by Jo Goodman
“You saw me on the phone?”
That was an easy admission and he nodded once. What he wasn’t prepared to tell her was that he had been waiting impatiently on the other side of the window, slowly crushing a can of Dr. Pepper in his fist. “Was it Joel?”
It surprised her that he would think that. “No. It was Rosie. My sponsor.”
“Rosie.”
“Mmm. I needed to talk to her. I was ... well, I was nervous about coming here ... about seeing you.”
“Nervous.” Although he said the word flatly, Mitch still managed to imbue it with meaning.
“Anxious,” she clarified. “More than fluttery. Like I wanted to come out of my skin.” Thea sighed and said bluntly, “The precursor to a panic attack, and the kind of feeling that usually had me reaching for the Ativan or Valium.”
“That’s what I do to you?”
Thea shook her head. “No,” she said firmly. “That’s what I do to myself. Rosie’s like a coach. She reminds me to breathe. To think. She reminds me that I’ll live through it, whatever it is that’s uncomfortable or scary.” She took a little breath and exhaled slowly as her eyes roamed Mitch’s still features. “You probably guessed already, but I’ve never been with anyone without taking something first. Ever.” Her short laugh held no real humor; rather, it mocked her. “Wanna fuck? Sure. Let me find the Xannies in my purse. That’s how I approached it, like something I had to get through. The pills dialed down the intensity of everything I was feeling. Mostly it dialed down the fear. Fear that I’d do something wrong. That I wouldn’t be good enough. I could never figure out how to handle being in the moment. There’s always a next thing, isn’t there? I’m pretty much scared to death of the next thing. It wasn’t about the sex. Not really. It’s about being so close to someone. Physically. Emotionally. I’m mostly still a mess, Mitch, and that’s with therapy. You shouldn’t forget it.”
He gave her a frank look. “Trying to scare me off again?”
“I don’t know.”
He appreciated how truthful she was trying to be and how much it pained her. “What do I need to do?” he asked. “Tell me.”
“I don’t know that either. I’m not certain I’m supposed to be with you now. That’s why I was calling Rosie.”
“For permission?”
Thea chuckled. “That’s what she said I was doing. Looking for someone to blame it on if it didn’t work out.”
“And if it did work out?” he asked. “Because I thought back there in the shower we were working it out pretty good.”
“Mmm ... yes. The shower was good.”
“And bed? That was the real thing, wasn’t it?”
“Real,” she said in a small voice. “Yes. Real.”
“And what about now? What did you call it? The postcoital wrap-up? I think we’ve touched on the critical aspects. Just for the record, though, that was a scream we all heard.”
She swallowed. “We?”
“You. Me. Every other living thing in a two-block radius.”
Thea pulled the pillow out from under her head and whacked him with it. Mitch wrestled it free, pitched it over the side of the bed, and pinned her back to the mattress. It was a short battle but they were both breathing a little harder than when it began. Their smiles faded simultaneously.
Mitch regarded her gravely, choosing his words carefully. She would be a lot easier to scare off than he was. “I like you, Thea. You know I do. And I’m not with you now because of the kids, or at least not strictly because of them. I want you to be certain about that. Obviously there’s a lot I’ve never known about you, but that was the point of yesterday, to get to know you.”
“And the point of this morning?” she asked mildly.
“To get to know you better.”
He said it with such practicality that Thea found herself smiling again. “Did I always suspect this about you?” she wondered aloud.
“Suspect what?”
Reaching up, Thea touched the side of his face. Her thumb brushed his lips. They parted marginally under the pressure, revealing the slightly uneven ridge of his teeth. “That you don’t take things too seriously.”
Mitch didn’t believe that. “There are plenty of things I take seriously. Global warming. Nuclear weapons in Pakistan and India. The Steelers winning another Super Bowl.” He paused. “My family.”
“Yes,” she said. All of that was true. “But not yourself. It makes you freer somehow that you can laugh at things, that you always see the humor or irony, sometimes both at once. I suppose that’s what makes you so good at what you do.”
“You’re talking about my political cartoons, aren’t you?”
