Now Bree nodded. “That’s reassuring. And I appreciate it. But wandering’s not the worst of it, Rufus.”
He met her gaze levelly. “Yeah, I know. But between the two of us, and with a little help from our friends, I think we could take care of her. As long as we have each other, we can handle whatever comes.”
She hesitated a telling moment, then said, with much less conviction than before, “It’s not your responsibility.”
“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “It’s our responsibility.”
She shook her head slowly. “How can you say that?” she asked softly. “You didn’t ask for it.”
“Neither did you.”
“Even so, I can’t ask you to take on something like that.”
“You didn’t ask. I offered.”
“But why?”
“Because, Bree, that’s what people who are in love do. They take care of each other. And they take care of what’s important to each other. They accept each other’s responsibilities. They take what life gives them together, and they face it together, and they deal with it together.” He smiled. “That’s just one of many perks the job has.” He covered the few steps that stood between them and cupped his hand over her cheek. “Anything that affects you, Bree, anything that worries you, or scares you, or hurts you, I want to be the one who makes you feel better. I can’t cure your mom. And I can’t take away your fear for her. But I can offer you a safe place for her. And I can be here for you whenever you need someone to remind you that you’re not in this alone. ’Cause, Bree, you’re not in this alone anymore. Not if you don’t want to be.”
He could see the fight leaving her by the way she tilted her head into his hand and by the way her entire body seemed to bow as the tension left her. Even so, she said, “It could take more than we can manage. I’ve done a lot more reading than you, and I’ve talked to other people in the support group. Alzheimer’s is—”
“Alzheimer’s is horrible,” he finished for her. “And it’s something that affects a lot of families, Bree. Rich, poor, it doesn’t matter. And they all manage somehow.”
“Not all of them,” she said.
“Yeah, they do,” he said firmly. “They learn to manage. Because they know they have to.” The way she looked at him then, he thought maybe he was getting through to her. So he hurried on, “You have a lot of friends, Bree. I do, too. They’ll help us out if we ask them. Give us breaks when we need them. Do whatever they can to make it a little easier for us. I’m not saying it’s going to be smooth sailing. There will be some rough times ahead. But you don’t have to go through them alone.”
Her eyes filled with tears at that, and her legs almost buckled beneath her. Rufus swept her into his arms, and she clung to him, crying silently at first, then letting go with great, gulping sobs. He let her go as long as she needed to. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for her, carrying around the fear, the worry, and the sadness she must have been carrying around for some time. And not just carrying, but hiding it, too. She hadn’t wanted to share the responsibility of her mother’s illness with her friends, even though that was the very thing friends would want her to do.
For a long time, he held her, rubbing her back lightly and brushing back her hair, until her sobs lessened to sniffles and she was able to mumble something about needing a tissue. Rufus smiled and guided her back into the kitchen, pulling a paper napkin from a holder on the countertop, and pretending not to notice when she blew her nose indelicately into it.
“You really do have everything a woman could ask for,” she told him with a shaky smile as she brushed the napkin under her nose a final time.
He grinned back. “I’m glad you finally noticed.”
She winced a little at the remark, even though he hadn’t meant anything by it. He really was glad she’d finally noticed. “Will you ever forgive me for being a jerk?” she asked.
“No forgiveness necessary,” he said gently. “You were never a jerk.”
She made a face that told him she knew better, but he wasn’t going to argue about it. Whatever was in the past was in the past. He wanted to focus on the future now. Especially since it looked like he’d be spending it with the only woman he’d ever loved. Handy, that. Having Bree in his life was, really, all he would ever need.
She tossed the napkin into the trash and turned to lean back against the counter, crossing her arms in a way that wasn’t so much defensive as it was protective. “I was wrong about a lot of things, Rufus,” she said softly. “But mostly about one thing. You’re not a good guy.”
He arched his eyebrows in surprise. How many times had he hated hearing her say that? And now that she was taking it back, why did it bother him so much?
She grinned. “You’re the best guy.” She strode across the kitchen and circled her arms around his waist. “Better than that,” she said as she leaned her head against his chest. “You’re my guy. And I love you. And no matter what happens between now and forever, that will keep me going.”
Rufus wrapped his arms around her shoulders and rested his head atop hers. “That’s all I want and can ask for, Bree,” he told her. “That’s all.”
Nineteen
IT TOOK COLE A FEW DRIVE -BYS BEFORE HE FINALLY saw the numbers of the address Lulu had given him as her studio’s, stenciled above the door of a narrow limestone-fronted building on Main Street. She’d told him if he came at four, she’d be ready for him, which was why he had arrived at quarter to three. He didn’t want Lulu to be ready for him. Lulu was much more herself when she was unprepared.
He had replayed the episode in the car the night before a dozen times after he’d gotten home, and he still wasn’t able to figure out exactly what had happened. He really hadn’t intended for things to go as far as they had—at least not in the park. He’d thought they could neck like teenagers for a while, and then, if things went well enough, they could go back to Lulu’s house and spend the night together. If things didn’t go well enough, then at least they could have enjoyed some great necking.
