by Arlene James
She cracked a mouthful of chewing gum, looked him up and down and said, “Who the hell are you?”
Jack dropped his hand, shocked to his toes and a little angry. He took a step forward. “Where are Mary Beth and the children?”
She gave him another of those insulting once-overs, then shook out long legs, still firm enough to belie the droop of face and breasts, and clacked her way across the floor. “Little Mary Beth has gone home to her supper,” she said, picking up a pack of cigarettes from the counter. “Heller ain’t here.”
Jack cleared his throat and dropped his hand. “I know where Heller is. What I want to know is where the children are.” As if in answer, he heard the pounding of smaller feet, and suddenly Cody was throwing himself at him.
“Jack!”
“Hey, bud!” Jack stooped and caught up Cody in his arms, standing with him in one smooth motion. “What’s up, son?”
“We didn’t know you were coming!”
“No? You should have. Did you think I’d leave you on your own all night?”
Cody directed a significant glance at the now-smoking woman, leaning negligently against the counter. “Granny Fanny is here,” he said rather dispiritedly.
Fanny. So that’s Heller’s mother, Jack thought, watching the woman’s heavily penciled brows rise and her red-rimmed eyes roll in obvious disapproval of being called anyone’s granny. No wonder Heller married so young! he concluded.
“So you’re Jackson Tyler,” the newly identified Fanny mused. “Well, you’re a lot of man, I’ll give you that. Too much for Heller Suzanne.” She rolled a hip out and parked a hand on it. “I knew you’d be outta her league. What do you want with my girl, anyway? As if I didn’t know.”
Jack felt his temper rise. He bent and set Cody on his feet. “Maybe you should go check on your brother and sister,” he said firmly.
Cody shot a look at Fanny, then nodded. As he moved warily back in the direction from which he’d come, he said to Fanny, “You’re not s’posed to smoke in here.”
“I’m not supposed to smoke in front of you kids,” Fanny retorted in her gravelly voice, “so get on out of here, and keep them other kids in the bedroom till I tell you to come out.”
Jack gulped in an effort to keep sharp words from escaping his mouth. His hands curled into fists. “I don’t appreciate your insinuations.”
Fanny smirked. “Honey, I don’t make insinuations.” She sashayed across the room to the little bookcase stuck in the corner at the end of the couch, bent far enough to scare the dickens out of Jack, as her tiny skirt rose up the backs of her thighs, and plucked something off the top shelf. She carried it back across the room and offered it languidly at arm’s length.
Feeling stupid somehow, Jack took the softly bound papers in hand and glanced at them, recognizing a SAT registration packet and sample test, the very materials available to every high school student in the state. His first thought was that Mary Beth had left them behind, but then he saw Heller’s name scrawled across the bottom in ink. Heller was studying for the SAT? He felt a surge of pride. Of course. She was astute enough to realize that a college education might be her only hope of getting out of the rut in which she worked and lived. He smiled to himself.
“I knew it!” Fanny’s voice accused. “You put her up to this nonsense, didn’t you? Got her hopes up when God and all creation knows she ain’t got a chance in hell!”
“I didn’t know anything about it,” Jack said offhandedly.
Fanny ignored him. “I’ve been expectin’ something like this. I told that girl that you wouldn’t do nothin’ but complicate her life!”
Jack almost laughed. As if Heller’s life could get any more complicated or difficult than it already was! He tossed the booklet onto the countertop and addressed Fanny Swift.
“I think you underestimate your daughter. She’s smart enough to know what it takes to get ahead in this world, and God knows she’s not afraid of hard work.”
“And look what it’s got her!” Fanny exclaimed, thrusting out her arms to the jangle of her bracelets, one hand holding a smoldering cigarette. She pulled it in and took a puff, blowing the smoke out in a brisk stream. “Three kids hanging on her skirt tail—if she had a skirt—and a rundown old trailer. Thing’s a damned fire trap in the winter.” She puffed again. “I’d take her in, you know. Kids, too.” She smirked, a fair imitation of Mae West, and slyly added, “Carmody’s already living with me.”
“My sympathies,” Jack muttered.
Fanny shrugged. “Carmody’s all right. He likes his fun same as any man, you included.”
“My idea of fun and Carmody’s are different as night and day.”
She looked down her nose at him, blowing smoke. “I bet.”
Jack shrugged. “Think what you like.”
She leaned one hip against the counter. “You’re wasting your time,” she said. “Heller ain’t never had the least inclination toward fun. No wonder her life’s so tough.”
“Her life’s so tough,” Jack said flatly, “because she made a bad choice in desperation and because no one’s ever done right by her.”
Fanny straightened. “I resent that!”
“So do I. And I resent you standing here in her own house criticizing her when you ought to be proud as punch of the way she chooses to conduct her life! Heller works hard for her kids and herself. She takes pride in what she does, and she loves those kids more than anything else in the world. She wants to better herself for their sakes, and you call it nonsense. That’s the very kind of thing she’s had to overcome all along, and by golly, she’s done it. She’s nearly worked herself to the bone in the process, but she can damn well hold up her head in any company! She deserves support for that, and I, for one, intend to see that she has it.”
