Forbidden Love (2 page)

“It will all come back to reward you in the
end,” her mother said.

Trisha glanced over at a framed photograph on
her desk of her family at one of her cousin’s weddings the previous
spring. She and her mother were petite, and the four men stood like
bears on their hind legs behind them. Her brother Lucas was
separated from the rest of them by a couple of feet, with his left
hand in his pocket, eyes averted. She opened her mouth to ask her
mother how he was doing, but decided against it. The woe-is-me mood
was in full swing.

“I guess I have no choice,” Trisha said.

Her mother droned on for another twenty
minutes about Aunt Carol’s new Jaguar, the neighbors’ refusal to
pay for half of a new fence, and Trisha’s father’s plantar
fasciitis. When Millie’s text to meet her at brunch pinged in,
Trisha was thankful for the interruption. But a pebble of regret
for being so disengaged from her mother bounced around in the pit
of her stomach as she headed toward the quad, quivering in the
frigid January air in her thin wool coat.

Trisha felt like puking. Just pitching
forward and letting the day’s garbage spill out of her and into her
Hello Kitty trash can. Of all of the times she’d been drunk, she
had never been sick once, and here she was, preparing for a blind
date, and fingers of nausea kept stroking the back of her
throat.

She looked good. Definitely not as pathetic
as she felt. Millie had driven her to the mall to buy a new pair of
dark wash jeans and a purple silk shirt with cutout shoulders and
V-back. With her slight body, Trisha could really wear anything.
She knew this pissed off Millie sometimes, as Millie had to contend
with a five-foot-nine frame and wide hips, fitting for the
basketball player she was. Trisha had layered on more eye-shadow
than usual, plum and silver to make her green eyes pop, and was
wearing new camel suede riding boots that her brother Eric had
gotten her for Christmas.

Millie had described Rusty Quirke as runway
steamy.

“Textbook hot,” she said over brunch that
Sunday morning of Trisha’s summer sentencing, as Trisha poked at
cold eggs miserably with her fork. “These blue eyes like the water
in St. Thomas, kind of turquoise, you know? And he’s tall. I would
have gone for him myself but I was with Dumbass—whatsisname—and I
didn’t want to be rude.” Millie had agreed to meet a guy she had
met on the Melville College radio station staff at The Open Call, a
bar a couple of miles from campus, and they had run into Rusty, one
of the guy’s friends from high school in upstate New York. “I tried
to find out more about him for you, but Dumbass Dave wouldn’t shut
up about their high school days. I don’t think Rusty really
remembered him, to tell you the truth. But anyway, I mentioned you
and he gave me his number. He said, and I quote, ‘I’ve been living
around here a year and haven’t met anyone worth sticking around
for.’”

Millie had set her up for failure, Trisha
thought now, staring at herself in the mirror. What would a guy
like that want with a pixie like her? He’d be searching for his
counterpart, a long-legged, round-breasted blonde. All right, she
said to herself. Knock it off. Rusty could be the one who picks you
up and dusts you off from this disaster of a life you’ve got going
on. He knows nothing about the past that’s obviously following you
around, at least as far as you can tell.

She hadn’t actually called him to arrange the
first date. She had figured that she could say things in texts that
she wouldn’t necessarily say out loud, things that she would have
no courage for in a phone conversation. She wasn’t sure she had
delivered, though. “Wear something that shows off your assets,” he
had written.

“That’s a huge demand on my wardrobe,” she
had responded, and then realized that he could have taken that one
of two ways. She imagined him chuckling over her lameness to a
group of his buddies as her texts came in. But it was too late now.
She was on her way to The Open Call, herself, trying to reduce the
nausea by breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth
in slow rhythm.

The cab driver asked her if she was doing
Lamaze. “They say that don’t work anymore,” he said. “When my wife
went to deliver, she threw that crap right out the window.”

