Kitabı oku: «Restless», sayfa 3

5

MERELY DRIVING UP to her parents’ house filled Lizzie with memories of the past, and bittersweet thoughts of the present. Her parents had been the family’s foundation, their rock. How could they even consider getting divorced now? After thirty years of marriage? It didn’t make sense.

Lizzie let herself in through the back door, much as she had for nearly the entire twenty-eight years of her life. The house was one of the first that her father had built after opening his own construction company before she was born. While he’d added on to it over the years to accommodate her mother’s wishes for a sunporch and her brother’s for a media room, much remained the same. Decor aside, of course. Her mother claimed that she’d been Martha Stewart before Martha even thought about making her first pinecone wreath. The house had undergone a complete makeover nearly every year, with a change in color schemes and throw rugs and artwork.

Now the living room walls were a soft, homey green, which went well with the upholstered furniture, a cream color festooned with tiny flowers of every color. The furniture had remained the same, chosen because it went with almost everything. Photos of the family, especially the three children, dotted the walls and mantel, documenting the various stages of their lives.

“Mom?” Lizzie called out, putting her purse on the kitchen table and shrugging out of her coat, much as she had countless times before. Only this time there was no answer.

She hadn’t checked the garage to see if either of their cars was there. It was usually a given at this time of night that her parents would both be home. It was just after dinner and right about now they normally would have been sitting at the kitchen table enjoying coffee and dessert or in the family room watching the news or reading.

The silence seemed to verify with deafening intensity that nothing was normal or usual anymore.

Lizzie sighed and looked around the kitchen. When she was growing up, there had always been something to eat. It was one of the many reasons neighborhood children had liked to hang out there. If there wasn’t a pot of something on the stove to sample, there were surely sandwich fixings and a bag of chips somewhere.

The sink was empty, the stove barren and not even the cookie jar held a crumb to lick off the pad of her finger. She opened the refrigerator. Bingo. She smiled as she popped the lid on a container of food and took out a slice of meat loaf.

She sputtered when an overdose of salt assaulted her taste buds.

She moved to the sink and coughed up the meat, running the water to wash it down the drain as she tripped the trash compactor.

“Damn,” she muttered under her breath, having forgotten the phone call of the night before.

She dumped the rest of the “poisoned” meat loaf into the garbage can and placed the container in the dishwasher.

She should have known the situation had deteriorated to this degree, but the absence of broken glass littering the floor had convinced her that things were as they always had been.

She opened the freezer and took out a fudge pop, visually verifying that no tampering had taken place. She hesitantly licked it, sighed with relief and then closed the freezer door. Do what you will with the meat loaf, she thought, but leave anything chocolate alone.

Of course, her father didn’t like chocolate.

Sucking on the sweet, she left the kitchen, walking through the hall toward the foyer. She immediately spotted her mother’s purse on the table near the door.

Huh?

“Dad?”

She stepped down the connecting hall toward the guest room that had once been a den and then a guest room again and rapped lightly on the closed door. No answer. She peeked inside to see the sofa bed open, the sheets and blanket unmade, and then closed the door again.

So her father wasn’t there. But her mother?

A sound from the second floor.

Maybe her mother was taking a bath with her headphones on and hadn’t heard her.

While the Gilbreds weren’t immodest, rare were the times when a bathroom door was locked. Lizzie had spent many a time sitting on the closed commode talking to her mother while Bonnie was immersed in a tub full of bubbles.

Of course, when those same bubbles started to dissipate, she was the first to give her mother privacy…and to spare herself from viewing something that might ruin her for life.

She climbed the stairs, licking her frozen treat as she went. She supposed she could grab a sandwich on the way home. Or see if the Chinese place on Oak Street was still open.

She looked first in the master bedroom to find everything perfectly in its place, the bed made, the connecting bath empty.

Okay…

Had her mother left her purse behind? Was she even now eating out somewhere and reaching for her wallet, only to find she’d left it at home on the foyer table? That was so unlike her mother as to be scary.

