Sleeping With the Enemy

by Laurie Breton

  They were mostly silent for the ride home, the silence of two people who had discovered an unexpected comfort level in each other’s presence. As he turned from Main Street onto Mountain Road, the last leg of the journey, she spoke at last. “I hope you realize that this hasn’t changed a thing.”

  She was her mother’s daughter, all right.

  A strange car was parked in his driveway, a maroon Taurus wagon. A rangy, dark-haired man he didn’t recognize leaned against it, talking to Luke.

  “Daddy!” Devon cried, releasing her seat belt and flinging herself from the car while it was still moving. She threw herself at the stranger, who grinned widely as he picked her up off her feet and swung her in a wide arc.

  And Jesse told himself the pang he felt wasn’t jealousy.

  ***

  When she got home, Eddie’s car was sitting in the driveway next to a brand-new Jeep with temporary plates. Rose cussed under her breath and slammed the Honda’s squeaky door behind her. After six hours of working on a Saturday, the last thing she needed was Eddie Kenneally. He was sprawled in Jesse’s favorite easy chair, a drink in his hand, as comfy as though he owned the place, regaling the kids with his trumped-up stories of high adventure in the electronics business. When she came in, he patted Devon on the knee. “Why don’t you and Luke run along for a few minutes,” he said, “so I can talk with your mother.”

  He always treated them as though they were still eight years old. Devon and Luke exchanged glances, came to some unspoken understanding, and discreetly disappeared. Giving in to the inevitable, Rose kicked off her shoes and sank onto the couch to rub her aching toes. “You’re looking good, babe,” Eddie said.

  The look she gave him would have frozen a less brazen man in his tracks. One thing she had to give Eddie credit for: he’d always had brass balls. “I’m not your babe,” she reminded him. “Speaking of which—” She looked around. “Where’s Lolita?”

  “Her name,” he said with wounded dignity, “is Heidi.”

  “How is it that I always manage to forget that? So, what’s up, chumley? She leave you yet?”

  “Jesus, Rose, you sure know how to take the wind out of a man’s sails.”

  With a humorless smile, she said, “I do my best.”

  His eyes made a slow perusal of the house, and she could almost see his mental calculator in action. “Looks like you really fell into it.”

  She knew what was coming. She’d lived with him for too long not to know. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I’m really rolling in clover.”

  “I know what this kind of property goes for.” He rattled his glass and watched the ice swirl around. “So,” he added casually, “maybe you won’t be needing my monthly checks any longer.”

  Eddie Kenneally was a snake. A dirty, slimy, low-down reptile. She knew better than to expect him to exhibit human traits. So why was it that he still had the power to disappoint her? “Don’t even go there, Eddie,” she said, and got up from the couch.

  “Hey, I’m just saying that this guy’s obviously not hurting for money. How much does he make, anyway?”

  She couldn’t believe his audacity. “The kids are your responsibility. Or have you conveniently forgotten that?”

  “Come on, babe,” he said, with a joviality that set her teeth on edge. “There’s nothing wrong with asking. Nothing wrong with sharing the wealth.”

  The kitchen door opened and shut, and behind her, she heard Jesse’s measured footsteps. He slipped an arm around her waist and stood so close that his breath feathered the hair at her cheek. She knew his show of territorialism was for Eddie’s benefit, but it felt real just the same. His body heat wrapped itself around her in a surprisingly intimate act. “Is there a problem?” he said.

  “No problem. Eddie was just remarking that since I’m married now, I shouldn’t be needing his pissant little child support checks any longer.”

  Eddie held up both hands and flashed a smarmy smile that was long in the tooth but never quite reached his eyes. “Rosie, baby, you’re reading me all wrong. I just thought—”

  “Keep your damn money,” Jesse snapped. “We don’t want it.”

  Aghast, she said, “Jesse!”

  Ignoring her, he said to Eddie, “It’s only because of your kids that I’m tolerating your presence in my house.” He drew Rose hard against his chest, sending a shiver down her spine. “But stay the hell away from my wife. Are we clear on that?”

  Eddie stood up, drained his glass, and set it down on the coffee table. “Crystal clear,” he said. “Better hang onto this guy, Rose. Looks like you’ve got him eating out of your hand. Say good-bye to the kids for me.”

  The instant he was out the door, she took a deep breath, pulled free of Jesse, and turned on him. “Why the hell did you do that? You were like two tomcats in a pissing contest. Did you really have to lower yourself to his level? And how dare you tell him we don’t want his money? He’s responsible for those kids until they turn eighteen!”

  “We don’t need the money. I can afford to support your kids.”

  And what happens when you’re gone? she thought. Who’ll support them then? But she didn’t say it. Instead, she said, “You already have a son to support. Luke and Devon are my responsibility. And Eddie’s.”

  “I don’t mind. The house is paid for. And I’m not exactly penniless.”

  “You’re missing the point! I won’t be indebted to you!”

  “You’re my wife, Rose. How can you be indebted to me? Look, there are things I haven’t told you. Everything happened so fast, we never really got a chance to sit down and talk about it. But we should.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to be beholden to you! I don’t want to be tied down!”

