Baby, I'll Find You

by Jennifer Skully

  “Yes, the attic.” He let her go, but she still felt the heat of his touch as she entered the spare room.

  Empty coat hangers rattled on the rack after she’d pushed them aside to open the door at one end of the closet. Dank, musty air whooshed out at her as she flipped the light switch. Just in case there wasn’t enough light upstairs, she grabbed the flashlight hanging from a wall hook. Stooping to get through, she discovered she could stand straight on the steep stairway.

  I don’t believe in spooks. She didn’t say it aloud, but she did consider letting Cole go first, except then he’d know she was a total chicken. The stairwell was free of cobwebs, thank God, and as long as she didn’t feel anything crawling, she’d be fine. Midpoint, the stairs turned, and she ducked beneath a low beam into the attic proper.

  Whack. “Oof.” Cole hadn’t seen the beam.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Maybe you should turn on the flashlight and find the lights.”

  The dormer windows at both ends provided only dim illumination, but enough to see two rows of light bulbs strung end-to-end. Running the flashlight beam across the two-by-fours, she found the switch.

  “Mouse droppings,” Cole said, pointing along the attic floor. “There’s your culprit.”

  She leaned closer and caught a whiff of him, which was so much nicer than the musty scent, and a lot better than mouse droppings. “Mice would make a soft scrabbling sound. This was louder. Heavier.”

  He tipped his head, his pupils dilating in the murky light. “How big do you expect these rats to be?”

  She backed up a step because she’d been scenting him like a cat in heat. “I have no idea.”

  “There’s nothing up here.”

  She turned and flashed the Maglite over the large room. “Isadora will feel better knowing we checked it out.”

  “So it’s all about making Isadora feel better?”

  What was he getting at? “Of course.” She certainly wasn’t going to ask. “Hey, look at all this stuff up here.” When Isadora said there was a bunch of junk, she meant it.

  Old steamer trunks, cloth-draped furniture, stacks of sagging cardboard boxes, paintings leaning against each other, piles of yellowed newspapers, chairs without seats, an old needlework stand with its petit-point already stitched, World War Two vintage suitcases. Newer items had been shoved in haphazardly; a white wicker bassinette, the plastic peeling off the top, out-of-date stereo equipment, a reel-to-reel tape player, the reels cracked, the tape snapped.

  Some things had been covered with old sheets that had long since slipped off. Dust coated everything, some in thick layers that hadn’t been touched in years, others with a faded memory of the last time someone had ventured up here.

  “It’s like the Antiques Roadshow where you take old junk and find out its worth millions.” She wanted to touch everything. It was a thrift store or garage sale raised to the power of ten. She turned in a circle. “This is so cool.”

  Cole fanned a stack of newspapers, dust puffing out to float in the air before settling once again. “It’s a fire hazard.”

  “Said just like a guy with no—” She stopped. Just like a guy with no soul. She knew damn well Cole had a soul, a once-bright, soaring-to-the-heavens soul, now tortured by his daughter’s death. “No sense of adventure,” she finished.

  “Is there a Ouija board?” He wandered idly through the cramped, makeshift aisles, dragging his finger through the dust, then blowing it off with a breath.

  How did he switch on and off? He’d kissed her until she saw stars, then he’d given her the cold shoulder and offended Andrea. Now this. Playful and...seductive. Yes, that voice seduced her as did his slow, inexorable procession to where she stood.

  His closeness made her breath come a little faster. She backed away, pointing. “Let’s look in the steamer trunks. When did they stop using them?”

  He followed. “When people stopped steaming across the Atlantic in boats. After the Titanic went down.”

  Lifting the lid, she added her fingerprints to the smudged dust on the trunk. “It was long after the Titanic. People were still crossing the Atlantic on luxury liners in the fifties. It was too expensive to fly.” She was thinking about the classic movie An Affair to Remember. Wasn’t that made in the fifties?

  “An old wedding dress,” he said, looking down, his hand on the side of the lid, holding it open.

