Two Wee Drams of Love, page 7
He kissed her cheek and winked at her, the barbarian.
Jane opened the door, a blast of frigid, chilly air smacking her in the face. The day had been autumnal. The night—as predicted—had turned wintry.
Behind her, Dunstan began that soft, semi-Gaelic swearing she’d heard from him earlier in the day.
“That’s ice coming down out there,” he said, tugging Jane back from the door. “It’s damned pouring ice, and you’re not going anywhere.”
* * *
Western Maryland enjoyed what Uncle Donald would have called Fickle Bitch weather. A November day could be seventeen degrees or seventy degrees, same with February. Whatever plans Dunstan made—to split wood over the coming weekend, for example—the weather could be relied upon to thwart them. After two weeks of Saint Martin’s summer—Indian summer, in American—winter had apparently descended.
“Sometimes it only starts out with ice then changes back to rain,” Jane said, clutching her carpetbag to her chest. “If they’ve salted the roads, it’s probably still safe to drive.”
Retreat on her part was smart, because circumstances had conspired to inflict on Dunstan an appreciation for opposing counsel that had only partly to do with her nimble legal mind.
“We’ll give it an hour, then, but let’s turn on the telly and see what the weather boys and girls have to say. If this is the first storm of the season, they’ll be all over it.”
“Should we turn on the heat first?”
“Aye, we should, but some frugal Scot hasn’t had oil delivered yet this season, and I ran my furnace nigh dry last spring.”
March, to be exact, because wood was cleaner and cheaper than oil, and Dunstan enjoyed slamming an ax down on a length of cured oak more than he enjoyed paying the oil bill. A lot more.
She set her bag down, but did not take off her coat. By the time they’d found a weather report, Dunstan was sharing a blanket with Jane on the sofa, Wallace wedged between them like a feline bundling board.
“Ice storms are so pretty,” Jane said more than an hour later, “but I hate them. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t shovel it off, you can’t do anything but wait for it to melt and hope the power stays on.”
Though for the duration of some movie Dunstan couldn’t follow about a hooker falling in love with a young, well-dressed version of Richard Gere, you could cuddle on the couch with a woman who tempted you to highly unprofessional behavior.
You could take more pain medication. You could eat a second helping of very good chili.
“I’ve only the one bed, Jane, but it has a mattress warmer. You’ll be cozy up there.”
Or you could argue with a woman half your size and twice your fight about where to sleep.
“You need a decent night’s sleep, Dunstan. I can curl up here with Wallace.”
He reasoned, he taunted, he considered getting her drunk, but in his present condition. he couldn’t carry her up the steps anyway, so he did what few Scots had ever learned to do well, he retreated.
She was gracious, agreeing to keep the heating pad with her. She pulled a pink plastic bag from her Mary Poppins satchel and disappeared into the bathroom.
Being only a fool rather than a very great fool, Dunstan used her absence to totter up the stairs, though he could feel Wallace’s smirk with each careful, uneven step.
Wallace was likely overcome by hilarity when, around one in the morning, Dunstan woke to realize the power was out. His bed was delightfully cozy, but the battery backup on his digital alarm clock was blinking madly, the mattress warmer had cut off, and the house was swaddled in a profound silence that suggested not even the fridge was running.
Jane would manage—she had Wallace, she had a wool blanket. She’d curled up in her coat, too.
By one thirty a.m., when Dunstan got up to use the facilities, those arguments weren’t keeping him warm, much less the lady he found shifting restlessly on his couch.
“Come up to bed, Jane. You’ll catch your death down here.”
“You sh-should not have come down those stairs in the dark, Dunstan Cromarty. The EMTs are likely overwhelmed with calls tonight, and I’ll be fine as long as Wallace—”
The cat hopped off the couch and strutted, tail up, for the kitchen.
“Come to bed,” Dunstan said, extending a hand down to her. “I canna sleep thinking you’re shivering away in my own house, while I’m warm and toasty between my flannel sheets.”
