I Waxed My Legs for This? (10 page)

It was eight that evening before she finally went back to her loft.

Her answering machine was flashing when she came in. More out of habit than an interest to know who had called, Carrie poked the message button on her answering machine.

“Message one of sixteen,” the disembodied voice said.

“Carrie. Where are you? And what the hell kind of emergency does a dress shop have?” Jack’s voice asked.

“Message two of sixteen.”

“Carrie. There’s some front moving in and no planes are leaving until it passes. I’ll be in the first available seat. Call me here. You must have the number.”

“Message three of sixteen.”

“Carrie. What happened? Call me.”

She shut the machine off. She didn’t need to hear anymore.

She’d left a note. Of course it was brief, but he had a note and he had Sandy. What more did he want from her?

The phone rang three times and the machine picked it up.

“Carrie. I know you’re there. Pick up the phone. Is this about us? Did I rush you? Scare you off? It scared me, too. You’ve been my friend for as long as I can remember. If you want to slow things down, I’ll try. I’m sorry. I—”

Sorry? He was sorry? Carrie couldn’t stand listening to any more. Jack was going to play the wounded party?

He had Sandy back. Why keep up the charade?

She picked up the phone. “Jack. It’s me. I’m here. I just got in from the shop.”

“And the emergency?”

“Eloise made me a partner. Isn’t that wonderful?” She tried to infuse her voice with a happiness that she didn’t quite feel.

“It couldn’t have waited until the end of our vacation?” he asked.

“Eloise knew the whole thing was a setup to get you out of town. She’s found a fantastic site in Pittsburgh, but she had to move fast. So I’m back, holding down the fort here. When she’s done there will be all kinds of paperwork to do. You deal with contracts, so you know how it is when people are setting up a partnership.”

“I’m glad for you,” he said. “But that doesn’t explain why you just left and didn’t tell me.”

“I couldn’t find you,” she lied. She didn’t want him to feel sorry for her if she admitted she’d seen him and Sandy. She certainly didn’t admit she’d snuck out a side door in order to avoid the two of them in the lobby. “And I had to hurry to catch my flight. I left you that note.”

“What about us, Carrie?” he asked.

“Us? Why, we’re friends, Jack. Nothing could change that.”

Even as she said the words, she realized it was a lie. Their friendship had changed and she wasn’t sure if they’d ever get past those two glorious days they’d spent together.

“Friends? That’s all?”

“I know things will be odd, after we...well, you know.”

“After we made love?” There was frustration in his voice.

“Had sex,” she corrected. “It was the atmosphere. I’m sure it was just a fluke. We’ll just forget it. Put it behind us and get back to reality. The reality of the situation is we’re friends. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“That’s it? Whatever else we’d started to discover was just a fluke? You can discount it that easily?”

“Jack, you know that we’re not meant for each other. You’ve...” she started to say,
you’ve got Sandy
, but he hadn’t mentioned his ex’s return. Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe he was just putting up a front to help Carrie save some self-respect. He’d tell her about Sandy later.

Well, Carrie wasn’t going to ruin his illusion. “You’ve got someone out there who can be what you need. It’s not me. I mean, can you see me fitting in with your lawyer friends?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, I’ve got to run. There’s so much to do here. Call me when you get home and we’ll get together
as friends
.” She put a heavy emphasis on the
as-friends
part.

“You’re sure that’s the way you want it?” he asked.

“It’s the way it has to be. Goodbye, Jack.”

On Monday, Carrie mechanically began to review Encore’s books from last week, getting herself up to speed.

Her books.

Her store.

The thought should thrill her, but it didn’t.

Nothing did.

Everything seemed grey and flat.

She forced herself to focus on the numbers. It was easier to concentrate on work than to worry about Jack.

The phone rang. She tried to infuse some enthusiasm in her voice as she answered it. “This is Encore, where yesterday’s clothes are rediscovered for today’s woman. Carrington Delany speaking. How can I help you?”

“Carrie, you didn’t answer the phone at home all weekend,” Jack stated emphatically.

Carrie decided another reason why a woman shouldn’t fall for a friend—they knew too much. “I’ve been busy.”

“Busy?” he asked, his tone sharp. 

“I needed to get back to work. Things are going to be crazy here until we settle into the new routine,” she finished lamely.

“Yeah, all those emergencies at the dress shop.”

She wasn’t going to fight with him. She avoided him after his return for just that reason. “What can I do for you, Jack? Shouldn’t you be out defending the American way of life or something?”

“I’m at work,” he said.

Carrie tapped her pen against the ledger. “Well, you should be thinking about your next case, not your friends.”

“Well, I wanted to see if you wanted dinner tonight,” he said.

