Walk in Beauty

by Wind, Ruth

  He looked at her. It was a mistake. A big mistake. Her robe gaped a little at the neck, and below, her thin cotton gown had stuck to the damp flesh of her breast. Through the fabric he could see a hint of the dark edge of her nipple, a far more vivid detail than he wished to notice.

  Without knowing he would do it, he reached for her hand on the table, dragging his gaze from the temptation of her almost bare breast.

  “I don’t think I can really talk right now, Jessie,” he said. Slowly, he moved closer and touched his lips to the smooth edge of her chin.

  “Luke,” she protested.

  He kissed her jaw, tasting the moist freshness of the shower on her skin, and when he found himself teetering unsteadily at the very edge of the chair, he swiftly left it to kneel in front of Jessie, putting his hands on her thighs. The scent of her body enveloped him.

  “Luke,” she whispered, “I don’t think—”

  To halt the words, he kissed her. Her mouth was deep and sweet and all too willing, and he groaned at the enfolding softness. He deftly untied the knot of her robe. She made a small, husky sound when the heavy terry cloth parted, and he knew she was as aware as he of the transparency of her gown. Lace in an open weave edged the neck and ran down the front. Luke traced the line of it with one finger and realized she wore nothing at all below.

  “God, Jessie, I don’t know how you expected me to resist you when you’re dressed like this.” He stroked her thighs and kissed her neck. “Maybe you didn’t want me to.”

  “Maybe not,” she agreed in a whisper, and shifted to touch him. Her mouth fell on his temple, and her fingers restlessly laced through his hair.

  Every inch of him thrummed with a passion so vivid he could barely breathe. In an agony of desire, he touched the soft shape of her breast. Unsure of how far she was willing to go, Luke gave her time to pull away if she wanted to, if she wasn’t ready. Her nipple pearled against his thumb.

  With a deep groan, he pulled her from the chair onto his lap, and Jessie made a sharp, surprised noise at the sudden, intimate contact between them. She cupped his face in her palms, settling closer, letting him pull her tightly against him, not protesting when his hands slipped below her gown to caress the length of her thighs.

  She kissed him deeply, with no holds barred, nibbling his lips and suckling his tongue and opening herself to him completely. Luke explored the satiny length of her thighs and—

  The awkwardness of the position defeated them both suddenly. Luke fell to one side, catching himself painfully on one elbow, and Jessie tumbled with him, bumping her head on the chair as they went down.

  Luke nearly surfaced then, aware that they were not alone in the house, that they were sprawled on the kitchen floor on a cold winter night, that the linoleum was not the most comfortable thing in the world. “Are you all right?” he asked, reaching for her.

  “No,” she whispered, and touched his lips with the tips of her fingers.

  Luke swallowed. Her long white robe protected them from the cold of the floor. Jessie gazed at him with her wide topaz eyes, her lips soft and gently parted, her gown demure and covering nothing. A wave of need stole his reason once more and he found himself bending to kiss her again, to taste that mouth so long lost and so deeply missed.

  His hand fell upon her belly, and it was a new shape to him. Surprised, he lifted his head to examine with his eyes as well as his fingers the new, gently rounded shape.

  She caught his hands. “Don’t—I’ve never really gotten it back in shape.”

  Back in shape. Once her flat belly had been a source of pride for her. His child had changed her forever.

  The knowledge caught in his throat. Against his will, a vision of another man picking her up when she was too pregnant to stand alone slipped into his mind.

  He closed his eyes and thought of that same man driving her to an Albuquerque hospital late at night while hundreds of miles away Luke had no doubt been in some bar, telling lies as he tipped back another shot of tequila.

  Shame knifed through him. He eased away from her. “I’m sorry.” He shifted and wrapped the edges of her robe around her body, covering her. “I was wrong to start that.”

  She sat up, clutching the terry around her like a shield. In her eyes, he saw a sharp pain, the same confused and vulnerable expression he’d glimpsed this afternoon, and he cursed himself for his weakness.

