Praise for

MEGAN HART

“Told in the heroine’s first-person viewpoint, Hart’s latest is simply terrific. Smart, ultra-spicy and thought-provoking, it will certainly delight her fans and win some new ones.”

—RT Book Reviews on Switch

“A sensual and impassioned love story, Dirty may very well become a ‘re-read’ to many readers, a ‘keeper’ to others … it was so vividly written; not for the faint of heart … Unforgettable!” —Erotica Romance Writers

“[Broken] is not a traditional romance but the story of a real and complex woman caught in a difficult situation with no easy answers. Well-developed secondary characters and a compelling plot add depth to this absorbing and enticing novel.” —Library Journal

“A compelling tale of love and understanding … The story is heartbreakingly familiar in its depiction of how teenage romance can shape our lives. I found myself on the edge of my seat.”

—Romance Junkies Reviews on Deeper

“Hart did it again—with Collide we get a story that is so different from your usual romance novel but still it works just perfectly the way it is. I think it is one of Hart’s strongest talents—her way to make her characters different and a bit flawed but still making them likeable. Her stories always feel so real, and for me that makes them exponentially more appealing.” —Book Lovers Inc.

About the Author

MEGAN HART is the award-winning and multi-published author of more than thirty novels, novellas and short stories. Her work has been published in almost every genre, including contemporary women’s fiction, historical romance, romantic suspense and erotica. Megan lives in the deep, dark woods of Pennsylvania with her husband and children, and is currently working on her next novel. You can contact Megan through her website at www.MeganHart.com.

Also by Megan Hart

SWITCH

DEEPER

STRANGER

BROKEN

DIRTY

NAKED

COLLIDE

Tempted

Megan Hart

www.spice-books.co.uk

To those who’ve touched my life and made me

who I am today, I say this:

A different person could have told this story, but only

the woman I am because of knowing you could

have written this book.

Chapter 01

Light and shadow painted him. On little cat feet, like the fog, I crept toward the bed. Tug-tugging, I slid the covers off to reveal his body.

I liked to watch him sleep, despite the way it sometimes made me want to pinch myself to prove I wasn’t dreaming. That this was my husband, my house, my life. Our perfect life. That there were good things to be had in the world, and I had them.

James stirred without waking. I crept closer to stand over him. The sight of him, all long, muscled limbs and smooth, sun-burnished skin, curled my fingers in anticipation of touching him. I held off, not wanting to wake him. I wanted to watch him for a while.

Awake, James was rarely still. Only dreaming did he loosen, soften, melt. If it was harder to believe he belonged to me when he was sleeping, it was also easier to remember how much I loved him.

Oh, I played a good game of confidence. I wore the ring and answered to the name Mrs. James Kinney. I even had the driver’s license and credit cards to prove I had the right to the name. Most of the time, our marriage was so matter-of-fact I couldn’t have disbelieved it if I’d wanted to, not when it came time to do the laundry and buy groceries, or clean the toilets, when I packed his lunches or folded his socks before putting them away. Then our marriage was solid and substantial. Granite. But sometimes, like when I watched him sleeping, the rock turned out to be limestone, easily dissolved by the slow-dripping water of my doubts.

Sunshine filtered through the tree outside our window and dappled him in all the spots I wanted to kiss. The twin dark circles of his nipples, the ridges of his ribs made sharper as he flung a hand over his head, the soft patch of hair furring his belly and meshing with the thatch between his legs. Everything about him was long and lean. Hidden strength. James looked thin, sometimes even breakable, but underneath he was all muscle. He had large, callus-fingered hands, used to working but perfectly suited for playing, too.

I was more interested in the playing as I bent over him to blow a puff of breath across his lips. Fast as sin, he grabbed me. He could pin both my wrists with one hand, and he did, pulling me onto the bed and rolling on top of me. James settled between my thighs, the only thing between us the thin fabric of my summer-weight nightgown. He was already getting hard.

“What were you doing?”

“Watching you sleep.”

James pushed my hands above my head, stretching me. It hurt a little, but then that’s what makes the pleasure so much sweeter. His free hand inched up the hem of my nightgown and found my bare thigh.

His fingertips grazed the curls between my legs as he spoke. “Why were you watching me sleep?”

“Because I like to,” I told him just before his questing fingers made me inhale sharply.

“Do I want to know why you like to watch me sleep?” His grin tipped the corners of his mouth. Smug. His fingertip settled against me, but he didn’t move it yet. “Anne?”

I laughed. “No. Probably not.”

“I didn’t think so.”

He lowered his mouth to mine but didn’t kiss me. I craned my neck, seeking to meet his lips, but James kept them a breath apart. His finger began the slow circling he knew well would drive me crazy. I felt heat and hardness on my hip, but with my hands still held fast in his grip, I could only wiggle in protest.

“Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

“Kiss me.”

James had eyes of summer-sky blue, ringed with deep navy. The contrast could be startling. The dark fringe of his lashes swept down as his eyes narrowed. He licked his lips.

“Where?”

“Everywhere ….” My reply trailed off into a sigh and then a startled gasp when he stroked me again.

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

I wouldn’t, not at first, though I knew sooner or later he’d have me doing what he wanted. He always did. It helped that I usually wanted what he wanted me to want. We were well matched in that way.

James bit down into the sensitive spot where my neck met my shoulder. “Say it.”

Instead, I writhed under his touch. His finger dipped inside me, then out, swirling gently when I wanted him to press harder. Teasing me.

“Anne,” James said seriously. “Tell me you want me to lick your cunt.”

I used to hate that word until I learned its power. It’s what men call women who have bested them. It’s what women call each other when we want to wound. Bitch has become something of a badge of pride, but cunt still sounds dirty and harsh, and it always will.

Unless we take it back.

I said what he wanted me to say. My voice was hoarse but not weak. I looked into my husband’s eyes, gone dark with lust. “I want you to put your face between my legs and make me come.”

For one moment, he didn’t move. Against my hip, his heat and hardness shifted and grew. I saw the pulse beat in his throat. Then he blinked slowly, and the smug smile spread across his mouth. “I love it when you say that.”

“I love it when you do it,” I murmured.

Then there was no more talking, because he moved down my body and lifted my nightgown to put his mouth exactly where I told him I wanted it. He licked me for a long time, until I shuddered and cried out, and then he slid up again to fill me and fucked me until we both came with shouts that sounded like prayers.

The telephone’s jangling interrupted the postcoital laziness to which we’d succumbed. The Sunday edition of the Sandusky Register, spread out on the bed, crinkled and rustled as James leaned over me to grab the phone from its cradle. I took the chance to lick his skin as he did, sneaking a nibble that made him jump and laugh as he answered.

“This better be good,” he said into the phone.

A pause. I gave him a curious look over the lifestyles section. He was grinning.

“You son of a bitch!” James settled back against the headboard, his naked knees pulled up. “What are you doing? Where the hell are you?”

I tried catching his eye but the conversation had immersed him. James is an intense butterfly, flitting from focus to focus and giving each his undivided attention. It’s flattering when it’s you. Not so charming when it isn’t.

“You lucky son of a bitch.” James sounded almost envious, and my curiosity was piqued even more. Generally, James was the object of admiration among his peers, the one with the newest toys. “I thought you were in Singapore.”

I knew, then, who had disrupted our Sunday afternoon lassitude. It had to be Alex Kennedy. I looked back to my paper, listening while James talked. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting in the newspaper. I didn’t really care about the latest summer fashion or what cars were trendy this year. I cared even less about burglaries and politics, however, so I scanned the columns of text and discovered I’d been ahead of my time in painting my bedroom pale melon the year before. Apparently it was the season’s hot new color.

Listening to only one side of a conversation is like putting together a puzzle without looking at the picture on the box. I listened to James talking to his best friend from junior high school with only the barest comprehension and frame of reference to help me assemble the pieces. I knew my husband as well and intimately as any one person can know another, but I didn’t know Alex at all.

“Yeah, yeah. Of course you did. You always do.”

The keen admiration was back, along with an eagerness new to me. I glanced at James. His face was alight with glee and something else. Something almost poignant. Despite having what could be a somewhat narrow focus on his own priorities, James was unafraid to be happy for someone else’s fortune. He was, however, rarely impressed. Or intimidated. Now he looked a bit of both, and I forgot about the vapidity of pale melon altogether to listen to him speak.

“Ah, get out, man, you’d rule the fucking world if you wanted.”

I blinked. The sincere, almost puppyish tone was as new to me as the look on his face. This was startling. A bit disturbing. It was the way a boy speaks to a woman he’s convinced he loves, even though he knows she’ll never give him a second look.

“Yeah, same here.” Laughter, low and somewhat secret, crept out of him. Not his usual guffaw. “Fucking-A man, that’s great. I’m glad to hear it.”

Another pause while he listened. I watched him rub the curving white scar just above his heart, his fingers tracing the line of it, over and over, absently. I’d seen him do that before, rubbing that scar like a talisman when he was tired or upset or excited. Sometimes it was brief, a passing touch like he was flicking a crumb from his shirt. Other times, like this, the stroke-stroke of his fingers took on an almost hypnotic pace. I could be mesmerized watching James run his fingers along that scar, which sometimes looks like a half-moon, or a bite, or a frown or a rainbow.

James’s brow creased. “No. Really? What were they thinking? That sucks, Alex. Really fucking sucks. Fuck, man, I’m sorry.”

From elation to sorrow in half a second. This too was unusual from my husband, who might move easily from focus to focus but always managed to maintain his emotional stability. His syntax had changed during his conversation, reverting a little. I’m no prude about bad language, but he was saying fuck an awful lot.

In the next instant his face brightened. He sat up, bent knees going straight. The sunshine of his smile burst from behind the storm clouds of a moment before.

“Yeah? Right on! Fucking-A! You got it, man! That’s fan-fucking-tastic!”

At this I could no longer hide my expression of surprise, but James didn’t notice. He was bouncing a little, shaking the bed so the papers rattled and the sadly neglected classifieds fluttered to the floor.

“When? Great! That’s … yeah, yeah … of course. It’ll be fine. It’ll be great. Of course I’m sure!” His glance flicked toward me, but I was certain he didn’t actually see me. His mind was too taken up with whatever was happening in Singapore. “Can’t wait! Yeah. Just let me know. Bye, man. See you.”

With that, he thumbed the disconnect button and settled back against the headboard with a grin so broad and vibrant it looked a bit maniacal. I waited for him to speak, to share with me the piece of brilliant news that had so excited him. I waited quite a bit longer than I expected to.

Just as I was about to ask, James turned to me. He kissed me hard, his fingers tangling in my hair. His mouth bruised mine a little, and I winced.

“Guess what?” He answered before I had time to reply. “Alex’s company just got bought out by a much larger corporation. He’s like a fucking millionaire now.”

What I knew of Alex Kennedy could fit on one side of a sheet of notebook paper. I knew he worked overseas in the Asian market and had since before I’d met James. He’d been unable to attend our wedding but had sent an elegant gift that must have been exorbitantly expensive. I knew he’d been James’s best friend since the eighth grade, and that they’d had a falling-out when they were both twenty-one. I’d always had the feeling the rift had never fully been repaired, but then, men’s relationships are so different from women’s. If James barely spoke to his friend, that didn’t mean they hadn’t forgiven each other for whatever it was that had driven them apart.

“Wow. Really? A millionaire?”

James shrugged, fingers tightening again in my hair before he sat back against the headboard. “The guy’s a fucking genius, Anne. You don’t even know.”

I didn’t know. “That’s good news, then. For him.”

He frowned, running a hand through dark hair already tipped blond, though the summer had barely begun. “Yeah, but the bastards who bought him out have decided they don’t want him part of the company any longer. He’s out of a job.”

“Does a millionaire need to work?”

James gave me a look that said I clearly didn’t get it. “Just because you don’t have to do something doesn’t mean you don’t want to. Anyway, Alex is done with Singapore. He’s coming home.”

His voice trailed off at the last, sounding almost wistful for the barest second before he looked at me with another grin. “I invited him for a visit. He said he’ll probably stay for a few weeks while he puts together his next business.”

“A few weeks? Here?” I didn’t mean to sound unwelcoming, but …

“Yeah.” James’s grin was small and secret, for himself. “It’ll be great. You’ll love Alex, babe. I know you will.”

He looked at me and was, for an instant, a man I didn’t know. He reached for my hand, linking our fingers before he took them to his lips and kissed the back of my hand. His mouth caressed my skin, and he looked up at me over the top of his kiss, his blue eyes dark with excitement.

But not for me.

I was Evelyn and Frank Kinney’s only daughter-in-law. Though my reception into the family had been chilly when James and I were dating and through our engagement, once I became a Kinney, I was treated like a Kinney. Evelyn and Frank had taken me into the bosom of the Kinney clan, and like quicksand, once I was so enfolded there was little I could do to escape.

We all got along well enough, for the most part. James’s sisters Margaret and Molly were several years older than us, both married with children. I didn’t have much in common with them aside from our gender, and though they were careful to include me in every “girls’ night” party they had with their mother, we weren’t close. It didn’t seem to matter.

Typically, James didn’t notice the superficiality of my relationship with his mother and sisters, and that was fine with me. It was all fine with me, that veneer. The shiny reflection that kept anyone from seeing what was underneath, the eddies and currents and depths of the truth. It was, after all, what I was used to.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, except that Mrs. Kinney had … expectations.

Where we were going. What we were doing. How we were doing it and how much it cost. She wanted to know it all and was not contented with the knowing. She always had to know more.

It took me a few months of frigid phone calls to figure out that if James wasn’t going to divulge the details, I would have to. Since she was the one who’d raised him to believe the world revolved around him, I thought she’d have figured out it was her own fault he didn’t realize it revolved around her. James didn’t seem to mind displeasing his mother, but I did. James shrugged off his mother’s frequent fits of martyrdom, but I couldn’t stand the forced silences or the thinly veiled comments about respect or the comparisons to Molly and Margaret, who didn’t sneeze without holding out the tissue for Mrs. Kinney to see the color of the snot. James didn’t care, but I did, so meeting Mrs. Kinney’s expectations became one more peace for me to keep.

“I wish your mother would stop asking me when I’m going to give ‘the gang’ someone new to play with.” I said this in a perfectly calm voice that could have shattered glass.

James glanced at me before fixing his attention back at the road, where late spring rain had made the roads slick. “When did she say that?”

Of course he hadn’t noticed. James had long ago perfected the art of tuning out his mother. She talked, he nodded. She was satisfied. He was oblivious.

“When doesn’t she say it?” I crossed my arms over my chest, staring ahead through the rivulets of water turning the windshield into a piece of abstract art.

He was silent as we drove, an admirable talent of his. Knowing when to be silent. It was something his mother could have learned, I thought vehemently. Tears pricked the back of my throat, but I swallowed them down.

“She doesn’t mean anything by it,” he said finally as he pulled into our drive. The wind had gotten stronger as we neared the lake, and the pine trees in our yard whipped angry branches.

