Nothing Personal (16 page)

“This is it. Turn left up ahead. The Country Club sign.”

He’d wondered if she’d fallen asleep
, she’d been so quiet. He’d been about to say something, to wake her up to ask the way before he drove right on out of town.

She
continued to direct him, though, a right turn, then a left. He pulled to the curb at the spot she indicated, clicked the button to release his seatbelt. But she didn’t follow suit. Instead, she turned towards him in the dark, seemed to be hesitating. So he waited.

“Do you think you could
come in for a while?” she asked at last.

“Sure. Or I could take you to m
y parents’,” he suggested again, “if you don’t want to be alone. You know they’d be happy. It’d be better, Desiree. Really.”

She shook her head. “No, I want to be here. But . . . could you come in?
Just for a few minutes?”

“Sure
.” Although this wasn’t exactly the way he’d pictured her inviting him back to her place.

He followed her up
the sidewalk, climbed four wooden steps onto a neat little deck, and waited while she fished in her purse for the key, opened the door and flipped the switch. The light cast by a standing lamp revealed her exhaustion, the shadows under her eyes, the pallor of her skin. And he knew that, whatever help he could be to her, that was what he was going to do.

She stood, looking irresolute again,
in the middle of the shabby little living room, furnished with a single faux-leather recliner, a yellow couch with a red and black afghan folded over the end, a wooden coffee table with curved legs. The dinette set standing a few feet away, the compact kitchen beyond it, to the right of the front door. The layout completely familiar to Alec, and the whole place not that different from the doublewide where his own family had lived when he’d been in middle school. Right down to the framed piece of needlepoint hanging against the veneer paneling.
God Bless Our Home.

“I need to take a shower,” she said vaguely
, clearly dead on her feet. “If you want . . .” She gestured towards the kitchen, let her arm fall again. “A beer or something. It’s Miller Lite, though.”

“I’m fine
,” he assured her. “You go take your shower.” He’d gone by his parents’ earlier in the day and showered, pulled clean clothes from the dresser that his mother, luckily, still hadn’t cleaned out. But Desiree hadn’t had a break at all.

He was sitting on the couch, leafing through a copy of
Good Housekeeping,
when the sound of running water stopped. The magazine selection here was pretty similar to the one in the hospital’s waiting room. In fact, he’d read this same issue there, had already checked out the article on “Seven Ways to Make a Statement—Without Spending a Bundle.” If he ever needed to stencil anything, he was all set.

He heard the bath
room door opening. And then a dull thud, a gasp. And was up and into the hallway leading out of the living room before he’d finished registering the sound.

She was leaning
face-first into the space between the bathroom door and what was obviously her bedroom, her arms hugging herself in desperation, her head wedged into the corner. Wrapped in a pink terrycloth bathrobe, her feet bare. And crying.

“Desiree.” He pulled her
away from the wall, turned her gently around. “Oh, baby. Shhh. Come on, now. It’s OK.”

She shook her head blindly,
wrapped her arms around herself even more tightly, literally trying to hold herself together. He didn’t know what else to do, so he walked her back to the living room, pulled her down onto the couch with him. And then he held her while she cried.

She tried to talk a few times, but never got beyond, “It just . . . I’m just . . .” before the sobs took her again.

“I know,” he said, his hand smoothing again and again over her wet hair. “I know, baby. But it’s going to be all right.”

At last
she sat back, her eyes and nose streaming. Sniffed hard, wiped her hands over her wet cheeks.

“
Here.” He looked for tissues, couldn’t see any. Got up and went into the kitchen and found the roll of paper towels, ripped a few off and carried them back to her.

She took them from him
, set about the business of mopping up. She was breathing through her mouth, her cheeks and nose were mottled with red, and her eyes were puffy. And he could feel her pain all the way inside his chest. All the way to his heart.

“I was in the showe
r,” she finally said, her voice even huskier than usual from her tears. “And I thought, my grandma’s going to
die.
She’s going to be gone, and I’m going to be . . .” She swallowed, and he could see the moisture leaking again from her swollen eyes. “I’m going to be alone. And I can’t . . . I don’t think I can stand it. She’s all I have.” The tears were back in force now. “She’s the only thing.”

“She’s going to be all right, though,” Alec said, wishing his dad were here. Or Gabe. Somebody who knew how to say the right things.

“But sometime,” she said again. “She’s going to die.” She gave a watery little laugh that turned to a hiccup, blew her nose again. “Well, that’s stupid. I mean, I know that. But I didn’t . . . I didn’t really
know
that, before.”

He wasn’t his dad, and he wasn’t Gabe, so he
went with what he had. “She’s going to be mad at you, you know,” he said conversationally.

“What?” She
stared at him, horrified.

“That you’ve already g
ot her dead and buried,” he explained. “I’ll bet she tells you that you’d better not be thinking you’re getting your hands on her good stuff, because she’s planning to be around for a long time yet.”

That shocked another laugh out of her, and this one sounded more genuine.
“I bet you’re right.” Her smile was wobbly, but it was a smile. “She’s probably thinking right now that she’d better get out of the hospital fast, before I make off with her special sombrero-shaped chip-n-dip server.”

“Or her
red Tupperware Jell-O salad bowl,” he agreed with a grin. “Because I
know
you’ve been coveting that.”

She smiled again, and he put his arm around her, pulled her close, and kissed the top of her head.
“I’m not trying to make light of how you feel,” he tried to explain. “But you’re so tired, and that makes everything look so much worse. Get some sleep, and I’ll come back and take you to the hospital again in the morning. I’ll bet she’ll be feeling a whole lot perkier by then, and you will too.”