  She bit her lip, but she’d already said too much. His eyes turned frigid, and his hands, clasping her folded arms, stiffened. “Oh,” he said. “Now I get it. Just in case you feel a burning need to invoke our little legal agreement, you want to be able to make a clean getaway.”

  She felt a flush coloring her cheeks. “Don’t make it sound so cold-blooded.”

  “Hell, no. It’s not cold-blooded, just a simple business deal. I’m sorry I interfered. Next time, I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

  “Jesse!”

  But he was already gone, the door of the den slamming behind him, and Rose was left to wonder, for the millionth time, why she always spoke first and thought second. Open mouth, insert foot. That was what her mother had always told her, that she needed to put more effort into thinking before she spoke. It was her biggest fault, one she’d tried hard to overcome. She started for the closed door, intent on apologizing, but stopped short when she reached that disarming expanse of solid wood. Behind it, she could hear the faint tapping of computer keys. Jesse had never invited her into his private domain, and she was reluctant to intrude in a place where she so obviously wasn’t welcome.

  Marry in haste, repent at leisure. Another of her mother’s favorite sayings. Rose hesitated, hand on the door knob. And then she sighed, gave the closed door a final, mulish scowl, and headed upstairs to take a shower. To hell with Jesse Lindstrom. She had better things to do than grovel.

  That night, for the first time in years, she dreamed of Alan, dreamed of that rich, resonant stage actor’s voice reading aloud from the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Once again, she was a dreamy fifteen-year-old, thoroughly infatuated with her English teacher, in love with those blue eyes, that dimpled chin, the smile that she just knew was aimed directly at her and nobody else. When Alan recited poetry, the rest of the world ceased to exist. The feelings he’d aroused in her had been magical, and she’d been absolutely certain that nobody else in the history of womankind had ever felt this way. It was hers alone, this special, magical feeling. Hers and Alan’s.

  She awoke with a jolt, felt the hot rush of tears trickle down her face. Her heart thudded as she lay in the darkened bedroom and listened to the rhythmic so
und of her husband’s breathing. She hardly ever thought about Alan any more, and when she did, it was with resentment and anger, not with the fierce teenage anguish that she’d felt in the dream. It had all happened a long time ago, and she’d long since put it behind her. She was a grown woman now, practical, independent, and responsible. There was no place in her life for the memory of a young girl’s first love.

  The house was drafty, and she drew the covers higher and moved closer to the lean male body whose warmth had already become familiar to her. During the day, when logic ruled, Rose couldn’t fathom why she’d imagined, even for an instant, that a pairing as ill-conceived as theirs could possibly succeed. But in the wee hours, when the darkness magnified fears, and emotion took precedence over logic, she was grateful to be sleeping next to Jesse, grateful that he was there, warm and comforting beside her. It was a contradiction that she couldn’t explain, except to say that in the years since her divorce, it had been the warm male body in her bed that she’d missed the most. More than she’d missed the companionship, more than she’d missed the sex, she’d missed the simple connection that came from sleeping with another human being.

  Jesse sighed, turned and wrapped an arm around her, then settled back into deep sleep. Comforted by the rise and fall of his breathing and lulled by the distant whisper of the surf, Rose lay there for a very long time before she went back to sleep.

  chapter ten

  “Mr. Lindstrom?”

  Jesse looked up blankly from the paper he was grading. Amanda Ashley hovered in the classroom doorway, one knee sock down around her slender ankle, her limp blond hair falling over a heart-shaped face that might have been pretty if it hadn’t been hidden behind all that hair. “Amanda,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I was just wondering…I didn’t do too hot on that last paper. I thought maybe you could show me what I did wrong so next time I can get an A.”

  Jesse slowly removed his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. Amanda was a solid C student. “Not everybody gets an A,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with a C.”

  “Try telling that to my mother.”

  Amanda’s father owned the local hardware store, and her mother sold real estate. The Ashleys lived in a split-foyer house in a new development on Meadowhill Road. So far, neither of them had found the time to attend parent-teacher conferences. “Your mom’s pushing you to get better grades?”

  Amanda nodded. “I brought my paper. You marked it all up, but some of it I don’t understand. I thought if you explained it, I’d remember better.”

  Her paper had been a disaster, loaded with grammatical errors and misspellings and lapses in logic. Not quite what he wanted to deal with at 2:30 on a Monday afternoon. But he couldn’t say no to a kid who needed his help. He’d never been able to.

  “Pull up a chair,” he said. “We’ll go over it together.”

  As they went through her paper, point by point, he explained about dangling participles and run-on sentences, split infinitives and passive voice and subject-verb agreement. He circled misspelled words, reminded her what a dictionary was and how to use it, recommended the grammar handbook that was his bible. “You should have learned all this stuff back in junior high school,” he said.

  “We moved around a lot. And English never was my best subject.”

  And it never would be. “Maybe what you need is a tutor. Somebody who can help you with some of the basic grammatical stuff you seem to be missing.”

  She coiled a strand of hair around her index finger. Without looking at him, she said, “Isn’t that something you can do?”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a peer tutor. Another student. Somebody who has a good grasp of the subject and the time to tutor you.”

