Viv came back to reality to find him watching her, his green eyes making a thorough emotional analysis. She tensed immediately and he noted it. J.B. reached out an index finger and gently touched her bottom lip.
She tried to squirm out from under him but she was firmly pinned. "Off," she commanded.
He frowned.
"I have to go to the bathroom," she told him. It was only half a lie. She had to go for breathing room, not for bodily need.
He rolled off her, lying lazily on his side, but continued to evaluate. It raised the little hairs on the back of her neck. The picture of calm, she rounded the corner and closed the door behind her, leaning against it. "You've got a real cute dimple right in the middle of your derriere," he called.
No, I've got a real cute dimple right in the middle of my brain. Because I'm here with you again, naked again, and starting to panic again.
She turned on the water and leaned her hip against the sink. She dug her knuckles into the hollows under her eyes.
Okay. You obviously aren't going to kick him out this time. You have to be civil, even endure a little snuggling.
Shakiness is not an option. So what if he strokes your
hair, tells you you're beautiful? You will not cry. You will not even think about crying.
These are normal things that normal lovers do and say to each other. Now pull yourself together.
Viv flushed the toilet, took a deep breath and straightened her shoulders. She left the bathroom. She sat on the bed, in what she thought was a passable imitation of a relaxed pose.
"Jesus," murmured J.B. "You approach afterglow as though it's boot camp."
"What? What are you talking about?" She faked a yawn and reclined among the brown flowers on the bedspread.
He reached for her and she didn't resist. He rumpled her hair and kissed her temple, drawing her close. She forced a smile. "Mmmm."
The radio was still playing, and J.B. kept time with the music by tapping on her tush. He began to hum and she discovered that he had a very nice baritone. Every muscle in her stomach had knotted, though her body adored the way he touched her.
"Why are you tense, honey?" he asked.
"I'm not tense."
"Yeah, you are. It's obviously time to dance naked again." And he tugged her, protesting, off the bed and led her into a simple, almost waltzlike movement. "What would all your New York friends think if they could see you doin' this? Hmmmm?"
"You have a serious problem with this naked dancing thing, J.B.," she said. "Have you thought about getting help?"
"Uh-huh." He spun her out on his arm and then reeled her back in. "I've entered a twelve-step program, but I just can't get beyond the two-step. Texas Two-Step, that is."
"Very funny."
"I'm a funny guy. And charming, too." He grinned down at her. "There's a lot of women who'd pay to dance with me naked."
"And so modest. Should we all form a line and get some quarters ready?"
"Quarters? More like hundred-dollar bills. After all, I have it on good authority that my performance is impressive ."
"I believe the word was magnificent ," said Viv. "You know, we should order you a T-shirt so you can advertise."
"Word of mouth does me just fine." He kissed her, and as usual, she couldn't help but respond. The song on the radio ended and gave way to an annoying used-car advertisement.
J.B. maneuvered them over to the radio and shut it off. The silence crowded her, like the intimacy.
"What's goin' on in that brain of yours?" he asked. "You tryin' to think up a polite way to kick me out, now that you're done with me?"
She opened her mouth to deny it, but she would have been lying. She said instead, "What makes you think that I'm done with you, Anglin?" She pushed him toward the bed. "My plan is to wear you out until you collapse into a useless heap. Then I'll roll you into the hallway."
But she had a feeling that she was only postponing the inevitable. Eventually she was going to have to face the Dreaded Afterglow.
Eventually turned out to be a lot shorter than she thought. J.B. bounced onto the bed but caught her wrists and pulled her into his lap, hugging her against him. "No more sex for you, darlin', until we have a little chat."
He reached for her wine and put it into her hand. Then he surprised her by turning off the light. They sat in the total darkness afforded by Marv's polyester drapes, Viv frozen and wary.
"In vino veritas," J.B. said, drawling the Latin in his Texas accent. "So chugalug, baby, if that's what it takes."
"What the hell do you want from me?" Her voice sounded metallic and hostile even to her own ears. "My life story? My medical records?"
