33 The Return of Bowie Bravo

by Christine Rimmer

  Angie asked, gently, “Is Johnny calling him dad yet?”

  “Not yet. It will be a while, I think. But I can feel it coming.”

  That night, after Johnny went back across the yard to the house, Bowie watched for a light in the kitchen window. The light would mean Glory had come downstairs for a last mug of tea.

  She came down most nights. He would see the light in the window and make himself wait to go inside and brush his teeth until at least ten minutes after the light went out. He’d been doing that—making himself wait to go inside at night until she was settled upstairs—the whole time he’d been staying in the workshop.

  The past week, though, he’d wanted to go in while she was still up, to talk to her, just the two of them, with honesty and frankness, the way they’d finally done last Wednesday night.

  The night he’d kissed her.

  The night she’d kissed him back.

  The kiss had been amazing. Too bad it had also ruined everything. He knew she regretted it. He’d seen regret in her eyes every day since then, at breakfast and again at dinner—and any other time of the day he happened to be in the same room with her. He’d seen her regret and her worry that he was going to try and kiss her again.

  Well, he wasn’t. No way. Even though the memory of that kiss would probably dog him to his grave—the memory of that kiss, and all the kisses they’d shared way back then.

  He loved kissing her. He loved the feel of her small, soft body against him, the taste of her mouth, the scent of apples and rain.…

  Too bad. Memories would be all he would have from now on and he accepted that.

  He’d also decided that he couldn’t sit out here every night and wait for her to go to bed, all the while wanting only to be in there with her. It was silly.

  Stupid.

  Why shouldn’t he go in and visit with her? They were two adults who had shared a kiss when they probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t the end of the world.

  He had things to tell her. He needed to talk with her. They needed to get over it and move on.

  That night, the minute the kitchen light popped on, he left the workshop and headed for the house. No hesitation. He wasn’t giving himself a chance to reconsider. He mounted the back-porch steps with determination and made no effort to be quiet about opening the back door, shutting it behind him and marching down the short hall to the kitchen.

  She stood at the peninsula of counter next to the cooktop wearing jeans and a soft-looking sweater the reddish-brown color of cinnamon, fixing her tea. When he entered the kitchen, she whirled to face him. Her eyes went wide and worried.

  “Bowie!” She actually put her hand against her throat the way women did in the movies when they were afraid the bad guy was going to jump their bones. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

  Just say it. Just spit it out. “Glory, look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have kissed you. I was way out of line. It won’t happen again, okay?”

  She gulped. She actually gulped. And she still had her hand at her throat. “Uh. Yeah. Sure.” She sucked in a quivery breath. “Okay…”

  “I mean that. I swear that.”

  “And I…I hear you. I do.” Slowly, she lowered her hand to her side. Was that a good sign? How the hell would he know?

  Keep talkin’, buddy. “Because I really do want us to get along. To be friends, like we agreed that night at Charlene and Brand’s house. I want us to be able to, you know, talk to each other like two grown-up people who have to raise their kid together, even if they aren’t together, even if they…” Crap. What was he babbling about? He was ridiculous. He didn’t need to keep talking; he needed to shut the heck up. “Crap.” He said it out loud, as if that was going to help the situation any. And then, before she could ask him to please just leave, he marched past the kitchen area to the breakfast nook where he yanked out a chair, dropped into it, braced his elbows on the table and put his head in his hands. “What am I talking about?” he asked no one in particular. “I have no idea what I’m saying.…”

  A silence ensued. A really long, painful one. He refused to look up and see the disgusted expression on her face.

  Finally, he heard her footsteps. She pulled out the chair across from him and sat in it. He heard her put down her mug of tea on the table. “Bowie.” Did he hear a hint of laughter in her voice?

  “Oh, great,” he muttered. “Now you’re laughing at me—not that I blame you. I am pretty damn laughable.”

  “I am not laughing at you. And come on, you can’t sit there with your head in your hands all night.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Come on…”

  He let his hands drop to the table. “What?” he demanded.

  Glory met his eyes and told herself she did not feel bad because he was sorry that he’d kissed her. No, not at all. It was better that he regretted it. She was more than happy to hear that he wasn’t going to try and kiss her again.

  “You’re right,” she said. “We should get past this.”

  His scowl fell away. “You mean that?”

  She wrapped her hands around her mug of tea and took comfort from the warmth. “What you said is true. We have Johnny to think about and we need to get along.”

  “Whew. That is so good to hear.”

  She picked up the mug, took a careful sip. “Let’s put it behind us.”

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “Good,” she said.

  “It’s…the best thing.”

  “You’re right. It is.…”

  Another silence. The really awkward kind. Finally, he spoke again. “Did you hear that I made an offer on the Halstotter place?”

  “No. When?”

  “Yesterday.” He lifted one sculpted shoulder in a half shrug. “I wanted to be the first to tell you, but around this town, word gets out fast.”

