Unexpected Family

by Molly O'Keefe

  He wanted to kiss that wrinkle. Slide his hands into the satin of her hair where it touched her shoulders, her neck. He wanted to warm himself against her skin, warm those places inside that had been cold for so long he no longer felt them. Her fire blazed in her eyes and the stubborn, knowing set of her shoulders.

  The truck door slammed and the three boys ran past him with varying speed. Ben, sullen and dragging his feet, brought up the rear. In a flash Jeremiah saw how tonight might end. How Ben with his disdain could hurt Sandra and the thought made him furious. Sick to his stomach.

  “Ben—” he snapped, as if the boy had already done something, and Ben flinched away from him.

  Goddamn it, he thought, always wrong. Always so damn wrong.

  “Come on in, Ben. Mom’s going to put you to work,” Lucy said, ushering the boy inside, but not before he sent one poisonous look at Jeremiah over his shoulder.

  Finally, standing alone outside the house where the sounds of the boys spilled out the front door, he realized, to his great shame, the person who might ruin it all was him.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS BEN AND LUCY cleared the hallway Ben shrugged her arm off.

  “Ben.” She sighed.

  “What?”

  Holy shit, did the kid ever give it a rest? “My mom is going to work very hard to feed you,” she said. “And it will be good food, too. If you’re rude to her or make her feel bad, you won’t ever get fed by her again.”

  He looked at her a long time, trying, she could see, to hold on to his anger, but in the end his stomach won out and he just nodded. “Good, now go see how you can help.” Ben walked off into the kitchen and then Jeremiah stepped into the hallway, just behind her. The skin along her neck and the backs of her arms shivered at his proximity. She was too aware, all too aware, of the dangerous cowboy.

  What would be so wrong? a little voice in the back of her head whispered. What would be so wrong with a little comfort? Some release from the pressure that was building in her chest. What would be wrong with a little fun?

  God. Fun. It seemed like such a foreign concept and she knew, despite the burden that rode Jeremiah so hard, he would be fun. In bed, he would be a carnival of delights.

  And she wasn’t one for casual sex, didn’t really know how to do it, but perhaps now was her moment to try. Maybe not every relationship had to be some dramatic melding of souls. Maybe she could have one that was just about the occasional melding of bodies.

  She had no idea how to do that, but she had the feeling Jeremiah was well versed.

  What are you thinking? You made a deal—no more kissing. Luckily, she had plenty of practice breaking deals.

  “You want a drink?” she asked. “We’ve got some beer.”

  “That would be great.”

  The boys were shucking a giant bag of corn down by the garden and, after grabbing their beers, Lucy led Jeremiah out to the back porch so they could keep an eye on them.

  Sandra was in the kitchen, pulling plastic containers out of the fridge with gleeful abandon.

  “Thanks again,” Jeremiah said, gesturing with his beer toward the knot of boys sitting on the ground, corn silk floating around them. “For Ben.”

  “No problem.”

  The silence pounded and shook between them and Lucy wondered if it would be better if they just stripped naked and did the deed on the splintered porch boards, or worse. Worse probably.

  Jeremiah took exquisite care in tearing a strip off the beer label. She watched his wide blunt fingers with a weird fixated breathlessness. “I’m…I’m too hard on him. I don’t even give him a chance anymore.”

  “I can understand the inclination,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “He makes it hard.”

  “He used to be so sweet,” Jeremiah said with a quick grin that sent pinpricks right through her heart. “Funny, like really goofy.” He laughed a little. “He used to do this thing for Casey when he was a baby—a whole comedy routine. Ben would hit himself in the head and pretend to stagger around and then fall down and Casey would howl. I mean, he’d pee he was laughing so hard. Ben would do it over and over again.”

  Lucy smiled because Jeremiah was smiling, his face splitting into craggy lines by his bright white teeth. So different from that charming grin he used in other moments.

  “But…” Jeremiah shook his head. “That kid is gone.”

  “Not gone.” She touched his hand and, yep, as expected, a spark traveled from the dark, hair-roughened skin of his arm right to the core of her, where she went wet in a wild rush.

