The Trouble with Joe Read online

  “Shouldn’t what?”

  He leaned back so he could see her face. He wanted to pick a fight with her. He realized it, but he felt completely powerless to stop himself. He wanted distance from her pain, more distance than he had been able to put between them in six months.

  “You shouldn’t care. For God’s sake, you’re a professional. You’re going to have kids like Corey in every class you teach. If you go around and let your heart bleed over every one of them, you won’t be any good to anybody. There won’t be anything left of you.”

  She was silent for so long that he thought she was considering his advice. Then her gaze found his. “And what would that matter? There’s nobody else who needs anything I have to give.”

  He had wanted a reaction; he had wanted distance. But when she got up and started toward the house clutching her ragged bouquet of dandelions, he cursed his own selfishness and insensitivity. He adored her; he had since the moment she had sat at the best table at a restaurant called La Scala and stared longingly at him with her dreamy, silky-lashed eyes. He had known that night that they would have a life together, a life full of ups and downs and sinfully acute pleasure.

  He remembered the afternoon that life had really started. He had no desire to wallow in the memory, but it seemed he was powerless to stop himself from anything self-destructive today. As Tinkerbelle’s kittens romped in the long grass, he sank back with his head pillowed in his hands and watched the sun descend.

  Chapter Four

  SAMANTHA WHITEHURST, BLUE-BLOODED, hot-blooded and possibly his. Joe had thought of nothing but Sam all morning as he fried eggs and flipped pancakes. He had seen her image in the shining chrome of the coffee-shop toaster, in incandescent soap bubbles and shimmering steam clouds. After only a few short weeks he knew her so well that he could see Sam in anything.

  She still looked away sometimes when she talked to him, as if she was afraid he might think she was too silly or not quite bright enough for a Bryn Mawr coed. He loved it when she turned her head and cast her sapphire gaze to the ground. He loved her profile, the graceful curve of her chin, the subtle lift of her eyebrows, the way her pale skin stretched over bones sculpted to perfection by a hundred years of scrupulous Anglo-Saxon breeding.

  Unfortunately there was nothing about Sam he didn’t love. Not the touch of shyness, the sophisticated reserve, the way she fought against the passion that threatened to overwhelm them both. In the two months since he’d met her Joe had found nothing about Samantha Whitehurst that didn’t make his blood sing and the most masculine part of him swell with longing.

  Today he carried flowers to their meeting place. She deserved pale, perfect hothouse roses. He had settled for brilliant red and yellow zinnias, orange marigolds, deep purple heliotrope so fragrant and feminine that it almost embarrassed him to hold it in his hands. On his way to work that morning he had picked the flowers in three different yards, choosing only those blossoms that had nodded at him between fence posts. He’d taken a second, but no more, to rationalize his theft. The flowers had been doomed to be crushed by the next pedestrian.

  Samantha was twenty-one, but the meeting place they had arranged was not her home. Her parents knew that she was seeing him, and in their few face-to-face encounters with Joe since La Scala, they had been coldly polite. It was he, not Sam, who had asked that she meet him somewhere away from the ice shower that was Kathryn and Fischer’s warmest welcome.

  He would have braved anything for her, stood up to any dignitary or defended her against the worst dragons of Chevy Chase. But he couldn’t stand to see what Sam’s parents did to her self-esteem. When she was with him, she was funny, bright and passionate, with only the occasional endearing moment of shyness or uncertainty. When she was with her parents, each moment was a fight for dignity. It was a battle she would never win until the outcome no longer mattered to her. In the meantime he didn’t want to watch.

  He crossed the street against the light, darting with city aplomb between honking cars. The afternoon was already scorching, with humidity like descending dew. The temperature was no hotter than his thoughts or the blood coursing through his veins. He had only to think of Sam these days and he was no different than a stag in rut.

  He spied her hiding behind a tree at the east end of the pocket park where they had agreed to have lunch. He wished he could afford to take her to one of the city’s best restaurants, to lavish champagne and the finest cuisine on her, fill her hands with diamonds and roses and her ears with the strains of a string quartet.

  Unfortunately sandwiches, cola and the trash-strewn grass of a downtown park were more his speed. The restaurant that had hired him after his dismissal from La Scala was not in Georgetown, and not the trendiest hot spot. He was lucky if his tips covered his rent. Last week he’d begun to work the morning shift as a short-order cook at a downtown coffee shop so he could save some money.

  He approached the tree as if he didn’t know she was there. He whistled off-key—the only way he knew how—then sidestepped and trapped her neatly between his body and the tree.

  The part of him touching her responded immediately. He edged away and tried to joke. “Mine at last, me proud beauty. Scream if you must, but it will do you little good.” He fondled a nonexistent mustache.

  “You’ve never heard me scream.”

  He couldn’t help himself. He moved a little closer again. “But I have heard you moan.”

  She blushed, something she did with regularity and intensity. He loved to watch the color wash over her cheeks and creep up her neck. Usually she averted her eyes, too, but today her gaze was fastened on his. “Not as much as you’d like me to, I bet.”

