Uncommon Passion (26 page)

of him, and acting like none of it was a big deal. Not Juliette in his bed two weeks earlier, not Steve’s frat-

boy stupidity, not Rachel and what she’d done to him the following Sunday.

Especially not Rachel.

The hiatus dialed Ben’s fury back to a simmer, but the heat turned up when Steve joined him.

“Hey,” Steve said when he joined Ben at the parking lot entrance.

Ben capped his water bottle and slid it into his cargo pants pocket, then folded his arms across his chest

and looked at Steve. “Hey? That’s how you start this conversation?”

“I said I was sorry,” Steve said. He braced up and glared at Ben. “Jesus, give me a fucking hint, a clue,

that you’re with someone else, and none of this happens.”

Ben shot him a look. “It better not happen again.”

“Trust me, I lost my taste for surprises,” Steve said. “Despite the fact that it was totally her idea, Juliette

ripped me a new one on the way back to her car. I guess it’s all fun and games until the shit hits the fan.”

“You should have said no.”

Steve ignored this. “Juliette said you two were about ten seconds away from hitting it when you came

through the bedroom door.”

“That surprises you?”

“No, but it surprised Juliette,” Steve said. “Said she was actually nice to her. Brought her your coat. I

think Ju expected a screaming match.”

“That’s not Rachel.”

Steve studied the line meditatively. “Maybe I’ll take a turn when you’re done with her.”

Fury flared in his brain, bright, white-hot. Before he knew it, he was talking. “Shut your mouth.”

Steve must have seen something, because he actually took a step back. “What the hell is wrong with

you?”

Rachel was wrong with him. Rachel and her dark hair and golden eyes and her ability to shine a light on

the protective shield he held up between himself and the world. Just showing him it was there, let alone

what it meant, or how thin it really was. Making him feel things he didn’t want to feel.

That little nugget of awareness sat hot and heavy right behind his breastbone. “She’s not like Juliette.”

Steve stared at him, connecting the dots. “Is that the girl from Elysian Fields? The one from the auction?

Oh man,” he said, not waiting for an answer. “What the hell are you doing?”

Genuine concern infused Steve’s voice, which made Ben laugh. Everyone worried about Rachel,

because they had no idea what she was capable of. He had no idea what he was doing with her, and after

she tied him to his chair and took him apart, he wondered why he kept letting her come back. She didn’t

need him to teach her anything.

So end it.

“Leave it,” he said. “Just fucking leave it.”

The rest of the night passed in stony silence. Steve did his job. Ben did his. Juliette and her girl-posse

were conspicuously absent, but his temper didn’t improve as the night went on. That was the thing about

being awake and aware. You couldn’t unlearn something once you learned it.

He went home and went to bed, alone.

Sunday morning, he was showered, dressed by 10:20. He called Sam on his way down the stairs. “Tell

me they’re not coming today,” he said when his brother answered his cell.

“By
they
I assume you mean Mom and Dad.”

“Yeah.”

A pause, then, “No. Spring barbeque at church. Why?”

“I’m on my way,” he said, tossed his phone on the passenger seat, and pulled out of the parking lot at

10:22. Thirty-eight minutes before Rachel.

Why are you doing this?

Because . . . ?

Because I can. Because it’s what I do.

He stopped at the liquor store for beer, then drove to Sam and Chris’s house. The street on both sides

was already lined with cars, so he parked four doors down and got out. He snagged the beer from the back

seat, but left his cell phone in the glove box.

He took the steps to the front porch and hauled open the screen door, automatically noting the double-

takes from Sam and Chris’s friends who knew Sam had a twin brother but never saw Ben at brunch, then

took a sharp left into the kitchen, where Chris was frying peppers and onions for fajitas. “Hello, stranger,”

Chris said affably, pausing his conversation with a woman Ben recognized as their next-door neighbor.

“Hi,” Ben returned, then hefted the beer. The clock on the microwave read 10:52. She’d be turning the

corner onto his street right about now. “Where do you want this?”

