In the Midnight Rain (34 page)

All at once, work didn't seem that important. He had a bag of groceries and his jaunty good humor said he would cook for her. The idea of sitting in the kitchen, drinking a beer while he played music and chopped things and teased her, was a thousand times more appealing than going off to her little cottage alone.

But this would not last. Work would. And after such a long struggle to piece together the missing bits of Mabel's life, Ellie couldn't afford to squander all the raging creative energy she felt. She needed to pour all this heat and emotion into her work. It would be wasted on sex.

And yet, he was temptation made flesh. He put the bag of groceries down on the step and took her hand, tugging her to her feet, then wrapped his arms all around her, hips nestled close, and kissed her. Deep. Those knowing lips and teasing tongue, the muscles in his back shifting under her hands, the way they did when he was over her, in her. "Mmm," he said, a long, low, satisfied sound. "I've been thinking about that all day." He shifted his body, rubbing them together playfully, and put his forehead against hers. "You were such a wicked thing last night that I've been thinking up questions for you to avoid all day."

He smelled like the air here, and the greenhouse flowers lingered on his skin, and Ellie leaned in close, letting him want her, impossible as it was, letting herself want him back.

"Uh, Blue," she said before she could weaken.

He slid a hand under her shirt and his palm ignited tiny nerves across her belly. "Mmm-hmmm?"

"I have to work tonight."

"Tomorrow."

She turned her face into his thick hair, let the roughness of jaw graze her brow. "No, tonight."

"Aw." He raised his head. "Really?"

"Yes. I learned so much today." She let it fill her. "So much."

The blue eyes twinkled. "Have dinner with me first and tell me all about it. I got everything for chicken."

Something warm and deep pushed at her then, making her lean forward and put her hands on his lean cheeks, and tilt forward to kiss that beautiful mouth, very gently. "You know something, Blue Reynard?"

"What?"

She almost said,
I'm so crazy in love with you I can't breathe,
but instead said, "You are the sexiest man God ever made."

Something funny—hurt—crossed his face, so fast it was gone in a blink, quickly replaced with that sly, knowing smile. "Told you so."

She laughed.

"All right, then." He let her go, smoothing a hand down her arm. "I'll let you work. Come find me when you're done. You know the way."

"You might be asleep."

"Darlin', you know I never sleep." He lifted one wicked brow. "And even if I am, you can surely think of some way to wake me up."

Ellie laughed. "All right."

He waved and walked by her, a little stiff across the shoulders, she thought, like he was self-conscious or a little hurt. Then her eyes fell to the jeans-clad hips, high and lean, and a tactile memory of that flesh against her palms rose up to tempt her—and she had to wonder if she'd lost her mind.

But Gwen's voice came back to her—
And I'll tell you one thing that Doc just can't bring himself to say: That woman loved Peaches McCall, heart, soul, and bone
—and Ellie told herself to hold the lust, the longing. Feel it. Because Mabel was all around her, pressing in, her voice a soft, throaty croon of longing.

Use it. Ellie turned, whistled for April, and hurried to her notes, to her book, to her work.

18

S
ince the night she'd first slept with him, weeks before, Blue hadn't been alone at night. He carried the groceries inside, putting the chicken and salad into the fridge, the tomatoes on the windowsill. The rich red of the fruit slowed him for a minute. It reminded him of rubies, the rubies set in a soft line across silver in the ring he'd bought this afternoon. He'd spent a lot longer trying to choose it than he'd planned, dithering between these rounded rubies in a faintly medieval ring or the square-cut emerald in white gold. He didn't know why it had to be color for her. Didn't know why silver, either. In sudden worry, he pulled the jeweler's box from his pocket and looked again. Tension eased. It was beautiful. Right.

And one day's delay was no big deal. Ellie was passionate about her work, and he'd sensed the undercurrent in her—the conflict she felt over whether to stay and spend that passion on him or give it to her work. He'd ached to coax her to give it to him, but in the end had tried to be graceful. She didn't—as Annie sometimes had—show up all bored and lonely, and want him to stop in the middle of some experiment. He wanted to give Ellie the same respect. She'd said she worked evenings, and she'd shifted her habits for him all these weeks.

Still. He clicked the box closed and wondered what to do about dinner. About the long evening ahead. Sasha came running when he opened the back door, and he fed her, then prepared a plate for Piwacket and called her.

She didn't come. A stab of worry went through him and he called more loudly, going to the kitchen door, listening for her reply. When she still hadn't appeared, he took the stairs to the study and peeked under the desk. She was there, curled in a ball, and she lifted her head when she saw him, yawning. Relief washed through him, a flood of cool against the heat of worry.

He picked her up, so tiny and thin she was nearly weightless, and she curled into his neck with a purr, her body warm against the hollow worry in his chest.

It struck him that he was expecting to have to pay for all this—the joy he'd found with Ellie. While he went around feeling good and happy, there was an apprehensive part of him that was waiting for the other shoe. When would he pay? And how much?

Piwacket lifted her head and gave his ear a moist bump, trilling softly. Blue held her and wanted to believe that her long, happy old age was a sign that things had changed in his life—that he wasn't Job, being tested, or a man living under a curse. He wanted to believe he would be able to enjoy this, but in the dark, with rain beginning to fall outside the windows, he could not quite shake his worry.

