Sleeping With the Enemy (4 page)

“I can still do that, Miz Kenneally.”

“You can,” she said with resignation.  “But you won’t.”

Keisha bit her lower lip.  “This is
my
life, Miz Kenneally.  I gotta do what I gotta do.  That man is the father of my babies.” She raised her chin, and her voice softened.  “And Leroy and me, when we ain’t fighting, he gives me real good loving.”

And there it was, laid out on the table between them.  The one thing she couldn’t fight.  How many women had she lost because a single act of mind-numbing sex had wiped out weeks of education, weeks of training, weeks of nurturing? Rose sighed and ran her fingers through her hair.  “You take care of yourself,” she said gruffly.  “And those babies, you hear?”

“Thanks, Miz Kenneally.  For everything.”

When she was gone, Rose folded her arms on her desk, buried her face in them, and tried to stem the scalding tears.  She’d failed Keisha, as surely as if she’d inflicted those battle wounds herself. 
Social Work 101
, she reminded herself. 
Don’t get emotionally involved with the clients. 
But she couldn’t bear losing someone with Keisha’s potential to some hulking Neanderthal who would be using her for a punching bag before two weeks were up.

The door to her office opened and she looked up, bleary-eyed, to see Lillian Cameron, her right hand and God’s blessing to the world.  Lillian locked the door behind her, pulled up the chair Keisha had recently vacated, and plunked a grease-spotted bag on Rose’s desk.  From inside the bag emanated smells both incredible and enticing.  “Lunch,” Lillian said.  “I figured you’d be needing it about now.”

“God, tell me it’s from Sing’s.”

“Where else?” Lillian plunked her derriere in the vacant chair and opened the bag, took out combination specials for both of them, distributed plastic forks and duck sauce and cold cans of Diet Coke.

Rose wiped the tears from her face, opened up her foam carton, and inhaled the luscious aroma carried on a head of steam.  “What would I do without you?”

“You’d be a basket case, that’s what.  More than you already are.  You want to tell me what’s had you bouncing off the walls for the past eight weeks?”

Rose nibbled at a sliver of water chestnut.  “My life,” she said, “sucks on ice.”

Lillian bit into a tender chicken wing.  Through a mouthful, she said, “So what else is new?”

“It cost me four hundred bucks to get the car fixed.”

Lil snorted.  “If that man had invested all the money you’ve paid him, he’d be a billionaire by now.  What else?”

She ate half a forkful of fried rice.  “Eddie was late with the check again.”

“Eddie’s a jerk.  Nothing new there.”

Rose played with her rice.  “I met a guy.  At my brother’s wedding.”

“Ahh…at last we’re getting somewhere.”

“And—” She looked up at Lillian, then quickly back down at her food.  “We sort of did the wild thing.”

“Consorting with the enemy? Really, Rose, I’m shocked.”

“You should be!” Rose furiously whipped her plastic fork through her rice.  “I went to bed with a man I’d met an hour earlier.  I can’t even blame it on the booze, because I wasn’t that loaded!”

“Uh huh.  Was the sex good?”

“Phenomenal.  But the sex was great with Eddie, too, at the beginning.” Her mouth narrowed.  “Before he decided to bounce on every bed in town.”

Lillian broke her egg roll in two and began scraping out the inside.  “Good-looking, was he? This guy?”

“Gorgeous.  Hair the color of—oh, hell, never mind.  You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“And what does this paragon of virtue do for a living?”

Rose gave up all pretense of eating.  “He teaches high school.  In this rinky-dink little town two miles past the end of the earth.  There’s nothing there.  Trees and cows.  One stop light, for Pete’s sake.  And what have I spent the last eight weeks doing?”

“Besides bumping into walls, you mean?”

“Wondering if I could survive living in a place like that.  Is that the stupidest thing you ever heard? It was just sex.  Nothing more.  I’m not even seeing him again.” She dropped her fork and covered her eyes with her hands.  “Oh, God, what have I done?”

“Don’t be so tough on yourself.  Three years of celibacy is a long time.”

“Three years,” she said morosely, “one month, and twenty-seven days.”

“Cut yourself some slack, woman.  You were long overdue.”

Rose snorted inelegantly.  “I have two college degrees, but I’m no better off than Keisha.  One good roll in the hay, and I’m walking into walls.  I know better! So why am I mooning over this guy I didn’t even know a few weeks ago?”

