"Okay." She smiled up at him.
He smiled back at her, but only briefly. She saw the exact moment when the shadow of remembrance came over his eyes, just as she watched him fight against it.
He shut his eyes, and she knew he was trying to forget that the woman who lay beneath him wasn't his wife. She couldn't bear letting him pretend she was anyone else, so she brushed her fingertips across his lips, and said softly, "Don't go squirrely on me now, dude, or I'll have to throw you out and find a younger model."
His lids shot open. She grinned and took the condom from him. "I'll do this."
He grabbed it back. "No, you won't."
"Spoilsport."
"Hussy."
She'd erased the darkness from his eyes, and only seconds passed before he settled between her thighs.
He felt so good there. Heavy, but solid. Dampness had penetrated their makeshift bed, and the sodden grass squished beneath her back. She should have been uncomfortable, but she could have stayed like this for a thousand years, safe and sheltered beneath his strength with the warm summer rain falling on their bodies.
She had never imagined she could feel aroused and weepy at the same time. She pushed herself against him, needing more. He pushed back, but her body wasn't as willing to accommodate him as her mind.
"Sorry," she managed, wanting to burst into tears.
"It's been a long time for you," he replied, not sounding all that upset about it.
Once again he began his slow dallying. Even though his breathing was uneven and she could feel his tension, he didn't rush.
But she wasn't nearly as patient. It was his fault. He was too big; he was too… She arched against him and writhed, really writhed, couldn't help herself because she had to… she simply had to…
"Easy… Easy…"
"No!" She pushed against him, doing her best to impale herself. Needing… wanting…
He reached between their bodies. What was he doing now? Idiot! Moron! Couldn't he stick with one thing at a time? Couldn't he—
She exploded into a million pieces at his touch, and he drove inside her.
Above them, the skies split open, drenching their naked bodies. She wrapped her legs around his and dug the heels of her hands into his shoulders, wanting him closer, even closer.
Rain pummeled his back as he thrust high and hard. She buried her head in the crook of his neck because she was drowning in the cloudburst, drowning in sensations so overpowering she didn't want the storm ever to end.
It went on forever and was still over too quickly. She lost herself once more, just as he came apart.
She held him and reveled in his rough shuddering. He was too big for her, too heavy, but she felt bereft when he finally eased his weight.
It was raining so hard they could barely see the house, and they both seemed to realize at the same time how embarrassing this lust in the rain was for two people who needed to keep some distance from each other. If they'd gone inside and found a bed, at least there would have been a certain dignity about it, but this backyard tussling in the rain spoke of a need so overwhelming that neither wanted to acknowledge it, certainly not with tender words.
He levered himself up, raised one knee, and glanced down at her. "Pretty good for a beginner."
She rolled to her side so that the ends of her hair dangled in the trampled grass. "Now quite as wild as I would have liked, but definitely adequate."
He arched one brow.
She gave him a cat's smile.
He smiled and stood, ridding himself of the condom, then leaned over to help her up. After scooping up their clothes, they walked naked back to the house. She began to shiver as the air-conditioning hit her. "If that big shower off the master bedroom is still working, I've got dibs."
"Be my guest."
Somehow she wasn't surprised when he joined her and showed her a whole new variation on the way a truly wanton woman could make love.
Gabe sat slumped on the side of the bed wearing only a pair of jeans. In the background, he heard the hum of Jane's hair dryer as Rachel tended to that untidy auburn tangle of hers.
He buried his head in his hands. He'd just lost another part of Cherry. Now he could no longer say that he'd only made love with one woman. That bond had been broken.
Maybe the worst part was how much he had loved being with Rachel. She was noisy and demanding, funny and passionate. And she'd made him forget the wife of his soul.
"Gabe?"
