Charming Grace

by Deborah Smith

  “Oh, Boone.”

  He pulled me to my feet and guided me across the courtyard to my room’s door while I clutched the candle to my stomach. I didn’t make any pretense of sending him away after he held the door for me. He stepped inside and shut the door behind us both. I went to an antique lamp stand near the room’s four-poster bed and carefully set the candle there. Water streamed off me. I was weeping all over.

  I faced Boone. Both of us breathed roughly in the candlelit darkness. “I don’t want to think too much.”

  He crossed the intimate room to me, lifting his hands, cupping my face in strong, trembling fingers. “As I see it,” his voice low and emotional, “my job is to re-flower the widow.”

  God bless the man who can startle a woman out of her misery. “What?”

  “Some men pride themselves on de-flowering virgins. I think my specialty might be re-flowering a widow. Making you bloom, again.”

  “You’ve. . .had practice at this specialty?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this moment with you.”

  “Show me.”

  He trailed a finger over my chin and down my neck, first down the center, then back up one side, then across and down the other, then up to tickle one earlobe, then down to the pulse point between my collarbones. Slowly he stroked the sensitive skin. “Don’t stop.”

  For a breathless moment he didn’t answer. His fingertips stroked my throat again. “I can’t imagine stopping, chere.”

  “Good.”

  Boone dipped his head close to my ear. “Keep your eyes closed.” He picked me up and carried me to the bed. We stretched out, wet and shivering, atop the soft white nest of a down comforter. He pulled that marshmallow-soft bedding around us, wrapped the two of us in it, facing each other.

  “Warm,” I said in a nervous tone.

  “Safe,” he answered.

  He was right. I twined my arms around his neck and curled one leg over him as he took me into a deep, full-body hug. I felt him hard against my stomach through the coarse material of his jeans. Burrowing my face into the crook of his neck, I settled into the warm, cosseted cocoon we had made. He stroked my back with long, languid movements of his hand. I tugged his unbuttoned shirt aside and put a palm against the soft, thick hair at the center of his chest. “You have a big heart.”

  “You know what they say,” he whispered against my hair, gruff and teasing. “Big heart, big—”

  “I already noticed.”

  We lay there for a long time in that comforter, not kissing, not moving more than by slow degrees, drying, absorbing each other, trading the outside world for the inside one. The mixture of pain and loss—letting go—merged with the helpless allure of being in a man’s arms again. I knew it was only natural; I knew I would get past this first time and feel better, but I never expected it to be so easy to simply want Boone.

  “Cry about him, it’s okay,” Boone urged, stroking my hair. The tears were barely past my eyes; he knew, he suspected, he understood. I cried with my head tucked deep under his chin and my hand clenching and unfolding on his chest.

  I don’t know how much time passed, but when I pushed his shirt off his shoulders the soft cotton cloth made a hot, damp compress in my hands. His hands grasped mine and pressed them into the pillow above my head. His leg slid between my knees and I squeezed it. He bent to my breasts and nuzzled them through the damp silk robe.

  “Burn me up,” I said. “Dry me out.”

  He brought my arms down by my sides and slipped his fingers under the robe’s lapels. He drew the robe open, then, even slower, pulled the hem of the clinging t-shirt up to my breasts. I gasped as the material pulled across my nipples.

  “The icing,” he whispered, “on the cake.”

  When he kissed my breasts I arched and moaned. Yes, it was just that easy to want him, and no, I can’t say I pictured Harp in my mind, or pretended Harp’s mouth was on my body. Guilt is no match for need.

  Boone finished undressing me. I shoved the comforter aside and lay naked in the dark under his hands. I pressed my hand to the front of his jeans. His quick intake of breath accompanied the flex of his hips toward me. “This is no time for you to stay in those jeans,” I said. My voice was like torn sandpaper on rock. Ruined and hoarse. “And if you don’t have any condoms we’re both going to feel foolish.”

  “Gracie, I have a whole box with your name on ‘em.” He rolled over and sat on the side of the bed, jerking at the jeans’ button and zipper, then dragging denim down his long legs. I saw the flash of white briefs, and a glimpse of ropey thigh muscles in the candlelight. I heard a wet slap as the jeans landed on the mosaic tiles around the courtyard door. My skin burned. He stretched out beside me again. Slowly, as if laying down a deck of cards, he fanned cool little condom packets on my body. One on each breast, one on my navel, one on the top of each thigh. And the last one, perched carefully, between them.

