“No.” He shook Luke’s hand off his shoulder.
Chloe watched Luke lay claim to her. At least that’s what it felt like and also sweetly delicious to be wanted by him, by Luke.
She missed whatever the guys said to each other, their tones low. But Finn got up and said good-bye, promising to bring his nephew by with the boat tomorrow for a day of fishing.
“What should I get for my boys? Fishing poles? Life jackets? Bait?”
“Not a thing,” Finn said. Then he regarded Luke. “You’re welcome to come along, Luke.”
“Great. I’ll take you up on that.”
Chloe’s body relaxed. She hadn’t known she’d been tense, but she hated boating. With Luke there, the boys would be safe. She somehow knew this in her heart.
“This is embarrassing.” Chloe spoke lower than usual so both men had to lean in to hear her. “I am afraid of boating. But my boys love it.”
“What’s to fear?” Finn swore he’d handle the boat with care.
“It’s not that. I trust you.” She said the words to Finn, but her eyes were locked on Luke’s. “I get seasick and also have a panic issue.” It took everything she had to admit that she’d have to take medication to get on a silly little fishing boat.
“I’ll take good care of your boys. You can check out the town. There’s a lady place.” Luke furrowed his brow. “Spa. And shopping. That kind of stuff.”
“Thank you!” She wanted to kiss Luke. Her boys would be safe with him, and she could go into town and have a girly day.
Luke loved the way the moonglow touched Chloe’s face, giving her face a pretty sheen that reminded him of pearls. Even without the moonlight, she had a lovely face. And of course her awesome body, which naturally Finn had picked up on.
“Your friend seems nice,” she said.
“He’s not,” Luke replied before thinking. “I mean, yeah, he’s a nice guy, but he loves the summer women. Loves to get what he can, if you know what I mean.”
Chloe didn’t say anything, but he could tell she was thinking about what he’d said.
“I’m not like that,” Luke clarified.
“I’m glad you’re going fishing with them,” Chloe said. “I would not have done a spa day if it was just Finn and his nephew, because Josh and Tommy don’t know them. But the boys will feel comfortable with you there. You’re a big deal to them, you know.”
The noises of the bonfire party breaking up reached them. Luke knew his mother or Eva would lock up the office at midnight so that guests wouldn’t take the party upstairs into the social area right above her quarters.
So, it must be getting close to midnight, Luke thought. All was calm. Except his heart, which beat so loud he figured Chloe could hear it.
“It’s late,” Chloe said, standing.
“And we’re here alone.” Luke stood and took a step toward her. She seemed a little nervous, but she didn’t back away from him, so he took another step forward, then another. Then he kissed her.
What was she doing? Chloe kissed Luke, hungry for his taste, a taste she remembered like it was yesterday. Mint toothpaste and moonlight. She heard the waves rushing against the shore, and she rushed like the waves, crashing against him, diving deeper into the kiss.
Then she stopped thinking.
After one long kiss lead to the next, Luke took her hand and opened the front door that led directly into the living room.
She pulled him past the sofa, into the bedroom she’d slept alone in last night, wishing he was there with her. She admitted it. She wanted him. That simple. He obviously wanted her, too. Was this love? She loved him, she must, or maybe it was only lust. Because lust overwhelmed her at the moment.
She’d be gone in a week, and this might be her only chance to find out if her love for Luke was real. She wouldn’t risk sleeping in the same room with Luke when the boys were here. But now, the moon had conspired with the sun to get the two of them here, alone, together. And she would not say no to that fortunate alignment of the stars. Her heart wouldn’t let her. She’d tell Luke about Seattle later. Once he knew he couldn’t live without her. They’d deal with it then. Lots of people worked out long-distance relationships. Or he could move with her. People needed yard work in Seattle, too.
He moved her hair aside and kissed her softly on her neck. The new sensation made her moan. She pushed all thought away. This was just for her. She needed to feel loved. And Luke made her feel loved right now, with his tender kisses and possessive embrace.
