Bombshell (21 page)

Before I could stop myself, I found myself grasping his hand before he left the bed completely. He turned to look at me, startled.

“Please stay,” I said, my embarrassment at uttering those two needy words clearly outweighed by my desire to have more of him. And I didn't just mean sex.

He hesitated, clearly wrestling with doubt.

“Tomorrow's Sunday,” I said, hoping I had managed to steal away his one and only excuse for escape. He couldn't possible have class on Sunday.

Whether I had succeeded because I had managed to steal his only valid excuse for escape, or because he had decided to give in to my now-obvious need for some lingering intimacy, he relented, sliding back under the sheet and pulling me back against his chest as he curved his body around mine.

Despite the satisfaction I felt in his decision, I did not relax. Could not relax when I could tell by the way his fingers moved continually over my neck, my back, my thigh, that he couldn't sleep either. For what seemed like an impossibly long time.

At least as long as I could keep my own eyes open, which, I realized as I hazily watched the sun slant through the window at dawn, was a bit…too long.

 

I did sleep eventually. I must have. Because when I awoke to an empty bed, I felt a sense of shock. Followed by relief. I told myself I didn't want to face Jonathan if waking up to me was such a hardship for him. Being alone was a choice after all. The easier one, I was beginning to think.

I flopped onto my back, already organizing my day into useful parts, breathing deep to shake off the sadness fresh solitude always brought, and found myself wallowing in the miraculous scent of coffee and, oddly enough, bacon. Someone was starting off the day right, and I decided I would start my day off similarly, treating myself to a full breakfast. Maybe at the diner on Broadway. Or even the Cozy Café.

I heard a clatter come from my kitchen.

Or maybe at home, I thought, realizing joyfully that
Jonathan was not only here, but whipping up a breakfast that, judging from the scents wafting in, was fit for a king.

Or a princess.

I leaped out of bed, not even trying to curb the happiness that swirled through me. Pulling on a short baby blue silk robe and glancing quickly in the mirror to run my fingers through my bedhead and wipe the sleep from my eyes, I headed for the kitchen.

Then stopped in the entryway to drink in the sight.

Of Jonathan, clad in a pair of boxers and standing before my stove, whistling—yes,
whistling
—while he worked at a pan of sizzling bacon.

He glanced up at me, startled, then smiled sheepishly. “I hope you don't mind.”

“Mind?” I said, my gaze roaming over his body and realizing, once again, how delicious he was.

“I kinda raided your fridge. You keep a pretty stocked freezer for a single woman.”

He should only know.

“I found some bacon, eggs, a bit a cheese and even some salsa. Thought I'd make us some breakfast. It's been a long time since I…since I cooked anyone breakfast….”

I could have kissed him. So I stepped up to him and did just that.

He leaned away from me, his gaze on mine. “You're pretty nice to wake up to,” he said with a smile.

And you're a dream, I thought. One I hoped I never had to wake up from.

 

We spent the rest of the day together, moving from the breakfast table to the bedroom where we wiled away the day making love and talking about everything from making art
to making babies. No, not our own—that would've been premature. But I got the sense, as Jonathan spoke about the dreams he had once shared with his wife, of starting a family, of making a home, that he did so out of a desire to make those dreams seem tangible again. As if it all could still happen. And the way he looked at me as the afternoon faded into evening, I sensed he could see it happening with me.

So we fell under the spell of mutual possibility, shutting out the world, ordering in dinner. We even indulged in a video rental, which resulted in our first true argument right there in the video store, where he fixated on some old Civil War movie and I lobbied for
Casablanca
. We settled on
Brave-heart
as a compromise. A little history. A lot of Mel. It seemed appropriate. Or at least Angie might have thought so, since she had Mel-Gibsonized Jonathan in her mind. I understood why, once Jonathan and I were snuggled in bed, watching Mel struggle with grief after the love of his life was brutally killed, before he moved on to conquer the world as he knew it, and even lay down with the queen.

I was feeling a bit like a queen myself when Jonathan treated me to a full-body massage before bedtime. I was about to maneuver the massage into a full-frontal attack, since those big hands were putting my body into a state of arousal, when the phone rang.

