Accompanying Alice Read online

  across her lips, touched the heat and moisture of her mouth. “Why do I know how you’d feel if I—”

  “Don’t.”

  She could barely breathe, he was so close. Blatantly sexual, his gaze moved lazily across her face, aroused, rousing. His breath brushed the corners of her mouth. His body didn’t quite press hers, but she could feel him, taste him...

  “—if I touch you—”

  “Don’t!”

  “How long has it been, Alice?” He braced his hands on the tree behind her head. “How long since you’ve been touched by someone other than yourself? Treated like a woman deserves to be treated?”

  Long enough. The thought leapt between them, guilty and revealing. Gabriel’s mouth lowered toward hers, and Alice knew he’d read the evidence in her eyes before she could blink it away. Her feet clung to the earth, wanting to run, unable to move.

  “Please, Gabriel,” she whispered. Why did she want to justify her reaction to him? Why was she afraid of what he might think? She shouldn’t be ashamed of not sleeping with anyone since Matt—of being cautious with both her body and her emotions. “Whatever you see, whatever I’ve done, I didn’t mean… I don’t want… I don’t know you. I can’t—”

  Gabriel’s mouth sought hers briefly, impatiently, stilling the words. “But I’ve known you forever, Alice,” he said thickly, “and I need…”

  He stopped abruptly, stunned by the truth. Oh, God, what was he saying, what was he doing? He did need her. Fiercely. Passionately. He did know her. Every nook and cranny of her soul. Had forever. Where he’d always thought he ended, she began him again. His hands crushed dead bark from the tree as he withdrew them from behind her head. The idea was madness. It was impossible.

  But it was also true.

  His eyes found Alice’s, read the confusion, the latent desire, the concern. The same mocha-chocolate eyes that had feared for him—been afraid of him—yesterday morning. The expressive wanting eyes that had called him to her last night, then stopped him from kissing her all in the beat of a pulse. Damning eyes. Samaritan eyes. Forgiving eyes.

  Hungry eyes.

  He spun away from her, back onto the trail he’d crushed through the bramble coming in. And stopped. He couldn’t run from her this time.

  He turned, but she was already there, hand on his arm, speaking his name. His skin quivered at her touch. “Gabriel…”

  “Don’t touch me, Alice, not now.” His voice was strained. “This is something I haven’t planned for, I’ve never felt. If you keep touching me, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Gabriel, please.” Again she was pleading with him, but differently now, for understanding. “You… I don’t understand what I feel. You confuse me. One minute we’re so close that the only things I don’t know about you—or care if I ever know—are the details. The next minute you’re

  someone else, someone I don’t want to know—couldn’t know. When I remember that it was only yesterday, and how I found you, I’m frightened. You frighten me. Everything in my life is changing so all at once, and I don’t know if the way I feel around you is part of that or because of it, and I don’t know if this is just a game of pretend that got carried away and...”

  She was dithering, just like Aunt Kate at Cousin Mamie’s wedding. She hated that about herself, hated not being able to put her thoughts into words coherently. She plunged recklessly on, anyway. “And I don’t like feeling like this—like I keep inviting you to do something, then pushing you away. But I’ve never…and I don’t know how…and if I let go of you, somehow that seems like it’ll make it all even worse and—”

  Gabriel’s hands cupped her face, were in her hair. His mouth was warm on hers, stilling, demanding, gentle. “Alice,” he murmured. “Be quiet. You’re rattling on.”

  Her hands were on his arms, holding tight. “Am I?”

  “Yes,” he assured her between kisses. “On and on and on.”

  “I’m sorry.” Breathlessly, Alice sought the dangers of his mouth, moth to flame.

  Gabriel’s hands slid down her sides, found her waist, dragged her close. “I’m not,” he muttered, and then there was no more room for speech, no breath to spare for anything so mundane. Alice’s arms sought the path along his shoulders, around his neck. Fingers slipped easily into his hair, tightened. His tongue touched hers, claimed it, branded it to the deep-seated tone of Alice’s encouragement. His hands curved over her hips. She stood on tiptoe straining to

  get near, called to him by the rumble in his throat, a sound without words, a plea.

