Accompanying Alice

by Terese Ramin

  “Do you know what you’re doing, Allie?” He jerked to a stop in the sand and swung about on her. “I could hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you, Alice.”

  “No,” Alice said vehemently, fumbling with her purse. “You can’t hurt me if I don’t let you.”

  “What turnip truck did you fall off of, Alice? I don’t know what the future holds past this minute. How can you deal with that when I’m not sure I can? God, I’m not a kid, I should know better. Damn, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” Impatiently Alice emptied the contents of her purse in the sand. “I didn’t fall off any turnip truck. I’m well aware of what I’m doing. I’m not going to let you hurt me and I promise— Ha!” Triumphantly she snatched up the crinkly packages she’d been looking for and got to her feet. “And I promise to try not to hurt you. Here—” She grabbed his hand and shoved the foil squares into his palm. “Use ‘em in good health.”

  “What?” He was hysterical, he thought, looking at his packets in his hand. He’d lost his mind. But she’d lost hers ahead of him.

  “I found them,” Alice said with supreme dignity, “inside a bunny puppet when I was straightening the dresser in the girls’ room. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, but I thought you might be.”

  Gabriel stared from her to his hand incredulously. “You weren’t sure, but you thought I might—”

  “That’s right.” Alice nodded vigorously. “Absolutely. So, what do you think?” Hands on hips, she tapped her foot in the sand. “Should I pitch a hissy and yell at the girls? Should I ignore the whole thing and put them back where I found them? Should I throw them away…” She glanced at Gabriel from the corner of her eye, saw his shoulders begin to shake. “What are you laughing at?”

  “Nothing,” Gabriel said, laughing harder. “Me, you, the world in general—the way you always seem to hit me in the funny bone to make me laugh.”

  “I’m not hitting you anywhere. I’m trying to ask you for advice. But if this is the way you’re going to act...” She stuck her nose in the air and turned to walk past him.

  Too breathless to pursue her properly, Gabriel dropped to his knees in the sand, caught her about the hips and hugged her. “Don’t go,” he wheezed. “I promise not to laugh anymore. I promise I’ll just listen. However difficult you make it. “

  Ignoring the last, Alice brushed her fingers through his hair. “Will you give me advice if I need it?” she asked softly.

  Gabriel rubbed his face in the fabric across her stomach.

  “Absolutely,” he whispered.

  “In that case...” Alice framed his face between her palms, lifted it toward her and looked down at him, loving the play of moon shadow across his features, the revealing shift and play of it in the breeze. Her heart swelled and contracted with emotion and excitement, but no doubt. “I

  want you, Gabriel,” she whispered. “I need you. I’ve thought about it, and I know the promises I can’t make, and I understand what you… I know these things—” she stroked a hand down his arm to find his hand “—don’t give me any license beyond that and tonight, except...” She touched two fingers to his mouth and smiled shyly. “Please, Gabriel, I want to make a memory with you. I want something of you to keep—a secret I won’t ever have to share with anybody but you. Please. Let me love you while you’re here and I can.”

  All laughter gone, Gabriel pressed his face into her stomach and hugged her tight. If she wanted him he was hers, body and soul. He would make her his for as long as possible. He reached for her hands to pull himself out of the shifting sand, bent and kissed her. “Let’s go home,” he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  Inside the darkness of her bedroom, they fumbled together, laughing, until their clothing lay in puddles around their feet.

  “Nervous?” Gabriel asked, running the tips of his fingers up and down her arms.

  “A little.” Alice smiled tremulously. “I’ve never had an adult lover, Gabriel. I had a high school sweetheart, a boyfriend. I don’t know if I’ll—”

  Gabriel stilled her self-doubt with a finger to her lips.

  “You’ll be fine,” he whispered. “Incredible. I’m the one who should worry about disappointing you.”

  “But you won’t,” she protested.

  “No,” he promised softly, “I won’t.”

  A moment of awkwardness passed between them. Then Gabriel smiled and bent toward her, and Alice stretched to meet him, fit him.

