Accompanying Alice (20 page)

George returned with two cases of beer, six
two liter
bottles of pop, several bags of pretzels, some crushed ice and a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of carnations that he gruffly handed to Alice as he asked for directions to her ice chest.

Uncle Delbert left greasy fingerprints on her doorknob as he asked for a rag on which to leave greasy fingerprints.

Gabriel laughed and chatted, outgoing and likable, betraying nothing of himself to anyone. Vacuum cleaner in hand, Alice stared at him through the lace curtains on her dining room windows, watching him move, involuntarily moistening her lips and catching her breath when he removed his shirt to lean further into the engine of Uncle Delbert’s Continental. Sunshine glistened on the sweat staining his back, and before she could help herself, she thoroughly appreciated every lean tan line and angle of his back, the ripple of every muscle in his shoulders and arms.

Mamie came silently out of the bathroom and, following the drift of Alice’s gaze, watched Gabriel, too.

“Nice,” she observed in her sulky sultry voice.

Alice jumped guiltily and turned. Mamie’s eyes were slightly glazed and the glass in her hand was empty. She giggled and shook her head, putting a dilatory finger to her lips.

“I won’t tell,” she whispered, patting Alice’s arm. “Our secret. But you can always recognize the women who live on nothing but fantasies. Mmm-hmm.” Mamie eyed Gabriel again, drew a regretful breath and continued on toward the kitchen. She stopped suddenly in the doorway, swinging back to Alice. “If you want to sneak off with him somewhere for a bit, I’ll cover for you. ‘Course—” she pursed her lips thoughtfully, narrowing her eyes “First time’s better if you let it build—you know, if you’re forced to abstain for a while.” She lifted a confidential brow and shut her eyes, shivering theatrically. “Anticipation, you know? By the time we all leave...” Her lips curved in a secret smile and her eyelids drooped for a moment as she retreated to some fine and clearly, private, place. Then she confided, “Anyway, it works for George and—”

“Oh
God
!”
Alice yanked the vacuum cleaner plug from the wall, stepped on the retractor that brought it whipping back into the machine and fled in horror. She didn’t want to hear about Mamie and George’s intimacies, didn’t want to dish up girl talk complete with suggested sex. And she didn’t want to be spied on by unwelcome relatives with big eyes and mouths who figured they could say anything because blood ties gave them the right—no matter how thin the blood.

What she felt about Gabriel was personal, what she wanted or didn’t want from him was private. What she’d done—or not done—was nobody’s business but her own. She was not on display for the kinfolk’s entertainment. What she was, was tired, embarrassed, full of rebellious hormones and... And...

She felt the moist track of tears down her cheeks and scrubbed at them with an ineffectual wrist. On top of everything else, she was crying in the back hallway. Because she had ninety-five seed pearls left to sew on Grace’s veil in the next three days, a houseful of strange family members who would never leave her alone, and a
“thing”
the size of Cleveland for a man who was pretending—far too effectively for comfort—that he loved her.

With a silent
“Grow up, Allie,”
she shoved the vacuum cleaner into the hall closet and for an instant contemplated climbing into the comforting anonymous darkness after it. Then she resolutely drew herself erect. This was dumb, she advised herself silently. It was stupid. It was stress. That was it! All she needed was to rest and relax—to spend a month out of touch in the Marquesa Islands with nothing but biting flies and soughing winds to distract her. Alone. As far as she was concerned, heaven would be the place without telephones, weddings, relatives or men named Gabriel…

“Alice, do you have any—” Gabriel asked and stopped, concerned. “Alice?” he said uncertainly.

With a start, Alice jerked the tail of her shirt from her pants and blotted her eyes gently, mindful of the appearance rubbing them would create. She’d been so busy feeling sorry for herself she hadn’t heard him come in.

“Do I have any what?” she demanded, trying to keep the sniffle out of her voice.

He ignored the question, ran a finger down the collar of her shirt. “Are you crying?”

“No.” The lie was ragged from the clog in her throat.

She looked guiltily at the floor, trying to swallow the lump of mortification that wanted to raise more tears. She wanted to run, but there was no place to go. She was boxed in by a closed bathroom door with a full
length mirror reflecting back at her everything that was going on, a closed closet door, a closed bedroom door and a man who smelled of sunshine and salt, whose arms would probably feel just too damn good and secure if she let him put them around her.

The tears ran before she could catch them. She was so damn tired of not being in control.

Gabriel took a step nearer, yesterday’s knowledge that she would pull herself together better if he left her alone forgotten. He didn’t want to leave her alone to handle anything. His fingers closed on her chin, tried to force it up. Alice jerked away, turned away. The mirrored door hid nothing. She averted her face and confronted the closet. Tucking his hands in his back pockets, Gabriel retreated a minute half a step.

“Allie, let me help. Tell me what I can do.”

