The Road to Glory (23 page)

Leigh mulled that over.

"I wouldn’t have done it except I didn’t want to see you hurt. I swear. Oops … and I’m sorry."

Apparently, those were the magic words because Leigh’s face seemed to lighten. "Thanks for looking out for me. It wasn’t necessary. But I guess it was sort of nice … in a weird, annoying, if-you-ever-do-it-again-I’ll-murder-you sort of way."

The one of RJ’s eyes that could narrow did. "Are you sure there’s no Irish in your system?"

Leigh exhaled slowly. "Nope. None that I’m aware of." She nudged RJ’s shoulder with her own. "C’mon, admit it. It felt good to blow off a little steam. I mean, I’m sure the quilting bees in Glory are great venting spots, but this was the best we had available at the moment."

"I don’t attend those particular social events, thank you very much. I prefer to get drunk with my brother and talk about women, if you must know." RJ gave Leigh a little smirk.

"Thank God. If you’d said you were a member of a quilting bee I don’t know what I would have done." Leigh turned sideways and crossed her legs under herself. "I’m sorry about your eye," she whispered. "I would never hurt you on purpose."

RJ sighed. "Don’t take it so hard, Leigh. I’m truly fine and I know it was an accident."

Leigh fiddled with the throw pillow, using any excuse not to look up at RJ’s bruised face. "That’s easy for you to say. How would you feel if you’d punched me, hurt me?"

RJ dropped her head and nodded. "I see what you mean. I’d feel awful if I hurt you. I’d never want to see you hurt either." RJ shuddered inwardly, thankful that the situation wasn’t reversed. That would truly suck. She smiled a little, trying to lighten her friend’s mood. "But, umm, according to the women in the bar tonight — I talked to a couple in the bathroom — I think I’m supposed to be the ‘butch’ one in this relationship, right? So it’s okay for me to get a shiner." RJ tugged on Leigh’s hand, trying to play with her a little, but it wasn’t working.

Leigh’s face remained impassive so RJ tried again. "It could be worse." She made a show of opening her mouth as wide as humanly possible, making it nearly impossible to speak. "You could have knocked out one of my good chewing teeth."

Leigh chuckled and grabbed for RJ’s tongue. "There’s always tomorrow, RJ."

R
J OPENED HER EYES slowly. They both worked and the left one didn’t even feel nearly as badly swollen this morning. She smiled at Leigh, who was still sound asleep, lying on her stomach with one arm draped off the bed.

Propping herself up on her elbow, the pilot tenderly ran a gentle hand through Leigh’s coarse, fair hair, tucking it behind a pink ear so that she could watch her sleep without anything blocking the lovely view. Leigh looked young and happy while slumbering. Her face, now slack in sleep, contrasted sharply to the woman who even while trying to relax seemed to hold RJ just a little further away than she wanted her to be. RJ sighed, understanding exactly why Leigh was doing it. When this week was over their ‘lives’ would go back to normal … and for both of them that mainly meant being alone.

These past few days had been some of the most interesting RJ had ever experienced, and she would be forever grateful for the time that she and Leigh had been given together. She wished there was more she could do to make the young woman happy, but this wasn’t Glory and there just wasn’t time. A firestorm of resentment built up within her when she realized she only had a few days — time was slipping away like sand between her fingers …
I just need to stop feeling sorry for myself and make every moment count. And dammit, I will.

RJ leaned over and gave the smaller woman a tender kiss on the cheek, getting swatted by a grumpy bedmate. She jerked her head back just in time to keep from getting smacked again by her growling companion. Drawing in a deep breath, RJ rolled out of bed, doing her best to ignore the kink her neck had developed in the night. Not surprisingly, being dead was much more conducive to a good night’s sleep. Moving quickly and quietly to the bathroom, she spent a few moments indulging in her morning ritual.

She inspected her eye, wincing at the lurid purple bruise that extended halfway down her cheek. "What’s this?" She spied a small bottle of hand cream on the shelf above the sink.
Oh, yeah, this is good.
Cool and soothing, the cream caused RJ to sigh happily as she carefully rubbed it into the puffy skin around her eye."Much better."

Leigh was still asleep when RJ clicked off the light and returned to the bed, sliding beneath the covers with the bottle of lotion still in hand. A light rain was tapping against the window, and the room was still steeped in early morning shadows.

