Sleeping With the Enemy

by Laurie Breton

  It was a little late to be asking now.

  She’d been sure she remembered him wrong, certain that no man could possibly look that good. But he was every bit as appealing as she remembered, with those dark eyes contrasting so vividly with his silvery hair. God help me, she thought. He is one spectacular man.

  The spectacular man in question cleared his throat. “How are you feeling?”

  “Lousy. Sick all the time. I was this way with Luke, too. That’s what first tipped me off that I was, ah—” She searched for an acceptable euphemism, but found none. “—pregnant.” She met his eyes head-on. “That and the nasty disposition. Pregnancy always turns me into the queen of mean.”

  “That explains why you met me at the door with both barrels loaded.”

  “Look, Jesse, this is damn awkward, no matter how you look at it. I’m single, I already have two teenagers, and I just found out that I’m pregnant by a man I barely know. Forgive me if I sound rattled.”

  The waitress brought their drinks, and Rose took a calming sip of tea. Jesse opened a packet of sugar and stirred it into his coffee. “How do you feel about having this baby?”

  How many times had she asked herself that very question? “Confused,” she said. “Frightened. A little resentful.” She took another sip of tea. “Excited. Hopeful. Awed.”

  “I guess that means I’m normal. I’ve run through the same gamut of emotions in the last four hours.”

  “It’s a miracle,” she said. “Even in a cruddy situation like ours, the beginning of a new life is always a miracle.” She paused. “It’s also terrifying. I thought my child-rearing days were over. My kids are almost grown, and here I am, starting over at square one.”

  “One of my biggest regrets in life is that I never had another child.”

  She raised her teacup and saluted him. Wryly, she said, “Congratulations, Dad.”

  “Rose, there’s something I think we should consider.”

  She studied the long, slender fingers cupping his coffee mug, the sprinkling of pale blond hairs along the back of his hands. Deep inside her, something stirred. “What?” she said.

  “We could get married.”

  Of the myriad of possibilities she could have considered, this was probably the only one she hadn’t. She gaped at him in disbelief. “Married? You want to get married?”

  “I had a four-hour drive getting here. It gave me time to think.”

  “Three hours and forty minutes,” she corrected, “and what makes you think I’d even consider marrying you?”

  “Are you so surprised? It’s not unheard of, you know. A man gets a woman pregnant, he makes her an offer of marriage. It’s a pretty common tale.”

  Against her will, she remembered the fantasies she’d been wrestling with ever since her brother’s wedding, the speculation she’d indulged in, the endless possibilities she’d imagined between herself and this man. All of it now meaningless. “It’s absolutely out of the question,” she said, burying her face in her teacup because she didn’t know what else to do.

  He studied her over the rim of his coffee cup. “Why?”

  “I tried it once. I didn’t like it.”

  His dark eyes did dangerous things to her insides. “Maybe you were just married to the wrong man.”

  “I live here, Jesse. My home is here. My job is here. My kids are here. You live four hours away. Which one of us is supposed to commute?”

  “Three hours and forty minutes,” he reminded her. “And there are all kinds of jobs in Maine for a woman with your background.”

  “Of course.” She snatched at the only weapon he’d allowed her. “I’m the one who’s expected to quit my job and move my kids to another state.”

  “I’m a teacher,” he said with maddening logic. “The school year’s already underway. Look, this isn’t as crazy as it sounds. I’m alone. You’re alone. And you have to admit there’s a strong attraction between us.”

  “You can’t build a marriage on sex!”

  “I wasn’t talking about sex. We like each other, Rose. We liked each other before we had sex, and we still liked each other afterward. That should count for something.”

  She didn’t argue his point, because he was right. She found something about him immensely appealing, something unrelated to sexual chemistry. It was a shame that he was a member of the enemy camp. If not for that damned Y chromosome, they might have been friends. “Do you have any idea,” she said, “what you’re talking about taking on? Besides a wife and a new baby?”

  “Two teenagers and one very large dog.”

  “Two belligerent teenagers who would hate us both because they had to leave their lives behind.”