  “I hadn’t heard.”

  “Well, now you have.”

  She said, “That’s a nice property—a beautiful house, and that great big hangar of a shed. Lots of level ground and easy to get to.” She’d been inside that house once, for a dinner party, when Matteo was still alive. It had a gorgeous modern kitchen, both a living room and a family room and five large, bright bedrooms. “Did they take your offer?”

  He chuckled. “Are you kidding? In this market? They jumped on it. I heard back from Tillie Manus this morning.” Tillie was a local Realtor. Almost everyone in town used her when they bought or sold property. “My offer has been accepted.” He looked so pleased about it.

  “Wow,” she said, injecting a lot more enthusiasm than she felt into the word. Lord. She was going to miss him when he went. And not only because she’d come to count on him and all the help he gave her around the house. Oh, what was her problem, anyway? It was good, she reminded herself, that he would soon be moving to his own place. He couldn’t stay out there in her barn forever. The guy had a right to get on with his life. “When will you take possession?”

  “Five weeks. The second week of March. The house is fine, move-in ready.”

  A month, and he wouldn’t be in and out of her house anymore. He’d be at his own place. Johnny would visit him there, stay with him there.…

  “Congratulations,” she said and tried really hard to mean it.

  She must have succeeded. He gave her that slow smile, the one that turned her silly heart to mush. “Thanks, Glory. I’m excited. I…” His sentence died, barely begun as the fussy little whines started from the monitor on the counter by the sink.

  They sat there, neither moving, just looking at each other, as Sera progressed beyond the fussy stage and let out a wail. Bowie winced. He hated it when she cried.

  She teased, “Aren’t you going to volunteer to go and get her?”

  H
e looked at her steadily. “You know I want to. I figure you’ll tell me if you want me to do it.”

  She waved a hand. “Go on. Go.”

  He was out of that chair and headed for the stairs in an instant. She watched him go, and for the first time she felt grateful. Truly grateful. That he’d come back to town at last, that he was working things out with Johnny.

  That he adored her daughter and her daughter seemed to feel the same way about him.

  Somehow, Bowie Bravo had become a very good man.

  And good men, as every woman knows, are much too hard to find.

  “Well,” Angie said in a disgusted tone a week later, “it’s obvious he’s interested, or he would be interested, if you gave him so much as a hint that you wanted him to be interested.”

  Glory settled the baby a little more comfortably against her breast. They were at Glory’s house that day. She’d made vegetable soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches. “How would you know if he would or could be interested?”

  “What do you mean how would I know? Haven’t we been through this already? I’ve seen you together. The attraction is…palpable.”

  “Palpable.” Glory scowled. “That’s a very big word for something that’s none of your business.”

  Angie let out a laugh. “If it’s none of my business, then you should stop talking to me about it.” She took a bite of her sandwich. “Mmm. Soooo good. You always did make the best grilled cheese. I think it’s that panini pan you use. Makes them crispy on the outside, and melts the cheese to a truly decadent gooeyness.”

  “Are you changing the subject?”

  “You mean the one that’s none of my business?”

  “He’s moving out in four weeks.”

  “So? He’ll still be in town. That way, when you finally stop lying to yourself and make your move, you won’t have to drive all the way to Santa Cruz to seduce him.”

  Glory let her mouth drop open. “I do not believe you just said that to me.”

  “Good point. Denial is always an option.” Angie pushed back her chair. “More iced tea?”

  The days went by much too fast. Bowie went to Santa Cruz for two days on business. When he returned, Johnny ran out to meet him. Bowie grabbed him up and twirled him around. Glory watched them from the bay window in the family room and couldn’t help smiling at the sight.

  Bowie finished the train set for Johnny, even painted every car to Johnny’s exact specifications. Johnny had the set in his room now, along with a giant tub of blocks of all sizes and shapes that Bowie had made from scraps of lumber.

  The whittling lessons seemed to be progressing, too. Johnny had whittled a rather crooked-looking squirrel and a small, round creature he said was a guinea pig. Now he was working on a raccoon.

  Nearly every evening when Glory went downstairs for that final cup of tea, Bowie came inside to sit with her. They talked. About nothing. About everything.

  Another week flew past. And suddenly, it was the last Monday in February and time to go to the clinic for her six-week checkup.

  Angie, who’d gotten her master’s degree in nursing a couple of years before and become a nurse practitioner, did the exam and gave Glory a clean bill of health. She also wrote a scrip for a birth-control pill that was progestin-only and safe for nursing mothers. “Never hurts to be prepared,” she said with a pleasant, professional smile as she ripped the prescription off the pad.

  Glory accepted the scrip even though she did not approve of herself for doing so. And then, before Johnny got home from school, she drove down to Grass Valley and filled it.

  The instructions for the pills said she would be fully protected within forty-eight hours of taking the first one. She put the pill case away in her underwear drawer and told herself that Angie was right. It was good to be prepared.

