Secret Lives (24 page)

“You raised a resilient daughter.” He swirled
the wine in his glass and then leaned forward. “Why do you think
you're fake in California and not here?”

Eden sighed. “I'm a good actress, Ben. I can
fool people. I can make them think I'm confident and strong
and…untouched by events in my life. You learn to wear the mask.
After you've done that for a while, you get stuck behind it. But I
can't fool Lou and Kyle. You can't fool the people you grew up
with, the ones who know the real you, warts and all.” She looked at
him squarely. She could be honest with him. “And I don't want to
fool you. It's a relief to feel real around someone for a change.
No offense, but part of the reason I feel so safe around you is
that I think you're as screwed up as I am.” She took a deep breath.
“May I have some more wine, please?”

He was smiling, nearly laughing. He shook his
head. “No, you may not. I have no interest in making you numb.” He
stood up then, shoving the coffee table out of the way with his
leg, and held his hand out to her. “Come here,” he said.

He led her to the bed and sat her down on the
blue-and-white quilt. She felt the layers of fabric, the knots and
seams, beneath her palms. He sat next to her and unfastened the
clip at the back of her head, and her hair fell softly to her
shoulders. He lifted it in slow motion to kiss the nape of her
neck, and she felt her blood rushing there to meet his lips.

“You have a beautiful neck,” he said. “But
when your hair is up it makes you look very, very vulnerable.”

“I thought it made me look matronly.”

“Nothing could make you look matronly.” He
cupped his hand under her calf and lifted her leg across his lap.
He began untying her tennis shoe and she watched silently as his
fingers deftly worked the laces. He motioned her to raise her other
leg. “You okay?” he asked as he tugged at one end of the
shoelace.

She knew he was asking if he should proceed.
“Fine.” She leaned back on her hands, remembering the elaborate
explanation her mother had given Matt to keep him from getting any
closer. “In the journal, my poor father is in love with my mother
and he's trying to get close to her. They're still just kids. Well,
eighteen or so. My mother got spooked. She wants it and she doesn't
want it. So she stops him with this long lecture on how sex and
friendship don't mix. I feel sorry for her. It's obvious she cares
about him and wants to make love to him—she's immensely aware of
her own sexuality—but she turned what could have been a warm and
passionate moment into a cerebral exercise.”

Ben set her shoe on the floor. “Like you're
doing now, you mean.

She gave him a defensive stare. “I'm making
conversation.”

“And you're not going to get spooked?” He
reached across her to turn out the lamp and his arm brushed her
breasts, deliberately, she thought.

The room dimmed. Only the lamp near the sofa
lit Ben's face, and the angle of light altered his features, made
him a stranger.

“I might,” she said. Her heart was pounding.
She had a sudden fear that if they made love it would indeed change
things.

He leaned toward her and she set her fist
against his chest. “Wait.”

She saw the question in his eyes as he pulled
away from her.

“Could we talk a little longer?” she
asked.

He smiled. “A few more cerebral calisthenics,
huh?” He moved up on the bed, pulling her along with him until they
were lying face to face, close together on the narrow bed, sharing
one long pillow. “You're not alone in being uptight about this,” he
said. His hand rested on her hip, fingers splayed, his thumb
tracing the line of her hipbone. “I felt sexually dead after my
divorce. It was like that part of me had died. But the first night
you and I were together at Sugar Hill, I discovered it was alive
after all.” He grinned at her. “That's why I was such a jerk that
night. I felt like a thirteen-year-old kid with his first public
erection. It took me completely by surprise. I didn't know what to
do with it.”

Never would Wayne have shared something that
intimate with her. Wayne would not even share that sort of thinking
with himself. And Michael would have made up some excuse for acting
like a fool, something to protect his carefully inflated ego.

“I admire your openness,” she said. “You're
not at all afraid to be yourself.”

“Thanks, but that's not completely true.”

“I'd like to tell you why I'm with
Michael.”

“Now? I'd rather not have him here in bed
with us.”

“I need to tell you, though, because I don't
want you to think I do this easily.”

