His fingertips pressed against the back of her knee. Each small point radiated heat. She said, “How do I know you’re not an ax murderer?”
He inched the garter past her knee and released it. “I guess,” he said, “that’s just a chance you’ll have to take.”
chapter two
After ten futile minutes of searching for Devon, she stumbled upon Luke sprawled lazily on the grass in the shade with several of his male cousins. Although he still wore the earring that dangled to his shoulder, Luke had submitted to a haircut a week before the wedding, mute testimony to the esteem in which he held his Uncle Rob.
She knelt to tug playfully at his lapel, knowing it was taboo to show any physical affection in front of his peers unless it was offered in the guise of traditional masculine roughhousing. “Yo, kiddo,” she said.
Luke’s ears turned red. “Yeah,” he said. “Whaddya want?”
“I’m leaving for a little bit. Tell your sister when you see her. If you need anything, Auntie Maeve is around somewhere.”
His flush deepened. “Ma, I’m fifteen years old. I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
He was right. She didn’t want to admit that her baby was growing up. She held back the caress her fingers automatically wanted to bestow. Instead, she said gruffly, “Stay out of trouble, kemosabe.”
She found Jesse Lindstrom leaning against the back porch railing. Beer bottle in hand, he was chatting with a dark-haired man she didn’t know. When he saw her, he set down the half-empty beer and stepped away from the railing, and she felt an instant of panic. She knew nothing about this man except that he was Casey’s former brother-in-law. She was thirty-six years old, for God’s sake, not twenty, and in spite of her liberation from Eddie, she didn’t make a habit of picking up strange men.
But logic didn’t enter into the equation. It hadn’t since she’d first noticed him standing there on the lawn, watching her with those dark eyes. She was reasonably certain she knew where this was headed, but she was powerless to resist. Didn’t want to resist. Didn’t even want to think about it for fear that she would lose her nerve and change her mind.
He led her to a shiny red GMC pickup, opened the door for her and steadied her as she raised the hem of her dress and climbed up into the cab. Inside, it was hotter than the hinges of hell. Rose lowered the window, and fresh air, ripe with the scent of new-mown grass, rushed through the opening, cooling some of the perspiration that had gathered under her arms and between her breasts.
Jesse walked around to the driver’s side and climbed in, started the truck, backed it around and squeezed between two cars parked in the grass at the edge of the drive. Afraid to look at him or at the three feet of no-man’s-land on the bench seat between them, Rose stared out the window at the passing landscape, as exotic to her as a foreign country, with its rolling hills and trees and its green pastures dotted with black and white cattle.
A couple of miles down the road, near a large, tidy Colonial home, Jesse slowed, clicked on his blinker, and turned off the highway onto a drive that was little more than a gravel path through a broad meadow of gently nodding grasses and wild roses that bloomed in clusters. He brought the truck to a halt atop a slight rise, and Rose sucked in her breath at the brilliant vista of meadow and sky and broad blue river that was laid out before her.
“This is spectacular,” she said, reaching for her door handle and climbing down from the truck cab. Even on a hot summer day, the temperature here was moderate, cooled by a mild breeze blowing in off the river. Wordlessly, she followed him around the house to the neatly mowed back lawn, taking a direct path to the river, until they both stopped at the riverbank. Standing at the spot where grassy lawn met the rocky path down to the river, she closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of fresh air, holding it as long as possible before releasing it.
“It’s a great place to come when you need to clear your head,” he said.
“I can see why.”
“You’ll probably want to take those shoes off,” he warned. “We’re going down to the river.”
She turned to look at him. While she was gazing at the scenery, he had shed his shoes and socks, his necktie, his suit coat. From the truck, he’d produced a folded blanket, a jug of Chianti, and two paper cups. Rose eyed the wine and raised an eyebrow.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I stole it. They’ll never miss it. I figure it’s safer than that punch they’re all drinking. I think I counted at least three different people pouring stuff into it.”