Lillian dipped her egg roll into her duck sauce.  “Look, I know Eddie was a shit.  I know he soured you on marriage.  I know that working here, you haven’t exactly seen the male of the species in a warm and cozy light.  But I think that somewhere along the line, you lost your perspective.  You declared war on everything with a Y chromosome.  They’re not all like Eddie.  Some of them are the good guys.  You know? The ones with the white hats?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Rose said resolutely.  I’m not seeing him again.  Case closed.”

Lillian dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin.  “Woman,” she said, “you are a lost cause.”

***

On Saturday, she woke up sick, the kind of gut-wrenching affliction that felt like the walls of her stomach were caving in.  She had a few saltines and a glass of orange juice, then promptly vomited them back up.  Wondering if she’d contracted food poisoning from yesterday’s
mu shu
pork, she mustered the strength to call Lillian.  But her assistant was as chipper as ever. 

“Whatever you do,” Lil said, “for God’s sake, don’t come near me.  I don’t want what you’ve got.  Stay in bed until you’re over it.”

It wasn’t like she had a choice.  She was too sick to do anything but lie flat on her back and wait for death to come and take her.  Devon brought her a couple of paperbacks to read, and Luke checked in on her before he went to Kevin’s for band practice, but obviously they both shared Lil’s sentiments about the possibility of contagion.  So much for family support.

On the other hand, it wasn’t so awful, suffering alone, drinking tepid ginger ale whose bubbles had long since dissipated.  As a matter of fact, she could get used to this; it was the first time in weeks that the house had been quiet.  Chauncey padded in, toenails clicking on the hardwood floor, and nudged her with a cool, damp nose.  “Hey, babe,” she croaked.  “I love you, too.” He lapped her hand, and with a mighty sigh, flopped down on the floor beside the bed, lay his head on his paws, and began to snore softly.

In between bouts of nausea, she spent the morning engrossed in Michael Starbird’s latest book.  She’d discovered him a couple of years ago, and had rapidly devoured everything he’d written.  His books defied categorization.  Loosely defined as thrillers, they were a cross between steamy, edge-of-your-seat suspense and gritty horror.  Terrifying, addicting, and thoroughly satisfying, they’d kept her up late many a night.

At lunchtime, she managed to keep a piece of dry toast in her stomach.  Too tired to waste energy celebrating her victory, Rose plumped her pillow and drifted into a deep and dreamless sleep.  When she woke, darkness had fallen.  The television was playing softly in the living room, her nausea had receded, and she decided that it must have been some kind of twenty-four-hour bug.

But when Monday rolled around, the bug still hadn’t left her system.  Exhausted and cranky and plagued by incessant nausea, Rose called in sick and stayed home to finish the Starbird book.  She went back to work on Tuesday, still feeling like she’d been kicked in the stomach.  The week progressed like a laboring snail, and she was so irritable that by week’s end, everybody was steering clear of her for fear of losing a limb if they came too close.  Friday afternoon, Lillian cornered her in the supply closet, where she’d gone to fetch a light bulb.  Eyeing her with concern, Lil said, “What in blue blazes is wrong with you lately? I’ve met grizzlies with better dispositions.”

Rose slowly rubbed her temple, where the tiny beginnings of a headache were taking root.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t know what’s wrong.  I’ve been sick to my stomach for a week, all I want to do is sleep, and I’m so grouchy I could bite the heads off chickens.”

“Well, don’t breathe in my direction.  I don’t need to catch your personality disorder.  Maybe it’s time you tracked down your sexy schoolteacher and got yourself a second helping.  You sure as hell need something to sweeten you up.”

Rose scowled.  “Oh, sure.  That’s exactly what I need to brighten my mood.  A man hanging around.”

“Hell, girl, I didn’t say you had to keep him.  Just
use
him for a while.”

“Look, Lil, he was gorgeous, he was sexy, he was not for me.”

“Fine,” Lillian said.  “Fine! I give up.  I’m washing my hands of you.  Just remember not to come crying to me when you wake up one fine morning and realize you’re growing old alone.”

Lillian left her standing there, mouth agape, the light bulb still in her hand.  “I am not growing old alone,” Rose said aloud to no one in particular.  “I do not need a man to survive.” Her encounter with Jesse Lindstrom had been a freak accident, one she had no intention of repeating.  After the years of hell with Eddie, she had earned her independence.  And no man, no matter how attractive, no matter how sexy, no matter how infuriatingly
nice
, was going to steal it away from her.

