Thorns of Truth (35 page)

“No, you don’t. I was a mess. If it hadn’t been for Brian …”

She let the sentence trail off, shaking her head as if to clear it. “But that’s yesterday’s news. You want today’s headline? My case was settled. The other side was smart enough to realize a bird in the hand is worth more than two million in the bush.”

“Hey, congratulations.” He grinned, and lifted his water glass. “What brought them around?”

“Insufficient proof. Not even a
prima facie
case.” She grinned. “In other words, they didn’t do their homework.”

“Either that, or you were more thorough. How did it go with Professor Highsmith, by the way?”

“Oh Eric, I can’t thank you enough. We flew him in to testify. He was terrific. His clinical study on the effect of smoking on the cardiovascular system was incredibly persuasive.” Highsmith, a professor at Stanford, had come to her courtesy of Eric’s Rolodex—the subject of an interview he’d done last year.

“In that case, you can buy me lunch.” As if remembering something, he added, “But, listen, about Brian … there’s one thing I’m curious about.”

Rose, thinking of the night she and Brian had kissed, felt herself grow warm. “What’s that?”

“He and I met for lunch the other day. Just to catch up, but somehow the conversation kept coming around to you. Brian wanted to know if I was still seeing you, how serious it was—that kind of thing.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him, yes, I was seeing you. That’s about it. Brian’s a great guy, and a friend … but I got the funny feeling he was doing more than just making conversation.” Eric himself seemed almost too nonchalant, as if he, like Brian, were soft-pedaling his interest in all this.

“Brian’s always been sort of a big brother. He … he’s very protective of me.” A lame excuse, she knew, but she was too flustered to come up with something better.

Eric wasn’t buying it. “You really loved him, didn’t you?’”

“Yes. At one time I loved him very much.” She was surprised at how easy it was to talk about. “He was … everything. I think I must have been in love with him from the time I first started wondering if a Near Occasion of Sin included kissing.” She took a sip from her water glass. “By the time I graduated from Impure Thoughts to Mortal Sin, I was a goner.”

Eric smiled. “What happened after that?”

“Vietnam.” She shrugged and said, “You know the rest. He was badly wounded. Rachel saved his life. They got married.”

Rose was relieved when their waiter arrived just then to take their order. All this was ancient history, sure, but even memories that had grown dull with time could still cut. Even now, so many years later, she couldn’t remember it without bleeding just a little—those letters he’d sent that had never reached her, that Nonnie had spitefully hidden away. And when Brian didn’t hear back from her, he was sure she’d forgotten him. Nothing could have been further from the truth; the only thing that had kept her
alive
was the hope of something in the mail. When she did finally get word—that he’d gotten married—she was devastated. The only thing worse would have been learning that he’d been killed.

In time, and with Max’s love, she’d grown to understand … to see that even if she
had
kept on writing to him, the Brian to whom those letters were addressed wouldn’t have been the same Brian reading them. Not the boy she’d grown up with, or even the young man who’d believed it noble to fight for his country, who’d promised tearfully to come back to her—the girl next door.

But back then, Rose had wanted only to die. To close her eyes and never wake up.

“It’s funny,” Eric observed thoughtfully. “When I turned the tables on Brian, and asked about you and
him
—he couldn’t get off the subject fast enough.”

“What would be the point of raking it up? It all worked out for the best in the end.” Rose felt something in her gut twist even so. “If it hadn’t been for Rachel, I wouldn’t have married Max. It hurt, yeah—honestly, I didn’t think I was going to survive—but with time, I came to see that it was meant to be.”

She saw something flicker in Eric’s eyes. “You believe in destiny?” he asked with a faintly ironic lift of his brow.

“Depends.”

“On what?”

She smiled, wanting to keep the discussion light, fearing that if she didn’t it might lead to questions she wasn’t ready to answer.

“On whether or not it comes with a prize at the bottom of the box.”

Eric laughed softly. He was leaning on his elbows, his sandy hair falling over his forehead in that endearing way of men and boys who spend as little time in front of mirrors as possible. Along the stucco wall behind him hung a row of halogen lights, like tiny conical hats, suspended from a long wire like Christmas-tree lights.

