Cupid's Confederates (6 page)

“Mom?” she called absently as she let herself in the front door. Still humming, she took off her boots and made her way to the downstairs bathroom to wash her hands, using the same hand cleaner Zach did, the only product that really worked on grease. Unlike Zach, though, she finished the job with apricot hand cream. Still rubbing it in, she wandered back to the kitchen.

“Mom?”

With a slight frown, Bett poured herself a cup of coffee and took a sip as she wandered back out of the kitchen toward her desk. Setting the cup down, she curled up with one leg under her and reached for the week’s receipts for orders of peaches and plums. Three receipts into the pile, Bett reached for the coffee cup, then set it down again.
“Mom?”

The prickling up her spine felt like a mother bird’s instinct of danger to its young. Bett stood up, knowing full well Elizabeth’s Lincoln was in the yard. Her mother generally considered fresh air a trial one had to endure in order to go to and from shopping. Hence, the lady was in the house.

And the lady was not answering.

Bett took the stairs two at a time. She peered first into her mother’s bedroom, then her own, then the bathroom. The door at the end of the hall was closed, that spare room that was eventually to be the nursery.

Bett opened the door, stopped short and swallowed a long, deep breath.

Her mother was wearing her pink tennis shoes, aqua pedal pushers and an orange bandanna. A ladder was perched in the middle of the floor, surrounded by tarps and old sheets. A jumble of rollers and paintbrushes dripped paint. Mint-green paint. Three gallons of it.

“Brittany! How
could
you come in here! I had planned this to be a total surprise!” Elizabeth glared at her daughter in comic dismay, though somewhere in those doe-soft eyes was a bouncing anticipation of Bett’s sure response.

Bett, for the moment, couldn’t give it. “Mom.” She rushed forward as Elizabeth came down the last two steps of the teetery ladder. “What are you
doing?
”

“You can
see
what I’m doing, silly one. Honestly, Brittany, I knew you had this room in mind for a baby sooner or later, and I thought this was one way I could pay you and Zach back. Zach just will
not
take any money from me, and here I am staying in your house, eating your food…” Elizabeth rubbed the knuckles of both hands into the small of her back, a gesture that indicated how physically difficult such a project was for her. “Aren’t you pleased?” she asked suddenly, the smile on her face fading as she noted Bett’s stillness.

Pleased? If she’d known her mother was using the most rickety ladder on the farm, she would have been developing ulcers. “Mom. I don’t
want
you doing anything like this—”

“I know that. What does that have to do with anything? Brittany?” Elizabeth’s face rapidly took on an unsure look. “You don’t like the color?”

Bett hated the color, but that was neither here nor there. She felt possessive about this room. Her mother could have absolutely anything Bett had, but this room had been a private thing for Bett from the instant she and Zach had made plans for the house. She and Zach were going to do it together, when it was time for the baby. A gentle cream color for the walls, with murals of kittens and raccoons and gentle lions, big and bold and soft.
Not
green.

Elizabeth’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “You didn’t like it? I felt so sure you’d be thrilled—”

Bett moved forward helplessly. “I am,” she assured her mother, and forced a smile as she hugged her. “I am…I was just…overwhelmed for a moment. And angry with you.”

“Angry with me?”

“For taking on something like this with your arthritis. Dammit,
look
at you, Mom.”

“Don’t swear.” But unconsciously, Elizabeth had been trying to rotate a swollen wrist. She stopped the instant Bett mentioned her arthritis. “It’s nothing.”

“It
isn’t
nothing. Mom…” Bett stared in despair at the half-painted room. The bright mint green caught the morning light. Some greens did well in sunlight. This one turned putrid. What was she going to do about her mother? In the meantime, she had an orchard to spray that afternoon; Zach had taken on enough jobs in the past two weeks. And she really had to tackle that bookkeeping; the workers had to be paid tomorrow.

“You don’t like the color.” Elizabeth’s lip was quivering.

Bett whirled. “Of course I do.”

