No Place Like Home (16 page)

I shrugged a little, daring to put my fingers on his wrist, looking at that strong, square joint to avoid his eyes. “That’s just what families do. Big families.”

“Who takes care of you?”

“I do!” I looked up to show I meant it and I liked it that way.

“Do you ever let anybody else do it?”

For a minute, I considered the question, rubbing my thumb across the silky hair on his upper arm. “Yeah, I do. My mom, my sisters. Even you—you’re very reliable in a weird kind of way.”

A flash of teeth. “That I am, ma’am.” He turned my hand over, put our palms together. “That’s not the same, though. You take little bits and pieces of help because you have so much going on all the time that you can’t turn down a little help now and again, but mainly you do it yourself.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I asked with some irritation. “You can count on yourself.”

“Everybody needs somebody, Jewel. Michael’s as independent as you are, and where would he be without you?”

I made a noise of exasperation. “Where are we going with this, Malachi? I thought we came out here just to enjoy the peace and quiet.” I shifted away, not harshly, just enough to give him the message. “Let’s not do the analyze-Jewel thing tonight, okay? I’ve had enough of it the past three months to last me the rest of my life.”

“Fair enough.” He dropped his hand, gracefully accepting my limits. Idly, he picked up a stone and tossed it over the edge of the bluff.

Quiet enveloped us. Not a tense silence or one filled with things we wanted to say and couldn’t. I admired the lights and the water and the sky, thinking no thoughts. “Tell me about your job,” I invited after awhile. “You’re a tour guide or something?”

“Adventure tours.”

I smiled, thinking of the image I’d carried of him for so long—drinking alligator blood and running with the bulls. “Very Hemingway.”

He chuckled, such a low, rich, deep sound on the night, like black mink. “Maybe. But it’s a good old time.”

I thought of bugs and snakes and bad weather. “The Amazon doesn’t sound like that much fun to me.”

“It is, though. You like rivers, honey; that’s some amazing river. She’s powerful and mysterious and full of surprises.” His voice, always heavily tinged with his southern childhood, slowed as if he had sunk into the current of a lazy river. “Sometimes, in the morning, I’d be the first one up, and it was like being the original man, squatting there at the bank, hearing all those strange birds and seeing them flash through the trees—” He made a clicking sound.

“I don’t like bugs.”

“Well, then, I’d take you on another sort of adventure.” He narrowed his eyes and studied me, pursing his lips. “The Alps. You’re a sturdy girl. You’d handle that pretty well.”

“Sturdy. Oh, thank you so much.”

He winked and lightly pinched the underside of my arm. “I like it. Healthy. You’d hike all day and be ready to party at nightfall.”

I gave him a reluctant smile, liking that vision of myself quite a bit, and he knew it. “Italian Alps, though. My ancestors would insist.”

“No problem. I love Italy.”

“Have you been all over the world?”

He shifted, propping his knee up. “Not everywhere. It’s a pretty big world, after all. Haven’t made it to China or India yet. Keep meaning to get to Egypt to see the Nile—I mean, if you like rivers, that’d be one to see.”

“Oh, yeah. And the pyramids. I’d love to see how the pyramids align with the stars. I’m a sucker for ancient Egypt.”

“Good reason for me to think of an Egyptian adventure then. You can be the first one to sign on.”

“It’s a deal.” I grinned at him. “First I want to hike the Alps, though.”

“Got it.”

“Did you really run with the bulls in Spain?”

An abashed little smile, oddly appealing. “How’d you hear about that?”

“Michael bragged about it to anyone who would listen for three seconds.”

“Yeah?” A soft chuckle. “Cool. I did, actually.” He cleared his throat ruefully. “Once was enough.”

“Scare you?”

“Yep.”

I thought about the film clips I’d seen, the bulls and the boys and men, the noise of it. Then I thought again of the Alps, cool and high and somehow serene. Malachi drifted off in his own thoughts.