  “That goes without saying.” He kissed her then because he couldn’t wait any longer. Her lips warmed to his immediately. He felt her body warming, too, warming and clinging and moving in an age-old rhythm to the beat of his. He thought he was dying.

  When he finally pulled back, her lips were an unnatural red and her eyes were clouded with desire. “I thought we were just having lunch.”

  “I do everything with passion.”

  “I can’t speak to that. There are some things I haven’t seen you do.”

  He smiled, a lazy, self-assured grin that covered up the way his heart had just dropped to his kneecaps. “Name the time and place.”

  “Now. At your room.”

  He stared at her, digging deep for the humor in her offer. “Before lunch?”

  “I’ve been eating for twenty-one years. There are other things I’ve never done.”

  He touched the knuckles of one hand to her cheek. Her skin was as smooth and soft as the petals of the bouquet he hadn’t yet given her. He traced the curve of her lips with his thumb as he watched the expression in her eyes. He wondered if she could feel his hand tremble. He wondered if she knew how much he wanted to pull her to the grass right here in front of office workers, homeless men and a trio of small children playing in a flower bed.

  “I don’t think so,” he said at last.

  “Why not?”

  He straightened and moved away so he could hold the flowers out to her. They were a barrier of sorts. He needed armor. “I’m a good Catholic boy. I drink, but not much. I don’t smoke and I don’t do drugs. I don’t want any hopeless addictions. And the first time you climb into my bed, that’s what you become.”

  She stared at him and didn’t raise a hand. “Hopeless?”

  Desire smoked up his voice. Even to his own ears he sounded brusque and unfeeling. “Look at us, Sam. My old man sold salami and pepperoni in a Brooklyn meat market. Yours manipulates the world financial markets. You think you want me now, but one morning you’re going to wake up and realize it’s Italian bread and black coffee every morning for breakfast because that’s all I can afford. And it’s not going to get much better. I’m a teacher, someday maybe I’ll
be an administrator. I’ve never wanted anything different, and I never will. I’d give you anything I could, but that’s not saying much. It’s not saying enough.”

  She slapped the palms of her hands against his shoulders and pushed him. It happened so quickly he stumbled backward. By the time he recovered she was yards away.

  He knew he should let her go, but he caught up with her and grasped her shoulder. “You know I’m right!”

  She whirled. “What about that first night? You said we were going to spend the next twenty-one years together.”

  “I was as drunk as you were, only it was your damned perfect face and body and that innocent smile that had me going!”

  “And now you’re tired of me?”

  He closed his eyes. “No. I’m besotted.” He didn’t know where the word had come from, but it was perfect. He dropped his hand and opened his eyes. “Damn it, I love you. And if I make love to you, it’ll kill me when you see how impossible this is. What else do you want me to say? I love you. I can’t sleep with you because I love you!”

  He watched her expression melt by slow degrees. Then she was laughing. She threw herself into his arms, and he, fool that he was, held her tightly against him, stabbing her back with the wiry stems of zinnias.

  “You can’t sleep with me because you love me? That’s perfect. That’s priceless, Joe. I love you, too! I love you! And I want to sleep with you forever! I don’t care about Italian bread and coffee. And I love you because you teach. I’d hate you if you were a stockbroker or a banker or an investment counselor. We can teach together. We can live together. We can sleep together.” She pushed away so she could see his face. “Let’s sleep together, Joe.”

  Resolve began to disappear. He told himself she was offering herself freely. He told himself that she knew what she was getting into, that he had clearly warned her. He told himself that he would survive if she changed her mind.

  He wouldn’t survive.

  “Not unless you marry me,” he said.

  She stared at him. “Marry?”

  He wasn’t sure where the words had come from, but he knew they were right. “That’s it, Sam. Marriage or nothing. You want me in your bed, you marry me first.”

  “What century is this?”

  He grabbed her shoulders. The flowers fluttered to the ground. “You marry me, or else. That’s it.”

  “You’re going to withhold sex unless this is blessed by a priest?”

  “I’ll settle for a justice of the peace. I can compromise. I can’t wait until you convert.”

  “Until...I convert?”

  “I want us to be a team. I want our kids to see us at Mass together on Sundays. I want you holding my hand when they make their first communion.”

  “Kids?”

  “Kids are part of the package. I want a lot. Little girls with blond hair, boys with black. A laughing, brawling, pack of sassy, mouthy kids. No lonely little princesses in castle towers. Dirty little kids with scraped knees and runny noses.”

  “I don’t know. There’s genetics to think about. We’re bound to have at least one kid with brown hair.”

  He stared at her. Her eyes were laughing. The rest of her face had collapsed into shock.

  “I can’t be what I’m not.” He had to lay it all on the line for her. He knew that this was his only chance because he would never find the courage to do this again. “I won’t be rich, and I can’t be Protestant. I can’t settle for a lifestyle that’s foreign to me. I know I’m asking you for everything and giving you nothing. And I don’t expect you to say yes. I’m just telling you everything so it’ll be easier to say no.”

  “Nothing’s easy to say with you going on and on. Take a deep breath and shut up!”

