Nobody's Princess
There actually seemed no vanity to her. Regan just seemed totally comfortable with her body, how she looked, who she was. And that was good, Alex thought. Only his first thought—that the shock of something different was good for him—was superceded by another. His blood pressure was never going to be able to handle a whole evening. Every look at her mainlined a charge direct to his hormones. His nerves just wouldn’t survive it.
She handed him a dripping glass of iced tea, and led him out to work on her misbehaving barbeque. The coven of cats followed him. She kept talking—not incessantly—but enough so he was busy answering her.
He never meant to relax. He meant to come up with a tactfully polite escape line and take a powder, but he had to fix her grill. By that time she’d absconded with his iced tea and returned with a tall pitcher of mint juleps. Then the steaks had to be cooked, and since he’d stayed that long...well, hell.
The neighborhood had quieted down and the sky faded to a jeweled palette by the time she served dinner on a card table on the back porch. The steaks were ogre-sized, and the baked potatoes were buried under lushly dripping butter and sour cream. The key lime pie, she claimed, was her only culinary skill, so he was ordered to save room.
Two kittens climbed on her lap, two on his. Unidentified paws kept showing up on the table, prepared to swipe any scrap—or anything that moved—and the mama cat chaperoned from a windowsill. Regan seemed to consider the cat-dominated dinner status quo. She also slipped her shoes off, and insisted he slip off his.
“This is Scarlett O‘Haira’s second litter. I wanted to get her fixed after the last one, but she took off with another true-love Romeo before that litter was weaned. I didn’t know she could get pregs while she was still nursing, and then it was too late. I’ve lectured and lectured about those love ’em and leave ’em types, but when she’s in love, she just doesn’t listen. Have you ever seen uglier kittens?”
“Um...maybe they’ll grow into their looks,” Alex said tactfully.
“My God, you really are chivalrous...more key lime pie?”
“If you feed me any more, you’ll have to roll me home. How long have you lived here?”
“Almost two years now. My family’s from Michigan. I taught at the U of M before this. But when they started the women’s studies program at Whitaker...well, the job came up right at a time when I wanted a total break. I love the warmer climate. And I thought it’d be fun to be a rabble-rousing feminist from the North on a quiet, traditional campus like this.”
“And how’s the rabble-rousing part of that going?”
“Not too bad. I haven’t been threatened with suspension more than once a term so far.” She grinned. “The girls pack my classes. That whole part’s going great. But I’m allergic to those formal faculty teas. There isn’t a tweed or a little flowered dress in my whole closet. And I’ve been known to use ‘language’ on occasion.”
“Not that.”
“What can I tell you. I was raised with four brothers. All rascals. I had to find some way to hold my own or they’d have buried me.”
Maybe they were rascals, but her voice was wrapped with love when she mentioned her brothers. Alex wasn’t sure where her negative views about heroes came from, but it wasn’t because of them. When she lifted a plate, he automatically stood up. “I’ll help with the dishes.”
“Good. I hate ’em with a passion.”
She wasn’t kidding. She not only let him wash and dry, but she supervised him doing it. Alex teased her about laziness, although he had the sneaky feeling that she was deliberately giving him stuff to do to make him feel more like a friend than a guest. Probably surprising him far more than her, it was working.
In short order they’d finished the chores and aimed for the back porch again, this time settling in the rickety porch swing. All five cats climbed on laps. True darkness had fallen by then, bringing a cool breeze that sifted strands of her hair and ruffled her collar. Lights popped on in the neighborhood. Katydids called. She poured him another glass from the pitcher of mint juleps.
“Have you heard from your Gwen?”
“No.”
“Do you think you will?”
The first time he’d met Regan, he thought her outspoken prying damn near close to rude. Now, it just seemed part of her, not about rudeness at all but more a gutsy honesty that was intrinsically part of her nature. And he admired it—even if she had the slight, nasty tendency to put him on the spot. “Yeah. Eventually. Gwen always lived here, and so does her family. So sooner or later, regardless of what happens with the guy she took off with, she’s bound to show back up if only to see her family.”
Regan reached up to unclip the hairpin, and shook her hair loose to let the breeze play with it. “That’s one of the reasons I took the job here—to be able to escape having to see a guy. He taught in the same building.”
