A clean-cut man of Middle Eastern descent sat behind the counter copying data from his smart phone into the margin of the magazine he had opened. He perked up when I approached him. “May I help you?” The ‘l’s rolled off his tongue so I guessed him to be Indian or Pakistani.
“My book got wet and I was wondering if you could spare a plastic bag for me to put it in.”
He knit his dark brows together. “Are you going to buy anything?”
I thumbed outside toward the pumps where Jon stood. “My boyfriend’s buying gas.”
The man nodded his head toward Jon. “Your boyfriend may have a free bag. You must buy something.”
“What? You’re kidding, right? It’s just a plastic bag.” When, after a long pause, he didn’t even crack a smile, I groaned and stomped over to the drink coolers. Something for Jon and I to drink to relax and set the mood might be nice. I headed inside the beer cave and emerged with chilled bottle of cheap white wine. On my way to the cash register, I stopped at the magazine rack and selected a crossword puzzle book similar to the one I’d ruined.
He rang it up and I handed him a twenty. Ignoring my outstretched palm, he slapped my change on the counter as if he were avoiding any sort of physical contact.
I stared at him, waiting for him to put my purchases in a bag, but he sat back on his chair and began writing in the margins of the magazine again. Unbelievable!
“Can I have a bag, please?”
A petulant sigh accompanied him throughout the five-to-seven-inch distance from his chair to the plastic bag dispenser. The bottle made a loud clunk as it hit the hard counter. He grabbed the puzzle book and moved to drop it in the same bag as the wine. Oh no, you don’t!
“I want the magazine in a different bag so it won’t get damp from the condensation.” I gave him my sweetest smile but received a huff and a scowl in return. Clearly he was not a fan of short blonde chicks trying to bilk him out of his stash of plastic bags.
As soon as he finished, I dropped the magazine bag inside the wine bottle bag, flashed him a toothy grin and left the store.
I was still grinning when I sashayed out to the car where Jon was already in the driver seat, waiting. He was on his cell phone but shut it down as soon as I opened the car door.
“What did you get?” he asked, starting Christine’s engine as I buckled in.
I slipped the plastic bag far enough down the side to reveal the wine bottle within. “For later.”
“Are you planning on getting me drunk and having your wicked way with me, Miss Lindley?”
“I am indeed, Mr. Cripps.” I shot him a sidelong glance but otherwise kept facing forward. Let him figure out what I had planned. At that moment I didn’t know myself.
“Excellent,” he murmured so softly I barely heard him.
***
The sun streamed in through my bedroom window, rays reflected through a crystal I had hung from the frame. The heater kicked on and the crystal began to swing, causing a rainbow of colors to dance on the white sheets of my bed. A bright flash struck Jon’s face as the crystal caught and reflected the sun.
“Morning.” My lazy lion cracked open an eye. His predatory perusal set my senses on high alert, like a gazelle that has made a wrong turn and suddenly finds itself in the lion’s den. During the night I’d commandeered most of the sheets, leaving him the scantest bits to cover his nude form. He didn’t seem to mind. I certainly didn’t mind the view of his skin—darker where the sun had kissed him but even the private parts were far darker than my sheets. The muscles of his biceps and shoulders rippled as he plumped his pillow beneath his neck, his eyes never leaving mine. How did such a formidable male animal end up with me? He could break me if he wanted, snap me in half with his powerful hands, cut me with a harsh word. And yet I danced on the blade’s edge, bared my neck to him in submission, loving it, him.
“Morning.” I moved closer, and faced the opposite direction to press my back against his front from sternum to groin, a groin that was wide-awake and rather bossy.
Jon draped an arm and pulled me in closer. He buried his nose in my hair and inhaled deeply. His breath stirred the strands nearest my ear, tickling. All was warm and safe in my queen-sized bed with my lion stretched out behind me, savoring my hopefully not too gamey scent before the inevitable feasting would begin.
He rocked his hips against mine, the steely reminder of his desire in the cleft of my ass. A musical intertwining of groans, his and mine, a request and simultaneous consent, and his hand slipped lower and lower.
