by Terese Ramin
With a muttered “Quit being such a fool, Allie,” she picked a stuffed puppet off Allyn’s dresser, prepared to set it back on the corner shelves where it belonged. The same stiff, foil crinkle that had made her pause and look through the wash last week stayed her now.
Whoa! she thought with shock, then gently squeezed and released the puppet once more. Again she heard the crinkly-crackly sound of foil or plastic. With a gulp, she set the toy back on the dresser, stuck her hands in the pockets of her skirt and looked at it, not wanting to appear too anxious. At the same time she thought she heard both her heart and her libido let loose ragged whoops of anticipation. Thought she really ought to think about chastising her daughters for hiding things from her instead of hoping she’d found what she thought she’d found.
Like a bomb squad rookie, she poked the bunny puppet tentatively as though afraid it would go off. Then she gathered her courage about her and anchored the puppet with one hand while she eased the other inside. And withdrew six square innocent-looking foil-wrapped packages.
For a fraction of a second Alice rocked back on her heels wishing she’d possessed Allyn’s nerve and sense of reality, as well as her open curiosity about the physical wonders of the body when she herself had been seventeen. Right or wrong, good or bad, protecting herself from the consequences of her irresponsible prom night act of insanity would have saved everyone a lot of grief.
Then one side of her mouth drew a line of bittersweet irony into her cheek. If she’d been more responsible all those years ago, she wouldn’t be standing here in Allyn and Rebecca’s room wondering how she might have been a better parent at the same time as she wondered if she dared present these packages to Gabriel. Especially since their relationship was only temporary.
Maybe if she found some wrapping paper and ribbon...
She whistled sharply through her teeth and flicked the condoms to the far side of the dresser, not particularly happy with the irreverent drift of her thoughts. Wow, looking at these things sure did make you think about what you were doing, didn’t it? she asked herself. Took the wind right out of your emotion and brought you right down to the basics: she could go get Gabriel and be downright “bad” and get away with it. Physically, that is. Mind and emotions, she had a feeling, would be another story.
She swallowed and eyed the bright pink packages again. It wasn’t a crime to want to love Gabriel no matter how short a time they’d known one another. To think about it, to want to set the scene and be ready for him. And the bottom line was, she was getting pretty damn tired of always being so tight-fisted with her emotions. She and Gabriel were going to be living together for at least the next three days and it was getting harder and harder to be near him without wanting to touch him and hold him—and love him. All he had to do was look at her to make her feel complete, yet with his eyes he also seemed to touch places inside her, make her experience feelings she couldn’t express to him in words. And she wanted to express those feelings, needed to share what he gave her by offering them to him in the most expressive way she knew. He’d already said more than once that he had no way to protect her. But now, truth be told, she could protect them both. And since her emotions, as well as her body, seemed to be in league against her common sense...
Alice took a deep breath and stuck the condoms in her skirt pocket. Just in case.
*
The contents of Alice’s closet lay on her bed.
It was a gloomy collection of neutral shades and conservative styles purchased for its inexpensive and washable durability rather than for show. Alice stared at it in dismay. She’d sort of hoped to wear something pretty tonight for a change. Dress, maybe, for Gabriel. Pretend that the family picnic was a kind of date with the potential for more dates. The clothing on the bed was all “nice” stuff, but there wasn’t a bright or truly attractive item in the whole lot. Just A-line skirts and cotton blouses. She didn’t even own a sundress or a pair of blue jeans. “Jeezo pizza!” she muttered under her breath, when had she become such a drudge?’
“Moving?” Gabriel queried from the door.
Alice glared at him. “Just getting dressed.”
“Ah.” He nodded, grinning. “The layered look.”
“Did you want something?”
Gabriel cocked his head and ran a lazy eye up the length of her legs, made a thoughtful appraisal of her hips and belly, shook his head with an appreciative “mm-mm-mm” over her breasts and met her eyes.
Alice blushed. “Cheap,” she said. “Very cheap.”
He grinned wickedly. “You asked.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Yeah, well...” Gabriel cleared his throat. “What time do we have to leave for your mother’s?”
“Five-thirty.”
“Good. Gives me time to grab a shower.” He started to turn away, paused, eyeing her.
“What?” Alice asked hopefully.
“Oh—” Gabriel gave himself a reluctant shake. “—nothing. I’ll just go shower now.”
“Good,” Alice snapped. ‘‘I’ll just get dressed.”
She ransacked the twins’ closet, wondering why she was mad at Gabriel. Because you don’t really want to go to your mother’s, she answered herself, but you also don’t want to make the first move and invite him to do something else. Alone. Just the two of you.
Aw, come on, she argued with herself, go to your mother’s. Doing something alone, just the two of you, will only invite trouble.
But I want trouble.
No, you don’t.
Yes, dammit, I do!
She gave up talking to herself and returned her attention to the girls’ closet. It was too hard to argue with a fool.
Between them, Allyn and Rebecca had covered the fashion bases. Alice shoved aside a leather miniskirt she distinctly remembered telling someone not to buy, shuddered over the price tag that had been left on a pair of jeans with artfully frayed holes all over them, and stopped at a vivid tangerine-colored sundress with a lot of tiny buttons down the front. The dress was made of some wrinkly gauzy fabric that looked as if it would be cool and clingy, modest and provocative at once. The weatherman had promised a hot night.
