A Marriage Between Friends (14 page)

J
ILL CAUGHT SIGHT
of Vince coming down the trail. He looked almost as bad as the day they’d posted the signs. His hair was mussed and his face sweat-streaked. His clothes were covered in filth and he may have wrecked another pair of shoes.

Vince slid into his car.

This is it. He’s leaving.

She should turn away. But she couldn’t. She needed one last look. As soon as Vince left, she would take off her ring and let go of silly fantasies and of her real husband. It was time to stand on her own.

Then Vince got out, opened the luggage compartment and took out his suitcase. He saw Jill watching him from the downstairs kitchen window and nodded once in acknowledgment before disappearing upstairs.

He must have found the answers he was looking for on his hike. Jill had answers of her own.

Vince was sexy and smart. He understood what it was like to hide your hurt and carry on. He did dishes and didn’t leave the toilet seat up. Teddy adored him—well, most of the time anyway. And if Arnie was to be believed, Vince had passed up a very lucrative deal for Jill. If he wasn’t the ideal husband, Jill didn’t know who was.

Something pleasant spread through her chest, bringing a smile to her face and a renewed burst of energy. She was certain that everything—Shady Oak, Railroad Stop, her marriage—was going to be okay.

Why wouldn’t it? Vince was going to be by her side.

V
INCE ROLLED HIS EYES
. Jill was crazy to have let Edda Mae leave her alone with all these people. She was damn lucky he hadn’t gone today. Oh, he’d climbed into his car fully expecting to drive away, but then he’d realized Jill might need an extra hand. And, boy, had she ever. He’d grilled forty hamburgers and done the dishes, mountains of dishes. He’d read Teddy a bedtime story and tucked him into bed.

He was exhausted. Jill must be dead on her feet. She’d run around more than he had, with a smile on her face for every guest.

And oddly enough, a warm smile for him, too.

With his head propped on the unyielding arm of the couch, Vince sprawled half-on, half-off the short, narrow torture device in Jill’s apartment waiting for her to lock up downstairs. He had to tell her about the deal he was setting up and that he was leaving in the morning. Before he went, he’d also tell her to expect divorce papers.

“Vince! You’re still awake.” Jill breezed in, glowing as if she’d just spent a day being pampered at the spa. She leaned over and pressed a kiss to Vince’s forehead as she passed.

Vince grabbed the back of the couch to keep himself from falling to the floor.

“Thanks for helping me today,” she said. “If not for you I’d still be elbow-deep in dirty dishes and never would have been able to read Teddy a bedtime story.” In the kitchen Jill squirted lotion on her hands and massaged it into her skin with strokes that inspired Vince’s overactive imagination. “I assume you’re still up because you want to talk.”

“Er…yeah.”

“And Teddy’s asleep?”

“Not a peep out of him.” Vince smiled fondly. When Teddy had come home from school, all Vince’s transgressions had been forgotten. Teddy was more excited to see him than he could ever have imagined.

“It’s great to see you smile. I thought the walk up the hill might do you good.” Jill sank into the chair next to him, bringing her smile and the smell of lemon lotion with her.

Frowning, Vince sat up. “Hill? It’s a mountain. And given that you have to crawl the last fifty feet or so, I wouldn’t go telling your guests it’s a walk.”

“Did I forget to mention you need to cut around to the left at the base of the summit?” Her blue eyes glinted with laughter as she kicked off her tennis shoes.

Once he confessed, how long would it be before she’d smile at him like that again?

“Right. At the split tree? You are evil,
wife.
”

“Oh.” She waved him off. “Edda Mae would have done the same thing if she wanted you to think.”

And the bitch of it was, Vince believed her.

“Tell me about your scars.” Jill’s voice softened as she reached out to take his left hand.

Trapped.
Vince didn’t want to tell Jill anything. He didn’t want her pity. But a trail of warm, fuzzy hope was humming its way up his arm from the hand she held.

“Share your secrets,” Jill prompted.

And then Vince understood. Perhaps if he told her his secrets, she might trust him enough to make love. Would she?
Could
she even if she wanted to? And suppose if what he told her was a turnoff? His history was pathetic. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

“You said on Friday that your dad was rough with you,” Jill said gently.

“Rough?” Vince laughed, but it was an empty sound.

“Was it that bad?”

