Love Me Love My Bed Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  About the Author

  Books by Rita Clay Estrada

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  Neither one of them could sleep. Maybe it was the two beds.

  “Can’t you sleep?”

  “No. You?”

  “No.”

  “Did I disturb you?” Beth asked, leaning against the balcony railing. The midnight sky was a buffer, the darkness giving her the courage to say and do things…

  Duke wrapped his hands around the railing as if he wanted to choke it. “You do disturb me, Beth. I want you.” His voice was as deep as the night, and almost as dark. “I want you so damn bad, I’m gritting my teeth to keep from grabbing you right now.”

  Her mind went blank, but her body hummed in reaction. At last she found her voice. “I thought you said you weren’t ready. I thought you really didn’t want me.”

  He turned slowly and stared down at her.

  “I lied.”

  Since 1985, Texan Rita Clay Estrada has been a favorite with Temptation readers, so when we’re looking for special authors to create special projects, her name always comes up. This time we asked her what she could do with a “wrong bed.” Find out for yourself in Love Me, Love My Bed, Rita’s seventeenth Temptation novel.

  Books by Rita Clay Estrada

  HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

  349—THE LADY SAYS NO

  361—TWICE LOVED

  450—ONE MORE TIME

  474—THE COLONEL’S DAUGHTER

  500—FORMS OF LOVE

  518—THE TWELVE GIFTS OF CHRISTMAS

  573—THE STORMCHASER

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Love Me, Love My Bed

  Rita Clay Estrada

  For two very important people in my life:

  Steve Goodwin, the Stormchaser.

  May you find your rainbow—you deserve it.

  And for Mary Tate Engles. Thanks for your many years

  of friendship and the use of your beautiful Tucson home.

  1

  IT WAS SOMETHING a handsome sheikh would own to seduce beautiful young maidens, one after another. It was decadent. It was sexy. It was classy but deliciously naughty.

  Beth McGruder’s new bedroom set was undoubtedly the fulfillment of her fantasy—or at least, half of it. The second half—the man—would probably never arrive. The massive bed had a waist-high frame and four white hand-tooled oak posts connected above by rice-carved poles that served as curtain rods for what had to be hundreds of yards of gauzy white fabric.

  And it was all hers.

  A giggle caught in her throat, then poured out in tinkling laughter. It was delightfully absurd, owning a bed like this. And the bed didn’t stand alone! Oh, no. She’d bought the whole package: a set of small wooden steps that led up to the bed, a table that fit against the foot of the bed, and matching armoires that towered at either side of the massive headboard. In addition to that, she had bought a down-filled comforter, white Battenberg-lace-trimmed sheets and pillow covers, a pleated bed-skirt and several embroidered pillows that would stack nicely with the regular ones.

  It was an imposing set that would have looked big even in a barn.

  Dropping her purse to the floor and slipping out of her trim black heels, she laughed again. She mounted the miniature ladder-like staircase to the mattress, then crawled to the center of the bed and leaned back against the headboard, her stocking feet stretched straight out in front of her. With a happy sigh, she surveyed the room through the filmy gauze that hung down around her like gossamer mist. Everything looked different.

  “The Princess and the Pea,” she whispered. And that was how she felt—like a princess.

  She’d been divorced for almost three years, living on a shoestring budget for most of that time. It felt very good to have splurged and bought herself the most extravagant bedroom furnishings she could find—and for a price she could afford—barely. The opportunity had just dropped into her lap.

  Every day on her way to work as a secretary for Abrams, Abrams and Barrett Law Firm, she’d driven by the furniture store. Glancing at their elaborate displays from the car window had told her that more than likely, anything in the store would be out of her reach financially.

  Then, just two months ago, the store began displaying Bankruptcy signs. In the first week the furniture was twenty percent off, then thirty and just last month they’d gone to a forty-percent discount. Beth finally had stopped on her way home one day to look at the remainders. There had been other beds on display, but she hadn’t seen beyond this one. It touched the core of her, calling to something she didn’t want to delve into or explain, not even to herself.

  But even at forty percent off, though, the price of the set was over two thousand dollars, and she couldn’t justify the expense. With her heart pounding and her fingers crossed, she told herself that she would come back when the furniture was marked down to fifty percent. Then, if the bed was still there, she would buy it. If it is still there, her conscience had taunted. But she’d known she was right to wait. If it wasn’t there, then she wasn’t meant to have it, she told herself. But her fingers stayed crossed and on the day the signs turned from forty into fifty percent off, she called in to work requesting a personal day off then waited impatiently for the doors to open. When they finally did, she marched in, went directly to the bed and let out a sigh; there was no Sold tag hanging from it yet. But there soon would be.

  She took a quick look at her savings passbook and every cent she’d received in the divorce settlement, then wrote a check for the full amount, on the spot.

