by Ruth Wind
She shook her head. "Diets don't work—and believe me, I've been on every single one ever invented. Low fat, low carb, high protein, grapefruit twelve times a day, shakes—everything. The only things that work are the simple things. Move your body, figure out what the bad habits are and think up new ones. I changed one thing every week. Just one."
"Like what?"
"Robert, this can't possibly be interesting to you."
"Sure it is. You're interesting."
She looked away for a moment, then back to him. "There are much more interesting things about me than my path to weight loss."
His gaze was straight, direct. "You know, most people never make a really big change in their lives. They just stick with the program, like it's a big game of seven-card stud, never realizing they can get rid of a couple cards and try some others."
She laughed. "Gambler metaphors! I love it."
"A man goes with what he knows." He winked, then polished off the chips and gestured to the waiter for more. "You tossed back a card you didn't like and took a chance on a new one. That's pretty brave."
"Thank you." She toasted him with her margarita.
"So, what kind of changes did you make every week? You never know, Crystal's probably right. My family runs to fat big-time along about forty."
She picked up her heavy goblet, admiring the green color of the drink, and the look of the kosher salt around the rim. "One of the first things I did was to look at my food. Look at every bite, and think about it." She lifted it to her lips, then paused. "This is going to look seductive, but I'm not trying to turn you on or anything." She licked a little salt off the glass to get the salt in her mouth and then took a measured sip of margarita and closed her eyes. "Salt and sweet and sour and that bite of tequila." She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Perfect. But in the old days, I would have gulped it, feeling guilty that I even wanted it."
He licked his bottom lip, slowly, and grinned. "Made my mouth water."
"Me or the margarita?"
He laughed—that rough, unfamiliar, thrilling sound. "Both."
In that instant, Marissa felt a stab of something hot and terrifying. She really liked him. There was a good helping of lust, she wouldn't deny that. She was dying to dive into his hair, kiss him until her knees would no longer hold her, but in that instant, when he laughed his rusty laugh, she felt a vivid shift. She liked him. Liked who she became in his company, liked the easy way he was himself without apology, liked even the slight vulnerability she glimpsed now and then.
He must have seen some of that in her eyes. "What?"
She shook her head, smiling lightly. "Nothing."
* * *
They lingered a long time after their plates were cleared away. Robert told stories of his army days, making her laugh with all the absurd, strange, alarming things that went on in the service. He discovered that he enjoyed her amusement so much that he scoured his mind for more, finding himself grinning along as he watched the flash of her white teeth, admired the line of her jaw.
The margarita loosened her, made her cheeks rosy, her eyes as vivid as a blue jay's tail, and she grew more confident, more expansive. Not quite as expansive as the night he'd gone to her house the first time, but a man could hope. "Want another one?"
She laughed. "No, thank you. I'm quite chatty enough already, don't you think?"
That was one word for it, but he thought a better one was charismatic. The waiter kept finding excuses to stop by the table and flirt in a demure and admiring way. A man in a booth across the room hadn't taken his eyes off her for more than three seconds the entire time they sat here. When she laughed, there was such exuberance in it that even women looked up and smiled, too.
He lifted a brow. "Can't blame a guy for trying."
A woman abruptly showed up at the edge of the table. "Marissa? Oh, my God! It is you!"
Robert repressed a scowl. The woman was a country club gal—that ever-so-perfectly-frosted hair, gelled into perfect messiness; even a sweater tied around her neck. But Marissa shot him a mischievous little glance and he couldn't rob her of a moment. "Julie! It's been ages. How are you?"
"I'm fine." She put a hand on her hip. "You know I kept thinking you looked familiar, but I didn't figure it out until a minute ago. How much weight have you lost? A hundred pounds?"
The grin slipped a little. "Close," she said.
"I can't believe it." She smiled again at Robert, and he caught a strange little tail of something in it. "At least your choice of company has improved."
"Robert Martinez, this is Julie Allen," Marissa said.
