Coming Home (Jackson Falls Series) Page 4

  He caught her hand in his and turned it to kiss the underside of her wrist, sending a shiver through her body. “It’s in grave danger,” he said.

  He was much too close. She could see each pore in his face, could see the tiny white scar near his left eyebrow. His hands on her were liquid fire and his eyes were telling her things better left unsaid. They drank each other in, feasting upon each other like ravenous beasts, while in the background Bette Midler crooned, Oh, baby, do you want to dance?

  There’ll be nothing beyond tonight, she told herself. Can you live with that? She harbored no illusions about him. There would be no forever. One night with him was all she would be allowed, a single night with no promises and no commitments, one that would have to suffice for the rest of her life. He would surely break her heart, but tomorrow, no matter how much it hurt, she would walk away without a single regret.

  “Take me home,” she said. “Take me home and make love to me.”

  ***

  Danny knelt to spin the tuner knob, and Bob Dylan sprang to life, knock knock knocking on heaven’s door. The muted glow from the dial cast deep shadows into the corners of the room and formed an indistinct halo around his head. In the dim light, she explored his bedroom.

  It was neater than she’d expected, the bed made, clutter minimal. A battered Fender acoustic stood in one corner. Casey picked up the silver-handled hairbrush that lay atop the dresser and stroked its smooth handle. In a jumble beside it were several dollar bills and change, a single subway token, and a broken guitar pick, and she inventoried them like an archeologist who had discovered lost treasure.

  He spoke somewhere behind her. “What the devil are you looking for?”

  She moved to the open closet door, touched the sleeve of a blue silk shirt, held the soft material to her cheek. If tonight were to be both beginning and end, she would have to squeeze a lifetime into a few short hours. Turning, she studied his shadowy face. “You,” she said.

  In the shadows, he seemed ten feet tall. She flattened her back against the wall, grateful for its support. Something was terribly wrong, for she was having difficulty breathing, and the shortage of oxygen sent a searing pain through her chest. It took him a year to cross the room to her. He rested both palms on the wall above her shoulders and leaned close, enveloping her in the heat from his body.

  And he kissed her.

  Nothing in eighteen years of living had prepared her for that first taste of him, for those hot, wet kisses flavored with Kentucky bourbon and Coca-Cola. The world was shattering into tiny pieces, melting into all the colors of the spectrum, and all of them were one, and that one color was Danny. And she was lost, and didn’t want to ever be found.

  She curled fingers in his tawny hair, and it was like silk, and she’d known it would feel that way from the first moment she saw him. With her fingertips, she explored the back of his neck, learning the feel of his heated skin and the way the fine hairs grew. He gathered the hem of her sweater in both hands, peeled it up and off over her head. Cool air rushed in to raise goose bumps on her exposed flesh. She shivered, and he ran warm hands up and down her back. “Cold?” he whispered.

  “A little.”

  “Let’s get under the covers.”

  Beneath the handmade quilt, their bodies fit like interlocking pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Hard and soft, convex and concave, man and woman. He tasted of heaven, this beautiful, blue-eyed stranger who had walked into her life and redefined the parameters of her universe. He teased her with warm, wet kisses from ear to navel as she shuddered in delight. Mouth to her belly, his breath warm on her skin, he whispered, “Touch me.”

  Uncertainty made her hesitate. “Where?”

  “Anywhere. Everywhere.”

  She started with his hands. One by one, she kissed those long, slender fingers. She unbuttoned first one cuff and then the other, learning the shape of the bones in his wrist and the smooth, muscled flesh of his forearms. His chest was hard and muscular and silken smooth, and she stroked and explored, admiring the sleek, hard planes of his body, memorizing it for a future time when she would take out that memory, like a precious jewel, and savor it. He caught his breath as she traced with a fingertip the fine line of hair that ran from his breastbone to his navel. She paused there, and he drew her hand down to the front of his Levi’s and taught her the shape and feel of what was inside. His breath came out in a sudden heated rush. “Come here,” he said hoarsely.

