“Reba.”
“Like the country singer?”
“Don’t you think she’d be honored?”
Jackson smiled. “And how did you come by such a noble beast?”
Monica was silent and he turned to look at her, watched her take another sip from her drink. “She was Jenna’s dog. She asked me to take care of her.”
“Does she just come this way?” he asked, petting her strange naked body. “Without hair?”
“It’s the breed.”
“It’s strange.”
Monica laughed, shifting down into the bubbles.
“But she’s growing on me,” Jackson said.
“She does that.”
As if she disapproved of the conversation, Reba stood up and jumped down the ground, giving herself a good shake before running out the door. Jackson leaned back with his own drink. The shots he’d had downstairs were already working on his muscles. He felt both mellow and hyperaware of her. And of the disappearing nature of those bubbles.
“So, Jackson, since we’re clearly on the subject.” Her lips, red and erotic, tilted up in a sexy, mysterious smile. He wondered if it was just her naturally, with that sexual spark undiminished by her disappointments, or if it was the way he saw her. Always beautiful. Always desirable, always just slightly out of reach. “Tell me why it’s been two years since you’ve had sex.”
“Oh,” he laughed. “It’s air-all-our-secrets time?”
“I showed you mine.”
He crossed his legs at the ankle, counted the tile squares between him and her. Too many at any other time, but for this moment—just enough. “I’m not interested in getting married,” he said.
“Perhaps the news hasn’t gotten to you guys yet, but you don’t actually have to be married to have sex.”
“It’s a small town,” he said with a shrug. “And being mayor, it’s not like I can just pick up women at The Pour House. For awhile I dated, but every woman I was interested in looked at me and started making wedding plans. Two years ago, Sean was researching bars in other towns—”
She made a scoffing noise in her throat and he laughed. “I know. He took that research very seriously. I went with him and I met someone and it worked, casually, for a few weeks. But then it just felt like this dirty secret … and like I was lying to this woman who’d started talking about meeting her parents and her kids and I knew she was thinking permanent thoughts about me. So I broke it off.”
“Well, you do seem like a permanent kind of guy,” she said.
“I’m not, though. Not right now.”
“What about the girlfriend … from school?”
“What about her?”
“She didn’t want to come back here with you?”
“I didn’t ask,” he said, and took a sip from his drink. “But there was no way she wanted to move to Bishop and help me raise my sister.”
“How do you know if you didn’t ask?”
Monica sounded affronted on behalf of a woman she’d never met, and he smiled at her. “I didn’t want to come back here. Why would she?”
“If she loved you—”
“We were young, Monica. Whatever we felt for each other, it probably wouldn’t have lasted. And … honestly, I didn’t want her to come. I needed to focus on my sister, figure out this new life I was going to be living. I couldn’t … I didn’t have time for her. That might make me an asshole, but it’s the truth. It was one or the other.”
She seemed to absorb his honesty, his failings. How novel.
“Your life got cut short when your parents died. You must feel like there’s a lot you didn’t get to do.”
In comparison to the rest of the people in his life, whom he’d known since he was in diapers, she was a stranger. And yet when she said things like that, it was as though she’d pried open his head and taken a good, long look inside.
“Something like that,” he agreed. Exactly like that. Exactly.
Her chuckle was low, suggestive, and her eyes when they looked at him over the glass tumbler were heavy-lidded. She was such a sexual creature, the way she dressed, the way she looked—he wondered, how much of it was a disguise? An act? And how much of it was real?
I guess you’re going to find out, he thought.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
She sighed. “Better than I have in a long time.”
“Do you have any music?”
She stretched out a long, damp ivory arm, bubbles dripped off her elbow, and pointed through the door to the bedroom. “My iPod is in the speaker set on the dresser.”
Quickly, he stood and found it. Using his thumb, he scrolled through her playlists.
Jeez! She had a lot of angry music. Rage Against the Machine. Ani DiFranco, The Ramones, Hole. Finally, halfway down, he found something that would work.
Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey.”
He hit play, and Van’s Irish soul came through the speakers. He walked back into the bathroom only to find her with her head back against the wall tiles, her glass empty beside her. Her cheeks flushed, singing nearly silently to herself.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to seduce me.” She laughed, her eyes closed. Fishing, she was fishing, and he smiled in acknowledgment.
He braced his hands on the doorjamb over his head. Leaning slightly closer, setting up his own boundaries. “I’m not going to touch you.”
Her eyes snapped open.
“I want you touch yourself,” he told her.
Her eyes opened wider.
He didn’t say anything else and he didn’t look away, and the room was thick with intensity. Apprehension and excitement and worry. Big emotions stole the air, but he just kept watching her, waiting for her. Dying a little.
“Touch myself?”
“The way you like. The way that makes you come.”
Do it. Trust me. Trust yourself. Just … try. The moment lasted so long, her indecision so palpable, that when she finally lifted those long arms out of the water, he gasped for air, unaware that he’d been holding his breath.
