by Tracy Sharp
“Um, no.”
“You wanna keep it that way.”
“You’ve seen a head smashed all over the road?” He wrapped his arms around my waist.
“I used to run with a wild crowd. Some of them thought they were too cool for helmets. One of them looked anything but cool when his head was being scraped off the pavement.” I blinked away the memory of that image. “The others began wearing helmets after that.”
I revved up the engine and headed north, speeding along the river. We bulleted down the highway with an icy wind against our faces. The faster we moved, the clearer my mind became. Tension fell away from me, leaving me feeling lighter.
We kept going until we reached Lake George. I pulled into a parking area across the road from the beach. The water looked black at this time of night and only a few stray wanderers made their way along the street. I climbed off the bike, pulled off my helmet and shook my head. With my short, wavy hair, there’s not much else I can do. It looks awry all the time.
When we walked across the road toward the lake, I couldn’t help but think how beautiful a night it was. I found myself wishing that we’d found our way there under different circumstances.
We headed down to the beach, feeling the sand slip and slide beneath our feet. It was a gorgeous night. The humidity level was low and there was just a slight nip to the breeze. Some would’ve wanted a sweater or light jacket on such a night but I welcomed the cooler air. It had been too hot for so long.
“It’s nice out here.” There was a touch of huskiness to his voice. He looked nice staring out over the dark ripples with the moonlight touching his dark hair.
I nodded. “I like it when it’s quiet like this.” It felt strange being out here with Callahan. I was reminded of awkward first dates. Neither of us knew quite what to say. All we knew was that we didn’t want to discuss work or drug lords who tricked innocents into prostitution.
I sat down on the sand, pulling my knees up and wrapping my arms around my shins, rested my chin on my knees. Silhouettes of seagulls moved in slow circles over the water. Their cries, caught in the wind, sounded lonely.
Cal sat down beside me. He picked up a small stone in the sand near his feet and tossed it into the water. “Too choppy for skimming.”
I had an unexplainable urge to go skinny-dipping. “But not for swimming.”
He turned and looked at me, his expression surprised and a little amused.
I leaned back on my elbows and crossed my legs, letting one move lazily up and down. This felt suspiciously like flirting. “Wanna get crazy?”
He looked around, making sure nobody was on the beach or watching nearby. A crooked smile came across his face. “Okay.” Cal was like every other red-blooded male out there. Most men would take their clothes off in a blizzard if a woman were willing to take her clothes off too.
I stood up, pulling my tank top over my head and dropped it to the sand. I walked toward the water, stripping myself of my sports bra, my jeans and my boots. Goose bumps appeared on my arms and legs and I smiled into the wind as I ran full tilt into the chilly water, splashing all the way.
It was so cold that I couldn’t breathe for a moment, so I dove beneath the surface and swam until I grew accustomed to the temperature. I popped back up and laughed, feeling a little hysterical, and when I turned toward the beach, I could see that Cal was already in the water.
“Wow,” I called out to him as he swam toward me. “You don’t waste any time, do you?”
“There’s a naked girl in the water,” he said by way of explanation, his breathing labored with his swimming movements.
I trod water until he reached me and then floated on my back, the water filling my ears and blocking most sound above the surface. Cal stayed near me, watching me with a goofy smile on his face. I hadn’t even noticed that my breasts had popped out of the water, gleaming white under the full moon. There was no way he could’ve missed them. I laughed again, my giggles sounding strange with my ears under water.
Finally I went back to treading, but a string of giggles escaped me and suddenly I couldn’t stop laughing. Callahan watched me for a moment, a strange smile on his face. When he’d decided that I hadn’t really gone crackers, he joined me. We laughed so hard that both of us swallowed some water, the two of us coughing and hacking, and still laughing. We had to swim back to where there was sand beneath our feet before we both drowned.