Lips brushed against the nape of my neck, soft to the raspy scrape of his morning stubble. A leg insinuated itself between my virginally clamped-together limbs, a gentle urging to open to him. I did. I always did.
Chapter 6
“Geez! It’s noon! Jon! Wake up!” I untangled myself from the sheets, no easy chore considering their mangled state. I ran naked into the bathroom to grab my robe and use the toilet. I called out to him, “I gotta go pick up Ian at the airport. He lands in like fifteen minutes. I’m going to be so late, and he’s going to be so pissed.” I grabbed my hairbrush and attempted to detangle my hair, a hopeless mess.
When I ran into my bedroom, Jon was on his cell phone talking. “... American at 12:15 PM, no idea what gate ... That would be great! Call when you have him, and I’ll give you directions to Gayle’s. Thanks. We’re even now.” He chuckled, warm and hearty. “Okay. See you later.” He clicked off and smiled at me. “Relax. It’s all taken care of.”
“What did you do? What’s all taken care of? Ian?”
“I called Jenny. She lives right next door to the airport. She already knows your brother and he knows her.” Jon shrugged and stood to pull on his briefs. “She’ll meet him and bring him here.”
“Wow, I can’t believe you asked her to do that. She barely knows him.” I stumbled over my words, still incredulous he’d do something like that so spontaneously.
He walked to me and pulled me into an embrace. “Relax. She didn’t mind at all. She’s picked up my friends for me before. She doesn’t have to pay to park either since she’s an airline employee.”
“But she’s on vacation. I hate to impose on her like this.” I really did. I’d just inched out of uncomfortable territory with Jenny and didn’t want to lose any ground. I also didn’t want her talking to Ian about Jon. I had only told Ian I was dating someone, but no particulars. He also didn’t know I was currently unemployed, and starting on Monday, I’d be floating my resume around. Jenny knew all that and if she told him ... oy.
“Gayle, it’s no biggie. Really.” He twisted his wrist up into viewing range. “I gotta go, though. I have an errand I need to run, and Black Friday is not the best day for it so I’d better get a move on. I told her to call me for directions, but I suppose your brother could call you. Either or.” His jeans and sweater quickly covered the rest of his body, while I still stood in my bathrobe.
“Okay. Thanks, I guess. I would have been late for sure, and Ian’s kind of a schedule Nazi.” I screwed my face up remembering all the times he yelled at me when we were kids if I handled anything of his for longer than five seconds.
I was the barely tolerated little sister, especially by Ian, the oldest sibling in my family. Our middle brother, Henry, gave me a wider screw-up margin, but also teased me the most. But Ian, Ian was the one who always sided with my twin, Gordon, no matter what our dispute was or who was in the wrong. In Ian’s eyes, I was always the offending party. To a certain extent, I resented him for that blind faith he placed in Gordon. I wanted some of it, too.
On the other hand, Ian was the one who made the most fuss when I did something that amazed him. He was the one who first dragged me out to the gun range, unbeknownst to our father, and had me firing at targets. I think when I behaved more like a boy than a girl, Ian loved me most. When I did girly things or went off with our mother, it was like I gravely disappointed him. Yet, Ian was the only one who offered to come visit me at Thanksgiving, a day
late because he’d enjoyed a meal at a “friend’s” house. I had no idea if his friend was male or female, but I’d certainly be trying to find out in a few hours.
I kissed Jon goodbye, wondering but not asking why and where he needed to go. I recalled the order from Kruger's. Black Friday was the pick-up date. Was that Jon’s errand?
Get a grip, Gayle! It’s way too soon for a ring.
I wasn’t ready for a ring anyway. I was too young. There was still so much about Jon that remained hidden, facets to which he had only begun to grant me peeks. Loving Jon was like eating a piece of Baklava, one thin phyllo sheet at a time—a hint of honey, an occasional nut, but so many layers to plow through before all the flavors could fuse into a single yumminess.
Still ... it was Jon’s crossword puzzle magazine. Most likely the order form had been between the pages. The magazine was a year old, though, so chances were it had been in that bathroom available to any number of Cripps guests to tackle.
