She didn’t do intimacy.
What quiet time she had left after babies and bookwork was spent alone. Always had been. Yet she’d invited him over.
Again.
She answered the door when he knocked. Looked him straight in the eye. Smiled.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to be here.” His voice was low. Husky. He smiled back.
Before he could lean in for another one of those devastating kisses, Sue led him into the living room. A place he’d been before. She watched him sit in the same spot on the couch he’d sat the night they kissed. She wanted him there.
Badly.
He was in jeans again. And a button-down blue plaid shirt. He didn’t kick off his loafers. Loosen his shirt. Or reach for her. He just put an arm along the back of the couch, watched her stand with a hand on one of the bassinets lined neatly along the wall, and said, “Okay, out with it.”
“You make me crazy with feelings and I need…this…but I’m scared.” They were way past game playing.
“This? As in us? Being friends?”
“Having sex.”
He frowned, but looked more baffled than displeased. “You mean tonight? Because, while I always hope, I certainly don’t come over here counting on getting you into bed. Or thinking tonight will be the night.”
God, he was so sweet. Why in the hell couldn’t she have met the man before she became the person she was? Before she’d gone to college and changed herself forever?
“Not just tonight. I…the intensity between us…it’s hard to take.” She was tired, that was all. She’d missed William at bath time tonight. And dinner. But that would pass. It always did.
“Hard to take?” Rick sat forward, on the edge of the couch, his arms on his knees. “How? I’m nothing to be afraid of, Sue. What have I done?”
“Invaded my thoughts.” Her honesty was going to get her in trouble. She just knew it. But silence, allowing whatever had been building between them to continue growing, would be worse. “I think about you,” she continued, all the confusion she felt inside spilling out. “I watch for your car, happy you might appear unexpectedly. I can be in a rotten mood, and you call and suddenly the world is fine.”
“I’m going through all the same stuff.”