Hell. If she could put him on the spot with those dicey questions, so could he. “You were in love with him?”
“Oh, yeah. Head over heels.” Her eyes looked smoky by moonlight, her face soft-brushed in the silvery shadows. “His name was Ty. I could have sworn I was picking a prince. He was blond, blue-eyed, claimed to be madly in love with me right back. Until I was late one month. At which time he turned into a frog faster than a witch could wave a wand.”
Late. The last time a woman had mentioned her period around him was precisely never. But she was trying to find a way to tell him, he suspected, that she’d had a “male Gwen” in her life. “He left you in the lurch?”
“I wasn’t in the lurch. It turned out I wasn’t pregnant. And to be honest, I admit to being careless...it just didn’t seem that way at the time. We were so in love that I was positive we were headed for rings and orange blossoms and that whole shebang. I never meant to skip a pill, but when it happened I just wasn’t that worried about it. Our starting a family seemed in the cards.”
“It still hurts?” he asked quietly.
“Yes and no. It doesn’t hurt that he’s gone from my life. Once he picked up with a young female student, the handwriting on his character wall was damn obvious. But it hurts that I was so damned naive and stupid to be taken in. It’s not like I was seventeen. I was too damned old to still be believing in the ‘magic’ of love.”
He’d been keeping the swing swaying with a foot. Now he stopped. “You’re serious? You really don’t believe in love?”
“I believe that if two people work like dogs, they may—may—make a successful marriage. But I’m not sure that has anything to do with love. I think couples with stars in their eyes, looking for magic and romance, are selling themselves lies that can seriously hurt them.” She cocked her head. “You were just burned by someone yourself, Alex.”
“Yeah. But not because either of us lied. It just didn’t work out. I wasn’t the right man for her.”
She shook her head vehemently. “There is no right man. There are no heroes. Not for a man—or a woman.”
Alex didn’t shout at her. By the cut-and-dried code he lived by, a man never vented temper on a woman. His voice did sneak up another notch in volume, though, but that was necessary. Her whole cynical view...as if love weren’t the most powerful force in the universe, as if there were something inherently dishonest in the concept of romance...well, he simply had to tactfully address the errors in her thinking.
They were still fighting like cats and dogs when she startled them both with a yawn. A quick glance at his watch shocked him. The illuminated dial claimed it was 2:00 a.m. He shook the watch, just in case the battery had stopped, but no.
“For Pete’s sake, I’m really sorry. I know you have classes in the morning, and so do I. I just didn’t realize how late it was getting.”
He immediately stood up from the porch swing. So did Regan, with a chuckle. “I didn’t, either. In fact, it’s been a blue moon since I got so involved in a debate that I totally forgot the time. ... I’m glad you came for dinner, Alex.”
“Yeah, me, too. Thanks for the invitation.” It seemed natural to scoop up two of the kittens when she did and cart them back to their nesting box in the kitchen. Somehow she’d made him feel at home. Alex really didn’t understand iL He’d never had a problem finding a comfort level with a woman, but this was her. Regan. Who had his hormones in such an unfamiliar zinging uproar that he never imagined ever feeling relaxed around her.
Her house was tripping dark. Since neither of them had been inside all evening, no lights had been turned on. Just as he reached the front door, her hand reached out in the darkness to flip on the light switch in the hall. “I’ll put the outside porch light on, too,” she said with a chuckle. “I just still can’t believe how—”
Whatever she’d been planning to say faded into cyberspace. When her hand reached out, it connected with his chest. Alex had no doubt whatsoever that the contact was accidental. His body just happened to be between her and the light switch. She was just seeing him out. Nothing had happened through the whole evening to make him think anything else was conceivably on her mind. Or his.
But there was a sudden silence in the dark hall. And her soft, warm palm froze. As if it were glued in place against his heartbeat.
Three
He couldn’t be kissing her. Not Alex. Regan wasn’t prone to hallucinations, but she fully respected that everyone had a bonkers moment now and then. This simply had to be one of hers. All she’d done was walk him to the door. Reach out in the pitch-black hall to flip on a light switch. And, yeah, her hand had accidentally collided with his chest. But there had been a spare second when she felt his heart beating, beating against the nest of her palm.
