And his being a cop wouldn’t have been a big deal if she hadn’t been sort of—at least in some people’s opinion—a criminal, putting the two of them on opposite sides of a wall neither of them had built. A wall that was now doing that kaleidoscope thing if she tried to look closely at it.
She’d quit her job. If he’d really quit his . . .
“Well, since I’m no longer going to be doing whatever you thought I might’ve been doing,” she said cautiously, still not sure if she should trust this new way of seeing him. “And of course I’m not admitting I ever did . . . whatever it was. Still, I would like to start making more money with my music now.”
“So you might consider having a booker?” The sadness slid away from his eyes. They began to light up with something else.
“I might. I mean, I’ve never really liked that part, all those pesky emails. So I might try working with a booker. Since so much has changed.”
“How much do you think you might let a booker handle? If you had one.” And he stood straighter, apparently no longer needing the refrigerator at his back. “Were you thinking he could handle only your shows, or . . . You once said you had a firm rule.”
“That might be more of a guideline than a rule.” And she leaned against the kitchen doorway because she was suddenly unsteady on her feet.
“So you might let him handle more than your shows? If he didn’t try any sudden moves. I imagine you reserve the right to punch out his lights if he goes too far.”
“How far is he thinking of going?” she asked, now getting really weak in the knees.
“Whatever works for you.” As he said this, the light in his eyes became unmistakable. “We could even, if you’re interested, kind of try something right now?”
“Something . . . beyond booking my shows?” And her body was screaming, yes, yes, yes, from her scalp down her spine deep into the center of her, her heart surging on past Reggae into speed punk.
She tried to keep a little rationality here, since Russ and Char had been so smug in predicting this, but Russ and Char did seem to know a thing or two about love. And Michael, he’d been so blatantly trying to arrange exactly this.
She just had to give up on proving all those people who loved her wrong. She took Wes’s hand and led him to the stairs.
There, as soon as the door at the foot of the stairs was shut behind them, she turned to him, and he didn’t hesitate. He was reaching for her. She was reaching for him, tracing the curves, the planes, the warmth she remembered and had missed. He seemed to be doing the same with searching, gentle caresses. Their mouths sought each other too, remembering and savoring more. Probing deeper until the gentleness gave way to a delicious hot need. Her body bent into his, and she gave up on standing on her own as he bent her into a deeper arch and his mouth moved down her neck. Hey, a little dominance in a man could be great. He lifted her off her feet and laid her back on the steps.
His kisses continued down her throat while his hands pulled up her T-shirt and did something with her bra. Then his tongue was awakening her breasts, and she gasped, “Don’t you think it’s a little cramped here on the stairs?” He cupped his hands under her bottom and lifted her up to the next step.
The link from her breasts to the center of her lit up like a freeway at rush hour as he pulled a breast deep into his mouth and her hips rose to press against him. He lifted her up another step, and his mouth moved further down.
They left a trail of clothes on those stairs as they worked their way up one step at a time. It looked as if someone had bombed that stairway. It felt as if she’d been taken by a force that might have caused mass destruction except it was clearly so good. A pyrotechnics of fireworks blossomed deep in her, dazzling and surging through her, again and again.
When they finally made it to her bed, her still rippling deep within but contented now, they lay quietly, skin against skin, warmth against warmth. And there were no more secrets that could slip between them if one of them made a wrong move. She felt smoothly naked as if fresh from a bath.
They’d met in an odd way, but now looking back, she thought it might have been the very best way because he’d always known her secrets. Which had been the most screwed up part of her life—something she’d never considered when she’d chosen to let Russ and Char solve her music money problems. No, she hadn’t chosen to be isolated from everyone else she knew, any friends she might have had, even the members of her band.
She’d just slowly come to accept the loneliness secrets bring and thought she was tough enough to handle it.
But maybe that kind of toughness was not only next to impossible but not such a great idea. Instead, maybe she could be tough enough to trust Wes. Because what was trust but a leap of faith from one heart to another—like a trapeze artist flying through the air. So it took guts and strength too, but like a successful aerial catch, it was so satisfying when it worked.
She’d never truly believed her uncle would set off a bomb.
“I’m beginning to think Michael’s pretty smart,” she said, her head nestled in the hollow of Wes’s shoulder where it fit so perfectly.
“That’s for sure,” he said, and she loved the way his voice rumbled up through his chest.
She let her fingers play with the soft curls that grew there and felt his arm tighten around her. And she felt beautiful again—frizzy orange hair, barely boobs, and all.
Sure, she had her music, she had her uncle, but now she had so much more.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the people of Johnson, Washington for having such a unique and charming parade. I decided to set Bombed in Moscow, Idaho, because I felt there was story potential in the demographics there—the mixture of hippies, rednecks, and college students there. But when I wanted to use a Fourth of July celebration in the book, like Hank and Smith I was disappointed by how little Moscow does for the Fourth. Then someone, it may have been the mayor at the time, posted something about hoping he could get the reading of the Declaration of Independence done early so he and everyone else could go to the Johnson Parade!
