Must Love Pets: A Romance Box Set

by Theresa Weir

  She felt like she was going crazy, wanting him and not wanting him, trying to balance the past against the present and the love she still felt for him against the fear that his sobriety would not last. How could she spend the next three or four days with him and pretend to be just his friend? How could she pretend to make room for him in her life as Giselle’s father when all she could think about was making love with him?

  Suddenly he was back in the doorway.

  Jessie spoke from her frustration. “So much for the dramatic exit, huh?”

  His jaw tightened. “I forgot that I’m supposed to ask you if Giselle can ride with me to Albuquerque.”

  She laughed harshly. “That couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “Jessie—”

  “You can’t keep doing this to me. I don’t know what to think from one minute to the next.”

  He glared at her. “I already told you I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

  “We have to work something out about Giselle, and I don’t see how we can if we keep going back and forth like this.”

  “There’s nothing to work out.” His voice and face were drained of all expression, but Jessie could feel his agitation, saw him swallow. “We just need some time—” he cleared his throat “—to learn to be friends.”

  “Time?” She made a noise of derision, and stood up. “Friends? Do you know how much time it took me to get over you? Now here you are again, and I’m supposed to know how to be your friend?” She heard her voice rising and swallowed to calm it. In a fierce near-whisper, she said, “You were more than my best friend, Luke. You were my whole world.”

  He winced, as if she’d hit him, and for a long time, he stood there without speaking. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “There are things you can never pay for, as long as you live. I think of you all alone and so pregnant and—” He bowed his head. “All my life, my father told me not to drink. He showed us the Indians who were drunk in Farmington, so it would scare us, so we’d be ashamed.” His face was rigid with the effort of holding back some powerful emotion. Jessie wanted to reach out, but was afraid he would shatter if she did.

  He shook his head. “I don’t have any words for this. I can’t make it right and I can’t go back in time. I just have to live with it.”

  His shame struck her with terrible poignancy. “I didn’t want to leave you, Luke. I just didn’t know what else to do.” She crossed her arms to hide their trembling. “I loved my mother so much, and no matter what I did I couldn’t keep her from drinking. I kept thinking if I’d just be really good, maybe she wouldn’t have to drink.”

  “Jessie, you don’t have to—”

  “Yes, I do.” Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. It seemed so important to make him understand. “When I found out I was pregnant, I just couldn’t bear the thought that Giselle would grow up doing the same thing.”

  Luke moved abruptly and took her into his arms. “Shh,” he whispered into her hair. “I know, Jessie. I never blamed you.” In the fine trembling in his body, she felt his emotion. “I missed you and I wanted you, but I never blamed you.”

  She buried her head in his shoulder and let go of a sorrowful moan. “This is crazy. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster.”

  “It’s the roller coaster that scares me. We’ve both been through a lot. I’m getting too old for this. I need things to be balanced.”

  She nodded, wiping ineffectively at her tears.

  “Time, Jessie. That’s all we really need. A year from now, I’ll show up to get Giselle for the weekend and you’ll wave as you go out with your new boyfriend.”

  That scenario struck her as more than a little unlikely, but she grinned at his attempt at humor, anyway. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Jessie.” He hesitated at the door, then turned away again. Jessie wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  * * *

  The feeling was still with her the next morning as she loaded her suitcase into her car.

  For one thing, it was damned hard to let Giselle crawl into the truck with Luke, instead of Jessie’s car. Everything seemed out of control, out of her reach. A part of her wanted to throw a screaming fit, grab her daughter and run away, far away, from all that had happened. Instead, she gritted her teeth and vowed to find some way to take control of her life once they were back in Albuquerque.

  The last thing Luke carried from the house was a box of CDs. Spying it, Jessie came forward. “Let me see what you have.”

