Kisses From Heaven

by Jennifer Greene

  “Thanks,” Loren said dryly, and studied them both silently as they finished their dinner. The meal was superb, and to her own surprise she was finished before either of them, too sated to move. She felt relaxed and almost cheerful for the first time in weeks. Yes, it was wonderful not to come home to a load of housework and cooking. Yes, even those few minutes of being pampered soothed the taut nerves she normally came home with. Yes, she liked the idea of someone at home for both Gramps and Angela when she wasn’t there. And yes, he was closer to Gramps’s age, perhaps company for those lonely Fridays… And she was not born yesterday. Neither Angela nor Gramps would meet her gaze. Suspiciously, she picked up the glass of wine and took a sip. “Where exactly did you find him? Are you going to try to tell me he just walked up to the door, looking for a job that doesn’t pay, knowing all our circumstances?”

  They were both silent, and then Gramps looked sternly at Angela, saying quietly, “We went looking for him. You needed help. You’ve needed it for an age. Since you don’t have the sense God gave you to come in out of the rain, we found an umbrella for you.”

  “Thanks again,” Loren said dryly. “In the meantime, how exactly did you find him?”

  “An ad in the paper. How else would we find him?” Angela said swiftly. “In the meantime, Loren, I have other news, and since for the first time in a month you don’t look like you’d like to snap my head off…”

  “Angela!”

  “I want you to go out to dinner on Saturday with David and me,” Angela continued smoothly. “A dress-up, elegant dinner—all on David.”

  “Oh, Angie…” Loren’s features softened even as a worried frown creased her forehead. Rayburn, her job, even Buck, for the first time in an age, fled from her mind. She could tell from her sister’s face—from the defiance in her chin and the love sparkling in her eyes—what the dinner was for. “Honey…”

  Angela shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it without David here. I know you think I’m too young, Loren—”

  “Darling, it isn’t just that. David isn’t even out of school yet—”

  Angela set her napkin on the table and stood up. “Loren, you had such a rotten marriage you don’t even like to hear the word said. You hole up here in your little shell. That’s not the way I want to live my life, and I’m of age. And I’ll be out of school by the first of June.”

  She stalked from the room, and Loren stared at her grandfather as they both heard the rush of footsteps up the stairs to Angela’s room, followed by the distant slam of the door. William Shephard stared back at Loren, and then he also rose. “Is that how you see me, too?” she asked helplessly.

  He bent down to kiss her forehead before he passed. “Loren, you’ve been under pressure for so long. You’re our mainstay, child; it’s been so easy to take advantage of you. At the same time, you make it hard to show gratitude; there’s less and less give and take in you, less ability to hear someone else’s story. I dislike your sister’s dramatics, Loren, but I can understand—she knows you wouldn’t have been willing to listen to her if she had stayed. You listen to no one these days, as if you were the only one who could be right. Don’t you really know better than that, sweetheart?”

  He, too, left the room. Loren sat perfectly still, cupping her chin in her hands. For some odd reason, her heart was suddenly pounding, as if she were afraid. The silence and emptiness of the candlelit dining room hurt. Was she so rigid, was she unable to see another’s point of view anymore? She thought not of her sister but of Buck, and love ached inside her like a needle-sharp pain, the loneliness suddenly unbearable. She believed what she’d told him, that his having money changed everything. She could never live off his bounty, could never take when she couldn’t give in exactly equal return; she knew that his giving her things would eventually sour the kind of giving that really counted. She didn’t believe she was wrong in what she’d done; it was only that being right seemed to have such a terrible price tag attached to it. Price tag. Money. Yes, she’d been right to dread the curse of it…

  Rayburn brushed through the revolving kitchen door with a tray in his hand. There were three coffee cups on it, but seeing the emptied room, he poured only one, setting it in front of her, his soft eyes taking in her unhappy ones with a compassionate expression. “Sit down and have a cup with me?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I thought you’d like to give me some instructions on the house.”

  She shook her head slowly. “Actually, I’d just like to talk with you,” she said quietly. “I’m beginning to have the feeling I haven’t really done that with anyone in a long time.”

