Restless

She stood quietly facing him, the taste of him still ripe in her mouth.

He seemed to be inordinately interested in her lips, his gaze lingering there even as he unfastened the catch on her slacks and pushed the fabric down over her hips along with her panties, skimming his fingers across her bare bottom, where they dipped into the shallow crevice before moving up her back. She shivered. Not from the cold but from the intensity of his expression, combined with his knowing touch.

Then he did something she would never have expected, given his words of the previous evening: he kissed her.

Multi-award-winning, bestselling husband-and-wife duo Lori and Tony Karayianni are the power behind the pen name Tori Carrington. Their more than thirty-five titles include numerous Blaze® mini-series, as well as the ongoing Sofie Metropolis comedic mystery series with another publisher. Visit www.toricarrington.net, www. sofiemetro.com, www.myspace.com/toricarrington and www.millsandboon.com for more information on the couple and their titles.

Restless

By

Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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We dedicate this book to everyone who wrote demanding Gauge’s story. In this increasingly politically correct world it’s nice to know that so many agree that a man as flawed as Patrick Gauge warrants a second look and a happy ending all his own. However unconventional…

And to our editor Brenda Chin, for trusting us to push that envelope ever further.

1

THE WEEK-OLD TEXT MESSAGE read: Gone back 2 Jen. Been nice. Sorry.

Lizzie Gilbred sat on her family-room sofa, clicking the cell phone to reread the message from her boyfriend—scratch that, her ex-boyfriend—Jerry, her thumb hovering over the delete button. It had been seven days. Surely the words were burned forever into her brain by now. She saved the message instead, then sighed and tossed the cell to the leather cushion next to her, where she knew she’d just pick it up again in two minutes.

She took a hefty sip from her wineglass, leaned her elbow against the sofa back and stared out the window at the snow swirling in the yellow security light over her driveway. The weatherman was calling for three inches of the white stuff to fall again tonight, casting a festive glow on the two-week countdown to Christmas.

Blizzard Bill the weatherman’s words, not hers. As far as Lizzie was concerned, they could cancel Christmas this year and she wouldn’t even notice.

She took another sip of her wine, feeling a blink away from jumping out of her skin. She’d returned late from the law offices of Jovavich, Williams, and Brentwood, Attorneys-at-Law, as was usual for a Wednesday, and fought to stick to routine even though she’d felt anything but normal since receiving Jerry’s cold text message goodbye. She’d kicked off her shoes at the door, removed her suit jacket, cranked up the heat, poured herself a glass of her favorite Shiraz, started a fire in the family-room grate, then sat on the rich leather sofa she and Jerry had picked out together. Usually at this point she went through her mail or reviewed the briefs or depositions she’d brought home from the office. Tonight it was a brief she’d had one of the junior attorneys write up for her. But damn if she could make it through a single sentence, much less comprehend the entire ten-page document.

She thought about making herself dinner. She hadn’t had anything since the bagel with jelly she’d half eaten at the office meeting this morning. But she couldn’t seem to drum up the energy to reach for the television remote, much less that required to actually rise from the sofa and go into the kitchen to either heat a frozen dinner or open a can of soup.

So she sat staring out at the snow instead, wondering what her ex-boyfriend, Jerry, and his once-estranged wife, Jenny, were doing right then.

She groaned and rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t thought of Jenny as Jerry’s wife in a long time. More specifically, for the past six months—ever since Jerry had left Jenny and appealed for a legal separation. One that had ended with his surprise text message and virtual disappearance from her life a week ago when she’d come home from work after retrieving the missive to find he’d taken everything he’d had at her house, including the waffle maker he’d bought her for her birthday last month.

What did he want with a freakin’ waffle maker? Had he taken it to Jenny and said the equivalent of, Something for you, honey, to show how serious I am about sharing Sunday-morning waffles for the rest of our lives? Or, See, I even took back every gift I ever bought her.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Because to take back every gift, he’d have had to go back six years, when he and Lizzie were the established couple on the verge of an engagement and Jenny had been the other woman.

God, she couldn’t believe she’d let him do this to her again. Six years ago, it hadn’t been a text message; rather, he’d left a quickly scribbled note on her car windshield, secured by the wiper: “It’s over. Sorry.” With it had been the announcement of Jenny and his engagement from that day’s newspaper.

The cell phone chirped. Lizzie scrambled to pick it up, punching a button and answering.

“Hello?”

“Lizzie?”

She sank against the cushions and pulled the chenille throw up to her neck. Not Jerry.

“Hi, Mom. How are you?”

“Okay, considering.”

Lizzie made a face. Ever since her parents had announced their impending divorce, the War of the Roses Revisited had begun at the Gilbred house. Both of them, it seemed, were all for the separation. But neither was willing to give up the house. So her father had taken up residence in a downstairs guest room, and her mother went about life as if he wasn’t there, up to and including a candlelit dinner with some guy she’d picked up at the country club last month.

