Violet Eyes (8 page)

Rachel carefully moved about the bathroom and bedroom, leaning on the walls, but slowly getting cleaned up and dressed. She didn’t worry as much about her hair as she normally would; she figured the big bandage on her ankle was a free pass to be half-assed today.

When she navigated back down the hall, she could smell the fresh coffee coloring the air; Terry was sitting on the couch with a cup in hand, and Eric was scooping up spoonfuls of cereal, leaning over the coffee table.

“You set?” she asked him. “Homework packed? Lunch?”

“I’m ready, Mom,” Eric said. “And I fed Feral. We’re all good.” He pointed towards the door. “Go to work, I’ll be fine. I’ll head to the bus in a couple minutes.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, and her son laughed.

“I don’t think it matters,” he said. “You’re not going to be doing much either way. Go!”

Terry downed the last of his mug and took it back to the kitchen, rinsing it out in the sink. Then after she kissed Eric goodbye, he helped her back to his truck.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” she told him, when he slid into the driver’s seat and revved the engine. It sounded strong and tuned…just like its driver. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she instantly wanted to slap herself.
What kind of sappy crap is that?

“Just do me one favor,” he said.

“Name it.”

“Have dinner with me tonight?”

Chapter Eleven

Friday, May 10. 5:14 p.m.

Rachel got a ride home from Susan Jefferson, the amazingly tan girl who held down the customer service cube next to hers, at the end of the afternoon. Listening to the lilt in Susan’s voice all day kind of drove her a little nuts—the girl had that same perky airhead sound to her conversations that had annoyed her about the girls in the Thai place the other day. But Rachel had to admit, Susan’s ditzy way seemed to get results. The woman never raised her voice or sounded tense (if anything, it sounded like she was trying to score dates with some of the angry customer service callers) and by the time the phone clicked back on the receiver in the cube next to her, from what Rachel could tell, the customers seemed to always be mollified.

Rachel, on the other hand, struggled to keep her temper in check on almost every call. Susan was cute, irritatingly chipper and
good
. Which only made it harder for her to ask the girl for help, but…she didn’t have a lot of options. Just like she was to all of the customers, so far, Susan had been really nice to her.

So at the end of the day, she found herself limping along, following Susan’s neatly sashaying behind to her neat little blue Mazda. Even the girl’s
ass
was perky, Rachel thought to herself. Watching Susan’s effortless strut made Rachel want to swing her own hips in jealous competition (older gals can
still
wiggle, she thought) but she could just barely keep herself upright given the ankle. It was feeling a little better, and with the solid pressure of the bandage on it all day, she found she could put a little pressure on it.

She tried to just be thankful for Susan’s kindness, instead of being jealous of the girl’s easy allure.

“My mom always said to soak a sprain in Epson Salts,” Susan offered, as Rachel moaned and levered her way into the low passenger’s seat.”

Rachel nodded her thanks.

“Maybe after my date,” she said.

“Is he cute?” Susan smiled. Her eyes flashed and her teeth seemed to grow just a shade whiter as she said “cute”. Rachel forced a smile and reminded herself that Susan was helping her.

“He is,” Rachel said.

“Well, just remember,” Susan advised. “Give him just enough to make him want to come back. But you want to still keep him guessing.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said. A twenty-something was trying to give her dating advice. The girl looked like she had just walked out of the sorority. Did Rachel really look that clueless? “I’m right here,” Rachel announced, avoiding any pursuit of
that
conversation and pointing at her house as they turned down her street. Saved by a quick commute!

“If you ever need me to watch your son?” Susan offered. “I love kids! Got two little brothers.”

“Thanks,” Rachel said opening the door. “But I think I have this one covered. Maybe next time though.”

Susan nodded, blonde locks bouncing across her shoulders and covering one eye. “See you Monday!”

Rachel watched the Mazda pull away. Maybe she should have seen if Susan was free tonight. She just wasn’t comfortable going there yet, though. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure if she wanted Terry seeing Susan when he picked her up. He might think better about which woman he wanted to have dinner with.

