Underneath It All, page 14
“A picture?”
He shook his head, grinning, and pushed the box toward her.
She pulled off the bow and tore at the wrapping. She’d always loved surprises, and the familiar fluttery feeling inside her stomach told her she wasn’t too old to get excited about presents. She expected something intimate and sexy, and felt a warm glow deep inside as she tried to imagine what she’d find under the wrapping. Something black and lacy? Would it be transparent?
She pulled open the lid and the warm glow died. Confusion took its place. Inside the box was a flat sheaf of papers. She picked up the first one and read it over quickly.
Her heart bounded against her ribs as panic set in. “I can’t believe you did this,” she cried. She flicked rapidly through the rest of the papers. When she could finally speak, her voice was a husky whisper. “You registered me for school?”
“It’s a special class for adults to finish high school. You start next Thursday night, but you can change it. It’s up to you.”
She licked dry lips, still flipping through the pages. “I was going to do it, you know. I was just kind of thinking nothing would start until the fall.”
“I know.” His voice was soft, full of understanding.
“Next Thursday, huh?”
“Yep. There’s a summer session. If you work hard enough, you could finish high school in time to go to college next year.”
“If Brian stops paying me back, I won’t be able to afford it.”
“You wouldn’t accept my help before and I understood. But we’re lovers now, Kate. Lovers help each other out. I’d lend you the money if you needed it.”
She felt she could hardly breathe. Already she was nervous. One thing at a time, she told herself. First high school. Then she’d think about college. “You’ll help me with my homework?”
Her dream. Maybe it didn’t have to be a dream anymore. Maybe it could be reality. Maybe she’d end up continuing as a beauty consultant because she enjoyed her work and was good at it. The important thing was she’d have more options if she finished school.
“Yep.”
She smiled broadly, suddenly excited. She threw her arms around Dean and kissed him. Then a sudden qualm hit her.
“What do adults wear to high school?”
KATE WAS SO NERVOUS she thought she was going to lose her supper. She crept into the classroom, hoping no one would notice her, and headed immediately for the back of the room. She sat down, her stack of new books on her lap, and glanced around. The classroom contained what looked like ordinary plastic stacking chairs, but some of the dozen or so students already there had a sort of tray thing in front of them.
Kate peered down beside her chair, and sure enough, there was her hinged desktop, hanging down the side. She reached down and tried to pull the thing up. A terrible screeching sound of metal resisting metal tore through the air. Every eye turned her way as she struggled and yanked at the tray. She got the stupid thing halfway up when it stuck, jerking Kate—and all her new books—out of the seat. The books tumbled to the floor in a series of thumps and crashes, and she followed, landing on her butt with her skirt flipped over her hips and her legs thrust in the air like a demented synchronized swimmer.
She heard a snicker from somewhere in front and felt herself grow crimson with humiliation as she scrambled to her feet. What was she doing here anyway at high school for dummies? If she couldn’t figure out how to put her desk together, what hope did she have to graduate? She scrambled to her feet and was just about ready to storm out of the class forever when a quiet older man’s voice at her elbow said, “They stick sometimes. Here, let me help.”
Her savior was a balding man she guessed to be in his fifties. He wore blue slacks and a matching shirt with his name, Eddie, embroidered on the pocket. With two sharp tugs he had the tabletop in place and Kate sat back down with her hastily collected books.
“Thanks,” she whispered to the man, who took the seat beside her.
“You’re welcome,” he whispered back. “My name’s Eddie.”
“I know,” Kate smiled, pointing to his shirt pocket.
Eddie grimaced. “I got no time to change after work.”
“Me, neither,” she whispered back. If she’d had time to change, she would have worn jeans and borrowed an old Harvard sweatshirt she’d seen in Dean’s closet, just for good luck. “I’m Kate…and I’m scared.”
The older man smiled his understanding. “So was I, my first day, but it’s no sweat. Just do your homework and you’ll be fine.”
There was a blackboard at the front of the room, and the smell of chalk dust took her back to childhood.
Then the teacher entered the room and she forgot to be scared anymore. What she felt was a stab of pure envy. The woman was probably Kate’s own age, a petite blonde with a surprisingly large voice. And she was a teacher.
Kate’s determination to succeed solidified as she scribbled frantically while the night school teacher outlined the curriculum and what would be expected of each student.
By the end of the two-hour class, she understood what Eddie had meant. Her progress would be entirely up to her. If she wanted to finish the year of high school she lacked in six months, she’d be doing a lot of homework. All she had to do was challenge herself a little bit and work hard.
Well, she was used to working hard, wasn’t she? And this was the first step to a better education.
A bubble of excitement tickled its way through her body. She’d be grappling with subjects she hadn’t thought about in years. Algebra, English composition, biology and Spanish. She could hardly wait to get started.
13
“WHAT’S ANOTHER word for ameliorate?” Kate asked, turning her head so her hair swung dizzily behind her. She was seated at Darren’s computer, working on an essay while he prepared dinner.
Darren loved to watch her work. He loved to see her getting such a charge out of writing essays and working out algebra equations.