Her father had had a fit and nearly clunked the guy in the head with one of his golf clubs, which her mother had tossed into the driveway after he’d taken advantage of an unseasonably warm day and gone out for a few rounds, missing an appointment with their divorce attorneys.

The clubs had gone completely missing the following day and Lizzie had gotten a call from her father asking her to help him find them since he’d had the set specially made. They’d finally hit pay dirt at a Toledo pawnshop, where they found them with an abominably low price tag…until the new owner figured out that they must be worth more and jacked up the price while her father fumed.

But maybe her mother was beginning to come to her senses. Usually she began conversations with whatever outlandish thing her father had done that day. That she was actually quiet and appeared pensive was a positive sign. Wasn’t it?

“How about you? How are you doing?” her mother asked.

“I’m just sitting in front of the fire with a glass of wine.”

“That’s nice, dear. And Jerry? Is he there with you?”

She had yet to tell her mother that she and Jerry were no longer a couple. In all honesty, she had never told her parents that he was still married, even though he was legally separated at the time.

What a tangled web we weave, she thought. “Yes. Yes, he is,” she lied.

“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Well, tell him hello for me.”

“I will.”

Lizzie squinted through the window, making out a shadowy, familiar figure in the falling snow.

Gauge.

She instantly relaxed against the cushions. Her hot tenant of the past four months was walking up her driveway, toward the garage and the apartment above it that he was renting. She craned her neck to see around a large evergreen in order to follow his movements until he disappeared.

The voice at the other end of the line sighed.

“Are you okay?” she asked her mother. “You sound…distracted.”

Could it be that Bonnie Gilbred was rethinking her situation? That the reconciliation Lizzie, her sister, Annie, and brother, Jesse, hoped for was just around the corner? Just in time to make Christmas feel somewhat like Christmas again?

“Me? Yes, yes. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Lizzie nearly dropped the phone when she heard a male roar on her mother’s end. She absently rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes, wanting to hang up yet straining to hear her father’s words.

“What in the hell did you put in this, Bonnie? Are you trying to kill me, for God’s sake? You are, aren’t you? Is it arsenic?”

Her mother’s voice sounded much too joyful. “No, it’s not arsenic, you old fool. I fixed the meat loaf the same way I always fix it. Your taste buds must not be what they once were.”

“Don’t hand me that b.s.!” There was a clatter of plates and then her father cussed a blue streak.

She heard a door slam.

“Mom?” Lizzie said.

“Hmm?”

Apparently Bonnie still had the phone to her ear, but wasn’t much paying attention to the fact that she was having a conversation with her daughter.

“What did you put in the meat loaf?” Lizzie asked.

“Salt. Lots of it.”

Lizzie smiled in spite of the exasperation she felt. “You know Dad’s watching his sodium intake.”

“I know. Why do you think I did it?”

Lizzie rested her head back against the pillow. “So is there a reason you called? I mean, other than wanting someone to witness your evildoing for the night?”

“I’m not doing evil. I cooked him meat loaf.”

“Sure, Mom. Is there anything else?”

She could imagine Bonnie thinking for a moment. “Nope. I figure that about covers everything.”

“Good. Oh, and next time you want a buffer between you and Dad, call Annie,” she said, referring to her younger sister.

“Will do, dear.”

“Good night, Mother.”

“Good night, Lizzie.”

She punched the button to disconnect the call and checked for any missed messages. None. So she read Jerry’s text message before tossing the phone to the sofa again.

God, but she really was a sorry sack, wasn’t she?

A sound drew her attention back to the driveway. Gauge had reappeared. He was wearing the same hooded sweatshirt and denim jacket he’d had on minutes earlier. She thought maybe he was leaving again. Only he wasn’t carrying his guitar case; he was shoveling her walk. She found the action incredibly hot.

All thoughts of her mother, Jerry and her missing waffle maker drifted from her mind. Replaced by ones related to the sexy drifter who had taken up residence in her garage apartment in August.

His name wasn’t really Gauge. Well, his last name was, but his first name was Patrick. Lizzie folded one arm under her chin and took another sip of wine, the alcohol beginning to work its magic by warming her a bit even as she watched Gauge out in the cold.

She didn’t know much about him. Her brother Jesse’s ex-girlfriend, Heidi, had recommended him; Gauge was part owner of the BMC bookstore café downtown where Heidi used to work. He was a musician. A guitar player, if the case he carried and the strumming she’d heard coming from his place when it was warmer were any indication.

Their paths rarely crossed. She found his rent—always cash—stuffed into an envelope in her front-door mail slot on the first of the month, and she made sure that any mail that was delivered for him was slid under his door.

