Accompanying Alice (25 page)

“No.” Gabriel sank to his knees in front of her and caught her hands in his, forcing her to look at him. “I think you’re beautiful and generous and loving and so damned sexy—” He buried his face in her hands, kissed each of them with gentle passion. “If we had doors to close behind
us, Alice,” he promised softly, “if we had time, I’d show you what I think of you. I’d make love to you—” His mouth curved, eyes lit. He leaned his elbows on the bed on either side of her, placed a lingering kiss on her mouth. “I’d
love
you,” he repeated for emphasis, “until the cows come home and beyond. If I could.”

As though wrapped in a spell, Alice swayed toward him.

“Oh, my,” she breathed inadequately. “Oh, my golly jeepers gee. You sure can talk. Is that what makes you good undercover?”

“Hmm.” His smile brushed her cheek when he lifted himself on his arms and pressed her back onto the bed. His tongue outlined her mouth, made a brief enticing foray into its interior. “That and knowing when to press an advantage.”

“Oh, my.” Alice gulped, staring up at the face so close to her own. Feeling the press of his weight on her chest, the smoothness of denim against her skin where his leg had hiked her skirt up her thigh. Feeling the flutter of tension and anticipation inside her when he shifted forward slightly.

Wondering how mature she really was the second after she wondered how far she’d let him go.
All the way,
she assured herself honestly, distrustfully.
I’d let him go—no, I’d
take
him all the way.

“No,” she moaned, and rolled away from Gabriel. “Not again. Not now. I’m a grownup, not sixteen. I’m supposed to have some self-control. Oh, damn.” She scooted off the bed and stood in the pool of yellow light cast by the floor lamp, gazing
at Gabriel, hand to her mouth. “Oh, what is it about you, me—us—that I keep doing this, acting like this? Yesterday morning you had a gun in my face, tonight I’m trying like hell to climb into bed with you. I can’t trust myself around you. You look at me and I feel like I’m going to burst. My chest gets tight and my heart pounds and I can’t breathe.”

She rubbed her forehead, dropped her hand to her side with a short unamused laugh. “If I were one of my daughters I’d tell myself this was a crush—something to be enjoyed, maybe daydreamed about, but not acted upon. But I’m not one of my daughters, and this isn’t a crush and I don’t want to feel like this about you or anyone. Not now. Not when I’m finally going to get the time I’ve always wanted to figure out who I am.”

“How do you feel, Alice?” Gabriel came intently around the end of the bed wanting her answer, afraid to hear it. “How do I make you feel?”

Jaw working, Alice looked at him, then away. “Like I’m not safe. Like I’m about to fall in love, lose my mind and go to hell on good intentions.” She swallowed and looked at him again. “Is that what you were trying to tell me this afternoon, Gabriel?” she asked. “Is that how I make you feel?”

Gabriel studied her for a moment before replying. He considered lying to make things cleaner, easier for both of them, but he’d promised her he wouldn’t. “Yeah.” He nodded. “That’s close. Given time and opportunity, I don’t think I’d find it difficult to love you, Alice Meyers.”

“Oh, God, do you want to?”

“Do I
want
to?” Gabriel’s shoulders shook with wry laughter. “I’ve never been under the impression it’s a matter of choice, Alice. It’s what we do about the situation that counts.”

“What are we going to do about it?” Alice whispered.

“Enjoy the moment. Make a memory.” Gabriel closed his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Nothing. You deserve someone who’s got time to love you right, Alice, to love you completely. You’re worth time. A lot more than I have to give you.”

“Oh, Gabriel.” Hands outstretched, Alice took two steps toward him before catching herself, stopping. “Damn.” She flung herself into the dining room and wrapped her hands around the back of a chair. “My grandmother always said idle hands were the devil’s workshop,” she muttered. “Now I know what she meant.”

“Alice.”

Gabriel crossed the room, gripped her arms. Alice slipped away from him, dodging around the table to pick up Grace’s veil, her pincushion and the bag of seed pearls from the shelves
built
in
to
the dining room wall. “I-I can’t...talk about this anymore, Gabriel. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do. Y-you go to bed. I-I’ll sit up, work on this veil
—
keep my hands busy so I don’t tempt the devil anymore. Besides, I do have to get this thing done.”

“Alice.” Half-serious, half-laughing, Gabriel caught hold of the chair she’d vacated, rocking it. “Alice, listen to me. You don’t need to worry about the devil tonight. We’re between the backyard and the bathroom and between the bedrooms and the kitchen. We’re sleeping in the middle of the main drag. Now—” his mouth worked around a grin “—I know I’m many things, but I’m not an exhibitionist.”

Alice ducked her head in consternation. “I wasn’t worried about you attacking me, Gabriel,” she mumbled. “I was thinking more along the lines of me attacking you. ‘Cause like the song says, you rattle my brain. When I kiss you I forget to think.”

Gabriel’s grin broadened. “I can sleep in the yard with the rest of the boys,” he offered.

“Well—” Alice set the pincushion and pearl bag on the table and toyed with the dimmer switch for the dining room light. “It’s not a bad idea, but it also kind of brings us to another problem.”

Gabriel coughed to hide a laugh. “I hoped it might.”

Alice sent him
a
severe look. He made an expansive gesture, motioning her to continue; he wouldn’t interrupt. Alice nodded, grimaced and took a breath.