“She does mean something by it, that’s the problem. She knows exactly what she’s saying and she plays it off with that little simpering laugh, like she’s making a joke, but she’s not.”

“Anne …” James sighed and turned to me as he keyed off the ignition. The headlights went dark and I blinked, eyes adjusting. The patter of rain on the roof seemed much louder with darkness surrounding it. “Don’t get so upset.”

I turned in my seat to face him. “She always asks, James. Every time we’re together. It’s getting a little old, that’s all.”

His hand caressed my shoulder and tugged down the length of my braid. “She wants us to have kids—what’s wrong with that?”

I said nothing. James took his hand back. I could see him now, a faint silhouette, the flash of his eyes in the hint of light from across the water. Cedar Point Amusement Park still glimmered despite the rain and the line of cars streaming off the causeway.

“Chill, Anne. Don’t make such a big deal—”

I cut him off by opening my door. The cold rain felt good on my heated cheeks. I tipped my face to the sky, closing my eyes, pretending the wetness on my cheeks was only rain. James got out of the car. His heat embraced me before his arm went around my shoulder.

“Come inside. You’re getting soaked.”

I let him lead me inside, but I didn’t talk to him. I went straight to our bathroom and turned on the hot water of the shower. I left my clothes in a pile and when the room had filled with steam I stepped into the tub and beneath the water that substituted for the rain outside.

That’s where he found me, my head bent to let the hot water stream over my neck and back, working on the tension. I’d untied the braid, and my hair hung down over my breasts in kinked strands.

My eyes were closed, but the brief chill as he opened the glass door told me he was there seconds before I felt his arms around me. James held me against his chest. It took seconds for his skin to heat beneath the water. I pressed my face to his skin, hot and wet, and let him hold me.

We said nothing for a while as the shower caressed us both. His fingers traced my spine, up and down, the way he sometimes traced his scar. Water pooled in the space between my cheek and his chest, burning my eye. I had to move away to let it drain.

“Hey.” James waited until I’d looked up. “Don’t be upset. I can’t stand it when you get so upset.”

I wanted to explain to him that being upset once in a while wasn’t such a bad thing, but I didn’t. That a smile could be as painful as a scream. “She makes me so angry.”

“I know.”

His hand stroked my hair. He didn’t know, not really. I’m not sure a man can ever understand the complicated matter of feminine relationships. He didn’t want to understand it. James preferred the surface, too.

“She never asks you.” I tilted my face to look at him. Water splashed, making me blink.

“That’s because she knows I won’t have an answer.” He traced my eyebrow with one fingertip. “She knows you’re the one in charge.”

“Why am I the one in charge?” I demanded, but I already knew the answer.

It was easy for him, being blameless. “Because you’re so good at it.”

I frowned and pushed away from him to reach for the shampoo. “I just wish she’d lay off.”

“So tell her.”

I sighed and turned. “Yeah. Right. That goes over so well with your mother, James. She’s so open to suggestion.”

He shrugged and held out his hand for a handful of shampoo, too. “So she’ll get a little pissy.”

What I wanted was him to be the one to tell his mother to back off, but I knew that wouldn’t happen. He, the son who could do no wrong, didn’t care if he made his parents angry. It wasn’t his issue. So, impotent and knowing it was my own fault, I swallowed my anger and concentrated on washing my hair. “We’re going to run out of hot water.”

The stream was already becoming tepid. We washed quickly, sharing the body sponge and the shower gel, our fingers tickling and doing more than just cleaning. James reached to pull the lever, shutting off the water, and I grabbed two thick towels from the stack in the closet next to the shower. I handed him one, but before I could use my own, he’d grabbed my wrist and tugged me toward him.

“C’mere, baby. Don’t be upset.”

It was hard to stay mad at him. James might be perfectly content in the knowledge he could do no wrong, but that allowed him to be all the more generous with his affections. He dried me carefully, squeezing the extra wetness from the length of my hair and patting my body. His towel-covered hands stroked my back, my sides, behind my knees. Between my legs. On his knees in front of me, he lifted each foot and dried it. When he set the towel aside, my heart was already thumping faster. I expected my skin, already flushed from the shower’s heat, to give off steam of its own. James put his hands on my hips and drew me gently closer.

When he kissed the small patch of curls between my thighs, I stuttered a sigh. He pulled me still closer, hands drifting around to cup my buttocks and hold me in place while his tongue crept out to flick my clitoris. One, two light licks and I bit my lip against a louder groan.

I looked down at his dark head. His strong thighs, covered with coarse dark hair, bunched with muscle as he knelt. The thick mass of hair surrounding his thickening penis was in stark contrast to the smooth hairlessness of his ass and chest, only the slightest hint of hair on his lower belly. He leaned in again to kiss me tenderly. His tongue stroked, lips caressed, breath tantalized.

Any woman who doesn’t feel the power she wields when a man kneels in front of her to worship her pussy must be lying to herself. I put my hand on the back of James’s head. His mouth worked my flesh with eager finesse, urging me to rock my hips forward. Tension coiled low in my belly. His hands moved on my ass, drawing circles I echoed in the shift of my pelvis.

When my thighs started to shake, he used his hands to move me one half turn, until I could lean against the edge of the claw-foot tub. The cold metal should have sizzled when my flesh met it. The curved lip bit with slight discomfort into my rear, but as James, still kneeling, spread my legs wider and dove into my pussy with his mouth and fingers, I didn’t care about anything else.

He moaned under his breath when he slid a finger inside me. I groaned when he added a second. James was a lover with a slow hand, just like the song. An easy touch.

I hadn’t always known how to respond to him. His slow and easy caress failed me in the beginning. I hadn’t expected anything else. I’d gone to bed with James because we’d been dating for a couple months and because he expected it, and because I didn’t want to disappoint him. I didn’t go to bed with him because I thought he could make me come.

Now he licked me slowly as he moved inside me, fingers curved just slightly to stroke the spongy bump of my G-spot. I gripped the bathtub, my back arched, thighs spread wide. In pain. Not caring. Later my fingers would be stiff and aching from holding on so tight, and my ass would be bisected with a red indentation from the tub’s metal lip, but now, with James between my legs, the pleasure overtook everything else.

The first time we went to bed together, he didn’t ask me if I’d come. Nor the second, not the third. Two months after we started, this time in the bed of a hotel room we’d taken for the weekend without telling anyone where we were going, he paused in kissing me to put his hand over my center.

“What do you want me to do?” His question was spoken low, but matter-of-factly, without boasting.

I’d been with boys who assumed a few moments of fingering were enough to send me into ecstasy. Going to bed with them had meant nothing, left no effect on me. Faking pleasure had become the shiny surface of sex with them, and I preferred it that way. It made it easier to find ways to break up with them by making them think it had been their idea all along.

James asked sincerely, clearly understanding that what he’d been doing so far didn’t work for me, though I’d never said so. He stroked my clit and labia gently, tickling. He looked down into my eyes.

“What do I do to make you come?”

I could have smiled and cooed, told him he was perfect in bed, the best lover I’d ever had. I could have lied to him, and a month later I’d have found a way to make him believe he didn’t want to see me any longer. I think I even meant to. I’ve never been sure why I didn’t, why looking up into James’s distinctive eyes made me say instead, “I don’t know.”

It was also a lie, but a more honest dishonesty than telling him he was doing everything right would have been. I’d opened my mouth to his kiss, but James didn’t kiss me. He looked thoughtful, his hand moving in slow circles over my thighs and belly, dipping down every so often to caress my clitoris.

“I love you, Anne,” he said then. It was the first time he’d ever said it, though he was not the first boy to ever tell me. “I want to make you happy. Let me.”

I wasn’t convinced I could do any such thing, but I smiled. He smiled. He bent to kiss me, his lips whisper-soft on mine. His hand moved, slow and easy.

James had spent an hour licking and kissing and stroking. I hadn’t resisted or protested, content to let him do what he wanted. Until, at last, unable to resist, my body had surprised me and pleasure overtook everything else.

I wept the first time he made me come. Not in sorrow. With utter release. Relief. James had given me an orgasm, but I hadn’t lost myself in him. I still knew who I was. I could say I loved him and mean it, and it didn’t consume me. I didn’t have to be afraid of drowning in him.

Now James shifted in front of me, his mouth leaving my flesh for a moment. The respite made me gasp and moan, the pleasure made more intense when he returned his tongue to me. His fingers stretched me. I wanted more. His hand closed around his cock and pumped it.

“I can feel how close you are.” His voice was hoarse and a bit muffled against me. “I want you to come.”

I could have, with a moment or two more of him licking me, but I was greedy. “I want you inside me.”

“Stand up. Turn around.”

I did. It had taken me a while to learn how to respond to James, but since then he’d learned more about me, too. His hands grabbed my hips as I gripped the side of the tub. I bent forward, offering myself to him.

James slid inside me all the way. A cry leaked from my throat. He moved, thrusting with slow and easy precision. My cunt felt swollen, embracing his erection, taking him all the way into my body. Sparks of pleasure radiated from my clitoris and ran up and down my belly and thighs, down to my toes curling in the bathroom rug.

My orgasm hovered, waiting for just the right moment to crash over me. I held my breath. I pushed back against him, and the wet slap of my ass against his belly made me groan. My hair hung down on either side of my face. I closed my eyes against the distracting sight of the spider that had committed hara-kiri on the bottom of the tub.

James’s hands clutched my hips harder. His fingertips pushed the solidness of bone. His thumbs dimpled soft flesh. His cock filled me. I slid a hand down to roll a finger against my swollen clit and couldn’t stop the low moans from sputtering out of me.

The phone rang.

My eyes flew open and our rhythm faltered momentarily. His penis banged the rim of my womb with a sudden pain that made me inhale sharply before we recovered. The phone rang again, a jangling distraction that had undone my concentration.

“Almost there, baby,” James muttered, regaining the pace.

Another ring. I tensed but James brought me back to him with a hand on my shoulder. His fingers gripped and tugged, close to my throat. They pressed the beat of my pulse. His other hand slid in front of me to replace mine, and he rubbed my clit without mercy. Taking me closer.

The answering machine clicked on. I didn’t want to listen. I stuttered on the brink. I closed my eyes again. Put my head down. Gripped the sides of the tub and pushed my ass back toward him, opening myself.

“Jamie,” said a voice like slow, dripping caramel. “Sorry to call so late, man, but I lost my watch. Dunno what time it is.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding. James grunted, thrusting harder. I drew in another breath and fought light-headedness. My clit pulsed under his fingertip.

“Anyway, jus’ wanted to give you a call, let you know when I’d be getting in.” Laughter like a secret curled out of the phone speaker. Its owner sounded drunk or high or maybe just exhausted. His voice was deep and rich and languid. He sounded like sex. “I’m heading out now, man, gonna hit a few more clubs before I leave. Call me on the cell, brother. You know the number.”

Behind me, James let out a low, breathy moan. His fingers raked my back and sent me tumbling into a climax fierce enough to make bright colors flash behind my closed lids.

“And Jamie,” said the voice, dipping even lower, a secret-sharing voice. “It’ll be great to see you, man. Love you, brother. I’m out.”

James shouted. I shuddered. We came together, saying nothing, listening to Alex Kennedy speaking from the other side of the world.

Chapter 02

“She’ll be late.” My sister Patricia sniffed as she looked over the menu. “Let’s not wait for her.”

My other sister Mary looked up from the text message she was busy answering from her cell phone. “Pats, she’s not late yet. Relax.”

Patricia and I shared a look. We’re the closest in age. Sometimes it feels like our family has two sets of daughters, separated by a decade instead of the four years between Patricia and Mary. There are an additional two years between Mary and our youngest sister, Claire. I’m not old enough to be Claire’s mother, but there are times I definitely feel like I am.

“Give her a few more minutes,” I told Patricia. “Yeah, she’ll be late but we can wait a few minutes, can’t we?”

Patricia gave me a stony look and looked back to the menu. I didn’t care for Claire’s lackadaisical attitude any more than my sister did, but Patricia’s attitude surprised me. She could be opinionated and bossy, but she wasn’t usually nasty.

Mary closed her phone with a click and reached for the pitcher of orange juice. “Whose idea was it to meet for breakfast, anyway? I mean, c’mon … you know she doesn’t get up before noon if she can help it.”

“Yes, well,” said Patricia as she snapped her menu closed. “The world doesn’t revolve around Claire, does it? I have things to do today. I can’t be hanging around all day long just because she was out late partying.”

This time Mary and I exchanged a look. Sisterhood is complicated business. Mary raised a brow, passing the responsibility of soothing Patricia to me.

“I’m sure she’ll be here in a few minutes,” I said. “And if she’s not, we’ll go ahead and order. Okay?”

Patricia didn’t look mollified. She snapped up her menu again, hiding behind it. Mary mouthed “What’s with her?” To which my only answer was a shrug.

Claire was, indeed, late, but only by a few minutes, and thus, by her standards, considered herself on time. She breezed into the restaurant like she owned the world, her black hair spiked out around her head like a sunburst. Thick black liner rimmed her eyes, making them stand out against her purposefully pale skin and crimson lips. She slid into the seat next to Mary and reached at once for the glass of juice Mary had poured for herself. Claire’s bangle bracelets jangled as she tipped the glass to her mouth and ignored Mary’s protest.

“Mmm, good,” she said when she set the glass down. She grinned, looking around the table. “You all thought I’d be late.”

“You are late.” Patricia glared.

Claire didn’t look fazed. “Not really. You guys didn’t even order yet.”

As if by magic the waiter appeared. Claire’s sultry stare seemed to fluster him, but he managed to take our orders and leave the table with no more than a glance over his shoulder. Claire winked at him. Patricia sighed in disgust.

“What?” Claire said. “He’s cute.”

“Whatever.” Patricia poured juice and drank it.

Chickens have a pecking order; sisters do, too. Past experience has led my sisters to believe I can be counted on to dispense advice and mediate arguments. They rely on me to keep the surface of our sisterhood polished and shiny, the way we trust Claire to shake us up and Patricia to put us all in order and Mary to make us feel better. We all have our place, usually, but today something seemed off.

“I told them expecting you to be here before noon was ridiculous.” Mary reached for the basket of warm croissants. “What time did you go to sleep last night?”

Claire laughed, taking a croissant for herself. Forgoing butter, she pulled apart the flaky crust with her black-painted nails and stuffed the pastry into her mouth. “Didn’t.”

“You didn’t go to bed last night?” Patricia’s lip curled.

“Didn’t go to sleep,” Claire corrected. She washed down her croissant with a mouthful of juice. “I went to bed, all right.”

Mary laughed. Patricia made a face. I did neither. I studied my youngest sister, spotting a telltale suck mark on her throat. She didn’t have a boyfriend, or at least not one she’d ever bothered to bring around to meet the family. Considering our family, I wasn’t necessarily surprised.

“Can we just get started? I’ve got stuff to do,” Patricia said.

“Fine with me,” Claire replied nonchalantly. “Let’s go.”

