SUMMERS FREEDOM

by Ruth Wind

  He looked over his shoulder at her, unmoving. The front screen door banged shut behind Samantha and David, and his chin lifted a little higher. It seemed to Maggie that he stood there against the light for an endless time, looking at her without a sound. She waited, watching his eyes grow brighter and clearer.

  When he suddenly shifted toward her, she found herself wringing the dish towel through her fingers, unable to maintain the eye contact he hadn't broken as he moved across the room.

  He stopped in front of her and took the towel out of her fingers. "You know I don't want a cup of coffee," he said. He wrapped his huge hands around her elbows. "But I do want you to stop looking like I'm going to eat you."

  Maggie dipped her head briefly, smiling, then looked at him. "You make me so nervous."

  "You're fighting your instincts," he murmured. He lifted her hands and placed them on his chest, then circled her waist with his arms. "Why's that?"

  Maggie let her fingers spread on the flannel that covered his chest. She shook her head. "It's not that I don't know how," she protested and looked up. "It's just that—"

  He cut her off with a kiss. And this, Maggie thought breathlessly, was no chaste exploration. With the same appetite he'd turned to his food, he tasted her lips; the edges and sides and tops; then the vulnerable inner flesh and the tip of her tongue. It was lazy and gluttonous at once, the craft of an expert.

  Maggie melted, simply dissolved against him, feeling his sturdy thighs and hard belly against hers. She made a sound of pleasure, and Joel slid his hands over her waist and back, devouring her lips. Her arms looped up around his neck as she strained on tiptoe to reach him more completely. In her stomach, a pulse beat feverishly.

  Joel released her mouth but secured her against him, leaning back to lift her clear off the floor. "God, I've wanted to do that all day," he said, and set her carefully down. His eyes swept her face and his hands ran up her sides, his thumbs grazing her breasts. Maggie moved against him instinctively, lifting her face to kiss him again.

  This, she thought with a rush of passion, was what she had imagined when she'd heard his shower. It wasn't enough. She circled his husky, well-formed neck with her hands, unfurling her fingers to feel the heat of his skin on her palms. His coarse hair grazed her knuckles, prickly in contrast to the enticing and surprising velvet of his skin.

  The very size of him excited Maggie, but it proved frustrating as well, for she couldn't reach him well enough to suit her—she wanted to touch the crown of his head and his shoulder blades; she wanted to strip them both bare and fall to the floor.

  The animal nature of her thoughts startled her and effectively brought her back to earth. "Joel," she whispered, "Sam could walk in at any moment."

  He kissed her quickly and lifted his head, smiling down. "You're right," he said, his voice a rumbling vibration Maggie felt through his chest. "And I promised to take it easy."

  Maggie flashed a rueful smile of her own, touching his square jaw. "I'm a grown woman," she said. "I'm capable of saying no."

  His eyes darkened to the color of the mountains on a hazy afternoon. "I'm having trouble saying no, myself. There's something about you—" He hugged her, then eased his hold.

  "How about that coffee?" she asked. Somehow, she felt more relaxed than she had before. In spite of the weakness in her body, she felt richly confident and gracious.

  He nodded reluctantly. "We can take it outside. I'd like to show you what I'm going to do with the garden."

  Maggie, pouring coffee, bit her lip. "The garden?"

  "You don't mind if I plant some vegetables, do you? It looks as fallow as the rest of the yard."

  "Oh, no," she said hastily. "I don't mind at all." It was just that it made his occupancy of the apartment next door seem permanent. Until that moment, she hadn't really thought of him being next door every day, not just for the next month or so, but for the month after that and the one after that and the one after that.

  Joel seemed to sense her misgivings in the way that he had of almost reading her mind—another point against him, she thought darkly. "Maggie," he said, brushing her cheek with his palm. "You don't have to be afraid of me."

  "I just don't know anything about you, not really."

  He grinned. "It takes a little time." The bantering mood fled abruptly as he stared at her, and she watched the ridge along his jaw go hard for an instant. "Trust your instincts, Maggie."

