Accompanying Alice Read online

  Her amusement was contagious. It touched him in spite of himself, invited him to chuckle with her, at himself, at the grand and petty wonders of the universe. It felt good, released him. He listened to Alice’s laughter trail into a comfortable sigh.

  “For a man who doesn’t like himself much you’re pretty funny,” she said.

  “For a woman who seems to think she’s nothing special,” he retorted, “you’re something else.” He peered around the corner of the window at her shape in the darkness and thought he could almost see the color rise along her throat and up into her cheeks. Her face would be warm, soft to touch, the bones of her jaw firm, her chin stubborn, her mouth...

  He shut his eyes and tasted it again in his imagination.

  Her mouth would never leave a man wanting.

  “Don’t.” He felt rather than heard her say it, thickly, and with a shudder. “It’s the night, nothing else. It’s only the night.”

  He opened his eyes and knew she was pale now, tense.

  “What is?”

  “Your imagination. Mine. Don’t imagine me, us. Don’t—” she stopped and he heard her swallow. “—feel. Let it go. I don’t—I can’t let imagination run away....”

  “Imagination isn’t real, Alice.” It didn’t even occur to him to find it unusual that she somehow knew what he’d been thinking.

  “Yes,” she whispered positively, “it is. Didn’t think so, either, before this morning, but now I know. Anything I can imagine might come real, and I can’t let you—”

  “It’ll only be real if we do something about it, Alice. And that’s not in the plan.”

  “We’re talking. We’ve already done. Oh, you don’t understand.” She slid off the picnic table and turned her back on him, fists tight at her sides. “How could you. Nobody explained it to you, either.”

  “Explained what to me?” He didn’t know what else to say, but he wondered if statisticians might find confusion an effective weapon in the war on overpopulation and sexually transmitted diseases. Or at least a distracting one. “Tell me what I don’t understand.”

  Alice faced the window. “I’m sorry, it probably sounds stupid, but do you see? You, Skip, my family—my daughters... I mean, they’ve been my life. That’s the way it is and I don’t mind, but now...” She laughed. ‘‘I’m not doing this very well, am I? But it’s... See, my father had his first heart attack the morning I turned fourteen. The doctors didn’t think he’d live long, even if he recovered, but he had a goal. He wanted to see all seven of his daughters get through school, maybe settled. He died two months before Grace graduated.”

  She gestured passionately, inadequately at him. “Last week, I saw my daughters graduate, and it’s not enough. I’m not ready to die now. I want more. I’ve been living for someone else since my junior year in high school. My life is finally beginning. I want to stay alive and see what I can make of it on my own. Find out what happens next. You, you’re like a shock to the system. This morning, you were mortality knocking. Tonight, flirting with you is exciting and scary and kind of fun and temporary. I don’t want to risk what I haven’t done yet on a game. Do you see?”

  Oddly enough he did. Not in words, but in some deeper part of himself where memory and experience counted more, he understood completely. “Yes.” He nodded. “You’ve let a lot of your life happen to you by accident and you don’t want to do that anymore. You want to be in charge of it now. You want to take control. You want to choose what happens next.”

  “Yes.” She was positive. “That’s it.”

  It was too easy, but he couldn’t quite resist trying to skewer her as she’d skewered him before. “So what happens next?” he asked quietly. “What do you choose?”

  She was better equipped to handle the question than he’d thought. “If I figure it out before you leave, you’ll be the second to know.”

  He heard the grin in her voice and he grinned back. “Gee, thanks. Just what I’ve always wanted to be, second.”

  “Beats being third.”

  “Or fourth.”

  Alice moved toward the side of the house. “G’night, Gabriel. “

  “Hey, listen. If you come with an operator’s manual, would you mind dropping a copy of it outside my door?”

  No answer. Down along the side of the house, he heard a door slam, then the click of her bedroom door. His ears strained to hear her movements as she got ready for bed, for the creak of her bedsprings as she settled into the cozy spot where she would sleep.

  “Good night, Alice,” he said softly and climbed back into his own bed, where he lay awake for a long time smiling.