“I’m sorry, Jack, I can’t. I’m...uh, busy.” She needed some time apart from him, time to let their relationship get back to normal.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“What?” she repeated.

“Yes, what?” Jack said again.

“I...uh, well...”

“It’s an easy question, Carrie. What are you doing tonight that you can’t go out to eat with me? Are you waxing your legs again?”

She snorted and felt a reluctant smile erupting. “I’ll never be that desperate. There’s not much I’d ever go that route for again.”

He laughed. “Okay, is it a date? Are you seeing someone else?”

Carrie only wished she were.

For years she’d wanted Jack, but she’d ignored what she felt and dated other men. Now, after having experienced what truly being with Jack could be, she wasn’t sure she’d ever want another man again. “No date. Just work.”

“I wanted to ask you at dinner, but since you’re busy I’ll ask you now. I have a favor and I’m hoping you’ll help me out.”

“What favor?”

“I need a date for Simpson’s retirement party—”

“And you want me to suggest someone?”

What about Sandy? She wanted to ask him how their time together on the island had been and what their future plans were, but she didn’t. She’d just act as if she didn’t know they were back together. Jack would tell her when he was ready.

Knowing Jack, he might even feel a little guilty, but there was no reason for that. They hadn’t made any promises.

When Sandy flew, Carrie had played fill-in date numerous times. He’d simply taken at her word and was falling back into their old routine.

“I want you to come with me,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Ah, come on, Carrie. You’ve gone to office stuff with me in the past when Sandy was out of town.”

She didn’t want to cut Jack out of her life entirely, she just needed distance. But it didn’t look like she was going to get it. He was right. Things were going back to normal.

“Fine,” she agreed.

“Great. Tomorrow at seven.”

“Fine.”

“Oh, and wear that dress. You know, the one you wore to the club after I waxed your legs,” he said.

“I thought you didn’t like that one.”

“No. The problem was I liked it way too much.”

Carrie shook her head. “Then I probably shouldn’t wear it.”

A sharp pain shot through her hand and Carrie realized she had the phone in a death-grip. She forced herself to relax.

“Well, I thought, since we’ve decided we’re just friends again, you might want some introductions around the office. That dress certainly shows your...assets to their best advantage.”

As Jack spoke to Carrie on the phone, he was torn between wanting to kiss her senseless and the urge to throttle her for what she was putting him through. He had no plans of introducing her to anyone at the party, at least not any single, available men. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. Something had spooked her and it was up to him to fix it.

She sputtered. “You’re going to show me off to your friends and parade me around like some offering?”

Jack grinned at the annoyance in her voice. She might be running, but she wasn’t going to run fast enough to escape him. “Sure. I mean, I’m sure we can find you someone better than Fred.”

“Ted.”

“Whatever.”

“Fine,” she said testily.

“Fine,” he repeated.

Jack tried to resist grinning as he hung up the phone on Carrie, who was obviously furious.

She wasn’t going to know what hit her.

Over the years he’d allowed himself to be manipulated time and time again by his friend. It wasn’t until recently that he began to wonder why it was she always got her way. The answer was so painfully simple now that Jack smiled just thinking about it.

He loved her.

Carrie always won because he couldn’t bear disappointing the woman he loved. That’s why a lawyer, who didn’t take anything from anyone when standing in front of a judge, could be pushed and pulled by one sassy dressmaker.

Well, love had toppled mightier men than Jack Templeton.

But for the sake of that love, Jack was about to use all his lawyerly wiles to rescue the damsel one last time—he was going to rescue her from herself.

For years Carrie had let Jack play her white knight, but who was going to save the damsel in distress when it was the knight who was distressing her?

“Come on, Carrie,” Jack called again as Carrie walked into the room where the party was in full swing.

“I feel like I’m popping out,” she complained, wishing she’d worn any other dress in her closet.

“You’re not popping out.” Jack gave her dress a little hike in an upward direction for good measure in a very all-business manner.

She slapped his hand. She was certainly capable of hiking her own breasts back into the dress if necessary. Being near him was doing things to her system—dangerous things.

Things like making her imagine what he’d do if she stripped off his suit and had her way with him right in the middle of her living room.

Friends, she reminded herself.

They were back to being friends.

Remembering they were just friends was going to be one of the hardest things she’d ever done.

“How long do we have to stay at this?” she asked.

The sooner it was over, the better.

“Your enthusiasm is flattering. What’s wrong, Carrie? You’ve never minded being at things like this with me in the past,” Jack inquired.

She’d never been in his bed before.

The memory of that night kept cropping up at the oddest times.