It wasn’t as if a bomb had exploded. Or Congress had balanced the budget. Absolutely nothing monumental had happened to explain this sudden, strange break from reality she was suffering from.
So fast, so mystifyingly fast, his arms had swept around her. Regan could have handled an unwanted pass blindfolded in her sleep. But this was nothing like a pass. The accidental physical contact acted like tinder for a spark in a dry, dry forest.
His fingers sieved and then clenched in her hair. And suddenly his mouth was just there. Covering hers. Warm. Mobile. Evocatively and distinctly male.
She swayed against him because she would have lost her balance if she hadn’t. He wasn’t rough. She couldn’t even imagine Alex being rough. The texture of his mouth was as gentle as the disarming, winsome caress of a spring breeze...or it started out that way.
That first soft kiss deepened and darkened, scooping up momentum like the electric charge in a lightning storm. His lips sealed against hers with a pressure that made moonbeams dance under her closed eyes and the blood sluice through her veins in a giddy rush.
She wasn’t going to call it magic. She knew perfectly well that physical longing and a bunch of ragtag, amoral hormones could hoodwink a woman into believing silly, irresponsible things.
But this nonmagic thing he was doing was alluring and startling and terribly unsettling. One kiss whispered into another, chained into another and another. Alex was supposed to be a gentleman. Not an inspired kisser. She’d been so positive he was on the shy side, if not downright inhibited around women, but that illusion bit the dust, too. His tongue bribed hers into trying a taste. He tasted like mint juleps and need...a raw, urgent, honest need to touch and be touched, hold and be held. He treasured her mouth, exploring, tasting, sipping her responsiveness as if he’d never sampled this gold before, as if nothing were more important in the whole paltry universe but finding her.
Images of a strong, protective knight sweeping away his lady slinked into her mind. The fantasy images appalled her. The feeling scared her far worse. She was a feminist, for Pete’s sake. In her head she had no problem understanding that being swept away was unrealistic, irresponsible and outright stupid.
He loved his Gwen. She knew that, too. He was suffering from loss, and that urgent, explosive need wasn’t really about her. The loneliness and longing of heartache hurt like nothing else in life. He just needed someone at that moment.
Regan played all the appropriate warning songs in her mind.
She just couldn’t seem to stop her body from playing waltzes. Foolish, distracting waltzes. Her hands had somehow slipped around his waist. Her breasts crushed against his chest, her head pounding to the same wild rhythm as his, as if both of them already knew this music. His hips cradled hers, in harmony with every movement she made. He smelled like clean soap and man, pleasing, but neither scent explained this crazy feeling of drunk, dizzy intoxication.
Even as fear climbed through her system, she wanted more, not less. Even as rational thoughts tried to ground her, she didn’t want to be grounded. She wanted the sizzle. She wanted the wonder. She wanted to be touched by Alex, like she couldn’t remember ever wanting a man.
She could accept a moment of insanity. But something was wrong here. Really wrong. Her mind had already tabulated all the reasons why kissing him was bonkers and foolhardy, but there was something terrible going on besides that. As his tongue dove in her mouth again, as the rubbing pressure of his body speared desire through every nerve ending, she tasted risk. Threat. The power of something she was completely unfamiliar with. And it had his name.
“Regan...” She heard him groan against her mouth, saw something flash in his eyes in spite of the drowning darkness. But then he pulled back. Clenched his fingers around her shoulders as if to ensure that she was steady, and then abruptly dropped his hands and stepped away.
Regan scrabbled to recoup, not easy when she felt as shaky as a shipwreck. She could hear his breathing. And her own. Both of them were rasping as if they were mightily suffering from head colds.
Alex just stood there. He felt shock, she sensed. She understood—she’d never thought, even for a second, that he’d meant that embrace to happen. But he kept looking at her. His expression was blurred in the murky shadows, but she could see the black fire, the intensity, in his eyes.
She assumed he was suffering guilt, that all that pagan black fire must be about his Gwen. Not her. But silence stretched between them until the awkwardness was darn near paralyzing. She had to say something. “It’s all right,” was the best she could come up with.
