Summer's Freedom (10 page)

Sam flashed a cheerful grin. “Great.”

Joel came into the kitchen a little while later, carrying the beer Sam had taken to him. He leaned on the counter. “Are you sure you don’t mind?” he asked.

“Positive. Sam said you don’t eat very well.” She grinned at him as she rolled up a concoction of flour tortillas, sliced black olives and sour cream. “I’m a good neighbor.”

“Mmm,” he murmured noncommittally. “Are you just being neighborly?” A playful skepticism underlined his words.

“You’d better behave or you’ll have to go home,” she said. “There are impressionable teenagers in the other room.”

He laughed. “I’ll be good,” he said, but he moved close behind her, his voice a tangible caress. With one hand on her shoulder, near the edge of her blouse, he murmured, “How about if I go get some of my Jamaican coffee?”

Maggie had shifted, about to turn to agree, when she felt his firm lips press into the flesh of her shoulder. The contact sent a shudder all the way down her spine, into her legs. “Quit,” she whispered, pushing him away. Concentrating on the task before her in order to avoid giving away her reaction, she said, “Go get your coffee.”

Joel laughed and his hand lingered an instant longer. “Be right back.”

“Dinner will be ready in a few minutes.”

“Great,” he said, smiling. “I’m starved.”

As he left the kitchen, Maggie rolled her shoulders restlessly, trying to dislodge the tingling aftereffect of his lips on her skin.

It didn’t work. She could still feel it as they sat down to dinner ten minutes later.

The four of them ate at the round kitchen table as the afternoon light deepened to a rich gold. There had been no rainstorm that day, and the air floating in through the back door was warm and scented heavily with lilacs.

Joel consumed the meal with genuine enthusiasm—Sam’s estimation of his cooking abilities was an overstatement. He existed on frozen entrees and restaurant food. The blend of chilies, cheese and beef in Maggie’s enchiladas was delicious. As he ate, he watched the woman who put them all at ease around her table.

Like the food, she had a southwestern flavor about her. A simple pale muslin blouse set off her tawny coloring, and a green print skirt flowed around long-muscled calves. Silver feather earrings dangled against her neck, and twisted ropes of silver circled her wrists. She laughed with the teens and told stories of her own, giving them her full attention when they talked.

That she was aware of him in return was evident to Joel in the way she avoided his eyes. Once, his feet and hers tangled under the table, and she shot an alarmed look his way. Otherwise, she studiously kept her eyes trained anywhere but upon him, even when he spoke. Her hands flitted nervously, she urged extra helpings on everyone and kept their glasses filled with ice cubes and tea. Inwardly, he smiled.

After dinner, Sam and Maggie cleaned up, and Maggie brewed the Jamaican coffee. Sam announced that she and David were going to take a walk. “Don’t be gone too long,” Maggie cautioned. She glanced toward Joel, standing in the sunlight pouring through the window. Nervousness rippled through her belly. “Do you want a cup of coffee, Joel?” she asked, folding the dish towel. “It’s finished.”

He looked over his shoulder at her, unmoving. The front screen door banged shut behind Samantha and David, and his chin lifted a little higher. It seemed to Maggie that he stood there against the light for an endless time, looking at her without a sound. She waited, watching his eyes grow brighter and clearer.

When he suddenly shifted toward her, she found herself wringing the dish towel through her fingers, unable to maintain the eye contact he hadn’t broken as he moved across the room.

He stopped in front of her and took the towel out of her fingers. “You know I don’t want a cup of coffee,” he said. He wrapped his huge hands around her elbows. “But I do want you to stop looking like I’m going to eat you.”

Maggie dipped her head briefly, smiling, then looked at him. “You make me so nervous.”

“You’re fighting your instincts,” he murmured. He lifted her hands and placed them on his chest, then circled her waist with his arms. “Why’s that?”

Maggie let her fingers spread on the flannel that covered his chest. She shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t know how,” she protested and looked up. “It’s just that—“

He cut her off with a kiss. And this, Maggie thought breathlessly, was no chaste exploration. With the same appetite he’d turned to his food, he tasted her lips; the edges and sides and tops; then the vulnerable inner flesh and the tip of her tongue. It was lazy and gluttonous at once, the craft of an expert.