  He popped open the lid, and Jessie riffled through the discs, reading the labels—some factory-generated, but most in his own hand. She shook her head over the collection. Santana and Bob Seger and Tom Waits mixed with Van Morrison and The Doors. “You have anything at all from, say, the new century?” she asked.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  Jessie grinned, grabbing the Santana and a Crosby, Stills and Nash she hadn’t heard in ages. “Don’t try and play any old-fogy music to your daughter.”

  “What does she like?”

  “Michael Jackson and any hip hop I allow her access to.”

  “Hip hop?”

  “I know.” Jessie picked out a Jackson Browne, too. “You should see her dance.”

  He looked pained. “I’m old.”

  Jessie grinned and took the CDs. “Me, too.” She waved. “I’m sure I’ll make better time than you will, so I guess I’ll just see you in Albuquerque.”

  “Okay.” He snapped the box closed. “Drive carefully.”

  Once she got out on the open road, with the CD player blasting old rock and roll, Jessie found herself taking a long breath of relief. It was the first time in well over a week that she’d been alone in any real sense of the word. The clouds had cleared off, leaving behind a sky the color of a blue jay’s feathers. It was something she loved about the Southwest—all that clear, open sky and the sunshine somehow made her feel more cheerful.

  Luke rode behind her for some way, but she lost him in the traffic through Pueblo and didn’t worry about it. Once she stopped glancing in the rearview mirror for his truck, she was well and truly alone.

  She liked the open road, always had. Those days on the road with Luke still counted among the most precious of her life. They’d gone everywhere together, up and down the West coast, into Canada, across the Great Plains and through the South.

  It struck her as odd that the one place they never went was Indian country. Not north or south, not anywhere close. They skidded by Montana and the Dakotas, somehow missed Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. And he’d said something about not being on the res for a long time when Marcia originally asked if he’d go down there with Jessie.

  She flipped the Santana tape and turned it up a little, nodding in time to “Oye como va” as she tried to remember what he’d told her. She knew the family had returned to the reservation for a year or two after Luke’s mother died. He’d been sixteen then. Why hadn’t he ever gone back?

  With a frown, she remembered with an uncomfortable sense of guilt that once he had wanted to go back, just after his father died. It had been a terrible time for him, and he kept pressing Jessie to go with him to the reservation to live for a while. Even now, she had trouble understanding why she had been so adamantly against it. She’d been afraid, afraid that she’d lose him there, lose him to people she didn’t know and who wouldn’t accept her. Their relationship had been just the two of them for so long…

  Jessie blew out a deep breath and wished for a cigarette. In retrospect it was easy to see how lost Luke had been after the death of his father. She had just kept telling herself he’d get through it.

  And he had, more or less, by simply drinking it all away.

  She didn’t kid herself about the drinking. It had lurked for years between them, a sleeping bear in the background, never really dangerous but always waiting. At first, it had made Jessie paranoid—not everyone was like her mother, but that had been, after all, her major experience with
alcohol. She tried to be reasonable, to explain away Luke’s fondness for beer as part of his trade—he was a construction worker. Wasn’t drinking a part of that culture?

  But even early in their relationship there had been times, at a party or when he fell prey to the odd dark mood, that he’d seem to lose control, wouldn’t quit drinking until she dragged him incoherent to bed. The next day, he would be desperately ill and depressed.

  For weeks afterward, he was always so ashamed and contrite that Jessie found herself soothing him, trying to ease the bleakness in his heart. Trying to make it all go away. By reassuring him, she reassured herself. He was just a social drinker who sometimes lost control.

  A hundred times since leaving him, she’d berated herself for not reacting to the signs sooner. Maybe if she’d been a little more alert, a little more aware, she might have been able to help him, instead of waiting until it was too late and walking out.

  Now they were traveling toward the past in more ways than one. In his truck, they would be together on the road, the way they had been once upon a time before disaster struck. And their journey would take them to Luke’s childhood and whatever it was that he thought he’d lost.

  What would happen to him then?

  And what would happen to Jessie?

