Just in Time (8 page)

He sat, watched the tide of pink creep up the porcelain skin of her chest, her throat, into her cheeks, and felt the heat rising in himself right along with it. Even as she tried to be matter-of-fact, tried to pretend that all those dirty thoughts, that entire shot list hadn’t been hers, when he knew they had been. He was looking at her, and she was looking straight back at him, her blue eyes caught in his gaze, and she seemed to have forgotten that she was holding her fork. He was ready to lay her right down on this table, and she could see it. Never mind what he’d told Solomon. Never mind what he’d told Faith. He couldn’t help himself.

“You know,” Bella said after a minute, “I’m the last to be prejudiced because somebody’s in the business. How could I be?”

“Looks like you still could be in that business, too, whatever you say.” Will tore his gaze from Faith and concentrated on Bella. “Easy to see where Faith gets her good looks. Although,” he added with his best smile, “I won’t go any further with that. Such a thing as dinner table conversation, at least that’s what my own mum tells me.”

Faith passed him a dish. “More green beans?”

“What, nobody’s ever told you that you’re as pretty as your mum?” He took it from her and served himself up a few more vegetables. At least it wasn’t eggplant—which had sounded terrible, and turned out to be aubergine. But then, he didn’t care for aubergine, either. “Hard to believe.”

Bella laughed. “You are so good. You’ve really got the gift, haven’t you?”

“I have?” Not quite the reaction he’d expected, because there was a cynical gleam in her eye.

“In fact, you’ve got more than that. You weren’t standing behind the door when anything was handed out, that’s obvious. Good thing you brought him over tonight, honey,” Bella told Faith. “Because this one…” She shook her head. “I could have given you a run for your money, back in the day. But Faith? No. She’s not up to your weight.”

“Mom.” Faith’s color was even higher now. “Please. We talked about this.”

“Men like you…” Bella sighed. “You’re like that chocolate cheesecake going around and around in the display case at the diner. It looks so good, you just can’t help yourself. It tastes just that good, too. You’re taking that first bite, and you’re thinking, oh, yeah, this is delicious, and I’m not sorry. And then it’s gone, and, yep, you’re just that sorry.”

“Uh…” Will sat, at a loss for once.

“Thanks for the tip, Mom,” Faith said. “Please stop.”

“Hope I’m—” Will began, then broke off. “Hope I’m a bit more than that,” he managed. “More than…ah….chocolate cheesecake.”

“You’re thinking I’m racist,” Bella said calmly. “But I’m not. Chocolate cheesecake’s delicious. So is regular old white cheesecake. So is…lemon cheesecake. But it’s all the same in the end. A real nice moment on the lips, and a lifetime of regret on the hips.”

“All right,” Faith said. “We get it.” The color was all the way there now. Will didn’t think he’d ever seen a woman blush as much as she did, and he was embarrassed himself, and a little offended, and turned on as hell by her all the same. But however embarrassed he was, she was more so.

“So I’m not specially bad for her because I’m Maori,” he said. “Just because I’m…”

“Yeah. Because you’re that,” Bella said. “Too good-looking. Too used to getting it easy. And, honey,” she told her daughter, “if you have to take a number, take a pass. I’m just telling you for your own good,” she said as Faith uttered a choked little sound of protest. “We can all see it. Not like he’s hiding it. I’m just putting it out there.”

It was out there, all right. It was right out there. And whatever his chances had been, they were that much less now.

“I’m sorry,” Faith said when they were in her truck again, driving back to her place. Their place. “I didn’t know that would happen. But she’s protective.”

“I managed to suss that out, yeh. Reeled me in, didn’t she. And then she got me straight through the gills.” He didn’t think he’d ever been so thoroughly dismissed.

“Sorry about that,” she said again.

“No worries.” He did his best to pretend that he hadn’t cared. “She can think what she likes, though I hope I’m not as bad as all that.”

“I can tell you’re offended. And I’m sure you’re thinking, what right does she have to say anything? When she talks about the skin trade, and what she used to do, and all that. But it’s because she’s a mom. A
great
mom. She’s trying to make sure I don’t make the same mistakes she did, just like she always has. She taught me that, and everything else, too. How to stand up for myself, and how to stand on my own two feet, not to depend on anybody else. That you can’t count on anyone but yourself, and how not to get sucked into thinking you can.”

“Well, that’s a bit harsh. I’d like to think you can count on some people.”

“Well, her,” Faith amended. “I can count on her. Because she’s still a mom. She wants me to be independent, but she has me manage her apartment complex, when she could get somebody with real handyman skills to do it, and then she pretends I’m doing her a favor. She does it because that’s what she can do for me. She couldn’t send me to college, but she’s helping me pay off the loans all the same. She does what she can do. Everything she can do. And she’s taught me how to do the rest for myself, so I can survive.”

It sounded like such a lonely life. Such a hard life. The two of them against the world? “I wouldn’t have said that she wasn’t a good mum,” he said cautiously, because she sounded a bit defensive, and why was that?