“You're a pretty popular lady,” Jonathan commented. The phone
had
rung quite a few times over the course of the day, though I hadn't bothered to pick up. Once had been Claudia, trying to coax me off to a day at the spa, where she doubtless hoped to slough off her most recent rage. The second call had been my mother, and I might have picked up if I hadn't been in the midst of a most pleasant tangle with Jonathan. The sound of my mother's voice—followed by my
father's, who chirped a cheery hello into my machine when my mother passed him the phone—seemed to send Jonathan into a strange spasm of momentary embarrassment. I guess it wasn't easy sharing a carnal moment with the daughter of the man he had exchanged some of his loftiest ideas with.

Then there was, of course, Angie, who gave me a momentary fright when I heard her voice on my machine. “I know you're there, Grace, pick up. Grace?” She hesitated, and for one paralyzing moment, I feared she might begin lecturing me on how I was avoiding talking about Jonathan. But something—perhaps some fluttering, romantic hope—stopped her. As if she sensed she might violate some Girlfriend pact of silence in the event that I wasn't alone. Thank God for that. The phone rang a few more times during the day, and the caller—likely Angie—wisely hung up. Now as it rang out, a bit late for a Sunday night, I grabbed the receiver, fearing Angie might go into a paroxysm of anxiety and be unable to hold her peace any longer.

“Hello?” I said somewhat throatily into the phone as Jonathan's hands moved down to the back of my thighs.

“Grace!” Angie shouted in my ear, clearly in a state of frenzy, just as I suspected. “Where have you
been?
”

“Right here,” I said sleepily.

“Why haven't you been picking up the phone?” she demanded irritably. Then, as realization struck, “You're not alone, are you?”

“Uh-uh,” I said, stifling a groan of pleasure as Jonathan massaged away a knot I had not even known I had in my calf. I heard him let out a little grunt of pleasure, himself, as if it satisfied him to find something on my body still in need of soothing.

“Grace, if that's Bad Billy I hear in the background, I'm going to kill you.”

“What are you crazy?” I said, realizing suddenly how insane I had been to think a booty call, even one as bootylicious as Bad Billy, could keep me satisfied.

“Then it must be—oh, my God, Grace! Don't tell me— Jonathan is there?”

I smiled. “Okay, I won't tell you.”

“Why didn't you
call
me? Oh never mind that, I want to hear everything!” she demanded. Then, before I could utter another word, she finished, “Tomorrow.” And hung up.

Sending a bubble of laughter through me that shook my whole body.

Jonathan let go of my calf, flopping down on the pillow beside me and peering into my face.

“What's so funny?”

As I looked at him, that burst of laughter turned into an out-and-out belly laugh. I realized that I had not felt such an urge to laugh in a long, long time.

I gained control of myself and flipped over to face him. “Oh, nothing,” I said, looking into Jonathan's beautiful eyes. “Well, everything.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“I'm just happy, you know?”

His expression turned a bit puzzled, as if the idea of happiness were just as bewildering. Then he smiled, relenting. “Yes,” he said, a bit shyly. “I know.”

 

I suppose it was natural for a woman who had suffered as many heartaches as I had to worry that the bubble of happiness she found herself in would somehow burst. Because once Jonathan walked out the door on Monday morning,
leaving me at the corner with one tender, albeit brief kiss before we headed off to our different destinations, I found myself filled with the kind of icy fear that had done in lesser relationships in my life. As I strolled across town, choosing to face the bracing cold over the crowded bus when I couldn't find a cab, I found myself mulling over the tenderness we had shared, the vulnerabilities we had revealed while lying side by side. And felt a sense of déjà vu. I had been in this happy little place before. With Michael, I realized, remembering well that feeling of possibility, of longing for all that could be, that I had experienced with the Dubrow heir. I might even have experienced this same floating feeling with Drew and Ethan. At least in the beginning. Before reality had set in. And it always did.

