Kisses From Heaven (9 page)

She washed the glasses, put them away and left the room, bending to fold the handmade quilt on the floor. It had come from a closet, she remembered, but when she opened the closet door, the shelf was too high. Buck came from behind her, taking the quilt out of her hands, the look in his eyes a detailed reminder of what they’d done on that quilt. “Everything in its place? Now try to put on your coat, Loren. Do it. See what happens.”

She reached up, very swiftly, and kissed him. His cheeks felt rough from the hours without shaving, and her fingers lingered gently as she looked up at him with sad eyes. Every muscle in his body tensed, and then he jerked away from her, breathing heavily.

“Would you like to tell me why I have the impression you plan on never seeing me again?” he said furiously.

“Because that’s the way it has to be,” she said simply, and looked around vaguely for her coat. It wasn’t in the living room or the closet. She’d given it to Buck when she came in. She retraced her steps to the kitchen, found it on a wall hook and was putting one arm through a sleeve when he stormed in behind her.

“So you have some idiotic prejudice against money. Perhaps with reason. That doesn’t change anything between the two of us. You didn’t give a hoot in hell what I had or didn’t have when we made love, now did you?”

“No,” she agreed, buttoning her coat and slipping out of the back door to bring in her boots. The rush of freezing air brought a welcome numbness to her cheeks. “It matters now.”

“
Why?
Exactly what has changed?” he demanded.

“Nothing yet.” She watched him grab for his coat, almost flinching at the violent way he snatched for it. “But it would change, Buck. No one keeps me, and I won’t play Galatea to your Pygmalion. I could see what was coming. You’d solve all my problems for me, would you? It’s so damn easy when you have money—”

“A hell of a lot of your problems
would
be solved with money,” he snarled.

“That’s just it. It’s like buying love. Like buying a perfect peach and watching it spoil. I know you don’t understand, but I’ve seen all too much of it in my life.” Her tone was rational and quiet. She sighed at his implacable expression, and then simply turned and walked out into the cold, feeling the salt sting of tears in her eyes.

The ground was uneven and slushy, barely lit by the moonlight and stars. Through her tears, the ground looked silvery gray; the shadows of trees menacing. He was at the car door ahead of her, in time to see her in and slam it. When he slammed the door on his own side, the entire car shook. “So you’re all done, just like that, Loren? How does it feel—a one-night stand? I got over liking that scene a long time ago, but maybe for you…”

It hurt; he’d meant it to. She didn’t answer until they were out on the open road again, it took that long before the lump in her throat would dissolve. It took the same length of time for him to stop racing as if he were driving in the Daytona 500 and smooth the car down to a decent purr on the road. “I love you, Buck, and I loved our time together,” she said finally, very, very softly.

“I wasn’t talking about
buying
you, Loren. I was talking about lifting the burden of family and financial responsibilities from your shoulders. And
not
out of the ‘goodness of my heart.’ Out of selfishness. Because I want you to myself, time with you. If you can’t see the difference between that and ‘keeping’ you…”

“It sounds good, but you’re really talking about taking me over, Buck. The debt would just accumulate; you couldn’t get out free and clear, and it would change how I felt about you. It wouldn’t be freedom to love, but obligation, cluttering up whatever real emotion exists, destroying it. You don’t know me well enough to be that sure you want a lifetime with me, Buck. But I know myself. I don’t regret a minute of this afternoon, but I would. It would stop feeling like love and start feeling like an exchange—sex for money.”

For forty minutes, they drove in silence, her last words echoing, leaving a bad taste in her own mouth. She could feel the first pangs of withdrawal stabbing through the numbness; he was withdrawing from her already, and he was next to her. She could still feel the imprint of his hands on her body, still feel the desire to curl close to him, still remember exactly what he looked like naked, leaning over her.

When he pulled into the driveway and stopped the car, there was a cold, unreadable expression on his face. “You’re a fool, Loren,” he said in a low voice.

She took a breath to control the burning swell of tears just behind her eyelids and reached for the door.

He snatched her first, grasping at her shoulders to half wrench her across his lap. Ignoring the shudder through her body, his fingers threaded roughly in her hair, molding her scalp to force her mouth to his. His lips meant to punish, and they did, with a savage pressure that bruised and cut where his teeth grazed against her soft flesh. As rough as he was, as raw, she could feel an eruption of sheer sexual desire rip through her, just as rough, just as raw. She felt an urge not to tame the primitive onslaught but to encourage it, to meet him on whatever ground he wanted to play. It wasn’t Buck she was rejecting but his moneyed world.