She couldn’t have irritated Patricia more with her blasé response. The disregard for her anger made Patricia even more snappish. Though she and Claire had butted heads in the past, this seemed excessive. I set out to defuse the inevitable blowup by pulling out my notebook and pen.

“Okay. First thing we need to decide is where to have it.” I tapped the pen to the paper. My parents’ anniversary was in August. Thirty years. Patricia had come up with the idea for a party. “At their house? At my house, or Patricia’s? Maybe at a restaurant.”

“How ‘bout the VFW?” Claire smirked. “Or the bowling alley?”

“Very funny.” Patricia tore apart her croissant but ate none of it.

“Your house, Anne. We could have a pit beef barbecue, or something, on the beach.” Mary’s phone beeped again, but she ignored it.

“Yeah … we could.” I didn’t hide my lack of enthusiasm for that idea.

“Well, we can’t have it at my house.” Patricia sounded firm. “I don’t have the space.”

“And I do?” My house was nice, and by the water, true, but it was far from spacious.

Claire scoffed, waving at the waiter, who came over at once. “How many people do you really think are going to come? Hey, hon, bring me a mimosa, will you?”

“Jesus, Claire,” said Patricia. “Do you have to?”

For a second Claire’s insouciance slipped. “Yeah, Pats. I do.”

“We could have it at Caesar’s Crystal Palace,” I suggested quickly to fend off an argument. “They have lots of receptions and stuff there.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Mary said. “The food there’s super pricey, and honestly, you guys, I just don’t have the cash to put toward this party like some of you do.”

She gave me a significant look, then one to Patricia. Claire laughed. Mary looked at her, too, with a wiggle of brows.

“Yeah, me and Mary are poor.” Claire looked up at the waiter who brought her drink. “Thanks, sugar.”

He actually blushed when she winked. I shook my head and rolled my eyes. Claire had no shame.

“I think keeping the cost down is a good idea, too.” Patricia said this stiffly, looking at her plate and its desiccated croissant. “Let’s have it at Anne’s. We can buy the paper goods at the wholesale club and make a bunch of desserts. The pit beef barbecue would be the most expensive thing, but they include the corn on the cob and rolls and stuff.”

“Don’t forget the booze,” Claire said.

Silence ringed the table. Mary’s phone beeped and she flipped it open, her face blank. Patricia said nothing. I didn’t, either. Claire looked around at each of us.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of not having booze,” Claire said. “At the very least, you have to have beer.”

“That’s up to Anne,” Patricia said after a moment. “It’s her house.”

I looked at her, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. I looked at Mary, also ignoring me. Claire, however, met my gaze head-on.

“We can have whatever we want,” I said, finally.

“It’s an anniversary party for Mom and Dad,” Claire said. “Now, you tell me you’re going to throw them a party and not have booze.”

We were saved from an uncomfortable silence by the arrival of our food. It took a few minutes to distribute and get started on consuming, but that brief time was enough. Mary sighed, stabbing a fried potato.

“We could have beer.” She shrugged. “Get a keg.”

“A couple bottles of wine,” said Patricia grudgingly. “And we’d have to have champagne, I guess. To toast. It’s been thirty years. I guess they deserve a toast. Don’t they?”

They were all looking at me to decide. My fork hovered over the omelet my stomach was deciding it no longer wanted. They wanted me to say yes or no, to make the choice for them. I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want that responsibility.

“Anne,” said Claire at last. “We’ll all be there. It’ll be okay.”

I nodded once firmly, the sharp action hurting my neck. “Fine. Sure. Of course. Beer, wine, champagne. James can set up a bar outside and make mixed drinks. He likes that.”

We all said nothing for another long moment. I imagined I felt relief from my sisters at not having to be the ones to make the choice, but perhaps it was only my imagination.

“Now. What about the guest list?” I said, my voice firm as I took charge.

Keeping the surface polished.

I wanted James to refuse to have the party at our house, but, of course, he thought it was a great idea. He was at the grill with a beer in one hand and the tongs in the other when I broached the subject. His apron had a picture of a decapitated, bikini-clad woman imprinted on the front. Her breasts bulged every time he lifted his arms.

“Sounds great. We could rent a tent in case the weather’s bad. It’ll give some shade, too.”

The scent of sizzling steaks should have made my mouth water, but my stomach was too twisted for me to appreciate it. “It will be a lot of work.”

“We’ll hire help. Don’t worry about it.” James flipped the steaks expertly and lifted the lid on the bubbling pot of corn.

Watching him, the master in front of his superfab-andgroovy grill, I let a small smile tug my mouth. James needed step-by-step instructions to make microwave oatmeal, but he fancied himself the Iron Chef of outdoor cooking.

“It will still be a lot of work.”

He looked at me then, finally getting it. “Anne, if you don’t want to have it here, why didn’t you say so?”

“My sisters outvoted me. They all want a pit beef barbecue, and this is the only place to have it. Besides,” I conceded, “even if we rent a tent and hire people to serve and clean up, it will still be cheaper than having it at a catering hall. And … we do have a nice place.”

I looked around. Our house and property were more than nice. A lakefront home with its own stretch of beach, privacy and seclusion, surrounded by pine trees. One of the first homes built along the shore road, the house itself had belonged to James’s grandparents. Others on the road were selling in the high nine hundreds and above, but we’d paid nothing. They’d left it to James in their will. It was small and worn, but clean and bright and most importantly, ours. My husband might build luxury half mansions for everyone else, but I preferred our little bungalow with the personal touches.

James slid the steaks onto a platter and brought them to the table. “Only if you want to, babe. I don’t care, one way or another.”

It would have been so much easier if he had. If he’d put his foot down and demanded we host my parents’ party someplace else. If he’d taken the choice from me, I could’ve blamed him for making what I wanted come true.

“No.” I sighed as he slapped an immense portion of beef onto my plate. “We’ll have it here.”

The steak was good, the corn crisp and sweet. I’d made a salad with in-season strawberries and vinaigrette dressing, and crusty French bread rolls. We ate like kings as James told me about the new work site, the problems he was having with some of the guys on his crew, about his parents’ plans for a family vacation.

“When do they think that’s going to happen?” I paused in cutting my steak.

James shrugged, pouring himself another glass of red wine. He didn’t ask me if I wanted any; he’d stopped asking long ago. “I don’t know. Sometime this summer, I guess.”

“You guess? Well, did they think to ask any of us when we might like to go? Or if we want to go?”

Another shrug. He wouldn’t have thought of it. “I don’t know, Anne. It’s just something my mom mentioned. Maybe sometime over the fourth.”

“Well,” I said, buttering a roll to give my hands a reason not to clench. “We can’t go away with them this summer. You know we can’t. I wish you’d just told her that up front.”

James sighed. “Anne—”

I looked up. “You didn’t tell her we’d go, did you?”

“I didn’t tell her we’d go.”

“But you didn’t tell her we wouldn’t.” I frowned. It was typical and unsurprising, and right now, immeasurably more irritating.

James chewed in silence and washed down his food with wine. He cut more steak. He poured steak sauce.

I, too, said nothing. It wasn’t as easy for me but had come about from long practice. It became a waiting game.

“What do you want me to tell her?” he asked, finally.

“The truth, James. The same thing you told me. That we couldn’t take a vacation this summer because you’ve got that new development going in and you need to be on-site. That we’re planning on using your vacation time to go skiing this winter, instead. That we can’t go. That we don’t want to go!”

“I’m not saying that.” He wiped his mouth and crumpled his napkin, then threw it on his plate where it soaked up steak sauce like blood.

“You’d better tell her something,” I said sourly. “Before she books the trip.”

He sighed again and leaned back in his chair. He ran a hand over his head. “Yeah. I know.”

I didn’t want to be fighting with him about this. Especially since I wasn’t really tense about his mother, but about hosting my parents’ anniversary party. It all cycled around, though, a snake eating its own tail. Feeling pressured into doing something I didn’t want to do for people I didn’t want to please.

James reached across the table and grabbed my hand. His thumb passed over the back of it. “I’ll tell her.”

Three words and such a simple sentiment, but some of the weight dropped from my shoulders. I squeezed his hand. We shared a smile. He tugged me gently, pulling me closer, and we kissed over the remains of our dinner.

“Mmm. Steak sauce.” He licked his lips. “Wonder what else that would taste good on.”

“Don’t even think about it,” I warned.

James laughed and kissed me again, lingering though the position was awkward. “I’d have to lick it all off ….”

“That sounds like a very good way to get an infection,” I said crisply, and he let me go.

Together, we tossed the paper plates and put away leftovers. James found many excuses to rub and bump against me, always with a falsely innocent “Pardon me, excuse me,” that made me laugh and punch his arm. Finally he backed me against the sink and pinned me. His hands closed around my wrists, pressing my hands down to the countertop. His pelvis anchored mine.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hello.”

“Fancy meeting you here.” He nudged me with his erection.

“We have to stop meeting like this. It’s really too shocking.”

He pressed closer to me, knowing I couldn’t move away. His breath, redolent of garlic and onion but in a delicious and not repugnant way, gusted over my face. He tilted his head to align our mouths, but he didn’t kiss me.

“Are you shocked?”

I gave my head the slightest shake. “Not yet.”

“Good.”

Sometimes it was like that with us. Fast and hot and hard, swift and frantic fucking without bothering to do more than slide aside panties and unzip a fly. He was inside me in a heartbeat, and I was wet for him. Slick. My body gave him no resistance as he filled me, and we both cried out.

My arms went around his neck, his hand beneath one thigh to shift the angle. We rattled the cupboards. I wasn’t sure I’d come but something in the way his body hit my pelvis, over and over, tipped me into a short, sharp climax. James followed just after my body tightened around him. His face dropped to my shoulder, both of us breathing hard. The position quickly became painful and awkward, and we untangled ourselves with stiff motions. He put his arms around me, and we stood together as our breathing slowed and the sweat on our faces cooled in the breeze coming in the window.

“When’s your next appointment with the doctor?” James’s question made me blink.

“I haven’t made one.”

I pushed away from him to rearrange my clothes and wash the grill utensils. The dish soap made my fingers slippery, and I dropped the tongs into the steel sink with a clatter that sounded like an accusation. James, however, did not accuse.

“Are you going to?”

I looked at him. “I’ve just been busy.”

He could’ve pointed out that since the local counseling center I’d worked for had lost its funding and closed, I’d been anything but busy. He didn’t. He shrugged and accepted my answer like it made sense, even though it didn’t.

“Why?” I asked. “Are you in a hurry?”

James smiled. “I thought you wanted to get started. Hey, who knows, maybe we just made a baby. Just now.”

That was utterly unlikely. “How lucky would that be?”

He reached for me again. “Pretty lucky?”

I snorted delicately. “To have conceived our child standing up in the kitchen?”

“Maybe she’d be a good cook.”

“Or he. Boys can be good cooks, too.” I tossed a handful of suds his way.

James buffed his nails on his shirtfront. “Yeah, just like his old man.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh … yeah.”

Before we could disintegrate into teasing about James’s lack of culinary skills, the phone rang. I reached for it automatically. James took the opportunity of my distraction to knuckle my sides.

I was laughing, breathless, when I answered. “Hello?”

The crackle of static and silence greeted me. Then, “Anne?”

I fended off my husband’s wandering hands. “Yes?”

“Hello, Anne.” The voice was low, deep, thick. Unfamiliar yet something made me think I knew it.

“Yes?” I said, uncertain, glancing at the clock. It seemed rather late for a telemarketer.

“This is Alex. How are you?”

“Oh. Alex. Hello.” My laugh sounded embarrassed this time. James raised an eyebrow. I’d never spoken to Alex. “You must want to speak to James.”

“No,” said Alex. “I’d like to talk to you.”

I’d already been planning to hand off the phone to James, but now I stopped. “You would?”

James, who’d been reaching for the phone, took back his hand. His other brow raised, the pair of them arching like birds’ wings. I shrugged and raised a brow myself, using the subtle nonverbal signals we’d forged as our private marital communication.

“Sure.” Alex had a laugh like syrup. “How are you?”

“I’m … fine.”

James stepped back, palms up, grinning. I cradled the phone against my shoulder and turned back to the sink to rinse off the dishes, but James nudged me aside and took over the task. He waved a little, shooing me.

“That’s good. How’s the bastard you married?”

“He’s fine, too.” I went to the living room. I’m not much of a phone conversationalist. I always need something else to do while I’m talking, but now I had no laundry to fold, no floor to mop. No dishes, even, to wash. I paced, instead.

“He’s not giving you any trouble, is he?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I opted to assume Alex was teasing. “Nothing the whips and chains can’t take care of.”

His low chuckle tickled my eardrum. “That’s right. You keep him in line.”

“So … James tells me you’re coming for a visit?”

The hiss of static made me think we’d lost the connection for a second, but then he was back. “Yeah, that’s the plan. Unless you object?”

“Of course not. We’re looking forward to it.” A slight lie. I was sure James was looking forward to it. Never having met Alex, I wasn’t so sure about having him as a houseguest. It was an intimate proposal, and I wasn’t so good at intimacy on short notice.

“Liar.”

“Beg pardon?” I stopped short.

Alex laughed. “You’re a liar, Anne.”

At first, I didn’t know how to respond. “I—”

He laughed again. “I’d be the same way. Some rascal calls out of the blue wanting to be put up for a few weeks? I’d be a little concerned. Especially if half the things I’m sure Jamie’s told you about me are true. He has told you stories, hasn’t he?”

“A few.”

“And you’re still letting me come to visit? You’re a brave, brave woman.”

I’d heard stories about Alex Kennedy but assumed most of them were exaggerations. The mythology of boyhood friendship, the past filtered through time. “So, if only half of what he’s told me is true, what about the rest?”

“Some of that might be true, too,” Alex said. “Tell me something, Anne. Do you really want me in your house?”

“Are you really a rascal?”

“A ragged one. Running round and round that rugged rock.”

He surprised me into a laugh. I was aware of an undercurrent there, a slight flirtation he was offering and to which I was responding. I looked into the kitchen, where James was finishing up the dishes. He wasn’t even paying any attention, uncaring about my conversation with his friend. I’d have been eavesdropping.

“Any friend of James,” I said.

“Is that so? But I bet Jamie doesn’t have any friends like me.”

“Rascals? No. You’re probably right. A few scoundrels and a moron or two. But no other rascals.”

I liked his laugh. It was warm and gooey and unpretentious. The connection hissed and crackled again. I heard a flare of music and the murmur of conversation, but couldn’t tell if it was in the background or breaking through on the line.

“Where are you, Alex?”

“Germany. I’m visiting some friends for a day or so before I go to Amsterdam, then to London. I’ll be leaving for the States from there.”

“Very cosmopolitan,” I said, only a bit envious. I’d never been out of North America.

Alex’s laugh rasped. “I’m living out of a suitcase and I’m jet-lagged all to shit. I’d kill someone just for a bologna sandwich on white bread with mayonnaise.”

“Are you trying to win my sympathy?”