  “They probably would hate us for a while. But kids adjust quickly. Before you know it, they’d make new friends and forget that we’d ruined their lives.”

  “Chauncey is a mammoth pain in the ass. He’d eat you out of house and home. He’d chew your furniture and pee on your floors. You’d also be taking on the loudest stereo system this side of hell. And we haven’t even gotten to the iguana yet.”

  “The iguana?”

  “You got it, toots. A three-foot-long iguana. Welcome to my world.” She leaned over the table. “Look, I like you, Jesse. But I’ve seen up close and personal just how few marriages survive. People promise to love and cherish each other forever, and five years later, they’re duking it out in divorce court. And I’m talking about people who started out in love. You and I don’t even know each other. What chance would we have for a successful marriage?”

  “I think we’d have a pretty good chance. We have an advantage that a lot of people don’t have when they start out. We’ve both been there. We already know how much work it takes.”

  “But it’s such a risk.”

  He leaned back against red leather and extended one long leg into the aisle. “Look,” he said, “the baby you’re carrying is mine, too. I don’t want to be the kind of father who sees his kid one Saturday afternoon a month. I may be old-fashioned, but I believe that a baby deserves the right start in life. And that includes having two responsible parents who happen to be married to each other.” His mouth thinned. “I don’t want my child being called a bastard.”

  Unknowingly, he’d found the chink in her armor. In spite of her liberal politics, Rose’s Catholic school upbringing, with its rigid moral teachings, still held sway in a tiny corner of her heart, the corner that believed children should be brought forth within the bonds of holy matrimony. “Listen, Rose,” he continued earnestly, “the city’s no place to raise kids. Jackson Falls is a small town. The high school’s one of the best in the state. The crime rate’s almost nonexistent. Your kids would have fresh air and wide-open spaces. And that big dog of yours would have room to run.”

  He was eloquent, damn him, and his arguments made sense. So did his need to create a safe haven for their child. Rose had been amazed to discover just how much she wanted the child that she’d conceived on a hot summer afternoon with this fiercely intent stranger. She wanted to give her baby the moon and the stars. She wanted him to have the kind of upbringing she’d had, in a home brimming with noise and commotion and love. Especially love. With two parents who adored each other, solid as a rock. Like Mary and Patrick MacKenzie.

  But she and Jesse Lindstrom didn’t love each other. They barely knew each other. What he was offering was a shotgun wedding at the age of thirty-six, a marriage of convenience, not of love. Was it remotely possible that a real marriage could grow out of something as insubstantial as the wild seeds they’d sown on that hot August afternoon?

  While he sat there quietly drinking his coffee, Rose turned his proposal over and over in her mind, like a child’s wooden building block, examining it from every conceivable angle. Jesse was the kind of man who would be a faithful husband. She already knew that much about him. He might not love her, but he wouldn’t run around. All indications showed him to be an even-tempered, reasonable man. And she suspected that he would o
ffer Luke and Devon the paternal guidance they were lacking.

  Since the day she’d thrown Eddie out, she’d been making decisions with her head instead of her heart. Rose wanted the best for her kids. And right now, although her heart was telling her to run for her life, her head was telling her that the best thing for her kids just might be Jesse Lindstrom.

  “Give me some time,” she told him. “I need to think it over.”

  ***

  Her mother’s chrysanthemums still bloomed outside the kitchen door, but the house no longer looked like it had when Rose had been growing up here. For years, Mary and Patrick MacKenzie had banked her brother Rob’s generous monthly checks instead of spending them. Last spring, she and Rob had sat their parents down and read them the riot act. Between the two of them, they had managed to convince their folks to make use of some of that money before the house disintegrated around them.

  So they’d had a new roof put on, installed new insulation, new windows, new vinyl siding. Rob had wanted to have the kitchen remodeled, but Mary had put her foot down and announced that the first person who moved anything in her kitchen by so much as an inch would be flying out the door with her foot planted firmly up his arse. That pretty much took care of that idea. Rose had been secretly relieved, for no matter how confusing her life got, she could always come home to her mother’s warm and comforting kitchen. There, for a while at least, she could still be Mary’s little red-haired girl.