She shed any inhibition she’d felt with their easily discarded summer clothes. She lay open to his hungry gaze. So good to be cared for in this way, to be loved, to be worshipped for who she was, underneath the masks and layers she put on in public.
Luke, not a man of many words on a normal day, but now, here, he didn’t have to talk to send her body the signal that he wanted her with a deeply thrilling passion. His hardness against her thigh told her, and she moved her hand to wrap him with greedy fingers. She breathed in his scent, the fresh water smell mixed with newly mown lawn that clung to his body even when his clothes were off.
He sighed when she touched him, taking her invitation to cup her breasts and kiss her lips. She lost herself in a dizzy whirl of emotion she couldn’t name or trace. Almost breathless, she broke the kiss to press her lips against his neck, letting her tongue feel the deliciousness of his suntanned skin.
If she could bury herself in the crook of his neck forever, she’d be happy to die there, so beloved, so cared for. Luke had broken his rule for her. Somehow they would bring their love into the light of day, just by the things they did with each other now, with a silent moonlight promise.
She closed her eyes as they melted into each other. She could follow him anywhere, like they were dancing an ancient dance, and each movement brought them closer and closer together. They could be making a baby together. That thought made her eyes pop open. Her body stilled under him.
As attuned as he was to her every movement, she froze, and he opened his eyes right into hers. He knew what they’d done, too. He stopped, still inside her. Skin to skin. She’d discovered that she could make him lose himself so completely that he forgot all common sense. And the same could be said of her.
She grabbed him with her hands, one on each cheek. “No. Don’t go. It’s fine.”
He laughed a low, wicked laugh, kissing her neck again just under her ear, reestablishing a smooth rhythm, stroking against her, enflaming her beyond the point of holding back anymore. So she didn’t. She let the rich waves move through her body as a sound rose from her belly, a sound of pleasure fulfilled as lap after lap of primal emotion engulfed her.
Her own throbbing set him free. She squeezed her pelvic muscles to hug him tightly and wrapped her arms around his waist. He lowered himself and cradled her as they rolled side to side and looked at each other.
“You’re dangerous.” His whisper in her ear thrilled her. Nobody had ever called her dangerous before. She liked it. “Are you on the pill?”
“No.” Her laugh escaped before she could catch it. “I have no need to be. Or I didn’t. For a long time. Until tonight.” She moved even closer, so that their bodies touched all the way to their toes. “It’s not the right time of the month.”
She rested there, her head on his shoulder. He kept his arm around her as he reached on the floor for his jeans. He pulled out a foil wrapped condom. Wow. Spence had never been able to go twice in one night. Not even on their honeymoon. She peeked down. Stone hard and already rolling on the condom. “Let’s not tempt Mother Nature too much,” he said.
Chapter Eleven
Spence woke up in an unfamiliar bed. His head ached, his teeth hurt, his body, cold with sweat, didn’t make sense, except…except when he was in detox. His queasy stomach made him turn over and open his eyes. A twin bed. Painted white cement walls. Not a jail cell, but might as well be. Back in rehab. Again.
After dry heaving over the toilet bowl for what seemed like hours,
he struggled to recall what had brought him here, but it was all black. No memories, just a sense of sickening dread and his dark familiar friend, depression.
“He’s up!” a nurse in a uniform of kitten pants and top informed the room.
“Where’s my wife? Why am I here? What happened to me?”
His boys were gone. He’d see them again, maybe once a year if he was lucky. The baby! God help him. He had to get better for the baby. And for Bettina. But as the nurse took his vital signs and he fought off nausea, he knew it wouldn’t work if he got sober for anyone except himself.
The nurse hadn’t answered any of his questions, but he heard his wife’s voice and struggled to his feet. He wore a horrible hospital johnny, but it hardly mattered. Clearly something much worse than showing his ass was happening here.
It stayed like that. Hot, then cold. Burning and shivering and itching. Shit and dry heaves. More than once he wished he’d died. This seemed to go on forever. No day or night, no soothing sleep, only nightmares. He was still being given medication, but it didn’t help. He’d heard Bettina’s voice that one time but didn’t see her until they had a meeting with an addiction specialist.