“Shamelessly.”

“I’ll make sure to stock up on white bread and bologna,” I said, the prospect of Alex staying in our house suddenly not as daunting as it had been before.

“Anne,” Alex said after a pause, “you are a goddess among women.”

“So I’m told.”

“Seriously. Tell me what you want me to bring you from Europe.”

The shift in conversation surprised me. “I don’t want anything!”

“Chocolate? Sausage? Treacle? What? I might have a hard time smuggling heroin or pot or prostitutes from Amsterdam, though. You’d better keep it legal.”

“Really, Alex, you don’t have to bring me anything.”

“Of course I do. If you don’t tell me what you want, I’ll just ask Jamie.”

“I’d say treacle,” I told him. “But I’m not sure what it is … does it come from a well?”

He chuckled. “It’s molasses. It comes in a jar.”

“Bring me that.”

“Ah, a woman who likes to live on the wild side. No wonder Jamie married you.”

“There’s more than one reason,” I said.

I realized I’d been standing still, chatting, for several minutes. Alex had so engaged me I hadn’t felt the need to multitask. I looked again to the kitchen, but James had disappeared. I heard the mumble of television from the den.

“I was sorry I couldn’t make the wedding. I heard it was a blast.”

“Did you? From James?”

A silly question. From who else would he have heard it? Except James had never mentioned he’d been in touch with Alex. James had spoken frequently about his best friend from junior high school, though on the subject of their falling-out he’d been rather more vague. He had other friends … but we were getting married, and I have a habit of trying to make things better. I’d been the one to add Alex’s name to the guest list, uncertain even if the address I found in James’s outdated address book was the right one. I figured whatever had happened between them might be repaired with a little outreach. When he’d sent regrets, I wasn’t surprised, but at least we’d made the attempt. Apparently it had worked better than I’d known.

“Yeah.”

“It was a very nice wedding,” I said. “It was too bad you couldn’t make it, but now you’ll get to come for a long visit, instead.”

“He sent me pictures. You both look very happy.”

“He sent you … pictures? Of our wedding?” I looked at the fireplace mantel, where a framed photo of us still rested even after six years. I always wondered how long it was acceptable to display wedding photos. I guessed at least until baby photos came along to replace them.

“Yeah.”

That surprised me, too. I’d sent photos to a few of my friends who hadn’t been able to attend, but … well, we were women. Chicks did stuff like that, giggled over pictures and sent chatty e-mails.

“Well ….” I trailed off, awkward. “When are you coming in?”

“I have a few details to work out with the airline. I’ll let Jamie know.”

“Sure. Do you want me to get him for you?”

“I’ll e-mail him.”

“Okay. I’ll tell him.”

“Well, Anne, it’s almost two in the morning here. I’m going to go to bed. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Goodbye, Alex—” He’d already disconnected, leaving me to stare at the phone, a bit taken aback.

There was nothing odd, not really, about his being in touch with James. Men’s friendships were different from women’s. My husband never told me about talking to Alex, but that didn’t mean he was keeping it a secret. It just meant he hadn’t thought enough of it to share. In fact, I should be happy they’d resolved their differences. It would be nice to meet James’s dear friend, Alex, the rascal. The ragged one who ran round and round the rugged rock. The one who promised me treats from Wonderland. The one who called my husband, Jamie, not James.

The one James had only ever spoken of in past tense.

Mary’s phone beeped for the fourth time in half an hour, but this time she only glanced at it before shoving it deep into her purse. “So how long is he staying?”

“I don’t know.” I lifted a crystal picture frame from a shelf laden with them. “How about this one?”

My sister made a face. “No.”

I put it back and looked around the store. “They’re all like that in here. We’re not going to find anything.”

“Whose bright idea was it to get a fancy picture frame, anyway? Oh, right,” Mary said sarcastically. “Patricia’s. So why are we suckered into trying to find one?”

“Because Patricia can’t come to places like this with the kids.” I scanned the shelves but all the frames were similar. Overpriced and glittering with ugliness.

“Right. And I don’t suppose Sean can watch the rugrats in the evening?”

I shrugged, but something in Mary’s tone made me look up. “I don’t know. Why? Did she say something about it?”

Sisters also share a nonverbal language. Mary’s posture and expression said it all, but in case I missed what she was trying to say, she said it anyway. “He’s a jerk.”

“Oh, c’mon, Mare.”

“Haven’t you noticed how she doesn’t talk about him anymore? And it used to be all, Sean this, Sean that, Sean says, Sean thinks. Tell me you haven’t noticed we’ve been spared the Gospel of Sean lately. And she’s been an even bigger priss than usual. Something’s going on.”

“Like what?” We abandoned the frou-frou shop and headed out into the bright June sunshine.

“Well, I don’t know.” Mary rolled her eyes.

“Maybe you should ask her.”

My sister gave me another look. “You could ask her.”

The sight of a familiar shock of black hair and a wardrobe that had dangerously malfunctioned made us both pause.

“Oh, brother,” Mary said under her breath. “Goth vomited all over her.”

I laughed. “Is that what that is?”

“I think you used to call it punk back in the day. Holy cow. She never quits. I thought she was seeing that guy who worked at the record store.” Mary sounded awed. “Who’s that guy?”

Claire was grinning and flirting with a very tall, very lanky young man with enough metal in his face to set off an airport security alarm. She wore a set of black-and-white striped stockings, a black lace skirt with a jagged hem and a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a punk rock band that had swirled down the drain of drug overdoses before she’d been born.

“She definitely marches to the beat of her own drum,” I said.

“Yeah, that and an electric guitar, two French horns and a synthesizer.”

Claire looked up and waved from across the parking lot, said her adieu to her new suitor and headed toward us. “Ladies. Good morning.”

“It’s afternoon,” Mary pointed out.

“Depends on what time you got up,” countered Claire with an unashamed grin. “So what’s the happs?”

“Anne can’t decide on a frame.”

“Hey!” I protested. Without Patricia here to balance on my side, I could quickly be overtaken by my two younger sisters. “It’s not up to me. We should all decide.”

Claire waved a hand clad in a fingerless lace glove. “Whatevs. Get whatever you want. It’s not like they’ll really care.”

“Hey, Madonna,” I said, annoyed, “1983 called. It wants its wardrobe back.”

Mary snerked. Claire made a face. I felt a small, useless moment of triumph.

“I’m starving,” Claire declared. “Can’t we go find someplace to chow?”

“Not all of us have the munchies,” Mary put in.

“Not all of us have to watch our weight,” Claire retorted sweetly.

“Girls, girls,” I interjected. “Grade school’s over. Can we please grow up?”

Claire slung an arm around Mary’s shoulders and gave me an innocent look. “Wha? Why for you so uptight, my sistah?”

I did love them, all of them, and couldn’t have imagined my life without them. Mary grinned and shoved Claire’s arm off her. Claire shrugged and leered at me.

“C’mon, princess,” she cooed. “Treat your li’l sissies to a burger and fries.”

“Are you going to come clean my house?” I asked. “That’s worth the price of lunch, isn’t it?”

“Oh, right, before James’s boyfriend comes for a visit. I almost forgot.” She stuck out her tongue. “You don’t want him to find all your sex toys lying around.”

“You never did say when he was coming,” Mary said.

The three of us started toward the diner on the other side of the parking lot. The food was decent and not generally a draw to the summertime tourist crowd inundating Sandusky to visit Cedar Point. Better still, it was close, and my stomach was rumbling.

“I don’t know when he’s coming.”

“What’s his name? Alex?” This came from Claire, who held the door open for Mary and me.

“Yeah.” The waitress seated us in a comfortable booth near the back and handed us menus none of us needed. We’d been coming here forever. “Alex Kennedy.”

“And he didn’t come to your wedding?” Mary shook sugar into her iced tea and squeezed the lemon wedge. She passed me a few packets without my having to ask.

“No, he was overseas. But his company got bought out, and he’s coming back to the States. I don’t know that much about it.”

“What are you going to do with him while James is working?” This practical question astoundingly came from Claire, sipping water through a straw.

“He is an adult, Claire. I’m assuming he can find something to do.”

Mary snorted. “Yeah, but he’s a guy.”

“Good point,” Claire said. “You’d better lay in supplies of nachos and spare socks.”

I rolled my eyes at both of them. “He’s James’s friend, not mine. I’m not going to be doing his laundry.”

Claire made a derisive noise. “We’ll see.”

“Oh, listen to you,” Mary said. “When’s the last time you ever did anyone’s laundry, including your own?”

“You’re insane,” replied Claire, unconcerned. “Of course I do my own laundry at school.”

Mary frowned. “You should do it at home, too.”

“Why? It gives Mom such pleasure,” said Claire, and I was pretty sure she was being serious.

“I’m not worried about the laundry,” I told both of them. “Or about entertaining him. I’m sure he’ll be able to entertain himself just fine.”

“Ha. He’s been in Hong Kong, right?” Claire put her hands together and pasted on a silly grin. “He’ll expect a geisha, you watch.”

“Geishas are Japanese, you idiot.” Mary shook her head.

“What. Evs.” Claire blew upward, puffing her bangs out of her eyes.

Listening to them declare disaster actually made me feel better about Alex’s visit. “Singapore. And it will be fine, you guys.”

“No walking around in your panties,” said Claire with a doleful sigh, like that was the worst thing of all. “How will you stand it?”

“As if I do that anyway?”

“Dude,” my youngest sister declared, “that shit’s the best part of living on your own.”

We all laughed. Mary’s phone beeped again, and she dug it out. She read the message, tapped the keys and tucked it away again.

“Hey, hot stuff, you act like you’re married to that thing. You holding out on us or what?” Claire craned her neck to catch a glimpse of Mary’s phone.

“It’s just Betts.” Mary shrugged and drank tea.

Claire leaned forward. “Are you and Betts a couple?”

Mary’s mouth dropped open. So did mine. Claire looked unconcerned. “Well? She keeps texting you like she can’t bear to be parted from you. And we all know you’re not that into dudes.”

“What?” Mary, who generally gave Claire as good as she got, seemed unable to speak.

I was finding it hard to speak, myself. “Claire, good lord.”

Claire shrugged. “It’s a legitimate question.”

“What ever gave you the idea I don’t like guys?” Mary blinked rapidly, her cheeks staining bright red.

“Umm … the fact you’ve never had sex with one?”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” I told Claire.

“No,” said Mary, “it doesn’t, especially since, hello! I so have!”

Claire and I both did a double take. One of the delightful things about having sisters is the Three Stooges-esque quality of so many of our conversations.

“Get out! What? When? Who?” Claire squealed.

Mary looked around the diner before she answered. “I did it, okay? I lost my virginity. What’s the big deal? You all did it, too.”

“Yeah, but none of us waited until we were shriveled up old maids,” Claire said.

“I’m not an old maid, Claire.” Mary’s face still gleamed from blushing. “And not all of us are rampant sluts.”

Claire frowned. “Hey.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend,” I said to defuse them.

Both turned to look at me with almost identical expressions of disdain.

“I don’t,” said Mary while at the same time Claire chimed in, “Who says she’s got to have a boyfriend?”

“I just thought … never mind.”

Mary shook her head as the waitress brought us our platters, but waited until we were alone again before speaking. “It was just some guy.”

“Some random guy?” I wouldn’t have expected that from Mary, who used to dress up as a nun … and not for Halloween. “You lost your virginity to some stranger?”

Mary blushed again. Claire hooted, reaching for the ketchup. “Rock it, sister. Way to go.”

“I figured it was time,” Mary said. “So I went out and I found someone.”

“Weren’t you worried about … disease?” I shuddered a little. “Or … anything?”

“She made him wear a condom.” Claire waved a fry. “Bet you ten bucks.”

“Of course I made him wear a condom,” Mary muttered. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Well, I’m just surprised, that’s all.” I didn’t mean to sound disapproving. I wasn’t, not really. Losing her virginity to a stranger was probably no worse than my giving it up to the high school boy I mistakenly thought loved me. At least Mary had gone into it without romantic expectations.

“Spill it. Was it good?”

Mary shrugged, looking down. Her phone begged for attention again, but she ignored it. “Sure. Yeah.”

“You’re not convincing me.” Claire nudged her.

Mary laughed. “Yeah. It was good. He was pretty hot. And I guess … he was good.”

“What, you guess? You don’t know? If you don’t know for sure, Mare, it can’t have been that good.”

“Why are we getting sex advice from you, I want to know.” I pressed down the top bun of my overstuffed burger, and juice puddled on the plate. I was going to eat the whole thing, I just knew it, even if I’d regret it the next time I got on the scale.

Claire shrugged and dug into her coleslaw. “Because I’ve had the most sex. Duh.”

“Duh.” Mary laughed. “I wouldn’t brag about that, if I were you.”

“I’m not bragging, just being honest. Geez. What I want to know is, how come you all have such a puritanical attitude toward fucking and I don’t. How’d that happen?”

I laughed. “I don’t have a puritanical attitude toward fucking, Claire.”

She gave me a look. “Oh, really? What’s the kinkiest thing you ever did?”

Silence.

“I thought so.”

A triumphant, smug younger sister is quite annoying. I threw a fry at her. She ate it with aplomb and licked her fingers.

“It’s not about the kink,” Mary said. “Gosh, just because we haven’t let anyone tie us up or spank us doesn’t make us prudes.”

Claire laughed, tipping back her head. “Oh, please. These days, spanking’s almost vanilla.”

“What’s the freakiest thing you’ve ever done, then?” I asked calmly, turning the tables.

Claire shrugged. “Cutting.”

Mary and I both recoiled. “Claire, gross!”

She laughed. “Gotcha.”

“Gross,” Mary repeated, looking sickened. “People do that?”

“People do everything,” Claire said matter of factly.

“I’d never let anyone cut me,” said Mary.

Claire pointed with a fry. “You never know what you’ll do for the right person, Mare. Never say never.”

Mary scoffed. “I can’t imagine there could possibly be a right person who’d get me to agree to cutting.”

“Maybe not cutting, but sure as hell it would be something,” Claire said. “Love is some messed up shit.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in love,” said Mary.

“Goes to show what you know,” answered Claire. “I do.”

“Me, too,” I said. We raised our glasses and clinked. “To love. All kinds.”

“Oooh,” said Claire. “Anne is kinky, after all.”

Chapter 03

“So. Tell me about him.” I said this to James as we lay in bed, the covers thrown off us in deference to the heatwave that was too fierce for early June. The overhead fan whirred, stirring air brought in from the lake, but I was still hot.

“Who?” James sounded sleepy. He had to get up early to hit the job site.

“Alex.”

James made a muffled, snorting sort of noise into his pillow. “What do you want to know?”

I stared upward, into darkness, and imagined stars. “What’s he like?”

James was silent for so long I was certain he’d fallen asleep. At last, he rolled onto his back. I couldn’t see his face, but I pictured it as he spoke.

“He’s a good guy.”

What did that mean? I rolled onto my side, facing him. Between us, heat stirred. Reaching out, I could have touched him, but I tucked my hand beneath my pillow instead and found a cool spot on the sheets.

