Tenderness had a way of lingering long after the flames had died down.
He pressed the car keys and several large bills in her hand and said, “Go shopping. If this doesn’t cover it, we’ll go back later. Meet you back here about noon.”
Rafe talked to the insurance agent and got the ball rolling. He had looked at several cars. “Something a damned sight safer than that high-priced cookie tin you were driving,” was the criterion he described to Stu when he’d called to discuss the matter. After that, he spent a few hours on the phone, most of them on hold, with various offices and agencies.
With a list of sizes, styles and brands, Molly shopped diligently. Stu was easy. Boxers, white socks and clunky sneakers, size ten medium. As long as his clothes fit, he was happy. If he had an ego, it wasn’t based on his appearance.
Annamarie was a bit more demanding, but as she’d look gorgeous wearing kitchen curtains, Molly had bought her underwear, two pairs of dark slacks and two pretty tops, sandals and sneakers. Pajamas for both, plus the toiletries, plus two bags of M&Ms. Annamarie would need her favorite comfort food.
Just as they finished comparing notes over the sandwiches Rafe had ordered from room service, Stu called to say he’d already been discharged, but Annamarie was undergoing tests to be sure the recurring pain in her side was nothing more than a strained muscle.
Hearing that, Molly started fidgeting. And then she started listing every known internal injury and a few no one had ever heard of.
“A strained goozle?” Rafe glanced up from his own lists.
“Oh, it’s the—you know. The whatchamacallit. I knew a boy who fell off a tractor and they had to take it out, but he got along just fine without it. But it might be— Oh, Lordy, what if they can’t have children? That would break her heart.”
“Molly. Look at me. Close your eyes. Take a deep breath and listen. You’re probably talking about a spleen. It has nothing to do with having children. If it has to go, she can live without it. Besides, the tests are only a precaution. If there’s the slightest chance of a liability suit, the hospital’s not going to let her walk out without the appropriate tests.”
Eyes closed, she said, “I need to be there. She’ll need me.”
“She has a husband now. How about letting him take over the responsibility?”
She opened her eyes and looked at him then, really looked at him for the first time since they’d made love. Golden brown eyes, dark now with apprehension. It was all he could do not to reach for her, but it was time to pull back. Time to begin erecting barriers again. “Trust me,” Rafe said, and she nodded.
“You’re right. I’m just—it’s habit, I guess. I told you Mama wasn’t exactly—that is, she was always so tired. She worked—did I tell you that? But she still found time to make most of our clothes and teach me to sew when I was growing up.”
“Mine taught me dance routines. Can’t tell you what a big help those high kicks were once I started playing football.”
Molly had to laugh. He shook his head—she thought he might have said something under his breath, but then he was holding her, and there was nothing at all sexual about it, only caring. Come to think about it, that was even more terrifying than the other. The knowledge that she cared too much. And that while he might care just a little bit, too, when it came to caring, there was no middle ground. Too much on one side and not enough on the other could never add up to happiness.
Rafe was not the classic loner. He had scores of friends. He had known hundreds of women and enjoyed dozens of them intimately. He’d always considered himself a generous man, both as a friend and a lover.
But deep down, where it counted, he had always held a part of himself aloof. Only once had he broken the rule, and then it was for a lonely, klutzy, resentful kid with a redwood-size chip on his shoulder. Stu had tried his damnedest to prove something to the big brother he’d been dumped on, to the mother who had done the dumping, and to the father who hadn’t bothered to see him since he was about four years old. For the first couple of years he’d nearly broken his neck trying to become something he was never cut out to be. Rafe had realized one thing from his own youth—telling a kid didn’t work. Keeping him alive while he learned who he was, what he was all about and where his capabilities lay, turned out to be a large order, but somebody had to tackle it. What the hell could a big brother do but love him, try to teach him a few survival skills and keep him out of major trouble?