He stepped behind her and fed her a marinated olive, one of the spicy ones he kept in stock especially because she loved them. “Improve?”
She nodded, the crease of concentration disappearing from between her brows. “Thanks,” she said, chewing.
Her eyes were glossy and full of fun and the joy of life rarely seen in anyone over the age of ten. And yet, she wasn’t childlike in any way. It was more a sense that her life was an adventure.
“What?” she asked as he continued to stare at her. “Do you need the computer?”
He shook his head. He’d risen early this morning so he could get some extra hours in and worked the whole time she was at the salon. “I just like looking at you. I love this whole schoolgirl thing you’ve got going on. It turns me on.”
She smiled and turned her head back to the screen.
“Kate?”
“Mmm?” she answered absently.
“What’s another word for turgid?”
For answer, her right hand left the keyboard and reached behind her, where she patted the bulge in his pants as though he were an eager puppy. “Hard. And forget it. You’ll have to wait until I finish my homework.”
He loved her seriousness and her playfulness. He loved that she never complained about the fact that she was working at her regular job and then putting in hours and hours to fast-track herself to her high school diploma.
He loved her hair and her wild fashion sense, her body and the sleepy way she always licked her lips when she woke, as though she were already savoring the day.
He loved her.
With a sound halfway between a moan and a quiet sigh of acceptance, he knew that the truth had hit him and hit him hard.
He loved Kate.
He, Darren Edgar Kaiser Jr., the man who’d bolted to the other side of the country rather than face anything more serious than casual dating, had fallen in love.
With a woman who didn’t know his damned name.
Love. Phew. He opened a bottle of dry white wine and poured two glasses. He set one by the side of those industriously tapping fingers, the nails flying around the keyboard like ten speeding red Corvettes as she wrote her essay.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, her fingers never slowing.
He sipped his wine. Sipped again and went back to preparing pasta and fresh seafood. All right. He was in love with the woman. It wasn’t a huge surprise, it had been coming on for a while. Love. Wow.
He’d flirted with the idea of being in love once or twice before, but the feelings had passed and he remembered both those women with fondness, but no regrets. What he felt for Kate was as different as, well, as the man he was now was different from Darren Kaiser Jr.
He chopped fresh ginger and glanced at the woman who’d slipped into his heart so effortlessly.
Somehow, the give-and-take worked out. He should have totally freaked about practically living with this woman, but in fact the domestic aspect suited him perfectly. They were great together. He and Kate were a team.
Breath seemed to hesitate before entering his lungs as he faced the obvious. He couldn’t love this woman and not be completely open and honest. He had to tell her the truth.
Tonight. He’d tell her tonight.
As they often did, they carried their food down to her outside patio. The sun had disappeared behind a cloud, but it was still warm enough to sit outside.
“You are such a great cook,” she gushed as she bit into the halibut.
“I love cooking for you.” Okay. He thought. That was a great start. He’d managed to get I, love, and you all into the same sentence. Now he simply had to get the extra words out of the way and say it again.
She blushed in that totally adorable redheaded fashion and shifted, crossing her legs. The movement had his mouth going dry. Her legs were amazing, curvy but long, and all he could think about was how they felt wrapped tight around him.
“Well, you can cook for me anytime. Tomorrow, for instance.” She glanced up at him a gleam of mischief deep in her eyes.
“I would, except that tomorrow is your day off, and I have to go to SYX. Therefore, you should cook.”
“Well, it won’t be fancy,” she said. “I need to do some studying tomorrow.”
“We could go out for dinner and both have a break,” he said, feeling foolishly reckless because he was in love and wanted to show off this woman to the world.
Of course, one of the best things about their current relationship was they had lots of reasons not to go out. Since there’d been no sightings of him recently, the media had cooled off a lot, so he felt he could go out with the woman he loved and not be spotted.
By then, she’d know the truth, anyway, if he told her tonight. He shifted on the hard plastic deck chair. He was going to tell her tonight.
“How about a walk after dinner?” he suggested, thinking it might be easier to talk to her if they were doing something companionable like strolling along on a summer evening. Where even if she was shocked and initially irate, he’d have time to explain.
“All right. I need to throw on a load of laundry first,” she said. “Do you have anything?”
They’d taken to combining stuff to make up a load. It was a new experience to Darren to think about things like washer-load efficiency, but Kate was big on conserving water, conserving energy, conserving money. He respected her enough to cooperate. Besides, there was something downright erotic about thinking of their intimate garments twisting and spinning together. “Sure,” he said. “I’ve got some things.”
After they’d done the dinner dishes, he ran upstairs and grabbed his laundry, thinking he’d started falling in love with her over laundry.
When he got downstairs, she was already in the laundry room, bending down and stuffing things in the washer. Lust spiked through him as the shorts hiked up showing a lot of slim, lightly tanned thigh, and her nicely-rounded ass.
“Do you have anything?” she asked, her voice echoing oddly around the steel drum in the front-loading washer.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve got something.”
“I’m doing lights,” she informed him as he advanced on her from behind.
“There’s a smudge on your white shorts,” he lied. “You should throw them in while you’re washing lights.”