“He’s smart. He’s …”

I waited but couldn’t stand the hesitation. “Funny? Nice?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

I sighed. “You’ve been friends since what, the eighth grade?”

“Yeah.” He no longer sounded sleepy. He sounded like he wanted to be sleepy.

“So … you have to have more to say about him than he’s smart and a good guy. C’mon, James. What’s Alex like?”

“He’s like the lake.”

“Tell me.”

James shifted, the bed dipping as he moved and tugged the covers with his feet. “Alex is … he’s deep, Anne. But he’s shallow in places, too, when you don’t expect it. I guess that’s the only way to put it.”

I pondered this for a moment. “That’s a very interesting description.”

James didn’t say anything. I heard him breathing. I felt his breath on my face. I felt the heat from his skin, inches from mine. We weren’t touching but I felt him all over me, just the same.

“Okay, how about this? Alex seems easy to know.”

“But he’s not?”

James drew in a breath. Let it out. Took another, a slow, easy pattern that nevertheless didn’t sound relaxed. “No. I’d say not.”

“But you know him? I mean, you were best buddies for a long time, right?”

He laughed, then, and the twinges of unease his answers had stirred in my gut fled. “Yeah. I guess we were.”

I reached for him then, to run a hand through his hair. He moved closer to me. His hand found just the right spot on my hip, nestled into my body’s curve. I lined myself up along him.

We were silent for a while. I let myself melt against him, breast to chest. He wore a pair of boxers. I had on a tank-top and a pair of panties. There was a lot of skin contact. I wasn’t about to complain, even though the night hadn’t yet begun to cool, and we stuck to each other.

He got hard, which made me smile. I waited, and after a moment his hand began its slow, easy path up and down my side. The thump of his heart quickened, but so did mine.

I tilted my head. His mouth found mine without effort. Our kiss was sweet and slow, without urgency.

“Don’t you have to be up early tomorrow?”

James pressed my hand to his thickening cock. “I’m up now.”

“I feel that.” I gave him an experimental squeeze. “Whatever shall I do with this?”

“I have a few ideas.” He pushed his groin against my hand, his fingers sliding between the edges of my tank top and panties. “Why not suck it?”

“Oh, that’s subtle.” My voice sounded dry, but I was grinning.

“Never claimed to be subtle,” James murmured. He dipped his head to taste my throat.

I hitched in a breath. My hand bore down. James groaned. I smiled. I pushed him back, just a little, just enough for me to slide down his body and take his penis out of the boxers. I didn’t have to see it to know every ripple and curve. I closed my fingers around the shaft and bent closer to lip the sensitive flesh around the rim.

James made a happy sigh and rolled onto his back. He put a hand on my head, not pushing me down or hurrying me along, just stroking my hair a little. His fingers snagged and tangled. A discomfort so slight it didn’t qualify as pain sparked against my scalp.

I licked him, savoring the salt-musk flavor. Even fresh from the shower, this part of him always smelled and tasted different from, say, an elbow or a chin. His cock, lower belly and inner thighs all maintained a deliciousness I could only describe as male. And unique. Blindfolded I might have faltered at identifying him by the slope of his nose or bulge of muscles, but that smell and taste would prove him to be mine every time.

“If I were in a dark room full of naked men and had to find you, I could,” I murmured before sliding my mouth over his erection.

“Do you often fantasize about being in a room full of naked men, Anne?” James lifted his hips to push inside my mouth. I curled my fingers tighter around the base of his prick to keep him from surging too far.

“No.”

His laugh was brief, breathless. “No? Never? That’s not your fantasy?”

“What would I do with a room full of naked men?”

He sighed as I sucked him. I cupped his balls, soft, and stroked my thumb along the tender seam in his flesh. “They could … do things … to you ….”

I used my mouth and hand in tandem until he groaned aloud, then stroked him up and down and gave my jaw a rest. “No. I’m a maximum two-input girl, James. All those men would just go to waste.”

I put my mouth back on him, taking him in as far as I could go. His cock throbbed against my tongue. Silky precome mixed with my saliva and made him slippery. Easy to stroke. Easy to suck.

James put a hand to my hip and tugged me gently, until I spun without taking my mouth off him so I straddled his face. It was my turn to moan when he gripped my ass and pulled my clit onto his tongue. He flicked me lightly with the tip. In this position I could control how close or far my body got to his. I could hover over his lips and tongue, move my pelvis, stroke myself along his mouth.

I loved it.

My orgasm rose fast. It became difficult to concentrate on sucking him while he licked me. We got a little sloppy. I don’t think either of us cared. We both came within seconds of each other, our cries mingling in the dark. After, when I’d turned around and lolled in sated content on my pillow, I noticed the air had grown cool enough I wanted to be under the blankets.

I pulled them up over both of us, though James was breathing in the just-about-to-snore way I found alternatingly endearing and excruciating, depending on how tired I was. He snorted into his pillow. I lay back, tired but not quite ready to sleep.

“What did you fight about?” I whispered into the darkness hanging between us.

The sound of his breathing changed. An indrawn breath. Silence. James didn’t answer and after a few moments, I forgot to ask again, so taken up was I in dreams.

Things changed, as they are apt to do, without warning. I’d spent the morning running errands, and I was playing reluctant hostess that evening to James’s family, all of them. Parents, spouses, nieces and nephews. I planned something simple, grilled chicken and salad, fresh rolls. Watermelon and brownies for dessert.

The brownies were ruining my life.

The recipe seemed simple enough. Good quality chocolate, flour, eggs, sugar, butter. I had all the right tools for the job, as James would have said with utter seriousness. I even had the skill, though perhaps not the talent. Yet for some reason, I was thwarted at every turn. My microwave refused to melt the chocolate without scorching it. The butter splattered and burned me when, forewarned by the chocolate disaster, I tried melting it on the stovetop. One egg had a blood spot, the other the bonus of a double yolk that would have been a lovely surprise in an omelet but messed up this recipe.

A glance at the clock showed the hour I’d set aside for this project had already stretched longer than that. This made me tense. I don’t like being late. I don’t like being unprepared. I don’t like being less than perfect.

I’d opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fans, because I preferred a breeze to the noise and sterile chill of our stuttering air conditioner. The kitchen smelled good, like marinade and melted fat and baking bread, but it was hot. Chocolate stained my white shirt and the front of my denim skirt. My hair, unruly on its best days, had gone berserk and hung in tangled corkscrews past my shoulders. Sweat trickled down my back, tickling.

I’d forgotten to buy salad dressing, but no time for that now. I’d have to whip up something from scratch. No time, either, for the soak in the tub I’d planned as advance reward for serving dinner to the horde. I didn’t care if that meant my knees would stay stubbled, but I’d been looking forward to the scent of lavender and half an hour of silence. Now if I was lucky I might squeeze in a quick scrub in the shower before changing my clothes. The way things were going, I’d have to just give myself a wipe down with a washcloth and hope for the best.

Right. Brownies. I had only one package left of the gourmet chocolate chips. If I messed up again, we’d be eating stale sandwich cookies for dessert. I set the package on the counter and poured the butter from the double boiler into the mixing bowl. One step at a time.

I stirred carefully. I re-read the instructions. I lifted the bowl to swirl the melted butter and eggs together, just like the book said.

“Hello, Anne.”

Warm butter sloshed and the mixing spoon clattered to the kitchen floor. My heart stopped, my breath stopped, my mind, for one terrified moment, stopped. Like a movie put on Pause, then clicked to Fast-Forward, I jerked back to life.

I’d screamed. How embarrassing. Turning, I released my death clutch on the bowl and set it on the counter with a small clang.

The first time I saw Alex Kennedy, it was with the thud-thud of my fast-beating heart still pounding in my ears and throat. He stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand on the doorjamb at a point high enough to stretch his lean body. He leaned slightly forward, one foot balancing his entire weight while the other leg bent as if I’d caught him in the act of taking a step. I saw faded jeans, low-slung but with a black leather belt holding them snug on his hips. A white T-shirt. Very James Dean, though instead of a red cloth jacket he had a black leather coat tucked into the hook made by his hand shoved into his front pocket. He wore sunglasses, and the big dark lenses covered most of his face.

It was a picture-perfect moment, like something out of a movie, and for a moment we merely stood and stared at each other like we were waiting for an unseen director to shout “Action!” Alex moved first. The hand came off the doorjamb, the other eased itself from his pocket and grabbed the coat before it could fall. He finished his step, entering my kitchen like he’d always been there.

“Hi.” He said this looking around the room over the top of his dark glasses before he looked back at me. “Anne.”

He didn’t make it a question. James had said he was smart. Who else would I be? He didn’t introduce himself, either, a fact that could be taken as arrogance or nonchalance, or simple understanding that though he didn’t know me well enough to know it, I was smart, too.

“Alex.” I moved around the kitchen’s center island, toward him. Streaks and mess coated my hands, so I didn’t offer one. “Wow. I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting you.”

He smiled. It’s a cliché to say it took my breath away, but all clichés began as truth, or else nobody would be able to relate to them. His mouth, full soft lips, quirked on one side. He took off his glasses. The eyes beneath were dark and could only be described as languid—lazy, rich, slow. Deep. Alex had eyes that meant something important, if only I could figure out what it was.

“Yeah, sorry about that. I rang Jamie’s cell and he said to head on over. He said he’d call you. I guess he didn’t.” His voice, too, was slow and deep. Bemused.

I laughed, rueful. “He didn’t.”

“Bastard.” Alex slung his jacket over the back of one of the high-backed chairs at the breakfast table and hooked both thumbs in his pockets. “Something smells good.”

“Oh … I’m baking bread.” I grabbed a dishtowel and wiped my hands quickly and began the dishevelment dance. Hair smoothed, shirt tucked, a quick pass of face and body to make sure I was put together.

He watched me, mouth still quirked. “And making something with chocolate, I see.”

“Brownies.” I blushed, and blushed harder at the heat rising along my throat. I had no reason to be embarrassed. Well, aside from the disaster that was my kitchen and personal appearance.

Alex made a low purring noise of approval. “My favorite. How’d you know?”

“I didn’t—” He was teasing. “Who doesn’t like brownies?”

“Good point.” He laughed. He looked around the kitchen again, as if taking in every detail. I found myself following his gaze with mine, cataloging the framed prints on the walls, the wallpaper, slightly peeling in the corner. The scrapes in the linoleum where the chairs had worn the pattern to whiteness.

“We’re fixing it up,” I said, like I had to apologize for the kitchen’s imperfections.

His gaze swiveled back to me. It was disconcerting, in a way, yet also familiar. Alex had the same focus as James, though on my husband it was offset by a somehow greater sense of impermanence. James could be intense on whatever had currently grabbed his attention. He was the blackbird with a beady eye, focused on the shiny. Alex reminded me of a lion waiting in the grass, seemingly sated until his prey got close enough to capture his notice.

“It’s nice. You’ve done some nice things.”

“Oh, you’ve been here before?” I shook my head at my own question. “Of course you have.”

“Back when Jamie’s grandparents lived here, yeah. Long time ago. It’s nicer now.” His mouth stretched into another slow grin. “Smells better, too.”

There was no reason for me to be intimidated by him. He wasn’t doing anything. He was, in fact, being quite pleasant. I wanted to return his smile, and I did … but it was with a sort of hitching, confused reluctance. It was the kind of smile you give to someone who’s just offered you a mint on the subway. Wondering if they’re being kind, or if your breath’s offending. Was he just being polite, or did he mean it?

I didn’t know.

“I hope they taste good, at least. I’m not having much luck with them so far,” I admitted with a glance at the bowl.

He tilted his head to look at the mess on the center island. “How come?”

“Oh …” I shrugged with a small, self-conscious laugh. “I thought I’d be fancy and make them from scratch instead of the box. I should’ve stuck with the prepackaged mix.”

“Nah. Things made fresh are always better.” Alex moved closer to the island, and therefore, closer to me. He looked into the bowl. Without his gaze pinning me, I could watch him. “So you put the butter in with the eggs? What’s next?”

He came all the way around, and we ended up shoulder to shoulder. He hadn’t looked so tall from across the room. My head would reach the bottom of his chin. On James, I could reach his mouth without standing on my toes. Alex turned his head and gave me a look I couldn’t interpret.

“Anne?”

“Oh … oh, I guess it’s right there.” I leaned over to stab the cookbook with my finger. Several grease splotches marked the pages. “Melt the chocolate. Melt the butter. Mix together. Add the sugar and vanilla ….”

I stopped when I saw him staring at me. I returned his smile with a tentative one. It seemed to please him. He leaned forward, the tiniest amount. His voice dipped low, sharing a secret.

“Want to know the trick?”

“Of making brownies?”

His grin got broader. I expected him to say no. That he had another trick to reveal, something sweeter even than chocolate. I leaned forward, too, just a little.

“Hot butter will melt chocolate. You need a low flame.”

“Will it?” I looked at the cookbook so I didn’t have to look at him. More heat rose, burning the tips of my ears. I thought I must look ridiculous and tried to pretend it didn’t matter.

“Want me to show you?” At my hesitation he straightened. His smile changed, gave us a bit of distance. Still friendly, but less intense. “I can’t promise you they’ll win any awards, but—”

“Sure. Yes, sure,” I said decisively. “James’s family will be here pretty soon and I don’t want to be worrying about dessert once they start arriving.”

“Yeah. Because they’ll take up all your attention. I know what you mean.” Alex reached for the bowl and turned toward the stove, where I’d left the double boiler I’d been using earlier.

He would know just what I meant, I thought, watching him dump the cooling butter-and-egg mixture back into the pot. He twisted the knob on the stove, bending to get his face at the level of the flame and setting it with a delicate touch. He grabbed up a spoon from the tool caddy on the counter and stirred the mixture.

“Bring me the chocolate.” He spoke like he was used to being obeyed, and I didn’t hesitate. I tore open the bag and gave it to him. Without looking at me, he shook the package gently, dropping chip after chip into the butter as he stirred it. “Anne. Come and see.”

I moved to peer over his shoulder. The butter now had dark brown swirls that got larger and larger as Alex added more chocolate chips. After a few more moments the mix was a gooey, velvety liquid.

“Beautiful,” I murmured, not really meaning to speak, and he looked up at me.

This time I didn’t feel like he’d snared me with his gaze. I wasn’t prey. He assessed me, then turned back to the thickening batter.

“Is everything else ready?”

“Yes.”

I gathered the rest of the ingredients. Together we mixed and poured and scraped the bowl with my serviceable white spatula that was guaranteed not to crack or stain. The brownie mix smelled liked heaven and filled the baking pan exactly the way it was supposed to.

“Perfect,” I said, and slid it into the oven. “Thank you.”

“And of course it has to be perfect, right?” Alex leaned against the island, hands gripping the edge so his elbows bent akimbo.

I wiped my hands on the dishcloth and started putting utensils into the sink. “It’s nice if it is, isn’t it?”

