When I'm With You

by JoAnn Ross

  The meat loaf turned to cardboard, and stuck in my throat. I took a gulp of cola to avert any necessity of the Heimlich maneuver. “Funny you should ask,” I replied quietly, “after what just happened at the Bronco.”

  At last, Tristan turned far enough to face me. He looked straight into my eyes. “You don’t love this Bob bozo,” he said bluntly. “If you did—”

  At my panicked look, he stopped. For all I knew, the people on both sides of us were listening to every word we said.

  Flo came back with his meat loaf, but he pulled some bills out of his Levi’s pocket and tossed them on the counter without even looking at her or the food. “Come on,” he said. Then he grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the diner.

  I dug in my heels when we hit the sidewalk. “I wanted to finish my dinner,” I lied.

  “I’ll fix you an omelet at my place,” he said. There was a big, shiny SUV parked at the curb. He opened the passenger door and practically tossed me inside.

  “I am not going to your place,” I told him. But I didn’t try to escape, either. Not that I could have. He was blocking my way. “What we did at the Bronco was a lapse of judgment on my part. It’s over, and I’d just as soon forget it.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Why? We had sex, it was good, and now it’s history. What is there to talk about?” Was this me talking? Miss Traditional Love and Marriage, hoping for a husband, two point two children and a dog?

  Tristan stepped back, slammed the car door, stormed around to the other side, and got in. His right temple was throbbing.

  “Maybe that’s all it means to you,” he bit out, jamming the rig into gear and screeching away from the curb, “but to me, it was more than sex. Way more.”

  My mouth dropped open. We were hovering on the brink of something I’d fantasized about, with and without Bob—or were we? Maybe I was out there alone, like always, and Tristan was leading me on. It didn’t take a software wizard to work out that he wanted more sex.

  “Like what?” I said.

  He turned onto a side street, and brought the SUV to a stop in front of a two-story house I used to dream about living in, as a kid. It was white, with green shutters on the windows and a fenced, grassy yard. There were flowerbeds, too, all blooming.

  And the sign swinging by the gate read:

  TRISTAN M CCULLOUGH, ATTORNEY AT LAW.

  “Never mind like what,” he snapped, while I was still getting over the fact that he was a lawyer. “Things didn’t end right between us, and I’m not letting this go till we talk it out!”

  I was a beat or two behind. Last I’d heard, Tristan was planning to major in Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. Instead, he’d gone on to law school.

  Sheesh. A lot can happen in ten years.

  I’d been into survival. He’d been making something of his life.

  The contrast hurt, big-time. I sat there in the passenger seat like a lump, staring at the sign.

  Tristan shut off the engine, thrust out a sigh, and turned to face me squarely. His blue eyes were narrow, and shooting little golden sparks.

  “Impressed?” he asked bitterly.

  I flinched. “What?”

  “Isn’t that why you left Parable? Because you thought I’d turn out to be a saddle bum, following the rodeo?”

  “I thought,” I said evenly, “that you would work on the ranch. Family tradition, and all that.”

  He sighed again, rubbed his chin with one hand. He’d showered and changed clothes between the Bronco and the diner, but he hadn’t shaved. An attractive stubble was beginning to gleam on the lower part of his face.

  “I keep getting this wrong,” he muttered, sounding almost despondent. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me, or to himself.

  I wanted to cry, for a variety of reasons, both simple and complicated, but I smiled instead. “It’s okay, Tristan,” I heard myself say. My voice came out sounding gentle, and a little raw. “We never did get along. Let’s just agree to disagree, as they say, and get on with our lives.”

  “As I recall, we got along just fine,” he said. I could tell he didn’t want to smile back, but he did. “Until one of us said something, anyway.”

  I laughed, but my sinuses were clogged with tears I wouldn’t shed until I was alone in room 7, with a lake view. “Right.”

  “How’s Josie?”

  The question took me off guard. “Fine,” I said.

  “She was a kick.”

