Hero at Large

  Aunt Edna turned from the stove with a disapproving look for the havoc Chris was causing among the silverware. She paused for effect, her wooden spoon held at half-mast. “He fits right in, don’t he?”

  “Mmmph,” Chris gurgled, an expletive strangling in her throat. “I don’t want him to fit right in. I want him to leave. I liked my life the way it was…without a man in my house.”

  Aunt Edna plopped her spoon back into the spaghetti sauce. “Nonsense. You’ve lived without a man long enough. Lucy needs a father, and you need a husband.”

  “I’ve already had a husband, and I didn’t like it.”

  “That horse’s rump wasn’t a husband. Spent the whole day looking in the mirror, fixing his hair.”

  “What makes you think Ken’s any better?”

  The old woman wiped her hands on her apron and faced her niece. “I’m not real book smart, and every now and then I worry I’m getting a little senile, but I’ve got some common sense, and I know something about people. Ken Callahan is a good man. He’s got gentleness and humor.” Edna turned back to the stove, then shot her niece a sidewise look and smiled broadly. “And he’s got a great body.”

  “Aunt Edna!”

  “I might be old, but I know a great body when I see one. Uh-huh!”

  Chris threw her head back and burst out laughing. She crossed the kitchen and hugged her aunt. “You’re right, as always—he does have a great body.”

  Ken pushed through the kitchen door and snatched a breadstick from the glass jar on the counter. “So, you think I have a great body, huh?”

  Chris grimaced. “God is really out to get me today.”

  “Don’t be blasphemous,” Edna warned.

  Ken looked sadly at the cast on his arm. “My body used to be perfect.”

  I don’t doubt it for a second, Chris thought.

  “This is the second time I’ve had spaghetti today,” Lucy announced. “We had spaghetti for lunch in school.” She looked at the plate in front of her, piled with whole-wheat spaghetti noodles and Aunt Edna’s chunky homemade sauce. Lucy sprinkled the freshly grated parmesan cheese on her meal with painstaking care. “The spaghetti we had in school was yucky. The noodles were white…like dead worms. And it didn’t have any sausage in it or nothing. And the sauce was orange and watery. And I didn’t eat it.”

  Ken nodded sympathetically. “What did you do with it, if you didn’t eat it?”

  Lucy looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know I did something with it?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  Lucy giggled. “I gave it to Tommy Hostrup. Beth Ann Cristo gave hers to him. And Sally Winthrop. And Audrey Schtek. We gave him all our spaghetti, and we told him we’d give him a dollar if he could eat it.”

  “Did he eat it?”

  “He tried, but he couldn’t get it all in. It was awful. There were noodles hanging out of his mouth, and he had sauce all down his neck.”

  “When I was your age they served spaghetti in my school cafeteria, too,” Ken told her. “We used to empty our milk cartons and fill them with the spaghetti. Then we’d take the cartons and put them behind the wheel of the principal’s station wagon. When he drove away at the end of the day, he’d run over the cartons and all the spaghetti would squish out.”

  “Oh, gross!”

  Ken leaned across the table and whispered to her conspiratorially. “There was this big bully in my school, Larry Newfarmer. He was really fat, and he used to pick on all the little kids. Everybody hated him. One day when we had spaghetti, I got his spelling workbook and put spaghetti noodles between all the pages without him knowing it.”

  Lucy’s eyes got wide, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to control the giggles. “Then what?”

  Ken leaned back in his chair and grinned sheepishly. “Then I sat on it. And the noodles got smashed between the pages. And when Larry Newfarmer went to spelling the next morning, those pages were stuck together forever.”

  Aunt Edna had bent her head and tried not to laugh. “Sh-sh-shame on you!” she managed when she was finally able to speak.

  Chris’ mouth curved into an unconscious smile. Her family was thoroughly enjoying Ken, and he seemed to be enjoying them. Other male guests had always politely tolerated Lucy—Ken actually liked her. He had a place in his heart for childish activities. That’s a nice trait to find in a man, she thought, watching him in open admiration. He was lean and hard with broad shoulders and muscles in all the right places—but it was his face that intrigued her the most. There was an inherent strength in it. A magnetic confidence that could only be found in a man who had come to terms with himself and was not unhappy with what he saw. The fledgling beard enhanced the aura of virility that radiated from compelling blue eyes and a wide mobile mouth. An easy man to fall in love with, she mused…if you were the sort of woman who wanted to fall in love.

