The Bookshop on Autumn Lane (15 page)

“Just a suggestion. You could do the same,” he whispered. He was looking at me with uncontrolled lust. His smooth skin felt like fire on the back of my knuckles. His uneven, husky breathing and half-lidded eyes told me all I needed to know. This was no polite act from Kit. There was no mistaking his body's reaction. I liked the honesty. And now I knew his desire was as strong as my own.

I lowered my head and pressed my lips to the point at the bottom of his neck where the pulse was visibly throbbing. Then I kept going, punctuating each button with a kiss. Until there was no more shirt left.

I put my hands on his shoulders and climbed into his lap again. “Poor prisoner. Maybe you need a little lap dance before I get started.”

I nipped him behind the ear and he growled, “I'm a fabulous tipper.”

He buried his head in my neck and ran his tongue along my collarbone. I arched my back and rubbed myself against him. My advantage was unfair, straddling him like this. I slid down until I was on my knees.

Unbuttoning the front of his pants. I asked, “Is it time to flip the switch?”

His smoldering eyes were the only answer I needed.

* * *

Someone caressed my face. It tickled. In a good way. I smiled, thinking about the way Kit and I tripped over each other on the way to the upstairs apartment last night. The electric chair may have shocked Kit, but his performance afterward had stunned me as well. When I untied Kit . . . finally, it was to discover a whole new side of him. He was insatiable. Wild. Starving but never sated. I wasn't as experienced as Kit thought. But something about his reaction to my seductive play was different than anything I had known. The intensity was surprising. And wonderful.

Fingers brushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen over my eye and a cool breeze grazed my cheek. Not fingers. I opened my eyes to see something white billowing over me. The curtain.

Strange, I hadn't left the window open.

I rolled onto my side and reached for Kit. It was still dark. But there was nothing beside me but a crumpled sheet and a lopsided pillow.

“Kit?” Suddenly the bed felt too big and very empty. But it wasn't just Kit's absence that made a void. Moby was gone too. I had become used to him taking up half the bed.

I rolled off and nearly knocked over my old box of condoms we'd almost used up. I padded barefoot and bare naked into the living room. “Hey, guys?” My toe bumped into a stack of books I'd forgotten about. Damn things.

I turned on a lamp. “Where are you?”

Well, nothing like being loved and left. And he'd taken my temporary dog companion too. They couldn't be far. Downstairs I flipped the light switch and gazed around the store. But no one was there. Not even my friendly ghost. The back door was partially open. I pulled on my tapestry coat and slipped my feet in the boots I had kicked off last night in my frenzy to undress.

Outside, a cold wind tangled my hair. I clutched the front of the coat. The moon was low on the western horizon and a faint glow had started in the east. Mickey was somewhere in my pile of clothes. It must have been close to sunrise.

Several early birds were beginning the day. They called back and forth in light, lilting songs. I wasn't much for the wee hours, but this morning made me appreciate the beauty of the predawn light.

I scanned the fields behind the store, but all I saw was the faint shadow of the tall grasses blowing in the wind. Main Street was quiet. Too early for anyone else to be awake yet. Even the traffic from M-33 was silent.

As I walked down the middle of Main Street toward them, naked but for the coat and boots, I thought of all the things I was going to tease Kit about. I looked toward Echo Lake. I could make out movement and a faint outline at the spit of land by the shore.

He stood on the sandy beach, his hands in the pockets of the very same pants I had removed in less than two seconds last night. His shirt hung loose and flapped in the breeze. With the dim glow of the lake behind him, he looked like an apparition.

Moby saw me first. He jumped over a pile of driftwood someone had used for an old bonfire. Wagging his tail and his body with it, he nuzzled my hand, seeking forgiveness for leaving me in the middle of the night. Kit watched us approach with a brooding expression that reminded me of a gothic hero in a BBC film. I wrapped my arms around him. His shoulders were stiff. I took the hint and stepped back.

He nodded toward Moby. “He needed to go out.”

“Really. He usually has a bladder the size of a horse.”

The wind kept playing games with my hair so I turned and faced it, freeing my hands enough to clutch my coat more tightly.

From my vantage point I could see Kit's profile as he stared out at the lake. He stepped back until we were yards apart.

The silence settled over us and felt stifling.