That was basically it.

Well, that and the fact that he was exceedingly hot and she liked watching him come and go, with no particular preference for either, because both front and back views were worthy of a long glance and an even longer sigh.

She put her glass back down on the coffee table. Aside from a very brief crush on the drummer that had played at her senior prom, she’d never gone much for the artistic type. Career-oriented, driven guys were more her thing.

Like Jerry.

She groaned.

Of course, that was probably because she was a bit on the ambitious side herself. A bit? She needed to stop lying to herself. In three short years since graduation, she’d made it to junior partner at the law firm with a full partnership whispered to be in the offing in the not-too-distant future.

Of course, Jerry’s disappearing act wouldn’t help. She’d been counting on taking him to the office party next week to help cement her shot at the partnership slot. With, of course, no mention of his marital status.

Her friend Tabitha had suggested that perhaps she should play at being a lesbian. Lizzie had nearly spewed her iced tea at her over lunch at Georgio’s, her favorite restaurant in downtown Toledo.

“What did you say?”

Tabby had shrugged. “Surely you know that being an unmarried woman of childbearing age hurts your chances of success in the workplace.”

“And acting like a lesbian helps how?” “For one thing, there’s nothing guys like more than imagining a great-looking chick—such as yourself—getting it on with another woman.”

Lizzie had snorted.

“For another, they’d be so preoccupied with the image that they’d forget about your biological clock and the fact that you may get pregnant at any minute.”

“But there are no kids in my immediate future. The partners know that.”

Tabby had given her an eye roll. “Sure. You think they believe you? They know—or think they do—how fickle a woman is. One minute she’ll be spouting off about not wanting children, the next she’ll be pregnant with quads.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lizzie told her friend.

But Tabitha’s advice had made a twisted kind of sense. While she thought she was being treated as an equal at the office, there were small incidents that sometimes left her wondering. Like the men-only golf outings. Or the times she walked into a room full of male colleagues and everyone would go silent.

Then there was Jerry…

He’d been her first love. She had fully expected to spend the rest of her life with him when they’d met in college and immediately hit it off. It had been that sense of unfinished business, and his convincing argument that she was his first love, as well, that had compelled her to let him back into her life.

What a mistake that had been.

Lizzie forced herself off the couch and downed the remaining contents of her wineglass. That was it. She wasn’t going to think about…him, or work or anything anymore for fear that her head might explode.

She craned her neck, watching as Gauge finished the shoveling and headed up the stairs to his place.

No…she shouldn’t. To even consider going over there would be nothing but stupid.

Who was she kidding? At that moment it might very well be the smartest decision she’d made in a very long time.

2

GAUGE BRUSHED the snow from his old cowboy boots and shrugged out of his jacket and sweatshirt, hanging them on the back of a kitchen chair in his small studio apartment. He’d hoped the physical activity of shoveling would help chase away the demons that had been haunting him lately. And it had. But for how long?

He grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table and unscrewed the top, taking a long pull from the whiskey, standing still as it warmed his chest and then swirled outward to his cold extremities.

The apartment was small but nice. He guessed it had probably been renovated in the past year or so. All the appliances and fixtures were new, the furniture unworn and scratch free. Unlike most of the places he was used to staying in when he was out on the road playing with whatever band he’d hooked up with. Or all the motels rooms, shabby apartments and run-down houses he’d shared with his traveling musician father when he was growing up.

Not that he paid much attention to his surroundings. As far as he was concerned, they were just details. And he probably wouldn’t be staying here except for Nina’s involvement. Nina was one of his partners in BMC, a bookstore/music center/café, and she matched him up with Lizzie Gilbred, the sister of Heidi’s ex, when Lizzie had listed the studio for rent.

He rubbed his chin and screwed the top back on the whiskey, putting the bottle on the table. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the place. He supposed it was all right. There was just something odd about living in the good part of town. About parking his beat-up Chevy Camaro at the curb where few cars sat, but those that did were BMWs, Mercedes and Rovers. You’d think that he’d be used to the fluttering of curtains as neighbors watched him come and go, but it bothered him on a fundamental level he was loath to ignore. What did they think—that he was going to break in and rape their women? Kill their children?

He didn’t know the names of any of them. And he’d lived there for nearly four months. Surely there was something abnormal about that?

Since the places he was used to staying in were shabby, the neighborhoods where they were located tended to be on the grungy side. Usually downtown, crowded with other people that looked like him, where no curtains fluttered because there were usually no curtains. And while he might not stay long in any one place, he always left knowing the names of most of the people around him, and could count more than a few of them as friends.

Hell, here he’d maybe talked to his landlady a handful of times. And she only lived thirty feet away in the Tudor-style monstrosity she called a house. From what he could tell, she used all of three rooms: the kitchen, the back room with the fireplace and what he guessed was her bedroom on the second floor.