But almost immediately into that first kiss, something had taken hold of both of them. Kissing Lulu wasn’t like kissing other women. He didn’t know why that was, only that it was true. It took awhile for him to warm up with other women. Not that he didn’t enjoy physical closeness with the opposite sex, but at any given moment, he generally had a lot on his mind, and it took him awhile to be able to focus, even on something like physical closeness with the opposite sex.
That wasn’t the case with Lulu. The minute he’d laid eyes on her at Bree’s apartment, he’d stopped thinking about everything except her. And being physically close to her. The closer, the better. Hell, the more physical, the better. And the minute their mouths touched, everything else in the world ceased to exist. There had just been sensation, desire, and passion. There had been Lulu. And getting closer to Lulu. And touching Lulu. And once he’d started touching Lulu…
He nearly tripped over his own feet at the memory and had to grab the bannister of the cramped stairwell as he made his way to the fourth, and uppermost, floor. Never had he been with such a spontaneous, uninhibited woman. He didn’t know why he’d been so surprised by the quickness and intensity of her response to him. After some of the things she’d written in her journal, he knew she was a deeply passionate, profoundly sensuous woman. But she didn’t come across that way in person. At least, she hadn’t until last night. What had happened in the car had been completely unplanned and totally unexpected.
Which was why he had come to her studio before she planned for or expected him to be there.
When he finally crested the top stair, two doors greeted him, each identified by a different letter. B, he knew, was Lulu’s studio, but there were no windows for him to look through, and nothing that indicated the space belonged to her. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard the downbeat and backbeat of hard rock, but not much else. With music that loud, there was no way she would hear him knocking. So he tried the knob and, f
inding it unlocked, turned it and pushed the door open.
The music was overwhelmingly loud now, so he ducked inside and closed the door behind himself before it escaped to space A across the way, potentially invading someone else’s studio and harassing someone else’s muse. Or whatever the hell those things were that artsy people were allegedly inspired by. The studio itself was small, no more than fifteen feet by fifteen, and there were no windows to speak of, save a row of long skinny ones near where the wall joined the ceiling on the far side of the room all propped wide open. In spite of that, the space was crowded with more color and light than Cole had ever seen in one place before.
Lulu had more than made up for the lack of sunlight by hanging dozens of halogen lamps overhead that rained down enough white-bright light to illuminate the studio to its farthest corners. Adding to the brilliance was a freestanding blowtorch in the middle of the room that erupted in even more light, though this was a glowing mix of yellow and blue amid the white crystal clarity of the other.
And the glass. Good God, it was everywhere, what seemed like dozens of pieces in even more colors, sitting on shelves, scattered about the floor, leaning against the walls, hanging from a grid work of stainless steel overhead. Most of it was unstructured and fluid, frozen rivers of mottled hues that flowed into one another so seamlessly, it was hard for Cole to tell where some of the pieces ended and others began.
Lulu hadn’t heard him come in thanks to the heavy hiss of the blowtorch doing battle with the music that blasted at about a billion decibels, some guy roaring about bleeding it out, digging in deeper, and then throwing it away. She sat on a low stool in profile to the left of the blowtorch, her eyes covered by old-fashioned riveter’s goggles made of heavy canvas and dark green glass to protect her eyes from the fire’s light. She was dressed in her construction worker-type garb again of white tank top and overalls, one denim strap having come undone to let the bib fall diagonally across her breasts. Her hair was bound haphazardly atop her head, but a few errant, sweat-dampened curls corkscrewed around her face and over her equally damp neck. Perspiration streaked what he could see of her face and throat, and as he began to circle slowly around toward her front, he saw that one very enticing rivulet was streaming down between her breasts.
Even when he stood within a few feet of her at an angle of only forty-five or so degrees, she didn’t see him, so focused was she on her work. In one leather workgloved hand, she gripped a long stick that held a blob of orange-hot glass being made oranger and hotter by the fire, and with the other hand, she adjusted the flame on the torch. The loud hiss grew louder still, louder, even, than the music, and Cole had to battle the urge not to cover his ears with his hands. Clearly the noise didn’t bother Lulu, so he wasn’t going to let it bother him, either.
In fact, the noise seemed to energize her, because as the flame grew higher, she drew nearer to it, picking up a small metal tool and touching it to the molten glass. Cole watched in fascination as the formless blob took shape, though, he had to admit, it was a shape he couldn’t quite identify. It seemed to please Lulu, though, because she withdrew it from the flame and held it up toward one of the halogen lights, turning it one way, then another before pulling it back toward herself and making a few adjustments with the tool.
As she moved her arms, Cole noticed muscles at work he hadn’t noticed on her before, the elegant bow of her biceps, the delicate curve of her forearm, the graceful camber of her shoulder. When she turned her body away from him, the cutout sleeves of her shirt revealed muscles in her back, too, that had developed through her art. Where he would have thought such muscles on a woman would be mannish and unattractive, he instead found them incredibly sexy. That Lulu had such strength and power in those arms meant she was in no way fragile or passive. On the contrary, her strength and power was something he liked.
Something he liked a lot.
