by Gemma Bruce
And there was Hilary, sitting in her box, and Bill, perched on the plank that ran along the back of the nesting boxes. Julie couldn’t help smiling. “Sleeping in? I know just how you feel.” And suddenly she was in a hurry to get back inside. She went outside for the egg basket and collected only three. Pretty soon, she’d have to start buying them at the Buy and Bag.
“Excuse me, miss,” she said and tried to nudge the hen aside. Bill made a guttural sound. Hillary pecked at her hand. “Hey, what’s with you this morning?” She reached back to move Hilary. Bill spread his wings in what she had come to recognize as fighting posture. She dropped her hand and cocked her head at him.
“Let me get this straight. There’s an egg in there and you want to start a family.”
Bill settled back on his perch. Hillary began to peck at her neck feathers. Julie looked at the three eggs in her basket. How many eggs did a person need? But what was she going to do with a baby chick? She had no incubator, and no idea of how to care for it. Wes hadn’t left instructions for starting a family. How long did it take for a chicken to hatch anyway? She might not even be here to see it happen.
And she would really miss not being a part of that. “Oh hell,” she said. “You have a reprieve until I consult with Maude.” She took her three eggs and walked back down the aisle. At the door she turned back for a final look. Bill had hopped off the perch and was sitting beside Hilary, his wing draped protectively over her.
“No way,” said Julie. She was definitely spending too much time with chickens.
She sent everyone else inside a few minutes later. She had to carry Ernestine up the ramp, protesting. “I’m sorry, Ernie, but it’s too cold for either of us to be outside, and you’re not, I repeat, not coming into the house. I’ll see you this evening.”
She closed up the gazebo, double-checked the door, shut the mesh fence and called to Smitty who came loping out of the woods.
“Breakfast,” she said.
Smitty bounded up the steps and into the house. The way to a man’s heart, she thought, then looked down at the basket of eggs. “Hmmm,” she said and closed the door.
The bedroom door opened and Cas smelled coffee. He smiled and opened his eyes. Julie carried a tray of dishes and a coffeepot into the room and set it on the bedside table.
Cas grabbed her wrist, pulled her down on the bed, and kissed her long and sweet.
“Is that because I made breakfast?” she asked, her eyes twinkling.
“One of the reasons,” said Cas. “But I brought dessert.” He placed her hand on the sheet above his growing erection. Her fingers closed around it and he lifted into her.
“Eat up,” said Julie. “I have a sweet tooth this morning.” She placed the tray on the bed and went into the bathroom. “And Ernestine is back,” she said over the sound of rushing water. “It’s like a miracle. She was there with all the others. I can hardly believe it.”
“That’s great,” said Cas. All back and accounted for and his ass was off the line. Feeling infinitely relieved, not to mention randy as hell, he poured coffee and listened expectantly as the tub filled with water.
“You’d better be planning for both of us to be in there,” he said.
She poked her head around the door. “I do.”
Cas sighed. If he could only figure out how to get her to say those two little words in front of a minister.
They ate while Julie talked about Ernestine and a hen called Hillary, who was hatching an egg. When Cas couldn’t wait any longer, he poked a piece of toast in Julie’s mouth and said, “Come on.”
The tub was filled to the top. Julie turned on the Jacuzzi jets and climbed in. Water splashed onto the floor. Cas climbed in after her, easing himself down into the water. Instead of relaxing his erection, a jet of water pushed against it and sent it into ready mode. He eased Julie over and lay down beside her.
“Wes sure knew how to buy a Jacuzzi,” said Julie, trailing her hand down his chest to his navel.
He captured her hand and brought it to his lips. “And you sure know how to use one.” He released her hand. It floated back down his body until it found home.
Cas turned into her, pulled her close. Her body slid against him as the water churned around them. And Cas thought about how it would be when Julie was his wife and they lived on the shore. Then he stopped thinking and he and Julie sailed away.
