Night Moves

by Thea Devine

  But where and when, she didn’t know because whatever work Truck was doing on her house now, he was doing while she was at Longford’s. It was almost as if he was shielding her from any gossip about all the things they did in the dark.

  He was protecting her.

  Carrie ran into him one afternoon at the Country Roads Restaurant. The very crowded Country Roads Restaurant. Where there weren’t any seats around about noon, and where everybody knew each other.

  Truck was in a booth alone. And he saw the light of battle in Carrie’s eyes. “Have a seat, Carrie.”

  “I don’t think so.” She looked around her. She couldn’t even say she wanted to talk to him some other time or place without someone overhearing it. “Thanks anyway. I just want some...some coffee, and then I’m going home.”

  “Sit down.”

  There was a tone that brooked no resistance. She sank into the booth.

  “You’re crazy, you know.”

  “Have a fry.” He held out one to her and she pushed his hand away.

  She never pushed his hands away, ever. She begged for his hands over and over...

  Stop it! “Stop it.”

  “Sure.” He swiped the French fry with ketchup and popped it into his mouth. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing we can discuss here,” she whispered fiercely, arrested by the movement of his mouth. The mouth she knew better than her own. The mouth that gave the most luscious kisses. Oh, dear Lord... “Nothing. Just nothing.”

  This was what it would be like to be in public with him. This, with all the sumptuous memories between them. She would have to move to another town, Carrie thought. She wouldn’t be able to stand it. She would always be poised on the edge of either jumping into his arms or just walking away.

  And either decision scared her half to death.

  “I lost my appetite,” she said faintly.

  “I haven’t lost mine.” He tossed some money on the table. “Come on,” he said with exaggerated care, just in case anyone was listening, “I’ll show you where we’re at on your house and how much we’ve gotten done.”

  “So HERE’S THE DEAL,” Carrie said as she faced him across the kitchen counter. “We have to stop.”

  Truck looked at her for a long, long time, trying to gauge how serious she was. She was serious. The warrior princess had found a weapon that cut the enemy right off at the knees: the word no.

  He didn’t take that lightly either. He knew how conflicted she was, how torn. How scared. And he knew how hard it was for her to do what she was doing, even without the burden of the secret assignations with him. It was only a matter of time, he thought. Neither of them could stop, really. But if she wanted to try, he was perfectly willing to let her.

  For a day.

  And that was a tactic he was sure she didn’t expect.

  “Okay,” he said.

  She started. “Okay? That’s it? Okay?”

  “That’s it. We’ve always operated on what you want, Carrie. So, if this is it—this is it.” She didn’t like that. Good—it was a start.

  She felt as if someone had just punched her. “Oh.”

  “We won’t do the friend thing either. I wouldn’t embarrass you like that.” Even better—she hated that.

  Better with me—or without me, Carrie? Think about it. Imagine it.

  She was imagining it too well.

  “No,” she said faintly.

  Carrie had expected some protest, some argument, some sensual persuasion. But this calm acceptance of her decision knocked her for a loop. She didn’t know what else to say. She almost felt as if she couldn’t leave it hanging in the air like that.

  We have to stop.

  Okay.

  There was something too cavalier about that, almost as if he could automatically disengage his emotions. Or maybe they’d never been engaged?

  No! She knew him. She knew him. And he’d always been there, in command, and fully engaged.

  Her confusion was endearing. Truck wanted to wrap her in his arms and tell her she didn’t have to make that decision, that she didn’t have to be so scared. But he wasn’t going to. This was the pressure point, he thought. This was the moment when she would realize that what was between them wasn’t just secret sex.

  And maybe it took something as catastrophic as this. He hoped to hell it did, because he planned to be back in bed with her tomorrow night, and she’d better have decided that was exactly where she wanted him.

  God, it was such a dicey long shot.

  “Anything else, Carrie?” he asked into her stunned silence.