  She swallowed. "I'll try."

  The predawn darkness weighed like a live thing upon him, the silence an echo of other times, other places. Joel flung back the sheet and padded silently into the alcove off his bedroom. Here air blew through the windows, heavy with the scent of lilacs and night. He breathed in the freshness like an exhausted runner, and slowly, his panic attack began to calm. He stretched out on the pallet he had made in this room and turned on his tape player, letting the mellow guitar of Albert King soothe him.

  He tried, as he lay there, to keep his despair at bay. Night sometimes brought the sorrows back to him, paraded before his insomniac eyes the life he had lost, the dreams that had been crushed, the long, dark years he couldn't always believe he'd escaped.

  At times like this, he hated Nina with every molecule in his body, hated her for all she had stolen—his trust, his love, his life. As the emotion filled him with hard rage, red and black against his eyelids, he practiced again an exercise he'd learned. "God," he croaked into the night, "bless Nina. Bless Nina. Bless Nina." He repeated the phrase until the hate ebbed, losing its power over him.

  His breathing returned to normal; his heartbeat slowed. The cool night air whispered over his face, like the gentle flutters of a butterfly wing. Just before sleep entirely carried him away, he thought of a smooth swath of honey-gold hair swinging around an angled face—and another emotion claimed him: guilt.

  In the beginning, his plan had seemed so simple, a gamble he had no choice but to accept. Now he knew the gamble had been a selfish one.

  He also knew he could not yet give it up.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  The next day Maggie arose early to fix Sam's favorite pecan waffles for breakfast. As she whipped up the batter, she saw Joel out in the garden, digging, but something about his still demeanor told her he thought himself to be unobserved, and she didn't call out to him through the open back door. Out of respect for his privacy—something she seemed to be forgetting he had a right to—she turned her attention fully to the waffles.

  "Two decent meals in a row?" Samantha said in disbelief when she came downstairs. "Are you feeling okay?"

  "This is my apology for judging a book by its cover."

  Sam smiled. "Thank you."

  "Sure."

  As they ate, Sam said, "Mom?"

  Maggie looked at her. "Samantha?"

  "Do you think Dad would be upset if I didn't come stay with him this summer?"

  Maggie cut a triangle of the golden brown waffle on her plate. "Does this have anything to do with David?"

  "No—well, yes, but it's not because he asked me to ask." She poked a bubble of butter with her fork. "We're just getting along so well, I hate to see it end."

  "What makes you think it will? You'll only be gone six weeks."

  "Six weeks is a long time."

  "I know it seems like it is, but it'll be gone before you know it." Maggie paused. "Your father would be devastated if you didn't come. He spends months freeing his schedule for your visits to Denver."

  "I know, and I want to see him, too." Her voice dipped. "I'm just really going to miss David." Her clear eyes were troubled as they met Maggie's across the table. "It's kind of hard to choose."

  "You can stay in touch—write letters, talk on the phone."

  "What if he finds another girl while I'm gone? Somebody more like him?"

  Maggie cut, lifted and chewed a bite of waffle while she mulled her reply. What she ought to say was "You'll find someone else," but she had a hunch that
wasn't the answer Samantha sought. "I don't think you have to worry about that, Sam. He has more to worry about on that level than you do."

  Sam sighed deeply. "It just seems like everybody is more hip than I am."

  "He had his choice of everybody, Sam. He chose you."

  Sam brightened. "I never thought of it like that."

  Maggie raised her eyebrows, feeling very much like the sage advice columnist she became for the newspaper. "Be yourself. It's all any of us really have."

  Sam nodded and ate in silence for a time. Suddenly, she asked, "Did you love my dad?"

  Maggie frowned. Where had that come from? "I thought I did," she said with a sigh. "He was so handsome and important and charming…" She shook her head. "He dazzled me, but it was you I loved."

