“I can’t. Oh, God, Flash, I can’t. You feel so good.”
“Ah, baby,” he said warmly, “so do you. Touch me again, right there. It hurts so damn good.”
She laughed. Had she ever before laughed in the middle of making love? “Here?” she said, touching him experimentally.
“Just like that,” he breathed. “Jesus, woman, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too. Oh, baby, please. Harder.”
“Any harder and it’ll be all over.”
“I don’t care.”
“Are you ready? Already?”
“Yes!”
“But sweetheart, we just got started.”
“We can do it again.”
And he laughed. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve waited thirty-five years for you. I don’t want a ninety-second quickie.”
“I’ll try. I’ll try to slow down. But I’m not promising anything.”
Fingers tangled in his hair, she held his face between her hands and they watched each other’s eyes as they moved together, hot and slick and sweet, and this was love oh god like she’d never felt it before, the pungent scent of lavender rising as they crushed the sheets beneath them, gasps and soft, breathy moans as they rolled together, oh baby yes do that again sweet, languid thrusting, disjointed words of love evolving into wordless sounds more eloquent than words, throaty sounds half uttered but fully understood oh stop please I can’t take it any more you feel so good don’t stop as they breathed in each other’s air, gasped and shuddered, sound and movement quickening oh yes baby hurry now hurry until they exploded in a violent, shattering climax and collapsed in a shuddering heap, slick and sated, dazed and sticky and utterly, wildly, unabashedly happy.
They lay there in a chaotic tangle of arms and legs and bedding for a very long time before the capacity for speech returned to either of them. Finally he regained his breath. Nibbled at her earlobe. “I think we just broke some kind of land speed record,” he said.
Against his damp chest, she laughed. “I’m sorry. I tried. I really tried to take it slow.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m just a little embarrassed, that’s all.”
She ran her hands down his back. “Why?” she said.
“The last time I came that fast was in the back seat of my dad’s ‘68 Galaxie, with Mavis Kirkpatrick, and I was seventeen years old.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Mavis?” she said.
He propped an elbow on the mattress and rested his chin on his hand. “She was one hot ticket, and I’d been chasing around her like a lovesick puppy for weeks. She finally said yes, but I was so worked up that the minute I got inside her, I went off like skyrockets. She wasn’t impressed. It was the first and last time she ever went out with me.”
“Poor baby.” She wrapped a single golden curl around her index finger, released it, and watched it spring back into place. “But you’ve polished your technique since then. You certainly didn’t leave me behind. I was with you every step of the way.”
“I think you have it backwards, Fiore. I was the one in danger of being left behind.”
“It’s your fault,” she said, “for getting me so hot.”
He grinned wickedly. “And I’m planning on doing it again in the very near future. But this time, we’re going to do it long and slow and sweet. Think you can handle that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Keep talking like that, and we could be in trouble.”
“I’ll try to keep my mouth shut.”
She kissed him tenderly. “You couldn’t keep your mouth shut if you tried, MacKenzie. I believe you came out of the womb already talking.”
“Then you’ll just have to get used to it. Starting right now.”
In mock astonishment, she said, “You’re ready again?”
“Sweet stuff,” he said, “I was born ready.”
***
The emptiness was gone.
The fading light of afternoon had been gradually replaced by the shadows of an October dusk. The restlessness was gone, the urgent voices inside her silenced. Casey couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this content. Everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d ever needed, was right here, packaged inside the heart of this man whose warm body was pressed snug against her backside. His love had taken her to heaven, and she still hadn’t come floating back down to earth.
From the shadowy twilight, his voice said softly, “You awake?”
She nestled closer to his warmth. “Mmn.”
He kissed her shoulder, his mouth lingering at the ridge of her collarbone. “So, dollface,” he said, “now that we’ve had carnal knowledge of each other, are we still okay?”
She turned in his arms, ran a hand along the line of his jaw, delighting in the rasp of whisker stubble. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “We are so okay.”