It was past noon when they bundled up and went for a walk in the woods.
“Don’t you have to check in at the station or something?” Julie asked when Cas suggested some exercise besides the kind they’d engaged in all morning.
“Already did,” he said and held up his cell phone before slipping it into his jacket pocket. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Of course not,” said Julie. Just the opposite. She’d like him to stay—forever.
That kind of thinking, she told herself, leads to heartbreak, so don’t even go there.
They fell in step together, Smitty trotting happily beside them, venturing off to explore and coming back again. He seemed so content that Julie hated to think of him living in a city apartment again. Actually she was feeling a little sorry for herself for the same reasons.
But the magic of the woods soon made her forget the future as the past rose up to meet them everywhere they looked. They stopped at the same places and remembered the same things from their childhood and as they walked deeper into the woods, Julie felt closer to Cas than ever. Now was the time to tell him about being a cop.
She took a deep breath, but Cas suddenly let go of her hand and disappeared through the trees. Soon his voice echoed back to her. “Come here, look at this.”
She stepped into the woods, looking for a path and only found more trees and a lot of underbrush. “Cas?”
“Over here.”
She followed the sound of his voice, but before she reached him, she knew where he’d be. The old chimney, the only thing left standing of an ancient barbecue and where Cas and she had spent many happy hours talking, dreaming and playing cowboys and Indians.
Sure enough, she stepped out into a small opening and Cas met her, grinning. “Remember this?”
“I was a captive Indian maiden here more times than I can remember.”
“Yeah,” said Cas, reminiscently.
“You used to look up my shorts and peek at my underwear.”
“Yeah,” said Cas, his grin broadening. “Too bad we don’t have a rope. We could go back to the house and get one.”
“I don’t think so.” Julie looked around at the wobbly brick chimney, leafless vines entwining it like Cas had entwined her so many years before. She shivered, thinking it must be symbolic of something, but she wasn’t sure what.
She stepped closer and frozen leaves crunched beneath her feet. He grabbed her as she neared him, pulled her up against the chimney, and pressed his body into hers. “But this is what I should have been doing instead.” He kissed her. It was slow and thorough and lasted until their cold lips warmed and heat surrounded them.
“That would have been a little perverse,” she said, breathless from the kiss and from the thought of being tied up and made love to. “The first time you tied me up, I think you were eight and I was six.”
“Foreplay,” he said. “A really long foreplay. Come on.”
He held her hand and they crashed through the trees and came to another spot where they had played, the old smokehouse. It had been falling down then, now only the foundation remained.
“It looks like there was a fire,” said Cas.
“Hmmm,” said Julie. She was remembering Wes telling them how during the Civil War, when Ex Falls had been a thriving town, manufacturing rifles for the Union army, all the families would bring hams to the smokehouse for curing. Then they’d load them onto a wagon and drive to Gettysburg, so their boys would have food to eat. She always felt sad to think of how many of those men and boys never returned.
She’d imagined herself walking among the troop
s, handing out slices of ham, like Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton, only she would be giving a gift of home. Maybe Cas would have been one of the soldiers, and he’d see her and say, “Julie, you’re a godsend,” because that’s how they talked in those days.
So much waste. No one even remembered the names of the dead. The monument in the square had fallen over years before and had broken into smithereens. The pieces had been sitting in the basement of the library ever since. And if the bodies made it home to the Good Shepherd Cemetery, they were long forgotten. Like Josiah Excelsior. Maybe Wes was in heaven entertaining the troops with his jokes.
“What?” asked Cas.
Julie shook her head. “I was just thinking about how things change. The smokehouse left to crumble when it should be a landmark. With a little bronze plaque that says, This smokehouse fed the Union army.”
“Where did that come from?”
“I was just remembering the story Wes used to tell us.”
“Oh, right. About the hams. I remember. I guess it’s a case of ‘to every season,’ et cetera.”
Julie sighed. “Yeah.” They stood looking at the ruins and Julie thought, this is the perfect time to tell him about your life.
