I’m In No Mood For Love (10 page)

“Ouch.” Clare laughed and moved in front of him.

“Believe me, it’ll be less painful than listening to her silly stories about Missy and Poppet.”

“I don’t know who is worse, Lorna or Rich.”

“Her son is an idiot.”

“Rich isn’t her son.” She sat beside him on the bench, and Sebastian gave up, resigned himself to his tormented fate. “He’s her fifth husband.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” She sat back and the night almost swallowed her. “If I hear my mother tell one more person that I write women’s fiction, I’m afraid I’ll grab one of the torches and set
her
on fire.”

“What’s wrong with her saying you write women’s fiction?” Moonlight filtered through the dogwood and cut across her nose and mouth. Her fantasy of a mouth that made him wonder if she tasted as good as she looked.

“It’s the reason why she says it. I embarrass her.” The corners of her lips rose in a smile. “Who else should we throw on the pyre? Besides Lorna and my mother?”

He leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. He set his glass on the ground and looked
through the darkness before him. He could just see the outline of his father’s house and the porch light above the red door. “Everyone who has taken the time to point out to me that my relationship with my father sucks.”

“Your relationship with Leo
does
suck. You should try to work on it. He’s not getting any younger.”

He glanced at the hypocrite across the iron bench. “Hello, pot? This is the kettle calling.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“That before you start giving me advice, you should take a good hard look at your relationship with your mother.”

Clare folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked across at the man beside her, the white stripes of his shirt the most visible thing about him. “My mother is an impossible woman.”

“Impossible? If there is one thing I’ve learned over the past few days, it’s that there is always a way to compromise.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. She’d given up on compromise years ago. “There is no use trying. I can’t please her. I’ve tried my whole life, and my whole life I’ve disappointed her. I quit the Junior League because I didn’t have the time, and I don’t belong to any other charitable organization anymore. I’m thirty-three, single, and
haven’t produced a grandchild. To her, I’m wasting my life away. In fact, the only thing I’ve ever done that she approved of was my engagement to Lonny.”

“Ah, so that’s the reason.”

“What?”

“I’ve been trying to figure out why a woman would choose to live with a gay man.”

She shrugged and the other strap of her dress slid down her arm. “He lied to me.”

“Maybe you wanted to believe the lie to please your mother.”

She thought a moment. It still wasn’t the ah-ha epiphany she’d been waiting for, but there was some truth in it. “Yeah, maybe.” She pushed both straps back up. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t love him and that it hurts less because he wasn’t unfaithful with a woman.” She felt an appalling sting in the backs of her eyes. She hadn’t had a good soul-cleansing cry all week, and she certainly couldn’t allow it to happen now. “It doesn’t mean that all the hopes I had for a future suddenly go away and I feel relieved, and I think, ‘Wow, dodged that bullet.’ Maybe I should, but—” Her voice broke and she rose to her feet as if someone had yanked her up.

Clare walked farther from the party and stopped beneath an old oak. She placed her hand on the
rough, uneven bark and stared out through rapidly blurring eyes at the outline of wild growth beyond. Had it only been a week? It seemed longer, and yet…it also seemed like yesterday. She rubbed beneath her eyes and wiped away her tears. She was in public. She didn’t cry in public.

Why was the crying jag hitting her now? Here, of all places? She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Perhaps because she’d kept herself busy. Worrying about the HIV test and planning Leo’s party had taken a lot of mental and physical energy. Now that she didn’t have those worries blocking her emotions, she was having a breakdown.

And it was damn inconvenient.

She felt Sebastian move up behind her. Not touching, but so close she could feel the heat of his body.

“Are you crying?”

“No.”

“Yes you are.”

“If you don’t mind, I just want to be alone.”

Of course, he didn’t leave. Instead he placed his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t cry, Clare.”

“Okay.” She wiped the moisture from her cheeks. “I’m fine now. You can rejoin the party. Leo’s probably worried about where you are.”

“You’re
not
fine, and Leo knows I’m a big
boy.” He slid his hands down her bare arms to her elbows. “Don’t cry over someone who isn’t worth it.”

