Cupid’s Confederates

by Jennifer Greene

  “Thirteen shots. That’s what you get, thirteen shots in the stomach if a wild animal bites you,” Elizabeth warned.

  “Now, take it easy, Mom,” she said absently. The tiny mewling cries were tearing at her heart. Grabbing a reasonably sturdy branch, she swung up one leg. The bark crumbled beneath her sneaker and suddenly she was swinging free. Dumb, Bett. She bit her lip, while her tennis shoe sought a foothold.

  “You’re going to kill yourself. You’re going to kill yourself. Raccoons are rodents, for heaven’s sake-Zach!”

  “I got him, Mrs. Monroe! Listen, I’ll take care of them, you know. My mom won’t mind. If you’ll just get them down, I promise you won’t have to do anything else. I’ll take them home and-”

  “Zach, will you talk some sense into her? I swear, I can’t. I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous-”

  Zach was over the side of the truck in one swift leap, his hands roughly snatching at Bett’s waist. She let go of the branch, sinking down to the stable truck bed again. Drawing a long, deep breath, she turned to face him, relieved he was there-at least until she saw the cold blue fury in his eyes. “You knew damn well that tree wouldn’t hold you,” he growled.

  His tone stung like betrayal, as if he and her mother had formed an alliance against her. Bett went rigid. “Fine,” she said stiffly. “You are absolutely right. So is Mom. You two just go right back home and be sensible and reasonable-”

  “Hold it, two bits.” For just an instant, his eyes pinned hers, a sky-blue, hypnotizing hold. Since when do you jump to conclusions where you and I are concerned? “Now, let’s just see,” he said quietly. He reached up, too, but could only get to the tip of the branch, not inside.

  “Lift me onto your shoulders, then,” Bett suggested.

  Zach shook his head. “Even baby raccoons can bite. And I’d rather put a hand in there myself than let you do it.”

  “Don’t be silly, Zach. What’s the difference who gets bit, for heaven’s sake?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Billy chimed in from the ground.

  “Except you,” Zach and Bett chorused simultaneously.

  “I don’t believe this,” Elizabeth moaned distractedly. “You two cannot possibly be serious.” Her tone was lethal with disapproval. “You will both get down from there this instant and come in to dinner. I’ve never heard of such a thing! There must be thousands of raccoons in this country, all of them filthy rodents.” She turned to Billy. “Young man, you just go on home. Brittany and Zach…”

  She sounded as if she were scolding a pair of teenagers. Zach glanced down at her in surprise. “Keep quiet for just a minute, would you, Liz?”

  Elizabeth’s jaw dropped.

  Zach turned back to Bett and rapidly tugged off his shirt. “You will be careful.” He knotted the shirt ends, making a kind of sling.

  She grinned, moved behind him and shimmied up as far as his waist. Zach’s hands reached behind and cupped her buttocks. “Ready?”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Elizabeth snapped.

  Zach pushed Bett up the rest of the distance to his shoulders. From there she could peer into the hollow limb, and though she could see nothing, there was a sudden silence within. She smiled, humming unconsciously, very low, the same French refrain that won over her bees. The same seductive song that had wooed a fawn into their yard the winter before.

  Zach kept a tight grip on her ankles as she leaned forward, her stomach pressing against the back of his head. Slowly, she reached in. Inside the darkened hollow, fur suddenly flew in frantic motion, but she captured a handful of hair and pulled the creature out.

  The baby blinked in blind fury at the sun. It was so tiny it fit in the cradle of her palm, all black-rimmed eyes and more tail than body. Clutching it by the nape, Bett wasted only a second to glance at Zach. They exchanged identical smiles before she gently dropped the tiny weak bundle in his makeshift shirt sack.

  Another one followed. The third tried to nip her; he got the chorus of the French love song. The fourth…for an instant, Bett paused, suspended, with her arm in the hollow of the tree, unable to move. The fourth baby was very soft, very furry…and totally cold and still.

  “Are there any more?” Billy demanded anxiously from below.

