Rachel Gibson - Tangled Up In You

“About ten minutes.”

He rested his weight on one foot and folded his arms across his big chest. He was silent for several more seconds before he said, “She could have called an ambulance and maybe saved his life.”

“She could have.”

Across the short distance, he looked at her. This time a wealth of emotion burned in his blue eyes. “Ten minutes is a long time for a wife to watch her husband suffer and bleed to death.”

She took a few steps toward him. “Yes.”

“Who called the police?”

“Your mother did. Right before she shot herself.”

“So she made sure my father and the waitress were dead before she called.”

Maddie stopped. “The waitress had a name.”

“I know.” A sad smile curved one corner of his lips. “Growing up, my grandmother always called her ‘the waitress.’ It’s just a habit.”

“You didn’t know any of this?”

He shook his head. “My grandmother didn’t talk about things that were unpleasant. Believe me, my mother murdering my father and Alice Jones were at the top of the list of things we didn’t talk about.” He turned his gaze outside. “And you have photographs.”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

She thought about her answer and decided to tell the truth. “Yes.”

“What else?”

“Besides the police reports and crime scene photos, I have interviews, newspaper accounts, diagrams, and the coroner’s report.”

Mick opened the French doors and stepped outside. Soaring ponderosa pines cast black shadows across the deck, chasing away the muted grays of dusk. A slight breeze scented the night with pine and lifted strands of Mick’s hair where it touched his forehead. “I went to the library when I was about ten, thinking I’d get a look at old newspaper reports, but the librarian was a friend of my grandmother’s. So I left.”

“Have you seen any accounts of that night?”

“No.”

“Would you like to see them?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t have a lot of memories of my parents, and reading about what happened that night would ruin those that I do have.”

She didn’t have a lot of memories of her mother either. Recently, with the help of the diaries, a few had come back. “Maybe not.”

He laughed without humor. “Until you blew into town, I didn’t know that my mother watched my father die. I didn’t know she hated him that much.”

“She probably didn’t hate him. Both love and hate are very powerful emotions. People kill the people they love all the time. I don’t understand it, but I know that it happens.”

“That isn’t love. It’s something else.” He walked to the dark edge of the deck and his hands gripped the wood railing. Across the lake, the moon began to rise over the mountains and reflected a perfect mirror image into the smooth water. “Until you came to town, everything was buried in the past where it belonged. Then you started digging and prying and it’s all anybody around here can talk about now. Just like when I was growing up.”

She moved toward him and leaned her butt into the rail. She folded her arms beneath her breasts and looked up into the darkening outline of his face. She was so close, his hand rested next to her behind on the railing. “Other than in your own house, I take it the subject of your mother and father used to come up a lot.”

“You could say that.”

“Is that why you fought all the time?”

He looked into her eyes and laughed without sound. “Maybe I just liked fighting.”

“Or maybe you didn’t like people saying unkind things about your family.”

“You think you know me. You think you have me all figured out.”

She shrugged one shoulder. Yeah, she knew him. In some regards, she imagined they’d lived mirror lives. “I think it must have been hell to live in a town where everyone knows that your mother killed your father and his young lover. Children can be very cruel. That’s not just a cliché, it’s true. Believe me, I know. Kids are mean.”

The breeze blew a few long strands of hair across Maddie’s cheek and Mick raised a hand and brushed them from her face. “What did they do? Not pick you for kickball?”

“I didn’t get picked for anything. I was a little pudgy.”

He pushed her hair behind her ear. “A little?”

“A lot.”

“How much did you weigh?”

“I don’t know, but in the sixth grade I got a really awesome pair of black boots. My calves were too big and I couldn’t zip them up all the way. So I folded them down, deluding myself that everyone would think they were supposed to be worn that way. They weren’t fooled and I never wore the boots again. That was the year they started calling me Cincinnati Maddie. At first I was just so happy they weren’t calling me Fattie Maddie anymore. Then I found out why they called me that and I wasn’t so happy.” Through the dusky space that separated them, he raised an inquiring dark brow and she explained, “They said I was so fat because I ate Cincinnati.”

“The little bastards.” He dropped his hand. “No wonder you’re so ornery.”

Was she ornery? Maybe. “What’s your excuse?”

She felt his gaze touch her face for several moments before he answered, “I’m not as ornery as you.”

“Right,” she scoffed.

“Well, I wasn’t until you moved to town.”