She looked down at her feet, her pedicured toes barely visible in the dark. “I know you think because I don’t have the right equipment that I shouldn’t take it so hard, but you don’t understand that I loved Lonny. I thought he was the person I’d spend the rest of my life with. We had a lot in common.” A tear rolled down her cheek and fell on her chest.

“Not sex.”

“Yeah, except for that, but sex isn’t everything. He was very supportive of my career and we took care of each other in every way that really matters.”

His warm, rough palms slid up her arms to her shoulders. “Sex matters, Clare.”

“I know, but it’s not the
most
important thing in a relationship.” Sebastian made a scoffing sound, but she ignored it. “We were planning to go to Rome on our honeymoon so I could research a book, but that’s all gone now. And I feel foolish and…empty.” Her voice broke and she raised a hand and wiped at her eyes. “How do you love someone one day and not the next? I wish I kn-knew.”

Sebastian turned her and placed his hands on
the sides of her face. “Don’t cry,” he said, and brushed her wet cheeks with his thumbs.

The distant sound of crickets chirping mixed and mingled with “Son of a Preacher Man” softly pouring from the stereo. Clare looked up at Sebastian’s smeared dark outline. “I’ll be okay in a minute,” she lied.

He lowered his face, and the light touch of his lips stopped the air in her lungs. “Shh,” he whispered at the corner of her mouth. His hands slid toward the back of her head and his fingers plowed through her hair. He placed soft kisses on her cheek, her temple, and her brow. “Don’t cry anymore, Clare.”

She doubted she could if she wanted to. While Dusty sang about the only boy who could ever teach her, shock clogged everything in the center of Clare’s chest and she could hardly breathe.

He kissed her nose, then said just above her mouth, “You need something else to think about.” He gently pulled her head backward and her lips parted slightly. “Like how it feels to be held by a man who can get it up for a woman.”

Clare placed her hands his chest and felt the solid muscles beneath the thin dress shirt. This could not be happening. Not with Sebastian. “No,” she assured him a little desperately. “I remember.”

“I think you’ve forgotten.” His lips pressed into
hers, then eased back a fraction. “You need a little reminding by a man who knows how to use his pickle fork.”

“I wish you’d forget I said that,” she managed past the constriction in her chest.

“Never. Although I can’t imagine anything the size of a pickle fork being much use to anyone.”

She gasped as his mouth opened over hers and his tongue swept inside. He tasted like scotch and something else. Something she hadn’t tasted in a very long time. Sexual desire. Hot and intoxicating, focused directly at her. She should have been alarmed, and she was a little. But mostly she liked the taste in her mouth. Like something luscious and rich she hadn’t had in a while, and it poured all through her, warming the pit of her stomach and the empty places inside.

Everything around her receded away like a low tide. The party. The crickets. Dusty. Thoughts of Lonny.

Sebastian was right. She’d forgotten what it was like to have a man make love to her mouth. She couldn’t recall it being so good. Or perhaps it was that Sebastian was so good at it. Her palms slid to his shoulders and the side of his neck as his slick tongue teased and coaxed until she gave in and kissed him back, returning the passion and possession he fed her.

Her toes curled in her Kate Spade sandals and she ran her fingers through the short hair brushing the collar of his shirt. His mouth never left hers, yet she felt the kiss everywhere. His wet mouth on hers turned every cell in her body needy and greedy and wanting more.

She rose to the balls of her feet and pressed into him. He groaned into her mouth, a deep sound of lust and yearning that fanned her ego, flamed the feminine fire deep inside that she’d allowed to die to a small ember. She turned her head to the side and her mouth clung to his.

His hands slid to her waist and his thumbs fanned her stomach through the thin cotton of her dress. His fingers pressed into her and he held her against his lower belly, where he was hard and swollen. He wanted her; she’d forgotten how truly good that felt. She kissed him like she wanted to eat him up, and she did. Every last bite. At that moment, she didn’t care who he was, only how he made
her
feel. Wanted and desired.

He pulled back and gasped for breath. “Jesus, stop!”

“Why?” she asked, and kissed the side of his throat.