Maggie melted, simply dissolved against him, feeling his sturdy thighs and hard belly against hers. She made a sound of pleasure, and Joel slid his hands over her waist and back, devouring her lips. Her arms looped up around his neck as she strained on tiptoe to reach him more completely. In her stomach, a pulse beat feverishly.

Joel released her mouth but secured her against him, leaning back to lift her clear off the floor. “God, I’ve wanted to do that all day,” he said, and set her carefully down. His eyes swept her face and his hands ran up her sides, his thumbs grazing her breasts. Maggie moved against him instinctively, lifting her face to kiss him again.

This, she thought with a rush of passion, was what she had imagined when she’d heard his shower. It wasn’t enough. She circled his husky, well-formed neck with her hands, unfurling her fingers to feel the heat of his skin on her palms. His coarse hair grazed her knuckles, prickly in contrast to the enticing and surprising velvet of his skin.

The very size of him excited Maggie, but it proved frustrating as well, for she couldn’t reach him well enough to suit her—she wanted to touch the crown of his head and his shoulder blades; she wanted to strip them both bare and fall to the floor.

The animal nature of her thoughts startled her and effectively brought her back to earth. “Joel,” she whispered, “Sam could walk in at any moment.”

He kissed her quickly and lifted his head, smiling down. “You’re right,” he said, his voice a rumbling vibration Maggie felt through his chest. “And I promised to take it easy.”

Maggie flashed a rueful smile of her own, touching his square jaw. “I’m a grown woman,” she said. “I’m capable of saying no.”

His eyes darkened to the color of the mountains on a hazy afternoon. “I’m having trouble saying no, myself. There’s something about you—“He hugged her, then eased his hold.

“How about that coffee?” she asked. Somehow, she felt more relaxed than she had before. In spite of the weakness in her body, she felt richly confident and gracious.

He nodded reluctantly. “We can take it outside. I’d like to show you what I’m going to do with the garden.”

Maggie, pouring coffee, bit her lip. “The garden?”

“You don’t mind if I plant some vegetables, do you? It looks as fallow as the rest of the yard.”

“Oh, no,” she said hastily. “I don’t mind at all.” It was just that it made his occupancy of the apartment next door seem permanent. Until that moment, she hadn’t really thought of him being next door every day, not just for the next month or so, but for the month after that and the one after that and the one after that.

Joel seemed to sense her misgivings in the way that he had of almost reading her mind—another point against him, she thought darkly. “Maggie,” he said, brushing her cheek with his palm. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“I just don’t know anything about you, not really.”

He grinned. “It takes a little time.” The bantering mood fled abruptly as he stared at her, and she watched the ridge along his jaw go hard for an instant. “Trust your instincts, Maggie.”

She swallowed. “I’ll try.”

* * *

The predawn darkness weighed like a live thing upon him, the silence an echo of other times, other places. Joel flung back the sheet and padded silently into the alcove off his bedroom. Here air blew through the windows, heavy with the scent of lilacs and night. He breathed in the freshness like an exhausted runner, and slowly, his panic attack began to calm. He stretched out on the pallet he had made in this room and turned on his tape player, letting the mellow guitar of Albert King soothe him.

He tried, as he lay there, to keep his despair at bay. Night sometimes brought the sorrows back to him, paraded before his insomniac eyes the life he had lost, the dreams that had been crushed, the long, dark years he couldn’t always believe he’d escaped.

At times like this, he hated Nina with every molecule in his body, hated her for all she had stolen—his trust, his love, his life. As the emotion filled him with hard rage, red and black against his eyelids, he practiced again an exercise he’d learned. “God,” he croaked into the night, “bless Nina. Bless Nina. Bless Nina.” He repeated the phrase until the hate ebbed, losing its power over him.

His breathing returned to normal; his heartbeat slowed. The cool night air whispered over his face, like the gentle flutters of a butterfly wing. Just before sleep entirely carried him away, he thought of a smooth swath of honey-gold hair swinging around an angled face—and another emotion claimed him: guilt.

In the beginning, his plan had seemed so simple, a gamble he had no choice but to accept. Now he knew the gamble had been a selfish one.

He also knew he could not yet give it up.

