Accompanying Alice (37 page)

Alice grinned, watching her high-handed, gung-ho sister tickle her grand-nephew when she thought no one was watching. Poor Skip had swallowed his sense of propriety, stopped wearing three-piece suits and hung around the family for weeks hoping the major would relent and come back to him. Helen, of course, had been unsympathetic to his plight despite the phone calls from her sisters urging her to have a little heart and at least reconsider the man. She had, however, invited a pretty petite, sassy-mouthed Southern Army Captain home with her for Thanksgiving, winked at her sisters and introduced the captain to Skip.

Skip had gotten the last laugh on that one, though. By the end of the holiday weekend he had, much to Helen’s supreme consternation, requested an immediate transfer to his company’s Seattle office and married the captain on Valentine’s Day ten weeks later.

As for Helen herself, Alice suspected she was finally about to receive her own comeuppance in spades from the Navy photographer who’d recently thrown the major for a full loop. Sad to say, the rest of the Brannigan girls were having a field day at the newly discombobulated major’s
expense. On the other hand, Alice decided, it was about time Helen succumbed to the hearts and flowers she’d once tried to bury her sisters under.

With a final mental thumbs up to the course of justice, Alice’s awareness moved on.

Edith had gone back to school and become a visiting nurse
practitioner. Twink still managed the same law office but now had another son. Sam was unendingly
Sam,
authority’s tester. She was also now the first female
Fire Chief
in the area. And Grace...

Again Alice smiled. Quiet, crowd-hating Grace strapped her toddler in the stroller, her infant in the backpack, picked up her walking stick and hollered for the dog, then spent her days walking the wooded back roads of the Upper Peninsula for Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, studying the physical drift of the land.

So much to celebrate, Alice thought gladly. Each of her sisters were still marked individuals whom love had tempered but stolen nothing from.

Her attention shifted proudly to Allyn and Rebecca, sitting close together on one side of the picnic table, still not quite comfortable at being included among the adult women. They’d grown, too; changing, shaping themselves to fit their own futures. Becky and Michael still had differences to outlast, but they seemed to be learning to sort out those differences on their own instead of running home to Alice with them all the time. Their son, Alice’s first grandchild, had
been baptized today.

Allyn, the formerly frightened and defiant wanderer who couldn’t decide who she was, had suddenly discovered an untapped determination in herself, collected her nerve and signed up for a six-month stint as part of the galley crew aboard a marine study vessel in the Pacific. Her doggedness at winning the post for which she’d had almost no concrete qualifications still amazed Alice, who’d never known about her daughter’s passion for marine biology. Now Allyn was well on her way to getting her Bachelor of Science degree in aquatic studies with honors, had chosen to pursue her master’s degree through the coast guard, and was already putting out feelers that could take her to Woodshole or Pensacola to work on her doctorate.

And Gabriel.

Alice took a deep breath trying to quiet the giddy beat her heart still took on every time she thought about him. He’d gone straight to New Jersey from Jack Scully’s office after Markum’s arrest to get his great-great grandmother’s wedding ring out of storage, and it had taken him exactly three minutes after Grace’s and Becky’s wedding to find out that he wouldn’t have to get it sized for Alice. It already fit.

Later, at the reception, no one had been the least surprised when Becky’s mother and her escort were mysteriously unavailable for their dance.

Even at the memory, Alice blushed. She and Gabriel had spent a decidedly wanton few days getting to know one another properly in every room of the house. On the fourth day, while Alice guiltily greeted Allyn who had arrived home at last, Gabriel sat on the edge of the bed and gingerly pulled his mother’s last letter out of the pocket of the jeans he’d shed in favor of the tux for the wedding. The paper was crumbled, dirty and hard to read, having spent six months wadded into a ball in the basket at his apartment, but it didn’t matter. The letter still said what he remembered, that his parents loved him and wanted to see him, no matter where
—
or who
—
he was. They were taking a sabbatical from their mission and would spend the summer with family in Iowa. He hadn’t much time.

By the time Alice had finished her heart to heart with Allyn and come searching for him, he’d found the suitcase she kept tucked in the back of her closet and had it half packed. He’d eyed her sheepishly for half a heartbeat, then he’d well and truly swept her off her feet, spiriting her away to meet his parents and marrying her at a simple Quaker ceremony inside of a month. Alice had already decided to live with him no matter what, but true to his word to Jack Scully, he’d tied up his loose ends and left the Bureau to become a crisis counselor at nearby Oakland University, putting both his experience and his educational background to use. His transition from undercover agent to husband, stepfather and a mostly eight
hour
a
day career life had not
always been smooth, but every instant of it had been worthwhile, had served to cement the bond between him and Alice.

Alice’s own life in particular seemed to have struck a reckless course for new horizons, sailing far beyond the edges of her most unrestrained desires. She no longer hid her competence under a waffling exterior and had made a deal to buy the string of
café
bookstores Skip had once asked her to design and oversee. Under Gabriel’s gentle encouragement she’d become a firm believer in risking everything to achieve a dream. She still found it incredible when she thought about how their lives had settled and changed together, weathered disaster, grown and blossomed. There was only one dream that they’d agreed to postpone until everything else
was
settled. And with two years behind them, and Gabriel’s undercover life—including any leftover testimony he’d had to make during the last twenty-four months—out of the way, Alice decided firmly that it was time to make one more dream come true.