  “No.” She hated men, just hated them. Truck was going to walk off without even trying to salvage something, as if all those nights meant nothing to him. That was what men did.

  That was why she had to be free.

  “Okay.” He could see she was floundering, she was furious and one tiny particle of her was relieved. But he wasn’t going to make it easy. “Well, I’ll finish up in the house as soon I can, and I guess I’ll see you at the store.”

  “Right.” She held on tight, tight, tight to her emotions as he stepped out the door.

  Truck knew he couldn’t leave her like that. He didn’t want to leave her at all. If she just made one move, one subtle concession, he would stay with her forever.

  “Carrie?”

  “What?”

  He threw her a verbal bone. “We had some spectacular nights.”

  “Did we? I hadn’t noticed,” she said as calmly as she could as Truck walked out the door...and out of her life.

  She wasn’t crying, she wasn’t, but as he revved the engine of the van, she felt the tears streaming down her face.

  It was better this way. All these feelings she’d been having, all this yearning for more. She knew what that was, really. It was the moreness of being a couple, of admitting there was something beyond their luscious coupling that linked them.

  She had been sinking in quicksand all these weeks.

  But now she was on firm ground. She had come to her senses.

  No more men. No more wild forbidden sex.

  Actually, I thought it was love...

  10

  CARRIE’S DAYS HAD TAKEN on a certain structure. She went to Longford’s every morning and stayed until two. She’d taken on the increased hours at Mr. Longford’s request so she could relieve him and Mrs. Longford for lunch, and because she liked that time in the front of the store. It wasn’t busy, but there were enough customers to keep it interesting. And she was learning all about hardware-store stock.

  Of course, there were the customers who greeted her like an old friend. “Hey, Carrie, how you doing? You got some window putty?” “I need a pound of tenpenny nails.” “I need some solder. I swear I’ve looked everywhere...” “Foam brushes?” “Enamel paint, small can?” “One-fifty-grade sandpaper?”

  All these things she had learned and more.

  “Hi, George, how’s your wife?”

  “Thanks for asking, Carrie. She’s doing well. Home from the hospital tomorrow. Gonna have a little celebration. You’re welcome to come.”

  “’Morning, Junie,” to the woman who owned the framing shop. “You after some gold-leaf paint today?”

  “And some angle braces, screws, brown paper, oh, I need glue sticks...let me see, well, you take the list,” June said.

  “’Afternoon, Callie,” to the woman who worked in the thrift shop across the street “I heard you’ve got some paintings in the Hunter Cove art show end of August.”

  “You bet,” Callie said. “I just had a booth down in Rockport. I sold two paintings, so I’m hoping for good things at this show too.”

  It was also nice, Carrie discovered, getting a regular paycheck again. The only drawback to her work schedule was she saw Jeannie only when she went to make deposits at the bank.

  Today Jeannie was looking a little drawn, as if some of her sexy-lady persona had been sapped out of her.

  “Are you okay?”


  “I’m okay. Eddie’s been pressuring me a little. He says my new image isn’t good for business. That prospective customers look at me and wonder what’s going on in Paradise.” Jeannie counted out the money she was returning with an emphatic snap. “We’ve been discussing it.”

  “Sounds like you haven’t been talking.”

  “No,” Jeannie said tiredly. “We’ve been shouting.”

  “I’m going to take you out to dinner Friday night,” Carrie said decisively. “You need to get out.”

  “It’s a date.” Jeannie handed her the money. “I don’t want to go back to where I was. I like where I am now.”

  “I know. I know.” Carrie hated leaving her but she had a schedule to maintain. Between two and three, she did her banking, her shopping and any other little chores that required her to be in town.

  Ideally, she tried to be home by four. She then changed into casual clothes and set up either at her desk or on the porch where she had rigged up a work surface on two sawhorses where she could look out over the pond. There on those mid-August hot, hazy afternoons, she laid out all the projects she’d taken on and worked outside until sundown.