  Ken raised a forkful of spaghetti to his lips and caught Chris watching him. His eyes searched her face, reaching into her thoughts. She decided to partially oblige him. “I was thinking about Mike Mulligan. You really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

  The tips of his ears reddened. “I…uh…I’ve always liked steam shovels.”

  There was a loud rapping at the front door followed by a mournful howl.

  Ken looked puzzled. “That sounds like Dog, but I know I left him in the backyard.”

  Edna got to the door first. “Well, Mrs. Thatcher,” she smiled, opening the door wide.

  Mrs. Thatcher stood flat-footed and ready for battle on the porch. She held the cowering Rottweiler by the collar. “Someone told me this dog came from the truck parked in front of your house. Is this your dog, Edna?”

  “I don’t know. What’s he done?”

  “He’s destroyed every bush in my yard chasing rabbits, that’s what he’s done.”

  “Then he ain’t my dog,” Edna told her.

  Ken took Edna by the shoulders and removed her from his path. “That’s my dog, Mrs. Thatcher.”

  The huge black beast looked at his owner mournfully. Telltale sprigs of evergreen and pieces of bark clung from his collar.

  “I’ll be living here for a while,” he told the woman. “Have the landscaping repaired, and I’ll pay for it.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, handing the dog over to him.

  Ken closed the door and shook his finger at the dog. “You were bad.”

  Lucy bounded over. “A dog! I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  The Rottweiler thumped his tail against the floor. It stood on all fours and looked Lucy in the eye, waggling its body side to side as it followed the happy tail.

  Lucy hugged the dog enthusiastically. “What’s its name?”

  “Dog.”

  Edna sniffed disapproval. “Dog? What kind of a name is that?”

  Ken shrugged. “He was given to me as a puppy a year ago, and I was so busy I never had time to think of a name. I just always called him Dog.”

  “Poor creature,” Chris murmured, patting the sleek ebony coat. “Imagine if someone named you Human,” she scolded Ken.

  The slight curve at the corners of his mouth indicated his amusement at her concern. “Would you like to choose a better name? I don’t think it’s too late.” He looked affectionately at the dog. “What do you think? Would you like a new name?”

  Lucy looked at Ken with large round eyes. “Could we call him Bob? I always wanted a dog named Bob.”

  “I think Bob would be a great name for him. Why don’t you take Bob into the kitchen and give him a breadstick while I talk to your mom a minute.”

  They both watched Lucy trot off with the dog. Chris felt Ken step closer to her. An electric flash ran along her spine and tingled at her fingertips. She felt his breath in her hair. “Uh”—she blinked in warm distress—“you wanted to talk to me?”

  “Mmmm,” he hummed in a raspy whisper, “but the words I want to say to you can’t be said in front of Aunt Edna.”

  Without turning to look, Chris knew Aunt Edn
a had taken her position in the rocker and was keeping her eye on them. “Thank God for Aunt Edna.” Chris laughed shakily.

  He leaned away from her and assumed a more casual attitude. “If you don’t have plans for the truck tonight, I’d like to make a trip out to Loudoun County. I’ll leave Bob there. I think his style might be cramped in a townhouse. And I have to pick up some clothes.”

  “That would be fine. I don’t have any lessons scheduled for tonight.”

  He whistled and called, “Bob!”

  The dog bounded up to him. “He’s so smart,” he bragged. “You see how he knows his new name already?” He grabbed his vest from the hall coat rack, kissed Chris full on the lips, and swept out the door. Halfway down the sidewalk he turned. “I called your auto club and had them tow the car to a garage. The garage owner said he might be interested in buying it. Give him a call—the number’s on the chalkboard.”