Her smile broadened in response to his disappointment. She tapped his cheek lightly. “You do all right for yourself.”
The fact that she refused to stroke his bedroom ego didn’t bother him in the least. He wasn’t going to forget how she came under him anytime soon. Or how she came again. “Up you go,” he said, bussing her on the lips. “Let’s get some breakfast.”
Thea’s mouth watered. “French toast?”
“I’ll speak with the chef.”
Before he saw her drool, Thea gave his shoulders a little push. Mitch rolled himself out of bed, taking the sheet with him. He hitched it around his waist while he shamefully ogled Thea before she tumbled out of bed on the other side. She paid him scant heed, pivoting on the balls of her feet and heading for the bathroom. Mitch enjoyed the view the entire way. On the point of stepping inside, Thea gave him a cheeky grin over her shoulder. “Pretty good ass, isn’t it?”
“Amen,” he said softly as she closed the door. Amen to that.
It was over breakfast that they took stock of their situation. The snow had stopped sometime during the night but there were ten inches of it in the driveway. The street had had one visit from the snowplow and was still largely impassable.
“What does this mean for the kids and your parents?” asked Thea.
“Another day at Seven Springs and no school tomorrow, maybe not even the day after. They’re really going to hate that.” He cocked an eyebrow to let her know he was kidding. “I’ll call them in a little while and make certain Mum and Dad know about the weather here so they can decide how soon they want to try to leave. What about you?”
“I suppose I need to call about my car. Find out what the garage is going to do.”
“It’s Sunday,” he reminded her.
Thea squeezed an extra dollop of warm syrup on her plate. She hadn’t been thinking about the fact the mechanic was entitled to a day off. Sighing, she pierced a triangle of bread with her fork and slid it through the syrup. “Then I suppose whether or not I get home today depends on you.”
“You know, I’m already regretting buying that SUV. My truck would have had a tough time in snow this deep.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” she said, glancing up at him. “I mean, if you’re not eager to get me out of your hair or anything.”
“You mean ... ?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh. We could have a snowball fight.”
Mitch’s eyes gleamed. “A good second choice.”
Thea’s skin glowed warmly. Ducking her head to avoid his knowing glance, she speared another piece of bread.
“How do you feel?”
She almost said “happy,” but then she realized that he was most probably referring to her physical health. He’d turned her brain to mush, that’s what he’d done. Who the hell said “happy” when someone asked them how they were feeling? For that matter, who admitted to having orgasms only when they masturbated? Maybe you’d tell a girlfriend that, or write it in your journal, but telling the man who’d just made you pop off two in a row? He already proved he had way too much power and wasn’t afraid to use it.
“Okay,” she said, shrugging. “I’m okay.” There was this delicious sense of space between her thighs; something that was almost an ache defined the hollowness. It made her conscious of her own body in a way she hadn’t
been before, and conscious of Mitch in a way she always had.
“Nothing tender? Sore?”
Her gaze flew to his. “I’m okay. I’ve had sex before.”
“Well, good,” he said carefully. It was a near thing. He almost choked on a mouthful of food. “But I was referring to your accident. You did put the Volvo on its side.”
“Oh.” She pressed her lips together as she evaluated her situation. On the one hand, she’d just made an idiot of herself, and on the other ... on the other it was pretty much the same thing. Not exactly the balance she had been looking for. “There’s never a trapdoor or one of those little Acme rocket seats when you need one.”
“No, but those’d be great, wouldn’t they? Maybe I’ll have them installed in the new house.”
Just like that, Thea thought, he’d given her a hand up. “New house?”
Mitch picked up his coffee mug. “I told you, remember?” He drank. “I’ve been thinking about it since I got the kids.”
Thea glanced around Mitch’s spacious and bright kitchen, looking for a rationale. “I don’t understand. This isn’t like your Chevy or the Indian. You have plenty of room here for everyone.”
