by Janet Dailey
“It would be worse if I pretended he was going to stay,” she reminded him.
Chapter Six
AFTER SUPPER GARY helped her clear the table and do the dishes, which was practically unheard-of coming from him. Propping himself against the sink, with the crutches under his arms for support, he washed the dishes while Charley dried them and put them away.
“How about a game of checkers?” he suggested when they were finished.
“I’m not really in the mood—” she started to refuse, then realized he was trying to be thoughtful and keep her mind away from Shad and what he might be doing. She smiled quickly. “All right, why not?”
The first two games were close, although Gary won them both, but he was the better checker player, too. On the third, her concentration faltered and it was barely a contest. Her gaze kept straying to the kitchen wall clock as the evening crept by. Charley lost the fourth and fifth games, too.
When the sixth showed signs of turning into a rout, her brother grumbled, “I can’t believe that anyone I taught to play checkers could play the game so badly.”
“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I wasn’t paying attention.” Her glance darted to the wall clock.
“It’s twenty-five minutes to ten,” Gary said dryly. “The last time you looked it was twenty- seven minutes to ten.”
“I’m sorry.” She felt guilty because he was trying so hard to keep her entertained.
“And stop saying you’re sorry.” He flashed her an impatient look.
“I’m—” She had been on the verge of saying it again and caught herself just in time. They looked at each other and laughed, breaking the invisible tension in the air. “It’s no use, Gary,” Charley sighed. “I might as well admit defeat now. I can’t concentrate.”
“It’s a losing battle, isn’t it?” He dumped the checkers into their box, calling it quits.
“Yes, but it was a nice thought,” she said as she pushed her chair away from the kitchen table.
“What are you going to do?” He put the lid on the box and handed it to her so she could put it away in the cupboard.
“I think I’ll take a long soak in the tub—and hopefully scrub that man out from under my skin,” Charley joked with a self-mocking smile.
“Good luck.” Gary sounded suitably doubtful of her success. As he started to pull himself upright with his crutches he winced and turned white with pain, sitting back down again.
“What’s wrong?” she frowned with instant concern.
“Nothing,” he insisted. “I’ve just been sitting in one position too long. It’ll pass.” He tried to stand up again and Charley could see that it hurt him but he finally managed to get upright.
“Are you sure you don’t want one of those pain pills the doctor prescribed for you?” she suggested.
“No, it’ll go away.” But his jaw was clenched against the discomfort as he bit down hard.
“You won’t make it easy on yourself, will you?” she chided him. “You have to tough it out.”
His gaze flashed her a challenge. “Look who’s talking.” He reminded Charley of her own harshly realistic outlook.
“All right, I’ll stop throwing stones,” she promised and started toward the stairwell in the living room. “If you need anything, call me.”
“I will,” he promised.
In the second-floor bathroom, she turned on the water faucets in the tub and adjusted the water temperature until it was comfortably hot. She dumped in some bubble bath. On impulse she added an extra splash, giving in to a whim of self-indulgence. There had been enough misery in her life of late and she decided she deserved a little pampering.
While the tub was filling with water she went into her bedroom to undress and get her cotton bathrobe. When she returned, the bathtub was mounded with bubbles. Turning off the faucets, Charley piled her hair on top of her head, secured it with a comb, and climbed into the tub to stretch out the full length of it, resting her head on the curved porcelain back. She closed her eyes and let the fragrant water act as a balm to soothe her inner aches.
After she had been in the tub barely ten minutes, she heard the thump of Gary’s crutches in the living room below. The sound was followed by the opening of the stairwell door.
“Charley!” He called up to her and she frowned at the interruption of her quiet bath. “Where are those pain pills from the doctor?”
She opened her eyes in surprise. His leg must really be bothering him for Gary to give in and ask for the pills. “They’re in the medicine cabinet.” She shouted the answer, and heard him thump away.
In a few minutes he was back. “Charley!”
“What?”
“I can’t find them! What kind of bottle are they in?” His patience seemed to be running thin.
“It’s brown!” She called down and waited as he thumped off again.
This time he wasn’t gone as long and his voice was decidedly more irritable when he called, “There are three bottles in the medicine cabinet that are brown! How am I supposed to tell them apart?”
Charley sighed in mild exasperation. “I’ll get them!”
Climbing out of the tub, she grabbed a towel and blotted the excess moisture from her body. Her robe was hanging on the door hook. She slipped into it, tugging the cotton material over her damp skin and buttoning it as she hurried out of the bathroom to the staircase.
Once she was downstairs, Gary protested, “You could have told me what to look for. You didn’t have to come down.’’
“Now you tell me,” she retorted. Then she saw how white his face was beneath the tan and added in a gentler tone, “I don’t mind. It’s better than wondering if you took a pill from the wrong bottle.”
With Gary following her, she went to the medicine cabinet in the downstairs bathroom and took out the brown bottle containing his medication. She didn’t bother to point out to him that neither of the other two brown bottles contained pills. One was iodine and the other held cotton balls. She gave him the prescribed dosage and a glass of water to wash them down.
“I’ll help you into bed,” Charley volunteered.