“Because,” he answered, his voice sounding both rough and tortured, “we’re both old enough to know where this will lead.”

She smiled against his neck. “Where?”

“To a quicky in the weeds.”

Clare wasn’t that far gone. She dropped to her heels and retreated a few steps, leaned her back against the tree and took several mind-clearing breaths. She watched Sebastian comb his fingers though his hair and tried to make sense of what had happened. She’d just kissed Sebastian Vaughan, and as crazy as that sounded inside her head, she wasn’t sorry. “You’ve been practicing since you were nine,” she said, still a little dazed by it all.

“That shouldn’t have happened. Sorry, but I’ve been thinking about it since the night you stripped in front of me. I remember exactly what you look like naked, and things got out of control and—” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t started crying.”

Her brows lowered as she stared into the darkened shadows and raised her fingers to her lips, still moist from his kiss. She wished he hadn’t apologized. She knew she should probably be mad or appalled or offended by the way they’d both behaved, but she wasn’t. At the moment, she didn’t feel offended, appalled, or even sorry. She just felt alive. “You’re blaming me? I’m not the one who grabbed and assaulted your mouth.”

“Assaulted? I didn’t assault you.” He pointed at her. “I can’t stand to see a woman cry. I know it
sounds clichéd, but it’s true. I would have done just about anything to get you to stop.”

She was sure she’d be sorry later, though. Like when she had to see him in the light of day. “You could have walked away.”

“And you’d still be bawling your eyes out like you were the night at the Double Tree.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Once again, I did you a favor.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Not at all. You stopped crying, didn’t you?”

“Is this your ulterior motive crap again? You kissed me to help me out?”

“It’s not crap.”

“Wow, how noble of you.” She laughed. “I suppose you got turned on because…why?”

“Clare,” he said through a sigh, “you’re an attractive woman and I’m a man. Of course you turn me on. I don’t have to stand here and try to imagine what you look like naked, I
know
you’re beautiful all over. So of course I felt something. If I hadn’t felt some measure of desire, I’d be damn worried about myself.”

She didn’t bother pointing out that his desire measured about eight hard inches. She wished she could conjure up some righteous indignation or anger, but she couldn’t. To do that meant she’d have
to be sorry. Right now, she wasn’t. With one kiss he’d given her back something she hadn’t even known she’d let slip away. Her power to make a man want her with nothing more than a kiss.

“You should thank me,” he said.

Right.
She probably should thank him, but not for the reason he thought. “And you should go right ahead and kiss my butt.” Lord, she sounded like she was ten again, but she didn’t feel like it. Thanks to the man in front of her.

He chuckled, low and deep in his chest.

“In case you’re confused, Sebastian, that wasn’t an invitation.”

“It sure sounded like an invitation,” he said. He took a few steps back and added, “The next time I’m in town, I just might take you up on it.”

“I don’t know. Will I have to thank you?”

“No. You won’t have to, but you will.” Then, without another word, he turned and walked away, not in the direction of the party but toward the carriage house.

She’d known Sebastian all of her life. Some things hadn’t changed. Like his attempts to talk around her and make her think day was night, to feed her lines of bull, and on occasion make her feel wonderful. Like the time he’d told her that her eyes were the color of the irises growing in her mother’s
garden. She couldn’t remember her age, but she did remember that she’d lived on the compliment for days.

Clare felt the sharp edges of the tree against her back as she watched Sebastian step onto the porch of the carriage house. The light above his head turned his hair gold and the white of his shirt almost neon. He opened the red door and disappeared inside.

She once again raised her fingers to lips made sensitive by his kiss. She’d known him most of her life, but one thing was for certain, Sebastian was no longer a boy. He was definitely a man. A man who made women like Lorna Devers eye him like a piece of smooth, mouth-watering decadence. Like something she wanted to sink her teeth into just once.

Clare knew the feeling.

T
he second week of September, Sebastian boarded an international flight bound for Calcutta, India. Seven-thousand-plus miles and twenty-four hours later, he boarded a smaller aircraft for the plains of Bihar, India, where life and death depended on the whim of the annual monsoon and the ability to find a few hundred dollars to battle
kala azar
—black fever.

