Once Around

by Barbara Bretton

  "You're an expert in these things?"

  "A girl," he repeated. He reached for her hand and placed it over her navel. "Feel the way she moves under your hand. A girl. No doubt about it."

  Molly laughed softly. "And why should I believe you?"

  "My Ojibwa grandmother could tell the sex of a baby by laying her hands on the mother's belly."

  "And you've inherited that ability?"

  "I'll tell you after you deliver."

  He covered her hand with his, and another set of defenses crumbled al her feet.

  She rested her forehead against his shoulder and closed her eyes. The baby fluttered Once more then settled down. You know, don't you? This feels as right to you as it does to me, she said silently to her baby.

  She leaned into his touch, willing her doubts and fears to lie quiet for just a little while. It seemed absurdly natural to sit there on the kitchen counter with her dress hiked up over her hips and her panties Curled at her feet while a man who was practically a stranger rubbed her pregnant belly. The feelings he brought to life were a powerful blend of the sensual, the sexual, and the spiritual—and they transcended explanation.

  They spoke without language. They heard without words. He gripped her by the waist and urged her to scoot forward, to wrap her legs around his hips. She'd never done anything like that, never felt so wildly passionate and hungry. She held him tight with her thighs then looped her arms around his neck as he lifted her from the counter and carried her toward the staircase.

  "No," she said. "Not upstairs." She wanted a place that belonged only to them. She wanted to stay one step ahead of reality.

  He carried her into the living room, to the big old sofa he'd found for her. It was wide and deep, and they lay together with their arms wrapped tightly around each other. She'd imagined them there a hundred times but she'd never once believed her fantasy would come true.

  She unbuttoned his shirt. He pulled her dress over her head. She unfastened his trousers: He stripped off the rest of his clothes then covered her body with his. They were a perfect match. Their bodies fit together as if they'd been fashioned for that. purpose. His powerful erection throbbed against her belly, and she wondered how it would feel to take him in her mouth and hold him until he came. She'd never done that, never taken a man in her mouth before, never wanted to taste a man the way she wanted to taste him.

  How do you tell a man that you wanted to do that to him? Her one experience with expressing a preference had ended badly, with Robert feeling shocked and Molly humiliated. What if Rafe turned her away or, even worse, laughed at her? She didn't know the first thing about making love, not really. Sometimes it was hard to believe she'd gotten pregnant. She and Robert had rarely made love, much less experimented with anything inventive or even mildly exciting. Her fantasy life had been nonexistent until very recently.

  He kissed the way she'd imagined he would kiss. He engaged every sense. She didn't know the first thing about kissing the way he kissed. Suddenly she felt clumsy and stupid and she wished she were anywhere on earth but where she was.

  She pulled away from him and grabbed for her dress.

  "I'm sorry," she said, struggling to hold back her tears. "I can't. I just—" She stopped. What was there to say anyway? This was all a terrible mistake. Surely he could see that now.

  His expression closed in on itself. She actually saw the moment. when the joy drained away, and it came close to breaking her heart.

  "I wasn't thinking." Why had she said that? She was only making things worse. He looked so hurt, so lonely.

  "The coffee," she said as she stood up. "You haven't had your coffee."

  "It's late," he said. His tone betrayed nothing at all. "I'd better get going."

  "But I promised you a cup of coffee to help you stay awake."

  "Don't worry," he said. "I'll stay awake."

  "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't plan any of this."

  "Neither did I, Molly."

  "I know that." The baby kicked her hard, and she .placed her hands on her belly. A tiny hand or foot beat against her right palm. "I wish I—"

  "Don't."

  "But I—"

  "There's no point, is there?"

  "No," she said. She felt utterly defeated. "There's no point."

  She walked him through the foyer to the front door.

  His eyes were dark, and once again the expression in them was unreadable. "Take care, Molly."

  "You, too."