After a long time, he said, “I really am sorry I was such an ass about the pie, Jewel. Took me by surprise, that’s all, and I just—” He shrugged, then looked at me. “Reacted.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing. I have a few father issues going myself.”

“You know about my dad?” He brushed invisible sand off the boulder. “What he did?”

“Some of it. Probably most of it. Killed your mother’s lover when she was in bed with him, right? And you were there when it happened.” A little kid.

A nod. “Michael wants me to just put it down, you know? But he wasn’t there.” A pause. “He wasn’t there.”

“Did you know he’s out of prison?”

He shook his head. “Michael knows better than to say anything to me about him. Most of the time.” With a hint of that earlier violence, he threw another stone. “Makes no difference to me anyway.”

“I can see that.”

“What? You think it should?”

I smiled. “Not at all. That’s your choice.”

“I can’t forgive him.” A bitterness around his mouth again, but something else, too, that wrapped tight little threads around my heart. “I don’t think about it every day anymore, but if I let down my guard, that nightmare is in my head—bam. Just like that. Still, after all these years.”

“It might be kind of an obvious question, but have you ever had any counseling? Not every kid in the world witnesses a murder, after all.”

He snorted. “No way.” He gave an involuntary little shudder. “Can’t see putting all my little pains and secrets out on some table for somebody to pick through.”

“I’m here. You could tell me.”

“I could.” He turned his head, looking at me in the dark, and I waited. His eyes glittered a little. “I’d rather kiss you.”

I shook my head, smiling. “I’m too old for you.”

“Old?” He said the word in a satisfyingly astonished way. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?”

Trouble. “What do you mean, what I’ve been thinking?”

He slid that tongue out and touched his bottom lip. I rolled my eyes, but it was only to cover the fact that it really did hit me hard. I wanted that tongue in a big way. He shifted toward me, leaning his arm into mine, undeterred. “I don’t usually have quite so much trouble figuring out a woman’s defense when it’s quite clear that she wants my body. You had to have some reason.”

“Want your body? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Oh, every little thing.”

I raised my eyebrows in skeptical fashion, trying desperately to hang on to my dignity, though we both knew that it was hopeless already.

“Come here, sugar,” he said, and before I could really do anything to stop it, he’d plucked me up like I weighed no more than a gumdrop and put me in his lap. “Quit lying.”

He put his hands on my face and tilted my head and kissed me. I smelled cinnamon on his upper lip, and tasted vanilla on the lower and there wasn’t really anything I wanted to do to stop it. It was a long, slow kiss—just lips and little whispers of tongue behind it, long and slow and gentle, not the onslaught I’d thought he’d be capable of.

Tasting that sweetness, feeling his giant hands on my face, it occurred to me that he could be dangerous. In the flavors of that kiss were hints of lust, generous helpings of sex god, but the main note was need, that bewildered loneliness of a man in search of harbor.

I’d tasted that need on the mouths of men a dozen times. And I knew that I’d give him more than he asked for. But the danger I felt in his arms came from what he did to me. On one level, my blood pressure was building, and I could feel that heat rising in my limbs, and I liked the feel of his body and the fit of his mouth, but all the while that was going on, there was something else. The more he kissed me, the more peaceful I felt. Everything about my life that worried me or hurt me or scared me just slid away as I touched him. Peace came into my shoulders, spread through my chest. He felt like the smell of supper and the sound of Mass, like walking into my own bedroom and closing the door.

But that part didn’t matter. For now, for this minute under a dark and peaceful sky, he was feeling the same ease I was, and we could share it for as long as we needed to. I opened my mouth to let the boy who’d been betrayed by his father come in and taste refuge. I put my arms around his neck. Slowly, he crept into the safety, his hands slipping down my neck, over my shoulders, his touch like rain.

His fingers slid under the straps of my tank top, and I shifted to make it easy for him to push them off my shoulders, a shiver of anticipation moving in me. It was so easy to pull my arms free of the fabric, easier still to help him by managing the clasp of my bra for him. So easy to cry out softly when his big hands reached up to cup my breasts, lift them with an accompanying sound of pleasure.