  She loved the luxury of having time. Time seemed to stretch, suddenly, to encompass her day, and if she wanted to just sit sometimes and contemplate the pond, she had time to do that too. And time to think about what she was doing and how, rather than being at the mercy of deadlines, nerves, office politics and clocks. It was a new experience for her to have this kind of time; and she felt it gave her a kind of freedom because she was suddenly doing the work she loved to do, but without all the complications she’d been so used to.

  At six o’clock, she made dinner, usually a salad or sautéed chicken or some pasta, and ate while listening to the news or reading the paper.

  After dinner, she went on-line or she worked. Ten o’clock to midnight, Carrie read—women’s magazines, industry magazines, mysteries, commercial fiction, anything to take her mind off Truck. Anything to keep her going through the long nights.

  It would get easier. A phantom lover couldn’t be depended upon anyway. It had been a liaison doomed to burn itself out.

  Except she felt herself still flaring up at odd times during the night, and sometimes during the day. Yet the thought of Jeannie’s situation and the price that Jeannie was going to have to pay, invariably doused her ardor.

  Jeannie was in a wry humor when they settled in at a brand-new upscale restaurant the following Friday. “Let me tell you, Old Man gave me an earful when I was over to Truck’s for dinner the other night.”

  “No kidding. Old Man?”

  “He’s got a pipeline from that back office in his house to all over the county, and he knows everything,” Jeannie said as she played with her fork. “He says it’s time to go.”

  Was it? Carrie wondered. Was this the foreordained conclusion to what she and Jeannie lightheartedly had started two months ago?

  Two months? Had it really been two months? She had no answers for Jeannie. Her life was just as messed up.

  “That sounds pretty radical coming from someone like Old Man.”

  “He says I could run the business, and better than Eddie too.”

  “I bet you could,” Carrie said feelingly.

  “They give real-estate courses at the night school. I think I’m gonna enroll.”

  “Okay. I thought I might take some courses myself.”

  “Good. We’ll do it together,” Jeannie said.

  So there it was, Jeannie’s life was rolling forward in a way she couldn’t possibly have anticipated, and all because she got trapped with the wrong man.

  Consequences. Everything had consequences, for Jeannie especially. Eddie might see this as a further betrayal but if Jeannie was seriously thinking of leaving him, she might want to make even more drastic changes in her life.

  “I went through Eddie’s books,” Jeannie said suddenly. “The firm should be doing better, you know. And he’s just been maintaining a certain level. Well, that’s because he’s been redirecting some of the money to cover expenses, and I bet you can guess what they are.”

  “Wine, women and song,” Carrie said immediately, feeling a clutch of anger.

  “Yeah. That’s how it looks. So, it’s time to stop being a doormat. But I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do that.”

  “You’re strong,” Carrie said encouragingly. “You’ve got a hundred friends who’ll support you.”

  “Except I don’t know how it’s going to play out once I confront him.”

  “Then just get out of the house and come stay with me.”

  “That’s what Truck said.”

  Bam. Carrie felt the words right down to her gut. Come stay with me. The words any woman would kill to hear. But he’d said them to Jeannie as a friend, just as a friend...

  She took a minute to regain her equilibrium. “Of course, he’d say that. That’s what a friend would say.”

  “He’s been great. I’ve leaned on Truck for years, he knows the whole story, and he’s been saying for years that it’s time for me to kick Eddie out and take over.”

  What could she say? “Maybe it is time.”

  “Yeah.” Jeannie still didn’t sound so sure. She opened the menu. “I think I want a steak. I think I want to chew him up and spit him out.” She looked up at Carrie. “And you know what? Any sexy lady worth her salt knows just how to do it.”

  NOTHING HAPPENED with Jeannie between that dinner and the weekend they went down to Hunter Cove for the art show.

  By then, the first of the trilake promotional pieces had been printed and were in Carrie’s hands, and she was going to distribute them through the Hunter Cove Chamber of Commerce, which had a table at the show.