“No matter how hard I tried to please my dad, I was never good enough. He beat me from the time I was five. He beat me,” Vince repeated, rubbing his forehead, hating that he sounded like a victim, but saying anything else was a lie.
A lie.
Edda Mae…

Vince strove to keep his voice light. “I learned the warning signs—slurred speech, loud voice, the swagger in his step. I developed the habit of blocking his blows with my left arm or turning my back so he’d hit me where no one else could see. That way I could still write, still go to school.” Where he could see Jill, where he could pretend everything was okay.

“My dad was smart. I had to be smarter. And for a time, I was. But then I gained some height and he caught on to what I was doing. And that’s when he started hitting me in the face.”

“I thought you’d lost a lot of fights with other boys over girls you slept with,” Jill said apologetically. “You had quite a reputation in middle school.”

Vince glanced up at her. “Thanks for not telling me that sooner.” Why would Jill have agreed to marry such a loser?

Then Jill made up for it by saying, “But I always told my friends I’d heard you put the other guy in the hospital.”

“You always did have that loyal streak.”

“I couldn’t bear the idea of you losing,” she admitted with complete seriousness.

“During those middle-school years I was harder for him to catch,” Vince said. “But then I made a huge mistake. I placed a side bet on one of my grandfather’s blackjack games and lost. When my dad found out about it, he went ballistic. My grandfather realized what happened and took me in. The next thing I knew, my parents had moved to Florida without me, didn’t even say goodbye. I tried to run away, go after them, because I just knew if I tried to be perfect, my dad would love me.”

“Don’t,” Jill said, tears in her eyes. “He should have loved you regardless.”

“My grandfather came after me and for a while everything was okay. But I still dreamed about the day my dad would come back sober and be happy to see me. He’d apologize and we’d be a family again.” What a waste of brain power that had been.

“Vince—”

“I had my happy ending. I finished high school, got married.” Vince jiggled her hand in an effort to lift the mood. “And graduated from college. But I wasn’t ready to…” He’d almost said
settle down.
“Whatever. I joined the army and was sent to Iraq.”

“Your scar isn’t that bad.” Jill gazed at him as if she had X-ray vision and could see through his clothing.

“Looks are deceiving.” His smile was weak, but it was better than breaking down and crying in front of her. “The first day out we were watching a parade. These men marched along with toddlers—
babies really
—strapped to their chests. This one little boy was sucking on his fist and grinning at me. I don’t think I registered the man carrying him pulling out a gun and opening fire.” His cheeks were starting to hurt with the effort of his smile.

“I choked. I couldn’t shoot.” Vince hadn’t meant to tell Jill that. He’d never told anyone that. He hadn’t even admitted his cowardice to Sam, and he’d
been
there. Was that another lie? Aw, hell, he owed Edda Mae an apology.

“I would have been a sitting duck, except my best friend, Sam, who’d been in the country a lot longer than I had, started firing his M16 and saved my life.” Vince had to stop and swallow. It wasn’t just terrorists who died that day. The children…

Jill’s face seemed pale, as if she, too, knew that an M16 was not a precision instrument.

He continued lightly, as if relating a story about his time at college. “Anyway, while I did my impression of a statue, a sniper’s bullet ripped through my arm. The force of it sent me to the ground. Other people weren’t so lucky. The wound wasn’t severe enough to send me home. They stitched me up, let me recuperate a bit and then sent me back out. If it wasn’t for the scar, you’d never know what a coward I’d been.”

Jill blinked, opened her mouth to speak, and then swallowed. When she did manage to string some words together, they came out barely above a whisper. “Would someone have called me if you…if you…”

“You’re listed as my next of kin. If those Tangos had been better marksmen, you wouldn’t need divorce papers.” He tried to smile.

“Stop it. This isn’t a joke.” Her eyes shone with something awfully close to pity.

“The hell it isn’t.” Vince stood, severing the connection between them. Damn hope for making him think that the truth would break down the barriers between them. “It’s a twist of fate, the irony of the universe. Someone somewhere is laughing at this, at my life.”

Jill shook her head. “You didn’t run away. You made it home alive.”

“And I learned the hard way what I had to do to stay that way.” Vince remembered the face of every man he’d ever killed. The ones he’d seen, anyway.

“What do you want, then? What does Vince Patrizio think fate, the universe or God owes him?”

“Nothing. All I wanted…” Vince swallowed thickly and tried again to be a man who wasn’t weighed down with so much emotional baggage. “All I ever wanted…was for someone to accept me as I am. No conditions. No
If you do this, I’ll love you.
” Vince had to confront his own truth, pathetic as it seemed.

