No Place Like Home (5 page)

“He looks tired and very thin, but not like he’s gonna die.”

“I know.” It was one of the more difficult aspects of the whole thing. “Sometimes he’s back to his normal self, he feels that good. And sometimes he’s really tired and won’t get out of bed for days. You’ve caught him on a good day. I swear I’m not lying—although he will.”

A small frown pulled down his heavy brows. “No.” He took an envelope out of his back pocket. Three envelopes folded together, actually. “I didn’t doubt you were serious.”

Seeing those three letters, each one more desperate than the last, sparked the anger that had been lurking since I’d seen his gorgeous bod on the porch. I glared up at him. “What took you so friggin’ long to get here?”

“I was in Brazil.”

“For six months?”

A lift of those arched brows. “That’s right.”

“Doesn’t anyone get your mail and tell you when something urgent is going on?”

He looked down at the letters, smoothed them between the index and long finger of both hands, framing my handwriting on his name:
Malachi Shaunnessey.
His mouth tightened a little, then he looked up at me, very directly. “It’s not like there’s some big network of people in my life. My mother is dead. My father’s an asshole and I don’t care what happens to him.” A little jerk in his throat or maybe the jaw, just enough to show that if he weren’t such a big, alligator-blood-drinking tough guy, he’d probably have tears in his eyes. “I never expected . . . Michael’s always landed on his feet.”

Damn. I’d had nearly two years to come to terms with all of this—a stage at a time. And although he was my best friend, he wasn’t my brother. I put my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

He gave that guy-nod, eyes downcast, throat working a little.

“I’ll let you take your shower, get some rest. We can talk later.”

“Thanks.” The sound was a little rough, but he attempted a faint smile. Didn’t step back, just lifted his head and gave me a rueful half smile, acknowledging his almost breakdown.

And, just like that, I was very aware of the fact that he dwarfed me—which is a good feeling when you’re tall and hippy—and that his eyes were soft when they were sad. He smelled like the outdoors on a summer afternoon, like clothes just taken off the line, and I wondered in a distant way why he didn’t smell like sweat and exhaustion.

It went on a little too long, and that initial zing I’d felt upon seeing him expanded into a roar. Lust. Deep and somehow clean, perfectly obvious for what it was. I wanted to see his chest. He tilted his head, quirked his mouth a little and his gaze flickered downward, and I suspected the same thought—a bared chest—was crossing his imagination.

I dropped my hand from his arm. He was in the way and didn’t seem to notice for a minute, and then he grinned. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped back. I pushed by him, my shoulder bumping his bicep.

In the hall, I backed away. “The faucet sometimes makes a loud noise when you turn on the hot water. Just turn it on a little more and it’ll stop.”

“Hmm.” He held up a finger for me to wait, ducked into the bathroom, and turned on the water until he got the noise—a shuddering that seemed to shake the entire room. He came out. “Got a wrench? I can fix that in about three seconds.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

His wink was pure sex god. “I’m sure you can figure out a way to pay me back.”

I rolled my eyes and went to find a wrench.

SYLVIA’S LOVE POWDER

On Saint Anthony’s day, cut long branches of rue, collect the freshest flowers, and mix with the petals of the reddest rose in the garden. Dry in a secret place where they will be safe from the breath of others. When they are dry, grind them with a mortar and pestle to a fine powder, then pour it into a bag. Take the powder to the river on the Feast of Our Lady, think of your heart’s desire, and toss the herbs into the water and ask the Lady’s blessing on your love. If he is meant for you, he will come by the turn of the season. If he is not, your true love will appear.

Chapter 4

Not even the arrival of the delectable Malachi could keep me from my nap. It’s a lifelong habit, one my mother says kept me out of afternoon kindergarten. “She needs her sleep,” she’d tell my aunts, brushing hair off my forehead as I dozed on her lap in one of their living rooms. “Hasn’t missed her nap since the day she was born.”

And I still try not to. The animals trailed me upstairs, taking their stations around the bed, Berlin at the foot, Giovanni the aloof tuxedo on the windowsill above the bed, the other two cats on each side of my body. I fell on my stomach, grabbed a pillow to throw an arm across, and closed my eyes. A breeze came through the open windows, sweeping over my face with the smell of summer water, making me think of Malachi’s white shirt flapping on a clothesline. I took the image with me into the dark, cool well of sleep.

When I woke up, one cat had moved to slump over the small of my back, paws on either side of my body, and another was curled right at my nose. She squeaked at me when I stirred. By the thickness in my head and the sweat collected on the back of my neck, it had been a long nap. Deep gold light, colored by dust in the air, slanted through the windows to fall on the dresser and floor and wall. Pueblo has the same artistic light that has made Florence and Taos and southern France so famous, but its steel mill image somehow stunted any artist colony that might have developed. Lying there, waiting for my mind to come back from the wild world of dreams, I admired the quality of those rectangular bars of light, thinking maybe I wanted to try some butterscotch pie sometime soon. Maybe my auntie Gen had a recipe, or maybe Carol.