He drew back from her, his hands clenched tightly on her shoulders, and then he pulled open his door. She could see his hands were trembling even more than her own. “I won’t call you,” he said harshly. “You call me, Loren, the next time you want a one-night stand. You want to give it away free and clear, with no strings attached…well, don’t waste it on a stranger.”

He stalked ahead of her to open the kitchen door. She walked up the stairs and then past him, too shaken to even look at him, and heard the door slam behind her. She was alone, a single light left on in the kitchen, the household obviously long asleep. She was “free and clear” to burst into tears, but the release was denied her, as if all her emotions had been buried in a dark box in her heart that had no key. A lump in the back of her throat was trying to choke her.

Her knees suddenly weak, she sat down at the kitchen table, cradling her head in her hands. She could not get over the horrifying feeling that she’d just made the worst mistake in her life and had no way to take it back.

It was past eight when Loren drove into her yard. With a weary sigh, she opened the back door of the van and reached in for an armload of papers to take into the house, hardly noticing the hint of crisp air that smelled distinctly springlike. The slush was long gone, and April only a few days away; a few trees were thinking about bursting into leaf, and the grass already had a lush softness of early spring.

Wielding her purse, folders and keys, Loren slammed the van door with her hip and made her way to the kitchen door, wishing she had a free hand to rub the aching spot at the nape of her neck. In the dusk, there was no one to see her, and the total exhaustion etched on her features gave her a fragile appearance. Her workload had been impossible these past few weeks, even when she stayed late and brought work home, and she had launched a spring cleaning in the house as well. Every minute of every day had been filled, but there was a continual, aching awareness that Buck hadn’t called and was not going to call. No matter how many times she convinced herself that she’d been both honest and right in what she’d told him, there was a lonely ache inside of her that just refused to lessen. Her weight had slipped five pounds, and unless there was a reason to make the effort, the ready smile and quick comeback she was famous for simply didn’t happen.

Thinking of what to make for dinner and how to wedge in the paperwork between the dishes and bed that night, Loren’s step almost faltered on the stairs. She
had
to pull herself together, stop driving herself. She opened the door and promptly frowned as she set down the papers on the counter.

Every light was on in the kitchen, an unexpected and tantalizing aroma of beef stroganoff wafting from the stove. The counters were spotless; there were no dirty dishes waiting for her; the floor gleamed. More startling was the man standing at the stove with a wooden spoon in his hand. He was as small as her grandfather, but oddly spiffy in gray slacks and a starched white shirt, over which he wore a body apron. On the safer side of sixty, he sported a cane in one hand; he was stirring with the other. A pair of puppy-gentle eyes lifted to hers. “Miss Shephard?”

She nodded, not exactly sure what to say.

“I’ll have dinner for you in about ten minutes. We’ve just been waiting for you to come in. I’m Rayburn, of course.”

“I see.” She didn’t see at all, watching as he deftly handled the pair of pots on the stove. The puppy-gentle eyes spared her another shy smile.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the job,” he offered warmly.

“The job,” Loren repeated faintly.

“Your grandfather and sister are waiting for you in the dining room.”

She resisted the urge to repeat that as well, instead removing her coat as she watched him, and finally giving in to his gently motioning hand to disappear into the other room. The dining room had been transformed; a white linen tablecloth graced with silver unearthed from locked drawers, not to mention the crystal and hand-painted china that were a legacy from past generations, a candelabrum in the center of the table… Gramps was in a suit and Angela in a low-cut red blouse; they were seated across from each other, all dressed up and like twin Cheshire cats.

“All right. What on earth is going on?” Loren said wearily.

Rayburn entered the room, again very gently motioning her to sit, his apron removed. She found herself sitting and then served as well, her plate heaped with asparagus in a marvelous cheese sauce, beef stroganoff, a tossed fresh spinach salad with a tangy dressing. Homemade bread was still steaming on the plate, cut in wedges. In her own glass, there was wine while the other two clearly held ice water, and again she looked up blankly at Rayburn, who stood patiently at her side. Something seemed to be expected of her.

“It looks wonderful,” she said obediently. It wasn’t hard to say, looking at the table.

“I love him!” Angela crowed when Rayburn returned beyond the closed door to the kitchen. “I just love him! He’s so…butlerish. I can hardly wait to tell David. It’s just like it used to be when Mother and Dad were alive!”