Which was exactly why I had laid my emotional cards on the table this weekend with Jonathan, telling him about Kristina, how I had found her—and lost her. I worried he might look at me differently once he discovered I didn't share the same gene pool with his admirable former colleague Dr. Thomas Noonan. I had learned the hard way that to some men it mattered. Like Drew.

Whereas Jonathan…

Jonathan pulled me into his arms, holding me as if he could wash away whatever sorrow I had suffered with the strength of his touch. I very nearly cried.

But I didn't, of course. I didn't want the first man I felt I could truly open up to thinking of me as some kind of emotional basketcase.

 

“Okay, give me all of it,” Angie said as she sat across from me at a sandwich shop near my office. She had cornered me at high noon, calling from her cell phone to let me know she
was on her way uptown to have lunch and wouldn't take no for an answer. Apparently she believed whatever happened between me and Jonathan warranted a trip uptown, which only raised my romance-filled weekend to a level that positively frightened me.

So I did what I could to bring it down to earth. I shrugged, carefully pulling the wrap from my sandwich. “We spent the weekend together. It was nice.”

Her eyebrows drew down. “Nice? C'mon, Grace, what happened? Start from the beginning! What happened when he called Saturday morning?”

“That was Claudia. Jonathan called around six. From the lobby of my building.” I couldn't curtail the smile that tugged at the corner of my mouth.

“The lobby—holy cow! He obviously wasn't taking no for an answer.” She sighed. “I bet he couldn't bear the thought of being without you!”

Or maybe he couldn't bear the thought of not finishing what he started the other night, I thought suddenly, remembering how quickly that box of condoms had come out.

“What was he wearing?”

I looked at her. “What does that matter?”

She rolled her eyes. “I'm trying to picture it!”

“A really bad sweater and a clashing wool blazer.”

“So he's a fixer upper. Go on.”

I sighed, realizing there was no way I could downplay these little interludes to Angie. So I gave in. Just a little. “He was carrying flowers. They were pink—pale pink….”

Angie clearly couldn't care if those roses were plaid. “Oh, my
God,
Grace! He's amazing! What did he say next? What did he
do?
”

I smiled, nearly blushing at the memory—and I'm not the type to blush. “Well, it was more like what
we
did.”

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened on an “O” of understanding. Then she smiled, clearly pleased with herself. As if she had somehow orchestrated the whole thing. “So, uh, how was it?”

Then, as if I could no longer suppress the joy that had been simmering beneath the surface of my words, I said, somewhat breathily, “It was beautiful.”

Angie sighed, her eyes going misty. It was almost more than I could bear. “Aren't you going to eat that?” I practically barked at her.

She looked down at her sandwich as if she'd forgotten about it, then picked it up and took a bite, chewing fiercely and swallowing quickly. “Then what?”

“Let's see,” I said, remembering how we had lain back on the bed, just holding one another. Not that that had lasted very long. It seemed to me our breathing had barely returned to normal when his hand found my hip and he pulled me in for another round. “We, umm, we did it again,” I said. Which had surprised me at the time. It was as if he'd just been released from prison. Then it occurred to me that maybe Jonathan had, in a sense, been released from a prison of his own making. Was it possible he hadn't had sex since his wife died?
No way,
my mind argued back, while another part of me wondered if that was what had driven him to my apartment, multipack of condoms in tow. Fear curled through me. Was that all I had been to him? A way to release all his pent-up sexual frustrations?

“Grace?
Heeellllo?
”

I came down to earth with a resounding thud. “What?” I asked, taking in her puzzled expression and realizing I'd never find the answers I needed there.

“I
asked
you a question.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, distractedly. I hadn't even heard her, my mind was so filled with the unbearable weight of other questions.

“What did you guys talk about? I mean you must have
talked
at some point.”

“Right,” I said, relief sheeting through me. We had talked. About our pasts. And more importantly, about our dreams for the future. But while I remembered the sadness and the hopefulness I had felt as Jonathan had told me how much he had wanted to start a family with his wife, I realized now that I might have read a little too much into his somewhat wistful tale. So much so, I realized, I had fallen asleep last night, filled with a vision of a hazel-eyed baby with thick, dark lashes…. My baby. And Jonathan's.