Light up the night, p.14
Light Up the Night, page 14
Trisha climbed into the shower, a smooth and graceful motion that was doing nice things to his blood flow. She slid the glass door closed behind her.
He wrapped the towel around his waist and was turning to order them breakfast when she called out.
“I’m pissed at you.”
“You are? Why?” All he’d done was slept beside her.
“You don’t wake me up. You don’t ravage me. What’s up with that?” Her voice echoed around the bathroom partly muffled by the cascading water.
“You looked too damn comfortable,” he called back loud enough to be heard. “And all cute tucked in bed like that.”
She slid open the glass door a crack and peered out at him. “I’m not cute.” By her tone she’d clearly taken that as a deep insult. Her hair was already plastered to her head and washed partly over one eye.
“You’re about the damn cutest thing I’ve ever seen.” She slapped the door closed on him.
Grinning to himself, he once more turned toward the bedroom and the phone. Then he thought better of it.
Shedding the towel, he went back to the shower and slid open the door. He had one foot in when she slammed it closed. Had it been heavier, it would have hurt. Instead, it trapped him momentarily off balance, with one foot in the shower and the rest of him balanced on one foot on the slick bathroom floor.
He hopped around until he had his balance back, then shoved sideways on the door. It resisted momentarily as she tried to find a way to brace it in place. Finally giving up, she let go and he stepped under the scorchingly hot water.
“Ow! Crap!”
“Don’t touch that or I’m leaving.”
He turned it down to merely scalding.
She went to slide open the door at the other end of the tub, despite still being half covered in soap, but he caught the door before it was open wide enough for her to escape.
Giving up, she turned to glare up at him as the water pounded down against his back.
“I’m not cute! I’m beautiful!” Her Irish temper was practically steaming out her ears.
“You’re immensely cute.”
“You’re a jerk, Mr. SEAL. Bloody Scotsman!” She thumped the side of her fist hard against his chest.
“And you’re not beautiful, you’re gorgeous! You crazy Irishwoman.”
In that moment her expression shifted from ire to disbelief.
He laughed. Bill couldn’t help himself. The woman was a constant wonder to him. He pulled her into a kiss, their bodies moving slickly together. Without hesitation, her arms slid up around his neck and held on, fingers digging into his hair.
His senses were awash in her. The smooth perfection of her skin. The strength of her kiss. The heady taste of her. The life that practically exploded from her pores. Bill actually had to shift and rest one hip on the shower wall to make sure they remained steady on their feet.
Trisha pulled back and nipped at his shoulder. She paused for a moment and mumbled barely louder than the pounding water.
“I’m not cute.”
God but Trisha loved Billy’s laugh. Even when he was laughing at her, it somehow included her. She remembered the laugh of all of the people who had judged her based on her size or her gender or her background or her jumping style of conversation that she was told skittered along like a flat stone on a mud puddle, or any of a hundred other excuses they’d found to belittle her.
That was one of the things Vinny had taught her and why she’d kept running with his gang whenever she had the chance. He’d taught her how to stand up for being who she was.
And now this big galoot of a sailor was sweeping her feet out from under her merely by being himself. She wasn’t ready for that. Didn’t want that. She wasn’t going to let herself be made less-than by anyone, whether they intended it or not.
Then she laid her ear to his chest and wrapped her arms around him, letting the shower water cascade over them. So slowly, so gently for a man of his immense strength, he in turn wrapped his arms around her back and held her tight. He didn’t make her feel less than she was; he made her feel more.
And that sent her nerves to skittering. So, she’d go for something that was more familiar.
She slid her hands down to his waist and pulled him tightly against her.
Well, she might not have any protection in the shower, but that didn’t mean she was out of ideas. She snagged the bar of soap and, keeping him close, began lathering that nice ass of his.
His sigh, and the combined relaxing of his body and tensing of his hips, was all the answer she needed.
She soaped her chest and breasts and then slid against him, tracing her tongue along that big scar crossing his chest. Trisha didn’t know why that line so intrigued her. Perhaps that he had been so damaged and yet come out whole. It was how she often felt inside—like anything that started to make sense was always chopped off and shredded, never allowed to come together, never allowed to heal. Like damned Chief Warrant Maloney and her get-your-shit-together-or-get-out talk. She’d had it together. Trisha had made SOAR and…
Bury it!
Just bury it!
And, with a hard blink, she did. She cast it aside and instead focused on that impossible contradiction of males, that something so hard could be so soft and so sensitive. Rubbing him between her breasts until he moaned aloud was the perfect anodyne for the mess she was inside. This was simple, clear, controllable.
“So, what’s with this?” She traced a line of soap down the scar. “Zulu warrior? Crazed Burmese drug lord? An angry Smurf?”
She soaped herself more and used herself like a human washcloth, rubbing herself over him until he had to brace himself against one of the walls to remain upright.
“The last is actually the closest.” His voice hitched with the effort to speak.
“Tell me.”
“Later.”
“Now, or I stop.” She wrapped a leg around him and began rubbing that up and down.