  “Looks like I got a winning hand,” he said. He removed the packets as slowly as he had placed them, then put one hand on me, stroking from throat to thigh, gliding into the hollows, lingering on the peaks. I arched. His fingers went on tormenting, exploring, cajoling my while his voice offered a thick, sexual liquor against my ear.

  “That’s it, my beautiful Gracie. . .”

  I stopped him, unhappy at what I was feeling. I pushed him onto his back, leaning over him, stroking him the way he’d touched me. He made a rough sound of delight, then arched his head back as my mouth brushed down his body. My lips traced the indentation of a taut muscle in his stomach. When I cradled him in my hands, his breath shattered the intimate silence. I made him arch again as I ran my hands down his thighs. Boone latched one hand around my wrist and tugged. “We haven’t kissed. Com’ere.”

  He sat up and caught my face between his hands. We knelt, facing each other, both breathing harshly. Boone slid his hands into my hair. I rose up a little and nuzzled my cheek to his, soft to coarse, ear to chin, chin to nose, lifting my face up just so as his hands guided me, until our mouths were nearly touching. “You kiss me first,” I said. “Let’s see if I like it.”

  He could make me smile with tears on my face and my throat raw and body bruised inside in the push-pull of emotions; he made he smile as I feathered my mouth against his. A little-girl kiss; soft and still, then a teenaged attempt, a little awkward, pressing, a little too noisy. And then, in its prime, the deep, mobile kiss of woman who used to be very, very good at kissing.

  And still was.

  He pulled back on a long, rough breath. “I think I’m outmatched.” Then he pulled me into the deep circle of his arms, kissed my forehead, my cheeks, my nose, my chin before finally, on the sound of my sigh, sinking into my mouth with a skill that made my bones melt. “I like it,” was all I had time or presence of mind to say.

  We fell back on the bed in a jumble of intertwined limbs and exploring hands, all patience gone. I arched and twisted against him as his tongue delved deep into my mouth and his hands squeezed my breasts. He pressed me onto my back and my legs surrounded him with welcome. A quick fumble with a condom ended with my hand clasped around him and him saying, very urgently but very gently, “You lead. I’ll follow.”

  I guided him inside me. Boone went very still, watching me in the dark, hearing the soft mewl of forgetting. He kissed me lightly, sweetly. “If you call me by his name, I can stand it. It’ll be all right.”

  I touched my fingertips to his face, tracing his jaw, then stroking the hair back from his forehead. A remarkable man. “Boone,” I said, hoping it would tide him over or serve as an apology if I pretended he was Harp. He trembled because I said his name. I pulled him down to me and we moved together, as simply and as sadly as that.

  I wasn’t Harp’s girl, anymore.

  I’d be a fool not to admit there were three people in bed that night—me, Grace, and Harp. And I’d be lying if I said I’m so generous and laid-back it wouldn’t have hurt to hear Grace call me his na
me. She didn’t, thank God, but I think she wanted to. I spent those hours with her drawn up so tight I could hardly breathe—watching her, feeling her out, judging every move she made, every sound, trying every way I knew to take her away from her husband. Nothing personal, Harp, but I made her forget you two or maybe three times—the last one was such an earthquake I couldn’t tell where I ended and she started, so it could be she was just caught up in my jump off the cliff. She held onto me hard and didn’t let go after we hit bottom, I know that much.

  And then she cried for about an hour.

  “I’m sorry,” she said more than once, until I shushed her into silence. She turned her back to me but didn’t edge away, maybe because I had her in a bear hug even a bear couldn’t get out of. She twined one hand around my upper arm and stroked lightly, slower and slower until her fingers stopped moving. I felt every soft fingertip on my skin, like butterflies. She sighed and fell asleep, or pretended to.

  I let out a long breath and kept holding her.