"Pleased to meet you." Brightly the woman turned back. "Well, you should stop by. I'm off to Switzerland at the end of May, but come by and we'll have a drink."
"I'll look forward to it," Marissa said.
"You're welcome to come along," Julie said with bright falsity to Robert.
He only nodded, aware of an odd shutting down in Marissa, a dimming of the light that had been radiating from her only a moment before.
"Nice to see you," Julie said, waving her fingers. Robert watched her return to her table and bend over urgently to her companion, a hale fellow in a ski sweater, then looked back at Marissa. Her smile was gone, and the light, and everything else he'd spent the whole evening reveling in.
"Why do you let her do that?"
"I don't know what you mean," Marissa said. She ran a finger along the line of her cast.
"Steal away all that—" he sought a word that captured it "—joy. That's why she did it, you know. Couldn't stand to have you over here enjoying yourself when she's clearly miserable."
"Oh, please," she said. "You sound just like my mother. 'Oh, honey, they're just jealous.'"
He grabbed her hand before she retreated entirely, grabbed it and pulled it over to him, raising the palm to his mouth. "I don't know about the others, but, babe, she was jealous." The feeling of her soft, clean palm against his mouth was so rich, so right, he kissed it again.
"You're awfully good for my ego." She sighed, and he saw a little of the cheer come back.
"You're pretty good for mine." He let her go. "Let's get out of here."
She smiled. "Great idea."
He helped her with her sweater and took her hand, inclining his head at the blonde at the booth. Outside, in the brisk night, he halted in front of the window. "Let's give her something to talk about, huh?" he said, catching Marissa close.
"What do you—"
He kissed her. Slid his hand around the back of her neck, his other against her face, and bent to capture her mouth. He told himself to make it look good, to make it hot and tender at once, because that woman in there had never had tender.
But he didn't have to pretend. This wasn't like the last time, when the touch of their lips had caused an explosion. This was sweet. The taste of salt and chili and tequila on her lips, the softness of her breath sighing out of her mouth. Gently he tasted that full mouth, easily their tongues tangled, exploring, wondering.
He'd intended just to make it look good. But he found himself lingering, shifting a little to draw her into a loose embrace, close enough that her breasts pushed a little into his chest, that she had to put her arms around his waist, that he could touch her neck beneath her hair. All the while kissing her slowly, so slowly, so deeply. A kind of brilliance seemed to seep through him, like a submarine's spotlights cutting the gloom in the depths of the ocean in Crystal's movie.
When the first jagged threads of red spiked through him—sexual hunger—he lifted his head a little, touching his thumb to her jaw. Her eyes opened slowly, and she only gazed up at him, her expression serious. "Was that for her?"
"No," he said quietly. "I don't think it was."
"Neither do I." She lifted a hand and touched his hair, just let a swath of it pour over the outside of her hand. "Did you wear your hair down on purpose to tempt me?"
He grinned. "Guilty."
"It's working."
But sex tonight
, right now, was too much. Dangerous for reasons he didn't care to examine too closely. "I'll wear it down again."
"Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die." He pulled away, took her hand and went back to his truck. They were quiet, not in awkwardness, but a strange, deep kind of calmness as he drove back to her place. A deep, soft Van Morrison tune was on the radio, and when he pulled up, Marissa held up her hand. "Do you mind if I listen to the rest of this? It's not much longer."
"Not at all." So they sat there, in the cozy dark, listening to Van sing a soft, bluesy love song.
"My sister has met him," Marissa said. "He's friends with some musician who did the score for her last movie, and she sat with him at a cast party."
"Is your sister an actress?"
"Writer," she said. "I think Crystal will like meeting her."
"Do you think Crystal could write?"
"I don't know. I haven't seen anything she's actually written." A scowl crossed her face. "I didn't tell Crystal, but I will tell you. You need to be careful with that English teacher. She's old school and I think Crystal has had a rough time with her."