Scarier still was the fact that both her parents constantly requested that she act as their attorney. She was grateful she wasn’t a family attorney and was only too quick to point that out whenever the topic raised its ugly head. Which was much too often for her liking.

She checked out the main bathroom just to make sure her mother wasn’t in there, then shrugged and headed to her old room. Bonnie had kept all the kids’ bedrooms decorated the same way as when they’d lived at home, the wallpaper a little harder to change than the color of paint. Lizzie sometimes liked to go into her old room and lie across her white canopy bed, remembering happier times.

Another sound.

Lizzie’s footsteps slowed. If she wasn’t mistaken, it had come from her old room.

She slowly opened the door and then gasped, standing rooted to the spot. Lying across her old bed was her mother, naked, her hands tied above her head to the canopy posts. Her father was kneeling at the edge, an extra large feather held aloft as he swung his head to look at her.

And the sound? The headboard hitting the wall.

Lizzie screamed and ran from the room. So much for leaving a scene before it ruined her for life. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to go into her old bedroom again.

A COUPLE HOURS LATER, Lizzie sat on the leather couch in her family room, flipping through channels on the television, purposely ignoring her vibrating cell phone. Her mother had called no fewer than five times since Lizzie had bolted from the house as if the floor had been covered with burning coals. Much of what had happened since the moment she’d caught her parents playing Pin the Princess on her bed—her childhood bed in her childhood room—had passed in a blur. She couldn’t even remember what she’d done with the fudge pop.

And at this point, she didn’t care, either. She half hoped she’d dropped the melting chocolate on the white carpet of her old room so her mother would have to clean it up…among other things.

Ugh.

Well, she supposed there was one good thing to come out of the situation. Her parents appeared to have reconciled.

She stuck her chopsticks into the rice container and put both down on the coffee table, pulling the chenille throw across her lap up to her chin.

Her cell vibrated and she turned the display so she could read the caller ID. Her sister, Annie.

She answered.

“Okay, what’s up? Mom’s going out of her mind with worry because you aren’t taking her calls.” Leave it to Annie to cut straight to the chase.

Younger than Lizzie by a year, her sister usually managed to keep up the front that her life was all sunshine and roses. But Lizzie knew it was more like dirty diapers and teething rings. The last time she’d talked to Annie, her sister had been a scant inch removed from running away from her family altogether. Which didn’t make any sense to Lizzie, because so far as she could tell, her sister had gotten everything she’d ever wanted out of life. A great husband. A marvelous house. Two beautiful children and another on the way.

Not that little Jasmine and Mason were angels. Far from it. They were loud and smelly and needed constant supervision. And somewhere in there, Annie had to fit in love, as well. Which wasn’t always easy.

So Lizzie and Annie had spent a lot of time on the phone lately. The approach suited Lizzie fine. Since she worked such long hours, she wasn’t physically able to step in to help her sister out much. The issue of children in her own future still hung like a swaying question mark. Not because she’d had any bad experiences or her sister’s situation had turned her off kids. She’d simply been so busy she hadn’t had a chance to think about them.

That, and she had yet to meet a man she loved enough to consider sharing another human being with.

Even Jerry.

So Lizzie paid back her sister’s brevity with a concise rundown of the evening’s events.

A silent pause stretched after she finished. Then, finally, Annie’s laughter filled her ear.

Lizzie scooted down farther into the sofa. “I’m glad to be a source of comic relief.”

In truth, her sister’s response irritated her.

“Tied to your bed…a feather? Oh my God, Liz, this is classic Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah, maybe. But not when they were in the middle of a divorce.”

“Maybe.”

Another silence as both considered a future in which their parents weren’t married. Fractured holidays spent running from one parent’s house to the other, never satisfying either of them, always hearing a litany of the ex-spouse’s flaws.

They’d both seen it happen to friends. And it was a way of life they’d counted themselves lucky not to have to confront.

There was a brief cry at the other end of the line. Lizzie realized her sister must have been holding Mason, her youngest.

“Shh,” Annie said soothingly.

Surprisingly, the sound served to make Lizzie feel better.

“Remember the time we caught them going at it in the garage in the middle of the day?” Annie asked.

