The question confused Eric. “What do you mean, why?”
“I want to know what it is about Cleo that you like so much.”
Eric’s nose actually twitched. “She’s beautiful.”
“Yep.”
“And she has perfect pitch.”
Luther shook his head. “I don’t even know what that means.” Eric opened his mouth to explain, but Luther lifted a hand to silence him. “And I don’t care.”
“Well, it’s extraordinary,” Eric said.
“That’s it?” Luther said, when Eric went no further.
“She really is beautiful.”
Luther nodded. Eric was infatuated with Cleo, but the kid didn’t love her. Not like Luther did. Yes, he’d been fascinated by her beauty in the beginning, but there was so much more. She had a lovable guard dog named Rambo who wouldn’t hurt a fly. She would give a friend the shirt off her back. She pushed her hurt deep, where no one else could see it.
He’d seen it. She’d opened herself up to him and shown him her heart and that made her his, in the way a hundred other little things made her his.
And he wanted that damn heart-shaped meat loaf.
Luther gave Eric a tight smile. “You’re going to have to find yourself another woman to moon after, kid.”
Eric muttered and shook his head. “Yeah, I figured as much.”
Cleo padded toward the kitchen as the sun was coming up, but when she caught sight of Syd sleeping on the couch she changed directions. With a gentle hand, she shook Syd awake. “What are you doing here? You should’ve gone home to sleep in your own bed.”
Syd came awake slowly. “I couldn’t leave you here alone.” One eye opened, then the other. “Are you okay?”
Cleo nodded.
“Sure?”
She sighed. “Yeah. I’m still shocked that it was Edgar, but I’ll be all right.” Rambo, frisky even at sunrise, bounded toward her. Cleo sat on the floor and gave the dog a big hug. “I guess I’m not a very good judge of character,” she said. “I knew that years ago, when I found out what Jack was like, but I was hoping my judgment had improved. I was completely fooled.”
“Honey,” Syd said huskily as she sat up. “Edgar had everyone fooled, not just you.”
Cleo nodded and buried her fingers in Rambo’s fur. “He’s not the only one I was wrong about,” she said sadly. Something inside her wrenched painfully. “I kinda thought Malone might call last night, after—”
“Oh, he did!” Syd said brightly. “You’d finally fallen asleep, and I didn’t want to wake you. When I told him you’d gone to bed, he said not to disturb you. That you needed your sleep after what you’d been through.”
In spite of her exhaustion, she wished she’d heard the phone ring, or that Syd had awakened her. She’d come awake more than once in the night, wishing he was with her.
“I don’t suppose he said... any thing else?” Tell Cleo I love her. I’ll see her tomorrow. Tell her goodbye and good luck.
“No.”
Cleo nodded and rested her cheek on Rambo’s head. Luther had said he’d fight for her, for them. Did he still want to? And if he didn’t, did she have the strength to do the fighting herself?
Luther Malone didn’t take chances, not ever. He expected the worst and usually got what he expected. So why was he doing this? He leaned on Cleo’s doorbell for the second time. Where the hell was she? It was much too late for her still to be asleep, no matter how harrowing yesterday had been.
He knew she’d been able to sleep last night, since he’d talked to Syd. Tempted as he’d been to come here late, after he’d spoken to Eric, he’d decided to let Cleo rest. They had time. Lots of time. At least, he hoped they did.
Finally he heard her on the other side of the door. He knew she peered through the peephole, because he heard her laugh. There was a sleepy smile on her face when she opened the door. She wore that purple nightshirt with the cat on the front, her hair was wild, her cheeks were pink.
“I woke you up?” he asked. “It’s almost noon!” Then he felt guilty. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I was up at the crack of dawn,” she explained, leaning against the doorjamb and looking him up and down. “Sent Syd home and went back to bed.”
“Are you all right?” he asked solemnly.
She nodded. “Better. Yeah, I’m fine.” She proved her statement to be true by giving him a wide smile. “Nice outfit. Joining the circus?”
He glanced down at the purple shirt and red tie. For a split second he thought he’d made a huge mistake. If she didn’t understand... “I’m just trying to learn to color outside the lines.”
Her gaze dropped to below his belt. “Hearts or six-shooters?”
“Hearts,” he confessed.
Cleo hummed contentedly and nodded at the bag in his hand. “I almost hate to ask. What’s in the bag?”
He held the plastic bag up and waved it before her. “Tim’s bread pudding and lots of it. Since you said you’d walk over broken glass to get to a piece, I thought maybe you’d agree to talk to me for a couple of pans full.”
“You’re a rare man, Malone,” she said. “I think you actually listened to everything I ever said to you.”
“Every word.”
Her smile faded. “Why are you here? Is this about Edgar?”
“No. This visit is strictly personal.”
“What do you want?” she asked gently.
Here? On the porch? Hell, why not?
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past two weeks, one in particular that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to make amends for.”
“Luther...”
“Let me finish. You said you couldn’t forget, and I understand that. But you also said you could forgive me. I want that more than anything. And then I’d like to work on the forgetting part,” he added.
He liked the expression on her face. It wasn’t tough, it wasn’t cynical. It was soft and wonderful.