T
he next day Maggie arose early to fix Sam’s favorite pecan waffles for breakfast. As she whipped up the batter, she saw Joel out in the garden, digging, but something about his still demeanor told her he thought himself to be unobserved, and she didn’t call out to him through the open back door. Out of respect for his privacy—something she seemed to be forgetting he had a right to—she turned her attention fully to the waffles.

“Two decent meals in a row?” Samantha said in disbelief when she came downstairs. “Are you feeling okay?”

“This is my apology for judging a book by its cover.”

Sam smiled. “Thank you.”

“Sure.”

As they ate, Sam said, “Mom?”

Maggie looked at her. “Samantha?”

“Do you think Dad would be upset if I didn’t come stay with him this summer?”

Maggie cut a triangle of the golden brown waffle on her plate. “Does this have anything to do with David?”

“No—well, yes, but it’s not because he asked me to ask.” She poked a bubble of butter with her fork. “We’re just getting along so well, I hate to see it end.”

“What makes you think it will? You’ll only be gone six weeks.”

“Six weeks is a long time.”

“I know it seems like it is, but it’ll be gone before you know it.” Maggie paused. “Your father would be devastated if you didn’t come. He spends months freeing his schedule for your visits to Denver.”

“I know, and I want to see him, too.” Her voice dipped. “I’m just really going to miss David.” Her clear eyes were troubled as they met Maggie’s across the table. “It’s kind of hard to choose.”

“You can stay in touch—write letters, talk on the phone.”

“What if he finds another girl while I’m gone? Somebody more like him?”

Maggie cut, lifted and chewed a bite of waffle while she mulled her reply. What she ought to say was “You’ll find someone else,” but she had a hunch that wasn’t the answer Samantha sought. “I don’t think you have to worry about that, Sam. He has more to worry about on that level than you do.”

Sam sighed deeply. “It just seems like everybody is more hip than I am.”

“He had his choice of everybody, Sam. He chose you.”

Sam brightened. “I never thought of it like that.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows, feeling very much like the sage advice columnist she became for the newspaper. “Be yourself. It’s all any of us really have.”

Sam nodded and ate in silence for a time. Suddenly, she asked, “Did you love my dad?”

Maggie frowned. Where had that come from? “I thought I did,” she said with a sigh. “He was so handsome and important and charming…” She shook her head. “He dazzled me, but it was you I loved.”

She’d been too young and inexperienced to see it then, but the truth of her words was plain in retrospect. Paul had been too busy for his little girl, a sunshine child of five with a demanding attitude that hid her need to be reassured and loved. Maggie thought she had been able to offset the insecurity Sam would have faced without a mother. A burst of pride and love consumed her as she studied her beautiful daughter. “I wouldn’t have traded it for the world.”

“Even though he ended up hurting you?”

“How do you know about that?”

“I’m not stupid. He’s the same guy now as he was then.” Sam rolled her eyes. “I love my dad—don’t get me wrong—but he’s not good husband material.”

Maggie laughed.

Sam stretched lazily. “That was really good.” She stood up and kissed Maggie on the forehead. As she carried her plate to the sink, she asked, “What about Joel?”

Maggie kept her eyes on her coffee cup, unwilling to take the chance that her feelings about him would show. “What about him?”

“He likes you, Mom,” she said with an air of authority. “And I think he’s pretty cute for an old guy.”

“Don’t matchmake me, Sam.”

“I’m not,” she protested. “But you aren’t gonna be young forever, you know.”

Maggie chuckled. “I’m delighted you think I have a few years left.”

“I think you oughta go out with him again.”

“I don’t think it’s any of your concern.”

“Right.” Sam tossed her head of bright hair. “Just trying to help.” On her way out of the kitchen, she added, “But you also ought to wear that white dress. If he asks.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Maggie said dryly. “Before we meet your great-grandmother for lunch, you need to check over your clothes to see if there’s anything you need before you go to Denver.”

“Dad always buys me new clothes.”

“I mean panties and bras and socks. He never thinks of things like that.” She squirted soap into hot water for the dishes. “We can get you some this afternoon—maybe even a pair of shoes.”

“Not with Grandma—she’ll examine every seam of every pair of underwear I like.”