I had to stop kissing him for one minute. It felt so good, I wanted to feel only that—Malachi’s work-hardened big hands moving on my bare breasts. I closed my eyes. “Oh, I’ve been wanting that.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, and pressed his face down into the excessive flesh. I could feel the trembling in both of us. I unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it off his shoulders so that we could rub together, flesh to flesh, as we kissed some more. Rubbing, sinuous motions of hips, of tongues, of hands.

“You feel so good,” he said roughly, his mouth against my shoulder, my neck. He put his hands around my bottom and pulled me closer to his erection, and I wiggled closer still, laughing softly against his mouth as we settled into a satisfying bump and grind, slow and easy and sexy.

It went on for a long time, kissing in the soft night, our shirtless torsos brushed by wind and night and hands, our mouths dipping and swaying and tangling. Giving and receiving the relief of no thought. It wasn’t even urgent to take off the rest of our clothes, somehow.

But there did come a point when it was time to quit. I lifted my head. “That’s probably enough.”

He had astonishing lashes, I noticed, long and thick and heavy. They cast a shadow over his irises, making it hard to read the expression there. I noticed his mouth instead, shiny with all the kissing. My chin felt faintly abraded from the growth of unshaved beard. He swallowed, his palms moving on my ribs. “Yeah. Probably time.”

“Feel better?”

“Much. You?”

I lifted one shoulder like it was nothing. “Maybe.”

It made him grin, eased the possibility of awkwardness between us now that we had to slide our bodies apart and put everything back together. I realized he would now see my belly, and the idea made me linger a little.

Maybe that was why I lifted my hands to his face, clasping his cheeks in my palms the way he’d done me. I thought of a dozen things I could say, but I kissed him instead. Softly. My lips to his, gentle as a promise.

And who knows why these things happen. But after all those other kisses, this one changed everything. A pierced sound whispered between his lips and I caught it in my throat as I traced the shape of his big, hard-angled face. Touched his cheekbones and his jaw, even the corner of his eyes where the lashes tickled my ring finger. And because I was looking at him, I saw the ripple of pain he tried to hide, that man thing that’s so poignant, that need and wish and sorrow and longing—all of it inexpressible—and my heart was snared. They don’t know, these guys, how to go anywhere but into a woman’s arms when they hurt, and they think they like breasts and bellies and sex so much because they have no idea how to get what they need any other way.

And it’s so easy to give them that union. Open your arms, kiss their lips, and invite them in. And when they’re lying there, spent, head against your neck or breasts, they can breathe for a few minutes. That’s why they fall asleep so fast after sex. They’re so exhausted by the time they get there that there’s no other option.

But Malachi had a whole lot more going on—or maybe it was scary for him, too. He put his hands on my arms, almost urgently. “Let’s stop now, Jewel,” he said gruffly. “We’ve stopped thinking long enough.”

I smiled. “Okay.” With an ease I might not have felt a few minutes before, I slid off his lap and sighed. “If you say so.” In the quiet loneliness of night and prairie, I turned my back and reached for the moon, letting starlight and the mother light fall on my naked breasts.

Malachi tossed my shirt at me. It landed across my shoulders and I laughed as I pulled it down virtuously over my chest before I turned. “Close your eyes.”

He inclined his head, tugging his shirt on his arms. “Won’t matter. It’s branded, right here.” He tapped his temple.

“Okay,” I said with a shrug, and put on my own shirt. Braless. I have to admit I knew he’d like the feeling of that against his back on the way home, and as if he knew that, he grinned.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Nope.”

He retrieved the lost bra from the ground. “I’ll just hang on to this then, if you don’t mind.”

“Feel free.”

In unspoken agreement, we turned toward the bike and put on our helmets. He tucked my bra into his shirt with a wink, then sobered. Putting his palm to my cheek, he said, very seriously, “Thank you, Jewel.”

