The Art of Inheriting Secrets

by O'Neal, Barbara

  “Nah. I’m not much of a reader, you know. Just like my football and the garden.”

  I nodded, patted my belly. “I need a little more gardening, a little less reading, I think.”

  “Ah, love, ye’re a beauty, just as you are. Skinny might be in fashion, but we fellas always appreciate a different kind of woman.”

  I laughed at the faint praise. “Thank you.”

  Samir was waiting at the flat, holding an umbrella so that we could each haul a box into the foyer, which smelled of bleach and fried fish and mold. When we’d unloaded them all, Samir said, “Thank you, Mr. Jenkins.”

  Peter tipped his hat. “No worries.”

  I handed over a clutch of pound notes. “Thanks for your help. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “If you’re staying, you might want to learn to drive.”

  “Yes. As soon as I get a moment.”

  It took another twenty minutes to haul everything into my flat and find spots for it, and by then we were both sweaty and hungry. “Do you want something to eat?”

  “No.” He took my hand and drew me close. “Let’s go to my house.” His hand moved up my arm, over my shoulder. “I have snacks there.”

  I touched his waist. Nodded.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The drive took less than five minutes, and every foot of it raised the heat in the air between us. We didn’t speak. I took his hand and pressed my much-smaller one to it. He brought our hands up to his lips, tasted each of my fingers.

  It had begun to rain again. He pulled up in front of the cottage, and we dashed for the door. He opened it, and we fell inside, kissing in the living room, madly, as if there would never be another chance, no other lips, ever, until Samir drew me to his bedroom, which smelled of that intense cologne. His bed surprised me, luxurious, covered with pillows and a duvet with a red paisley pattern. The window looked out to the back garden, the rain obscuring everything but the barest smear of color where the border was. I stood there, out of breath, and looked at him.

  And this was the moment, the ordinary moment, that I would remember always. Samir, so tall, reaching for the hem of his shirt and pulling it off over his head, and standing there, waiting for me, revealed—his burnished, smooth skin, a scattering of dark hair between dark nipples, rounds of easy muscle from his work.

  I pressed my palm to his heart, and that wild, intense emotion rose in me again, and I looked up, stricken, tears running down my face. “What if we hadn’t met?” I whispered.

  “But we have,” he said in a low rumble and reached for me, pulled my head against his chest, his lips on my head. “We have. We’re here.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m—”

  He tipped up my face. “I don’t mind.” He kissed me, gently, kissed my cheeks so that then I could taste my tears when he kissed my mouth again. “There is another famous quote from Tagore,” he said, holding my face. “‘I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.’ That’s what this is, you and me.”

  “Yes.” I bent my head back to his chest and pressed my mouth to his skin. His hands moved on my scalp, over my ears, down my neck. The smell of him made me dizzy, and I suddenly, urgently wanted to feel his skin against mine. I stepped back and flung off my sweater and then the tank beneath it, then my bra, and this time, I paused.

  He swallowed, reached up one hand and cupped my breast, bent to kiss my neck, my shoulders. “Beautiful,” he whispered. My skin rippled as his hair brushed my arms, my chin, and I pulled him closer, gauging the taut span of his waist. He kissed my breasts, my shoulder, the hollow of my throat, and I swayed with emotion. Desire.

  Urgently, I reached for his belt, and he obliged me, lifting his hands so I could unbuckle his belt and the buttons of his jeans, pushing the fabric down muscled hips and rock-hard legs. He stepped out of them, and I took in the sight of him fully nude: long legs and that blackest nest of hair nearly made me faint. “Oh, my,” I said. “You’re beautiful, Samir.”

  He smiled, touched his belly, ran a hand down his penis, as men do. “It’s all yours.”

  I hesitated, thinking of my not-so-thin thighs. “I’m not quite so perfect.”

  “This hair,” he said, threading his fingers through it, “is perfect. These lips, these breasts.” He brushed my mouth, my breasts. “Let’s see the rest, shall we?” He unfastened my jeans, skimmed them downward, and then I was naked too.