He nodded, trying not to bend close and put his mouth against Marissa's neck, right at the spot above her collar where moonlight shone down on it. Some of the same light must have fallen on his wrist, because she raised a finger and traced a line around it. "You have interesting tattoos," she said.
If only she knew. "A lot of them, anyway." He lifted a shoulder.
"Really? More?"
"Yeah," he said gruffly. A lot more, but he didn't say that. Didn't like to think about it, think about the fact that if he reached across the cab now and put his hands on her the way he wanted to do, he would almost certainly have to reveal them. And maybe that was more than he wanted this particular woman to see about him just now.
"Robert," she said quietly, her hand on his. "I'd like to just kiss you good-night."
It was said almost wistfully, and any resistance he'd been mustering abruptly collapsed. He turned and bent his head, keeping his hands firmly on the wheel. At least for a minute. It was like giving up drink, he thought a little wildly, feeling himself fall. One taste was too much, and a thousand would never be enough. The jagged red spike shot through him—sex and something more than that, something that ached to feel her soft body against his. She slid free of the seat belt and put her hands in his hair, stroking her fingers through it, and made a soft little sound of pleasure.
And suddenly it didn't seem all that important to keep his hands on the wheel. So much better to put them against her shoulders, narrow against the heart of his palms. So much better to let one of his hands slide downward, slowly enough that she could stop him, and cup one heavy, full breast, the nipple rigid against the last joint of his middle finger. A nipple that begged to be stroked, stroked the way he stroked her tongue with his own, the way his organ longed to be stroked by the hand combing through his hair.
He rubbed his index finger over that rigid flesh, feeling his sex grow more rigid still, filled with blood rushing to his aid, and her kiss suddenly grew more urgent, her teeth catching lightly at his lower lip before she opened, taking his tongue deeper into her mouth.
He heard a rattling groan and realized he'd made the noise himself, made it as he urgently pulled up her shirt, his palm stinging with pleasure as he skimmed it over incredibly soft skin, upward to that heavy breast clasped in some silky something, the nipple easily freed with a small tug on the skimpy cup. He rubbed the edges, thinking of that very dark areola and the contrast with her very white skin, and his organ started to pulse more urgently, the blood thumping with his heartbeat as he touched just the top with one finger, just one— A knock sounded on the cab, and they broke apart hastily. Marissa jumped so violently she smacked Robert in the nose with her cast, sending scalding pain across the bridge and into his teeth. He yelped, but Marissa was urgently pulling away, straightening her clothes. She rolled down the window. "Mr. Peterson? Is something wrong?"
An older man stood there, scowling. "Your lights are shining right in my window. A person needs sleep, ya know." He stalked away.
"Sorry!" Marissa called. She looked at Robert. "Are you okay? That had to hurt."
"I'll be all right," he said. But it hurt like the devil. Black eyes—hell, he hoped not. "But you'd better get that hot little body inside before we end up having sex in the truck."
"Let's just go have sex inside."
He heard a noise, the sound of his will to resist crumbling. He looked at her for a long moment, trying to summon just one of the many reasons he had come up with not to do this. But she reached out and slid a hand up his leg. "Just for us," she said. "Just for tonight. No one has to know."
A dozen images whirled in his head, all splashed with vivid color—her glass-blue eyes, the white of her teeth when she laughed, the darkness of her hair, falling in that elegant swathe to her shoulders, the green of the margarita tonight—and the fragments coalesced somehow, rearranged themselves, morphed into that Tiffany screen in her house.
Too much. Too rich. Too dangerous. Gently he kissed her and moved her hand from his raging organ. "Not tonight, princess."
She didn't seem to mind. A twinkle lit her eye and she tossed her head. "Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me." Laughing easily, she opened the door and jumped out, a jaunty little spring in her walk as she went up the sidewalk. From the porch, she turned around and gave him a little wave.
Damn.
* * *
Chapter 10
« ^ »
Louise waited through the first whispers of twilight settling on the mountains, through the first solid nightfall, till the silence of the mountains spread like a warm fur blanket through the house and town, till most of the lights in the valley had winked out.