Dryly, she said, “Every one of them a MacKenzie, no doubt.”
“I couldn’t testify to that. But one of them was your Uncle Seamus.” He held out a hand. “Careful. The rocks can be slippery.”
He braced her elbow and guided her along some invisible course that he seemed to know by heart. Rose stepped over a wide crack, and Jesse jumped down onto a hard pack of wet sand and turned to help her down behind him.
They were on a beach, a small private strip of sand. Rocky outcroppings surrounded it, completely hiding it from the lawn above. While Jesse spread the blanket on the sand near the rocks, Rose moved slowly toward the river. She stood ankle deep in crystal-clear water, face turned to the sun, and felt all her tight muscles begin to loosen.
She sensed his presence, opened her eyes and smiled at him as he handed her a paper cup of Chianti. “You own this little chunk of paradise?”
“I think,” he said, gazing placidly around him, “a more accurate assessment would be that it owns me.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “This place makes me feel like I just took two Valiums and had a long session with a good Swedish masseuse. You should rent it out, an hour at a time, to overworked city-dwellers. You’d make a mint.”
“Probably. But I like my privacy too much for that.”
By unspoken agreement, they sprawled on the blanket with the bottle of wine between them. “Did you get everything squared away with your kids?” he said.
“One of them. Luke. My ray of sunshine. My daughter, unfortunately, seems to be avoiding me.”
He uncapped the bottle of Chianti and topped off both their cups. “Oh?”
“Devon just turned seventeen, and suddenly I can’t do anything right. I don’t talk right, I don’t dress right, I don’t act like anybody else’s mother.” Rose leaned forward and rearranged the hem of her dress so the sun could warm her toes. “I think she wants me to be some polyester hausfrau in pink foam curlers.”
His smile was wry. “Instead,” he said, reaching out to finger her dangly copper earrings, “you wear the sun and the moon and the stars.”
“I am who I am. Take me or leave me.”
“I respect that. Devon will, too, one of these days.”
“Assuming we both survive her adolescence.” Palms braced against the blanket behind her, Rose tilted her face up to the sun. “Sometimes, I feel like I’m losing her. You should have seen the look she gave me today when I caught the bouquet. She was absolutely livid.”
“It’s a hard age. I teach high school, and the girls can be a pain to deal with. They can get really snotty at that age.”
She eyed him speculatively. “You’re a high school teacher? What do you teach?”
“Freshman comp. English lit. That kind of thing.”
A sudden breeze blew in off the water, raising gooseflesh on her bare forearms. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come. “With your looks,” she said wryly, “you must have to fight off lovesick girls with a baseball bat.”
His smile was rueful. “Only a few.”
“How do you handle it?”
Jesse shifted his weight onto one hip and stretched out his long legs. “You just have to set boundaries, and make sure they understand the consequences if they step over the line. Kids respond to limits, as long as they think they’re fair.”
“I bet you’re one hell of a teacher,” she said.
“And I bet you’re one hell of a mother.”
She to
ok a sip of Chianti. “Do you have any kids?”
“One,” he said. “Mikey. When Colleen and I divorced, she had things she wanted to do, places she wanted to go. I was the settled one, so Mikey stayed with me. He’s a great kid. Never gives me any trouble. He actually listens when I speak.”
“I hope you realize that’s nothing short of a miracle. My kids stopped listening to me as soon as they learned the word no.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “I’ve told you what I do,” he said. “What about you? What does Rose Kenneally do when she’s not dancing with her uncle at weddings?”
While she watched, a gull swooped down to the river’s surface and rose back up with a shimmering silver fish in its bill. “I manage a shelter for abused women.”
A moment of silence fell as he processed her words. “And I bet you’re like a she-wolf,” he said, “protecting her cubs.”
“Something like that.”
He took the hint and didn’t pursue that line of questioning. Instead, he uncapped the bottle of Chianti and refilled her empty cup. She looked at the cup, then at him. “Tell me. Are you planning to ply me with drink and then take advantage of me?”