RJ slowly pushed the covers down, exposing Leigh’s bare back. She squeezed a bit of the cream into her hands and rubbed them together, warming it before beginning a gentle massage of Leigh’s shoulders. She kept her touch light, waiting to see how Leigh would react to being awakened this way.

"Now that’s the way I like to wake up," Leigh mumbled sleepily, still not opening her eyes.

RJ breathed an inner sigh of relief. "Well, good."
Because it would be one of my favorite ways to wake you up. I’d do it every morning if I could.
"Would you like a little more pressure?" RJ subtly dug into Leigh’s muscles with her thumbs.

Leigh moaned. "Don’t you dare change a thing." Her eyes rolled back in her head. "It’s perfect."

A grin lit RJ’s face as she continued to run her hands over soft, warm skin. Leigh’s back was already relaxed from sleep, and her palms and fingers easily pressed into the muscles, drawing frequent, nearly sub-vocal sounds of praise from the trucker. More than once Leigh drifted back to sleep.

RJ chewed her lip as she regarded Leigh, who at this very moment was mumbling happily. "Would you like to go back to sleep?" she whispered. "I can stop if you like." RJ was half teasing. She knew what she wanted to do, but if Leigh was more interested in sleep … well, that would be fine too.

RJ glanced out the window. It was gray and drippy, a perfect day for lounging in bed. Or at least until they both got so antsy they couldn’t stand it. Which, she suspected, would be early afternoon at the soonest. "You know, lass," she squeezed another dollop of lotion into her palm, "It’s not really a nice day out. I could go out and find a market and pick us up a few things and we could just stay in today. Would you like that?" She titled her head in question. "Or did you have plans?"

"I could say I had plans," Leigh admitted, sighing as strong thumbs worked down the length of her spine, finding sensitive spots along the way. "Driving gets me really tense there."
What was she asking me? Oh, right.
"Considering that this is better than anything I had planned, I’d love to spend the day in bed. With you."

RJ’s eyebrows jumped. "Well, I would hope it’d be with me. Seeing as how I’m the one who’s gonna go out and get everything we need to have a lovely day together while you go back to sleep. How does that sound?"

Leigh mewed her agreement at the idea, gently patted RJ’s leg, and promptly fell back asleep.

With the help of the hotel clerk and a hand-drawn map, RJ found her way to a strip mall not too far from the hotel. It had several interesting stores full of electronic equipment that RJ couldn’t imagine people really needed and a decent-sized grocery store. She liked the fact it was within walking distance. It gave her a chance to stretch her legs, and if she were lucky, she’d get back to Leigh’s suite before it began raining any harder. Her jeans and light sweatshirt were already soaked but oddly she was enjoying every minute of it. While she had gotten used to her physical sensations being slightly dulled, she hadn’t grown blasé about seeing this new and exciting world around her that was the same and yet so different.

The comfortable clothes that she loved and that had driven her mother and teachers to near fits had become common place for woman. Hairstyles were a wild mix, for both sexes and from behind RJ couldn’t tell who was who. The people even looked bigger than in her day. RJ’s five feet eleven inches had made her taller than most of the men and nearly freakishly tall for a woman. Nobody stared at her height in this time … and she walked the streets with a delicious sense of anonymity.

By the time she’d finished her shopping and returned home, she was wet to the bone but in a cheerful mood. It wasn’t until she made it back to the hotel that an actual storm cut loose, sending bolts of jagged lightening through the gray sky.

She fumbled for a moment as she tried to get the ‘key’ to their room from her pocket without dropping anything.
What happened to real keys? These flimsy plastic cards don’t work for shit!
On the fourth try, a tiny green light appeared on a box above the door handle and her timing was right. RJ breathed a sigh of relief when she could actually open the door. She wondered if all the noise she’d made rattling the door in frustration had sent the people next door calling for the police.

RJ set the wet sacks onto the counter, glad that she’d selected plastic and not paper.
Is everything plastic nowadays?
She thought of some of the horrible little cars she’d seen up close on her trek to the store and decided that plastic had, indeed, taken over the world.

She peeled off her sweatshirt and padded out of the kitchen to hang them on the metal hooks sticking out of the front door. RJ turned for the kitchen when another loud clap of thunder shook the building. She looked up, annoyed, and sucked a puff of air through her teeth. "You could tone that down a bit, you know." Her hands moved to her hips. "Leigh’s still sleeping."

