Then she saw the flowers. They stood on the kitchen table in the deep blue springwater bottle she had taken from a trash can at the Bicentennial Bash. There were three black-eyed Susans. She loved black-eyed Susans.
She looked around, ran from kitchen to hall to parlor to hall to kitchen, but there was no sign of him.
Then she heard the motorcycle. She ran to the door to see him pull up at the steps, but he didn’t dismount. Only the helmet came off. He looked unsure.
“I keep leaving and coming back, leaving and coming back,” he said. “If I had any sense I’d have been through the next state by now.” He searched her face. “Didn’t get past the next county.”
Ask him why, Jenny told herself, then changed her mind because she didn’t want him to even think about why he had felt he had to leave.
She needed him to stay.
Ask how he is. Ask how he slept. Ask if he ran into traffic, or when he ate last, or if he’s hungry. Ask him in, for God’s sake.
“I brought you flowers,” he said. “I looked at roses and lilies, but the black-eyed Susans were the best. Maybe it’s the country boy in me.”
They’re beautiful, she thought but was afraid to say it aloud, afraid to say anything aloud lest he vanish again.
He was biting the corner of his mouth. “I keep thinking about you. You’re different from other women I’ve known. That makes you interesting. It started with your hair. I’ve never seen hair like that. Or freckles.”
“They’re awful.”
“They’re beautiful!”
“No.”
“Yes. And there’s more. I’ve never met a woman— not since I left home, and that was a lifetime ago— never met a woman who’d take her life in her hands to climb up on a roof for the sheer joy of owning the view.”
“People here think I’m crazy.”
“If being crazy means you think for yourself, I’m all for it. I’ve known a lot of people who do just what’s expected of them, and they’ve been boring as hell. You’re an individual. You look out for yourself, instead of sitting back and needing others to do for you. That’s what I hated most back home.”
Jenny wanted to hear more. “What did you hate most?”
He smiled, shook his head. “You first. Why do you live alone?”
She took a careful breath. “Who would I live with?”
“A husband.”
“There’s no husband.” There never would be as long as Darden lived. He had sworn it. He had sworn that the only thing keeping him alive in prison was the thought of coming home to her. He had said she owed it to him, and maybe he was right. But it was sick, sick, sick.
“Where’s your father?”
“Up north.”
“That his truck behind the garage?” She nodded. “His Buick inside the garage?” She nodded again. “Why don’t you drive it?”
“I don’t have my license.”
“Why not?”
“There was lots going on, and I just kind of forgot. But it’s okay. I can walk everywhere in town, and there are buses that go most other places. So what did you hate most at home?”
“How did your mother die?”
She couldn’t answer. “What did you hate most at home?”
He gave in. “People who were leaners.”
“It’s a luxury, leaning. Nice, sometimes.”
“Sometimes, but not all the time. You have to do things in life.” He pulled in a breath. “Not that I’m one to talk.”
“Why not?”
“Well, look at me, riding around, halfway between here and there, without the guts to do what I have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Go home.” He gave her a startled smile, teeth white amid all that dark stubble. “Weird. I don’t usually tell people my faults, but you just pull it out of me.”
She got scared. “I don’t mean to. It’s nothing, really. I’ll forget what you said, and you don’t have to say anything more. I wasn’t trying to be nosy, it’s just that you’re here and you’re interesting, too, and it’s been the longest time since anyone’s talked to me like this—”
She stopped short, unable to believe what she’d said. Now he would know how pathetic and lonely and desperate she was.
But he was smiling. “Make you a deal?”
She was afraid to hope. “What kind?”
“Another home-cooked meal in exchange for anything your heart desires.”
“I don’t think you should offer that.”
“Why not?”
“I might accept.”
He considered that. He studied the helmet for a while. He climbed off the motorcycle, set the helmet on the seat, and kept his back to her for another minute. Then he turned and came toward her.
She had her hand on the screen. When he reached toward it, her heart leapt into her throat. He touched a knuckle to her palm and brushed it lightly through the wire mesh. Watching the small movement, he said, “The offer stands. There’s nothing you can ask that I don’t have it in me to give, at least today. I can’t tell what’ll be tomorrow or the day after that. I’m not good at long-term promises. You’re the one who ought to be thinking twice. I said that before. My record is lousy. I have a way of disappearing when the going gets rocky. People damn me for that.”
“Then here’s your chance at redemption,” she said, but lost the ability to say anything more when his eyes climbed the screen and caught hers— warm, inviting eyes like she had never seen before, sending heat tumbling down her face to her throat to her chest, caressing her heart for a bit before landing in her belly.
He looked at her mouth. “Dangerous,” he whispered. “Do you know what I want?”
He wanted sex. Sex with a man like Pete would be breathtakingly beautiful.
She opened the screen. He stepped through and stood before her, so tall that she had to look up, so broad that she felt sheltered. She was all hot inside, hot and trembly, just like the magazines said she would feel when the man was right.
He was going to kiss her. She knew it. And she was suddenly scared, afraid that the good feelings would die. But she needed him. He was all she had left. He was her only, only hope of escape.
