purse and I’ll meet you out there.” His grasp on her arms tightened a fraction, then he released her. She watched him walk toward Lexie, then turned to find Mae.
There was definitely something different in his touch tonight. Something in the way he held her and kissed her. Something hot and possessive as if he were reluctant to let her go. She cautioned herself not to read too much into it, but a warm little glow had settled about her heart.
She quickly retrieved her purse and bid Mae and Hugh good-bye. When she walked outside, night had fallen, and the parking lot was illuminated by streetlights. She spotted John leaning his behind against her car. He’d wrapped Lexie in his wool jacket and held her against his chest. His white shirt stood out in the dark parking lot.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she heard him tell Lexie. “You can’t name yourself. Someone else has to start calling you something, and the name just sticks. Do you think Ed Jovanovski chose to call himself ‘Special Ed’?”
“But I want to be ‘The Cat.’ ”
“You can’t be ‘The Cat.’ ” He looked up at Georgeanne and pushed away from the car. “Felix Potvin is ‘The Cat.’”
“Can I be a dog?” Lexie asked, resting her head on his shoulder.
“I don’t think you really want people to call you Lexie ‘The Dog’ Kowalsky, do you?”
Lexie giggled into the side of his neck. “No, but I want to have a name like you do.”
“If you want to be a cat, how about a cheetah? Lexie ‘The Cheetah’ Kowalsky.”
“Okay,” she said through a yawn. “Daddy, do you know why animals don’t play cards in the jungle?”
Georgeanne rolled her eyes and fit her key into the lock.
“Because there are too many cheetahs,” he answered. “You told me that joke about fifty times already.”
“Oh, I forgot.”
“I didn’t think you ever forgot anything.” John chuckled and placed Lexie in the passenger seat. The car’s dome light glistened in his dark hair, and illuminated his blue and red paisley suspenders. “I’ll see you at the hockey game tomorrow night.”
Lexie reached for her seat belt and buckled it. “Give me some sugar, Daddy.” She pursed her lips and waited.
Georgeanne smiled and walked to the driver’s side of the car. The way John cared for Lexie touched a tender spot in her heart. He was a great father, and no matter what happened between Georgeanne and John, she would always love him for loving Lexie.
“Hey, Georgie?” His voice called to her like a warm touch on the chilled night air.
She looked across the roof of the car and into John’s face, partially hidden in nighttime shadows.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Well, home, of course.”
He chuckled deep within his chest. “Don’t you want to give Daddy some sugar?”
Temptation taunted her weak will and self-control. Heck, who was she kidding? Where John was concerned, she had
“Did you just call me stud boy?”
She placed one foot on the doorframe. “It’s an improvement over what I called you last month,” she said, and slipped inside the car. She started the engine, and with John’s laughter filling the night, she drove out of the parking lot.
On the way home, she thought about the difference in him. Her heart wanted to believe it all meant something wonderful, like maybe he’d gotten hit in the head with a hockey puck, and he’d suddenly come to his senses and realized that he couldn’t live without her. But her experiences with John told her different. She knew better than to project her feelings onto him and look for hidden motives. Trying to decipher his every word and touch was nutty. Whenever she let her guard down with him, she always got hurt.
After she put Lexie to bed, Georgeanne hung John’s suit jacket on the back of a kitchen chair and kicked off her shoes. A light rain pattered her windows as she brewed water for a cup of herbal tea. She moved to the chair and smoothed her fingers across the shoulder seam of John’s jacket, recalling exactly how he’d looked standing across the aisle at the church, his blue eyes staring into hers. She remembered the scent of his cologne and the sound of his voice.
Pongo let loose with a string of yapping seconds before the doorbell rang. Georgeanne dropped her hand to her side and scooped up the dog on her way to the entrance. She wasn’t really surprised to find John on her front steps, raindrops glistening in his dark hair.
“I forgot to give you the tickets to tomorrow night’s game,” he said, and held out an envelope.
Georgeanne took the tickets, and against her better judgment, she invited him inside. “I’m making tea. Would you like some?”
“Hot?”
“Yep?”
“Do you have any iced tea?”
“Of course, I’m from Texas.” She walked back into the kitchen and deposited Pongo on the floor. The dog ran over to John and licked his shoe.
“Pongo is getting to be a pretty good watchdog,” she told him as she reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of tea.
“Yeah. I can see that. What would he do if someone broke in, lick the man’s toe?”
Georgeanne laughed and shut the door. “Probably, but he’d bark like mad first. Having Pongo around is better than installing a house alarm. It’s kind of weird, but I feel safer when he’s in the house.” She placed the envelope on the counter and filled a glass.
“Next time I’ll buy you a real dog.” John took a few steps toward her and reached for the tea. “No ice. Thanks.”
“There better not be a next time.”
“There’s always a next time, Georgie,” he said, and raised the glass to his lips, his eyes watching her as he took a long drink.
“Are you sure you don’t want some ice?”
He shook his head and lowered the tea. He sucked moisture from his lips as his gaze slid over her breasts to her thighs, then traveled back up to her face. “That dress has been driving me crazy all day long. It reminds me of that little pink wedding dress you had on the first time I saw you.”
She looked down. “This is nothing like that dress.”
“It’s short and it’s pink.”
“That dress was a lot shorter, strapless, and so tight I couldn’t breathe.”
“I remember.” He smiled and leaned one hip against the counter. “All the way to Copalis, you kept pulling at the top and yanking at the bottom. It was seductive as hell, like an erotic tug-of-war. I kept watching to see which half would win.”
Georgeanne rested one shoulder against the refrigerator, and folded her arms. “I’m surprised you remember all of that. As I recall, you didn’t like me very much.”
“And as I recall, I liked you more than was wise.”
“Only when I was naked. The rest of the time, you were fairly rude.”
He frowned at the tea in his hand, then looked back at her. “I don’t remember it quite that way, but if I was rude to you, it wasn’t personal. My life was a pile of shit back then. I was drinking way too much and doing all I could to ruin my career and myself.” He paused and took a deep breath. “Do you remember when I told you that I was married before?”
“Of course.” How could she possibly forget about DeeDee and Linda?
“Well, what I didn’t tell you was that Linda killed herself. I found her dead in our bathtub. She’d sliced her wrists with a razor blade, and for a lot of years, I blamed myself.”
Shocked speechless, Georgeanne stared at him. She didn’t know what to say or do. Her first impulse was to