She waited a moment, listening, as it seemed to move off into the distance. RJ grinned toothily and headed back to the kitchen. "Thank you." It didn’t really matter if the storm had moved along due to her complaint or not. If RJ had learned one thing since dyin’ it was that it never hurt to be polite.

Hair still dripping into her face, she put away the groceries and took twenty minutes to figure out how to start the coffee pot. The one at the diner was a new-fangled model from the 1960s that Mavis had ordered from a catalog when the old one officially died, but this little
plastic
one was all electronic. Luckily her intellect prevailed. Eventually. Not only did she figure it out, but she was almost certain that she fix it to where it would come on for the next morning while they slept.
Truly amazing!
The things in the electronic shops were fascinating and not terribly expensive, considering the fantastic technology that made her head spin. But milk was nearly three dollars a gallon and gasoline almost two! This world made no sense.

RJ was in the process of scrambling eggs when she heard the bedroom open and Leigh’s soft footsteps. Leigh pushed open the swinging door to the small kitchen. Judging by her erratic movements, she was obviously still partially asleep. Her eyes were still half closed and her hair was a mess, sticking up in several directions. She was also naked as the day she was born.

To RJ’s eyes, she looked lovely.

Leigh stumbled past RJ, completely oblivious to her presence and opened the door to the fridge. She removed the carton of orange juice that RJ had put in there and took a long drink.

RJ leaned against the counter, watching Leigh in amusement as the swirling action of the eggs got slower and slower. Once Leigh was finished she put the juice back, moved to RJ, giving her a soft kiss on the cheek as she reached around her for a coffee cup in the cupboard.

I guess the lass did notice me after all.
"You mean you’re not gonna drink it straight from the pot?" She gestured toward the percolating coffee maker with her spatula.

One eyeball rolled in RJ’s direction and fixed on her spectacular shiner. "Who kicked your ass last night, Irish?"

"I said it was a good punch. I never said it wasn’t a lucky one to boot." She winked her good eye. "Umm … tell me, did someone break in here in the middle of the night and steal your clothes? And isn’t the cold floor making you chilly?"

Leigh’s gaze drifted down her own body, but she couldn’t dredge up even the slightest bit of embarrassment. They’d had sex in a dozen different locations since they’d met. It seemed sort of silly to start worrying about modesty now. Her brow creased. "It appears that
you
need to be reminded to actually remove your clothes before you take a shower. You’re all wet!"

"Groceries."

"Oh, right," Leigh yawned, remnants of their earlier conversation and a wonderful massage floating back to her. "Does me being naked bother you?"

"Depends on how you define ‘bother.’" The pilot wiggled her eyebrows. She set the skillet off the burner and wrapped long arms around Leigh’s waist. "If you’re thinking it bothers me in a my-goodness-she’s-runnin’-around-naked way, then you’d be wrong. If you think it bothers me in a she’s-naked-and-we’re-wastin’-time-talkin’-about-it-in-the-kitchen sort of way, then you’d be right." Her hands drifted down to the trucker’s backside and she gave a little squeeze, her own body reacting fiercely to Leigh’s presence. "How bad do you need that coffee, Leigh Matthews?" she whispered throatily.

"Bad." Leigh closed her eyes and let her lips brush against RJ’s damp collarbone, feeling the slight shock of cool wetness against her warm skin. "But not that bad."

RJ kissed her soundly, removing the coffee cup from Leigh’s hand and placing it haphazardly on the counter behind her. She lifted the blonde and felt strong legs curl around her as she deepened the kiss, tasting the sweet tang of orange juice and Leigh’s tongue. RJ slowly walked them to the bedroom and stopped at the foot of the bed where Leigh’s legs dropped.

She began peeling off her undershirt. The thin white material had been made see-through by the rain and Leigh growled impatiently at the sight. Reaching out, she tugged at the buttons on RJ’s jeans with slightly trembling hands. "How can I want you so badly already today?" she breathed, popping the last button and quickly working the material over RJ’s hips.

"I dunno, lass." RJ kicked out of her pants and underwear and pushed Leigh back into the cool, tangled sheets as their bodies met and their breasts pressed firmly together.
Sweet Jesus.
"But I feel the same way."