Trisha didn’t know how to answer. She
concentrated on watching the campus buildings roll by, the series
of rickety three-families where graduate students usually lived,
and the modest strip mall with the pizza joint they were always
calling, Supercuts, Laundromat, and convenience store. Her
heartbeat revved as the driver slowed down in front of the blinking
neon pink sign of the bar. Inside, everything was dark—the wood
furniture, the copper-colored tin ceiling, the faded portraits of
the town of Tyfield, MA when its biggest moneymakers were quilts
and asparagus. She had been here only once before after a soccer
game the year before when she was interested in one of the
forwards, and the bartender would serve her only Coke. It was
crowded right now, and loud. She waved to a few upperclassmen drama
students she recognized, and they lifted their glasses to her. Her
attention swiveled back to the bar stools. Rusty said he would be
sitting there, wearing a white shirt. She saw a couple at first,
feeding each other cashews from the bowl on the counter. Then a man
who looked too old to be at a college bar, with a graying beard and
motorcycle jacket. She took a few timid steps toward the back of
the room.

It was him.

The first thing she noticed
was the arch of his long, broad back over his drink. He was wearing
a white shirt, all right—just a white undershirt. His biceps curved
in toned swells out of his sleeves, tanned a rich brown despite the
winter season. Strong thighs wrapped in denim extended in front of
him and disappeared under the counter. The back of his neck with
its perfectly straight, close-trimmed hairline seemed to call for
the stroke of her fingertips. His hair was the tone of mahogany,
but richer, with flecks of auburn. His jaw was as defined as an
Abercrombie model’s. He took Trisha’s breath away. She stopped
about two feet away from him. Her mouth parted, but produced no
sound. She focused hard on drowning out the panicking voice in her
head that was warning,
he’s too good for
me
.

Rusty turned his head, leisurely, as though
scanning his surroundings. When his blue eyes caught her, they
petrified her on the spot. Millie wasn’t kidding. Trisha thought
she could see the Virgin Islands themselves in their aquamarine
cool. The corners of his lips pulled back into a grin, as if
letting her in.

“Hello, Beautiful.”

Trisha blinked. “Me?”

Rusty swiveled on the stool so that his
entire body faced her, and spread out his arms. “Do you see any
other woman in here who even comes close to deserving that
greeting?” He had to shout a little over the noise of people
laughing and joking.

Trisha took another step toward him. He
twirled his index finger in the air and widened his eyes when she
didn’t react. “Turn around?” he said.

She did, confused, and he placed his hands on
her shoulders. Their warmth through her coat made her loose inside.
With the movement of his body, he swathed her in a scent of musk,
and something else, something clean.

“Unbutton your coat,” he had to tell her.

Dammit, Trish, wake up, would you? She closed
her eyes and collected herself as Rusty slid the coat from her
arms. Her heart was nearly ricocheting off her ribs with this
feeling that he could not possibly be single from a stroke of
fortune alone.

“I bought you a drink; it’s coming,” he said.
“Hope Sprite and raspberry Stoli isn’t too strong for you.” He got
up from his seat and gestured for her to take it.

“I can handle it,” she said, even though
vodka could very well be the nastiest stuff on earth, and muddled
her head instantly. Did he think, because she was small, that she
was a lightweight? Au contraire, mon ami, she thought. She had
plenty to teach. Or at least she was trying to emanate the attitude
of someone who did.

“You don’t look like I pictured.” Rusty
leaned one elbow on the bar and began to dip the maraschino cherry
in his glass up and down, up and down in the golden liquid. His
gaze shifted over her, from her forehead, to her nose, down the
front of her shirt, back up again to meet her eyes. He was
smirking, now. “Your friend told me you were into acting.”

Trisha took a sip of the Sprite and Stoli the
bartender had delivered. It tasted medicinal. She took another sip.
“Yeah? So what is an actor supposed to look like?” she said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you want to go
into TV, film, or stage?”

Trisha hoped she didn’t know where he was
going with that question. She decided to be truthful. “Stage,” she
said.

