Accompanying Alice (16 page)

Someday,
Alice promised herself tartly. Like Dad used to say, you’ve always got Someday.

“But how do you know when it’s Someday, Mom?” Alice could still hear the aggrieved note in Allyn’s voice when her daughter had been eight and wondering when they could take a vacation to Disneyland, when she could get a horse, when they could buy a new house. The answer had always been “Someday.”
But how do you know when it’s Someday, Mom? ...

“You’ll know,” Alice heard herself assure Allyn, “when you’re old enough to reach out and grab it.”
.

“But what if I don’t, Mom? What if I don’t?”

“Don’t worry,” Alice promised, stroking her hair. “You’ll know, my darling, you’ll know.”

But maybe Allyn hadn’t really been worried about
how
she’d know when Someday was here, after all. Maybe what she’d really been worried about was what would happen if she didn’t reach out and grab it.

Nothing, Alice thought, bending down and yanking the laces of her tennis shoes too tight for comfort as she felt the swell of the familiar unnamed anger and frustration. If you didn’t grab for Someday when you had a chance, absolutely nothing happened.

She straightened, jaw set. The girls were grown and out grabbing handfuls of their own Somedays. They didn’t need her, not today, and maybe not tomorrow, either. She was out of a job, but maybe that wasn’t so bad. Maybe that was just Someday’s Opportunity knocking, looking for her, challenging her. After the wedding, after she finished up her commitments to Grace, maybe she could take some time to find herself, too, travel like Allyn, go to college, take risks....

She stepped purposefully out of the dressing room, accepted her dress box from the woman at the counter and followed her sisters out of the shop. Gabriel was slouched against the wall beside the boutique, plastic-wrapped tuxedo over one shoulder. He straightened gladly when he saw her, and Alice felt a flicker of warmth ignite in her veins at the same time she felt her resolve drain. So much for Someday, she thought. Because if he kissed her hello, she damned well knew that, whether she intended to or not, she’d go to hell kissing him back.

Chapter Six

“H
i,” she said.

“Hi.” He reached for her box and fell naturally into step beside her, smiling, glad to see her. Enjoying himself, when from all past experience, he should not. “I ran into Skip at the tux shop,” he murmured softly. “We had a long talk. I invited him to lunch.”

“Yeah?” His breath in her ear made her senses buzz. She wanted to touch him; she wanted to run. There was a piece of thread on the sleeve of his shirt. She reached over and picked it off. “What about?”

“Seems the man has had quite a crush on the major since high school to the point where he—no offense, he says—was willing to go out with you to please her. And I think,” he said conspiratorially, “if you’re interested, I know what we can do about the major.”

“Really?” She liked the twinkle in his eye, the sound of the chuckle he shared only with her. “That sounds evil but promising.”

Gabriel nodded.

“Funny,” Alice mused aloud, “I didn’t picture opportunity wearing a Band-Aid when it knocked.”

“Oh, honey, I haven’t been called
opportunity
for a long, long time.” Acrimony was faint but evident. He covered it quickly, asking, “How should opportunity dress?”

“Sirens, bells, flashing lights.”

Gabriel grinned. “Is that another way of saying
“I don’t know what it looks like but I don’t want to miss it when it comes”
?”

“You got it.” She colored slightly when he lifted a brow at her vehemence. “I’ve just...” She hunched one shoulder. “I’ve just been waiting for an opportunity to do something about Helen for years.”

“I see,” was all he said, but his eyes laughed at her, called her liar.

“I have,” she insisted to them.

“Uh-huh.” He nodded, teasing. “Sure.”

Alice yanked open the outside door, furious. “Shut up,” she hissed. “What do you know?”

“I know—” he stepped outside and faced her, barring her path “—that if I dropped everything and kissed you right now the way a real lover would, you’d kiss me back into oblivion and run.”

Alice gazed up at him, breath shortened, heart bumping fast against her ribs. Gabriel’s face was calm; his eyes were not. They challenged; they desired. They were uncertain. Alice gripped the handle of the door. This was crazy; it was nuts. She’d never been adept at dating, nor allowed herself much curiosity about bedroom gymnastics on the whole. Since the girls had been born, she’d avoided the former at most costs and had never felt she could afford the latter. But she wasn’t a schoolgirl either. She shouldn’t feel like one, behave like one.

Her tongue flicked around the inside of her teeth, her eyes dropped to his mouth, couldn’t seem to leave it. She had so much to confront about sex and sexuality, things to understand—things to accept—about, herself.

Why she thought it was wrong to feel the way she felt. Why she denied desire existed, or joked crassly with her sisters to cover up her fears of it. The things she couldn’t reconcile with herself.

Like the very idea of love and marriage.

Like why she quite definitely, quite decidedly, wanted Gabriel.

She watched his lips bow and constrict, thin then part.

Deliberately she shut her eyes, shut out Gabriel, shut out the curl of heat at the base of her spine. Her body and her emotions didn’t control her anymore. She didn’t let them use her; she knew how to ignore them. She was in charge.

She lifted her chin and opened her eyes, meeting Gabriel’s unspoken dare with one of her own. “Move,” she said, shoving him aside. “I’m hungry. I want some lunch. And I want to do something about Helen before the wedding.”

