33 The Return of Bowie Bravo

by Christine Rimmer

  But she wanted him. So much. She wanted more of what they’d shared on that narrow cot such a short time ago.

  She wanted him and she didn’t want to upset her little boy or have the whole town whispering behind their backs. And so she persisted, “As long as you’re living here, in the workshop, it won’t be that difficult to keep what we have to ourselves.”

  He stared down at her for a long time. And then he said, “For a week, you mean?”

  She frowned at him. “A week?”

  “I’m closing on the Halstotter place a week from today. After that, I won’t be living here anymore.”

  “A week…” How had she managed to let herself forget how soon he would be leaving?

  “That’s right,” he said. “A week. And as for being careful, for keeping what’s going on with us some deep, dark secret? No, I’m not willing to do that, Glory. I’m just not.”

  And so their beautiful, passionate secret affair was over. Just barely begun.

  And over already.

  Bowie avoided being alone with her. He still came in for breakfast and dinner. He was polite and he was helpful, as he had been since that first day he returned to town.

  But he avoided any chance they might end up alone together. He didn’t come across the yard to see her either Saturday night or Sunday after the kids were in bed.

  Monday, Glory went to lunch at Angie’s house. She told her sister what she’d done with Bowie on Friday night. And then she told her that they’d already ended it—and why.

  “Bowie’s right,” Angie said when Glory finished revealing all. “If you want to be with him, it’s wrong that you should make it some back-door affair.”

  “Angie, could you please not tell me what I already know?”

  “Then go to him. Tell him you see how off base you’ve been and beg him to give you another chance.”

  “I don’t think so. I, well, I just don’t think I’m ready for this, for him and me, all over again, you know?”

  Angie shook her head. “If you weren’t ready, why did you—”

  “Please, could you just, you know…not say it?”

  Angie wouldn’t quit. “It’s a valid question.”

  “I know. And I shouldn’t have done that, gone after him like that. I get it. Getting anything started with him was a bad idea.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Fine, you do that. Disagree all you want. But it’s still my life and I get to run it.”

  “I never knew you to be a coward, Glory.”

  “Well, surprise, surprise. That’s exactly what I am.”

  “Bowie’s moving out, Mom,” Johnny announced Tuesday morning at breakfast. “But he’s going to live right here in town and I will see him all the time, even go and have sleepovers at his house a lot of times, more than once a week. Right, Bowie?”

  Bowie nodded. “That’s right.” He glanced in Glory’s direction. She just happened to be looking at him right then. Their gazes collided.

  They both quickly looked away.

  Glory swallowed a spoonful of cereal. It felt like a handful of rocks going down. “Well, I’m sure it will all work out fine.” She said it cheerfully. Maybe too cheerfully.

  Johnny beamed. “I’m going to get a puppy, soon as Bowie moves.”

  “Oh, are you now?” She slid Bowie another look. He was staring straight ahead, chewing his cereal with great concentration.

  “Yes, I am,” Johnny crowed. “I can’t wait.” He looked from her to Bowie and back again, a worried frown creasing his smooth brow. “Bowie said the puppy was okay with you.…”

  “Yes,” she hurried to reassure him. It wasn’t his problem if she and Bowie didn’t see eye to eye on the concept of how to behave when having a wild, passionate affair. “Of course it’s okay. Bowie and I have discussed the puppy.” Back when he was still talking to me. “The puppy is fine.”

  “Mom, I’ve been thinking…”

  She smiled at him. He really was the greatest kid. “About what?”

  “Maybe Bowie will let you and Sera come and have sleepovers, too. So you won’t be lonely when I’m gone to his house.” He turned to Bowie. “Bowie, can Mom and Sera come and stay at your house, too?”

  Glory sipped her tea. No way was she touching that one. And she didn’t have to. Johnny had just lobbed the ball right into Bowie’s court. She sent the man a smug glance.

  He didn’t even flinch. “Absolutely. Your mom and Sera can stay at my new house anytime.”

  Johnny beamed. “See, Mom? You won’t be lonely after all. You and Sera will be there, too.”

  “We’ll see,” she said and tried not to look daggers at the man calmly chewing his cereal across the table from her.

  “You don’t want to come and stay at Bowie’s?” Johnny asked. He’d always been perceptive well beyond his years. Sometimes she really wished her son could be a tad more oblivious.

  “I think probably it’s better if Sera and I stay here when you go to stay at Bowie’s.”

  “Why?” Johnny demanded.

  Glory’s heart sank as she scrambled to come up with the right reply to that dreaded why.

  And then Bowie said, “Your mom has been very good to me, letting me stay here so that I can get to know you. She’s welcome at my new house anytime. But that doesn’t mean she has to come. Your mom lives here. And so does Sera. That’s just how it is.”

  “Oh,” Johnny said. “Okay.” And he picked up his spoon and dug into his cereal again.

  Stunned at how exactly right Bowie’s response had been—how adult, how calm, how simple, how downright fatherly—Glory picked up her spoon, too. She finished her cereal.

  It tasted a lot like humble pie.