“Even a flawed brownie still tastes damn good.” He watched me clean without offering to help.

I paused, mixing bowl in my hand. “Depends on the flaw. I mean, if it’s too dry or crumbly, it might not look right but will taste good. Or if the ingredients are wrong it can look perfect on the outside and taste terrible.”

“Exactly.”

I wondered if he’d been baiting me to say something he’d been thinking. “Well. They looked perfect. Unless they burn.”

“They won’t burn.”

“But they might not taste good, either?” I laughed at him. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“You never know, do you?” He shrugged and gave me an upward, sideways, roundabout glance.

Teasing. He was teasing me, judging me. Trying to draw me out. Trying to feel me out. Figure me out.

“I guess we’d better taste it then.” I held out the bowl. “You go first.”

Alex raised a brow and pursed his lips, but pushed himself off the island and held out a hand. “In case they’re vile?”

“A good hostess always allows her guests to have the first portion,” I said sweetly.

“A perfect hostess makes sure everything’s grand before she serves it,” Alex countered, but he scooped a finger along the bowl’s side. It came away smeared with chocolate.

He raised his finger, showing me. Being theatrical. He opened his mouth, tongue showing intimately pink. He put his finger in his mouth and closed his lips over it, sucking hard enough to hollow his cheeks before his finger popped out with an audible noise.

He said nothing.

“Well?” I asked, after a moment.

He grinned. “Perfect.”

That was enough incentive for me. I slid my finger along the small amount of batter left in the bowl and licked it with the tip of my tongue.

“Coward.”

“Fine.” I stuck the whole thing in my mouth and sucked as hard as he had, making a show of it. “Mmmm, that’s good!”

“Brownies fit for a queen.”

“Or James’s mother,” I said and immediately covered my mouth to pretend I hadn’t said anything so remotely derogatory.

“Even her.”

We smiled at each other again, drawn together by our mutual understanding about what sort of person James’s mother was.

“Well …” I cleared my throat. “I should go change my clothes and take a shower. And show you to your room. It’s clean and ready, I just have to bring you some towels.”

“I don’t want you to go to a lot of trouble.”

“It’s not any trouble, Alex.”

“Perfect,” he said, not quite a whisper and not really a sigh, either.

Neither of us moved.

I realized my fingers were numb from clutching the bowl too hard. I loosened my grip at once and put it in the sink. I had chocolate on my fingers from the bowl’s edges and I laughed, gesturing.

“What a mess.” I licked them, the pointer, middle, thumb. “I’m chocolate all over.”

“You have some just … there.”

Alex’s thumb traced the outer edge of my mouth’s corner. I tasted chocolate. I tasted him.

That was how James found us, touching. An innocent gesture that meant nothing, yet I backed away at once. Alex did not.

“Jamie,” he said, instead. “How the fuck’ve you been?”

They collapsed into a flurry of backslapping and insults. Two grown men reverted to the behavior of fourteen-year-old boys in front of my eyes, both of them rumbling and posturing. Alex grabbed James around the neck and knuckled his hair until James stood up, face flushed and eyes bright with laughter.

I left them like that, to their greeting. I crept away down the hall and into the shower, where I ran the water cold as ice and stood beneath the spray, mouth open, to wash away the taste of my husband’s long-lost best friend.

Mrs. Kinney often looks as though she’s smelling something bad but is too polite to say so. I’m used to it being directed at me, that carefully curled lip, those delicately flaring nostrils. I assumed it was meant for me this time, too, until I saw how her eyes had focused over my shoulder.

I had intended to nod and smile but not really listen to her commentary on the dinner, how it was being prepared, how much to serve, where everyone should sit. So when she stopped, stuttered, actually, like a wind-up doll whose key has rusted, I turned to follow her gaze with mine.

“Hi, Mrs. Kinney.” Alex had showered, too, and changed into a pair of black trousers and a silk shirt that should have looked too dressy but didn’t. Smiling, he came forward for the sort of hug and kiss to the cheek she insisted on giving me every time we saw each other, though I hate casual embraces.

“Alex.” Her reply was as stiff as her back, but she inclined her head to accept the peck he put on it. “We haven’t seen you in a while.”

Her tone clearly said he hadn’t been missed. Alex didn’t seem offended. He merely shook Frank’s hand and waved at Margaret and Molly.

“James didn’t tell me you were back,” continued Mrs. Kinney, as though if James hadn’t told her it simply couldn’t be true.

“Yeah, for a while. I sold my business and needed a place to crash. So I’m here for a few weeks.”

Oh, he knew how to play her in a way I envied. An answer, delivered in a manner casual enough to belie the fact he knew exactly what she was fishing for but not as much information as she wanted. My estimation of him went up a notch.

She looked over at James, who was busy swinging one of his nieces in the air. “You’re staying here? With James and Anne?”

“Yep.” He grinned, all teeth. Hands in his pockets, he rocked on his heels.

She looked at me. “My, how … nice.”

“I think it will be very nice,” I answered warmly. “It will be very nice for James and Alex to have some time together. And for me to get to know Alex, of course. Since he is James’s best friend.”

I smiled brightly and said no more. She digested that. The answer appeared to be enough, if not satisfactory, and she gave him a nod that looked like it hurt her neck. She lifted the casserole dish in her hands.

“I’ll just go put this inside.”

“Sure. Anywhere you like.” I gestured, knowing she’d put it anywhere she liked no matter what I suggested. When she’d gone inside and Alex and I were alone for the moment, I turned. “What’d you do to piss off Evelyn?”

He smirked. “Aww, and here I thought she adored me.”

“Oh, you must be right. That was clearly a look of adoration on her face. If adoration looks like she just stepped in dog crap.”

Alex laughed. “Some things don’t change.”

“Everything changes,” I told him. “Eventually.”

Not Mrs. Kinney’s feelings about him, apparently. She avoided conversation with him for the rest of the evening, though she didn’t skimp on the “crap, I stepped in crap” looks.

For his part, Alex was cordial, polite, slightly distant. Considering how long he’d known James and how “welcoming” they were to everyone, the fact Evelyn was giving him the cold shoulder was very telling.

“Well, well, well, Alex Kennedy,” said Molly as she brought me a handful of plates for the ancient, cranky dishwasher I only used when we had company. Dinner had ended and everyone stayed out on the deck. The dishes could have waited, but I was looking for tasks to occupy me so I didn’t have to make small talk. “You know what they say about bad pennies.”

I slotted the dishes into the washer and filled the soap dispenser. “You think Alex is a bad penny?”

I liked Molly well enough, in that I didn’t dislike her. She was older than I by seven years, and we didn’t have much in common other than her brother, but she wasn’t as overbearing as her mother or an opinionated drama queen like her sister.

She shrugged and grabbed up the lids to the open containers of deli salad on the counter. “You know the boy your mother warned you about? That’s Alex.”

“Was,” I said, helping her close up the plastic tubs of macaroni salad and coleslaw. “In high school.”

She looked out the window toward the deck, where James and Alex were laughing quite loudly.

“I don’t know,” Molly said. “What do you think?”

“He’s James’s friend, not mine, and he’s only staying for a few weeks. If James likes him—”

Her sharp burst of laughter stopped me. “Alex Kennedy led my brother down a lot of bad roads, Anne. Do you really think someone like that can change?”

“Oh, c’mon, Molly. We’re grownups, now. So what if they got into trouble a few times as kids? They didn’t kill anyone. Did they?”

“Well … no. I don’t think so.” She sounded like she wouldn’t have been surprised if Alex, at least, had committed murder.

I knew she’d never think such a thing of James, the beloved baby of the family. Just like I knew that no matter how much James had been a part of whatever hijinks he and Alex had got into as kids, it would always be Alex’s fault and never James’s. The Kinneys hadn’t done their son and brother any favors by setting him on such a high perch, in my opinion. James had a lot of self-confidence, which was good. He wasn’t so great about taking blame, which wasn’t.

“So tell me what they did that was so bad, then.”

Molly rinsed and wrung one of the dishcloths and proceeded to wipe down the center island, though I’d already done it. This annoyed me much less from her than it would have from her mother, who’d have been doing it deliberately. Molly simply had been conditioned to following after someone else’s efforts and straightening the edges—even if they weren’t untidy.

“Alex doesn’t come from a very good family.”

I didn’t comment. If you want to know how someone really feels, you almost never have to ask. Molly swiped at invisible spots with her cloth.

“They’re white trash, to be perfectly honest. His sisters were sluts. One or two of them got pregnant in high school. His mom and dad are drunks. They’re all low-class.”

I don’t think I flinched at her judgment of Alex’s family. She wasn’t talking about my sisters, or my parents. Or about me.

I wanted to tell her that she was lucky nobody judged her based upon how her parents acted, but I kept that opinion to myself, too. “There must have been something good about him for James to be his friend, Molly. And we aren’t always what our parents are.”

She shrugged. There was more she wanted to tell. I saw it in her eyes. “He smoked and drank, and more than cigarettes, if you know what I mean.”

“Lots of kids do that, Molly, even the so-called good ones.”

“He wore eyeliner.”

My eyebrows rose, both at once. There it was. The worst of it. Worse, somehow, than the drinking or the weed smoking, or even the fact his family was white trash. This was the real reason they hadn’t liked Alex Kennedy, and didn’t like him now.

“… eyeliner.” I couldn’t help saying it like it was ridiculous, because … well … it was.

“Yes,” she hissed, glancing again to the deck. “Black eyeliner. And … sometimes …”

I waited while she struggled with whether or not she could possibly bring herself to continue.

“Lip gloss,” she said. “And he dyed his hair black and wore it spiked out all over, and he wore high-collared shirts with pins at the throat and suit jackets ….”

I could picture him, a Robert Smith wannabe, or like Ducky from Pretty in Pink. “Oh, Molly. So did lots of people. It was the 80s.”

She shrugged again. Nothing I could say would change her mind. “James didn’t. Not until he started hanging out with Alex.”

I’d seen pictures of James from that time. He’d been scrawny and gangly, a hodgepodge of stripes and plaids and battered Converse sneakers. I hadn’t noticed any liner or gloss but could easily imagine him wearing it. It would have set off his vivid blue eyes quite nicely, I thought.

“Anyway,” Molly said. “He doesn’t seem to have changed much.”

“I’ll keep an eye on my makeup bag.”

This time, she didn’t miss the veiled sarcasm. “I’m just telling you, Anne, Alex was bad news then, and he’s probably no better now. That’s all. Do with it what you want.”

“Thanks.” I didn’t want to do anything with it. The more they all hated Alex, the better I felt I wanted to like him. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“We were all really glad when James didn’t hang out with him anymore,” she added, unprompted, and I looked up at her again.

“I know they had a fight.”

If you want someone to tell you something they really want to say, all you have to do is let them.

But however much Molly might want to say about it, she couldn’t. “Yes. I know. James never said what it was about. Just that Alex had come to visit him in college—Alex didn’t go to college, you know.”

It hadn’t seemed to hurt him at all. I didn’t comment on that, either.

“Anyway, he went to Ohio State to visit James and something happened, and they had a big fight. James came home for a week. A week! And then he went back to school and we never found out what had happened.”

I couldn’t stop the smug smile wanting to creep over my mouth, so I hid it by loading some containers into the refrigerator. That was even worse than the eyeliner. That James had dared not to share every intimate detail of his life with them. That he had something they didn’t know.

A secret.

Of course, he had it from me, too.

Chapter 04

I went to bed before the men did, and James woke me when he slid in beside me. He gave me a nudge or two, but I feigned sleep and soon his snoring buzzed over me. I’d been sleeping more peacefully before he came to bed, but now I lay awake listening to the noises all houses make in the night. The same creaks and groans, the ticking of an extra-loud clock. But tonight, something unfamiliar. The shuffle of feet in the hall, the flush of a toilet and thud of a door closing. Then the sound of sleeping again, the air heavy with it, and I let James pull me closer, until I fell back to sleep in his arms.

He was up and gone in the morning before I woke. I lay in bed for a while, stretching and thinking, until the need for the bathroom forced me up and about. Alex was out on the deck already, a mug of coffee in one hand. His eyes swept the lake and back as a morning breeze ruffled the fringes of hair falling too long over his forehead. I painted an image of mid-80s high fashion on him with my mind, and it made me smile.

“Good morning. I thought you might still be asleep.” I joined him as I sipped my own coffee. It was good. Better than I made it.

I was getting used to his languid looks. I was getting used to him. His mouth tilted.

“I’m all messed up from traveling. Time zones, jet lag. Besides, early bird and all that.”

He gave me a grin so easy I had no choice but to return it. Side by side we leaned on the railing and looked out over the water. I didn’t feel like he expected me to say anything, and he didn’t, either. It was nice.

When he’d finished his coffee, he lifted the empty mug. “So. It’s just you and me today.”

I nodded. I wasn’t as worried about it as I’d have been the day before. Funny how being warned away from him made me feel that much more comfortable. “Yep.”

He looked back out over the water. “Do you guys still have the Skeeter?”

The Skeeter was the little sailboat belonging to James’s grandparents. “Sure.”

“Want to take her out? We could sail across to the marina, hit the park, grab some lunch at Bay Harbor—be tourists for a day. My treat. What do you say? I haven’t been on a roller coaster in about a hundred years.”

“I don’t know how to sail.”

“Anne.” The look dipped down, one brow raised, his smile half a leer. “I do.”

“I don’t really like sailing ….” His look, that seductive, pleading, half-pouting look, stopped me.

“You don’t like sailing?” He looked over the water again. “You live on a lake, and you don’t like sailing.”

It did sound dumb. “No.”

“You get seasick?”

“No.”

“You can’t swim?”

“I can swim.”

We studied each other. I think he was waiting for me to tell him what I really wanted to say, but there wasn’t anything I wanted to share. After a minute, he smiled again.

“I’ll take care of you. Don’t worry.”

“You’re an expert sailor?”

He laughed. “They don’t call me Captain Alex for nothing.”

That made me laugh. “Who calls you Captain Alex?”

“The mermaids,” he said.

I snorted. “Uh-huh.”

“Anne,” Alex said seriously. “We’ll be fine.”

I hesitated again and looked at the water, then the sky. It was a beautiful day, the only clouds white and fluffy sky-sheep. Storms could flare up fast, but it was only a twenty-minute sail across the lake to the Cedar Point Marina.

“Sure, okay.”

“Perfect,” Alex said.

We docked at the marina. Alex had, indeed, proven himself a capable sailor. I hadn’t been to the Point since last year. As always with each season, fresh paint and rides made even the familiar new again.

We were lucky. The crowds were thin that day, mostly busloads of kids on school trips who arrived early, but hung in herds leaving vast areas uncrowded.

“I had some good times here,” Alex said as we picked a direction and meandered down one of the tree-covered paths toward the back of the park. “This was my first real job. First real money. This was the first place I realized I could actually get out of Sandusky for good.”

“Was it?” We stepped aside to let a fast-moving swarm of kids pass us. “Why?”