  Chris stood, rooted to the spot, as man and dog climbed into the truck and drove off. Lucy stood beside her, enthusiastically waving good-bye to Bob. When they reached the corner Chris closed her eyes tight in a sudden return to her senses. “Oh, darn!” She smacked her fist against her forehead. She was going to kick him out after supper. Why did she let him go off to get his clothes?

  Chris lay perfectly still under the patterns of silver moonlight that spilled through her bedroom window. The digital clock on her round, lace-covered night table read twelve forty-five. She was thinking about her marriage…about pain. She had blithely hurtled herself into a marriage that had brought her more pain and anger than she’d ever thought she could endure. But she’d managed to get through it. She had cried until there were no tears left in her body…for her unborn daughter who would never know her father…for her broken dream of sharing the joys of her pregnancy with the man she loved…for her terrible love for a man who really didn’t exist. Her husband had been vain and shallow and ruthlessly ambitious—all gilt and no substance—and she had married him. She had fallen in love with falling in love. And it had taken years before her eyes were no longer clouded with being in love. Years before she’d been able to see the man for what he was and exorcise him from her life.

  A tear slid down her cheek over the loss of what might have been. Another tear gathered in the fringe of her lower lashes. It was for the empty future, and for the ache of wanting to love Ken Callahan and knowing it would never be. She was not a good judge of men—that much was clear. She couldn’t trust herself to fall in love again, because this time she wouldn’t be the only one hurt. This time, when the love of her life turned out to be a rat, it would be Lucy’s loss as well, and no one was going to hurt Lucy like that—not if she could help it. No one was going to blithely waltz into her daughter’s life, and read her books, and get her to love him, and then leave.

  She sat up in bed and scrubbed the tears from her eyes, piqued at this uncharacteristic bout with melancholia. It was all Ken Callahan’s fault, barging into her life, with that unraveling grin and mouthwatering body, and stirring up feelings better left unstirred. She switched the table lamp on and immediately felt better as the room was bathed in a warm glow.

  She’d decorated the room for the middle of the night. It was a room that could dispel the gloom and horror of the most terrible nightmare. It was a room that conjured up gentle sunshine and warm summer breezes. The light from the lamp reflected in the patina of her queen-sized brass bed. An ornate rolltop desk hugged one wall, it’s pigeonholes overflowing with trinkets, dried flowers, bills, half-finished correspondence, and rolled-up magazines. It was framed by an assortment of pictures—pictures of trains, pictures of gorillas, pictures of ice skaters, pictures of family. The walls were the color of vanilla cream, the lush carpet a dusky rose, the down comforter covered by an apricot coverlet that matched an adjoining bath done entirely in apricot—including the walls and ceiling. Her brother had dubbed it her “sherbet phase,” had merrily declared it to be sexist, and had concluded that his sister was substituting for all sorts of oral gratification.

  “Probably,” she’d told him breezily. “Who cares?” But deep down inside, she cared. She had made a terrible mistake, and she couldn’t afford to make another. She couldn’t afford the luxury of self-pity, and she couldn’t admit to loneliness—not even to herself.

  Pull yourself together, Chris, she fumed. Twelve forty-five. She had to be at the rink by five-twenty. She would be tired tomorrow, and it was all Ken’s fault. He was sexy and charming—and a rogue. His first night under her roof, and he was off in Loudoun County, staying up to all hours and doing heaven-knows-what. It certainly didn’t take five hours to gather a few clothes together. She threw the covers off and sprang out of bed. It was simple. She would go downstairs, she would make herself a cup of hot chocolate, and then she would go to sleep. And with any kind of luck, Ken Callahan would decide to stay in Loudoun County, and she’d never see him again.

  She padded quietly downstairs and crept through the dark house. Reaching the kitchen, she switched on the light and set a pan of milk heating on the stove while she spooned the chocolate mix into a mug. The beginnings of a smile tipped the corners of her mouth. Her life was filled with small pleasures. Having a midnight treat in her cozy kitchen was one of them. She poured the milk into the mug and watched, enthralled, as the liquid became brown and steamy. It was her favorite mug—fine porcelain with a colorful picture of a mother rabbit. Her best friend Amy had given her a set of four because she knew Chris loved rabbits. There had been no special reason for the present—Amy had simply seen them, thought of Chris, and spent her last cent on the cups. And that was the whole point, Chris reasoned. She had Amy. She had Lucy. She had Aunt Edna. What did she need with Ken?