  Gently, he helped her to her feet, letting go when she stood beside him. “It’s not you, Jessie,” he said tightly. “I’m an ass and I know it. I’m sorry.”

  Before he could weaken, he stalked out of the kitchen, taking his conscience and his struggle with him.

  * * *

  Jessie slumped in her chair, stunned and confused. Against her belly and the side of her breast, she could feel the imprint of his fingers, hot places on her cold body. There was a slurry feeling in her legs and a thwarted congestion in her breasts and loins.

  She felt like she was going crazy, wanting him and not wanting him, trying to balance the past against the present and the love she still felt for him against the fear that his sobriety would not last. How could she spend the next three or four days with him and pretend to be just his friend? How could she pretend to make room for him in her life as Giselle’s father when all she could think about was making love with him?

  Suddenly he was back in the doorway.

  Jessie spoke from her frustration. “So much for the dramatic exit, huh?”

  His jaw tightened. “I forgot that I’m supposed to ask you if Giselle can ride with me to Albuquerque.”

  She laughed harshly. “That couldn’t wait until morning?”

  “Jessie—”

  “You can’t keep doing this to me. I don’t know what to think from one minute to the next.”

  He glared at her. “I already told you I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

  “We have to work something out about Giselle, and I don’t see how we can if we keep going back and forth like this.”

  “There’s nothing to work out.” His voice and face were drained of all expression, but Jessie could feel his agitation, saw him swallow. “We just need some time—” he cleared his throat “—to learn to be friends.”

  “Time?” She made a noise of derision, and stood up. “Friends? Do you know how much time it took me to get over you? Now here you are again, and I’m supposed to know how to be your friend?” She heard her voice rising and swallowed to calm it. In a fierce near-whisper, she said, “You were more than my best friend, Luke. You were my whole world.”

  He winced, as if she’d hit him, and for a long time, he stood there without speaking. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “There are things you can never pay for, as long as you live. I think of you all alone and so pregnant and—” He bowed his head. “All my life, my father told me not to drink. He showed us the Indians who were drunk in Farmington, so it would scare us, so we’d be ashamed.” His face was rigid with the effort of holding back some powerful emotion. Jessie wanted to reach out, but was afraid he would shatter if she did.

  He shook his head. “I don’t have any words for this. I can’t make it right and I can’t go back in time. I just have to live with it.”

  His shame struck her with terrible poignancy. “I didn’t want to leave you, Luke. I just didn’t know what else to do.” She crossed her arms to hide their trembling. “I loved my mother so much, and no matter what I did I couldn’t keep her from drinking. I kept thinking if I’d just be really good, maybe she wouldn’t have to drink.”

  “Jessie, you don’t have to—”

  “Yes, I do.” Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks. It seemed so important to make him understand. “When I found out I was pregnant, I just couldn’t bear the thought that Giselle would grow up doing the same thing.”

  Luke moved abruptly and took her into his arms. “Shh,” he whispered into her hair. “I know, Jessie. I never blamed you.” In the fine trembling in his body, she felt his emotion. “I mis
sed you and I wanted you, but I never blamed you.”

  She buried her head in his shoulder and let go of a sorrowful moan. “This is crazy. I feel like I’m on a roller coaster.”

  “It’s the roller coaster that scares me. We’ve both been through a lot. I’m getting too old for this. I need things to be balanced.”

  She nodded, wiping ineffectively at her tears.

  “Time, Jessie. That’s all we really need. A year from now, I’ll show up to get Giselle for the weekend and you’ll wave as you go out with your new boyfriend.”

  That scenario struck her as more than a little unlikely, but she grinned at his attempt at humor, anyway. “Good night.”

  “Good night, Jessie.” He hesitated at the door, then turned away again. Jessie wasn’t sure whether she was relieved or disappointed.

  * * *

  The feeling was still with her the next morning as she loaded her suitcase into her car.