He didn’t flinch. “Okay, sure. That makes
sense,” he said. He smiled again, and a dimple appeared in his left
cheek.

What did that mean,
that makes sense
? Why?
Because she wasn’t a curvaceous blonde, like she had predicted was
his type? Suddenly, she wasn’t feeling so hopeful. She sipped her
drink again. She had a desperate urge to text Millie and threaten
to strangle her. How could she set her up with someone so gorgeous,
so utterly flawless, who was so maddening? That dimple just put him
over the top.

“I would think,” he continued, “that stage
directors would be more open to the pink highlights, that’s all.
You’re not the stereotypical model-wanna-be who’s partly
manufactured by a chemical company, if you know what I mean.” He
sucked his drink off the cherry, then plucked it from the stem and
chewed.

Trisha’s shoulders relaxed. All right, she
thought. Maybe he’s not so bad. She resisted the inclination to
reach out and swipe her finger across his lips, which glistened
with the amaretto sour he was nursing. She pictured herself doing
so, then licking the amaretto from her own finger. He must taste
tangy, sweet, and warm, she thought. She almost asked him how he
knew so much about acting, but she brought her glass to her mouth
again. The alcohol was filling her muscles with a kind of tranquil
fizz.

“Plus, I like surprises,” he said. Was it her
imagination, the vodka, or was he inching closer to her? One more
move and he might be between her legs. “I’m sick of meeting these
girls who are so full of themselves, you have to guess what parts
of them are real and which aren’t.”

I’m real, Trisha wanted to say. I’m real
here, and here, and here, and here. Try me. She gave him what she
thought was an alluring grin.

“You’re so quiet,” Rusty said. His thigh
bumped her knee, teasing. “You don’t have to be so nervous. I shit
and fart like every other loser in this place.”

Trisha burst out laughing. “You’re crass,”
she said.

“No, no,” he said, and held
up a finger. “I’m
Rustic
. There’s a
difference.”

She shook her head at him. The room tumbled
over to the right and tumbled back over to the left in front of
her. “Too much,” she managed to say. He was too much. The drink was
too much. And she wanted to stay here forever, staring at him.

“No, really,” he said. “My full name is
‘Rustic.’ I was born in the back of a covered wagon on my parents’
farm in upstate New York. The fields—cows and chickens and
outhouses and all that. I’m telling you.”

Trisha looked at him. “A covered wagon?”

Rusty nodded. “From the 1880s. It came with
the property. My mother was out picking strawberries with her niece
when she went into labor, and she was too far from the house to
walk all the way back. So her niece pulled her into the wagon, and
I popped right out.” He tipped his head back and downed the rest of
his drink. “Ready to confront the world with all of my rugged
charm. And I had a few splinters, but nothing life
threatening.”

He had edged even closer to her, so that his
left thigh was entirely between her knees. He reached out and swept
a stray block of her bangs out of her eyelashes. The brush of his
fingers against her skin was enough to make her lose her balance on
the stool, and her right foot skidded off one of the rungs and hit
the floor. She fell forward into him and grabbed his forearm to
steady herself.

“Sorry,” he said. “I have to work on
that—sweeping girls off their feet instead of knocking them off
stools.”

For a moment, he cupped Trisha’s lower back
with his hand. The open V in her blouse meant that more of his skin
was touching hers, and her breath escaped her again. She looked up
into those eyes, wanting them never to descend on any other girl.
She’d do whatever he wanted.

“You going to tell me your birth story?” he
asked. “I’ll start it for you. ‘Once upon a time…’”

Trisha laughed again. He was so damn
enchanting. She hoped he didn’t let go of her; she thought she
might collapse right there on the floor. “I’m the baby,” she said.
“I’m the baby of everyone.”

“Brothers or sisters?”

“Brothers.”

“What do they weigh?” he said. “Do I need to
be concerned?” He picked up Trisha’s drink and held it to her
mouth, letting her take down the rest. “Could I take them in an
American Gladiator obstacle course?”