  Bared to one another for the first time, they moved slowly, hands tracing every line and curve. No shrinking violet when she’d made up her mind to something, Alice found the appendectomy scar on Gabriel’s abdomen and examined it thoroughly, making Gabriel smile when she bent to kiss it, making him inhale sharply when she drew a line from the scar to his navel with her tongue and paused there for a few tantalizing moments before continuing on. In his turn, Gabriel lowered her to the bed and took his time, exploring every inch of her, finding the sensitive nerves in the arch of her foot, the ticklish spots at the inside of each knee, the places that made her giggle and try, not very hard, to get away from him. The spots that made her gasp and sigh and twist her hands in his hair with longing.

  When his mouth finally found one of her nipples, Alice moaned with relief. It felt…it felt… It just felt! There were only so many breasts and so many ways to describe the sensation of a lover’s mouth suckling them. Alice had read them all, from the chaste to the blatantly erotic, from series romance to bodice-ripping historicals to literary erotica to the trashy earthy passions of glitz. She’d read them to sell them, to escape reality, to fuel fantasy. None of them came

  near to describing how exquisite it felt to have Gabriel’s mouth, his tongue, on her—she gasped, half rose when his head dipped below her waist—inside her.

  His name grew urgent on her lips. “Gabriel, come to me. Gabriel, please, now!”

  And Gabriel complied.

  Heat curtained them from the world, fused two into one, created a perfect nucleus with swift bold strokes. Hot mouths, hot hands, hot skin; his on hers, hers on him; his in hers, hers around him. No longer separate, he was part of her, and they were one. One movement, one heart, one

  pulse, one complete universe, newly formed, freshly landscaped, virginally beautiful. Touch, hold, kiss, caress; senses cottoned, senses exploding…

  “Gabriel, please…”

  “Allie!”

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t…”

  “Allie... Allie...”

  Ripples washed outward, reversed suddenly to whirlpool in, suck them down, drown them, then toss them out toward the shore, together, full and empty, replete and complete. Gabriel heard Alice’s pleasure in her breathless laughter, felt the echoing spaces inside him fill up with her. Suddenly shaking, he wrapped himself around her, holding on to her and their moment for dear life. It would be over too soon. He would go back to where he’d come from six months ago

  and she would go on without him, her life too full to remain interrupted by thoughts of him. And he—

  All at once he thought he heard Markum’s voice in the back of his head. It slunk in through the chinks loving Alice had left in his armor, poking at him where it would do the most damage.

  You come in alone, you go out alone, it insisted, as Markum always said to newcomers to the academy. Trust no one. Always expect the worst.

  “No,” Gabriel whispered grimly, trying to bring Alice closer by sinking deeper into her embraces. “Not this time.”

  Markum’s voice was relentless.

  You can’t stay with her, it reminded him. You’re an undercover. You’ve got no life, no family, no friends. You aren’t even the echoes in an empty room.

  “No.” His denial was louder this time, startling Alice.

  “Gabriel?” Her voice was anxious beneath him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, Allie, I’m sorry. It’s nothing.”

  Like hell, Markum’s voice retorted inside his head. You wanna walk a
way, but you can’t walk until you clean it up—until you deal with me.

  Not yet, Gabriel thought, not tonight. Tomorrow I’m coming to get you, Si, but not now. He lifted himself on his hands, wanting to see Alice, to fill his eyes with her. She lifted her chin, smiling, and tightened her legs around his hips. Gabriel looked down at her through eyes filled with wonder, terror and awe, acknowledging commitment and responsibility, his possessor, his possessed. He had branded her. She was his.

  And God help them both, he was hers.

  In desperation he rolled away from her, reaching for the packages they’d tossed somewhere on the bed. Alice came up after him, running her hands up his back. “Gabriel…”

  Ready for her, Gabriel caught her around the waist and lifted her into his lap, pulling her legs around him. He would lose himself inside her just for tonight, keep her with him, keep the world at bay. She didn’t judge him the way he judged himself, merely took him into her and drove the night away hard and fast, out of control. He needed most to lose control sometimes, fiercely, savagely, thoughtlessly. The medicine of her body healed him; her spirit cloaked his,

  sheltered and renewed. He needed that right now, needed her, couldn’t wait.