  “Still is,” I said lightly. “She’s into bikers these days.”

  Tristan brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers, and I had the usual cattle-prod reaction, though I think I hid it pretty well. “Got to be better than Bob,” he said.

  I felt a flash of guilt. “Listen, about Bob—”

  Tristan raised an eyebrow, waiting.

  I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t bring myself to admit that Bob was a vibrator. It was too pathetic. “Forget it,” I said.

  “Like hell,” Tristan replied.

  A stray thought broadsided me, out of nowhere. Tristan was a lawyer, and most likely the only one in Parable, given the size of the place. Which probably meant he was involved in the negotiations for the Bucking Bronco.

  “Who’s buying the tavern?” I asked.

  It was his turn to look blank, though he recovered quickly. “A bunch of investors from California. Real estate types. They’re putting in a restaurant and a marina, and building a golf course across the lake.”

  “Damn,” I muttered.

  “What do you care?” he asked.

  “You’re representing them, and my mother knew it.”

  “Well, yeah,” Tristan said, in a puzzled, so-what tone of voice.

  “She knew I would have done anything to avoid seeing you.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Well, it’s true. You broke my heart!”

  “That’s not the way I remember it,” Tristan said.

  I unfastened my seat belt, got out of the SUV, and started for the Lakeside Motel. By now, my phone would be charged. I intended to dial my mother’s number and hit redial until she answered, if it took all night.

  I had a few things to say to her. We were about to have a Dr. Phil moment, Mom and I.

  Tristan caught up in a few strides. “Where are you going?”

  “None of your damn business.”

  “I did not break your heart,” he insisted.

  “Whatever,” I answered, because I knew it would piss him off, and if he got mad enough, he’d leave me alone.

  He caught hold of my arm and turned me around to face him. “Damn it, Gayle, I’m not letting you walk away again. Not without an explanation.”

  “An explanation for what?” I demanded, wrenching free.

  Tristan looked up and down the street. Except for one guy mowing his lawn, we might have been alone on an abandoned movie set. Pleasantville, USA. “You know damned well what!”

  I did know, regrettably. I’d been holding the memories at bay ever since I got on the first plane in Phoenix—even before that, in fact—but now the dam broke and it all flooded back, in Technicolor and Dolby sound.

  I’d gone to the post office, that bright summer morning a decade ago, to pick up the mail. There was a letter from the University of Montana—I’d been accepted, on a partial scholarship.

  My feet didn’t touch the ground all the way back to the Bronco.

  Mom stood behind the bar, humming that Garth Brooks song about having friends in low places and polishing glasses. The place was empty, except for the two of us, since it was only about 9:30, and the place didn’t open until 10.

  I waved the letter, almost incoherent with excitement. I was going to college!

  Mom had looked up, smiling, when I banged through the door from the apartment, but as she caught on, the smile fell away. She went a little pale, under her perfect make-up, and as I handed her the letter, I noticed that her lower lip wobbled.

  She read it. “You can’t go,” sh
e said.

  “But there’s a scholarship—and I can work—”

  Best of all, I’d be near Tristan. He’d been accepted weeks ago, courted by the coach of the rodeo team. For him, it was a full ride, in more ways than one.

  Mom shook her head, and her eyes gleamed suspiciously. I’d never seen her cry before, so I discounted the possibility. “Even with the scholarship and a minimum-wage job, there wouldn’t be enough money.”

  For years, she’d been telling me to study, so I could get into college. She’d even hinted that my dad, a man I didn’t remember, would help out when the time came. Granted, he hadn’t paid child support, but he usually sent a card at Christmas, with a twenty-dollar bill inside. Back then, that was my idea of fatherly devotion, I guess.

  “Maybe Dad—”

  “He’s got another family, Gayle. Two kids in college.”

  “You never said—”

  “He was married,” Mom told me, for the first time. “I was the other woman. He made a lot of promises, but he wasn’t interested in keeping them, and I doubt if that’s changed. Twenty dollars at Christmas is one thing, and four years of college are another. It would be a tough thing to explain to the wife.”