  And then he lifted his head and let her go, drawing her hands from his hair, pushing her away.

  “Gabriel.”

  His name was out before she could stop herself from saying it, calling him back. He shut his eyes, jammed his hands deep into his pockets.

  “I can’t, Alice. I want you too badly. If I don’t stop now, I won’t be able to stop at all. I’d take you down right here, but I don’t want you to remember me that way. I don’t want you to regret it.”

  “What about you?”

  Gabriel looked at the sky, at his recent past and indefinite future. What had she called their possibilities last night? Temporary. “I don’t matter a damn past Saturday, Alice.”

  She was in front of him, insistent. Her eyes were damp.

  “What if I said you did? You could?”

  “You like to be sure of things before you commit to them, Alice, and I am not, by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, a sure thing.”

  “Because of your job?”

  “That, and who I am.”

  “But who—”

  “I’m never sure, Alice.” He looked at her bleakly. “And I do wish I knew.”

  Chapter Seven

  A dithery-looking white-haired woman in a fluttery dress of orange-flowered chiffon stood on Alice’s porch wiggling her fingers excitedly at them as they pulled into the driveway after a silent journey home.

  She was flanked by a squat gray grizzled-looking man in his late sixties, three dubious-appearing red-haired boys of varying sizes and ages, a forty-five year old whiny-looking female in shorts and a halter top who bore a marked resemblance to the chiffon-clad woman, and a tall stalwart-looking gentleman with orange hair and an expression eternally wishing to be somewhere else. Alice stared at them aghast. After what she’d just been through with Gabriel, the last thing in the world she needed was Aunt Kate, Uncle Delbert, Cousin Mamie, her husband, George, and their children dumped, like so many puppies, on her doorstep. She lifted her eyes skyward with a silent Why me?—realizing, as she had in the past, that God undoubtedly appreciated this joke very much, since He apparently had the same sense of humor that Helen had.

  Beside her, Gabriel roused himself from his black study to view this diversion with interest. It certainly beat self-castigation all to hell. “Is that...?”

  “Aunt Kate.” Alice nodded blankly. “Uncle Delbert, Cousin Mamie, George and the boys. I forget their names.”

  “Were we expecting them?”

  Alice struggled with a long-suffering sigh. “No. But then, we never are.”

  The grin that formed his mouth caught Gabriel unprepared. He coughed and cleared his throat to hide it. His “I see” sounded strangled.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Aunt Kate wobbled down the three concrete steps on her orange sling-back stilts, took one step off the walk onto the grass, which last night’s rain had left soft, wet and muddy, sank deep, recovered and remained on the walk, waving. “Alice dear, do come let us in, will you? We’ve waited simply hours and we’re all just impossibly exhausted and famished. We absolutely must—”

  Aunt Kate, Alice observed to Gabriel with a shudder, always seemed to speak in exclamation points and emphatic italics, laboring under the mistaken impression that this was

  1920, and she was Southern, cute and perpetually twenty-three. Which was, she added with a shudder, what made Aunt Kate fascinating to observe—from afar. She left the car, mentally cringing, an
d crossed to greet the relative who lifted her cheek to Alice.

  “How are you, Aunt Kate? We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

  “Now, don’t be upset, Alice dear,” Kate urged. “Your uncle and I decided to come down a day early to see if we could help your mother with anything. Mamie and George and their darlings drove in with us to do a little shopping and sight-seeing because we knew you’d be the only one not too busy to take them. I mean, you know, there’s simply nothing like Detroit around us.” She slapped a dramatic hand over her heart. “And, well, you know, the prices are simply atrocious in the stores up there. And then when that hotel mysteriously lost our reservations, Helen told us arrangements were made for Delbert and me to sleep here. Mamie and George’s reservations aren’t even good until Friday, and well, you do have a sofa bed, don’t you? And of

  course, the darlings can make do with air mattresses and sleeping bags on the floor, and—”

  Aunt Kate stopped abruptly and drew in a soft breath, hand to her throat and eyelashes fluttering as Gabriel’s shadow brushed her face. She captured his hand. “Oh, my,” she breathed. “So you’re the gentleman they say has taken up with our Alice. You are the handsome devil, aren’t you? My Delbert reminded me of you, once.” She linked her arm with Gabriel’s, leaning on him as she climbed the porch steps. “That was a long time ago, of course, but to see you

  now does take me back to our courtship....”

