The 39-Year-Old Virgin Read online

  “This is a test, right?” she murmured under her breath. She had a feeling she could probably do a lot better if the test involved locusts, not Caleb.

  She had to get hold of herself, Claire silently insisted, and channel this into something positive. After all, she was clearly in debt to Caleb, not just for initially coming to her rescue at the restaurant, or for all the repairs he’d already done, but for the very fact that he had brought Danny along just as she’d asked.

  She didn’t even have to ask anymore, or remind him. Caleb brought the boy without being prodded. She took that as a good sign that things were slowly mending between father and son. She’d covertly watched as Danny had shyly volunteered to help with some of the repairs. Caleb had initially hesitated, but rather than send him away, he’d put a screwdriver in the boy’s hand and began to show him what to do.

  Danny had beamed and blossomed right before her eyes. From then on, he’d helped whenever he could. And when he wasn’t “helping,” he was keeping her mother company.

  Having Danny around did wonders for her mother, forcing Margaret Santaniello to leave the depths of her depression and socialize with the boy who was just the right age, under other circumstances, to have been her grandson.

  It had only been a few weeks and she was amazed at what a difference the time had made in her mother’s life. It took more for life to thrive, to vanquish the strand of acute leukemia than just applications of chemotherapy. It took a positive attitude, a will to live.

  By having Danny come around, by interacting with the boy, her mother had transformed from a woman who was stoically waiting to die to a woman who had something to look forward to. It was obvious that her mother avidly looked forward to weekends.

  That makes two of us, Mother.

  “I could have stayed with the order and just sent over Danny,” she confided late one Saturday afternoon as she brought out a glass of ice water for Caleb. He was on the ladder, caulking the lower perimeter of one of the windows on the second floor. He wanted to make sure all the windows were impervious to rain before he painted the exterior of the house. His capacity for work took her breath away.

  Pausing, Caleb looked down at her from his perch on the ladder.

  “If you’d never left the order, Danny wouldn’t be here,” he said simply. Deciding to take a break, Caleb made his way down the ladder. Getting off, he accepted the glass and all but drained it in one long, parched gulp. “Besides,” he reminded her, handing the glass back, “you said the reason you left is because you didn’t feel the calling anymore, not just because your mother needed you.”

  “You were listening.”

  His shoulders moved in a careless shrug. He moved, she thought, like some kind of jungle cat.

  You’ve got to stop noticing things like that.

  “I’m a detective. It’s my job to listen. And to remember details.” He looked at her for a long moment. It wasn’t impulse that had him saying what he said next. He’d thought about it, long and hard, and had decided to push forward. Because he found himself needing to see what would happen. “Go out with me tonight.”

  A cold shiver suddenly materialized, shimmying up and down her spine despite the heat of the afternoon sun. In the space of half a heartbeat, she went from confident to uncertain.

  Maybe she’d heard wrong. “What?”

  “I’m not speaking in tongues, Claire,” he said patiently, never taking his eyes off her face. “Go out with me,” he repeated.

  There was sand in her mouth. It made her tongue unwieldy. “Where?”

  “A restaurant, a walk, a movie. Doesn’t matter.”

  She pressed her lips together. She needed home-team advantage, she thought. Besides, her mother would love the change of pace.

  “Why don’t you and Danny come over for dinner, then. Or just stay if you don’t want to go home and then come back. I can whip something up—”

  “Safety in numbers?”

  She didn’t know if he was insulted or amused. With Caleb, it was really hard to tell at times. But since he’d asked her a question, she could only be honest. “Something like that.”

  “All right, we’ll stay.” He glanced up toward the second floor, then back at her. “But eventually, you know, you and I are going to be alone together.”

  “We’re alone right now,” she said, her voice having more than a little difficulty emerging.

  Caleb nodded. “All right.”

  She didn’t quite understand. “All right?”

  The question barely left her lips. Caleb framed her face with his hands and brought his lips down to hers.

  And made everything else instantly vanish along with her halfhearted protest. Hot lava filled her veins as the kiss deepened. Claire felt something slipping from her fingers.

  The sound of glass meeting concrete vaguely registered as she fell further and further into the inferno. Leaning into it, into him, she wound her arms around his neck and for just a second, before she struggled to get her mind to kick in, she allowed herself to absorb the wondrously delicious sensations exploding all through her body.

  This alone was worth leaving the order.

  Guilt all but immediately followed, marring her pleasure.

  “You can’t keep doing that,” she told him an eternity later, when she’d finally managed to get herself to break away and step back.

  Amusement faintly curved his mouth. “Seven weeks between kisses hardly qualifies for ‘keep doing that,’” he pointed out.

  Seven weeks. He’d been keeping track. Why did that both thrill and frighten her at the same time?

  She had no frame of reference to work with. This was a brand-new playing field for her.

  “I’ll—I’ll go see about dinner,” she murmured, backing away.

  Caleb turned back to the ladder and began to climb back up. His mouth curved with amusement. “You do that, Claire.”

  Danny received with exuberance the news that he and his father were staying for dinner. “You make the best dinners, Miss Santaniello,” he freely declared.

