by Liz Crowe
Chapter Fifteen
“Babe, I really need you to give me an answer on this.” Kent pointed down at the blueprints, again. “Cara.” His voice sharpened, piercing her gauzy fog.
“What? I don’t care. I told you already.” She pushed the plans away from her. “I don’t want to move. This is your project. You manage it.”
She got up too fast and had to grip the edge of the table. He appeared at her side in an instant.
“Good Lord almighty, will you stop?” Moving out of his reach she wandered into his kitchen, noting its extreme tidiness for the zillionth time. She took down a glass from a cabinet where all the glasses matched and were in rows by size, filled it with water from his reverse osmosis filter, and drank it.
She sensed him nearby, could hear him breathing, smell his cologne, almost taste his anxiety, and every bit of it made her want to scream. Her better self started to lecture.
Unfair, Cara. So very unfair. This man loves you, is still willing to marry you even though you lost the baby. He won’t let his parents bully you. What is your dang problem?
Her dang problem was clear to her, of course—all six-foot-six, redheaded, freckle-faced, high school sweetheart of him, who’d somehow managed to inject himself into her life, in more ways than one, and now she simply couldn’t eject him from her thoughts.
She flinched when Kent touched her shoulder. He seemed so forlorn, dressed in his expensive suit, shirt and tie, his jaw dark with stubble, hair messy from dragging his fingers through it.
He is so hot. And rich. And great in bed, most of the time.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. Hormones, I get it.” He tugged at her and she went into his arms. After a few minutes, gave her a squeeze and let go. “Now, please, give me some input on Cara’s Dream Kitchen?” Dipping his face down to make her meet his eyes, he grinned. “Anything you want, my love. Granite? Marble? Stainless? Corian?”
She tried hard not to snap at him again. “Fine. Let me see the…thing.” He led her to the table covered in blueprints and sweet-talked her through a boring hour’s worth of cabinet materials, countertops, backsplash tile, faucets. By the time she’d finally okayed the last detail—drawer pulls, of all things—her head ached.
Finally, she sat back. “I’m starving.”
“My command,” Kent said, heading into the kitchen.
While he puttered around the kitchen, she decided to stretch out on the couch. Her body felt mired in mud, weighed down. The sensation of moving in slow motion, as if underwater but at the same time forlorn and emptied out, devoid of the living hope for her future marriage’s success never left her.
She drifted a bit, in an in-between land free of final dress fittings, major life-changing decisions about the color of her kitchen tile and how much cream to inject into the center of the obnoxious wedding cake they’d chosen. Such trivia had never been her strong suit. Growing up she’d been too concerned over money for dinner every night, or wondering if her mother would actually come home from her second waitressing job sober and alone or drunk and with some loser hanging off her like a redneck leech. She’d had little time for the pretty little details like what color nail polish would match her Sunday dress.
Rubbing the bridge of her noise, she realized she’d forgotten to stop and get the dry cleaning. Her formal engagement tea at the club loomed around the corner on Sunday. She’d have to make it before noon tomorrow in order to have the dress she and Vivian had chosen for it, plus she had to get nails re-done, her brows and crotch re-waxed, and who the hell knew what else. Putting her body through the wringer of extreme wedding perfection made her want to scream. She hated all of it and wished she’d convinced Kent to elope to Hawaii or someplace equally exotic to her small-town imagination, like, Key West.
Kent nudged her a few minutes, or maybe an hour, later, holding out her phone.
“Your mother,” he mouthed with a sympathetic shrug before giving it to her and hightailing it out of her hearing. She took the device and held onto it a full minute, trying to gather her energy before putting it to her ear.
“Baby!” Cara winced, convinced the woman’s shriek could likely be heard by dogs in the next county. As her bed-bug crazy mama filled her ears about her AA meeting, her new boyfriend, a fellow alkie named Glen, the dress she’d be wearing on Sunday, Cara almost missed the little aside about money Kent had sent her to cover the costs of all the primping and fussing required.