He played idly with a strand of her hair. “You hungry?” he said.
She ran her fingers in an exploratory course down his rib cage, investigating every ridge, every indentation. “It’s always food with you,” she said, “isn’t it, MacKenzie?”
“I’m a growing boy.”
“We could just stay here forever,” she said. “And live on love.”
“Sooner or later, they’d probably throw us out. Or find us, two skeletons, dead of malnutrition but still grinning.”
She smiled into the darkness. In the distance, a fog horn sounded its eerie echo. “Tell me your stories,” she said.
After a moment, he said, “What stories?”
“There’s a part of you,” she said, “that I don’t really know. I know who you are now. But I don’t know how you got to where you are. What it was like growing up in your family. What your dreams were as a child.”
He wrapped his lanky thigh around hers and settled her more closely against him. “I wanted to play for the Red Sox. I was going to be the world’s greatest first baseman until I found out it meant I had to practice every day.”
“Ah,” she said. “You discovered that play meant work.”
“Yep. And then, when I was nine, my brother Pat came home one day with a secondhand Gibson he’d picked up somewhere. Somebody put the idea in his head that it would attract girls.” He shifted his hand on her breast. “The only problem was that Pat didn’t have a musical bone in his body.”
She lay her cheek against his shoulder. “But you did,” she said.
“But I did. One day when he was at work, I snuck into his room and wiped the dust off the Gibson and just started playing. Jesus, was he pissed. Here he’d been working at it for months, and in his hands it sounded like a cat in heat. Then I waltzed in, this skinny little snot-nosed nine-year-old kid, and played it like I’d been born with the damn thing in my hand.”
“And the world’s greatest first baseman,” she said softly, “died that day, unrecognized and unmourned.”
He tasted the skin of her shoulder and adjusted the bedding around them. “Pretty much,” he said. “I was hooked. I did Pat’s chores for the rest of that summer to pay for the guitar.”
“Sounds like he got the best of that deal,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know. How can you put a price on what he gave me that day?”
“You have a unique way of looking at life, my love.”
“Well,” he said, “the way I see it, there are two kinds of people in the world. Pragmatists and dreamers. The pragmatists keep the world running smoothly. But the dreamers,” he said, “they’re the ones who feed our souls.”
“And you’re a dreamer.”
“So are you, pudding.”
“Me? A dreamer? I’d say I’m more of a pragmatist.”
“Only on the surface. Scratch that surface and underneath the pragmatist you’ll find a genuine, hundred-proof dreamer.”
“Ah, Flash,” she said, “where were you when I was eighteen?”
“I was right there. You, on the other hand, were a little preoccupied.”
“Ironic, isn’t it? All m
y life, I’ve needed someone like you. And there you were, standing right in front of me all along.”
He took her face in his hands and kissed her. “Imagine that,” he said.
chapter thirty-three
It was a Saturday in early November, and Rob was leaning against her bathroom door frame, watching as she pulled a towel from her head and shook her hair free. In one hand, he held a pint of Ben & Jerry’s. “Trish is downstairs,” he said, scooping up a spoonful of Cherry Garcia. “She just waltzed in, plastic in hand, ready to singlehandedly slay the dragons of a depressed economy.” He held out the spoonful of ice cream, and Casey took a bite. “She uttered the word mall,” he added, “and I ran for cover.”
She ran brisk fingers through her wet hair. “It’s been ages since I’ve been shopping. Want to go?”
“No, thanks.” He scooped up another spoonful of ice cream. “This is one of those female bonding things, isn’t it? I know about this stuff. I have five sisters.”
She lowered her eyelids. “I’d rather bond with you,” she said.
He licked the spoon clean. “If we do any more bonding, Fiore, neither one of us will be walking upright for a week.”
“That’s a shame,” she said, “because I was thinking of stopping by Victoria’s Secret.”
