Tempt Me Tonight (34 page)

Soft guitar music began to play as Jana looped her arm through his and they stepped from the tent out into the bright sunlight. Walking his sister up the aisle between a hundred strippers and mob guys felt a little surreal, but Joe had bigger things to concentrate on—like making sure Jana stayed balanced in her ridiculously high heels in the grass. She clutched tighter at Joe when the crowd turned to watch her make her way toward her husband-to-be, and he instinctively covered her hand with his.

At the foot of the gazebo stood the guy with the ponytail he and Trish had seen a few minutes earlier—and Jana beamed at the sight of him. Three more guys—who looked a lot like the groom—stood next to him, all in black. That’s when Joe noticed the bridesmaids, revealing dresses and all, who he figured performed at seven, nine, and eleven nightly.

When the justice of the peace—who looked like he might also be a bouncer—asked who gave this woman, Joe said, “I do,” then kissed his sister on the cheek.

The way she smiled at him tightened his chest and made him damn glad he’d been there for her. Hell, no matter what she chose to do with her life, he knew he
would
be. He just
would
be.

Of course, as he sat back down beside Trish, his mind reeled. The stripper thing was still a blow. Sure, he’d sown some wild oats in his day, but there were some things he was real old-fashioned about, and one of them was that his
sister
should not
take her clothes off and dance naked for strange men.
But he couldn’t think about that now.

No, right now, he had to watch the union to which he’d just given his blessing take place, whether he liked it or not. And a few minutes later, as Vinnie Balducci gave his sister a way-too-long kiss, the kind Joe reserved strictly for the bedroom or the Cobra or someplace where he was getting ready to have sex, Trish said, “You know, they look really happy.”

“I guess,” he said stiffly.

“Maybe he really loves her—maybe they’re going to have a great life together. And…” She paused to study the crowd, who was now cheering and applauding at the kiss. “Their friends all seem really happy
for
them. So maybe this will all be okay, Joe.” She squeezed his hand and he thought—
Oh shit, I’m crazy about this woman.
But that was one more issue he couldn’t deal with right now.

Next thing Joe knew, they were standing in a line, waiting to greet the bride and groom. When he finally reached his sister, Jana threw her arms around him again. “This is Vinnie,” she said at the end of the embrace, still gripping Joe by the wrist as she drew him closer to her new husband. “Vinnie, this is my big brother, Joe.”

Joe knew he sounded too brusque when he said, “Nice to
finally
meet you.”

Vinnie took his hand in a firm handshake and Joe liked realizing he had several inches on the guy. “Joe, my girl here talks about you all the time. I’m sorry we haven’t met before now.”

Joe narrowed his gaze. “Well, I’d hoped to on the day you guys brought my car over.”

Vinnie nodded in reply. “That was my fault. I was having a bad day, some business problems, and I didn’t want to meet you when I was in a sour mood. I’m sure you understand.”

Not really.
But Joe held his tongue, so Vinnie went on.

“I hope we can get to know each other
now.
I know Jana would like nothing more.”

Joe didn’t respond to that, but before letting go of Vinnie’s hand, he leaned in closer, met Vinnie’s dark eyes, and said, “Take care of my sister. Make her happy.”

Vinnie didn’t pull his gaze away, didn’t look bothered or threatened at all, which kind of disappointed Joe. But he also didn’t look angry. Instead, he just said, “You’ve got my word.”

“Good.”

So he’d come to the wedding he’d dreaded, and he’d taken care of his little sister one more time—either that or he’d given her to a thug. The only thing left to see now, he supposed, was just how good Vinnie Balducci’s word was.

“Listen—a whippoorwill.” Darkness had long since fallen and Joe sat with Trish on her parents’ screened-in porch. They’d left the wedding reception right after the cutting of the cake—he hadn’t been able to stand it any longer—then driven back here, grabbing dinner on the way and arriving just in time to say goodnight to Mr. and Mrs. Henderson as they were heading up to bed. Strange how comfortable he was with them again so quickly, now that he’d made peace with Trish’s dad. Strange how much better he felt walking into this house than his own sister’s wedding.

Trish smiled up at him as the whippoorwill called again. “I haven’t heard one of those in a very long time.”