“I’m taking a vacation next week,” he continued.
“Florida,” she said.
Luther nodded. “I want you to come with me.”
“Why?”
He took a deep breath. Had he really thought she’d make this easy? “For one thing, my idea of the perfect vacation includes sun, sand, and making love to you every night.”
Cleo actually blushed. “Oh, it does? That sounds nice, but I’m sure there are women in Florida.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to make love to just anybody every night,” he snapped. “I said you. No one else will do.”
“I see,” she said.
“Besides,” he added with a sigh, “I want you to hold my hand when I make a stop in Georgia.”
Her widening grin was fabulous. “Your grandmother?”
He nodded. “Yeah. I want you with me when I meet her. After all, you gave her to me.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s a family moment. You don’t want—”
“I love you,” he interrupted impatiently. “I want you with me because that’s the way it should be. If I have to dress like a clown every day and clean Tim’s out of bread pudding to get that through your thick skull...”
Cleo reached out and grabbed his tie, tugging him gently forward. “Took you long enough, Malone,” she said as she pulled him inside.
Luther kicked the door closed behind him, dropped the bag of bread pudding on the floor and pulled her close. She rose up on her toes, bringing her mouth to his.
“It’s the truth,” he said, whispering against her lips as he kissed her. “I do love you.”
“I love you, too.” She draped her arms around his neck and feathered her own small kisses on him.
He lifted her off her feet, and she wrapped her legs around his hips. “Maybe I should start my vacation now.”
Cleo rested her head on his shoulder and sighed. “Sorry. There’s no sand here, and no sun. Though we could turn all the lights on, and I have lots of candles.”
“I
think I could learn to live without the sand and the sun.” He carried her toward the bedroom. “But there’s no way I could ever learn to live without you.”
“You won’t ever need to.”
Epilogue
Cleo lay back in the bed and stared at the faintly lit ceiling. Warm June air wafted through an open window, bringing with it the scent of the ocean. The radio was on, playing low, and she rested in Luther’s arms where she so loved to be.
“On a honeymoon scale of one to ten, with one being a single, unsatisfying night at Flo and Mo’s Dew Drop Inn and ten being two weeks of sex and sun in Hawaii, where would you rate ours, so far?”
“Fifteen,” Luther answered without hesitation.
She smiled. “And it’s just our first day.”
She’d never thought to be so happy. A new home awaited them, on their return to Huntsville. They’d picked the house out together, and it had everything she’d ever dreamed of. A fenced backyard for Rambo, a large master bedroom with a walk-in closet and access to a deck, and three other, smaller bedrooms she had great plans for. Syd had been a little perturbed about Cleo moving out of the duplex, but when she’d learned that Michael Russell was moving into Cleo’s vacated half, she’d quickly offered forgiveness.
The wedding had been small but beautiful—a definite fifteen on the wedding scale—with Syd as maid of honor and Ray as best man, and Luther’s grandmother, who’d been delighted to discover the grandson she’d never known, in beaming attendance. Cleo’s own family had been there, too, and even though her mother had been horrified at the notion of her daughter marrying a cop, Thea had been extremely supportive. Thea had also finally gotten wise and dumped Palmer, much to Mother’s dismay.
Eric and Lizzy attended the wedding together and seemed quite chummy. They were a beautiful couple. Cleo sensed a great deal of potential there.
A notebook rested on the bedside table in their honeymoon suite, on Cleo’s side. It contained scribbled notes that no one but she could decipher. She’d started writing songs again, happy songs. Maybe no one would ever see them but her, but that wasn’t important. Her heart was open again. The songs were there.
“I brought you a present,” Luther said, sitting up and reaching under the bed to grab a sloppily wrapped gift.
“You sneak!” she said, grinning as she shook the package.
“Open it.”
She tore open the paper and opened the box, and drew out two scraps of black material. She screwed up her nose. “What is this?”
“It’s a bikini.”
“Luther Malone!” she said, trying to make sense of the teeny bits of fabric. “I can’t wear this!”
“My perfect honeymoon includes a beautiful woman in a bikini,” he said, taking the top and showing her how it was supposed to go.
“But it’s so… so tiny. Luther, I’d be horrified to wear this in public.”
“I didn’t say you were leaving the room in this thing,” Luther growled. “I didn’t say I want anyone else to see you in it. It’s just for me.”
She laughed and threw her arms around his neck, just as a new song came on the radio. Since the movie had been released, ‘Come Morning’ got lots of airtime. You couldn’t take a twenty-minute drive without hearing it. Hearing it had hurt at first, but the more she loved Luther, the less it hurt.
While Luther showed her how the bikini was supposed to be worn, she sang along.
He arranged the sliver of fabric that was supposed to be the bikini bottom, his fingers brushing her skin familiarly.
“Remember how you said you wanted kids right away?” she said, taking his hand in hers and laying his palm against her belly.
He smiled. Oh, she did love his smile.
“I definitely remember.”
“Well, I’d better wear this bikini now, because in a couple of months it’s not going to fit.”
“When?”
“February, I think. I haven’t seen the doctor yet, but… I think February.”