Lizzie groaned. “Did you have to remind me of that occasion? I mean, my God, we were like, what? All of ten and eleven? And we had friends with us.”

“I forgot about that. But what I can see clearly is Mom with her tennis skirt hiked up around her hips sitting on the washing machine, Dad’s shorts down around his ankles, the two of them going at it during the spin cycle.”

Lizzie rubbed her forehead. “Or how about the time they took us to the drive-in when we were even younger than that?”

“Oh, God! And they started going at it right there in the front seat, thinking the three of us were asleep in the back.”

“Yes, well, if we had been, the squeaking of the car springs would have woken us.”

“If Mom’s shouts hadn’t.”

They shared a laugh. “Well, you can’t say that it hasn’t been an interesting run.”

“No, that you can’t. But what I don’t understand is why, after all these years, the two would even contemplate divorce.”

Lizzie worried her bottom lip. “Maybe they ran out of places to do it?”

“There’s that.”

“Have you really talked to either of them about it?” Lizzie asked.

“Me? Are you kidding? I’m almost afraid to ask, what with all I’ve got going on.” Mason made a few cooing sounds. “How about you?”

“No. I mean, I tried a couple of times. But the two of them seem so caught up in the act of divorcing that my questions hit a wall.”

“What about Jesse? Do you think he’s talked to them?”

Lizzie didn’t even bother answering. Jesse was going through an interesting time of his own, what with dumping the girl he’d been engaged to practically since junior year of high school for a pole dancer from Boston.

“Maybe it’s time we called a family meeting,” Lizzie suggested instead.

“A what?”

“You know, make an appointment for all of us to come together so we can talk this out.”

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Think about it, Liz. You can’t handle the idea of them still having an active sex life—”

“I can handle the idea of them having sex…I just don’t want to view it.”

“Anyway, do you really want to hear what’s driven them apart? All the gritty details?”

“Somebody’s got to.”

Annie sighed. “Yeah, well, after today, let’s hope there’s nothing more to worry about. Let’s hope they’ve worked out their differences and that life goes back to normal again so Christmas can go ahead as scheduled.”

Lizzie dropped her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. “I forgot all about Christmas.”

“I finished my shopping yesterday.”

“Shocker. I haven’t started.”

“Shocker. What are you going to get Mom and Dad?”

“How about an appointment with a shrink?”

“Ha-ha. No, really.”

“I have no idea, Annie,” she said quietly, considering all that had happened that night. Hell, over the course of the past week.

She didn’t ask her sister what she’d gotten them. Annie always had a great handle on the perfect gift for everyone.

“Okay, I’d better put Mason down. Do you want me to call Mom? Or will you?”

“I’ll call her in the morning.”

“Fine, I’ll call her now.”

“Do what you will.”

“Good night, Lizzie.”

“What’s good about it, Annie?”

Her sister laughed and signed off.

Lizzie pressed the disconnect button and tossed the cell phone to the other side of the sofa. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a light tap on the patio windows behind her.

She jerked around to find Gauge standing outside holding up what looked like a mug of something.

Hmm…

6

“GET THE HELL AWAY from my wife.”

The words seemed burned into Gauge’s mind, the three hours since he’d heard them doing nothing to diminish their effect.

There he’d been, standing in Kevin and Nina’s kitchen, his arms around Nina from behind, helping her to open a fresh bottle of wine. Yes, he had maybe stood a little too close. Yes, he’d sniffed her hair as if he’d like nothing more than to bury his nose there. Yes, he’d felt her bottom, hot and hard against his promising arousal. But he would never have pushed things any further.

As he stood on Lizzie’s back steps waiting for her to open the kitchen door, he called himself the liar he knew himself to be.

Nina had been the one to hold up her hands. “Please, Kevin, let’s not ruin what’s turning out to be a perfectly nice evening.”

Gauge had moved away from her, but not quickly enough, it appeared, because Kevin looked a scant breath removed from delivering the pummeling his expression promised.

In a fair fight, Gauge might have been able to take him. But there was nothing fair about a man in love, afraid his best friend was making a move on his woman. Gauge got that.