“So Kit—”

“Trudy, I—”

We spoke at the same time.

“Sorry?” he asked.

“Nothing. What was it you were going to say?” A heaviness settled on my chest. It was ridiculous. I didn't care about this morning-after stuff. I was fine enjoying sex and moving on.

I stumbled over my words. “If you don't want to do anything else together—fine. I mean, lots of people have sex once—I mean one night.” We actually did it more than once. “Feel free to move on to someone else, one of your loyal followers—it's all fine. It was just mutual pleasure. I don't believe in relationships and bonds that made people speak and do things they don't mean. I'm not like that—”

He cleared his throat. “I was just going to say that I didn't mean to be so—so ardent last night.”

“Ardent?” What kind of word was that to use?

“You know what I mean. I was just a little avid. I didn't mean to be so . . . it wasn't like me to be that way. I didn't mean it to happen.”

And there it was. Dropped like a bomb between us.

“You regret it?”

“
Regret
is a word that expresses sorrow that something happened. I don't feel that. But I do feel that it can't happen again. You. Me. We are here for just a short time. And we have responsibilities that don't necessarily . . .”

“Don't necessarily what?”

“They don't fit together.”

I tossed my head and turned toward the lake. The wind whipped my hair into tangles that would take time to comb out. I didn't feel like looking at him. All sad and full of whatever the word was that wasn't exactly regret.

“Whatever. It was good. No worries.” And I thought we fit together pretty good.

“Trudy, don't take it the wrong way. Maybe you'll understand in time—”

“Time?” I laughed. “Hey, Kit. Don't make this into a big deal. I'm no shy virgin and I was the one who attacked you in the chair. I'm here for a short time and you are too. You wanna have some fun while we're here, I'm up for it. You want to part ways and just put books on shelves and drink tea, that's fine too.”

He put a hand on my bare neck. “I don't mean to sound so cold—”

“Don't be silly.” I shrugged off his hand and reached down and picked up a stick at my feet. “Hey boy, go get it,” I said. I threw the stick as far on the grass behind us as I could.

Moby ran after it and sniffed. Instead of bringing it back, he sat down and began to chew. Even the dog didn't want to play with me. “So it's like four in the morning or something. I'm going to try to go back to bed,” I said.

My throat felt funny. I couldn't say anything else. I must be losing my ability to have a proper one-night stand. I turned to go.

“Come on, dog.” I suppose I should be grateful that the dog would come to my bed. He didn't have to. He was as free to leave me as Kit.

“Wait a minute, Trudy.” Kit grabbed my hand. “I don't want you to go back alone.”

I dug my nails into the fabric of my coat. “Don't be polite, goddamn it!”

“What?”

“Stop thinking about how I feel. What do
you
want?” Despite my intentions, my anger was rising to the surface.

“I don't want to leave you alone like this.”

“I've been alone for the past fifteen years. I can take that. What I can't take is your polite pity. I am not one of the ladies of this town. Don't treat me that way!”

“I don't treat you like them.” His glasses caught a faint glimmer of light from the horizon.

“Yes you do. When you act the way you think you should, instead of the way you want to—you treat me like them. You act like a fake!”

“That is ridiculous. Did it look like I was faking it last night?”

I poked him in the chest. “No. That felt real. Then this morning you turned back into a fraud.”

“Being cautious and thinking something through does not make me a fraud. I'm not prevaricating.”

“Pre—? Whatever! I just want you to be honest.”

The wind blew his hair up. I resisted the urge to smooth it down. His shoulders slumped. “Honesty can be very complicated.”

“I find it very simple. You start by doing and saying what you want.”

“What
I
want? Ha! If you only knew. You wouldn't be happy with me . . .” His voice trailed off in the breeze.

I turned back to Main Street. “I should have known. You aren't capable of being honest with your feelings.”

“You have no idea what I am capable of.” He moved around to block my path.

“You're right. Because you never let anyone know.”

“Wait. I don't want you to go.”

“You don't? Why? Because you don't want me to be alone and feel bad, my lord?”

“No!” In the pre-glow of dawn his eyes looked black and fierce.

“Then why, for God's sake!”

“Because right now I want to make love to you again. That's what I want. I want you!”

“You do?” I put my hands on my hips and my coat fell open.