I lifted up on my toes to press one last kiss to his gorgeous mouth. “Trust me, the pleasure was all mine.”

FROM A HOMILY BY POPE SAINT GREGORY THE GREAT:

Devotional Readings: Mary Magdalene

We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: “Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.”

Chapter 11

The sisters were all summoned to be fitted for bridesmaid dresses. I drove to Jordan’s on a Saturday morning a week after that wild night with Malachi, glad of the respite from what had been an absolutely grueling seven days.

The way Jordan’s house sat on the hill, it caught all the best morning sunlight. Cottonwood leaves glittered, moving on some unseen breeze, and the freshly mudded adobe glowed a rosy gold. I parked, seeing Jordan and Henry walking up from the river, a basket in Jordan’s hand. Their heads were close, both of them with long curls, slim shoulders, she just a little shorter than he and much rounder. It was the sweet peace of a couple in harmony, headed for the house they’d filled with their love, and I envied them fiercely for a minute. A long, solid relationship like that is rare. They had been married nearly eighteen years, and it appeared they would not have children—not for lack of trying—and yet they still walked like that in the morning, heads bent together in quiet accord.

I’d never known that with Billy, not really. We’d shared a powerful connection, but it had never been particularly peaceful. Not this kind of shimmering, soft quiet. Billy hadn’t had a quiet spot in his entire being.

Jordan saw the car and waved. I got out, waving back.

“Morning!” Henry called, tossing long curls out of his face. “Have breakfast with us?” He held up a handful of what looked like river grasses, and I wasn’t sure, even looking at his face, if he was kidding.

“Wild rice?” I guessed.

Henry grinned, winking at Jordan. “No, mon, a peace offering for the gods, you know.”

I laughed, glancing at my watch. “We don’t have time. Mama will have a fit if we’re late.”

Jordan kissed him easily and ambled over. “You ready for this?”

I rolled my eyes. “Ugh. Have you heard anything?”

“Jane has good taste,” she said hopefully. “Maybe it won’t be too awful.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Have you ever seen a
good
bridesmaid’s dress?”

“Um. No.” We both climbed in the car. “So,” she said. “I hear Shane’s doing good at the restaurant. Charming everybody, working his way right up to prep cook in a single week.”

“He loves it. If I’d realized, I would have done this ages ago.” I backed out and headed to town. “He’s even asked if he could borrow the car to take a girl to the movies next weekend. He’s got Sunday night off.”

“Ooh, what girl? Somebody from the restaurant?”

“A busgirl. I haven’t met her—her name is Alicia.”

Jordan gave an earthy roll of laughter. “Oh, are you in trouble.”

“Why?”

“Oh, God, Jewel, she’s like a tiny Aphrodite—stacked and perfect and full of fire. And she knows exactly what she wants.”

“Sounds like Shane’s type, all right.”

“And how’s every other thing?” She lifted a brow, and although I wasn’t absolutely sure she meant Malachi, that’s who was in my mind. Heat touched my ears.

I hadn’t seen much of him since that night on the bluff. There didn’t seem to be a rush to get to the next step, although we both knew it was coming. And I held the anticipation of it close, a secret to take out and examine late at night when I knew he was asleep in the room down the hall.

But life, this week, had intervened. I landed the Dante Alighieri catering gig and spent whatever extra time I had meeting with the organizers of a fund-raising event. Shane started work at the restaurant and had to be ferried back and forth. And Michael . . . well, Michael wasn’t thriving. He’d had one little crisis after another, and it looked like he was stable again, but it had been exhausting. I’d peeked in on him this morning, and his color had been a little hectic, his skin dry, but when I frowned over him, he insisted he was fine.

Relatively speaking, anyway.

“Jewel?” Jordan asked.