What Gauge didn’t get was why he had done what he had. Beyond it seeming like a purely innocent act at the time.

There had, however, been absolutely nothing innocent in his reaction. Or in the hitch in Nina’s breathing. And he knew that if he could have taken it further, he would have.

The door opened suddenly in front of him and he grimaced, forgetting for a moment where he was. What he was doing.

Until Lizzie’s provocative face filled his line of vision.

He found himself grinning. A natural grin, despite the night’s awkward events.

Nina had tried to force an air of normalcy on the last hour of his visit, but there had been nothing normal about eating dessert in the living room of a man who would just as soon Gauge disappeared from the face of the earth.

As Nina had uncomfortably kissed him goodnight—a peck on the cheek that he wished would have lingered a little longer—she’d smiled and said, “I think it’s a good first step.”

First step toward what? He’d wondered. A first step toward resurrecting a friendship among the three of them that was better left to wither away?

He’d heard it said over the years that platonic friendship between a man and a woman was impossible. That sex always managed to get in the way. And he’d believed it. Until he’d met Kevin and Nina. For three years they’d been friends, as well as business partners. For three years they’d enjoyed a nonsexual, if flirtatious, relationship.

Then he’d found a way to screw even that up.

“Gauge?”

He focused again on the woman in front of him.

Lizzie.

She pulled her sweater a little closer.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked.

He stepped through the open doorway, allowing her to close the door after him.

“Hi,” she said, coming to stand back in front of him.

There was a lot in her expression he couldn’t read.

He lifted the empty coffee cup he held. “I was hoping to borrow some sugar.”

She laughed, a happy sound that made him feel slightly better. “Do people really do that? Borrow sugar, I mean? I thought that was just something that happened in the movies.”

“Or back when there wasn’t a corner market open twenty-four/seven.”

She didn’t make a move to take the cup, merely stood looking at him as if curious about more than the questions she’d asked.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

Gauge squinted at her. Was there something in his appearance that indicated that he wasn’t all right? That spoke of what he was going through?

Something that Lizzie had picked up on?

He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Because it meant either she was extraordinarily observant. Or she possessed those insights only when it came to him.

He put the cup down on a nearby counter, a prop in the game that had become his life.

Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he was doing here. Just that he couldn’t stand the thought of being anywhere else at that moment. His apartment was quiet. Too quiet. The bar too noisy. His bottle of Jack Daniel’s unappealing.

He felt a bit like Goldilocks in the story of the Three Bears. And right now Lizzie was his just right bowl of porridge…not to mention her bed.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked.

“If I’m not interrupting.”

“To the contrary. You’re probably saving me from an hour wasted watching a television show that doesn’t interest me.” She turned. “Would you like some coffee or something to drink? Bourbon or whiskey?”

He shook his head, following as she led him into the family room.

He’d viewed the room from the outside in, but it looked different from this vantage point, the recessed lighting and knickknacks and bookshelves giving it a cozy feel. Lizzie picked up the remote and shut off the television.

“Please, sit down.”

He did. And if she found it intriguing that he chose the spot he usually saw her sitting in, pushing the lap blanket to the side, she didn’t say anything. Instead she sat on the other side of the same couch, tucking one of her legs under her as she faced him.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

He found himself peering at her closely again. “Talk about what?”

“About what put that crease between your brows.” He gave a halfhearted grin. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. He’d come here to forget what had happened, not dwell on it.

“I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

She looked at him for a long moment and then nodded. “That’s fine.” She settled in a little more comfortably against the cushions. “We can just sit here and say nothing if you want. I’ve had a bit of a…trying day myself. And right now, with you here, I feel quiet.”

He raised a brow. “Quiet?”

“Mmm. It’s a good thing. About a half hour ago I was ready to jump out of my skin.”

He couldn’t imagine what could have shaken what he guessed were nerves of steel. But he didn’t ask, either. Normally, he didn’t have to. He found that others talked about what they wanted to regardless of whether you wanted to hear it or not.

Which made Lizzie’s silence all the more resounding.

“Do you mind?” he asked, gesturing toward her stereo system.

