Heartbreak, Tennessee (22 page)

She had to have more.

She slid back on her
knees along the wooden floor of the boat, and guided Mac into a sitting
position, his back leaning against the seat. With the sensitive pads of her
fingers she traced a trail down the center of his chest to his belly. It was
flat and hard, but the skin was warm and smooth, like no other texture in the
world, and she paused to circle his navel. Then, while Mac reclaimed her lips,
her tongue, with his own, she explored further with her fingers, taking him
into her hand, feeling his urgency.

“Do you remember how
to undress without capsizing us?” she asked throatily.

In answer he lifted
his hips, thighs tensing to an iron firmness below her stilled fingers, and
eased out of his shorts and briefs. Seeing him freed, the deep tan of his torso
ending in a line just above the curl of ebony hair, Amber’s breath quickened.

“Your turn.” Mac slid
his fingers under the thin knit fabric of her shirt and she lifted her arms up
as he shoved it up and off, tossing it behind her into the prow of the boat. He
circled his hands on her waist and pulled her towards him until she straddled
him, her skirt bunched at her waist. He fingered the delicate lace of her bra
for a moment and then bent his head to kiss along its edges.

Amber pressed his head
to her, snaking her fingers through his hair. His touch was at once teasing and
inflaming. It was agony, but blissful agony, as she held her breath and waited.

He unclasped her bra
at last and it too went sailing over her shoulder. His mouth took her nipples
in turn and teased them, swirling his tongue around in circles that left her
dizzy and clinging to the wooden seat for support. The throb in her belly was
turning to a dull ache of need, and when she couldn’t stand it any longer, she
pushed herself up and awkwardly wriggled out of her skirt, the boat responding
by tilting one way and then another in the water, dipping nearly far enough to
let water in.

“Careful, skipper,”
Mac said, his voice amused but his eyes sparking with fire. Her panties were
easier to remove—especially when Mac’s hand covered hers as she slid them
down, tracing the insides of her thighs with his burning touch.

Amber had had enough. Waited
long enough. Maneuvering her knees around his thighs, she clutched Mac’s
shoulders and arched against him, throwing her head back. Mac cupped his hands
beneath her bottom and pulled her to him, and they met and fit together
perfectly. Mac kissed her throat and rocked her closer and closer until he was
deep within her, and then she took over and established her own rhythm,
pleasuring herself against him with abandon.

Somehow, even exposed
as they were, the middle of the lake felt like the most private place on earth,
and as Mac finally let go and thrust deeply into her, Amber forgot herself and
cried out. She felt the waves of sensation rocketing through her body until she
could no longer stand it and, sobbing, she finally pushed away from him, but
Mac held her firmly against him. Amber pounded her fists at his torso as the
last few tremors wracked her while he was still deep within.

At last she fell
against him, utterly drained, and they were still. Wordlessly, Mac traced lazy
designs on her back, and her perspiration slowly dissolved on the cooling
breeze.

It was the hard wood
under her bare knees that finally caused Amber to stir. Otherwise, she might
have stayed that way all night, possibly forever, the low thump of Mac’s
heartbeat lulling her into a feeling of perfect happiness.

As she pulled away,
rubbing the red marks on her knees and shins, and settled herself more
comfortably on the wooden seat, Mac watched her with an expression that she
couldn’t read. Wordlessly he followed suit, slipping his shorts back on and
sitting loose-limbed across from her. Amber felt suddenly self-conscious, and
though the late afternoon was heavy and humid with the setting sun, she felt
something almost like a chill as she maneuvered her own clothes back on.

“I have to tell you
everything now,” she said.

It was cold that
night, the last night she spent in Heartbreak fourteen years before. Amber’s
thin jacket wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, over the short polyester
waitressing uniform.

Amber had done what
she could in the ladies’ room after work, taking a minute to try to tame her
hair with a comb dipped in water, slicking on a little lipstick, meting out a
few drops of the precious vial of perfume that Mac had given her and rubbing it
between her wrists.

