I Still Do Read online

  Not to mention Izzy’s exhortation to get out there and live a little instead of turning to books in order to satisfy her need for emotional experiences. So she’d finally listened, and the result was spectacular…and the aftereffects weren’t bad either. There was the residual warmth of sexual pleasure humming through her and the complete lack of need on her part to figure out where she and Will would go next.

  She already knew that he wasn’t looking for anything serious or long-term, so she didn’t have to mine every moment for meaning or intention. She could just sip the wine and sniff the smell of pizza baking and be as happy as she’d be after getting a good haircut and blow-out or a particularly relaxing facial.

  Yes. She could look at sex like a pleasant sort of personal grooming experience.

  Okay, not that she’d tell Will that, because it wasn’t quite right, but the point of view gave her just the perfect attitude as she shared the pizza with Will and then dressed to go home.

  He started to make a polite noise about her staying over, but she had to work the next day and so did he. So she walked away without further thought or any future date with him—after all, it wasn’t her usual practice to make her next appointment with her stylist upon completion of her current one—and thought Will looked as content for her to go as she was to leave him.

  It bugged the hell out of Will that Emily had left him the night before with a carefree salute and an almost-smug smile. That wasn’t right, was it?

  Not that he’d thought of right or wrong or anything beyond the bed once he’d discovered her half-naked in his closet. Layers of frou-frou dress at her feet, she’d looked like a water nymph rising out of the waves. The only thing he’d been thinking of at that moment was getting her out of her sole piece of clothing—those panties that he had a kinky little hankering to steal from her and then bronze. Not for a second had he put his brain toward what they would do, relationship-wise, after having sex.

  But that was a guy-prerogative, wasn’t it? To be so taken with the present that he didn’t consider the future. But then how was it, when that future came, that Emily was the one strolling away without so much as a “Won’t I see you later?”

  All right, he realized that wasn’t very enlightened of him, and maybe he’d needed to revamp his outlook, but his confusion was less about stereotypical gender roles and more about the woman he’d been with the night before. She had to have been analyzing and cataloging what all this now meant. He knew his heavy-thinking, research-oriented librarian Em.

  Didn’t he?

  Still mulling over what to do about her, during his lunch break at the fire station, he called his sister, Jamie.

  “What’s happened, Will?” she asked. Her voice sounded alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

  Will frowned. “Does something have to be wrong for me to call my sister?”

  There was a pause. “Well, frankly, yes.”

  Guilt gave him a little slap. “Everything’s just fine,” he grumbled. But that word fine made him think of Emily again, and of how she’d told him she was fine, too, even though they’d just shared a sexual experience that he found mindblowingly unforgettable.

  Yet she’d walked away, without a backward glance, without an acknowledgment of just how…well, damn special they’d been between the sheets. So he’d called his sister to…hell, he couldn’t exactly ask her advice about this, could he?

  First, he wasn’t about to make love and tell. Not to anyone. And second, he didn’t turn to the sibs for help. He was the responsible one, the go-to bro, not the one going to them. And he really, really wanted to untangle himself from all the familial bonds anyway. He was owed that, wasn’t he, after those long years of parent-teacher appointments, butt-numbing sessions on sports bleachers and seemingly endless tuition payments?

  “Will?” Jamie said. “Will, if you only called to mystify me, can we postpone it for some other time? I’ve got cookies in the oven for my book group and the baby’s about to throw strained peas at me, and—”

  “Strained peas? I’d throw those at you, too,” Will said, and considered himself blessed that at least he’d avoided being the caretaker of babies. The kids had been way past diapers and most of them beyond kids meals when he’d taken over. Then another thought struck him. “Did you say something about your book group?”

  “They’re coming over tomorrow night. It’s my turn to host. Why?”

  Why not? Will thought. The idea was perfect. He’d get Jamie to invite Emily to her book group the following evening. That way, he could check up on her without being obvious—maybe he’d drop by at the end of the thing—but he’d also provide an opportunity for Emily to make new friends. That was one of his goals, wasn’t it? Emily secure in her new community meant he could untether himself from their inconvenient connection.

