A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father: A Marriage-Minded Man / From Friend to Father

“You get bombed and puke all over my rug?”

Tess shook her head. Decided maybe she shouldn’t do that again. “I didn’t even throw up when I was pregnant,” she said, which made her sad, thinking about her babies and how much she loved them and how hard it was when they were off with their father, even though that only happened maybe once a month, if that, and that here she was, sitting in Eli Garrett’s kitchen, drinking his beer and not even thinking about them. Except she was, because she was always thinking about her babies.

She thought maybe she was getting a little…confused.

Nothing another beer couldn’t fix, right?

“Please,” she said, and Eli took her glass, pouring another beer into it, God bless his baaaaad self.

“Need any help?” Eli heard Tess ask when he went to clear the table shortly after they’d finished their meal.

“Nope. All under control. Soon as I give ’em a rinse, I’ll run you home. If you’re ready.”

She gave him a slightly guarded smile, then nodded. “Sure thing,” she said, getting to her feet. More or less steadily, he was relieved to note. Not that she was exactly sober—feeling no pain was the phrase that came to mind—but thankfully she’d stopped well short of stupid drunk. Eli’d been with his share of stupid drunk women over the years; whatever amusement he’d at one time found in those sorts of shenanigans had long since faded. And besides, Tess getting plastered…just didn’t seem right.

In any case, he got the feeling the beer had only been an excuse to let go—which something told him she hadn’t done in a very long while. Not that she’d gone all maudlin on him or anything; mostly, they talked about her kids, Miguel and Julia—pronounced with an H instead of a J—and his recently married and very much younger brother, Jesse, and his wife, Rachel, how they were dealing with being new parents, stuff like that. In fact, whenever Eli’d tried to steer the conversation in Tess’s direction, she’d steer it right back.

Because, okay, he was curious about what had happened between her and Enrique, who’d been deployed overseas for most of their marriage. Maybe more than curious—he’d watched his older brother, Silas, go through a nasty divorce, knew how hard it was. Especially on the good ones. Like his brother. Or Tess.

Still, the protective feelings boiling up inside him went way beyond your garden-variety gee-I-hope-she’s-okay concern. What did it matter to him whether she got drunk or not? Or made a fool of herself?

So why, as he stood at the sink, half watching her walk into his living room with her hands tucked into her jacket’s front pouch, did he feel compelled to make sure she wasn’t gonna keel over or anything?

“Everything okay in there?” he called over.

Tess nodded. A little too vigorously. “I like what you’ve done here.”

Stacking the plates in the dishwasher, he laughed. “I think ‘done’ might be overstating it. Unless you consider shoving around a bunch of castoffs and thrift store junk so I can walk through the room without injuring myself ‘done.’”

“It’s…” She gave him a puzzled look over her shoulder. “You.”

“Lot to be said for not having to consider anybody else’s opinion.” The dishwasher shut, he was about to say, “Ready?” when she spun around and collapsed into the couch, an old beige corduroy number that had been in his parents’ family room. The fluff was worn off in some places, and the cushions sagged from being crushed by a whole bunch of butts over the years, but it was still comfortable as hell—

“What’s wrong?” he said when Tess leaned into the cushions, her eyes closed.

“Probably shouldn’t’ve done that spinning thing.”

“You gonna be sick?”

She laughed softly. “Told you. I don’t do that.”

“Not even when you get stomach flu?”

“Nope. And by the way, technically that’s not the flu.”

“Technically, I don’t much care what it’s called. And how do you not throw up?”

“Sheer willpower,” she said, except the words seemed a little frayed around the edges. Eli crossed his arms, trying not to think how soft and vulnerable she looked, all sunk into those deep cushions with her eyes closed like that. “Comfy?”

“As comfy as one can be when your brain’s on the puree setting.”

“So you are drunk.”

“Maybe. A little.” Finally, she opened her eyes, frowning at him. “I didn’t expect you to be…nice.”

Eli frowned. “I’m always nice—”

“I mean really nice.”

“What that’s supposed to mean?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Tess snuggled farther into the corner of the sofa, letting out a shriek when the mass of fur that owned the place jumped up onto the sofa arm beside her. “Dear God—what’s that?”