He recapped the bottle. “Yes,” he said, those dark eyes steady on hers. “But only if it’s what you want.”
The thrill started somewhere in her stomach and shot through her on a hot jolt of adrenaline. In the distance somewhere, a gull cried. This was the craziest thing she’d ever done. She didn’t even know this man. But the sun and the river and the wine had loosened her inhibitions, and she couldn’t think of a single reason to say no when her instincts, and her body, were all screaming yes, yes, yes!
Her stomach clenched and unclenched as he took the cup from her hand and set it on the sand beside the blanket. She turned into his arms and into the moment they’d both been anticipating since they’d first seen each other across that wide expanse of lawn. His mouth was hot on hers as they took their time learning the taste, the feel, the scent of each other. Braced on his elbows, his weight a sweet heaviness upon her, he paused to study her face.
“Is this why you brought me here?” she said hoarsely.
“Yes. And it’s why you came.”
She studied him in painstaking detail, the soft dark eyes, the smooth skin taut over his cheekbones, the pale stubble of whiskers on his jaw. Her heart thudding, she said, “It’s broad daylight. Anybody could see us.”
“Don’t worry. Nobody comes here.”
“Not even some pleasure boater, floating down the river?”
“The only pleasure boater around here is my cousin Leo, and the last time I saw him, he was on his fourth glass of punch.”
“I suppose you realize,” she said lazily, “that I’m going to hell for sure. Nice Irish Catholic girls don’t put out.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, and humor sparked in those dark eyes. “I see. And are you a nice Irish Catholic girl?”
Their eyes caught and held. And then she reached up to unbutton his shirt. “Not any more,” she said.
***
The moon rode high in the sky when he brought her back to Casey’s house. The celebration had long since died down, most likely because the majority of the celebrants were sleeping it off somewhere. In the vast darkness of this rural paradise, the night sounds were different from those of home. Instead of the constant drone of traffic and the shriek of sirens, she heard the soft chirping of crickets, and the wind sighing through the trees. In the glow from the overhead light, she leaned up against the clapboard siding of the house, hands tucked demurely behind her. “I feel like a sixteen-year-old,” she whispered, “sneaking home after curfew.”
“I want you to know,” he said, “that what happened today—” He paused to examine her face, as though memorizing it for the future. “—I didn’t take it lightly.”
She touched her forehead to his chin. “Thank you. Thank you for the most incredible afternoon of my life.”
He raised her face, kissed her forehead. “I won’t forget it, Rose Kenneally. Or you.”
She watched him walk back to his truck. He opened the door, paused to look back at her. They studied each other for a long moment, and then he climbed into the cab, started the engine, and backed the truck around. She stood there, watching, until his tail lights disappeared from sight.
And then she steeled herself for battle.
Her mother was sitting in the wicker rocker, pretending to read a magazine. Mary MacKenzie’s keen blue eyes took in Rose’s tangled hair, her wrinkled dress, her kiss-swollen lips, and Mary’s mouth thinned. “Getting in pretty late, aren’t you, Rose?”
“I’m thirty-six years old, Mom. I can come in as late as I want.”
Her mother set down the magazine. “Luke was worried about you.”
“Well, as you can see, I’m fine.”
Mary studied her face. “Maybe not so fine.”
“Look, don’t judge me, okay? Do you have any idea how long it’s been since—” She stopped, felt a flush crawl up her face. At thirty-six, divorced and braless, she still couldn’t talk about sex with her mother.
“For the love of Mike, Rose, it’s not your soul I’m worried about. It’s your heart. And I’m not so old I don’t remember how it is between a man and a woman.”
“Then cut me some slack, Ma. I can take care of myself.”
“I thought by now you’d be settled down. But I’m not so sure it’ll ever happen.”
“I was settled, remember? I’m not the one who pushed Eddie out of my bed and into every other bed in town.”