We stood in front of each other, neck deep in the lake, catching our breaths. We watched each other’s faces, not saying anything for a long moment, the air thick with anticipation. His eyes were softened by desire and he moved forward. I stepped back. I knew what we were about to do wasn’t a good idea. My need for him was taking over my common sense. Relationships were messy and we had to work together. The more we had sex, the closer we came to actually being in a relationship. Then, being me, at that moment I didn’t much care. I was just enjoying teasing the hell out of him.
Finally I moved forward in one fluid motion until our noses were almost touching. My breasts brushed up against his chest, thrilling my nipples. His breath was becoming ragged and he was trembling from holding back.
“Leah—”
I cut him off with my mouth, tasting drops of lake water on his lips. I kissed him softly, but wouldn’t offer him my tongue.
“You’re playing with fire,” he murmured against my lips.
“It’s okay. I’m in water.”
He lifted his hands to my waist, moving them over my back and down my ass. His hands were strong, rough feeling, even though they were softened by water. Callahan Parker was a tough nut. He kept his temper and ability to harm tightly harnessed. I respected him for this. I also found it sexy as hell.
He pulled back and looked into my eyes, his face a mix of emotions. “You scare the hell out of me.”
“I scare the hell out of me, too.” And that was the truth. Suddenly I felt cold. I began to shiver and my teeth started chattering.
He slid his hand up and rested it on the back of my neck, pulling my head toward his shoulder. I resisted a little at first, confused. Somehow, he knew exactly what I needed, even if I hadn’t known myself. He tried again, gently pulling, guiding my head toward his shoulder until I finally gave in. I let my cheek rest against him. Drops of water beaded his skin, chilling it. Strangely, I felt warm again.
At that moment, there was no place on earth I’d rather have been.
* * *
After we’d dropped the bike back at the repo depot, Callahan drove me home in his Land Rover. It still had that new car smell to it. I’d never had a car with that new car smell.
“Thanks.” Embarrassment heated my face.
I felt more awkward with him than if we’d had sex. I was thankful it was dark so he wouldn’t notice. I tried to keep my face from tilting downward and my eyes from the floor of the car. I didn’t like to need anyone and now I felt weak.
He waved his hand like it had been nothing and grinned. “Thank you. It’s not every day that I get to go skinny-dipping with a gorgeous woman.”
I could feel a loopy smile spread across my face against my will. I looked away, out the window. The shadowed trees suddenly very interesting. “Stop.”
“Okay.” He lifted his hands, palms up. “Whatever you say. It’s the most fun I’ve had with a naked woman without at least buying her dinner first.”
I looked at him, eyes wide. “Dinner? But we’re going to pick out rings tomorrow, aren’t we?”
His face fell and he suddenly had that deer-in-the-headlights look.
I couldn’t help it. I cracked right up. “Gotcha.”
He let out a breath. “Whew!”
“Oh come on! You know I’m not that kind of girl. If I actually let you in my bed I’d boot your ass out the minute we were done.”
“Oh really? So you’re just using me for the sex? It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
“Forget it, pal. You had your chance to have it twice in a day. Noooooo, y
ou wanted to cuddle instead.”
He chuckled, his head tilted back. I loved it when he laughed. All the stress lines in his face just disappeared. And his laugh was contagious. It made me want to laugh every time.
“All right,” he conceded. “Maybe next time.”
“You wish. The offer has been revoked. Besides, you’ve already gotten more than I’d intended to give you.”
“Boy, you’re tough.”
“You remember that.” I closed the door to his Land Rover and leaned in through the open window. “And when am I getting my own damned car? I feel like some high school girl you just took to the drive-in every time you drop me off.”
He smirked at the image. “Hmm.”
“It’s not my style, Cal. I need my own wheels. Don’t you have some crappy old shit-box I can drive for a while until I can afford to get my own crappy old shit-box?”
“I think I can come up with something.”
“Nifty. I’ll see ya.” I started to turn away.
“Not if I see you first.”
I pulled a face. “Lame.” I began walking toward the house.