  The cocoa cooled on the counter while Chris enjoyed the quiet. The refrigerator hummed as it defrosted. The sound of suburban traffic droned in the distance. A car door slammed. A key turned in her front door. Chris felt her heart skip a beat as the front door clicked open. It was him. Damn! What rotten luck—now she was trapped in the kitchen in her nightgown. She flicked the light switch, plunging the room into darkness. Maybe he hadn’t seen the light. Maybe he wasn’t hungry or thirsty. She closed her eyes in silent prayer. Let him go directly to his room.

  A broad-shouldered, slim-hipped form appeared in the middle of the doorway. His face was bathed in shadow, giving Chris no clue to his mood. His good arm rested casually against the louvered door. “Hiding?” His voice was a velvet murmur. Low and purposefully seductive.

  Rational thought and good intentions flew from her mind like autumn leaves on a windy day. She was aware only of the flame flickering to life deep within her. And she was suffused with the plea sure of his presence, with the predatory purr of his voice.

  “You’re standing in the moonlight, Chris. Would you like to know what I see?”

  Chris felt her lips part, but no words emerged. She stood statue still, barely breathing, her heart thumping in her chest.

  “I see a beautiful woman with silver curls and moonbeams spilling over ivory shoulders and the curve of her arm. All highlight and shadow and breathless expectancy.” He took a step toward her. “I’d be afraid to touch you if it weren’t for the shadows.”

  “Shadows?”

  He was very close now. Close enough for her to see his eyes, black with desire.

  He drew the tip of his finger across her lower lip. “This shadow that tells me your lips are parted, waiting to be kissed.” He closed his eyes, touched his mouth to hers, and he deepened the kiss. When she responded, he drew away to continue the seduction.

  “And this shadow at your pulse point,” he murmured, his lips across her neck.

  She closed her eyes and moaned softly, succumbing to the pleasure that ripped through her body at his every touch, wanting to feel him against her. Again, Chris was treated to a searing flash of foresight, a reaffirming of what she’d sensed in the hospital: that Ken would be a careful, sensitive lover; that he would allow their desire to build until
it was unbearable; and that when his passion was finally unleashed, it would be all-encompassing, devastatingly intense, and like none she had ever known.

  His mouth found hers with startling urgency. Chris leaned into him. Her breasts pressed against his muscled chest. She kissed him without reserve.

  “I need you.” He kissed her again, long and deep. “I need you to love me.” He swung around to lift her in his arms, forgetting the day-old cast. C-l-a-n-n-n-g! The plaster cast smashed against an empty copper fruit bowl sitting innocently on the counter. The bowl sailed through space and clattered onto the floor. Arrrrang arrrrang arrrrang! The bowl whirled to a stop.

  “Oh my God!” Chris choked.

  “What the hell was that?”

  Chris choked back laughter and bent to retrieve the bowl. “It was a copper bowl.”

  Lights flashed on upstairs. A door was thrown open. “What’s going on down there?” Edna yelled.

  They looked at each other like two children caught pilfering the cookie jar.

  Ken rested his forehead against a cabinet door. “I think I might cry.”

  “I think I might buy more fruit bowls.”

  “Saved by the bell, huh?”

  Chris looked at him in the moonlight. His face was still tinged with the strain of unsated desire. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she explained in a voice that was shaky with emotion. “I couldn’t sleep, and I was making myself a cup of cocoa.”

  “I guessed. I could smell the cocoa as soon as I opened the front door.” He took the fruit bowl from her and set it back on the counter. “And I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he told her with a menacing grin aimed at the now-silent bowl.

  “Yeah,” Chris breathed. “I believe that.”

  Aunt Edna’s voice rattled down the stairs. “Chris? Is that you making that racket?”

  “Yes, Aunt Edna. I was making cocoa, and I accidentally knocked the fruit bowl off the counter.”