Now he had a wife. He was no longer lonely or resentful. He might still be something of a klutz, but he was Annamarie’s klutz. Neither of them would appreciate Rafe’s stepping in and trying to run the show.
Rafe called the hospital room to describe the SUV he had picked out. Annamarie answered and said Stu had gone out to get her something in chocolate, preferably M&Ms. “We’ve decided on a pickup truck. It’s a lot more practical and just as safe.”
Rafe figured Annamarie had decided. Stu’s interests ran more to Roman chariots than to modern transportation. “Okay, your call. How about dark green?”
“Orange. You can see it coming from a mile away.”
“I don’t think pickup trucks come in orange.”
“Maybe not, but paint does.”
On the whole, Rafe decided as he hung up with plans to collect Stu after visiting hours, he liked his new sister-in-law.
He also liked his sister-in-law’s sister, he thought late that afternoon as he went through the preflight checkup. And that might be something of a problem.
Summer had struck with a vengeance. Five in the afternoon on the first day of May, with the temperature hovering in the eighties. Molly was wearing a new pair of dark pants which hugged her shapely hips, with a white open-throated cotton shirt. A plain white shirt that looked sexier than another woman’s thong bikini. Imagination was a hell of an aphrodisiac.
Mayday, mayday!
Silently she climbed in and strapped herself down without speaking a word. She’d hardly spoken on the way to the airport. She was worrying again. Not about money, because Stu still had his credit cards. It would take more than a bottom-of-the-line pickup truck to max out his credit. They’d bought the truck—it was red, not orange—and Annamarie would be driving until Stu’s hand healed.
She was probably worried about her sister’s driving. Hadn’t she mentioned something about the trouble Annamarie had had getting her driver’s license? “Look, they’re going to be cautious as the devil after what happened. I wouldn’t worry.”
And then he remembered that her parents had gone off a mountain road in a hard rainstorm and both been killed. “Great roads between Norfolk and Ocracoke. Straight, wide, flat. Not a lot of traffic this time of year.” He didn’t have a clue about the traffic—Memorial Day was coming up—but it was what she needed to hear.
“I know,” she said almost too softly to be heard. “And thank you, Rafe. For—well, for everything.”
As they lifted off the runway, he concentrated on flying. Not until they reached cruising altitude did he respond. “I’m not sure what everything you’re talking about, but you’re certainly welcome.” He’d given Stu most of the cash he had on him and paid for another night at the hotel, figuring it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the younger adults to be within range of medical care for a day or so before heading back. He wasn’t sure about the medical facilities on the island.
“I hope the birds haven’t taught Carly too many bad words.” Molly had been watching the patterns pass below. The geometric patchwork of fields and doll-size farms, and then the lacework of sounds and creeks, rivers and ponds as they neared the coast.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t taught them a few.”
She looked at him then. “Rafe, she’s only a child.”
“Yeah,” he said, and she shook her head and then laughed. For the first time all day—since they had made love, in fact, she seemed visibly to relax. They hadn’t slept together last night. Stu, dismissed from the hospital, had shared Rafe’s room,
then insisted on racing off to the hospital to spring his wife. It had taken a couple of hours, after which they had gone to the dealer’s to collect the new truck.
He had a feeling Molly had spent the most of the time while he was gone making a list of every penny he’d spent on her so that she could settle her account. When he’d come back, she’d been on the phone with her other sister—Etta Mary or was it Mary Etta? There was a stack of receipts and several pages of hotel stationary on the desk beside her.
He’d listened in unabashedly while he poured himself a big glass of orange juice from the minirefrigerator. Molly had obviously explained what had happened, and how it was being dealt with, and was in the process of explaining why she’d been free to house-sit while Annamarie was off on a birthday-gift trip with her new husband.
Rafe had already known most of it. He’d learned about two of the three sisters from watching the interaction between Molly and Annamarie at the hospital. For all their apparent differences, they were surprisingly close. They finished each other’s sentences. Molly would say, “Remember that time—”
“—when I dressed Miss Daisy’s cat up in doll clothes and it got away?”
