Uninhibited (Unlikely Lovers) (35 page)

“
Did you hear me?”

“
Yes, I heard you.” Emily didn’t have to imagine Janice’s jittery foot tapping the leg of her chair. She could hear it. “I’d really rather you didn’t bring him.”

“Ever? I have a feeling Alan and I will be together for a lot of Christmases. I hate to think you’d hold something against
my boyfriend because of what happened to one of your buddies.”

“
Carol wasn’t the only one affected.”

“You know what? I don’t care. I love—”

“He did it with Mom.”

Certain that t
he New Madrid fault had given way at last, Emily expected to hear dishes rattling in the cabinets, but all she heard was the ticking clock and the hum of the refrigerator. A glance around her kitchen revealed no crumbling plaster or swaying light fixtures. Her body was shaking, not the ground. 

“Emily? Are you still there?”

Shit.

So
this was the catch. She’d always known there would be one. Sleeping with Janice would’ve been bad enough.

B
ut her
mother
?

Janice continued as though Emily had responded.
“You heard me right. That annoying, over-sexed, clinging creep fucked our mother.”

“Shut up, Janice,” Emily growled. “I don’t give a damn
who he fucked. He is
not
a clinging creep.”

“Yeah, right.
I’m sure you don’t give a damn, but I bet Mom regrets it.”

“
I’m sure she does.” Doing her best to remain calm and sane, Emily tamped down her rising panic. “Who else knows? Did she ever tell Dad? Oh,
shit
.” She groaned as another thought struck her. “
Please
tell me Todd doesn’t know.”

“I doubt it. At
least, she hadn’t told anyone else when I heard about it. Carol was still living here at the time, so I had to deal with two women that jerk had screwed up. And now you’re fucking him.”

“
Janice, so help me God, if you say one more word against him…”

“
How can you keep defending him? He nailed our mother!”

“To date, Alan is the best thing that ever happened to me. We can work this out. I know we can. We
have
to.”

“I don’t see how. It’s not like your mother and your boyfriend would never meet—not unless you lived in Outer Mongolia or something.”

“That’s a thought. Since I didn’t change my name back to Stewart after my divorce, I can understand how he might not know Todd and I were related. But Todd and Mom have the same last name—although it isn’t all that unusual.”

“Knowing him, he might not have known Mom’s name.”

“Oh, he knows it all right. Looked me right in the eye and told me he’d never tell me or anyone else who she was.”

Emily was convinced
now. Whether Alan realized that she and her mother were related or not didn’t matter. His description of the “sweet, lovely woman” who’d given him a pity fuck fit her mother to a T.

“He told you about
her,
too? Jesus, I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Yeah, well
, you go right ahead and puke your guts out if you think it’ll help, but this doesn’t have anything to do with
you
. Alan was a total wreck after Carol left him. He told me about the last woman he slept with. The timing is right because it was after Carol left him that Mom told you about it.”

Emily was surprised her brain worked well enough to figure that out.

“How could he not know you’re her daughter if he knows Todd is your brother?”

“Maybe he never knew Mom’s last name. Hell, maybe he doesn’t know
Todd’s
last name. Maybe he was too wigged out after Carol left him to know anything. All I know is, a very nice, sweet woman—probably our mother—took pity on him, and he was so upset afterward that he swore off sex altogether.”

“Pity, huh?”

“Yes, and he must’ve been pretty damn pitiful or Mom wouldn’t have done it.” Oddly enough, Emily still believed what she’d told Alan about that woman being the right thing at the right time, although the infidelity thing had her bugged. “I always thought Mom was faithful to Dad. I mean, he’s as understanding as they come, but—”

“I guess that was why she
felt she had to confess.”

“
Yes, but why would she tell
you
and not
me
?”

“
Don’t make it sound like such an honor,” Janice said with a snort. “I was simply telling her why Carol was staying with us, and it came up in the conversation.”

“
What did she say exactly?”

“Now
that you mention it, she wasn’t too pleased with Carol—said she’d been unnecessarily cruel.” For the first time, Janice’s laugh seemed genuine. “I have to admit, there are
better ways to break up with a guy—even a slimy little horny toad with a nasty mouth.”

Emily counted to ten.
“Was that Carol’s description or Mom’s?”

“Carol’s.
Mom only said he could go longer than anyone she’d ever seen or heard tell of and she wished she’d met him when she was young and single.”

“
That sounds more like something Mom would say.”

Imagine that…
A man with my mother’s seal of approval...

Surely that had
to count for something—no matter how weird it was. And, no doubt about it—it
was
weird.

“I still don’t understand why Mom would do that. I mean, I know he was upset, but what about
her
? Surely she didn’t do it just because she felt sorry for him.”

Janice’s deep breath and subsequent sigh took a good thirty seconds. “She
was having a few problems herself—sort of a mid-life crisis. Having gotten Dad through his a few years back—remember when he was acting so weird and kept saying his life had no meaning?”

“Yeah, I remember.” Emily
didn’t understand how her father could see himself as being useless and unimportant to the lives of those around him, but apparently, he had. Whether it was a hormonal thing or a developmental task he had to achieve didn’t matter. What mattered was that he’d worked through it and was pretty much back to normal.

