Days Like This (5 page)

And then, in the way of
nightmares, he opened his eyes, and they weren’t Danny’s eyes at all.  Instead
of that summer-sky blue, they were hard and evil and yellow.  The hideous
Thing-That-Wasn’t-Danny reached out a bloody hand toward her, and it had claws
where there should have been neatly manicured fingernails, and she had to get
away, had to escape from this monster before she suffered the same fate. 

She yanked frantically at the
door handle, but it wouldn’t budge.  Tried to roll down the window, but it was
jammed.  She began kicking at the passenger-side window, kicking harder and
harder as the Thing drew ever closer, until she felt its hot, rancid breath on
her neck.  But the window refused to break, and the Thing smiled, showing
razor-sharp teeth, and it was going to tear her to shreds, and she couldn’t escape,
couldn’t do anything but scream and scream and scream—

She awoke with a jolt, her heart
hammering, her breath coming in short little gasps. 
Oh, my God
, she
thought. 
Oh, my God.

Trying to slow her breathing, she
glanced around the bedroom to orient herself.  The room was hot and sticky, and
the fan they’d put in the window, its whirring blades fluttering the curtain,
wasn’t doing much more than redistributing the thick, humid air.  Parched, she desperately
needed a drink.  Beside her, Rob slept hard and peacefully, the way he always
did. 

Still trembling from the
nightmare, she eased away from him and sat on the edge of the bed.  Took a
long, cleansing breath and stood.  Reached for the robe she kept on a nearby
chair.

From the darkness behind her, a groggy
voice said, “Where you going?”

She hesitated, the robe in her
hands.  Slipped it on, tied the belt, and turned back toward the bed.  “I’m
just going downstairs to get a drink.  Go back to sleep.”

The kitchen was cooler than her bedroom
had been.  Moving swiftly and surely in the darkness, she took a glass from the
cupboard and filled it with water, icy-cold, refreshing and wonderful.  She
drank until the glass was empty, then set it in the sink and stood there
running cold water over her wrists.

This December would mark four
years since that terrible night when Danny died.  Yet the nightmares hadn’t
started until a year ago, so soon after she married Rob that the connection was
impossible to miss.  Dr. Freud would certainly have something to say about
that.  Was it guilt that generated these gory horror-fests?  If so, she had no
reason to feel guilty.  She’d done nothing wrong.  They’d waited nearly two
years, a respectable length of time for a widow to mourn her husband before
becoming sexually active again.  Rob had—for the most part—kept his distance,
had allowed her to come to her own conclusions about the direction their
relationship was headed. 

But Danny had been her love and her
life for thirteen years, the only man she’d ever slept with, and even though
she knew it was ridiculous, in some small part of her, it still felt disloyal,
being with another man that way—and enjoying it so damn much.  She’d been so
young and innocent when she met Danny, only eighteen, and she’d fallen hard and
fast.  Being with him had been heaven and it had been hell.  She’d worked incredibly
hard to keep their marriage intact.  But there had been something missing in
him, something broken that couldn’t be fixed.  Looking back from the vantage
point of thirty-five years spent living on this planet, she couldn’t help
wondering:  If she were to offer advice to that naïve eighteen-year-old version
of herself, what would she say?

Step away from the Magic Man. 
Yes, he may be pretty and shiny and sparkly and new, and yes, he may offer
untold delights.  But along with those delights come heartaches.  Sorrow.  So
much pain.  In the end, you may not find him worth it.  Run away now, while you
still have time!

And yet.  And yet.  She didn’t
regret those thirteen years.  They’d loved each other with a desperation bordering
on obsession.  No matter how bad things got, no matter what wedge drove them
apart, she and Danny were always drawn back to each other by some force she’d
never been able to explain.  Even after Katie died and everything went to hell,
even after she recognized that her feelings for Rob had turned into something complicated
and unnerving and sexual, even then, that same sick obsession had driven her
back to Danny.

And there was still the other
side of the coin, the side she couldn’t ignore.  If she’d never met Danny, she
wouldn’t be here with Rob today.  She would probably be married to Jesse, and living
in that big house by the river, with three or four kids and a husband she cared
for but didn’t love.  A thirty-something housewife, aging too rapidly, mourning
her lost youth, trying to minimize her regrets, and yearning like some lovelorn
teenager for the kind of passion she would probably never experience.

