The Older Woman

by Cheryl Reavis

  Rain or no rain he couldn’t walk fast, then or now, and he could barely see where he was going. The house was dark except for a dim light coming, he thought, from the den or the hall. He rapped lightly on the back door, and when she didn’t come, he opened it and went inside.

  He could hear soft music playing somewhere in the house. Some kind of stringed instrument. A Celtic harp, maybe, or a dobro.

  Haunting.

  Melancholy.

  A lighted candle burned on the mantel in the den. He could just make out Scottie’s picture in one of the silver frames. The candle flame wavered slightly as he walked past.

  “Kate?”

  he

  said.

  She still didn’t answer, and he kept going.

  He bypassed the kitchen and went down the hallway toward her bedroom. He could see a flicker of light coming from there.

  He saw her when he reached the doorway. She was sitting on the side of the bed. There were more lighted candles—on the dresser and the nightstand. She stood up when she saw him, came to him, took him by the hand.

  “What…?” he began, but she pressed her fingertips against his lips.

  She led him into the room. He was drenched to the skin, and without prelude she began to dry him gently with a towel. Her fingers lightly caressed his face from time to time, lightly touched his mouth. When she was done, she began to undress him, still saying nothing. He couldn’t keep from smiling. He had thought her invitation sounded promising, but this was way beyond that. She kept walking between him and the light from the candles. He could see her body through the thin gown-like thing she was wearing, and his breath caught. He wanted to touch her, but she eluded his grasp, still saying nothing. When he was naked, she took him by the hand again and led him to the bed—no, to the place she had made for him there.

  He lay down where she wanted, his back resting against a number of pillows placed against the headboard.

  He started to say something again, then didn’t. He gave himself up to whatever this was instead, closing his eyes after a moment.

  Waiting.

  The music played softly. It had that echo sound, he realized, sort of like the song he and Kate had danced to after Mrs. Bee’s anniversary dinner.

  The rain fell.

  He could feel her come onto the bed and kneel beside him. He opened his eyes when she took his hand. She touched it lovingly, caressing it, running her fingers gently between his. When she pressed her warm lips into his palm, he gave a small gasp at the unexpected intensity of his response.

  She moved closer to him.

  “Close your eyes,” she whispered, and when he didn’t, she leaned over him to kiss his eyelids closed, first one, then the other. And she didn’t stop with that. She kissed his cheek softly, his forehead, the other cheek, and finally the corner of his mouth. His breath grew heavy, and his hands began to tremble.

  He wanted to touch her, needed to touch her.

  “Kate—”

  “Shhh. My fantasy,” she said against his ear. Her breasts lightly brushed against his chest. He could feel her nipples, hard with desire, through the silky cloth.

  Her fingertips moved lightly over his shoulders, down his arms and back, over his chest and down his thighs, touching him everywhere.

  Almost.

  Her hands were warm and gentle. He had never had this experience before, not even with her. She had touched him before, of course, but not like this, not with such…

  Love was the only thing that came to mind.

  Love.

  Her hands became bolder. He was having a hard time lying still. She moved to kiss his mouth, softly at first, and then—

  He looked into her eyes.

  What is it?

  He reached for her. He thought for a moment she was going to cry.

  “Kate…”

  He tried to say more, but she wouldn’t let him. Her mouth covered his again, the kiss hungry, needy. He returned it. Whatever he had, whatever she wanted—his body, his soul, his last dime—it was hers.

  He pulled the gown over her head, and she came to him. He wrapped his arms around her, and then he was inside her.

  I love you, Kate!

  The music played.

  The rain fell.

  He woke up alone. The house was quiet now. Quiet and dark. He sat up on the side of the bed and switched on the lamp. His clothes were folded and stacked on the foot of the bed. He reached for them—they were warm, as if they’d just come out of the dryer.

  He thought he heard her talking, and he put them on in case the sisters were here for some reason, and made his way slowly down the hall to the kitchen. Kate was sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, talking to someone on the phone. There was just enough light for him to see that she was dressed and purposeful. It made him more than a little uneasy.

  “Don’t turn on the light,” she said as he came through the doorway.

  The phone call must have ended, because she put the phone down on the table.

  “Are you…all right?” he asked, because she wouldn’t let him ask that or anything else earlier.

  “Yes,” she said. He could hear her take a deep breath. “Sit down, okay?”

  He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Do you remember when I asked you once if you wanted the truth and you said,

  ‘Always’?”

  “I

  remember.”