“Go ahead.”

He got up and crossed to crouch in front of the expensive system. It took a moment to find the power button, and instantly the room was filled with the sound of Nina Simone. Her choice of music surprised him.

In the months that he’d lived there, he’d formed his own opinions about her and her likes and dislikes. He would have guessed her more the classical type. Bach. Or maybe Schumann. But not the blues.

He glanced over at her DVD collection, finding some interesting action films, and then got up to walk to her bookshelf. She had Jules Verne, Asimov and Wells. There was even a section on what looked like contemporary romantic novels.

Definitely not what he’d expected.

Which meant there was far more to the driven attorney than he’d thought.

He picked up a five-by-seven frame of her with a guy and a girl who had the same blond hair and similar features. Her siblings?

“So?” she said softly.

He turned to see her watching him as he put the frame back. “So what?”

“So what do you make of me?”

He gave her a lopsided smile. “That you’re more complex than I thought.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Neither. It just is.”

She smiled and tilted her chin into her chest, causing her golden blond hair to fall over her face. The flames in the grate seemed to light it on fire and gave her an almost ethereally sexy look. “Good answer.”

He moved to stand next to her side of the couch. “I get the impression that you like to classify everything neatly into either the good or bad column.”

She looked up at him.

“Where do I fall?” he asked.

She languidly reached out and hooked her index finger into one of the belt loops on his jeans. “Both.”

“Oh?”

He watched the pupils enlarge in her blue eyes. “Mmm.”

Her hum was husky, vibrating.

“Bad because I shouldn’t have done…shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing.”

Her long, manicured fingers slid from the waist of his jeans to cup his arousal beneath his closed fly. “And good because?”

She licked her lips. “Good because it seems to be just what I need right now.”

He caught her hand against his fly, pressing it more insistently against him, absorbing the warmth of her that seeped through his veins as effectively as any whiskey.

“Tell me, Lizzie,” he murmured, tipping her chin up with his other hand. “Is there any room for gray in your life?”

She blinked, staring at him from under the fringe of her dark lashes. “None.”

She shifted her hand so that her fingertips dipped inside the waist of his jeans, wedging between the heavy material and his skin. The movement, combined with her boldness, made him rock hard.

He’d known many women in his life. Some shy and submissive. Others brash and forceful. The ones he chose to spend time with depended more on his mood at the time he met them rather than the qualities of the women themselves. But Lizzie…Beyond her confident, icy exterior, he glimpsed something soft and vulnerable, and the contrast drew him in.

She began undoing the buttons on his jeans. He let her.

Within moments, she weighed his length in her hot palm. She shifted on the couch until she sat on the edge. The movement caught his attention in the glass of the balcony doors behind her. The recessed lights shone like a spotlight on her so that her hair glowed, while he stood in shadow.

It was surreal to be standing on this side of the window, watching their reflection, rather than on the outside looking in.

She slid her mouth over the head of his erection. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth together, sweet sensation pooling in his balls.

Lizzie curved her fingers around the base of him and held him straight as she took more of him in, swirling her tongue around his shaft then backing away before going down on him again.

Gauge slowly touched her hair, fingering the soft strands. There were few things more beautiful than a hot woman who knew how to please a man. Knew how to please him.

He reached behind her, tugging on her sweater until she broke contact and allowed him to strip it from her. Her back was long and graceful, appearing ghostly white in the glass. He smoothed his palms down her shoulders and unhooked her bra, watching as she shook it off, the orbs of her breasts swaying tantalizingly.

Gauge groaned as she once again took him into her mouth and increased suction, his hips bucking involuntarily.

He pushed her hair back from her face so he could view her attentions directly, mesmerized by the fit of her lips, the flicks of her tongue, the grip of her hand…a hand that squeezed him and then curved down to cup his balls.

He stiffened in preparation for orgasm, hoping she wouldn’t pull away too soon. Instead, she sucked until he was sure he’d filled her mouth, and then moved his shaft to her breasts, squeezing the full mounds of flesh together to sandwich him there, prolonging his climax until he was afraid he’d emptied himself…