“A cat. What’s it look like?”

“Something from a ’50s horror movie. After the radiation experiment went horribly wrong. Wait—” She shifted her frown to Eli. “You have a cat?”

“Got a problem with that?”

“Geez, touchy much?” she said, then looked at the cat again. Leaning back a little. “He’s bigger than my two-year-old.”

“She. And big is a definite advantage when you live in the woods. Chased a bear up a tree once.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Wanna see the video?”

“No, I’ll take your word for it. Does she have a name?”

She would have to ask. Warmth prickled his cheeks. “Maybelline.”

Tess’s wide-eyed gaze flew to his; a moment later, she snorted out a very unladylike laugh. “You’re not serious.”

“I didn’t name her, okay? Some lady we were working for, it had been her mother’s cat, only the old lady died and her daughter was allergic. Damn thing glommed on to me from the moment I walked into her house, so she asked me if I wanted her.”

“And you actually said yes.”

“She’d already asked, like, ten people. It was me or the pound. Anyway, look at that face—how could I say no to that face?”

Another laugh. “And you actually call her Maybelline?”

“Actually, I call her Belly. For obvious reasons.”

Sitting on the arm of the sofa and purring loud enough to rattle skulls in a five-mile radius, Belly shot an offended look in Eli’s direction, although with one eye partly closed and her snaggleteeth on full display the effect was kinda lost. One ear was half-bitten off—Eli didn’t want to know what she’d tangled with, or what condition she’d left the other guy in—and it’d been a while since she’d let him brush out the knots in her fur. He supposed maybe she didn’t give the best first impression.

Now, sensing some lovin’ in the offing, she jumped down and trotted over to Eli, her saggy belly swaying from side to side. In one swipe, Belly coated the bottom of his jeans with a half inch of cat fur. Eli scooped her up to roughly scratch under her chin, getting her motor going full throttle. Cat did love her chin rubs.

“You. With a cat. Unbelievable.” Tess grinned, for a second looking almost like the girl he used to know. A moment later, though, she swiped the red Netflix envelope off the end table next to her, slipping out the sleeved disk. “Bond, huh?” she said, and Eli thought, Why are you still here?

Because she was making him feel maybe not so protective, which was in turn making him twitchy. He scratched the cat harder.

“Not just Bond. Craig’s Bond.”

“I’m a Brosnan girl, myself.”

“Get out.” Please.

“What can I say?” she said, pushing herself to her feet. “I like suave…oh, hell—”

Cat went flying when Eli lunged forward to catch Tess as her knees buckled. She molded herself to his chest—what the hell?—only to immediately shove away again, shaking her head. Good call.

“You need to sit,” he said, trying to make her sit.

“I don’t need to sit. I’m fine, I’m—”

Tears bloomed in her eyes before she pushed past him to the door. Except she wobbled again, crashing into an armchair.

“For God’s sake, Tess—!”

She wheeled on him. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve watched a movie with another adult?”

That thud he heard in his head would be any hope of getting her out of his house before one of them did something stupid. Because clearly whatever she’d been keeping locked up inside her was only now lurching to the surface. And, since she was there to begin with at his insistence, dumping her now probably wouldn’t be cool.

Yeah, this would be a good time for the evil, scum-sucking side of his personality to kick in. If he’d had one. “You’re more than welcome to stay and watch—”

“That’s not the point!” Tess cried, charging him. Flailing a bit. “The point is…” She stopped, shaking her head, looking a little wild-eyed. “The point is, that there is no point! To any of it!”

She’d started pacing his living room like she was fixing to lift off any moment. Maybe not the best time to interrupt the flow.

“You know what I felt when Ricky said he wanted a divorce? Relief. That I could finally stop holding my breath, because it was over. He was officially no longer my responsibility! No more lying awake at night, worrying…no more wondering when he’d be home, if he’d even make it home…no more going around with a fake smile plastered across my face, pretending that everything was just hunky-dory when all I wanted to do was hit something, somebody, only to find out he’d fallen out of love with me! All that worrying for nothing, Eli! Nothing!”