  “Pardon, miss?”

  She smiled absently at him. “I’m lonesome for company, and I’m beginning to have the feeling it’s my own damn fault, Rayburn. Just talk with me, would you? Tell me about yourself…”

  Angela stood in the doorway to Loren’s bedroom. “You’re not wearing that.” She pointed to the beige suit laid out on the bed. Loren had a hairbrush in her hand and was standing at the window in a silky coral slip.

  The suit was a severely tailored outfit, which Loren felt was appropriate for the dinner they were going to. It fit her well and made her look older, more responsible, and that was the role she knew she needed to play tonight with David and Angela. She opened her mouth to defend her choice and closed it again. “What would you like me to wear?” she said instead.

  Angela looked startled at her sister’s meek tone, but very quickly crossed the room to Loren’s closet, burrowing for the better part of three minutes before she came back out again. “I want you to wear something pretty,” she said belligerently. “You’re always hiding your figure, Loren. We’re going out to dinner and dancing, and I want David to see what you’re like when you’re having fun. Now this…”

  Loren sighed. About a hundred years ago, she’d thought a black dress was the end-all of sophistication and chic. This particular “little number” had been shoveled to the back of her closet like a rabbit’s foot, but it really wasn’t her style. Nor did she feel she was going to be able to talk sense to the two younger people when she would worry every other minute whether inappropriate skin was showing. But perhaps if for once she seemed less like the Great Stone Face…“All right,” she agreed.

  Angela’s eyes widened, and then she reached over to kiss her sister. “Good girl. We’ll get you smiling yet, Lor. You just wait until you’re glutted with lobster and champagne and soft music—”

  “That’s what you have in mind? Already I’m feeling like a third wheel,” Loren said dryly.

  “Is there a law against talking and having fun at the same time?” Angela demanded. “Now I’m going to come and check on you in a few minutes. Don’t change your mind about the dress.”

  A half hour later, Loren surveyed her image in a full-length mirror. Having decided to please her sister, she’d gone the whole way, but as to whether or not she pleased herself… The shoes she loved, a spangle of silver straps with high heels; the stockings were sheer and dark, like silk over the curves of shapely thigh and calves. And when she so much as breathed, the black chiffon skirt swirled around her knees in a sexy way that made her feel ultrafeminine…but sexy should not be the operative mode, not for this dinner, she thought unhappily, and from the waist up…

  The back was sheer chiffon, the same as naked, and the sheerness was repeated in the long, loose sleeves that banded tightly at the wrists. Except for a gentle drape of fabric across the breasts, the front of the dress was plain to a high-throated, stiff collar, and beneath was a lining so silky it was shiver material against her bare skin. The severe cut and color accented both her figure and her creamy skin, but Loren was uneasy—it wasn’t so much the look of the dress as the feel of it. She felt…sinful. But Angela had insisted… Would Angie listen to a sister who didn’t listen to her?

  She might as well go whole hog. With a sigh, Loren brushed her russet hair back from her forehead, applied an eyeshadow called Smoky Sin and several coats
of mascara. She was just reaching for perfume when she saw her sister in the doorway again, staring at her so intensely that Loren examined herself nervously in the mirror.

  “Too much funereal black?” she questioned.

  Angela shook her head. “Loren, I don’t think you realize what a knockout you really are.”

  “No one who’s five-one is a knockout, sweets.” But she turned away from the mirror pleased and subjected her sister to an equally intense scrutiny. Angela was dressed in a mauve crepe top and pants, her blond hair swept up in loose curls on top of her head, and her voluptuous figure showed off to perfection. “Now you,” Loren teased, “have got all the equipment to turn heads in any crowd.”

  David, with his shy charm, claimed they were both stunning. The restaurant was in Ann Arbor, a three-storied, open-balconied place called Blake’s, where one could see all varieties of action no matter where one was located. The main door opened to a sing-along bar, the second story had pool tables, and the third a bass player providing quiet jazz from a candlelit corner. A live band playing classic rock was out of sight, and there was a bar on every floor. The clientele was young, a twenty-to-forty crowd with a mix of couples and singles.