The kitchen light came on,
startling her, and she blinked rapidly to adjust her eyes.  She hadn’t heard
his footsteps.  Casey turned off the faucet, dried her hands on a dish towel,
and turned to face her husband.

He’d thrown on a pair of jeans. 
Tight ones.  Long and lean and rangy, he had wide shoulders and well-developed
biceps—honed by years of playing scorching rock guitar—a flat stomach and
narrow hips, and a dark triangle of silky chest hair tapering to a slender vee that
pointed directly toward paradise.  After the better part of two decades spent
trying to fatten him up, she’d finally managed to put a few pounds on him over
the winter, and those pounds had landed in all the right places.  Shirtless and
barefoot, the man was a walking advertisement for sex. 

Her mouth went dry, and everything
inside her melted.  He had no idea how the sight of him like this affected her,
and she had no intention of ever telling him, because it seemed undignified for
a woman her age to lust so heartily after her own husband. 

Maybe his lack of ego was part of
his charm; in spite of the long list of women who had come and gone before her,
he still didn’t recognize his own attractiveness.  Rob MacKenzie wasn’t
handsome, not in any conventional sense.  At first glance, he seemed quite
ordinary, until you got close enough to look into those soft green eyes and see
the kindness there.  Even then, a woman might dismiss him as a lightweight, a
nice guy who would always finish last, until he flashed one of those zillion-megawatt
smiles, his secret weapon, and reduced said woman to a helpless puddle of goo.

“Another nightmare?” he said.

She should know better than to
try to sneak around his built-in radar.  He always knew.  Always.  “I’m okay.”

Rob knew she kept reliving the
accident in her sleep, knew the dreams were horrifying.  But she’d never told
him the details, and she never would.  He knew better than to ask.  There was
only so far they could take the
no boundaries
thing.  Even she and Rob
had certain lines they didn’t cross, places they didn’t go.  They never discussed
his first wife.  And they never talked about the accident.

He stepped closer, slipped his
arms around her waist.  She pressed her mouth to the center of his chest in a
soft kiss.  Silky chest hair tickled her nose.  “Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

Her hands idly sliding up and
down his back, she lay her face against his chest and let herself wallow in the
absolute rightness of being with him.  He tucked her head under his chin and
they swayed together, contentment rolling off them in waves.  This was the way
marriage was supposed to be.  Easy and open.  Not tainted by rivers of darkness
that ate away at its foundations until it could no longer stand without assistance.

Eventually, he said, “Can’t keep
your hands off me, can you, Fiore?”

Against his warm skin, she
smiled.  “I’m just admiring all that delicious male pulchritude.”

“Pulchritude,” he said.  “That’s
a big word.”

“It is.  Do I get extra points
for all those syllables?”

“You get extra points, sweetheart,
just for breathing.  You hungry?”

She tilted her head and looked up
at him.  “It’s always the same with you, isn’t it, MacKenzie?  Food and sex,
sex and food.  That’s all you ever think about.”

“Hey, a man has to survive, and
there are certain basic building blocks to survival.  One is food, the other one’s
sex.  And maybe indoor plumbing, although the jury’s still out on that.”

“If my vote counts for anything,
I’m all for indoor plumbing.”

“Of course you are.”  He patted
her fanny, let his hand rest there.  “You’re a girl.”

“And aren’t you glad I am?”

“I remain ever grateful that you’re
a girl.  This whole relationship would be really awkward if you weren’t.  So
what do you say?  I’m starving.  We never ate dinner.  Let’s heat it back up.”

The kitchen clock read 2:37 a.m. 
It wasn’t as though it would be the first time; they had a tradition of
late-night eating going back nearly two decades.  “Why not?” she said, and
stepped out of his arms.  “You open a bottle of wine, and I’ll reheat the food.”

“Babydoll,” he said, and leaned
to kiss the tip of her nose, “you read my mind.”

He hated like hell to wake her. 