  Her mother had just finished baking a lemon meringue pie. “Hi, Mom,” Rose said, kissing her mother’s cheek. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Down at the corner bar, lifting a few with the Morency brothers.” Mary’s face was flushed from the oven, her auburn hair sprinkled with gray. She rinsed her hands at the old-fashioned porcelain kitchen sink and briskly dried them on her apron. “Why’re you looking so glum?”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Her mother stopped midway across the kitchen floor, hands still clutching the apron, her ruddy face alight with astonishment. Rose folded her arms across her chest and regarded her mother defiantly. “Well,” Mary said. “I guess I’d best be making a pot of tea.”

  Over tea and lemon meringue pie, Rose spilled her tale of woe. “He asked me to marry him. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually considering it.”

  Mary set her fork on her pie plate. “I see,” she said carefully.

  “I swore to God I’d never get married again. But I want what’s best for the baby.”

  “What about what’s best for the rest of you? You have two other children, Rose. What about them?”

  “They’d hate it. At first, anyway. But they’re growing up too fast, and I’m scared, Ma. Eddie doesn’t even bother to come around. The kids are running wild. They need something more than I can give them. A man in their life. Jesse would be a stabilizing influence.”

  “You’re not a bad mother, Rose.”

  “Yeah? Put that on a postcard and mail it to Eddie.”

  “Eddie’s a fool. Tell me, Rose, do you love him? This Jesse?”

  Rose poked her finger through a hole in Mary’s lace tablecloth. “It’s not like that. I’m not expecting love. Not the way I would if it was a real marriage.”

  “Well, what in God’s name are you thinking it’s going to be? Some kind of game? Rose, marriage is a serious undertaking, no matter what the circumstances. It’s not something you play at. Or with. You marry this man, you’ll be sleeping beside him for the next forty years. Are you ready for that?”

  “I already slept with him, Ma.”

  “Horsefeathers. You had sex with him. It’s not the same thing.” Her mother clucked her tongue in disapproval. “You’re still a young woman, Rose. Do you really want to tie yourself down to a man you don’t love? What if somebody comes along in a year, or two, or five? Somebody you really care about? What then?”

  “At my age? I should be so lucky.”

  “For the love of Mike, woman, you’re thirty-six years old. Not exactly Methuselah. You think people don’t fall in love at your age? You’d best take a good look at your brother and his new wife and then think again.”

  “My brother,” she said, “is thirty-six going on twelve, and he’s been in more relationships than Johnny Carson. He skews the demographics all to hell.”

  “Your brother,” Mary said, “finally got it right. You’d do well to take a few lessons from him. Rose, love, I raised you to be a fine, intelligent woman. It doesn’t matter what I think. You have to do what feels right for you.”

  ***

  She found the house enveloped in blessed silence. Chauncey raised his head from his paws, eyed her lazily, and went back to sleep. “Good plan, babe,” she told him, yawning as she kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes. “Maybe I can sneak in a little nap before the kids come home.”

  Sunlight, viscous and golden, poured through the bay window in the living room, dust motes dancing in its warm river of light. Promising herself that she’d dust tomorrow, Rose padded barefoot down the carpeted hall, swung open the door to her bedroom, and stumbled directly into a Kodak moment.

  She wasn’t sure who was more stunned. The naked couple grappling amid the bedding jerked apart and scrambled to cover themselves. She had a quick glimpse of ripe young flesh before Devon snatched up the comforter and wrapped it around herself and the boy. “Oh, shit,” her daughter said.

  Kyle Housman said nothing, just stared coolly at her with those infernal gray eyes.

  Rose’s blood pressure shot through the roof. “You have approximately thirty seconds,” she told him, “to get dressed and out of my house. Capisce?”

  He nodded dumbly.

  “Get your clothes on,” she told her daughter. “I’ll deal with you in the kitchen.”

