Moonlight Man (15 page)

He could ask her to marry him. He knew that. He saw her dark, seeking eyes silently wondering why he did not. And he wanted to do it so bad, he hurt deep inside. But he knew that he couldn’t. Because he was going to have to leave. Sometime. Sometime before it was too late, he was going to have to find a way to ease himself out of her life before he did even more damage to her than had already been done. So he didn’t say it, and after a moment, she turned and went into the den.

Sharon was glad when the kids were back in school, when she could get back into the old, familiar routine of work and home and driving Jason to hockey and Scouts, Roxanne to figure skating and Brownies. They were activities that, if they did by some miracle manage to occur at the same time, were never in the same place. She felt like a juggler trying to keep a hundred balls in the air and was glad because it left her little time to think, little time to brood on the fact that the day after they arrived back from Mount Washington, Marc, with a brief word of good-bye, the key to his house so she could feed the stray cat he’d semi-adopted, and a swift, hard kiss, had left on business.

She hadn’t seen him or heard from him for nearly two weeks, when she looked out the kitchen window one morning and saw the camper parked in its familiar place on the other side of her patio wall. Her heart slammed hard against the inside of her ribs, making her knees feel like jelly and her eyes sting with tears.

She had to restrain herself not to run over there, and only the fact that the school bus was due in twenty minutes and she had to be at the library at ten-thirty prevented her from giving into the impulse. She stood there, gripping the edge of the sink, wondering when she would see him. Would he come to the library? Would he wait until that night? Would he come before the kids went to bed or after? Her body ached with needs he had aroused in her and then left unfilled for too long, needs that only he could take care of.

She had to hold herself very still when she saw him come loping down the front steps of his house, across the moist lawn, leaving silvery tracks in the grass, and leap up over the low wall at the edge of her patio. She met him at the back door, forgetting all the things she had planned to say to him, forgetting that she had decided to hold herself aloof until she knew where she stood with him. When he opened his arms she walked right into them, burrowing against his broad, warm, chest, moaning with relief at the knowledge that he was there again, holding her as if he’d never let her go.

“I missed you,” he said, his voice a low rumble in his chest. “Where are the kids?”

“Upstairs getting dressed.”

“Good, because I need to kiss you more than I’ve ever needed anything—food or drink or air or—” Or what, she never found out, because he stopped talking and started kissing, and she dimly head the door click shut, realizing that they were on the outside of it, wrapped in a blanket of rapidly growing body heat.

“Mom? Mom? Mommy!” The high-pitched wail finally got through to her, and Sharon shook her head, fighting off the sensual lethargy Marc’s kisses generated. “Where are you?” Roxy called, beginnings of panic evident in her shrill voice.

“I have to go in,” Sharon said with a gasp, then called out, “Out here. I’ll be right in! Marc, let me go. You shouldn’t have come over at this time of day.”

“Yes. I know. But I saw you in the window. I couldn’t wait another minute to hold you.” His golden eyes glittered between his half-closed lids, and she wanted to crawl back into his arms and never leave, but Roxy called again.

Sharon opened the door and stepped inside, just barely aware that Marc had not followed her in, that he was the one who had closed the door behind her.

“What were you doing out there?” Both kids gaped at her. “You don’t have any shoes on, Mom.” Jason scowled. He wasn’t allowed outside barefoot in January!

“I just went out for minute to see if … if the snowdrops were blooming. I thought I saw something white in the planter.”

Jason shrugged with utter lack of interest in flowers, and Roxy handed her a hairbrush. “Can you fix my hair, Mommy?” With shaking hands, she did as her daughter asked, then made sure both children had their lunches before sending them out to wait for the bus.

She heard Jason’s whoop of delight. “Hey, look! Marc’s home!” and echoed it in her heart even though she knew that this was not Marc’s home and probably never would be.

She was suddenly frightened as much for Jason as she was for herself. He would be crushed when his hero left. Was Marc aware of that? Was that why he’d avoided coming in while the kids were getting ready for school? It didn’t make sense, she thought, sitting down at the kitchen table with her second cup of coffee. He was the one who had wanted them to live together, wasn’t he? Had he thought maybe the kids wouldn’t notice? Or was it simply that he had changed his mind?