“Stick with me, babe,” he said, “and I’ll keep you in whippoorwills.”

She laughed softly and he tightened his arm around her.

Then lowered his voice. “And by the way, thank you.”

She lifted her head from his shoulder to look up. “For what?”

“Going with me today. It was a nightmare. But less of a nightmare with you.”

She gave him a teasing smile. “I’d have thought it was a dream come true. How often do you find that many scantily clad women with fake boobs in one place?”

He grinned—and held in the reply that came to mind.
Who needs scantily clad women when I have you?

And instead of asking him what was wrong or why he was looking at her so strangely, she simply reached both hands up to his face and kissed him. Nothing heated, just a soft, chaste, sweet kiss—and he wondered if she could feel the weird pain running through him right now.

And the strangest part was—he suddenly wanted to tell her. He didn’t know why. Hell, just two nights ago, he’d worried what she’d think if she knew. But Jana’s wedding, along with wondering if the path she’d taken had been his fault, had some old, hard memories bubbling to the surface. Trish’s return to his life had brought them back, but Jana’s wedding was bringing them
out
. “I need to tell you,” he heard himself say.

She looked up. “What?” He supposed he’d sounded abrupt, maybe a little reckless.

“I need to tell you,” he said, softer this time, “about the night my mom died.”

Her eyes went round and sad, and even in the dim lighting he could see her heart welling in them. “Oh, Joe. When it happened, I knew…I knew I should have been there for you. I cried and cried, so sad for you, and feeling like I should have been at your side. I’m sorry. That I wasn’t.”

He blinked, amazed. He’d never even thought about what she might have felt when she heard about it—hell, he’d been pretty wrapped up in his own troubles at the time. “You don’t have to be sorry, Trishy. We’d been over almost a year by then. And the truth is…”

He heard her swallow. Felt the heavy knot growing in his own throat, too.

But he had to get these words out. Just had to
tell
her, tell
somebody.
“The truth is, I didn’t deserve sympathy. Because it was my fault.”

“What?” Shock reshaped her pretty face, but it still stung because he knew he was about to shock her in a much worse way.

He stared out into the darkness, remembering that night over a dozen years ago—but sometimes it felt like yesterday. He’d spent a damn lot of time wishing he could take it back, make things like they were before, bring his mother back to life. Crazy, but some mornings he’d wake up half-forgetting that she was gone, dead—and even after he’d remember, he’d lay in bed pretending it wasn’t true, pretending she was out in the kitchen making coffee, stuffing bread in the toaster, about to yell through the house that they’d all better get up if they were gonna get to work and school on time.

“On the night she died,” he began low, still peering out through the screen into the blackness of the backyard, “she and my dad had a fight, a bad one. They fought a lot, especially if they drank too much.”

Trish’s voice was barely audible above the songs of crickets wafting in. “What were they fighting about?”

He gave a short, cynical laugh. “Who knows—could have been anything. Money. Me or Jana. Anything. You probably never really knew…how much my mom drank.”

She blinked, clearly taken aback. “No. I guess not.”

He choked back his pain. “I guess she kept it kind of hidden, but some mornings I’d find her asleep on the couch with a glass or a can still in her hand. Not every morning—just…pretty often. And on the weekends, she and dad would both drink all day. It wasn’t until I started spending time at other people’s houses, like yours, and Kenny’s, that I started realizing not everybody drank that much.

“Anyway, she was drunk—both of them were. And screaming their damn heads off when I came home that night. It was a Saturday in June—hot as hell, and no AC back then, so I remember walking in to find them both dripping with sweat, yelling at each other. Jana was barricaded in her room. I was about to go barricade myself in mine—and remind myself that I needed to save enough money to move out so I didn’t have to listen to it anymore.

“Then Mom started screaming that she was leaving, that she wasn’t putting up with his shit. She started for her car keys, but I picked them up first.”

He stopped then, sighed. God, remembering it made him weary.

“So suddenly I was in their argument. She was screaming at me, wrestling me for the keys, telling me I had no right to take them, asking me who I thought I was, threatening to throw me out of the house, you name it. And Dad—hell, he didn’t do much of
anything
. He just stood back and let her take her wrath out on me.”