  “I hope you meant it—because I want to tell you the truth now.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, but a thousand alarm bells were going off in his head. He reached across the table to put his hand on hers. She took her hand away.

  “I…”

  “Go ahead,” he said again when she didn’t get any further.

  “I care about you,” she said after a moment.

  He stared at her across the table. He’d heard that before and he knew exactly what it meant. He had no great expectations when it came to women. Never had. Never would. He was glad that it was dark. He didn’t want to see the look in her eyes.

  “Nobody has ever—”

  “Could we just get to the bottom line here?” he interrupted.

  “It’s over,” she said quietly, and he could feel the breath go out of him. “I thought I would be all right with this—with you and me—but I’m not.”

  He started to get up, to get away from what she was saying, but then he changed his mind, mostly because he felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut and he wasn’t sure he could stand.

  Sometimes you hit the ground. Sometimes the ground hits you.

  He sat there, knowing he could make it hard for her, for them both. He could make her spell it out for him, make her justify her decision with reasons—or lies. But he didn’t. It took every ounce of control he had to keep his voice sounding normal.

  “Okay,”

  he

  said.

  “Cal…”

  “I said okay. Whatever you want. Our being together—it’s that kind of an arrangement, isn’t it? No strings. No anything but bailing whenever somebody feels like it. You just happened to feel like it first.” He stopped, hoping, praying that she would contradict him—tell him that he’d completely misunderstood, like she had the other time.

  But she didn’t. She didn’t say a word, and the silence between them lengthened.

  “So when did you know you’d had enough?” he asked in spite of everything he could do. “Last week? Today? Was it something I said or did?”

  “No—”

  He gave a sharp sigh. He had to get out here before he did something really stupid. “Well, that’s good to know, I guess. So. That’s it then.”

  “Cal…” she said again.

  “What, Kate! If it’s over, it’s over!” He pushed the chair back and struggled to his feet. “I do have one question, though. If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “What is it?”

  “What the hell was that in there just now!” he asked, pointing toward t
he bedroom. “One for the road? Send the poor dumb jerk on his way happy? What?”

  But even as he asked, he knew what it was. It was Kate Meehan, saying goodbye.

  He was overbalanced and he crashed into the edge of the kitchen table.

  “It’s okay!” he said when she tried to help him. “I’m okay. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “Cal,” she said when he reached the back door. He looked around at her, but he didn’t wait to hear whatever else she had to say.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I guess I’d better say thanks. Thanks a lot, Kate. I’ll say one thing. You’re the best I ever had.”

  Chapter Eleven

  You can’t make a woman love you if she doesn’t.

  He couldn’t remember when he didn’t know that little truth. He’d learned the hard way. It was seared into his brain somewhere in big capital letters. And it didn’t help.

  He couldn’t sleep, didn’t really care if he ate, and what little energy he had he used trying to stay out of Mrs. Bee’s way and off the church ladies’ radar. The most positive thing he’d done in the past few days was to let the cat in and out.

  He kept going over and over everything in his mind. What Kate said. What he said. And what he should have said.

  Why the hell didn’t I see this coming?

  That was the question that dogged him so. He hadn’t had this problem with Rita, so why hadn’t he sensed that Kate was on her way out the door? It wasn’t like he hadn’t been on the qui vive—as his old drill sergeant used to say. He had been, but there was no point in pretending that he hadn’t been completely knocked over by Kate’s invitation to run along. He still didn’t understand how he could have been so dense. He’d never mistaken Rita’s feelings for him as anything but friendship. Kate was a friend, too, as far as that went—but there was more. There had always been more. He knew that, damn it. He’d felt it, even before they had become lovers.

  He realized how hard it was for her to come to terms with their being together. He knew that the sisters were afraid that her association with him meant that she was going into some kind of emotional tailspin because the real estate guy had dumped her—the same way she had when her husband blew off their marriage. She might have been afraid of that herself, but he’d thought that at least for the time being she had resolved the misgivings she’d had.

  Clearly, he’d thought wrong, because here he sat staring at the walls, while she—

  he didn’t know what the hell she was doing.

  He gave a heavy sigh. One thing for sure—he was going to have to find another place to live. He didn’t think he could stand seeing her every day. Or not seeing her every day. So far, he’d managed not to hang out the window trying to spot some movement over at her place, but it hadn’t been easy. Nothing about this was easy. He couldn’t stop remembering the way she looked and felt…tasted…

  Damn.

  He kept thinking about making love with her, especially the last time— her fantasy, she said. Well, it was some fantasy, he’d give her that. He’d always be glad he was on the receiving end of it, regardless of the grand finale when he got the boot, regardless of the way he felt now.