“Of course, I’ve been known to be wrong. By the way, purple just happens to get me hot. In case you’re interested.”
“Everything gets you hot, MacKenzie.”
“Only if you’re in it, sweetheart. Or out of it, depending on the circumstances.”
“Aha,” she said. “Brownie points.”
He flashed her a grin. “How’m I doing?”
“Pretty good so far.”
“So there’s a little leeway,” he said, “in case I feel some urgent need to be bad?”
She stepped closer to him and rested a hand on his sleeve. “When you’re bad,” she said, looking wistfully into his carton of ice cream, “your score goes up.”
“That’s not all that goes up.” He offered her another spoonful of ice cream.
“Ah, Flash,” she said, “I love it when you talk dirty.”
They exchanged a damp kiss that tasted of chocolate and cherries. “Go ahead,” he said, “go shopping. Have fun.”
“What will you do all day?”
“I’ll probably sit around watching soap operas and drinking beer and imagining you in something purple from Victoria’s Secret.”
She found Trish standing at the kitchen sink, finishing the breakfast dishes that she and Rob had renounced in favor of more pleasurable pastimes. “Hi, hon,” Trish said. “I was starting to think you were dead. I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been intending to stop by. I’ve just been busy.”
Trish dried her hands on a dish towel. “Doing what?”
Casey looked to Rob for help, but he was leaning those lanky hips against the kitchen counter and had apparently discovered something riveting inside his carton of Cherry Garcia. “This and that,” she told her sister-in-law. Trish gave her a long, hard look, but didn’t ask any more questions.
The mall was crowded. They wandered through the shops, looking at everything, buying little. “This place is exhausting,” Trish said. “Why do I even come here?”
“Female bonding,” she said. “That’s Rob’s theory.”
“To hell with bonding,” Trish said. “Just give me a tub of ice for my feet.”
“Just one more stop,” she said. “There’s one place I still have to visit.”
She’d always loved Victoria’s Secret. The smell of the place was so exotic, the atmosphere so feminine, the clothes so beautiful. While Trish looked at lounging pajamas, Casey fingered her way through a rack of silk teddies, pausing to examine the white lace one with the satin ribbons and the spaghetti straps. At her shoulder, Trish sighed. “Sweetie,” she said, “if I had a body like yours, I’d buy the whole rack. What’s his favorite color?”
“Purple,” she said softly, still stroking the lace with her fingertips. Then flushed, realizing what she’d admitted.
“Buy the orchid one with the black ribbons,” Trish said. “It’ll drive him crazy.”
Casey sighed. “I can never keep anything from you,” she said. “How did you know?”
“Honey, I’ve never known any man to take that much interest in the inside of an ice cream carton. Are you going to tell me about it? Or did you plan to keep it a secret forever?”
“I’m not sure I can. It’s like—” She tried to find words, realized she couldn’t. “I’ve never felt this way in my life. Never. Not even—” She paused to tamp down the seed of guilt that had sprung to life inside her. “Not even with Danny.”
“Oh, honey. This is serious, isn’t it?”
“I’m thirty-three years old. Am I supposed to feel this way at thirty-three?”
“I don’t know. How do you feel?”
“Like a teenager, high on hormones.”
“Well, hon, it isn’t over till it’s over.” Trish shoved aside a couple of teddies, pulled out a peach-colored one and examined it. “So how’s the sex?”
“Oh. My. God. White-hot. Steamy. Incredible. Trish, he makes me laugh. In bed. Right in the middle of making love. And it’s not just the sex. He’s bright, he’s funny, he’s kind and gentle and talented—”
“Sounds like a regular Lochinvar,” Trish said dryly.
“He’s also jackass stubborn, colorblind, and prone to occasional tantrums when things don’t go his way.”