  The booths lined Main Street so that the only parking was down the long side streets or the lots behind the stores. And it was crowded. Hunter Cove wasn’t as far for Bostonites to drive as Bar Harbor, for example, and a juried art show drew not only art lovers but also collectors from away who hoped to discover the next trendy artist. It was a one-day affair, which made getting there even more critical for those serious buyers.

  All day long, the judges went from booth to booth anonymously, viewing the works.

  There were potters there, too, and jewelers, and water-colorists and quilters who sewed painterly scenes.

  Carrie dropped off trilake brochures at the Chamber of Commerce table, chatted for a moment with the president of the chamber who would be manning the booth for most of the day, and then she and Jeannie began strolling around.

  There were a hundred artists displayed, most of them local, and some from away. They viewed landscapes, seascapes, portraits, modern and surrealistic art, watercolors, pottery and quilts.

  They found Callie, who was chatting with a neighbor, and Carrie bought one of her primitive prints.

  They bought hot dogs, sodas and ice cream as they wandered through the stalls.

  “This is a really good turnout,” Carrie said thoughtfully, “but I wonder if they couldn’t be doing a better job advertising it.”

  “You are looking for job opportunities everywhere,” Jeannie said.

  “I guess I am. The question is, do they want to expand the event, make it important and attract up-and-coming artists or do they want to keep it small? Either way, they could probably make it better know. I think I’ll speak to the chamber president when I get a chance. There might be something here.”

  “How do you come up with ideas, just like that?” Jeannie said wistfully as she snapped her fingers.

  “I don’t know. I just do,” Carrie said with a shrug, wishing that Jeannie would use more initiative, learn not to take no for an answer, and stop feeling so helpless. The problem with Jeannie was, she was too used to things being as they were. She hadn’t done a thing about Eddie, August was almost at an end, and eventually she was going to have to tell him about the real estate courses, ask questions about the books and make some demands.

  But Jeanni
e was still lacking in confidence and hadn’t cultivated the ability to make possibilities out of nothing; her sexy-lady persona and her signing up for a course were about as audacious as she’d been in all the years Carrie had know her.

  Carrie wondered whether her own tenacious followthrough on her own ideas didn’t scare Jeannie just a little. Maybe, she thought, she should just take it down a notch. Jeannie didn’t have to be privy to everything she was doing or planning. Or every job possibility she hoped to conjure up.

  “Look at this,” Carrie said, stopping abruptly in front of a booth in which was displayed a large unframed watercolor of ice skaters on a pond.

  “Doesn’t that look like the pond?” She peered at the price that was discreetly tacked on the wall beside it. Seventy-five dollars. Junie de Longo could frame it for her.

  “Look at the trees, the way they ring the water. And that red roof in the distance. That could be straight across the pond from me. I like this. I think I’m going to buy it.”

  Trying to distract Jeannie with the painting didn’t work. Jeannie saw exactly what she was doing, what Carrie wasn’t admitting she was doing: she was feathering her nest, and she’d already started by painting the two rooms she lived in most, and she was adding accessories. New sheets and comforters, books, a bowl.

  A painting.

  It was beginning to look as if she planned to stay.

  No. She just wanted to be comfortable for the time she would be there. That was all.

  The only thing was, her decisiveness, her fearlessness was making Jeannie uncomfortable. How must Jeannie feel, watching her go after what she wanted and in some measure getting it?

  “Watching you is an education,” Jeannie said suddenly. “You go out and conquer the world, and I hide behind the walls of a bank. What have I done in the past two months?”

  “Now, Jeannie—” Damn it, she knew it: Jeannie was feeling diminished by her aggressiveness.

  “I got uplift,” Jeannie said dolefully.

  “There’s something to be said for uplift,” Carrie stated before Jeannie could get down on herself. “You have a whole new attitude. You’re starting to take charge of your life. And you made a decision about a new direction.”