  “Gabriel,” she murmured again, caressing his face, then clutched his shoulders hard, gasping and arching into him when he rocked upward, filling her.

  “Hold me, Allie.” His breath was harsh against her breast. “Hold me, Alice. Love me...”

  *

  Toward dawn they slept.

  The scent of Alice roused Gabriel. Evocative, welcoming, it drew him from his dreams, causing him to reach for her before he fully awoke, to bury his face in the hair furled on his pillow. His body knew her. She was woman, she was life. Buried inside her was strength and peace, quixotic, healing. In her arms, desperation faded.

  Smiling sleepily, Gabriel arched and stretched against Alice. Even in her sleep she responded at once, snugging her hips to his, rotating them. Her breast swelled to fill his hand.

  Late morning daylight eased around the edges of the window shades, brightening the room and hiding night’s terrors.

  Fully awake, fully aroused now, Gabriel jacked himself up on an elbow and turned Alice’s face toward his. She murmured warm unintelligible greetings against his mouth before opening it to the delicate pressure of his tongue. Smiling and drowsy, she twisted in his arms and slid a hand down his belly as she opened for him. Gabriel shuddered beneath the lightness of her touch, arching into it. So sweet, he thought, tasting her mouth again, like honey. Alice’s hand closed on him, stroking. Gabriel groaned at the tension coiling too fast inside him. He wanted to wake her slowly. Take his time. Make it last. We’ve got time, he thought, plenty of time.

  Obviously being a cop had not equipped him with the instincts of a parent. The phone jangled with importance just as he dipped his head to find Alice’s breast. The Mother Whose Children Are Not At Home instantly came awake inside Alice. She rolled away from Gabriel before she even realized what she was doing, snaking out a hand to grab the phone off the nightstand next to her side of the bed.

  “Let it ring—” Gabriel began, but it was already too late.

  With a groan that was half-frustration, half-chuckle at the ever present and inevitable interruptions of Alice’s life, Gabriel flopped onto his back to listen.

  “Hello.” The word came out scratchy, so Alice cleared her throat. “Hello?”

  “Mom?”

  Alice sat up, recognizing Allyn’s quavery you were right Mom little-girl-lost-in-the-middle-of-the-night voice at once. She reached instinctively across the bed for Gabriel. “Lynnie? What’s wrong?” She listened a moment. “Are you all right?” she asked sharply, and Gabriel slid across

  the bed to support her back.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Where is she?”

  Alice shook her head, listening. “Did something happen? Did you lose your money? Where are you?” She shut her eyes gratefully and covered the receiver with her hand. “Sounds like she’s okay, just scared and mad. She’s at a bus station in Colorado Springs,” she told Gabriel. “Her

  friends dumped her and took off before she could grab her money or her clothes. She wants to come home. Says she’s got enough on a prepaid Visa card for a ticket to Kansas City, but—”

  “Find out if she’s somewhere safe—transit officials around or whatever—and get her phone number,” Gabriel said immediately. “You’ll call her back. Let me make a call. I think I know somebody who’ll look after her until we can get her home.”

  Alice narrowed her eyes, enjoying the sudden sense of jealousy this suggestion aroused. “Who do you know?” she asked. “Some woman?”

  Gabriel grinned at her and climbed out of bed to pull on his jeans. “Nope, an ex-fed who quit civil service and went out west to become a born-again ecologist and mess up the logging industry by pounding railroad spikes in trees.”

  “Oh, God.” Alice covered her eyes. “And you think the people I know have a lot in common with banana cake? He won’t, um, preach his eccentricities to her, will he?”

  “He’s not big on people. I doubt he’ll say anything.” He leaned on the bed and kissed Alice squarely. “Now, Mom,” he said, “get the kid’s number and get the hell off the phone so I can do what I’m good at and bring her home.”

  Already near noon, the arrangements for Allyn took longer to make than Alice expected. True to Gabriel’s prediction, the ex-fed turned ecologist who lived near Colorado Springs was willing to keep an eye on Allyn while he kept her company. Allyn said he was kind of quiet and reminded her of Mel Gibson’s reputation on a bad day, but that he was better than some of the other creeps who hung around public transportation facilities. Still, it was late afternoon before Alice was able to complete wiring a bus ticket and food money to her daughter, whose bus would not leave until close to midnight and who would, with layovers, be several days getting home.