“I do!”

“Then come over here and prove it.”

He closed the distance between us in two steps, wrapping his hand around my bare hip and pulling me close with one rough movement. We collided in an exquisite crash that made my senses explode. Before I could tease him his lips were on mine in a kiss that was hard and urgent.

If he thought he was ardent before this, he was single-minded and bold now.

He reached down and lifted me, grinding his hips against me and forcing me to wrap my legs around him. I clung to him and arched my back, crying out when his lips travelled down my neck.

Everything spun away from me; time, place, sounds. My world was Kit. In my eagerness to get his clothes off I unbalanced us. We fell backward and I braced for the impact. But Kit had me. He cushioned my fall, making the sandy beach as soft as a down pillow.

Kit looked down at me with a satisfied smile and slowed his pace. His kisses grew softer as he peppered me with his tongue and his touch until I cried out. He took his time. He savored my body with a focus that made me feel amazing. As if I were special.

When we came together part of me cracked open. Like a new fissure at the bottom of the ocean, Kit exposed something inside me that was ablaze like hot lava.

With my coat spread beneath us, and the first blush of morning behind his head, I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.

I
woke up to the warmth of sunshine and Kit's smile. “How long have you been staring at me?”

“Since the first morning I saw you in that towel.” He kissed me on the nose and then moved to my lips. They weren't the only part of my body that was pleasantly raw. I could feel the delightfully chaffed skin and whisker rash all over.

When the kiss ended, Kit looked down his adorable aquiline nose with hooded morning eyes. The heat in the apartment hadn't kicked in yet. The air was crisp and I burrowed under the blankets and snuggled, savoring the warmth and the smooth, hard places of his body. As if on cue, the grind of a garbage truck and the pounding of someone hammering next door reminded us that the morning was almost halfway gone.

“Let's stay in bed and forget the world outside.”

Kit smoothed his fingertip along my brow. “I have a better idea. You finish that chair and I'll organize the west side of the store. Then you can come to my place tonight. We'll open a bottle of wine and relax by the fireplace.”

“It turns me on when you get bossy like that!” I ruffled his hair.

“We have some things to talk about—”

“Forget the blimey talk, you silly Brit. Tea and crumpets are for talk. But wine and a roaring fire are for sex!” Then I rolled off the bed and fumbled in the closet for my clothes. For once my words had made an impact. Kit sat on the edge of the bed watching me quietly. He grabbed his pants from the floor and almost fell over as it took him several tries to get his feet in the right holes. I laughed and pulled on an old sweater and jeans.

“I love the way you wear clothes,” he eventually said after he fastened his pants. He sat down and ran his hand along a silk scarf with butterflies I had left on the bedpost.

“The credit goes to my mother.”

“Really?” He seemed fascinated. I pulled out a Japanese silk
yukata
robe from the closet. “A lot of this is hers.”

“Even the boots you always wear?”

“God no. Just the good stuff. I like to shop at vintage stores and supplement her pieces, of course. All the boots and shoes are mine. My feet are bigger than hers were . . . and I lost her shoes when she—” I paused and shook my head.

The morning sun played on the back of Kit's hair, making me blink. “She what?” he asked.

“She loved shoes.”

“Tell me about her.”

I don't know why I felt compelled to open up. But last night had changed things between us. I snapped the button on my old jeans and grabbed the butterfly scarf.

I brought it to my face. “Sometimes I imagine it still smells like Mom.” I folded it reverently and placed it on a box. “When I was young, she let me play dress-up in her closet . . .”

“Women and their clothes . . .” Kit drawled.

“Says the man who could be a J. Crew model.”

“Tell me more.”

I sat down next to him and hugged my knees to my chest. “Mom was warm and funny and thrifty. But her guilty pleasure was clothes. The one advantage to living overseas is that, whether we were in Europe or Asia, there were always great places to shop. Korea had amazing markets for finding off-label clothes. Germany was great for handmade clothing. Shoes were best in Italy. Mom spent her free time hunting for great bargains and vintage clothing. I got to go along whenever I wasn't in school. My favorite moments were at home, playing dress-up in the mirror.

“But her shoes were the best. I begged and begged her to let me wear them to school. But she always said ‘no'.”