“The deal you offered me in town was conditional,” Jill said evenly, not quite rubbing it in his face.

“Yeah. I guess when so much crap happens to you, you have no choice but to adopt those same crappy ways.” Vince was just like his grandfather, manipulating everything in his path. He supposed it could have been worse. Vince could have taken after his father—a drunken bully.

Jill stood. “Will you show me?” She took a step toward him.

“No.” Vince turned away. Why wasn’t she running? Vince hadn’t been good enough to be loved as a kid or brave enough to take a life to save his friend. He was too pathetic for words.

Vince couldn’t show Jill. She was right. It didn’t look bad to others, only to him. He’d bared his soul, opened his old wounds. He needed to crawl into a hole and put his armor back on, not prolong this agony.

“I’m going tomorrow.” Vince wanted to curse when his voice shook. “My business here is done.” He turned away from Jill and went to the window.

It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do—stand with his back to Jill as she left him.

V
INCE WAS STILL AWAKE
.
Jill could hear him moving about the living room while she sat at her bedroom window looking out over the moonlit valley. It had been a successful day for Shady Oak. Edda Mae had called earlier to let her know she’d arrived safely in Fresno. She sounded happy. Jill should have been happy, too, and sound asleep.

Instead, she was bringing out the old memories of Vince and aligning them with the man in her living room. Then and now Vince always had an argument, a reason why she shouldn’t do whatever it was she wanted to do. And he’d always kept his distance, choosing to come closer on his terms, when it was safe. Now Jill understood why. When he was a kid, he’d had enough physical hurt in his life without getting emotionally hurt by other children, who could be insensitive and cruel.

There was no point in Jill getting up. No reason for her to leave the bedroom. Vince wasn’t going to open up to her. Tomorrow he’d be gone. And someday soon they’d get a divorce.

Jill padded down the hall in a pair of bunny-patterned pajama bottoms and her yellow tank top, pausing at the edge of the living room. Vince was easily discernible standing next to the window in the moonlight. He’d been looking down over the same view of the valley. At least, she assumed that was what he was doing, but then he shifted and rubbed his right biceps, lifting his arm as if he could see through the material of his T-shirt.

“It takes a strong man to bear scars like yours,” Jill said softly, stepping into the room, unable to let him endure his pain alone.

Vince turned to watch her approach.

“Does it still hurt?” Jill nodded at his arm, knowing it was a stupid question.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Vince sighed. “I’m branded with a constant reminder of my failures, of my cowardice.”

“I see it as a mark of perseverance, of forgiveness and love.” Jill was close enough now to touch Vince’s fingers with hers, twining them together when he didn’t protest. “Will you show me?”

“No.” His refusal rasped across the air between them, a warning to keep her distance.

But Jill was tired of friendship and empty beds. She’d clung to the memory of one bad encounter for too long. It was time to make a new memory. Now. Tonight. Before Vince left in the morning.

“Please.” Jill led Vince to the couch. When he didn’t protest she turned on the lamp on the end table behind him, not surprised to find his eyes searching her face. “May I?” Her hands hovered over his right wrist.

Again Vince didn’t protest. She pushed his sleeve up, but the knit cuff was tight and didn’t slide over his forearm. With a sigh, Vince tugged his shirt off, his gaze returning to her.

Cords of taut muscle defined every inch of his arms and chest. But she sought out the round, reddish-brown scar in the front of his right arm, and the exit wound in back. Jill passed her palm over Vince’s warm skin from shoulder to elbow, then she rubbed her forefinger and thumb over each scar.

Jill shifted her attention to his other arm. She could picture Vince as a young boy trying to stand up to his father with his left arm raised against another blow. There was a spot or two where the skin was discolored slightly, as if it had been bruised to the bone.

She pushed Vince back into the corner of the couch so that she could see his chest.

“Nothing on the front,” he said gruffly.

Jill stood and went around behind him, needing to see his back. Vince had an oblong mark running several inches along his lower spine. “What’s this?” she demanded.

“My dad threw me against a wall.”

“And your legs?”

“My legs are fine.”

She wanted to believe him. It was worse than anything she’d imagined. He’d not only faced death courageously in Iraq, he’d been abused as a child. Jill came back around the couch and sank to the floor at his feet, wrapping her arms around her knees. He’d been a little boy. What kind of man could hit a child, especially his own? “And your mother?”

“Too drunk. I think she was his target until I got old enough.”

