by Mallory Rush
"Hey!" he shouted. "Just where the hell do you think you're going?" He almost grabbed her, but she eluded him and ran for the door.
"I'm sorry," she sobbed out miserably. "I'm sorry, Sol. I can't stand this. I have to—to think. To get away. I'll be back, I—I promise. Please don't hate me."
The screen door slammed shut behind her and she knew only the need for escape. She couldn't see. She couldn't breathe. Nor could she hear his shouted command for her to stop as she flew blindly through the gate and into the cover of night.
*
Sol stared after Mariah, his bellow dying to a growl once she disappeared from view. No way he could chase after her, and he sure as hell wasn't going to air their dirty laundry in front of his folks.
He was fairly certain where she was headed, and as much as he wanted to corner her now, he'd grant her a little time to pull herself together before he set about tearing her flimsy lies apart. Besides, he didn't trust his anger. He would never hit a woman, but he was liable to say some damaging things that he wouldn't be able to take back.
Thrusting his crutches aside, Sol took several uneven steps to the rocker and reconnected the phone to make an overdue call. He was no dummy, and even a dummy could have figured out what Beth's urgent news was.
Punching out the number he hadn't dialed since he'd been overseas, Sol was rewarded with a frazzled-sounding male voice on the other end.
"Mr. Garnet... Oh, sorry, Dr. Garnet. We've never met, but I think a meeting's in order. My name's Sol Standish and your daughter just happens to be my wife..."
*
"Oh, Hilda, Hilda, what am I going to do?" Mariah sobbed against the calf's neck in the barn lit only by a full moon. She wished she could burrow and hide and never come out, blot out the horrible memory of Sol's livid face, the sound of his fury.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," she moaned, clinging to Hilda. "I—I didn't mean to hurt anyone or betray Sol. It was just a little fib and then there was another one and another and—and I love him, love him so much and how can I bear it if he hates me? I can't, just can't. I can't live without him. And what if he goes to Desiree? Would he actually want to spite me so much that he'd—"
An image of Desiree soothing his wrath beat at her, causing her to shudder. "Tell me what I can say to make everything good again, Hilda. Tell me what to do—"
"I'll tell you what to do. Get up and get in that back stall." A crutch suddenly appeared beside her bent head and Mariah jerked her tear-streaked face up to Sol. He stood over her, a giant ominously shadowed by the night. "I said get in the back stall, Mariah. And I mean now."
"Sol." Or was it? This wasn't the man she slept with, loved with, shared her life with. This was a dark stranger slapping her leg with a crutch when she remained paralyzed on her knees. "Please... please—"
"You beg pretty, little girl. But I'm not asking, I'm telling you to get your butt where I said. Don't make me move it for you."
Somehow she got up, stumbling back while he advanced, his hot breath fanning her face. She didn't know where she was going, blindly clutching stalls until she fell down on a pile of hay. The smell of fear and dread filled her senses at the sound of his crutches being thrown against wood and a gate slamming.
Then she heard the slow, deliberate rasp of leather against metal as he took off his belt.
"No, Sol!" She raised her hands as if warding off a whipping lash. "No, don't hit me, please don't—"
Leather cracked when he flung his belt away.
Before she could draw in a breath, he was between her knees, yanking up her dress and stripping off her panties. With one hand he gripped her wrists and pinned them above her head. Then his lips came down on hers and all her pleas for forgiveness were lost in his mouth.
His lips were hard and unrelenting, yet rife with a stunning passion. They rubbed against hers as his tongue stroked the softness within. Through a riot of sensation and fragmented emotion, she realized punishment was not his mission—unless punishment came in the form of a never-ending kiss, the gentle probing of his hand between her legs.
He ended the kiss, leaving her more disoriented and confused than before.
"I don't understand." She was gasping, hurting with the empty ache and the horrible lies that had brought them to this. "What do you want from me?"
"This." He filled her completely with a single sleek thrust. "And more."
"More," she whimpered. Then her pinned arms were free and she was grabbing his shoulders, clutching him to her.
