Her Gentle Giant Read online

  Neither of them noticed the car across the street from them that was tucked into a dark corner up against the church building with its lights off. It didn't move when either of their cars—both of them shit boxes, the driver noticed—did. He was an inconsequential cripple and there was no need to follow her back to a house that had already been cased.

  The recipe she had ingredients for was chicken and herbed dumplings, so that was what he got. She was making roasted asparagus with shallots and garlic to go with it and had gone out to a small bakery in the next town over to get a carrot cake for dessert. She didn't know if he liked it, but it was one of her favorites.

  He arrived right on time, of course.

  Arianne was surprised to realize that she opened the door with only a small amount of trepidation.

  "Good evening, my dear." He bowed—if a bit wobbly—from his waist. "I come bearing wine. I took a chance and brought white, since I figured you still had chicken left."

  Blushing only made her look just that much prettier, as far as he was concerned.

  "I do, and that's what you're eating tonight. Your own chicken."

  "Yes," he agreed, stepping in as she moved aside. "But I didn't have to prepare it with my own two delicate hands."

  Arianne had to laugh. "Delicate? Are you really claiming that there's something delicate about you?" she teased.

  He looked thoroughly affronted. "I'll have you know, madam, that there are quite a few delicate things about me, including my feelings, which you have managed to hurt."

  "Poor baby."

  He humphed. "I detect a distinct lack of sympathy."

  "Oh wow, you're smarter than you look!"

  Hoyt loved that she felt comfortable enough to needle him. He'd worried that things might be awkward between them after the last time they were together, but she seemed to be more relaxed than she'd ever been around him. Maybe it was that she had a job. He hoped her financial problems had eased up. He should have made his suggestion sooner, perhaps, and that would have removed a stressor for her.

  But he'd do that tonight, after dinner. He really hoped she would go for his suggestion, even if it wasn't forever. It would get her out of Unka Al's. He didn't like her working at night, either.

  "Unka Hoyt!" Emmy ran into his waiting arms.

  "Hey, princess! How's you?"

  To hell with him, she was looking around him for something. "Did you bring Luthi?"

  "No, I didn't, I'm afraid, but I know he would love to have a visit from you—both of you—sometime."

  "Please," Ari protested. "He doesn't want to see me. He wants to be around you or Teensie. I'm chopped liver."

  Hoyt put Em down and quipped as he very deliberately watched her face, "No, you're not chopped liver."

  "And how do you know that?"

  He gave her an unrepentant grin as he announced, "Because I don't want to eat chopped liver."

  There was that beautiful blush he was after!

  "Hoyt!" Her hands went up to her burning cheeks. "You can't say things like that!"

  "You mean the truth?" he asked, batting his eyelashes with an innocence he couldn't possibly possess.

  "Come color wiff me!" Emmy grabbed his hand and pulled, and he—like his dog—let her lead him to where she had her things spread out on the coffee table, and he gladly indulged in a favorite old childhood activity.

  "Need any help there, ma'am?" he drawled as she began to set the table.

  "No, thanks. It's worth it to me to have her occupied so I can get things done without interruption."

  "Ah. Well, I thoroughly enjoy her—and your—company, so that's no hardship for me at all," he said, booping Emmy's nose.

  The asparagus was ready, and she was just waiting for the dumplings to cook, so she wandered over to the living room where they were being artistic and sat down in a chair some ways away from them.

  Hoyt, of course, looked up at her. "Will you sit on my lap tonight after dinner?"

  "What? No! Stop saying outrageous things!"

  But Emmy defended her friend. "It'th not 'rageouth, Mumma! I like thitting in Hoyt'th lap!"

  He laughed. "Well, that's one vote of confidence, but I'd really like to hear two," he hinted broadly.

  "I would suggest that you not hold your breath, Mr. Chandler."

  He clutched his heart as if he had been mortally wounded. "You're cruel to me, Miss Arianne. Terribly, terribly cruel."