  Not that she needed to be prepared.

  In the morning, when she got up, she took the pill case from her drawer, popped the first pill out of its protective plastic bubble and swallowed it. As soon as she did that, she wished that she hadn’t. She did not, after all, actually plan to seduce the father of her son.

  “Denial is always an option.” Her sister’s knowing voice echoed in her brain.

  Was she in denial?

  It was a definite possibility.

  But if she did try and seduce him, in forty-eight hours, given that she took the second pill, she would be protected from getting pregnant again, at least. The other consequences of such a foolish action would still be hers to confront, the emotional consequences. The ones she really ought to be considering more thoroughly.

  Glory put the case away and went down to breakfast, where Bowie stood at the cooktop stirring a pan of oatmeal. Her heart gave a lurch in her chest and her pulse beat faster, just at the sight of him standing there in her kitchen. His hair was a little longer than it had been when he first showed up at her door. And his eyes were like oceans she could happily drown in.

  He smiled at her. “Morning.”

  “Morning.” She got down her mug and brewed her tea and tried not to think that Johnny had a sleepover birthday party at his cousin’s on Friday. Well beyond the forty-eight hours required for contraceptive safety…

  That night, with the kids in bed, when she sat alone at the table with Bowie, he asked her what was up with her.

  “Up?” she replied, so calmly, so innocently. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You seem…different.”

  “Different, how?”

  “I don’t know. Like you’ve got some big secret, I guess.”

  “A bad secret?”

  “How would I know—unless you want to share it with me?” He gazed at her coaxingly.

  She tried not to stare at his mouth, not to think about kissing him. “There’s nothing, really.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  The next morning, she took another pill. And then another the morning after that.

  And then, all of a sudden, it was Friday.

  She got out the pill case and stared at the remaining pills and thought that if she only put the case away now, without taking a pill, she would have the best kind of protection.

  Protection against her own foolish desire.

  It wasn’t too late. She hadn’t made her move and she didn’t have to make a move.

  And then, with a surrendering sigh, she popped the next pill free and placed it on her tongue.

  That day crawled by. Glory thought more than once that it would never end. Every hour took a lifetime, every minute a year.

  Breakfast lasted forever, with Bowie right there, serving up the pancakes, totally unaware of what she intended to try to do to him that night. When that agony of a meal was finally over, when Johnny was off at school and Bowie was out in the shop, Glory cleaned bathrooms and scrubbed floors.

  She got down on her knees in the kitchen and washed that floor by hand. Was it something of a penance before the fact? Ugh. Maybe Angie was right and she was getting to be a lot like Aunt Stella.

  But then again, why would Stella need to do penance—before the fact or otherwise? Stella never sinned.

  Glory met Angie at the diner at noon. She got through the entire lunch without telling her sister what she planned to do that night. It did seem to her that Angie looked at her strangely more than once.

  But that could have just been her guilty conscience making her overly sensitive.

  Back at home, she cleaned some more. She took the dishes down from the cabinets and washed the shelves. She probably would have started washing down walls, but Sera got fussy and she had to spend an hour walking her, singing to her, jiggling her gently, trying to comfort her.

  Finally, Sera settled down and Johnny came home from school. She h
elped him wrap the birthday present he was taking to the sleepover, then sent him upstairs to fill a pack with his pajamas and his toothbrush and everything he might need for a night away from home. She had him put his sleeping bag in the back of her Subaru wagon. Then he had to run out to the shop to check in with Bowie.

  Finally, he reappeared. “Bowie says he can either watch Sera or drive me.…”

  “That would be great if he’ll drive you. Your sleeping bag’s in the Subaru.”

  She kissed her son goodbye and started dinner.

  Bowie came in at five-thirty. She heard him go into the bathroom next to the laundry room and she heard the shower running. Her hands shook as she cut up the salad. And she almost dropped the pot of boiled potatoes in the process of carrying them to the sink to drain them. A woman in her state probably shouldn’t be cooking.

  But if she didn’t make dinner as usual, Bowie would step in and do it for her. And he would start asking questions about what was the matter.

  When he finally came out of the bathroom, she heard him in the laundry room, putting a load in the washer. And then, at last, he appeared, fresh from his shower, totally innocent of her wicked plans for him later that evening.

  He set the table. “Kind of quiet around here, without Johnny.…”

  She fished the fried chicken out of the pan. “Give it a few minutes. Sera will be wailing.”

  “Smells good.”

  It was a miracle she hadn’t burned the whole meal to a crisp. But she didn’t tell him that. He would only ask why and she would be forced to lie to his face or tell him straight-out that she had decided to have sex with him and she intended to do so that very night.

  He ate with gusto. The poor guy had no idea what was in store for him. She had some cookies she’d made the day before to offer for dessert. He had coffee with those and he seemed to want to linger at the table and chat.