Retreat to Love (19 page)

“Yeah, I’m not surprised.” I closed my eyes. “It’s good to be back with you, though.”

I could feel his smile warming the room, though my lids were still shut. “Who knew I’d miss you in one day?”

“I knew.”

“Yeah?”

I moaned as his fingers dug at a knot in my muscles. “Course. Just look at how adorable I am. What did you expect?”

“What, indeed?” He began to kiss the arc of my skull, moving towards the nape of my neck. “So, missions accomplished?”

I didn’t know if he meant my talk with Gran, my surviving the birthday party, or my run for supplies we wanted to procure without Margie’s explicit knowledge. But I nodded yes for all three of them. Over my massage, he agreed to keep what he knew about my grandfather a secret from Zach. “And your parents, of course,” he added, leaning in to nuzzle my spine.

I opened an eye. “Were you planning on having many private conferences with Frank and Bernadette?”

“You never know.”

I rolled over, pulling him down beside me. “True enough,” I smiled. He tasted so good—mint and sun and a hint of sweet coffee. An overwhelming desire to seize him and absorb him just as he was took me and I think he was a little startled when I dashed into the studio for a length of silk and used it first to blindfold him while I took his shirt off—slowly, slowly—and then to bind his wrists to the headboard. But unless it was a moan of protest, he didn’t mind.

I moved over him almost desperate to memorize his body, his reactions, his desires. I didn’t want to think about anything other than Caleb Kendall and the energy between us. He was ticklish just under his ribs, but not unbearably so—that was reserved for the backs of his knees. When I tongued the hollow at his sternum he wriggled with voracious pleasure. His pelvic bones were sharp but his abdomen strong within them, and his pubic hair arced gently and beautifully upwards towards his belly. He was an innie.

As I took neat little bites of his shoulders and chest, he wrapped his thighs around my waist and trapped me, “Hey!” I protested, but he claimed turnabout was fair play and swore he wouldn’t let me up until I reached up to untie him. Of course as I wriggled up to do so, he enveloped my nipple with his mouth and slid one leg in between my two for a meltdown of contact. And then when I was collapsing against him and his hands were free he flipped us over and twisted my wrists into the silk.

Before I could tug them out he had me bound to the corner of the bed and was grinning like he’d just won first prize in the county fair chili cook-off. “Well, what have we here?” he whispered deep into my ear. “A little lesson in equality for you, ma’am?”

I twisted a bit, just so he’d know I was objecting, but it only made the way his pelvis was pinning mine more liquid. “You may as well give in,” he added, talking now to my clavicle, “it’s no use struggling.” His fingers brushed my thighs, his palms cupped my hips. He kissed lower, nibbling in a spiral that sent my breasts into a taut frenzy to be sucked. But Caleb ignored my whimper, and lay his head on my stomach, breathing gently across my pubic mound as he told me it wasn’t very nice of me to have trapped him earlier. I started to apologize but had to stop when he murmured, “Shushhh, shush,” against my crotch.

Tears streamed down my cheeks and into my ears, and I thrashed my head to clear them. My hips were thrashing for another reason, and Caleb straddled my legs up over his shoulders and clamped my abdomen against the bed with his hands. He wasn’t strong enough to still my bucking crotch, though, and his occasional bites to my inner thighs didn’t do anything to convince me I should stay still. All I wanted in the world was for his mouth and tongue to follow the directions of my arching hips, but he kept whispering, “Now, now, who’s in control here? Settle down,” and pressing me back against the mattress. So I clamped my thighs against his head and held it in place, my will to move against him stronger than his to keep me still. After explosion four hundred and sixty-three, Caleb finally pulled himself away from me, and kneeled straddling me as I panted.

“My, my, my,” he grinned. “I missed you, too.”

“Prove it,” I managed to breathe, tugging at my ties. He moved forward to lean over my head and untie the knot on the headboard, which gave me a chance to ensure his erection was about as hard as it was possible for it to get. He froze in place, so I sat up enough to wrap my still-tied arms around his neck and lower us back to the sheets. He reached for a condom, moving quickly again as I teased him with kisses on his earlobes and gentle brushes of my soaking crotch against his. He moaned as he came into me and again I thought of how right it felt to be in a room with him.

I was drained by the time with my family, but Caleb was doing enough work for the two of us. Soon I found my legs and back responding independent of my brain, which thought we were taking a break. Our urgency grew and grew and grew and it wasn’t long—not too short, but not long—before we imploded together.

Wow.

I lay there leaking silent tears, feeling a little like a shallow fool when the word ‘love’ kept flashing through my brain, as if incredible chemistry in bed was the main criterion. Fortunately Caleb’s eyes were glistening, too, as he looked at me, so I cheered up. He eased my hair behind my ears with some sweet soft touches and asked what I was thinking. I just smiled and sighed.

“No fair holding out, lady. I’m here for more than just the awesome sex, you know. I wanna know what’s on your mind.”

“Just stuff about us. About chemistry and biology and history and psychology.” I laughed. “Sounds like my senior year of high school, huh?”

“What, no cheerleading practice?”