  They devoured each other with feverish intensity, touching and tasting, exploring forbidden places as they impatiently discarded clothing which had become an impediment to closeness. His skin against hers was hot and sleek and damp, and she shuddered at the exquisiteness of his touch, at his hand on her breast, and then his mouth. He cradled her head in his hands and tasted the hollow at the base of her throat. Against her heated flesh, he whispered hoarse words of love in Italian. Understanding none, understanding all, she answered in English.

  He buried his face in her hair. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “I’m not in the habit of deflowering virgins.”

  She raised her chin and met those blue eyes head-on. “What makes you so sure I’m a virgin?”

  “The way you looked at Lindstrom,” he said. “And the way you look at me.”

  “I’m not afraid,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “You wouldn’t be.”

  Even though he was gentle with her, the pain took her by surprise. She uttered an involuntary gasp, and her fingertips dug into his shoulders, but when he would have pulled away, she held him fast, biting her lip hard as the pain momentarily took her breath away.

  He stilled against her. Cradled her head in his hands and began moving slowly, carefully, his eyes searching hers for evidence of the pain she hadn’t been able to disguise. But it was gone, replaced by a faint, delicate pleasure that was spreading throughout her body. She uttered a soft whimper and he kissed her, a tender butterfly kiss that deepened when she opened her mouth and his tongue found hers.

  And she tumbled off the edge of the world. She moaned aloud, and his cool control vanished. He was no longer gentle, and she no longer wanted him to be. Hot and wet and gulping for oxygen, she followed his lead in a pagan dance, seeking, soaring, until without warning the universe exploded around her, sending her spinning off into space in a violent, shuddering burst of rapture.

  Dazed, they lay face to face, restless hands stroking, touch more eloquent than words. “Daniel,” she breathed, loving the sound, the feel of his name on her tongue.

  He kissed her throat. “What?”

  “Is it always like this?”

  He studied her somberly with those blue eyes. “No,” he said.

  Dreading the answer, she still had to ask the question. “Have there been a lot of women in your life?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She felt an insane rush of jealousy. “I hate them. I hate every single one.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “There’s no need. Nobody’s ever mattered until now.”

  ***

  “You learn fast on the streets. You learn fast, and you learn early, and that’s how you survive.” He picked up a slice of toast, buttered it, and cut it in half.

  “Oh, Danny,” she said softly. “What an awful way to grow up.”

  He shrugged. “My grandmother tried to control me. But I liked my freedom.”

  She toyed with the handle to her coffee cup. “It sounds to me like a good way to get into trouble.”

  “Some kids do,” he admitted. “I didn’t. There was always something to do.”

  She rested her chin on her palm and gave him a bemused look. “Like what?”

  “Hang out. Play a little pool. Stand in doorways with the guys to watch the pretty girls go by and see who could be the most vulgar. Smoke a few cigarettes. Talk about getting laid, lie about the details, and hope to Christ the other guys wouldn’t see through my sophisticated facade to the scared kid underneath with his woeful ignorance of all matte
rs sexual.”

  She smiled. Softly, she said, “Tough guy.”

  “You have to understand,” he said. “The sisters have control of your life until that final bell rings at three. And then, no one’s in charge but you, and you’re out on the street, and it’s yours.”

  He fed her the last bite of scrambled egg. “If you’re lucky,” he said, “you go to work for your Uncle Vito, unloading crates of vegetables off a truck. If you’re not so lucky, ten years goes by and you’re still hanging out.”

  She helped herself to half his toast. “You’re not still hanging out.”

  “I was one of the lucky ones.”

  She paused, butter knife in hand. “You have an Uncle Vito you forgot to tell me about?”

  “I had something better. One hell of a singing voice. I always knew it would be my ticket out of the North End.”

  “It’s what you were meant to do,” she said. “It’s in your blood, like a virus.”