  He stood in the doorway, a silhouette in the moonlight spilling through the trees. "You'd better have that chimney checked before you light any fires," he said. "And watch out for this porch step. You need to replace it."

  They both knew this was good-bye, although neither one of them said the word.

  "I'll remember about the step."

  His eyes were dark and fathomless. "Take care, Molly," he said again.

  "You, too," she said, wrapping her arms around her chest as a chill wind blew. "You take good care of yourself."

  He turned and walked down the porch steps. I won't leave you.

  Of course you will, she thought. You just did.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The thing to do was put as much distance between himself and Molly as possible, but Rafe wasn't sure the universe was big enough for that.

  Her scent lingered on his skin, a combination of sweetness and something darker, more intensely female. He'd wanted to brand himself with 'her smell and he would have if she hadn't stopped him. He would have worshipped her.

  You did the right thing, Molly. You recognized a loser when you saw one.

  He could feel her hands on his shoulders as she pushed him away. He'd never forget the frantic, guilty look in her eyes.

  What the hell had he been thinking? You didn't get more off limits than Molly. She was a pregnant Madonna with a husband still out there somewhere, even if he was campaigning to be her ex-husband. Rafe knew how that particular story usually played out. In every marriage one partner loved, and the other was loved.

  Molly loved. He understood that. He knew it took more than divorce papers to break the chain.

  Maybe she thought there was still a chance for her and Chamberlain. Maybe she believed he'd come around before it was too late and check back into their old life. For the first few months after Karen left him, he'd actually believed she would come back, that one day he'd open the front door and she and little Sarah would be standing there and he wouldn't say a word. He'd just step aside, they'd walk into the house, and it would be like nothing ever happened.

  Molly probably believed the same thing, and maybe she'd be the one who got the happy ending.

  He stopped at a 7-Eleven near Route 206 and bought a giant cup of black coffee then hit the road again. He drove past Stockton and Fallen Rock, driving north with the Delaware River. He had no destination in mind and almost laughed at the way that paralleled his own life. No destination. No course neatly mapped out. He'd drive until he ran out of road and then he'd turn around and drive some more.

  Sunrise found him at the foot of the Poconos. A Sunday morning stillness shimmered against the fiery reds and golds and yellows of the autumn landscape. He drove up and down little residential streets tucked into the woods, past postage-stamp ranch houses with tiny plots of well-tended land. Here and there a light burned behind the window, and he slowed to a crawl, trying to see into the heart of a family. Any family.

  What went on inside a family anyway?

  It was all mysterious to him. He didn't know how it worked, There had to be some secret handshake involved, a password maybe that opened up your heart to happiness. His parents hadn't known about. it. He remembered an endless coil of dark nights that echoed with the sound of tears and anger. He remembered the day the principal. called him out of class—sixth-grade geography—to tell him that his mother was dead:

  A suicide.

  The town buzzed about that for years. It marked him, her suicide did, marked him more indelib
ly than anything he might have done himself ever could. Depression, the doctor called it. The long lonely Montana winters finally wore her out. Rafe knew better. Her long lonely marriage was what had worn her out. Her spirit died long before her body, and he wished he'd been old enough, smart enough, to have made a difference.

  But he was just a little boy then, looking for the unconditional love the other kids took for granted. Kids needed more than food in their bellies and a roof over their heads. He was proof of that.

  He'd thought he could have a family with Karen. Those first few months after the baby arrived were the happiest of his life. They were the happiest of Karen's life, too, but for a different reason. She was in the process of planning her escape into a more successful, more profitable marriage.

  The front door of a white Cape swung open, and a middle-aged woman in a pink terry bathrobe stepped outside to fetch the Sunday newspaper from her porch. She noticed Rafe and stood very still, watching him, as he drove past. Don't you have someplace to go? her look said. Isn't there somewhere you belong?

  No, he thought. Not one goddamn place on earth. He found a small pancake restaurant just outside East Stroudsburg. The hostess, a plump matron in a blue dress and pearls the size of golf balls smiled up at him. "How many?" she asked.