  She'd been too young and inexperienced to see it then, but the truth of her words was plain in retrospect. Paul had been too busy for his little girl, a sunshine child of five with a demanding attitude that hid her need to be reassured and loved. Maggie thought she had been able to offset the insecurity Sam would have faced without a mother. A burst of pride and love consumed her as she studied her beautiful daughter. "I wouldn't have traded it for the world."

  "Even though he ended up hurting you?"

  "How do you know about that?"

  "I'm not stupid. He's the same guy now as he was then." Sam rolled her eyes. "I love my dad—don't get me wrong—but he's not good husband material."

  Maggie laughed.

  Sam stretched lazily. "That was really good." She stood up and kissed Maggie on the forehead. As she carried her plate to the sink, she asked, "What about Joel?"

  Maggie kept her eyes on her coffee cup, unwilling to take the chance that her feelings about him would show. "What about him?"

  "He likes you, Mom," she said with an air of authority. "And I think he's pretty cute for an old guy."

  "Don't matchmake me, Sam."

  "I'm not," she protested. "But you aren't gonna be young forever, you know."

  Maggie chuckled. "I'm delighted you think I have a few years left."

  "I think you oughta go out with him again."

  "I don't think it's any of your concern."

  "Right." Sam tossed her head of bright hair. "Just trying to help." On her way out of the kitchen, she added, "But you also ought to wear that white dress. If he asks."

  "I'll keep it in mind," Maggie said dryly. "Before we meet your great-grandmother for lunch, you need to check over your clothes to see if there's anything you need before you go to Denver."

  "Dad always buys me new clothes."

  "I mean panties and bras and socks. He never thinks of things like that." She squirted soap into hot water for the dishes. "We can get you some this afternoon—maybe even a pair of shoes."

  "Not with Grandma—she'll examine every seam of every pair of underwear I like."

  Maggie grinned. "You've obviously never shopped for lingerie with your great-grandmother."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You'll see. Go on, now. Get your shower so that we can leave—I don't want to wait an hour for you to do your hair."

  "It's awfully early."

  Maggie dumped the silverware into the water. "I'm not taking any chances. We have reservations at noon."

  "I'm not that bad," Sam protested.

  "Worse." A knock at the front door interrupted the conversation, and Sam dashed upstairs, afraid to be seen in her sweats. Maggie grinned to herself, wondering where her own sense of vanity had gone—she wasn't fit to greet the paperboy.

  So, naturally, it was Joel at the door. "Hi," she said, brushing back a lock of hair.

  "Are you busy? I could use a hand for a minute getting a curtain rod hung."

  "A curtain rod?" she echoed blankly. "Oh—sure. Let me yell for Samantha and I'll be right out."

  Sam appeared at the head of the stairs when Maggie called. "I'm going to run next door for a minute," Maggie said. "Hurry up and get in the shower."

  Sam flashed a thumbs-up signal. "All right, Mom."

  Maggie shook her head.

  Joel waited on the porch, turning as he heard the screen creak open. Her feet were bare, her long legs exposed by the shorts, her hair free. Four bracelets adorned one wrist, expensive bracelets made with silver, agate, jade and what he thought might be lapis lazuli. In her ears were wide silver disks, their surface cratered like the moon. He grinned. "You're about half tomboy, half glamour girl, aren't you?"

  Maggie gave him a twist of a smile. "You caught me in between modes."

  He could see that she was a little embarrassed, and it pleased him. It meant his opinion mattered in some way. "Come on," he said, "in here."

  As when he'd brought her in to meet the old tomcat, Maggie felt a little overwhelmed in his living room. This morning, she realized that one portion of the intimacy she felt was due to the scent of the room, a concentrated essence of the man himself, something rich and loamy and sun warmed.

  "So, what do you need help with?"

  "This," he said, and picked up one end of the sixty-inch drapery rod for the front picture window. "I've tried four times to get it hung, but it's impossible with one person. I need you to brace it in the middle while I nail the ends."

  "I think I can handle that."

