Accompanying Alice (27 page)

“I’m here, Alice. Hold on to me. I won’t let you go.”

“But you…we didn’t…I want to—”

“It’s all right, Alice, it’s fine. You’re wonderful, beautiful. Hold on to me. Don’t let me go.”

“But you…right now…it’s not right. It doesn’t seem fair. I didn’t mean to use you, Gabriel.”

“Use me?” Unnerved by her choice of words, Gabriel rocked back on his heels to stare at her incredulously. “
Use
me?” he repeated angrily. “Is that what you think just happened?”

Guiltily Alice nodded and turned her face to the window.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think, I just—”

“Felt.” Gabriel’s voice softened. “Enjoyed.” He caught her chin, drew her face gently his way. “Trusted me. Gave me the most precious and irreplaceable piece of yourself because I needed you to. Because I asked you to. But, God, Alice,
use
me?” He shook his head. “No.”

“But you’re still—” Alice began and stopped uncomfortably.

“Aroused?” Gabriel smoothed her hair behind her ear. “Physically encumbered?” He smiled when she gave him a hesitant nod, and kissed her reverently. “Do you know how beautiful you are when I touch you?” he asked. “What you do to me? How you make me feel inside? Now, I won’t deny it’d be a helluva relief to jump your bones right now, Alice Meyers,” he said softly, “and sometime when the time’s right, I hope to do just that. But until then, know this—” he took a breath “—what you just gave me is worth a damn sight more to me than some temporary physical relief and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”

“But—”

“No, Alice.” He touched an open palm to her face, inhaling some unnamed emotion when she lifted her cheek into his hand. “I want you, Alice Meyers,” he said huskily, “make no mistake about that. But right now what I need more than anything is to hold you, be with you, know you’re there. Please,” he implored, and Alice thought she felt her heart burst. “Let me hold you.”

She smoothed his face, took his hand. “Come to bed,” she told him. “Gabriel, come to bed.”

*

She awoke at sunrise to an unfamiliar sense of complete peace and a too familiar sense of impending interruption. Gabriel had pulled the sheet over them when they’d gotten into bed and now slept spooned along her back with one leg thrown over her thigh and one arm tucked around her middle, hand possessively encompassing her bare breast. The feel of him made her ache with anticipation and the need for privacy so that she could wake him the way she wanted to.

She shifted carefully in his embrace, trying to distract herself by straightening the twisted clothing she’d slept in. Instead she succeeded in making Gabriel stir. His hand contracted, thumb stroked across her nipple, making it harden. Alice sighed with pleasure. Gabriel murmured something soft and wordless and repositioned himself more firmly against her back, tucking his leg around her this time, as well as his arm. She thought she felt him smile in his sleep against her neck. She shut her eyes and loved the feel of his smile.

Her sense of impending interruption and disaster increased with her sense of contentment and desire. All she wanted to do was bask in Gabriel’s warmth, to at least replay last night to an even more satisfying conclusion in her dreams, but something niggled at her awareness, something that wasn’t quite
so.
She glanced uneasily around as much of the living room as she could see. The house was too quiet, she decided, and her everymother’s instinct warned her it had been too quiet for far too long. Something, she realized, was about to explode.

Unfortunately, she understood her instincts well.

There was a springy whine, a hesitant click and the front door was eased open into the living room. Before he even woke up, Gabriel flung himself away from Alice and across the four feet to the doorway, surprising the intruder as she came in. He crooked his arm about her neck, bent her arm behind her back and forced her face first against the wall. Then he stood there blinking and shaking his head groggily.

The intruder struggled with him, alternately sobbing and emitting tiny shrieks that came out sounding a lot like
“Mom.”

“Becky?” Alice took one look at her youngest daughter, used another one of the words she’d been saving up for eighteen years and scrambled off the bed, buttoning her blouse as she came. “Gabriel, let her go. It’s my daughter.”

Chapter Ten

“H
uh? Oh.” Embarrassed and still yawning, Gabriel released the struggling teen. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

Becky shushed him with a look of teary loathing and threw herself into Alice’s arms. “Mom,” she sobbed. “Oh, Mom!”

. “Shh, baby, shh.” Alice sat down on the bed, holding Becky, smoothing her daughter’s hair, comforting her child. “He didn’t know it was you, darlin’. He didn’t know.”

“It’s not him.” Becky gulped and sniffled back a sob. “I don’t care about
him—
were
you sleeping with him? Your clothes are kind of rumply. It’s Michael. He—” She gulped
again and threw herself face down on the bed, sobbing. “Oh, Ma! It’s such a mess—I’ve made such a mess. I’m not…and Mike—”

“What’s going on?” Mamie whispered from the twins’ bedroom doorway. “Is somebody crying? Is it my boys?”

“No, it’s—”

“What’s going on out there?” Aunt Kate staggered blindly into the hallway, pulling the black sleep mask she’d worn to bed up from over one eye and blinking. “Whoever it is better not try anything funny,” she said querulously, patting the pockets of her robe. ‘‘I’ve got a knife here somewhere and I’m not afraid to use it. Alice Marie, where is your bra, and is that your blouse I see unbuttoned? Young man—” she waved a threatening finger at Gabriel and made a move toward him “—I thought I warned you—”

“Mother!” Mamie eased herself into the hall, squinting at Alice’s clothing as she took her mother’s arm. “Leave them alone. It’s nothing. If you’ve really got a knife, give it to me and go back to bed. Honest to God, I don’t understand why I do this...” She maneuvered Kate back into
Alice’s bedroom and shut the door behind them.