“It’s not about room. It’s about territory. It’s been a tough adjustment for all of us.” Mitch regarded her over the rim of his mug. “I’m not satisfied that I’m doing the right thing by making them live here. Sometimes—I don’t know—it bothers me when there are video games under the coffee table or I step on cars on the stairs. There’s no room in the garage for anything else. Emilie’s bedroom was where I kept most of my books. Now they’re stacked in what was the guest room along with a lot of other junk, and I haven’t been able to put my hands on anything in under twenty minutes. That’s sounds pretty selfish, doesn’t it?” Mitch put his mug down and held up one hand to stop Thea from answering. “Don’t bother. I know it’s selfish. I’m just not sure what to do about it. You’ve seen my office, so you know I’m not a neat freak. The problem is, it’s always been my mess. My space and my mess. I don’t know why it’s so annoying when it belongs to someone else, but I’m not sure I’m ever going to get used to it. I keep thinking that it would be less of a problem for all of us if we took a place that wasn’t mine or theirs, but ours.”
“How has it been a problem for the kids?” Thea asked.
“It isn’t their home,” he said simply. “Early on, I tried doing some weekend nights at their place. That didn’t work.”
“Perhaps it was too soon.”
“Maybe. Probably. There were nightmares and lots of fighting, but it was more than that, too. I didn’t fit there. It was like putting on someone else’s shoes. In this case, there were two pair, and neither was comfortable.”
“I see,” she said gently. “So you’re thinking about a family transplant.”
Mitch considered that. “I guess I am. I thought maybe I’d talk to Gina about looking for a place for us. House hunting is her expertise, not mine.”
Thea kept her expression carefully neutral. What had she thought? That he’d ask her to help? “You might want to find out what the kids think about this, and in the event they like the idea, you might want to consider what they think is important.”
“Yeah, but then I’d end up with a pool in the basement and a half pipe for trick bikes in the backyard. I’ll take your suggestion under advisement, though.”
“It’s just about letting them voice an opinion. They’ll have one.”
“They’ll have three.”
“And you’ll have the final decision.”
“You don’t think they’ll want to move, do you?”
“I don’t know what they’ll want or what they’re ready for. That’s the point of discussing it with them.”
Mitch’s head tilted to one side. “All right,” he said finally. “I will.” His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “How’d you get so smart about it?”
Thea didn’t know that she was. She stood, picking up her plate and silverware. She gave him a small, careless shrug. “I was a kid, I had opinions, and no one ever asked me what I wanted. It’s not exactly rocket science.”
No, Mitch thought. It was much, much harder.
After cleanup, Thea collected her toiletries from Mitch’s bedroom while he called his parents. She put some moisturizer on her face and added lip gloss to her mouth before she tossed everything into her bag. Thoroughly conscious now of Mitch’s territory and how he wouldn’t want to be finding her things three days from now, Thea spent some time looking around for the stray article she was inadvertently leaving behind.
Mitch was still on the phone when Thea returned downstairs. Not wanting to disturb him, she sat on one of the lower steps hugging her knees and waited for him to finish his call.
From his side of the conversation Thea gathered he was talking to one of his parents. He gave a report of the local snowfall and cautioned them that they wouldn’t be able to get into their own driveway if they tried to leave today. “Give me today to shovel you a way in,” he was saying. “It’ll be okay. There probably won’t be school tomorrow anyway. Sure, I know the turnpike is going to be clear, but trust me, you’re going to get hung up in town.”
Smiling to herself, Thea rested one shoulder against the banister, watching Mitch through the rails. He could have seen her if he turned around, so Thea didn’t think of herself as an eavesdropper. Neither did she do anything to make her presence known. She liked the view she had.
“Yeah, Mum,” Mitch was saying. “Uh-uh ... right ... well, I don’t know. My political stuff is more about the national conscience. I don’t think local snow removal makes much of a statement in a big picture kind of way. Yeah ... but that’s different. When the snow’s in D.C., Mum, it is on a national level. A bureaucrat in a federal building can’t get to work that day and some poor jamoke in Fargo doesn’t get his social security. Uh-uh ... yeah ... tell you what, I think you better listen to Dad and put Emilie on. Mmmm ... that’s a good idea, Mum. Write a letter to the editor. He loves to hear from you.”