“I wasn’t referring to Cracker Jacks,” he said.

“Eric, what are you asking?”

He regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I’ve heard how you felt about your husband. And Brian. What I’m not so sure of is how you feel about
us
.”

Rose shifted back in her chair, as if she’d been cornered. “Us?”

“Don’t look so panicked.” He smiled, but this time there was no humor in it. “It doesn’t have to be written in blood.”

“Eric.” She folded a hand over his. “Listen … can we talk about this some other time? I’m feeling kind of overwhelmed at the moment.”

He held her gaze for longer than she could physically bear—longer than it would have taken to tell him she was sorry, she hadn’t meant to sound so heartless, could they please just leave now and go to his apartment, where they would draw the blinds and make love in the light that trembled in paper-thin slices between the slats.

“Is this a polite way of saying you want to cool it for the time being?” Eric was as blunt as ever. It was one of the things she admired most about him.

“I just thought …”

“I’m not in this to make life more difficult for either of us,” Eric cut her off sharply. His eyes fixed on her with a keenness she found uncomfortable. “I have only one favor to ask. If you
do
decide to end it, do it in a minute. I promise I’ll be out of your life before you take another breath.”

Rose sat back, stunned by his intensity.

“I didn’t say we should stop seeing each other,” she told him.

“What
do
you want, then?”

“I don’t know. That’s the point.” She frowned, nervously toying with her pendant—a ruby-studded heart on a slender gold chain, Max’s gift to her on their fifteenth anniversary. “Except for my husband, you’re the first man I’ve slept with in over twenty years. To be honest, I don’t know quite how to handle it. It
does
feel a little like when I was a teenager.”

He drew his hand across her cheek, his fingertips lighting briefly on her mouth before curling back into his lap. His slightly off-center smile made her think of a crooked picture frame in need of straightening. “Is that good or bad?”

“Both.”

“I’ll never hurt you.”

“Oh, Eric.” She sighed. “It’s not
you
I’m afraid of. It’s me. My family is falling apart, and I’m supposed to be at the center holding things together—only I’m not. I’m either at work, or running back and forth between your place and mine.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way.” He regarded her coolly, but underneath she sensed a heat that might scorch her if she got too close.

Rose took a sip of water that tasted flat, coppery. Indian sitar music played softly in the background. She felt something stirring in her, she didn’t know quite what—either the beginning of something she wasn’t ready to face, or the end of something she wasn’t quite ready to give up.

Who was she kidding? Well, the least she could give him was an honest answer. “I guess I’m just not ready for more than what we have right now.”

“I don’t mind taking it slow.”

She gave him an upside-down smile of contrition. “It doesn’t seem fair. All I’ve done is dump my troubles on you.”

“I don’t see it that way,” he said. “But if it helps to talk, I don’t mind listening.”

“You’ve done more than listen. Especially with Mandy.”

“What’s going on with her?” he asked, his expression sharpening.

Rose filled him in on her conversation with Hayden Lock-wood. “The thing is, it’s not
like
her,” she puzzled aloud. “Until now, she never let her drinking get in the way of her work. Mandy has incredible willpower. She’s like her father that way.”

“In AA we have a saying: ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,’ ” Eric told her. “Sometimes it takes losing the next-most-important thing in your life to give up the
most
important.”

“What could be more important than her job? Than
us
—her family?”

Eric smiled at her—a knowing smile. “Booze,” he said simply. “To a practicing alcoholic,
nothing
is more important.”

Their waiter appeared once again with several steaming bowls, reminding her of how hungry she was. Later they would decide what to do about Mandy, she decided. Right now, she was simply going to enjoy what was in front of her.

The savory dishes arrived one after the other, and she devoured everything, including most of the warm breads Eric had ordered for the two of them. The red-hot spices made her eyes water and her mouth smart. The dense chewiness of the
chapati
soothed her. The entire spread was like some elaborate seduction of the senses she was helpless to resist.