  The disappointment ran deep, and it was more than not being able to go to college. “You led me to believe he was going to help,” I whispered, stricken.

  “I thought I could come up with the money, between then and now,” Mom said. She looked worse than I felt, but I can’t say I was sympathetic. “I wanted you to think he cared.”

  I turned on my heel and fled.

  “Gayle!” Mom called after me. “Come back!”

  But I didn’t go back. I needed to find Tristan. Tell him what had happened. And I’d found him, all right. He was standing in front of the feed and grain, with his arms around Miss Wild West Montana of 1995.

  I came back to the here and now with a soul-jarring crash, glaring up at Tristan, who was watching me curiously. He’d probably guessed that I’d just had an out-of-body experience. “You were making out with a rodeo queen!” I cried.

  Tristan looked startled. “What the hell—?”

  “The day I left Parable,” I burst out. “I came looking for you, to tell you I couldn’t go to college like we planned, and there you were, climbing all over some other girl in broad daylight!”

  “That’s why you left? Your letter said you met somebody else—”

  “I lied, okay? I wanted to get back at you for cheating on me!”

  “I wasn’t cheating on you.”

  “I saw you with Miss Rodeo!”

  “You saw me with an old friend. Cindy Robbins. We went to kindergarten together. The vet had just put her horse down, and she was pretty shook up.”

  It was just ridiculous enough to be true.

  I really got mad then. Mad at myself, not Tristan. I’d been upset, that long ago day, because I’d just learned my dad was a married man and my mother was his lover, and because I wasn’t going to college. I hadn’t stopped to think, or to ask questions. Instead, I’d gone to the bank, withdrawn my paltry savings, dashed off a brief, vengeful letter to Tristan, explaining my passion for a made-up guy, and caught the four o’clock bus out of town, without so much as packing a suitcase, let alone saying good-bye to my mother.

  Rash, yes. But I was only seventeen, and once I’d made my dramatic exit, my pride wouldn’t let me go home.

  “Hey,” Tristan said, with a gruff tenderness that undid me even further. “You okay?”

  “No,” I replied. “I’m not okay.”

  “There wasn’t any other guy, was there?”

  I shook my head.

  He grinned. I was falling apart, on the street, and he grinned.

  “Bob’s not a guy, either,” I said.

  “What?” Tristan did the thumb thing again, wiping away my tears.

  “He’s a vibrator.”

  Tristan threw back his head and laughed, then he pulled me close, right there in front of God and everybody. “Hallelujah,” he whispered, and squeezed me even more tightly.

  He walked me back to the Lakeside Motel, and I might have invited him in, if the minivan family hadn’t been there, swimming again. They smiled and waved, like we were old friends.

  “Later,” Tristan said, and kissed me lightly.

  With that, he walked away, leaving me standing there with my room key in one hand, feeling like a fool.

  I finally let myself in, locked the door, and took a cold shower.

  When I got out, I wrapped myself in a towel, turned on my cell phone, and dialed my mother’s number. I was expecting the usual redial marathon, but she answered on the second ring. I heard a motorcycle engine purring in the background.

  “Hello?”

  “Mom? It’s me. Gayle.”

  She chuckled. “I remember you,” she said. “Are you in Parable?”

  “Yes, and you set me up.”

  “Sure did,” she replied, without a glimmer of guilt. “The meeting’s tomorrow, at Tristan’s office. Ten o’clock.”

  “Thanks for telling me.”

  “If you’d bothered to read the documents, you would have known from the first.”

  “It was a sneaky thing to do!”

  “I’m a mother. I get to do sneaky things. It’s in the contract.”

  I paused. My mother is no June Cleaver, but I love her.

  “How are you?” I asked, after a couple of breaths. My voice had gone soft.

  “Happy. How about you?”

  “Beginning to think it’s possible.”

