Sleeping With the Enemy (12 page)

At precisely three p.m., the big yellow school bus stopped in front of the house, and the kids got off.  Devon walked with her head hung low, her eyes hidden behind dark glasses, her feet raising tiny dust clouds every time they touched ground.  Already proficient with the crutches, Luke passed her, his book bag swinging from his shoulder.  Mikey followed at a more sedate pace, eyeing Devon suspiciously without getting too close.

“Man, I’m starved,” Luke said, holding the door open with a crutch.  “I have to get you to sign a permission slip so I can go on a field trip for history class.”

Devon flashed her brother a look of utter contempt and passed Rose without speaking.  She stomped up the stairs and slammed the door of her room.  “Hello to you, too,” Rose said.

“She’s just mad,” Luke said, “because she’s got Jesse for Honors English.  Personally, I think it’s pretty funny.”

“You would.  Mikey, how was your day?”

“Okay.” He stood just inside the kitchen door, his books held loosely at his hip, watching Luke and Rose as though they were exotic zoo animals.

“You guys want a sandwich?”

“Sure.” Mikey dropped his books on the table and stepped cautiously into the kitchen.

“Yeah,” Luke said, “but I got stuff to do, so make mine to go.”

She made Luke a whopping peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  He marched off, sandwich in hand, his book bag slung over his shoulder.  With amazing agility, he managed to maneuver himself, crutches and all, up the stairs to the second floor.

And she was alone with her stepson.  “Peanut butter and jelly?” she said.

Mikey hovered just out of range.  “Just jelly.  I don’t like peanut butter.”

She made the sandwich thick, the way Luke liked them, then poured Mikey a tall glass of milk and sat down at the table with him.  “I hear you play football,” she said.

He took a long swig of milk that left him with a white moustache.  “Yeah.  We usually practice after school on Mondays, but Coach was out sick today, so they canceled practice.”

He was slender for a football player, built more for speed than strength.  “Quarterback?” she guessed, and he looked at her in surprise.

“How’d you know?”

“You look like you could run fast.  A smart coach takes advantage of his men’s talents.”

With eyes that were as deep and unreadable as his father’s, he studied her, from her face down to her still-flat abdomen, then back up to her face.  “Do you want a boy or a girl?”

“As long as it’s healthy,” she said, “it doesn’t matter to me.  I already have one of each.”

“I always thought I might like to have a sister.  Then again, if they’re all like Devon, I’m not so sure about that.  I think she hates my dad.”

“She doesn’t dislike him personally.  He’s just the most obvious target to blame for her life being turned upside down.  Give her time.  We threw you kids into this situation without allowing you time to adjust.  I’m really sorry about that.”

“You couldn’t help it,” he said, “under the circumstances.”

“How come you sound so grown-up?”

He flashed her a shy grin.  “Aunt Casey says I have an old soul.” He set down his milk glass.  “Dad’s thrilled about the baby.  I don’t know when I’ve seen him so excited.”

Rose blinked, picturing in her mind the quiet, unflappable stranger who was her husband.  “How can you tell?”

Mikey grinned.  “Trust me.  He’s excited.  And he likes you a lot.  I mean he really, really likes you a lot.  Not like Mrs. Delacroix.”

Her heart skittered a bit.  “Who’s Mrs. Delacroix?”

“His old girlfriend.  She was the high school librarian, but she moved away.  She wore her hair up in a tight little bun on top of her head, and she always had this sour look on her face.  I don’t think she liked kids.”

“Really,” she said, intrigued in spite of herself.  “How long did your dad go out with her?”

“About a year.  But I don’t think he really liked her all that much.  He didn’t seem to mind too much when she moved away.”

A half-hour later, just as Jesse was coming through the door, Casey’s friend Dave Marshall called.  “Thank you so much for calling,” Rose said into the phone as she waggled her fingers at Jesse.  “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

Marshall chuckled.  “I was fascinated.  Casey left a message on my voice mail painting a picture of you that was just short of sainthood.”

Rose rolled her eyes in embarrassment.  “She would.”

“I may have something for you.  Lighthouse is looking for a new counselor.  It sounds like it’s right up your alley.”

“What’s Lighthouse?”