The “town” of Johnson is just as I’ve described it, a tiny jewel in the Palouse Hills. The parade is just as zany and wonderful as I’ve described it too. But I have stretched the truth a bit. At least the time I saw it, there were no horses in the parade. This may be to avoid the inevitable complication of having horses walk down a street, especially since the parade doubles back on itself. So I’ve blended in aspects of other small town parades I’ve seen, including the horse dressed up as a cow and the accompanying garage sales. But I saw the cut-in-half car in Johnson, and the Man Eating Chicken. I’ve seen Big-Foot for President and the Giant Palouse Spitting Worm on YouTube, so you can see them there too.
I also need to thank Steve Schecter, aka Ghostwriter, “the original punk-folk troubadour,” for not only snippets of his songs but the glimpses he’s given me of rock ‘n’ roll life.
And as usual, my critique group was with me through the writing of this book, and the rewriting and rewriting, chapter by chapter, laughing at all the right places and catching lots of errors. Thank you, Margaret Bechard, Carmen Bernier-Grand, Carolyn Conahan, Heather Vogel Frederick, Pamela Smith Hill, and Eric Kimmel. Plus a special thanks to two more members of that group, Susan Fletcher and Ellen Howard, who also read the manuscript in its entirety once I thought I had it finished, catching more errors, of course.
And thanks to my husband, with whom I have learned everything I know about love.
A Note From the Author
I’ve built and remodeled houses and helped plant more than a million trees. I’m also the author of several award-winning children’s books that were published the more traditional way, five pictures books and four novels for the young—and the young at heart. But lately I’ve decided to grow up. And I’ve let myself get a little wackier. You can contact me or learn more about me and my books at WinifredMorris.com.
*
Thank you for readin
g Bombed. I hope it’s given you a few hours of enjoyment, maybe even made you laugh, brightened your day a bit, and if it has, I hope you’ll post a review so others may find it and enjoy it too.
Then maybe you’ll also enjoy Of Mice and Money, a comic women’s book. Which I’m told is a contradiction in terms. How come?
It’s the story of Kiva, who leaves her drug-smuggling husband to start a new life in a mouse-infested farmhouse, thinking no one from her old life will be able to find her there. But just about everyone does—including her daughter who ran away four years ago, her best friend who pulls her back into illegal activities, and the captain of the smuggling boat who hasn't been paid.
Can she reunite with her daughter, quit being quite such a screw-up, and possibly find true love while pursued by assorted bad guys?
Here is the prologue and the first chapter:
Of Mice and Money
Prologue
The woman’s voice comes through the headset: “You never listen to me! Why don’t you listen to me!”
The man’s voice: “I heard you, hon. The deli’s out of Alfredo. I’m fine with quatre fromage.”
“See! How do you do that! How can you!” This is the woman again.
Next comes a lot of clanking and crashing, maybe the woman putting plates on the table but with far more force than necessary, and she shouts over the clattering plates, “Have you even bothered to look at our new garbage man!”
“Come on, hon, you know I don’t swing that way.”
Some violent ripping and sloshing. She’s serving the quatre fromage? “Well, if you’d looked, if you’d just look, you’d see he’s way too slick to be a real garbage man.”
“You’ve got the hots for our garbage man. Think how that must hurt me, hon.”
Smashing noises and a yelp. Now she’s throwing china at him? The special agent pulls the headset away from her ear and wonders how much longer she’s going to have to listen to this crap. She turns to the other agent in the tech room to ask, “Do we have a man on their garbage now?”
Chapter 1
“I want to buy the Mud Springs place,” I tell Lester Bickle for maybe the hundredth time. He’s an old guy with wispy white hair. Maybe his hearing is bad.
“No bank will write a loan on that house,” he says, for maybe the two hundredth time.
“You told me Mrs. Miller will carry a contract,” I remind him.
“True, but she wants a third down. And the house is not financeable for a number of good reasons. You should not only have it inspected, you should get an estimate of what it will cost to make the necessary repairs.”
“I like it,” I say.
He shakes his head as if I’m a hopeless child. He almost makes me feel like a child, the way he keeps shaking his head and repeating himself. But I’m not sure I’ve ever been a child in the usual someone-is-there-to-take-care-of-you way, and now at thirty-seven, I’m way past the point where I can blame all my stupid mistakes on still being a kid.
I have a kid who’s so grown up I don’t know where she is.
“Then there’s the problem of the road,” he says.
“I like the road too.”
“It’s August,” he says.
No shit. I pull my blouse away from my chest and flap it to get some of the marginal A.C. in this dreary office to blow down my front. He turns about the same color as my fuchsia tube top. So maybe I do like to show a little cleavage—when you’ve got mousy thin hair and eyebrows that definitely don’t match, you’ve got to use what you’ve got—but you wouldn’t think skin as leathery as his could go so pink.
At least this makes him quit trying to talk me out of the house I want—as if I don’t know my own mind.
Okay, sometimes I don’t.
He looks down at his gray steel Depression-era desk, and he keeps his eyes down. He says, “If you’re absolutely sure,” and lays a form in the center of that desk. He puts my name at the top.
Except he doesn’t know my full name. He says, “Kiva . . .,” and when I don’t jump right in with what follows that, after what must seem to him plenty long enough to wait, cautiously, he looks up at me again.