Dr. Michaels would keep Bettina off his back. He hoped. It was all he could do to walk down the hall supported by an attendant. He still couldn’t remember why he was here. The attendant opened Dr. Michaels’s door, and Bettina sat there, shredded tissue in hand, eyes red of rim. Oh God, give me the strength to deal with this woman, he prayed. He had never been a big fan of Jesus, but when things got this bad, praying helped. Apparently God didn’t hold it against you if you didn’t quite believe in him.
He took his seat. Stole a look at his wife.
“Hi, honey.”
She wouldn’t turn her face to his.
“I’m sorry.” He wasn’t sure what he was sorry for. Clearly he’d ODed. But why? How? When? He might as well get his all-inclusive apologies out of the way. He felt so sick and tired he wanted most of all to go back to his cot and four walls, curl into a ball, and breathe. Or not.
She still didn’t glance his way. She didn’t speak. Fine.
Dr. Michaels glanced over a chart.
“This is something you wrote last time you were here,” the doc said. Spence didn’t remember ever writing anything while in rehab. He slumped in his chair. Whatever came, he wouldn’t like it.
He was right.
“Does Bettina know about your family situation? Your family of origin?”
Spence shrugged. He wasn’t sure. Actually, he was pretty sure he hadn’t mentioned it. He didn’t like to think about that stuff.
“They live in Iowa. I’ve never met them. Spence hates them.”
No. They were not going to make him talk about that.
“Have you ever been curious about why he hates his folks?”
“They’re not my ‘folks.’” Spence’s legs did a little dance of their own. He tried to make them stop, but they wouldn’t. “We don’t talk about them.”
“Why don’t you tell your wife—”
“Soon to be ex if you don’t start talking. Now.” Bettina finally spoke.
Ex. Oh, no, not again. At least this time he’d have warning and not come home to an empty house, no wife, no kids. No clothes in Chloe’s closet, no toothbrush in her holder, no jewelry box on her dresser. She’d left a few of the kids’ things behind, but she’d taken their beds. She’d left his to lie in alone.
“I, ah, what?” His hands were shaking. He couldn’t think. Wait. Think. Remember. “Oh, wait, no, don’t leave, please, let me think, I just need a sec.” His mind blanked.
“Your parents.”
“Oh, those people. They adopted me when I was ten. I was abandoned as a baby, orphaned. Foster care for ten years. Then they needed help on the farm, more help than foster care allowed ten-year-olds, so they adopted me. I was your basic slave laborer.” He turned to face Bettina and stuck his tongue out. Then he realized what he’d done and slammed his hand over his mouth. “Jesus, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that, oh God, don’t leave. I love you.”
Bettina hadn’t said a word. She clutched her rounded belly.
“It’s okay.” The doc turned to Bettina. “Some of Spence’s motor skills are out of sync. He’ll be fine, we think. But it may take some time for him to settle down.”
“He’s behaving like a ten-year-old.” Bettina said it and then he saw realizing dawn. She’d made the connection. “In one of your suicide notes, you mentioned you had an alcoholic grandfather. Does that mean you found your family of origin? We have medical records?”
Spence swayed in his chair. Too many questions. She asked too many questions. Finally the doc spoke. Thanks, Doc. Saved me.
“Yes, something shifted for Spence at age ten. Spence, you wrote out your history for me here, last time. I’m sorry to see you back again and with the circumstances so similar.”
“How do you mean?” Bettina massaged her back and talked to the doctor.
“It’s better if you and Spence can have this conversation where you both feel supported. I’m the silent support. Talk to your husband. Tell him how you feel.”
“Well, I hate him,” she told the doctor.
“That’s fine, but tell him, not me.”
Spence put his hand over his eyes. Why was he such a fuck up? So he’d been an orphan, so his family hadn’t wanted him, so he was adopted, so he had to work hard, so the fuck what?
Bettina slapped the hand from his eyes. He flinched.