  Pearls had been stitched to the bodice, but now many had torn loose, and the lace was ripped. It hadn’t been packed carefully, but literally stuffed into the trunk with old framed photographs, picture albums, a wooden rolling pin, and a bunch of other stuff. She wouldn’t use the word junk because a person’s photographs could never be junk. When Nanette lost her cell phone, it wasn’t the phone numbers or the phone itself she cared about, but the pictures she’d taken with the camera and hadn’t downloaded yet, the sweet text messages she’d gotten from her girls and never erased.

  Tugging an album from beneath the old rolling pin, she flipped it open. “Oh my God, that’s Isadora.” She’d been beautiful in her youth, especially with the wild bouffant and a baby in her arms. Jami held it for Cole to see. “That must be her son.”

  Cole made a noise. A harrumph maybe, or just a disinterested snort. She glanced up to find he wasn’t even looking at the book.

  Cole was looking at her.

  And all the air got sucked out of the attic.

  * * * * *

  Jami dropped the album, or rather it just seemed to slip from her fingers. It fell with a poof on the wedding dress, wafting dust motes into the air.

  Cole called himself all kinds of an idiot, but he knew he’d kiss her. He’d known that would happen when he followed her up the stairs and couldn’t take his eyes off the sway of her hips in her vacuum-packed jeans. She had one hell of a rear view, and he should know because he’d been viewing it so closely, he’d missed seeing the low beam until he whacked his head.

  “Let’s look in that trunk.” She shot down the aisle, sliding on a couple of pearls that had somehow fallen out when they were examining the first trunk.

  Not that he’d been examining it. He’d studied Jami. He liked the way she looked, her scent, the way she asked the most inane questions or made an irrelevant point. It was endearing.

  She’d stopped to flip through a stack of paintings. “These look old,” she mused.

  With the tops relatively dust free, the sheet could only have fallen off recently. He didn’t care about the paintings. He didn’t care about mice in the attic or bats in her belfry. He simply wanted her. He could admit at least that to himself.

  Just one kiss. That’s all he wanted. Hell, it sounded like a song title. The words started playing through his mind. He shook his head to clear it.

  He needed another kiss. You had to have a really good idea of what a woman tasted like if you were going to torture yourself with never getting to taste her again. That was the plan. He’d kiss her, and this would be last time. He could dream about her in the middle of the night, which meant he wouldn’t be dreaming about Stephie.

  “What are you doing?” She held up her hand, warding him off.

  “Nothing.” He wanted to be doing everything. He hadn’t felt this alive, this energized, this real in seven years. If he could have it only for thirty seconds, he wanted it now.

  “You’re giving me a look.”

  “What kind of look?” He took up the rest of the space between them. She could have backed up.

  She didn’t. “Like you’re not thinking about rats running around up here and waking us up in the middle of the night.”

  “That was definitely not what I thought about waking up to in the middle of the night.”

  She put a hand on his chest. Her touch seared him through his shirt. “Don’t,” she said. “You give too many mixed signals, and I’m the one that ends up getting all mixed up.”

  He chuckled. “I’m mixed up, too. Let’s get more mixed up tog
ether.” He didn’t know why he was pushing, when she obviously wasn’t sure she wanted it.

  Scratch that. Hell, yes, he knew why he was pushing. He wanted to touch a woman, this woman. A week ago, he’d been fine without it, but she’d stepped into his life and reminded him.

  He had to have it, like an addict or an alcoholic. You could stay sober for years, then suddenly one small thing sets you off, and you’re a goner. She was his whiskey sour, and he wanted to drink her down.

  Along with everything else he’d lost, he was starved for a woman’s touch.

  He took her arm and reeled her in until her breasts caressed his chest. Vanilla shampoo fogged his brain, minty toothpaste beckoned. “Just one kiss,” he whispered. To himself. To her. “Just one and it’ll be the last time, I promise.”

  She blinked, and he considered it a yes.

  He tasted her, just the tip of his tongue along her lips. “Torture me,” he whispered. “Please.”

