Unforgettable (14 page)

It should not have felt as good as it did. Rett prayed that Angel was unaware of it.

“So we decided it was high time for ladies’ night out. I’m so glad we came,” Bunny said. “Cinny saw the notice in the paper.”

“My agent sort of pulled it out of the hat. A friend of a friend knows the owner. The place is packed, so I guess it’s worth his while.”

Rett was suddenly acutely aware that the zipper on the front of the jumpsuit had slipped down a bit lower somewhere along the way. Cleavage is not a crime, she told herself, though you might want to escape before you expose your belly button. With a sigh of relief she heard the sax player tuning up and she made her excuses.

“We’re going to see you at the picnic on Sunday, right?” Bunny shouted over the sudden twang of the guitar. “There’s going to be a pajama party at my house Friday night. No boys.”

“Sounds fun,” Rett lied. Right, a sleepover. Sure, why not just have her roll a sleeping bag out between Cinny and Angel. That would be conducive to sleep.

“Oh, it will be. I’ll be making some of my world-famous rum punch. The kids are staying at my mom’s all weekend and I’m going to par-tay.”

Rett went into the next set feeling as if she’d landed on another planet. Her thigh was hot where it had been up against Cinny’s, and Angel’s fiery topaz gaze had left her breathless. Cool, calm, professional Rett Jamison was long gone. She wasn’t the Rett Jamison she’d been in high school — oh no — this was a new Rett Jamison who couldn’t think past her libido.

The mood in the second half was definitely lighter as they moved away from blues toward jazzy, contemporary numbers. Most were songs she could sing in her sleep, and she was able to put her turmoil aside and enjoy the music. Well, almost. When the performance was over and she had escaped to the back room she wondered how she’d avoid going out front again.

Angel was already there.

Rett found herself so tongue-tied she couldn’t even say hello.

“I’m sorry.” Angel looked more approachable now. “I should have called. A few days after we saw each other I left for summer vacation, but I could have called first.”

“I really did lose your number.”

Angel’s lips twitched. “I believe you. I was being childish, and sometimes I can’t help myself. Anyway, I had the feeling I’d be seeing you here.”

“How did you know I was going to come?”

“Cinny told me she had you just about persuaded. We talked because she wanted me to do a guest lecture while I was here.”

“So you didn’t call me, but you did check up on me because you knew who I was.”

Angel colored slightly. “I know it sounds a little homeroom, but Cinny offered the information. I didn’t ask.”

“Oh, I feel so much better.” Rett didn’t know quite what to feel aside from the pulsing ache in several increasingly influential parts of her body.

 “I hadn’t forgotten how good she was at persuading you to do things.” Angel waved a hand. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

Rett liked Angel’s forthrightness, but the remark stung. “Yes, you did.”

“You’re right. I did.” Angel looked at her steadily. “I didn’t call because I knew there was a chance she would be in the way again. I don’t know who you’ve become over the years, and I didn’t know if she would still —” Angel hesitated. “I just didn’t want to go down that road again. What happened over twenty years ago seems like it shouldn’t have anything to do with right now, you and me. But it does.”

“It does,” Rett admitted. “I’ve been looking forward to and dreading this.”

Angel bit her lip. “Then don’t talk to me until she’s out of your system, one way or another.”

“Who says she’s in my system—”

“I’m serious, Rett. It took me a long time to stop looking for you in every woman I met, but I did it.” She rubbed her face with her hands and then ran her fingers through her hair. “I think it’s pretty obvious that you could become very important to me all over again. I’m not going to let that happen if there’s no chance of my being happy.”

Rett wanted to pounce on Angel and it made following the conversation very hard. “So we’re playing by your rules.”

“I’m sorry if it seems that way. I just don’t want to play by her rules.” Angel half-smiled, then stared at the floor. “The funny thing is, I’m finding that I like this Cinny a lot. She deserves her own chance.”

“I feel like some sort of door prize.”

Angel looked up at her then. “Do you really not know? I think half the girls in our class were half in love with you. There was something about you, there still is—”

“I remember the name-calling, I remember the fights. I don’t remember much in the way of love, half or whole.”

“That’s because you were only looking at her for it. Why do you think some of the boys had it in for you? The finely honed teenage male intuition for competition made you dangerous. But there wasn’t a girls’ club you couldn’t join.”