“Everything is fine.” I pulled up in front of the bridal shop and parked, counting the cars of everyone else. My mother’s Chrysler, Jane’s neat Toyota, Jasmine’s SUV, several others that looked like young women’s cars that I assumed belonged to the four of Jane’s friends who would complete the wedding party. “Ready, Freddie?” I said with a sigh.

“As I’ll ever be. How fat do you think we’ll look?”

“I will look very fat. You will be fine.”

“God, please not pastels.”

A gaggle of voices met us as we went in—I could hear Nana Lucy’s above everyone else’s, scolding the dressmaker for something. My mother was trying, as usual, to be peacemaker. Jane and Jasmine stood to one side, biting their lips. I looked at Jordan. “This looks promising.”

“Oh, very.”

It wasn’t until I rounded the last stand of evening gowns that I saw my father sitting with my uncle Carlo in a pair of easy chairs. My heart slammed hard into my ribs, and I was already turning around unconsciously, unaware of it until Jordan grabbed my sleeve. “You’re gonna have to learn to deal with him sooner or later. The family isn’t
that
big.”

Don’t ask me why a pair of middle-aged men would find this entire process so interesting, but it was often the case in my family that a couple of guys came along to anything big like this. Maybe they wanted their opinions heard, they wanted the women to look good, but not too good. I never asked, but I probably should have been prepared for the possibility.

It wasn’t like he paid any attention to me anyway. My grandmother got her way about whatever had incensed her—she usually did. I gathered it had something to do with hemming. Not the length, but the method of stitches in the bridal gown, which Jane was wearing right then.

She spied me and a happy bright smile spread over her face, that youthful glow that made me feel decrepit. “Jewel!” She spread her arms. “What do you think?”

“You are so gorgeous,” I said sincerely. It was a confection of a dress—billions of yards of soft lace and seed pearls, a nipped waist and deep bodice that displayed her dewy, youthful bosom perfectly, finished off with a long, long train that would delight the youngest cousins who would get to carry it up the aisle. “It’s fit for a queen. Turn around.” I sighed happily. “Oh, you’re going to be the most beautiful bride that ever was.”

“Thank you!” She hugged me happily.

Then the matron of the shop brought out the bridesmaids’ dresses. I managed to keep my face straight, but Jordan was straight-up horrified. Not only were they pastel, but pastel
satin
in baby bootie colors—all those nauseatingly adorable shades. The style was simple enough, but simple in that way that would make my arms look fat, emphasize the belly that had grown way too old for these kinds of dresses.

“Jane!” Jordan protested. “I’m going to look like a cow in that!”

“Oh, no! No, you won’t!” She was busy passing out candy colors to various people. Her little skinny friends, not a single one bigger than a size eight, were cooing happily. Sure, sure. They had a chance to show off collarbones and delicate wrists. My collarbone had disappeared years before and I didn’t hold out any hope that it would appear between now and the wedding.

Still, it was Jane’s day and I gave Jordan a hard look, accepting my pastel purple dress with a bright smile. Lavender is an awful shade for my skin. The only one worse is yellow, which is what Jordan pulled. She gave me a sickly smile. Our coloring is almost identical.

We were directed to various dressing rooms, and Jordan nabbed one with a full door. Inside, she bent over, crushing the satin against her body. “Oh, God, Jewel!” she squeaked, her eyebrows to the middle of her forehead, her eyes dancing with something close to hysterical laughter.

I could feel it coming and put my hand to my mouth. “Don’t.” I deliberately turned away to put the dress on.

“What size did she get me?” Jordan muttered. I glanced over my shoulder to see her flipping the tag. She made a noise. “Twelve. A size twelve with this chest. Right.”

“Just put it on. That’s what we’re here for, to get the sizing right.”

“The wedding is in two weeks. How can they fix this much?” Swishes and grunts as she struggled into it. With a sinking heart, I pulled mine up, seeing the bulges below the waist, the not-straight line of waist to hip to thigh, trying not to see the way my skin turned a particularly exciting shade of sulfur against the purple.

