33 The Return of Bowie Bravo (13 page)

“Five weeks. The second week of March. The house is fine, move-in ready.”

A month, and he wouldn’t be in and out of her house anymore. He’d be at his own place. Johnny would visit him there, stay with him there.…

“Congratulations,” she said and tried really hard to mean it.

She must have succeeded. He gave her that slow smile, the one that turned her silly heart to mush. “Thanks, Glory. I’m excited. I…” His sentence died, barely begun as the fussy little whines started from the monitor on the counter by the sink.

They sat there, neither moving, just looking at each other, as Sera progressed beyond the fussy stage and let out a wail. Bowie winced. He hated it when she cried.

She teased, “Aren’t you going to volunteer to go and get her?”

He looked at her steadily. “You know I want to. I figure you’ll tell me if you want me to do it.”

She waved a hand. “Go on. Go.”

He was out of that chair and headed for the stairs in an instant. She watched him go, and for the first time she felt grateful. Truly grateful. That he’d come back to town at last, that he was working things out with Johnny.

That he adored her daughter and her daughter seemed to feel the same way about him.

Somehow, Bowie Bravo had become a very good man.

And good men, as every woman knows, are much too hard to find.

“Well,” Angie said in a disgusted tone a week later, “it’s obvious he’s interested, or he
would
be interested, if you gave him so much as a hint that you
wanted
him to be interested.”

Glory settled the baby a little more comfortably against her breast. They were at Glory’s house that day. She’d made vegetable soup and grilled-cheese sandwiches. “How would you know if he would or could be interested?”

“What do you mean how would I know? Haven’t we been through this already? I’ve seen you together. The attraction is…palpable.”

“Palpable.” Glory scowled. “That’s a very big word for something that’s none of your business.”

Angie let out a laugh. “If it’s none of my business, then you should stop talking to me about it.” She took a bite of her sandwich. “Mmm. Soooo good. You always did make the best grilled cheese. I think it’s that panini pan you use. Makes them crispy on the outside, and melts the cheese to a truly decadent gooeyness.”

“Are you changing the subject?”

“You mean the one that’s none of my business?”

“He’s moving out in four weeks.”

“So? He’ll still be in town. That way, when you finally stop lying to yourself and make your move, you won’t have to drive all the way to Santa Cruz to seduce him.”

Glory let her mouth drop open. “I do not believe you just said that to me.”

“Good point. Denial is always an option.” Angie pushed back her chair. “More iced tea?”

The days went by much too fast. Bowie went to Santa Cruz for two days on business. When he returned, Johnny ran out to meet him. Bowie grabbed him up and twirled him around. Glory watched them from the bay window in the family room and couldn’t help smiling at the sight.

Bowie finished the train set for Johnny, even painted every car to Johnny’s exact specifications. Johnny had the set in his room now, along with a giant tub of blocks of all sizes and shapes that Bowie had made from scraps of lumber.

The whittling lessons seemed to be progressing, too. Johnny had whittled a rather crooked-looking squirrel and a small, round creature he said was a guinea pig. Now he was working on a raccoon.

Nearly every evening when Glory went downstairs for that final cup of tea, Bowie came inside to sit with her. They talked. About nothing. About everything.

Another week flew past. And suddenly, it was the last Monday in February and time to go to the clinic for her six-week checkup.

Angie, who’d gotten her master’s degree in nursing a couple of years before and become a nurse practitioner, did the exam and gave Glory a clean bill of health. She also wrote a scrip for a birth-control pill that was progestin-only and safe for nursing mothers. “Never hurts to be prepared,” she said with a pleasant, professional smile as she ripped the prescription off the pad.

Glory accepted the scrip even though she did not approve of herself for doing so. And then, before Johnny got home from school, she drove down to Grass Valley and filled it.

The instructions for the pills said she would be fully protected within forty-eight hours of taking the first one. She put the pill case away in her underwear drawer and told herself that Angie was right. It was good to be prepared.

Not that she
needed
to be prepared.

In the morning, when she got up, she took the pill case from her drawer, popped the first pill out of its protective plastic bubble and swallowed it. As soon as she did that, she wished that she hadn’t. She did not, after all, actually plan to seduce the father of her son.

“Denial is always an option.”
Her sister’s knowing voice echoed in her brain.

Was she in denial?

It was a definite possibility.

But if she
did
try and seduce him, in forty-eight hours, given that she took the second pill, she would be protected from getting pregnant again, at least. The other consequences of such a foolish action would still be hers to confront, the
emotional
consequences. The ones she really ought to be considering more thoroughly.

Glory put the case away and went down to breakfast, where Bowie stood at the cooktop stirring a pan of oatmeal. Her heart gave a lurch in her chest and her pulse beat faster, just at the sight of him standing there in her kitchen. His hair was a little longer than it had been when he first showed up at her door. And his eyes were like oceans she could happily drown in.

He smiled at her. “Morning.”

“Morning.” She got down her mug and brewed her tea and tried not to think that Johnny had a sleepover birthday party at his cousin’s on Friday. Well beyond the forty-eight hours required for contraceptive safety…

That night, with the kids in bed, when she sat alone at the table with Bowie, he asked her what was up with her.

“Up?” she replied, so calmly, so innocently. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You seem…different.”

“Different, how?”

“I don’t know. Like you’ve got some big secret, I guess.”

“A bad secret?”

“How would I know—unless you want to share it with me?” He gazed at her coaxingly.