"I want you to relax," he said.
"I'm sitting in the dark with a crazy man," she retorted. "Would you relax? And why are we in the dark, anyway? We had sex with the lights on."
"I want you to trust me. I want you to talk to me. And the lights are off because I thought it might help. You're different from any other woman I've known, Vivvie. You'll show every inch of skin in broad daylight, but you won't show your heart. You'll have sex, but you won't make love. Why is that?"
"Oh, hell." She tossed back the wine out of sheer frustration. "Are we getting into the semantics of romantics again?"
"What do you mean by semantics? I don't know all your Park Avenue terminology."
"Meanings of words. Hairsplitting. Sex versus making love. Same thing, J.B.! Insert the male into the female. Animals do it all the time. Inseminate and run."
"That's not what just happened here and you know it. Why can't you look at this as a thing of beauty and not science? Why are you reducing making love to crude mechanics?"
"Love," she snorted. "The many-splendored thing. The great eternal"
"Yeah, love ." His voice was hard and uncompromising. "Tenderness. Et cetera. Ever hear of it? Or are divorce attorneys immune?"
"Nice crack about my job again. Of course divorce attorneys aren't immune. I see divorce attorneys get divorced all the time! I've even done a couple of the divorces myself, out of professional courtesy."
"Don't any of them stay together? Come on, they must."
She sighed. "Yeah, but are they happy? J.B., romance may lead to marriage, but marriage kills romance, okay? Romance does not equal love. You're talking about illusion. Temporary blindness."
"You are such a cynic."
"And you are a poor, misguided idealist."
Viv reached for the wine bottle and splashed some more into her cup. She took another mouthful and let it slide down before gesturing with the cup.
"Come on, J.B. Making love ? Are you honestly going to tell me that we're here in this room because you love me? Because I love you?" She laughed.
"I don't know." His tone was quiet but angry. "What do you call it when you can't stop thinking about someone for three years after just one encounter?"
"Obsession. Unhealthy." She got off the bed and paced around it.
"No. I didn't obsess about you. I didn't think about you every day, or spin endless fantasies about you in my head. I went on with my life. But your image, your voice, your smilethey'd drop into my consciousness every once in a while.
"I wondered about you, and what made you tick, and why you'd done what you'd done. Then I wondered if your actions had hurt you, too. Whether you thought about me. Obsession? No. I'm not a nut. I'm not a stalker or a psycho. But I'm not a liar, either. I'm telling you, I feel something here and I think you do, too. But you're treating it lightly and cynically. That pisses me off."
She said nothingjust put the cup to her lips and tipped it back yet again.
"That 'something'," he insisted, "can be fostered. The 'something' is a seed. It can become love. A precious gift. One that you don't look in the mouth."
"J.B., you don't even know me."
"Because you won't share anything."
"What do you want to know? You can't force sharing. That's it's practically oxymoronic."
He was still
and quiet in the darkness.
She drained her cup and set it down with a little hollow plonk . She hesitated and then spoke. "My mother once urged me to write a letter to my father. I think she thought it might remind him of domestic bliss or some such crap, and bring him back. I told her that I had no idea what to write." She wet her lips.
"Mummy said, 'Just share your life with him. Go on. Do it.' And so I chewed on a pencil for a while and wrote about the funny smell of the silver polish, and how I was allowed to taste the party hors d'oeuvres, but only the broken or cracked ones. And how I loved it when Mummy gave holiday parties, because she looked so pretty and wasn't crabby like usual."
J.B. was quiet and didn't interrupt her.
"Well, my mother didn't like what I shared . So she ripped up the letter and told me to write another one, all about ice-skating and pretty holiday lights and hot chocolate. I did. She sent it to him. He never responded."
"I guess you didn't think too highly of sharing after that?"
She shrugged. "I suppose that's a little simplistic, but yes. After that I shared my grades. I shared my school photos. I shared my awards and achievements. But not too many private thoughts. I found that Mummy either edited or invalidated them."