  "One," he said.

  She plucked one menu from the stack. "Don't get too many singles on Sunday morning," she said as she led him to a tiny booth near the rear of the restaurant. "Usually family time for us."

  There was nothing he could say except, "Thanks for the menu."

  The server popped up a few moments later to take his order and fill his coffee cup. He gulped down the caffeine then looked around at the other customers. The hostess was right. Families Were everywhere. Young parents with newborns and toddlers. A couple well into middle age with an infant in a car seat. A multi-generational group with grandparents, parents, surly teenager, and gangly adolescents. He was the only one there alone.

  A couple sat down across the aisle from him. The man was young and well-scrubbed. The woman was very pregnant. Her belly bulged against her too-tight sweater. He could easily see her navel popping through the fabric. They both wore that slightly embarrassed look of pride that he remembered seeing in the bathroom mirror for the entire nine months of Karen's. pregnancy.

  Karen had tried to hold the experience at an arm's length from her emotions. She went through all three trimesters with an almost stoic air of acceptance. Little did he know she was already planning her escape.

  He'd wanted to share every second of Karen's pregnancy, while she'd wanted to pretend it wasn't happening. It wasn't like that with Molly. She'd cried when he caressed her belly. He'd seen tears shimmering on her cheeks when he kissed the tautly stretched skin. She craved all the things his ex-wife had pushed away with both hands, but she didn't crave them from him.

  That about said it all.

  She wanted him, but not enough to risk taking the whole imperfect package. Half-Ojibwa handymen didn't register too long on her radar screen. He'd been painfully out of place at the dinner-dance. He was surprised they hadn't sent him to the kitchen to sit with the help. He only knew which fork to use because he followed her lead. He worked with his hands. Sometimes they even got dirty. He went to work in jeans and T-shirts, not thousand dollar Italian suits.

  Mackenzie was the obvious choice for her. They both knew how to use finger bowls and understood why sorbet was served in the middle of dinner and not at the end like any normal dessert back in northern Montana.

  You had to go with your own kind, the people who understood your world and your place in it. The kind who wouldn't embarrass you in public or want you too much in private.

  Wasn't that what Karen had taught him during their brief time together? Somewhere along the way he'd forgotten that valuable lesson, the one that had cost him his baby daughter. He'd forgotten it in the glow of Molly's smile.

  #

  As far as Spencer was concerned, sex was sex and nothing more.

  There was nothing transformative about it. Nothing transcendent. Physical exertion didn't translate into spiritual fulfillment. He worked up a sweat but he didn't see God.

  It was the most intriguing activity two reasonably healthy humans could engage in and, in most ways, the least satisfying. Nothing left him feeling less connected to the human race than the afterglow of love. Mostly because there was no afterglow.

  He had just spent the last three hours making unexpectedly passionate love to Jessy Wyatt, and now all he could think about was how to get her out of his bed and back to her own. She was sprawled diagonally across the mattress. Her face was buried in his pillow, her tiny feet angled toward the opposite side. Before tonight he'd thought of her as skinny and plain. Now he could see the delicate bone structure, the perfect skin, appreciate the supple limbs and laudable flexibility.

  I love you, she'd said to him, and he'd pretended not to hear. She'd said it once more before she fell asleep, and whatever remained of desire died with those words.

  People said things during sex they wouldn't say over dinner. He'd said things himself, things he later wished he could erase from that universal tape that captured all human folly. That's the kind of thing you learn how to control as the years roll on and the disappointments pile up on the pillow next to you. He could always see the ending implicit in the beginning. It was always out there in the middle distance pointing out the futility of it all.

  Or maybe that was his father.

  Can you see me, Dad? I'm the second son . . . the one you're stuck with.