  *

  She wasn’t ready for morning when it got there.

  Sleep clung to her eyes, refusing to release her, instead pulling her just beneath its surface again and again to the place where dreams lay in wait. Just below consciousness, her hands clenched and released to the sting of night sweat and salt in her blistered palms. In the clinging shadows of repose where she couldn’t control what happened, he lay beside her, touched her skin, slid a hand over the soft cotton nightshirt covering her breasts, slipped his fingers between the open buttons....

  Restlessly she struggled with the vision, the sensations, turning over and twisting herself in the sheets, knocking her pillow aside. He turned with her, refusing to dissolve; his mouth tasted where she moved, tormented and roused and claimed. She flung the covers aside to escape him, to get nearer—it was hard to tell which. His breath was warm and gentle; his hands knew all of her. He raised himself to look down at her. His eyes were shadowed at first, then light claimed them, showed them to her. One was aqua, cold, intense, impersonal and unreal. The other was brown, warm and revealing, fathomless and real.

  He tipped his head one way, and she was frightened, empty, lost; then the other way, and she was safe, whole, home. It was like looking at two men in one face; at two faces on one man. Unnerving. She scrunched herself into a ball and bit down hard on a knuckle hoping pain would

  wake her, bring escape.

  The muted clang of aluminum pans, the smell of fresh coffee, warm yeast and cinnamon permeated the house. Disconcerted, Alice woke to sound and smell slowly, dragging her fingers across her eyes and down her cheeks, trying to remember what it was about yesterday, last night, the dreams from this morning, that she seemed to have forgotten. A confusing sense of unease, and paradoxically of accomplishment, lurked underneath her waking memory when she sat up and looked at her pulled-apart bed. She was not a fretful sleeper by nature, even when she dreamed.

  She sat on the edge of the bed, yawning, clutching blessed fog around her for security.

  Rising finally, she dressed for her sisters and the bridal boutique fitters, presentably conservative but comfortable, then stumbled through the house to the kitchen. Gabriel gave her an uncertain smile and dried a mixing bowl, then put it away in the cupboard above the refrigerator. Alice stared at him, recognizing the brown-eyed face of the man of her dreams. She colored slightly. Now she remembered.

  Talking to him. Listening to him. Feeling for him.

  Bringing him home. Knowing him.

  Self-consciously she straightened her peach sweatshirt, watching him take her in and assess her by daylight, non-plussed by those truth-telling brown, brown eyes in the impassive high-boned face. The mental picture of those eyes was the one she’d willingly gone to bed with, slept with, but the startling aqua contacts fit her daylight image of him better. Aqua went with the brazen arrogance she imagined undercover agents had to be born with; brown eyes did not.

  Aqua eyes belonged in a book: You wear a red carnation in your lapel, I’ll be the one with the turquoise eyes...

  Brown eyes belonged in front of a crackling fire with a bottle of wine and zip-together sleeping bags.

  She bit down on the inside of her lip and ducked away from Gabriel’s gaze, half-embarrassed, half-amused by the thought.

  Recklessly, her gaze slipped his way again, surprising him in what must have bee
n a similar unguarded thought. She’d said things to him, she remembered, implied things, revealing things about herself; about the physical wants of her body, the deliberate inhibition of her thoughts. He’d been more reticent, less verbal, yet equally informative about himself, equally expressive, equally lustful.

  They studied one another awkwardly for a moment, caught between who they’d been last night, who they’d told themselves to be by day, wondering if the base they’d begun to establish between themselves could bear the weight of light. The air vibrated with embarrassment and desire, words they wanted to snatch back from the night and bury where no one would find them. Gabriel turned away first and lifted a “Mom” mug from one of the hooks beneath the dish cupboards, poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her with verbal amenities.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Sleep well? Have a seat. Cinnamon rolls will be out of the oven in three minutes. It’s an old family recipe, passed down for generations and baked only for special occasions. I hope you like raisins?”

  “Not really. You catch crooks and bake, too?” Lifted from reverie, Alice stared around the normally less-spotless kitchen, feeling disadvantaged in her own home. Only the impolite guest rose and snooped through unfamiliar terrain to make breakfast before the host had a chance to get her bearings. But then, she reminded herself, he wasn’t really a guest, was he? No, he was her—

  “Your mother called.”