She looked so relaxed, so
comfortable, sleeping face down with her dark hair spilling over her bare
shoulders and across the pillow, that he wished he could let her stay this way
forever.  Casey was typically an early riser, but they’d been up for half the
night.  After the wine and the reheated dinner, they’d managed to squeeze in a very
satisfying round of canoodling. 

This morning, he’d let her sleep
as late as he dared.  He’d been up for two hours already, had gotten in an
eight-mile run and a long, hot shower and had sipped his first cup of coffee on
the way into town to top off the Explorer’s gas tank.  Under normal
circumstances, he might have crawled back into bed and stayed there with her,
their limbs intertwined in a random tangle of post-dawn wedded bliss.  But
their particular brand of normal was about to undergo a sea change, and he had
no idea what the end result would look like. 

Atkinson, the attorney, was
expecting them around noon, and it would take at least three and a half hours
to get to Boston.  Maybe longer, depending on traffic.  So he crouched down
beside the bed, coffee mug in hand, swept aside her dark cloud of hair, and
pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder.

“Mmph.”

He recognized that sound, knew it
well.  Translated, it meant,
Go away and leave me alone
.  Prepared for
the challenge, he ran a finger down the center of her spine.  She reached for a
pillow and draped it over her head, and he used the final weapon in his
arsenal, tilting the coffee mug so the aroma of fresh-ground Colombian beans
wafted directly up her nose.

That did the job.  She flung the
pillow aside and with obvious reluctance, opened her eyes. 

“Morning, gorgeous,” he said.

She wet her lips and said in a
groggy voice, “You fight dirty.”

He grinned.  “I know your
weaknesses.”

She sat up, wrapping the sheet
around her modestly, as if he hadn’t already seen and explored in depth every
inch of that hot little body.  Prudishness was one of her quirks that he found
alternately endearing and maddening.  He leaned forward, gave her a lingering
kiss, and handed her the mug of coffee.  “Thank you,” she said, and took a
sip.  “What time is it?”

“Almost eight.  We really need to
roll.  You want to grab breakfast on the road, or should I just make toast?”

“Toast is fine.”  She took
another sip and closed her eyes.  “Once I get a shower and some caffeine, I’ll
be human again.  I promise.”

“You’re dragging this morning.  I
guess I was too much for you last night.  Must be a
looove
hangover.”

She opened her eyes, studied him
at length.  “Don’t flatter yourself, MacKenzie.”

He grinned.  “Woman, do you have
any idea how much irreparable damage you just did to my poor, battered ego?”

“Tell your poor, battered ego to
stop fishing for compliments.  If I have any complaints, I’ll let you know.”

“So I at least performed
adequately on what may have been our last opportunity for the next decade to
have hot jungle sex?”

She reached out a hand and
straightened his collar.  “You got the job done, Flash.  And it won’t be a
decade.  It’ll only be three years.”

“Only three years without sex.  I
feel so much better.”

Over the rim of her coffee mug,
she gave him one of those heart-stopping smiles that always turned him inside
out.  “Hand me my robe, my incredibly oversexed man, and go make toast.”

He picked up the ice-blue silk
robe she’d hung neatly over the back of a chair.  “Oversexed?”  He handed it to
her.  “Hardly.  No pun intended.”

“Toast,” she said.  “Vamoose! 
Give me ten minutes to shower and get dressed.”

Most women, when they said ten
minutes, meant an hour.  But his wife was a low-maintenance woman, and when she
said ten minutes, she meant ten minutes.  Punctuality was another of her
primary character traits.  Twenty minutes later, beneath clear blue skies, they
were on the road, both of them nursing coffee and private thoughts.  He glanced
over at her, took a sip of coffee, and said, “You’re quiet this morning.”  He
suspected the enormity of this had finally hit her.

She turned to look at him, her
opaque sunglasses hiding her eyes, making it impossible to gauge her mood.  “It’s
a lot to take in.”

“Are you sure you’re really cool
with this?  It’s different for me.  She’s my kid.  I have a blood connection
with her.  But for you—”

“Come on, Rob.  Do you really
think I’m that shallow?”

Eyes on the road ahead, he said, “Of
course not.  I didn’t mean it that way.  But part of me feels like I’m forcing
her on you, and you’re too polite to tell me to take a long walk off a short
pier.”