Mac’s father had
called right before her shift ended to tell her that Mac was going to be tied
up a little longer than he thought, finishing up a job.

“I’ll come on by and
pick you up,” he said. Amber was taken aback. Pete McBaine had barely spoken a
full sentence to her before, much less called her on the phone.

“No, no,” she said. “I’ll
catch a ride with someone.”

“All right. Stop by my
office, will you?”

Hanging up, she
thoughtfully twisted the thin circle of gold on a chain around her neck. What
on earth had gotten into Pete? He’d never seemed concerned about her welfare
before. Why now?

Slowly realization
sunk in. Mac must have told his father about the engagement. That was it. He’d
shared the news, and now Pete had been forced to view her as more than just
another girl Mac was dating. Pete finally understood that Amber was the one,
destined to be his daughter-in-law, and decided to begin treating her that way.

A small smile danced
on Amber’s lips as she thought it through, barely able to concentrate on toting
up the night’s tickets. Oh, he was a quiet man, Pete was, and he might never be
the father that Amber had always dreamed of. But if he was willing to accept
her into the family, Amber was more than ready to overlook his shortcomings. Any
crack at all in the McBaine family chill was a big change, and Amber resolved
to make the most of it.

Her friend Josie flashed
her a sympathetic look as she pulled her old sedan into the near-empty parking
lot at McBaine Boats. Though they’d worked side by side all night, Amber hadn’t
yet told Josie about the engagement. Somehow it seemed more special this way,
when the only people who knew were her mother and now Mac’s parents, too.

“You’ll knock him
dead,” Josie said. “If anyone could look good in these stupid uniforms, it’s
you.”

Amber murmured a
self-conscious good-bye and watched the car pull out of the lot, tail-lights winking
as it lumbered down the country road. It was a moonless night, a promise of a
cold rain in the air, and the parking lot was lit only by a single rusted
street lamp. Amber saw Pete’s car, but not Mac’s, and wondered briefly where it
was.

The door closing
behind her with a click, Amber followed the thin yellow light coming from Pete’s
door. As she hesitated before knocking, Pete called to her from inside.

“Come on in, little
lady.”

She opened the door
wide, fixing a smile on her face. The room was empty except for Pete, who was
bent over a stack of papers. He stubbed a smoldering cigarette into an ashtray
overflowing with butts, and motioned to the other chair.

The “inquisition chair”,
as Mac liked to call it, the one where Pete was known to castigate his
employees and work every bit of margin out of the deals he made with suppliers.
Reluctantly, Amber sat, the cracked vinyl hard and unforgiving.

“Where’s Mac?” she
asked, trying to keep her tone light.

Again, the wave of the
hand, a gesture that in Pete’s vocabulary seemed to make do for a lot of
unspoken statements.

“I thought we’d have
us a chat.”

Amber waited. Here it
would come, the welcome—however awkward—into the family. For a
moment Amber allowed herself to savor her secret hopes, hopes she’d never
reveal, not even to Mac. Would Pete invite her to call him Dad? Had Fran had a
change of heart, was she even now planning to invite Amber over, for tea, to
meet her friends, to plan a wedding shower?

But Pete was
inscrutable. “You’ve been seeing my boy for a while now,” he said, and from his
tone it wasn’t clear if it was an accusation or merely a statement of fact. “In
fact he tells me he asked you to marry him.”

“Yes, sir.” Amber
swallowed, hard, and shuffled her feet on the worn linoleum.

A long moment passed,
while Pete unhurriedly lit another cigarette with a plastic lighter, his
nicotine-stained fingers cupped around it while he puffed.

“You’re to tell him
no.”

The air in the room
suddenly seemed thin. Amber tried to register what Pete had said.

“What—”

“I said, tell him no. You
heard me. You’ll not marry my boy.”

“But—”

Pete held up a hand,
silencing her, while with the other he shoved the pack of cigarettes back into
his shirt pocket.