  He had run dry, anyway. There was nothing left except all the good things—and those would sound like pleas. He could tell her how much he would cherish her, help her, support her. Tell her about a lifetime of stolen bouquets and stolen moments, Italian bread and coffee brought to her in bed, nights spent rocking their babies so that she could get some sleep, days spent thinking of ways to tell her how much he loved her.

  She drew a finger down his cheek. “I don’t care what church we go to, as long as we go together. I don’t care how many children we have, as long as they’re yours. I don’t care how much money you make, as long as I have some say in how we spend it. But I do care that you don’t trust me to love you enough. I care that you don’t see that I want exactly and only what you can give me. You’re not my adolescent rebellion. You’re not some three-bourbon fantasy, Joe. You’re the man I love, the man I’d like to love for the rest of my life if you’ll just stop laying down ultimatums.”

  He wasn’t sure he had heard her right. But in a moment he knew his ears hadn’t betrayed him, because she spoke again.

  “Now,” she said softly, “shall we go to your apartment?”

  His apartment was one room above a paternal uncle’s grocery store on a noisy corner of northwest D.C. that was half an hour’s bus ride away. He spent an hour’s tips on a cab that took ten agonizing minutes to get there, minutes spent in back-seat purgatory.

  They took the steps two at a time. The smells of cabbage from the garbage bin drifted upstairs with the fumes of traffic, but his room had never seemed so welcoming.

  “It should be more special,” he said in the doorway, giving her one more chance to back away.

  “It couldn’t be more special, could it?”

  “Did you mean it when you said there were some things you’d never done?”

  “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  He told himself it didn’t matter, and he knew that it did. Virginity was a standard he hadn’t been able to meet, and he didn’t expect more of Sam than he had expected of himself. But her answer had told him so much about the woman, her fears, her commitments. Most of all it told him about her decision today.

  He clasped her to him and buried his face in her hair. He’d had just enough women to know what the fair sex thought of his sexual prowess, but apparently he’d had too few to get him past this moment. He felt like a virgin, too, a clumsy, bumbling oaf who knew only the most basic features of sex and none of the embellishments. He doubted he would have the skill or control to make this easy for her, much less pleasurable.

  “You should have married me first,” he said, his voice already harsh with desire.

  “Why?”

  “Because then it would be harder to scare you away.”

  She was braver than he. She laughed a little and her hands slid along his spine, fanning out like butterfly wings. “You can’t scare me, Joe. I’ve seen movies. I’ve read books. Even my big, bad Italian stud won’t be any surprise.”

  Judging by the way his body was reacting, he was afraid she was going to be surprised, anyway. He tugged her blouse from under the waistband of her slacks and kneaded her bare skin. She shuddered against him, and shuddered again when he unhooked her bra.

  He had caressed her before, but never with unbridled longing. Always he had kept a part of himself in check with her. Now there was nothing kept in check. He explored her as she stood against him, savored the silky smoothness of her skin, the pillow softness of lush breasts that had seemed so refined and model perfect when covered by clothes.

  She helped him unbutton her blouse, blushing proudly when it was on the floor beside them. He was so overcome with desire that the signals in his brain were hopelessly crossed. He couldn’t taste and touch and see her all at the same time, and one need thwarted another until he thought he might go crazy with longing. He slid his hands under her waistband and eased her pants over her hips. Desire poured—hotter, heavier—through him, pounding in his ears, roaring through his bloodstream until each sense blended into the others.

  He wasn’t sure how they got to the bed. He thought maybe
Sam had led them there, because he wasn’t at all sure that he was capable of independent movement. She unbuttoned his shirt—he knew that much because the aching purity of her hands against his chest was crystal clear. She unzipped his jeans and smoothed his pants over an arousal that should have frightened her witless.

  She gasped when he pulled her naked body tightly against his own, then just as he was gathering control, she pressed herself against him.

  They fell to his bed together. He had just enough sense not to take her immediately. He filled his senses with her scent, his lips with her flesh, his hands with her breasts and the seductive, sensuous curve of her hips. He parted her legs with one knee and she eased them wide apart in invitation.

  Finally he sank into her like a man going home.

  He felt her tense, then relax as he held himself still. He could do that much for her. She was small boned and fragile; he was not. He eased himself slowly deeper, reciting the alphabet, stanzas of poetry from high school, lists he had memorized in catechism class. At last he rose on his forearms to look at her face, and the fragile control he had gained was almost lost.

  She was crying.

  “Sam.” He wanted to cry, too. Worse, so much worse, he wanted desperately to finish what they had started. He wanted to sink into her again and again, and it was only the sight of her tears and a thread of decency that kept him still.

  “Oh, Joe, I love you so much.”

  The thread broke. He gathered her in his arms as he never had another woman. He held her against him so tightly that there was little room for movement. He thrashed against her and felt the answering call of her body. And when his control was exhausted he raised himself higher and filled her with the love he had saved only for her.

  It wasn’t a masterly performance. When it had ended he wasn’t sure that his audience was appreciative. He took her with him when he rolled to his back, afraid that he had disappointed her terribly. He caressed her, traced the curve of her hip with his palm. Then, because he couldn’t wait any longer for the review, he spoke.