And then they would laugh, and Annamarie would say, “If it had been anybody else she would have—”
“The finger. She had the biggest forefinger I ever saw,” Molly had explained to Stu and Rafe. “She was always shaking it in someone’s face, like it was a—”
“—a weapon. When you’re only about three feet tall, and—”
“And there’s this huge forefinger shaking right in your face, believe me, it makes a big—”
“—impression, even when you know she’d never lay a hand on you.” Annamarie had grinned without diminishing the china-doll perfection of her face. “She might have taken a switch to me, but she would never in this world have hurt you.” And to Rafe she’d explained, “Everybody loves Molly.”
“Annamarie, that’s not—”
“Oh, yes it is. There’s not a man, woman or child in all of Grover’s Hollow who hasn’t—”
“For heaven’s sake, you’re boring everyone to death!” Molly’s cheeks were flaming.
“Well, anyway, they all love her,” the younger sister had insisted. Barefooted, wearing a hospital gown over a pair of pink plaid slacks, she’d looked all of twelve years old as she proceeded to embarrass and defend her older sister at the same time.
Rafe had listened with half an ear, trying to bring into focus a younger Molly who had helped to raise both her sisters. A woman whose taste in men was on a par with her taste in seashells, collecting broken specimens of both. A woman who was surprisingly naive, considering she had been married and divorced.
And now that her sisters were out on their own, Rafe thought now as he followed the coastline on a southwesterly course, she was probably going to hole up in some retirement home and spend the rest of her life looking after people who would take advantage of her sweet, generous spirit until she was all used up. No more blushes. No more laughter. No more fresh, dewy cheeks and soft sighs and uninhibited passion.
It was a damned shame, too. Not that there was a sentimental bone in his entire body, but a woman like Molly would bring out the protective instincts of a totem pole. What she needed was—
Was none of his business!
“I guess they’ll be here sometime tomorrow,” Molly said brightly a few hours later. She had a kink in her neck from watching a spectacular sunset over the broad waters of the Pamlico Sound. They had barely made it back to the island before dark. Rafe had mentioned that there were no lights on the runway and then concentrated on flying, although from time to time she felt his gaze on her. They hadn’t tried to talk over the engine noise, and for that Molly was grateful.
Now she swung herself down from the plane without waiting for his help. No point in getting used to something that was about to end. After today, the pets would no longer need her. The cottage was barely big enough for a couple of honeymooners. Four was definitely a crowd.
“I guess you’ll be leaving in the morning,” she said with every appearance of cheerfulness.
He nodded. “I told Stu not to be in too big a hurry, in case your sister needs more—more time to shop.” Rafe had been about to say, more medical attention, but Molly was a world-class worrier.
“She won’t. She has clothes here, and more back in Durham.”
“But as long as they’re near the shops, she might want to indulge.”
“She’ll be fine with what I bought her. I know her tastes and her sizes.”
Personally Rafe had never known a woman, including his own mother, who wasn’t a marathon shopper. The more beautiful they were, the more they enjoyed spending his money to enhance that beauty. All his mistresses had been high-maintenance types. “At any rate, Stu can afford it. He won’t come into his trust until he’s thirty-one, but he has an interest income that should keep her happy until then.”
Molly gave him a curious look. With the plane secured, they were in the rust bucket, headed back to the cottage. “Is that what it takes to be happy? Money?”
“Doesn’t it?” It was like having a sensitive tooth. He couldn’t leave it alone, he had to keep probing, testing, ferreting out weaknesses in order not to fall any deeper under her spell. He told himself it was only the novelty factor. That’s all it could be, because Molly was different in every conceivable way from his usual women.