  The saleslady apologized profusely. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McGruder, but we can’t deliver for two weeks. We’re booked up, and we’ll need to wait until we have another delivery going in your direction. After all, this bed will take our people a couple of hours to assemble.”

  Beth was disappointed, but undaunted. “That’s fine. I can wait. After all, I’ve waited this long.”

  Later, at home, she had dreamed and anticipated, waiting for delivery. And now it was here—the first new thing she’d bought since the divorce, the first new thing that was just for her.

  One more time she gave herself a silent pep talk and told herself she deserved it. After all, a bed was where you spent a third of your life, and from the looks of her life at this point, she was going to spend the rest of it single and alone. If that was the case, she would have to catch enjoyment where she could. This would give her pleasure for years to come.

  She grinned. It had been the birth of that thought that had allowed her to rationalize purchasing this fantasy without too much guilt in the first place.

  “Indulgence.” Her voice was as firm as her thoughts were. “Sheer indulgence.” The corners of her mouth turned up again. “And well deserved.”

  The phone rang and she slid from her high perch to the floor, then tried to find her bedroom phone. When she couldn’t spot it, she made a mad dash for the cordless in the living room. She answered with a breathless, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. McGruder?” asked a deep male voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you buy a bed at Simpson’s Fine Furniture last
week?”

  “Yes,” she answered slowly, wondering what in heaven’s name was going on. Had she entered some kind of contest and they were going to give her a prize? Had she done something wrong? Had her check not cleared? She went through a thousand reasons for the phone call.

  “And was it delivered today?”

  “Yes.” She cleared her throat. “Before I answer any more questions, just who is this?”

  “My name is Duke McGregor. I live in the same building as you, in apartment 537, one floor above?”

  The name rang a distant bell, but Beth couldn’t place it just yet. Instead of saying anything, she waited, and her silence allowed him to continue.

  “I bought a bed at Simpson’s last week, too. It was a massive, king-size contraption that would take an army of men to install. They said they couldn’t deliver it until today, when they delivered yours.”

  “I see,” Beth said. Only she didn’t. What did all this have to do with her? “And are you enjoying your new bedroom set, Mr. McGregor?”

  “I don’t know. Are you?” There was just a hint of teasing—or was it sarcasm?—in his voice.

  Was this man a little off his rocker? She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at it as if it held the answer to her unasked question. She put it back against her ear and asked the least aggressive question she could think of: “I beg your pardon?”

  Obviously a patient man, he repeated the question. “I said, I don’t know. Are you enjoying my bed, Ms. McGruder?”

  “I don’t think so,” she answered. “Are you hallucinating about your own bed or is this just an obscene phone call in general?”

  He gave a heavy sigh—one that told her he was holding on to his patience—barely. “In error, my bed was delivered to your apartment. You haven’t noticed, Ms. McGruder, that you have a strange walnut-and-leather bedroom suite in your home?”

  This time she stared at the ceiling, hearing a telltale squeak in the floor where he must have been pacing. There it went again. “I’m so sorry, but I think you must have the wrong nut. But I wish you well in your quest, Mr.—” She couldn’t remember what his name was.

  “McGregor,” he supplied with a hint of testiness. “Duke McGregor.”

  “Duke McGregor,” she repeated, then suddenly she remembered where she’d heard the name before. “Are you Benjamin McGregor’s father?” she asked.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “My daughters went to school with your son,” she finally admitted.

  “Your daughters?” he asked slowly, as if piecing together his memories, just as Beth had done a moment ago. “Meaning two?” Then he hesitated. “As in twins?”

  “Yes.”

  “The McGruder twins?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re Mrs. Stan McGruder?” He sounded slightly amazed. She didn’t know why. She was perfectly harmless. Duke McGregor, on the other hand, was reputed to have a temper the size of Texas. She wanted nothing whatsoever to do with tempers—especially bad ones—and certainly didn’t want to speak to someone who was supposedly without manners.

  “My, my, it is a small world, isn’t it, Mr. McGregor?” she said smoothly.

  “It certainly is, Mrs. McGruder. And how is Mr. McGruder?” There was just enough smugness in his tone to tell her he was asking for a verification of old information.

  “Why, I would assume he and his new bride are doing just fine. And how about Mrs. McGregor? Is she still busy with charities and bridge?”

  “She certainly is,” he answered, but his voice didn’t hold a shade of warmth. In fact, he sounded downright testy. “And I assume you know we divorced a little over two years ago.”

  “I must have forgotten,” she said innocently, noticing that he’d finally stopped pacing over that one weak spot in the floor. Obviously, she’d gotten his full attention.

  “I’m sure,” he said dryly. “But I don’t think that’s the question of the day, is it?”

  “Really?” She grinned. “And what is?”

  “Whether or not you’re going to hold my bedroom set ransom.”

  “Ransom? Now why would I do that?”