"That's better," he whispered harshly against her mouth. "And don't you ever suggest again that I would raise a hand to you."
"I'm sorry, Sol, sorry for everything."
"Save the apologies. The 'more' I want is some trust from my wife."
"I trust you. I—"
"Do you? Do you really?" He was pumping into her quick and deep, his chest pressing against her covered breasts. What was happening? He was taking her like a madman and she was wild beneath him, grateful for this plundering that took away the numbness of her body, her mind.
Defenseless, she had no choice but to cling to the trust he demanded she give and that she had been so wrong not to show long ago.
"I love you," she cried haltingly. "Trust you... trust—"
"Then show me. Tell me how old you are."
"Twenty... next year."
"Is that why you never sent Turns the birth certificate?"
"Yes. But—but I was going to, I swear it. As soon as I—I had to tell you first." His hands, as impatient as her need to tell him all, ripped the bodice of her dress. "It had to come from me."
"That it did. Though you should have told me a lot sooner." Her breasts fell into his cupped palms. His rough handling of them relayed the urgency of his need to possess and answered her need to be possessed wholly, with nothing between them.
"Hard," she demanded. "Drive it all away, Sol."
"Driving into your body is one thing, Mariah. Your mind is another, and it's vexed me, driven me half crazy the way you've given me glimpses, teasing me with what's in there, only to shut me out. Let me in now. Tell me why, why did you take so long to tell me the truth?"
"I was afraid you would think you'd married a kid. That you'd—decide I was too young and wouldn't want me."
"What do you take me for, a fool? One who couldn't figure out how young you were the first time we woke up in bed together with you all naked in the morning light and your makeup smeared off?" He feasted on her lips until she groaned. The sleepless nights, the self-recriminations, and all because she hadn't trusted him any more than she trusted herself.
"I was the fool, not you, Sol."
"Glad you realized that. Because the idea that I could ever give you up is about the most foolish notion I've ever heard in my life." With a snarl, he raised up and yanked off his shirt, then her dress. "So whose picture did you send me?" he asked with a grinding of his hips.
"It was... Beth's."
"Nice-looking woman, Beth. Ever been to Cairo, Paris—"
"No," she said. "Never. Not Pat Pong's or anyplace I said I'd been. Beth was there, not me."
"Not a family vacation, huh? And speaking of which"—he suddenly pulled out—"do your parents know we're married?"
"Don't leave me like this," she pleaded, reaching to put him back inside her. "I need you."
"You can have what you need." Sol gripped her wrist. "But not until you tell me about your parents."
"They don't know that I'm here. I told them that—" Mariah searched for and found her guts. "I told them we'd had the marriage annulled."
"Going to tell them the truth anytime soon?"
"Tomorrow. They'll try to force me to go home, Sol, but I won't go. This is my life. This is my home."
"You bet your bottom dollar this is where you belong, little lady. Because I love you. You hear me, Mariah? I love you like crazy, and nobody's taking you away from me unless it's over my dead body."
"You mean... you love
me?" With shaking hands, she framed his face and probed his gaze. "Even after all I've done, you love me? Tell me again. Again."
"I..." He kissed her gently. "Love..." He kissed her hard. "You." With one swift movement, he planted himself deep inside her, all the way to her heart. "Now that we've got that settled, I want to know the rest. You lied to me from letter one. I reckon I know why, but I want to hear it from you. Spit it out, baby."
"I didn't think you'd have anything to do with me, much less have married me."
"You're right. And for that I can forgive what you did. You made life good again for me, Mariah. I didn't want to live for a while, and now I can't live without you."
She met his thrust with a gyration of her hips, taking him in, pulling him down, getting as close to him as a desperate lover could. His rough reassurance pumped through her veins, unleashing her final confession.
"There's more, Sol. Something else you don't know about me—"
"Save it. All I want right now is a promise. No more lies. You hear me, Mariah? No more and never again. Promise me," he demanded.