“Maybe she’ll be a Valentine’s baby.”
“She?” Cleo asked.
“Or he. I can’t call our baby it, now, can I?”
“No.”
Luther tossed the bikini aside and rolled her over, taking her face in his hands. “Do you know how much I love you?”
She nodded, unable to speak without shedding an emotional tear or two.
“You changed my life, Cleo Malone.” He kissed her briefly, tenderly, his lips barely lingering.
“Loving you certainly changed mine,” she said.
“On the happiness scale, you took me from a miserly three to a really great fifteen,” he teased.
She smiled. “I wonder what a twenty is like?”
“Let’s find out.”
* * *
The End
* * *
Read on for an excerpt from Boone Sinclair’s story, In Bed With Boone
In Bed With Boone
Spring 2002
* * *
A blind date was a sure sign of a life gone wrong. Jayne Barrington stared out the passenger-side window of the speeding Mercedes and wondered where her life had gone wrong. The Arizona landscape, so different from her Mississippi home, provided no answers. Giving in to the only sign of nervousness she ever allowed herself, Jayne fingered the pearls that hung at her throat.
She expected too much, she imagined. The kind of man she dreamed about was long gone. A gentleman. A gallant. A knight in shining armor. Those men didn’t exist anymore.
“I must’ve taken a wrong turn,” Jim said nervously. “Surely there’s a road that cuts through to the south. We’ll be at the party in no time at all.” The false note of cheer he tried to put into his voice didn’t quite work.
They hadn’t passed a house or a streetlight for miles. Jim had driven by the last gas station twenty minutes ago. When Jayne had suggested that he stop and ask for directions, he’d uttered a valiant rejection of her sensible idea. Men.
The car jerked as the narrow asphalt road ended and without warning they found themselves on what was little more than a dirt trail.
“Turn the car around,” Jayne insisted in her frostiest voice. “This road can’t possibly go anywhere.”
Jim leaned forward and craned his long scrawny neck to see over the steering wheel, peering at the small section of the road his headlights illuminated. “There’s a ditch on this side. I’m afraid if I try to turn around here, we’ll get stuck. Keep your eye out for a nice flat place to turn around.”
For the past half hour, everything had been flat! Jayne took a deep breath in and exhaled slowly. Pamela would pay dearly for setting up this disastrous date. Jim might be relatively handsome—but for that long and skinny neck—and he definitely ran in the correct social circles. But the man was dumb. Beneath that pretty face and the expensive dental work, he had fewer working brain cells than the average twelve-year-old. Jayne could abide many faults in a man, but stupidity wasn’t one of them.
They’d left Flagstaff two hours ago, eventually leaving behind the pine forests for stretches of flat land broken here and there by magnificent red rock formations and scruffy plants that fought to survive in the harsh dirt. They should’ve reached their destination more than half an hour ago, but she hadn’t seen any of the landmarks she’d been told to look for.
For goodness’ sake, they were completely lost!
“I think I see lights,” Jim said, a twinge of hopeful optimism in his voice.
Jayne looked ahead, and sure enough a soft glow broke the complete darkness of the night in the distance. Not enough to be the headlights of an approaching car or a house situated here in the middle of nowhere, but more illumination than a flashlight would give off. A distinct uneasiness settled in her stomach. Who knew what might be ahead?
“Perhaps you should just put the car in reverse and back up until we hit the asphalt, and then you can turn around,” Jayne said sensibly. “To be honest, I’ve developed a headache. Let’s forget the part
y. I just want to go back to the hotel.” Her father would be disappointed, but there was just so much a dutiful daughter could do to further a promising political career. Jim had been looking forward to the party at Hollywood producer Corbin Marsh’s secluded Arizona home. He had a notion that if Marsh got a good look at his pretty face, he’d soon be a star.
“Drive backward all that way?” Jim shot her an astonished glance. “It’ll be easier to just find a wide place to turn around. If we don’t come across a good spot by the time we get to whatever that light ahead is, I’ll try to back up.” He attempted a reassuring smile. “I was really looking forward to meeting Marsh, but if you insist, we can forget the party and go back to your hotel. I’m sure he’ll want to meet with you at another time, and I’ll just tag along then.”
No way was she inviting this moron into her hotel room, and this was definitely their last date. He would not be “tagging along” with her anywhere. But now, while she was at his mercy practically in the middle of nowhere, was probably not the time to tell him so.
The glow ahead grew brighter, and soon Jayne was able to make out dimly lit forms moving about two cars that had been pulled off the road. Three or four powerful flashlights lit the night, illuminating the scene, a scene that struck her as not being quite right. Why were all those men out here where there was so much nothing? She didn’t like this; she didn’t like it at all. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up.
“Jim, just back up,” she commanded. Men usually listened intently to her commands, but not dim Jim.
“I’ll ask for directions this time. Guess I should’ve done that at the gas station we passed.”
“Guess so,” Jayne muttered, fingering her pearls almost furiously.
Jim pulled the Mercedes to a slow gentle stop in the middle of the road. He grabbed his keys, turned on the small flashlight that hung from his keychain, and gave her a dazzling smile. “I’ll be right back.”
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