Free Love Game by Mallory Rush Page B

his head and laughed as if she’d just played straight man to a one-liner. “After ending up a daddy because Arlene’s mom skipped her pills, I haven’t had sex without a condom since. What with the current climate, I thought that might be a concern you weren’t sure how to bring up.”
    “Actually, I hadn’t thought about that.”
    “Do me a favor? Think about it the next time. I’d hate to see anything happen to you. The world, Chris, it’s a better place with you around.”
    The warm hug he gave her played havoc with her head and had an unexpected pull on her libido. His bluntness, his comfortable familiarity with the nitty-gritty of sex, seemed healthy and yet another something she could learn from Greg. Odd, though, that he was more relaxed about sex than holding a baby.
    “I’ll turn off the lights,” she offered, needing some distance from their close encounter of the comforting kind. But his hurt spot, his sense of failure as a father, stuck with her. Trying to escape it, she hastened her pace and snapped out a silent order. Sleep with him, laugh with him, anything. Just don’t let yourself start to care. To care was to risk that black, terrible tunnel she would never again go near.Greg had helped her to escape, and for that she was grateful, but an emotional entanglement she had to avoid at any cost. Especially with Greg. Audrey aside, he was too tempting and too lethal, like cheese baiting a steel trap.
    Chris stopped in her tracks as he kicked off his shoes. They landed on top of the heels she’d shucked off with a laugh. No longer laughing, she watched him prop his feet on the coffee table and stretch out. His arms on the sofa’s back was a natural posture for a… “Family man,” she whispered, while an image of a cheese wedge sliced through her mind.
    “Did you say something?” he asked, looking away from the tube.
    “I said that I’m glad you thought this up. A relaxed evening has a certain charm for a woman who’s got a sore rear end and ate leftover french fries at the rink so they wouldn’t go to waste.” Good, very good, she told herself. Hook it to the kid and make him bring it back to the bed where he’s comfortable and this whole crazy thing belongs.
    “Then it’s okay by you if we don’t hit the bar where we could take on the 20-somethings? Maybe show them how to swing to Springsteen—move over, alternative rock.”
    Time out! Okay, here’s the plan—no self-respecting player could possibly find a woman in support hose and up to her elbows in arthritis worth the chase.
    “The older I get, Greg, the slower I go.”
    “That’s good to hear. Otherwise, I couldn’t keep up.”
    Chris frowned. He was too easy to be with, too easy to talk to. She couldn’t seem to quit telling him things—little things that were somehow more revealing than big secrets. Her affection for him was genuine and that was fine. But what she couldn’t—repeat, could not —do was let herself think of him as more than a good time on the fly.
    His fly was whereshe angled her gaze since she deemed it safer than his couch-potato slouch.
    “Sit with me?” He patted the sofa and looked even more dangerously domestic. “I won’t bite.”
    “I’m disappointed.” Her retaliatory defense got the reaction she needed to put Greg in his proper perspective. A dark brow rose over a darker glitter in his eyes. His slouch straightened and his crossed ankles came off the table. “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with your shirt off?” she prompted, ignoring the prickling sensation on her neck.
    He tapped his fingertips together, as if contemplating his answer. Suddenly, he reached for the remote control. The television silenced, only the light of the screen illuminated him as he pushed the coffee table away.
    And then, he worked loose the knot of his tie. Slipping it off, he slowly, suggestively, ran its length over his palm.
    “Come here.” His voice was smooth but rough around the edges.
    Her feet