  He ran those artist’s fingers over my squishy bits and down the sides of my thighs. “I can’t kiss all those beautiful places”—he touched the curve of my belly, my collarbones—“if we’re standing up.” I let him take my hand and waited as he flung back the duvet, and then we lay down, and I rolled close to him, and our bodies, our skin, all of it, touched, and I made the softest of sounds, reaching for him.

  “God, Olivia,” he breathed, his hands on my back, my thighs, his lips brushing my mouth, my chin, my shoulder. “The minute I saw you at Rebecca’s house, I knew you.” He brushed his nose over my chin. “I haven’t stopped thinking about this since.”

  “Me too,” I said and pushed him back to look at his face, kiss his mouth, softly, then more deeply, my hands running down his chest, around his ribs, down his belly and into that thicket of heat. “I just kept thinking I shouldn’t.”

  “I thought I shouldn’t.” He touched my breasts, kissed one and the other, kissed my belly, and then my mouth again, and I found myself lost in it. In him, in making love, in learning the geography of his body, his throat, his mouth, his hands, and allowing him access to the hills and valleys of mine, open, trusting as he traveled the length and breadth of me. In return, I journeyed along the ridges of his hip bones and down the savanna of his broad, powerful back, tracing the valley of his spine, the forest of his beautiful long curls.

  And then it was too much to wait, and we joined—fierce, not gentle in the slightest. It was roaring and wild as we moved and kissed, our limbs tangled, our tongues, our bodies slick and sticky and, then, sated.

  He lay over me as our hearts slowed. I ran my hands through his hair, releasing the essence of his scent, and I floated in it, in this moment, this very one. When he tried to move, I gripped him closer. “Not yet.”

  He braced himself on his elbows, dipped down to brush his mouth over mine. “I don’t want to squash you.”

  “I’m rather liking it.”

  “Rather liking it?” He grinned and swept hair out of my eyes. “Any moment you’ll break out in full British.”

  “Well, my mother did raise me.”

  He moved just a little inside of me, causing a rippling echo of orgasm. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Me either.”

  He shifted, then reached for the duvet to pull it up over us in the cool room. With gestures as old as time, we moved into a newly woven shape, my head in the hollow of his shoulder, his hands draped around me.

  I said, “But if I spoke British, what class would it be?”

  “American.”

  “Not if it’s full Brit.”

  “Never happen. You’ll always sound American.”

  “That’s disappointing.”

  He laughed. “I’m quite fond of a certain American.”

  “Hmm.” My body felt boneless. “I never want to get up. Like, ever.”

  His fingers moved in my hair, and I drifted a little, happy. As will happen, a sudden thought bolted through my mind. “Wait!” I said and shifted to look up at him. “We didn’t read that book until ten years ago.”

  “What are you talking about? Who?”

  “My mom. We had a book club, just the two of us, and the reason I thought to look behind the painting of the pasha was because my mother and I read a book about India, and there was a paragraph I loved reading aloud, all this alliteration, about a young prince and a white Persian cat and curled shoes.”

  He tucked one arm behind his head, and I was momentarily distract
ed by the angle of his biceps, the black hair in his armpit, the—

  I shook my head. “She’s been here, in England, in the house since then. Like, she set this all up recently.”

  “You knew she’d left you a treasure hunt, so it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  “But when did she come here? I didn’t know she left the country. I would have noticed—I mean, I saw her a couple of times a week.”

  “Surely you traveled, for work, for holidays.”

  I closed my eyes. “Right. She could talk on the phone anywhere, of course.”

  “What bothers you about this?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head, feeling that rise of powerful emotion again. “Maybe I wish she would have just told me. That we could have talked about all of it so I would know what to do now.”

  He held me closer to his body. Skin to skin, his cheek against my hair. “She must have had a reason.”

  “I guess.” The movements of his naked thigh moving over mine kindled new awareness, and my flesh began to rustle again. I ran my hand over his belly, lower, down his thigh, over his belly button. “Maybe I don’t care right now. Maybe I’m tired of thinking about it.”