  “That’s progress,” Mom said, and I knew she was smiling.

  The Harley engine began to rev. Biker impatience.

  “Gotta go,” Mom told me. “I love you, kiddo.”

  “I love you, too,” I said, but she had already disconnected.

  I shut off the phone, curled up in a fetal position in the middle of the bed, and dropped off to sleep.

  When I woke up, it was dark and somebody was rapping on my door.

  I dragged myself up from a drugged slumber, rubbing my eyes. “Who is it?”

  “Guess.” Tristan’s voice.

  I hesitated, then padded over and opened the door. “What do you want?”

  He grinned. “Hot, slick, sweaty sex—among other things.” His eyes drifted over my towel-draped body, and something sparked in them. He let out a low whistle. “Lake’s all ours,” he drawled. “Wanna go skinny-dipping?”

  My nipples hardened, and my skin went all goose-bumpy.

  “Yep,” I said.

  He scooped me up, just like that, and headed for the lake, leaving my room door wide open. I scanned the windows of the motel as he carried me along the dock, glad to see they were all dark.

  I’m all for hot, slick, sweaty sex, but I’m no exhibitionist.

  The lake was black velvet, and splashed with starlight, but the moon was in hiding. Tristan set me on my feet, pulled off the towel, and admired me for a few moments before shedding his own clothes.

  Then he took my hand, and we jumped into the water together.

  When we both surfaced, we kissed. The whole lake rose to a simmer.

  He led me deeper into the shadows, where the water was shallow, over smooth sand, and laid me down.

  We kissed again, and Tristan parted my legs, let me feel his erection. This time, there was no condom. He slid down far enough to taste my breasts, slick with lake water, and I squirmed with anticipation.

  I knew he’d make me wait, and I was right.

  He turned onto his back, half on the beach and half in the water, and arranged me for the first of several mustache rides. Each time I came, I came harder, and he put a hand over my mouth so the whole world wouldn’t know what we were doing.

  Finally, weak with satisfaction, I went down on him in earnest.

  He gave himself up to me, but at the edge of climax, he stopped me, hauled me back up onto his chest, rolled me under him. He entered me, but only partially, and the muscles in
his shoulders and back quivered under my hands as he strained to hold himself in check.

  I lifted my head and caught his right earlobe between my teeth, and he broke. The thrust was so deep and so powerful that it took my breath away.

  I’d thought I was exhausted, spent, with nothing more to give, but he soon proved me wrong. Half a dozen strokes, each one harder than the last, and I was coming apart again. That was when he let himself go.

  I don’t know how long we lay there, with the lake tide splashing over us, but we finally got out of the water, as new and naked as if we’d just been created. Tristan tossed me the towel, and pulled on his jeans. We slipped into my room without a word, made love again under a hot shower, and banged the headboard against the wall twice more before we both fell asleep.

  When I woke up the next morning, he was gone, but there was a note on his pillow.

  “My office. Ten o’clock sharp. After the meeting, expect another mustache ride.”

  Heat washed through me. The man certainly had style.

  I skipped breakfast, too excited to eat, and at ten straight up, I was knocking on Tristan’s office door. The buyers and other owners had already arrived, and were seated around the conference table. Tristan looked downright edible in his slick three-piece suit, and even though he was all business, his eyes promised sweet mayhem the moment we were alone.

  The crotch of my pantyhose felt damp.

  The negotiations went smoothly, and when the deposit checks were passed around, I glanced down and noticed my own name on the pay line, instead of Mom’s.

  “There’s been a mistake,” I told Tristan, in a baffled whisper.

  “No mistake,” he whispered back. “Josie signed the whole shooting match over to you.”

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  The meeting concluded amiably, and in good time. Everybody shook hands and left. Everybody but Tristan and me, that is.

  Tristan loosened his tie.

  I quivered in some very vulnerable places.

  “Ever made love on a conference table?” he asked. He locked the door and pulled the shades.

  “Not recently,” I admitted.