"No more lies. I'll never put anything between us again. No more—" She screamed his name while her body shook. Her womb was hungry and he filled it, filled it as her final cries dissolved into a whispered sigh of "Lies."
*
"Mariah, wake up."
Sol's breath tickled her ear and produced an incoherent murmur from her lips. When she cuddled closer, he said, "Baby, milking time's in less than an hour, and neither of us looks exactly decent, much less proper."
"I don't care," she said groggily. "Let's roll around in the hay some more, lover."
"I must have misjudged the hour." Sol chuckled and captured a bare breast. "Milking time just came early."
Mariah laughed throatily, gloriously sated and at peace with the world. They rolled around, limbs entangled amidst straw and discarded clothing that was ripped beyond repair.
"I love you," she vowed, sealing it with hungry kisses. "I love you, love you—"
"And I love you right back." Sol pulled away and stared down at her in the predawn light. "Can't wait to meet my new in-laws. They must be something to have raised such a unique daughter."
Mariah threw her hand over her eyes and groaned. Tomorrow had become today, and after the draining last twelve hours, dealing with her parents was the last thing she wanted to do. Not only that, but she realized her confession to Sol hadn't included an admission of her particular uniqueness.
"Sol, there's something else you deserve to know. Something about pickles and trying to save Besse and why my parents had other plans for me besides marriage."
"Yes?" he drawled. Surely that wasn't a smile tugging at his lips. "Go on, I'm all ears."
"I have a gift—well, actually it's a curse. I'm not like normal people. No matter how hard I tried to just be myself, all anyone ever cared about was my, um, peculiar abilities." She hesitated, not wanting to relinquish the normalcy she'd embraced in being simply a woman, a wife, a friend.
"I care about you, Mariah. Just for yourself."
"I know you do. You were the first one, Sol. You'll never know what freedom it meant to my life the day I went to the mailbox and opened your first letter. You didn't know anything about me but what I wanted you to know."
"A little hedging on that score, but I understand why. Now about that gift...?"
"I have a photographic memory. They can't measure my IQ because it tops the scale. I have a bachelor's degree in biology and I probably could have finished medical school by now but I dragged my feet. They're still dragging. My parents are going to push hard to see that their prodigy does what they've expected all my life. But I won't go. I won't be a surgeon."
"Forget the parents. What I want to know is, why not? Is it because of what happened with Besse?"
Mariah shrugged, disconcerted by his demanding tone. "I failed her—"
"For the love of God, Mariah, everyone fails. It's how we learn to succeed."
"It's not just Besse. It—it's me. Me, Sol. For once, I can choose how to live my own life. Do you have any idea what it's like to be some—some guinea pig? To have your mind probed by experts as if it belonged to science instead of you? This is my choice. No more school, no more anything but my life with you."
She tried to push him off, to get the remains of her clothes on and leave the conversation at that. An idea had taken hold the night Besse died, but it was one to consider at her leisure, now that she was calling her own shots.
Almost. Sol pinned her with his weight and gripped her chin, which she stubbornly attempted to jerk away.
"Easy," he said firmly. "Easy, babe. We need to talk about this before you run off in a snit with your mind made up about the rest of your life. You've got some legitimate reasons to turn your back on the past, and to take some time off. But a gift like yours shouldn't be wasted."
"You sound like my parents," she accused.
"Well, this isn't them talking, it's me. I could never hold you back, any more than you could limit yourself to life on a dairy farm."
"I don't want to talk about it," she snapped. "Now let me up before someone finds us."
"Back to that, are we? A little while ago you preferred to roll around in the hay." She met his gentle teasing with a glare and a good dose of resentment for trying to take back a part of what she'd gained. "Okay," he sighed, letting her up. "But this conversation's not over. To be continued—later today, in fact."
"Absolutely not," she asserted as she dressed.
"I'm afraid you won't have any choice," Sol said from behind her. Slipping his arms around her waist, he pulled her to his chest. "Your parents are due to arrive before noon."