  That night, she wanted to go to Bowie. Go to him and beg him, as Angie had suggested, to give her another chance.

  On his terms. For the world to see.

  The incident at the table that morning had shown her a hard truth. Johnny would be just fine if she and Bowie got together. Her son was a well-balanced person with a very strong sense of self. He would be fine, whatever happened—or didn’t happen—between her and Bowie.

  He had already accepted Bowie fully into his life. He’d loved Matteo and thought of him as a father. The loss of Matteo had been rough. But now he had Bowie. He wouldn’t have to grow up as Bowie had, without the steadying hand of a dad.

  Glory was so grateful for that.

  And she really had to quit using her son as an excuse not to let Bowie get too close. She needed to be braver, stronger, better than she’d been so far. And she sure did need to be a lot more truthful.

  But then she looked at Matteo’s smiling face in the picture on her night table and it just seemed so wrong.

  So immeasurably sad.

  He had been so good to her, so generous. So true. He’d given her all that he had. And now he was gone.

  And what, really, would be left of him if she let even her loyalty to him go? It seemed that once she turned to Bowie fully and honestly, for everyone to see, then it would be as if Matteo had never existed.

  Or worse, as if he’d been merely a placeholder in her life. The one who stepped in and helped her get by until Bowie Bravo returned to reclaim his son and stand beside her at last.

  Maybe that wasn’t true, but it felt that way. So she straightened her wedding-day picture on the night table and climbed into her bed alone.

  Thursday morning, after Johnny had left for school and Bowie was out in the workshop building beautiful furniture for rich people, the front doorbell rang. Glory was walking the kitchen floor with Sera at the time. She’d fed her and changed her and still, Sera kept fussing.

  Glory carried the crying baby out to the front hall. Sera wailed in her ear as s
he pulled open the door.

  The woman on the other side was tall and slim, with hair the color of a raven’s wing flowing like a dark waterfall halfway down her back. She might have walked straight out of the pages of a fashion magazine, all sleek and perfect, with big green eyes and lips that looked like she’d stolen them from Angelina Jolie.

  She took Glory in at a glance. And dismissed her just as fast. “Bowie Bravo, please,” she said in a thoroughly bored tone of voice.

  Sera wailed some more and squirmed on her shoulder. Glory pressed a kiss to her temple and rocked her from side to side, “In the back,” she said, catching sight of the red Mercedes waiting at the base of the front walk.

  The woman became even more bored, if that was possible. She let out a slow sigh and asked in a tone suitable for questioning the village idiot, “The back of…”

  Sera kept wailing. The woman winced at the sound. Glory pointed toward the stone path beside the porch. “Follow that walkway around to the back. There’s a barn. Bowie’s got a workshop inside.”

  The woman turned away, dismissing Glory without another word.

  Glory shut the door. “Shh, it’s all right,” she whispered to her baby, as she reminded herself that no way was she running into the laundry room to look out the window over the folding table.

  Sera did not shush. And Glory was already heading through the front hall.

  She made it to the laundry room just as Bowie’s visitor reached the workshop door. Glory stared at that river of black hair, at that perfect rear end as the woman lifted her slim hand to knock.

  A moment later, Bowie, in dusty jeans and one of those old chambray shirts of his, the ones that clung so lovingly to his deep, muscular chest, pulled open the door. He smiled at the woman, said something, probably her name.

  She let out a glad cry that Glory could hear from all the way in the laundry room.

  And then she threw her arms around him.

  Her cheeks burning and her hopeless heart twisting painfully under her ribs, Glory spun from the window and went to the kitchen. Sera kept on wailing and Glory kept walking her, into the central hall, up the stairs, into and out of each of the rooms up there. She made a circuit of the second floor, then went downstairs again and started all over on the first.

  Finally, an hour or so later, the poor sweetheart wore herself out. Glory put her in her crib and then couldn’t stop herself from looking out the master bedroom’s bay window.

  The red car was gone.

  Whatever Bowie and that strange woman had been doing out in the workshop, they’d finished in under an hour—not that it mattered. It didn’t. Bowie had his own life and she didn’t care in the least if he wanted to have wild sex with some gorgeous bad-attitude rich bitch.

  Except that it did matter. And she did care.

  And hadn’t she promised herself she would start being more truthful? With herself, first and foremost.

  She turned from the window. There was plenty to do around the house to keep her mind off Bowie. She got to work with the vacuum and a can of Pledge. And after lunch, she went over to the hardware store and ran the register until it was time to go pick up Johnny and his cousins from school.

  At dinner, Bowie didn’t say a word about the woman with the red car. Glory almost asked him. But she knew that no matter how hard she tried to sound merely curious, her real feelings were bound to show. And Johnny was right there, happily pounding down his favorite mac and cheese with ham. It somehow didn’t seem appropriate to start questioning Bowie about another woman in front of their son.

  That evening dragged on endlessly. And when she finally got both kids quiet in their beds, she went downstairs for her tea and sat at the table for over an hour, hoping against hope that Bowie might come in again for once, wishing that they might sit and talk the way they used to. Not even really thinking about the black-haired woman anymore. Only thinking of Bowie and missing him so.