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“I was so sure you would love it.”

“Mom. I do!”
Elizabeth was rubbing her sore wrist again, a waif at fifty-four in her orange bandanna and pedal pushers. “Mom, I really do,” Bett said softly. “And I’m grateful for the thought, really I am. You’re a very special, generous lady and I love you for it. But you’re not going to paint this room; it’s just too much for you.”

“Well, you don’t have time.” Elizabeth tugged down her blouse. “I admit it was a little more of a job than I had originally anticipated, but I’ll manage, Brittany. I’ll just take it slower—”

“What I’m counting on you to manage is Zach’s lunch,” Bett intervened swiftly. She tried out an impish smile. “I was looking for an excuse to play hooky this afternoon anyway.”

“You always have so much to do…”

“Not this afternoon, I don’t,” Bett lied blithely.

Her mother allowed herself to be gradually bullied downstairs. Then Bett returned alone to the nursery and stared at the green walls for a few moments in silence.

It wasn’t that she didn’t know exactly why her mother continually upset her—and why she kept letting it happen. Mother and daughter were coming from two different generations, and worse, two different systems of values. Because Bett didn’t live her mother’s lifestyle, Elizabeth seemed to feel she was being criticized for her own choices.
You
must
see that what I’ve done all my life is important,
she continually told Bett ever so unconsciously. A feminine woman, by the standards of Elizabeth’s generation, kept a clean house, prepared for babies and didn’t ride tractors.

Two weeks of subtle criticism, though, had depressed Bett. Not because she was unhappy with her own choice of lifestyle, however. It just wasn’t a simple thing, two women’s different definitions of “woman.” She couldn’t conceivably argue with her mother when Elizabeth was going through a rough period. And her mother really couldn’t see that Bett had anything more important to do than paint a room in ultimate preparation for a baby.

Bett picked up the paintbrush, stared at the strange green color dripping from it, and sighed.

***

Zach strode through the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. At the sound of his footsteps, Bett glanced down from her perch on the ladder, regarding her husband’s flinty blue eyes with a sick fluttering in her stomach. Surely he realized Elizabeth was responsible for the painting? He knew his wife well enough to realize mint green was not among
her
favorite colors. So why did he look angry?

“Hi there,” she tried brightly.

Zach said nothing. He often walked into this empty room at the end of the hall, for no reason, really. This odd feeling would hit him sometimes, and he’d find himself by the window in here…

“Zach?”

An odd uneven pulse was beating in his throat. They’d argued about finishing this room or not. They’d argued over the architectural plans for it; they’d argued square footage and the shape of the window. They had agreed to let it stand empty until they were ready to start a family, which had made perfect sense to both of them. At least, he’d believed it made sense to both of them. The pulse in his throat kept throbbing. It seemed very foolish to feel hurt about this; Zach had never considered himself in any way oversensitive. It was just…Bett was his whole family. And he could have sworn she’d understood his need to be involved when a baby was made part of that unit.

“You know if you’d waited just a couple more weeks until the harvest was over,” he said quietly, “I would have helped you.”

“We can do it over,” she said swiftly. She realized suddenly that he hadn’t even noticed the color. She had to explain, and yet she didn’t want to sound as if she were
accusing
Elizabeth. It was bad enough to be harboring uncharitable thoughts about her own mother…

“It doesn’t matter.” Zach turned toward the door. “Be back in for dinner.”

He was gone; Bett was still swallowing the huge lump in her throat, trying to find the right words to say.

“How about a little game of three-handed bridge?” Elizabeth suggested brightly.

Zach, stretched out on the couch, lifted his eyes from the farming journal in his hand. It was after ten. He’d just finished sixteen hours of work, give or take quick breaks for meals, and if he hadn’t needed to catch the latest weather report on the late news, he would already have been sacked out upstairs. “Thanks, but no, Elizabeth,” he said evenly.