When she turned her body back toward him again, he noted how the sheen of perspiration refracted and shone on her face the same way the glass did with the light shining through it. As she worked, Lulu became one with the glass that surrounded her, as vibrant, delicate, and clear as the art itself. It had never occurred to Cole that the act of creation could be so unbelievably sensuous. But Lulu made it inexorably so.
For several more minutes he watched in silence as she worked, noticing more things about her he hadn’t noticed before. The way her hair wasn’t just one color—it was dozens of shades of auburn and amber and gold. The way she bit her lower lip when she was concentrating on an especially precise task. How she wiped away the sweat the same way a man would, with a complete lack of decorum. How no matter how hard she was concentrating, or how carefully she was forming the glass, her left foot still tapped perfectly in time with the blaring music.
Then, without warning, she looked up from her work and saw him. Immediately, she pushed the goggles up onto her forehead so she could meet his gaze. And then…zing. Just as it had that night in the bar, time for Cole came to a stop, and everything in the room went out of focus. Everything except Lulu, who became clearer to him than ever.
“Hello,” he heard himself say as if from a million miles away. Even though he’d had to raise his voice for the greeting, he scarcely discerned the word.
She studied him without moving for another moment, then squeezed her eyes shut tight and shook her head once, as if she, too, had lapsed into a sort of otherworldly existence.
“Hey,” she shouted back when she opened her eyes again. She lowered the flame on the blowtorch until it was barely a flicker emitting little more than a low-grade whisper of sound. She rose from her stool, moved to a bucket of water and lowered the hot glass into it, then covered the few feet to the boom box—stepping over and around a half-dozen pieces of glass as she did—and lowered the volume on the music.
“Sorry,” she said as she shed her gloves and scooped up a rag to wipe off her sweaty hands. “The piece dictates the music, and today I’m working on one that’s a bit in-your-face. Linkin Park is perfect for that.”
He smiled as he drove his gaze over the richly variegated items littering the studio. “What? No glass unicorns?”
She smiled back as she whipped off her goggles and swiped her forehead with the rag. But instead of cleaning herself up as she intended, the action left behind a smudge of dirt that Cole found, for some reason, incredibly erotic. “Not since sixth grade, no,” she told him. “But I did recently complete a commissioned piece called ‘Leda and the Swan.’ Does that count?”
He shoved his hands into his trouser pockets and took a few steps toward her. “I don’t know. Did it have a unicorn in it?”
She chuckled. “No,” she said with mock impatience. “My studio is a unicorn-free environment. Please extinguish your horn before entering.”
He could have said something then about how he hadn’t had a horn until he entered, but refrained. Instead, he lifted a hand to her forehead and touched his thumb to the smudge. But he didn’t wipe it off. He just followed the ragged line of it lightly, threading his fingers into the damp hair at her temple when he reached it.
Her eyes widened at the gesture, her pupils expanding until only a thin circle of blue surrounded them. But she neither did nor said anything to halt him. This close, Cole could smell her, the combining odors and aromas of physical labor, unbridled heat, and the inescapable patchouli that mixed and mingled into something almost narcotic.
“I told you I wouldn’t be ready for you until four,” she said.
“That’s why I’m here now,” he replied.
And before she had a chance to respond to that, he leaned forward and covered her mouth with his. She started to pull back, but he followed her, covering her shoulders with his hands as he deepened the kiss. Her skin was slick and hot from her perspiration, and the knowledge that she was already smoldering and damp—and that he had some catching up to do—increased his sense of urgency. She must have sensed it, because instead of pulling away this time, she kissed
him back, her hands moving to the knot of his necktie and working feverishly to loosen it.
Cole’s last coherent thought was that it was just like last night, the velocity and totality with which he lost himself to her. The moment their bodies made contact, everything else ceased to exist. There was just heat and need and hunger and desire, all of which demanded satisfaction.
As Lulu pulled his tie from his collar and went to work on his shirt buttons, she took a few awkward steps forward, pushing Cole back. “The lights,” she mumbled against his mouth as she reached past him. “Too bright.”
She flicked a quartet of switches on the wall, something that took care of that problem, and they were thrown into semi-darkness lit only by the flickering flame of the blowtorch and the long afternoon sun that seeped through the windows overhead. It was enough for him to see what he wanted to see—Lulu’s face as he unhooked the other strap of her overalls, pushed the garment down over her hips, tugged her shirt over her head, and covered her naked breasts with both hands. Her fingers fumbled on his buttons as he gently kneaded both tender globes, her sweat-dampened skin making his hands slip easily over her flesh. He released her long enough for her to push his shirt off his shoulders and over his arms, then captured her again when she moved her hands to his belt.
The next thing he knew, she was on her knees before him, one hand curving over his taut, naked buttocks, the other moving on his hard cock. She palmed the head gently, then circled her thumb and index finger around his shaft, and slowly slid both down to its base. Then she pulled her hand back up again, and pushed it slowly downward once more. For a long moment, she teased him that way, then she curled her entire hand around his hard length. Instead of stroking him, though, she guided him to her mouth and pulled him deep inside.
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