  His fingers traced the curve of my breast. Naked fingertips, bare skin coming alive. “I’m happy to help you forget about it.”

  He convinced me that it didn’t matter right then.

  And after a time, we tumbled into sleep, tangled together in a way I had never before liked, his arms around me; his damp, spent penis nestled against my buttocks; his strong, solid body a bulwark against the world.

  We stirred as the sun was beginning to drop into the earth. My stomach was growling, and as his hand was over that spot, he laughed into my shoulder. “I’m famished as well. Shall we find some food?”

  “Yes.” I turned. “But only here. I don’t want to leave this house.”

  “No.” He leaned on one elbow. “Nor do I.” He touched my chin, the side of my neck. “This is not casual for me, Olivia. I hope you know that.”

  “Not me either,” I said. “In case you couldn’t tell by the tears.” I rolled my eyes. “It’s a wonder you didn’t run far, far way.”

  “I only took that to mean you could not believe your good fortune to be with such a man among men.”

  “Well, there was that.”

  “I knew it. Come on.” He slid out of bed, absolutely unselfconscious, and I followed his movements as he picked up our clothes. “Do you want something to wear?”

  “A robe or something would be nice.”

  “Hmm. None of that, but how about—” He tossed me an oversize T-shirt that smelled of laundry. It said, “Saint John of the Woods Lacrosse.” It tumbled down my thighs, and the sleeves reached my elbows, but it was plain that the reason he chose it was for the deep V-neck, which showed off a considerable amount of cleavage. I gave him a wry grin and posed. “Good?”

  He winked, pulling on a pair of sweatpants. “Quite.”

  I found my socks on the floor. “Not sexy, I know, but it’s kind of cold in here.”

  “I’ll light the fire.”

  The cat was spread over the back of the couch as we entered, and he yawned. “Hey, Billi,” I said and scratched his head. He grinned, allowing it, and followed us into the kitchen.

  “I make a very spicy masala chai. Secret recipe,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows. “Would you like to try it?”

  “Absolutely.” It was a tiny room, and I perched on a stool at the counter.

  He settled a pot on the stove and poured water in, then slid a tray of spices over and opened them one at a time, counting out peppercorns and cardamom, star anise and something I didn’t quite see. With exaggerated care, he hid the tray when he was finished, mugging at me over his shoulder. “Pavi would kill for my blend.”

  I laughed. “With her palette she could deconstruct it in three seconds, no matter what you put in it.”

  “Perhaps. You haven’t tasted it yet.”

  “What can I do?”

  “I’ll have you chopping in a minute.” On his phone, he touched an app, and music wafted out of the speaker in the living room, something low and jazzy. “Good?”

  “Yeah.” I accepted the glass of water he poured and drank a long swallow. “I’m easy with music. Not much I don’t like.”

  He set me to chopping carrots, onions, and garlic while he washed chicken breasts and broke a generous knob of ginger from a larger hand. “What do you choose when you’re alone?”

  “Depends on my mood, of course.” I sliced a carrot with a very sharp knife and, in surprise, examined the blade. “Messermeister!”

  “Restaurant family, remember?”

  “Ah, of course.” I started on a second carrot. “So, music. I love Leonard Cohen, but he’s not the guy you want on in the background when you’re working or whatever.”

  “Brilliant. I’ve studied his poetry, of course, but never heard him sing.”

  “My mom loved him. She had a taste for dark themes, sad music—all that regret, you know—and Cohen has this great, deep voice, rumbly, raw, but it’s the words that make his songs. He was such an old, old soul, especially about relationships.”

  He started to peel the ginger, but his hair was in his eyes, and in a gesture that had the stamp of a million repetitions, he reached up and tied it back from his face using just the hair, then washed his hands and picked up the ginger. I smiled.

  “What?”

  “It seems like your hair drives you crazy.”

  “A little. But”—he lifted a brow—“the girls like it.”