“He’s been in love with you for years.” Trish fingered a black satin ribbon. “I knew it when Danny died. I saw the way he hovered over you, like a mama bear protecting her cub, ready to maul anybody who came within twenty paces. At one point, I thought he was going to haul off and boot your precious cousin Teddy out the back door. Not that I would have objected.” Trish’s eyebrows rose. “Why are you looking at me that way? Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“I guess,” Casey said, “maybe I didn’t want to know.”
“Not everybody gets a second chance. If I were you, I’d latch onto him and hang on for dear life.”
***
He was in the process of becoming intimately acquainted with Casey’s laundry equipment when he decided to do something about Danny’s car. He’d found it in the barn a couple of days ago when he’d been looking for the storm windows, and it had been eating at him, the image of that exquisite machine lying dormant beneath a shroud of dust. Danny had passionately loved that car, and he would break down and cry if he knew what had become of it. So while a load of whites tumbled in the clothes dryer, Rob took the spare set of keys from the hook in the kitchen, flung the barn door open wide, and climbed in behind the wheel of the Ferrari.
He fitted the key into the ignition. After a moment’s hesitation, the engine roared to life. He could feel the power in the vibration of the steering wheel beneath his hand, could hear it in the engine’s aggressive purr. He caressed the shifter, then eased it into reverse and backed the car out of the barn.
Car washes be damned; he’d always felt that a man didn’t truly know a car until he’d washed it by hand. There was a communion between man and car, something to do with the laying on of hands, something that few women seemed to understand. He hosed off the top layer of dust, then soaped the car lovingly, rinsed it and wiped it dry with a chamois so it wouldn’t water spot. On a shelf in the barn, he found a half-empty can of car wax, and he waxed and buffed and polished until the finish was sleek as butter beneath his fingers. And he left it there, glistening in the sun.
He whistled as he folded towels and underwear, not in the least fazed by the intimacy of handling a woman’s lingerie. He wanted everything to be perfect, the house spotless when she came home, for tonight he wanted no distractions. Tonight, to the tune of dim lights and soft jazz, over a dinner accompanied by flickering candlelight and Dom Perignon, he was going to ask Casey Fiore to be his wife.
He distributed the towels evenly, half in the downstairs bath, half upstairs. Laundry basket in hand, he swung through the door to Casey’s bedroom. On the night stand was a framed photo of her with Danny, his arms folded around her, both of them smiling into the camera. It must have been taken shortly before he died. Even though that damned baby face had kept Danny looking a decade younger than his thirty-six years, it was evident in his eyes, in both their eyes, the hell they’d been through.
Feeling as though he’d accidentally stumbled into some private moment where he didn’t belong, Rob set the laundry basket on the foot of the king-size bed, realizing too late that it was a blatant reminder that the woman he loved had slept here with another man. His mouth dry and acrid, he went to the bureau and flung open the top drawer, prepared to cram in Casey’s lingerie and scurry back downstairs where he belonged. But it wasn’t lace and silk that stared back at him from the open drawer. It was Fruit of the Loom. Danny’s underwear.
She still had Danny’s underwear in the bureau drawer?
In the second drawer he found Danny’s socks, neatly paired up. In the third, his tee shirts, precisely folded. By the time he reached a drawer that held feminine apparel, his hands were shaking so hard he didn’t care if it was the right drawer or not. He just dumped in her bras and panties and slammed it shut.
The laundry basket was empty now. He had no reason to linger. But of their own volition, his legs carried him to the closet. He opened one of the bifold doors slowly, breathing a sigh of relief as he saw dresses and skirts, blouses and slacks and a single lacy peignoir. Then he flung open the second door, and his body went numb. The left side of the closet was crammed with Danny Fiore’s clothes: pants and shirts and jackets and a black tux in a dry cleaner’s bag, ties and leather belts draped neatly from an elaborate contraption that hung from the back wall of the closet.
It didn’t have to mean anything. She simply hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of Danny’s things yet. But a nagging little voice reminded him that it had been nearly two years. Why would she keep a dead man’s clothes where she would have to look at them every time she opened the closet door?
Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 43