Besides, her bad temper had nothing to do with Jesse.  It was a result of the flu.  She probably needed more Vitamin C.  Maybe some Vitamin E for energy.  She was generally a ball of fire, but the last couple of weeks, she’d had trouble getting out of bed in the mornings.  It had to be a vitamin deficiency.  She hadn’t felt this tired since she’d been carrying Luke.

Since she’d been carrying Luke?

Her eyes shot wide in horror.  The light bulb slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor.  It couldn’t be possible.  She was thirty-six years old, not some ignorant teenager who didn’t know about birth control.  She was a grown woman with two college degrees.  A former den mother, for God’s sake.  A responsible adult.

Who’d had unprotected sex, not once, not twice, but three times in the course of a single afternoon.  With a man she’d just met.

Her ears buzzed and her legs felt spongy.  Not certain she could continue to stand on her own, she felt for a chair and eased into it.  Against her will, she remembered the nickname Eddie had given her before Devon was born, the nickname he’d taunted her with because of the way she constantly blew hot and cold whenever she was pregnant: 
Hurricane Rose.

With Luke, virtually from the moment of conception through the end of the first trimester, she’d suffered constant morning sickness.  When she wasn’t barfing, she was sleeping.  And when she wasn’t doing either, she’d kept herself busy frightening children and small animals.  It was amazing how little had changed in fifteen years.

Eddie was going to laugh his ass off.  Devon was going to disown her.  And her mother was going to die from the shock.  She supposed she would have to verify it with a doctor, but she didn’t really need the verification.  She’d been through it twice before, and this was all too sickeningly familiar to be anything else.  Rose MacKenzie Kenneally was thirty-six years old, unmarried, and knocked up by a man she didn’t even know.

Where the hell was Dr.  Kevorkian when you needed him?

chapter four

Jesse Lindstrom sat with his feet up on his desk, toying idly with a rubber band while Amanda Ashley haltingly read word-for-word her oral report on
Last of the Mohicans
.  Judging by the glassy eyes of her fellow students, he wasn’t the only one who found her treatise as stimulating as a cubic zirconia marathon on the home shopping channel.  He shifted position, cleared his throat, and glanced at the clock, wondering if seventh period would ever be over.

Outside the window lay fresh air and sunshine.  Inside, the odors of fricasseed chicken and dirty gym sneakers mingled with raging teenage hormones. 

Jesse loved teaching, loved working with teenagers, who alternated between sullenness and a sponge-like eagerness to learn.  But these warm September afternoons seemed to exist in some alternate dimension, where time moved at the rate of snow melting uphill.  And on a Friday afternoon at two-ten, not a soul in the room gave a flying fig about
Last of the Mohicans
.

Lulled by Amanda’s voice, he let his mind wander to a pleasanter place, the same place it had been traveling on a regular basis since Rob and Casey’s wedding:  Rose Kenneally.

He’d wanted her the moment he saw her, with that mass of red curls tumbling about the shoulders of the green dress.  She wasn’t pretty.  Her mouth was too wide, her nose too straight, her chin too determined for prettiness.  Instead, Rose was striking.  Stunning.  Light years beyond pretty, with its fixation on shallow attractiveness.

But it wasn’t
her looks that had made him follow her out onto the dance floor.  It was her laugh.  Much too big a laugh for a woman that small, it had buoyed up out of her as her uncle swung her in dizzying circles.  She’d kept up with the old rascal, hadn’t missed a step, had thrown back her head in delighted laughter as she did so.

And the oddest thing had happened.  For a fleeting instant, some internal voice had told Jesse that this was the woman he’d waited for all his life.

Celibacy
, he told himself. 
Too damn much celibacy
.  It made a man crazy after a while.  In the years since his divorce, there’d
been only one woman, a divorcee who had filled in for a year as the high school librarian.  They had provided each other with an outlet for twice-monthly, extremely civilized sex.

Sex with Rose Kenneally was not civilized.  Making love with Rose was like coming face-to-face with a tornado and being swept up inside its swirling vortex.  Jesse closed his eyes, the better to relive that Saturday afternoon, the way she had looked in the green dress.  The way she had looked out of it.  The way she had wrapped herself around him and closed her eyes in ecstasy.