“You look pretty complacent.” Gabriel slid his arms around her waist, rested his palms on the flat of her belly. “What are you doing, counting our blessings?”

Alice rubbed her husband’s chin with the back of her head, nodding. “Feels good to know where I belong, who I am.”

Gabriel’s arms flexed tight around her; he buried his face in her hair. “God, does it ever,” he muttered fervently. “You’ll never know.”

Alice turned in his embrace, reaching to hold him, too.

“But I do know,” she said. “If I hadn’t found you that day, I never would—”

Gabriel kissed her quiet. “You’ve always been stronger than you think,” he returned softly. “Even without me you’d have been all right. You’d have grown and survived and become who you are, anyway. It’s me who was lucky that day...” His eyes shut on a prayer of thanks. “I’ve gotten so much from you, Alice, I can’t say. My own family back, a whole new family here—sisters, daughters, a grandchild. A real life.”

“But if it wasn’t for you,” Alice argued gently, “I’d be a lonely brittle frustrated not
quite
forty
year
old. You make me—”

“Whole.” Gabriel kissed her. “Complete.” His tongue made a lazy tour of her mouth. “
“And these two shall be as one.”
“ He quoted the words from their marriage ceremony as tongue and lips traced the familiar but always new trail along her throat, up the sensitive area below her right ear. “
“One heart, one mind, one spirit, one body...”
”

“Two minds,” Alice murmured, arching her neck for him. “One heart, one spirit,
two
minds and one body.”

“As long as we come back to that,” Gabriel muttered, skimming his hands over the sides of her cotton covered breasts. “I don’t care if we have six of everything else.”

“Mmm.” Alice’s arms locked around his neck, and she pulled herself up to meet his mouth. “I think you’ve definitely got something there—”

There was a thump in the hallway.

“Alice, aren’t you going to bring the—Oh!” Edith gasped, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think. Pardon me.”

“Ah-ah-ah, Alice,” Helen teased from the doorway. “This may be the place, but it’s not the time. You’ve got guests in the yard, an open window and you didn’t even shut the—”

“Thank you, Helen, I’ll take care of it,” Gabriel said firmly, then closed the door in her face and locked it.

“How rude,” Helen commented.

“Are they actually going to stay in there now?” Edith breathed.

“Looks like it,” Helen said.

“Well!” Edith exclaimed, affronted, and then ruined the effect by giggling. “At least one of us has found a man who can handle Brannigans.”

“In his sleep,” Helen agreed, and the two of them went off, laughing.

“Well, that’s taken care of.” Gabriel turned back to his wife with an irresistible come-hither smile and a look of unabashed anticipation. “Now, where were we?”

Alice backed away from him. “No, Gabriel, we can’t. Not now. They’re all going to—”

“Let them,” he said. “They’ll talk about us no matter what we do. You’ve got to face that, Alice.”

“But—” Alice scrambled across the bed “—don’t you think we should go—”

“Yes.” Gabriel knelt on the bed, leaned over and caught her hand, drawing her toward him. “I definitely think we should.”

“Now?” Alice felt the buzz of warmth through her muscles, felt them melting. She resisted Gabriel an instant longer, prolonging the anticipation. “Shouldn’t we go do it now?”

“Wrong verb, Alice.” Gabriel tugged suddenly, and Alice sprawled on the bed. He knelt over her, pulling impatiently at the tiny buttons on her sundress. “I think what you meant was, shouldn’t we
stay
and do it now.”

“Yes.” Alice sighed. She arched to him, reveling in the instant coil of tension inside her, wishing she hadn’t put all these damn buttons between them today, wanting him inside her now. She stilled his hands by wrapping her hips around him and pulling him down to her. “I suppose that’s exactly what I meant.”

She shifted beneath him, touched moist feminine heat to the fly of his light summer pants. Gabriel groaned softly and caught her hips, rubbing himself against her. Alice pulled herself up by his shoulders, hips matching the rhythm of his, pressing them tighter. “Come to me, Gabriel,” she whispered against his mouth. “Come into me
now.”

Her eyes were dark, full of passion; her demand left him hard, impatient, trembling, ready. With a hoarse oath Gabriel tried to ease himself away from her, reaching for the decorative can on the shelf beside the bed. “Oh, God, Alice, I will. Just let me get—”

“Now,
Gabriel, please,” Alice breathed, tugging at his pants, unsnapping, unzipping, freeing him. “I’m ready
now.”
She reached between their bodies, guided him past the silky barrier between them, and with a twist of her hips sheathed him inside her.

Gabriel’s breath grew ragged with his effort to stay still inside her. “Alice
—
God, you’re killing me, Allie. Let me protect—”

Alice rocked her hips, moaned at the feel of him, hot, slick, sliding. She looked up at him through heavy-lidded eyes, arched her throat and moistened her mouth with her tongue. “Don’t want to be protected,” she gasped, lifting herself toward him again. “We’ve waited two years, everything’s taken care of. It’s time, Gabriel, it’s time...”