"Who else was around?"
Viv shrugged again. "Gerta, the housekeeper. Various 'uncles' and friends of my mother's."
"What was Gerta like?"
"She was wonderful and warm, used to kiss and hug me all the time. But I think Mummy got jealous of my feelings for her, because she sat me down one day and told me about how 'one' didn't kiss and hug 'the help.' She must have said something to Gerta, too, because after that day the physical affection stopped and Gerta seemed quiet and moody. I think she was petrified that my mother would make a voodoo doll of her and"
"What?"
Viv realized she'd slipped. "Ah, yes. Didn't I tell you that the ex-Lady Shelton, wearing her cashmere pajamas, practices a little black magic? You don't want to make her angry. Ooops. Shouldn't have shared, I see."
"I'm speechless. You're not saying it works, are you?"
"Well, that's the creepy part. It does."
"God Almighty." He didn't seem to want to know any more.
She supposed that was understandable. Viv thought about J.B.'s mom, who seemed sweet and normal and actually cooked. Mrs. Anglin looked like she gave good hugs. She wasn't rail thin, with bones that clacked together when she moved, like Anna Shelton. J.B.'s mom had probably been the nurturing type, praising his every action.
And he seemed to be a lot like her. Her heart melted again as she reflected that it wasn't every guy who'd wheel and deal a woman out of jail with pies and casseroles. And plan on seeing the bargain through even after she'd stolen his truck
"Viv," he said, "come 'ere. Your parents may have put the 'fun' in 'dysfunction' but not all marriages are like that. I wish you could have seen my parents. And you should see my friend Alex's parents. His mom's lost half her mind to Alzheimer's, but she and his father are still in love."
She didn't respond.
"Look. I don't know what I feel for you. And you don't have to be in love with me. The bottom line is that I actually did come up here partly to get my revenge. But that urge is gone now.
"The urge that isn't gone is this: I want to show you that you've been missing out on the best part of sex, Vivvie. And it's not the lust or the climax. It's the unspoken connection between two people. It's the harmony of skin on skin and the pleasure of giving someone else pleasure; it's the sharing. Maybe you hate that word, but it fits."
J.B. had walked to her in the darkness, and now he actually picked her up and carried her back to the bed, while her heart moved into her throat and she almost gagged on it. She was paralyzed by his sweetness, not knowing how to accept it.
He settled them onto the bed, his arms around her, and tucked her head under his chin. She tried not to hyperventilate.
He stroked her hair and kissed it and murmured nonsense to her: sweet, comforting nonsense. The words ran together in her mind, but the sentiment got through. Still
"What if I don't know how to share, J.B.?"
"Ssshhhh. Sure you do."
"No I snatch before anything can be shared, because I'm afraid it'll be taken away."
"We're sharing right now, baby. We're sharing right now: space, and breath and comfort."
Is this man even real? Or have I gone mad and conjured him ? Emotion drowned her, but she didn't dare reveal it. She ate her sobs whole without a single spasm, but the section of pillow under her eyes got soaked. She fell asleep in his arms.
* * *
Chapter Sixteen
Vivien awoke to a tinny little refrain from a rock song, repeated over and over. It took her a moment to realize that it was J.B.'s cell phone, and that they'd been asleep for
She squinted at the clock radio. One a.m.? Not possible. They'd slept for hours. She'd she'd actually snuggled with the man. It had been nice. Better than nice. So why was the panic rising in her again at the sight of him, relaxed and rumpled on her bed?
You've been missing out on the best part of sex, Vivvie. And it's not the lust or the climax. It's the unspoken connection between two people.
His words echoed in her mind. Yeah, but the problem is that the connection doesn't last, or it gets old and moldy and you end up breaking it anyway. I don't want to get used to this. I'll only miss it so much it might kill me .
The tenderness and affection was all great and wonderful, except that it snuck up on you, caught you unawares and made you vulnerable as hell. That vulnerability equaled messy emotions and then eventual victimization.