  Her mother, however, tried to demur when she told her about guests for dinner. “I’m too tired to sit at the table, making conversation,” she told her. “I’ll just take something to my room.”

  Claire frowned. Maybe this was too much for the woman after all. The treatments her mother underwent left her feeling weak, but it had been almost a week since the last one. Her mother might just need some coaxing to stay. So be it. “Mother, please, I want you to stay.”

  “Don’t you like us?” Danny asked, coming into the kitchen.

  Embarrassed, Margaret cleared her throat. “Of course I like you, Danny, but I’m a tired old woman—”

  “No, you’re not,” Danny protested.

  “How would you know I’m not tired?” Margaret scowled.

  “I don’t. But I know you’re not old.”

  Danny couldn’t have said anything better if she’d personally written it down and given it to him to recite, Claire thought. Her mother was beaming.

  “All right, I guess I can stay up for a while longer.”

  Danny took her hand. “You can sit by me.”

  “I would like that,” Margaret told him.

  Thank you, God, Claire thought as she turned to the refrigerator to see what she could come up with.

  Dinner went wonderfully well. Caleb and his son stayed for the meal and then lingered awhile longer. Danny watched a cable channel devoted to cartoons with Margaret sitting beside him on the sofa. Caleb gruffly helped her clean up and put things away.

  “He’s really a very special boy,” Claire told him, peering into the family room. Danny had his head on her mother’s lap and from where she was standing, it looked as if the boy had dozed off. Her mother didn’t appear that far from it herself. And there was a beautiful smile on her face.

  “Yeah, he is a special boy,” Caleb agreed. And, much to his regret, he had been oblivious to his boy’s sweetness. Until Claire had come along and
taken charge. Things still weren’t the way they used to be between him and Danny, but progress was being made. And he was trying, really trying, to make his way back from the island where he’d remained isolated for so long.

  He owed her for that. For opening his eyes to how his suffer-in-silence behavior was actually affecting Danny.

  The only way he knew how to repay Claire was to keep fixing things around her house. The way she had symbolically fixed things around his.

  “I think it’s time we got going,” he told her, moving her aside and walking into the family room.

  It tingled where he’d touched her. She tried her best to ignore it as she followed him into the room.

  When she saw Caleb look stumped as to how to disentangle her mother from his son, she grinned. “Here, let me,” she offered, keeping her voice low. Very gently, she eased the boy out from beneath her sleeping mother’s protective hands and then picked him up. Turning, she presented Caleb with his sleeping son. “This is yours, I believe.”

  Their eyes met for a moment, and then he gazed down at the boy. “Yeah,” he murmured, feeling a wave of love slowly move its way forward. “He’s mine.”

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” she offered, striding ahead to open the front door. Behind her, her mother continued dozing as on TV a mouse in high heels and a frilly skirt squealed for her boyfriend to come save her. Again.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Claire told him once they were outside. “My mother’s a whole new person. Danny’s made a world of difference in her life.”

  Caleb pressed the button to release the security locks on his car. All four popped up and stood at attention. “And you’ve made a world of difference in his,” Caleb countered. And in mine. He spared her a look before opening the rear passenger door. “One good turn deserves another, isn’t that the expression?”

  That didn’t begin to cover it, she thought, but nodded. “Something like that.”

  Angling Danny in, he secured the boy in his seat and double-checked the seat belt cinches. They held. “Are you serious about wanting to thank me?” he asked as he closed Danny’s door.

  Why did it suddenly feel as if there were pins and needles dancing along her extremities? Where had all these nerves come from? “Yes.”

  He turned to face her. The moon was finally up and it seemed to give her a golden glow. She really was beautiful, he thought. Outside and in. “Then go out with me.”

  Shaken, she took him literally. “It’s late and you’ve got Danny—”

  He cut her off. She sounded as if she was about to pick up steam. “Not tonight, tomorrow night.”

  Wanting to say yes perhaps a little too much, she grasped on to the first excuse she could think of. “I’ve got papers to grade.” It wasn’t entirely true. All she had left was a paper to grade. That didn’t exactly make for a huge stumbling block.

  Unfazed, he said, “Grade them in the morning. Before we go out.”

  His eyes held her prisoner.

  What would it hurt? To say yes, what would it hurt? she silently asked herself. After all, they were friends. She’d be going to dinner with a friend. It wasn’t as if she didn’t enjoy his company. She did. A great deal. Too much, maybe.

  Blocking it, Claire took a breath and plunged ahead. Challenging herself. “All right.”

  He surprised her by laughing. She raised her eyebrow quizzically, waiting for an explanation.

  “You look like a little kid in the doctor’s office, bracing herself for a shot she knows is necessary,” he told her. She was scared, he thought. That was okay. So was he. Scared, but curious. And intrigued. For the first time in a very long time, it didn’t hurt to be alive. To breathe. He wanted to see if this was just a fluke. “I promise I won’t sting.”

  That made her smile and relax again. “I know you won’t.”

  Caleb got into his car and rolled down the window. “Tomorrow,” he repeated. Turning on the ignition, he put the car in Reverse. “At seven.”

  Seven, she echoed in her head as she watched him drive away. She walked back into the house with goose bumps.