She dropped her head into her hands, her fingers shoved through her hair, and never even heard the door open. She wasn’t aware that Marc was in the room until he lifted her out of her chair and held her high against his chest, nuzzling the front of her robe open with his chin and nose.

She struggled, and he set her on her feet but didn’t let her go. “Marc,” she said earnestly, “we need to talk.”

“Sharon,” he said just as earnestly, “we need to make love.” He kissed her long and hard, until all the arguments she might ever have considered were gone like smoke in the wind. “Here?” he said with a grin she couldn’t resist, “or”—with a toss of his head—”up there?”

“I only get to pick one?”

He laughed and scooped her up again, heading for the stairs. “For starters, love. Just for starters.” For the first time in three years, Sharon phoned in sick when she wasn’t.

“MARC, DO YOU READ MUSIC?”
Sharon looked up from her desk, half turning to face him. He glanced up from the book he was reading and nodded.

“Would you …” Her voice cracked and, with a sheaf of papers trembling visibly in her hand, she got to her feet, gnawing on her lower lip. Marc stood, caught her in agitated mid-stride, and held her still. She drew in a deep breath and started again. “Would you like to try this with me?” She put the papers into his hand and turned her back quickly as if she couldn’t bear to watch his face while he looked at them.

“‘For Harmonica and Harp’ … Sharon, yes! Yes, of course I want to try this with you! Sweetheart, it’ll be great!” Spinning her around, he gave her a quick kiss and then he was striding out of the house. “I’ll be right back,” he said before he closed the door.

She heard his feet thud as he jumped back over the wall on his return trip, and when the door opened again, she was seated on her stool, fingers caressing her harp strings, waiting for him. With his music sheets on a stand before him, he sat nearby and listened to the light, airy intro she had written, then came in with his part. At once, she stopped him. “No. Not like that. Ease in. You can’t overwhelm the harp at this point. So come in softly, like a hint of a breeze slipping through the branches of a tree to find the wind chimes hanging there.”

He grinned at her. “What are you, a musician or a poet?” But he tried it again, and she smiled encouragement as he let his breathy music slip up unobtrusively and blend with hers, until the combined tones sounded the way she had intended. Slowly, she led him through the work, his harmonica growing stronger, rustling the leaves, making branches sway, dying down again and leaving the chimes to fade away into stillness.

More than an hour had passed before she pronounced that part of the composition just right. Over and over, she had taken back his score and rewritten it, just as she had her own. Rubbing his back, he arched and stretched. “You’re a perfectionist. It sounded just great to me the way it was before those last changes. How did you know it would sound better the new way?”

“I just knew. Do you want to quit? Is your back tired? How about your lips?”

He leaned over and kissed her. “I don’t know. How about my lips?”

She laughed, and it was a joyous sound. “Your lips seem to be holding up all right.”

“Then let’s keep going.” He’d sit there till he rotted if it would keep that wonderful glow of hers alive.

They were well into the second section of her new work when Sharon suddenly realized that they had an audience of two. Her hands fell from the strings, and she stood, knocking her stool onto its side, crowding out past Marc, and flinging herself into her sister’s arms.

“Jeanie, Max! What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I missed you, Sharon!” Jeanie hugged her tightly, then shoved her away, her eyes full of questions. “You were playing! I can’t believe it! And it was so beautiful! It’s new, isn’t it? It’s yours!”

“Yes,” Sharon said softly. “Mine, Jeanie. All mine.”

“It’s wonderful to see you playing again, to hear it.” Jeanie wiped two tears from her tanned cheeks, and then hugged her again.

Sharon stood back and looked up at her tall little sister. “It’s wonderful to see you two as well, but aren’t you a couple of weeks short of a full honeymoon?” They’d meant to stay away until the middle of February, and it was only the second.

Max beamed so wide, his lean face threatened to split, and Jeanie gave a little shrug. “We … well, we just wanted to come home. We missed you.” She moved away from her sister. “Hello, Marc. It’s nice to see you again. I didn’t know you were such a good musician.”