“Long before I moved to town you were giving Sheriff Potter hell.”

“Growing up in this town was sometimes hell.”

“I can imagine.”

“No, you can’t.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “People have wondered my whole life if I was going to lose it like my mom and kill someone. Or if I’d grow up and be like my dad. That’s a hard thing for a kid to live with.”

“Do you ever worry about that?”

He shook his head. “No. I never do. My mother’s problem, one of them, was that she never should have put up with a guy who repeatedly cheated on her. And my old man’s problem was he never should have married at all.”

“So your solution is to avoid marriage?”

“That’s right.” He sat beside her on the railing and took her hand into his. “Kind of like you solved your fat problem by avoiding carbs.”

“It’s different. I’m a hedonist and I have to avoid more than just carbs.” At the moment, her hedonist nature felt the warmth of his palm spread up her arm and across her chest.

“You’re avoiding sex too.”

“Yes, and if I fall off either of those wagons, it could get ugly.”

“How ugly?”

He was suddenly too close and she stood. “I’d binge.”

“On sex?”

She tried to pull her hand away, but he tightened his grasp. “Or carbs.”

He grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt with his free hand. “On sex?”

“Yeah.”

Through the darkness that separated them, he flashed a white seductive smile. “How ugly will you get?” Slowly, he drew her toward him until she stood between his thighs.

The warmth of his hand, the touch of his thighs, and his wicked smile conspired to pull her in, suck out her will to resist, and shove her headfirst off the wagon. Her breasts felt heavy, her skin tight, and the relentless ache that Mick had created the first time he had kissed her hit her now, sharp, painful, and overwhelming.

“You don’t want to know.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I do.”

I thought you were going to keep your tongue out of my mouth.”

Mick glanced up into Maddie’s face bathed in moonlight, and he reached for the zipper on the front of her sweatshirt. “I guess I’ll just have to put my tongue somewhere other than your mouth.” He pulled the zipper down, and the sweatshirt parted to give him a glimpse of her deep cleavage. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath, and his testicles tightened as the pale swells of her naked breasts were revealed a few inches from his face.

“Someone will see us,” she said and grabbed his wrist.

“The Allegrezzas are in Boise.” He pulled until the zipper parted at her waist.

“What about the neighbors on the other side?” she asked, but she didn’t stop him from pushing the edges of the sweatshirt aside. Her breasts were firm and pale white in the moonlight, her puckered nipples an erotic outline in the darkness.

“No one is out, but even if they were, it’s too dark to see anything.” He slid his hands around her waist to the small of her back and brought her closer. “No one can see me do this.” He bent forward to kiss her belly. “Or this.” He kissed her cleavage.

“Mick.”

“Yeah?”

She combed her fingers through the sides of his hair; her nails scrapping his scalp sent a tingling pleasure down his spine. She took short choppy breaths and said, “We probably shouldn’t do this.”

“Do you want me to stop?”

“No.”

“Good. I’ve found a place to put my tongue.” He opened his mouth and rolled her puckered nipple beneath his tongue. She smelled like sugar cookies tonight and she tasted a bit like sugar cookies too.

“Mmm,” she moaned and pulled him closer. “That feels good, Mick. It’s been so long.” She was a talker, but then, he could have guessed that about her. “Don’t stop.”

Mick had no intention of stopping, not when he was doing exactly what he’d wanted to do to her since the day he saw her at the hardware store. He slid one hand from around her back to cup her breast. “You’re a beautiful woman.” He pulled back far enough to look up into her face, at her parted lips and the desire shining in her dark eyes. “I want to put my tongue all over you. Starting here.” He sucked her into his mouth and drew lightly. Her flesh puckered even more and he loved the feel and the taste of her. His palm cupping her breast moved down her smooth flat stomach and slid beneath her loose pants. Since that night he’d kissed her at Mort’s, he’d had wild fantasies of what he’d do to her if he got her alone again. He slipped his hand between her thighs and cupped her through her thin panties. She was incredibly hot, and wet, and lust twisted and tightened painfully in his groin. He wanted her. He wanted her as he hadn’t wanted a woman in a very long time. He’d tried to stay away from her, but at the first excuse to see her, here he was with his mouth on her breast and his hand in her pants, and he wasn’t going anywhere this time until he satisfied the lust pounding through his body. She wanted him and he was beyond ready to give her what she wanted. He wasn’t going anywhere until both of them were too exhausted to move.