She closed in on him, fists raised; although she couldn’t have hurt him if she tried, Eli grabbed her wrists, then wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight as all hell broke loose, as she railed against her husband for leaving her and the kids for months on end, for coming back from Iraq only to leave her for good. Then, somehow, they were on the couch, and he was holding her in his lap—just trying to comfort her, stop the emotional hemorrhage—when he all of a sudden realized they were kissing, seriously kissing with tongue and everything, and while on one level he was enjoying it and all, in the back of his mind he thought, Dude—seriously messed up.

And wasn’t now a helluva time for the growing-up thing to kick in?

So he wrenched their mouths apart and said, “This is just you being drunk and upset,” and she said, “Yeah, so?” and planted another one on him, and blood rushed hither and yon, doing what rushing blood will do, and it occurred to him watching movies wasn’t all Tess hadn’t done with another adult in a long time.

Especially when she mumbled, “Please tell me you’ve got condoms.”

Chapter Two

With more regret than the world would ever know, Eli put some distance—not enough, but some—between him and the woman currently responsible for an erection so hard his ears were ringing.

“Honey—you don’t really want this.”

Her answer to that was to unzip her running suit top and struggle out of it, tossing it over her shoulder, her exercise bra no match for her nipples’ attempts to punch right through the stretchy fabric. “And if you don’t touch my breasts within the next two seconds, I may have to kill you.” When Eli shook his head, she clamped her hands around his face and stared him right in the eye. “They hurt, Eli. I hurt—”

“And you’re going to hurt ten times worse if we do this.” She smacked his shoulder. “What the hell—?”

“Since when do you become honorable?” she said, smacking him again, although her hundred pounds—if that—were barely gonna make an impression on his one-eighty. “Geez, Eli—you sleep with anything with hooters! So how come you choose now to rustle up some scruples?”

She gasped when he grabbed her wrists, jerking her into silence. Bringing their faces within kissing distance again, he ground out, “I do not, and never have, slept with every woman who came on to me. And I sure as hell am not gonna take advantage of somebody who’s only looking for a little stress relief!”

Her swollen mouth set, Tess locked gazes with him for a long moment, then reached up and took off her bra. Eli groaned. And stared. What? Like he was gonna look away? Then he frowned.

“They’re bigger.”

“Yeah, two kids’ll do that. So. You got condoms or what?”

“Yeah, I got condoms. But you hate me.”

That seemed to sober her for a moment. Then, smiling, she thrust her hands through his hair and kissed him again, open-mouthed and hot and slow and thorough, and his scruples packed up their little bags and began to shuffle off, sighing. Day-um, the woman could kiss. Then she finally came up for air, pressed her forehead to his and ground certain eager body parts to his equally eager body parts and said, panting, “I’m drunk and mad and horny and half-naked. Could you please just shut up and go with the flow here?” And it occurred to him that he’d hurt her a lot more by rejecting her than simply doing what she wanted.

At least, that’s the story he was going with.

So he wound her more tightly around him and stood, carrying her into the bedroom, not even bothering to pull back the covers before he dropped her on the bed and ripped off her bicycle shorts and cotton panties, realizing he was more than a little pissed off himself as he stripped off his own clothes and yanked open the dresser drawer.

“So, you want me to just—”

“Yes,” she hissed, getting to her knees to yank him onto the bed. Snatching the condom out of his hand, she shoved him on his back, straddling him, sheathing him. A moment later they were joined, her long nails gouging his shoulders as she rode him, tears streaming down her cheeks, splashing onto Eli’s chest, making him madder still. He thrust up into her, hard, no finesse, making her moan and hiss and cry out.

Then he lifted her up and off, making her moan again—from distress, most likely—only to flip her onto her back and plunge into her…and she clutched the wrinkled bedspread in her fists and arched into him, whimpering, her lower lip caught between her teeth a moment before she crossed her ankles at the small of his back and drove him higher, tighter, even though he knew he must be hurting her, if it’d been a year or more since she’d—

She sank her teeth into his neck, not hard enough to draw blood—he didn’t think—but hard enough to make him jerk, then she licked the spot and blew on it, and he thought he’d lose his mind even as he did lose control, driving into her over and over and over until she screamed, clutching at his back as she tried to get on top of the orgasm.

But damned if he would let her, pushing her up, up, up until she had to curl forward to keep from banging into the headboard, shuddering his own release into her interminably pulsing warmth.

