Lass Small - My House Or Yours?

There were no notches. There had been no other man. She still hadn’t gotten over her love for Chad. She hadn’t even been tempted to try another man.

But she was ready for Chad.

She met him halfway and she loved him.

He had the newly purchased condoms and he was careful of her as he’d always been. He was gentle and kind with his ravening hunger for her. He controlled himself, but his breaths were harsh and his low moans were exquisitely thrilling. He loved her as he always had.

And it was not enough.

They had a night of love. Her hair was like driedout, raveled rope. So was his. Her body was well used. So was his.

She was limp and contented. She had forgotten the pleasure, the ecstasy, the thrill of being with him, of being part of him, of making love with him.

And he groaned, “Why did you leave me?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “You were never there.”

Agonized, he protested earnestly, “I slept with you every night.”

“But the days were long and empty.”

“People live all their lives with other people and see them seldom. Why did you need to be with me all the time?”

“I loved you.”

He frowned at her. “To need constant attention like that isn’t healthy.”

“Probably not.” She looked down at the sheet as she drew it up over her. She felt isolated. Just thinking of it all chilled her. It was past. How could she still be affected by those sad, empty times?

Dallas and Fort Worth are separate big cities and different from one another. Dallas is glitzy and elegant while Fort Worth keeps an iron lock on being Western. There was a time when Fort Worth had been the gathering center for shipping cattle by train. Trucks had changed that.

The building of the shared airport had been a fascinating merger for the cities. Their sprawling populations were reaching out to occupy the area between the cities, and the shared airport was the obvious solution. It had not been easy for Dallas to share it with a “lesser” neighbor who was deliberately lacking in elegance.

Necessity makes for strange bedfellows.

Just as did the meeting between Jo and Chad.

Jo would look at Chad eating breakfast across the table in their room and she was stunned that she was with him again.

What were the chances of running into someone known in an airport? Actually, it wasn’t that unusual. But an ex-husband?

Incredible.

Of course, if one was a film star or multimarried perhaps, but Jo Morris? Ridiculous.

Chad was in the shower when Jo was startled by the discreet knock on their door. A knock? Who could possibly know they were there?

In their shared room, only one bed was rumpled and askew.

But hotels no longer had house detectives who checked on morals.

She squinted at her traveling clock and it was only seven-thirty. Jo inquired as to who was there. With the reply that it was breakfast, she put on her raincoat before she opened the door.

The discreet waiter didn’t even gasp at her dishabille. He conducted himself as if every person in the hotel was barefooted and wearing a raincoat in their room. She’d obviously been in some sort of rain because her hair was a tangled mess.

He said not a word but went straight to his work. He set the small table adroitly and with some skilled flourish.

She gave him a guilty-conscience tip.

He grinned as he thanked her.

She did not make eye contact. Her glances darted around and she blushed scarlet. But she was seriousfaced and silent.

With the size of the tip, he felt he had to tidy up a bit. And he moved chairs, retrieved and plumped night-discarded pillows. Did he emphasize that chore?

Jo moved her hands and said, “Never mind.”

The waiter grinned big and friendly before he reluctantly left.

She knew full well that the waiter thought she was a loose and easy woman. She was there in one of the giveaway rooms that cost outrageously but less than the others. And she’d come from the overloaded airport with a stranger. HARLOT must be written across her forehead in purple on the red blush that suffused her entire face.

Closing the door again, Jo scowled at the torn-up bed with its plumped pillows. Two of the pillows had been taken from the floor. Just as they had some years ago. She and Chad had shared one pillow. That was a clue right there. Then too, the other bed hadn’t been touched. How obvious.

There is nothing like a guilty conscience to rattle a seemingly free woman.

She straightened. She would never see the waiter again. She would leave this place. She would go back to her life and this would be a forgotten incident.

Chad came out of the bathroom, gloriously naked, drying his hair with a rough towel. He grinned at her and said, “I’m clean. Let’s roll around so that I can smell you instead of just me.”

She looked back at him in appalled shock.

He noted she was wearing a raincoat, over nothing, and he lifted his eyebrows a trifle as he smiled. “It’s raining inside?”

“That could be what the waiter thought.”

He then noted the set table. He said, “Great. We can eat first.”

She replied stiffly. “I believe I shall shower.”

“No. Don’t. You have such a wonderful woman smell.”

“I…smell?”

And he made savoring sounds as he tried to hold her. He rooted his nose around her throat and tried to loosen the tightly tied coat belt. He inquired, “Going out?”

“I had to put something on to open the door.”

“Good thinking.”

“He thinks I’m a harlot.”

Chad lifted his head back and looked at her. “He said that?”

“No. He smiled in that way.”

“What way?”

“As if he knew what we’d been doing.”

Chad looked at the one messed-up bed and then he looked back at his ex-wife. “A logical conclusion. The pillows are back where they belong.”

“He did that.”

Chad tried not to grin too widely. “Tonight we’ll mess up the other bed first.”

“I am embarrassed.”

He was surprised by her. “We’re married!”

“We are not. We are divorced!”

“Ah, that doesn’t mean anything to a couple. It’s just a technicality. We’re legal.”

“I believe you are tilted in your thinking.”

He laughed in a good throat chuckle. “You’ve always tilted me, one way or another. I had to leave the house so that you could get some rest.”

“You gave all your attention to the college, you just used my body now and then.”

“You’re lucky I had the distraction of a commitment to the college, or you would have never gotten out of bed at all!”

She dismissed him. “You say that after I’ve been gone for four years—”

“Just over three years.”

She confronted the stickler and corrected him. “It is almost four. I’m twenty-eight.”

He slid a salacious glance down her body. “You’ve held together quite well.”

She leveled a look at him that showed him her adult maturity and tolerance.

She went to her suitcase, removed a pair of slacks and underwear, then chose a blouse.

“We’ll swim after we’ve breakfasted and read the paper.”

She looked up at him. She did want to swim. She took out pajamas and went to the bath, ignoring his very earnest protests.

She returned wearing the green silk pajamas for the first time, and was additionally wrapped in a cover-up of dark blue. She had a towel around her head.

He put down the paper and served her breakfast from the insulated pots.

There was hot cereal, fruit, remarkably sinful iced muffins, milk, tea and sugar mints. He had coffee. He hadn’t forgotten any of her needs.

She put the fruit on the cereal, butter and jam on the muffins, and she ate every bite.