“There is?” she tilted her head around to look up at him, and he said, “It’s right here,” gently squeezing the middle of a firm cheek. “Best put it in the wash now,” he continued, and while her eyes twinkled with devilry, he slipped the shorts down her hips.
“While we’re at it…” he said, then took the white panties down as well. She gasped and a tremor ran over her body as she stepped out of the garments and rose.
He’d give Kate credit. She wasn’t slow about catching up in the lust department. Her arms went around his neck and she kissed him as though they’d been denied each other for months instead of hours.
“Your boarders are smudged, also,” she said, looking into his eyes and nowhere near his fictitiously dirty shorts.
“They’re kind of a gray color. Can they go in with the lights?” He was teasing, but sort of not. He never could figure out where the defining line was between darks and lights. Luckily for him, Kate never had any laundry angst. Especially not now.
She didn’t even answer, merely reached for the fly and unbuttoned him. Off came his shorts and white briefs.
“T-shirt,” she demanded, and he stripped it off and handed it to her rather than stuffing it in the washer himself. He wanted to watch her turn and bend over once more.
When she’d added his shirt, she said, “Anything else?”
“Your own shirt is very grubby.”
With a grin she stripped it off, and didn’t even wait for him to critique her snowy-white bra, merely removed it with gratifying haste and shoved it into the washer.
While his brain was too lust-soaked to function, she managed to figure out soap and turn the thing on so it chugged and vibrated quietly against the cement floor.
He kissed her, ran his hands down her back and over her hips, then hoisted her so she was sitting on the rocking washer.
“Aah,” she gasped. “It’s cold.”
“I’ll warm you,” he promised, and parted her thighs.
The gentle vibration went all through her, he noted. Her hair trembled, catching light and glowing red and chestnut and amber. Her breasts didn’t bounce so much as shudder, intriguing him until he reached forward and tasted the coral tips.
His hand slipped lower, to where she was wet and open, and already quivering in time with the washer. He helped her along with his fingers until she was doing a lot more shaking than the machine, and certainly being a lot louder about it.
With his lips still glued to a breast, he thrust two fingers inside her and that was enough to send her over the edge.
She slid bonelessly down into his arms. He caught her hips and her legs went around him to clasp tight around his waist as he eased her open body right onto his straining erection.
“Mmm,” she said as he entered all that hot sweetness, which clasped him tightly.
His reply was even less coherent.
Her eyes were dazed with passion, little tremors still chasing up and down her flesh. She kissed him deep and hard, her arms wrapped around his neck, her hair floating around them both.
His climax had him staggering, holding tight to his precious burden so they didn’t both fall to the ground.
Once they had their breath back, she laughed softly.
“What’s so funny?”
“Unless you want to shock the neighbors, we’re trapped in here until the dryer cycle’s done.”
“Can’t have that,” he said, kissing her again. “I wonder what we can find to do?”
She returned the kiss. He got the feeling they had the same idea.
Of course, by the time the washing was dry, it was too late to go for a walk.
Tomorrow, he decided, would be better, anyway.
KATE KNELT IN THE FRESHLY dug flower beds, admiring her work as she put chrysanthemums and dahlias in the small front garden so they’d have lots of color through fall. A disturbed worm twisted over on itself and began to burrow slowly back into the sun-warmed earth.
Summer was aging, she realized as she put in the flowers that would liven up her garden right through November if the weather stayed mild. What was with her and this domestic streak suddenly? She’d heard of pregnant women getting the nesting instinct—with her, falling in love seemed to bring out a domestic mania. Okay, so she wanted a permanent home with a permanent garden and a permanent man. A place where the flowers would bloom from year to year, the plants growing mature along with her love.
She and Dean hadn’t declared their love for each other aloud, but it was there every time they touched, when she’d catch his gaze on her, when they fought over which DVD to rent or who was cooking dinner.
She pushed a warm curl back up off her forehead with her gloved wrist, stretching out her back at the same time in the late afternoon sunshine.
Pulling back the cuff of one red gardening glove, she glanced at her watch. If she hurried, Kate just had time to get the rest of the plants in, shower and change to get to school on time.
She smiled to herself, picturing her essay, neatly typed on Darren’s computer, all ready to hand in: Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn: A Stylistic Comparison. She was proud of her essay, proud of her work at school and the budding certainty that she could make it into college. By then she’d have her high school diploma and enough money from what she could save and the regular payments from Brian. His second check had been for two thousand. He’d included a note telling her he was working on his problems, so that was good.
She picked up a small plastic pot and dug out a purple mum, placing it carefully into the prepared hole. The soft breeze carried the scent of the roses that had rewarded her new trellis by blooming all over the place. A low, contented buzzing told her a fat bumblebee was already checking out the mums. A feeling of pure bliss stole over her as she pressed the plant into the crumbly black earth. Everything in Kate’s life seemed to be blooming.
She was in love with a man who seemed to be flowering beneath her eyes. She no longer thought of him as a computer geek. He still wore a lot of questionable clothes and insisted on keeping his terrible glasses for work, but now he was the man she loved. And whatever he looked like to the outside world, he looked wonderful to his lover.
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