  David escorted them to the third-story open balcony with a view of two bars, a piano down below and a quieter milieu than on the other floors. As promised, lobster and champagne were ordered, while Loren studied her sister’s beau. Though far from handsome, David’s angular, square face and husky frame conveyed a steadiness that had always appealed to Loren. His humor was shy, had to be coaxed out, but it was there. He’d been hooked on Angela from the first time he’d laid eyes on her, which had rather surprised Loren. The two were so different, David’s seriousness to Angela’s flightiness, his sense of responsibility to her devil-may-care insouciance. He gave in to Angela ninety-nine percent of the time; it was the one percent that Loren valued—David never gave an inch when it counted.

  At home, she had deliberately not brought up the subject of marriage to Angela, certain the only response would be defiance and perceptive enough to understand that open opposition would only harden Angela’s resolve. She ought to be congratulating herself that Angie was, of her own accord, thinking now of settling down. But she was too young, and so was David. Yet there had been an openness in Angela the past few days that Loren didn’t want to spoil, a vulnerable pleading in her eyes when she looked at her older sister. Understand, for once, she seemed to be saying.

  Thoughtfully, Loren waited through dinner, relaxing in spite of herself after the first glass of champagne. The food was excellent, and unconsciously she found her toe moving to the seductive jazz of the bass player in the corner. The tablecloths were blood-red and the paneling dark; a single candle flickered on the table. Her skin glowed in the soft light, the flame sensuous and soft in her eyes. Her feelings showed in her expression, the real love and concern she felt for her sister, the haunted loneliness she felt watching the two of them very unobtrusively stealing looks at each other, a faint sensation of restlessness that the frankly sensuous dress she wore and the champagne and setting invoked. She wasn’t lonely for company or even for an escort, but the image of a red-haired man kept intruding on her thoughts, a discordant note she couldn’t seem to erase.

  “Loren,” David said gravely, once the waiter had served coffee, “I want to marry your sister.”

  She looked at him silently, cupping her hands beneath her chin.

  “She can’t cook,” David said flatly. “She can’t keep house, has never held a serious job, couldn’t manage a dollar to save her life. On top of that, I’ll be in school until December, and we want to be married in June. So if you think I don’t know all the very good reasons why you’re going to object—”

  “David!” Angela interjected, protesting his picture of her unfitness to be his wife.

  David flashed her an affectionate smile. “This is between your sister and me, angel.” He leaned forward, his pale blue eyes on Loren. “I’m not going to stop loving her. You don’t have to tell either of us that it’ll be rough. She’s eighteen and I’m twenty-one. We don’t need your approval, Loren; we’d just like you to be with us. You know I’m working while I’m going to school, and my uncle’s agreed to let us have the apartment above his garage. You know I’d never let her starve—”

  “I didn’t think you would. And I am—with you,” Loren said gravely. “I only ask that you wait—”

  “But we can’t, Loren,” David said with equal frankness.

  “Why not?” Loren leaned forward. “David, the two of you have been open and aboveboard about…your closeness. Just a little more time, a little more maturity…”

  “Lor, people get divorced at fifty. They’re not mature?” Angela interjected. “Nobody gets guarantees. Nobody gets anything without reaching out and grabbing for it.”

  “This is our chance,” David said quietly. “If we don’t take it, it may be gone. Your sister could do all that ‘maturing’ with someone else, I could find someone else. You think I don’t know that could happen? We take our chance, or it’s gone. I don’t want to risk losing Angela, Loren. So it’s going to be tough, but that’s what we want to go through together. Please try to understand.”

  Loren set down her empty coffee cup and sat back, fingering the nape of her neck restlessly. She felt a curious desire to cry. These two young adults were more romantic than rational; she’d seen so much more of life that she had dozens of arguments at the ready, all very good ones… But she heard them, really heard them: “Take the chance; there may only be one time…” She not only heard, she felt it suddenly in her soul; she felt it in the blue notes of the bass player and the single flicker of the candle on the table. How could she tell them they were wrong? She wasn’t sure they were, not anymore, not when she’d turned down the only chance that meant anything to her, a choice that had ached inside her for weeks now…

  And then she saw Buck, two floors below.