“Brittany? Of course, we can’t play bridge with only two, but these are other card games…”

Bett was already rising from the opposite couch, rapidly swinging her feet to the floor. Her muscles ached from painting. Her head ached as well. In fact, everything ached. Spraying all morning, painting all afternoon, payroll until ten minutes ago… She forced herself to a standing position with a miraculously energetic smile for her mother. “I’ll play.”

“A good game of cards will relax us both,” Elizabeth announced.

“Yes.” Elizabeth looked as relaxed as a bouncing ball. Bett trailed her into the kitchen, stifling a yawn. “Maybe we could just play for a few minutes, Mom. I’m a little tired.”

Elizabeth glanced up from the card drawer with a hurt look. “If you really don’t want to play—”

“I do. Really.” Particularly if keeping her mother busy meant a few minutes of peace and quiet for Zach. After doing both his own work and half of hers for the past two weeks, Zach was understandably exhausted. Apart from tiredness, though, he wasn’t in the best of moods. If Bett hadn’t yet managed to claim a moment of privacy with him to explain about painting the room, the least she could do was ensure him some peace. At dinner, Elizabeth had chattered on and on.

Bett settled in a kitchen chair while her mother expertly shuffled the cards. “Canasta or poker?” Elizabeth questioned.

“Canasta.”

“I think poker. We haven’t played that in a long time.”

“Poker, then,” Bett agreed.

“On the other hand…”

They played canasta. After one game, Elizabeth got up to bring them both glasses of lemonade, and peeked into the living room. “Zach’s fallen asleep on the couch,” she said fondly.

They played a second game, and were halfway through the third when Elizabeth laid down her cards, perched her elbows delicately on the table and looked at her daughter. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, honey.”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you think that you two work together just a little…too much?”

Bett’s eyebrows arched. “What do you mean?”

“Well. You, going off on those tractors. Lifting bushels. Being around that…crew of
men.
Sweetheart, look at your nails.”

Bett dutifully looked at her nails. All ten were there, clipped very short. Her small hands didn’t fare well with physical work, which was why she constantly plied them with hand lotion. They were never going to pass for the hands of a lady of leisure, but she couldn’t see any actual deformities.

“See what I mean?” Elizabeth said gently.

“Not exactly.”

“Many, many women,” Elizabeth said obliquely, “make the terrible mistake of letting themselves go after they’ve been married awhile. Just a little. As if once you’ve caught the man, you don’t have to worry anymore about keeping him.”

Bett shuffled her cards back together, scooped up her mother’s and started putting them back in their cardboard box. “I’m almost positive Zach isn’t on the verge of divorcing me because of the state of my hands,” she said dryly.

“Now, don’t get defensive.”

“I’m not getting defensive.”

“I was married to your father for a long time, you know. We had a good marriage, a very good one. That took work on both sides, Brittany, don’t think it didn’t. The hunt and chase is very exciting before you’re married, but then a man suddenly realizes he doesn’t have to chase anymore, once the ring’s on her finger. Humdrum sets in. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, because I’ve never met a woman yet who hasn’t gone through it. The man’s just not in as much of a hurry to pursue, so to speak.”

Bett cupped her chin in her palm. She’d been through a lot of these lectures with her chin cupped in her palm. For some strange reason, though, she had an odd stricken feeling inside. Humdrum didn’t apply to her and Zach. Luck, undoubtedly? Actually, it was Zach. But for the past two weeks, Zach really hadn’t seemed to mind that their lovemaking had been interrupted every time, nor that their touch-and-tease contacts throughout the day had been curtailed. Bett swallowed suddenly. “What is it you’re suggesting?” she asked quietly.

Elizabeth smiled in triumph. “Several things, really. Darling, don’t you think Zach could be tired of seeing you in jeans and work clothes every day? And what exactly do you think he feels when he notices grease under your fingernails?”

Bett didn’t know. It had never occurred to her before. She’d thought more along the lines of the pleasure of doing work together than the appearance of her hands before they were washed. Dirty fingernails were…rather disgusting. Which was why she was always careful to clean her hands thoroughly and use the apricot hand cream liberally, but she’d never really thought of how often Zach had seen her fresh—or not so fresh—from the fields.