Rachel stood in the doorway that led from the bathroom to the master bedroom. His old T-shirt hung from her narrow shoulders, and his sister-in-law's jeans were too big for her hips. She'd used the rubber band he'd found to pull her hair into a pony tail, but damp auburn ringlets framed her small face. She didn't have on a speck of makeup, nothing to hide the sprinkle of freckles that dusted her nose, nothing to take away from the impact of those green eyes that saw too much.
"Gabe?"
He didn't want to talk to her now. He was too raw to engage in one of their sparring contests, and he didn't believe for a moment that lovemaking would have dulled the edges of Rachel's sharp tongue. Why couldn't she go away and leave him alone?
But she didn't go away. Instead she touched his shoulder and regarded him with such understanding that his throat tightened.
"It's all right, Gabe. I know you miss her, but you didn't do anything wrong."
His chest burned. Her compassion made him defenseless. Just seconds earlier he'd been dreading her waspish tongue, but now he would give anything to be hit by one of her wisecracks.
"Did Cherry ever lose her temper with you?"
Her name. Someone else had spoken her name. No one did anymore.
He knew his family and friends were trying to spare him, but he'd begun to feel as if she'd faded from everyone's memory except his own. Now the urge to talk about her was nearly irresistible.
"She… Cherry wasn't much of a fighter. She'd just get real quiet. That's how I knew I was in trouble with her."
Rachel nodded.
As he gazed at her, he felt as if he were glimpsing something rare, a generosity of spirit that was as much a part of her as a sassy mouth, and for a brief moment, he had the feeling that she understood something about him no one else did. But that was impossible. Rachel didn't know him at all, not like his parents, his brothers, the guys he grew up with.
She squeezed his shoulder, then bent down and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Her funny little rosebud mouth looked pink, as if she'd been nibbling a strawberry. "I want to go now."
He nodded slowly, got up, put on his shirt. He went through all the motions of getting dressed without once letting her see that he wanted her all over again.
That night, after Rachel had finished the dishes, she took Edward into town for ice cream. It had been months since she'd been able to treat him. When she'd been married to Dwayne, she'd paid little attention to money, but now she guarded every penny, and the ones she'd set aside for tonight were precious.
Edward bounced up and down as far as the Escort's seat belt would permit while he kept up a monologue on the relative merits of chocolate over vanilla. Rachel had invited Kristy to come along, but she'd declined. Maybe she sensed that Rachel needed time alone with her son. And time alone with her thoughts, too.
While Edward chattered on, the images of the afternoon burned in her mind: the rain, Gabe's body, her own abandon. She'd once imagined lovemaking could be like that, but she'd long ago given up hope that it would ever happen to her.
Just thinking about him made her body feel hot and restless. She lusted after him with an intensity that scared her, but she was also drawn to him in other ways. She was drawn to his darkness, his brutal honesty, and his grudging kindness. He didn't seem to realize that he was the only person in town who didn't judge her by her past.
Her mind began to toy with the edges of a fantasy in which Gabe was a less troubled man, but she pushed it away. She was too wise to fall in love with him, even in her imaginat
ion. He had too many shadows. And if those shadows ever lifted enough for him to fall in love again, it would be with a softer woman than Rachel, one who wasn't notorious, someone well-educated and well-bred, who didn't launch into verbal combat with him whenever she got the chance.
Once, she would never have considered having sex with a man she didn't intend to marry, but that dreamy-eyed girl was gone. She needed this joyous wickedness. And as long as she remembered that Gabe was for sex and nothing more, what was the harm? He would be her guilty pleasure, a small selfish indulgence she would permit herself to make life more bearable.
The ice-cream window built into one end of the caboose-shaped Petticoat Junction Cafe was doing a steady stream of business as she took Edward's hand and crossed the street. A thirtyish-looking woman holding a baby stiffened as she approached, then said something to a thin, dark-haired woman next to her. The woman turned, and Rachel saw that it was Carol Dennis.
Her lips moved, but Rachel was still too far away to hear what she was saying. Those around her could, however. Another head came up, and then another. Rachel heard a low buzz, like angry bees inside a wall. It lasted maybe five seconds, then stopped. Silence followed.
