Janet Evanovich - Thanksgiving

He took off his tie and undid the top two buttons on his shirt. Little black hairs curled from the open V. “Nope. I’ve never made pie crust. Do you think it’s warm in here?”

“I have the oven on, and the fire is going, and…” And her heart was racing, she thought. If he didn’t kiss her she was going to tear his shirt off and pin him to the kitchen floor. No! she shouted silently. That was wrong. That was not what she was going to do. Remember the bag? Remember Dave? She hit herself on the head with the wooden spoon.

Pat’s eyes widened. “Why’d you do that?”

“I deserved it.” She waved his question away and returned to her pie crust. “This is the third crust I’ve made. The first one had too much water and got slimy. The second one I rolled out too thin and it stuck to the rolling pin and my shirt. This one is going to be perfect. Look, it’s almost round!”

Pat moved the pie plate closer to the dough, and together they maneuvered the crust into the pan. “Damn!” he said, his voice filled with admiration. “You did it. You made a pie crust.” He gave her a quick kiss on the lips. “I’m proud of you.”

Their gazes locked for a moment while they each pondered taking the kiss a step further.

“No,” Megan said. “Yes,” Pat said. He pressed himself against her, snaking his arms around her waist. “I’m serious.”

“Me too. Want to get married?”

“No!”

“Want to go to bed?” She narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her nose. “You want to get conked with my wooden spoon?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“Hmmm.” Of course she wanted to go to bed with him, she thought. If her attraction to him continued to grow, she might even want to marry him. Unfortunately, it was all impossible, and what she really didn’t want to do was fall in love with him. That would be totally painful.

“Hmmm?” he repeated. “That’s encour aging.” He brushed his hips lightly against hers.

She wanted to be encouraging, she thought. She also wanted to erase the threat of nuclear war, eliminate hunger from the face of the earth, and find a cure for cancer. Unfortunately, none of those things was within her power.

She placed the palms of her hands on his chest and pushed firmly. “I’m going to finish my pie, and you’re going to do the dishes, and then we’re going to sit down and talk.” He was much too lovable, and she was far too susceptible to his charms. She didn’t want to bare her soul to him, but he had to be made to understand that this was a working friendship, not a love affair. They were briefly bound together by Timmy and Thanksgiving. She didn’t want to jeopardize either of those things, but she was not going to bed with him.

She fluted the edge of the crust, just as the cookbook showed, and poured the filling into the shell. Turning toward the oven, she allowed herself a moment of sexist ogling as she watched Pat, his back to her, rinse the dishes and load them into the dishwasher. His shirt sleeves were rolled to above his elbows, displaying strong, muscular arms. Despite the rigors of med school, he’d managed to keep in shape. He was nearly perfect, with broad shoulders, trim waist, a hard, flat stomach, and slim hips. His faded jeans clung to the world’s sexiest buns. She tried to picture him naked, but there were a few details beyond her imagination. She sighed wistfully and put the pie in the oven.

Pat stowed the last bowl in the dishwasher and dried his hands on a kitchen towel. “Okay, what are we going to talk about?” he asked, reaching for her.

She sidled away, putting the kitchen table between them. “Us.Mostly you.”

He leaned against the counter and lazily folded his arms across his chest. His expression was serious, but his eyes were glinting with pleasure as he gazed at her. “What about me?”

“You’re very attractive.”

“And?”

“And I like you. You’re fun, and you’re great with Timmy, and you’re nice to me.”

His gaze didn’t waver, but his voice dropped an octave. “I like you, too, and I have an uncomfortable feeling this conversation is about to turn around.”

“The simple truth is that you don’t fit into my future. At least, not in a romantic way. I’d like to think of you as a friend. A very platonic friend.”

The corners of his mouth tightened almost imperceptibly, and his brown eyes darkened.

“I’d like to think of you as a friend. I’d also like to think of you as a lover.”

She pressed her lips together. “You’re not cooperating.”

He unfolded his arms and walked toward her. “Nope.”

She edged around the table. “How dare you just disregard my feelings? I’ve been totally honest with you.”

“And I’m being honest with you. I want you, Megan Murphy. And I’m going to do everything I can to get you.”

“Holy cow.” Megan knew it was a dumb exclamation, but her mind was the texture of Timmy’s rice pudding. Her body was in a state of hormonal riot, and her mind had completely shut down. No one had ever said anything like that to her before.

“Maybe we should dump the honest approach,” she said, reaching for her fleece lined jean jacket, slipping her arms into the sleeves while she moved toward the door. “Maybe I should go home now.” If she could, she silently added. Move, legs, move!

Pat closed the space between them. He took her jacket lapels in his hands and gently pressed her against the front door. “Not going to stay for pie?”

“This isn’t fair,” she said thickly. “You have a bogus nose.”

He grinned down at her. “A bogus nose?”

“It’s the sort of perfect little nose you find on the boy next door. It’s… um, innocent. I shouldn’t have paid any attention to it. I should have sized you up by your backside. You have a killer behind.”

A killer behind! he thought. He couldn’t wait to go upstairs and take a look at it in the mirror. All these years he’d assumed his smile was his best feature, and now he found out he had a killer behind. “Say good night, Gracie.”

“Good night,” Megan whispered.

He buttoned her jacket, letting his fingers brush against her breasts as he worked his way down. Then he leaned against her and kissed her deeply and slowly. “See you in the morning,” he said, opening the front door.