She laughed away that insecure thought, and began to walk across the street. Billy was out, which was perfect. At his age, Eric really
could
stay at home for a couple hours on his own, but she didn’t really
want
him to.

Billy crossed the street to talk to her, asking “What’s up?” with a white-toothed grin that looked as bleached by the sun as his hair. The kid looked…fresh, she thought. Healthy, strong and ready for anything. She was pretty sure college kids hadn’t looked as good as him when she’d been in school. She could have introduced him to Susan, and the two could have passed as a real-life iteration of Barbie and Ken.

Figures
, she thought.
We got the dogs when we were in school, and the kids these days…they got it all.

She shook off the thought about how Billy’s pecs probably looked with his shirt off and instead focused on the topic at hand. “Do you think you could keep an eye on Eric tonight?” she asked. “He’s really almost too old for a babysitter, but…I’ve got a date, and I don’t really want to leave him totally alone in a new place…”

Billy smiled. “Say no more!” he said. “We were talking the other day. Eric needs to work on his fastball. I’m there for him.”

He blinked quickly, three or four times, and then shook his head, as if to ward off a mosquito. Then he grinned.

“Awesome,” she grinned. “I owe you big time.”

“Great. Do you do landscaping?” he asked with an innocent gleam.

Rachel shook her head. “Afraid not. But I’ll contribute toward the bill!” She smiled.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Babysitters make $50 an hour, right?”

Rachel raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking more like $5.”

“What’s a zero between friends?”

“Uh-huh. Thanks, Billy,” she said.

Terry picked her up at seven, and Eric was already across the street and practicing his fastball pitch on the front lawn with Billy when he pulled in the drive. Rachel had gotten a long branch from a pile near her back fence and stripped it of twigs and dead leaves. It served well as her walking stick. When she hobbled up to answer the door, Terry grinned.

“I was hoping you were a nature lover,” he said. “But wow…you’re like a mountain man.”

“Bite me,” she answered.

“I might,” he promised. Then he took her elbow and helped her to the truck. “I thought first though, we might check out some normal food. I was thinking Boudreaux’s, down by the docks. Okay with you?”

She shrugged. “Whatever. I have no idea what’s good around here or not.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were seated at a riverside table, staring out at the cypress trees and the green rolling river that led out to the sea. Passanattee wasn’t that far from the ocean, but sometimes, it felt like it was deep inside the swamp. She didn’t know about the food, but Boudreaux’s sure had a great view.

“How did you end up working for the swamp?” she asked, and then instantly regretted it. She sounded like an idiot. He wasn’t working for the swamp, he was working for the state of…

“I love the Everglades,” he said. “I grew up in Ohio, and we didn’t have anything but fields. But here…” He shrugged. “I came to school down here, not really sure what I wanted to do. But when I saw the Everglades… I knew that somehow I had to work here. To help preserve the wildlife here. To make sure nobody came in with a bunch of plows and cranes and started filling in the swamps to build new condos. There’s plenty of space around the country for that. But there is only one place that is like the Everglades. And we can’t replace that.”

“Wow,” Rachel said. “Sounds like you’re a convert.”

He grinned, and she could see the sparkle in his eyes when he did.

“Totally. I love this place. And I want to make sure nobody ever comes in here and messes it up.”

“I think humans pretty consistently manage to mess up just about any good thing they find.” As she said it, a mental image of Anders came to mind. She forced it away.

“We do tend to abuse nature more than we care for her,” Terry agreed. “But we can do good too. Just look at the story of the Bald Eagle! We nearly took out the whole species with pesticides and hunting, and then people got wise, and realized it would be pretty embarrassing to have killed off our own national emblem. Now there are thousands of them in the skies again—all because people decided to take action. We
can
do good, when we put our minds to it.”

“Yeah, but we usually don’t,” Rachel said. “Usually we bulldoze down the forests, fill in the swamps and pour asphalt. You know that, it’s why you’re here.”

“Are you gunning for the Miss Misanthrope award today?” He smiled, but Rachel saw the crinkle of concern in his eyes.

“I think I already won the crown,” she said. “But don’t worry, I’ll try not to hate you too!”