  “How is it you understand me so well?” Those blue eyes were puzzled. “You know things about me that I don’t know myself.”

  “It’s easy to see other people objectively. It’s harder to see yourself that way.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m having a devil of a time trying to see you objectively.” The intensity of his assessment brought a hot flush to her face. “Do you have any idea how sexy you look in my shirt?”

  She looked down at her slender legs beneath his white cotton shirt. “No,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his boldly. “But I know exactly how sexy you look out of it.”

  “Christ,” he said, just before he kissed her, “I think I’ve created a monster.”

  ***

  Hands tucked in the pockets of his Levi’s, Danny Fiore stood at the window, watching the first light of dawn touch the eastern sky and wondering when he’d stopped wanting to run away.

  He’d tried to run. When running hadn’t worked, he’d decided there was no reason they couldn’t discuss the situation like two rational adults. But he’d been wrong again; he’d forgotten that the moment she walked into the room, one of them regressed to a fifteen-year-old, all knees and elbows and quavering uncertainty. So he’d done the only thing left to do: he’d given in to the tumult inside him.

  And when he touched her, he knew he was lost.

  He had nothing to offer her. Eighty-seven bucks and change, a rusted ten-year-old Chevy, and three years’ back issues of Rolling Stone. It was no life for a woman, at least not for the kind of woman Casey was. But if he did nothing, she would go home, back to Jesse, and half his insides would go with her.

  Danny rested his forehead against the window pane and closed his eyes. What he knew about love you could put in a thimble. He was no good at intimacy. Christ, that was a lie; he didn’t know if he was any good at it. He’d never had a chance to find out. All he understood was singing, and the way the music made him feel. Until now, it had been enough.

  She was sleeping in a tangle of dark hair and slender limbs and rumpled sheets. Danny sat on the edge of the bed and tried to think of the right words to say. She deserved champagne and roses, candlelight and soft music. Not a marriage proposal from some crazy wop bastard at five in the morning on sheets that hadn’t been changed in a week.

  He touched her cheek to awaken her. She stretched like a cat before opening sleep-studded eyes to his. When she smiled, his heart rolled over in his chest. “Look,” he said, the words suddenly tumbling out of him so fast he was tripping over them. “I’m not in a position to offer you anything even faintly resembling an orthodox life. My life’s chaotic, and I don’t see it getting any better in the foreseeable future. Right now, I don’t have the proverbial pot to piss in or the window to throw it out of. But it won’t always be that way.” He paused for breath. “By God,” he said, “I mean to have it all. But there may be hard times along the way. And you have to know up front that I won’t change, not even for you—” He stopped, suddenly aware that he was rambling. “I’m not making any sense, am I?”

  Softly, she said, “You’re doing just fine.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I had all these flowery things I wanted to say, and I’m saying this all wrong—”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He blinked. “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  He was grinning, grinning like a fool, and he couldn’t help it. “I haven’t asked you yet.”

  “If I waited for you to get to the point,” she said, “ we’d have to spend our honeymoon at the Sleepytime Old Age Home.”

  He took her hand in his and somberly studied her slender fingers. “There’s something you have to know,” he said. “Up front. I want to make sure you understand what you’re getting into.”

  She closed her fingers around his. “Yes?” she said.

  He cleared his throat. “The kind of life I lead,” he said, “is not conducive to rearing children.”

  Her steady gaze didn’t waver, nor did her grip loosen. But he could hear it in her voice, the faint hint of a tremor. “Ever?” she said.

  He felt himself weakening. God help him if she ever figured out that he was incapable of saying no to her. “It’s not an easy life,” he said. “I’d have to be damn settled before I’d ever consider bringing a kid into it.”

  “But later,” she said, “someday—”

  He brought her hand to his mouth, kissed those pale, trembling fingers. “Someday,” he said, “when things are more settled, we’ll talk about it again.”