  She blushed prettily, tugged Gabriel down to breathe in his ear. “I am so sorry about spoiling your sleeping arrangements, you understand, but they did say the two of you weren’t married and, well, it may do for you to share a bed when there’s nobody about, but you do see, don’t you, how it looks to the relatives that you may just be using our Alice. I mean, how plain she is and all, not like my Mamie. And really, it may just be best if you’d bow out now and shack up somewhere else while there’s someone here to comfort her, if you see what I mean, because the example for Mamie’s boys and all, well, you know, it’s just not what we want, and—”

  “Aunt Kate.” Alice grasped the other woman’s free arm, smiling, but her voice was low and dangerous. “You’re overstepping again, Aunt Kate, and I don’t care what Helen says, there must be some lumpy-mattressed motel around here somewhere with a room and a restaurant where you can go and pay for all your meals, and if you don’t behave, I Will Find It For You.”

  “Oh, but Alice dear.” Aunt Kate looked shocked. “I was only thinking of your best interests. You’re all alone in the world and with one disastrous marriage already behind you, why it’s obvious you simply don’t understand a thing about men. Someone has to protect you.”

  Alice glanced at Gabriel, whose mouth fought a valiant battle with laughter, but whose eyes warmed her, stirring the still-smoldering coals inside her. Her hand shook as she tried fitting her key into the front door lock. “Thank you, Aunt Kate, but someone does—” her gaze unconsciously slid Gabriel’s way once more, and her cheeks pinkened slightly “—protect me from myself. Now.” She controlled her trembling with an effort, unlocked the door and pushed

  it open, letting them all in “I think we’ll pitch a tent in the backyard for the boys, and...”

  *

  Her hand ready to snap the bowl off the stem of the wineglass she held, Alice surveyed the six new tiny punctures Aunt Kate’s stiletto heels had put in her kitchen floor, the bits of pile carpeting that littered the woman’s knife-heeled path through the dining and living rooms. Bits of clothing shed by the travelers lay draped over available chairs; dresses and suits to be worn to the two or three planned family functions hung from the curtain rods and lamps. The boys’ sleeping bags, car pillows and suitcases obliterated a corner of the living room; mud flecked the floors and carpet, marking the passage of boys from the side door, through the house and into the bathroom.

  Barely two hours had passed, but already no matter where Alice turned, her formerly tiny-but-adequate house looked the way she felt, ransacked. What was it the nuns used to say about cleanliness being next to Godliness and an orderly desk meaning an orderly soul? Apparently they’d been right, because right now she had neither. She was almost as confused by and about... oh, everything, as her house was confused about to whom it belonged. And in less than two hours she had people arriving to gossip, relax and party before the actual pre-wedding gossiping, relaxing and partying began tomorrow.

  She’d get no help from Aunt Kate or Cousin Mamie that was clear. The former had breezily suggested everyone help themselves to lunch from Alice’s cupboards, then gently informed Alice that proper etiquette forbade guests from actually lifting a finger in the host’s house. And Alice, who realized she herself had thought Gabriel impolite for taking uninvited liberties with her kitchen—was it only this morning?—had opened her mouth to disagree with Aunt Kate, then been left with nothing to say.

  Instead she’d mutely watched Aunt Kate go off for a long soak in a refreshing lavender milk bath in Alice’s tub, while Mamie, complaining of a migraine, had retired to Allyn’s bed with her soothing aquatic face mask and a bag of chocolate-chip cookies from Alice’s freezer. George had gotten directions and volunteered to go for beer. Uncle Delbert had corralled Gabriel in an under-the-hood-of-the-car-getting-to-know-you discussion of “Men Things” that included, Alice suspected, having overheard bits of the “Men Things” discussions before, the proper set for spark plugs on a Cadillac, the ungodly state of baseball in the American League and the current price of tea in China. And, after setting up Alice’s tent and devouring everything that wasn’t nailed

  down in the kitchen, Mamie’s boys were glumly mucking about on the top deck of the play structure, resenting the way family weddings interfered with their lives.