“What? Don’t worry. I won’t say it again. I know you heard.” Bettina looked pissed as hell, tapping her foot like his adoptive mother used to do. He closed his eyes and tried to remember, but there were a lot of blanks. “Say something, asshole.”
He closed his eyes and reached out a hand to the doctor. “Could you let me see those pages?” The doc handed them over.
Spence scanned. “No idea who natural parents were slash are. No idea of medical history.” He remembered that now. It wasn’t in the pages. He put them down. He didn’t want to see what else he’d written. “Chloe got so angry she hired a guy to find my parents. My real parents. Good ol’ dad was dead, but he had a sister who gave us the medical information. My mom had been thirteen. Raped. Hid it. Had the baby, well, had me, outside, alone, and put it, ah, put me, in a purse, an old purse. She tried to keep me in her room, but her mother saw and took me to some Catholic Sisters of Mercy or some such adoption people. I was not adopted as an infant. I already knew that.”
“Did you meet your mother?” For the first time Bettina’s voice softened a little.
“She thought it best to leave the past in the past.” True story. He got so hot, sweat beaded up all over his body, making him cold. He shivered. The doc had a thin hospital blanket on a side chair, and he nodded toward it.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Get it if you need it.”
What he needed. What he needed. “I need you.” Spence blurted to Bettina as he got up on shaky bare legs to retrieve the blanket. He wrapped himself in it. “I know I’m not supposed to say that.” He directed his comment to the doctor. “But I’m being honest, right? I need her. I need my boys, too. My family means everything to me. I never had one, not really. Those people didn’t love me. I was a paycheck.”
“Now I’m YOUR paycheck.”
Boy, she knew how to bust his balls. Wasn’t there a heart beating inside her enormous breast? The room started to telescope, and then everything went black.
****
Bettina had been checked over by her OB and released the same day. She had to call one of the teachers she liked best to come get her. The woman had wanted to know what had happened, where was Spence, was she okay? Bettina played it off. Oh sure, everything’s fine, Spence had to go out of town on business and she’d had a cramp and didn’t feel she should drive, so she’d called a cab. Silly.
She’d learned how to lie from Spence. She got pretty good at it. When she got home, she trudged up the steps,
grabbing up the pages Spence had written. She took them into the bedroom with her, sat on the bed with her swollen feet up, and read.
What she saw, self-indulgent bullshit. He wasn’t thinking of her or the baby. He wasn’t thinking of his sons. He only thought “poor me.” Well, to hell with him. Bettina understood why Chloe had taken her children and left Spence. Now she had to decide. Would she do the same?
It was tempting. She had a good job. Her mother lived in Arizona, but hell, she could afford quality daycare. A nanny. It wasn’t what they’d planned, but life didn’t work like that. She let tears roll down but didn’t bother to break into sobs. The jerk wasn’t worth it. He obviously didn’t feel she and their child were worth living for.
What a line of crap she’d fed herself when she’d first met him. Oh, Mr. Wonderful, Mr. Misunderstood. She had wanted to take care of the broken man she’d married. Yes, a bad time for real estate in Detroit, he’d get back on his feet someday. But for the first few months, hell, years, she’d done all she could to make it up to the wounded child inside Spence. Then he started acting like a druggie teenager, and she’d started to become annoyed. As his behavior escalated, she got scared. Her OB had told her she must keep calm in these final weeks. No matter what stress her husband was under, she must make herself her first priority.
She could do that. She’d seen Spence do it for years. Her first act of rebellion was falling asleep in her clothes without turning down the bed first. She slept like a child, but she woke up a woman with some decisions to make.
Should she call Chloe?
Oh so tempting. With a mix of horror and chagrin, she realized Chloe was her only friend. Unless you counted what’s-her-name from the Al-Anon group. Suzy. Bettina dragged herself out of bed, stripped, and stood under the hot shower. She had to get the smell of hospital off her. While the water pounded down, she admitted something. She was no different from Suzy or any of the other people at Al-Anon. And admitting that became a first step into a new reality for Bettina.
What had Suzy said? “Get out while you can.” Bettina would certainly take that under advisement.
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