Gramps was looking at Loren. “Admit it’s nice, to come home and be able to relax for a few minutes, Loren,” he said quietly. “Just eat your dinner while I explain.”

When she’d walked in the door, she’d felt too tired to eat, much less cook, yet when she took the first bite, her appetite miraculously perked up, and she found the second and third bites going down while she listened. Jim Rayburn had a bad hip and consequently could not find work. An army pension was enough to keep him in adequate spending money, but would not in itself pay for living expenses. He had no family still living; after his discharge from the service, he had worked as a clerk, later as a cook. In exchange for a roof over his head, he was more than willing to both cook for the Shephards and do some basic housekeeping. “To take the load off you,” Gramps finished.

“You look like hell lately,” Angela added cheerfully.

“Thanks,” Loren said dryly, and studied them both silently as they finished their dinner. The meal was superb, and to her own surprise she was finished before either of them, too sated to move. She felt relaxed and almost cheerful for the first time in weeks. Yes, it was wonderful not to come home to a load of housework and cooking. Yes, even those few minutes of being pampered soothed the taut nerves she normally came home with. Yes, she liked the idea of someone at home for both Gramps and Angela when she wasn’t there. And yes, he was closer to Gramps’s age, perhaps company for those lonely Fridays… And she was not born yesterday. Neither Angela nor Gramps would meet her gaze. Suspiciously, she picked up the glass of wine and took a sip. “Where exactly did you find him? Are you going to try to tell me he just walked up to the door, looking for a job that doesn’t pay, knowing all our circumstances?”

They were both silent, and then Gramps looked sternly at Angela, saying quietly, “We went looking for him. You needed help. You’ve needed it for an age. Since you don’t have the sense God gave you to come in out of the rain, we found an umbrella for you.”

“Thanks again,” Loren said dryly. “In the meantime, how
exactly
did you find him?”

“An ad in the paper. How else would we find him?” Angela said swiftly. “In the meantime, Loren, I have other news, and since for the first time in a month you don’t look like you’d like to snap my head off…”

“Angela!”

“I want you to go out to dinner on Saturday with David and me,” Angela continued smoothly. “A dress-up, elegant dinner—all on David.”

“Oh, Angie…” Loren’s features softened even as a worried frown creased her forehead. Rayburn, her job, even Buck, for the first time in an age, fled from her mind. She could tell from her sister’s face—from the defiance in her chin and the love sparkling in her eyes—what the dinner was for. “Honey…”

Angela shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it without David here. I know you think I’m too young, Loren—”

“Darling, it isn’t just that. David isn’t even out of school yet—”

Angela set her napkin on the table and stood up. “Loren, you had such a rotten marriage you don’t even like to hear the word said. You hole up here in your little shell. That’s not the way I want to live my life, and I’m of age. And I’ll be out of school by the first of June.”

She stalked from the room, and Loren stared at her grandfather as they both heard the rush of footsteps up the stairs to Angela’s room, followed by the distant slam of the door. William Shephard stared back at Loren, and then he also rose. “Is that how you see me, too?” she asked helplessly.

He bent down to kiss her forehead before he passed. “Loren, you’ve been under pressure for so long. You’re our mainstay, child; it’s been so easy to take advantage of you. At the same time, you make it hard to show gratitude; there’s less and less give and take in you, less ability to hear someone else’s story. I dislike your sister’s dramatics, Loren, but I can understand—she knows you wouldn’t have been willing to listen to her if she had stayed. You listen to no one these days, as if you were the only one who could be right. Don’t you really know better than that, sweetheart?”

He, too, left the room. Loren sat perfectly still, cupping her chin in her hands. For some odd reason, her heart was suddenly pounding, as if she were afraid. The silence and emptiness of the candlelit dining room hurt.
Was
she so rigid, was she unable to see another’s point of view anymore? She thought not of her sister but of Buck, and love ached inside her like a needle-sharp pain, the loneliness suddenly unbearable. She believed what she’d told him, that his having money changed everything. She could never live off his bounty, could never take when she couldn’t give in exactly equal return; she knew that his giving her
things
would eventually sour the kind of giving that really counted. She didn’t believe she was wrong in what she’d done; it was only that being right seemed to have such a terrible price tag attached to it. Price tag. Money. Yes, she’d been right to dread the curse of it…

Rayburn brushed through the revolving kitchen door with a tray in his hand. There were three coffee cups on it, but seeing the emptied room, he poured only one, setting it in front of her, his soft eyes taking in her unhappy ones with a compassionate expression. “Sit down and have a cup with me?” she asked.