“She was,” Faith said again. “She went to every parent-teacher conference, even if she’d just gotten home from doing two shows a night. On her feet for hours every night in spike heels, with that smile plastered on her face. Once she got the showgirl job, that is, because before that, yeah, she was an exotic dancer, and she wouldn’t be ashamed to tell you so. So if she seems a little jaded about men, a little cynical? She’s got reasons. But she’d trade shifts so she could go to Back-to-School night, even when the other parents didn’t talk to her. That’s the kind of person she is. She’s always held her head high.”

“But it’s Vegas.”

“Doesn’t mean people don’t still look down on women who take their clothes off for money. And she wasn’t a hooker, if that’s what you’re thinking.” She was driving a bit faster now, speeding down Tropicana Boulevard, her hands clenching on the wheel. “In fact, that’s the one time I got in trouble in school. Fourth grade. A boy said my mother was a hooker. He didn’t even know quite what it meant, I’m sure. He’d heard it from his parents. I didn’t know, either. But I knew it was bad.”

“What did you do?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t her usual Faith-laugh. It was short. Dry. “I punched him. Gave him a bloody nose. Then I kicked him in the balls. Man, I’ll tell you, he went down like a
rock
. My mom had to come get me at school, because I got suspended. I’m a dangerous enemy, just so you know.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But I suspect your mum is, too. What did she say?”

“She told me not to fight her battles. I asked her what a hooker was, and she said, ‘That’s a woman who has to have sex for money.’ You notice that?
Has to
. She said, and I still remember this, ‘So you know? No, I’m not a hooker. But I’m not going to look down on women who do what they have to do to take care of themselves, or to take care of their kids. We’re all just doing what we have to do to get by.’”

He didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything.

“She was a good mom,” she repeated after a minute. “She had fun, sure she did. You just heard her tell you so, because she’s honest. But she told me I was smart, and that being smart mattered. She made sure I wouldn’t have to use my body to survive. She pushed me in school. She was proud of me.”

“I can see that.”

“And you know, men want women to be sexy. Then they look down on them for being sexy. Like if they’re sexy, that’s all they are. My mom’s more than that.” She shook her head, pulled onto Torrey Pines at the light, and slowed to twenty-five. “I’m not making sense, I suppose.”

“No. You are. So where was your dad?”

“Married.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.” She sighed, pulled into the little parking lot of the apartment complex, and turned the engine off, but kept sitting there, so he did too. “She didn’t know, of course. Because men are good at lying. Some men, anyway,” she went on hastily, as if that would be a shock to him. “She didn’t tell him about me, because she didn’t want to wreck his wife’s marriage. She told me the truth, though, when I was old enough to hear it. She didn’t sugarcoat it, because life’s hard, and facing the truth is the only way through. My mom’s a decent lady, although I don’t expect you to see that.”

“I see it. And my dad buggered off himself, didn’t he,” he found himself admitting. “Worse than that, I guess you’d say. After five kids, when I was eighteen. So I know about strong mums who do what they have to do. And I know about looking after your mum, too. About wanting to protect her. Don’t worry about me. She was keeping you safe. That’s a mum’s job, keeping her kids safe.”

She was still sitting there in the dark, and she didn’t look like she was moving. Normally, that would have been his signal that a woman wanted him to kiss her. Normally.

“You know,” she said, looking at him at last, “you’re just way too confusing.”

That startled a laugh out of him. “Me? How?”

“Would you just be one way? Let me make up my mind? At first I think you’re a player, and my mom’s completely right. And then you’re so
sweet
. Stop that. It’s messing me up.”

He wanted to kiss her. He’d never wanted to do anything more. If he was sweet…she was that, too, and so much else besides. Sweet, and warm, and curvy, and so bloody sexy. Her embarrassment, and her passion, defending her mother. The way she’d blushed, the way he’d seen her breath coming a bit faster, there at dinner, when he’d looked at her. He’d known that if he’d put his palm on her chest, just above that wide vee of neckline, he’d have felt her heart galloping, and the need to do it had pulled at him. Was still pulling at him.

So, yes, he wanted to kiss her. But he didn’t. “Your mum’s right,” he said instead, and felt the wrench of it, the twist in his gut. “I’m a player. I’m chocolate cheesecake. And I’m leaving in less than three weeks.”

“Yes. You are.”

He looked at her there in the dark. She wasn’t looking at him, was staring out through the windshield, her hands still on the wheel despite the fact that they weren’t going anywhere at all, and her expression was so…so troubled. So sad, and it was making him sad, too.

“I’m never noble,” he said, “and I wouldn’t have said I had a clue how to be. I’m doing my best, though. I’m leaving, and I don’t stick anyway. So I’m going to get out of this truck, and I’m not even going to kiss you goodnight, because I like you too much. And I don’t want to muck that up.”

She turned her head at that. “All right.” It was just a breath. Had he been wrong? Did she want him to kiss her?

He couldn’t help it. His hand went out like it belonged to somebody else and tucked a wisp of hair that had fallen down from its knot back behind her ear, then brushed her cheek. Her skin was soft, and her eyes were, too, that gorgeous mouth had parted, and she was leaning into him a bit, surely.

And then she pulled away like it was an effort and got out of the truck, and he followed her, and said goodnight, and
didn’t
kiss her.

And why was it, he wondered as he walked down the hall to his empty apartment, that doing the right thing had to feel so wrong?