He brushed a strand of her hair back from her
face and let his fingers rest for a moment on her throat before
returning them to the arc of her hipbone. “Okay,” he said. “Tell
me."

“I was nervous about seeing anyone after
Wayne and I separated. I finally got up the courage to go out with
this guy. We kissed good night, that was it, but he spread it all
over town that we slept together. I was holding my breath, waiting
for one of the tabloids to pick it up. I could just see the
headline, I FUCKED EDEN RILEY, across the front page.”

Ben frowned. “Do you think I would do
something like that?”

“No, no. I didn't mean that. I'm just trying
to explain why I'm with Michael. You see, I would lose so much if
that sort of thing happened, if my public image deteriorated. If
I'm linked first with one guy, then another. I'd definitely lose
the Children's Fund. Maybe even Cassie. Wayne would be back in
court so fast I wouldn't know what hit me. He'd make me look loose
and less fit to have Cassie than he already has. That's where
Michael comes in. He cares about me, to the extent that Michael's
capable of caring about anyone other than himself, and I can call
all the shots. I don't have to worry about dating, being linked
with other people, rumors. Michael is very safe for me.”

“My God, you really can't live your own life,
can you? You can't be yourself.”

“It's difficult.”

“But you said you and Michael aren't lovers.
Don't you need that? Sex?”

“Not this last year I haven't. And even with
Wayne, I would never say I needed it. He said I lacked desire.” She
made a face, lowered her eyes to the quilt. Was there nothing she
wouldn't tell him?

Ben laughed. “Well, that's certainly
bullshit.”

“How would you know?”

“Well, I don't want to embarrass you.” He
tugged her T-shirt from her shorts as he spoke and slipped one warm
hand inside on her back. “But every once in a while I catch you
staring at me with a look that says 'l want your body, Ben
Alexander.' It hasn't been my imagination, has it? Not just wishful
thinking?”

“No, it's not your imagination.” She slid the
tips of her fingers tentatively beneath the snap of his jeans and
heard his quick intake of breath. “I think I'm going to explode if
we don't make love right now. Does that qualify as desire?”

She could see his smile in the dim light.
“Close enough,” he said. He raised himself up on one elbow and
kissed her, then lowered his head to her breast. She tugged him
closer by the waistband of his jeans and he nibbled her breast
through her shirt. She wanted her shirt off, wanted to feel his
lips against her skin. She reached for the hem, but he caught her
hands.

“Birth control?” he asked.

“Oh.” The color rose in her cheeks. She had
not given it a thought. She would remember later, no doubt. But
that would be a little late. “I stopped taking the Pill when I was
divorced. I completely forgot I needed to worry.”

He groaned and buried his head against her
stomach. Then he grabbed her hands and pulled her off the bed.
“C'mon.”

“Where are we going?” She scooped up her
shoes.

“Drugstore.”

“But Ben.” It was ten winding miles to the
nearest drugstore.

“Do you have another suggestion? I doubt a
pregnancy would do much for your image.” He grabbed his keys and
was pulling her toward the door. She saw he was not angry, not even
upset. He seemed to be enjoying this. “I could leave you here while
I go but ,I'm afraid you might take a page from your mother's book
and make love to yourself—as you so sweetly worded it—and there'd
be nothing left for me by the time I got back with the goods.”

She climbed into the passenger seat of his
truck, laughing. There was something about his sudden rush of joy,
about the caution he would take with her body when she hadn't
thought of it herself, that made her want him even more. She sat
close to him, resting her cheek on his shoulder, and slowly stroked
his chest through the soft cotton of his T-shirt. She felt the
springiness of the hair beneath the fabric, the small rigid knots
of his nipples, the hard edge of his rib cage. The only sound in
the truck was his breathing. He kept his hands on the steering
wheel but she felt his chin against her temple.

“Ten fucking miles,” he said at about the
halfway point. “I knew there was a good reason I should have found
a place closer to town.”

Thunder sounded in the distance as they
climbed out of the truck in the small parking lot of the drugstore.
The light inside the store was glaringly offensive and it took them
a minute to find the condom display.