He landed in Muzaffarpur and drove four hours to the village of Rajwara with a local doctor and a photographer. From a distance the village looked bucolic and untouched by modern civilization. Men in traditional white dhoti kurta cultivated the fields with wooden carts and water buffalo, but like all underdeveloped parts of the globe that
he’d reported on in the past, Sebastian knew this peaceful scene was an illusion.

As he and the other two men walked the dirt lanes of Rajwara, swarms of excited children surrounded them, kicking up dust along the way. A Seattle Mariners baseball cap shaded his face from the sun, and he’d filled the pockets of his cargo pants with extra batteries for his tape recorder. The doctor was well known in the village, and women in bright saris emerged from thatched huts one after the other, speaking rapidly in Hindi. Sebastian didn’t need the doctor to translate to know what was said. The sound of the poor begging for help spoke a universal language.

Over the years, Sebastian had learned to place a professional wall between himself and what took place around him. To report on it without sinking into a black fog of hopeless depression. But scenes like these were still hard to encounter.

He stayed on the Bihar plains for three days interviewing One World Health and Doctors Without Borders relief workers. He visited hospitals. He spoke with a pharmaceutical chemist in the U.S. who’d developed a stronger more effective antibiotic, but like all drug development, money was the key to its success. He visited one last clinic and walked between the crammed rows of beds before he headed back to Calcutta.

He had an early flight out in the morning and was more than ready to relax in the hotel lounge, away from the teeming city, the overwhelming smells, and the constant noisy barrage. India possessed some of the most astounding beauty on earth and some of the most appalling poverty. In some places the two lived side by side, and nowhere was that more in evidence than Calcutta.

There had been a time when he’d scorned the journalist he considered soft—those “old” guys who kicked back in nice comfy hotel bars and ordered hotel food. As a young journalist, he’d felt that the best stories were out there in the streets, in the trenches and on the battlefields, in the flea bag hotels and slums, waiting to be told. He’d been right, but they weren’t the only worthy stories or always the most important. He used to believe he needed to feel bullets whizzing past his head, but he’d learned that high-octane reporting could make a journalist lose perspective. The rush to report could lead to a loss of objectivity. Some of the best reporting came from a thorough and unbiased gaze. Through the years, he’d perfected the sometimes difficult craft of journalistic balance.

At thirty-five, Sebastian had suffered through several cases of dysentery, been robbed, stepped in running streams of raw sewage, and seen enough
death to last him a lifetime. He’d been there and done that, and earned every bit of his success. He didn’t have to fight for a byline anymore. After years of running full tilt, balls to the walls, chasing stories and leads, he’d earned some kickback time in an air-conditioned hotel.

He ordered a Cobra beer and tandoori chicken while he checked his e-mail. Halfway through his meal, an old colleague spotted him.

“Sebastian Vaughan.”

Sebastian looked up and a smile spread across his mouth as he recognized the man walking toward him. Ben Landis was shorter than Sebastian, with thick black hair and an open, friendly face. The last time Sebastian had seen him, Ben had been a correspondent with
USA Today,
and they’d both been in a Kuwaiti hotel, awaiting the invasion of Iraq. Sebastian stood and shook Ben’s hand. “What are you up to?” he asked.

Ben sat down across from him and signaled for a beer. “I’m writing a piece on the Missionaries of Charity ten years after the death of Mother Teresa.”

Sebastian had done a piece on the Missionaries of Charity in 1997, a few days after the death of the Catholic nun, the last time he’d been in Calcutta. Little had changed, but that was no surprise. Change was slow in India. He raised his beer
and took a drink. “How’s it going?” he asked.

“Ah, you know how things move around here. Unless you’re in a taxi, everything seems to stand still.”