But Cas said, “Come on. It’s kind of depressing here.”
They circled back through the woods and across the orchard, pausing now and then to try to remember which tree Cas had fallen out of. On the other side they slid down the incline to the dirt path that would become Hillcrest Drive.
As they reached the asphalt, an old black Buick turned right out of the Reynolds’s driveway. Julie stepped back.
Cas laughed. “It’s only Larue. Going for more vermouth, probably.”
They turned up Wes’s driveway and stopped at the pond, now completely frozen over. “It will snow soon,” said Cas. He sat down on one of the rocks where they’d once fished and pulled her down to sit beside him.
“I know. I’ll have to get going before I get snowed in.”
Cas frowned at her, then his expression cleared. “The county owns a snow plow these days. They keep the roads pretty clear.”
“Oh.” Julie looked out across the pond.
“When do you have to go back to work?”
This was the time to come clean. She swallowed. “W-e-l-l ...”
Chapter 18
She told him about being a department store clerk. It wasn’t entirely a lie. She had sold cosmetics in Lord and Taylor her junior year at CUNY.
“But that seemed like a dead end, so I, uh, enrolled in school, took the test and ... went to work for the city.”
Cas smiled.
“What?”
“I’m trying to picture you as a civil servant.”
“What’s wrong with that?” asked Julie, bristling.
“Nothing. I’m one myself for the moment. Is that why you have that big—”
“I’m freezing. Let’s go back to the house.” Julie stood up. At least she was getting closer to the truth.
They returned to the house, hand in hand, and it felt so right, that Julie convinced herself that it didn’t matter that she’d not been totally forthcoming. It was a start.
They fed and watered the chickens early, then went inside. Julie put water on for spaghetti and shredded lettuce for a salad, while Cas replaced the kitchen light, refitted the door knob, and built a fire in the parlor fireplace.
They ate dinner on the hearth rug, watching the flames. Then they played scrabble while Smitty snored beside them, and when it was time for bed, Cas was still there.
When the fire was banked, the doors locked, the lights turned off, they went upstairs. And Julie thought, I could get used to this. This is the way it should be.
They stopped at the door to the bedroom and Cas kissed her, and for a moment Julie panicked, thinking he’d changed his mind about staying.
But before she could smack herself for being so pathetic, he opened the door and guided her through. She heard Smitty hunker down outside. He was already used to the routine and that made a flutter pass over her heart. Not a good thing. She was going to get hurt again. All it would take was a phone call to shatter everything. He would run off again and it would be her own damn fault for letting it get started in the first place.
But when Cas’s fingers begin to pull up the waistband of her sweater, she forgot about the future, good or bad, and gave in to the sensation of his fingers on her skin. Chills ran up her arms and back as he pulled the sweater over her head. She closed her eyes and arched her back, waiting for that incredible moment when he touched her breasts, breasts that were already tingling in anticipation. But his hands moved to her waist and held her lightly in his grasp.
She opened her eyes to see him standing at arm’s length, looking at her. She smiled, tentatively. “What?” Her voice was breathy and expectant. She wanted him. Really, really wanted him.
He shook his head, not answering, but continued to gaze at her, her face, her neck, her breasts. His hands slid up her back and unclasped her bra. Then he slowly pulled the straps down her arms with the tips of his fingers, barely touching her skin.
Her bra fell to the floor and he looked his fill. Julie’s mouth felt dry and she ran her tongue along her lower lip to moisten it.
“Okay, that does it,” said Cas and yanked his sweater off. “I wanted to go slow, savor the moment, but hell, when you do that with your tongue ...” He tore open his jeans and pushed them down his legs. His cock sprang into the air, dusky and hard and ready.
Julie feasted on the sight, then gave a quiet laugh.
“What?” asked Cas.
Julie unbuttoned her jeans and wriggled them down her hips. Cas’s erection jumped to attention. “I was thinking that your cock goes so well with the décor.”