Fanny was looking at him like he’d grown a second head. “You don’t say?”
She clearly didn’t have the least notion of what he was trying to communicate. Jack sighed and shook his head. “Go home, Mrs. Swift,” he said evenly. “I’m staying with the kids.”
Fanny looked longingly at the door, clearly wanting to leave, but stubbornness held her in place. She put her nose in the air, blew smoke and said, “I don’t think so. We don’t need you around here, Jack Tyler.”
“Well, I need to be here,” he said frankly. “Go home.”
Fanny stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer. “Uh-uh.”
“Go home, Granny,” said an unexpected little voice.
Jack yanked his head around and saw Cody and Punk at the end of the hallway. Punk met his gaze squarely, then switched to her grandmother. Cody’s mouth turned up in a smile so broad that it covered half his face, but Punk was doing the talking.
“Mister Tyler’s gonna baby-sit us,” she said firmly. “You just go on home. That way we won’t have to stay in the bedroom so you can smoke.”
“Dumb, stupid rule, anyway, if you ask me,” Fanny muttered. Then she snatched up her purse, stuffed her cigarettes inside and hoisted the enormous gold and black leather bag onto one shoulder. She shook a finger at the kids. “You tell your mama not to call me again unless she really needs me. I got a life, you know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Punk said absently, staring at Jack. He wanted to scoop her up and squeeze her, but something told him not to try it at this stage.
Fanny strode past him, teetering on her purple stilts. “I still think you’re trouble for my girl,” she said in a low voice as she made for the door. “That child never did know what was good for her.”
Jack bit the inside of his cheek to forestall a reply to that, not knowing whether it would be a laugh or a curse. He shook his head as the door closed behind Fanny and smiled lamely at the kids. “I don’t think your grandmother likes me.”
Punk just looked at him, then walked over to slouch against the sofa. “Daddy says Fanny likes anyone and anything male.”
“She’s always saying how she’s got more boyfriends than Mama,” Cody added from the hallw
ay.
Jack choked back one remark and chose another. “Maybe your mother just has better taste.”
Cody considered that, then said, “And she works too much.”
Jack nodded. “I won’t argue with that, but she does it because she has to, you know, and I admire her for it. She’s no quitter, your mom.”
“Is that how come you like her?” Punk asked, eyes narrowed.
“That’s one reason,” Jack answered truthfully.
Punk seemed to find that acceptable. She climbed up onto the couch, sat down and folded her arms. He sensed that she was waiting for him to do or say something, but he didn’t know what that might be. A screech from the vicinity of the bedroom saved him.
“Ya-a-ack!”
Jack chuckled. “Hold on, Davy, I’m coming.”
He winked at Cody as he slipped by him in the hall. Cody winked back, smiling ear to ear, and gave him a quick thumbs up. Well, he’d done something right. Jack wasn’t exactly sure what it was, but at the moment he didn’t even care. It was enough that Cody was happy, that Davy couldn’t wait to see him again, and that Punk, God love her crotchety little soul, had chosen him—actually chosen him—over someone else. It didn’t even matter that the someone else had been Fanny Swift. For once, for the very first time, Punk had chosen him. He felt ten feet tall—and growing.
Heller worked her key in the lock and let herself into a living room lit only by the night-light plugged into an outlet in the far corner of the room. The television was off, and the house was quiet, almost unnaturally so. She frowned at the faint odor of tobacco smoke and wondered where Fanny was. Fanny seldom went to bed before daylight.
Laying her purse and extra clothing on the counter, she slipped off her shoes and quietly carried them into the hallway and to the door of the bedroom her children shared. She stooped and set the shoes on the floor then crept into the tiny room. All was as it should have been. Cody lay on his stomach in the top bunk, breathing through his mouth, his thick ash brown hair sticking out at odd angles, one bare leg peeking out from beneath the yellowed sheet. In the lower bunk, his sister slept on her back, both arms flung out, her light golden blond hair spread upon the pillow. Heller noted that her bangs needed a trim and made a mental note to get out the scissors tomorrow.
She turned to the crib in the corner. Davy lay facedown, arms and knees pulled in, his little rump in the air, a wet circle of drool near the corner of his mouth. He had kicked his covers down to the foot of the bed. Heller pulled the pink sheet—a leftover from Punk’s infancy—up to his shoulders before tiptoeing from the room, picking up her shoes and moving on down the hall.
The bathroom was empty, the door open, which meant that Fanny was either sleeping in her bed or had committed the unpardonable sin of leaving her children alone, and Heller wouldn’t have taken bets either way. Surely Fanny knew, however, that abandoning the children would ignite Heller’s temper, and justifiably so. Prepared for the worst, Heller pushed open her bedroom door and flipped on the overhead light. The body in her bed did not belong to her mother.
“Jack!”
He rolled over onto his side and lifted an arm to shield his eyes from the sudden light.
“Hmm?”