Kit pulled my toes into his lap and rubbed. “I can't imagine you would have looked normal wearing grown-up shoes to school at that age.”

I closed my eyes, enjoying the foot massage. “I tried once. I left the house one morning when she wasn't looking. We were the same size then. I wobbled all the way to school.” It seemed so long ago.

“What happened?”

“My teacher looked at me strangely. The kids in my class laughed at me. But I didn't care. I was wearing the beautiful black four-inch pumps that I loved. I fell twice. By noon my feet were throbbing. By the end of school I had started forming blisters. I took them off on the way home, regardless of the fact that it was cold enough to snow in Itaewon.”

Kit dropped my feet and pulled me close. “Did she find out?”

“Don't all mothers have that sixth sense? When I got home, she was waiting. She looked down at my blistered, red feet and took the shoes from me.” I could still picture how she let them dangle off her index finger.

“Was she mad?”

“Not really. She helped me spread lotion on the blisters. I remember she said, ‘Shoes are the one thing you can't really borrow, Trudy. It's not just the fit. People's feet have different places to go. You have to wear your own shoes in life.' ”

Kit pulled me onto his lap. “Your mother was a wise woman.”

“You would have liked her.” I put my head on Kit's shoulder and felt a peace I hadn't felt in years. It was good to talk about her. “My father gave all her beautiful shoes away after she died. I was so mad. I stuffed as many of her clothes as I could into that old Samsonite suitcase and covered them up with my own clothes so he wouldn't see them. I was lucky to have something left of her to save.”

“Good for you. I suspect you carry more of your mother with you than her clothes, though.”

That was a beautiful thought. I wrapped myself in it and stayed in the circle of his arms, letting the warmth envelope me.

After a few minutes, I said, “You'll appreciate the fact that her favorite reminder after that came from a book. Something about never knowing a person until you wore their shoes or walked around in their skin or something like that.”

He put his arms around me.
“To Kill a Mockingbird
.
”

“I should have known. A bird story.”

He kissed my nose and held me close, sensing my need to pause and catch my breath. Talking about my mother was like unraveling another layer of myself. For someone comfortable with nudity, it was a strange feeling to be exposed this way. I felt raw and naked.

“I think you need another pair of shoes. The ones you had on yesterday were—” Kit looked down at my feet and his eyes went wide. “You did pick up all your clothes you dropped by those two coffins, didn't you?”

I froze. “I didn't even think about it.” We tumbled out of bed and dressed like silly children, giggling the whole time.

Before he left, he cupped my chin in his hands. “See you later.”

I liked the way he said it. It sounded like it came with a guarantee. I trailed my finger along the tip of his perfectly formed ear. Nothing on his body that wasn't perfect. Even his toes were shaped like Adonis's.

When he was gone I stood and stretched. It was a beautiful morning and I was ready to return to the Nightmare on Main Street next door. While Moby ate breakfast, I crept into the store from the back door and grabbed my clothes. The lone person in the insane asylum was the lady who had been with the deputy sheriff the other day. The only clue she might have seen me was a crooked grin that she covered with her hand.

I dumped my clothes in the apartment and held the back door open for Moby. We both needed a long walk.

Years ago, before I first came, there had been a fire at an old barn a mile away. It had swept across the field, almost reaching town. By the time I arrived in Truhart, nothing remained of the field but a charred and barren stretch that matched my mood during that fourteenth year of my life. Now nature had returned to the land. The autumn grass was golden and brittle and the sun flickered off the jack pines that had grown tall among the brush.

Moby ambled from tree to tree, sniffing and marking his territory. I walked with my hands in the pockets of my coat, trying to stop smiling like a silly teenager. The shy little bird who was becoming my friend flitted above us, singing a sweet repetitive song over and over. Like a gentle reminder no one understood.

This . . . “thing” with Kit was not normal for me. Despite the impression I gave off, I hadn't slept with scores of men. The ones I had been with had been convenient. Like friends with benefits. I was with those men because we shared things. A love for vinyl records, a summer of working in a theater company, or a trip along the trailhead to Sentinel Dome in Yosemite. Ironically, Kit and I had absolutely nothing in common. We were as different as Lulu and the sleek black Ford truck he drove. Despite that, I felt something that I never felt with the other lovers in my life. He was so—nice. And smart. And decent. And sexy. I wanted to know him, read his moods. Understand him. His obsession with books, his affection for all things American, the fact that he hated tea and loved football. I wanted to find everything that made him happy and feed it to him on a platter, just because. And even though I felt no affection for those things and probably never would, I wanted to watch joy play across his face and know I had helped put it there.