“Fridge in the garage,” Chris said. His brother’s partner was his opposite in every way: shorter, blond,

blue-eyed, even-keeled. Ben liked him because he was a good guy and because he treated Sam well, but

under their friendly surface simmered the fact that Chris knew things about Sam that Ben never would. He

gave Chris a nod and made his way through the crowd gathered around the mimosas, out the back door and

down the path to the detached garage. Sam had made good progress on the rewiring project since he’d seen

him last. Ben slid the beer into the fridge, snagged a cold one from the shelf, and headed back out into the

yard to look for his brother.

And stopped. It wasn’t too late to get his phone and send Rachel a text, but the scene playing out by the

sandbox caught his attention. His nieces, their blond hair pulled up in pink-ribboned pigtails on top of their

heads, were playing in the red race car sandbox Sam and Chris built for Jonathan. That meant his sister

Katy was somewhere in the crowd.

Jonathan was playing in the bare patch of dirt under the oak tree. Ben slowly crossed the yard, watching

the kids. Five, no six, Barbies sat in the sandbox, several in swimsuits, two in shiny satin evening gowns,

and the Ken doll in cowboy gear. The girls had parts of a tea set in there as well, their high-pitched voices

tumbling over each other as they played.

“Hi, Uncle Ben,” Callie said.

“Hey,” he said as he hunkered down to watch them play, then turned his attention to Jonathan. The boy

sat off by himself, almost hidden by the tree. Attachment issues. That’s the phrase Sam and Chris used most

often. He’d used a gardening trowel to scrape away the dirt barely covering the tree’s roots, and had a line

of Matchbox cars nosed into the shallow depression.

“What’re you doing, buddy?” he asked.

“Playing.”

“You don’t want to play in the sandbox?” Ben knew all about this sandbox. The pressure-treated, red-

painted sides held four hundred and fifty pounds of the finest white sand money could buy.

Jonathan didn’t look up from his precise arrangement of cars. “I like dirt.”

Ben walked over to stand beside him, then went down on his heels again, but a couple of feet away.

Jonathan had been forcibly removed from his home by a uniformed officer. Ever since Ben stopped by one

night after work in uniform, the boy had stayed away from him. “Why?”

Jonathan shrugged. “It’s just better.”

Ben remembered how he’d played at that age. He and Sam found a scraggly patch of dirt at the top of

the pasture and over the summer months carved an entire ranching operation into the natural hillocks and

channels. They’d spent hours out there, negotiating roles, arguing over what land to use for what operation,

just like their dad did. It was a passionate, all-consuming game, one that occupied them for most of the

summer between first and second grade.

Jonathan was going through the motions. He pushed cars around with his skinny fingers, but he kept an

eye on the girls and the back door, too. So wary.

Ben looked at his watch: 11:06. Rachel would have left his apartment by now.

His stomach did a twisty little flip-flop. To cover it he said, “Have fun,” straightened, and set off to find

Sam.

The house’s main floor was filling up with Sam’s eclectic Sunday lunch crowd, consisting of neighbors,

friends, artists, anyone who took the open invitation seriously. His sister gave him a tight nod while

describing an upcoming surprise trip to Disney World they were planning for the girls. He returned the nod

and kept moving.

Eleven fifteen. No Sam.

He swung back through the garage for another beer. The male couple making out against the fridge

moved long enough to let him snag another beer and wander out into the yard. The noise subsided a little

out there. A group sat around the fire pit built into the stone patio Chris put in a couple of years earlier,

their feet up on the rim, arguing politics. A couple sat on the swings, talking idly and sharing a bottle of

beer. Ben looked around again, then up at the tree house nestled into the limbs branching over the sandbox.

Jonathan ignored him as he climbed up the slats nailed to the tree’s trunk.

Sam lay on his back, a beer in one hand, looking up at the branches and leaves overhead. “Took you

long enough,” he said.

Ben settled onto the platform and swung his legs up, then lay down on his back, his head at Sam’s feet.