  —lover. Alice choked, and scalding coffee went down the wrong pipes with the thought and Gabriel’s statement. A bout of uncontrolled coughing brought the coffee misting back up again to spray the kitchen floor and dribble down the front of her pale peach sweatshirt with the picture of the pale porcelain clown that, until this moment, had looked silly but fairly nice with her pale peach rose-shaped coral earrings that the girls had given her for her birthday. Gabriel gave her one hard thwack in the middle of her back, grabbed a towel and began mopping her up.

  “You okay?”

  “My—” Glaring at him, Alice snatched the towel and cleared her throat to find her voice. Who was it had said no good deed went unpunished? “My mother called?” she whispered hoarsely, mortified at being caught like a teenager with a boy in the living room. “You answered the phone?”

  Gabriel forced back a grin. Alice was thirty-five years old and still guilty as hell about sins she’d barely thought about committing. “You were asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.” Didn’t trust himself to wake her would have been closer to the truth. “She asked if I came with references, welcomed me to the family and said there’s a problem with—” he picked a red sticky note off one of the cupboards and looked at it “—Aunt Kate and Uncle Delbert. Their hotel reservations were canceled and they need a place to—”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “—stay until Sunday.”

  “She’s sending them to chaperone me.”

  “She also said she regrets inconveniencing us, but that they’ll need your bed and a board under the mattress because of their bad backs.” His mouth continued its losing battle with a grin. “If it helps, I think I understand you better now that I’ve, er, met your mother.”

  “It doesn’t help.” Alice threw the towel at the sink and turned her back on him, muttering, “They told her you were here and she called— No, no, Helen called the hotel, I’d bet my firstborn on it. Unbelievable. I’ve got to think about this.”

  She tapped her foot thoughtfully for a moment, then shook her head incredulously. “I can’t believe this. We’re eight grown women, but here I am trying to think up ways to outdo them because they’ve decided to tease me over a man I’m pretending to sleep with. Just wait. I’ll get to that fitting today, and they’ll have something set up.” Her fingers drummed her thigh. “What will it be? Potty chair photographs? Embarrassing stories—”

  “Your parents took a picture of you on a potty chair?”

  “No, I think that was Meg. I was standing behind her.”

  “Naked?”

  “I was wearing a bathrobe. And pajamas. Meg was wearing Mickey Mouse ears.”

  “I’m sorry I asked.”

  Alice flipped an impatient hand at him. “No problem. Apology accepted. It’s them there’s no excuse for. Practically throw me into the future with a guy named Skip, then can’t leave me alone when I actually bring home a guy on my own.” She looked at Gabriel earnestly. “What do they want?”

  “Your happiness?”

  Alice snorted. “Interesting theory, but people who really have your happiness and best interests at heart usually ask you which of your interests will make you happy before they go off to meddle in them for you, don’t they? They don’t just assume they know what’s best for you and then try to cram it down your throat when you tell them pretty specifically you don’t want it, do they?”

  “Ah...”

  Happily, the timer on the stove buzzed before he had to think of an answer, and Gabriel grabbed a pair of pot holders and opened the oven door. Alice considerately found a cooling rack and slid it under the pan as he set it on the counter. Warned by a male survival instinct too ancient for its origins to be recorded, Gabriel put the pan and the pot holders down and gave Alice his full, guarded attention.

  “You know,” she mused, chewing the tip of one fingernail meditatively, “I know they love me. I can’t really fault that, can I? I love them, too. And I guess, when you love people, you try to make them happy whether they want to be or not. It’s just that, well, this has really started to bug me, and maybe it’s time to be blunt. Hmm...” She tapped her teeth. “I guess I actually should have dealt with it once and for all when I was twenty-six, but you know how it is. Whenever I thought about it I was in the middle of somebody’s 4-H fair or soccer practice or something and didn’t have time.” She folded her hands angelically, and used them to prop up her chin. “I’ve never had time before,” she added dreamily.