“Later, cookie,” he called out.
I turned and stared at him with my best “as if” look.
“As in tough cookie,” he explained.
“That’s more like it.”
Chapter Seventeen
The next week and a half was fairly normal. Well, as normal as it could be for a woman who took her life into her hands by repossessing vehicles for a living and who was being chased by one of the city’s worst maniacs. I hadn’t heard from Woodard or his buddies since our rooftop antics. It was making me nervous.
I thought of how nervous it made me as I waited for Jesse to be released. I had to protect him now that he was going to be out of prison. Had to watch him like a hawk so that he didn’t go back in too. As usual, I had my work cut out for me.
Finally, Jesse walked toward me, a big smile on his face. He wore a pair of khakis, a Henley shirt and sneakers without socks. I knew that once he’d settled into my house, he’d wear nothing but faded old jeans and t-shirts. Same kind of stuff I liked to wear.
“You ready? No sentimental last glances back?”
“Hell, no.” He stood looking at me, his face hard to read. “Take me home.”
And that took me back two decades.
* * *
“Take me home,” Jesse had said to me. His round, three-year-old face looking up at me from the swing as it took him back and away from me. When he came forward he said, “Please?”
So I caught his legs before he swung away from me again. Both of his tiny sneakers were untied. I bent down and began tying them in a double knot. “Why do you want to go home? It’s such a nice day.” I looked up at the sky. “Look, the sun is smiling at you, kissing you on your fat little cheeks, just like this!” I leaned forward and planted a bunch of kisses on his face.
When I leaned back and looked at him he wasn’t smiling. I knew what was wrong. There was nothing that I could do. All I could do was to try my best to keep him distracted so he wouldn’t feel so lonely for her. Some of the time it worked. Not today. It had been just over a week since she’d left us. And he wasn’t doing well with it. To my ten-year-old mind, it was kind of a blessing that she was gone.
It wasn’t that I didn’t miss her. I did. I missed the mother who would smile at us, sing songs and tell silly jokes. I missed the mother who picked lilacs and daisies in the springtime and placed them on the kitchen table so that the house would smell pretty. I missed the mother who was spontaneous, who would pack us into the car at a moments notice to take us to the beach or an afternoon movie on the weekends. I missed a million things about her, just as Jesse did.
That mother had left us the minute Susie had been taken from us a year before. She hadn’t returned. I doubted that she ever would. The mother who was left sat silently for hours, not moving. Or she’d stand, looking out the window and hugging herself, kind of rocking back and forth. She rarely spoke to us anymore. Jesse had been too young to remember her the way she was before Susie went away. So the mother who was left was the only one he really knew. And even if she wasn’t really a mother to us any more than one of the house plants was, she was the only mother he’d ever known.
Before she did leave, I had done my best to take up the slack. And boy, had there been a shit load of slack. I still wasn’t his mother. There had been many times when, just before I’d walk through the front door, I’d stand with my hand on the doorknob, bracing myself for what I might be about to see. I was so certain that she’d kill herself. I’d walk through the door and there she’d be, either at the kitchen table, just staring, or at the window, doing the same. Then I’d go and get Jesse from the house next door where the lady with five kids didn’t mind watching another. Thank God for her.
“Why do you want to go home, Jess? There’s nobody there.” I smoothed a lock of strawberry-blond hair from his forehead.
“Cuz mommy might be there now. She might be back from her ‘cation.”
“She’s not on vacation, Jess.”
“Daddy said she’s on ‘cation.” He looked at me with huge, grey eyes filled with confusion.
I couldn’t hurt him by telling him that she was never coming home again. Or that I hoped that she wouldn’t because I couldn’t stand to watch her that way anymore. Most of all, I couldn’t stand the accusation in her eyes when she looked me.
“Okay, Jess. We’ll go home.”
I took him by his small hand and began the trek back home, where the only mother Jesse would ever have again would be me.