Under the low branches of two twisted live oak trees, the cottage was dark. Rafe unlocked the door and Molly stepped inside and felt for the light switch. Pete—or was it Repete?—tuned up with the squeaking door imitation, and the other bird made a chattering noise that sounded like a scolding wren. Actually, Molly thought, they were rather nice birds as long as they weren’t spouting profanity.
So, of course they had to start. Every indecent four-letter word known to man. Someone—probably the entire fraternity—had taken great delight in corrupting a pair of otherwise beautiful birds.
“It’s a wonder they don’t blister the paint,” Rafe observed.
“Bugger off, mate, bugger off, mate, bu—”
“Bad-ass, bad-ass!”
“They don’t seem to bother your sister.”
“Actually they do, but nobody else would claim them and she was afraid they’d be—well, whatever you do to unwanted birds. Euthanize them, I guess.”
Rafe dropped the bags in the two bedrooms, opened windows and then peered into the refrigerator. “They’re probably long past frying age, but stewed, they might be—”
“Rafe!”
“Only kidding,” he said. “Want a… Let’s see, we could have a bacon-and-cheese omelet or—”
Hearing Shag at the door, Molly opened a can of cat food. No wonder the poor creature always stunk. So did his dinner. “Sally Ann wants me take a puppy.”
“So?” Rafe got out the ingredients for an omelet and lined them up on the counter.
“The place where I live has a no-pets policy.”
“Call it a guard dog.”
“I could call it a stuffed duck, but I don’t think it would work.”
Molly was almost too tired to eat. She couldn’t think why, as she’d done little but sit for the past few hours, conscious every minute of the man beside her—his warmth, his strength, the woody scent of his shaving soap mingling with the oil-and-metal smell of the plane itself. “You wouldn’t think you could get tired of resting, would you?”
Rafe was whipping eggs. Oddly enough, there was nothing at all incongruous about a large, rugged man wearing tailor-made khakis and a stylish chambray shirt with a flowered tea towel tucked under his belt.
“I’d better get to work, too,” Molly said, and jumped up so fast, her head swam. Then she stood there like a fool, not knowing where to start, what to do. “They’ll probably be here sometime tomorrow. I should clean the house.”
“Why? Did they clean up before you came?”
“That’s different.”
“I don’t know!” she cried, flinging out her arms helplessly. “It just is! I’ve always cleaned when company was coming. It’s—it’s expected.”
The bacon was sizzling on the back burner. Rafe poured the egg mixture into the omelet pan and let it set before he began tilting and lifting. Calmly he said, “Sit down, Molly. They won’t be here until tomorrow evening at the earliest. You need to eat a good supper and go to bed. In the morning you can start worrying again. If necessary, I’ll help you with a list of things to worry about.”
She had to laugh. It was the strangest thing, but when it occurred to her that he was saying exactly the same sort of thing to her that she’d said for years to Annamarie and Mary Etta, laughter bubbled up inside her like antacid tablets dropped in water.
“What, you think that’s funny? You want to get started on tomorrow’s list now? How about the Middle East situation? Those earthquakes? The price of oil and what it’s doing to the economy?”
And then she howled. “I want extra cheese in mine,” she said when she could speak again.
“Hmm…it’s sort of green,” he warned. “I’d better shave off the mold.”
“Who cares? I’ll put mold on the list of things to worry about tomorrow.”
She would worry about more than moldy cheese tomorrow, but meanwhile she intended to enjoy what might be the last few hours she would ever have with the man who had opened her eyes to what love was all about.
It was about laughing together. About sharing. About fitting together body, soul and mind, as if they were two parts of a whole. It was about that scary, thrilling feeling of knowing that for better or worse you’re connected in some mysterious way to another being and there’s not one blooming thing you can do about it.
And when the worst came, letting go.
Rafe hadn’t exactly said when he was leaving, but it would probably be shortly after Stu and Annamarie got here tomorrow. He’d mentioned waiting to see that they got here safely, but after that, if there was enough light left to fly by, there’d be no more reason for him to hang around.
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