His mouth touched hers. She stiffened against the smothering, but it didn’t come. No smothering, no sickness, no terror. Just gentleness and lightness and— this was new— wanting more.
But he was bent on whispering— kissing, sucking, nibbling, all in whispers. He didn’t ask a thing in return, which was good. Jenny couldn’t have produced, if her life had depended on it. She was too taken with the newness of what she felt to do a thing but stand there, lock-kneed, with her eyes closed, her head back, her lips parted.
She was wondering what else in those magazines was true, when he released her and took a breath. He drew himself up to his full height. He let his head loll back and took another breath.
Jenny steadied herself against the wall with her chin tucked low and waited for him to say something dark and mean. When it didn’t come, she dared a look. He was smiling.
“See?” he said. “That was interesting. And we’re still dressed.”
She swallowed. He was so cool. She had to get him to stay. “We don’t have to be.”
He just smiled and brushed his thumb over her freckles. “There’s time.”
Jenny’s heart positively melted. Pete was everything she had always dreamed a man could be. She thought of pinching herself to make sure he was real, but how could such a large physical presence not be real? Looking up at him, feeling the caring in his smile, she knew for the first time what it meant to be in love and want to give and give and give to a man. Unfortunately, her assets were slim.
“Do you like chicken fajitas?” she asked.
“I love chicken fajitas.”
“I made them for a party, but I made too many, so there’s lots in the freezer. They’ll fry up nice, unless you’d rather have little beef Wellingtons—”
“Chicken fajitas.”
/> She smiled. “Good choice.”
“Do that again, that little smile.”
“What little smile?”
“That one. It lights you up.”
“Makes my freckles pop, more likely.”
“Makes you look happy.”
She was happy.
Then the phone rang and she froze. Nothing good came from phone calls to Jenny. Ever.
She wanted to let it ring, but if it was Darden, there would be no end to his questions about where she’d been and what she’d been doing and why she hadn’t been at the phone.
“Hello?”
“It’s Dan. I got a problem here, MaryBeth. Old Nick Farina’s raisin’ a ruckus, something about your stealing flowers from him. Now, I know there’s an explanation, only he wasn’t listening to me. He kept telling me I had to drive over there and look into the charge. He says you stole black-eyed Susans from his yard. Did you?”
“Why would I do that?”
“That’s what I asked him. There are black-eyed Susans growing wild all over the place. He swears he saw you picking three big ones right there in his yard.”
“I was on the road. There’s no other way to come home from work but past his house.”
“I told him that.” Dan sighed. “I’ll tell him I talked with you, okay, but be prepared. He’s apt to give you the what-all when you go past there tomorrow.”
Jenny thanked him for the warning and hung up the phone. She turned around and caught her breath, then gave Pete a big smile, because he was still there. That made her happy again. “Want a beer while I cook?”
“Sure.”
She took a Sam Adams from the fridge— another bottle would never be missed— and passed it to him. Then she opened the freezer. In no time she had the makings for fajitas sizzling in a big iron skillet and salsa bubbling in a saucepan and tortillas heating in the oven, and she didn’t drop a thing, because she wasn’t nervous. Pete was like no one she had ever known. While she cooked, he sat peacefully, just watching her, like there was pleasure in that alone. He didn’t make her self-conscious. He didn’t ask her questions she didn’t want to answer, didn’t swear or threaten revenge. He kept offering to help her cook, and she kept refusing, and it got so they were laughing about it, but the laughing was easy, too. The laughing was wonderful! She suddenly realized that she felt relaxed, for her a new sensation.
They had finished eating and were sitting across from each other, letting the food settle, when she started feeling shy about the choice she had to make. What did her heart desire in exchange for a meal? She couldn’t begin to choose.
So she asked, “Why did you say you were selfish?” When he frowned, she said, “Last night. When I invited you in. You said you were selfish, lonely or not.”
It was a minute before he responded. “I haven’t been nice.”
“To your family?”
He looked pained. “I was the oldest of the kids. The whole time I was growing up I had more responsibility than the others. My dad dumped it on me, said I had to set an example for the younger ones. I hated it. So when I had a chance to go to college, I took it and went as far away as I could. I figured the others could learn to do the work, just like I’d had to. And they did. Only there were some troubles along the way, and I didn’t help. I got great at not returning calls.”
“Why?” Jenny asked. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, kept studying him. She liked the way he flexed a hand, strong but no threat. Same with the forearm beneath his rolled-up sleeve— strong but no threat. Even the way his brows drew together indicated wisdom.
“For a while I was just plain angry,” he said. “I was convinced I’d earned the right to a little freedom. I didn’t want to hear their worries and be drawn in. I didn’t want to say no or feel guilty when I did. I didn’t want to have to have the answers. Now I really don’t have the answers. I’m, like, paralyzed.”
“Like you want to go back, but you can’t get yourself to do it.”
“Exactly.”
“Like you know what you have to do. You’ve listed all the reasons, and other people have, too, but still you can’t leave.”
“Yeah!”