“OK,” she sighed. She
straightened, and he let his arm fall. “But . . .” She looked at him again. “Would you mind staying with me? I can sleep in my grandma’s room,” she hurried to explain. “And you could sleep in mine. The sheets are clean, and there are a couple new toothbrushes in the bottom drawer in the bathroom, even. I mean, if you can. If you wouldn’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t mind. Of course I wouldn’t mind.”
Sleeping in her bed? Again, not the way he’d imagined it, and this clearly wasn’t the time, but still. “And you have extra toothbrushes up here?” A little more teasing might be just what the doctor ordered. “Let me guess. There’s an extra razor too, and not because of all the guys you’ve brought back here. Are your grandmother’s spices in alphabetical order now, because you got bored over Christmas?”

“No.”
She was smiling back at him, because he’d got it right, had known what she needed. “They already were. And you’re right. You’re Guy Number One.”

“Alec.”

He struggled out of the depths of sleep, wondered for a moment where he wa
s. And then he saw the shape of her, pale against the darkness, standing beside the bed, and remembered. Desiree.

“What?” He pushed himself up on an
elbow, blinked a couple times. “Can’t sleep? Bad dream?”

“Can I . . .” Her voice was hesitant again, husky and low. “Can I get in bed with you? Would you
. . . could you just hold me?”

Was this some kind
of horrible nightmare? One of those ones where you were trying and trying to get to the airport, but you could never quite make it?

“Uh . . . “ He cast his mind around wildly, but couldn’t find any answers. “Sure.” He scooted over, flipped the covers back. And saw her, felt her sliding in beside him.
Coming closer, and he felt the touch of her feet on his calves, and flinched.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling back. “Cold feet.”
Which was nothing to how he was feeling right now.

You can do this,
he told himself desperately.
Man up.
She needed him to hold her, and that was all, and that was exactly what he was going to do. Right the hell now.

“It’
s OK.” He rolled onto his back, pulled her close. “Come here.”

She nestled into him. Her feet were still cold, and the long, slim arms and legs felt cool
against his skin too. He shifted to his side, ran his hand down the narrow surface of her back, felt the rib of the skinny undershirt under his fingers, and was reminded of that first day he’d seen her, in the Snack Shack. And felt a rush of tenderness that almost overrode the heat that was consuming him now. A heat that she had to be aware of, because she was pressed close, and she was killing him.

“Could you . . .” Her breath was soft on his cheek. “Could you kiss me?”

He could, and he did. Pressed his lips gently to hers in the dark, to that full, soft, sweet mouth. Felt the shock of it, like the touch of a live wire, all the way through his body.

She sighed, and her
mouth opened a little, and the kiss was heating, his tongue touching her upper lip, tracing the fullness of her lower one, and he could sense her tightening against him, her body as sensitized as his own. He could swear that he could feel what she was feeling, his tongue slipping into her mouth, tasting her, his mouth moving over her own. His hand drifting down her back, coming to rest on one firm, round cheek, sliding over the cotton underwear. His fingers touching the soft skin of the crease at the back of her thigh, rubbing over the edge of the fabric, tracing its contours. All the way down to the silk of her inner thigh, then back up, again and again.

He had her leg pulled over his hip now, and she was pressed tight against him, and he was still kissing her, more and more deeply, wanting every bit of her.
Wanting to be inside her with a desperation he’d hadn’t felt since he was sixteen.

And then it hit h
im, like a bucket of cold water right to the chest. His hand froze, his mouth lifted from her own.

“Shit.”

She didn’t respond for a moment, frozen too. Then scooted back from him in a hurried motion. “What?”

“I don’t have a condom.”

“Oh.” She sat up. “Oh,” she said again, and she sounded so lost.
“Anyway, we shouldn’t . . . This is such a bad idea. What am I
doing?”
She was working herself up again, he could tell.

He reached for her. “Desiree. Wait.” P
ulled her down next to him, leaned over to kiss her, gently this time. Soft on her mouth, then her cheek. He brushed her hair back, kissed her temple. “Baby, no. It isn’t. It isn’t a bad idea. Not if you want to do it, it isn’t. It’s a good idea, you and me. I promise.”

“
Oh.” She sighed. “I do. I do want to do it.” She had her arm around him, her hand stroking his upper back as if she couldn’t resist, any more than he could resist touching her. He’d been sleeping in nothing but a pair of briefs, and he could almost picture the trail of sparks she left behind as her hand moved over his shoulder blade, down the length of his spine, back up again to trace the curve of muscle at his shoulder. “Could we . . . anyway?”

“No.” He wished the answer could have been anything else.
“Even though it’s been months for me, and I’ve been tested. And I’ll bet it’s been a while for you too, hasn’t it?”

He heard the little hitch of her laughter. “Months would be a safe bet.”
And he was
glad.

Why
the hell
didn’t
he have a condom? He was always prepared. But he hadn’t been, not since . . . when? Not since well before Christmas, anyway. Since he’d finally realized, on some level, that he wasn’t going to be taking advantage of anything that came his way, so there was no point.

“
But I’ll bet you’re not on birth control, are you?” This was the un-sexiest conversation he’d had in bed in years, but it mattered.

“No,” she said softly
, and he could hear the regret, and what sounded like . . . shame?

“
Baby. It’s all right.” He kissed her again, took her lower lip between both of his own, pulled it into his mouth, and felt what it did to her.

“It’s all right
,” he told her again between kisses, his hand moving over her back again, reaching to pull up the undershirt, tracing the top edge of her underwear now, low on her hips, around to the front, stroking over velvet skin, feeling her tremble at his touch. “I can still make you feel good. Lie back, now, and let me do it.”