  Her eyes never left his as she removed the diamond engagement ring from the third finger of her left hand and placed it on the table beside the bed. “Are you sure?” he said hoarsely.

  She smiled. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  ***

  At 4:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, in the clerk’s office at the city hall in Hayesville, Maryland, while static crackled from the police radio in the lobby and pigeons cooed from their roost along the eaves above the open window, Danny held her trembling hand in his and promised to cherish her until death. With the mayor’s secretary and an off-duty cop as witnesses, they exchanged the rings they’d bought a half-hour earlier at K-mart, and the city clerk, doubling as a notary public, pronounced them man and wife.

  She signed the marriage certificate with a flourish. Casey Lynn Bradley Fiore. Danny’s handwriting was small and neat as he signed his name next to hers. The secretary returned to her typewriter and the cop went home to dinner, and Danny slipped the clerk a twenty before taking Casey’s arm and walking her out into late afternoon sunshine. There, on the sidewalk in front of God and half the homebound population of Hayesville, he swept her into his arms and kissed her until her insides turned to butter. The secretary came out the door and gave them a benevolent smile, and Casey returned the smile just from the sheer joy of it.

  Danny cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. “So, Mrs. Fiore,” he said, “where would you like to eat dinner?”

  She straightened his collar. She couldn’t seem to keep herself from touching him. “Some place wonderfully elegant, Mr. Fiore. Like the Ritz.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to settle for something a little less elegant,” he said wryly. “Like McDonald’s.”

  She kissed his chin. “I can’t think of a more elegant place.”

  They spent their wedding night in a motel off the Jersey Pike, somewhere outside of Philly. In a paneled room that smelled of mildew, they drank supermarket champagne from disposable plastic goblets and explored together the mysteries of love. He shared with her his fire, she shared with him her tenderness, and they drew strength from the knowledge that nobody could tear them apart now.

  And in the morning, they went home to face the lions.

  chapter five

  When the knock came on her apartment door, Casey had one foot on the kitchen counter, the other braced on the back of a straight chair that she’d weighted down with books, and she was at
tempting to unscrew an uncooperative light fixture. Catching hold of the glass shade to balance herself, she shouted, “Come in. The door’s open.”

  “Casey?”

  “Rob? I’m in the kitchen.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you to keep the door locked? This is Boston, not the sticks. And don’t ever say ‘come in’ until you know who’s on the other—” He broke the corner, took one look at her, and did a double-take. “Holy shit. Are you trying to kill yourself?”

  “I’m trying to get this blasted thing down. I don’t think it’s been washed in forty years.”

  “Woman, you are an accident waiting to happen. Get down from there before you break your neck.”

  She caught hold of the hand he held out to her and said, “You try going through life only five feet tall.”

  He had the fixture unscrewed within seconds. Handing it down to her, he scowled and said, “What if you fell and nobody was here to pick up the pieces?”

  Casey waved away his concern and immersed the glass in hot, sudsy water. “I’m as agile as a mountain goat.” She rinsed the shade and held it up. “Look at this. I knew there was something beautiful underneath all that grime.” She smiled up at him. “Have you had lunch? I make a mean tuna fish sandwich.”

  “You’re on, kiddo. Where does Danny keep his guitar?”

  “In the bedroom closet.” She held out the light fixture. “You put this back up for me, and I might even let you play me a song.”

  He sat on the edge of the kitchen table with Danny’s guitar and watched her prepare lunch. “I’ve seen a big difference in Danny,” he said, “since he married you.”

  She licked mayonnaise from a butter knife and dropped it in the sink. “Good or bad?”

  “He’s mellowed. You’ve somehow managed to smooth out all his jagged edges.”

  Casey opened a loaf of bread, pulled out four slices, arranged them on the counter and began spreading tuna salad. “Maybe,” she said philosophically, “there’s a reason why opposites attract. Maybe it’s because we complement each other. Fill in the chinks in each other’s armor.”