  Chapter Five

  Gabriel dumped the cinnamon rolls onto the counter, oblivious to flying raisins and dripping sugar. Long ago, when he’d been just any other Bureau rookie, he remembered the look Alice was wearing as a danger sign that had invariably brought him unfavorable notice from people whose displeasure he’d rather have avoided. Older and wiser now than he’d been at twenty-five, he wanted no part of that look or anything that went with it. Not even if he did “owe” her. Hell, he didn’t believe in counting markers or trading favors, either. Not usually.

  Hastily he cut two cinnamon rolls, slid them onto a plate and plunked them on the dining-room table. Relieving Alice of her coffee mug, he guided her to the table and seated her unceremoniously in front of the rolls. “Eat,” he ordered. “Enjoy. They’re best hot. I’ll bring you more coffee.”

  “With milk? Poured in before the coffee.”

  “Naturally.” Gabriel sloshed the coffeepot back onto its burner, then rummaged in the fridge for milk. “You’re out.”

  “I think there’s some Cool Whip in the freezer. That’ll do.”

  “In your coffee?” Gabriel shuddered, poured it black and set it in front of her. “No whipped topping. It’s better for you this way.”

  “What is?” Absently Alice tore off a piece of cinnamon bun, dunked it in her cup and nibbled on it thoughtfully. “You know—” she ran an appraising eye over him, from bare feet to button fly denims to bare chest “—we really ought to go shopping before we go to the fitting, spiff you up a little, you know? Not,” she continued, wondering if she sounded as manic as she felt, “that you aren’t spiffy now, just that maybe we ought to make you spiffier so there aren’t too many questions.” She regarded the left side of his forehead where the cut in his temple looked hair-matted and oozy. “And you need a big Band-Aid and some antiseptic on that. If we let it go and it gets infected... It’s awfully close to the brain. And besides, Helen might not have noticed it, but Helen never pays attention to that sort of thing, and the fact of the matter is that Edith’s a nurse and—”

  “Clothes and a Band-Aid
,” Gabriel agreed. “We redesign me to fit you. No problem. Do you have a story for me, too?”

  “What?” Alice sat up, taken aback. All she’d been interested in was sidetracking her disquieting desire for Gabriel while doing something to make a point with her family. The means to that end hadn’t really occurred to her. But now... “I didn’t mean we should lie. Skirt the truth a little, maybe evade it, delay it, but I’m no good at lying.”

  Gabriel looked her over, the woman who’d grabbed his heart and forced his honesty by dark, suggesting deceit by day. Who we are, he thought, is almost never who we seem to be. “I am.”

  He made the statement flat, and Alice looked at him hard, concentrating all her attention on him. The ragged edge she’d heard in him last night was back full force. Time to tread carefully. “I don’t want you to lie for me.”

  “Then what is it you do want, Alice? Besides a back to hide behind.”

  “Nothing. That’s all.” Defensive. Stubborn. Rebellious. Defiant. Emotions that had gotten her through the comments made at school when her pregnancy had started to show. The state of grace that had kept her tough enough to finish out the credits she needed to graduate from high school early, at the end of the January term, when she was eight months pregnant. It had been a long time since she’d felt any of those emotions.

  Having the twins when she did had forced her to rise to the occasion, to take charge of her own life before she might have otherwise. If she hadn’t been so dead set on keeping her babies, she’d never have had the courage to do many of the things she’d done. Not having the girls to propel her through anymore frightened her, made her afraid she’d get lazy, no longer choose to rise to the occasion because there’d be no one pushing her forward, no one holding her back. She was on her own. Freedom, she realized with a start, was a terrifyingly responsible word. She lifted her chin.

  “Do what you have to do for you,” she said softly, “but leave me out of it. I don’t need anything from you.”

  Or anyone, her tone implied. For some reason her autonomy angered him. She got to him, her directness, her innocence, her expectations. And the lack of them. “You got it, babe,” he agreed scornfully, “just as soon as you give me something to work with. Tell me, if you were really going to live in sin with someone, who would he be? Who’s your dream man, Alice?”