  "Huh uh. I think it's the other way around, considering the position in which I found myself the last time you were here."

  Hoyt gave her a look. "Yes, but you knew exactly what you had to do to avoid that particular position, so you'll forgive me if I don't have a lot of sympathy for you."

  "No, I won't," she pronounced pertly and headed back into the kitchen at the sound of the timer.

  He disengaged himself from all of Emmy's coloring accoutrements to come open the bottle of wine for her.

  "Oh, damn, I don't even think I own an opener!" she lamented, rummaging through her drawers.

  "No problem at all. A Boy Scout is always prepared!" He produced a corkscrew on his Swiss Army knife that proved challenging, but he managed to get it opened anyway.

  "Oh my God, this is fabulous!" he enthused when she'd dished up the meal to him—much like he had to her—and he'd taken his first bite. "The dumplings are excellent—light and airy, rather than heavy and gummy, as they can be sometimes."

  "Thank you. I'm glad you like it. I made a vat of it so you can take some home with you, if you want."

  "Definitely." Even here, he kept an eye on Emmy. "Isn't this good, Weensie?" he asked.

  "It'th Teenthie!" she corrected.

  "Oh dear, I'm awfully sorry to have gotten that wrong!" Hoyt winked at Arianne. "So how did you end up working at Unka Al's?"

  She told him the boring story about being in there and seeing that they had a "help wanted" sign in the window. There was no real interview involved—they'd hired her on the spot. But it was nights and weekends and minimum wage, and she knew that she was worth a lot more than that.

  "Yeah. We're going to discuss that later."

  Arianne wasn't sure how she felt about that. She couldn't imagine what his idea might be, and she didn't hold out a lot of hope for it being something she either could do or would want to do, frankly.

  But it was nice of him to be looking out for her in that way.

  She'd not contacted him since that night when he'd spanked her—and discovered a bit about her secret—because she felt much too embarrassed, on both counts. Not surprisingly, it was the scars that she was much more mortified about than the fact that he'd spanked her.

  That was wonderful!

  Well, perhaps not quite wonderful. It had hurt quite a bit! But the way he'd treated her afterward—the holding and the cuddling and the stroking—was unbelievable! There were definitely parts of her now that would want to jump into his lap if he even looked like he was going to invite her to do so—not that she let him know that.

  She was having a hard time with the fact that she was still technically married, and all of the baggage that came with that relationship, to say nothing of the fact that she still expected to see her husband around every corner. There hadn't been any indications whatsoever that he knew where she was, but he'd left her with a healthy sense of paranoia that she didn't think she was easily going to jettison from her psyche, and it was telling her that she hadn't seen the last of him yet.

  Hoyt was a marvel with Emmy, too. He even got her to try some asparagus, which she rejected predictably.

  But she ate a good-sized portion of the chicken and dumplings, which had veggies in it already, so Ari was happy with that.

  When they were through, Hoyt shooed her out of her own kitchen, saying that he would take care of the mess.

  "But you don't know where anything goes!" she protested.

  He turned around and gave her a look that hurried her along to her favorite chair. "And if I put things away in the wrong
place and you can't find them, you'll have to call me. So, there's a method to my madness."

  "I think you mean there's a madness to your madness, but okay."

  His laugh was deep and full throated at that, and she wished she could get him to laugh more often.

  By the time it was done, it was time for Em to have a bath.

  "Can I do it?" he asked. "You're welcome to supervise, of course."

  She ended up doing that, not because she didn't trust him—she did, somehow, intrinsically, at least as far as Emmy was concerned—but because she began to hear voices coming from the bathroom that she couldn't recognize.

  When she got there, Ari realized that he was narrating an epic sea battle amongst her bath toys and making up not only different voices for each one of them, but all of the accompanying sound effects, as well.

  Emmy, of course, was delighted, and she had to admit that so was she.