She tried not to stare at his mouth, not to think about kissing him. “There’s nothing, really.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

The next morning, she took another pill. And then another the morning after that.

And then, all of a sudden, it was Friday.

She got out the pill case and stared at the remaining pills and thought that if she only put the case away now, without taking a pill, she would have the best kind of protection.

Protection against her own foolish desire.

It wasn’t too late. She hadn’t made her move and she didn’t
have
to make a move.

And then, with a surrendering sigh, she popped the next pill free and placed it on her tongue.

That day crawled by. Glory thought more than once that it would never end. Every hour took a lifetime, every minute a year.

Breakfast lasted forever, with Bowie right there, serving up the pancakes, totally unaware of what she intended to try to do to him that night. When that agony of a meal was finally over, when Johnny was off at school and Bowie was out in the shop, Glory cleaned bathrooms and scrubbed floors.

She got down on her knees in the kitchen and washed that floor by hand. Was it something of a penance before the fact? Ugh. Maybe Angie was right and she was getting to be a lot like Aunt Stella.

But then again, why would Stella need to do penance—before the fact or otherwise? Stella never sinned.

Glory met Angie at the diner at noon. She got through the entire lunch without telling her sister what she planned to do that night. It did seem to her that Angie looked at her strangely more than once.

But that could have just been her guilty conscience making her overly sensitive.

Back at home, she cleaned some more. She took the dishes down from the cabinets and washed the shelves. She probably would have started washing down walls, but Sera got fussy and she had to spend an hour walking her, singing to her, jiggling her gently, trying to comfort her.

Finally, Sera settled down and Johnny came home from school. She helped him wrap the birthday present he was taking to the sleepover, then sent him upstairs to fill a pack with his pajamas and his toothbrush and everything he might need for a night away from home. She had him put his sleeping bag in the back of her Subaru wagon. Then he had to run out to the shop to check in with Bowie.

Finally, he reappeared. “Bowie says he can either watch Sera or drive me.…”

“That would be great if he’ll drive you. Your sleeping bag’s in the Subaru.”

She kissed her son goodbye and started dinner.

Bowie came in at five-thirty. She heard him go into the bathroom next to the laundry room and she heard the shower running. Her hands shook as she cut up the salad. And she almost dropped the pot of boiled potatoes in the process of carrying them to the sink to drain them. A woman in her state probably shouldn’t be cooking.

But if she didn’t make dinner as usual, Bowie would step in and do it for her. And he would start asking questions about what was the matter.

When he finally came out of the bathroom, she heard him in the laundry room, putting a load in the washer. And then, at last, he appeared, fresh from his shower, totally innocent of her wicked plans for him later that evening.

He set the table. “Kind of quiet around here, without Johnny.…”

She fished the fried chicken out of the pan. “Give it a few minutes. Sera will be wailing.”

“Smells good.”

It was a miracle she hadn’t burned the whole meal to a crisp. But she didn’t tell him that. He would only ask why and she would be forced to lie to his face or tell him straight-out that she had decided to have sex with him and she intended to do so that very night.

He ate with gusto. The poor guy had no idea what was in store for him. She had some cookies she’d made the day before to offer for dessert. He had coffee with those and he seemed to want to linger at the table and chat.

But then Sera started crying and she said, “She’s hungry. I’ll see you later.”

He got right up and carried his cookie plate and coffee cup to the sink. She left him and went upstairs. Miracle of miracles, Sera ate and had her diaper changed and went back to sleep.

Glory took a bath. She put her favorite apple-scented bath oil in the water and she ran the tap nice and hot. Once settled in the steamy tub, she rested her head on a fluffy towel and tried to clear her mind of things like guilt and second thoughts.

Back in the bedroom after her bath, she got a pair of pink silk panties from her dresser. She was slipping them on when she happened to glance over and catch sight of her wedding picture, of Matteo, looking so happy to have her as his bride.

She went straight to the nightstand and turned the picture facedown. Okay, it was childish and it accomplished nothing. Still, she just wasn’t up for glancing over and seeing her poor dead husband’s smiling face while she ran around getting ready to put a move on Bowie Bravo.

Again.

After all these years.

She had a nightgown she’d bought on sale the previous spring and never worn. That seemed the best choice. It felt wrong to wear something she’d worn with her husband. The nightgown was white, sleeveless, with little ruffles down the front and a pink ribbon that tied at the throat. The material was lightweight cotton. She stood in front of the mirror and thought that it was pretty, but not sexy.

Which was fine. Great. She was almost thirty, a widow with two children. She didn’t need some sexy nightgown showing off the extra pounds she’d put on since the last time Bowie saw her naked.

Naked.

Oh, Lord.

Better not to think that far ahead.

The clock by her facedown wedding picture said 7:27 p.m. It seemed a little early for seduction.

But on second thought, how long did she have until Sera woke up? A couple of hours, if she was lucky.

So she put on her red velveteen winter robe. She stood at the mirror on the inside of the closet door and brushed her hair so it fell in soft waves on her shoulders. And then she hiked up her robe and her nightgown and took off the pink panties. She didn’t need them. Not to do what she was about to do.

She pulled on her favorite fur-lined Uggs—again, not sexy. But she did have to walk across the snowy yard to get where she was going.

And then she was ready. It was time.

Her heart stuck high in her throat and her pulse racing like a jackrabbit on the run from the big, bad wolf, she grabbed the baby monitor and headed for the barn. Halfway down the stairs, she almost lost her nerve. But she put one booted foot in front of the other and before she knew it, she was out the back door.