  It’s there a rule of thumb about orgasms and tears, it must be that one provokes the other the way rain begets flowers. I felt sorry for Boone at the same time I used him mercilessly. He wasn’t put off by a woman who groaned against him one minute and cried against him the next. I felt as if I’d fallen in a warm bath of sex and comfort, all neatly hidden behind the basic hunt-catch-keep rituals men and women use as a shield. Harp and I had fumbled our way from awkward virginity to wild young love to comfortable married sex; with Harp, I was usually the one doing the soothing, the coaxing, the how-about-let’s-try-this adventures.

  Now I was wrapped in the arms of a man who crooned shush like a two-syllable poem but also spooned himself so close behind me I felt every languid flex of his resting erection. Cry all you want, but I’m just a nudge away when you’re ready again. A simple fact for a complex night: Sex, life, and Boone were irresistible.

  So I pretended to sleep.

  He let me.

  An hour later his cell phone rang. He snatched it from a bedside table and we both sat up. As he listened to the caller his face went hard. “We’ll be there in ten minutes,” he said. By the time he put the phone down he was already out of bed and reaching for his clothes.

  “Leo’s in the hospital,” he said.

  Chapter 12

  “Didja know?” Leo slurred, looking up at a tearful Mika while an ER doctor put the finishing stitches on the gash on his fractured cheekbone, “didja know ma full name iz Gal-leo? Gal-leo Senterra.”

  “Galileo?” she filled in, squeezing his left hand—the unhurt one. “I didn’t know, but it’s perfect. You’re brilliant and unique and courageous. Yes. Just as special as the famous Galileo. Perfect.”

  “Awww. You say that ta all tha Gal-leos.” Blood speckled his face. One eye was swollen shut. The scraped knuckles of his right hand were stained yellow with antiseptic. A long rip in his Lakers jersey revealed a bony, muscular chest and one pale nipple among a forest of fine blond-brown fur. As a street fighter, he made a good nerd. But as a protector of truth, honor, and the gentleman’s way, he was worthy of Mika’s adoring tears. Boone and I stood to one side, silent and watching and helpless. In the ugly bright light of the three a.m. ER unit Boone’s dark eyes looked predatory with anger and self-disgust. Four hulking football players had interpreted my speech at their school as a call to beat up the son of the man who planned to make a movie about Harp’s life. Boone never showed an ounce of anger toward me, though I deserved it. My speech had provoked this attack on Stone’s son but also on Mika. Harp’s niece.

  “Two of the boys who attacked Leo were black,” Dew told us grimly, dabbing a cotton swab to her face. My no-nonsense cousin had a long scrape on her forehead from diving into the melee to save the teenagers. “They called Mika some names I won’t repeat. One of the politer ones was ‘Oreo.’”

  Now Mika cuddled Leo’s hand to her pink blood-dabbed pullover. A jeweled hairclip dangled from the curly tangles of her black hair. Smears of his blood made brown splotches on the thighs of her pink pedal pushers. Huddling over him, she smiled and cried. “My name means ‘Raccoon’ in some Native American language. I’ve been told my mother chose it because her and her brother Harp’s great-grandmother was Cherokee Indian. My grandmother in Detroit considered ‘Mika’ a trendy and trashy name, not fitting for a DuLane. She had my first name legally changed to Susan. Susan. But I’m not a Susan, I’m a Mika. I’m a smart little raccoon.”

  Leo blinked owlishly, wincing in slow motion as the doctor tugged at the last stitch in his face. “I saw you smack a guy in the head. I name you Rabid Raccoon.”

  “I had to help you with those Neanderthals. It was four against one. And they were so big.”

  “I heard what the black dudes called you. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve never fit in anywhere. I’m used to it.” Her voice trembled. “The only person in the world who makes me feel totally, completely accepted for exactly who I am, is you.”

  He moaned. “All my life I’ve just been Stone Senterra’s scrawny, nerdy, screw-up son. But with you I’m not just Leo Senterra. I’m Gal-leo. I love you, Rabid Raccoon.”

  “I love you too, Gal-leo. If my uncle Harp were here, I’m sure he’d say he never wanted you to be hurt for his sake.” She bowed her head to his, and cried. So did Leo.

  “They need privacy,” Boone said under his breath. He looked terrible. “At least we can give ‘em that.”

  I nodded. My eyes burning, I followed him into the hospital lobby. We stood at a window, side by side but not touching, staring into the empty night.

  “I didn’t do my job today,” he said.