  With a sigh, Alice realized it was the best she could do. Allyn had gone off in search of adventure, and now she was getting it. Alice only hoped this trip would not discourage her daughter from striking out on her own again. Soon.

  “I used to want twenty kids,” she told Gabriel with a sigh, when they lay propped on their elbows on the bed later. “But that was before I had two. God, my mother was crazy—or a saint—to have seven of us. And all accidents at that. ‘Course—” she glanced at Gabriel wickedly “I suppose even accidents have their silver linings.”

  “You’re the best accident that’s ever happened to me,” he assured her gravely, but his eyes twinkled. Then he turned serious. “Do you think you’ll ever want another one?”

  “Accident?”

  Gabriel fixed her with a mock evil-eyed glare. “Baby.”

  “Why?” she asked, avoiding the answer to his question with one of her own. “You wanna have one with me?”

  When Gabriel merely stared at her, refusing to rise to the bait, Alice rolled onto her back and faced the wistful envy that rose every time one of her sisters had a baby. “I dunno,” she said truthfully. “Sometimes, I guess, but not while everything’s so up in the air with me. I don’t even

  know if I’d be able to support a baby. And I wouldn’t want to do it alone. I’ve done that. But maybe if I could pick the time, the place, and the husband. Why?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Just something Mike said made me think about it.”

  Alice rolled up and ran a hand down his side. “And what did you think?”

  “That I shouldn’t think about it until my chances for living to help a child grow up are better.”

  “Do you think about dying a lot?”

  His eyes were blank. He shrugged. “Hard to avoid it some days. Especially days when I realize there’s got to be a better way for a grown man to earn a living.”

  Alice inched closer to him and kissed his throat, wanting to ease. “Do you have a lot of those days?”

  Gabriel tucked an arm about her waist and pulled
her under him. “Lately, yeah. Fact, I’m having one now. I think it’s going to last awhile.”

  “If you find a better way to earn a living…”

  “You’ll be the first person I call.”

  For a long moment Alice’s dark brown gaze held Gabriel’s, sharing hope, regret and maybe. Then Alice drew Gabriel to her, and they didn’t speak again for a long time.

  *

  The double wedding rehearsal was nearly over by the time they got to it. Helen, who had somehow been coerced into spending the day babysitting Mamie’s boys, made I’ll get you for this faces at Alice the minute she stepped into the church. Alice, who was feeling fairly invincible with Gabriel’s hand at her waist, smiled gently back at her. Grace and Phil huddled with Becky and Michael near a side altar, apparently in the midst of a heated argument. The groom’s parents and the groomsmen sat on one side of the church looking bored, except for Skip, who wandered aimlessly about wearing a painful to witness I’m-in-love-and-she-doesn’t-know-I-exist expression. The rest of Alice’s sisters sat with their families whisper-laughing and chatting, taking brief meaningful glances at Alice and Gabriel, Helen and Skip, and Grace and Phil, then turning back to one another and giggling.

  Michael’s parents sat alone in a back pew, looking as though they weren’t sure why they were there. Alice gulped when she all of a sudden realized they were not here as the

  in-laws for one of her sisters, but for her daughter. No matter how often she’d thought about Becky’s marriage the past few days, the reality of it hadn’t sunk in until now. She should, she realized almost guiltily, probably go over and try to get to know them.

  Serene, dark-haired Julia Block Brannigan floated gracefully to the back of the church, hand outstretched to Gabriel. In her thoughtful laughing way, she assessed the man who made her eldest daughter glow, gave Alice an intense knowing perusal and went off to speak to the deacon who’d conducted the rehearsal.

  The dinner afterward in a side room at another local pub seemed to include a lot of everybody’s relatives who weren’t actually part of the wedding party. The families were noisy and jovial and, jumbled together by circumstance, even the in-laws found they enjoyed one another’s company. At least briefly.