Her steps slowed and her heart pounded. For a moment nothing happened, and then Carol Dennis turned her back. Without a word, the young woman next to her did the same. A middle-aged couple followed, then an elderly pair. One by one, the people of Salvation gave her their backs. It was an old-fashioned shunning.
She wanted to run, but she couldn't do that. The breeze slapped the skirt of her navy cotton dress against her legs, and her hand tightened around Edward's as she drew him closer to the window. "What's it going to be?" she managed to ask him. "Chocolate or vanilla?"
He didn't say anything. She felt him lag, but she kept tugging him toward the window, refusing to show any weakness to these people. "I'll bet you'd rather have chocolate."
The young man standing behind the window had buzzed hair and a bad complexion. He stared at her, looking confused.
"Two small cones," she said. "One vanilla, one chocolate."
An older man appeared behind him. She remembered him as Don Brady, the cafe's owner, and a Temple supporter. He pushed the young clerk out of the way and regarded her with distaste. "Window's closed."
"You can't do that, Mr. Brady."
"For the likes of you, I can."
The wooden partition slammed down.
She felt sick, not for herself so much as for Edward. How could they do something like this in front of a child?
"Everybody hates us," he whispered at her side.
"Who cares about them?" she replied loudly. "This place has lousy ice cream anyway. I know where we can get something really good."
She pulled Edward away from all of them and headed back to the Escort, forcing herself to move slowly, so it wouldn't look as if she were running away. She opened the door for Edward, then leaned down to help him fasten his seat belt, but she was trembling so hard, she could barely hold it in place.
Something brushed her shoulder. She straightened and saw a chubby middle-aged woman in bright-green slacks and a white overblouse standing behind her. A green parrot pin perched on her collar and matching wooden earrings swung from beneath tightly curled salt-and-pepper hair. Her face was round, her features blunt, and she wore large glasses with flesh-colored frames that swooped down at the sides.
"Please, Mrs. Snopes. I need to speak to you."
Rachel expected to see hostility on the woman's face, but all she saw was worry. "I'm not Mrs. Snopes anymore."
The woman barely seemed to hear her. "I need you to heal my granddaughter."
Rachel was so taken aback she couldn't respond.
"Please, Mrs. Snopes. Her name is Emily. She's only four, and she has leukemia. For six months, she was in remission, but now…" Behind her glasses, the woman's eyes filled with tears. "I don't know what we'll do if we lose her."
This was a hundred times worse than the nightmare at the ice-cream window." I—I'm sorry about your granddaughter, but there's nothing I can do."
"Just lay your hands on her."
"I'm not a faith healer."
"You can do it. I know you can. I used to see you on television, and. I don't care what anyone says, I know you're a great woman of God. You're our last hope, Mrs. Snopes. Emily needs a miracle."
Rachel was sweating. Her navy dress stuck to her chest, and the collar felt as if it were choking her. "I—I'm not the person to give you a miracle."
If the woman had been hostile, it would have been so much easier to endure than the deep suffering that lined her face. "You are! I know you are!"
"Please… I'm sorry." She pulled away and hurried toward the other side of the car.
"At least pray for her," the woman said, looking lost and hopeless. "Pray for our baby girl."
Rachel gave a jerky nod. How could she tell this woman she never prayed now, that she had no faith left?
She sped blindly back to Heartache Mountain with her stomach twisted into a knot. Old memories came back to her of Dwayne's faith healing. She remembered a woman who'd had one leg longer than the other, and she could see Dwayne now, kneeling before her, grasping her longer leg at the shoe.
In the name of Jesus Christ, heal! Heal, I say!
And everyone watching on television saw the leg get shorter.
What they didn't see was the small action Dwayne had performed when he'd first knelt before her. As he'd lifted her longer leg, he'd surreptitiously slipped the back of her shoe down on her heel, and when he'd cried out to heaven, he'd simply pushed it back up. From the audience it looked as if her leg were getting shorter.