“Because I knew there were other places to work than here or the automotive parts factory,” he said. “The Point hires a lot of college kids. Hearing them talk about where they were going and what they were going to do made college seem like something I could really do.”

I already knew he hadn’t gone.

He looked at me. “I didn’t go, though.”

“And now you’re back here.” I wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass, just pointing out something interesting. A circle.

He laughed. “Yeah. But I still know there’s more to the world than this place. Sometimes it’s good to remember there’s home, though, too.”

“You still think of here as home?” We were heading toward what once had been the tallest, fastest and steepest roller coaster in the park, The Magnum XL-200. It was still an impressive structure. I liked to ride in the front.

“Someplace has to be, right?”

The queue wasn’t as long as it sometimes got in the height of summer, when wait times could be hours long. Still, we did have to wait, and the line moved along slowly enough to give us ample time for conversation.

“I got the feeling you weren’t a big fan, that’s all.” Without discussing it, we both moved toward the row of cattle chutes that would lead us to the front seat of the coaster.

“I have some good memories.” He shrugged. “Who said home’s the place where you go and they have to take you in?”

“Robert Frost?”

He laughed. “I guess that’s why Sandusky is still home. I came back and someone took me in.”

Someone had, but not his family.

The attendant waved us into the front car, where we sat knee against knee and buckled ourselves in tight. The Magnum might not be the fastest or the tallest anymore, and it might not have any loops, but it’s an impressive coaster just the same. Two hundred and five feet high with a one hundred-and-ninety-five-foot drop, it’s the most thrilling two minutes you’ll ever spend.

The ride to the top of the first hill takes forever, but once there, the view of the park is amazing. The breeze ruffled Alex’s hair, and the sun was bright enough to make me squint; I’d taken off my sunglasses in preparation for the plunge. We looked at each other, and when I saw the grin on his face I felt one on my own.

“Hands up,” he said.

We raised our hands.

Poised at the top of a roller coaster, I always have time to think, “why am I doing this?” I love them, the twists and drops, the stomach-sinking feeling and adrenaline rush. But at the top, with the world spread out below me, I always pause to wonder why I’m subjecting myself to the fear.

We seemed to hang over the edge for a long time before finally beginning the downward swoop. I was already bracing myself, already opening my mouth to scream.

Alex grabbed my hand.

We fell.

We flew.

I screamed, but with laughter and without breath. It was like being shot into space, twisting, turning and dropping. Soaring. And in two minutes it was all over, and the train pulled into the station with its passengers shaking and windblown. My teeth felt dry. Alex let go of my hand.

On vaguely trembling legs I got out of the car and followed him down the steps to the exit. He held open the small gate for me at the end and turned to walk backward, facing me, his face alight.

“The Magnum is the perfect fucking coaster,” he said. “They can make ‘em taller, but they don’t make ‘em sweeter.”

“James doesn’t like roller coasters.” It was true, but it suddenly sounded disloyal, and I wasn’t quite sure why. “He says he overdosed on them as a kid.”

“Nah. He never liked them.” Alex shook his head and made a circle in the air with a finger. “He’ll ride the Puke-a-Tron or the Barf-o-Rama twenty times in a row, but he won’t ride a coaster.”

“He’s got equilibrium.” James could go on those spinning rides without getting sick. “He’s good at turning in place.”

“But not so good at going up and down.” Alex’s hands swooped, following the curve of a coaster. “How about you, Anne?”

“I like both, I guess.” We were following another winding path, past food stands and games whose vendors implored us to take a chance on winning a stuffed toy. The scents of popcorn and fries tickled my nose, and my stomach rumbled.

He slanted me a look. “But you like coasters better.”

I gave him an equally sideways glance. “Sometimes.”

He laughed. “Me, too.”

Ahead of us was the sign for Paddlewheel Excursions, a ride the park designated Tranquil and which was in essence a staged boat ride through quirky, animated scenes and narrated by the boat’s “captains.” The last time I’d ridden it, the operators wore uniforms designed to look like old riverboat captains, complete with maroon vests and ruffled armbands. Now they wore regular park uniforms. I was disappointed.

“Wow. Paddlewheel Excursions. I haven’t been on this ride in forever.” I paused at the entrance.

“So, c’mon. Let’s go.”

“We don’t have to. There are plenty of other rides to go on.”

“So?” Alex held out a hand. “We have time.”

The ride was as hokey and charming as I remembered. The jokes were silly but made us laugh, anyway, and the ride itself was serene. We sat in the back, thigh to thigh on the narrow bench. The water in the canal was a murky green.

“I always thought they ran on a track,” I murmured as the captain of our boat revved the engine to avoid a sandbar.

“When I worked here, one of the guys almost sank one.”

“Did he?” I turned to look at Alex. “How could you do that?”

“Hit the dock hard enough, I guess you can put a hole in anything.” Alex nodded toward the dock where two other captains awaited to tie the boat in place so we could disembark.

I looked at Alex closely. “Was it you?”

For a moment he looked stunned, then started to laugh. “No. I cleaned toilets.”

My surprise must have shown on my face. “I always thought—”

America’s not a place comfortable with a class system. We’re all equal, even when we aren’t. Nobody would ever have admitted aloud that the restroom attendants tended to be not as … socially presentable … as the people they hired to operate the rides and serve the food.

“See what a bad attitude will get you?” He shrugged.

We got off the boat. I thanked the young captain, who still looked embarrassed about his close call with the sandbar. I heard his friends ribbing him as we left.

“So. You cleaned toilets. For how long?”

“Two seasons. Then I moved into full-time maintenance.”

“You worked here a long time,” I said.

“Until I was twenty-one. I met a guy at a club who was hiring people in his factory overseas. He put me into transportation and distribution. Two years later I had my own business.”

“And now,” I teased, “you’re a bazillionaire.”

“From cleaning crappers to self-made man,” Alex said, not boasting but not downplaying his success, either. “From shit to shine.”

I needed a drink and stopped to buy two large fresh-squeezed lemonades. The drink was tart and cold and puckered my mouth. It was delicious. It was liquid summer.

James had told me the big fight with Alex was during his senior year of college, when they were both twenty-one. I’d always assumed alcohol was somehow involved. Booze has made and broken many relationships.

“And you’ve never been back until now?” I asked.

Alex shook the ice in his cup before sipping. “No.”

He’d left the country when he was twenty-one upon the invitation of a guy he met at a club and after a fight with his best friend so catastrophic neither of them would discuss the cause. Or maybe I was extrapolating and the fight had been of such minor consequence, the rest of it coincidence, that neither felt the need to comment.

I poised on the edge of asking for details but then backed off. Asking him to elaborate would mean I’d have to admit I didn’t know, and what sort of wife wouldn’t know something like that about her husband? I didn’t know Alex Kennedy well enough not to care what he thought about my marriage.

“Well, we’re glad to have you now.” It was the right sort of thing to say, I thought, but he only gave me another of his slow glances and a smirk.

“I said I’d treat you to lunch at a fancy place,” he said. “But I’m starving for a good burger and some nachos.”

That sounded better to me than something hoity-toity, anyway. Even in the casual resort atmosphere, I felt under-dressed for a place nicer than a burger stand. We grabbed food and found a table, where we ate and talked.

He was better at listening than he was at sharing, with a knack for drawing answers out of me I’d have withheld from someone else. He was both subtle and forthright, asking questions that might have sounded rude from someone who wasn’t at the same time so disarming. It’s easy to be interesting for someone who’s interested, and I found myself waxing poetic on subjects I hadn’t touched in a long time.

“I just wanted to help people,” I said, when he asked me why I hadn’t gone back to work after the funding for the shelter failed. “I don’t want to work at Kroger, bagging groceries. Or in a factory, putting lids on jars. And besides, if we have kids …”

He was leaning back in his chair, but his body weight shifted when I said that. “Do you want kids?”

“James and I have been talking about it.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

The breeze had picked up and gotten colder. I looked at the sky. It had grown darker while we talked. The rumble of the roller coasters masked faraway thunder.

“It’s going to storm.”

“Yeah. It might.” He looked back at me. I must’ve looked disturbed. “You want to go.”

He didn’t ask. He just knew. I thought about shrugging it off, protesting I was fine, but I didn’t.

“Yes,” I said. “I don’t like being on the water in a storm.”

We made our way back to the marina. The water had turned choppy and gray. The sky wasn’t black, not yet, but the clouds were no longer fluffy white sheep.

Alex moved fast without rushing. Steady. He unrigged, we pushed off and he pointed us toward home. I gripped the Skeeter’s sides. I didn’t have a life vest on. I wouldn’t let go long enough to grab one.

The wind fought us, and though we made progress toward home, it was slow and rough. Spray whipped our faces every so often. I tipped my face to the sky, no longer needing my sunglasses to protect my eyes from the glare. Was the rain coming? The lightning and thunder?

I saw the blue-white flash of it from far away and heard the hint of a rumble. My stomach lurched. We were halfway between the Point and home.

I could swim. If the boat sank, I could swim. I knew I could. But people drowned all the time in sudden squalls because they weren’t prepared, because they’d taken chances, because they’d been stupid. Even people who could swim. Even those who’d won medals for it. And still, I couldn’t make my fingers let go of the boat’s sides long enough to grab up the faded orange life vest.

Alex muttered a curse when the wind came up and tried to steal the sail. He yelled for me to grab a rope, pull a knot, something I didn’t understand. I didn’t know how to sail. I’d never learned.

The boat rocked and jumped on sudden waves. One took us higher than expected, and when we dropped into the valley it left behind my stomach heaved into my throat. Up. Down. A roller coaster without exhilaration. Without the safety of brakes and seatbelts.

The rain coming across the water looked like lace curtains or the scrolling of the numbers and symbols on the black screen in the opening frames of The Matrix. It looked like the tornado from The Wizard of Oz, its curving dinosaur neck bringing doom.

The Skeeter was small, and it rocked when Alex shifted his weight to bend next to me. I drew in a breath, not screaming but heart pounding so fast and hard it hurt. My fingers gripped tighter, my knuckles white.

“Don’t worry!” He had to shout over the sound of the wind. “We’re almost home!”

The storm reared up in full force when we were just a few feet from the shore. Alex jumped out to tie the Skeeter up onto the small wooden dock James’s grandparents had built. The sail snapped and fluttered. I caught a face full of wet fabric and gasped at how cold it was.

Once we were safely on shore, my fingers unkinked. I helped him tie everything down and secure the Skeeter. The waves were storm-sized but still did no more than tickle the beach; this wasn’t the ocean, after all.

The rain came down in fat, stinging splatters. Drops struck the top of my head, my arms, got in my eyes and ears. We ran into the house and skidded on the tile floor. Alex slammed the door and the sound of the storm outside muted at once. I heard heavy breathing and realized it was me.

“You’re shivering.” He grabbed up a dishtowel from the counter and handed it to me.

I held it for a moment, the fabric inadequate to do more than wipe my face. I did that.

“My father,” I said, and stopped. My teeth chattered like dice in a cup.

Alex dripped, waiting for me to speak. Lightning from outside reflected in the puddle at his feet. I tried again.

“My father,” I said, “took me out on a boat. We were supposed to be fishing. It started to get dark.”

He ran a hand through his wet hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. Water ran down his face, off his nose and chin. His eyes caught the green light from the microwave.

“The storm came up fast. We weren’t too far out. But I didn’t know how to sail. And … he was …”

He was drinking, as he almost always was when he wasn’t at work. He’d filled his cup again and again from the jug of “iced tea” in the red-and-white cooler between his feet. The sun made him thirsty, he said. I was ten and had tasted what was in his cup. I didn’t see how it could quench his thirst.

Alex’s shoes squeaked on the tile as he came closer. His hand on my shoulder felt heavier than it should have, an undeserved weight. He meant it to be caring, but his understanding was too intimate to be borne. I didn’t want to be beholden to him for his compassion.

I shook off the memory. “We didn’t drown, obviously.”

“But you were scared. You’re still scared, remembering it.”

“I was ten. I didn’t know any better. My dad wouldn’t have done anything to hurt me.”

Gentle but firm, Alex squeezed the tension in my shoulder. He found the trigger point. My body wanted to melt into that simple touch, to give up the coils of anxiety woven into my muscles. I didn’t move, and we stayed like that, linked by the touch of his fingertips.

The flash of lightning and almost instantaneous crash of thunder made me jump. I slipped a little, but Alex was there with a hand under my elbow and a firm forearm for me to grab. I didn’t fall.

The power went out with a bleat from the microwave and came back on a moment later with a similar, electronic cry. Another rumble followed another flash, and the power stayed out. Night hadn’t fallen but the afternoon had gone dark enough to cast the kitchen into shadow.

Darkness reveals as much as it hides, sometimes. We were touching, hand to shoulder, hand to arm, hand to elbow. We dripped. We breathed. My teeth had stopped chattering, because of the heat.

“He was drunk,” I said.

Alex’s fingers squeezed again. I never said that aloud. We all knew, my sisters and my mother and I, but we never said it aloud. I never even said it to James, the man to whom I’d bound my life.

“He couldn’t get us back in. The water came over the sides and up to my knees, and I thought we were going to die. I was ten,” I said again, like it was important.

Alex said nothing, but we moved closer to each other anyway. The hem of his jeans caressed the skin of my foot revealed by my flip-flop. His shirt dripped onto my bare arm, and the water was cold.

“Families suck,” Alex said.

The power came back on. We moved apart. By the time James came home, I’d made dinner and we ate while they laughed together and I put a smile on and pretended it was real.

My mother was dithering. I didn’t know whether to scream or take pity on her and simply remove the choices that had sent her into such a frenzy. The air in the attic was so hot it was like breathing steam.

“Mom, just pick out a couple and let’s get downstairs. Or better yet, bring the boxes downstairs and we’ll look at them there.”

“Oh, no, no,” my mother said, her hands fluttering like birds over the carefully labeled boxes of photographs. “I’ll just be a minute. There are so many nice ones ….”

I bit my tongue against a sharp retort and craned my neck to see the pictures she’d lifted. There were a lot of nice ones. Nobody could ever say my parents weren’t photogenic, not even in the butt-ugly 1970s prairie-style wedding gown and brown tuxedo with the yellow ruffled shirt.

“How about this one?” She held up a portrait-size photo of the two of them. She had Farrah Fawcett wings in her hair and he had mutton-chop sideburns. They looked happy.

“Perfect.”

“I don’t know.” She dithered some more, going back and forth from one to the next, the only difference between the two was the width of their smiles. “This one is nice, too ….”

The heat sapped my patience; so had the lack of sleep the night before. I’d dreamed again of the weight of stones in my pockets and water closing over my head. “Mom. Just pick one!”

She looked up. “You pick, Anne. You’re so good at that sort of thing.”

I reached for the one closer to me. “This one.” I put it in the pile of others she’d chosen for the collage Patricia wanted to put together.

“Oh, but that one—”

I gathered them up and tucked them into the manila envelope for safekeeping. “I have to get out of here before I pass out. I’ll take these.”