  She couldn’t seem to answer, any more than she could force her hand away from the tiny creature. So cold… Helplessly, she blinked back tears. Zach, being Zach, picked up on her feelings before she had to say a word. “Leave it, babe,” he whispered roughly. “Think of the ones with life.”

  She took a breath, and pulled her arm free from the hollow. A moment later, she had shimmied back down to the truck bed, cradling the sack of squirming bodies to her breast. Zach jumped down from the back of the pickup, and then reached back to help her.

  “Now, I know you’re not going to take them back to the house,” Elizabeth said frantically.

  Zach supervised the loading of one bike, one boy, two women and three raccoons into the truck, but his eyes rested thoughtfully on his mother-in-law.

  ***

  They didn’t want food, the little raccoons. They were too exhausted and weak from crying for their mother, and the warm, diluted liquid Bett offered them from an eyedropper tasted nothing like their natural mother’s nursing milk.

  “So we’ll have to force it,” Zach said patiently. He was on the kitchen floor next to her, both with their backs resting against the kitchen counter. A bowl of warm milk was on the floor between them. The three babies were swaddled in warm towels, so that only those big ringed eyes and tiny mouths peeked out.

  Billy had just left, most reluctantly, after a fairly lengthy phone conversation with his mother. Mrs. Oaks had warmly agreed that Billy could raise the raccoons-but only if he promptly came home to dinner, and only when the Monroes had approved their “release.” Zach hadn’t done that instantly, to Billy’s disappointment. Very gently, he’d explained to the boy that he knew Billy would take good care of them, but not to get up his hopes quite yet. The chances of the wild babies surviving the night simply were not high. If they were sure the creatures would live, they would be happy to give them up to Billy’s care. Bett heard Zach’s gentle but firm warning-and knew it was only half for the boy. He was looking at her.

  Biting her lip, Bett pried open the first reluctant mouth and forced an eyedropper of milk down its throat. The vise closed again; she had to force it a second time. Suddenly, those big eyes blinked open, unseeing in the way of the very young, and one paw with ridiculously huge claws made its way to the top of the towel.

  “One more little bit?” Bett coaxed. She started humming again. The little one took one more eyedropper full, then Bett laid the towel-wrapped bundle on the warmth of her lap and picked up the second raccoon.

  “Bett,” Zach said quietly, “don’t count on it too much.”

  But she was counting on it. “If we can keep them alive and eating through the night, they’ll be stronger in the morning.”

  After that they exchanged warm towels for more warm towels and fed them again. And did all of that again. With the baby that seemed weakest, Bett stripped away its towel and held it close to her body, cradling it to her own warmth.

  At midnight, they were still in the kitchen. “You know, your mother,” Zach mentioned absently, “was really furious with you.”

  “I know.”

  “To begin with, she’s not a farm woman. Those were honest fears of rabies dancing in her head. A lot of that anger was concern for you.”

  Bett leaned her head back against the counter. “Zach, I know that.”

  “I haven’t seen one tear out of her since she’s been here. She is happier, Bett. It’s all your doing.” Their eyes met. “And she doesn’t understand the simplest thing about you, does she?” he asked quietly. “Your feeling for animals, two bits. How could she not know of your feeling for animals?”

  Bett didn’t know what to say. Her hair brushed her cheek as she bent her head, stroking the soft creatures in her arms. “
I care a lot about her, you know. All she’s ever wanted is a daughter to share the things that are important to her. And because I have different values, she seems to feel that I’m rejecting hers. So she…tries to push her own on me. I really do understand.” Bett shook her head absently. “That’s just it, you see. I do understand. The failure’s mine that the closeness isn’t there. It always has been.”

  Zach’s jaw hardened. He was seeing the faint violet shadows beneath his wife’s eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. Failure? Bett was a failure at nothing, beyond occasionally trying to be too many things to too many people. He hesitated, his instinct to quickly reassure her frustrated by a new awareness that Bett must have harbored those feelings for a long time. Quick words weren’t appropriate. He wanted to think, and Bett was so tired she could barely sit up. “You go up to bed,” he ordered. “I’ll stay up with them. Both of us certainly don’t need to-”

  Her eyes kindled and she stared him down. Zach sighed. “I can just see how tomorrow is going to shape up, after feeding these monsters every two hours all night.”

