33 The Return of Bowie Bravo

by Christine Rimmer

  “Ma sent me letters. And my brothers wrote to me, too.”

  “You never sent me an address where I could write to you.” She knew she sounded accusing again. So what? She felt accusing.

  “I didn’t send Ma or my brothers an address, either. At first I didn’t have one to send. But then they sent my half brother Tanner out to find me. He’s a private investigator. Lives in Sacramento?”

  She nodded. “I think Brand has mentioned him once or twice.”

  “His mother was Lia. She had Tanner and two daughters by Blake.” Bowie smiled but there was little humor in it. “He was a busy guy, dear old Dad.” He kept turning that half-full glass. “So Tanner found me and told me he was telling Ma and my brothers where to get in touch with me. By then, I was thinking I should have told them myself. So I was glad to get their letters. And grateful to hear about you and Johnny, to know that you were getting along all right, managing better without me than you ever did with me around to mess things up for you. Ma asked in one of her letters if she could give you my address. I wrote back and asked if you’d asked for it. She said that you’d told her you didn’t want to hear anything about me. Ma said you told her that if I wanted to contact you, I knew where to find you.”

  “That’s right. It’s what I told her.” She would have given anything—a kidney, every last ounce of her pride—to have gotten one letter from him back then. But now, slowly, she was coming to understand what a mess he’d been in those days, that it hadn’t been a simple matter of him snapping out of it and behaving like a normal person. During that time, he really hadn’t been capable of the simple actions that mean so much.

  He asked again. “So why did you come back from New York?”

  She shrugged. “I got homesick, that’s all. I’m from the Flat. It’s a lot of who I am. My family drives me up the wall, but I missed them so much. And I missed your mamma, too. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I just had to come home.”

  “You ever get that college degree?”

  “What? Nobody told you?”

  “They didn’t tell me everything. And I never had the nerve to ask them. I kind of figured it was one thing if they volunteered stuff about you and Johnny. But as soon as I asked them…” His voice trailed off.

  Her throat clutched tight again. “What? Say it.”

  He didn’t answer right away. She became certain he wouldn’t. But then, he surprised her. “I didn’t feel I had any right, okay? No right to ask about you when I wasn’t…there for you. Or for Johnny.”

  A loose curl of hair kept tickling her cheek. She smoothed it away. “Okay, I guess I get that.”

  He braced his elbows on the table, so his strong forearms surrounded both the water glass and the old pocketknife. He leaned in across them, closer to her. “So did you get your degree?”

  “Yes, I did. I have a B.A. in business.” She still got a feeling of satisfaction just saying it. “Took six years, but I did it. I graduated last June. And then, a month later, Matteo died.”

  He scanned her face. “That must have been brutal.”

  “Brutal,” she echoed. “Yeah, that’s a good word for it.” She looked down into her empty mug. “He was so proud of me. It was…such a happy time. I earned my degree. We had found out I was pregnant.…” Her voice was barely a whisper. “And then he died.” She glanced up again. Bowie’s eyes were waiting. She opened her mouth and told him more. “I went to work for him at the hardware store when I got back in town from New York. Matteo was good to me. Patient. Kind. He paid more than minimum wage and gave me health insurance. I was so grateful. And he understood, about my being a single mom. When Johnny got sick, Matteo didn’t get all on my case because I needed a day off. And the first time he asked me out, he was so nervous, just falling all over himself, stammering a little, wondering if maybe I might possibly want to join him for a steak at the Nugget.…” She closed her eyes, let out a low groan. “Oh, what am I doing? Telling you all this. You don’t need to hear this.…”

  “Glory, come on, look at me.”

  She made herself do it, made herself open her eyes and face him. He gazed back at her, so calm and unruffled, eyes like the ocean on a clear, windless day. So unlike the Bowie she used to know. Unlike…and yet, still the same, deep down somewhere. At the core.

  He said, “What you’re saying is nothing I hadn’t already pretty much figured out.”

  “Maybe so, but that doesn’t make it any less…oh, I don’t know. Inappropriate, I guess.”

  “It’s just the truth, right?”

  “Yeah, but still. Can we talk about something else?”

  That slow, irresistible smile again. “Sure.”

  “Those first checks you sent me?”

  “I hope they helped.”

  She confessed, “I really needed them. I cashed them, spent them on shoes and groceries, on the essentials.”

  “Good, that’s why I sent them. I didn’t have what it took, to come myself, to write you a damn letter now and then. But at least after I started working for Wily, I had a little cash I could contribute.”

  “I want to tell you…” She hardly knew how to go on.

  “Please, I’m listening.”

  “Bowie, I…as the checks got larger, I was sure you must have done something illegal to get that money.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t communicating, was I?”

  “No, you weren’t.”

  “You were in the dark. I guess I’m not surprised you assumed the worst. And I don’t blame you.”

  She put her hands over her mouth, let out a pained laugh and then dropped them, palms flat, on the table. “Well, I blamed you.”

