More Than Friends (41 page)

"Well, he brings out the worst in me, too," Grady announced with a force that brought her head around. He was standing in the shadows, reeking of animosity. "I swear, if those cops hadn't been with me when I saw him at the house, I'd have strangled him. I haven't been so angry since I hit Homer, and look where that got me. I'm supposed to be rehabilitated. I'm supposed to be able to control the anger. I thought I could, but I was close to the edge then. I shake when I think of it."

Teke nearly left the chair and went to him, but she didn't trust herself that far. She wished he would button his shirt. Then again, she prayed he wouldn't. Looking at him was a pleasure. She craved the occasional pleasure. "Come sit," she said. "Talk with me." Hands hooked low on his hips, he took a breath that shook with lingering anger. After what seemed an eternity, he finally crossed to sit on the edge of the bed, safely out of her reach. Which was good, she told herself.

"So I wanted to apologize for J.D.," she said. "I also wanted to thank you. Michael was invigorated after being out with you."

"I'll bet."

"He was. He had a great time."

"I believe you. No problem with that kid. You should have heard him telling off the cops."

She smiled wryly. "He's had great teachers in J.D. and Jana. I normally wouldn't approve of that, but it's good to see him showing spirit."

"He needs to get out more."

"That's what he told me, so I spoke with his physical therapist. We've switched all of his sessions to the health club. The aqua-treadmill helps most anyway, and the other exercise machines are there. So Michael will leave the house every morning like his friends do. If that helps, we'll drive him to his tutor, rather than the other way around. The social worker keeps saying that his recovery hinges on his attitude." It made such sense. Teke wanted to kick herself. "I should have realized how bored he was and done something before this, but I thought being home would be enough." It wasn't. And she was new at handling the emotional problems accompanying a major injury.

"Michael is groping. He's not sure what he can do and what he can't. Me, too."

Grady had his hands braced well out from his thighs. His shoulders rode high, his head hung between them. It was an unhappy pose, to say the least.

Teke's instinct was to soothe him. She came out of the chair with that in mind, but thought better of it and approached the dresser. There were a brush and comb on top, a razor and a can of shave cream, the worn wallet that normally sat in the back pocket of his jeans. She touched it, thinking of the way it touched him, then closed her hand and put the fist to her heart to steady its beat. "Where do you shower?" she asked in search of distraction.

"Upstairs."

She looked around for signs of food. "Where do you eat?"

"Upstairs."

"Cornelia doesn't mind?"

"She likes it. She eats what I cook. She says she hasn't eaten so well in years."

"She's a sweetheart," Teke said just as her eye fell on a plastic basket filled with clean laundry. She shook out a towel and folded it neatly, put it on the dresser, reached for another. "So's her son. Leigh is seeing him at the beginning of January. She wants birth control. We talked about it over Thanksgiving, but I kept forgetting to make the call." Forgetting? "It was probably deliberate. The thought of giving her carte blanche to sleep with Jon bothers me. She's annoyed at me for that."

"Is that why she's failing in school?"

Teke gave a faintly hysterical laugh. "It may be one of the reasons, but there are so many others, I can't begin to list them. In the last three months, our family has become dysfunctional. That'll ruin grades any day." She reached for a T-shirt.

"It didn't ruin yours."

She shook out the T-shirt, folded it deftly. "Different situation. A dysfunctional family was the norm for me. I didn't know anything else in life. Besides, I wanted to impress you."

Grady made a sound. She looked over her shoulder. He was still on the bed, still with his shoulders hunched. She held the folded shirt to her chest, inhaling its clean scent for a minute, before setting it carefully on top of the towels. Then, impulsively, she approached the bed.

"Why did you come here tonight?" he asked, raising his head. Her heartbeat sped. "To thank you for taking Michael out and to apologize for what J.D. did."

"Is that all?"

She thought of the agonizing she'd been doing. "I don't know," she confessed quietly. "I'm torn."

"Between what?"

"Wanting to love you and wanting to hate you." She couldn't be more truthful, to him or to herself. "I'm still furious at you for what you did."