“Y’see,” she said tentatively, “what I was saying, we’d probably be ever so much more comfortable if you slept outside, except, well, the extra sleeping bags are in the girls’ room with Mamie and George, and there’s only enough room in the tent for the boys, and the ground is kind of hard, and you said yourself that you’re not as young as you used to be and, well—” she made a face “—it’s a big bed. I mean, it’d be silly to waste the space, you know and—” she hesitated, then plunged on “—I kind of like the idea of you being in it where I can see you. Very strange, I know, except that if you do go to sleep, then maybe I could calm down and come to bed, too, and you know—” she sighed in half-sincere despair “—just sort of be near you.”

“Sounds frustrating,” Gabriel commented dryly.

“Yeah.” Alice nodded. “It does, doesn’t it?” She gazed at him apologetically. “I told you it was a problem.”

Gabriel pulled off his shirt and came around the table to her while unbuttoning his jeans. “If I do fall asleep and you do come to bed,” he said slowly, and Alice swallowed, then nodded that she was following his drift. “If that happens,” he went on, “and I reach out to hold you—in my sleep, of course—will that be a problem?”

“Definitely,” she murmured, eyes on his mouth. “But feel free to do it, anyway.”

“I will.” He stepped out of his pants, leaned toward her.

Alice met him halfway. His kiss was rough, thorough, sweet. “Good night, Alice,” he said and touched his mouth to hers again. “Don’t stay up all night.”

“No,” Alice said shyly, “I won’t.”

*

The dream went something like this:

She was standing in the middle of her bedroom with Gabriel. The door was closed and they were undressed, in one another’s arms, about to make use of the bed. There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for a response, Julia Block Brannigan opened the door and entered her daughter Alice’s room.

“Well,” she said, circling Alice and Gabriel thoughtfully, “what have we here? Sneaking boys into your room now, Allie? What would your father say?”

Gasping, Alice lifted her face from Gabriel’s shoulder and gazed at her mother, glassy-eyed and irritated. “Ma,” she snapped defensively, “could you get out of here? I’m in the middle of something.”

“So I see,” Julia reproved. She shook her head sadly. “Allie, Allie,” she said, “when will you learn? Didn’t Matthew teach you anything? Didn’t Ian use you enough?”

“Ma
-a
,” Alice singsonged, “what do you mean, didn’t I learn anything? I waited eighteen years, didn’t I? I mean, you have a lot of nerve disapproving of what I’m doing, what with all the men this family has thrown at me over the years.”

“Fodder,” her mother said, dismissing the men with a shrug. “Company. Family prerogative. Nobody you’d go to bed with. We’ve always been very careful to select only men who’d irritate or distract you, instead of someone who might be
right
for you.”

Nonplussed, Alice stared at her mother. “Then what was the point, Ma? If you weren’t looking to find someone who’d take care of me and the girls, what the hell was the point?”

“We love you,” Julia said. “You’ve been so wound up in Allyn and Rebecca all these years that you’ve never taken any time for yourself. You’re getting old and crabby. We just wanted to take your mind off. We want you to be happy.”

“But, Ma, Gabriel makes me happy.”

“Ffftt!” Snorting, Julia tossed up a hand. “How would you know? You know him five seconds and you’re off to bed. You know what I think? Proximity, that’s what I think. A man and a woman living closed up in the same house with a bed and active imaginations—that’s a lot of temptation. Things happen.
Happy
is just a word you use to justify the choice.”

“Mom...” Locked in Gabriel’s arms in her dream, naked emotionally as well as physically, Alice stared at her mother, remembering. Hadn’t she had almost this same conversation with Allyn five minutes before her daughter—Julia’s granddaughter—had driven off in the van with two girlfriends, three boys and a bed? And she’d had it almost as successfully, too. “Ma,” she complained almost as Allyn had, “I’m thirty-five years old, and I’ve been making my own decisions for years. Don’t you think it’s about time I go back to making my own mistakes, too?”

Julia touched Alice’s shoulder with a daughter-irritating mixture of compassion and love. “A lot of things have happened in your life lately, Allie. Don’t fall into bed with him just because everything around you is changing and you figure one more change thrown on top of the others won’t make any difference. Your confusion may make him seem right to you when he might not be.”

“I’ll be careful, Ma.” Alice nodded and turned her attention back to Gabriel.

Her mother shook her head, down, but not defeated. She got in the parting shot even as her image began to fade from the dream. “He looks at you the way a man looks at a woman, Alice Marie. He expects more from you than flirting and waffling. More than sex. Are you sure you’re ready for that?
Are you sure...”

“Are you
sure?”

Alice awoke with a start, jerking her face off the dining room table, hearing the voice in her head. Only it wasn’t her mother’s voice she was hearing now. This voice was masculine. Deeply, richly, despairingly male.

Without comprehension Alice looked around. She was sitting at the dining
room table, Grace’s veil in her fist, seed pearls scattered in front of her. Her back ached and she had a crick in her neck. The dining room light was off.

“You’re sure,” the voice said again, violently. “That’s an absolute? No mistake?” The voice paused, listening.

Gabriel, Alice thought and blinked. Talking to someone in the kitchen. No, she shook her head. That wasn’t right. There was only one voice. He was in the kitchen talking to someone on the phone. No, she tensed and straightened apprehensively. He wasn’t talking. He was hurling obscenities at someone on the phone as though what he’d really like to hurl was something shiny, sharp and deadly.