Rachel remembered exactly when her love for her husband had turned to contempt. It was the night she discovered that he wore a tiny radio transmitter in his ear during the healing services. One of his aides sat backstage and whispered the details of various illnesses audience members had noted on the cards they filled out before the broadcast. When Dwayne called out the names of people he'd never set eyes on, as well as precise facts about their illnesses, his fame as a faith healer had spread.
It had spread to a woman with wooden parrot earrings who somehow believed Dwayne Snopes's widow could heal her dying granddaughter.
Her fingers convulsed on the steering wheel. A short time earlier, she'd been daydreaming about making love with Gabe again, but reality had just hit her in the face.
She had to get out of this town soon, or she'd go crazy. The chest was a dead end. She needed to find Dwayne's Bible and pray that it would tell her what she wanted to know.
Except she didn't pray anymore.
Edward's soft sigh drew her back. They'd pulled up in front of the cottage, and she realized she had forgotten about the ice cream. She regard him with dismay. "Oh, baby, I forgot. I'm sorry."
He stared straight ahead, not protesting, not saying anything, merely once again accepting the fact that life had handed him the short end of the stick.
"We'll go back."
"Don't have to. It's okay."
But it wasn't okay. She turned around and headed straight to the Ingles grocery store where she bought him a Dove Bar. He dropped the wrapper in a trash can by the front door, licked the chocolate, and they set off across the parking lot toward the Escort.
That was when she saw that all of its tires had been slashed.
Chapter Twelve
« ^ »
Rachel got up before six the next morning, even though she hadn't slept well. Barefoot and wearing her customary sleeping attire, a pair of panties and a man's work shirt she'd found in her closet, she padded into the kitchen.
As she put on a pot of coffee, she watched the buttery early-morning light splash through the back windows and make a crosshatched pattern on the scarred old farm table. Outside, dew sparkled in the grass, and the daylilies turned up their bright-orange trumpets. The pink crepe myrtle tree at the edge of the woods seemed blurred in the morning light, rather li
ke a fanciful older woman in a feathery boa.
After the ugliness of last night, her eyes misted at the simple beauty around her. Thank you, Annie Glide, for your magical cottage.
If only this beautiful place could fix her troubles. She had no money to replace the Escort's tires, and she didn't know how she'd manage. Getting to work wouldn't be a problem. It was a long walk, but she could make it. But what about Edward? Last night Kristy had come to get them, and each day she took him to and from the day-care center, but she'd be moving soon, and then what?
Rachel had to find the Bible.
The morning was too precious to spoil with any more worry, especially when she knew she'd have plenty of time to do that later on in the day while she worked. The coffee was done, and she poured it into an old green mug that still bore the remnants of a Peter Rabbit decal, then carried it toward the front of the house.
This was her favorite time of the day, before Edward awakened, when everything was new and fresh. Sipping her coffee in the creaky wooden rocker on the front porch while the rest of the world slept was more precious to her than all of the luxuries of her old life with Dwayne. Then she could dream her new dreams, the little ones. A small backyard where Edward and his friends could play, maybe a garden, and a dog. She wanted him to have a pet.
She slipped the dead bolt on the front door with her free hand, turned the knob, and pushed open the screen. As she stepped out onto the porch and drew the clean mountain air into her lungs, a feeling of almost indescribable bliss came over her. No matter what else happened, she had this moment.
She turned toward the rocker, and her euphoria evaporated. Her mug clattered to the wooden floor, sending hot coffee splashing up onto her bare feet and legs, but she barely noticed. All she could see was the single crude word someone had painted in red on the front of the house, right between the windows.
Sinner.
Kristy came rushing out onto the front porch, her long cotton nightgown flapping around her legs. "What's wrong? I heard—Oh, no…"
"Bastards," Rachel hissed.