  He still wanted to do that, despite how hot they’d been between the sheets, because, damn it, he was a man determined to enjoy his newly won bachelor status. So getting Emily into his sister’s book group was a grand idea.

  The more he considered it, the better it became. For several reasons he could think of, not the least of which was that the all-woman book club meeting was a more appropriate avenue for friend-making than that football game. There, she’d run into that boneheaded Pat-the-Rat and Will didn’t like what she’d learned from him. At Jamie’s female-only event it was highly unlikely that anyone would remind Emily that he was the once and future Wild Will.

  Chapter Eight

  Emily was still feeling pleased with herself and her world when she went to Jamie’s house, taking the other woman up on her last-minute request for Emily to attend her book group night. While the invitation had Will’s fingerprints all over it, she’d accepted gladly. No matter how self-satisfied she was over how she’d handled things with him, there was no sense in not giving herself something to think about.

  Something besides Will and what they’d done in his bed.

  The next day he’d sent her a charming, small bouquet of country flowers. It was a sweet, casual gesture that she took as the message she suspected he intended. They’d had a casual interlude. So it seemed smart to get her mind off Will and onto something else.

  Serendipitously—or not, since she was a voracious reader—she’d read the novel the book club members were discussing that night. But it turned out that she was in the minority, since several of the women, many of them young mothers, had been nursing various family members and themselves through the same flu that had flattened Emily. While that larger group commiserated about long waits in the pediatrician’s waiting room and the struggles of caring for sick husbands and ailing children when the nurse felt like death-warmed-over herself, a smaller group that included Emily carried on a discussion about the heroine of the book and her travails involving shoe shopping, a married, on-again, off-again boyfriend and the countdown of her biological clock.

  “Overextended credit cards, crummy love lives, that annoying tick-tock,” one beautiful blonde complained. “I’m tired of single women being portrayed as either on unending quests for the perfect stiletto or sitting through unending evenings with loser guys and sticky cocktails. All because the woman’s frantic for something that will in a few years—” she lowered her voice and slid a glance to the group of moms nearby “—be puking its guts out one day and having temper tantrums the next.”

  “Laurie!” admonished the young woman on the couch beside her.

  “What? Haven’t you been listening to our friends over there? I’m not seeing the upside to this mommy thing.”

  Emily hid her grin behind her cup of tea. Laurie’s comments were honest and even refreshing and because she didn’t look a day over twenty-five, there was plenty of time for her opinion to change. Or not. “I did think that the heroine agreeing to date a guy who worked in the circus showed more desperation than true desire,” Emily said.

  “Yeah,” Laurie added. “Especially when he confessed his job involved a blue wig and a nose that honked when you sq
ueezed it.”

  Her companion on the couch grimaced. “I once went out with a guy who made balloon animals. But to my credit, he didn’t have to dress like a clown while he was on the job.”

  Laurie clucked. “Still, Gail…”

  “It’s not easy to meet men! It was that year I worked in the admin office at the all-girls’ school.”

  “What about you?” Laurie asked, turning to Emily. “What’s your opinion on motherhood, the dating scene and the best places to meet men?”

  “Motherhood, dating, men?” Emily shrugged. “My opinion is I guess I’d prefer thinking of them in the opposite order. Man, dating, marriage and the rest after that.” Her gaze strayed to the nearby mantel where a selection of framed photos was gathered, each picture crowded with Dailey siblings. While she wasn’t anxious, exactly, about becoming a wife and mother, family was something she truly missed. An only child, she’d never been part of a large one like the Dailey clan.

  She didn’t allow her gaze to linger too long on the mantel, though, because she kept staring at the single 8 x 10 of Will. She was supposed to be distracting herself from thoughts of him. “But I work in a library,” she said, refocusing on the two women. “It’s probably a little like the admin office of an all-girls’ school. Not a lot of single guys come in to check out books.”