She pushed the blanket aside and rose, though Dunstan did not flatter himself she cared for his tender sensibilities. The lady was enamored of his Black Watch plaid flannel sheets, lest there be any mistaking the matter.
He used his cell phone as a flashlight as he herded Jane up the stairs, then switched it off, because a bad storm could kill the power for days.
Jane draped her coat over his reading chair and dove under the covers.
“Cromarty, you are an honest man. This bed is h-heaven.”
Heaven for her, hell for him. “Move over. You’re on my side.”
“Use the other side. I’m calling dibs on this one until spring thaw.”
Arguing was what lawyers did. It was also what lovers did. Dunstan climbed in on the far side, the cool bedding providing no distraction whatsoever from his bedmate.
She shivered, which made the bed tremble, and created a dilemma for Dunstan having moral, ethical, pragmatic, erotic, and even—he was an honest man—romantic implications.
Which he would consider when the electricity came back on, or while waiting tables at some dive in Edinburgh, the sure fate of those disbarred for gross misconduct.
“Come here, wee Jane. You’ll keep me awake with your shivering, and I need my beauty sleep.”
He also needed his license to practice law, though it would not keep him warm under these covers. Neither would Jane’s license perform that function for her.
“You come here,” she said. “The feeling has come back in my feet, and I’m not budging.”
He rolled to his side, tucked her against his chest, and wondered how many other former members of the bar had mentally practiced the question, May I supersize that for you?
* * *
Dunstan was warm, he smelled good, and he was warm. Any two of the three would have sufficed to send Jane’s scruples out into the icy, blustery night. She scooted around to face him, bundled into his chest, and hiked her legs over his hips. Dunstan brought his thighs up under her backside and wrapped an arm around her middle, and everywhere, he was warm.
“Try to relax,” he said. “Relax in your middle. You’ll stop shivering sooner.”
“Where’s Wallace when you need him?”
“The bedroom door’s open, and heat rises, so this is probably the least cold room in the house. He’ll be upon us soon, literally.”
A madness was upon Jane, a madness to exercise awful judgment with Dunstan Cromarty at least three times before morning. She wouldn’t jeopardize her license to practice for anything less than a hat trick.
“Dunstan?”
“Go to sleep, Jane.”
As if. “Even Wallace ignores you when you give orders like that. You’re becoming aroused.” With reassuring speed, too.
“I’m also over the age of thirty, and thus not at the mercy of my biology.” He sounded amused, while he felt…
“I wouldn’t mind being at the mercy of your biology.”
A considering sort of silence ensued, while Jane’s teeth stopped chattering and Dunstan’s embrace became less utilitarian.
“You’d mind if we crossed that line, Jane. When we’re in court, the Almquists snarling at each other, the accusations flying, the judge fed up with the lot of us, you’d mind that I knew exactly how your breasts felt in my hands. You wouldn’t want me knowing the taste of you, and you’d hate that you knew the taste of me, or the feel of me as I—go to sleep.”
Until that moment, Jane might have been content with a rousing argument, a lecture about professional integrity and circumstances conspiring, but Dunstan’s burr rumbling through the darkness, his scent, his heat, put images in her head of intimacy and pleasure.
“I’ll get out of the case,” she said, kissing his chest. Of course, she’d get out of the case—easiest thing in the world to file a motion to strike her appearance and enter somebody else’s.
Anybody else’s.
Dunstan’s hand landed in her hair, cradling her closer. “You need the money. So do I.”
“No, we don’t need it. We just want it. People get divorced every thirty seconds in this country. I haven’t wanted to be intimate with a man for—”
He kissed her cheek. “Hush, woman. Please, God, hush.”
“—years, and you’re in worse shape than I am,” Jane went on, this time kissing his throat. “You hush, and—”
His hand, big and warm, palmed her breast through her old T-shirt. “I’ll get out of the case, too, if you’ll only for the love of Almighty—”
She got her mouth on his, and while his body was warm, his mouth was hot. Blessedly, desperately hot.