  He was going to make a wonderful father, Bett thought lazily. He stood up and added the third raccoon to the bundle cradled to her chest. Ten minutes later, he returned from upstairs with two sleeping bags and their pillows. By then it was time to reheat the milk and wield the eyedroppers again.

  An hour later, Bett was snuggled in the sleeping bag, waiting for Zach to finish rinsing the bowl and lie down next to her. “Mom’s going to have a stroke when she comes down in the morning,” she murmured drowsily.

  “And that’s the last time you worry about your mother alone,” Zach muttered back.

  She didn’t hear him, her hand slowly stroking one soft, furry head. The three babies were snuggled next to her. “They’re going to make it, you know,” she told him.

  Zach bent to kiss her once, a kiss for his lady who had certainly lived in the country long enough to understand nature’s way of life and death. And who never would. Those babies didn’t have a chance in hell of survival…but they hadn’t come across his wife before.

  Chapter 8

  “Bett?”

  Through a sleepy fog, Bett opened her eyes, reaching automatically for Zach when she saw his face so close to hers.

  “No, sweetheart. Up,” he whispered.

  “Pardon?”

  Zach, for some strange reason, was dressed. Jeans, a dark sweatshirt, sneakers. The room was still shrouded in the charcoal fuzziness of predawn; she could barely make out his shaggy brown hair and crooked smile. The same fuzziness muddled her brain as Zach, speaking in whispers, urged her into a robe and slippers, then down the stairs.

  At the front door, she was sufficiently awake to at least open her mouth. She was not generally in the habit of walking out the front door in yellow scuffs and her long yellow cotton robe. Zach kissed her just then. Zach kissed her very, very thoroughly.

  By the time she surfaced, he was herding her toward the pickup. “The babies-” she protested vaguely.

  “Billy took the babies yesterday morning. Don’t you remember?”

  Sort of. There’d been two nights and a day before the raccoons had changed from reluctant feeders to guzzlers. She couldn’t let Billy take them until she’d been sure they would survive.

  Last night, though, she’d fallen asleep like a zombie; she only vaguely remembered Zach carrying her upstairs. Now, she regarded her husband with a definitely sensual smile. “You seem to be kidnapping me.”

  “You bet your bare toes I am.” He tucked her in the curve of his shoulder for the drive, aware that he’d woken her from sleep she still needed, but not caring as much as he should.

  Something had clicked in his head during the past few days. Elizabeth, so insensitive to Bett’s feeling for animals, to something so integral to her daughter’s nature. Elizabeth, criticizing Bett so very subtly on half a dozen fronts, always well-intentioned. Elizabeth, forever and with all good intentions, interrupting every moment of closeness between them.

  Zach had never intended to complain about the inconveniences Elizabeth’s stay was causing for him. He not only cared about his mother-in-law, but also accepted Bett’s feeling of responsibility for her welfare.

  But Liz should never have made the mistake of hassling Bett.

  Very complicated issues had been reduced to utter simplicity. As simple as breakfast. Twenty minutes later, he had a small fire going at the edge of the woods by the pond. Bett was staring at him with increasingly bewildered eyes, her soft hair fluffed around her face in a haphazard halo. Wearing yellow inevitably made her appear as fragile as a daisy. Bett was, at times, very fragile. Scrambled eggs were cooking in the iron frying pan; Bett was curled up on the sleeping bag with an old blanket around her shoulders; and dawn’s pale, silvery colors were peeking through the woods.

  “So.” Bett was groping for conversation. “You just suddenly felt like a picnic at five o’clock in the morning.”

  Zach spooned eggs onto a paper plate and handed it to her, along with a plastic spoon. Finding plastic forks had proved difficult. “You’re going to need this energy,” he commented.

  “I am?”

  His eyes flickered to hers. “When you’re all done, I’m going to make love to you so long and so hard you won’t know what hit you.” He frowned, staring at her. “Hard isn’t the right word. I don’t want you to misunderstand. I want an hour with you, in complete silence. I want you open for me. I want to bury myself inside your softness.”