  That's what he got for ducking his old man's call the other. afternoon. No matter which side of the guilt fence he came down on, he felt like a. bastard. Hell, being Owen Mackenzie's bastard son would be easier than being the one who'd lived. What was the headline when Owen, Jr. died? Mackenzie. Dynasty Hopes Shattered in Crash. Owen, Jr. and Spencer had been tooling up from Virginia in Owen, Jr.'s flame red Austin-Healy. Owen had just asked Glory Mathers to marry him, and Owen, Sr. had been over the moon.

  "I'm on the fast track now," Owen, Jr. was saying just before the crash. A seat in the State House of Representatives was opening up, and he was the golden boy. The heir apparent. "Dad's talking to Glen Alcoa tomorrow about . . ."

  Spencer had been listening to this since they passed Timonium, Maryland, but he'd quit actually hearing the words near Dover, Delaware. That was at least an hour ago. The good thing about his brother was that he didn't particularly give a damn if Spencer listened to him or not. All Owen, Jr. wanted was center stage. Spencer had been drifting, daydreaming, when he looked out the window in time to see an eighteen-wheeler spinning across six lanes of Jersey Turnpike traffic, heading straight for them.

  When he woke up two days later, his brother was dead, and so were his father's dreams. Spencer had a broken right leg, a concussion, three broken ribs, and damage to his spleen. That was the good news. The bad news was that he was the brother who'd lived.

  Next to him Dr. Jessica Wyatt murmured something in her sleep then slid closer to him. She pressed her small straight nose against his side and sighed. Spencer reached for a cigarette on his nightstand, and settled back to wait for dawn.

  #

  All along Jessy had told herself that one night with Spencer was all she wanted. One night in his arms would be enough. She would live off that for the rest of her life.

  She'd believed that. With her entire heart and soul, she'd believed it. Right up until the second he took her in his arms and she found out how wrong she'd been. One night wasn't near enough. She wanted a week, a month, a year. She wanted forever. He made her feel beautiful and desirable. He made her feel womanly and soft.

  And he didn't want her.

  He was too much of a gentleman to say so, but she knew just the same. She'd dozed after they made love, and when she woke up he was sitting with his back against the headboard. He was smoking a cigarette, and somehow she knew exactly what he was thinking. She pushed her fac
e deeper into the pillow and pretended to be asleep, because the second he knew she was awake he'd be pushing her toward the door.

  "Sorry about breakfast," he said later as he turned onto Lilac Hill. "I have to be up in Greenwich by noon."

  "You don't have to apologize for anything, Spencer." She aimed a big bright smile in his direction. "I appreciate the ride home."

  He looked vaguely uncomfortable, and she found herself torn between sympathy and glee.

  "Do you work today?" he asked.

  "Does it matter?" she asked him.

  His face reddened. She almost regretted her remark. Almost. She knew she'd never see him again, not this way. She could say anything. She could tell the truth. It didn't matter.

  He pulled up in front of Molly's house, then came around the front of the car to open her door. Good manners, even at the end. There was the difference between the boys she'd grown up with in Mississippi and a real live Yankee rich boy. Good manners. One of her hometown boys would have gunned the engine impatiently while she fiddled with the door handle. Not Spencer. Spencer made her feel wanted even when the only thing he really wanted was to get rid of her.

  That took talent, she thought as she climbed out of the car. That took class.

  This time she was being dumped by a pro.

  #

  Spencer sat behind the wheel of his Porsche and watched Jessy walk up the pathway to the front door. He felt guilty, driving her home early on Sunday morning without even taking her for breakfast. Hit-and-run wasn't his style, but she hadn't given him a choice. At least not a choice he could have made. When a woman strips down to her skin in the front seat of your car, the matter has pretty much been decided for you.

  Once a year the Mackenzie clan gathered to commemorate the life and times of Owen, Jr., the son who hadn't lived long enough to disappoint anyone. This was the day of the command performance. Attendance was mandatory. No exceptions, not even if it meant you had to turn a woman out of your bed.