The problem is I haven’t yet decided on a name. “Phoenix,” I finally say. His knobby, vein-ribbed fingers still don’t move to write this down. So only movie stars get to have that name? Or any name is suspect if you take that long to remember who you are.
I’ve always sucked at lying.
But this is no time to start telling the truth. “I just got divorced.” Someone who just got divorced might be uncertain about her name.
“I’m so sorry.” He sounds genuinely concerned.
“You know, I think it’s for the best.”
“Divorce is never a good thing. Marriage is a challenge, of course, but my wife and I, as the years go by, we’re so glad to be together as we age.”
“Okay, I guess, but . . .” I really don’t need a lecture on true love. I’ve had enough problems with its much more common stand-in.
“Is . . . is it final?” he asks. Throwing me. “Your divorce,” he helpfully adds.
“Oh. Does it matter?”
“Well, yes.” He sighs. “If it’s not final, then there’s always a chance. My daughter left her husband once, but in time they both came to appreciate the promises they’d made to each other.”
So I am going to get a lecture on love. And here I’d thought this was one of my better lies.
“Then there’s the matter of ownership. If your divorce isn’t final, you’ll need to talk to your lawyer before signing a contract like this. Also . . .” He sighs again. “There are a number of laws. Homeland Security, you know. At the time of closing your photo ID should match the name on the deed.”
Now he has my attention. “Fine. Put down Sumner. The divorce is not . . . ” Do I dare admit this to such a believer in true love? “I just left. I doubt my husband has even noticed I’m gone.”
The craggy old face smiles benevolently. Lester Bickle is clearly relieved. “Then we’ll just put in a contingency about the cost of repairs. That should give you plenty of room to change your mind. And we’ll set the closing out as far as we can.” He looks down at his form again. “Let’s say at least ninety days?”
“No!”
Crap, I’ve caught a nail in one of my favorite scarves. In this heat I didn’t want anything around my neck or my hair, but I have a peacock’s train of royal blue and turquoise eyes tied around my waist, and I’ve been fiddling with it. Silk on my fingers is better than Xanax for me.
Except now. “Mr. Bickle!” He’s made me do some spastic jerk, ripping my nail half off, probably tearing a huge snag in the silk. “The house is vacant! I thought I could move right in!”
“Please call me Les.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to live!”
“Dear, it always takes some time to finalize a real estate purchase. But if you don’t have anywhere else to live . . .” What with the “dear” and the “call me Les” is he going to invite me home with him? So he can teach me more about true love? “Mrs. Miller might be willing to rent you the house until the purchase goes through.”
“Yes!” I can take a deep breath. I start unhooking my nail.
“Then.” He finds another space to fill in on his form. “In regard to the earnest money you were going to put down today—”
“Earnest money?” I’ve never bought a house before. I’ve never been able to buy a house before. The one I’ve been living in, Carlton bought, of course.
“A deposit to show your commitment,” old Les explains. “What I’m thinking is, if you’re absolutely sure you won’t change your mind, even if you and your husband reconcile—which I truly hope you do—and you’d like to move in right away, you might make that deposit a bit larger than a person normally would.”
“No problem.” I jump up. “I just need to run out to my car.”
Outside, I hit a wall of heat. Waves of it shimmer off my Melbourne Red car
making it look like a sunset mirage on this empty street where everything else—the plank-walled, wild-west-style tavern, the abandoned gas station, and the few stores that are clearly on their way to being abandoned—are gray, dirt-streaked, and peeling paint.
I burn my hand opening the trunk. And this morning I had to pack while Carlton was out doing who knows what for no telling how long. With that kind of time pressure on me, standing in my wonderful walk-in closet with its banks of rods and drawers and baskets, all overflowing with the beautiful clothes I’ve bought over the past ten years—with Carlton’s money—how was I to decide what I would need to start a new life? Would I need any skirts or dresses? Which shoes!
Much as I love my car, it’s only a two-seater, a little BMW Z4 coupe, so the trunk is stuffed, and now I have to get to the bottom of it. At least the trunk is connected to the front so I can toss things through to the seats. Of course, the passenger seat is already just as full as the trunk, in fact crammed with a sleeping bag and a Styrofoam cooler I had to buy on my way here.
I just never thought I would need to get to the secret compartment so soon!
But finally I’m going to live the life I’ve never had, a quiet safe life in a quiet safe home. I’ve left Carlton and his scary business. I’ve come to this wide open country I love, the dry side of Oregon—no high-rises, no shopping malls, hardly another car on these roads. I even found this realtor here in Broken Pine—a one-street town just past Postage Stamp, on the way to Bakeoven—who, once he figured out I wasn’t lost—at least not geographically—drove me around in his pickup truck and showed me the perfect place.
It’s a classic farmhouse, big wide porch, pointy dormer over the porch. True, old Les has spent the rest of the afternoon trying to talk me out of that house, but I remember seeing houses like that go by the rear window of my parents’ Volkswagen bus, and I always wished I could live in one. I was sure people in houses like that probably knew what time it was. They probably knew when it was time to eat. They didn’t eat tofu.
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