Megan took a step backward into the cold night and shivered. The next morning she was going to answer the door fully dressed, she vowed, even if it meant staying up all night or sleeping in her clothes.

Pat rested his forehead against the closed door and decided that the next morning was an eternity away. And it would take him that long to understand Megan Murphy. So many contradictions and secrets, and he was totally enthralled by her.

“Hunter,” he said, “you’re in deep trouble.”

The historic district of Williamsburg was roughly the shape of a long rectangle. At the west end of the rectangle was a small commercial shopping area, Merchants Square. Just beyond that, at the very end of Duke of Gloucester Street, sat William and MaryCollege. On Friday afternoon, Megan parked in the Merchants Square parking lot and pulled the collapsible stroller from the back seat of the big maroon car. She set Timmy in it, adjusted his harness, and gave him the new yellow blanket Pat had bought.

During summer months Merchants Square was filled with people browsing through the shops and eating at the outdoor cafés. Today, the sky was winter gray, the wind whipped Megan’s hair across her face, and the tourists browsed at a rather fast pace. The stroller clattered over the brick sidewalk as Megan headed for North Boundary Street.

She tucked her flyaway hair into the collar of her navy pea coat and reread the address she’d written on a slip of paper. Turning left off North Boundary, she began looking for house numbers in a neighborhood of small bungalows, which were rented mostly by students and a few young faculty members. She stopped at a large gray clapboard house and studied the dark windows of the small apartment over the attached garage. A ripple of unidentifiable emotion passed through her. Fear?Anger?Relief? She didn’t know what she felt. She lifted Timmy from the stroller and walked to the outside stairs leading to Tilly Coogan’s apartment.

“What do you think, Tim? You think Mommy’s home?”

Timmy held the blanket tight to his chest. “Mum,” he jabbered.

Megan pressed her lips together. Mum had flown the coop, she thought grimly. Mum was nowhere to be found. She wondered if Timmy knew that. It was only natural that he missed his mother, and yet he seemed like a happy, well – adjusted child. Megan supposed children were flexible at this age. Or perhaps it was a reflection of Timmy’s personality that he could take things in stride.

She knew it was an empty gesture, but she knocked on the apartment door anyway. There was no answer, and she tried the door and the window beside it. Both were locked. There had been no word from Tilly, and Megan was worried. She was beginning to wonder if the girl would return. After caring for Timmy for five days, she couldn’t understand how Tilly could have left him, even for an hour.

She took a stack of letters from the black metal mailbox and riffled through a week’s worth of junk mail. Tilly Coogan must have led a lonely existence in Williamsburg, she thought. No one to take in the mail, and only letters addressed to “Occupant.” She stood looking at the blank window for a few minutes, as if at any time a light might be switched on or the phone would ring. Neither of those things happened, and Megan finally turned with a sigh and walked back to Duke of Gloucester Street.

At five o’clock the twilight was heavy over the darkened buildings. Duke of Gloucester Street was almost empty as the shops closed for the day and the lantern – style streetlights blinked on. Megan paused briefly at BrutonParishChurch and listened to the faint strains of organ music.

Her life had always been very secure, she realized. The little brick house in South River, New Jersey, had been a lot like the practical pig’s house. It had held up against all the huffing and puffing of childhood. Her father had been a policeman. In South River that was as safe as being a shoe salesman, and only slightly more prestigious. Her mother was a housewife, plain and simple. It was what she wanted to do, and she did it well. They’d had a twenty – foot Criscraft in their driveway and a gas barbecue in their back yard. Her father had regarded growing grass as a moral obligation, right up there with church on Sunday and sparkling white socks on Monday.

Megan’s finely arched brows drew together in a frown. She’d spent her whole life worrying about freckles, for crying out loud. This poor kid in the stroller didn’t have a father. He didn’t have a little brick house. He didn’t even have a mother anymore. He had Megan and Pat, and that fact raised frightening questions in Megan’s mind… questions without answers.

She continued past the miller and the silversmith. Anne Hedgeworth stood on the steps of the wigmaker’s shop and waved. She wore a white ruffled pinner, a colonial headdress, and an apricot dress with lace at the shoulders and cuffs. Megan waved back, marveling at how Anne always looked so attractive in the fancier costume of the Williamsburg upper class. At the end of the day, Anne’s stomacher was precisely buttoned and her pinner in place, an accomplishment Megan suspected she could never achieve.

“There’d always be a button popped at my waist from too many sugar cookies,” she told Timmy. “And I can’t manage a mobcap. What would I ever do with a pinner? Anne looks pretty, but I think I’m destined to be a peasant.”

She turned at the alley leading to the Raleigh Tavern Bake Shop. The bakery was closed for the day, and inside two women bustled about, cleaning trays and packing away Sally Lunn loaves and Queen Ann tarts. They saw Megan and Timmy looking in the window and hurried over with a cookie for Timmy.

Getting a free cookie at five o’clock had become a ritual for Timmy and Megan. For the past three days she had taken Timmy for a walk along the quiet streets, gotten a cookie from the women at the bakery, and gone to Patrick’s house to share the evening meal. Usually it was a disaster. Gray chicken cooked in the microwave. French fries that bubbled over and set the stove on fire. Thank goodness they hadn’t burned the house down. The night before, they’d made shoe – leather steak. Tonight they were playing it safe with canned chicken noodle soup and bagels with cream cheese.