The Other Side - J. D. Robb [160]
Quite a coincidence, really, as her newly revised list of wishes contained his name in several places as well.
It was this coincidence, she supposed, that made actually verbalizing their desires unnecessary when they stopped on the sidewalk in front of Hedbo House and turned to one another. He wanted to kiss her, and her smile gave him permission.
Lifting her face as he lowered his, their lips touched with a sweet, blistering need that both surprised and pleased them. The next kiss was deeper, more familiar, waking and feeding passions like dragons of old, with fire in their breath and wings that carried them to the stars.
“Holy . . . Wow,” she gasped, one hand to her throat to calm herself while the other clung to the back of his neck for support. His forehead came to rest on hers, and he murmured a soft, “Yeah.”
When they could hold their heads up and breathe and focus their eyes all at the same time, they laughed.
She put her hand in her pocket. “I guess I should get going. Thank you. I had fun tonight.”
“Me, too.” He turned with her and followed her slow walk to her car, parked at the curb in front of his. He let several long seconds go by. “I don’t suppose I could convince you not to drive home tonight.”
“There’s no electricity and it’s cold and I didn’t bring any overnight—”
“You wouldn’t really need any.”
“Oh! You mean . . . you know . . . with you.”
He grinned at her fluster, in his eyes a light of wicked delight at her sudden sexual unease. But she was no mouse who would play to his cat. . . .
“Well, I don’t know. Could you?”
He looked startled. “Could I what?”
“Convince me not to drive home tonight?”
His grin said that he’d do his best. Hers answered that it wouldn’t be difficult.
Okay, so maybe it was foolish to think she could sneak into the house around noon and not have anyone notice—it was like trying to slip dawn past a rooster.
“Ahhhhhh.”
“At last.”
“Now, don’t tease her. We may have something here. Darling, are you in love?”
“Look at her face. Of course she is.”
“You can’t tell by her face alone. What if he’s just really good in bed?”
“Is he?”
“Maybe,” she said, tucking her grin into her cheeks to present only a smug smile. “Maybe it’s both.”
“Ooooooh.”
“I knew it. The first time I saw him look at you, I knew.”
“And did you tell him about us, dear? Father always put a new face on things. Maybe we need a male perspective. Perhaps a man would know exactly what we’re looking for.”
“No, Odelia, I didn’t tell him.” She looked at each lady in turn, feeling her emotional high slip away to one simple truth: she’d lied to Ryan. But if she told him now, he either wouldn’t believe her and decide she was delusional or he’d be angry that she lied to him in the first place. No, the best solution was to help her mother and aunts find what they’d lost, quickly, and allow them to pass on to the Other Side—to end Jimmy’s fascination with them and to keep their existence as another family secret. “And I don’t plan to. We don’t need him. We’ll work harder at figuring out what you’ve all lost, and we’ll do it ourselves. I promise you. Now, instead of going over the past individually, I think we should spend the afternoon going over it together. You’re bound to see each other’s lives in a different light, and who knows what you might have forgotten that someone else remembers.”
And that’s exactly what they did. Even Odelia set aside her pies to sit at the kitchen table and reminisce over story after story from their past. People they knew and events they’d attended. They laughed and were sad and grew boisterous and then silent as they contemplated their lives until sundown, when the room became gloomy and dim and forced M.J. to finally go home.
Nine
“So when did you put your number in my cell phone?” Ryan asked early Monday morning when he called her at work.
“Yesterday when you went down to make coffee.”
“Here I thought I was going to be so smart taking it off my caller ID when you called last night to tell me you were home safe.