Accompanying Alice (19 page)

Beside her, Gabriel roused himself from his black study to view this diversion with interest. It certainly beat self-castigation all to hell. “Is that...
?”

“Aunt Kate.” Alice nodded blankly. “Uncle Delbert, Cousin Mamie, George and the boys. I forget their names.”

“Were we expecting them?”

Alice struggled with a long-suffering sigh. “No. But then, we never are.”

The grin that formed his mouth caught Gabriel unprepared. He coughed and cleared his throat to hide it. His
“I see”
sounded strangled.

“Yoo-
hoo
!” Aunt Kate wobbled down the three concrete steps on her orange sling-back stilts, took one step off the walk onto the grass, which last night’s rain had left soft, wet and muddy, sank deep, recovered and remained on the walk, waving. “Alice dear,
do
come let us in, will you? We’ve waited simply
hours
and we’re all just impossibly
exhausted
and
famished.
We absolutely
must
—”

Aunt Kate, Alice observed to Gabriel with a shudder, always seemed to speak in exclamation points and emphatic italics, laboring under the mistaken impression that this was
1920, and she was Southern, cute and perpetually twenty-three. Which was, she added with a shudder, what made Aunt Kate fascinating to observe—from afar. She left the car, mentally cringing, and crossed to greet the relative who lifted her cheek to Alice.

“How are you, Aunt Kate? We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“Now, don’t be upset, Alice dear,” Kate urged. “Your uncle and I decided to come down a day early to see if we could help your mother with anything. Mamie and George and their
darlings
drove in with us to do a little shopping and sight-seeing because we knew you’d be the only one not too busy to
take
them. I mean, you know, there’s simply
nothing
like Detroit around
us.
”
She slapped a dramatic hand over her heart. “And, well, you know, the prices are
simply
atrocious in the stores up there. And then when that hotel
mysteriously
lost our reservations, Helen told us arrangements were made for Delbert and me to sleep here. Mamie and George’s reservations aren’t even
good
until
Friday,
and well, you
do
have a sofa bed, don’t you? And of
course, the
darlings
can make do with air mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor, and—”

Aunt Kate stopped abruptly and drew in a soft breath, hand to her throat and eyelashes fluttering as Gabriel’s shadow brushed her face. She captured his hand. “Oh, my,” she breathed. “So
you’re
the gentleman they say has taken up with our Alice. You are the handsome devil, aren’t you? My Delbert reminded me of you, once.” She linked her arm with Gabriel’s, leaning on him as she climbed the porch steps. “That was a long time ago, of course, but to see you
now does take me back to
our
courtship....”

She blushed prettily, tugged Gabriel down to breathe in his ear. “I am so sorry about spoiling your sleeping
arrangements
, you understand, but they
did
say the two of you weren’t married and, well, it
may
do for you to share a bed when there’s nobody about, but you do see, don’t you, how it looks to the relatives that you may just be
using
our Alice. I mean, how
plain
she is and all, not like my Mamie. And really, it may just be best if you’d bow out now and shack up somewhere else while there’s someone here to comfort her, if you see what I mean, because the
example
for Mamie’s boys and all, well, you know, it’s just
not
what we want, and—”

“Aunt Kate.” Alice grasped the other woman’s free arm, smiling, but her voice was low and dangerous. “You’re overstepping again, Aunt Kate, and I don’t care what Helen says, there must be some lumpy-mattressed motel around here somewhere with a room and a restaurant where you can go and
pay
for all your meals, and if you don’t behave, I Will Find It For You.”

“Oh, but Alice
dear
.
”
Aunt Kate looked shocked. “I was only thinking of your best interests. You’re all alone in the world and with one disastrous marriage already behind you, why it’s obvious you simply
don’t
understand a
thing
about men.
Someone
has to protect you
.”

Alice glanced at Gabriel, whose mouth fought a valiant battle with laughter, but whose eyes warmed her, stirring the still-smoldering coals inside her. Her hand shook as she tried fitting her key into the front door lock. “Thank you, Aunt Kate, but someone does—” her gaze unconsciously slid Gabriel’s way once more, and her cheeks pinkened slightly “—protect me from myself. Now.” She controlled her trembling with an effort, unlocked the door and pushed
it open, letting them all in “I think we’ll pitch a tent in the backyard for the boys, and...”

*

Her hand ready to snap the bowl off the stem of the wineglass she held, Alice surveyed the six new tiny punctures Aunt Kate’s stiletto heels had put in her kitchen floor, the bits of
pile
carpeting that littered the woman’s knife-heeled path through the dining and living rooms. Bits of clothing shed by the travelers lay draped over available chairs; dresses and suits to be worn to the two or three planned family functions hung from the curtain rods and lamps. The boys’ sleeping bags, car pillows and suitcases obliterated a corner of the living room; mud flecked the floors and carpet, marking the passage of boys from the side door, through the house and into the bathroom.