He faked a bow. “I’m honored. But would you still be saying that if I hadn’t picked you up off the ground this morning?”

“We’ll never know,” she said. “Will we?”

Dinner was amazing. Not because of the food, which was great (A Cajun/Caribbean fusion…who knew?)—but because it was so enjoyable to sit and talk, completely at ease, with a man again. Even when she had first met Anders, Rachel had always been a little nervous when they had gone out to dinner or more usually, bars. When she’d met him, Anders had attracted her more from what he
didn’t
say, than what he did. He had a way of looking at you; a way of making a woman wonder what it would be like to be held by him.

Anders wasn’t a really tall guy, but his arms had been solid. Muscular. You could tell he was a man who worked with his hands even before you saw the grit beneath his fingers. One look at him bent over a mug at the bar, black T-shirt tight over his shoulder blades, and you knew that this guy would strip down nice, and would make you know you were a woman. Maybe make you feel like a
slut
, truth be known, because you could tell from looking at him that he probably wasn’t going to bring you flowers; he was probably going to buy you a couple shots and then take you back to his bedroom and bang the shit out of you and then when he’d had his fill, tell you to get out when he was done because he had to work in the morning. And the tattoos of snakes and demons that peeked out from beneath his shirtsleeves only added to the mystique.

Why would a woman fall for an asshole like that, when you could see the writing on the wall from the very first moment?

Rachel had asked herself that over and over again for years. Anders had tried to occasionally act like a gentlemen at first, she had to admit that he had. But he never really had known how to truly share his heart with her. And eventually, she had stopped giving him free access to stomp on her own.

Being with Terry was like stepping from the foul air of the factory to the pure breath of the forest. She almost snorted at the thought.
Okay, hokey, but true.
Rachel had found herself bantering with him from the moment they’d met, and that didn’t stop when he picked her up for dinner. He was kind and warm and easy to joke with. When Boudreaux’s was starting to empty out, and Terry mentioned that it was probably time to take her home, Rachel felt her heart sink.

He must have seen the look on her face, because a moment later he said, “If I get you home safe, will you promise to risk another date with me this weekend?”

Rachel couldn’t halt the smile from stealing her face. She nodded, not trusting her voice.

He held out a hand and his fingers were quickly warm around her elbow. “C’mon then, let’s see if your neighbor has survived your son.”

Eric and Billy were both just fine. Terry left her at the door, and when she stepped inside, clutching her makeshift cane, the two of them both looked up from the couch with the reflection of blue fire in their eyes. They were watching some sci-fi movie on the TV, and things sounded as if they were exploding at an alarming rate on the speakers as she stepped into the room.

Nobody jumped to their feet to help her as she hobbled through the door.

She flipped the switch for the end table light and they both looked up. Billy pushed himself to his feet then. She put a hand up to stop him and said, “you can finish watching your movie if you want!”

“It’s cool, I’ve seen it,” Billy said.

But she had to smile when he kept glancing back at the screen as he walked towards her.

Rachel pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her purse and handed it to him. “Thanks,” she said.

“Anytime,” Billy answered. “We had a blast.”

She opened her mouth to answer but just then the phone in the kitchen rang. As she moved towards the other room, Billy waved, and then looked at Eric. “Work on the fastball, huh?”

The door closed behind her neighbor as Rachel picked up the phone.

“Hello?” she said. She gasped slightly for breath, and a familiar voice picked up on her weakness instantly.

“Sounds like you’ve been hitting the sheets,” Anders said. “A little early for that, with my boy in the house and all, isn’t it?”

“A little late for you to be calling, isn’t it?” she countered. The clock on the kitchen wall read 10:24.

She could almost hear him take a deep drag on his cigarette before answering.

“I’ve been thinking,” he began. When he said it, his voice took on the kind of drawl that just telegraphed the notion that any
thinking
he’d been doing was damned dangerous. She could imagine him continuing the sentence, “I’ve been thinking that your leg is sexy as hell, but ya know, it’d look even better if there was a bear trap around it. That’s the kind of calf bracelet I’d like to getcha.”