“It ain’t entirely my
idea, if it makes you feel any better,” he said, tossing his lighter back into
his desk drawer and taking a deep draw on the cigarette, the end glowing an
angry red. “Mac’s old lady made it clear she don’t care for the idea. Y’see—”
He looked at her through slitted eyes, crafty now, cunning, and Amber’s blood
ran cold. “No offense, but my wife’s got it in her head that you’re trash. You
might say she thinks you’re nothin’ but a nice-lookin’ scrap of a bastard
child.”

As the words sliced
through her, Amber could not bear to hear any more. A tight coil of anger
formed in her gut, and her blood pumped through her veins.

“I’m not trash,” was
all she could say. Her indignation pushed against fear, and she felt small and
insignificant in her chair.

“Yeah?” Pete allowed
himself an ironic smile, his face twisting almost grotesquely. “Don’t know as
how we can settle that one here. But it doesn’t really matter, now does it? You’re
still illegitimate. Your daddy was a traveling salesman.”

“I have a good name,”
Amber said. “My mother’s name. She’s known in town.”

“Can’t disagree with
that one,” Pete said, chuckling mirthlessly. “No siree. Everyone loves Nadine
DeWitt, now, don’t they? Still, I’m going to tell you just this one time,
Missy, you stay away from my son. And you’re going to make damn sure you do.”

“I
won’t
.” Amber was surprised at the
defiance in her voice. Again her hand went to the ring suspended on the fine
chain, twisting it for support. For comfort. “I love Mac. He loves me. I know
he’d sacrifice everything for me if he had to. You can’t keep us apart.”

“No, eh?” The
amusement on Pete’s face was worse than his usual expressionless demeanor—much
worse. It was so unfamiliar, so out of character—and somehow, so cruel. “You
may have a point about my boy. He’s whipped, sure enough. Bought you that ring,
did he? Yeah, that’s what got Fran going this time, that damn ring. Well,
anyway. I got something to show you.”

Not taking his eyes
from her face, Pete opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a small object,
shoving it across the desk at her.

A barrette, small,
silver filigree. Amber knew it well. She’d given a pair of them to her mother
last Christmas.

“Where’d you get that?”
she demanded, uncomprehending.

“Your mama,” Pete
said. “She really didn’t want you to find out, but I just don’t see how it can
be helped. See—” he leaned over the desk and whispered conspiratorially. “Me
and her, we got a thing.”

A
thing
. Even as understanding chilled her, Amber recoiled at the
word.

Pete was saying that
he was having an affair with her mother.

“Yeah, you might say
me and her are having an anniversary of her own,” he went on, his eyes boring
into her face. “We been together for coming up on ten years now. If you know
what I mean.”

“You’re lying,” Amber
said, her voice chilled.

“Yeah? Let me ask you
something, doll face. Who do you think pays the bills over at your house? Who
do you think paid for your piano lessons, your fancy church dresses? Who paid
to fix your mama’s teeth, or put a new clutch in that car of hers? Huh? You
think she can afford that taking in sewing?”

Dumbfounded, Amber
shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t believe you.”

“Yeah,” Pete said, his
voice suddenly grim. “Yeah, I guess I’m an ugly old cuss, huh? Not good enough
for your mom? Well, let me tell you something, honey. Time was I could turn a
few heads myself. You were just a little girl then. Your mama and I kept
running into each other at church—back when I was still a church-going
man. We’d get to talking sometimes. Oh, I knew she didn’t care much for me. But
she didn’t have no one to talk to, and after a while she used to pour her heart
out, how it was killin’ her she couldn’t afford any nice things for her little
girl.”

He rose out of his
chair, and stared out the window for a minute, into the night. “You’d be amazed
what happens when two desperate people get together,” he said gruffly.

“See, I didn’t exactly
tell you the truth there a while ago,” he added, whirling around. “I don’t much
give a damn what my wife has to say about the two of you. It’s your mama. She’s
threatening to stop seeing me, now things have got so serious between you and
my boy. She suddenly seems to think it ain’t right.”