Thea’s grin deepened. Mitch was leaning into the kitchen counter by the phone base, his elbows resting on the top. He had the receiver propped in the crook made by his head and shoulder and he was tapping a pen on a piece of paper. Occasionally he wrote or doodled, but mostly he just tapped. It wasn’t an impatient or agitated gesture, more like an absent one, a lazy workout to keep his wrist supple and his arm flexed.
“Hi, Em. I told Nonny you and the boys will have an extra day of skiing. Don’t worry. No school tomorrow. Yes, I’m sure.”
Thea saw him cross two fingers on his free hand.
“Umm, yeah. Aunt Thea’s here ... well, she decided it was snowing too hard to drive home so she stayed... .Yes, like a sleepover.”
Aunt Thea noticed Mitch was not uncrossing his fingers.
“Uh, sure. She liked sleeping in your room. No, I don’t know if she slept with your animals. I’ll let her know it’s okay if she has to spend another night.”
Thea’s attention strayed from the conversation. Mitch was wearing a loose-fitting shaker knit sweater that matched his jeans in terms of faded color and comfort. He had the raglan sleeves casually pushed up to his elbows, and because he was leaning forward at the waist, the sweater had hitched up a few inches in the back and exposed his narrow hips and tight butt to an appreciative audience of one.
“Do you want to talk to her?” Mitch was asking. “Sure. She’s around somewhere.”
Before Thea could avert her glance, Mitch turned and caught her staring at his behind.
Surprise faded quickly and the left corner of his mouth lifted in a quirky grin. “Just a second, Em.” He placed one hand over the mouthpiece and pointed to his butt with the crossed fingers of the other. “Pretty great posterior, eh?” Thea gave him a prim, butter-wouldn’t-melt smile that in no way altered his good opinion of his own ass. Chuckling, he held out the phone to her, the mouthpiece still covered. “Em wants to talk. You heard what I said about whe
re you slept?”
Straightening, Thea nodded. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I have a vested interest in this, too.” Mitch met her halfway with the phone and Thea took it from his outstretched hand. “Hi, Emilie. How’s skiing?” Thea felt Mitch step just behind her. His arms circled her waist and drew her back against him, fitting her snugly against his chest and thighs. “Oh, yes. I liked sleeping in your bed. No, I moved the animals to the floor. I didn’t want to accidentally kick them while I slept.”
Mitch was halfway to nuzzling her neck when he stopped. “I wish you had had the same consideration for me,” he whispered.
“Just a moment, Em.” She held the phone against her midriff and spoke softly to Mitch. “You want to sleep on the floor?”
“No. I meant that—”
“Then be quiet.” She lifted the receiver. “Sorry, Em. Your uncle was being annoying. Mmm-hmm. Just like your brothers.” Well, perhaps, not just like them. Mitch was nuzzling her neck now and the hands he had slipped under her pink cashmere sweater were inching their way up to her breasts. “Ummm. I guess I could punch his lights out. Is that what you do? No, I mean to your brothers, not your uncle.” Mitch’s low, rumbling laughter sent a little shiver through Thea. The consequence of that was Mitch electing to hold her closer. “Sometimes you hide their stuff? That’s pretty sneaky, Em. It takes a little planning. What do you think I’d have to hide to annoy your uncle Mitch?”
Thea stiffened and in response, Mitch went still. “Say that again, Emilie? I’m not sure I heard you.” Thea held out the phone so Mitch could hear her answer at the same time.
Emilie’s voice was as perfectly clear this time as it had been the last. She said brightly, “His gun.”
Chapter 10
Thea knelt on the sofa and drew the window curtain aside. Mitch was still shoveling snow off the driveway. He had two packed heaps of it on either side of the pavement and still had five feet to go to get out to the street. Like every other driveway on the block, Mitch’s now resembled a luge run. Thea doubted anyone else was going at the job with the maniacal intensity that Mitch was displaying. He had already done the sidewalk from the house, as well as the sidewalk that paralleled the street, and he hadn’t slowed yet. She watched him swing the shovel as if it were a weapon.