“No. It isn’t.” Alex squeezed his eyes closed and took a long breath. She still wasn’t sure what he was thinking or feeling, but Alex being Alex, his gentleman side never disappeared for long. “Regan, I seriously apologize. I’m not sure I understand what just happened, but I swear I never meant to—”
“I know you didn’t. And we were having a good time, weren’t we? Just being friends. We just got sidetracked for a second there. Hey, you suffered a big loss. I don’t think it’s any great surprise you might have needed to hold on to someone for a minute.” If that was a pale interpretation of the embrace they just shared, Regan figured it was a lie they both wanted to swallow. “Don’t start feeling guilty over nothing.”
“It wasn’t ‘nothing’ to take advantage of you.” He clawed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what got into me. And I wouldn’t blame you for not trusting me again—”
Regan had always been better at being blunt and bossy than owning up to any vulnerability. “You didn’t take advantage of me. Quit being so hard on yourself, you dimwit. We gave in to a little chemistry. It’s not a hanging offense, and nothing happened that either of us need to worry about. Now go home. Get some sleep. It’s two in the morning, for Pete’s sake.”
She kicked him out—but not before winning a startled grin out of him. Possibly no one had ever called Alex a dimwit before.
She quickly locked up and then headed for her bedroom, thinking that someone obviously should have. He’d been upset. Hell, so was she. But they’d made the mistake together, so there wasn’t a reason on the planet why he should hustle in to take all the responsibility. She’d never known a man with that kind of conscience, much less one who took honor and guilt so seriously.
Until him.
Trying to distract her mind in another direction—any other direction—she flipped off the overhead light in her bedroom and started peeling off clothes. No housekeeping genie had shown up to make the bed, she noticed. The sheets and blankets were rumpled; jewelry and makeup were liberally strewn on the dresser; and the blend of startling colors would likely make Laura Ashley cringe.
Regan had long accepted that she was never going to be a shy, ladylike Laura Ashley type. She liked color. Lots of it. Heaps of it. She’d done up the bedroom with rich emeralds and satin blues with a splash of sassy yellow. Everything but the sheets came from garage sales— no way she was sleeping on anyone else’s sheets—but everything else inspired her gypsy, bargaining spirit. She resented paying full price for anything. More to the point, her taste—or lack of it—didn’t have to suit anyone else. This was her haven.
Normally.
She dove for the pillows, knowing she was whipped and positive she would fall asleep instantly. Instead, she felt the cool, smooth sheet settling against her breasts and hips with an erotic awareness that had her scowling in the darkness.
Okay, so she’d been celibate for a long time. And long stretches of celibacy frustrated a woman no differently than they did a man. Intellectually, she accepted that living alone was her safest choice of life-style. Her hormones just didn’t share the same enthusiasm.
The thing was, she’d always had a figure that turned male heads. She’d never asked for the overabundance of curves, any more than she’d asked for the gregarious, flamboyant personality. She couldn’t help having boobs. She couldn’t change her blunt, open nature.
But Regan was well aware that she’d habitually scared away the gentle guys and attracted those who assumed she was a gutsy, confident, life-of-the-party type. They weren’t exactly wrong. She didn’t have a demure bone in her body. But underneath, she wasn’t at all carefree, and that underneath part never seemed to come out. Not with anyone, and especially not with a man.
Until tonight. Suddenly edgy with nerves, she gnawed on a thumbnail.
Nasty, terrifying feelings had sneaked up and seeped to the surface in Alex’s arms. She’d never been afraid of men. She’d never been afraid of sexual feelings. Her fears were about being used and taken for a ride, because she’d fallen for Prince Charmings with feet of clay before.
But Alex was a gentle man. Not a predator. And damnation, it was downright delicious to be undone and unraveled by a lust attack for a good man for a change. But that was precisely the problem. Alex’s integrity glowed as brightly as his vulnerability. He’d been completely honest with her about his feelings for Gwen. He needed a friend, Regan thought, and having been dumped and disillusioned herself, she even believed she could be a damn good friend to him. But to hurt a vulnerable, caring, good man stabbed her conscience with a sharp knife. Allowing hormones to enter the situation was simply out of the question.
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