I refuse to be a victim. It is just not my style.
So she yawned and stretched and said, "Good thing we woke up. I'm a thrasher and a blanket thief, and I'm sure you'd be more comfortable at home." She got up and threw a long T-shirt over her nakedness while J.B. eyed her with an inscrutable expression.
Had the man really talked to her about love? When she lived in Manhattan and he lived in the Texas Hill Country? He was such a sweet, old-fashioned idealistnothing like the New York men who, as she did, gave ninety-seven percent to their careers and just got in a quick encounter when they could.
J.B. was hot. He was truly gifted in bed. But he was an alien. He may as well have been green with little antennae.
Uh-oh . And right now it looked as if he was one pissed-off alien. His face darkened, his brows drawing together and his mouth thinning. "You're kicking me out."
"I'm not kicking you out. I just"
"You used me all over again."
"sleep better alone, that's all. And you will, too."
"Unbelievable! I'm so done trying" J.B.'s cell phone rang again. Without another word, he picked it up and answered it. "Yeah." His face remained impassive as he listened.
It took Viv about three seconds to figure out who would be calling him at one a.m. J.B. wasn't the type to have a girlfriend on the side. It had to be his ex-wife.
"Get a broom," he said.
A broom?
"You can use a broom just as well as I can, Co rinne. And that creature is a lot more scared of you than you are of it." He ran an impatient hand through his hair.
"I'm out," he said. And then, "Does that really concern you?" He sighed. "Well, how about you? I'm sure there are other people you can call."
The completely unjustified green coil of jealousy came back and took root in Viv's stomach as he spoke to the unknown Corinne. Suddenly she hated the woman with a violence that shocked her.
"Yeah. I'm such a goddamned nice guy. That's why I get used ." He shot a glare in Vivien's direction. Then his face softened and his tone gentled. "Okay, okay. I'm sorry. Just close the kitchen door. I'll be right there." He hung up.
"What was that all about?" Viv asked, as he tugged on his boxers and jeans.
"There's a rat in my ex's kitchen."
"She calls you at one a.m. and you come running?"
"What do yo
u care?" He pulled on his shirt and rounded up his socks.
Whether justified or not, her anger grew. "You've just spent the entire evening with me, and now you're going to her? I don't believe this!"
He shoved his foot into one sock and shot her a scathing glance. "Oh, no, darlin'. You are not allowed to get territorial now . You had your chance. And you made it crystal clear that you weren't taking it. May I remind you that you were in the process of kicking me out when my damn cell phone rang? You've got a nerve, woman." He got his foot into the other sock and jammed on his boots.
She just stood there with her mouth open. What could she say? How had she gotten herself into this, anyway?
J.B. stalked to the door and opened it, his expression bitter. "What the hell better do I have to do?"
J.B. drove away from Marv's Motor Inn too fast, trying to leave Viv, his conflicting emotions about her, and the tasteless neon COUNT SHEEP FOR CHEAP sign behind. From Main, he took South Adams toward Kerrville and turned off at the winding entrance to what had once been his home. Two minutes later he sat in the driveway, looking forward more to seeing the rat than Corinne.
He sighed and got out of the truck, remembering how they'd looked at endless plans and blueprints, chosen a special oversized lot and paid a hefty sum for the house to be built out of Texas white limestone. He'd been so sure he would have children in this house, grow old in it, perhaps even die in it if he was lucky and went in his sleep.
He looked at the place now with regret tinged by growing indifference. As he climbed the steps to the front walkway, he bent to pull a few weeds from between the concrete slabs, but then straightened without doing so. It was her problem to deal with the weeds. It was her house.
His boots scuffed a couple of times on his route to the door, he guessed because he was dragging his feet. Impatient with himself, he jammed his index finger onto the bell.
She opened the door wearing very short satin tap pants and a very skimpy matching camisole, her hair tumbled ingenuously around her bare shoulders.
First Dance - [Bridesmaid's Chronicles 03] Page 15