Cara spotted the man in question, taking in the nightly financial report on the small flat screen embedded in his fridge. “How much?” She finally interrupted the monologue.
“Well, I declare I thought it was some kinda joke, or he had a hidden camera or somethin’, you know?”
“How much?”
“Well, it’s embarrassing. You know I don’t like talkin’ about money, since we ain’t never had a pot to piss in thanks to your no-account daddy.”
“Mama, I’m walking into the kitchen now and asking him myself.”
“No, no, don’t go embarrassing that fine man for what he done for me. You’re actin’ like the spoiled brat you always was.” Her mother’s tone dipped into childish petulance, reminding her of endless nights spent playing mother as a teenager to the woman while she bitched about the loser boyfriend of the moment maxing out her credit cards or making off with the rent money she had stowed in the mattress. “You are one lucky so-and-so, Miss Priss Cara Elizabeth. You’d better do all you can to keep your looks and make that man the best wife possible, you hear me? Don’t you go shamin’ how you was raised.”
Cara sighed and had to swallow the bile rising in her throat. How she was raised, had been something she’d shared completely with her future, silver-spoon-enabled husband. She couldn’t be accused of leading him on about her poor white trailer-trash background. No way. He’d claimed not to care and every time he saw her mother, he acted like the perfect gentlemen—going overboard at times with his attention to her. It sickened Cara, but she’d get almost faint with gratitude whenever he’d do it.
But giving the woman money? That Cara would not tolerate.
“All right, Mama, all right, relax.” She cracked a yawn, sticking out her tongue at Kent when he pointed to the phone then circled his finger around his ear. They’d have to discuss the money. She wouldn’t let her mother sponge off him. The prospect of conversations with her future mother-in-law over it made her want to scream because sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, Vivian Lowery would find out somehow.
But not until after the wedding, and the honeymoon, she thought, ignoring her mother’s yammering. The honeymoon Cara had requested—not to some expensive beach resort that required her to buy a passport, but to a cabin in the Smokey Mountains. She’d been there once as a kid, with the Love family, in her days as another urchin taken under Miss Lindsay’s wing, when Cara and Kieran were nothing but pre-adolescents fighting over the Monopoly board, or who got to paddle the back of the canoe.
The ten-day trip had imprinted on her young psyche as indelibly as a burning brand on her flesh. It had been utterly perfect—Love family dynamics, fights, drama, laughter, and all. She wanted to go there. So Kent had arranged it to her specifications, as closely as he could manage, since she couldn’t remember the name of the place and could hardly call Lindsay and ask her. Cabins in the Smokey Mountains by a Lake abounded, it would seem.
Returning to the present, Cara gazed out the large window onto the Ohio River and the Albany, Indiana skyline beyond, her mother’s irritating voice filling her ear without making an impression on her consciousness.
“I’m gonna go. Kent is...he’s got dinner and I’m....” She winced. She’d just set herself up for another shriek and a lecture about who was taking care of whom and her role as a wife and all sorts of nonsense that would make her laugh from the irony if she were not so sick of hearing it. “Bye, now. Bye-bye, see you Sunday. Yes, I love you. Bye!” She touched the end call button to head off the burst of emotion her
mother always managed to spew at the end of every call, as if they were departing for opposite ends of the planet, never to meet again.
“So sorry, babe.” Kent carried her plate into the room on a TV tray, plunked it down in front of the couch, and went to grab his. “She insisted on talking to you. It sounded serious.” He patted the couch next to him before tucking the linen napkin into the open neck of his dress shirt.
“It’s never as serious as she makes it out to be. You know that.” Strange whoosh-whoosh sounds filled Cara’s ears, in time with her heartbeat, which had increased during the call. “Why did you give her money?”
He pointed the clicker at the giant television over the stone mantel then went to work on his steak. He cut a bite, stuffed it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and wiped his lips, ignoring her question in the process.
“Honey,” she said, her voice a bit sharper than she’d intended. His gaze darkened and he set his utensils down. The man made better use of a pregnant pause than anyone she knew. Probably what made him such a good litigator, she supposed. Prepared to wait him out, she matched his silence. She’d asked, so he owed her an answer.