It wasn’t quite the way Rett remembered it. “I never thought of myself as popular. I didn’t care.”

“Oh, God.” Angel put her hand on her stomach and Rett could see tears glittering in her eyes. “That it could matter so much after all this time. I’ve been around the world, endured twelve years of college, yet I think about high school and some things still hurt.”

“You’re not the only one. A lot of my memories can still hurt me.” Far more than Rett was willing to admit, even to herself.

“I wanted to have a name that didn’t end in a vowel. I wanted to be wanted, but I wasn’t even welcome in the prayer group. I knew my Bible better than just about anyone else, but the unwritten rule was Lutherans only. I was the only Catholic, the only wop, the only one who preferred garlic to mayonnaise. I didn’t want to be skipped forward a grade and always be the youngest. I didn’t want to be the brain. I’d have given anything to have a fraction of what you had. And I wanted to love you.”

Rett could find nothing more to say than, “I’m sorry. But that was then and this is now.” She reached out for Angel’s hand, but Angel stepped back.

“I can’t… no touching. I’ll have no resolve at all.”

Rett let her hand fall back to her side. “I can empathize, you know.” She knew how awful she had felt, suffering what seemed like rejection after rejection and not being able to be with the one person she wanted. Her lips trembled and she struggled for control. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I thought something was familiar, but—”

“She was in the way. She was so blonde, so tall, so beautiful. How does a short, Italian girl in glasses compete with everybody’s dream?”

“You don’t have to anymore.”

“I don’t believe you.”

Rett took a step toward her, suddenly aware of the open door and the clatter of people in the hallway beyond. “Leave with me.”

Angel shook her head. “I told you, I want you to confront how you feel about her —”

“I don’t need to.”

“I need you to.”

“That’s not fair. I’m not the one who has a problem with it.”

“I don’t believe you. I can’t. I have too much at stake.” She started to walk by Rett, but Rett grabbed her arm.

“Angel, don’t do this.” A spike of heat surged up her arm.

Angel was breathing hard. “I may be nearly forty, but my mother won’t sleep until I walk in the door. If I call at this hour she’ll think someone has died while she kills herself running for the phone.”

“That’s just an excuse.” She was breathing hard, too.

Angel’s lips parted and for a heartbeat she leaned toward Rett, then she shook her head angrily. “Stop that, just stop it.” She yanked her arm away. “I want you to deal with her. I’m sorry if that’s not rational. You have no idea how badly you hurt me the first time around.”

Angel was gone before Rett could stop her. Jesus H. Christ, she thought. She wanted to shout after Angel that it wasn’t all her fault and that she was not going to be manipulated into a guiltfest. She hadn’t hurt her on purpose, all those years ago.

She was shaking all over, feeling torn in too many directions. She wiped ineffectually at her stage makeup. The sudden entrance of a critic from the Star Tribune forced her to find some semblance of calm.

He was complimentary and inquisitive, first asking some simple questions about her background, then working around to her new relationship with Henry Connors. The few interviews she’d done in L.A. helped her sound casual. When he asked exactly what had happened between Henry Connors and Gilda Bransen, she had her answer ready. Naomi’s first rule of interviews: Never gossip, it never pays.

“I wouldn’t know.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t there. I just feel like the luckiest singer in the world that Henry remembered me.”

Her pretense at calm was tested by Cinny’s arrival. She made a “duty calls” gesture but Cinny remained just outside the door. The critic wrapped things up quickly and Rett hoped he wasn’t too disappointed that she wouldn’t give him some exclusive dish on Gilda Bransen. Cinny entered as he left.

“I just wanted to say a private hello,” she said from just inside the doorway.

After a long moment, Rett managed, “So hello.”

Cinny was moving toward her slowly. Damn Angel, anyway. Damn her for making me want her and then leaving me with Cinny. Inch by inch Rett felt Cinny’s approach.

Cinny edged toward the dressing table, glanced in the mirror, then crossed the room to touch a chair. Every step brought her closer to Rett. That slow approach was maddening, and Rett remembered that was how Cinny had always been. Never a beeline for a kiss, always a slow dance, allowing Rett a long look at every inch of her.