Chapter 15
"Mariah, wait!" Sol took six steps after her, then lost his footing and had to grab the stall's swinging gate. With a growl, he limped over to his crutches while he ate Mariah's infuriated dust.
"Mornin', Dad," Sol bit out when they passed shoulders on his way from the barn.
"Where's the fire?" Herbert followed Sol's gaze across the street, where Mariah had just slammed the cottage's front door.
"I think you can see the blaze from here. Could you ask Ma to set two extra plates for dinner? We're having guests—Mariah's parents."
"I see." Herbert pulled at his chin and said slowly, "I know it's not the best time to ask, son, but should I tell your mother to prepare that fatted calf she's been saving? We've been worried you might be getting restless, since two weeks was usually your limit for R and R around here. You don't have the itch to head out soon, do you? Go see some new sights in Mobile?"
Sol considered the question; he considered the changes in himself. "You can stop worrying, Dad. The itch got scratched and I'm here for the long haul. But you can tell Ma to save the fatted calf for breeding. There's another generation of Standishes perfectly satisfied to tend the herd."
Herbert let go of a relieved sigh. "So what're you standing around here for, boy? You've got a fire to douse before company comes to call."
*
"Mariah, open this door!"
"Go away," she yelled over his pounding on the bathroom door. "Just go away, you—you back-stabber."
Sinking into the claw-foot tub, she covered her ears while the water all but simmered from her boiling rage. She still couldn't believe that he'd gone behind her back, when it was her place to deal with the fiasco she'd created in Mobile. And not only that, but he'd known the truth, the whole awful truth, before putting her on the rack and grilling her.
Suddenly a click sounded and the door flew back on its hinges. Sol stood in the entry, holding the key in his hand, his expression divided between anger and heated interest in her nakedness.
"Back-stabber?" Sniffing as if he'd just picked up the scent of something foul, Sol narrowed his gaze. "No name-calling, remember?"
With a yank of the shower curtain, Mariah cut him off. A millisecond later, the curtain was jerked back and flipped over the top bar, out of her re
ach. Sol then proceeded to shut the toilet lid and take a seat.
"I didn't ask for an audience," she said sharply.
"And since when does a husband have to ask for one?"
"Since said husband went behind my back and called my parents." She sat up so fast the water sloshed over the edge of the tub and onto his feet. "I can't believe you had the nerve to stick your nose where it has no business—"
"I beg your pardon? In case you forgot, we're married and that makes your business, my business. Especially when it involves some in-laws who think you ditched me."
"I had my reasons and you know it," she said. "Now look who's bending the rules, dredging up old garbage. Stick to the issue at hand, you said."
"My, my, Mariah, you are a fast learner. One good fight under your belt and you want to referee. But since you're turning out to be such a stickler for the rules, I'll state my case. This is the issue and I need to get it off my chest."
"Then get it off so you can get out."
"Well, if the kitten doesn't know how to scratch and hiss too." He leaned forward and said quietly, "Now sharpen your claws on this: You hurt me. I figured your parents might not know I existed and you snuck off once they were out of sight. But finding out they knew about me all along and you'd supposedly gotten rid of me was a damn bitter pill to swallow. Made me feel real good that you stood up for your husband like that."
"Why didn't you bring that up last night?" Her rage rapidly diminished with the sudden rush of shame and guilt.
"Because I felt you had enough to deal with and I was thinking of someone besides myself. Which is exactly what I'm asking you to do for a change."
She winced, his probing gaze making her look down.
"That's a bad habit, lady, running away from what you don't want to confront." Sol reached into the tub and flipped some water toward her face. Mariah swiped it from her cheeks and turned to him. "That's better. There's another rule, by the way. A person has to admit when he's wrong."
"Okay, I was wrong. Wrong," she repeated. "If I had it to do over, I'd stand up to them, but I was a different person then and our future was shaky enough without them on the scene. It was a rational decision, Sol." Shaking her head in defeat, she added, "Maybe I wouldn't do it any differently. If I had, they might have stolen any chance you were willing to give me. I'm sorry I hurt you, but can't you understand it was necessary at the time?"