He jiggled her a time or two and grinned down lovingly. 'You sure's hell didn't act like one. Grandmas are supposed to bake gingerbread cookies and go to sewing circles.'
'Remind me to join when I grow tired of this.'
She felt his chest lift with silent chuckles. Again his fingers sifted idly through her hair. 'Have you ever thought about trying to find our Beth?'
'Yes, I've thought about it. But never for long. It would be too hard to see her, possibly even talk to her, then walk away. And what good would it do? She has parents to love. If she learned about us it could be devastating for her, too. Does it bother you?'
He shrugged. 'No, not like it used to.
Especially since my other Beth has 339 come to live with me.'
They lay silent for some minutes, then Tommy Lee said the most startling thing.
'Rachel, suppose you're pregnant right now.'
She snapped back and gaped into his dark, amused eyes. 'But… but I can't be pregnant now!'
'Why not? You're only forty-one, and you're not on any kind of birth control.' His brow wrinkled. 'Are you?'
'But I'm allergic to sperm!'
'You were allergic to Owen's sperm, not mine. If we had one baby, why isn't it possible for us to have another?'
Suddenly Rachel burst out laughing. 'Tommy Lee, you're crazy!'
He smiled crookedly. 'Maybe. But it's fun thinking about it… 'cause then we'd have to get married.' He settled her back where she'd been before. 'Imagine the expressions on our parents' faces when we walked up those church steps together, and you pregnant out to here.' His hand caressed her abdomen, and they laughed together,
imagining it. Then Rachel fell serious.
'Forty-one is too old to become parents.'
'Who says?'
'I do, for one.' But her heart lurched at the thought, gave a little kick of independence, and left her feeling slightly giddy.
'I know I wasn't much of a father, but I always thought that if it had been you and me together I'd have been so much better at it, loving you the way I did. They say a child's security stems from the love of its parents for each other, so think about it, okay?' He reached out to snap off the light and knocked a few pillows onto the floor, then curled her tightly against his body. 'With or without a pregnancy, we're both getting a second chance with Beth.'
What a stunning and beautiful thought. Mulling it over, Rachel fell asleep.
They awakened to a butterscotch sun streaming through the bedroom. Tommy Lee stretched and quivered magnificently, then opened his eyes to find Rachel beside him, watching.
'Hi.' He grinned with half his mouth.
'Hi.' She thought he looked wonderful with his
hair tousled and whiskers beginning to show. 341
'What're you grinning at?'
'What're you grinning at?'
'Rachel Talmadge, all messed up.'
'Yeah, well, look who messed her.'
'Tell me, Miss Talmadge, what do you think about morners?'
'I always kinda liked them myself. Tell me, Mr. Gentry, what do you think about morners?'
'They rate right up there with nooners and afternooners.'
'In that case I don't suppose you'd care to indulge with a messed-up woman who just might be a grandma.'
He reached out lazily and ran a knuckle across her lips. 'Ohh, Grandma, what nice lips you have.'
'The better to kiss you, my dear.' And she made a pretense of gnawing his knuckle.
His hand moved down to cup one small breast.
'Ohh, Grandma, what nice breasts you have.'
She gyrated the breast against his palm. 'The better to entice you, my dear.'
He came up slowly and turned her to her back while running a hand down to explore her
sweet mysteries. 'Ohh, Grandma, you ain't like no other grandma I ever come across in the woods.'
She smiled and indulged in some sensuous writhing that felt positively wonderful. She nuzzled the silver hair on the side of his head, then bit his ear and asked seductively, 'Isn't this the story where somebody's always eating up somebody else?'
'Oh, nasty, nasty Grandma,' he said against her lips, then lowered his open mouth to her breast as they set about ushering in the morning properly.
A half-hour later Rachel was dressed in a floor-length robe of pink satin and coffee was perking as she wrung out Tommy Lee's shirt in the laundry basin.
'Rachel, can I use your brush?' he called from the bathroom.
'Sure. It's in the top left drawer of the vanity.'
She heard the drawer open, tossed the shirt into the dryer and turned it on, then stepped into the kitchen.
When the rush of running water stopped at the far end of the house, she called, 'Help yourself
to towels.' Then she cocked her head and 343 asked, 'Do you like bacon?'
'I love it, but it's fattening!' he called back.
She smiled as she laid several thick strips on the hot griddle. The bacon was sizzling and the buttons of the shirt were ticking noisily against the tumbling dryer, so she didn't hear the front door opening.
She wasn't aware of Everett's presence in the house until she turned the corner into the family room with a glass of juice in her hand.
At the sight of her father she came up short and her stomach seemed to tilt. He was standing in the middle of the family room, staring at the surface of the pool, where miscellaneous pieces of clothes were caught in the skimmer. Her eyes darted outside to find even her shoes visible, lying in the aquamarine depths of the shallow end. Everett's stormy gaze moved from the pool to scan her pink wrapper, pausing for the briefest second on the fabric shimmering unmistakably over bare nipples.
'Daddy,' she gulped.
'I came to have coffee with you before you left for the
store,' he said acidly. But just at that moment Tommy Lee stepped out of the bathroom and entered the room from the opposite direction, dressed in nothing but trousers, toweling his wet hair. When his face emerged from beneath the towel he stopped dead in his tracks.
The suffocating moment seemed to stretch forever while Everett fired angry glances from one to the other and nobody said a word. His face turned stony while Rachel's began to redden.
'Well, well,' he drawled after several interminable seconds. 'What have we here?' Tommy Lee glanced helplessly at Rachel while Everett went on silkily. 'But I guess it's obvious what we have here. The county's most notorious whoremonger, preying on one of its most vulnerable widows.'
Tommy Lee and Rachel both spoke at once.
'Now just a minute!'
'Daddy, it's not that way!'
Everett pierced his daughter with malevolent eyes and pointed an outraged finger. 'You shut up, girlie, I'll get to you later!' Then he spun on Gentry. 'How dare you set foot in
my daughter's house!' 345
'I didn't realize I had to ask permission to see a forty-one-year-old woman.'
'See?' Talmadge hissed. 'It appears you did more than see her! It isn't enough that you have every two-bit whore between here and Montgomery? Do you have to drag my daughter down with you?'
Tommy Lee's hands tightened into fists on the ends of the towel. 'Your daughter is a lady, and my being here doesn't change that.'
'Oh, doesn't it? I wonder if her neighbors agree with you!'