Alice chewed her lip for an instant. The dress straps were too slim to hide her sturdy white bra straps, but the bodice was lined. Maybe she could do without a bra. Dare to jiggle, she told herself—then shut her eyes and shook her head. She was out of her mind.
She confiscated the dress, anyway, searched the bottom of the closet for the sandals Becky usually wore with it, then sifted through the twins’ communal jewelry box for a pair of earrings. She wound up with a pair of rose-shaped posts that matched the dress, a flat gold chain necklace with a rose pendant that hit the hollow of her throat, and a slim gold bracelet. It was, she realized, probably more jewelry than she’d worn at one time since before the twins were born. After appropriating some of the twins’ discarded makeup, she went into her own bedroom and shut the door to get dressed.
When she emerged a short time later, Gabriel was waiting for her in the living room dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. He turned and saw her, and all the wow! looks she’d ever read about, imagined or seen men give women in movies or TV paled in comparison. He inhaled awe, exhaled a “yeah” of absolute awareness. His mouth curved, his eyes glowed and he took on the pleased if somewhat puffed-up expression of a man who knew this woman had dressed for him.
Alice’s heart fluttered. She dragged her top teeth over her bottom lip and turned one foot on its side behind the other, a gawky teenager on her first date. Gabriel smiled at her, a man smiling at a woman, not a boy smiling at a girl, and all at once the inept adolescent inside Alice was gone. She lifted her chin and drew herself up, reveling in the buzz of awareness that ran through her. Gabriel reached out and touched the dark comb she’d used to pull her hair up and back over one ear, let his fingers drift to her chin.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, wanting her more than he ever had before, needin
g more than anything to spend some time with her alone so he’d have something of her to take away with him.
“You, too,” she said.
“Do you have to put in an appearance for your family tonight?” Gabriel asked. He might never get another chance to have her to himself.
Alice hesitated. “I probably should, to save Becky and Michael from—” She stopped abruptly, suddenly realizing she was about to throwaway an opportunity to spend time with him that she didn’t want to miss. She tilted her face up to him. “No.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Gabriel’s smile widened at the positiveness of her tone.
“Good,” he said. “In that case, Alice Meyers, will you have dinner with me? Someplace with deep dark intimate booths, good service and a lot of privacy?”
“I know just the place,” Alice said, and handed him the keys to her car. After all, if he was going to take her out on the first real date she’d been on in twenty years, she was darn well going to let herself succumb to the sexist proprieties of the event and let him drive.
Grinning, Gabriel took the hint and held the front door open for her.
Entertaining as he did so a good few sexual improprieties of his own.
*
They drove across Pontiac to picturesque between-the-lakes Keego Harbor, dining at a pub-style restaurant—a cozy spot with dim lights, plenty of atmosphere and good basic Irish and American food.
Dinner was an intimate, sometimes intense, no-holds-barred laughter-filled affair. Conversation was frank, funny and revealing—a nonstop yak-fest between two people who felt as if they’d known one another forever, but who’d never had the time to really sit down and simply get to know one another. Alice told Gabriel what it was like to grow up in a big family, and then to raise two children on her own. Gabriel reciprocated by telling Alice what it had been like to grow up in Quaker missions.
The minute he began to talk, it was as though Alice had somehow opened a dam inside him that had been backing up for too long. All at once he needed her to know him the way no one else ever had, wanted her to understand what made him tick. Wanted to tell her all the things about himself he’d never told anybody.
He told her about the nun who’d given him the St. Jude medal and then died. He told her about the growing up dreams he’d had of carrying on his parents’ work in the refugee camps and orphanages of Southeast Asia.
He told her about Aunt Sarah, about going back to Cambodia and Vietnam and winding up a prisoner of the Cambodian guerillas for three days. He told her about being a Quaker pacifist who felt he had a peaceful contribution to make in a war zone, about becoming a medic at the evac hospital, about watching the guys come in and go out—about how difficult it was to remain a nonviolent nonparticipant in the face of so much violence. Of the first time he’d ever held a gun in his hands and been tempted to use it. Of the thing that had snapped inside him when someone else had died because he hadn’t.
Dispassionately he told her of how he’d decided to become a participant, a gun-toting cop, when his self-made hell over that incident and the many others that had seemed to resemble it too closely became unlivable. He told her about the demon that had started to grow inside him not long after he’d started to handle undercover cases and that had eventually destroyed his relationship with his parents. He told her how the job had managed to shake his belief in
everything except man’s ability to heap treachery on top of treachery on top of betrayal. He told her about wanting to quit the cynicism of his profession, and he told her about Markum.
Alice listened. She couldn’t have stopped the flow of his story if she’d wanted to, but she didn’t want to. She’d begun to realize how much she’d told him about herself the past few days without learning much of anything about him. Now she understood why: it had simply taken him longer to depend on his instinct to trust her with his life than it had taken her to be open with him. But that was the way it generally was with Brannigans. To be open with total strangers about emotions and details, but to keep them at arm’s length when it came to any deeper involvement until they’d been around “long enough”—which meant anywhere from two minutes to ten years.