  Her lips formed a startled O that never materialized aloud. A moment ago, they’d been talking about breakfast. She tried to swallow a bite of food, staring at her husband.

  Zach looked the same. His brown hair was still the color of chestnuts, all disheveled, his sideburns getting a little long. His skin still had the whole summer’s sheen of bronze in it. He was moving casually, his walk lithe and easy, to the pond, where he crouched on his haunches to rinse out the frying pan.

  Maybe he hadn’t just said all that, she thought fleetingly. Maybe she’d imagined it. Because there was nothing specifically different in the way he looked that could account for an instant, vibrant, delicious tingling in every erotic nerve ending in her body. As he strode back toward her, his eyes seemed to burn into hers with an intense, deliberate flame.

  “Eat,” he scolded.

  Ah, yes. For that energy she was going to need. She took another bite, not the least interested in food. Zach kicked sand on the embers of the fire with the side of his boot, served her the last of the coffee from the thermos and took the few items involved in his cooking project to the back of the pickup.

  The sun was just peeking over the horizon; the smell of dew surrounded them; the pond waters, pearl gray, were like glass. It was a silent world. She watched Zach as he moved about soundlessly, strong and tall and very, very male. Zach smiled so readily. But Zach was not smiling when he looked her way.

  “Bett?” His voice was curiously gentle. He took the half-eaten breakfast from her hand. When he scooped her up, yellow blanket and all, she was not surprised. Zach was doing an unforgivably good job of making her feel like a princess, a princess captured by a pirate. Not that she really believed that, but she gave in to the odd, vulnerable feelings inside, that fragile, trembly rush. She nestled her cheek against his chest as he climbed into the cover of the trees.

  “Are you angry?” she whispered suddenly.

  His lips fleetingly brushed her forehead. “No.”

  “You are,” she said hesitantly.

  “Not,” he promised, “with you. And you are the only one on my mind at the moment, Bett.”

  He stopped walking at the crest of the hill, where in spring there was a bed of wood violets and the sun shone down in long, dusty ribbons through the leaves. In early fall, there were no flowers, just the bed of green like a spongy cushion beneath the blanket as he laid her down. She could smell the fresh dampness of morning, the promise of a sultry Indian summer day that hadn’t yet arrived.
A golden leaf fluttered down here and there in the stillness. The shade was dark and private.

  A cool flush touched her skin as Zach knelt beside her, his fingers threading through her hair as he drew her face close, close enough to lower his lips to hers. “You’ve been keeping secrets from me,” he murmured. “I don’t like that, two bits. I don’t like that at all.”

  “What secrets?”

  His lips swept over hers again, denying her question, his tongue probing between her parted lips, stirring a crazy flurry of emotions. His mouth left hers at the very instant she’d become addicted. He trailed kisses along her profile, so fragile and light she might have imagined them. His fingers were just as gentle untying the sash of her robe, parting the lapels, slipping inside. “When you’re unhappy,” he murmured, “I want to know about it. Some problems are solvable and some aren’t, sweet. I don’t give a damn. I want to know.”

  “Zach, I don’t have the least idea what you’re ta-”

  His blue eyes blazed into hers. “After all this time, if you really think there’s something you can’t tell me, Bett, you’ve got a long lesson coming to you.”

  “But I never-”

  Zach was too intent on engraining the lesson to explain. Her robe was in the way. It had to go. He could feel the shiver vibrate through her body when it was gone. She wore some kind of nylon nightgown that crinkled in his fingers as he swept it up and off, baring her sweet ivory flesh to the morning coolness. She needed warming. He had no intention of letting her catch cold.

  He reveled the feel of her bare skin against his sweatshirt and jeans, the tease of clothes between them. His hands swept up and down her flesh, searing in warmth wherever he touched, creating fire with the friction of his hands that were never still. “Don’t you ever hold out on me,” he murmured. “You don’t wear a mask, not around me. You put on coverings for the rest of the world, but not for me.”