Maybe I would look back some day and say,
Oh that was my Truhart phase—the time I cleaned out a bookstore with the British guy and we slept together
. But, I doubted it. This didn't feel like anything I had experienced. This time with Kit felt like I imagined Angkor Wat would feel. Like a temple in the jungle where I could discover something wonderful.

He challenged me to think about so many things. To accept what I had been avoiding. Not just about Aunt Gertrude and the store and the town. Being with Kit was like having a mirror around. I didn't need to look at myself to get through the day, but having the option of looking at my reflection made me more sure of who I was. I felt better because of him.

I giggled and raised my face to the sun. “What the hell am I doing?” It was more of a hope than a complaint. I looked down to see Moby staring at me with raised ears, as if he wanted to answer me. Instead he wagged his tail and put his nose back down to the ground.

I kicked a pinecone and shook my head. I was overthinking this. “Come on, boy. I'm hungry. Let's get some grub.”

We rerouted and had almost reached the back of Cookee's when I heard the little bird again. I had an old packet of oyster crackers in the pocket of my coat I had been saving for Moby. I smashed the packet with my fist, making the pieces more manageable for the little guy, and spread the crumbs on the ground.

“I'm going to have to remind Kit to tell me all about chickadees in the Midwest,” I whispered, trying not to scare him. I held Moby and watched the little guy eating just four yards away. When I turned to go I almost ran headfirst into the lens of a camera.

“Oh!” I reached out and steadied the frail man with the hooked nose, whose camera I'd almost run into.

“Shh . . .” he said with a finger over his mouth. He pointed behind me and I looked back at the little chickadee.

“Isn't he cute?” I whispered.

“Do you know what that is?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“That's a Kirtland's warbler,” he said with wide eyes.

“A what?”

“A Kirtland's warbler.” He said it again, with reverence. “Very rare.”

The tiny bird must have sensed our attention. He grabbed a crumb and flew away.

I turned to the man. “Rare, you said?”

“Kirtland's warblers have been on the list of endangered species for years. They can only be found in the spring and summer in this region of the state. That little guy is very late flying south. Just like me.”

“Really?” A buzzing started in my ears.

“Whole ecotours are scheduled around those little guys. I've been looking for them all summer. I can't believe I was lucky enough to get close and snap a good picture of him.” He held out his digital camera for me to view.

I nodded absently. “Are you absolutely sure that was a Kirt—Kir—”

“Kirtland's warbler?” He pulled a field guide out of his pocket. “Absolutely. See? The yellow breast, the blue-black wings, little broken outline of yellow around the eyes.”

I studied the field guide. The picture fit. He was right.

“And then there's that lilting sound with that little upturn at the end as if he's asking a question.”

“I heard the song just now.” I heard it several times, in fact. I had pointed it out to Kit.

“They love to make their home in a jack-pine forest. People thought they were extinct for a while. But they are making a grand comeback. I can't wait to show my friends in the Keys when I head out next week.”

I thought about the first day I'd met Kit. It was the first time I'd seen the warbler. And Kit hadn't even noticed. He was too busy looking at books.

“Do many people outside the area know about them?”

“Birders and nature lovers do. Here.” He handed me the binoculars. “Can you see him at the edge of the clearing?”

I put the binoculars to my eyes. But I wasn't really looking. My mind was thinking about Kit. Something had been bothering me since I first caught him in the back alley. His fascination with the store and the books. And his strange disregard for the little bird.

I handed the binoculars back to the older man. “You seem to know a lot about birds.”

“Oh, I know a lot about this area. I get so excited about these things that everyone teases me that I'm the local expert on the flora and fauna of the county. Name's Nestor Nagel.” We shook hands. “It's hard not to love the area. Truhart has some of the best morel-mushroom picking in the state. Our rare plants like trillium and lady's slipper are the pride of the county. And then there's that little guy.” He pointed to the bird, who was back again.