"For hitting Michael?"

"Lord, no!" She couldn't believe he would think that. "The accident wasn't your fault. What I'm furious about is your showing up after all these years." Then she corrected herself. "What I'm really furious about is that you sent me away in the first place. We could have had so much."

"Yeah," he said with a disparaging look around. "A basement."

"There's nothing wrong with this basement," she insisted.

"You wouldn't say that if you had to live here."

"That's not true, Grady. I came from a lot worse than this and you know it. Besides, you said you owned a place with your wife, and even if that weren't so, I'd take living in this basement over living with the turmoil over at my house any day."

He looked away. "You don't know what you're saying."

"It's what I feel."

He looked back sharply. "Know what I feel? I feel like grabbing you, pulling you down on this bed, and screwing the living daylights out of you."

Teke felt the stirring of her own deep heat. She thought of the day he had kissed her in the woods. No time might have passed, so strong was the need. She guessed that was part of what had brought her here tonight.

"But that'd complicate things ten times over, wouldn't it?" he went on. His fingers tightened on

the edge of the bed. His eyes never left hers. "Damn it, why do you tempt me? You always did, Teke. I shouldn't have taken you when you were fifteen, but I couldn't resist, and I couldn't resist any time I could get my hands on you after that, and then you got so far under my skin that the sight of Homer with his hands on you made me crazy--" He broke off. A weary sigh escaped him. "You're gonna be the death of me yet, so help me, you are."

He rubbed the back of his neck again, but she caught his hand before it could return to the bed. "I'd never let that happen." He barked out a laugh. "Like you could stop me from going to jail?

Like you could stop Michael from suffering brain damage? My God, Teke, you're such an innocent at times. You think love can protect people from bad things, but it can't."

She told herself to put his hand down, but in a voice too soft to be heard. His fingers fascinated her; they were long, lean, and strong. She touched the calluses that spoke of his work. They had been there for years, but there were new scars, tiny nicks that a saw or a nail must have caused. Unable to resist, she kissed them, then pressed his hand to her neck and said, "Maybe nothing can protect people from bad things. But maybe love is what makes the bad bearable. You were wrong to send me away and tell me to forget you, Grady. You were wrong to send back my letters and refuse to see me when I went to visit. We had something so good that the wait would have been worth it."

"It's over and done."

She took a shallow breath and hurried on. "That was going to be my line. I was going to tell you that we shouldn't see each other. That I'm okay and Michael's okay and you ought to leave town. There's no way anything can come of this." But her voice lost steam because her eyes fell to his chest, which

was spattered with dark hair and looked warm and inviting. She wanted to remind herself that she had three children who needed her, and that, technically at least, she was still married. But the need to touch him was suddenly overpowering. Slipping a hand inside his shirt, she spread it over his chest. Immediately she was transported to a higher place, one she had spent forever dreaming about.

"Teke," he warned.

"Just for a minute," she whispered, as though by whispering she could get away with the illicit. She explored his chest, inching her hand from one side to the other, through a smattering of hair, over one swell of muscles to its mate.

"Teke."

"A minute," she breathed, half dazed. The heat of his body did that to her. It always had.

Bending her head over his so that her mouth touched his ear, she said,

"Twenty-two years, and it's still the same." She let her palm idle over his hammering heart, over soft hair, a tight nipple, hard muscle. His heat was inside her now, having moved from her hand, up her arm, into her chest. "One of the things I loved most about you was your strength. You were always my champion. Right from the start. Even when you hit my father."

Grady wrapped his arms around her hips. "I couldn't let him rape you."

Teke shuddered. For years she had refused to think about Homer's threats, but being in Grady's arms, protected, opened a window on the details of that night. Homer had been drunk and ugly. He had been annoyed because she spent so much time with Grady. He had said she owed him some of that time. He had grabbed her and torn off her blouse. She had been terrified.

Reliving that terror now, she cried, "You could have let me testify." But Grady was vehement. "They would have asked for details. They would have taken one look at you and said you had tempted him beyond his control. They would have called you ugly names. I couldn't put you through that."