In the tub the bubbles were dissipating, but not enough. And that was probably a good thing, because if he saw what he hoped she would do, he’d probably lose his mind. He’d just combust in the doorway. As it was, imagining what she was going to do with those hands, those fingers, was a sweet and painful torture.
Her eyes locked on his, unflinching and not shy, but somehow … wary. Somehow unsure. She ran her fingers from the sharp curve of her collarbone to the swell of her breast just above the bubbles and then down, lifting her breasts slightly. Those brown nipples, so lovely, so sweet, appeared briefly before she covered them with her fingers. She pulled. Twisted, her mouth opening on a gasp.
“Does that feel good?” he asked. She nodded. One hand stayed with her breast and the other, he could tell by the flex in her muscles, the way her body seemed to lift in the water, slipped down, over her belly. He imagined the softness of her skin, the way it stretched over her taut muscles, her smooth flesh.
And then she sighed, gasped, her eyes closed.
“Tell me.” His voice sounded scorched. Burnt.
“I’m … wet. Hot.”
His fingers were white-knuckled on the doorjamb. His blood pounding so hard in his ears he could barely hear her whisper.
Her eyes opened again. “You too,” she whispered. “You touch yourself too.”
He shook his head. “This one’s … this one’s about you.”
I don’t put on a show, he remembered her saying, and he wondered if she would think that was what this was about. Because it couldn’t be farther from the truth. He just wanted to share some pleasure with her. And if this was how she felt it, this was the way he wanted it.
And then she bit her bottom lip, her white teeth in the pink flesh. Honestly, her teeth were so freaking sexy. Was there any other woman in the world with sexy teeth?
“Tell me,” he said, “what you’re doing. How you lik
e it.”
Her cheeks were red, flushed, her eyes unfocused when they opened. “At the top. My clit.”
He ducked his head, his body shaking.
“I squeeze it, between my fingers.”
“Hard?”
“Soft, then hard.”
This was going to be torture. He closed his eyes and her breath, those small gasps, the half-moans high in the back of her throat, echoed against the tiles, inside his head. He’d die remembering how she sounded.
“Now a finger,” she whispered. “Inside.” She gasped, groaned.
He opened his eyes to see her sitting up; her breasts, gilded with light and bubbles, were wet and perfect. The small muscles in her shoulder, her arm, were tense, flexing and releasing as she touched herself under the water.
“It’s so good,” she gasped and her eyes swung to his. He smiled, even though it killed him.
“You’re beautiful.”
She stopped. He could tell she’d stopped.
“Don’t—” he protested, putting out a hand.
“I want to watch you, too.”
“Monica.”
“It’s both of us or neither.”
It took a second, a second of wondering what was noble, before he realized he didn’t give a shit. Bracing his feet wide, he let go of the door frame, amazed that he hadn’t left finger dents in the wood. As he unbuckled his belt, he noticed the small muscles in her arms had started working again. Her breasts, full and beautiful, shimmied with the motion. She leaned back hard against the tub, her eyes fixed on the zipper he was lowering.
Hard, so damn hard, he hissed when he touched himself, freeing his dick from his pants, pushing them down beneath his sac so she could see. He wanted her to see. This whole thing had quickly turned into the hottest, most erotic thing that had ever happened to him.
“Stroke it,” she whispered.
He did. Softly at first, top to bottom and then harder, just at the top, so hard he bit his lips. It wasn’t going to be a long show, that was for sure. He slowed down, not wanting to miss a single moment of watching her, waiting for signs that there was something building in her body, something under those bubbles that would climax.
It took a while and he was patient, slowly stroking himself. She braced a foot against the wall, and bubbles ran down her leg from her toes to her knees to the pale three inches of thigh he could see before the bubbles detached and drifted across the water.
And then she moved faster, her breath sawing harder, and he stroked himself accordingly, making himself work, slowing down when he got ahead of himself, speeding up to catch up with her.
“Soon?” she gasped.
He couldn’t talk, just nodded.
“Oh,” she cried, her neck, her chest, her face flushing red. “Yes. Oh … God.”
And in three more hard strokes, his heartbeat pounding in his hand, he cried out, saw stars, saw nothing, and came. His knees nearly buckled.
Done. God. Oh my God.
In the tub, her legs were pulled up and she had curled herself into a ball, shaking.
They sounded like Olympic sprinters after a race, gasping for breath.
Just like honey from the bee, Van sang from the other room.
That … that just happened, he thought, staring down at the mess on his hands.
“You … okay?” he asked. She nodded, her forehead pressed to her knees, her face hidden. That didn’t seem like a good sign, but he walked to the sink, cleaned himself up. The intimacy of the last ten minutes seemed awkward now; he had no context for this.
The sound of his zipper was loud in the bathroom and there was another sound. In the mirror over the sink, he could see her shoulders shaking in the bath.
“Monica?” He whirled and stepped toward her, and then stopped when she brought her head up, smiling.
“I thought … I thought you were crying.”
“No.” The look she gave him was warm. Fond, even. But knowing. As though she’d seen his secrets, and liked him better for it. That look was totally different from the way every other woman in his life looked at him. It made him nervous. “I’m … laughing.”