  She jerked her hand away and he glanced over at her.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, waving his hand as if clearing the air. “I’m preoccupied. How are things going for you in Los Angeles?”

  “Oh.” She shot him a skeptical look. “You don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I do.”

  “Jeremiah.” She laughed. “The other day in the garden you wanted to run away so bad I could see it.”

  His smile was lopsided, rueful and utterly self-aware. A heartbroken cowboy who was self-aware? Good Lord, he was a country song brought to life. “I’m…I’m not good with the deep stuff,” he said. “I’m totally shallow.”

  “Come on,” she cried.

  “It’s true. I’m the king of small talk. Of one-night stands. Try to talk to me about your feelings, or anything deeper than the color of your underwear, and I panic.”

  “So, I told you about my business and you panicked?”

  He opened his eyes wide. “I thought you were going to cry, Lucy. I freaked right out. I broke out in a rash.”

  “Well, then, all the more reason not to tell you about Los Angeles.”

  “True,” he murmured, but watched her sideways, both of them slipping into waters so fast moving, so treacherous, they must be sick in the head. “But maybe you can change me.”

  She howled with laughter, even as something in her chest spasmed. “How many women have gotten their hearts broken believing that?”

  “Probably too many,” he said, sobering slightly.

  She punched him in the shoulder, not enjoying the sudden downturn in mood. “Cads aren’t repentant. Goes against type.”

  Again that grin. Again the electrical storm between them. “So? What should I be?”

  Everything I want right now, she thought, everything I need. Fun. Easy. Uncomplicated. A blind release from the pressure keeping me up nights.

  The words didn’t come. It didn’t feel as if anything was easy between them. Ben. Los Angeles. All of it complication upon complications.

  But she still wanted him.

  “You know.” He leaned forward, just slightly. Not enough to be pushy, but enough that the equation between them changed and her better sense was drowned out by the sudden clamoring demands of her body. “I might be wrong, but I’m sensing that perhaps you’re interested in breaking a certain rule you’ve given us.”

  “It wasn’t just me,” she whispered, looking at his lips, the pinkness of them. The lushness of them. How did she not notice those lips before? Gorgeous. She wanted to investigate them further. “You agreed that anything between us would be a mistake.”

  “Well.” He sighed, the smell of his breath intoxicating. “Maybe we just need different rules.”

  “Like what?” Oh, Lord, was that her voice? She sounded as if she’d been running uphill.

  His finger touched her hand, the knuckle of her thumb, and her nipples got hard in a wild cataract of feeling. “Like…we keep things casual.”

  “Casual?” She didn’t know how to tell him that she wasn’t very good at casual. She was trying, but it was hard for a woman who’d lived with a calling for most of her life. Who’d never had any other job but the one she’d just utterly failed.

  “Yeah. Fun.”

  “Fun?”

  He tilted his head as if to get a better look at her. “Am I reading you wrong, here, Lucy? I’ll admit I’m out of practice… .”

  “
No, you’re not reading me wrong.”

  She touched his hand, the roughness of his skin, the hair that prickled and teased her palms. So many textures, so many things to discover on him. He could be a project. Her imagination roared as she pictured his body. The perfect sculpture of it. The shadows and light of his skin. The flex of muscle, the tension of sinew.

  “Lucy.” She looked up into those endless blue eyes, rimmed in black, filled with fire. A kiss. Yes. She did love to kiss.

  His lips fell across hers like sunlight. Light and warm and sweet and she melted into the moment, into him. He breathed out, she breathed in and the earth stopped rotating, as if someone had just pressed pause on the rest of the world.

  “Hey, Uncle J.” Aaron, the oldest boy, charged onto the deck from the steps like a wild animal and she and Jeremiah leaped apart. Her beer fell from numb fingers, rolling across the floor, spilling a trail of beer. “Sorry,” Aaron muttered, darting forward to grab the bottle and hand it to her—half-empty and sticky.

  “It’s all right.” She laughed, nervous and awkward, her heart hammering in her chest.

  “I forgot to tell you, but our next game moved to Beauregard.”