Rett was remembering how slowly Cinny had slid across the car seat toward her, how she made it seem not deliberate and yet directly intimate. Just now, with Cinny’s back almost to her, she could be the same girl Rett had sweated over, held, tried to love. Cinny idly examined an object on the dressing table again, then turned to face Rett. She was only a foot or so away. She was all breast and all waist and all hip and all leg.

Rett was seventeen again, and wanting to taste Cinny’s skin. Or was she all grown up now, and aching for Angel in her arms again? Her head was pounding in keeping with her heart. She put a hand on her stomach. There was still magnetism between her and Cinny, but would the flame be leaping so high if Angel hadn’t fanned it?

“Bunny and the carpool went home. I drove by myself because I had a house to show.” Cinny swallowed, then added in a low voice, “I’m not in a hurry to get anywhere.”

Rett tried to tell herself she knew better. She knew how she felt about Angel and yet her pulse was throbbing at Cinny’s nearness. The rule she’d carved in stone about being with women who were in other relationships was melting away.

“I liked this better lower,” Cinny whispered. It seemed an eternity as she raised her fingertips to the zipper front Rett had hastily pulled up when she’d gotten back to the stage. A gentle tug moved the zipper down. “I was such a fool.”

“Cinny, please.” The door’s open, she wanted to say. You’re married, she should have said. “I think I’m in love with Angel” was something she couldn’t say, not with Cinny so near.

“Please what?” Cinny tugged on the zipper again, this time pulling Rett closer to her. “I can say please, too. Please kiss me.”

The years were nothing. Cinny had been under her skin all this time and now her skin was on fire. She told herself that she was betraying no one, that she was giving in to what Angel insisted she had to face. She filled her arms with Cinny, felt the press of her breasts.

“What a fool I was,” Cinny breathed. “All those times you touched me and I never let myself touch you back.” Her fingers came back to the zipper and she pulled it lower still. “I still have dreams about you, Rett Jamison.”

There was a flicker of motion at the door and all Rett saw was Angel’s back.

Rett broke away from Cinny. “Shit.”

“What did I do?”

“Nothing.” Rett was reeling. What had Angel come back for? To dump more guilt on her or to apologize? To say she hadn’t meant Rett to be with anyone but her? She’d acted childishly, Rett reminded herself. She’d let high school come between what could obviously grow into serious feelings for each other. “Just someone at the door.”

“This isn’t the best place to get reacquainted.” Cinny pulled the bandeau from her hair and the thick white-gold curls cascaded around her shoulders. “Where are you staying?”

“It’s not very far. Why don’t you follow me?” She was perfectly free to ask Cinny to her motel. There were no strings on her. Angel wanted her to deal with the past? Fine.

“Okay.” Cinny stepped closer. “One for the road.”

Cinny’s fingertips nestled in the exposed hollow between Rett’s breasts as they kissed hungrily.

“I’m not going to take no for an answer,” Rett said hoarsely.

“I’m not teasing,” Cinny whispered, even as her fingertips slid to one side to brush Rett’s nipple. The shock of her touch separated them and Rett shakily gathered up her things.

The warm night air didn’t provide any relief to Rett’s fever. As she drove toward her motel she kept an eye on Cinny’s headlights and tried desperately not to ask herself what she thought she was doing. There might be no strings on her, but the same was not true of Cinny. There was a husband somewhere.

She held the door open until Cinny passed her, then switched on the light. Cinny put her purse and keys down on the table and turned to face her. “You look apprehensive.”

“I don’t know what we’re playing at.”

“I’m not playing. I knew the moment I saw you on stage that this was how it was going to be. It’s as if no time has passed at all.” Her deliberate approach made Rett’s skin prickle. “But I know what I want this time.”

Rett could hardly breathe as the zipper came down all the way, then Cinny’s hands were under the fabric, on her skin, on her stomach, on her breasts. It was as if Cinny was experiencing the sensation of touch for the first time. She pushed the jumpsuit off Rett’s shoulders and Rett gave in to the wave of desire and the vertigo that accompanied it. She dropped into the side chair next to the table.

“Good idea. Let me do this,” Cinny whispered. She bent over Rett to tug the jumpsuit down, then knelt. “There’s no substitute for this.” Her tongue trailed lightly from Rett’s belly button to her throat.