Apparently Jack was able to put it behind him, but Carrie wasn’t having such an easy time. Picturing him naked was only part of the problem. It was the little things. Like when he’d showed up at her door to pick her up, she’d had an overwhelming urge to straighten his tie.

She didn’t. It was an intimate thing to do. It was the kind of thing a significant other did, not a best friend.

Oh, she might have done it before that darned trip, but now she couldn’t. She didn’t want Jack to read anything into it, because there couldn’t be anything between them. They were friends. Only friends.

She’d been chanting the phrase since he’d picked her up—it was rapidly becoming her mantra, but it wasn’t working very well.

Only friends
, she tried again.

Nope, it wasn’t working at all. A friend would never look at another friend and imagine removing his clothes and kissing her way down his body. No, a friend would never do that.

A woman in love might though.

Only friends, only friends, only friends
, she kept chanting, while she studiously kept her eyes off the man she’d like to strip naked.

“Stan,” Jack called, waving his hand at an older gentleman. “You remember Carrie, don’t you? Carrie, Stan Simpson, the guest of honor.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “What big plans do you have?”

“Oh, the wife and I are thinking about taking a romantic little second honeymoon, then I’m going to settle into some serious golf and teach an occasional class at the college.”

“If you’re thinking about sneaking off somewhere with Wilma, think about Amore Island,” Jack said.

Thinking of the island brought images of Jack flashing through her mind and Carrie kept chanting her mantra, hoping to override them.

Only friends.

“Amore Island?” Stan asked.

“It’s off the coast of the Carolinas. Carrie and I just got back last week from a vacation there. Couples only and romantic. Stan, if the island does for you and Wilma what it did for Carrie and me...well, hang onto your socks.”

Carrie glared at Jack.

He wasn’t making this easy, not easy at all.

Only friends
—and friends don’t want to make love to friends.

And they certainly didn’t want to rip their clothing off and go wild with them.

Only friends.

Stan laughed. “I always thought the two of you belonged together. That nonsense about being friends.” He laughed. “Never believed in it. Anyone who knows the two of you or has even just seen you together, has known for a long time that you belong together.”

“We’re not together,” Carrie protested.

What was Jack thinking?

Why didn’t he tell her he was back together with Sandy?

He was deliberately giving him the impression they were a couple.

They weren’t a couple.

A couple of fools, maybe.

They were friends—
only friends
.

“No, we’re not a couple. We’re just friends, right, Care?” Jack winked, a blatant kind of wink that said he didn’t believe his last statement any more than Stan should.

“Oh, I know all about
those
kinds of friends. It just so happens Wilma and I have always had that kind of relationship,” Stan said.

Both men laughed and Carrie said, “If you both will excuse me a moment?”

She slithered out from under Jack’s arm and desperately looked for somewhere to escape to.

Men. They were such fickle creatures. Jack made love to her, then he took up with his old girlfriend—and where the heck was Sandy?—and now he was acting as if they were a couple.

Well, they most certainly weren’t a couple. He had Sandy.

At the rate things were going, they weren’t even going to be friends by tomorrow.

Without really picking it as her destination, Carrie ended up in front of the bar.

“Wine,” Carrie said to the bartender.

“White, or red?” he asked.

She thought about it a moment. “Forget the wine. Give me a Scotch.”

She’d always wanted to try it and tonight sounded like a great time to give it a shot, literally.

She took the glass and tilted, allowing the liquid to flow down her throat. Maybe she should have sipped it, but she wasn’t in a sipping mood.

She wasn’t in a choking mood, either, but it didn’t look like her throat or the Scotch cared because she promptly and inelegantly began to cough uncontrollably.

“Ma’am?” asked the bartender.

“I’m fine,” she gasped. “Just fine. Give me another.”

The stuff was vile.

It burned going all the way down, but with any luck it would calm her nerves.

The bartender filled her glass again.

She started to pick it up, only to realize someone else had grabbed it.

“I don’t think so,” Jack said and emptied the glass himself.

He slammed the glass on the bar and smiled. The darn man didn’t even have the decency to choke a little.

He had always been a show-off.

“That was mine,” Carrie protested.

Jack shook his head. “I’ve had experience with you drunk before, I don’t relish reliving it, especially not here with all my co-workers.”

“The coworkers who you are deliberately misleading,” Carrie pointed out.

“How am I misleading them?” he asked, the picture of innocence.

“Just friends...
wink, wink
. Sound familiar.”

“I had something in my eye?” he asked.

She balled her fist and thrust it toward his big, fat head, but stopped short, her fist hanging menacingly between them. “You’re going to have something in your eye—something that looks suspiciously like my fist—if you don’t give that sort of stuff a rest.”