  Fuming, she stalked to the kitchen and began slamming the breakfast dishes around in the sink. How dare that slimeball touch her daughter? And in her own home. Her own bed! Rose scrubbed furiously at her cast-iron frying pan. Tears of fury and disappointment burned behind her eyelids.

  Kyle wisely left by the front door. A few minutes later, Devon slipped into the kitchen, hands tucked into the pockets of her cut-offs, adolescent breasts thrust forward defiantly beneath a black tee shirt with a picture of the Tasmanian Devil on it. “It’s no big thing,” she said.

  “No big thing?” Rose said. “I come home and find my daughter in bed with some heathen, and she tells me it’s no big thing?”

  “Get real, Mom. Did you really think I was still a virgin?”

  With the scruffy haircut and those huge eyes, Eddie’s eyes, Devon looked about twelve years old. Of course Rose had believed she was still a virgin. She was seventeen years old, for God’s sake. A child.

  “I don’t suppose,” she said, “that it occurred to either of you to use protection?”

  Devon had the grace to flush. “We don’t need protection. Kyle always pulls out before—you know.”

  “Dear God in heaven. Have you ever heard of AIDS?”

  Her daughter glared at her. “You’re such a hypocrite. Do you think I don’t know exactly what you were doing when you left Uncle Rob’s wedding with that guy? How come it’s okay for you if it’s not okay for me?”

  Devon’s words hit her like a slap to the face. Furious, she said, “I happen to be thirty-six years old. I have the right to sleep with anyone I choose. You, on the other hand, are seventeen. You’re still underage, and I have a big surprise for you, Miss Muffet. This household is not a democracy. It’s a dictatorship, and I’m head honcho. And if I catch you with that boy, or any other boy, again, you won’t see the light of day before you’re thirty-six. Is that clear?”

  Devon’s eyes narrowed. “I hate you!”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not particularly fond of you right now, either.”

  Devon turned and stomped off in the direction of her room. “Wait just a minute!” Rose yelled at her retreating back.

  Her daughter paused, squared her shoulders, and turned around
. “What?”

  “I want you to go into my room, strip the bed, and remake it with clean bedding. While you’re at it, you can throw the dirty sheets into the washing machine.”

  Seconds ticked away before Devon spoke. “Is there anything else, Mommie Dearest?”

  Her daughter’s anger, a palpable thing, made Rose’s chest ache. When had this enmity sprung up between them? “Yes,” Rose said. “One more thing. You can unplug the telephone in your room and bring it to me.”

  “What? You can’t take away my phone! That’s not fair!”

  “Tell it to the judge, toots. Now move it!”

  Visibly fighting back tears, Devon stomped off down the hall. She returned with the telephone and flung it on the kitchen table before retreating in livid silence. A moment later, her bedroom door slammed shut behind her. “Well,” Rose said. “That certainly went well.”

  Miserable, she did what she always did to ease her anguish: opened a pint of chocolate ice cream and called her sister Maeve.

  “Where have you been?” her sister exclaimed. “I haven’t seen you since Rob’s wedding. I thought you were dead or something.”

  Rose ate a huge spoonful of chunky chocolate ice cream. “Not dead,” she said, “but definitely something. Aw, Maeve, you won’t believe what’s been going on.”

  “This sounds serious. Hold on while I get fortification.”

  She managed to wolf down two more heaping spoonfuls of ice cream before her sister returned. “Okay,” Maeve said, “I’m back. Spill the beans.”

  “For starters, I just caught your favorite niece in bed with her boyfriend. I’m still reeling from the shock.”

  “Aw, geez, Rose.”

  “It gets better. They were in my bedroom. In my bed.”

  “Ew, gross. What did you do?”

  “What do you think I did? I went ballistic. Jesus Christ, Maeve, she’s only seventeen!”

  “And how old were you when you and Eddie started doing it?”

  “Me? I was—” She stopped in disbelief as the truth sank in. “That was different!” she said. “That was Eddie, Maeve. We were practically married.”