Hide & Seek - James Patterson [50]
I watched Jennie and Allie with Will, and I could tell they adored him. I was almost certain he liked being around the kids, that he ached to bring up children just right, the way it ought to be done, not the way it had happened to him. He had told me as much.
I remember seeing him with Allie that afternoon at the house. The extraordinary picture sticks with me, one that will always play on my mind.
It was an Indian summer kind of day, brilliantly sunny, in the high fifties. The two of them were riding on one of our tamer horses, a sweet mare Jennie had named Fleas. Will and Allie rode across a wide field of tall grass that looked sea-green in the light.
They had their winter jackets on, but open, acting very manly, both of them strikingly blond. They were laughing uproariously as Fleas loped on, seemingly in very slow motion.
Will held Allie tightly and very securely in his arms, and he was beaming with joy. I knew the happiness was real, and I loved what I saw. I loved the look on their faces.
Jennie came and stood beside me. “Aren't they just beautiful?” she said. “They look like a real dad and his boy. Oh, I love it now, Mom. I feel so good inside, so right.”
“Me too,” I said and hugged Jennie.
CHAPTER 56
WILL TOLD ME everything; we told each other everything, until I believed that we had no secrets. One night he shared a terrifying story of his father beating his mother, then of his mother's words to him: “Only Mommy loves you. Only Mommy does.”
Listening to Will talk, I'd never felt closer to him. Maybe I'd never felt close to anyone. Certainly, I'd never had so much pain revealed to me.
“But she left me anyway,” he said. There was a faraway look in his eyes. “So she didn't really love me, you know, Maggie.”
He could be so sweet, and at those times, I imagined the way he must have been as a boy. I could picture Will as a boy, as a beautiful, blue-eyed boy.
“You think it was your fault she went away?”
“Yes. But I'm getting better about it. I'm almost there. I couldn't have done this without you, Maggie. You, Jennie, Allie, just being around all of you has made all the difference.”
I reached to hold Will's hand. His pain, his love for me, seemed so clear. It was very touching. I could identify with his sad family history, and maybe, I was trying to help convert my own angry father through Will.
“I'm not going to leave you,” I whispered to Will. “Not ever.”
“Marry me, Maggie. Don't give up on me. Promise.”
In the morning, I told him I would marry him to prove it.
CHAPTER 57
CAT AND MOUSE: the glorious game of love. A wanna-be model, Cam Matthias, took Will in her mouth and rolled her long tongue slowly over and around, eliciting a groan and a tightening of his hands in her flowing red hair.
God, he was such a fabulous, untamed animal, Cam thought. He might actually be the most exciting man on earth. Someone had to be, right?
“Oh,” Will said. “Jesus, Cam. That feels wonderful. You feel wonderful.”
They had been going at it for hours. He was insatiable, and made her feel the same way. When she knew, or thought, he was about to come, she released him and lay on her back, placing his cock between her breasts, and once more increasing the pressure until she thought he could stand it no longer. He kept going though, on and on, like some kinky version of the Energizer bunny. The image made her howl with laughter. They both howled.
Next, she knelt in front of the wall. She reached behind and spread the cheeks of her perfect bum.
“Take your time, as if you wouldn't anyway,” she said.
It was the night before Will Shepherd's wedding.
CHAPTER 58
AT ONE O'CLOCK, three hours before “the wedding of the decade,” two dozen policemen in their finest navy blue uniforms and dress-white gloves took up their positions at the main and service entrances of