  He didn't even notice she was there until she handed him a big fluffy towel in which to wrap her soapy, wet daughter when he lifted her out of the tub.

  "Oh, thank you."

  "You're welcome, Mr. Williams."

  Hoyt gave her a confused look. "Mr. Williams?"

  "As in Robin?"

  He blushed at that, and she loved it.

  "Or maybe Mel Blanc is closer."

  "Who's that?"

  Ari looked aghast. "The voice of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Marvin the Martian and all of those Warner Brothers characters! How could you not know that?"

  "Didn't watch much TV when I was a kid. Spent most of my time outdoors."

  He dressed her in a warm pair of jammies and tucked her under the covers, then he remembered every one of the rituals in conjunction with putting her to bed.

  When they'd left her—already asleep—with the hall light on and her door open just a crack, he took Arianne's hand and led her back to the living room, where he proceeded to do what she'd been aching for and dreading at the same time. He pulled her down onto his lap and wrapped his arms loosely around her.

  "Is this really the best position in which to discuss a job?" she asked.

  "Most definitely. I know the boss on this job really well, and he would be all for it."

  Arianne frowned up at him. "How would you know that?"

  "Because he is me," Hoyt grinned.

  "What? What job could you possibly want me to do for you?"

  His grin only got bigger. "Well, I can think of some things that you'd likely object to—at least at first."

  "Hoyt! Stop that!" She wiggled around some, as if she was going to try to get down, but he merely kept his arms around her to keep her in place.

  "Sorry—not at all sorry. I like teasing you, and I love it even better when you blush so prettily."

  She responded scornfully, "I'm not pretty. Don't say—"

  Before she could finish her sentence, she found herself over his lap, with his big hand covering nearly all of her behind at once.

  "What did you just say?"

  Ari wasn't an idiot. "I said I'm extremely good looking."

  Hoyt laughed and tipped her back up. "Good girl."

  "So?"

  She wasn't sitting nearly close enough to him, so he simply contracted his arms a bit, and she ended up lying against him, with her head on his shoulder.

  "This is a novel position from which to conduct an interview," she pointed out.

  He frowned. "It's not an interview. You have the job if you want it."

  "I do?"

  "Yes. I was just going to tell you about it to see if you thought you might want it."

  "Okaayy."

  She sounded skeptical, but he guessed he couldn't blame her for that.

  "So, as I mentioned to you before, I'm writing a book—or trying to, anyway. And I could use someone who can actually type to help me. You said that you could type and that you even enjoyed doing it."

  "I do."

  "Have you ever done any editing or anything like that?"

  "No, but I was in Honors English classes all through school, and I have a reasonably good grasp of grammar. Better than most, probably, if you judge by the fact that my friends used to call me a grammar Nazi."

  "Good. So, you have all of the qualifications, as far as I'm concerned. I really just want to kind of dictate to you—or into a recorder I bought to carry around—and then have you write it up for me."

  "I could do that!" Hell, she'd love to do that! She'd also be able to get to know a heck of a lot more about him in the process. She hadn't wanted to pry, but she was very curious about him and what had happened to him. She assumed the accident that had resulted in his injuries happened while he was stationed in a war zone, but she wanted details. This was probably her opportunity to get them!

  "Great! And it won't be nights or weekends."

  "But you sleep all day. I assumed you would work all night."

  "I will. But you'll be able to come into the house and start transcribing while I'm sleeping. Then I'll disgorge more, either in writing or onto the recorder, until I'm done. You can bring Emmy with you, and I'll pay you more if you take care of Luci, too."

  She'd sounded enthusiastic about doing this until just now, but her face had clouded over and he could feel her tensing in his arms.

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Yes, you do," he answered astutely. "Tell me, Arianne."

  She drew a deep breath. "It's just that, well, I feel a bit uncomfortable taking money from you, for some reason."

  "Well, it's just paying you for providing a service that I need. I figured fifteen bucks an hour?"