  “I kind of gathered that.”

  She didn’t know why she wanted him to hear all this. She only knew that it was something she suddenly just had to tell him. “After Matteo and I got married, I opened a special savings account. I put every check you sent from then on into it.” She glanced toward the dark window that faced the backyard. “I was afraid to spend it, in case someone showed up to take it back.”

  “Well, great.” He sounded sincere. “That means Johnny’s got a head start on his college education.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not offended.”

  He blew out a breath. “I am, a little. But I’m thinking that’s my problem, not yours.”

  She looked at him, amazed all over again at the changes in him. “You’re so…even-tempered now. You always used to be on a hair trigger, always angry. And you always used to boss me around.”

  “Well, I tried to. You never were real big on letting anyone tell you what to do—and the truth is, I felt so far beneath you. And I was always afraid that I would lose you. And guess what? I got exactly what I was so scared of. I pushed you away. And I lost you.”

  “I just, well, I never…”

  “Never, what?”

  “Never in my life did I even dream that we might end up sitting at my kitchen table like we are right now, telling each other these things.”

  “It was always too damn hard to talk to me,” he said softly. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I finally realized it was never going to work with us. I accepted that.”

  “I know.” It was a simple statement of fact.

  “And I have to tell you…”

  “Yeah?”

  “At first, when you came back, I was just waiting for you to mess up again.”

  “Yeah, well, I expected that.”

  “And then, because you haven’t messed up, I sometimes find myself wondering what you’ve done with the real Bowie.”

  “I am the real Bowie.”

  She made a show of squinting at him, hard. “You sure?”

  He made a low so
und, a short, rough laugh. “I still feel a lot of the same bullheaded unreasonable crap I always felt. I just learned that I don’t have to act on every little emotion that gets my heart beating faster. Wily Dunn taught me that. Wily would say, ‘Just ’cause you got feelings, son, that don’t mean you have to exercise ’em.’”

  “He sounds like a wise man.”

  “He was. I miss him. So much.”

  She dared to suggest, “He sounds like a good father, like the father you never had.”

  “Yes, he was. And I’m grateful to have known him, to have had him in my life, even if he was gone way too soon.” Bowie picked up the water glass and pushed back his chair. “I’m also glad that we had this talk.”

  “So am I.” And she was. Maybe too glad.

  He took his glass to the sink, crossing behind her to get there. She kept her gaze straight ahead, didn’t allow herself to turn and watch him. He was leaving, going back across the yard to his half of the barn. She reminded herself that it was past time for him to go.

  “Don’t forget your Swiss Army knife.” She picked it up from the table and stood.

  He came back in three long strides and he was right there, beside her. She stared up at him, feeling dazed and a little disoriented, like a woman suddenly roused from a deep sleep. All the breath seemed to have fled her body.

  She made herself draw in air. And that only brought the scent of him into her. Spring wind. Wood shavings and evergreen. So tempting. So well-remembered.

  “Thanks.” He took the knife from her hand, his rough fingers cradling hers for a sweet, endless moment, sending hot flares of sensation zipping up and down her arm.

  She wanted him to let go, step back, give her room to gather her defenses, to regain her certainty that nothing intimate or crazy was ever going to happen between them again.

  And at the same time, she knew she yearned for exactly the opposite: for him to move even closer, for him to put his strong arms around her. For the feel of his perfect mouth again. At last. Touching hers.

  After all these years.

  He whispered, “Glory?” using her name to frame the impossible question.

  That was her final signal. This was the crucial last moment. Her response was the key.

  A simple no. The slightest shake of her head. It wouldn’t have taken much. She knew him better now than she had the day he came to her out of the storm. She knew the strong, determined man he had become.

  Such a man didn’t need much urging to do the right thing.

  She should give him that urging. She was all too achingly aware of that, of what she should do.

  And still, she held off. She let the last moment draw out forever.

  She gazed up at him, transfixed, while somewhere in the wiser part of her mind, she frantically checked off the reasons why she needed to call a halt right now. She had loved him beyond reason and he had broken all his promises. He had deserted her. And there had been Matteo who was so good to her. Good for her…

  But Angie was right. Matteo was gone.

  And Glory was still very much alive.

  And lately, in the darkest part of the night, when she reached out her hand and touched only the cool, empty sheets on the other side of the bed, it wasn’t Matteo she was reaching for.

  “Bowie,” she whispered. It was her answer. It was her yes.

  He recognized it as such. He framed her face in his two rough, warm hands. He said her name again. “Glory…” He said it raggedly that second time, as though he was pulling it up from the deepest part of himself.

  And he lowered his mouth to cover hers.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the wrong thing, to kiss her.

  Bowie knew it.

  He kissed her, anyway.

  Because her eyes told him yes when she whispered his name.

  Because she was everything he’d ever wanted, everything that mattered, everything he’d thrown away in his sad, desperate spiral down to his own personal rock-bottom. She was all that he’d known he had no right to ever hold again.