The smell in the air brought me around fully. Michael was cooking. I turned over on my back, breathing it in with a smile, identifying the food by the notes in the air. Barbequed chicken wings, messy and sweet and tangy. He’d make a spinach and orange salad to go with them. Blinking heavily, I stumbled down the hall, passing the closed door to the silent blue room where Malachi still slept, and washed my face, thinking about the extra strong coffee that was the secret ingredient in Michael’s sauce.

But before I went down, I went back to my room, took off the old T-shirt I’d slept in, and shuffled through my drawers for something else. It all looked boring—the short-sleeved Henleys and simple little scoop-necked summer shirts. Mother stuff. I glared at them, digging deeper, wondering when I’d let this part of myself go. When had I turned into this person?

Finally, near the bottom of the stack, I found a green silk tank. Not great, but a hell of a lot better than the rest of the junk. I shook it out, and the cool heavy weight of it suddenly made me remember wearing it in previous summers, good times, sometimes with Michael, sometimes with another man or some of my girlfriends. Finding a club where the music was good, the tables crowded into some dark, small space. The rush of excitement of getting ready, going out, having a few drinks and laughing, dancing, letting down our hair.

Outside my window, there was no sound of traffic, no horns or rumbling trucks, and a part of me was suddenly, deeply homesick for those noises, for the rush and excitement of the city. Why had I come back here?

A step sounded in the hallway, and I heard the bathroom door shut. Malachi, almost certainly.

Maybe it was thinking of my old self, or maybe it was that lingering hint of man hunger that had been crawling on my spine all day, but I suddenly reached around and unhooked the ordinary white bra that had taken me through the responsible roles in my life—the businesswoman and the mother and the caregiver—and dug into the bottom of the drawer for a dangerous black one, made of soft lace. Just in case he needed to take another look down my shirt—the silk shirt that made a man want to run his hands over a woman. I could have told myself I was doing it for me or to celebrate Michael feeling good enough to cook or even to celebrate Malachi’s arrival here, but I learned a long time ago not to play those kinds of games with myself. He stirred me up and I wanted to stir back.

But in that instant I happened to catch sight of my body in the mirror over the dresser and got a crashing dose of reality. Why does that happen, over and over? In my head, especially in a good mood, I’m thinking I’m still a hot mama, a little more of me than there was, maybe, but still pretty sound female stuff.

The mirror is so brutal. Especially since I was standing in that bright gold sunlight streaming in the second-floor windows. It showed the fish whiteness of my belly, which would never stand the scrutiny of a bikini again and hadn’t for five years. Soft grayish stretch marks there along the sides. And the breasts that had once stood so high and proud were lower, not anywhere close to perky. It wasn’t an awful body—how can you really hate the body that gives you babies and pleasure and walks you around in the world?—but it was just so obviously skin and hips and breasts that had been around for forty years. For one tiny moment, I wanted a belly button that could tolerate a tattoo.

Never gonna happen. But I put them on anyway, the black lace bra and the silk tank, because I was liking the sense of pleasure it gave me to make the best of whatever those years had left behind. Michael would love it—he hated for me to be anything less than 100-percent siren—and I was pretty sure Malachi wouldn’t
mind.
I let my hair down, too—what the heck. Maybe I’d just be a wild woman and ask him for a ride on that big old bike, and use it as an excuse to lean into his body, smell him again.

“You are such a slut, girl,” I said to the mirror. The slut looked back and lifted one rueful eyebrow. She didn’t look nearly apologetic enough for a woman who’d been estranged from her father for twenty years over the whole thing.

I beat Malachi downstairs, which gave me a minute to wander into that hot, spicy-smelling kitchen and see Michael happily tossing greens in a big wooden bowl. Baby spinach and mandarin oranges, as I’d suspected. He wore a black shirt and black jeans, a silver bolo at his neck, and his pointy black cowboy boots. The blond hair gleamed in a thick mane down his neck, completely unaffected by his illness.

It pierced me to see him looking so normal. He gave me a big grin over his shoulder and held out a cup of the rich, almost thick coffee he made for barbeque sauce. “I heard you moving around.”

I took the cup and drank a grateful sip. “I smelled it. And the wings. How long till dinner is ready?”

“About a half hour, I guess.” Whistling, he turned around to toss the salad some more, and he suddenly seemed so dear, so perfect, so himself, that I set aside the coffee cup and put my arms around his waist, my head against his back. His ribs and shoulder blades were sharply defined, belying the happy good humor of the moment, and the recognition of the fact that I would lose him drove itself home once again, deep and hard and unbearable. I gritted my teeth against revealing it to Michael, but he felt it, and he put his hands over mine, gently lifting one to his mouth.

“Thanks for getting Malachi here,” he said.