  She broke loose. Up on her toes, she wound her arms around his neck and opened her mouth to him. Teasing, sucking, licking, she devoured him. He tugged her shirt from her jeans, and his hands found their way to the warm skin beneath. She sizzled in his arms, and a soft moan escaped her. She tested him with light kisses to his throat, his ear, a gentle bite to his lobe. While he wanted her breasts in his hands, she was the one who undid the top buttons on his shirt and slid inside to touch his nipples.

  She pinched, and he’d never felt anything like it. A heat-seeking missile straight to his groin, and he went instantly hard against her. It was an ache in his gut, a thousand nerve-ending explosions all over his chest.

  He groaned, pushed her away, then took her face in his hands, and kissed her hard, long, deep. Just his hands and mouth on her. Anything else, and he’d have her down on the attic floor.

  Then he backed off, breathing so fast and shallow, he felt lightheaded. “I think that might have been more than one kiss.”

  Her breath came in equally harsh bursts. “No, it was only one because my lips never really left your body.”

  Holy hell, he was in trouble.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “He didn’t stay for breakfast,” Isadora moaned as she broke eggs into the frying pan. The house still rang with the slam of the front door behind Cole’s fleeing butt. “He’s a funny one.”

  The understatement of the year. Jami hadn’t quite recovered from the close encounter. “At least there aren’t any rats up there.” Her nose twitched. “Do I smell bacon? I thought you didn’t eat bacon and only cooked boiled eggs.”

  “He’s a man,” Isadora said, as if that explained it all. Whatever. Questioning made Jami’s head ache, especially with the aftereffects of that kiss.

  “The bacon’s done,” Isadora went on. “The toast is made, the juice is on the table, and you’ve got just enough time to wash your hands and fix your lipstick before the eggs overcook.”

  Jami put a hand to her mouth, wiping off the remainder. What was the point in fixing it now? She’d forgotten all about her lipstick when they came downstairs. Cole had moved too fast to give her time to think.

  “I kissed him,” she said. “Big deal.”

  “That’s what I told my mother right before I got pregnant.”

  Jami washed her hands. “You’re such a fibber. You told me”—in one of their evening conversations—“it was years after you were married that you got pregnant.”

  “Why is it that Betty gets away with saying all sorts of outrageous things, but everyone thinks I’m making stuff up?” Isadora narrowed her eyes.

  “She gets her details straight.” Then Jami hugged the little lady off her feet and dropped a kiss on her white hair. “You know, you’ve got a bunch of cool stuff up in the attic.”

  Isadora flapped a hand dismissively. “It’s just junk. Someday I’ll do a clean-out party and give it all to the church.”

  “Some of it might worth something.” The paintings could be art treasures, and the old books might be first editions.

  Isadora snorted and added a not in typical Valley-girl intonation. “Sentimental value, maybe, but...” She trailed off and shrugged. “Just junk.”

  Jami had a brilliant idea. “You could ask you son to help you. I’m sure he’d be willing.” It might bring them closer together.

  “Jami, sweetheart, I know you mean well, but my son isn’t interested in what help I need.” That was so sad, and the shimmer in Isadora’s eyes confirmed it. “Maybe if I could like his wife...” She sighed. “But I can’t...so that’s that.” She closed the subject by serving the eggs.

  They ate breakfast, then Jami helped clean the house. In the afternoon, Isadora let her use the washer and dryer so she didn’t have to go to the laundromat, and after supper—leftover lentil soup because Isadora had made waaaay too much, she claimed—Jami changed her sheets, too. Housework was a good time to think about things. Which may or may not be good. She thought excessively about kissing Cole, and how he promised it would be the last time. What did that mean?

  She thought about Andrea, too. I’m used to being ignored.

  Wasn’t that funny—well, funny-odd—that Andrea’s mom didn’t even come to the door to meet Jami. Didn’t a mother always check out her kid’s friends? It wasn’t checking up, it was simply checking. Yet it was as if once Dad approved of Jami—or at least figured out she was a woman—they didn’t care anymore.