Marc stepped forward and accepted Max’s firm handshake and Jeanie’s quick kiss on the cheek. “The fact is, I’m not such a good musician. I always thought I was more adequate, in an amateur sort of way, of course. But tonight I’ve learned that I’m not only amateur, I’m slow and a little bit stupid and don’t know a B-sharp from an A-flat. And if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get them in at the right time and place and with the proper cadence.”

“Marc!” Sharon stared at him. “Have I been that hard on you?”

His smile was slow and filled with love he made no attempt to hide. “No, of course not. But I love to tease you because it makes your eyes glitter. Seriously, though,” he added, turning to Jeanie again, “I have learned an awful lot from your sister tonight.”

Sharon met Jeanie’s eyes and read a hundred questions in them. Quickly, she turned away, terribly aware of the bright burning color in her cheeks. Somehow, Jeanie finding Marc in her house at nine-thirty in the evening was even worse than Zinnie and Harry finding him in the chalet at breakfast time.

“Well, let’s not just stand here,” she said quickly. “Come on in and sit down. Are you hungry? Did you drive from Victoria? Do you need dinner or a snack or what? And where are your bags? I’ll go and make a pot of coffee unless you’d rather have drinks?”

Max laughed at his sister-in-law’s jerky movements and staccato speech. “Hey, relax, Sharon. We’re family, aren’t we?” He slung an arm around her shoulder and bumped her up against his side, much as his brother Rolph had a habit of doing. “I’ll get the bags. Jeanie can help you make coffee—decaf, please, for my wife, and she will need a snack, but I’m not hungry.”

“I’ll give you a hand with the bags,” Marc said, “and then I’ll get on home. See you tomorrow, Sharon?”

Standing half in the dining room, half in the living room on her way to the kitchen, she looked at him with longing mingled with understanding. He was going to absent himself in order not to cause her any further embarrassment—to save himself some. But if she let him go, it was as if she were saying that he was nothing more than a neighbor who had come in to share a musical evening with her. She didn’t want to deny him to her family.

“Don’t you want coffee?” she asked in a small voice.

With a smile, he shook his head, mouthed the word “tomorrow,” and went out to help Max.

“He’s even more gorgeous than I remembered,” said Jeanie, dropping bread into the toaster. “But I must say I was surprised to see him here with you. The last I heard, you couldn’t stand him.”

“Uh, well, he’s not as bad as I thought.” Jeanie nodded. “So it seems.”

“You see a lot of him?”

“Uh … yes. Quite a bit.”

Jeanie reached into an upper cabinet where Sharon kept the spices and brought down a bottle of cinnamon. She gave her sister a quizzical look. “Dare I ask if this is serious? And if it is, why did the guy take off like that?”

Sharon shrugged. “Just being polite, I guess. He knew we’d want to talk.”

“We can’t talk in front of him?”

“Well, you know. Family.” She shrugged again. “Jase must be in seventh heaven if you’ve made friends with his hero.” The toast popped, and Jeanie put it on a plate and began slathering it with butter, then added sugar and cinnamon. When Sharon didn’t answer, she glanced at her over her shoulder, dropped the knife, and ignored it when it fell to the floor with a clatter.

“Sharon! What’s the matter?” Gently, she led her sister to a chair and sat her down. She grabbed a fistful of tissues from a box on the counter and stuffed them into Sharon’s hand. “Hey, come on. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“He’s more than Jason’s hero, and I’ve done more than make friends with him. I’m in love with him. And he says he loves me.”

Jeanie plopped onto a chair and looked hard at Sharon’s woeful face. “This,” she said, “is reason for tears?”

“It is when we have to sneak around together. We hire a sitter, say we’re going out, and sometimes do, but then go back to his place and, well, you know. Or we wait until the kids are in bed and he comes here, but then I make him leave before morning. It’s a lousy way to live, Jeanie, and I hate it more and more every day. But there just doesn’t seem to be any other way.” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then sat up straight.

Jeanie remembered her toast, got up, and brought it back to the table. The aroma of coffee began to fill the room. “There’s a marvelous institution called marriage,” she said. “I recommend it highly.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Max said, coming in and taking her by the wrist, bringing her hand and her toast up to his mouth. He grabbed a huge bite, just missing her fingers, which she folded into a fist to wave threateningly.

“You said you weren’t hungry! Go make your own toast, McKenzie.”