He was too long for the bed, his stockinged feet hanging off the end. His sleek golden hair was mussed endearingly, the shadow of his beard on his jaws and chin quite dark in the harsh light. He yawned, rubbed both hands over his face and briefly groomed his mustache with his fingertips, then wedged his arm beneath his head, propping himself up on his elbow. He smiled sleepily.
“Hi, babe.”
Heller could only gape and shake her head. “Jack, what are you doing here?”
His smile became a little sheepish. “Your couch is just too short,” he said. “When I got sleepy, I knew that if I didn’t move in here, I’d wind up packing ice on this knee again.”
“I don’t mean that,” she said, moving into the room and dropping her shoes at the foot of the bed, right next to his, as it happened. “Well, I do mean that, but I also mean…Where’s Mother?”
He grinned, actually pleased about something, so much so that he rolled onto his back, folded both arms beneath his head and crossed his ankles. Intrigued, she moved to the side of the bed so that she could look down into his face.
“What?” She was smiling herself.
“Punk sent her away,” he said.
She blinked at him. “Punk?”
“Um-hm, right after I got here.” The smile faded, and he pushed up onto his elbow again, his good knee cocking to provide him balance. “Didn’t you know I wouldn’t leave you in the lurch?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I expected to stay with the kids myself at night. Mary Beth in the daytime, me at night.”
She was gaping again. He sounded so…wounded. “Jack.”
“Listen, if it’s presumptuous of me, I mean, if I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong, you just tell me, and I’ll…I’ll…” He sighed.
The dear man. She should have known he’d be here. She should’ve realized that the big heart he carried around inside that broad chest wouldn’t allow him to walk away from someone else’s problem. Or was it just her problems from which he couldn’t walk away? God knew he’d been more help to her in a few short weeks than Carmody ever had during all the years of their marriage. In point of fact, he’d been as much husband to her as Carmody had, even though they weren’t married and had never made love. She was standing there looking down at him, all rumpled and warm in her bed, trying to remember why she shouldn’t lie down beside him and offer herself, body and soul. Never mind her heart. He already had that, blast him, and a lot of good it would do him, too. The poor man.
“You’re bound and determined to complicate your life, aren’t you?” she said, folding her arms.
He drew his brows together. “How so?”
“Jack,” she said earnestly, “I don’t have anything to offer you but trouble. I have three kids by an ex-husband who will never be anything but a headache. Just my upbringing and family background is enough to send most men running. I don’t have a single viable asset, not even a bank account. Life’s worn me to a nub, Jack, and I’m not even thirty! What do you want with a woman like me?”
A wistful kind of smile spread slowly across his face. He crooked a finger. “Come down here, and I’ll show you.”
She stared at him for a long time, but in the end she crawled up onto the bed and across him to sit astride his hips, her hands braced against his shoulders. He reached around and pulled the rubber band from her hair, allowing it to flow down her back in a silky cascade. He combed it forward with his fingers, framing her face.
“You’re beautiful.”
She tamped down the thrill that that produced and regarded him frankly. “Jack, I’ve had three children.”
He grinned. “Acquired a few stretch marks, have you?”
“A few.”
“I don’t care.”
Oh, how she wanted to believe that, but she shook her head. “You deserve better.”
“Doesn’t get any better than you,” he told her. “You’re beautiful from the inside out. You’re strong and principled and dedicated. You have real character, Heller. Your children, too, young as they are.”
She smiled at that. “Even Punk?”
“Especially Punk, because she’s so like you.”
Still smiling, she closed her eyes and whispered, “You’re making me fall in love with you.”
“God, I hope so!”
“Ah, Jack.” She leaned forward on her knees and brought her mouth to his. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down on top of him, thrusting his hands into her hair at the back of her head. A liquid warmth spread through her body, and she became suddenly and excitedly aware of the length of hardness pressing against her belly.
His hand moved to her back, massaging and manipulating her shoulder blades so that her breasts rubbed against his che
st, a friction so exquisite that it was akin to torture. She moaned into his mouth, her tongue following the sound to elicit one like it from him. His hands lifted away from her back and an instant later cupped the twin mounds of her buttocks, pressing her up and against him. Heller gasped at the fierceness of the sensation that flashed through her.
Suddenly Jack rolled onto his side, carrying her with him and thrusting a knee between her legs while one hand moved to knead her breast. Within moments she was lost, her head whirling in an attempt to keep up with the sensuous responses that he wrung from her body. Desperate to find an anchor, she closed a fist in the fabric of his shirt, twisting until it wrapped around her wrist.
“I told you.”
The sound of her daughter’s voice sliced neatly through the haze of passion. Heller froze, her desire cooled as effectively as if a pail of ice water had been dumped on her. In the same moment Jack groaned and flopped over onto his back.
“Punk,” Cody scolded in a loud whisper, “look what you’ve done!”
Heller closed her eyes and waited for the embarrassment to come. Oddly enough it didn’t, and after only an instant’s reflection, she knew why. It was amazingly simple: she was right where she should be, and so was Jack. Smiling to herself, she struggled up onto her elbows and peered over Jack to the open doorway of her room.