  “I’m just not ready to settle down,” Laurie said. She slid one mile-long leg over the other. It might have been easy to hate her for her supermodel body and bright smile, but the fact was, she was funny and friendly. “Maybe because I’m lucky enough to meet men all day long. I’m a sales rep for a party supplies company.”

  Party supplies. Of course animated and attractive Laurie was a sales rep for a party supplies company.

  “So they’re out there—single men, I mean?” Emily asked. “From my side of the librarian’s desk, I’ve sometimes wondered if they’re a figment of the imagination just like the people inside the books in the Fiction section.”

  Laurie waved a hand. “Dozens. Every one of them looking for a good time.”

  Emily smiled a little. “Sounds familiar.”

  “Lots of them are great guys. Really.” Laurie scooted closer to the edge of her cushion. “A group of us are having a big barbecue at the park this weekend. I’ll be there, Gail here, too. You should come.”

  “Oh. Well…” Emily hemmed and hawed. It wasn’t that she was leaving her weekend open for someone else or anything. It was just that…

  “You’re new to town. I can introduce you to some men, all vetted, if you know what I mean. Not a one of them has ever worn a blue wig or twisted a balloon into a baboon.”

  “I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned that,” Gail muttered.

  Emily had to laugh. “I don’t want to impose.”

  “I know the perfect guy for you,” Laurie said, then glanced over at Gail. “Carl Fletcher. Now he’s not looking for a wife—”

  “And I’m definitively not looking for a husband,” Emily hastened to clarify.

  “But Carl knows all the best restaurants in town and can be very entertaining.” Laurie turned to her friend. “What do you think?”

  Gail appeared to consider a moment. “Smooth, but not too smooth. Pretty, but not too pretty. Great backside. I say it’s a go.”

  “Still…” Emily wasn’t big on fix-ups.

  Laurie’s gaze shifted to somewhere over Emily’s left shoulder. “Speaking of pretty.”

  A quick glance back told Emily who had snagged the other woman’s attention. Her stomach jittered as Will entered the room, looking lean and dark and not the least bit “pretty.” As the only male in the vicinity, his virility stuck out like a thumb. An un-sore, very manly and handsome thumb.

  Gail looked over at Laurie. “Are you still seeing him?”

  Laurie didn’t take her gaze off Will as she shook her head. “Not anything regular. Just a couple of times early in the summer. We both got busy. But I’m feeling a sudden itch to free up my schedule for Wild Will.”

  Wild Will. Emily’s stomach jittered again.

  The woman waved toward the doorway. “Will?” she called out. “Will! Over here.”

  What could Emily do, but paste a smile on her face and sit back while Laurie the party supplies rep played honey to Will’s bee? It wasn’t long before he was leaning in for a taste, bussing the blonde and then Gail on the cheek, then glancing toward her couch. Upon catching sight of her, he halted a moment, then replayed the friendly greeting by brushing his lips just to the right of Emily’s.

  “Em,” he said, his hand squeezing her shoulder. “How are you?”

  Laurie’s eyebrows were halfway to her hairline. “You two know each other?”

  “Old friends,” Emily hastened to say, before Will might think she’d try to stake a claim. Wild Will.

  He took a seat beside her, and she tried not to stare at his hands where they rested on his knees. But it was impossible to ignore them altogether, because she so well remembered their lean length molding her breasts and sliding over the curve of her thigh.

  Squeezing her legs together and tucking into the corner of the sofa, she tried to make herself smaller as the others chatted. It wouldn’t do for any of them to notice the flush that must be crawling across her face or the odd tightness in her chest.

  But she could smell Will! Even from a cushion away she could detect his particular scent and it conjured up all the kinds of images that made a woman warm and breathless.

  Will, shirtless.

  Pantless.

  Naked.

  Will, crawling between her splayed thighs, a wicked smile curving his mouth as he bent his head to kiss the inside of her knee. Goose bumps had raced from the spot, running toward the finish line, taking her closer to—

  “Emily’s coming.”