  He was going to have to do something and soon—but for now he only had one thing on his list. Feeling sorry for himself.

  No problem. Too easy.

  He’d had all that practice right after Rita’s wedding—and right before he fell totally in love with Kate Meehan.

  Someone rapped sharply on his door. He ignored it.

  Whoever it was knocked again. The knock was too heavy to be Mrs. Bee’s, but he still made no effort to answer it. He sat there, willing it all to go away.

  “Doyle!” someone said, knocking louder, and he closed his eyes, tuning everything out but the misery.

  The knock came again—this time down low on the door.

  He opened his eyes, wondering what the hell.

  When the tentative, low knock came again, he struggled to get up and moving. He could hear two people talking in the hallway.

  “We just knocked,” he heard a male voice say.

  When he opened the door, Arley, Scottie and a soldier whose name tag Doyle couldn’t quite read stood in the hallway. Old habits died hard, and he looked to the vaguely familiar soldier first.

  “I’m Priority Two,” the soldier said, nodding discreetly in Scottie’s direction—

  which indicated two things. His presence here wasn’t official and he had at least some understanding of what it was like to be a little boy.

  Doyle looked down. Scottie stood there, looking like he was on his way to the gallows, his bottom lip was trembling.

  “Hey,

  Scottie—”

  “Where’s my sister?” Arley interrupted.

  “I don’t know,” he said to her. “What’s the matter, buddy?” he asked Scottie.

  “I got in trouble, Bugs,” the boy said.

  “What kind of trouble, man?”

  “The teacher was really, really mad. ”

  “Where is my sister!” Arley asked again.

  “I don’t know, Arley. I haven’t seen her.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Well, I can’t help that—Scottie, what happened?”

  “I

  hit…Wesley.”

  “Did he need hitting?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Arley demanded, finally taking an interest in her son’s difficulties.

  “Look. Who came to whose door here? If you don’t want him to talk to me about this, tell him.”

  She threw up both hands and gave him the floor.

  “Why did you hit him, Scottie?” Doyle asked.

  “He was…making…armpit…noises at me!”

  Ah, yes, Doyle recalled, trying not to grin. Damned hard for a man to walk away from those.

  The confession apparently was too much for Scottie, and he grabbed Doyle around the knees. Doyle had to hold on to the doorjamb to keep from toppling over, still fighting a grin in spite of his current misery and Arley’s obvious impatience. It took him a few seconds to make sure he wasn’t going to laugh.

  “I guess he wouldn’t stop, huh?” he said, reaching down to pat Scottie on the back.

  “No! He just kept on and on!”

  “Well, I tell you what. It’s not good to go hitting people like that, even if they’re asking for it. Teachers and mothers and sergeants—they don’t like it.”

  “And aunts,” Scottie said, trying not to cry.

  “Them, too. Look up here at me.” He waited until he could see the boy’s unhappy face. “What you have to do is not let Wesley know he’s getting to you. If you don’t pay him any attention, he ends up looking like an idiot. Just be cool. Mr. Cool all the way, okay?”

  “O…kay,” Scottie said, his voice wavering.

  “Outstanding.” Doyle glanced at Arley to see if he could follow his own advice. She was looking at Priority Two. Priority Two was very careful not to look back.

  Doyle took the opportunity to read his name tag. “Baron.” The COC—Chain of Concern—soldier Kate had volunteered.

  “See, Scottie?” Arley said abruptly, reaching out to pat her son on the head.

  “That’s what I said. Just don’t pay any attention to Wesley.”

  Scottie let go of the choke hold he had on Doyle’s knees. “Mr. Cool!” he said, clearly feeling better.

  “Doyle, are you going to help me or not?” Arley asked.

  “Arley, I don’t know where Kate is.”

  “Well,

  I don’t, either,” she said, as if that was all his fault. “She’s not at work and she’s not at home and nobody’s talked to her.”

  “I have,” Priority Two said, and they both looked at him. “If you’re talking about Kate Meehan.”

  “When?” Doyle asked, sounding more like Arley than he cared to admit.

  “A couple of hours ago—she sent me over here.”

  “Why would she do that?”r />
  “Well, she said she thought you wouldn’t get to your clinic appointment—and you definitely needed to keep it.”

  “I know that,” Doyle said. Which was the truth. He hadn’t forgotten the appointment. He simply planned to ignore it. “When did you say you talked to her?”

  “A couple of hours ago—at the hospital.”

  “They

  told