“God, Joe.” Trish touched his thigh. “It sounds awful.”

But she didn’t know the half of it yet. And the hard part was coming. “So…I told her she was too damn drunk to drive. I called her an alcoholic. And she slapped me. Hard.

“My mom had never hit me before. With my dad, it was different—he’d taken the belt to me when I was a kid and got in trouble. He’d never had a problem shoving me around if he thought I’d done something wrong. But with my mom—I never saw it coming.”

He felt almost out of breath, but knew he had to keep going now. “So she slapped me and yelled that I’d better give her the damn keys. And I was so mad that I said, ‘Fine, you want to go out and kill yourself, do it,’ and I threw the keys at her and went in my room and slammed the door.” It was difficult to talk now—his throat had started closing up. “And that’s exactly what she did. She got in her car, drove up the road, missed the turn by Pollard’s barn, and hit that big oak tree on the curve.”

“Oh, Joe.”

He heard Trish’s voice—but it sounded distant somehow, as if he were in a bubble by himself. He pushed back the huge lump blocking his airway and blinked to keep any wetness from leaking from his eyes. “She wasn’t perfect, but she was my mom, and I loved her. And I let her get behind the wheel of a car when I knew she was drunk. It was like…I killed her myself.”

“No, Joe,”
Trish said, her voice sharper now, cutting through the fog surrounding him. “You were a kid, and she put you in an awful position—and she
hit
you, for heaven’s sake.”

He pulled his gaze from the darkness finally, meeting Trish’s. “But I still didn’t have to give her the damn keys.”

“You just reacted, that’s all. It was a horrible situation, and you wanted out of it, and that makes sense. It’s not your fault she drank, or was angry, or drove. If you hadn’t been there, the same thing would have happened.”

His chest hollowed and he felt eighteen all over again. “My dad said if I hadn’t been standing between them,
he
would have gotten the keys first, and he wouldn’t have given them to her for anything.”

Trish’s eyes widened, her face painted with something like horror. “Your father blamed you?”

Joe tried to explain, but his mouth felt weird, numb. “He never told anybody else about it. But when I said it was my fault, he said it would’ve been different if I hadn’t come home when I did, or if I’d just stayed out of it.”

Trish feared her heart would burst in her chest. In that moment, she hated Joe’s father with everything inside her. And she hated that Joe had been put in that hideous position and had been carrying this weight around with him, blaming himself for something that wasn’t his fault.

She considered trying to absolve him some more, to make him understand, but she feared he wouldn’t be able to hear, to absorb her words, right now. Still, she desperately needed to comfort him. “I don’t want you to hurt anymore,” she said softly, then lifted her hands back to his stubbled cheeks and kissed him again—but deeper this time, because she had to take him far away from those memories, to someplace much better.

Below the occasional call of the whippoorwill, the low trill of crickets still emanated from the shadowy trees beyond the yard. Even from the enclosed porch, she could see stars twinkling above the treeline amid a darkness so thick and velvety she’d forgotten it could exist. The rich, fecund scent of earth and grass and pure summer night filled her senses. And Joe filled her senses, too.

Ending the kiss, she drew back to look at him, take him in completely—the dark beauty of the man he was, with all his hurts, all his regrets, all his brusqueness and anger and gentleness and sweetness, everything.

When
he
leaned slowly forward to kiss
her,
only their tongues met—somehow tentative yet utterly sensual. But then his mouth closed back over hers, warm and exciting and as new as if it were the very first kiss they’d shared since high school, and she sank into it completely. She might not be willing to surrender her heart to him—but she seemed to have no control over her body when he touched her.

His breath grew labored as their kisses deepened, and she soon found herself trembling in his arms.
Because
it felt new. But it also felt old, ancient—primal.

“Need you, baby,” he murmured against her neck, his hand rising to the side of her breast to mold and caress—and before she knew it, the intensity of the moment gave way to baser instincts, hard raw needs, and all trembling disappeared as he pulled her over to straddle his hips on the couch. They moved together in that rhythm as old as time itself, and she bit her lip and peered deep into his eyes as she undulated against that sinfully hard part of him in tight, hot circles.