Afterward, annoyed, he collapsed on top of her, panting, fully expecting her to shove him off, get up, get dressed and demand he take her home. Instead she wrapped herself around him, all sweaty and smelling of woodsmoke and girly shampoo and sex, and whispered, her teeth grazing his earlobe, “How long until you’re ready again?”

Floored, Eli pushed back enough to look at her. “You’re not serious?”

“Oh, honey,” she said, dragging her nails down his arms, making him shudder, making things stir he wouldn’t’ve thought anywhere near ready to stir again, “I’m just getting started.”

“Tess…you don’t—”

Her fingers clamped around his arms, stopping him, her expression gone from postorgasmic mellow to oh-no-you-don’t in two seconds flat. “Yes. I do.” Her eyes glittered. “Burn this feeling out of me, Eli. Please.”

Despite himself, his heart flipped over at the agony in those shiny eyes, at the soul-deep ache she had no idea how to ease. For some people—like his brother, like Tess—the end of a marriage was every bit as devastating as an actual death. But when he shifted to stroke his thumbs along her temples, she struck his hands away.

“No. I don’t want you to make love to me.”

His hands flat on either side of her head, Eli frowned at her. “You just want sex?”

“I just want sex.”

“You just want me to make you feel good, is that right?’

“You got a problem with that?” she said, brows arched.

“Fine,” he said, not sure why he was still pissed. “There any ground rules I should know about?”

Her pupils darkened. “None. I trust you.”

“And why in the hell would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, tearing up once more. Damn. An instant later, Mad Tess was back. “But just for a moment, you made me…forget.” Her hands clamped around his face, she pushed against him, a tight smile pulling at her mouth when he responded. “Make me forget again.”

Eli reached for another condom, thinking tonight was giving a whole ’nother dimension to that Good Samaritan thing.

Nothing, Tess thought as she jerked awake the next morning, starts a girl’s day out right like waking up to a Freddy Krueger scalp massage.

Swearing, she detached Maybelline—who hissed back—and bolted upright, immediately realizing that precipitous changes in altitude were to be avoided at all costs for the foreseeable future. And that she was naked in Eli Garrett’s bed.

And nope, there was no “Did we…?” about this. Because they had. Oh, yes, indeedy, they had. Several times, in fact, before her anger was spent and many, many moons’ worth of sexual frustration exorcised.

Groaning, Tess yanked the top blanket out from underneath the cat, stomped to the bathroom and did her thing, only to scream when she returned to the bedroom to find Eli standing there, dimples at a hundred percent, her sports bra dangling from one hand.

Growling, she snatched it out of his hand, scanning the room for the rest of her clothes. “That blanket sure looks better on you than it does on me,” she heard behind her. As she irritably pondered how many times he’d undoubtedly used that line, he added, “Sleep well?”

She had, actually. Like the dead. “Guess I dozed off,” she muttered, mincing past him to look on the other side of the bed.

“Honey, you passed out.”

“I did not!” she said, twisting around, the velvety blanket’s rasping across her nipples instantly hardening them. Or maybe that was Eli’s knowing smirk.

“Like you would’ve voluntarily spent the night in my bed?”

Okay, there was that, she thought, clumsily dropping to her knees to look under the bed. Her head rebelled. As did her stomach. Especially when the damn cat decided to go after her bare toes. Yelping, Tess again jerked upright, catching her head in one palm before it rolled off her neck. Although the cat would probably love it. A new toy to bat around the room, yay.

Still cradling her head, she carefully hauled herself up to sit on the edge of the bed, wishing Eli would take pity on her and leave her to wallow in her mortification alone. But no.

Her stomach boinged when she felt the mattress shift. “Touch me and die.”

And of course, that brought a warm, gentle palm to the top of her head. “Your head hurt?” Eli said softly, and many unkind thoughts leaped to her brain, mostly along the lines of how desperately she wanted Eli to not be kind. Or warm. Or gentle. Not now, at least. Last night had been another story. Last night had been—

“Oh, they haven’t invented a word for how my head feels right now,” she muttered. Just like there was no word for women who finagle their high school exes into pity sex. No, wait—actually, there were several. None of them flattering.