“
Well, Mom was going through the ‘I’m getting old and unattractive’ phase. I guess she and Dad were still sort of—oh, I don’t know…taking each other for granted or not as much in love as they used to be. He was traveling a lot back then, and maybe she was feeling neglected. Who knows? Anyway, she saw how upset Alan was, and after she’d sat and talked with him for a while, she offered to take him home.” She blew out another breath. “I guess one thing led to another, and she did the only thing she could think of that would help him. Obviously it didn’t help him—or her—very much. Then again, she and Dad have seemed a little more…chummy since then. I mean, they did take that trip to Jamaica.”  

Sighing deeply,
Emily made one last, desperate attempt to disprove her sister’s story. “You don’t think Mom made that up, do you?”

“
Why in heaven’s name would she do that?”

“
I have no idea,” Emily replied. “Great. Now that I may have finally found the love of my life, you have to ruin it by telling me that. Thanks a whole big bunch.”

“I’m sorry,
Em, but you needed to know the kind of man you’ve taken up with. Really, he’s been around more than—” She paused as though trying to come up with a good comparison and failed. “Anyone.”

“Oh, come on, Janice
. Surely, you can do better than that. I mean, he’s been around more than a ’39 quarter, or an offering plate in an old church, or a hot chick with a ’64 Mustang, or—”

“Oh, hush up
. This isn’t funny. And you are not—and I repeat,
not
—bringing him to my house for Christmas.”

“
Then you won’t be seeing me, either. I’d much rather spend Christmas with him anyway. Sure beats an evening with you and Ned and your kids all yelling at each other.”

“
What about Todd?”

“
Are you kidding? He was all for waiting until Mom and Dad came home. I practically had to beg him not to wuss out on me. You guys aren’t much fun these days, you know. Like I said before, you’d all behave better with Alan there.”

“
But he had sex with our
mother,” she wailed.

“So has our father,”
Emily reminded her. “You don’t hold that against
him
, do you?”

“
Of course not. I—”

“
Look, Janice, I know Alan has been with a lot of different women, and they’ve all thought he was over-sexed and too needy. Even I was a little overwhelmed at first until I realized he was exactly the kind of man I’ve been craving all my life. I’m not an afterthought to him. He actually listens to me and we have fun together. The best part is knowing he’s not always thinking about who won the big game or how much beer he’ll drink when he’s out with his buddies. He’s thinking about what he’ll do when he gets me in bed.”

“
Sounds like Ned.”

“
What?
I thought he was only concerned with retirement plans and such.”

“
He is—most of the time. The rest of the time, he just wants to get laid.”

“And what’s wrong with that?
Don’t turn him down, Janice. Whatever else goes wrong with people’s relationships, if the sex is good and the love is there, you can cope with anything.” She paused, recalling the last conversation she’d had with her sister. “What happened to you, anyway? You used to like sex as much as anyone.”

“
Too busy, I guess. And he’s so unromantic. One minute he’s talking retirement accounts, and the next, he wants to get it on. It doesn’t work that way for me. Thinking about getting old enough to retire does
not
make me feel sexy.”   

“Well, then, what would?”

“Oh, I don’t know…maybe if he wanted to take a vacation—just the two of us—or go for a drive, or brush my hair, or rub my back—”

“Feed you when you’re hungry, take care of you when you’re sick, rub your feet when you’ve had a hard day
, and give you as much love as you could stand?”

It took her a moment to digest all that, but when she did, her reply was a breathless whisper. “Oh, God, that sounds
fabulous.”

“
That’s what Alan said he’d do for me on the day we met. And he does it, too.
Now
do you understand why I love him and want to keep him and spend Christmas with him—whether he nailed our mother or not?”

“
Okay, but how do you think Mom will feel—or how
he
will feel when he realizes you’re her daughter? That’s got to be weird, and you know it.”

“
I’m sure it will be. But right now, Mom and Dad are in Jamaica, and I’ve already invited Alan to have Christmas dinner with us. Let’s try to get through this without making a big issue out of it. Can you do that for me? Please?”

“Okay. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll try.”

Her response lacked conviction, but given the circumstances, Emily couldn’t expect much more than that.

It’s a start.

Moments later, Alan staggered in laden down with an enormous container of tofu salad and an assortment of bags and packages.

“
Great. I’ve got to go,” she said, taking a couple of bags from him. “We had a wild day at the office, and I have to get ready for the party tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Emily added that last bit with a very firm tone. She wasn’t about to let Janice talk her out of dating Alan. Every relationship had problems, and this one wasn’t insurmountable.

At least, she hoped it wasn’t. 

Cha
pter 25

How in the world did anyone tell their new boyfriend that they knew he’d done the deed with her mother? Her happily married, never-cheated-before mother? She would have to tell him before—

Before what? Before the next sunrise? Before they actually met each other in the context of being her mother and her boyfriend? Emily had never considered herself to be cowardly, but this went beyond the usual need for courage.

Travis had warned her that Alan was fragile and to be careful with him. Her mother, on the other hand, wasn’t the least bit fragile. Emily would’ve bet any amount of money that she would greet Alan without batting an eyelash. Alan would probably have a meltdown, which might lead her father to suspect the truth—something Emily would prefer to avoid. 

One
glance was enough to convince her that giving him up was not an option. He had snowflakes in his hair, a twinkle in his eyes, and a mischievous smile that wreaked havoc with her heart.