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“I’m not your messenger boy,” she retorted.
“Is he there right now?” Lucy asked.
“That would be a yes,” Meg replied.
“Tell him hello from me, then.” Lucy’s voice grew small again, full of guilt. “And that I’m sorry.”
Meg cupped her hand over the phone and gazed up at him. “She said she’s having the time of her life, screwing every man she meets, and dumping you was the best move she ever made.”
“I heard that,” Lucy said. “And he’ll know you’re lying. He knows things like that.”
Ted rested the heel of his hand against a top cabinet and slanted her his superior look. “Liar.”
She glowered at him. “Go away. You are totally creeping me out.”
Lucy sucked in her breath. “Did you just tell Ted Beaudine that he was creeping you out?”
“I might have.”
Lucy let out a long exhalation. “Wow . . .” She sounded a little dazed. “I sure didn’t see this coming.”
Meg frowned. “See what coming? What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Love you. And enjoy!” She hung up.
Meg snapped her phone closed. “I think we can safely assume Lucy’s recovered from her guilt.”
“Does that mean she gave us her blessing?”
“Me. She gave me her blessing.”
He adopted a faraway look. “I sure do miss that woman. Smart. Funny. Sweet. She never gave me a moment’s trouble.”
“Gosh, I’m sorry about that. I knew it was boring between you two, but not that bad.”
He smiled and stretched out his hand. She let him pull her to her feet, but he didn’t stop there. In one smooth motion, he drew her against him and began kissing the breath right out of her. Because of their height, their bodies were a surprisingly comfortable fit, but that was the only comfortable thing about this lusty, bone-shattering kiss.
He smelled so good, tasted so good, felt so good. The heat of his skin, the feel of sturdy muscle and hard tendon. It had been so long.
He didn’t grab her ass or shove his hand under her shirt where he would quickly have discovered lots of bare skin bisected only by that fragile ivory thong. Instead, he concentrated on her mouth, her face, her hair—stroking and exploring, sliding his fingers through her curls, finding her earlobes with his thumbs. It was as if he’d memorized a diagram of all the nonobvious erogenous zones on her body. It was heady and thrilling and oh so arousing.
Their mouths parted. He pressed his forehead to hers and spoke softly. “I’d like to go to my place, but I’m not risking having you change your mind on the way, so it’ll have to be here.” A nibble at her bottom lip. “Doubt it’ll be the first time two people have got it on in that choir loft, although I thought my days of getting sweaty on a futon had ended when I graduated from college.”
She tried to get her breath back as he caught her wrist and drew her out into the church. “Stop.” Her heels skidded on the old pine floor. “We’re not taking another step toward that futon until we have The Conversation.”
He wasn’t dumb. He groaned, but he stopped walking. “I’m disease free. There’s been nobody since Lucy, and since that was four fricking months ago, you’ll have to understand if I’m a little impatient.”
“Nobody since Lucy? Really?”
“What part of four fricking months don’t you get?” He regarded her stubbornly, as if he expected a fight. “And I don’t go anywhere without a condom. You can make whatever you want out of that. It’s just the way it is.”
“You being Ted Beaudine and all.”
“Like I said.”
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“Four months, huh? It hasn’t been nearly that long for me.” A lie. Her disastrous affair with Daniel, the Aussie river-rafting guide, had ended eight months ago. She’d never indulged in one-night stands, something she attributed to the conversations her mother had initiated about sex. Unfortunately, those conversations hadn’t kept her from making some bad choices. More than one of her friends had said Meg deliberately chose men she knew would never commit because she wasn’t ready to be a grown-up herself.