Without waiting for her answer, I ducked through the low-hanging eaves and down the set of pull-down stairs. Compared to the stifling heat of the attic, the second floor felt like the arctic. My vision blurred for a moment and I swallowed hard against a swirl of nausea. I could blame it on the attic, but I almost always felt a twinge of stomach upset whenever I stood in the place I was now.

The stairs from the first floor came out in the middle of the second level. We had no upper hallway, just a square cordoned off by banister railing surrounding the stairs. The three bedrooms and the bathroom all opened off this square. As they’d always been, the doors were cracked open to keep the breeze flowing.

Mary, at home for the summer while she waited to return to law school in Pennsylvania, had taken over the room that had been mine and Patricia’s. Claire had the room she’d shared with Mary all to herself. They still shared the single bathroom, but with only two instead of four, the fighting for the shower probably never reached the epic proportions it had when we all lived at home.

The door to my parents’ bedroom was closed, the only one to ever remain that way. Closed to keep in the cooler air from the shadowed side of the house, and the air from their window air conditioner. Closed to keep us out, as children, when our dad had “a headache” and needed to “rest.” A closed door that shut us out but didn’t keep us from hearing the shouting.

“Anne?” My mother’s flushed face appeared in front of me. She wore her curls shorter than mine, in a cut that emphasized the bright blue of her eyes. She’d stopped coloring her hair and now two side streaks of white painted the dark auburn. I didn’t need a time machine to know what I’d look like as I aged. I only had to look at my mom.

The world swam and I swallowed again. Dizziness swept over me and I gulped in air that no longer felt so cool.

“Sit down.” She might have been held hostage by indecision at having to choose which pictures to use, but my mother didn’t hesitate now. In a house full of pale-skinned redheads, fainting had been a common occurrence. “Put your head between your knees.”

I did as she said, knowing well enough the warning signs of buzzing in my ears and flashing spots in my vision. I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth with slow, measured breaths. She brought a cold, damp washcloth and laid it over the back of my neck. It only took a few minutes before the discomfort of the balustrade digging into my back was worse than the dizziness. My mom brought me a plastic cup of ginger ale, cold but without ice, and I sipped it.

“Should I ask if there’s something you want to tell me?” she asked, and when I looked up, her eyes were twinkling.

I shook my head, only slightly, not wanting to send myself back into feeling faint. “It was the heat, Mom. That’s all. I didn’t eat breakfast, either.”

“Okay, if you say so.”

My mother wasn’t in my face about having kids the way Mrs. Kinney was. My mom adored her grandchildren, Patricia’s son, Tristan, and daughter, Callie, but she wasn’t the sort of grandma who heat-sealed photos of her grandkids onto tote bags or wore sweatshirts that said “Grammy’s Gang” and had small embroidered stick figures representing each grandchild. My mom loved her grandkids and was happy to take them places and just as happy to send them home when she was done.

I sipped more ginger ale, feeling better. “Mom, I’m not pregnant.”

“Stranger things have happened, Anne.”

They had happened, and to me, but she hadn’t noticed back then. Or if she did, had stayed silent in the face of early morning sickness and fainting spells, of sudden bursts of hysteria and long, telling silences.

“I’m not. I’m just overheated.” My stomach rumbled. “And hungry.”

“Come downstairs. We’ll have a late lunch. It’s almost four o’clock. What time do you have to be home?”

I didn’t have to be home at any time. Alex had left the house early that morning with mention of seeing some people about projects that hadn’t been my business, and James had gone to work. I expected him home around six, but I didn’t have to be there when he walked in the door.

“I should leave soon. I have time for a sandwich. I think we might be going out to eat, later, when James and Alex both get home.”

My mother, however, had the long-time habit of being home when my father got home. This was a useless attempt at restricting his drinking; if she could keep him occupied with household tasks for a while before he settled into the easy chair, he might drink less. Or, he might not. The futility of the effort didn’t seem to keep her from trying.

I didn’t want to be here, however, when my dad got home. There would be much joviality on his part and much tension on mine as I counted the number of times he refilled his glass of “iced tea,” each time adding more whiskey and less tea. Once, as children, Patricia and I had hidden the tea bags. We thought if there was no tea, there’d be no special ingredient, either. It hadn’t worked.

“Oh, James’s friend’s still there? How long is he planning on staying?”

“I’m not sure.”

I followed her down the stairs and into the kitchen, where the ceiling fan stirred the air into a semblance of cool. It hadn’t changed much, that kitchen. The same daisies nodded on the wallpaper and the same yellow curtains hung at the windows. My mother had talked a lot about redecorating, but I suspected the enormity of choosing a new paint color, new fabric for window treatments, new potholders, had proven too much for her. We tried, sometimes, the four of us, to encourage her. But what did I care if my mother never changed the pattern on her walls? I hadn’t lived in that house since I was eighteen; if God was good I’d never have to live there again.

“Is he nice? Do you like him?” She pulled out plates, bread, lunchmeat, mustard. A jar of pickles.

I grabbed a bag of chips from the pantry. “He’s nice. Sure. But he’s not my friend, he’s James’s.”

“That doesn’t mean he can’t be yours.”

My mother had befriended my father’s buddies, opening the house to poker games and football-watching parties. Backyard picnics. She claimed as friends the wives of these men my dad brought home, but they only seemed to get together with their husbands in tow. No luncheons or shopping trips, no ladies’ night at the movies. Those things she did with her sister, my aunt Kate, if she did them at all. The rest of it was an attempt at keeping him home. If he was home, he wasn’t out driving over someone’s dog. Or their child.

“He’s only staying for a little while,” I told her. “Until he gets his new business started.”

“What does he do?” My mom looked up from the mustard she was slathering on her bread.

“I … he had some sort of transportation business in Singapore.” That was all I knew.

My mom finished making the sandwiches and reached for her leatherette cigarette case. Most smokers had brand loyalty, but my mom usually bought whatever was cheapest. Today they came in a plain white pack that looked sort of like a deck of playing cards. I didn’t bother asking her not to light up, though I did reach to pull my plate far out of the way.

“Singapore, oh, that’s very far away.” She nodded and lit her cigarette, drew in smoke, let it out. “How long did you say James knew him?”

“Since eighth grade.” Suddenly ravenous, I fell to the sandwich with gusto, adding a handful of crispy chips to my plate. They were kettle-cooked, the sort I never bought at home because I tended to finish the entire bag in front of an especially good movie marathon.

There’s no place like home. Ain’t that the truth? Home for me would always be the smells of cigarettes and cheap hairspray, and the taste of greasy, kettle-cooked chips. I suddenly felt weepy, all at once, my emotions as much of an up-and-down roller coaster as the ride I’d taken with Alex the day before.

My mother, bless her, didn’t seem to notice. We had a lot of practice avoiding the discussion of sadness. I think maybe it had become habit for her to talk over the sound of surreptitious sniffles. She chattered on about some movie she’d watched and a cross-stitch pattern she was intending to try. I got myself under control by concentrating on finishing my sandwich, but it was time for me to go.

I wasn’t fast enough. The back door slammed, the way it had done a hundred thousand times when I was a kid. I heard the clump of heavy boots.

“I’m hooooooome,” boomed the voice of my father.

“Dad’s here,” my mother said, unnecessarily.

I stood. He came into the kitchen. His eyes were already red, his smile broad, his forehead sweating. He held out his arms to me and I went obediently, no choice but to suffer the embrace. He smelled like sweat and liquor, like maybe he sweated booze now. I wouldn’t have been surprised.

“How’s my girl?” My dad, Bill Byrne, stopped himself from knuckling my head … but only barely.

“Fine, Dad.”

“Staying out of trouble?”

“Yes, Dad” was my dutiful answer.

“Good, good. What’s for dinner?” He looked at my mother, who looked almost guiltily at our plates.

“Oh … are you hungry?” She began cleaning the mess like she was destroying evidence. She’d cook him a full dinner even if she wasn’t hungry herself.

“What do you think?” He grabbed for her, and she giggled, flapping her hands at him. “Annie, you staying for dinner?”

“No, Dad. I’ve got to get home.”

“Bill, she’s got to get home, of course.” My mother shook her head. “She’s got James waiting for her. And a guest. Alex … what did you say his name was?”

“Kennedy.”

My dad looked up. “Not John Kennedy’s boy.”

I laughed. “No, Dad. I don’t think so.”

“Not John Kennedy the president,” my father said. “John Kennedy who’s married to Linda.”

“I don’t really know.” Leave it to my dad to think he knew Alex’s parents.

“Ah, well. Doesn’t matter. What’s he doing in your house?”

“He’s James’s friend,” my mother put in quickly as she pulled the makings of dinner from the freezer. “He’s come for a visit. He’s been in Singapore.”

“Yeah, that’s John’s boy, then.” My dad looked satisfied with himself, like he’d sleuthed the answer to some great mystery. “Alex.”

It was useless to point out I’d already told him his name. “Yes. You know his dad, huh?”

My father shrugged. “I see him around sometimes.”

Around. I knew what that meant. At the bars.

“He’s James’s friend,” I repeated for what felt like the hundredth time. “He’s just staying for a little while.”

“But you got to get back to him, I get it. Go on. Go.” My dad waved a hand. “Get out of here.”

My dad opened the cupboard and pulled out a glass. Another cupboard gave up the bottle. I loved my parents, both of them, but I couldn’t stay to watch. I made my goodbyes and stole away the photos of them in their youth, leaving them to what they’d made of their lives.

Chapter 05

Alex wasn’t home when I returned, but James’s truck was in the driveway. He couldn’t have been home for long, as he hadn’t even showered. I found him headfirst in the fridge, and I took the chance to squeeze his denim-clad ass.

“Hey, you—” He whirled, his grin faltering for a moment before he grabbed me around the waist. “What are you doing?”

“I should ask that of you. What are you doing home so early?” I slipped my arms around his neck and tipped my face for a kiss.

“I was waiting on a couple of the subcontractors to bring some stuff and they cancelled, so I came home.” He brushed his lips to mine. “Hello.”

I laughed. “Hello.”

His hands crept from my waist to my ass. “I’m hungry.”

“I thought we were going to go out for dinner tonight ….” The nip of his teeth on my jaw stopped me, and I wriggled. “Have a snack!”

“I know what I want for a snack.” His hand slid between my thighs and pressed upward. “Some of this, and a little of that …”

Any other time I would have opened my legs and my mouth for him. Today I pushed him away. I laughed as I did it, but it was still a refusal.

“If you want a snack get one from the fridge,” I said. “If you want something else—”

“I do.” He reached out, pulled me close again. Inside the worn denim of his jeans, his cock was stiff.

I didn’t yield. “James, cut it out.”

He got the picture. He didn’t let me go, but he did stop trying to feel me up. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. But we can’t get busy in the kitchen, okay? In case you forgot, we have a houseguest who could come home at any moment.”

I pushed past him to open the fridge myself. The chips had made me thirsty. I pulled out a can of diet cola. As I was popping the tab, James grabbed me again around the waist, snugging me in close to him. He tucked his chin against my shoulder, his cock hard on my ass and his hands flat on my stomach.

“That will make it more exciting,” he whispered. “We’ll hear his car in the driveway, anyway. C’mon, baby. I’ve been thinking about you all day.”

“No!” I tried to sound stern, but his hands had begun roaming again. He cupped one of my breasts while the other hand rubbed my side. “James, no. Forget it. We wouldn’t hear him, he’d walk right in on us. It would be awful.”

“Why would it be awful?” His voice had taken on a familiar, seductive cadence, the one he used to get me to do pretty much anything.

“It would be … rude, at the very least.” I wasn’t winning this argument. His hands were too skilled. I wanted to please him too much.

“Alex wouldn’t care. Trust me.”

I turned to face him, my can of cola held out to the side to prevent spilling. “He might not. But I would!”

He stopped. Looked at me. I’ve always been able to read James’s face, and he’s never had any reason to hide anything from me. Today, though, his expression was familiar and still indecipherable.

“Think about it,” he murmured. He turned me as he spoke. Put my hands on the center island. His hands went to my hips, anchoring me as he pushed my feet apart with one of his. “Think about me fucking you, right here like this.”

The marble was cool under my fingertips. I pushed the soda can aside to spread my hands flat. James pressed against me from behind.

“All I have to do is take down your pants and your panties,” he continued. His hand moved between my legs again, stroking me through my jeans. “I’ll rub you. Think how good it will feel.”

It did feel good. Pleasure coursed through me. I looked to the back door, to the small square of driveway I could see. I pushed back against him.

“It will feel good in the bedroom, too,” I said. “And we don’t have to worry about Alex coming home.”

“C’mon, doesn’t it get you hot, just a little? Thinking about him finding us?” He rubbed a little harder. Under his fingers my body responded. I got wet for him. “Think about me fucking you, just like this, Anne. And he comes in …”

“And what?” I turned to face him, effectively saving myself from further seduction by fingertip. “What happens then in your little fantasy, James? Is he wearing a pizza delivery costume and I suck him off while you finish fucking me?”

I spoke louder than I’d meant to, and James stepped back. I felt on edge, tingly, aroused and disgruntled, too. Random fantasies were one thing, and we’d never been shy about sharing even the most ridiculous. But they’d never been about anyone real.

James said nothing. I stared. I heard the faint fizz of my soda’s carbonation evaporating.

“James?”

He smiled. Smirked, actually. “Well?”

He glanced over my shoulder, and I actually whirled, expecting to see Alex in a pizza delivery costume. The doorway remained empty. I refused to be disappointed. Instead, I smacked James on the upper arm and pushed past him to stalk down the hall.

“Anne, c’mon ….”

I wasn’t sure what I meant to do in our bedroom, just that I wanted to get away from him. I’m sure he thought I was angry. I was acting that way. It wasn’t, however, anger that urged me into pacing. It was a jumble of confusing emotions, coupled with the day on the lake and my visit with my parents. It was everything in my life. It was PMS. It was many things, but not anger.

“Anne, don’t be like that.” He leaned in the doorway for a moment, watching me. “I didn’t think you’d react that way.”

I focused on the basket of laundry waiting to be folded. “How did you think I’d react?”

He came into the room and stripped off his shirt, tossing it toward but not quite into the dirty laundry. He undid his belt and slid it from the loops, then eased open the button. My fingers smoothed T-shirts into neat squares, but my eyes followed his movements.

“I thought you might, you know, get excited.”

“By exhibitionism?” I tried sounding shocked, but didn’t do a very good job of it.

James stepped out of his jeans and stood in front of me in boxer briefs. “Haven’t you ever thought about it?”

I straightened. “About having sex in front of someone else? No!”

“We did it with your roommate in the room,” he reminded me.

“That was different. We didn’t have anyplace else to go. And it was only once.”

Once, making love under covers. Making sure not to moan too loudly, or rustle too fiercely. Listening to be certain the bed wasn’t squeaking in a telltale way. James’s mouth between my legs, licking me as I arched and tensed and came in agonized silence.

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