“Like out of all the choices you have only one makes sense, but to make that one choice is so much harder.”
He seemed amazed. “You understand.”
Oh, she did. She knew about paralysis, and about deceit and guilt.
“How did your mother die?” he asked.
“An accident.”
“Were you and she close?”
Jenny shook her head. “I wasn’t the boy she wanted. She had one before me, but he died when he was little. I was supposed to replace him, only I came out a girl. She never liked me.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“It’s true, and for more reasons than that.”
“What reasons?”
But Jenny had already said too much. She looked at her hands. “I have nothing to give you.”
Pete drew her eyes back up with a laugh. “You make a mean fajita,” he said. He planted his elbows on the table, warmed the chill from her with his eyes— long, dark lashes to die for— and gave her a crooked grin that made her melt. “So, what’ll it be? What’s your heart’s desire?”
To stay here, right here, right now. To frame the look on your face and hang it on the mirror over all those party invitations I stole. To freeze-dry this moment and put it away for the time when… the time when…
“A ride,” she said. “There’s a twisty road up in the mountains. Nebanonic Trail. It takes your breath when you’re going fast.”
“You’ve done it before?”
“No.” Darden wouldn’t take her when she was little, and there had been no one to take her later. But she heard what the kids said in town, and many times she had dreamed of going there.
Pete slapped his hands on the table and rose. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Eleven
Two hours later, Jenny still wasn’t ready to go inside. Back at her house, she lay in a tent of drooping pine boughs in the night-dark backyard, and relived the exhilaration of Nebanonic Trail. All the things she had heard over the years were true. The Trail was as scary as it was breathtakingly exciting. On Pete’s motorcycle, it had been unbelievable— twenty minutes of leaning into one curve after another, of hugging Pete while the wind whipped and the fog teased and the night held its secrets until the very, very, very last minute, when the bike swerved into a turn or lunged into a dip. The whole time she had felt alive and free and daring. If they had crashed, she would have died happy.
The boughs parted, and Pete appeared. He had to bend over to enter, but rather than straightening once he was inside, he settled on the ground, cross-legged like her. Their knees touched.
Dark as it was, she saw his grin and grinned back. She knew hers was a silly grin, and that her hair was sticking up every which way from the wind, but Pete didn’t seem to mind. If he had, he could have left, could have said something like, “Well, you’ve had your heart’s desire, now it’s time I moved on,” but he hadn’t.
She wanted to thank him for that, and for taking her out on the Trail, so she offered a bit of herself. “This is my special place. I spent hours hiding here when I was little.”
“Hiding?”
“My mother hit me when she was angry. She was angry a lot. I hid here until she cooled off.”
“She made the scars on your legs, didn’t she?” Pete asked.
Jenny took a deep breath and said, “She used her father’s walking stick. It had a brass band around the bottom and screws holding the band on.”
“And she hit you with it? What kind of mother would do that?”
“I made her angry.”
“Okay, so she could have yelled. But to make you bleed? To permanently scar your legs? Someone should have stopped her. Surely someone noticed.”
“I wore long pants. Or high socks.”
“Then your father. He must have known. Why didn’t
he stop her?”
“He had a moving business. Sometimes he was gone for four or five days.”
“He never saw your legs?”
“Well, he did. But it was like he let her get away with it because he felt guilty.”
“About what?”
Jenny’s strength dwindled. She tucked up her legs, put her chin on her knees, and shook her head.
Pete took her hand and held it dangling between them. With each little swing, the past faded… more… more. It helped that she had his fingers to concentrate on. They were blunt tipped, lean, and so real that other things became real, too. Like the size of him and his sturdiness. Like the clean, windy way he smelled. Like the warmth of his skin, the fuzzy tingles in her tummy, and, deeper, a wanting.
She had never felt that wanting before— or the curiosity that came with it, a curiosity about physical things about Pete. Like whether he had hair on his chest, or how dark his nipples were, or whether there were beauty marks on his back. She should have been repulsed by such thoughts, but she wasn’t. Instead, she wondered if he was wondering the same kinds of things about her. He wasn’t calm, not to hear his breathing. But was it sexual longing? Or a deeper something? Or was she imagining the whole thing? She still didn’t know why a man like Pete would want her.
But there he was, moving closer, touching her neck, her throat, the vee of her polo shirt, and she was suddenly on her knees, holding tight to his shoulders, wanting something she couldn’t put a phrase to, because its meaning was so new.
“Tell me,” he whispered. His hands hovered over her breasts. She felt herself swelling toward him, but she couldn’t quite reach— deliberately, maybe, because breasts hurt during sex— which didn’t explain why she ached to feel Pete’s hands on her, didn’t explain it at all.
Feeling confused but driven, she cried, “You can do what you want, anything, it’s really okay, I won’t mind.”
What he did was to slide his arms around her and draw her close, then hold her, just hold her, until she was feeling less frantic. Then he took her down to the ground. She felt the weight of his body on her breasts and belly, even between her legs for too brief an instant to threaten, before he rolled sideways and tucked her under his arm.
Flirting With Pete: A Novel Page 17