Finally, he shook his head and smiled, but she refused to be charmed out of this. “My mother is a leech. I’ve told you that. You’ve heard her talk, all those extreme delusions of how well she raised me, how she has big plans as a small business owner. It’s...crap!” She flopped into a chair near tears and furious over that, too.
He hesitated, his brow knit in consternation. Crying threw him for a loop every time. She sometimes wanted to advise any lady lawyer arguing opposite him in court to flip on the waterworks. She’d have him eating out of her hand.
Unfair, Cara. Have mercy but you are a colossal bitch, went the inner lecture this time.
She waved him away when he hurried over to her, clucking and fussing like a mother hen. He crossed his arms, his brow furrowed, a flash of anger passing over his face, making her thank heaven for that. A pissed-off man she could deal with. Mister Perfect made her feel like a high-maintenance whiny cow.
“Oh, never mind. It’s your money. Throw it down the toilet, write her huge checks pretending you want to ‘cover her pampering’. I don’t care. I didn’t earn it.”
Kent blinked and for a split second Cara honestly hated her own guts. Then he laughed so hard he bent double. He guffawed and got the hiccups from it before he stopped. Her lips twitched as she tried to keep frowning at him.
“Oh, honey, c’mere.” She ducked into his outstretched arm, pressing her face against his neck. “I’m sorry, but the concept of your mother thinking that five-hundred bucks could launch her as the next great makeup saleswoman or would buy her a restaurant is too much.” He gave her a squeeze, and Cara felt irrationally insulted and defensive over her mother’s extreme naiveté. She was allowed to insult the woman. He was not.
“Lord almighty, I thought you’d staked her ten grand or something.” Sniffling, she pulled away and sat behind her tray of food. Her mouth watered at the sight of the rare steak, leaking red underneath its perfectly charred exterior, and the fluffy mound of mashed potatoes alongside the home-style green beans. “You are too good to me.” She glanced over and caught him still chuckling at the concept of her mother’s ignorance regarding five hundred dollars.
He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and pecked her on the nose. “Yes, I am. But I love you. So there you go. Now eat. You’ll need your strength for the coming gauntlet of parties.” She let go of the niggling sensation that he’d insulted her by making fun of her mother.
Later, they sat curled together under a blanket while Love, Actually played for the hundredth time. He claimed to enjoy it as much as she did. She claimed he only said that so he could get laid. By the end, he had her pressed down on the couch, and was teasing her neck and pulling her shirt off so he could get at her breasts.
“You taste so good,” he mumbled around her nipples. Her yoga pants got tossed over his shoulder before he dove down between her legs, taking the task on with the sort of enthusiasm she sometimes questioned for its authenticity. But he’d discovered all her buttons, all the secret little places that would send her spiraling over the edge every time he used them. He dug his fingers into her ass and yanked her closer, so she raised her hips and let it happen.
Once she lay gasping and spent, he dropped down beside her, his huge leather couch accommodating them both as long as one of them lay propped on his or her side. He ran his fingers down her face then nibbled his way down her neck, but when she reached for him, needing more now that he’d started this particular ball rolling in his expert way, he stopped her.
“No, sorry, this one is about you,” he said, using his fingers to tease her flesh until she shuddered and gasped and gripped his arm. But she felt it, or rather the lack of it, against her hip. He’d been this way before during the weeks leading to their wild weekend at the B&B. He’d chalked it up to stress. Now he claimed he didn’t want to hurt her, claimed he felt guilty over all the rambunctious sex they’d had before the miscarriage. He’d not so much as stirred behind his zipper as far as she knew, since her night in the hospital. A shame, really. She missed it. But she didn’t want to embarrass him.
He pressed his lips to her stomach and she succumbed to the sudden drowsiness post monster orgasm. She wound her fingers in his hair, smiling when he raised his face to hers.