Sebastian set his bottle on the table and the two of them caught up, swapping war stories and ordering a second beer. They reminisced about what a pain in the ass it had been to climb into hot, sweaty, chemical-protection suits everytime there’d been a chemical threat during the push into Iraq. They laughed about the Marine’s FUBAR, with forest green suits sent to the troops instead of sandstorm beige, though at the time it hadn’t been a laughing matter. They recalled stories of waking every morning in a shallow hole with fine dust covering their faces, and laughed some more about the knockdown, drag-out between a Canadian peace activist, who’d called Rumsfeld a warmonger, and an American wire service reporter, who’d taken exception. The fight had been fairly evenly matched until two women from Reuters joined the fray and broke it up.

“Remember that Italian reporter?” Ben asked through a smile. “The woman with big red lips and…” He held his hands in front of his chest as if he were holding melons. “What was her name?”

“Natala Rossi.” Sebastian raised the bottle to his lips and took a drink.

“Yeah. That was her.”

Natala had been a reporter with
Il Messaggero,
and her gravity-defying breasts had been a constant source of fascination and speculation for her male colleagues.

“Those had to be fake,” Ben said as he took a long pull off his beer. “Had to be.”

Sebastian could have cleared things up for him. He’d spent a long night with Natala inside a Jordanian hotel and had firsthand knowledge—so to speak—that her lovely breasts were real. He’d understood very little Italian; she’d spoken very poor English; but conversation hadn’t been the point.

“The rumor was, she took you up to her hotel room.”

“Interesting.” He’d never been the kind of guy to kiss and tell. Not even when the retelling was really good stuff. “Did the rumor mention if I had a good time?” When he thought back on that night, he could hardly recall Natala’s face or her passionate cries. For some reason he couldn’t fathom, a different brunette rose up and got stuck center brain.

“So, the rumor isn’t true?”

“No,” he lied, rather than give a blow by blow—so to speak—description of his night with the Italian reporter. While the memory of Natala had faded, the memories of Clare in a pink thong and the kiss they’d shared seemed to grow more vivid
with each passing day. He could recall perfectly the soft curves of her body pressed against him, the soft texture of her lush lips beneath his, and the warmth of her slick mouth. He’d kissed a lot of women in his life, good, bad, and hot as hell. But no woman had ever kissed him like Clare. Like she wanted to use her mouth to suck out his soul. And the confusing thing was, he’d wanted to let her. When she told him to kiss her nice little butt, he knew just the spot he wanted to kiss.

“I hear you got married,” he said in an effort to change the subject and get his thoughts off Clare, her smooth behind, and soft mouth. “Congratulations.”

“I did. My wife’s expecting our first child any day now.”

“And you’re here, waiting around to talk to nuns?”

“I’ve got to make a living.” A waiter set Ben’s third beer on the table and disappeared. “You know how it goes.”

Yeah, he knew. It took a lot of hard work and a good deal of luck to make a living in journalism. Especially for a freelance reporter.

“You haven’t said what you’re doing in Calcutta,” Ben said, and reached for the bottle.

Sebastian filled him in on what he’d been investigating in the Bihar plains and the newest
outbreak of black fever. The two men shot the breeze for another hour, then Sebastian called it a night.

On the flight home the following day, he listened to the interviews he’d taped and scribbled down notes. While he wrote an outline, he recalled the abject hopelessness he saw in the faces of the peasants. He knew there was nothing he could do but tell their story and shed some light on the epidemic that had plagued the region. Just as he knew that there would be a new plague and a new epidemic to report next month. Bird flu, malaria, HIV/AIDS, cholera, drought, hurricane, tidal waves, starvation. Take your pick. War and disasters were a never-ending cycle and a constant employer. On any given day there was a new breakout of disease, or if not, some little dictator, terrorist leader, or Boy Scout gone bad, was going to start shit somewhere on the planet.

During a two-hour layover in Chicago he got a bite to eat in a sports pub and pulled out his laptop. As he’d done hundreds of times in the past, he pecked out an opening while he ate a pastrami on rye. He struggled a bit, but nothing compared to what he’d gone through with the piece he’d written on homegrown terrorism.