“My leg hurts too much to lie down,” he refused her suggestion with a frowning shake of his head.
“Listen, when those pills start to work, you’ll be knocked out. And I can’t get you into bed by myself so you’re going there now,” she ordered and Gary gave in.
By the time she tucked the covers around him, he was already beginning to feel the effects. She turned off the light as she left the room and went back upstairs to the bath she’d left. The bubbles had all dissolved and the water was barely tepid. Most of her enthusiasm for a long, luxurious bath had evaporated, too. She pulled the plug to let the water run down the drain. As it gurgled noisily, she scrubbed away the soap scum from the sides of the porcelain tub. Once the bathwater was gone, she ran cold water out of the faucets to give the tub one final rinse.
Just as she finished, Charley thought she heard a noise downstairs. She stopped to listen, thinking maybe Gary was calling for her but there was only silence. Yet she was positive she’d heard something, so she went downstairs to check.
She tiptoed quietly into her brother’s room. The outside yard light cast its beam through the window by his bed. Gary was sleeping soundly, his chest rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm beneath the cover of the blankets. Reassured that he was all right, Charley slipped out of the room.
A flash of white in the living room caught her eye a split second before a low voice said, “Charley?”
She smothered her startled cry of alarm with her hand as Shad materialized from the shadows. Her hand slipped down to cover her rapidly beating heart.
“You startled me,” she accused.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to,” he apologized and glanced beyond her to the bedroom door. “Is Gary all right?”
“Yes. His leg was bothering him earlier and he took a couple of pain pills. I was just checking on him to make sure he was okay,” s
he explained. The initial surprise of his sudden appearance in the house had gone. In its place was the sharp memory of where he’d been. “What are you doing back so soon?” Charley challenged in an icy voice. “I thought you were going to stay out until all hours of the morning.”
“I was.” His voice was low, unruffled by her tone.
It was difficult to see his face in the shadowy dimness of the room. There weren’t any lights on downstairs. What light there was came from the stairwell or the yard light outside. Yet Charley could feel the disturbing intensity of his gaze.
“Then what are you doing here?” Forced anger was her defense against him.
“After I had my steak dinner, I went to a bar. There was this drunk there. . . .” His voice took on a different quality, gentle, almost caressing. “He kept singing ‘Charley is my darling.’ And I started wondering what I was doing in that bar when my Charley was here.’’
Her heart cried out for him, loving him all the more for saying such beautiful words, but it hurt, too. Charley turned her head away, closing her eyes tightly.
“Don’t say such things, Shad.” She pleaded with him not to hurt her anymore.
“Why not?” he countered. “It’s what I feel.
She tried to take the potency from his words by accusing, “You’ve been drinking.”
“Yes, I’ve been drinking,” he admitted. As she started to walk away from him, he caught her wrist and pulled her around. She was in his arms before she had a chance to resist. “But I’m not drunk.”
“Let me go, Shad.” She tried to twist out of his arms but they tightened around her, holding her fast. The warmth of his hands burned through the thin material of her robe, setting her flesh afire.
“My God!” He issued the stunned exclamation under his breath as he became suddenly motionless. An exploring hand moved over her hip. “You don’t have anything on under this.”
Aware of the imprint his body was making on hers, her own senses echoed the aroused note in his voice. Yet she tried to resist it.
“Shad, don’t,” she protested.
But he merely groaned and rubbed his shaven cheek against hers, brushing her ear with his mouth. “It’s no use, Charley. I’ve tried to stay away from you, but I can’t. Let’s forget about tomorrow. We have today. Better yet, we have tonight.”
His mouth rocked over her lips, persuading and cajoling, sensually chewing on her lower lip until she was reeling. Restless male hands wandered the length of her spine, arousing and loving the feel of her. She was helpless against this loving attack.
“We can’t go on like this, denying ourselves,” Shad muttered thickly as her lips grazed along his jaw. “It’s tearing us both apart. Isn’t it?”
“Yes.” The aching admission was torn from her throat, the ability to reason lost.
It was the answer he had been waiting for as he swept her off her feet and into his arms. Her hands circled his neck while her mouth investigated the strong column of his throat, savoring the taste of him. He carried her to the couch and lowered her to the cushions while he sat on the edge facing her.
He leaned down to cover her parted lips with his mouth, his hard tongue probing behind the white barrier of her teeth to have the satisfaction of total possession. Raw desire licked through her veins, a spreading fire that left none of her body untouched. His large hands deftly loosened the buttons of her robe and pushed the material aside to expose her flesh to his tactile explorations.
Jealous of the liberties he enjoyed, her fingers tugged at the buttons of his shirt. When the last one was unfastened, Shad aided her by pulling his shirt free of his waistband. She moaned softly as she felt the heat of his flesh beneath her hands. Her fingers ran eagerly over his flexed and rippling muscles, excited and stimulated by this freedom to touch and caress.
Forsaking the passion of her lips, his mouth began a downward path. Delighted quivers erupted through her skin as he explored the sensitive cord in her neck and drank from the hollow of her throat. Her fingernails dug into his flesh when his mouth grazed along the slope of her breast, its point hardening with desire, eventually luring his attention to it. Charley shuddered with uninhibited longing under the arousing manipulation of his tongue.