“And you doing rough-and-tumble work. Man’s work. Honey, do you think so much has changed over the generations? A man still likes to feel he’s bigger and stronger than his woman. All men like to protect, to believe they’re taking care of their wives. If you take that away from him, maybe he sees you less as a woman?”

“Mom.” Bett took a long, weary breath. The whole conversation was ridiculous, but a most undesirable flicker of doubt was suddenly preying on her already jangled nerves. When they were first married, she’d invariably come home from work in a dress or skirt. Zach had inevitably commented on her legs, the scent she wore. He was so damned impatient half the time that they’d skip dinner, or forget it. He’d always been…impatient. But the past couple of weeks, he hadn’t seemed to care at all that they’d been interrupted. Maybe…

Elizabeth pressed her advantage. “You used to wear padded bras to build up your figure. A little makeup, darling. And your hair, if we had it cut and permed—”

Bett’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “I had ten thousand permanents as a child. They never worked.”

“Maybe this time—”

“
No,
Mom.”

Elizabeth sighed. “Well, makeup, then. You’re going to be thirty in a few years, Brittany; you
must
take care of your skin. You’re in the sun all the time, and you don’t want to get wrinkles, for heaven’s sake…”

***

Zach, yawning, shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and wandered toward the bright light in the kitchen. The living-room clock said it was past midnight. He had evidently fallen asleep on the couch. Every one of his muscles was a mix of stiff and sleepy, but the murmurs from the kitchen announced that the two women were still up.

He paused in the doorway, blinking hard to adjust to the sudden dazzling illumination. Elizabeth was bending over her daughter, who sat in one of the kitchen chairs, and when she straightened up, he saw the array of tiny vials and bottles on the table, as well as his wife’s face. “Better,” Elizabeth announced critically.

He blinked again. Bett’s sun-golden complexion had turned ivory; the natural coral of her cheeks had turned pink. The shape of her mouth looked different, sort of a Cupid’s bow.

He glanced at the kitchen clock to verify that it was indeed after midnight. He stood there for a few seconds more, unnoticed by the two women, feeling a mixture of amusement and irritation. Not that this new look wasn’t very interesting, but where was Bett beneath all of it?

The thought echoed in his mind as he silently climbed the stairs. Where
had
his wife gone? Painting rooms in the middle of the harvest season, spending half her day inside, distracted all the time. He’d expected changes when Elizabeth came, but not that his wife would turn into a stranger.

***

Bett tossed her head, stuck her hands in her pockets and entered the cavernous darkness of the huge old barn. The beams stretched up for three stories, and from the top she could hear the low, melodious coos of the homing pigeons greeting her. Pulling open an old wooden door, she entered the shop.

The room was a stark change from the tall beams and mellow character of old barn siding. Zach had added modern lighting and a smooth cement floor to the shop three years before, and neat metal bins stored the spare parts and shop tools that had once been strewn every which way.

The John Deere was parked on the far side of the long room, and Zach was crouched over the engine, a wrench in his grease-stained hand. On a packing crate next to him was a sterling silver tea service. A thermos of coffee stood next to an alternate option of iced tea; next to that was an assortment of homemade cookies, still warm. Bett’s eyes traveled over her husband. His jeans were pressed with an impeccable crease these days. His work boots, underneath the day’s layer of dirt, had been freshly siliconed. His blue chambray shirt was starched. Well starched.

The incongruous touches of sterling and starch ordinarily would have made Bett chuckle. Zach was being spoiled, Elizabeth-style. But no smile crossed her features, because Zach, once upon a time, became extremely uptight if the least fuss were made over him. These days, he hadn’t said a word. Obviously, he didn’t much mind being spoiled; even enjoyed it, perhaps. Which was exactly what Elizabeth had been preaching to her.

Zach’s head swiveled around at the sound of her footsteps. He had the same oddly distant expression in his eyes that she’d seen all too often this past week.