“Naw, that was for the pretty, big haired girls. I was in the Latin Club, though, does that count?”

“Absolutely.” How did he still taste like mint? I made a mental note to check what brand of toothpaste he used.

Footsteps on the path past my window to my door. We were just acing our timing. I shut the bedroom door all the way as Lizzy let herself into my sitting room.

“Ash?”

“I’m in here,” I answered. “Not alone, though.”

The strides towards the bedroom stopped.

Caleb’s sudden transfer of a pillow from under his head to over his crotch made me laugh. “You want me to come by in half an hour?”

“Uh, sure, that okay?” Lizzy asked through the door.

“Yeah, I’m just going to shower and I’ll head over. Oh, your beer is there in the box on the counter if you want to take it.”

She rummaged. I wondered if I’d brought all of the condoms and stuff into the bedroom already. “Cheers, Ash, see you in a bit. Bye, Caleb!”

Through compressed lips, Caleb muttered, “Bye.”

I peeked out the door—this not having direct access to the bathroom from the bedroom thing was getting to be a pain—to check the clarity of the coast. We dashed into the shower, giggling. Damn but I had a good time with this guy. Casting my mind back to the patchy men, I wondered if I would have said the same in the early phases with any of them. I didn’t think I was lying to myself: none of them were like Caleb.

Even as I discovered the sticky note Lizzy had left with my great-aunt Kitty’s Dublin phone number, his warmth and support grounded me. There was a lot of freedom with Caleb, a lot of feeling like it was the real me exploring life with the real him. And I was learning that the real me felt even realer with him around, than without.

A beautiful rain was falling—the kind that goes straight down, no wind to make it gush and slant, and it hit the roof with loud round flops. We lay and listened to it until I couldn’t stand it and got up to watch out the studio windows. The trees barely moved and the clearing was developing little pits in the dirt where the drops dug into the earth. But of course it was all just a precursor to the real weather, and simultaneously the temp dropped several degrees and the wind rushed in to drive the rain sloppily against the cabin. Within moments rivulets streaked haphazardly down the panes and the dirt in the clearing became streams of mud. I sighed and turned back to my room to get a sweatshirt. The night would be cold again.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I just don’t feel like doing anything now.”

“How long will this last?” I assumed he meant the storm, which was settling in for a loud party. But it looked to break for dinnertime, which was a blessing cause I was starving.

“Oh shit!”

Caleb sat up. “What?”

“We’re on dinner duty. Did you order anything?” I knew the answer—we’d been holed up in the cabin together for hours. He was, he claimed, thinking hard on what his next phase of the project would be, though thinking looked a hell of a lot like laying around on the love seat and drinking beer. But he’d kept me supplied with glasses of ice water and kisses, and stayed quiet so I could concentrate on my two-dimensional men, so I wasn’t complaining.

“There’s bound to be something we can make,” he ventured.

I sighed. “Exactly,” and tossed his flannel shirt at him. “Let’s go see if Lizzy will let us steal something from tomorrow.”

Typically, it was warmer outside than in, but wetter. The rain had slowed but the trees were shedding unpredictable drips and torrents. I laughed when Caleb jumped at the thunder. Californians and their habitual droughts. After semi-successful scrounging, we goofed around the Main House, listening to the rain.

Gran had written back to my email with Kitty’s contact info:

“Sweetheart—first the good news. I opened the packet that just arrived for you from Bluebonnet Expo and you’ve been juried! Both Hibiscus Nights and Comfort Food (my favorite excepting Chains, you know) are going to be exhibited. I’m delighted for you, and won’t stand for less than a grand prize from those people, if they know what’s good for them.

“On to other matters. Naturally I don’t mind you passing on the information from the Murphys. I was still in two (probably more) minds about getting the information, but once I had it, I realized I was glad. But I don’t think I’ll be doing anything about it. At least not at this juncture. Much as I would love to give that Kitty a piece of my mind, I can see nothing more than more hurt coming from that. I know you still honor it, but my request that you not tell your mother or anyone about it all still stands. Don’t be annoyed with me for repeating it, just put it down to your doddery old Gran’s quirky ways.

“Nothing else of note to report to you, except the opening of the magnolia buds. I imagine there aren’t any up there in your woods, so think about mine and smile.

“Much love to you, my dream-girl.

“Gran.”

Well, that left me high and low. I was delighted about the show—it was great regional exposure and a likely forerunner for Houston’s International Quilt Festival in the fall. Plus they’d rejected my submissions the last two years, so I felt vindicated.

But I ached that Gran was so torn about the Pappa news. If she’d been raging, I could have been strident in my support; if she’d been stricken with sadness, I could have been her shoulder to lean on; if she’d not minded, I could have been her sounding board about contact or proof or whatever. But instead she was somewhat all of those things, and there was no definitive place for me to set up emotional camp. I worried I’d be too passionate in the wrong direction. Having only written communication about it, too, was hard. I’d reply to the tone of one message, and by the time she got it, she was in another place.