  Setting the dirty wineglass carefully on the counter, Alice glared at the walls around her, heaping curses on the Army for allowing Helen to leave Washington state before she had to, on Grace and Phil for not having the consideration to elope and spare the details, and on Gabriel for having the bad taste to fall half-dead at the side of a road where she’d find him and then having the gall to turn her emotions inside out at a time when they were hardly right side in.

  She knew what they’d agreed to be to one another, knew the appearances they were supposed to keep, but something was happening beyond “pretend.” Something was changing—had changed—almost from the moment they’d agreed to pretend to be lovers. Because of him something that had lain dormant for years was waking inside her, filling her with an unfamiliar longing. She’d wanted him. Badly. Desperately. He’d touched her senses and her heart. She

  couldn’t concentrate. She was nervous, she was restless, filled with the desire to do something naughty, wild. And it would be easy to take that short step between pretense and

  reality, except...

  She dumped the remains of that morning’s coffee over the dishes that lay piled in the sink, turned on the water and began to rinse plates. Relieving this particular fit of restlessness could be expensive. Because she couldn’t guarantee that physically becoming lovers would actually make them so. From what she’d read, undercover agents had to be likable con men—consummate character actors who never went out of character during a case, no matter what, because the case and the cause came before anything else. Before family, friends, children, lovers...

  She viciously attacked a cheese encrusted plate with a table knife, trying to scrape away unaccustomed desire as she scraped the scorched remains of someone else’s lunch. Life had walked right around her without her ever even noticing where it had gone. The knowledge irritated her at first, then made her angry. She’d already spent too much of her life with her face pressed up against possibility’s windowpane watching the opportunities pass her by. If she wanted anything to come from her life now, post-children, post-bookstore, post-past mistakes, she couldn’t afford to let her body—or her emotions—dictate her behavior because of one earthshaking soul-shattering absolutely-to-die-for kiss from an undercover
impostor she’d met, for Pete’s sake, yesterday.

  Schoolmarms and desperadoes. The attraction was classic.

  The knowledge played havoc with her thoughts.

  “I want you too badly,” he’d said to her. “I’d take you down right here, but...”

  Oh, God, why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he just done it and gotten it over with so she could hate him for taking advantage of the situation, instead of hating herself for still wanting him to? Damn it to hell, for a thirty-five year old not-quite-virginal mother of two she was awfully confused.

  Furiously she clattered the dishes out of the sink, stacked them, ran the sink full of scalding water and dumped the dishes back into it. Her hands resembled lobsters by the time she’d finished, but she barely noticed, turning from dishes to straightening, vacuuming, dusting and food preparation with a dogged let’s-avoid-thought zeal and concentration.

  To and fro, past her while she worked, Mamie’s boys came and went, leaving a trail of blue Kool-Aid in their wake. Mamie and her aquatic face mask surfaced long enough to crack the seal on tonight’s rum, mix it with pink lemonade, sugar, ice and grenadine in the blender and depart

  toward the bathroom with two large glasses of the mix to have a chat with her mother.

  George returned with two cases of beer, six two liter bottles of pop, several bags of pretzels, some crushed ice and a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of carnations that he gruffly handed to Alice as he asked for directions to her ice chest.

  Uncle Delbert left greasy fingerprints on her doorknob as he asked for a rag on which to leave greasy fingerprints.

  Gabriel laughed and chatted, outgoing and likable, betraying nothing of himself to anyone. Vacuum cleaner in hand, Alice stared at him through the lace curtains on her dining room windows, watching him move, involuntarily moistening her lips and catching her breath when he removed his shirt to lean further into the engine of Uncle Delbert’s Continental. Sunshine glistened on the sweat staining his back, and before she could help herself, she thoroughly appreciated every lean tan line and angle of his back, the ripple of every muscle in his shoulders and arms.