  Caleb wouldn’t tell her where they were going until they got there. “There” turned out to be The Belle of The Mississippi, a restaurant built to look like one of the riverboats that had traveled up and down the length of the Mississippi River two centuries ago.

  This particular “riverboat” was docked at the harbor in Newport Beach. It offered a spectacular view of the water at night, complete with lights shimmering across the dark liquid surface.

  It was like stepping back through a time portal into another world. Claire loved everything about it.

  She forgot to be nervous.

  “I didn’t even know this place existed,” she told Caleb over two hours later as they started to walk to his vehicle in the parking lot.

  “It didn’t when you lived here. You’ve been gone a long time,” he reminded her. “There’ve been a lot of changes.”

  When she had lived here, more than half the developments hadn’t even been built yet. But his comment made her think of him rather than a building boom. She slanted him a look as they walked. “Yes, there have.”

  Caleb could felt her gaze. His pulse accelerated just enough for him to notice.

  He wasn’t a man given to impulses. He was a man who planned things out, did things in a logical, pre-considered fashion. But this was different. This was stepping back into the past, doing things he’d thought about. Picking up opportunities that hadn’t been there the first time around.

  “Would you like to take a walk on the beach?”

  She knew she should turn him down. She needed to be getting back. But it did sound like a lovely thing to do.

  Go!

  “Okay,” she agreed before she could change her mind. “But just a quick one.”

  He laughed. “I don’t recommend jogging after the meal you just had.” She had a healthy appetite. He liked that.

  They walked to the back of the parking lot. A small path led onto the beach. A full moon cast its beams along the water. To the passing eye the beams seemed to lead right down to the path on the beach.

  Stairway to Heaven, she couldn’t help thinking.

  As she removed her shoes and then picked them up by the straps, it occurred to Claire that the scene was made for lovers.

  Caleb took her free hand. The moment he touched her, she felt her pulse speeding up wildly.

  She had to stop this, she upbraided herself. This was Caleb, the little boy whom she’d read stories to. Why was she reacting to him this way?

  “A penny for your thoughts.”

  Startled by the sound of his voice, she struggled not to show it. “Not worth that much, Detective.”

  To her surprise, he didn’t drop the matter. “Tell me.” He placed a penny in her hand. “I feel like splurging.”

  Her fingers closed around the penny. It still felt warm. Looking straight ahead, she said, “I was just thinking what a nice meal that was.”

  “Sister Michael, you’re lying.” His voice was filled with amusement.

  Claire began to deny it, then decided not to compound the offense. “How did you know?”

  “Your voice got deeper. It always gets deeper when you’re not comfortable with what you’re saying. And lying makes you uncomfortable.”

  Caleb stopped walking and dropped her hand. Then, as her breath lodged itself in her chest cavity, he turned toward her and burrowed his fingers in her hair. She could feel her heart hammering wildly now.

  This was where she drew back, pulled away. Stopped him. And yet, she found herself holding her breath, waiting. Yearning.

  This wasn’t fair. Not to him, or her. She didn’t know who she was yet and he was the man with a broken heart.

  “Caleb, don’t,” she whispered.

  His eyes held hers. He knew he’d see the truth in her eyes. “‘Don’t’ because you don’t like it, or ‘don’t’ because you do?”

  She couldn’t
lie. “Because I do. And I shouldn’t.”

  Right now, it wasn’t about should or shouldn’t, it was about need. “Why? Because you’re an ex-nun?”

  “Because I’m too old for you.”

  “You’re five years older, not fifty,” he pointed out. His eyes delved deep into her being. When he spoke, it was as if she could feel every word forming, brushing along her skin. “I don’t think you understand, Claire. I haven’t ‘felt’ anything except pain in a very long time. And I’m beginning to feel things because of you. Feel things for you. I don’t see how that can be bad.”

  Oh God, he was saying all the right things. And yet, if she allowed herself to be swept away, that wouldn’t be right.

  Would it?

  “It’s not bad,” she began, trying to make her way through the minefield. “It’s just not—”

  She ran out of words. But that wasn’t why she didn’t get a chance to finish. She didn’t get a chance to finish because he was kissing her again.

  Chapter Eleven

  He took her breath away.

  More than that, Caleb took her very will away. All she wanted to do, heaven help her, was melt into him. Because as the seconds ticked away and the kiss deepened, the rush she experienced grew wilder and more heady. It spurred her on, making her want more. She could feel a quickening in her loins, a desire filling her that she’d never experienced before.

  Was this what it felt like to be a woman, without her habit or her vows to hide behind?

  And then, just as suddenly as he had kissed her, he was drawing his mouth away from hers. But the heat, the fire still remained, still burned brightly. Still fueled the electricity that had sprung up within her.

  Claire felt as if she was coming unglued. She didn’t know if she could deal with any more uncertainty.

  “You’re making me afraid,” she confessed in a small, husky voice.

  That goes double for me, he thought. He’d been so confident that he’d never feel anything for anyone again. And yet, here she was, tapping into some hidden reserve that had been set up in her name several decades ago. Afraid didn’t even begin to cover it.