“Look at this.” Ben shook his head at the
rows of condoms. “The last time I used one of these things, there
were about two brands to choose from. Do you want something
fancy?”

“Just utilitarian, Ben.” She turned her face
into his shoulder and he smiled at her discomfort.

“Wait in the truck,” he said.

She could see him at the cash register from
her perch inside the truck. She tried looking at him with objective
eyes. He was startlingly handsome. In a rugged way, not like
Michael. The young female cashier had to be jealous of whoever
inspired his purchase. Ben said a few words to the young woman, and
they both laughed. He was buying condoms. What could they possibly
be saying to each other? She was glad she'd chosen to wait
outside.

Condoms. God. The last time she'd even seen
one had been in high school. The drama crowd. The actors, Lou
called them. The impostors, Kyle would rejoin, infuriating Eden.
She could remember several occasions when she'd sat outside a
drugstore waiting for one of them—Tex, or Will, or Bo—to buy
cigarettes, Hershey bars, and rubbers. She'd be sitting in a VW Bug
then, or a Chevy. Or on Tex's motorcycle, the inside of her thighs
building in anticipation as she straddled the leather seat. She
shuddered now to remember those days and the constant lies she told
Lou and Kyle. She tested their love over and over again, while she
ran off with people whose rejection couldn't hurt her because it
was so predictable.

She watched Ben push through the drugstore
doors. He threw the package up in the air with his left hand and
caught it behind his back with his right. She smiled, let the
memories fade.

This time when she set her hand on his chest,
Ben stopped the truck in the middle of the road and pulled his
T-shirt over his head. He dropped it into the space behind his seat
and began driving again. He steered with his left hand and reached
for her with his right. She turned to face him and his hand traced
the shape of her breasts, his fingers light as feathers. A few
scattered raindrops dotted the windshield and the thunder sounded
again, this time closer and deeper. The roads began to twist so
sharply that every once in a while Ben had to take his hand from
her to steer. He finally stopped the truck square in the road again
and slid both hands beneath the back of her T-shirt, hunting for
the hook on her bra.

“It's in front,” she said. She reached up and
unhooked it for him and he kissed her, cupping her breasts gently
in his hands before he began driving again.

The inside of the truck felt like a sauna.
Ben's chest was damp beneath her fingers, and when he stroked her
breast her skin burned as it had that first day she met him, when
he touched her knee.

“Windows are steaming up,” he said.

Her own breathing was as coarse and loud as
his now, and when he softly tugged at her nipple she dropped her
hand to the crotch of his jeans and cupped her fingers possessively
around his erection.

Ben suddenly turned the truck into the woods
and brought it to a jolting stop.

“What are you doing?” She withdrew her hand
as he turned to pull a blanket from behind his seat.

“It's seven more miles to the cabin,” he
said. “I don't know about you, but I'm not going to make it.”

A warm rain was falling and a bolt of
lightning lit the woods as they climbed out of the truck. Ben laid
the blanket on the ground above a cushion of leaves. He moved
quickly, acting as if it were an emergency. And maybe it was in a
way. She caught his frenzy as she lowered herself to the blanket.
She pulled off her shirt and the loose bra while he tugged her
shorts to her knees with one hand and unzipped his own pants with
the other.

She felt impatient with kissing. When he
moved his hand from her breast to her stomach she caught it and
guided him lower. He let out his breath when he slipped his fingers
inside her.

“You're soaked,” he said.

“I know.” She felt her pulse beating where he
touched her and she whimpered when he drew his hand away.

“Hold on,” he said.

She heard him unwrap the condom but couldn't
see him in the darkness. Then his hands were on her knees, easy and
unhurried now as he parted her thighs and lowered his head between
her legs. She sank her fingers gratefully into his hair, lifted her
hips to meet him.

The rain washed over her face, spiked against
her belly. When she was very close Ben raised himself to his knees
and entered her. For a moment the momentum was lost and she
panicked, thrusting against him in her struggle to find it
again.