I retrieved the bag I’d stashed the wet puzzle magazine in, and realized I’d forgotten to give Jon the replacement I purchased. I’d do it later. In the meantime, I pulled the old one out and laid it on some paper towels to dry.
I flipped a few pages. A bloodbath of blue ink marred nearly every puzzle, clearly not from a ballpoint pen but from a gel or felt tip style pen. Page after page of casualties lay dead and mortally wounded on the battlefield of the waterlogged pages, water that came from a toilet I reminded myself. Nothing a little soap and water couldn’t tackle, though.
As I flipped toward the back, I caught a glimpse of ink that hadn’t smeared and backtracked to find it again. There it was. Pristine ballpoint pen ink, not within the grid lines of the puzzle but in the margins. I read the words there, “Probably not until 11/29, sooner if possible. Same grade and $$.“ Below that he’d written, “Size 6. Thalia.” The handwriting was definitely Jon’s. I checked the date of the magazine again. November of the prior year. My heart sank, for the mystery had been solved. The order had to be for Thalia’s engagement ring from last year. I hadn’t bothered to determine in what year the order form had been prepared. My eyes had gone immediately to the boldly written month and day for pickup and automatically assumed the current year. My ring size was a 4 1/2, birdlike compared to Thalia’s finger. No doubt her mother would proclaim a larger ring finger to be a sign of robust health and fertility.
Gah! I’m so ridiculous.
Leaden steps took me into my bathroom where I lingered under a very long shower. I had nowhere to be other than at my apartment waiting for Ian to arrive. I’d already cleaned it before going to the Cripps’ the day before, put clean sheets on the sofa bed for Ian, stocked up at the grocery store. Since Jon and I had skipped the wine and gone straight to bed the night before, I had a bottle of wine to share, too. Jon would join us later that night for dinner, for which he volunteered to do most of the cooking. The sons of Italy were also good cooks.
An hour later, Ian still hadn’t arrived. I scrambled to find my cell in case he’d crossed wires with Jenny. Sure enough, my phone had logged a missed call.
“Dammit!” I punched in the digits to retrieve my voicemail. As it rang, I paced, chewing the inside of my mouth. I wondered if he was still waiting for me or if he’d taken a cab. If the latter, he might show up any second. The message had been left nearly an hour earlier, probably as soon as I had stepped under the water.
“Hey Gales, it’s Ian. Hey, thanks for outsourcing my pick-up. Listen, I’m going to grab some lunch with Jenny first. Least I can do to thank her for picking me up, right? See you later. Call me on my cell if you need to reach me.”
I disconnected from my inbox and clicked off to pick up my sagging jaw. Wasn’t like they were total strangers, after all, else she’d have never agreed to pick Ian up. Still, I thought Jenny would have been doing it solely as a favor for Jon and would be only too happy to dump Ian off at my place so she could get back to her shopping.
That Ian wasn’t all that anxious to see me also stung a little. I hadn’t seen my own family since the end of May. I had passed on Thanksgiving at my parents’ because Jon had invited me to his parents’ house and being unemployed, I could ill afford to be jetting anywhere.
I mentally computed when Ian might show up. If his plane landed at quarter past twelve and Jenny met him around 12:25 … allowing forty minutes from the airport to my house with some traffic and allowing an hour for lunch…. I figured I might as well make myself lunch because I still had a while to wait.
An hour later, I lay down on my couch to read my book.
My doorbell awakened me. Ian! I bolted to the door and threw it open to see ... Jon with bags of groceries.
“What time is it?” I asked yawning, but given the sun had already set, it had to be at least half past five, which was when Jon was due to arrive. “Wait. Where the hell is Ian? Have you heard from Jenny?” I turned and rushed inside to find my cell phone.
“Ian’s not here?” Jon asked, shutting the door behind him.
“No. Jenny picked him up. He called when I was in the shower.” A check of my cell phone showed I’d missed another call while I had been napping. “Unbelievable!” I dialed my voicemail and listened.