* * *
I blinked the past away and wrapped my arms around Jesse. Then we left the prison and I took him home again.
“Cool,” Jesse said as he eyed all the workout equipment. “Very cool.”
He’d bulked up during his time in prison. Not having had a computer to play with, he’d turned to weightlifting. I was glad the equipment wasn’t going be to an eyesore for him since I really had nowhere else to put it. The basement was more like a cellar, complete with a dirt floor.
“Glad you like it. You’re welcome to the equipment. Hope you don’t mind me coming in here to work out.”
“Nah. Go for it.” He placed his bag on the double bed, which sat on the left side of the room. Buddy sat beside him, looking up at him.
“Looks like you’ve made a friend,” I said. Buddy and Jesse seemed to connect immediately.
Jesse smiled and patted Buddy on the head. “I could use one. Haven’t had one in a while. Not one I could bring home to you, anyway.” He grinned and winked.
“No. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.” The thought of what prison pals he might’ve had made me cringe. “So, this is the place. Make yourself at home.”
He plopped himself down on the bed. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“You hungry?” My stomach was growling.
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Chicken stir-fry okay?”
“Ugh. Health food.”
“I’m fresh out of slop and gruel.”
He chuckled. “Chicken stir-fry will have to do, then.”
I smiled. “Coming right up.”
As I chopped vegetables, sliced chicken and threw them into a wok, I thought on what Jesse could do to keep his mind occupied. He needed a job. He needed to earn his own money or he’d start feeling like a free-loader pretty quickly. I know my brother and he wouldn’t live under my roof for long before he began to feel like a charity case. Then he might get into trouble.
So he needed a job which would pay all right and allow him to use his mind and creativity. There weren’t any off the top of my head I could think of that had a demand for ex-cons. I sighed and leaned against the counter, sipping a beer and watching the stir-fry sizzle in the wok. He wanted to be a repo agent. There was no way in hell I was going to put him into that much danger. He’s my brother and I needed to protect him. He’d been through enough already.
/> Who would give him a second chance to do well in life? Who would watch over him when I couldn’t do it myself?
Suddenly an idea came to me and I smiled.
Jack.
Chapter Eighteen
“So you all set to start building bikes, Jess?” Jack’s voice boomed in the shop. He was happy to see Jesse and more than glad to have him working for him.
“I’m stoked, man! Where do I start?” Jesse stood before a bike frame, looking at it with a glint in his eye. It was a blank canvas he couldn’t wait to start working on.
Jack led him to where Patrick Thompson stood assembling a purple motorcycle. Patrick had always been a man of few words, and although he hadn’t seen me in several years, he only nodded at me with his hand slightly raised before turning his attention back to working on the bike. He’d buzzed his long, blond hair off since I’d seen him last. This was an improvement since he was a handsome man in a rough, jagged kind of way.
Sharon Laporte looked exactly the same. She still kept her dark hair cropped short and was still very thin. Only a few lines around her eyes and mouth betrayed her age. She’d smiled at me when we came in before going back to whatever she was doing at her desk. She’d always been pretty shy. Jesse found her fascinating, glancing over at her every few moments. I had the feeling he’d have his knuckles rapped for it soon enough when Jack’s patience ran out. I wondered where Sean was.
As if on cue, Sean Graham came swaggering into the shop, wind blown and looking like he belonged in a cowboy movie. His sandy curls were shorter but he still wore snug, worn looking jeans and cowboy boots. Unbelievably, he looked far better than he had all those years ago and I had to work at keeping my mouth from falling open.
“Leah! I heard you’d come out of hibernation. How’ve ya been?” He walked over to me and wrapped me in finely sculpted arms.
“Fine.” I was a little breathless. There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room all of a sudden. “I’ve been good. How about you?” My eyes moved over his chest. I couldn’t help but notice the way his navy-colored “Blue Lightning” t-shirt seemed to enhance every bulge and crevice.