  For one thing, it was damned hard to let Giselle crawl into the truck with Luke, instead of Jessie’s car. Everything seemed out of control, out of her reach. A part of her wanted to throw a screaming fit, grab her daughter and run away, far away, from all that had happened. Instead, she gritted her teeth and vowed to find some way to take control of her life once they were back in Albuquerque.

  The last thing Luke carried from the house was a box of CDs. Spying it, Jessie came forward. “Let me see what you have.”

  He popped open the lid, and Jessie riffled through the discs, reading the labels—some factory-generated, but most in his own hand. She shook her head over the collection. Santana and Bob Seger and Tom Waits mixed with Van Morrison and The Doors. “You have anything at all from, say, the new century?” she asked.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?”

  Jessie grinned, grabbing the Santana and a Crosby, Stills and Nash she hadn’t heard in ages. “Don’t try and play any old-fogy music to your daughter.”

  “What does she like?”

  “Michael Jackson and any hip hop I allow her access to.”

  “Hip hop?”

  “I know.” Jessie picked out a Jackson Browne, too. “You should see her dance.”

  He looked pained. “I’m old.”

  Jessie grinned and took the CDs. “Me, too.” She waved. “I’m sure I’ll make better time than you will, so I guess I’ll just see you in Albuquerque.”

  “Okay.” He snapped the box closed. “Drive carefully.”

  Once she got out on the open road, with the CD player blasting old rock and roll, Jessie found herself taking a long breath of relief. It was the first time in well over a week that she’d been alone in any real sense of the word. The clouds had cleared off, leaving behind a sky the color of a blue jay’s feathers. It was something she loved about the Southwest—all that clear, open sky and the sunshine somehow made her feel more cheerful.

  Luke rode behind her for some way, but she lost him in the traffic through Pueblo and didn’t worry about it. Once she stopped glancing in the rearview mirror for his truck, she was well and truly alone.

  She liked the open road, always had. Those days on the road with Luke still counted among the most precious of her life. They’d gone everywhere together, up and down the West coast, into Canada, across the Great Plains and through the South.

  It struck her as odd that the one place they never went was Indian country. Not north or south, not anywhere close. They skidded by Montana and the Dakotas, somehow missed Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona. And he’d said something about not being on the res for a long time when Marcia originally asked if he’d go down there with Jessie.

  She flipped the Santana tape and turned it up a little, nodding in time to “Oye como va” as she tried to remember what he’d told her. She knew the family had returned to the reservation for a year or two after Luke’s mother died. He’d been sixteen then. Why hadn’t he ever gone back?

  With a frown, she remembered with an uncomfortable sense of guilt that once he had wanted to go back, just after his father died. It had been a terrible time for him, and he kept pressing Jessie to go with him to the reservation to live for a while. Even now, she had trouble understanding why she had been so adamantly against it. She’d been afraid, afraid that she’d lose him there, lose him to people she didn’t know and who wouldn’t accept her. Their relationship had been just the two of them for so long…

  Jessie blew out a deep breath and wished for a cigarette. In retrospect it was easy to see how lost Luke had been after the death of his father. She had just kept telling herself he’d get through it.

  And he had, more or less, by simply drinking it all away.

  She didn’t kid herself about the drinking. It had lurked for years between them, a sleeping bear in the background, never really dangerous but always waiting. At first, it had made Jessie paranoid—not everyone was like her mother, but that had been, after all, her major experience with alcohol. She tried to be reasonable, to explain away Luke’s fondness for beer as part of his trade—he was a construction worker. Wasn’t drinking a part of that culture?

  But even early in their relationship there had been times, at a party or when he fell prey to the odd dark mood, that he’d seem to lose control, wouldn’t quit drinking until she dragged him incoherent to bed. The next day, he would be desperately ill and depressed.

  For weeks afterward, he was always so ashamed and contrite that Jessie found herself soothing him, trying to ease the bleakness in his heart. Trying to make it all go away. By reassuring him, she reassured herself. He was just a social drinker who sometimes lost control.