“Sure.” I just leaned into him, smelling his particular scent—a hint of grass and spices—for a long time. Against my cheek and my hands, wherever we touched, there was a tingling sensation, not at all sexual. Maybe it was just healing, just love—a strength transfer. He put my hand on his faintly stubbled cheek and pressed it there for a minute, and I let him go.

In the big window by the breakfast bar was a shelf for Saint Anthony. I gave his head a pat as I sat down, remembering when Sylvia would turn his face toward the wall when she was mad at him.

I sipped my coffee. “You never told me your brother was a sex god.”

Michael grinned. “Runs in the family.”

“What does?” Malachi himself appeared in the doorway, much cleaner than last time I’d seen him, dressed in jeans and a turquoise T-shirt printed with a parrot and some Spanish slogan. No shoes. I didn’t look at his feet, naked and white against the worn linoleum of my aunt’s floor, but this time, I couldn’t help but notice his waist. Impossibly narrow beneath those shoulders. And the kind of radiating presence that slams you if you’re within twenty yards. Maybe twenty miles.

Trust Michael to get that mischief in his bright blue eyes. “Being a sex god,” he said.

Malachi looked at me, slightly sleepy, his hair just a little untidy. “Yeah?”

Sex sex sex sex sex. It came off him in waves, reminding me how long it had been since I’d let myself indulge. Such promise in that little quirk of a smile, the edges of his eyes crinkling in a solid fan of sun lines. “Trouble with sex gods,” I said, “is that they’re so damned predictable.”

He laughed. “Too true.” He came in the kitchen, Berlin—traitorous creature—trailing behind, and took the other stool at the breakfast bar.

His eyes said that he didn’t care if my body was a decrepit forty and he was used to twenty-four. They slid with that cheerful familiarity over my neck, my hair, my arms, liking what they saw. He even—shameless creature—touched his lower lip with his tongue, showing it to me like the manifestation of original sin. He saved himself—just—by winking.

I laughed. Overt I could handle. “I should have known he’d have a brother like you.”

Michael laughed, too.

“Where is Shane?” I asked, having finally gathered enough brain cells to notice his absence.

“Your sister Jasmine came by and wanted him to baby-sit so she and Jane could go do something for the wedding,” Michael said. “They should be back any minute.”

Jane, my youngest sister, who was fourteen years younger than Jasmine, which meant sixteen years younger than me, was getting married in August. Word was that she had somehow remained a virgin and actually had earned the right to wear her two-thousand-dollar white wedding dress. “What are they doing?”

Michael made that helpless face. “Fittings or something?”

“Ah.” I understood and neither of them had to. I also understood that Jasmine had picked Shane to baby-sit in order to give him a caring lecture about going to jail, and also to illustrate that even when a kid went to jail he still had value. Something else I owed her for.

And because Malachi was sitting there sipping coffee and I kept noticing the thick, raised veins in his forearms, I was also grateful when the group of them showed up. Jasmine and Jane, both as clean-scrubbed as a Noxzema ad; and Shane, carrying Karen, Jasmine’s youngest;
and
my mother and grandmother; and Jasmine’s other child, a monster boy of eight named Daniel who was born to do manly things like mow down other boys on a football field and swoon over army tanks at the state fair. “Yo, Danny-boy,” I said. “Give me five.”

“Hey, Auntie,” he said, being cool. He noted the guys in the kitchen and swaggered over, hands in his pockets, to pop my palm smartly.

He had stitches across his nose. “What’d you do this time?” I asked. He already had scars from a dog bite, a fall from a trampoline, a long skid across a sidewalk from riding a skateboard face first, and a particularly impressive thick snake of a scar running up his thigh that he received jumping over a fence. Caught a nail that ripped through his jeans, his flesh, and six muscles. He never dropped a tear until they gave him drugs for the pain. The Sabatinos and Falconis bragged about Daniel, I can tell you.

“Oh, I fell off my bike.”

Jasmine elaborated. “He smashed into a truck and broke the windshield with his nose.”

Malachi gave a quick, bright hoot of laughter. “Whoa,” he said, sticking out his hand for a high five, too, and Danny, who’d been deeply hoping for such validation, tossed his buzz-cut head and slapped him five.

The women all swiveled their heads around at the robust sound of that man laugh in the kitchen. Jasmine straightened prettily, just slightly thrusting out her impressive chest. My mother’s black eyes narrowed, while Nana Lucy impaled him, The Stranger Who Would Bring No Good, with her gaze. It was nothing personal—strangers were always trouble, in her opinion.

Only Jane acted like a normal person. Tall and leanly muscled, Jane is as healthy as anyone I’ve ever met. Her dark blond hair bounced in its ponytail as she stuck out her hand. “Hi,” she said to Malachi. “I’m Jane. You must be Michael’s brother, Malachi. Shane told us you got in this morning.”

He was already standing, exhibiting the good southern manners I’d always found so charming in Michael, and guided Nana Lucy to his seat. It earned him a solid half point with her. Only ninety-nine and a half to go. “That’s right,” he said, and took Jane’s hand. “Nice to meet you.”