Lightning cut across the sky, followed by a sharp clap of thunder that sent Piwacket flying from his arms to her hiding place under the desk. She glared up at him, and he chuckled. "I know you find this hard to believe, but I'm not in charge of the weather." If a cat could have rolled its eyes, hers would have rolled then. Blue grinned, and tugged playfully on her tail, his apprehension dissolving with the storm.

A little superstition wasn't surprising, given his experience, but it would be crazy to let it run his life.

All through the night, he rattled around his house. He settled first in front of the television, and surfed for an hour through fifty-seven channels before he got bored with it, and went upstairs to the office where his computer was. He signed on to the Internet and searched for something that might interest him, and finally broke down and opened his E-mail, hoping for a note from Ellie.

It gave him a funny sense of déjà vu to find one and feel the pleased surprise, just as he always had before she arrived, all angles and toughness, in his real life. He opened the message.

B—

I'm sitting here, with Mabel's song—the one song, not all of them—rushing through me, pouring through my soul, through my bones, and I finally get it. "Hearts and bones and blood in a tangle..." It makes so much more sense now! I have so much to tell you, but for now, just this: She loved Peaches McCall with everything in her.

It has taken so much work to get to this point this time that it's all the sweeter. This is why I do this—this feeling right here, when it all comes together and I feel like I am that musician. For just a little while, I can feel what it might be like to have the gift of music in me, feel it being born into the world through me. Was it Salieri who said, "Music is the language of God"? That's what I think. There are many beautiful things in the world, but music is the highest, most beautiful, purest of all.

I do sometimes wonder why musicians seem to have to suffer more than most people. Ever noticed that? They have to pay such a high price for the gift—even now, in our own times. Even the ones who get to be more or less happy and live long lives somewhere pay some huge price for it.

But you know what, Blue? To have music in me like it was in Mabel, like it was in John Lennon, like it is in Eric Clapton, I'd pay that price. I really would.

Ah. You know what I mean. I don't have to say it to you. You know.

Thanks for being understanding about my need to come here alone tonight and work.

Love, Ellie

Blue stared at the note, blue letters against a white screen, his heart full. Then he hit the Reply key.

Ah, Ellie, I think I fell for you the first time you posted like that in the blues group—nobody captures that spirit of musicians and their power like you do. Is it wrong to ask if I can read the book before anybody else? I'm dying to see what you've done.

See you in the morning, darlin'.

He smiled to himself, patting himself on the back for being so mature and letting her do her thing. Then, because he couldn't stand to leave it like that, stop talking to her, he opened a second window.

P.S. What I'd really like to be doing now instead of typing notes in the dark and drinking bourbon and getting annoyed with the idiots in the newsgroups (don't these people have lives? g) is kissing you.

I'd like to hear a knock at my back door and I'd like you to be standing there naked, and I'd like to answer the door naked, and then I'd like—oh, I bet you can figure out the rest.

Tomorrow, sugar.

He sent the mail, then went to stand by the window. It offered a slightly different view of the cottage than the kitchen window, but through the rain, he could see lights glowing in the cabin.

He missed her. He wanted her. His life, which had been acceptable before she appeared, was empty and boring without her. Piwacket trailed around his ankles and he picked her up, idly rubbing her skinny shoulders as he mentally planned his proposal—for Ellie, it should be something beautiful and romantic. Something that would make her get all choked up and teary, that she could tell her friends about for forty years. In his mind, he saw it all—a granddaughter with Ellie's eyes, saying, "My grandpa's the most romantic guy in the world."

Oh, yeah.

* * *

Ellie was still lost in the book when the sun started coming up over the eastern trees, staining the sky a soft purple first, then lighter and finally giving the world a hard wash of red. She blinked and stretched her shoulders, realizing for the first time that she'd been up all night.

But what a night! Wandering over to the fridge, she took out a gallon of tea she'd made a day or two earlier and took a long swallow. Across her shoulders, she could feel the strain of such a long stretch of writing, and her eyes were grainy from a lack of sleep, but there was a jumping kind of restless giddiness, too.

She glanced at the desk, with the piles of paper piled up beside the small, efficient printer, and felt a soft dizziness. She lifted the mouth of the tea jug to her lips again and the moisture wet tissue long dried, forgotten, and it tasted as good as anything she'd ever known.

Finally—finally—Mabel had come to her last night. Ellie had played one song over and over, a song Mabel had written, then sung, with a kind of whispery brokenness Ellie had always loved: "Hearts and Bones," a ballad of lost love that must have been written for Peaches.

And it was Blue who had made it come home for Ellie, Blue with his seductive mouth and lost soul, that irresistible combination. Mabel, as Gwen had said, must have felt much the same for Peaches, and unlike Ellie, had believed it was a true and honest love.

In her slightly light-headed state, she glanced toward the big house where Blue probably slept right now. It was so easy to imagine him there, tangled in the humidly softened sheets, his long limbs and dark, smooth skin; his dangerous mouth slack in sleep, his lost soul hidden as it always was, behind a defense of wry beauty.

The work she'd done tonight was very good. She knew it, deep. Knew it from the way Mabel had just simply come alive for her during the long, quiet midnight hours when the rest of the world slept.

But there were questions remaining. Ellie had figured out the why of Mabel's disappearance—it was a method of atonement. Because she'd sinned so mightily, she gave up one of the things she cared most about: her music.

Undressing, Ellie wondered about Mabel's son.

Not many women could just walk away from a child. And by all accounts, Mabel had been quite fond of children. It didn't make sense that she'd just leave her baby with his grandmother and disappear, not even to atone for killing his father.