  A hundred times since leaving him, she’d berated herself for not reacting to the signs sooner. Maybe if she’d been a little more alert, a little more aware, she might have been able to help him, instead of waiting until it was too late and walking out.

  Now they were traveling toward the past in more ways than one. In his truck, they would be together on the road, the way they had been once upon a time before disaster struck. And their journey would take them to Luke’s childhood and whatever it was that he thought he’d lost.

  What would happen to him then?

  And what would happen to Jessie?

  Chapter Nine

  The trip from Colorado Springs to Albuquerque took a good seven hours under the best of circumstances. Luke figured Jessie, in her small car, would make it in about eight, including a couple of stops for food. In his truck, stable but far from powerful, it was going to take closer to nine, ten if he counted breaks for meals, to let Giselle and Tasha attend to nature and run off some of their restlessness.

  Luke thought it was one of the best days of his life so far. He and Giselle talked and talked about everything and nothing. Giselle wanted to know about Luke’s parents, and he told her little snippets he remembered, things that would make her laugh and make her think and be proud she had been born to them.

  He found himself thinking of his father, as he had been so often the past few days. Jack would have been ashamed at Luke’s drinking, but maybe Luke could make up for it by being a good father to this child.

  By seven, Giselle was drooping visibly and Luke took pity on her, pulling into a diner outside Santa Fe. “How ‘bout some supper, little bit?”

  “Yeah!”

  He called Jessie to let her know they’d be there soon and ordered hamburgers and soup, coffee for himself and milk for Giselle.

  She made a face. “I’d rather have pop.”

  “Pop will rot your teeth.”

  “So I’ll brush ‘em when I get home. We’re not far away now.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Nice try, but no dice.” She shrugged and fell back against the booth. “I’m gonna be so glad to sleep in my own bed tonight. Do you think Tasha could sleep with me?”

  “She’s not really used to being in the house at night.” He pulled the tobacco from his pocket. “She probably wouldn’t like it.”

  To his surprise, tears welled in Giselle’s eyes. “I
think she would. Why have a dog if you aren’t gonna let her come inside and sleep with you?”

  He studied her as he rolled the cigarette. “To love and play with outside.”

  “I think you’re being mean.”

  Their burgers arrived at that moment, and Luke was glad for the diversion. “Why don’t you eat your supper and we’ll talk about it later.”

  With a sigh, she tossed her hair over her shoulders and looked at her plate. “Oh, great,” she said with annoyance.

  “What?”

  “Pickles!” she grumbled with disdain and fastidiously flipped them off with one finger. “I hate pickles. They make everything stink.” She gave him a level look. “My mother knows that.”

  Luke bit back a smile, seeing the telltale signs of exhaustion in her manner. “Is that right?”

  Slapping her bun on top of the hamburger, Giselle took an experimental bite. She chewed it with an expression of disgust and swallowed. “Tastes like pickles.”

  He chuckled.

  “Are you laughing at me?” she asked.

  “Yes I am, Your Majesty.”

  “I’m not Your Majesty.” She frowned and slumped back against the booth. Below her eyes were circles of exhaustion. “Whatever that means.”

  Luke signaled for the waitress. “Bring me something to take these out in,” he said, indicating their meals. “We’re going to have to go.”

  He bundled up the burgers and bought a couple of small bottles of juice on the way out. As he suspected, Giselle ate and fell promptly asleep.

  The working-class neighborhood in Albuquerque was easy enough to find, and Luke parked in front of a small, simple adobe with a courtyard in front. Leaving Giselle in the truck, Luke rang the doorbell. When Jessie answered, he said, “She’s out cold. Turn back her bed and I’ll carry her in.”

  The child barely stirred as he lifted her in his arms, just slumped against his chest and sighed deeply. In her room, a little-girl place full of dolls and stuffed animals, he tugged off her shoes and dress and covered her with a heavy quilt.