“If you don’t stop, I’m not sure I can keep speaking.”
“If I stop, I don’t restart. Figure it out, sailor.”
His eyes rolled in frustration. God, he was so much fun to torture.
“Angry husband.”
At that she did stop. Stopped and stared at him. He hadn’t seemed like the type to sleep with someone else’s wife. Her expression must have been clear on her face.
“I was only nineteen, but I wasn’t stupid. She didn’t tell me he was a trucker, out of town.”
“No ring? No male crap scattered around the house?”
“Neither. Makeup on her ring finger, so no shadow. Didn’t know it at the time, but we were in her guest bedroom. All his stuff was in the master bed and bath. He surprised us and came at me with a machete.”
He traced the stroke down. “Damn! What did you do?”
“Disarmed the son of a bitch. Broke both his wrists and a knee to do so. Actually, it was the wife he ended up pissed at. He was going for her throat with that big blade when I stopped him. Then his wife came at me like it was all my fault.” He traced a tiny scar on his left arm. “Point of a nail file. Tied her up with a bedsheet and called 911.”
“With a bedsheet, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“And?” His grim look had a smile hiding in it somewhere. “I, uh, tied her to the bedpost with her hands behind her back. Once I told the cops what was going on and the ambulance crew was working on the husband and me, they kind of left her tied there a good while. Stark naked. She wasn’t real pleased about that or her injured husband screaming for a lawyer so he could divorce her sorry ass as soon as he could sign a paper again.”
Trisha ran her hand down the scar once more. It didn’t change how it felt. A slice like that and he hadn’t killed the man. As always, Billy did right by everyone he met. “Tell me about this one?” She traced the bullet hole so near his heart.
“That one was a Smurf.”
She took a soapy hand and massaged him right between the legs.
“Okay. Okay.” His groan was deep and shook him. “It was a crazed Burmese drug lord, except he was Argentine and dealing in Russian arms.”
Trisha led him across the roadmap of his body, scar by scar, wound to wound, teasing and taunting him until he shook with need.
There was a thrill to having such a strong man so wholly under her control. One of the nation’s best trained warriors was close to whimpering at what she could do to him.
She kissed Billy as he came in a rocket-hot jet against her palm, with a massive groan of release—and joy that found a home in places far deeper than any scar.
When Trisha tried to slide free in the shower, Bill wrapped an arm about her, keeping her in place.
All he could think… He couldn’t think. All he could do… He thought of several things he could do. He tipped his head back into the water that continued to sheet over them to clear his brain.
As soon as he was steady enough to do so, he pushed her back half a step and looked down into those sparkling blue eyes made more so by all of the water drops caught on her darkened lashes.
Ever so slowly, he turned her around, until her back was facing him. She glared at him, but finally submitted. Then he lifted her hands and placed them against the shower wall. Again the resistance until he leaned in and whispered into her ear, “Trust me.”
“Like I’m going to do that.” But she did turn to the wall, bracing her hands high.
“Close your eyes.”
She gave an exasperated groan, but he hoped she did so.
Then he poured a squirt of shampoo on her bright red hair and began working it in.
Her startled gasp was all he needed. She’d clearly expected something else. He liked surprising her, keeping her guessing. As he worked his strong fingers into her scalp, she began relaxing until she truly did need those hands on the shower wall to hold herself up.
Taking up the soap, he began massaging her neck and shoulders. He dug into muscles until they gave way and she moaned as they loosened. He worked down her incredible body, learning each curve, investigating and memorizing every shape.
When he reached her feet, he turned her around and began working his way back up her glorious form.
She simply lay back against the wall and dug her fingers into his own hair, not to massage, but merely to hold on as he continued his investigation with soap and touch, with tongue and teeth.
By the time he’d worked his way back up to kiss her on the mouth, she was frenzied for release and finally let go rubbing against him. Now he knew each of her muscles as well as he knew any weapon he’d ever carried. Perhaps better, for he knew he’d never forget a single curve of Trisha’s incredible body. He could feel every shift and change ripple through her slender frame as she heated past reason. Bill could feel the pulse of each wave as it traveled from one muscle to the next up her body to where their lips met.
He had kept his eyes open to watch the wonder of it shimmer up her length.
What he hadn’t been ready for was seeing the tears that flowed from under her closed eyes.
16
It had been a long couple of days.
The meetings had been endless, and if not for Trisha’s infinite aplomb and good manners, Bill would have probably made enemies of everyone in the town of Richmond, Vermont—and been a wreck besides. Instead, Trisha had taken the lead, applying breeding—that still didn’t fit with her stories and the charm that flowed from her naturally, in sharp contrast to her normal irascible self—with everyone they had to deal with.
Most of Constance’s belongings had gone to the thrift store that also hosted the local food bank, so they took her kitchen supplies too. One box of shared memories remained to be sealed and sent off to his storage locker at Little Creek Naval in Virginia. There was so little in it that it was pathetic. He’d moved them both here from Chicago in two suitcases and then he’d gone to the Navy, sleeping on the couch of her one-bedroom whenever he got leave.