  “Beauregard?” Jeremiah said. “That’s two hours away, buddy. I can’t take you that far on a Tuesday. Did you ask Mrs. Penning if you could ride with her?”

  Aaron looked so crestfallen, so worried, that it was obvious there was no room with Mrs. Penning.

  “Oh, man, Aaron,” Jeremiah said, clearly pained. “I just…I just can’t—”

  “I can,” Lucy blurted before she even thought about what she was doing. Aaron beamed, Jeremiah looked thunderous.

  “What are you talking about?” Jeremiah demanded.

  “I’m starting a taxi service. I can take him, but…you know…it’ll cost you.”

  “We’ll pay!” Aaron said.

  “Now, hold on a second, Aaron. A taxi? Is this a joke?”

  “What can I say, I see a need and try to fill it. My entrepreneurial spirit cannot be squashed.”

  “Lucy,” he whispered, “You are an artist, a famous designer—”

  Her body shook away from the words, not wanting to hear them out of someone else’s mouth. She stood. “Fifty dollars should cover it,” she said, unable to stare at Jeremiah’s questioning face.

  “Fifty dollars, Uncle J.—”

  “That will cover gas and maybe a cup of coffee,” Jeremiah said. “Your entrepreneurial spirit needs a business education.”

  She stared at him, wounded by his cavalier tone, the way he made a joke of what had happened to her, and then as if he realized what he’d said, he sobered. “I’m sorry, Lucy. I didn’t mean… It was just a joke. A bad joke.”

  “So, can we do it, Uncle J.?” Aaron demanded.

  Jeremiah, probably motivated more by guilt than anything else, nodded and Aaron whooped.

  “Why don’t we go inside and you can give me the details.” She stood.

  “Thanks, Lucy,” Aaron said, all but falling over his too-big feet in an effort to open the screen door for her. “That’s so awesome.”

  “Lucy?”

  She turned back to Jeremiah.

  “We’re not done.”

  They weren’t. Not by a long shot.

  She grinned and winked—fake it till you make it. “I know.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS A GODDAMNED party going on in his house. Walter could hear the voices of kids outside his window in the back garden. He was still deciding if he liked that sound. Normally, no. But this afternoon he’d woken up after twelve straight hours of sleep and he felt…different. Not necessarily better in every way, but in his head…he was better.

  Walter limped down the hallway, his stomach queasy, his muscles weak. He’d lost some weight in the grueling torture of the past week. And he hoped to God he was through the worst of it, the last of the poison exiting his system last night, creating from the demons in his head that vision of his ex-wife.

  Now, of course, standing in the shadows just outside the kitchen, he had a terrible fear that it hadn’t been his ex-wife at all. The scent of roses and cumin clung to only one woman he knew.

  It had been Sandra in his room and he’d sworn at her and who knows what else.

  Had she told him he’d never be half the man A.J. was? It’s not as if it would be news to him, but the words had extra punch from her mouth.

  He was embarrassed and angry that she would have seen him like that. God, he’d been in his underwear. Naked in his dream, but he woke up in boxer shorts, so he prayed that had been the case while she’d been there.

  But the real issue was that she would have ignored what he’d demanded of her—to leave him alone—and forced herself into his hell.

  The rubber stopper at the end of his crutch made a nice thud on the floor as he stepped into the dining room. At the sound, Sandra poked her head up over the counter that split the dining area from the kitchen. Her cagey eyes unreadable.

  “Sandra.”

  She stood all the way up, her hair slightly skewed, thin flyaway silver strands wreathing her skull like a halo.

  “You look better.” Her eyes traveled over him, missing nothing—his overlong hair, the scruff on his neck. He was obscenely glad he’d showered. Put on clean clothes. “You look very good.”

  Out of the blue he felt like smiling. He squashed the instinct.

  “Were you in my room last night?” he asked, demanded really, his tone totally unchecked.

  “I was.” Again, he felt like smiling at that stubborn set of her jaw. No apologies from her. Oh, Sandra, he thought, if we were only different people.

  “I asked you to stay away.”