On the flight from O’Hare, he caught up on some sleep, waking just in time for the Boeing 787
to set down at Sea-Tac. Rain pelted the runway and strings of water streamed from the wings of the big aircraft. It was ten
A.M.
, Pacific time, when he deplaned, and he maneuvered easily though the airport toward his Land Cruiser parked in the long-term lot. He couldn’t recall how many times he’d walked through Sea-Tac over the years. Too many to count, but this time was different. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he knew this would be his last international flight. Flying halfway across the globe to report a story didn’t appeal to him as it once had, and now he was thinking about Ben Landis and his pregnant wife.

As he drove up Interstate 5, an irritating little peck of loneliness nagged at him. Before the death of his mother, he’d never been lonely. He had male friends. Women too, a number of whom he could ring and who’d meet for a drink or anything else he wanted.

His mother was gone, but life was fine, just the way he liked it, just the way he’d always envisioned. But with every silent swipe of his windshield wipers, the feeling scratched a little deeper. He figured it was the jet lag and once he got home to his condo and relaxed, the feeling would go away.

He’d purchased the condo two years after his book had hit number one on the
New York Times
and
USA Today
best-seller lists. The book had sat
on the lists for fourteen months, earning him more money than he’d ever made or would ever hope to make from journalism. He’d invested the money in real estate, luxury goods, and a few risky tech stocks that were paying off nicely. Then he’d moved on up, à la the Jeffersons, from a small apartment in Kent to the deluxe condo in the Queen Anne district of Seattle. He had a million-dollar view of the bay, the mountains, and Puget Sound. The 2,500-square-foot space had two bedroom suites with shower stalls and sunken jet tubs in each bathroom. Everything from the ceramic tile and hardwood floors to the plush carpet and leather furniture were done in rich earth tones. The polished chrome and glass shined like new money, a symbol of his success.

Sebastian pulled his SUV into his parking space, then moved to the elevator. A woman in a power suit and a boy wearing a lizard T-shirt waited by the doors and stepped into the elevator with him. “What floor?” he asked as the doors closed.

“Six, please.”

He pressed the buttons for six and eight, then leaned back against the wall.

“I’m sick,” the little boy informed him.

Sebastian looked down into the kid’s pale face.

“Chicken pox,” the woman said. “I hope you’ve had them already.”

“When I was ten.” His own mother had turned him pink with calamine lotion.

The elevator stopped and the woman gently placed her hand on the back of her son’s head and they stepped into the hallway. “I’ll make you some soup and a bed in front of the TV. You can curl up with the dog and watch cartoons all day,” she said as the doors closed.

Sebastian rode the elevator two more floors, got out, and entered the condominium on his left. He dropped his carry-on suitcase in the entryway, the sound inordinately loud on the tile floor. There was nothing to break the silence that greeted him. Not even a dog. He had never had a dog, not even as a kid. He wondered if he should get one. Maybe a beefy boxer.

Sunlight poured through the huge windows as he walked from the great room and set his laptop on the marble countertop in the kitchen. He started a pot of coffee and tried to explain away his sudden interest in a dog. He was tired. That’s what was wrong with him. The last thing he needed was a dog. He wasn’t home enough to take care of a plant, let alone an animal. There was nothing missing in his life and he wasn’t lonely.

He moved from the kitchen to the bedroom and thought perhaps it was the condo itself. Maybe it needed something more…homey. Not a dog,
but something. Maybe he should move. Maybe he was more like his mother than he’d ever guessed and had to try on a dozen or so homes before he found one that felt just right.

Sebastian sat on the edge of his bed and took off his boots; the dust from the streets of Rajwara still clung to the laces. He kicked off his socks and took off his watch as he headed to the bathroom.

Several years before, he’d tried to talk his mother into retiring and moving into a nicer house. He’d offered to buy her something newer and fancier, but she’d flat-out refused. She’d liked her house. “It took me twenty years to find a place that feels like a home,” she told him. “I’m not leaving.”

Sebastian stripped naked, then stuck his hand into the shower stall. The brass fixture was cool to the touch as he turned on the faucet and stepped within the glass closure. If it had taken his mother twenty years to find a comfortable space, he figured he had a few more years to figure it out. Warm water rained down upon his head and over his face. He closed his eyes and felt the tension wash away. There were plenty of things to stress about. At the moment, where he lived wasn’t one of them.