Alice gaped after them for a moment, then crossed her eyes and flared her nostrils, making a they’re-driving-me-nuts face at Gabriel before turning once more to Rebecca, who was leaning on her elbows sniffly and watery-eyed, but interested. “Wow, Mom,” she said. “Aunt Kate, Cousin Mamie...” She narrowed her eyes and glanced speculatively at Gabriel.
“Him.
What’d you do last night? It must have been a hell of a party.”

“Don’t swear,” Alice admonished automatically.

“God, Ma!” Rebecca shoved herself off the sofa bed in disgust. “I’m eighteen. I don’t even live here anymore. I come home to get your advice on this problem and all you can do is tell me not to swear. I’m old enough to swear in front of you if I want to. God, I mean, I don’t want to get to be
your
age and find out I’m still curbing my natural speech patterns in front of you like you do in front of Grandma because you’re afraid of offending her. I mean, really, is that what you want, Ma?’

“Ah—” Alice began, but the side door slammed open, saving her from replying.

“Cousin Alice,” Mamie’s oldest son shouted. “Cousin Alice, you up? We can’t sleep out there anymore with the sun comin’ up, so we thought we’d get up and make breakfast and get Dad and go fishing. We caught some really freaky night crawlers last night. You got a camp stove and some eggs and bacon and potatoes and sourdough? If you don’t have the sourdough, we’ll take some Jiffy Mix or Bisquick and frozen blueberries. Oh, and a frying pan. Gotta have something to cook in.”

Alice rose stiffly and advanced toward the kitchen, gritting her teeth. “Do I have what?” she asked carefully.

Gabriel put a hand on her arm and pointed her at Becky. “You handle this,” he suggested. “I’ll take care of that.”

“Wise choice,” Alice muttered and eyed her daughter. “Front porch?” she asked.

“It might be more private,” Rebecca agreed and went out the door she’d just come in.

Alice took a quick look down at her clothing. Who the hell had told her life to start imitating her dreams? Her bra was practically around her throat, the front of her blouse was buttoned at an angle, and her skirt was full of static cling and riding up her back. She spread a hand over her face and heaved an oh-God-wouldn’t-you-know-it sigh of humiliation, wondering exactly how Aunt Kate would embellish this story. She might as well resign herself to her fate, Alice thought. Because no matter how Aunt Kate told the story, Alice’s sisters would have a field day with it when she was through. It would be handed down in the Brannigan annals as The Day—or rather The Night—Aunt Alice Went Mad. It would be like playing telephone round the dinner table when they were kids: each telling would get more and more ridiculous, until finally the story would have Aunt Alice dressed in a toga wearing grape leaves on her head being fed the grapes by some bronzed young god—who might or might not resemble Gabriel—with oiled skin and wearing very few clothes. Alice yanked her clothes into place with a sound of irritation. Some nights, she thought, it simply didn’t pay to go to bed.

But the up side was, she also no longer felt quite so
old
..
..

*

Outside, the late
June morning was still cool and soft around the edges, but the stark yellow of the rising sun promised heat when the dew burned off. Alice stretched and for a moment simply stood to take in the morning’s beauty, looking up and down the street at the facing rows of matching houses. Sunlight glinted off windows, barely filtered through the cover of maple and locust leaves where the trees farther down lined the street. Lawns, both the ragged and the well-kept, glistened with dew; roses, petunias and pansies were alive with it. Serenity touched the neighborhood while there was no one about to see it.

Except here. Alice looked down at the porch steps where Becky awaited her, head bowed, face peeking out at her mother between long strands of dark brown hair. The big deep-lidded hazel eyes that had first attracted Alice to Matthew and were his unsung legacy to both of Alice’s daughters, blinked guiltily when Alice sat down on the chilly concrete.

She’s been lying to somebody, Alice thought, recognizing the look. But who to? Me? Michael?

She lifted a lock of Becky’s hair and tucked it behind her daughter’s ear. Again the red-rimmed dark-shadowed eyes blinked unhappily at her. Some deep-rooted sense of mother intuition told Alice that Becky had lied to her husband and not been quite straight with her mother. Wonderful, Alice thought, this was going to be one of
those.

“So,” she said neutrally, smoothing the rest of the tangled hair off Becky’s face. “Tell me about
it.
Start with how you got here.”

Becky hid her face in her knees. “I got a ride from a couple of guys who needed directions to the Detroit waterfront so they could get to Eastern Market or the Ethnic Festival,
I
forget which. They dropped me off up on Baldwin.
I
walked from there.”

“I
see,” Alice commented carefully. “It’s not quite five-thirty now, so that means you must have left East Lansing, what, about four?”

“Three-thirty.”

“What did Mike say when you left?”

Becky buried her face deeper between her knees and plucked an impatiens from the bunch Alice had planted beside the porch. “Mike’s working the third shift over at the hospital for the summer. He doesn’t know I’m gone yet.”

“Ah, Becky—”