She remembered her father's rough hands, his leering eyes, his fetid breath--but they were nothing compared to the anguish she had felt when Grady had sworn her to silence. That silence had tormented her for years. Now, she argued, "But it would have gotten you off." Grady shifted her onto his lap. "There was no physical proof that he wanted to rape you. He didn't get to do it."

"Because you hit him," Teke said against his jaw, "and he fell."

"They would have convicted me anyway."

"But at least I'd have felt I'd done my best to prevent it. I wouldn't have felt so guilty all these years. It wasn't fair, Grady. I wanted to help, if not at the trial, then afterward, but you wouldn't let me. It wasn't fair."

He moved his arms over her, supportive and soothing. As she calmed, she felt the rebirth of desire. It was mutual. Grady's voice was thicker. "So, what'll it be? Do we take off our clothes and do it, or do you leave? It has to be one or the other, and soon. I'm pretty close."

Teke could feel the tremor of restraint in his muscles and the hardness of him under her hip. They echoed the race of her pulse, the knot in her belly, the heat between her legs. She wanted him desperately. But wanting him wasn't enough. She wasn't a teenager anymore. She knew about the complexity of life. She knew about consequences. Drawing back, she studied his eyes. They were dark and aroused. Wanting to drown there, she moaned, "Oh, Grady, I can't."

"Because you're married?"

She no longer held any delusions on that score. Her marriage was over. But that wasn't the reason. "Because I'm afraid."

"Of going to bed with me?"

"Of after. You hurt me. I can't live through anything like that again."

He was silent, but only for a minute. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"But you did it."

"I won't ever do it again."

"You said you wouldn't the first time."

"Christ, Teke," he argued, "those were extenuating circumstances. I thought I was doing what was right for you. And I was, really, when you stop to think of it. You've had much more in life than I could ever have given you."

"Like the house, and the car, and the jewelry?" She pushed to her feet. "I would have happily lived without them. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

"And how many times do I have to tell you that I didn't want you to live without them?"

"You're hung up on money."

"Yeah, because I've never had much."

"Money doesn't matter."

"Like hell it doesn't." He stood and faced her head-on. "I wanted to give you all those things myself, just like we dreamed, only once I was sentenced to prison, I knew I'd never be able to. So I did what I thought was right. You could try to look at it from my side."

"I do, but it doesn't make sense. If you had loved me, really loved me, you'd have wanted me to wait for you, no matter what." All those years, that was what had bothered her most, the doubts about the depth of Grady's love.

He glared at her. "I loved you so much I killed a man for you. How can you possibly doubt me, after that?" His eyes narrowed. "I know your problem. Damn right, you're afraid. You're afraid that loving me will upset your cushy life."

Teke stiffened. "I'm afraid that loving you will destroy my life, and you can take 'cushy' and shove it."

"Sweet."

"Truthful." She made for the door. "You were right. I shouldn't have come. We're both in bad moods."

"You're afraid!" he repeated, coming after her. "You're afraid of taking a chance on an ex-con."

"Bull shit," she exploded, whirling around. "Yes, I'm afraid, but not of that. I'm afraid of being rejected again. I trusted you completely once. I believed everything you said about the future we were going to have. Then, with no need whatsoever, you took it all away." She resumed her flight.

"You're impossible!" he shouted after her.

"You're right! So go away! Leave town! Get out of my life! Again!" Yanking the door open, she stormed out.

The last thing she heard before sealing herself in her car was Grady's angry, "No way, lady! I've got plans!"

She drove off wondering what in the devil he meant.

For the week prior to Christmas, Annie was up until all hours reading papers, recording exam marks, and calculating term grades. By the time she climbed into the car with Sam and the kids, headed for the ski house, she was exhausted.

Teke had decided not to come. She claimed that it would be counterproductive for Michael to see

everyone skiing and not be able to do it himself. Annie could buy that, but she also suspected that the same applied to Teke. Seeing Sam and Annie, and all the other couples they knew there, would be hard for her, given that she was alone.