Whatever Remains (30 page)

             
“Yeah?” His smile was strange: breathless, and, almost, disappointed.

             
Her heart squeezed. “From you,” she amended. “I needed it from you.”

             
When she reached for him, he was hard, and his hips bucked at the contact. He entered her on a strong thrust that snatched her breath, his tempo instantly animal.

             
“Go on,” he urged against her ear. “You know you wanna watch.”

             
She did. She tipped her head back again and sunk her nails in his shoulders, eyes on the mirror and the flex and coil of his powerful body above her.

             
He was hers. When the world blew apart and he slumped beside her, after they finally stirred and crawled up to the head of the bed, managed to get beneath the covers and tangled together, the truth dawned. When he reached over and clicked off the lamp and wrapped himself around her, Jade knew the real reason that he’d never told her about his marriage. He didn’t want that to be a part of his story; because he was hers, and even if he’d fought against the idea for five years, it was inescapable.

20

              “
I
refuse to make him breakfast.”

             
Jade – blinking against the morning sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows – tried to keep the exasperation from her face as she glanced at Jeremy. He was at the counter, dressed for the day and dusted with hay, barefoot and tossing together a simple syrup fruit salad while Keely begged politely for a handout at his feet. Ben was at the table, browsing through the paper and sipping coffee.

             
“Did I ask you to?” she fired back.

             
He made a face. “It’s seven and you’re just now up. Clearly, you had no plans for getting horse-breakfast ready – they’re all fine, by the way – much less your own. I can only assume since he’s here, that you’ll expect me to cook for him too.”

             
Over at the table, Ben made cat claws with one hand without taking his eyes from the paper.

             
Jade choked back a sudden laugh and composed a serious expression for her wounded friend. She was so tired, it was a miracle she was standing. She’d awakened at ten till, the sun already up, one of Ben’s arms beneath her head and the other around her waist. He’d turned off her alarm and fallen back to sleep. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d overslept, and it had left her feeling disoriented and shaky. The company, though – the man clutching her back against his chest, smelling like sex and her lavender soap – was lovely. “I’m sorry,” she said, with some sincerity. “I know it was my morning to feed, but I was exhausted – ”

             
“From all the bed-thumping sex that woke me up at three-thirty a.m., yeah, I know.”

             
She cringed. They had one rule about dates sleeping over: no obnoxious sound effects. “I’m sorry.”

             
He set the salad aside with a
thump
and went to the fridge for bacon. His look said,
you should be
.

             
“You’re making bacon?” Ben asked from the table.

             
“Not for you, I’m not.”

             
After last night – all of last night – she was finding it hard to be patient about Jeremy’s Ben-hate. “Remy, go sit down and I’ll make breakfast. I don’t know what else to say but ‘sorry.’”

             
He looked betrayed, and that annoyed her. “Go.” She shooed him off. “Sit. Sulk. Whatever.”

             
With deliberate slowness, he laid the bacon package down beside the heating skillet and went to the window, staring through it with blank insolence.

             
Jade sighed as she took up his place and peeled a strip of bacon off the rasher. She didn’t believe Jeremy would make her choose, but if he did…she had no idea what she’d do. She had a distinct feeling the father of her child would win out.

             
She cooked in silence, listening to the hiss of the skillet and the rustle of Ben’s paper. Jeremy finally went outside, wordlessly, Keely on his heels. Through the window above the sink, Jade watched him stride down to the barn with a familiar tension across his shoulders. She plated their bacon and cold, leftover blueberry muffins; took them to the table along with the fruit salad; sat; listened to Clara’s little shuffling feet coming down the stairs; and she fixed Ben with a no-nonsense look that halted his coffee mug halfway to his mouth.

             
“What?”

             
“I want you to try to get along with Jeremy while you’re here.”

             
He made a face, started to say something, and she cut him off.

             
“He’s like my brother, Ben. And he’s held my hand every time you weren’t around to.”

             
He swallowed; “every time” was a lot, and he knew it. Clara was coming down the hall, so all he did was nod, though it looked like it took an effort.

             
“Daddy, you’re here again?” Clara asked, incredulous, as she appeared in the threshold.

             
“Yep.” He pulled out the chair beside him. “Come sit with me.”

             
Jade nibbled a piece of bacon, then excused herself. She bundled up three strips and two muffins in a napkin, stepped into her paddock boots, and slipped outside. Jeremy had been busy that morning, and she wondered if he might have been driven from the house by all the “bed-thumping.” The horses were out, the stalls were clean, the aisle swept, the hose rolled up neatly by the spigot. He was in the tack room, buffing beeswax into his saddle with a gummy strip of rag. He was a musical tack cleaner; the radio was always blasting and he was usually whistling and talking to himself. This morning he was silent, glaring at the saddle flap, oiling in fast, angry circles.

             
She propped a shoulder in the doorjamb. “I brought you breakfast.”

             
He didn’t comment.

             
“You have to eat,” she urged. “Otherwise you’ll get all swoony and fall off Rebecca Green’s horse. Then I’ll have to bust out the hartshorn and revive you Jane Austen style.”

             
“Austen didn’t need hartshorn,” he said, without looking up. “That’s just in those bodice ripper novels you read.”

             
She grinned. “Is that the problem? Your bodice too tight?”

             
He dipped the rag in the wax again and kept going.

             
“Shit, Remy,” Jade sighed. “We both know Ben can’t turn over a mature leaf; I need you to be the bigger man, here. Please?”

             
His hand stilled and he turned a ferociously pissed off look her direction. “’Please?’ Jade, how many times do we have to go through this song and dance? And every time it’s, ‘Remy, please,’ and, ‘Remy, be nice,’ and he’s the one who hurts you. Over and over.” He balled up the rag in his hand and squeezed it, his frustration needing an outlet.