Alice shook her head. “Go away,” she mumbled miserably. “Don’t touch me. Don’t be nice to me. And don’t call me Allie. People I like call me Allie, and I don’t want to like you.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I
am.
”
She tried not to make the tears worse by being too adamant; they got worse anyway. “You’re the one who doesn’t make sense.” It was hard to whisper through a sob. “You touch me and kiss me and it’s all pretend. They all know that, and we know they know, but we pretend, anyway, and I feel like such a
virgin,
which is stupid when you think about it and—” Her forehead bumped the closet door. “Why am I telling you this? I didn’t even know you yesterday morning and when you get down to it—”

“Alice.”

“—it’s really no better now, we just look at each other and know things and, really, doesn’t that frighten you just a little bit—”

“Alice.”

“—and I know I’m babbling, but you make me nervous because I never know what you’re going to do, except that I suspect things, and then you do them and I don’t know if they’re real or part of an act—”

“Alice.
” Her distrust tore at him. More than anything in the world,
he
wanted her trust, needed it. She had to know. He had to show her—

He caught her wrist and hauled her to him, sliding one hand down her back to anchor her hips to his, twisting the other in her hair. Frightened silent, Alice stared up at him.

“I don’t do theater for just anyone,” he whispered savagely. “Certainly not for you, not this...” He rubbed himself against her, offering the painful hardness in his jeans as a graphic illustration of her effect on him. “If you can’t believe anything else, believe this. I want you, I want to be inside you, no one else, and I haven’t for a long, long time. I look at you and this is what I feel. I want you hot and wet and melting around me. I want to fill you with me. I want
to lose myself with you.”

He shut his eyes, stopped to collect himself, the breath shuddering through him. There would be no calmness while he held her; he wouldn’t let her go. Something irrevocable had happened to him today, something wisdom dictated he avoid. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

He didn’t want to.

He opened his eyes. ‘‘I’ve never wanted to lose control before, Alice, never thought I might. There’s more to it than this, but even this is more than I can afford to offer you right now.” He took her unresisting hand, guided it down between them so that she cupped him, held him. His groin tightened, and he pressed himself up into her palm with a stifled curse. “You do this to me whenever I look at you, think of you.” He swallowed. “Believe it. And be careful.”

Then he let her go. Alice staggered back, shocked by his intensity, her sudden freedom, and reached for his arms to support herself. Gabriel’s hands locked beneath her elbows. Breath fluttered in her lungs, knots of expectation formed in her stomach; she couldn’t take her eyes from him.
If
was
no longer the question;
might
no possibility; only
when
maintained the distance between them.

This was not Matt in the back seat of his father’s Ford fumbling to unfasten her bra and get inside her pants. This was a man, adult and dangerous, issuing her an invitation while at the same time warning her to be wary with her RSVP.

And her confusion.

There was a whirring from somewhere in the house—the blender in the kitchen. Outside, boys screamed and hollered, the hood of Uncle Delbert’s car thunked shut. Through the bathroom door behind them, they could hear the slippery squeak of Aunt Kate rising from the tub, the sound of water gurgling down the drain. The hallway was dusky and intimate, airless and warm. The skin over Gabriel’s biceps was smooth and sweaty, slippery; the muscles beneath it hard. The skin over Alice’s elbows was soft, sensitive over the inside of her arms. The texture of Gabriel’s fingers was rough by comparison, eliciting skittish leaps from Alice’s pulse when his hands stroked up then down her arms. He lifted a hand to brush her mouth with his thumb.

“Whatever comes between us, we started with the truth. Wherever this goes, I won’t play make believe with you, Alice,” he promised softly. “I don’t think I can.” His knuckles caressed her cheek. “I don’t think I want to.”

“Gabriel, please, I don’t think I’m ready to handle—”

The screened front door whined open, banged closed.

“Alice,” Meg singsonged from the middle of the living room. “We’re he-ere....”

*

Chatter and laughter assaulted the house at every turn.

“So, what, do you think Jack’s going to do it?” Meg blotted the lettuce she’d just shredded between two paper towels, then dumped it into the available salad bowl. “We need the kitchen done, and I’ve got to tell Tim something so he doesn’t go out and hire somebody else—which I don’t want because Jack’ll get what I want done right the first time.”

Sam shrugged and crumbled a lump of Danish blue cheese over the lettuce. “I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him. If I try to talk to him about it he thinks I’ve been out digging up charity for him. It drives me up the wall. He’s out of work two months and already his pregnant working
wife has emasculated him. Never mind he’s the best fool carpenter in six states—
‘
fool’ being the operative word. I mean really. I knew the guy could be Mr. Sensitive when I married him, but—”

“—no, no,
no
!” Helen exclaimed into the phone. “I said eight
large
pizzas, one with everything but anchovies, one with everything but hot peppers, one with half black olives and half green peppers with Italian sausage over the whole thing, one—”

“—oh, yes.” Aunt Kate nodded violently at Twink as she took another long sip of a tall rum-and-something. “She said it was a dreadful trip. Dysentery, spitting camels, sometimes bombs—horrible! Never go to that country in the summer—”

“—no, Uncle Del,” Edith shouted down the basement stairs. “Mom said to
bring
Mamie, George and the boys when you meet her for dinner. She said she
doesn’t
want to meet you alone. Oh, no, that’s not what I mean—”