Kate couldn’t believe her eyes. She scooped the kitten up and held it close.
“Now why are you crying?” Dave asked in total exasperation.
Kate didn’t even try to stop the tears. “I’m so happy!”
Dave took four bowls from the kitchen cabinet and filled them with cat food. “Women,” he said gruffly, and when he turned back to Kate his eyes were bright.
Kate let out a long, slow breath. Never in a million years would she have suspected it could be like this. Loving someone so much that their pain was your pain, and their joy was your joy. That’s how much Dave loved her, and that’s the love she returned. She bit her lower lip and gave her head an almost imperceptible shake. She’d been incredibly stupid. She’d almost thrown away the love of a lifetime because Dave didn’t fit into her silly preconceived husband mold. She went to Dave and wrapped her arms around his neck. “You like me, huh?”
He nodded his head.
“And you’re happy the kitten’s been found?”
He nodded again.
Kate kissed him tenderly. “I think I finally figured it out. I thought my marriage to Anatole failed because of irreconcilable differences, but I was wrong. It failed because we didn’t love each other. We never loved each other. At least not the way husbands and wives are supposed to love. Our marriage is going to last forever because the differences between us won’t matter so much. You were right. It’s our love that’s important.”
It took him a minute to find his voice. “You’re a pretty smart lady.”
“It took me a while.”
He kissed her slowly, savoring every moment of it. “I’m glad you decided to marry me. I’d hate to think of these kittens growing up illegitimate.” He leaned away from her just a bit so he could better look at her. His eyes were serious when he finally spoke. “You’re going to make a good kitten mother.”
“Because I love them, too?”
“Yup.”
“If I had some help, I might even make a passable child mother,” she said, smiling. “Don’t you think?”
“You’ll make the best child mother ever. And we’ll make sure there’s room in your life for your cello.”
She thought she might bubble over with happiness. She had everything she’d ever wanted. And it was going to get better. Every year with Dave would be better than the one before.
She felt his heart beating against hers and was overwhelmed with emotion. Mine, she thought. My husband, my lover, the father of my children. It was exciting. Her whole life was expanding before her very eyes. She was going to continue her music, but she was going to find time for other things as well. She might never learn to actually bake a cake, but she was going to learn to throw a football. She might get a dog, she decided, so the kittens would have something to torment. She’d definitely have a baby. She wanted a house that was filled with noisy love and activity. She could buy houseplants now because Dave would remember to water them.
And she was going to get sexy underwear… maybe a garter belt. After all, she would be young only once, she told herself. Live it up.
She ran her hand along the curve of Dave’s neck. “Is that crayon still on the nightstand?”
“You mean the crayon we use to record your toe exercises?”
Kate’s fingers found their way down to his waist, popped the snap on his jeans, and wiggled their way through layers of clothing until they found smooth skin. She smiled when she felt his stomach muscles tense, heard the quick intake of breath. “I have an urge to… do toe exercises,” she said, letting her finger stray lower and lower.
Dave was breathless. “If that finger goes a half an inch farther south, you’re going to be doing toe exercises on the kitchen floor.”
Kate pulled away in mock horror. “Not in front of the kittens!”
He grabbed her and carried her out of the kitchen, up the stairs to the bedroom.
Kate held tight to his neck. “Are you being romantic or are you being nice to my injured leg?”
“Neither. I’m getting you into bed in the fastest way possible.”
Later that afternoon Dave studied what was left of the crayon. “Look at this poor thing,” he said. “It’s worn down to practically nothing.”
Kate studied the new marks on her cast and smiled in contentment. “We need a fresh crayon.”
“They’re all in my house… on the third floor.”
Kate propped herself up on one elbow. “I’ve never seen your third floor. You always keep that door locked. Just exactly what have you got up there?”
Dave toyed with a red curl that curved around Kate’s earlobe. “It’s sort of a… studio.”
Her curiosity was aroused. “What kind of studio?”
Good question. He didn’t know what kind of studio. It was a little bit of everything. It was his junk drawer. But it had its serious side, too.
“I guess it’s some kind of artist’s studio. Mostly it’s just a bunch of stuff.” All my favorite things, he privately added. The equivalent of your cello.
Kate struggled to get out of bed and began a hunt for her clothes. “I’d like to see it. I’ve always wondered about that locked door. Why do you keep it locked?”