*

The Irish-Mexican restaurant across the street from the Banquets ‘n More catering service was packed. Alice and Gabriel threaded their way past tables decorated with shamrocks and shillelaghs, beneath bright piñatas, around waiters and waitresses wearing green Irish bowlers and bright Mexican frills, to the arrangement of tables at the back where Alice’s sisters were already ensconced. Helen patted the empty chair beside her.

“Sit, Gabriel,” she invited. “Is that what they call you? Gabriel? Not Gabe or Gabby?”

Twink snorted indelicately. “Leave him alone, Helen. Would you want to be called Gabby? Besides, it doesn’t suit him. Neither does Gabe. He’s more of a…” she screwed up her face thoughtfully “Dane.”

“Based on what?” Sam asked. “That he’s mostly blond, with Alice and because Matt’s middle name was Dane? Oops.” She put a hand to her mouth and glanced contritely at Alice when Meg slapped her arm. “Sorry, I didn’t mean
it.
I
t just came out.”

Alice flipped the remark aside with a hand, but not before Gabriel caught a flash of some involuntary deep-rooted pain mixed with self-disgust. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.” She glanced around at Gabriel when he slid a gentle palm across her back and pulled out her chair for her. “I told him about Matt.”

“And a lot of other things.” His eyes on Alice were intense and warm, seeing. “We don’t keep secrets.”

He slipped into the seat between her and Helen and angled his chair closer to slide an arm across the back of Alice’s. His fingers slid into the hair at the base of her neck, slid down again, massaging. She didn’t want to
be
aware of him, not when he was performing. But she
was
aware of him, couldn’t help it, couldn’t—

“So, Gabriel,” Helen asked, “what do you do?”

Gabriel’s hand tensed on Alice’s neck, then relaxed. “I’m in insurance—an investigator.” Not quite the truth, not completely a lie. “What do
you
do?”

“Same general line of work—Military Claims Investigations.” Helen grinned. “I’m a negotiations expediter. When all else fails, they bring me in to unravel the red tape. You?”

“No.” Gabriel shook his head. “No red tape. I just try to make a difference.”

“Do you succeed?”

Gabriel’s grip on the back of Alice’s neck grew painful; his eyes were blank. “Not always.”

Something about the way he said it drew their eyes and their silence. Alice had the sudden fierce urge to protect him from that silence. She reached over and squeezed his thigh, leaned into the table confidingly, drawing her sisters’ attention. “He’s just come off a rough case—family dispute. It didn’t go well.” She settled back, nodded at an approaching waitress and opened her menu. “Everybody know what they want for lunch? Oh, look, there’s Skip. Helen, move over, we’ll get another chair and ask him to join us.”

*

From there, lunch turned into a round of pleasant family bickering and teasing that included Gabriel and in which he participated—made him unconsciously feel as if he belonged. Mixed in amongst the banter were notes about the wedding preparations—who was in charge of which disasters—and the current state of the sisters’ extra-family lives. Rebecca and Allyn were discussed by aunts who thought it was pretty funny that Alice, the big sister who had advised
all of them about growing up while they were, should now be so confused by her own children doing the same. Sam’s newly announced pregnancy was congratulated, horror stories about
labor rooms and breast feeding were shared—much to Skip’s embarrassment and Gabriel’s amusement. Then Twink, whose infant was barely two months old, and Edith, whose children were already nine and eleven, and Meg, who’d been married almost two years and showed no inclination toward having babies, were laughingly ordered to get busy and produce.

After a pair of margaritas, Helen lamented the fact that now only she, Alice and Ma were still unmarried and it didn’t look as if Alice would be on the market much longer.

At this point Alice, ignoring Gabriel’s restraining hand, advised Helen smartly that the major had better stay out of her sister’s business and look to her own, where she might, if it was possible for Helen to see what was beneath her own nose—meaning Skip—discover the direction of her own future.

Helen countered by asking sweetly whether or not Alice had put the board under her mattress yet, since Aunt Kate and Uncle Delbert would be arriving tomorrow.

Twink pointedly advised them both that if they would each shut up and stop considering every possible angle before making a commitment to anything that they might both wind up happier.

Meg left the table several times to make phone calls, trying to find Grace. Skip offered to chauffeur Helen anywhere she wanted to go—and would she perhaps like to go to dinner and a concert if her schedule permitted? Edith, ever quick to spot a potential for disaster, invited Skip to join them all at Alice’s for sisters-sisters night, since Gabriel, it appeared, was already going to be there. Gabriel raised a questioning brow at Alice over the suggestion, and Alice shut her eyes and shook her head; he didn’t want to know.

Sam’s beeper went off toward the end of the meal and she left thinking she’d have to go to a fire, and returned to announce that Grace had been stopped by the state police while on a pizza
delivery run, had been late delivering the pizza and, to put it mildly, had been quite specific about where Sam and the rest of her sisters could stick their meddling
,
overprotective concern for her.

Hearing the news, Alice surprised both herself and Gabriel by pressing her face into his shoulder with a whispered prayer of thanks. And it was with some astonishment that Gabriel discovered from the general giggles of relief, exchanged glances, hand gestures and quick little indrawn breaths exactly how apprehensive Grace’s sisters had been about her. They’d barely spoken about her absence, but apparently overt demonstration and knock-down-drag-out-arguments had nothing to do with love in the Brannigan family. The bond was simply something that they all took for granted, and would remain a constant channel marker in an ever shifting sea—regardless of sunshine or hellfire—forever.