  “Because, so far, Ms. McGruder, you haven’t told me whether or not you have my bedroom furniture.”

  She was tired of the baiting game. “I don’t have it. How could I? I only have room for my own, which was delivered and set up this afternoon.”

  “Then the furniture company was wrong and I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  Suddenly, she had a new thought. A heavy feeling began to settle in the pit of her stomach. Beth went to the door of her second bedroom, usually a storage room or a spare when the girls were home. “It’s quite all right,” she said, stalling him in the conversation as she opened the door. Flipping on the light, she stared into the used-to-be-empty room.

  She finally found enough voice to interrupt Duke McGregor’s apologies. “Uh, Mr. Duke, uh, McGregor?” she finally managed, stepping into the spare room as if she were walking on eggs. “Is your bed brown leather and dark wood with a canopy?”

  “Why, yes—” he began.

  But she interrupted him again. “With dark wood armoires on each side?”

  This time his voice sounded wary. “Yes.”

  She peeked up at the canopy. “With mirrors on the ceiling above the bed?”

  “And five-inch speakers on either side of the headboard?” His voice sounded hopeful.

  She leaned forward and looked at each side until she confirmed what he was describing. “Right.”

  “Yes, well. It’s here in all its glory,” she drawled.

  “So they did deliver it.” Satisfaction laced his voice.

  “They certainly did,” Beth stated flatly, looking at the monstrosity squatting in her spare bedroom.

  “If it’s not an imposition, may I come see it? Your apartment and mine are the same, so I’d get an idea of how it will look when I have it up here.”

  “And when do you think that will be?” she asked, eager to get the gaudy thing out of her apartment.

  “They told me that once they found it, they could probably get it set up in a few days, but no sooner.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she murmured sincerely.

  “So am I. I’ve already given my son my bed to take to college. He picked it up last night because I thought I’d only be in a hotel one night.”

  “You spent the night in a hotel?” she asked, surprised.

  “Of course. I’m in the middle of an audit. I need all the sleep I can get to keep on top of things. I thought it’d only be for one night.”

  She recalled that he was a very successful CPA specializing in corporations. A numbers man, her friends used to say.

  “My goodness. I’m really sorry. Of course, you can come down and see this, ah…your bed.” She walked around the side of the bed, opened an armoire and took a deep breath. It was lined in rich-smelling cedar, which was the only good thing she could say about this ugly set.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Be there in a few minutes.”

  After he hung up the phone, Beth imagined him racing to the elevator and rushing to her front door.

  When he didn’t knock on her door immediately, Beth decided she’d been wrong, shrugged him off and began thinking dinner. Peering into the fridge, she hoped to see something that would whet her appetite. None of the fourteen different frozen dinners did it for her. One foot daintily propped on another, she surveyed the bottom shelves.

  Nothing there, either.

  She opened the pantry.

  A jar of peanut butter, half a sleeve of stale crackers, a giant can of spinach and four small tins of tomato sauce. Nothing tempting.

  She picked up the phone and dialed her favorite restaurant down the street. Under her breath, she muttered to her upstairs neighbor, “Too late, buster. You can visit your bed some other time, because I’m about to eat dinner. And I dine by candlelight. Alone.”

  The restaurant answered and she ordered spagh
etti, chunky sauce and mozzarella garlic bread for delivery. It felt good to splurge on dinner once in a while, and tonight was a night for celebration. She needed to mark the addition of her new bed to the eclectic family of new and used furniture she’d acquired over the past few years.

  It hadn’t been easy making the transition from being a married woman living in a spacious home on the golf course in the “right” neighborhood—where she’d raised her children, worked on charities and school boards and taken golf and tennis lessons—to being a single woman who had to work for a living to make ends meet—and they definitely weren’t the same ends she’d been used to.

  There remained in her a residue of bitterness over the fact that her ex-husband still had money to burn on his new wife. Apparently Stan had no problem funding his mate’s manicures, hairdresser bills, extravagant hobbies and clothing. He hadn’t been that way with Beth. He hadn’t been generous with her—neither with gentle words nor deeds. But rumor had it he had learned a lot between wife number one and wife number two. Number two definitely had his attention.

  It was a shame he hadn’t learned that lesson before. But that was another story. He hadn’t learned his lesson and they had gotten divorced.

  The phone rang and she reached for it, thinking it would be Mr. McGregor apologizing for being late. To her pleasant surprise it was her daughter Carol.

  “Hi, honey. What’s up?” Beth asked, knowing there wasn’t any such thing as a phone call without a purpose from a college girl.

  “I need you to find my maroon wool suit and send it to me. Could you, Mom?” The quieter of the twins, Carol was also the more direct. Ask a question, get an answer. “I’m invited to a sorority tea next week and it’s perfect for the occasion.”

  “Fine. I’ll mail it from the office tomorrow,” Beth promised. “Is everything else okay?”