Dunstan tried to draw back for about two seconds, but then Jane felt the instant when his professionalism lost the case entirely to the logic of loneliness and desire. He shifted so she was half-tucked under him, and his weight was the most delightful reassurance that Jane would stay warm through the night.
His tongue was a wonder on cross-examination, feinting, teasing, daring—
“Clothes,” Jane managed. He drew back enough that she could get out of her sweats and T-shirt without gelding him or giving him a black eye, though it was a near thing on both counts.
“Take off my kilt,” he said.
“You take it—” What the hell, of course she’d take his kilt off. She found the buckles and wrenched them loose. Then she found him.
“Careful,” he whispered, “or this exercise in confused priorities will be over before it starts.”
“Will not,” Jane said, stroking her fingers down the hard, silky length of him. But having made the decision to be intimate with Dunstan, her sense of urgency abated, leaving her curiously bereft.
How long had it been since she’d reciprocated a man’s desire for her? Since she’d felt that lovely contrast, between the soft underside of her breast and the callused tenderness of a male palm?
Was this what family law had done to her? Made her avoid the very relationships that could give life meaning?
“Where did you go, Jane?” Dunstan asked, his hand shaping breast.
“I’m here,” she said, cradling his check against her palm. “Why did we become lawyers, Dunstan?”
He should have laughed at the question, for it was no kind of pillow talk. Instead, he offered the first year law student’s answer. “To do good while doing well?”
She thought of Doreen Almquist’s perfect hair and her bewildered ex-to-be holding her as she cried in a cold, wet parking lot.
“Are we doing either?”
“On a good day, I hope. I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “I’m no damned good at math, and I like to argue. That’s why I’m a lawyer.”
“That was why you went to law school, but it’s not why you’re a good lawyer.”
From the jumbled heap of arousal, self-doubt, and career puzzlement, Jane extracted a truth:
She liked, respected, and was attracted to Dunstan Cromarty, and with good reason. He was a singularly worthy man. Giving up a case that wasn’t likely to go well was no price to pay for exploring where that attraction might lead.
Getting into bed with him was the smartest move she’d made in years.
“You don’t want to be in bed with the lawyer, good or otherwise,” Dunstan said, tracing his finger over her lips. “And neither do I, so could we please dispense with the questioning?”
She bit his finger, gently, because he’d said please. “I want this to matter, Dunstan, and I want to savor it. I want it hot and slow, and—”
“And I want you.” He eased his finger over her lips. “Now. Reach into the top drawer and find us a Frenchie.”
“I’m on the pill, and I don’t even know what a Frenchie—”
He cut off whatever closing arguments she might have appended with a slow, deep, wet kiss that made Jane’s insides sing something other than Auld Lang Syne. She kissed him back, climbed over him, and prepared to argue with him about who would be on top of whom.
The first time.
“Dunstan, are you comfortable on your back?”
“Aye, except for a wee ache in m’ goolies.”
“What are—?”
He nudged up. Those goolies.
“I ache too, and I don’t even have goolies,” she said, scraping her nails over his nipples.
“We’ll let that be our secret. For much of the male bar association would have it otherwise when they oppose you.”
He trapped her hands, and the moment became serious. The air Jane breathed was cold, probably cold enough that she could see her breath, but the entire house was in darkness. The clicky-wet sound of ice hitting the windows underscored the sense that beneath the covers, with Dunstan, was the only heat Jane would find anywhere.
“Love me,” she whispered, right against his lips.
Dunstan Cromarty went about his loving the way he prosecuted his cases—thoroughly, with attention to detail, nothing sloppy or haphazard. When Jane might have rushed through their initial coupling, he slowed her down, with naughty whispers, soft caresses, and a patient, almost stealthy joining of their bodies.