  And it really should have been fairly simple, except the chair was just low enough to make it a stretch for Maggie to reach the center of the rod, and Joel had to return to the toolbox for different nails twice. Each time he whispered by her, she felt the aura of his body slam into her torso, a portion that seemed unnaturally exposed in her stretched position. Her awareness of him exaggerated a minute into a deep, still length of time, and she felt an absurd need to catch a bit more air into her lungs.

  "You better hurry, Joel. I can't stand here like this all day."

  He stood up. "What if I tickled you right now?" he said in his raspy voice.

  "You wouldn't dare." The thought of his hands touching her exposed middle section set her nerves whirring from her eyelids to her shins. When a wisp of something curled around her ankle, she started, gave a strangled yelp—and tumbled right off the chair.

  Joel snagged her, laughing, his powerful arms pulling her against his chest.

  For one long, dazed second, she stared at the column of his throat, watching it move with the rumbling sound she could feel vibrating against her palms and into her belly.

  He looked down at her. "It was only the cat. Are you okay?"

  "Fine," she said, and made a move to release herself.

  He tightened his arms. "I kind of like this," he said, one hand moving on her spine.

  Fighting the impulse to dissolve against him as she had the night before, Maggie said breathlessly, "We're only supposed to see each other in broad daylight and in the company of lots of other people."

  He released her gently. "Come on. Let's get this curtain rod up."

  Oddly deflated, Maggie nodded and climbed back onto the chair. They finished the job without incident, and Maggie headed for the door.

  Joel snagged her hand. "It was an excuse, you know—the curtain rod."

  "Was it? For what?"

  "To see you." His fingers sandwiched hers. The skin on his hands was dry and cool. "Go out with me tonight."

  "Joel—" she began, her fear a palpable thing. If she continued to spend time with him, eventually her defenses would give way—they would become lovers.

  He half grinned and the dimples flashed, making him look more like a teenager than a full-grown man. As always, it disarmed her. "You're still afraid of me," he said.

  She drew her hand away from his and adopted her most sensible tone. "Joel, I'm not a woman that indulges in casual sex. I'm also not made of stone." She swallowed, forcing herself to look at him to say the next words. They weren't children, after all. "I can't be with you so much and not want to … well…" She paused.

  "I know," he said, as if her confession was not a confession at all. He made a move to touch her, then
crossed his arms over his chest. "I also understand and respect your wishes. We'll go get some supper—maybe Guiseppe's or something." He reached to brush a finger over her arm. "I won't even hold your hand," he said with a smile. "Promise. Cross my heart and hope to die."

  Maggie laughed. "You wretch. You know I want to say yes."

  "What time?"

  "I'll be ready about six-thirty," she said, moving toward the door. "And I have to be in by ten-thirty."

  Joel nodded, trying to push the fullness from his chest, a fullness of anticipation that made him feel younger than he had ever felt, more alive than he had ever thought he'd be. "I'll be there."

  Although Maggie tried to keep her mind on the moment at hand throughout the afternoon she spent with Samantha and her grandmother, she knew she was distracted. She barely tasted lunch, her mind was so focused on the upcoming dinner. She listened with a vague smile to the conversation between Anna and Samantha as they all lazily window-shopped, her mind floating toward Joel, wherever he was.

  Her preoccupation didn't go unnoticed. "You look like the cat that ate the canary," Anna said, tapping Maggie on the arm.

  "She went over to Joel's house this morning," Sam added teasingly. "When she came back, her face was full of color."

  Maggie thanked the stars that she didn't blush, and ducked her head to hide her expression. Denying Sam's statement would only lead to more teasing, more protestations—so she kept quiet.

  "Must be something," Anna said to Sam. "She always clams up when it's something big."

  Maggie felt a grin stretch her mouth. "Come on, you guys," she pleaded. "Don't do this."

  "Don't you trust us?" Sam teased.

  "I trust you," she said, and shrugged. "I just feel silly."

  "I'd feel silly over a man like that myself," Anna said.

  Maggie laughed. "Okay, okay. I'm going out to dinner with him tonight. It's no big deal." She ignored the exchange of triumphant glances between Anna and Sam, pointing to the display of dolls in a toy store window. "Look at Rapunzel."