“I love you,” he said, looming over her, making her wish he could finish, to find his own release.
“I love you,” she murmured back, already half-asleep, cradled in his arms, figuring she might as well enjoy it.
Hellfire, Cara, are you that craven? Have you become your mother despite all your efforts not to be?
But the exhaustion precluded any more guilt, or anything other than the compelling need for sleep and she let her inner nag go silent. “We staying on the couch?” she asked when he covered them with a blanket.
“Yeah, we are. Go on to sleep, honey.”
“Okay,” she slurred like she’d been on an hours-long bender. “Love you.”
She woke with a gasp from a terrifying and instantly forgotten nightmare. Wincing, she peeled her skin off the leather and sat, trying to get her bearings. Her temples pounded and her gut was turning in queasy flips. Seeking Kent’s familiar contours, she found empty space. She swiped at the sweat beading her face and rose, thinking a big glass of water might help, so she swaddled her naked body in the blanket and headed for the kitchen.
“Ow! Crap,” she yelped when her pinky toe geo-located the coffee table leg on her way, relishing the kitchen’s coolness after the stuffy confines of the living room. She drank two huge glasses and wiped her mouth, figuring Kent must have decamped to the much-more-comfortable bed after she’d passed out in a puddle of post-orgasmic goo. A blue glow lit the hall. She followed it, thinking he’d left the television on in the bedroom.
The door eased open and she slipped into the room, planning to crawl in behind him, maybe do a little of her own kissing, sucking, and whatever it took to get the man off these days. The TV sat dark on top of the huge piece of furniture that held Kent’s many perfectly folded white undershirts and immaculately arranged underwear. She tracked the glow around the corner, to a small alcove that jutted out over the other side of the building. It held a tiny desk and a comfy chair where she would sometimes curl up and read, liking her little private retreat high above the city.
Figuring his phone must be lighting the area with incoming stock quotes from overseas, she tiptoed away until she realized he was sitting at the desk, hunched over his laptop. She yawned and headed for the bathroom and the toothbrush she’d left here a few days ago at his insistence. He’d been pretty bossy about it, among other things. Telling her that she should quit her job now, concentrate on the wedding, their new house, healing after her miscarriage.
The bathroom light blinded her momentarily. After brushing her teeth, rinsing out her mouth, and using his soap to wash her face, she
flipped off the light and snuck out, thinking she’d surprise him, drag him to the bed, see if she could revive some of his newly missing ardor. She’d gotten close to his darkened profile when she realized he had his hand in his lap and his breathing came in short gasps.
Oh crap, he’s jacking off.
She backed away, intending to give him privacy when she caught the images on the screen. On it were two men, one seemingly hunched over the other’s back. The camera shifted, giving her a clear view of a long, thick cock sliding into an ass, again and again. She put her palm over her mouth to keep from gasping when another shot of a man on his knees sucking some other guy’s dick filled the screen. Cara tried to move, but her feet seemed set in concrete, anchoring her and forcing her to observe as her fiancé masturbated to the images of men fucking each other. When she whirled away, she immediately tripped over an ottoman, sending her nose first onto the carpet.
“Ow,” she whispered, rolling so she faced the ceiling. Kent filled her vision, his face flushed, his gaze panicked. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb your...whatever that was.” A strange sensation of lightness, perhaps even relief, coiled around in her head. She let him help her to her feet, but kept her distance.
“Baby, I’m...I...it’s not what you...think.” He stopped and shifted his gaze to the floor, his perfectly cut torso gleaming with sweat, his shorts tented, a shock of his dark hair dropping over his forehead.
Unable to stop herself, she brushed it away and cradled his rough cheek in her palm. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“There’s nothing to know.” He hesitated just long enough to make her heart sink. “I...needed to, you know. I mean....”
“I’m sleepy. Let’s go to bed.” She held out her hand, her heart calm, her mind clear but acknowledging that things had suddenly gotten a lot more complex.
“I love you,” he ground out, pulling her to him, pressing his erection against her stomach. “I want you. Only you.”