I did my best, knowing good enough was still no good. But the next family email I got, the next morning, wasn’t from Gran. It was the first time since my arrival at FireWind that Bernadette had written:

“Dear Ashlyn—It was lovely to see you at my party, and thank you again for the pretty blanket. It means a lot to me. I know your Gran was happy to see you, too. We get more used than we know to having you so close, then when you’re gone we find ourselves surprised to miss you so. I want when you return for you to participate in a conversation with me and your uncles about Mom’s living arrangements. I don’t want to spring this on you suddenly, so I am planting the seed now. It is not urgent, but I know you want the best situation for her and I wouldn’t want to upset you by failing to include you. I’ve cause to worry about her mind-set and as you know, one cannot thrive in any environment without the mental peace to breathe deeply and sleep well. If we can do anything to help Mom attain that, I feel we owe it to her. I hope you agree. And again, I hope I’ve not unsettled you by bringing this up this way. It had been in my mind to touch on it, but now I feel I should open the dialogue in whatever way I can. Hence this message. I wish you many pleasant sleeps and all the energy to create that you seek up there. Frank and I send our love, Bernadette.”

Well, wow. I sprang up to pace, scaring one of Margie’s hummingbirds from the window feeder. The room wasn’t big enough for the strides I needed, though, so I hit the still-muddy trail out towards the lake. I managed to scare Hester, too, in a real communing with nature moment. Damn these birds.

I mean, what the hell brought this on? Bernadette a) treating me like an adult b) bringing up this nursing home threat in a freakin email c) acknowledging my gift almost as if she meant it d) sounding like maybe Zach was right and she’s scared of me and e) obviously reacting to some change in Gran that made her want to reach out to me sooner rather than when I got back to Houston.

Gran wouldn’t have talked to her about Pappa two days after telling me not to, would she?

I mean, if anyone was going to talk to Bernadette about it, it should be Gran. I realized that. But she’d said she didn’t want her kids to know. She’d been opposed to me mentioning it to a soul. So what was the deal? Was she so devastated and indrawn even Bernadette noted the change?

I had to reply.

I didn’t want to. I didn’t know what to say. Glancing at Rafa’s cabin, which looked empty, I let rip with a primal scream the likes of which I hadn’t loosed upon the world since the Inner Peace workshop Frank and Bernadette had enrolled me in senior year of high school.

After dinner, the gang showed up in my cabin. I tossed the printout of Bernadette’s message to the coffee table then yanked the cork out of a bottle of Chablis.

“I need to be there to figure out what’s going on,” I ranted. “She had to have said something. Otherwise this makes no sense, right? Either she said something or she is so bummed out she’s letting it show to Bernadette, and that’s just not her style.” I poured. “Or it wasn’t her style ever before. Maybe she is so depressed about this she’s letting it show, in which case I am an idiotic and callous fool for telling her about it.”

Wren took her glass. “Ash, you’re overreacting. No, you are. I see why you’re saying what you’re saying, but it’s not so bad.”

“She’s right,” muttered Caleb into his wine, I think afraid to meet my eye. I was beginning to think I was a too-severe person if the people I loved were afraid to stand up and contradict me.

And now I was thinking about loving Caleb as if it was for granted. I sat down heavily in the rolling desk chair. Great, even more grist for my emotional mill, as if I weren’t overflowing with grist already.

“Well, I think I should talk to Zach about this,” I said. “Maybe he can go to Houston and check the lay of the land.”

Lizzy was shaking her head.

“What?”

“Your gran told you not to.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not seven. I don’t have to do everything she says.”

“Fine, so don’t act like you’re seven,” she retorted. “She asked you not to, and it’s her relationships you’re talking about here, so you honor that.”

“It affects Zach and me, too.”

“How, exactly?”

“How? Because it’s our grandfather! It’s our aunts or cousins or whatever out there, unknown to us.”

“So?”

“So, we should have a voice in talking to Gran about what she’ll do with the information.”

“No, not really.” Lizzy sat forward. “Look, it makes no difference in your life to know or not know these Irish people. You don’t stand to gain anything from it, you’re not likely to stage a family get-together, you would just screw up their lives, too, if they knew about you.”

Wren nodded. “Yeah, the only one this affects is your gran. She’s the one who should decide how to disseminate the information, or even if she should. And she said don’t talk to Zach about it.”

“He wouldn’t tell her I told him, if I said not to.”

“And, what, you think she wouldn’t be able to tell?” Caleb asked. “Zach couldn’t hide that from her.”

He wasn’t exactly the most opaque person.

All my dramatic sighing was starting to irritate even me.

“Fine, I’ll keep it to myself.” I glared. “For now. When I get back home if she’s not doing okay and I can’t make her better I’ll tell Zach, though, so he can help me.”

“How’s he going to help?”

“I don’t know. He just will. He’s a helpful guy.”

“Don’t fight with me, I was just asking.” Caleb was getting all defensive on me, and worse, Lizzy and Wren weren’t sticking up for me. So fine. I dropped it and told them about the Bluebonnet Expo. Of course, being foreigners to my great state, they hadn’t heard much about our state flower and thought it sounded all very bucolic, but I took the high road and ignored them.