  Intently studying her paper, she said, “I’d rather have you,” and flushed beet-red.

  It wasn’t the first time this had happened. In the ten years he’d been teaching, more than one young girl had fancied herself in love with him. It was always awkward, always difficult, walking that fine line between courteous distance and outright rejection. “I was thinking,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “that maybe my stepdaughter might be interested. Devon Kenneally. Do you know her?”

  Amanda gave a noncommittal shrug that could have meant anything. Jesse repressed a sigh. “Are you willing, if she is?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll talk to her tonight. See what she says.”

  Amanda hung her head. “Okay,” she mumbled.

  “Then I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

  It was clearly a dismissal, but it still took her a while to gather up her books and leave. When she was gone, he propped his feet on the desk and tapped his pen against the lined writing tablet in his lap. Sooner or later, the situation would blow over. In the meantime, he would avoid being alone with her, avoid singling her out in any way from the pack. Young girls, especially the more desperate ones, sometimes had a tendency to view simple friendliness as encouragement. That was the last thing he needed.

  He considered mentioning it to Henry Lamoreau. But Henry would issue dire warnings and stew unnecessarily. Better to remain silent than to stir the principal up over something as innocent as a teenage girl’s crush on her English teacher.

  He was catching up on yard work that afternoon when he saw Devon trekking across the field with an enthusiastic Chauncey bounding around her feet. He stopped and leaned on his rake to watch her approach. At first, he thought she would avoid him and go directly to the house. But slowly, with greatly exaggerated reluctance, she crossed the yard to see what he was doing. “Hi,” he said.

  She folded her arms. “Hi.”

  “Chauncey likes to run, I see.”

  “I guess.”

  “I have a proposition for you. I have a student who needs an English tutor. Somebody who can help her with basic grammar. I thought you might be interested.”

  She studied him with dark eyes that seemed to see all the way into his soul. “Maybe,” she said. “What’s it pay?”

  “Nothing. You’d be doing it because you’re an incredibly wonderful human being.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  “Think about it.” He returned to raking. After a moment, he said, “You looking for a paying job?”

  Her eyes lit up before she remembered she was supposed to be a martyr. “Doing what?” she asked warily.

  “Here.” He handed her the rake. “Give an old man a break. I’ll pay you five dollars an hour.”

  “You’re not old.”

  “Nice try, but I’m still only giving you five bucks an hour.”

  She struggled to hold back a smile while he pretended not to notice. “The rest of the lawn,” he instructed, “all the way to the tree line. The leaves go in the wheelbarrow. When it’s full, you dump it in the compost pile over there. Think you can handle it?”

  “I can handle anything.”

  While she raked, he stood at the kitchen window, warming his hands with a cup of coffee and absently scratching Chauncey’s massive head. Maybe it was his imagination, but he thought he’d detected a chink in that armor of hers. Could it be that she was softening toward him?

  She was a great kid. Right now, that greatness might be far enough beneath the surface so you had to hunt for it, but every so often, in spite of her best efforts, a piece of it broke free and floated to the surface. She and her brother were both great kids. Luke was adapting well, and Devon would adjust with a little more time. Both of them were living testament to their mother’s strength. He didn’t think Rose knew how good a mother she was. But he knew. He’d seen her in action. She might be a little flaky. A little disorganized. But he’d never met a woman who cared more for her children’s welfare. What she lacked in administrative skills, she more than made up for in love.

  ***

  That night, in bed, he told her about Amanda Ashley. “The girl makes me uncomfortable,” he said. “I don’t know what it is. I’ve
been through this before, with other kids. But there’s something about her, something I can’t put my finger on, that tells me to tread carefully.”

  “Get her out of your class,” Rose said with a vehemence that surprised him. “Right away.”

  He plumped up the pillow and folded his arm beneath his head. “I thought about that. But we’re into the second quarter now. She’s doing passable work. I think I can get this kid through the school year. If we shuffle her around, she’s likely to fail.”

  In the darkness, they were both silent. “I don’t suppose,” she said, “that it would ever occur to you to think about your own welfare?”

  “I can’t do that, Rose. I’m a teacher.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You are. You always give the kids your all, no matter what the cost to you.”

  The darkness hid her face, and he didn’t know her well enough yet to gauge her sentiments from her voice alone. “Is that something that bothers you?”

  “It’s one of the things I respect the most about you,” she said. “You’re a teacher who really cares about the kids you teach. It’s a rare gift.”

  Warmth flooded his body at her words, for they were the last words he’d expected to hear from her. Rose was a chameleon, as unpredictable as the sea, distant and aloof at one moment, warm and inviting the next. It was one of the things that fascinated him the most about her. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s probably the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Sounding bewildered, she said, “I only speak the truth.”

  ***

  She was doing paperwork the next morning, making the most of her free time before her appointment with Torey Spaulding, when the flowers arrived, a dozen long-stemmed red roses.

  This man was making detachment increasingly difficult. She buried her face in the blossoms and inhaled their incredible scent. They smelled good enough to eat. Mary Lumley, passing by in the hallway, saw the humongous bouquet on Rose’s desk and backtracked. “Secret admirer?” she said.