  “I did mine all too well,” I answered.

  All hell broke loose when I called Stone at dawn and told him I’d let his kid get beaten up. He and Diamond were in the middle of their a.m. weight-training session when my call came in, so she grabbed a phone to listen. She went deadly quiet. Stone started yelling.

  “I thought you taught my kid to fight, Noleene! I told you to teach him every Cajun street trick you know! What the hell happened?”

  “Leo’s not the eye-gouging and ball-kicking type. He’s a thinker. So I taught him a few wrestling and nerve-pinch techniques. It’s called Brazilian ju-jitsu.” I didn’t mention I’d picked up the skill from a South American arms dealer at Angolo. “Leo’s pretty good at it. He was just outnumbered tonight, that’s all.”

  “What the hell is Brazilian ju-jitsu—kung fu for sissies wearing gaucho pants? You sent my kid into a street fight pretending to be Mr. Spock doing the Vulcan neck grab?”

  “I’m not proud of what happened to him.”

  “Well, neither am I. This isn’t like you, Noleene! Where the hell were you?”

  “In bed.” I let it go at that.

  “In bed! In bed? You let my kid hit the bars with Grace’s crazy women relatives while you turned in early for some beauty rest?” He did a lot more yelling but Diamond continued to lurk like a piranha in the deep end of the river, just waiting for the blood to reach ‘appetizer’ level.

  When Stone stopped for breath she swam in, mouth open, teeth bared. “I’ll be down there in two hours, max, in Stone’s jet, to pick Leo up and bring him back to Atlanta. Noleene, you keep Grace Vance out of my way or she’ll need an ER visit, too. And so will you.”

  I gritted my teeth. “You can chew me up and spit me out, but don’t come down here and kidnap Leo. He’s sleeping. He’s fine. Mika’s holding his hand and won’t budge. Grace and her cousin are guardin’ his door. I swear I won’t let anyone else near him. I’ll drive him back to Dahlonega later today when he can sit up without drooling. I’ll bring Mika and Grace and Grace’s cousin Dew with us. He likes them. He wants it this way.”

  “You’ll take care of him like you took care of him tonight?” she said sarcastically. “And you think I’ll just accept your ‘word’ on that? You think I’ll let you keep my nephew surrounded by Grace and her coven?”

  “He’s nineteen.
Don’t treat him like a kid.”

  “Don’t you tell me how to treat my nephew, you loser—”

  “Enough!” Stone yelled. “Noleene, get out of the way. Diamond’s coming down there and get him. I want to see you here in Dahlonega this afternoon, and I want some explanations that make sense! For now you just take care of Grace and her girls. Try not to screw that up, too, huh?”

  He hung up on me.

  Leo was a kind of kid brother I had wanted to protect the way Armand always tried to protect me. Now I knew how Armand felt every time I got whacked, shot, or cut in a fight. Why didn’t you hurt me, not him? I said to God. Give me the cracked cheekbone. Give me the bruises. But since God didn’t work that way, the best I could do was swear I’d never let it happen, again. And that no one else would be blamed for my mistake. Especially not Grace.

  I walked back to Leo’s hospital room. He was sleeping. Mika slept beside him in a chair, one hand curled over his arm on the bed. Grace had gone to find us all some coffee. Cousin Dew stood at the door like a red-headed Doberman. Speaking in a cocktail-hour voice that rich Southern women use to slice finger sandwiches without a knife, she hissed, “All you are is six inches of temporary satisfaction with a big sign on your back that says ‘Trouble.’ If your plan was to embarrass, manipulate, and confuse Grace for the sake of your stupid employer, you’ve done a good job.”

  “For the record, chere, if I’d known I was going to do any kind of harm to Grace, I’d never have set foot within a mile of her.” I paused. “And it’s eight inches, not six.”

  Grace’s footsteps coming our way brought that little conversation to an end. Dew watched me shrewdly, surprised, maybe. At any rate, she pulled a small white Bible from a tiny purse she carried and waved it at me. “I’m going to the hospital chapel. To pray that you get struck by lightning.” She stalked away.

  Grace handed me a cup of coffee. We stood outside the hospital room’s door, trying to pretend we hadn’t been naked together. “Problem with Dew?” she asked.