  Chapter Ten

  “Loren?”

  Her attention flickered back to the young couple at the table. “I feel very strongly,” she said quietly, “that it would be better for the two of you to wait, but as you said, David, you’re both of age. I’ll support whatever you both decide and help you any way I can…”

  Angela let out a deep, heartfelt sigh and leaned over to kiss her sister. “Do you mind if we dance just one dance, Loren? There’s a terrific band just out that back door on the first floor. We’d be right back.”

  Loren smiled at the two hopeful faces. “Of course not.”

  They left, arms around each other. Loren didn’t see. Buck was below with two men, one of them an Afro-haired brunette with a mustache, the other light-complexioned, with hair the color of sand. The three men, drinks in front of them, were laughing at a round, crowded bar. Buck was wearing a sport coat, some soft fabric. Cashmere. Gray.

  A waitress stopped before them; she was wearing a scanty yet lush uniform of scarlet satin designed to show off the upstairs she certainly had. The two men with Buck were attractive, thought Loren, indeed, more conventionally handsome than Buck was. Yet the waitress lingered by him, whispering something in his ear. He laughed. Loren could see his hand reach around to pat the satin-clad bottom. The woman was of a marvelously normal height, her seductive manner one Loren could never hope to emulate, and the invitation was clear when she bent toward him again, covering his hand to encourage familiarity.

  You had your chance, you lost it, she told herself. But she found herself standing up, smoothing her hair with her fingers. Below, the waitress was walking away, Buck’s eyes following the swing of her hips. The other two men were also watching her, and so, momentarily, did Loren. They were an expressive pair of hips. Clearly, an offer was being made. There wasn’t a reason in hell why he shouldn’t take it.

  Loren’s feet went into motion, following the red carpet down the circular flight of stairs to the second floor. There’s no way you’re going to do this, she told herself.
But her feet kept moving, her heart pounding like a bass drum, a flush on her cheeks that darkened when a husky blond cruiser on the second level whistled a come-on to her.

  On the first floor, the noise level was higher. From beyond closed doors, muted classic rockcontrasted with an active piano bar; there was a steady hum of conversation over that, people entering and laughing as they shed their coats. Loren stopped in the middle of it, assailed by the whiff of alcohol and a cool draught of midnight air from the constantly opening and closing door; all of the confusion made her shiver. She saw a man leering at her from behind a pair of wire-framed glasses, trying to catch her eye.

  Buck was still talking to the two other men, standing around a semicircular bar along with other business types. He hadn’t noticed her yet. All she had to do was go back upstairs; he’d never know. She would be the only one who knew there had been a second chance—and that she’d thrown it away.

  Resolutely, she angled through the throng of people and tables until she reached him. Her palm tentatively touched the curve of his shoulder. Cat-aware, he whirled, his green eyes expressing fleeting surprise before they chilled over. His friends, interrupted in their conversation when Buck turned from them, were staring at her. The one with the Afro gave her an unobtrusive once-over, with a relaxed smile of appreciation and curiosity. The other man frowned momentarily at the interruption, and then continued to talk as if the others were still listening; he was obviously more than two sheets to the wind.

  Buck’s eyebrows lifted in question, but his eyes were clearly cold and unforgiving. She’d been written off; she could feel it in the pounding panic in her chest. “I saw you…and I thought I would say hello,” Loren said awkwardly, her voice so low he had to bend to hear.

  “Hello,” he echoed back crisply.

  The next few seconds seemed like several centuries. He noticed her dress and her figure, and there was an instant flare of something intimate in his eyes, but he was totally silent. They were not friends. He was not going to go through any social charades. Rage suddenly welled up inside Loren. He was the one who’d started all of it, who’d barged into her life in the first place, turned her head until she couldn’t think straight.