  Chapter 9

  The trip from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque took a good seven hours under the best of circumstances. Luke figured Jessie, in her small car, would make it in about eight, including a couple of stops for food. In his truck, stable but far from powerful, it was going to take closer to nine, ten if he counted breaks for meals, to let Giselle and Tasha attend to nature and run off some of their restlessness.

  Luke thought it was one of the best days of his life so far. He and Giselle talked and talked about everything and nothing. Giselle wanted to know about Luke’s parents, and he told her little snippets he remembered, things that would make her laugh and make her think and be proud she had been born to them.

  He found himself thinking of his father, as he had been so often the past few days. Jack would have been ashamed at Luke’s drinking, but maybe Luke could make up for it by being a good father to this child.

  By seven, Giselle was drooping visibly and Luke took pity on her, pulling into a diner outside Santa Fe. “How ’bout some supper, little bit?”

  “Yeah!”

  He called Jessie to let her know they’d be there soon and ordered hamburgers and soup, coffee for himself and milk for Giselle.

  She made a face. “I’d rather have pop.”

  “Pop will rot your teeth.”

  “So I’ll brush ’em when I get home. We’re not far away now.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Nice try, but no dice.” She shrugged and fell back against the booth. “I’m gonna be so glad to sleep in my own bed tonight. Do you think Tasha could sleep with me?”

  “She’s not really used to being in the house at night.” He pulled the tobacco from his pocket. “She probably wouldn’t like it.”

  To his surprise, tears welled in Giselle’s eyes. “I think she would. Why have a dog if you aren’t gonna let her come inside and sleep with you?”

  He studied her as he rolled the cigarette. “To love and play with outside.”

  “I think you’re being mean.”

  Their burgers arrived at that moment, and Luke was glad for the diversion. “Why don’t you eat your supper and we’ll talk about it later.”

  With a sigh, she tossed her hair over her shoulders and looked at her plate. “Oh, great,” she said with annoyance.

  “What?”

  “Pickles!” she grumbled with disdain and fastidiously flipped them off with one finger. “I hate pickles. They make everything stink.” She gave him a level look. “My mother knows that.”

  Luke bit back a smile, seeing the telltale signs of exhaustion in her manner. “Is that right?”

  Slapping her bun on top of the hamburger, Giselle took an experimental bite. She chewed it with an expression of disgust and swallowed. “Tastes like pickles.”

  He chuckled.

  “Are you laughing at me?” she asked.

  “Yes I am, Your Majesty.”

  “I’m not Your Majesty.” She frowned and slumped back against the booth. Below her eyes were circles of exhaustion. “Whatever that means.”

  Luke signaled for the waitress. “Bring me something to take these out in,” he said, indicating their meals. “We’re going to have to go.”

  He bundled up the burgers and bought a couple of small bottles of juice on the way out. As he suspected, Giselle ate and fell promptly asleep.

  The working-class neighborhood in Albuquerque was easy enough to find, and Luke parked in front of a small, simple adobe with a courtyard in front. Leaving Giselle in the truck, Luke rang the doorbell. When Jessie answered, he said, “She’s out cold. Turn back her bed and I’ll carry her in.”

  The child barely stirred as he lifted her in his arms, just slumped against his chest and sighed deeply. In her room, a little-girl place full of dolls and stuffed animals, he tugged off her shoes and dress and covered her with a heavy quilt.

  “Come on in the kitchen,” Jessie said to Luke, kissing Giselle’s forehead. “I made some cookies and tea.”

  Luke glanced over his shoulder as he turned out the light. A canopy of stars painted on the ceiling glowed in the dark above Giselle’s bed. He grinned at Jessie.

  She lifted a shoulder. “It was fun.”

  The rest of the house was small and open, with soft ledges and cutouts in the walls. He liked it. On the worn couch were piles of pillows in jewel tones, and a multitude of plants crowded the big front window. She gestured him through to the kitchen.