Only at midnight did she act. She came out of her bath wrapped in a thick chenille robe, noticing that the light was still on beneath the guest room door, just as she'd known it would be. Quietly she made big mugs of cocoa from scratch, sliced some nut bread and carried it all to the room, balancing it on one arm as she knocked gently.
A muffled "Come in" came through the door.
Crystal leaned against the headboard, her eyes red from crying and watching movies for hours and hours back to back. Her hair fell like wrinkled satin ribbons over her arms and shoulders. "Hi," Louise said, closing the door behind her. "I can't sleep, either. Want some cocoa?"
The girl wiped her nose with a tissue. "Okay. If I won't keep you up."
"Heck, no." She settled the tray on a table and gave Crystal the heavy mug. "Older I get, the more I seem to wander, like a ghost, all through the late hours."
A wan smile.
"How 'bout you?" Louise asked. "What's keeping you up?"
Crystal shook her head. "Probably the medicine." She rubbed a place between her eyebrows. "Every time I lie down, I think about—"
Louise sipped her chocolate, waiting. It took a long time, so long she thought maybe she needed to do some prompting, though her usual tack was just to let folk talk. Children, especially, got talked to a lot. Giving them room to talk themselves was often all they needed.
But finally Crystal said, "I want to keep my baby."
"I can understand that."
"My boyfriend was the only good thing in my life, ever, till I came here," she said. "Ever, you know? If I give up the baby, it feels like I'm betraying him."
"Mmm." Louise sipped her chocolate. "Betraying him?"
"Yeah," she said heavily. "He lost everything because of me."
"Like what, sugar?"
But Crystal put down her cup and let her head fall on her knees, and began to weep in earnest. Deep, heartfelt, heartbreaking sobs. "I miss him so much!" she cried.
Louise knew that sound. She put her own cup down, climbed up on the bed and put her arms around the girl. "Go ahead and cry, sweetie." She stroked her hair, rocked her back and forth, and Crystal did cry. Not just the leaking tears
she had been indulging so easily, but the kind of recognition weep that brought out the truth of a thing.
"He was so good to me," she choked out. "And the gangs got him. I know they did. Nobody knew where he was the next day. Only that the 50s got him. When I went in the alley, I found all this blood. All over. On the walls and the pavement and even some on a trash can." A rigidness in her body, a stiffening at the horror of the memory and a soft, mournful howl. "The police said nobody got killed, but I went to all the hospitals and he wasn't at none of them. I asked and asked.
"And then—" a falling cadence, resignation. "I went to his mom's house and it was empty."
"Oh, darlin'," Louise said, "I'm so sorry."
"I just wish I could find him," she said.
Louise just rocked her. And in a little while, the sad little girl, the brokenhearted woman, the mother-to-be, fell into a hard, slack-mouthed sleep against Louise's grandmotherly bosom, like an exhausted five-year-old. And Louise didn't go anywhere. She held the child in her arms and thought.
And it was good, so good, when her own man came to the door with concern on his brow, his hair ruffled and standing up, to see if everything was okay. When he saw the way of it, his mustache twitched and he nodded, waving a hand.
* * *
Marissa was humming as she went inside, literally and not so literally. She put her purse and keys down, locked the door and heard herself singing a lighthearted piece of music that must have been playing at the restaurant. Feeling light as air, she floated upstairs to take off her makeup, her mind flashing little pieces of the evening back to her.
The bathroom was one of her favorite rooms in the house. She'd knocked out one wall to include two dormer windows. An enormous claw-footed tub sat between the windows, and there were ferns hanging from hooks by each one. The walls and floor were finished oak simple and elegant.
She shed her clothes in the same airy pleasure, pinning up her hair and riffling through the various bottles and boxes of bath scents she kept for one that suited her mood. Green Goddess—oh, yes. She started the water running and poured in a generous handful, inhaling the soft green scent happily.