  He found her as he remembered, apples and rain and unimaginable sweetness.

  Just as he remembered…

  Only better.

  It was the wrong thing, to kiss her. And yet how could it be wrong when it felt so exactly, perfectly, essentially right?

  She lifted her small, soft body toward him and he felt her breasts against his chest, fuller than they once were. So tempting. Already, he was growing hard.

  Her cool, tender hands came up. She laid her palms against his chest and then slid them up, until her fingers linked around his neck. Her mouth opened beneath his on a long, sweet sigh.

  It was too much. It was everything. Glory. In his arms again at last.

  He gathered her closer, deepened the kiss, easing his tongue in where it was so warm and wet. She moaned a little. He drank in the sound.

  But it had to end. It couldn’t go anywhere.

  He understood that. His blood pounded in his veins and his body ached to be with her, the way it used to be, all those years ago.

  Used to be…

  And never would again.

  When she brought her hands back down between them and laid them against his chest once more, she hardly exerted any pressure at all. He could have easily overridden her, could have pretended she wasn’t asking him to stop.

  But he didn’t override her. He was long past that kind of pretending.

  It tore his heart in half to do it, but he lifted his mouth from hers.

  Those big eyes regarded him, so soft. Brandy-brown. “Good night, Bowie.”

  “Good night.” He let her go.

  “When?” Angie demanded. “When did this happen?”

  Glory ate a potato chip, slowly. “Last Wednesday night.”

  “Bowie kissed you—he actually kissed you?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “A week ago? And you never even called me?” Angie asked the two questions at full volume.

  It was safe for them to speak above a whisper today. They were sharing lunch at Angie’s house, down by the river. Brett was at the clinic and the kids were in school. Sera was sleeping in a nest of pillows in the living room.

  Glory picked up a triangle of chicken-salad sandwich and started to take a bite. But she couldn’t. Her sister’s eyes reproached her. She set the sandwich down. “Look, I shouldn’t have let it happen. And it’s not going to happen again.” Angie only stared at her. “You can just stop looking at me like that, please. It was just…one of those moments, you know?”

  “One of what moments, exactly?”

  “We were talking.…”

  “You and Bowie, you mean?”

  Glory nodded. “Really talking. About the past, you know? About his moving to town and about Johnny. And then, Bowie got up to go and…oh, I don’t know. It just happened.”

  “Let me get this straight. You kissed Bowie for the first time in…what, seven years?”

  “Actually, it was seven years and three months ago. In October. October 28, to be specific. It was the day before he went behind my back and told my parents I was pregnant to get them to put the pressure on me to marry him. I refused to kiss him ever again after that. I mean, until last Wednesday.”

  Angie gave her one of those way-too-knowing looks. “October 28. Amazing. You still remember the exact date.”

  Glory put up a hand. “Don’t say it, please.”

  Angie put on her innocent look. “Say what, Glory?”

  Glory picked up her sandwich again, resolutely bit into it and chewed. Thoroughly. “It’s been a week since it happened, okay? And there has been nothing—nothing—since then. I see him two, three, even four
times a day. I have breakfast and dinner with him. Nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Angie echoed, but in such a way that she implied everything.

  “Nothing.” Glory said it again because she knew that Angie was not getting the point. “It was…a fluke, that’s all. Just one of those things.”

  “Was it good?”

  “What do you mean was it good?”

  “You know exactly what I mean.”

  Glory ate another potato chip. And another after that. Angie watched her, a relentless kind of watching. Finally, Glory cried, “Yes! All right? It was good. It was really good. And I want to kiss him again. I want to do a whole lot more than kiss him. I seriously do.” She stuffed yet another chip in her mouth and chewed it furiously. “I don’t know what it is about that man. He’s my weakness. He’s always been my weakness. All these years, everything that’s happened, and still the feeling is there. I mean, come on, that can’t be normal, can it? Everybody knows that the whole sex thing lasts only for so long between two people.”

  Angie was smiling much too sweetly. “So they say.”

  Glory groaned. “I’m happy for you and Brett. I mean, it’s great if you two can keep the passion going.”

  “Yes, it certainly is.”

  “But I would just as soon not have that going on with me and Bowie.”

  “Well, maybe the feeling will go away. It could happen.”

  “Hah. That’s not what you think, Angie. I can see on your face what you really think.”

  “I’m only trying to be supportive.”

  “Hmm. He’s teaching Johnny to whittle, did I tell you that?”

  “Johnny hasn’t been back to the clinic for more stitches, so I’m guessing that’s working out all right.”

  “Johnny loves it. He’s always in the workshop lately. As soon as he gets home from school, he rushes right through his homework so he can get out there and be with Bowie—who is whittling him a train set. Did I tell you that?”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  “Ah, that’s right. I guess I did.” Glory stared out the window near the table. The sky was gunmetal gray and a blanket of snow covered the ground. Sometimes lately, it seemed that it had been winter forever, that the spring would never come.