He grinned, then groaned, and pulled her onto the bed.
“I might say the same for you,” he said moments later, his mouth poised between her legs. He opened her with his fingers. “This is pink.” And he licked the spot that made her gasp, then he circled it with his tongue, then took it between his lips and sucked.
“Oh God, Cas.” She felt his breath on her and it felt too good. He circled her again and drove his tongue inside her, then came back to circle her again. She came before she could stop herself, bucking with the violence of her contractions. Cas gripped her butt and sucked her while she rocked and cried out, again and again.
Finally, she became aware of Smitty whining in the hall and pawing the door. She fell back. Cas turned his cheek to rest on her stomach. “He thinks I’m molesting you,” he said, breathing hard.
“You are.” She lifted her shoulders until she could pull him up by his armpits. “Now I’m going to molest you.”
Cas was jolted out of a deep sleep by the ringing of a phone. His cell phone. He moved Julie aside and crawled over her to reach his jeans. He flipped his phone open and saw Terrence’s number. Damn.
“Cas here.”
“Edith just called me,” rumbled Terrence. “There’s a robbery in progress at the Vales, 20 Halbeck Lane. I’m heading over there now. Thought you’d want to know.”
“I’m on my way,” said Cas and flipped his phone off. Then he remembered his car was parked four long, steep blocks away. Damn.
Julie sat up. “Whatisit?” She sounded groggy and sated. Cas had to make himself not crawl back into bed and keep her that way.
“A robbery in progress,” he said, pulling on his T-shirt and looking for his socks.
“Robbery?” She jolted upright, propelled herself across the bed, and reached for him. Cas automatically stepped back.
But she wasn’t reaching for him. She pulled out the drawer of the bedside table and brought out her gun. At the same time, she dropped her feet to the floor and stood up.
“What are you doing?” said Cas, staring at the weapon.
Julie looked down at it like she’d never seen it before, then she looked at him. “I—uh—”
And Cas got a weird sinking feeling in
the pit of his stomach. Their eyes met. Hers shifted away and suspicion wrapped around his heart. She slept with a gun next to her pillow and her first reaction was to reach for it. Even groggy with sleep, she was prepared to use it. Was she afraid? Had someone hurt her? He wouldn’t let anyone hurt her again. He shook himself. He had to go.
“I—thought—that you might need this.” She slowly handed it toward him. “You don’t have yours here.”
“No, but I do need your car.” He headed for the door.
“Keys on the kitchen table.”
He looked over his shoulder at her. She was still holding the gun but now she was holding her jeans in her free hand. “Put the gun away,” he said firmly.
“I’m coming with you.” She stepped into her jeans, while still holding the gun.
“No, you’re not. Put it away.”
“What? Oh.” She dropped it back into the drawer and shoved the drawer shut.
“I’ll be back.” He opened the door, turned and tripped over Smitty who was still sleeping in the doorway. “Dammit,” he said, as he regained his balance and ran down the hall to the stairs. Smitty lumbered to his feet and followed him downstairs.
“Take Smitty with you.” Julie called after him.
He found the keys and when he reached the front door, Smitty was waiting for him.
“No, Smitty,” he said, pushing the dog aside. “You stay here and protect Julie.”
He eased out the door into the night. A minute later, he was chugging down the hill toward Halbeck Lane. His fingers gripped the steering wheel. His jaw was clenched so hard that his teeth hurt. Not from tension or adrenaline, but because of Julie’s reaction. There was something major she hadn’t told him.
And here he’d been, congratulating himself on finally getting her to open up. Yesterday had seemed so perfect that he’d actually begun to think ... what was she hiding? What was she afraid of? An old boyfriend, or was it part of her job? The thought sent a chill through his bloodstream. When she said she worked for the city, he’d just assumed she meant as a stenographer or clerk. But she might—no, it was too preposterous. Then again she was pretty damn good at self-defense.