“Carrie.” He laughed, obviously not intimidated in the least by her air-hanging fist.

She was on a roll and wasn’t going to stop for him. “Listen, I’m sorry I said I’d come with you tonight. I’m sorry I let our relationship go somewhere it definitely shouldn’t have gone. I’m sorry—”

He interrupted. “I’m not sorry for any of it.”

“You said you were,” she reminded him.

When he’d said that on the answering machine Carrie had wanted to die.

Now she just wanted to kill him. He was such a…a man.

“Not for what we did, but for scaring you,” he explained.

“Scaring me?” she asked. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“That’s what I used to think, before this. You ran away, you must have been scared to do that.”

“Jack, what do you want from me?” Carrie felt as if every time she got her feet firmly planted, Jack ripped the rug out from under her.

“I want you to be honest with yourself and with me,” he said quietly.

“When have I lied?” she asked in frustration.

He was the liar. He still hadn’t said a word about Sandy being at the hotel.

Out of the comer of her eye she could see the bartender whispering to the people at the other end of the bar, nodding in their direction.

“You lied when you said you’d give us a chance. I want that chance. I’ve earned a chance.”

“Jack, you’re old enough to realize that most people don’t get everything they want.” She was an expert at that. Years of experience had taught her well.

Jack leaned close, his breath caressing her neck. “Ah, but sometimes people get lucky and get everything they want.”

“Well, if you want my friendship, it’s here,” she said stubbornly.

“Lucky for you, your friendship is something I never want to be without.” Jack ran his fingers against her spine and watched with delight as she shivered.

She might be trying—for whatever illogical reason—to convince herself that friendship was all they had going for them, but Jack knew better.

Soon he planned to make sure Carrie knew it as well.

“So you’ll stop this winking nonsense and just enjoy the evening with me?” she asked.

“I very much plan to enjoy the evening with you, if you’ll let me,” he said.

“Fine. There are the Cowells. Let’s go say hi.”

Jack watched Carrie breathe her sigh of relief and he let her have it. He was a patient man, a lawyer who was used to winning.

And Carrington Rose Delany was a prize worth winning.

He watched her work the room, talking to his friends, people she knew from years of being a part of his life, and just as easily mixing with those she didn’t know.

Carrie’s hair started slipping from the twisty sort of hairdo she’d worn for the evening. While she was immersed in a conversation with Terry Lester, she pulled at something, and the mass of silky strands came tumbling down.

For years Jack had thought it was cute the way her hair would maintain no style for more than an hour.

Now, Jack longed to reach out and touch it, and pull her into his arms.

He wanted her and it wasn’t just sex.

With Carrie it wasn’t sex at all. It had something to do with desire borne deep from the core of his being instead of a reaction he was much more familiar with.

What he felt for Carrie was unlike what he’d felt for any other woman.

She thought they were back to being just friends.

Well, they were friends and he didn’t intend for that to change. But if Carrie thought that was all there was between them, then she was mistaken and it looked as if it was up to Jack to teach her the error of her ways.

And he would, just as soon as he got away from this party.

Carrie eyed Jack nervously.

“Isn’t that right, Jack?” Carrie asked, pulling him into the conversation.

He’d been giving her those looks again.

The kind of look that made her legs turn to jelly and melted that little block of ice that had recently taken residence in her chest.

But she was going to ignore it.

Jack was her friend.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Only friends.

She’d just ignore Jack’s nonsense and eventually he’d stop.

She wasn’t sure why he was going through this charade, but if she played it cool, he’d stop soon enough.

“What?” he asked.

“I said, the water park on Amore Island was wonderful, but nothing compares to the one we have here at Waldemeer.”

“Oh. I guess.”

She glared at him and continued, “You know, we’re so lucky here in Erie. We have all the amenities of a big city and yet we’ve maintained that small town mentality. There’s a great big lake in our backyard, beaches to swim in, snow for skiing... I can’t imagine living anywhere else. The island was a fun place to visit, but really there was nothing there that we don’t have in Erie. It’s like a vacation every day here.”

Carrie glanced again at Jack.

He was acting strange, drifting in and out of the conversation, a totally un-Jack-like thing.

“Maybe we should get something to eat?” she asked him, hoping food would help him regain his focus.

“Maybe you’re right. I’m hungry.”

He looked at her then, his eyes reflected hunger, but not for food.

“Someone said the chicken salad was great. I think that’s what I’m going to try.”

Jack leaned over and whispered huskily in her ear, “You’re welcome to try anything you like.”

Forcing herself to keep smiling, Carrie beamed at him. “Chicken salad it is then.”

They were moving toward the buffet table when someone called Carrie’s name.