Extending one hand, Jill laced her fingers with his. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Nobody wants pity, Jill. You, of all people, should know that.” He kept his gaze averted.

“What I’m feeling isn’t pity. It’s anger—at your parents, at the warmongering ways of men, at you for not telling me sooner.” Jill tried to contain this anger, tried not to let her next words quaver. “You would have had to tell me on our wedding night.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

Jill swallowed her pride. He’d admitted he’d been with other women. Of course, he hadn’t married her out of love and she’d been the one to leave. And he’d said he’d waited for her to contact him. Jill had to believe he hadn’t lied about that. “Your girlfriends must have seen—”

“You’d be amazed what you can do with your shirt on.” Self-loathing clouded his eyes as Vince pushed away from her.

Jill recaptured Vince’s hand.

Vince stared at their joined hands and shook his head.

“They were fools,” she repeated adamantly, knowing now that it had only ever been sex for Vince, nothing like the intimate ritual between a man and a woman in love.

“Go back to bed, Jill.”

“No.” She was trying to scrunch up the courage to gather him in her arms.

Vince’s fingers closed painfully tight around hers. “You already heard my secrets. You know how I want it to end. If you sit here and look at me like that, I’ll…” He paused to catch his breath. “I’ll be asking a few questions of my own. Like what really happened with Craig.” The bitterness she’d been expecting finally surfaced in his words, echoed in his dark eyes. He wanted to scare her away.

Vince loosened his grip, waiting for her to decide.

A week ago she would have run away from the challenge. Jill rubbed the side of her face on her shoulder, brushing away a tear. It would probably be easier for both of them if she did as he asked. “I suppose that’s fair,” she whispered, lifting her gaze to his. “But my price is a kiss.”

Vince wanted more than that, but he drew her tenderly onto his lap and pressed his lips to hers once, reverently. His chest was bare and she wore only that skimpy tank top and pajama bottoms, so he had to keep his distance, keep his head.

“Is that all?” Jill asked in a small voice, tucking her head into the crook of his neck, sending her warm breath across his skin.

“Kisses have to be earned,” Vince said solemnly. She fit nicely in his arms. He couldn’t think about
other
places he would fit for fear of losing control. “What was the worst thing about the night with Craig?”

“The shame.” Jill sounded annoyed, her hand traveling slowly up his left arm. “The shame of doubting my ability to love the baby. The shame of no longer being perfect or invincible. He stole so much more than my virginity.”

“But he gave you a precious gift—Teddy.” Vince slid his hand up Jill’s spine and back down again, mirroring her movement on his arm. If she noticed his erection pressing into her hip, she didn’t mention it. “Did he ever try to contact you?”

“I sent him a letter after Teddy was born, notifying him that he was a father and asking him to sign away all parental rights. I heard back within a week.” Jill snuggled closer and Vince held his breath. “That’s enough talk about Craig. You certainly earned your keep today.”

“You would have finished the dishes eventually, but I’m sure you would have multitasked and burned the burgers.” Vince fought his body’s impulse to tremble. Jill was in his lap. She hadn’t locked herself in her room at his confession of weakness. Only, things probably weren’t going any further than that chaste kiss. “I wish you’d said yes to a date with me that night, instead of meeting Craig.” He’d known what Craig was like, how he targeted less-popular girls, the ones with such low self-esteem they wouldn’t say anything later.

“I’m sorry.” Her hand stilled. “I was blind.”

And she’d paid the price. “I’d love to ask you out on a date now.” One that ended up with them in bed.

Jill sat up and grinned at him. “Have you ever seen those old Dating Game shows? Bachelor Number Three—if we were stranded on a desert island, where would you take me for dinner and what would you wear?”

Now Vince could see where Teddy got his bad sense of humor. “It wouldn’t be dinner. It would be an early breakfast watching the sunrise and the dolphins swimming in the surf. And clothing would be…” He couldn’t bring himself to say optional, but she only smiled wider, so he didn’t have to complete the sentence.

“You, my friend, have earned yourself another kiss.” Jill shifted, causing another breath-holding moment. But she lifted her lips to his and claimed him as gently as if it was Vince who had been sexually abused, not her.

Her palms found their way to his chest, sliding down to his waistband in a tantalizing motion that had him pulling her toward him until he realized what he was doing. “I’m sorry.” He started to release her, afraid he might scare her.

“Don’t stop,” Jill murmured against his mouth, wrapping her arms around his neck and drawing him closer until they were sliding down on the couch and Vince lay half on his side.