Dave sighed. “Because I was afraid if you saw what I have up there, you’d be even more convinced I was all wrong for you.” He followed her in the clothes search, gathering together underwear and socks.
It seemed silly now, but Kate knew it might have been a real concern two days earlier. She realized that she’d been on a witch-hunt of sorts, looking for reasons to justify her fear of marriage. Fortunately Dave was a patient man. And a wise one. She watched him puzzling over a third sock he’d found and couldn’t resist the urge to tease him. “What on earth have you been hiding, dismembered body parts?”
“Worse than that,” Dave said, zipping his jeans. “Toys.”
Kate’s eyes grew wide. “More toys?”
He took a key from his jeans pocket. “They help me to think. I know that sounds crazy, but they sort of get me in a mood.”
He led the way over to his house and carried Kate up the stairs to the attic door and unlocked it. “Some of my toys are pretty special. Collectors’ items. Most of them are just fun.”
Kate looked inside and blinked in amazement. Not in her wildest, most childish fantasy could she have imagined anything like this. Huge skylights had been cut out of the back half of the roof, splashing sunlight over most of the room. The remainder was lit by recessed lighting. There were games, books, bubble-gum machines, weather vanes, toy trucks, a basketball hoop… It was a seemingly endless collage of colors and textures. She was sure it was the happiest, coziest nest anyone had ever built. And in the middle of this riot of indulgence was a sturdy, no-nonsense drawing board. A small rolling set of shelves sat beside the drawing board. It held pencils, pens, brushes, crayons, Magic Markers, erasers, rulers, and some sort of mechanical device.
“What’s this?” Kate said pointing to the machine.
“Airbrush.”
“What do you do with it?”
“I draw cartoons.” He went to the drawing board and flipped a half-finished page for her to see.
She stared at the figures running across the frames. “This looks familiar.”
Dave smiled. “That’s because you’re finding time to read the funnies in the paper these days.”
“This is a great cartoon,” Kate said. “This guy here is from outer space, and he fell in love with a crossing guard named Patti….” She looked at the drawings in front of her. “Why are you copying these cartoons?”
“I’m not copying them. I’m drawing them.”
Kate looked at the signature in the last frame. David Dodd. “You really draw this? You mean you thought of it, and you get paid for it?”
“Yup.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I did tell you. You weren’t listening. Every time I said I drew cartoons you’d roll your eyes and say ‘Yes, but what do you
really do?’ ”
Kate felt her stomach lurch. He was right. “I feel like a complete jerk,” she said.
Dave hugged her to him. “It wasn’t all your fault. To tell the truth, I was a little insecure and was just as happy to keep it a secret for a while. It’s been syndicated for only three weeks. Initially it was for a one-month trial, but it’s become so popular they’ve offered me a long-term contract. And I’m negotiating a comic book contract for it, too.”
He held her at arm’s length, and then concern showed in his eyes. “Do you really like it?”
“I love it! And I love your room. I can see where it would inspire you to write comic books.”
“You think you could practice your cello here?”
Kate laughed. “No. I need someplace that doesn’t hold so many distractions.”
“We have a problem, Katie. We need a bigger house.”
Kate agreed. “We need a house in a family neighborhood,” she said. “Someplace where there are children skipping rope in driveways. Someplace with lots of bedrooms.”
About the Author
Bestselling author JANET EVANOVICH is the winner of the New Jersey Romance Writers Golden Leaf Award and multiple Romantic Times awards, including Lifetime Achievement. She is also a long-standing member of RWA. “Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.” Janet Evanovich, 1988
Visit Janet Evanovich’s website at
www.evanovich.com, or write her at
P.O. Box 5487, Hanover, NH 03755.
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Books by Janet Evanovich
Back to the Bedroom
Love Overboard
The Rocky Road to Romance
One for the Money
Two for the Dough
Three to Get Deadly
Four to Score
High Five
Hot Six
Seven Up
Hard Eight
Visions of Sugar Plums
To the Nines
Ten Big Ones
Coming Soon in Hardcover
Motor Mouth
Coming Soon in Paperback
Metro Girl Manhunt
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
BACK TO THE BEDROOM.Copyright © 1989, 2005 by Janet Evanovich. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition © July 2005 ISBN: 9780061797552
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Janet Evanovich, Back to the Bedroom
(Series: Elsie Hawkins # 1)
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