“Caruso just called,” she told him. “The truck’ll be here any minute.”

Zach nodded. “Our last, you realize?”

“Our last,” she agreed, with a fleeting, sharing smile. The battle season was almost over. When the harvest was done, it didn’t mean an instant end to the work, but it did mean they could pay off their loan with a comfortable sum left over and begin to relax. Her fleeting smile widened irrepressibly, turning joyous. “Hey, Monroe? We’re actually making it. You realize that?”

Zach chuckled, tossed down his wrench and crooked a blackened finger in her direction.

“No, Zach.
No.
Behave—”

“I need a hug.” He caught up with her before she could reach the door, stretching both long arms around her shoulders to imprison her, his grease-darkened fingers splayed in midair behind her. Her eyes were very bright blue this morning, full of laughter. He hadn’t seen quite that look in her eyes in nearly a month, and he wasn’t about to let her go that quickly.

“Listen, Buster. If you get grease on this white sweatshirt, my mother—”

“Will have something to do besides starch my work shirts.” His lips closed on hers swiftly, and lingered until Bett’s hands slowly crept around his waist to hang on.

He liked the feel of her arms around him, and he liked the feel of her pelvis cradled directly between his thighs. He didn’t much like the feel of lip gloss over the smooth natural texture of Bett’s own lips. He drew back just a little to look at her. Bett’s skin was as soft as a baby’s, skin that begged to be touched. The eye makeup did sexy things for her eyes, but he just couldn’t understand why she wanted to hide her natural softness under a layer of…crud.

“You’re staring,” Bett murmured.

“Probably.”

“You don’t like what you see?” The question was teasing, but Bett suddenly looked as vulnerable as a kitten.

“I
always
like what I see.” To hell with it. He was hardly going to say the wrong thing and risk hurting her. It was her business, if she wanted to wear a little paint.

He
was in the mood to wear Bett. To pull her on, tuck her in close and button her up inside of him. Quickies seemed to be all they had the time or energy for these past few weeks since Elizabeth had been there. And when they did catch a private moment in bed, his wife was always worrying that her mother would pop her insomniac head through the bedroom door. Bett’s willingness to make love was unchanged, but Zach could sense her distraction. He understood just fine…and for three minutes of real privacy with her, he would willingly have auctioned off portions of his soul. Cheap.

“Zach.” Bett tried to pull away. “There’s a truck due—”

“If you move even an inch, you’ll have greasy fingerprints all over your shirt,” he murmured.

True. Bett obediently stood still, offering up her most mischievous smile. She pressed closer to him, since that was obviously what he wanted, and then weaved her hips just a little, a motion she’d learned in the single belly-dancing class she’d conned the girls in the dorm into investing in, about a thousand years ago.

Zach sucked in his breath. His chin nudged aside her hair, exposing a spot on her neck for his lips to explore. Come to think of it, he’d always been partial to that vulnerable spot just below her ear. Probably because she inevitably shivered when he kissed her there.

Her arms tightened around him and she raised up on tiptoe, rubbing deliberately against him, teasing the tips of her breasts against his starched shirt. Inside the stiff collar of his work shirt—the so
very
stiff collar—she tested a puppy-soft tongue. Just a little lick. His skin was sun-warmed and faintly salty; she could smell the earth they both worked on and loved. The man-smell was underneath that. That certain musky scent and nakedness were inextricably linked in her mind. She lifted up on tiptoe again, arching against him, her hips suggesting a familiar rhythm.

She could sense more than see Zach’s hands lift to hold her, and hesitate. “Do that again,” he murmured next to her ear, “and watch how fast you get taken on the floor of the barn.”

Her sparkling eyes met his. “You think I’d object?”

“I think your fanny would.”

She peered over her shoulder at the subject under discussion. “It doesn’t object.”

The chuckle rumbled from his throat at the same time that his teeth nipped at the curve of her shoulder. “You just told me twice that Caruso was coming. Now, behave.”