             
“I know you wish he would disappear,” she said. “I – ”

             
“No. I don’t want that. I want that stupid son of a bitch to treat you right. I want him to be there for Clara, and you, and not just treat both of you like his mail order family when he decides he needs you.”

             
“It’s not that simple.”

             
“Yeah, it is, actually.” He got to his feet and paced a lap around the stand that held his saddle, hands on his hips. “You two have a child. He can’t use you as his dirty mistress. Either he loves you” – he gave her his stern schoolmarm face – “or he doesn’t. And I hate to be the one to tell you that, honey, but it’s true. If he doesn’t love you, then he’s the stupidest motherfucker alive, and you need to boot him out on his ass. Because this – whatever’s going on with the two of you now – that’s just about him licking his wounds – wanting
you
to lick his wounds – because his captain smacked him across the knuckles.”

             
“Remy.” His brows twitched in anticipation of her saying something naïve. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction; because, as many valid points as he may have had about Ben, he was just as blind as she was, just as fueled by raw emotion. “If Ben uses me, then I’m just as guilty of using him. And you know what? Neither of us are doing that. Things are complicated and strange and unconventional, but you don’t know him like I do.”

             
He rolled his eyes and she stayed him with a hand. “You didn’t see him two nights ago when I called him; you didn’t hear him. He does care. I wish he cared in a normal way, but he cares.”

             
“Do you believe that?”

             
She wanted to, desperately.

             
He twitched a humorless smile and stepped up in front of her; reached to tidy a piece of her hair in a gesture so much like one of Ben’s. “You deserve so much better,” he said sadly. “I wish you knew that.”

             
She returned his thin little smile. “He’s so much better than you think. I wish
you
knew
that
.”

Every few months, Ben was forced to sack up and make the pilgrimage to Canton to visit the folks. The thing was, he had
good parents. And Canton was only a forty-five minute (to an hour) drive with traffic. His mother always had something in the oven and his father always had some woodworking project he wanted help sanding. It was very apple pie and Chevrolet.

             
And it was an effort, every time, to make himself go. With two weeks off, there was no better time to bite the bullet. And he’d rather go straight away rather than waiting for the dread to build. Jade had managed to book a nearly normal lineup of lessons for the day, so Ben buckled Clara into his backseat with her stuffed rabbit and off they went.

             
“Do you think Gram’ll let me have a cookie?” she asked as Ben turned down the drive and coasted to the garage doors.

             
“Probably.” He threw the Charger in park and glanced at her via the rearview mirror; she was swinging her legs and clutching Oatmeal in an excited chokehold. “If you drink all your milk.”

             
She met his eyes in the mirror and scrunched up her nose. He chuckled.
Thanks for the laugh, kiddo. I’m probably gonna need it.
“Alright. Let’s do this.”

             
He and Chris had grown up east of Atlanta. When they were both grown and gone, and after their father retired from the Corps, their parents had moved up here to Canton. The house was a long gray ranch with lots of windows and a white rocking chair front porch on a well-landscaped acre. His mom liked to garden, and bake, and sew. She was a homemaker, and a military wife, and she was absolutely ferocious. Everyone gave Clark a wide birth – he was the iron-jawed, broad-shouldered Marine – but it was Paula who’d sink her teeth in you.

             
Some sort of yellow autumn flowers bowed low on their stalks over the sidewalk; Clara skipped ahead of them, small feet thumping up the porch steps. She was in her pink cowboy boots, jeans and one of an endless string of t-shirt decorated with ponies, denim jacket. By the time Ben reached the step, the front door was open, Clara wrapped tight in her grandmother’s arms.

             
“Hi, sweet darling!” Paula gushed against the top of Clara’s dark head. “It’s been too long since I saw you last!” She pushed her back at arm’s length. “I swear you’ve grown a foot! How old are you now? Twelve?”

             
Laughing, Clara held up four fingers. “Almost five, Grammie!”

             
“Well, you coulda fooled me!” Paula stood and surveyed her, hands on hips. “You don’t still like chocolate chip cookies, do you?”

             
In answer, Clara ducked around her and through the door, slipping out of sight with a flash of white boot heels. It was then that the friendly grandmother façade dissolved. Hands still on her hips, her spine straightened, drawn upright by some invisible string that lifted her head and kicked back her chin. At sixty-eight, Paula Haley was neither stooped nor weak-shouldered. Her tight cap of iron hair was still brown around the edges. Tall, reed thin, she wore her age better than most. And in her lined, now-unsmiling face, her dark eyes were shrewd. Assessing. She was a cookies-and-milk grandmother. But she was a drill sergeant of a mother.

             
“Mom.”

             
She greeted him with: “Jade brings her up here more often than you do. You actually make the poor girl come spend time with your parents.”

             
His smile was an automatic defense mechanism. “No one makes Jade do anything.”

             
She hummed her disagreement. “To what do I owe the pleasure today? Are you dying?”

             
“Gee, I don’t know why I don’t come more often.”

             
“Your brother comes. He and Jess invited us to dinner just last week. I see Maddie and Tyler four times as often as I see Clara.”

             
“Tyler isn’t even your actual grandchild.”

             
She shrugged. “I’m not choosy.”

             
“Obviously.” Ben heaved a sigh and felt his shoulders slump; he was twelve again and apologizing for coming into dinner with mud on his sneakers. “I’m taking some time off.”

             
Her brows – brown and neatly plucked – lifted. “And what would prompt Ben Haley to take time off for the first time in his life? Certainly not a visit to his mother.”

             
Another sigh. “I’m on suspension.”