Her cell phone rang.

From her jacket pocket.

In, apparently, the living room.

She glared at Eli. Who kept on grinning. “Would you like me to get that for you?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

And during the approximately nine seconds he was gone, Tess found and put on the rest of her clothes, scattered willy-nilly about the room though they were. Eli returned and handed her the phone. And her jacket. Tess’s heart nearly stopped when she saw Enrique’s cell number.

“Everything okay?” she barked when he answered.

“Just what I was gonna ask you. Since you’re not here.”

Tess paused. “‘Here’ being…?”

“The house. Where the hell are you? When you didn’t answer your phone I called your aunt. She’s probably on her way over already.”

Was there an award for Worst Morning After Ever? ’Cause Tess was at least a shoo-in for the finals. “You’re supposed to have the kids until tonight—”

“Julia was up half the night, I think she missed you. So I figured I may as well bring ’em back since they were so miserable.”

“They?”

“Okay, Micky, maybe not so much. But I’m not gonna drive up there and back twice in one day, am I?”

“For God’s sake, Enrique—you only see them one weekend a month as it is—”

“Yeah, I know, I’m disappointed, too. So where are you?”

“At…a friend’s. Since I thought I had the day to myself.”

Turning, Tess caught Eli’s frown. “I’ll be home soon,” she muttered, dialing Thea Griego’s number when Eli stomped off.

And it’s a beautiful day in Bozoland, she thought as Thea picked up, her “Tess? What’s wrong?” delivered in the groggy voice of the mother of a one-year-old still not entirely down with the concept of sleeping through the night.

“Please tell me I didn’t just wake you up.”

“For you to do that, I’d’ve had to have been—” Thea yawned “—asleep.” In the background, little Jonny happily squawked. “And you’re calling when the sun’s not even up yet, why?”

“Omigod, it isn’t, is it?” Tess said, realizing that until that very moment, she hadn’t thought her embarrassment level could spike any higher. She’d been wrong. “I have a huge favor to ask,” she whispered. “First off, I need you to swear to anyone who might ask that I was at your place last night.”

Silence. “Why? You kill somebody?”

“Worse,” Tess muttered. “So will you?”

“Long as it doesn’t involve the word ‘accessory’ in some way, sure, but—”

“And is there any way you could come pick me up and take me back home?”

More silence. “Um…pick you up from where?”

Somehow Tess doubted Thea’d buy her having spent the night by the side of the road. “Eli Garrett’s.”

“Lord, now I know I’m not awake yet. I could’ve sworn you said—”

“I did.”

That got a far-too-gleeful cackle. “This just keeps gettin’ better and better.”

“Can you pick me up or not?”

“Do I have to put on makeup?”

“God, no.”

“Then I’ll be there in a few. Hang tight, honey.”

Tess had no sooner shut her phone than she heard behind her, “I’m not good enough to take you home?”

She turned. And while Eli’s insouciant smile and slouch against the door frame with his hands in his pockets might’ve said Like I give a damn, the sting of hurt in his eyes told another story entirely. What the hell?

“Oh, right,” Tess said, dropping onto the edge of the embarrassingly rumpled bed to lace up her running shoes. “Like there’d be any way to explain to Enrique why you were bringing me home at the crack of dawn.”

“He’s there?”

“Brought the kids back early, yup.” Slapping her hands on her thighs, she looked up. “Lucky me.”

“Guess that makes two of us,” he said, and Tess almost—almost—cringed at the bitterness spiking his words. “Because God knows I’m the last person you’d want to be associated with—”

“And don’t even go there,” Tess said, getting to her feet. “This isn’t about you. It’s about me not having the energy to deal with Ricky this early in the morning. It’s also about me feeling like an idiot. Not because I slept with you, but because I…fell apart—”

He grinned. Not one of his best, but bright enough. “Several times, as I recall.”

“Shut up,” Tess said, her face flaming, her nether regions tingling. Damn them. Fighting the urge to bury her face in her hands, she took a deep breath. “I used you, Eli. And I feel like crap about it.”

His grin died. “And didn’t I tell you this is exactly how you’d feel this morning? Although when you first came at me I sincerely doubted you’d be around for longer than twenty minutes—”