  They had enough worrying about Darryl, so as long as Andrea wasn’t in trouble, they ignored her. They weren’t bad parents, really, they simply had their plates full with taking care of a special-needs child. Yet it said so much about Andrea’s relationship with her parents. They didn’t want to worry about her. They wanted her to go to college and get a stable job, to be able to take care of herself. Someday, maybe they even envisioned her taking care of Darryl when they were gone. They were planning their daughter’s life so they didn’t have to take care of her. Now or later.

  All right, maybe she was getting ahead of herself and making assumptions about the Bagottis that weren’t true, but it felt like the correct assessment of the situation. She should talk it over with someone.

  She should talk it over with Cole.

  When she grabbed her cell phone and scrolled down through her received calls, she found his from the other night had been scrolled out in favor of all the ones from her mom and sisters making sure she hadn’t died or gone crazy or gotten lost in Yosemite never to be seen again.

  She’d have to go see him. Because really, this needed to be discussed tonight. It couldn’t wait. Utmost importance and all.

  Ah hell. She just wanted to see Cole.

  * * * * *

  He was weak. He should have closed the door the way he had the last time she’d shown up uninvited. Then again, it hadn’t kept her from infiltrating his life and his mind. It hadn’t stopped him from kissing her. So Cole let her in, though he did manage to keep the cat from sneaking in with his foot blocking the door. He could handle only one of them at a time.

  Beneath the entryway light, Jami’s eyes damn near sparkled. “I’ve had a revelation.”

  He’d had one, too. I want you. Simple yet devastating. “What was your revelation about?”

  “Andrea. I’ve got her all figured out.” She looked at him, then she looked around, and he could see her brain working.

  Sixteen hundred square feet had been big enough for him and Stephie. Three bedrooms, one bathroom, big kitchen, large family room. Two of the bedrooms he hadn’t been in for years. The house had been nice once, but the cream paint was old and marked to hell, and the blue carpet had lost its nap. There were a couple of stains he’d never been able to get out of the green sofa and had long since stopped caring about. A cleaning woman came in twice a month—though she didn’t do the two extra bedrooms—so at least it wasn’t a pigsty, nor was he prone to leaving dirty dishes in the sink. They soon started to stink.

  Yet he could see in her eyes that the furnishings looked exhausted. He didn�
�t give a damn about anything, and the room screamed out his apathy. The house wasn’t a home, merely a roof over someone’s head, unloved and uncared for. Just like the front garden and the backyard.

  She laced her fingers, held her clasped hands in front, and rocked back and forth on her sneakers. “Well, this is nice.”

  It looked like shit. He’d never noticed. Even if he had noticed, he wouldn’t have cared. It bothered him that he cared about it now. “It’s a place to sleep,” was all he said.

  “Okay.” Then she smiled and seemed to put her thoughts to the back of her mind. “About Andrea.”

  “Yeah. You had a revelation and figured her all out.”

  She looked longingly at the sofa and his easy chair, visible over the low wall separating the family room from the front door. They’d remained in the small entry hall; he was afraid to invite her in all the way.

  She re-laced her fingers, and the action drew his gaze to her breasts in the tight long-sleeved shirt. Had she forgotten a jacket when she’d rushed over here?

  “Well, so, this is it,” she said, not missing a beat of where his gaze had strayed. “Her brother has Down’s Syndrome, and her parents expend all their energy taking care of him, and they don’t have anything left over for Andrea.” She finally took a breath.

  “So you’ve decided she’s neglected.”

  “Not neglected. Her parents just don’t think she needs them the way Darryl does.”

  “She told you all this yesterday?”

  “No. I met her brother when I picked Andrea up yesterday. And we all met her dad the other day.”

  “And her mom?”

  “I haven’t met her yet.”

  “So you decided all this”—he spread his hands—“why?”

  She tipped her head first one way, then the other, opened her mouth, shut it. And finally said, “Can I have some water?”

  He almost laughed. He knew full well he was leading her deeper into his house, and that it was a metaphor for... something. He also liked that she unabashedly avoided the issue. He was damn good at doing that himself and understood it.