When she was weak with need, he returned to bruise her lips with his kisses. “Tell me you want me, Charley,” he urged. “I’ve been haunted by your voice saying those words. I want to hear them again.”
“I want you, Shad,” she whispered against his skin. “More than that, I love you.”
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any other woman in my life,” he told her roughly.
“I want you to stay with me tonight, Shad,” Charley murmured. “Tonight and tomorrow night and every night of my life. I don’t want you to leave me.”
“You know I can’t promise that, Charley,” he muttered thickly, rubbing his mouth over her cheek.
She knew. Her arms curved more tightly around him, fusing the warmth of his bare flesh against her own. “Hold me,” she whispered. “Don’t ever let me go.” Her eyes were tightly closed, but a tear squeezed its way through her lashes. It was followed by more until Shad tasted the salty moisture on her skin.
“Don’t cry, Charley.” The roughness of his calloused hand was on her cheek, wiping them away. “For God’s sake, don’t cry.” His voice held no anger, only a kind of anguished regret.
“I can’t help it.” She honestly tried to check the flow of tears but it was unstoppable.
With a heavy sigh he eased his weight from her and sat up. She blinked and felt the touch of his hands as he folded the front of her robe shut. Then he was leaning his elbows on his knees and raking his fingers through his hair to rub the back of his neck. Charley sat up, a hand unconsciously holding the front of her robe. She touched his shoulder, tentative, uncertain.
“No, Charley,” he said, then turned his head to look at her. A dark, troubled light was in his eyes. “I swear to God I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know,” she murmured gently and a little sadly. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t ask me to fall in love with you. Maybe if you had, I’d be able to hate you, but I don’t.”
She swung her feet to the floor and slowly walked to the stairs, leaving Shad sitting there alone on the couch. It was almost an hour later before she heard him come upstairs. He paused at the top of the stairs and Charley held her breath. Finally the door to his bedroom opened and closed. The tears started again.
Sleep became something that eluded Charley. The hours that she didn’t spend staring at the ceiling, she tossed and turned fitfully. By Wednesday morning the lack of rest began to paint faint shadows below her eyes. They didn’t go unnoticed by her brother.
“Aren’t you feeling well, Charley?” he asked at the breakfast table Wednesday morning, eyeing her critically.
“I’m fine,” she insisted.
“Well, you don’t look so good,” he concluded bluntly.
“Thanks,” she snapped and paled under Shad’s scrutiny.
Gary noticed the exchange and his eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he made no comment. Charley knew that her brother had probably guessed the cause for her sleeplessness, but there was nothing he could do about it.
When she crawled into bed that night, she expected it to be a repeat of the previous nights. She listened for the longest time, waiting for the sound of Shad’s footsteps on the stairs. She dozed off without hearing, then awakened later and strained to hear-sounds of him sleeping in the other bedroom. Finally fatigue overtook her and she fell into a heavy sleep.
The buzz of the alarm clock was insistent, dragging open her eyelids despite her attempt to ignore it. She climbed wearily from the bed, irritated that the one time she had managed to sleep, she had been forced to waken. She dressed in her usual garb of blue jeans and blouse and left the bedroom in a kind of daze.
At the door to the bathroom, her glance was attracted to Shad’s bedroom. The door was shut. She didn’t know whether he was s
till sleeping or was already downstairs. Not that it mattered, she told herself and entered the bathroom. With her face washed and her teeth brushed, she lost some of that drugged feeling.
At the bottom of the stairs, Charley was shocked to find Shad sleeping on the couch in the living room. Too tall for it, he was sprawled over the length of the cushions with his feet poking over the end of the armrest. From somewhere, he’d gotten a blanket. It was loosely draped over him. She couldn’t imagine what he was doing sleeping on the couch. She walked over to waken him.
Her hand touched his shoulder and he stirred, frowning in his sleep. The second time Charley gripped his shoulder more firmly and combined the action with the use of his name. “Shad. Shad. It’s time to get up.”
With a flex of his shoulder, he shrugged away her hand but he opened his eyes. They focused slowly on Charley’s face as she stood half- leaning over him. His mouth tiredly curved into one of his slow smiles.
“Good morning.” His voice was husky with sleep, its drawl thicker.
“Good morning,” she returned the greeting and started to ask him what he was doing on the couch, but his hand reached out to snare one of hers and pull her onto the cushion beside him.
“Don’t I get more of a greeting than that?” Shad mocked and hooked his hand behind her neck to force her head down.
Charley stopped needing direction when she neared his mouth. Her lips settled into it naturally and moved in response to his sampling kiss. She wasn’t breathing quite formally when she finally straightened. He started to shift his position and winced from a cramped muscle. The discomfort made him take note of his “bed.” He seemed to register vague surprise when he found himself on the couch.
“Why are you sleeping here?” Charley finally asked her question.
“The mood I was in last night, if I had gone upstairs, I would have ended up sleeping in your bed.” There was rough impatience in his expression as his hands settled onto the soft flesh of her upper arms and began rubbing them absently.
“Oh, Shad.” She trembled with the quick onrush of desire.