“I don’t know if that’s better.”
She held out her hand and he grabbed it, let her tug him closer. “That,” she said, “was the hottest thing I have ever done in my life.”
He thought about making a joke about rock-star orgies, but he realized it was hot for her for the same reason it had been so exciting to him—because it was honest. And real.
“Me too.” Her knuckles were slippery under his lips.
“Now go,” she said, dismissing him as she leaned back in the tub. “I want to finish my bath.”
He laughed, something unexpected rolling through him. Relief, maybe. He was pretty much talked out and if she had wanted to dissect what happened, it would have been tough. But there was something else in that mix. Something young and exciting, and he didn’t want to think about it too hard.
He would call it chemistry and leave it at that.
“I’ll leave a message for you regarding the camps once I know more information,” he told her, tucking his shirt into his pants.
“You can just send me a smoke signal,” she said, her eyes shut, a little smirk on her lips. “I know how you like to communicate.”
She was irresistible, and he didn’t even put up a fight. Leaning down, he braced one hand against the tiles and kissed her, hard, on the lips. Startled, she jumped but then softened into the kiss. What he meant as something short and sweet turned into something long and hot. She twined ivory arms around his neck and his tongue found its way into her mouth, stroking hers, licking at her lips. Finally giving in to the urge he’d had from the moment he’d seen her on his front porch, he sucked her lower lip in between his teeth.
She groaned into his mouth and slowly, painfully, he pulled himself just a few inches away so he could look into her eyes. “I’m just beginning to show you how I like to communicate,” he whispered and before he lost his momentum, he kissed her nose and left.
He wasn’t a guy with lines, but he had to admit that was a pretty great one.
In the hallway he checked his watch. He was drunk, sort of laid, and he’d saved the contest—again.
And it wasn’t even noon.
Who says I can’t fix everything?
Chapter 12
Monica stood on the sidewalk outside a small, yellow-brick bungalow and checked the address on the napkin against the address on the house.
This was it. Ed Baxter’s house.
She shoved the napkin in her back pocket and walked up the cracked sidewalk toward the front door.
It was impossible to know how she would feel without having had that … experience with Jackson a few hours ago. But right now she was keenly grateful for having had it, because the edge of her anger was filed down and she was able to ring the doorbell without feeling trapped by the specter of the book.
Masturbating in front of Jackson, watching him touch himself, had set her square, somehow. Given her the distance—the armor—she needed a few hours ago and had been scared she’d never get.
But still, standing on that cement porch, three short steps up from the dying grass on the lawn, her knees shook and her hands were sweating and nerves were on high alert. She was going to do this, open up this door so long shut.
When the storm door opened behind the screen door, revealing a small man who looked like an older version of Sean, she smiled.
“Ed Baxter?”
The man—Monica would put his age at about seventy—nodded, reaching out to push open the screen door. “Come on in,” he said, and she pulled the door open the rest of the way so she could slip inside.
A sense of neglect hung over the house, which was clean enough, but sparse. Empty-seeming. A sea of shabby beige. Not dirty, just worn. The few frames on the wall were all cockeyed, the photos faded. There were no knickknacks. No rugs. No blankets tossed over the side of the couch.
It
was an eerie tableau.
The table beside the recliner was cluttered with prescription bottles, the only real sign of life.
“Sit,” Ed said, walking toward the kitchen. “You want coffee?”
“Only if you’re having some.” She glanced at the photos on the wall. Sean showing off a gap-toothed smile on Christmas morning. A round, red-headed woman caught in a pensive moment. A couple of family shots with Brody standing a few feet away, his dark eyes like bruises in a very serious face. Looking at the photos, it was obvious Ed and his wife were older when they had Sean.
There’s a story here, she thought, looking at Brody’s little face in the pictures.
Ed came back out, carrying two coffee cups. His hands had a tremor, and the coffee was in danger of sloshing out of both cups. She reached out to help, but he handed her a cup before turning toward his chair.
“Sit,” he said. “You said you had some questions.” He collapsed back in his chair, the coffee splashing up on his already spotted shirt.
“Yes.” She sat on the couch, which predictably sagged, and pulled out her notebook and her recorder. “Do you mind if I record you?” she asked. “It’s only to make sure I get everything.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
She put the recorder on the edge of the couch closest to him and opened her notebook. A strange calm enveloped her. The people she was about to talk about were characters. Just characters. She was researching other people’s parents. Other people’s tragedy.
“Your family has owned The Pour House for three generations, right?”
Ed nodded. Took a sip of coffee. She waited for more but he was silent.
Oh boy.
“Your father owned the bar when my mom was growing up.”
Ed nodded again. “Dad hired Neil … your grandfather … I guess after he got back from Vietnam. Gave him the apartment over the bar.”
“Neil was in Vietnam?
She didn’t know that. Not that she’d ever met her grandfather, but that explained the service revolver.
“Did you know Neil?” she asked.
Ed glanced at her as if he knew what she was trying to do, the way she was keeping this story at arm’s length. It won’t work, his stony face said. Sooner or later those sharks are going to get you.
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