After dinner they drove around the nearby lake, peeking at the water between the houses built along its shore, stopping to trespass in the moonlight bathing a subdivision’s private beach. Carrying their shoes, they walked along the water’s edge in comfortable silence, close without touching. In the silky water that washed up, then receded, around their ankles, they stopped to watch the stars come out. When Alice shivered involuntarily during a sudden off the lake breeze, Gabriel automatically moved in behind her and wrapped his arms around her like a shawl, tucking her tight to the warmth of his chest. Wind lifted her hair to tickle his nose, filled his nostrils with her scent.
Sensation flooded him. He buried his face in her hair, letting her fill his senses as she filled his heart. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to get enough of her. He couldn’t remember ever feeling the way she made him feel—whole, free, replete…a part of something larger than he’d ever been a part of before. Family. She’d made him a part of hers. And without meaning to, she’d made him a part of her. That was the way it went. When you weren’t looking for a thing to happen, when you couldn’t afford it to, boom, that’s when it caught you. He was used to snap judgments; they were a hazard of his profession, and he made them and lived by them every day. But this was different, this was deeper, a knowledge he’d somehow carried with him all his life, a sense of recognition. He loved Alice Meyers.
He’d expected to shock himself with the admission, but he wasn’t shocked. Unnerved, maybe, uncertain about how to work love and Alice into his future—and himself into hers. But not stunned.
He felt her take a deep breath of lake air and sigh it happily away. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
He rubbed his face in her hair. “Very.” God, he wanted her. Wanted to brand her as his.
Alice turned in his arms, slipped her own arms about his waist and tipped her face up to him. He made her feel sexy and secure at the same time, but she didn’t want to be “safe” with him tonight. Tonight she wanted to flirt with the dangerous side of him, to know if she could tame it.
I want to touch him, she thought. I want to hold him. I want him to touch me, be with me. Just once before he leaves. Before I let him go.
She drew herself up with a mental start. He couldn’t leave her if she let him go. It was that simple. Why couldn’t she have understood that eighteen years ago with Matt, and last week with the girls? Love didn’t mean binding up, it meant freeing. It meant choosing to release. It meant choice.
“I never said thank you, did I?” she asked aloud.
Gabriel touched the moon shadow on her cheek. “For what?”
For coming into my life, she thought. For listening to my complaints. For waking up my body. For touching my heart.
“For dinner,” she said aloud. “For whatever you said to Mike this morning.”
The set of her lips in the moonlight fascinated him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her mouth. “Dinner was my pleasure. I didn’t say anything to Mike. He doesn’t need anyone to say anything to him where Becky’s concerned. He loves your daughter, Alice. He’s not blind to her faults, and an adolescent sex drive hasn’t blinded him to himself. He came after the whole woman Becky is—” he grinned “—banana cake relatives and all.”
“My relatives have nothing in common with banana cake,” Alice said in mock indignation. “Well,” she amended, “except maybe Aunt Bethany. And Aunt Kate. Maybe Helen. Grandma Josephine...”
A gust of wind tossed her hair into her face. Gabriel smoothed it back with trembling fingers. “Alice,” he muttered hoarsely, “you’re running on.”
“Am I?” she whispered. The look on his face made her giddy with anticipation. It made her want to do something she’d never regret. Touch him, she thought. Trust your instincts. Trust yours
elf. “Am I really?” she repeated, half smiling.
“Yes.” Gabriel nodded raggedly. “On and on and—”
Alice locked her arms about his neck, lifted herself against him and kissed him. He ran his hands down her back and crushed her tight, groaning when she nipped at the soft underside of his lips and dipped her tongue between them.
Just for a minute, he assured himself. I can do this for a minute, then I’ll stop.
Heat curled and tightened in his belly, clouded his awareness. He struggled for control, but she invaded his mind and his senses, and he lost himself in her. He pressed her to him like some missing piece of himself and let instinct lead him where it would, deepening the kiss. He could feel her against him, her body formed to fit his, soft and hollowed where his was hard and ridged. He wanted her. Beside his want there was nothing else; it was primitive, uncontrolled,
complete. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted a woman like this, couldn’t remember that he ever had. The ache of his desire for her cut deep. His hands kneaded the soft fabric covering her hips, her name in his throat was an impatient plea.
“Alice...”
He felt the vibration of her response against, his tongue.
“Yes...”
The wind scudded across the lake, sent waves slapping up over his knees to rouse him. Disoriented, he lifted his head to collect his bearings, and felt the waves plaster his pants to his legs again. He looked at the beach, at the lights across the water, at Alice staring up at him as though transfixed—felt the pulse of blood through the arousal behind his zipper. He dropped his head back in angry disbelief and shoved his hands through his hair. Oh, God, he’d promised
himself he wouldn’t use her and leave her like Matt.
“God, Allie, why did you let me do that?”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“In another minute... Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I didn’t want to.” Alice tried to touch him, but he yanked himself away from her and started back up the beach. “Gabriel, please. Wait.”