“First time I came up here I interrupted a sex act,” he said as he closed his eyes.

Sam laughed. “And you didn’t bust them?”

“Private property,” Ben said, his eyes still closed.

“They ask you to join in?” Sam said lazily.

Ben huffed. “It was two women, so they looked at me like I was physically revolting. I got the feeling I

totally killed their mood.”

Sam laughed out loud. Ben grinned, lifted his head enough to tip the rest of the beer down his throat,

then stared up through the leafy canopy at teasing glimpses of blue sky.

“I thought you had something going on Sundays these days,” Sam said.

“Not today,” Ben said.

“What was it? Some work thing?”

Ben stared up at the sharp points and veins in the leaves. “Not exactly,” he said.

“Off-duty thing?”

“Not exactly.”

“Fucking talk to me or I’m going back to my party.”

He could tell Sam anything. “This woman bought a date with me at a bachelor auction. We went out on

the date and after the date I fucked her.”

“You know,” Sam drawled, “like you do.”

Ben ignored him. “Turns out she was a virgin.”

His brother propped himself up on his elbows. “What?”

“I felt bad about deflowering her in what had to be the least sensitive way possible, so I offered to give

her sex lessons on Sundays.”

“I’m fucking speechless,” Sam said finally. “You felt bad about screwing a woman?”

Ben slugged him, hard, but Sam slugged him back just as hard.

“Where the hell did you find a virgin?”

“Like I said, she found me at the bachelor auction.”

“That was weeks ago.”

And this week it was over. “She’s twenty-five, and five months ago she was living at Elysian Fields,” he

said, like Sam had asked. “She needs to catch up with the rest of the world in a hurry. She knew exactly

what she was getting. She said she wanted to lose her virginity with someone who wouldn’t care.”

How did she see that? How did she know?

“Ouch,” Sam said mildly. He knew. He always knew how Ben felt, what he needed. Who needed a

mirror when you could look at your own soul?

Yeah.
Ben tipped back his beer bottle.

“What’s she like?” Sam asked.

She needs something I can’t give her.

“I thought she’d be a blank slate,” he said finally. “Innocent, sweet, kind of clueless. She’s more

like . . . It’s like when we used to rehearse in the barn. Remember?”

Below the tree Jonathan murmured quietly to the cars. Ben and Sam had graduated from Matchbox cars

and a pile of dirt to video games to jamming away in the barn. Katy even played with them for a while,

pounding away at the drums like a punk rocker. But then Ben joined the varsity football team and got

popular with girls, while Sam got quiet. When he wasn’t singing.

“I remember,” Sam said quietly.

“It’s like that.” He stared up at the branches. Together. When he was with Rachel he didn’t feel alone.

They weren’t exactly making music, but he wasn’t alone.

Sam shifted his gaze from Ben’s face to the leaves. “She’s got something going on today?”

Ben stayed quiet.

“Benjamin Eli Harris,” his brother said. “You didn’t.”

“It’s how the game’s played,” he said to himself. He glanced at Sam’s wristwatch but the sunlight

streaming through the tree house window cast a glare on the face.

He wasn’t going to ask.

He wasn’t.

“What time is it?”

“Eleven twenty-two,” came his sister’s voice from the ladder. “Why? You have somewhere to be?

Shove over,” she added as she clambered up into the tree house.

“Hi, Katy,” he said.

“Hello, Ben,” she replied formally, folding her legs to the side and smoothing down her skirt. “Long

time no see.”

“I’ve been busy,” Ben said.

“And yet you’re magically not busy on the one day Mom and Dad aren’t here? Very convenient.”

“Katy,” Sam said wearily. “Leave him alone.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” she said mock-cheerily. “Is that why you’re here, Ben? Because Dad isn’t?”

“No,” he said. Katy’s attitude and the unpleasant truth made him clench his jaw. He was here so he

wouldn’t be where Rachel’s lips and hips and fingertips could lay him bare again. Avoiding their father was

just a perk.