“You feel,”—Jane cast around for a word to capture the way he filled her up, inexorably, sweetly, powerfully, completely—“ sublime. If you don’t let me catch my breath, I’ll come, Dunstan.”
He didn’t let her catch her breath. Not the first time, or the second. By the third, though, Jane had found that Dunstan Cromarty had sensitive earlobes—something nobody had bothered to discover with him previously—and she could drive him to distraction with just her mouth.
“You have much to answer for,” Dunstan whispered. “Taking advantage of my delicate back, driving me ’round the bend with your naughty mouth. The time has come for you to pay, Jane DeLuca.”
He was strong, and determined, and because Jane was on top, Dunstan’s hands were free to torment her, and torment her, he did. He worked his thumb between them and applied a steady pressure to a part of Jane already gone screamingly sensitive.
And if this was Dunstan with a delicate back…
“Damn you,” Jane panted when pleasure blossomed, hot and relentlesse, once again. “You too, Dunstan.”
With her last shred of strategy, she took his earlobe between her finger and thumb and pinched hard and that, ah yes, that.
“Yes. Yes, yes, Dunstan Lachlan Cromarty—”
He covered her mouth with his, while bliss shimmered through Jane, brighter, longer, more than she could endure, and yet, endure it she did, for Dunstan endured it with her.
She would have pitched off him immediately, the better to breathe and reactivate her brain, but Dunstan’s embrace prevented it.
“Give me a minute,” he said. “Please. Tissues are on the night table.”
She would give him years, if he were inclined to take them. “Your back’s okay?”
“Bugger my back. My earlobes will glow for a week.”
He sounded pleased, and his hand drifting over Jane’s back was so tender that tears threatened. She snuggled closer. “If I had goolies, they’d glow for a month.”
He kissed her temple, and Jane remained snuggled to his chest, fighting sleep and tears both, because she did have a heart, and as delicate as extricating herself from the Almquist case would be, trying to disentangle herself from the man sharing the bed with her would be impossible.
* * *
“He won’t let me out.”
Jane sounded panicked, though her panic was controlled.
Dunstan closed the Ostergard file and switched the phone to his left ear, because the right one was still a tad sore about the earlobe.
“Whether an attorney leaves a case isn’t up to the client, Jane. You send him the explanatory letter, and you file the motion.”
“I know that,” she spat, for of course, he should not have presumed to lecture her on legal procedure. “I told him I had a potential conflict of interest I hadn’t known about when I took the case, and I’m ethically required to get out of the case.”
Not a potential conflict of interest, a real conflict. Dunstan hardly blamed her for putting it more delicately to her client. He would put it the same way to Doreen.
“And?”
“He said he’d waive the conflict. Seems accountants deal with conflict of interest occasionally too.”
“Bloody hell. I haven’t been able to reach Doreen. Let me think.”
“How’s your back?”
His back? He’d found the sure cure for his back, though the interlude with Jane played hell with his conscience.
“My back is fine, thank you. Chili for breakfast is my new favorite medicinal.”
A silence fell, awkward, wishful. They spoke at the same time.
“I’ve been meaning to make something clear—” From Jane.
“Would you ever consider—?” From Dunstan.
He did not want to endure whatever she’d been meaning to make clear, because women who wanted more from a man they’d spent the night with—the night loving him to exhaustion—didn’t sneak off in the morning, then wait three days to call the fellow.
“If you have to be specific with Calvin,” Dunstan said, “then be specific. We were both in that bed, Jane, and we’re both adults. I’ll be getting out of the case too, as soon as I can get Doreen to return my calls.”
“Divorce clients are like that,” she said. “They bombard you with calls over nothing, then go to ground when you need an urgent signature.”
She’d probably complained about that to the absent Louise, while Dunstan griped to his cat about the same thing.
“This isn’t urgent,” Dunstan said. “Nobody has filed anything.”
Back to the legalities, when he wanted to ask her if she was wearing shoes, and if so, were they the spiky kind or the little black slippers.