“Eddie Kenneally wasn’t worth the snot from your nose,” her mother said. “Right from the day you married him, it broke my heart to see the way he treated you. You deserve better. But you won’t find it, sleeping with men you don’t even know.”
“It was only one man, Mom,” she said wearily. “Not exactly an orgy. I suppose Dad’s furious with me, too.”
“Your father doesn’t know where you disappeared to. I thought it more prudent not to tell him.”
Some of Rose’s anger dissipated. She crossed the room and knelt on the floor at her mother’s feet. “Thank you,” she said, folding her arms and resting her head on Mary’s lap.
Mary lay a hand on Rose’s head and ran her fingers through the red curls the way she had when Rose was a small child. “You’re still my little girl, Rose. You don’t stop being a mother just because your little ones grow up.”
Thinking of her own kids, Rose said softly, “I know.”
“Go on in and take a shower,” her mother said. “Get yourself put together. And then go talk to Luke.”
***
She found Luke in one of the upstairs bedrooms, sprawled across the bed, poring over a guitar magazine. He’d traded in the suit for torn jeans and an Aerosmith tee shirt. “Hey, hot stuff,” she said. “Mind if I come in?”
He shrugged. “Whatever.”
She sat on the edge of the bed. “Did you have fun at the wedding?”
He closed the magazine and rested his chin on his palm. “Weddings are for dorks. I can’t believe Uncle Rob actually wore a tux.”
She grinned. “Neither can I.”
He returned the grin. Luke had inherited his father’s dark good looks, but he’d gotten the MacKenzie trademark green eyes. “Mom?” he said, suddenly serious. “Do you think you’ll ever get married again?”
The question surprised her. “Where’d that come from?”
He shrugged those broad but bony shoulders again, reminding her of her brother Rob at that same age. He was built like Rob, tall and scrawny, with feet that wouldn’t stop growing. “I’ve been thinking about it, that’s all,” he said. “Devon starts college next year, and I’ll be off to college two years after that.” Those green MacKenzie eyes were somber. “Dad has Heidi, and the baby. But you don’t have anybody.”
“Aw, honey.” She brushed a wayward strand of hair back from his face. “You’re too young to be worrying about your
old mom.”
“You’re not old,” he said. “And you still look real good, for your age. I mean—” He paused, and blushed. “Kyle Housman thinks you’re hot.”
She gaped at him in astonishment and began rapidly cataloguing the procession of pimply and boisterous teenage boys who regularly visited her house, trying to put a face with a name. It finally clicked, the name and a vague image of a kid with a ponytail and gray eyes that looked as if they’d seen just a bit too much. Cheeky little bastard. “You tell Kyle,” she said, getting up from the bed, “that this hot old broad has forgotten things he has yet to learn. And stop worrying about me. I’m not good at being married, and I like my life just the way it is. Capisce?”
He grinned, and in that grin she saw the little boy who had brought her flowers from the empty lot on the corner of their street. “Loud and clear.”
She tweaked his nose. “Twerp,” she said, and left him laughing.
chapter three
Eight Weeks Later
Boston, Massachusetts
It had been a bitch of a week.
Monday morning, halfway to work, her twelve-year-old Honda Civic coughed and sputtered and died in rush-hour traffic. She was forced to endure forty-five minutes of furious glares from delayed commuters while she waited for a wrecker to come and haul it away. The week went downhill from there. Devon was pulling her Greta Garbo act, hiding out in her room and refusing to come out and be a member of the family. Tuesday brought a parent-teacher conference with Luke’s English teacher, who told her the same story she’d been hearing since he’d entered kindergarten: Her son had a good head on his shoulders, if only he’d come down out of the clouds long enough to apply himself.
The car was fixed on Wednesday, and Roy, the mechanic she’d come to think of as “hers” because she’d financed his recent Caribbean cruise as well as orthodontia for all three of his kids, presented her with a $400 repair bill and stood there scratching his head as she wrote out the check.
Sleeping With the Enemy Page 2