“Ugh,” Jordan said. With a sigh, she said, “Zip me up, will you?”

She pushed her hair out of the way and I tugged up the zipper, only having to force it for a little way right through the waist. “Oh, it’s going to be fine, Jordan. They’ll just have to let it out a little right here.” I pulled her hair up into a loose mass. “Your back and shoulders will look great.”

She stared balefully into the mirror. “Yeah, Jewel. Just keep talking.”

“Girls!” my grandmother said, rapping sharply at the door. “Hurry up. We ain’t got all day.”

I turned to let Jordan zip me. And this zipper took a little more forcing. I could hear it groaning from my waist all the way up to the top, no matter how I sucked in my stomach. In the ever-so-flattering, fluorescent-lit mirror, I watched the satin stretch like an overextended balloon over my flesh. Jordan snorted when I turned around.

“Oh, thanks!” I said, but she looked at me, and I looked at her. She pressed her lips together, sucking them in until there was no lip skin visible. Her nostrils quivered. I tried to resist, but the edge of a snicker slipped out before I could catch it.

Her figure was quite perfectly voluptuous in normal clothes, but the yellow satin made her look like an aging barroom whore. I could barely breathe, and when I did, about half of my breasts fell out of the top of the dress, where they’d been squeezed up. I felt my lip shivering and pointed my finger at her sternly. “Don’t do it, Jordan. I mean it. I can’t breathe, much less laugh.”

“You look—” she covered her mouth and opened her eyes wide, blinking rapidly “—like Miss Piggy!”

My own nostrils flared, and I felt the tickle at the back of my throat, that tickle that meant she was about to send me over the edge. Determined to resist, I stuck my piggy nose up in the air and regally headed for the door, satin swishing around my legs. Behind me, the danger quaked in Jordan and I knew one of us had to keep it together. I didn’t dare look at her as we two cows—pigs?—trundled out, trussed hard into our satin.

The others looked fine, of course, just as bridesmaids should—thus the
maids
part of the word—even Jasmine with her skinny little butt, but there was no mistaking the horror on the younger girls’ faces when they saw us. Nor the shock of my mother and grandmother when they saw my tattoo, bold as sex itself, a scarlet rose across my right breast.

Jordan, half in humiliation, half in the helpless hilarity that had infected her the minute we stepped into that dressing room with pastel satin, said in a choked voice, “Miss Piggy with a tattoo!”

As long as I didn’t look at her, I’d be okay. I swallowed several times, struggling to keep my mouth in a straight line, but it wiggled in spite of me. The tickle in the back of my throat danced upward into my sinuses, forward to my lips. Little tears blurred my vision.

But Jordan was already gone. “Well, gee, Piggy,” she said in a Kermit-like voice, laughter welling up like water starting to trickle from a split pipe. “It’s you . . . it’s you . . . it’s
you
!”

The pipe burst. She bent over, roaring, shaking, and squealing, and I was lost. I put a hand on my chest to keep my boobs from falling out completely and let ’er rip. We’ve always done this to each other, fallen at stressful or bewildered or ordinary moments into our own little World o’ Hilarity, and once we get going, there’s no stopping it. People stand to one side, giving us polite half smiles as we feed each other a word, a gesture, a glance to fuel the giggles.

And I could see them all, the entire circle of women and girls looking on like we were crazy as we hooted and strangled and clung to each other. I’d just about get it together, then I’d see the edge of her belly pushing at the skirt, or she’d do another Kermit imitation, and we’d be off again. I could feel the irritation of my mother tugging at us, feel Jane’s complete bewilderment, and caught Jasmine rolling her eyes, but none of them could halt us until it was finished, and that was that.

We both knew it was inappropriate in this circumstance, and we were trying to get it together when the side seam in my dress gave way with a very loud sound, and the pair of us collapsed completely, falling to the floor in absolutely lost, hysterical giggling, our eyes running with tears, cheeks aching. “I’m sorry, Jane,” I choked out. “It was too tight.”