“Hey sis! Sorry I’m running very late, but there was a huge crowd at the restaurant so we went to another one and there was huge crowd there, too, so we finally just said, ‘screw it’ and went to Jenny’s house with our takeout....” In the background I could hear giggling. Jenny. She was yelling something. “So, anyway, we’ve kind of been drinking and well, neither one of us is in any shape to drive, so I’m just gonna hang out here until we sober uuuup-ah!” More giggling in the background, a hand covering the phone, my brother’s drunken laughter.
What the hell was going on?
“So, anyway, Sis, I just thought you should be the first to know. I’m in love! Don’t wait up!” And thus ended my brother’s last voicemail to me.
In love? In love with who? Jenny? Oh, no, no, no. My brother was not that guy! The boozing womanizer he sounded like in his drunken message was not my highly disciplined, always punctual oldest brother the rocket scientist. Had someone slipped him some ecstasy? What was Jenny’s role in all this? I immediately called Ian’s number. It rang and rang until it finally went to voicemail. Ian’s monotone outgoing message sounded nothing like the nonsensical one I’d just listened to. My turn to leave a message began at the beep.
“Ian! What the hell are you doing? You can’t be there with Jenny. She’s engaged, you dummy! You can’t be hitting on her or falling in puppy love with her. I’m coming to get you. I’ll drive you back, you idiot. Did you even think of that ... did you for even one second—”
Jon snatched the phone from me and hit the end button, an unexpected heat blazing in his eyes.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Leave them alone,” he said, no emotion in his tone.
“Why? He’s behaving abominably! He can’t just hook up with your sister!”
“It’s none of our business, Gayle.” He set the phone down on the coffee table. “Jenny is a grown woman. She’s thirty years old, and Ian is nearly that, right?” I nodded. Ian was twenty-eight, never been married, never been engaged, never even had a serious girlfriend as far as I knew, though he was no stranger to dating. He was good-looking, smart, and even funny when he loosened his grip on his control freak leash. “They can do what they like. Honestly, I wish Jenny would finally kick Scott to the curb, and maybe this will force her to do it.”
My jaw went slack. Other than the head games remark, I didn't think Jon bore animosity toward his future brother-in-law. Sure, he’d acted a little possessive of me in Scott’s presence, but I thought that was just Jon doing his “My woman! Keep away!” caveman shtick he always did when another man got too close to me. When I mentioned finding his territorial behavior kind of sexy, he vehemently denied acting that way. Whether he realized it or not, Jon was that way, but not boorish or stalkerish.
> “I didn’t know you weren’t on Team Scott,” I said, dropping onto the sofa.
In a second, he joined me, our hips and thighs touching. “I think he’s a condescending, pompous ass.” A loud rush of his breath followed, almost like he’d been holding that opinion inside his head so long that the tiniest of pricks caused it all to explode.
“Okay, he didn’t impress me either, but this isn’t the right way for Jenny—or my brother—to behave. It’s wrong. Plus, they’re drunk. They may wake up in the morning regretful it ever happened, only Jenny will have this burden in her heart for having cheated on Scott and may hold it against my brother, and by extension me.”
Jon shook his head the entire time I spoke. “No. I already knew she was going to end it with Scott. I don’t know why she hasn’t told him yet, but we’ve talked about it before, Jenny and I. We talked about it that night she came home and found us in bed together.”
I squeezed my eyes together. “The Lindleys are totally screwing up the love lives of the Cripps, aren’t we?”
Two strong arms urged me closer, and I shifted onto his lap, my head against his shoulder. Jon kissed my forehead and smoothed my hair. “No, you made me see the pale imitation of love I nearly settled for, and then stepped into the light all shiny and golden.” A low groan rumbled in his throat and a few primal shivers of my own made their way south. “I have no idea about Jenny and Ian. She might be just having a fling with a man who finds her attractive and that’ll be the end of it, a catharsis perhaps? Or maybe, like me, one singe of the flame and she’ll combust.” Another soft kiss landed on my cheek, followed by one near my ear and a third on my jaw. A fourth landed on my neck, his breath hot and his tongue making some swirly motion that stirred my insides into a maelstrom of need, and oh, dinner could wait.
Purely Relative (The P.U.R.E.) Page 4