Barely two hours had passed, but already no matter where Alice turned, her formerly tiny-but-adequate house looked the way she felt, ransacked. What was it the nuns used to say about cleanliness being next to Godliness and an orderly desk meaning an orderly soul? Apparently they’d been right, because right now she had neither. She was almost as confused by and about... oh, everything, as her house was confused about to whom it belonged. And in less than two hours she had people arriving to gossip, relax and party before the actual pre-wedding gossiping, relaxing and partying began tomorrow.

She’d get no help from Aunt Kate or Cousin Mamie that was clear. The former had breezily suggested everyone help themselves to lunch from Alice’s cupboards, then gently informed Alice that proper etiquette forbade guests from actually lifting a finger in the host’s house. And Alice, who realized she herself had thought Gabriel impolite for taking uninvited liberties with her kitchen—was it only this morning?—had opened her mouth to disagree with Aunt Kate, then been left with nothing to say.

Instead she’d mutely watched Aunt Kate go off for a long soak in a refreshing lavender milk bath in Alice’s tub, while Mamie, complaining of a migraine, had retired to Allyn’s bed with her soothing aquatic face mask and a bag of chocolate-chip cookies from Alice’s freezer. George had gotten directions and volunteered to go for beer. Uncle Delbert had corralled Gabriel in an under-the-hood-of-the-car-getting-to-know-you discussion of “Men Things” that included, Alice suspected, having overheard bits of the “Men Things” discussions before, the proper set for spark plugs on a Cadillac, the ungodly state of baseball in the American League and the current price of tea in China. And, after setting up Alice’s tent and devouring everything that wasn’t nailed
down in the kitchen, Mamie’s boys were glumly mucking about on the top deck of the play structure, resenting the way family weddings interfered with their lives.

Setting the dirty wineglass carefully on the counter, Alice glared at the walls around her, heaping curses on the Army for allowing Helen to leave Washington state before she had to, on Grace and Phil for not having the consideration to elope and spare the details, and on Gabriel for having the bad taste to fall half-dead at the side of a road where she’d find him and then having the gall to turn her emotions inside out at a time when they were hardly right side in.

She knew what they’d agreed to be to one another, knew the appearance
s
they were supposed to keep, but something was happening beyond “pretend.” Something was changing—had changed—almost from the moment they’d agreed to
pretend
to be lovers. Because of him something that had lain dormant for years was waking inside her, filling her with an unfamiliar longing. She’d wanted him. Badly. Desperately. He’d touched her senses and her heart. She
couldn’t concentrate. She was nervous, she was restless, filled with the desire to do something naughty, wild. And it would be easy to take that short step between pretense and
reality, except...

She dumped the remains of that morning’s coffee over the dishes that lay piled in the sink, turned on the water and began to rinse plates. Relieving this particular fit of restlessness could be expensive. Because she couldn’t guarantee that physically becoming lovers would actually make them so. From what she’d read, undercover agents had to be likable con men—consummate character actors who never went out of character during a case, no matter what, because the case and the cause came before anything else. Before family, friends, children, lovers...

She viciously attacked a cheese encrusted plate with a table knife, trying to scrape away unaccustomed desire as she scraped the scorched remains of someone else’s lunch. Life had walked right around her without her ever even noticing where it had gone. The knowledge irritated her at first, then made her angry. She’d already spent too much of her life with her face pressed up against possibility’s windowpane watching the opportunities pass her by. If she wanted anything to come from her life
now,
post-children, post-bookstore, post-past mistakes, she couldn’t afford to let her body—or her emotions—dictate her behavior because of one earthshaking soul-shattering absolutely-to-die-for kiss from an undercover impostor she’d met, for Pete’s sake,
yesterday.

Schoolmarms and desperadoes. The attraction was classic.

The knowledge played havoc with her thoughts.

“I want you too badly,” he’d said to her. “I’d take you down right here, but...”

Oh, God, why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he just done it and gotten it over with so she could hate him for taking advantage of the situation, instead of hating herself for still wanting him to? Damn it to hell, for a thirty-five
year
old not-quite-virginal mother of two she was awfully confused.

Furiously she clattered the dishes out of the sink, stacked them, ran the sink full of scalding water and dumped the dishes back into it. Her hands resembled lobsters by the time she’d finished, but she barely noticed, turning from dishes to straightening, vacuuming, dusting and food preparation with a dogged let’s-avoid-thought zeal and concentration.

To and fro, past her while she worked, Mamie’s boys came and went, leaving a trail of blue Kool-Aid in their wake. Mamie and her aquatic face mask surfaced long enough to crack the seal on tonight’s rum, mix it with pink lemonade, sugar, ice and grenadine in the blender and depart
toward the bathroom with two large glasses of the mix to have a chat with her mother.