He could only imagine what her monthly heating bill looked like.

That’s probably why she or any of the other neighbors weren’t home much. They were too busy working to pay the bills that went along with their lifestyle—like astronomical heating bills.

Speaking of heat…

After pushing the arrow and nudging the digital numbers up to sixty-nine degrees on the thermostat, he picked up his acoustic guitar where he’d left it sitting on the edge of the queen-size bed and walked around with it until the baseboard heaters warmed the place. He stopped near the window overlooking the driveway. Already the falling snow was beginning to cover his work. He hit a dissonant chord and automatically adjusted the tension of the wayward string, tuning and testing three times before he was satisfied.

His gaze was drawn to the back of the Tudor where he could see Lizzie Gilbred spilled across the leather sofa in front of the fireplace. He ran his fingers over the guitar strings, playing the distinctive licks of Muddy Waters’s “Going Down Slow,” the sound making the room feel not so empty. There was a time when he might have brought one of the young women who liked his playing home to warm his bed, but not now. Not since he’d come back to Fantasy, determined to forge a different life for himself.

Not since he’d fallen for a woman he’d had no right falling for. A woman he could never have. A woman who was now married to his best friend.

Gauge closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest, his fingers moving as if on their own accord.

There had been times lately when he’d thought maybe returning to Michigan hadn’t been such a great idea. But in his lifetime, the three-year span he’d spent here was the longest he’d spent anywhere. And when he’d left, he’d been even more aware of the hollow loneliness of wandering the country in search of his next gig than he’d ever been before. Partly because he’d gotten a taste of what love, real love, might be like. Mostly because his best friends and business partners, Nina Leonard and Kevin Weber, had been the family he’d never had.

Until he went and mucked things up.

He forced all thought from his mind, giving himself over to the music, feeling the blues wash over him, through him.

A knock at the door.

Gauge opened his eyes, convinced he was hearing things, because it was a sound he hadn’t heard since moving in.

Another knock.

He leaned the guitar against the bed.

He wasn’t sure what he expected when he opened the door. But it sure wasn’t what he found.

Lizzie Gilbred.

Hadn’t he just seen her in her house? What was she doing out in this weather? What was she doing knocking at his door?

She bounced a couple of times, as if cold, looking smaller somehow in the oversize camel-hair coat she wore.

Gauge had always had a deep appreciation of women. He supposed it came from not having had a constant female presence in his life. But the opposite sex never failed to fascinate him. Even if that weren’t the case, Lizzie Gilbred would have made a lasting impression on him. It was more than her golden-blond hair and wide, baby-doll-blue eyes. There was an inherent sexiness to her, and he couldn’t help wondering why she covered it up in her strict business suits and pulledback hairstyles.

He couldn’t help thinking that if she hadn’t been an attorney, she’d have made a great stripper.

“Can I come in?” she asked, intruding on his thoughts.

Probably a bad idea in a long line of bad ideas. Just as he appreciated women, he knew them better than they sometimes knew themselves. And he knew that for whatever reason, Lizzie had decided to distract herself with him.

Then again, his girl-dar had been off a little lately. She could be there to evict him.

Gauge shrugged and moved away from the door. “Seeing as you own the place, I don’t know that I can stop you.”

She stepped inside, quickly closing the door after her. She looked around the apartment and then at him. “Am I interrupting something?”

Gauge tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. Definitely there to distract herself.

Where once the thought might have mildly amused him, now he was vaguely disappointed. But never let it be said that he ever turned a great-looking woman away from his bed. And Lizzie was absolutely stunning. She’d let her coat hang open and he appreciated the snug black cashmere sweater and clingy black pants she wore.

“Am I late with the rent?” he asked.

She smiled. “No. I just thought I’d come up to thank you for shoveling the snow.”

“Mmm.”

“May I?” she asked, indicating her coat.

“Be my guest.”

She shrugged out of the heavy wool coat and draped it over the back of the same chair that held his jacket. She eyed the bottle on the table.

Gauge watched her closely. He knew she was an attorney and that she worked hard. She drove a convertible Audi that was wasted during Michigan’s harsh winters. He guessed that her boyfriend was similarly ambitious with his late-model Porsche and fancy suits.

He’d thought it odd that he hadn’t seen the jerk’s car for the past week. He’d figured maybe the guy had gone on a business trip. Apparently he’d been wrong.

“You want something to drink?” he asked.

“Sounds good.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Whatever you’re having is fine.”

He wasn’t entirely sure that was a good idea, but hell, it had been a while. And though he was able to resist tempting any women home, having one offer herself up on his doorstep…well, he was but a man, after all. And it was obvious that’s what Lizzie was counting on.