He nodded. “I thought you’d like to give me some instructions on the house.”

She shook her head slowly. “Actually, I’d just like to talk with you,” she said quietly. “I’m beginning to have the feeling I haven’t really done that with anyone in a long time.”

“Pardon, miss?”

She smiled absently at him. “I’m lonesome for company, and I’m beginning to have the feeling it’s my own damn fault, Rayburn. Just talk with me, would you? Tell me about yourself…”

Angela stood in the doorway to Loren’s bedroom. “You’re
not
wearing
that.
” She pointed to the beige suit laid out on the bed. Loren had a hairbrush in her hand and was standing at the window in a silky coral slip.

The suit was a severely tailored outfit, which Loren felt was appropriate for the dinner they were going to. It fit her well and made her look older, more responsible, and that was the role she knew she needed to play tonight with David and Angela. She opened her mouth to defend her choice and closed it again. “What would you like me to wear?” she said instead.

Angela looked startled at her sister’s meek tone, but very quickly crossed the room to Loren’s closet, burrowing for the better part of three minutes before she came back out again. “I want you to wear something
pretty,
” she said belligerently. “You’re always hiding your figure, Loren. We’re going out to dinner and dancing, and I want David to see what you’re like when you’re having fun. Now this…”

Loren sighed. About a hundred years ago, she’d thought a black dress was the end-all of sophistication and chic. This particular “little number” had been shoveled to the back of her closet like a rabbit’s foot, but it really wasn’t her style. Nor did she feel she was going to be able to talk sense to the two younger people when she would worry every other minute whether inappropriate skin was showing. But perhaps if for once she seemed less like the Great Stone Face…“All right,” she agreed.

Angela’s eyes widened, and then she reached over to kiss her sister. “Good girl. We’ll get you smiling yet, Lor. You just wait until you’re glutted with lobster and champagne and soft music—”

“
That’s
what you have in mind? Already I’m feeling like a third wheel,” Loren said dryly.

“Is there a law against talking and having fun at the same time?” Angela demanded. “Now I’m going to come and check on you in a few minutes.
Don’t
change your mind about the dress.”

A half hour later, Loren surveyed her image in a full-length mirror. Having decided to please her sister, she’d gone the whole way, but as to whether or not she pleased herself… The shoes she loved, a spangle of silver straps with high heels; the stockings were sheer and dark, like silk over the curves of shapely thigh and calves. And when she so much as breathed, the black chiffon skirt swirled around her knees in a sexy way that made her feel ultrafeminine…but sexy should not be the operative mode, not for this dinner, she thought unhappily, and from the waist up…

The back was sheer chiffon, the same as naked, and the sheerness was repeated in the long, loose sleeves that banded tightly at the wrists. Except for a gentle drape of fabric across the breasts, the front of the dress was plain to a high-throated, stiff collar, and beneath was a lining so silky it was shiver material against her bare skin. The severe cut and color accented both her figure and her creamy skin, but Loren was uneasy—it wasn’t so much the look of the dress as the feel of it. She felt…sinful. But Angela had insisted… Would Angie listen to a sister who didn’t listen to her?

She might as well go whole hog. With a sigh, Loren brushed her russet hair back from her forehead, applied an eyeshadow called Smoky Sin and several coats of mascara. She was just reaching for perfume when she saw her sister in the doorway again, staring at her so intensely that Loren examined herself nervously in the mirror.

“Too much funereal black?” she questioned.

Angela shook her head. “Loren, I don’t think you realize what a knockout you really are.”

“No one who’s five-one is a knockout, sweets.” But she turned away from the mirror pleased and subjected her sister to an equally intense scrutiny. Angela was dressed in a mauve crepe top and pants, her blond hair swept up in loose curls on top of her head, and her voluptuous figure showed off to perfection. “Now you,” Loren teased, “have got all the equipment to turn heads in any crowd.”

David, with his shy charm, claimed they were both stunning. The restaurant was in Ann Arbor, a three-storied, open-balconied place called Blake’s, where one could see all varieties of action no matter where one was located. The main door opened to a sing-along bar, the second story had pool tables, and the third a bass player providing quiet jazz from a candlelit corner. A live band playing classic rock was out of sight, and there was a bar on every floor. The clientele was young, a twenty-to-forty crowd with a mix of couples and singles.