“It’s a privately-funded agency that works with women who’ve been victims of domestic violence.  They offer counseling services, education and training, help their clients find jobs, housing, child care, that kind of thing.  With your MSW and your background experience, you’re just what they’re looking for.  I’m on their board of directors.  If you’re interested, I can mention you to Jim Davidson.  He’s the agency director.”

It was all she could do to keep herself from jumping up and down.  “I’m interested.  I’m definitely interested.”

“Great.  I’ll give Jim a call tomorrow.”

“Dr.  Marshall, you are a life-saver.  I was halfway to needing Prozac.”

“It’s Dave.  And I’m glad to help out.  Give Casey my regards.”

She hung up the phone and did a quick-stepping little dance around the kitchen.  “Yes!” she said.

Jesse leaned against the kitchen counter, coffee mug in hand.  “Does this mean you found a job?”

“Maybe.  I should know more in a day or two.”

He glanced upstairs.  “How goes the cold war with Devon?”

“Still frigid.  I didn’t even rate a greeting when she came through the door.”

He crossed his arms.  “She spent an hour in my classroom without even acknowledging that she’d ever met me.”

“I hope you gave her a whopper of a homework assignment.”

It took its time, the smile she’d already discovered she had to tease out of him.  It began at the right-hand corner of his mouth, spread to the left side, then worked its way up to his eyes.  “I did,” he said.  “A ten-page essay detailing the pros and cons of the death penalty.  They have to take a stand on the issue and defend their choice.  The paper’s due in one week.”

“Wow.  You play hardball, don’t you?”

“These kids are all seniors, all honors students.  They can handle it.  And they need some idea of what college will be like.  My freshman year was rough.  Nobody prepared me for what it would be like.  I don’t want them to have to go through what I did.”

Softly, she said, “You really care about these kids, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t be teaching if I didn’t.” He walked to the coffee maker at the other end of the kitchen.  Caught in a ray of afternoon sunshine that turned his hair to silver, he lifted the pot and refilled his cup.  His back to her, he said, “You made quite an impression at Jackson Falls High.”

“I bet.”

He turned, coffee in hand.  “They’re already talking about you in the teacher’s lounge.  I’ve probably lost my photocopying privileges for all time.”

“What happened?”

“I caught a couple of our local busybodies singing your praises.  Alice turned red as a lobster and headed for the hills, but Hazel was a little more brazen.  She stood right there and stared me down.”

Rose put a hand to her mouth in gleeful horror.  “What did you say?”

“Not a word.  Neither one of us did.  But I won the contest.”

Her smile faded.  “I’ve really made a mess of your life, haven’t I?”

He moved slowly, long-limbed and lanky, across the room to her.  “I don’t know as I’d put it quite that way.”

His body heat was doing dangerous things to her insides.  Rose cleared her throat.  “How would you put it?”

He lifted a strand of coppery hair away from her shoulder, tested the feel of it between his thumb and forefinger.  “I’d say you’ve livened things up a bit.”

chapter eight

He’d never yet missed a deadline, but he was weeks behind, and his editor would have his hide if he didn’t finish on schedule.  Concentrating on work was difficult when he knew that Rose was waiting in his bed, wearing that ridiculous football jersey that was intended to assassinate his sexual appetite.  Instead, for reasons unclear to him, it had just the opposite effect.

But he’d struck a bargain with himself before the wedding, and Jesse Lindstrom was a man of his word.  He suspected that when Rose had thrown her tidy little business arrangement in his face, she’d been expecting that sex would be part of the deal.  A fringe benefit.  But he didn’t intend to make it that easy on her.  Rose MacKenzie Kenneally Lindstrom might be tough, independent, and more than a little sassy, but underneath that prickly exterior beat the heart of a warm and passionate woman.  He’d met that woman once, and he was determined to find her again.  If patience was what it took, then patient he would be.  If and when they made love, it would happen because it was what they both wanted, and not because the wedding vows they’d spoken had endowed him with certain conjugal rights.