  But he didn’t come. And at nine-thirty, she climbed the stairs to bed. As she was brushing her teeth she heard the faint sound of the back door opening downstairs. He must have been waiting for her to go to bed before he came inside.

  That didn’t surprise her. But it did make her feel even more glum and despondent than she already was.

  When she turned off the tap, she could still hear water running. He was having his shower. Glory closed her eyes and hung her head and willed away the image of Bowie, naked, water streaming over his golden head and down his beautiful, powerful body.…

  She went back to the bedroom and put on her favorite cozy red flannelette pajamas and got into bed. By then, the water had stopped running downstairs.

  Faintly, she heard the back door close.

  He was gone. Back to the workshop. Another day gone by in which they’d barely spoken.

  Tomorrow was Friday, the day he would sign the final papers on his new property. He would move out.

  She would see him often. It was a small town and they had family in common. Not to mention that they shared a son. There would be no end of opportunities to run into him.

  And very few chances for them to ever really talk. It was only going to get more difficult to bridge this gap she’d put between them.

  She sat up, turned on the lamp, saw her husband’s dear face in the nightstand photo—and knew she had yet to give herself permission to move on, to openly and proudly love another man.

  To love Bowie…

  Not that she was sure Bowie even wanted to be loved by her at this point. Maybe he had that black-haired woman out there in the shop with him tonight.…

  No, she knew he didn’t. She couldn’t have said exactly how she knew, but she did. The other woman was only a distraction, someone for her to focus her frustration and anger on, someone for her to blame.

  The real issue, the thing that kept her up nights and made her days a misery, was that she hated the idea of him moving to his new place without the two of them coming to some sort of peace with each other.

  There wasn’t a lot of time left to find that peace. If she didn’t make an effort, she could miss her chance. He would be gone. When he lived someplace else, it would become even harder for her to go to him, to talk to him privately.

  She had to make a move and she had to make it soon.

  Glory pushed back the covers and reached for her robe.

  Chapter Twelve

  When he heard the knock at the workshop door, Bowie considered not answering it. He was afraid it might be Fiona. She’d said she was driving straight to Reno and catching a flight back to New York.

  However, you just never knew with Fiona. She changed her mind as often she changed her shoes. He didn’t feel up to dealing with her a second time in a twenty-four-hour period.

  But what if it was Glory?

  It didn’t seem likely. Since she’d left him Friday night to his blackberry pie and his empty cot, she hardly seemed to be able to look at him. And she only spoke to him when it was absolutely necessary.

  Still, he had to know.

  He shoved back the blankets, pulled on his jeans, stuck his feet in his mocs and went to answer.

  The sight of her sucked all the breath from his lungs.

  She stood in the halo of light from the back porch, clutching the top of her red robe together, her hair loose and a little tangled, shining on her shoulders. He’d always loved the color of her hair: dark as coffee, but coffee streaked with butterscotch.

  “Um, I was…” Her velvety cheeks flamed pink. Why? Because she’d come out here to where he slept when she should have been in her own bed? Because he hadn’t finished buttoning his pants and he didn’t have a shirt on? He didn’t know nor did he care. All that mattered was that she was standing there. She tried again. “I was hoping we might talk a little
?”

  “Sure.” He stepped back, gestured her inside and shut the door as soon she cleared the doorway. She went straight to the stove. He used the moment when she had her back to him to take care of that last button at the top of his fly.

  She turned to him. Her sweet mouth trembled. And then she opened it—and a flood of words came pouring out. “Since Friday, we’vd hardly spoken and I…oh, I don’t know, you’ll be leaving soon and I want us to, well, I guess, be friends, at least. I want you to know that I do realize I’ve been the dishonest one in this whole thing since you came back. I keep telling myself I’ll be more truthful and then, somehow, I’m not so truthful after all—like today when that woman showed up and I told her how to find you out here and then I told myself I wasn’t going to run to the laundry room and spy on you through the window in there. But I did, I ran in there with Sera screaming in my arms and stood there, rocking my poor little baby, watching that woman throw herself at you. I hated that, hated to see her hands on you, even though I knew I had absolutely no say in whether you might be kissing some bitchy black-haired woman in really great clothes. I had no say about anything when it came to you because I had walked away from you Friday and that was it for you and me.…” She had to pause for a breath right then.

  He saw his chance and seized it. “I wasn’t kissing Fiona, Glory.”

  She swallowed, hard. “Fiona. That’s her name?”

  “Yeah, Fiona Sedgeman. She’s a customer. A very good customer. And sometimes she’s a pain because she’s such a man-eater, but there’s nothing going on between her and me.”

  “Nothing?” She sounded breathless.

  “Zip.”

  “Oh, okay.” She almost smiled, but then she seemed to catch herself—and scowled instead. “Not that it’s any concern of mine.”

  He said, very gently, “Cut the crap, Glory.”

  She winced, but then she nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.” A small, embarrassed laugh escaped her. “I seriously need to cut the crap, but I seem to be having some real trouble doing that.”