When Eric suggested they head back to his place, a thousand excuses—all of them valid—rose up in her mind like a frenzied flock of geese. But she couldn’t think of a single one more urgent than the delicious prospect of Eric’s making love to her.

Half an hour later, she stood naked before him in the bedroom of his Murray Hill apartment, which made up in sunniness what it lacked in charm, watching him undress.

She wanted him so badly she could hardly bear it. For years, she’d heard men talk about such urges, and had always come away feeling slightly superior. Women weren’t so base, she’d thought smugly. They knew how to proceed at a more civilized pace—mutual regard for one another that built toward mutual desire; knowing what was appropriate, and what wasn’t.

To hell with it,
she thought.
I need this.

Soft jazz played on the stereo—tenor saxophone that curled like silk ribbons about her naked limbs as she stretched out on the bed, looking up at the sturdy pine shelves that marched up toward the ceiling like rungs on a ladder. They were crammed with books, CDs, framed photos of vintage airplanes, promotional coffee mugs sent to him at WQNA, along with a curious array of boyhood baseball gloves so stiff with age they resembled chunks of wood oiled and polished to a dull shine.

“Stan Getz,” Eric informed her. “Would you rather I put on something different?”

“No … I like it. Just come here.”

He did. As Eric wrapped his naked body about hers, it was like sinking into a warm pool. She felt his breath against her neck, patient and still. He understood how it was with her, she thought. Instinctively knowing to allow her a minute or two to adjust to the floating sensation brought on by their combined bodies. Until she felt ready to begin stroking her way toward the deep end.

Eric smoothed his palms down the length of her arms, leaving a slipstream of goosebumps. In the semidarkness, his eyes glinted from under lids gone heavy. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing naked.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” she whispered into his hair with a throaty laugh, running her hand down his back.

On the rag rug beside the bed, her pale-blue silk half-slip and matching bra lay in a puddle like melted ice. Several weeks ago, she’d succumbed at long last to the Victoria’s Secret catalogue that showed up in her mailbox each month as faithfully as her period. Instead of tossing it into the recycling bin as she usually did, she’d picked up the phone and dialed their 800 number, ordering two hundred dollars’ worth of lingerie. Since Max’s death, she’d worn nothing but plain white cotton underwear. Catholic birth control, Marie called it. What difference did it make? she’d reasoned. Nobody was going to see her undressed. Now, suddenly, it mattered. At work even, under her tailored suits, the whisper of silk against her skin made her feel sexual, desirable, the kind of woman a man would want to be trapped in an elevator with.

She felt as if she were on an elevator now, ascending rapidly. Her stomach floated somewhere up around her sternum. She felt prickly with sweat, and unable to swallow. She stroked him where she knew he liked to be stroked, gratified when he shuddered and cupped her buttocks, drawing her closer.

“Mmm … you’re good at this,” he murmured.

A breeze blowing through the open window caused the blind to undulate, sending delicate fingers of light and shadow rippling over his face and bare torso. A patch of skin below his collarbone, roughly the size and shape of a palm print, glistened with perspiration.

She squeezed lightly, and heard a hissing intake of breath as his stomach muscles clenched, tightening until they quivered.

“You make it easy,” she teased.

His hand began moving in slow circles down her belly, lower, lower, leaving her breathless. His fingertips explored the soft hair below, parting her like sections of ripe fruit. Without her even drawing him a map, he knew each tributary and blue road as if he’d traveled it a hundred times.

“Like this?” he asked softly, thrusting deeper.

Rose moaned, feeling drugged with pleasure, soaking up each delicious sensation—his touch, his scent, the mere sight of him, even.

Eric was muscular in the long, lean way of swimmers, with low-slung hips that tapered into legs roped with tendon. What saved him from being annoyingly perfect was an inch of spare tire around his waist. And thank God for it, Rose thought, or she’d have been far too embarrassed to let him see
her
naked.

She could feel the seams in the old quilt on which she lay pressing a row of plump little diamonds along her naked spine. Rose gasped as Eric plunged into her again … then just as abruptly withdrew.