After forty-five minutes of staring at a computer screen, he tossed out the few sentences he’d managed to get written and shut down the computer.  For the first time in days, the house was quiet.  Jesse loved working with teenagers all day, but when the work day was through, he also loved coming home to the relative calm of his home.  He hadn’t expected his peaceful life to be so thoroughly destroyed by the instant family he’d taken on.  But the kids were always squabbling, dog hair coated the furniture, and the vibrations from Luke’s stereo had created a new fault line directly beneath the house.  Rose’s kids were a lot like Rose herself, a lot like all the MacKenzies:  noisy, opinionated, boisterous, and brimming with life.  Next to them, he and Mikey looked like shadowy caricatures of real people.

He poured himself a glass of milk and drank it standing at the double French doors that opened off his den onto the backyard patio.  The harvest moon that had risen earlier in the evening was now a luminous white orb in the eastern sky.  Bathed in its light, five white-tailed deer foraged for food in the shadowy places where meadow and forest met.  In a few more weeks, with the advent of men in orange carrying rifles, the deer would go into deep hiding until the first of December.  He’d watched the phenomenon all his life and still couldn’t explain how they knew.

He found Rose asleep on the bed, an open book in one hand, her hair a burnished cloud that cascaded over the snowy pillowcase beneath her head.  Carefully, so he wouldn’t jolt her, he knelt beside the bed and watched the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing.  When he touched her shoulder, she came awake slowly, those green cat’s eyes unfocused at first, then sharpening with recognition.  “Hi,” she said.  “I guess I fell asleep.”

“Come here.”  He held out his hand.  “I want to show you something.”

He turned off the bedside lamp and led her in the darkness to the window, leaned loosely over her shoulder and pointed.  “See?” he said.  “Down at the edge of the woods?”

“Oh, wow.  Are those deer?”

“Yes.  They come out at night, looking for food.”

“I’ve never seen a live deer before, except in the zoo.  They’re beautiful.”

“In another month or so, they’ll be gone.  Hunting season starts the first of November, and they go into hiding.”

She turned toward him in instantaneous protest.  “That’s barbaric.” In the moonlight, he watched the emotions flicker across her face.  Outrage.  Anger.  Speculation.  “You’re not a hunter, are you?”

“No.  And my land’s posted.  Anybody who gets caught hunting on my property will be in trouble.”

She turned back to the window.  “Eddie used to go up to Vermont for a week every fall with a couple of guys he worked with.  They thought they were big he-men, the Great White Hunters.  I thought they were pathetic.” She drew the curtain away from the window pane, gazed out into the darkness, then dropped it back into place.  “They didn’t even keep the meat.”  She turned and folded her arms.  “All they wanted was a trophy to hang in the den.”

“Most hunters are responsible,” he said, “but some of them will shoot at anything that moves.  I have a friend who puts a fluorescent orange blanket on his horse every fall, because some of these idiots wouldn’t know the difference between a deer and a Labrador Retriever.”

She smiled at his words, and for a moment, they shared an unexpected synchronicity.  “Sunday afternoon,” he said, propping one shoulder against the wall, “Henry Lamoreau’s having his annual faculty get-together.  We’re supposed to bring our significant others.  He has this warped idea that we’ll work better together as a team if we see each other socially once in a while.”

“Ah, yes,” she said dryly.  “Henry Lamoreau.  The space cadet.”

“Henry’s annoying,” he said offhandedly, “but he’s harmless.  We don’t have to stay long, just put in an appearance.  Everybody’s dying to get a look at you.”

“Me?” she said.  “Why would they want to get a look at me?”

He crossed his arms.  “It’s like this.  The national pastime may be baseball, but around these parts, our favorite hobby is sticking our noses into other people’s business.”

“I see,” she said dubiously.

“You’re a transplanted city woman.  And I’ve been a bachelor for five long years.  I think everybody’s waiting for us to fall on our faces.  I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they were placing bets behind our backs.”

“Ah,” she said.  “Now I get it.  I’m the scarlet woman who stole the town’s most eligible bachelor, and they’re expecting me to come to my senses at any minute and make a rapid retreat back to the big, bad city.”

Her astute appraisal of the situation made him smile.  “Something like that.”

“And I imagine there are any number of sweet young things waiting in the wings to offer you consolation once I’m gone.”

“I never looked at it that way,” he said, “but you’re probably right.”

“Trust me.  I’m right.”

“It’s not that bad.  All we have to do is keep a low profile.  The buzz will blow over once they find somebody else to talk about.”