“Jill…I…are you sure this is a good idea?” he breathed against her ear. There was no place he’d rather be than cradled between her thighs. But knowing there’d be no follow-through, he thought they should slow down.

“You said I could have my wicked way with you.” Vince could feel Jill grinning, her cheek plumping against his lips, and then she was shifting until her thinly covered body was pressed flush against his, their legs bent and cramped on the short couch.

“I don’t think I said it quite like that.” But damn if it didn’t sound like his idea of heaven.

Jill froze, closed her eyes tight. Then she began disentangling herself from him. “Forget it.”

“Whoa. Wait a minute. I’m not rejecting you. I could never reject you,” Vince hurried to reassure Jill. He needed her as badly as he needed air. “You own me, Jill. You have since our first day in kindergarten.”

“Why does it sound like a
but
is coming?”

“
But
you kiss me like you want more and you have to tell me what kind of more. I mean, are we talking second base? Third?”
All the way?
He had a pounding erection that demanded to know Jill’s intentions.

She sighed, her eyes still locked down. “I can’t answer that. I just know that if I don’t touch you tonight, if I don’t learn the way you taste, the way you smell…I will have missed the greatest opportunity of my lifetime.”

“Look at me, Jill.” Vince pulled back as far as he could, given that the couch was made for someone Teddy’s size.

Her eyelids didn’t budge.

“Open your eyes, babe. Please. I want you to look at me.” So he could gauge how serious she was about this.

Slowly, Jill met his gaze, her blue eyes filled with longing and only a hint of apprehension.

“Just so we’re clear. This is not about casinos or Craig or my grandfather. This is about you and me, right?”

“Do you interrogate every girl you seduce?”

“I’m not seducing a girl,” Vince said. “A woman has just invited me into her bed—her rules, her fantasies, anything goes. All I have to know is when and where.”

“Now.” Jill shifted and rolled onto the floor. Not that Vince thought she meant to, but he wasn’t going to so much as crack a smile. She recovered quickly, getting to her feet and reaching for him. “My room.”

Vince kissed the back of Jill’s hand before letting her draw him to his feet, his heart singing a chorus of hallelujahs. “Just tell me what to do…or not to do.”

“I think I need you to shut up,” Jill said. “I don’t like men—or electronic devices—that come with too much instruction.” She was smiling because she loved their kibitzing, but if Vince kept distracting her, she’d over-think things and they wouldn’t get further than the first pitch.

“This is not a silent movie.” Vince waggled his finger at her. “I want to know what you like and what to give you more of.”

“There you go, destroying the moment again.” Jill stopped in the middle of the hallway and faced him, whispering because Teddy was just down the hall. “Maybe this isn’t—”

Vince closed in and stole her breath, crowding her, moving quickly but not too fast. He backed her against a wall. His hands found her breasts, circled, squeezed and then looped around to cup her behind. Jill’s knees wobbled. Vince was on full power, pheromones set to thrill. He kissed a trail of fire from just below her ear to her breastbone and back up the other side.

Clinging to him, Jill lost several moments as she slipped into a place of pure pleasure, where her fantasy Vince and this real-life version combined. And then she felt as if she and this über Vince were melding together, their hearts pounding fiercely, only for each other. At some point he’d claimed her mouth and her hands, one of which he guided down below his belt, cupping her palm around his…around him.

“This is what you do to me,” he said in a low, husky voice.

“I’m not afraid,” Jill whispered defiantly, pressing her hand more firmly against him. But she was. A little. She ducked away, distracted by a vision of Vince naked and her…well, she was naked, too. But how to get to that point?

“You’re thinking too much.” Vince took a tentative step forward.

Jill smiled, backing up a step, then another. “I’m thinking about you naked.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed.” Vince looked down at himself. “But I’m already halfway in the buff.”

“I’m wondering if you have tan lines.” She had her hand on the frame of the door to her bedroom now.

“Italians don’t get tan lines. We also like to wear silk undergarments.” He gave her a sly glance as he reached for her.

But Jill was a step ahead and now fully in her room, standing next to the bed, where she’d dreamed about Vince for far too many nights. “Are you wearing silk now?”

“Of course.” Vince followed her, in her territory now. He closed the door behind him.

Jill lit a candle by the window. “You can turn off the light, too.”

“We’re losing the spontaneity,” Vince warned gently, but did as she asked, sending much of the room into romantic shadow. “Come here and tell me just how you were imagining I got naked.”