  “I know, Walter, but you were so sick. You were—” She licked her lips. “In need.”

  He chewed on his tongue, the words he needed to say not coming with any grace. “I’m sorry.” His voice was rough, too quiet, and he cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m sorry if I said something—”

  “You screamed.” She rubbed her wrist, and he noticed a wide silver bracelet there. “That’s all. You thought I was Vicki.”

  He remembered grabbing his ex-wife in that dream, holding her wrist, pressing the thin bones together. As fast as he could he crossed the room, leaving the cane against the counter, and he reached for her hand.

  She jerked away, her eyes knowing.

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  Oh, he’d hurt her. He wanted to take himself out back and peel the skin off his back.

  He just stared at her, his eyes locked on hers. Those black depths opening up and showing him her heart. Her too-big heart. She shouldn’t be here, caring for him. But her heart would not allow her to be anywhere else. Foolish, he thought, to be so kind. It would only get her hurt.

  “Please,” he breathed, and slowly she lowered her arm. Carefully, with shaking fingers, he shifted the wildly beautiful bracelet that could only be one of Lucy’s creations. Touching only the metal and never her skin, he twisted the jewelry over her wrist until the inch between the wide ends of the cuff revealed purple bruises.

  A moan broke in his throat.

  Before he knew what he was going to do he lifted her wrist and pressed his dry, cracked lips to that soft skin.

  She pulled her hand away, holding it to her chest, as if he’d somehow hurt her all over again.

  He wore his body like a too-big suit, feeling small inside. Where it counted. “I’m sorry,” he told her. He was too wrecked to even feel embarrassed.

  “It’s…it’s okay.”

  “You were right last night. I’m not half the man A.J. was.”

  Her eyes were wide. Coal-black. “I…I didn’t say that, Walter.”

  He blinked. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

  From the living room he heard the sliding glass door open and Lucy arrived. A tall blond boy behind her.

  She stopped in her tracks when she saw Walter.

  “You’re up.”

&
nbsp; He nodded, feeling suddenly like a zoo animal.

  “Walter, not sure if you remember Aaron Bilkhead…” She shifted, holding an arm out to the kid.

  “Of course I remember. The kid’s a neighbor.”

  The boy smiled and stepped forward to shake his hand. “Nice to see you again, sir.”

  Walter smiled at his manners. Annie wouldn’t raise her sons to be anything but respectful.

  “You staying for dinner?” he asked, though the rough shape of his voice made it sound like an accusation.

  Aaron glanced sideways at Lucy, who glowered at Walter. “I suppose I am,” Aaron finally said. “If…if that’s all right with you?”

  “Be nice to have a full table,” he said, and nearly smiled at Lucy’s slack-jawed expression. It was good to surprise the girl. He grinned at her as he hobbled past her to the living room and the porch beyond.

  The sun was shining and he wanted to feel it on his face.

  * * *

  JEREMIAH SAT ON THE BACK porch and thought about basketball. Laundry. Anything to cool the heat in his blood after that kiss with Lucy. But it wasn’t working.

  Filthy, dirty hockey equipment, he thought, but in his mind he only saw Lucy winking at him. And his body responded to the image like a young boy’s.

  Behind him, the sliding glass door slid open.

  “Lucy—”

  “Nope.”

  Jeremiah spun in his chair and then stood at the sight of the old man coming out onto the deck.

  “Walter.”

  “That’s my chair.” He pointed with his cane at the seat Jeremiah had just vacated.

  “Here,” he said, jerking it sideways, closer to Walter, who then collapsed into it. Walter looked thinner, the skin on his cheeks and neck hung a little from his bones. He was pale and shaky, but his blue eyes were clear. Searing.

  “You want a beer?” Jeremiah asked, lifting his empty bottle, hoping he’d say yes and Jeremiah could hide out in the kitchen. Check out the leftover situation, do some cherry-picking, anything but awkward small talk with Walter.

  Walter stared at the bottle for a moment as if Jeremiah was holding up the proof of something Walter didn’t quite want to believe. “More than you know. But no, thanks.”