  "Really?" She'd get over her discomfort about taking money from him really quickly for that amount.

  "Yeah."

  Then she asked, "You're not overpaying me, are you?"

  It was a strange question, as if she was going to try to talk him out of paying her well. "I don't think so. Do you want me to pay you less?"

  "No. I just don't want to feel obligated to you."

  Hoyt understood what she meant. "Good, because neither do I. If anything should develop between us, beyond a fast friendship, it will be based on us liking each other very much and not on your paycheck, I promise."

  "Good. You have an employee, then!"

  "Wonderful!" He produced a key from his chain and handed it to her. "You can come and go as you please, eat what you please, take time out for doctor's appointments, etcetera. I'd just like to see what I dictated from the night before typed up the next day, if you can. If you can't, just let me know."

  This sounded too good to be true, which she knew probably meant that it would be, but she was going to give it a shot anyway.

  When she'd put the new key onto her own ring and tucked her keys into her pocket, a crooked finger appeared beneath her chin and he tipped it up so that he could look into those baby blues of hers.

  "What do you say we seal the deal with a kiss, Miss Arianne?" he asked huskily.

  She gave him an impish look out of the corner of her eye. "Now, wouldn't that be considered blatant sexual harassment, Mr. Chandler?"

  "If it's not, then I'm not doing it correctly," he whispered.

  And for the first time since she'd become involved with Matt over four years ago, she shoved aside the inevitable guilty feelings it was going to inspire within her and allowed another man to kiss her.

  And it felt more right than it ought to, by far.

  He kissed her the same way he'd treated her after he'd spanked her—with infinite care and gentleness, cupping one cheek and holding her eyes as he brought his lips to hers very slowly, as if he was waiting for her to object.

  But that was literally the last thing on her mind.

  Ari felt as giddy as a schoolgirl having her first kiss ever, although there was still a bit of trepidation around the fringes of her awareness, and it was as if he knew that that remained for her as his kiss was feather light at first.

  When she kissed him back, seconds later—h
owever tentatively—he was the one who sighed all of his breath out at one time, as if he'd been holding it, and she felt a certain tenseness leave him. But he didn't become greedy or grabby, even at that point. She felt as if every inch she gave him meant something to him, as if he actually understood her apprehension and hesitation and didn't think any less of her for it—maybe even thought a little more of her, instead.

  Nothing like that would ever begin to occur to Matt. It was all about him, even when he was trying to make things up to her.

  Because he was so undemanding, she felt more comfortable than she might have, and thus, he was able to coax her into opening her mouth to him merely by nibbling a bit at her lips and occasionally flicking his tongue out to glide across them, inviting rather than requiring a response from her.

  She still wasn't touching him—he was holding her to him—but Hoyt didn't care about that in the least. He'd never expected any woman to touch him ever again; hell, he didn't even make the occasional lady of the evening whom he paid to be with him do that. He could hardly expect it of her, someone he had grown very fond of. He was beginning to dare to hope that something more might come of whatever it was that was between them, and even then, he'd be extremely content if all that ever involved was that he punished her when he felt she needed it, pleased her anytime he could, and inflicted himself on her occasionally.

  Hoyt was careful not to let himself get too involved, especially not this first time. He kept himself under a tight rein, and after several kisses became rather heated, he slowly pulled back, noting with satisfaction that her eyes were closed.

  When they fluttered open, she found him staring at her intently, and dove for cover, pressing her face against his neck—not that he objected in the least.

  Careful not to restrain her but wanting her to still feel the presence of his arms around her, he organized them loosely across her.

  "You are a phenomenal kisser," he complimented quietly, feeling the loss of her when she moved a bit away to look down at him.

  "Thank you—so are you."

  She looked hesitant.

  "What?"

  Even though his inquiry was soft, she ducked her head down a little, as if dodging a blow. "I-I just… I'm still married, Hoyt."

  He swallowed. "Ah."