  “Mmm.” I crunched a bit of carrot. “Not all, surely?”

  He minced the skinned ginger expertly, his fingers curled to avoid chopping them off, the ginger moving swiftly, cleanly beneath the knife. He dropped half the slices into the water simmering on the stove. “My ex-wife hated long hair, and I originally let it grow to”—he paused—“infuriate her.”

  “What happened there, Samir?”

  He shook his head. The light came straight down from overhead, skimmed down his strong nose, illuminated his brow. “I was young. She was very polished, very beautiful, from a very wealthy British Indian family. She dazzled me.” He scraped the ginger into a small bowl, then crushed a handful of garlic cloves. “Do you mind a lot of garlic?”

  I laughed. “You can add an entire head of garlic, and I won’t mind.”

  He smiled that sunny, beautiful smile. “I knew I liked you.”

  My carrots were finished, and I ran the knife through the top layer of the onion, peeling it away. “You were dazzled, and . . . ?”

  “Do you really want to hear this right now?”

  Seriously, I said, “Kind of. Before I’m so lost in you that I can’t turn around.”

  “She is not a consideration. Trust me.”

  “That’s not the concern.” I settled the onion on the cutting board and sliced off the ends. “Large or small dice?”

  “Large.” His eyes were sober, deep, as they rested on my face. “Then what?”

  “You spent a year reading yourself through your broken heart. Maybe that left a wound. Maybe you won’t get around it.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.” Tossing the meat into a pile on a plate, he said, “She loved me for the book I wrote, not for me. Or maybe she wanted to be connected to the young and upcoming Indian writer—it made her look good to have me on her arm.”

  “You would look good on anyone’s arm.” I plucked a carrot wheel from the pile. “Seeing that you are a god among men.”

  His lips quirked, and he pointed the knife at me. “There’s that.” He shook his head, and a single curl fell down along his cheekbone. “Anyway. The next two books failed spectacularly, and she lost interest.” Pouring oil into a heavy skillet, he added, “I was more humiliated than brokenhearted. We didn’t like each other very much by the end.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “But if that had not happened, I would not have been here,
and we would not have met.” He leaned over the counter, very close. “I would have hated that.”

  I lifted my chin so that our lips connected, and the kiss was sweet, deep, lingering. “Me too.”

  Still close, he said, “Did that make you feel better?”

  “Yes.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  The pot on the stove sent out an evocative scent, and he bent in and smelled it closely, stirred it, moved it off the burner. I peered around him to catalogue the spices, grinning when he caught me. Deftly, he tossed tea into the pot and glanced at the clock on the wall.

  Then, like a dancer humming to the music under his breath, he tossed the ginger and onions in the big skillet and stirred; added garlic, sending the scent into the air; then added the chicken and a handful of frozen peas, stirring, stirring, his mouth pursed in a way that I knew I would think about. Watching him, I felt suddenly breathless with both gratitude and terror. What had I done, allowing myself to fall?

  Because fallen I had. Fallen for his beauty and his sunny nature, his sexy bare feet and his brains and the way he made love to me and now the way he cooked.

  “I forgot limes!” he cried. “They’re in a bowl over there. Cut two into quarters. And we need a cup of milk in the chai.”

  I followed instructions. Mesmerized, I watched as he strained the chai into mugs. “Secret recipe.”

  The scent alone would have seduced me, but the flavor was sharp, hot, peppery, very sweet. “Wow,” I said.

  “I knew you would like it.” He took a sip, nodded, then turned to the big skillet, piling plates high with rice he’d heated in the microwave and the chicken and peas and, at the very last minute, a big handful of fresh coriander, all served steaming hot and fragrant and perfect with the limes. We were both so hungry we dove into eating like little kids, completely focused. I even found myself swinging my foot.

  At last, I rose for a breath. “Samir, this is so delicious.”

  “Need to keep your strength up.”

  I grinned.

  He poked at the dish, sobering, then looked up at me. “I keep thinking about our grandmothers, in love all those years. What that meant for them.”