But after a decade, it shouldn’t be so empty. Pile of photos, a deck of cards, and the backgammon board they used to play on. A small framed picture of her and his father at their wedding and a month later standing in front of the Round Church, not yet knowing they had just conceived a child. Totally unaware of the hardships to come. A folded flag, which showed the worn spots of the desperate clutch of a woman who had lost her one true love twenty years before. A woman with few enough skills for being in the world on her own, saddled with an angry eight-year-old boy.
He barely recalled Trisha finally removing the box from his lap, sealing it, and taking it away to the post office.
They paid off the coroner, canceled the apartment rental, and paid someone else to come in and clean the place after they were gone. The to-do list had seemed endless.
In the apartment, he’d uncovered her will. Simplest damn document, he was close to tears because it was so like her. Lawyerese included, it had only covered two pages. At its core it simply said, “To my son.” The attorney that Trisha scared up assured Bill that he’d take care of filing it, not that there was anything much left to matter.
Constance Bruce must have harbored every paycheck Bill had sent her as if it were gold. Not only was there a tidy sum in their joint bank account, joint so that he could deposit his pay there, but she’d taken out a life insurance policy in his name years before. And, as far as he could tell, she’d spent pretty much nothing else. The VA had covered most of her medical. She’d been content to join the local church and work at the grocery. Her big evenings out were apparently going to the Grange on Family Night to help out.
He sat on the couch now, in an apartment empty of everything that might have been hers. It had been a cheery place with bright yellow walls and local farmers’ market watercolors and weavings that had made it quite pleasant. With nothing remaining on them, the walls were now overbright, especially where the missing art had shadowed the paint from the years of sunlight fading the rest of the wall. His mother wasn’t here anymore.
He’d have slept right here the last two nights if O’Malley hadn’t kept dragging him back to Burlington or wherever. She’d made sure he ate room service before she tucked him in. Bless her. They hadn’t even had sex, at least not that he remembered. He rather assumed he’d remember sex with Patricia O’Malley, no matter what state he was in. Not the kind of thing any man was likely to forget.
There appeared to be no man around to remember his mother, and few enough others. She’d left such a small impression upon the world.
“I knew Mom was a simple woman with simple needs,” he told Trisha who sat opposite him in the lone armchair. “Never quite understood how true that was.”
“Everyone we spoke to liked her a lot.”
He nodded. He’d heard that too. It was about all that had sustained him beyond Trisha’s endless reservoir of ability to deal with things. If he had to do one more thing on the list, though, he’d scream.
“C’mon, sailor.”
“Where to now?” Maybe he’d scream now and save the trouble later.
Trisha came up and pulled on his arm, finally dragging him to his feet before he could go fetal right there on the couch. “You aren’t fit for service, so we’re going to see what we can do about that.”
“How?”
“Just shut up.”
He let himself be led out. It was a relief when she placed the apartment keys on the kitchen counter and pulled the door closed, locking it behind them. So done with that. Trisha practically manhandled him into the car. Womanhandled. Done with skill and no small amount of force.
Right. He reminded himself of what Michael Gibson had warned him. Don’t mess with Patricia O’Malley. He was starting to get that hadn’t been an overprotective idle warning. If nothing else, the woman was tenacious as hell.
Trisha hoped this place was as good as the clerk at the post office had said. She knew what Billy needed; now she had to find it.
After heading through the two blocks of downtown, they drove across the steel bridge. At the Old Round Church she took a right. In a hundred yards at most they were among farms, with actual cows, plowed fields, and a farmer on a tractor who actually waved as she drove by.
“What happened?” Trisha stared back at the farmer in her mirror. “Did we fall off the edge of the Earth here or something?”
“No. Vermont is really like this. Haven’t you ever lived in small towns?”
“The only time I touch nature is on training exercises, and then I’m usually flying over it.” Again that sharp pinch, again she shoved it aside. No matter what CW3 Lola Maloney thought, Chief Trisha O’Malley was going to be flying. It was the best thing she’d ever done, kicking ass across the sky.
They wound along a two-lane blacktop past streets with names that had “Pine” and “Hill” and “Crest” in them. Streets! Dirt tracks she’d want a Humvee for, and not a Toyota rent-a-car.
Three miles out and she was on the edge of despair and ready to turn back when the road hit a T. Well, not really, but she was getting desperate and the post office boy had said it was like that.
“It’s kind of a T but isn’t one,” he’d told her, a cute kid who kept trying to not stare at her chest. He mostly succeeded. It wasn’t all that much to stare at, though Billy appeared to like it. “You’ll be facing a big field, I think the Jansens have beets going in.” As if she’d have any idea what that might look like. “Dugway Road cuts back to your left.”
There was indeed a road cutting back to her left, paved, thank God, though the sign was covered by yet another tree, this one with white bark and leaves gone all golden. Kinda pretty, actually. Dugway was a smaller two-lane that rapidly dwindled to such a tiny width that the trees met overhead, blocking the afternoon sun.
She spotted the river and knew they were most of the way there, despite their entry into the forest primeval.