  She started, jolted from her sensual reverie by Laurie’s voice. “What?”

  “To the barbecue on Saturday,” Laurie said. “Remember?” She wiggled her eyebrows and though she didn’t add anything more, Emily knew she was signaling to her about the fix-up. With Carl Fletcher, who was pretty but not too pretty.

  Laurie directed her attention back to the man beside her. “You come too, Will. We’ll have fun.”

  Which was exactly what Wild Will wanted, right? He glanced over at Emily, his expression unreadable. “I don’t know—”

  “Of course you have to be there. It’s at the park right around the corner from your house. And I’m bringing something new for us to play,” Laurie said. “With these sort of wicket-like things. You throw lengths of rope at them that have ping pong balls on each end.”

  “Yeah?” That caught Will’s interest. “I think I saw someone bring that set-up to a station house party one time. I didn’t get a chance to try it, though.”

  “Well,” Laurie said, crossing her long limbs again. “On Saturday will be your opportunity to play my game.”

  Emily still couldn’t hate her, even with the supermodel legs and the phone sex operator purr. Because the other woman wasn’t doing anything wrong. The blonde didn’t have any idea that two nights ago Will had taken his old friend into his bed. All she knew was that this good-looking guy had Saturday free and that they both liked to play.

  Will glanced over at Emily.

  She gave a little shrug and directed her gaze at Laurie, the not-ready-to-settle-down party supplies rep.

  “Sounds like an afternoon,” Emily murmured, just loud enough for him to hear, “made in Wild Will heaven.”

  Will noticed Emily’s arrival at the park the instant she showed up. He noticed it because he noticed a couple of the guys standing nearby straighten their posture and share a speculative glance.

  “Fresh meat,” one said. “Nice.”

  He turned his head to check out who they meant, and then felt a little burn grind in his gut as he realized they were referring to Emily. Emily, in a too-brief floaty skirt, a skinny-strapped sleeveless top, and a pair of cherry-red flip flops. Her toenails were painted the
same color.

  “I’d like a taste of those toes,” the other man standing nearby said.

  “Me, too,” his buddy agreed.

  “Hey,” Will protested. Geez. This was Em, his childhood friend they were talking about as if she was a new item on a familiar menu.

  The men shot him identical puzzled looks. “What’s up? You have some prior claim on the new treat?”

  Fresh meat. Tasty toes. New treat. Was this the way unattached men looked at the women strolling through their world? Okay, yeah, he knew that attitude had always been there, but now…now…Well, Will had sisters, damn it, and the notion that they, not to mention Emily, could be looked upon with such—well, what the hell would you call it but disrespect?—suddenly was ticking him off.

  “Wild Will?” the man prompted again.

  Wild Will. God, he was starting to hate that nickname. But he was distracted from protesting it by the familiar note of Emily’s perfume drifting close. And then she was there, standing beside him, wearing a sunny smile that just rubbed his bad mood the wrong way.

  “Hi, Will.” Her friendly gaze moved to include the two guys, too. “Um…hi.”

  “Hi,” one replied, then shot Will a glance. “Going to introduce us?”

  “No,” Will said, grabbing Emily’s elbow and hauling her away from them.

  She gave out an uncertain laugh as he dragged her toward the coolers filled with soft drinks and beer. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

  “No,” he said a second time. Because he’d promised himself he wouldn’t do this. He’d come to the barbecue to have fun, to mingle and be social, and not attach himself to Emily. He was in his bachelor mode, of course, and she seemed as easy-breezy as a man could hope, despite the fact that they’d been to bed together.

  He glanced down at her and had to swallow his groan. They’d been to bed together. Why couldn’t he get that out of his mind? It looked as if she had, he thought, as she rummaged through the ice for something to drink. When she bent over, her lightweight, swishy skirt molded to the curves of her very-fine behind, and he remembered holding those warm, smooth cheeks in his hands as he tilted her hips in order to penetrate her more fully.