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Relax? Oh, sure. Relax while his thumbs were nestling in the grooves at the tops of her thighs. How could she relax when her senses were spinning out of control? For the life of her she couldn’t remember why it had seemed like a bad idea to get involved with him.
But it was, and later the reason would come to her. In the meantime, she had to put space between them. She wouldn’t be able to breathe normally until she did. When Steve’s car rolled to a halt in Fran’s driveway, Sunny grappled for the door handle and all but tumbled out when the door came open.
For the next hour she was afforded that coveted breathing space. She and Fran stayed busy in the kitchen stacking sandwiches and taking drink orders while the other adults, including Ty, helped corral the little girls, who were too excited about the wedding to be well behaved.
Both Fran’s parents and Steve’s bade them an early good-night, knowing they would have to rest up because they were dividing the girls between them during the week of the coming honeymoon.
“I’ve got to get them settled down for bed,” Fran said wearily, after sending the two youngsters upstairs.
“I’ll help,” Steve volunteered, rising from his chair at the table. “That is, if you don’t mind hanging around a while longer, Ty.”
“Take your time,” Ty replied with a negligent wave of his hand. “I’m in no hurry.”
“I’ll drive you downtown as soon as the girls are asleep.” Steve left the kitchen to join Fran upstairs.
“I guess cleaning up the kitchen falls to us,” Sunny said brightly, after a considerable silence in which she and Ty stared at each other across the littered table. Palsy-walsy wasn’t exactly the way she would describe the way he was looking at her. He might have said he wanted them to just be friends, but his smoldering expression conveyed something else entirely.
Sunny wondered how such an unromantic setting as Fran’s cluttered kitchen with its loud, daisy-print wallpaper could be so redolent with sexuality. Yet the atmosphere teemed with it.
“I’ll wash,” she said, coming out of her chair as though ejected by a mechanical spring. At the sink she began rinsing the dishes and placing them in the dishwasher.
“Can I tell you something friend to friend?” he asked as he carried a tray of dirty dishes from the table.
“Sure.”
“You’ve got a terrific fanny.”
Sunny was bending over the dishwasher. She popped erect and spun around to face him, slinging soapy water onto the front of his shirt. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“You don’t believe your fanny is terrific? Take my word for it.”
“I mean,” Sunny said impatiently, “that you call yourself a friend and yet say something so ... so ...”
“Sexist?”
“Yes!”
“Well, hey, I only learned how to be a friend tonight. You can’t expect me to change from a woman-denigrating chauvinist to a good buddy in the space of a few hours.”
“That reminds me of a saying, something about a leopard and his spots.”
“It’s not like I was trying to pick you up in a singles’ bar,” he said easily. “Then I could understand it if you objected to my saying something like, ‘You’ve got a terrific fanny.’ But I was just being honest, friend to friend.”
“Well then, friend to friend, thank you.”
“If you didn’t want people to notice your behind, you shouldn’t wear tight white jeans that cup—”
“All right! Thanks for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind. Now, can we talk about something else?”
“Okay. How about your tits?”
She rounded on him, ready to do battle. Instead, when she looked into his teasing eyes, she started laughing. “That’s better,” he said. “I was getting worried about you.”
“Why?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way. You look as beautiful as always. But when you came into the church tonight, you looked tired.” With the tip of his finger, he traced the violet crescent shadows beneath her eyes.
“I didn’t have a very good day,” she confessed.