  “Wow!” Luke whistled softly at the tangles of flowers growing in the room. Big windows lined one wall, and scarlet and white and peach flowers bloomed in pots of every description. The only flowers he recognized were the geraniums and begonias, but there were dozens of others in a splashy palette of colors. From the ceiling hung vines and coleus, and from the tops of every available surface were strings and tangles of plants. He touched a papery pink flower. “You really have a green thumb.”

  “This is nothing,” she said with a smile. “You should see my studio. It’s really out of control.” She gestured, oddly formal, for him to sit down at the simple oak table by the window.

  “I’d like to,” he said. “See your studio, I mean. I’d like to see your paintings.”

  She shifted her head, neither a yes nor a no. He decided not to push it. He sat down, and an awkward little silence fell between them. The table was set with blue placemats and stoneware mugs and a plate of cookies.

  “Tea?” Jessie said.

  “Sure.” He cleared his throat and looked around.

  “I didn’t have any herb teas or anything,” she said. “I don’t drink them.”

  “This’ll be fine.”

  A blue point Siamese wandered out from below the table to plainly bump Luke’s knee. “Hey, there,” he said, relieved at the diversion, and scooped him up. The cat purred loudly and instantly.

  “That’s Blue,” Jessie told him, and she smiled a little more naturally. “He’s a glutton for affection and he’s annoyed with me for going away.”

  The cat slumped, delirious with joy, and closed his eyes to lean into the fingers on his head. Luke scratched under his chin.

  “Is Tasha okay?”

  “Yeah. She’s in the courtyard.” He grinned to himself, thinking of Giselle’s collapse at the truck stop. “Giselle wanted Tasha to sleep with her.”

  “I wouldn’t have minded.”

  He shook his head. “Ah, she was just having a little breakdown. I had the audacity not to know she didn’t like pickles.”

  Jessie laughed, and he found himself letting go of a breath at the natural sound of it. “She’s a monster when she’s tired. She has two speeds, fast forward and stop. When she hits the collapse point, she’s awful.”

  “I just gathere
d her up and put her back in the truck. She was asleep in about five seconds flat.” He let the cat down and sipped his tea. It was hot and sweet. “Mmm. If I’d known she was that tired, I wouldn’t even have bothered to stop.”

  Jessie shifted, reaching toward another chair, and Luke was struck with the beauty of her hair spilling over her arms and torso. The natural waves were deepened from the braid she’d worn all day, and it struck him that she’d let it down and brushed it out carefully before he got there. A single barrette caught some of it away from her face. When she straightened, a stack of photo albums in her hands, her hair moved with her, as sensual as silk over flesh. He swallowed and sipped his tea.

  “I thought you might want to see these,” she said and glanced away a little shyly. “They’re pictures of Giselle.”

  He didn’t reach for them right away. He wasn’t sure he wanted to see them, if he was ready to understand just exactly how much he’d missed. He didn’t know if he could manage any more emotion today.

  Jessie, sensing his hesitation, looked up with her enormous golden eyes. “Please, Luke. I can’t make up for you losing the time, but maybe I can fill some of it in for you.”

  He studied her and felt his gaze slipping over her face to the tenderness of her lips. A stirring heated his loins. “Tell you what,” he said. “Come sit over here and look at them with me, and it’s a deal.”

  She smiled and scooted around, until he could feel her warmth, smell her perfume. Just right. He opened the first book. “Ah, baby pictures.”

  It wasn’t as painful as he thought. In fact, it was somehow cozy to sit next to Jessie in her flower-strewn kitchen, feeling her arm brush his every so often, and see how Giselle had grown. More often he found his attention on the curve of Jessie’s cheek than on the photos of a time long gone. His gaze snagged over and over on the delicate silver earring she wore, on the simple curve of her neck, on her hands with their long fingers.

  He began to feel restless, smelling her warmth and seeing all the details of her again, so close.

  There was only one bad moment. Luke turned a page and found himself face-to-face with a picture of a two-year-old Giselle, laughingly embracing a similarly laughing Daniel. “Damn, he hasn’t changed at all,” Luke said, thinking the picture made Giselle look like Daniel’s child.