mouth, and he felt a tingle go through his fingertips and all the way up his arm and into his scalp. He thought it was a damn good thing he had his hands full.
“What about later on?” he asked her in an airless mumble. “When you were grown-up and on your own?”
She answered him with her mouth full. “Mmm-I live in an apartment, work long hours-wouldn’t be fair. It’s better this way, actually. No responsibilities, nothing tying me down. I can do what I want to-come and go as I please.”
“Uh-huh,” said Troy. He wanted to ask her if she ever missed having somebody around, somebody to be there and happy to see her when she came home at night, somebody to curl up on the rug with and read a book, somebody to massage her feet for her when she’d been in court wearing those high-heeled shoes all day. Not that a dog could do that for her. He tore off another piece of chicken and held it just out of her reach and said, “Doesn’t that get kinda lonely?”
Her eyes met his above the morsel of chicken, dark as the woods around them, each one holding a tiny glowing lantern in its center. “I’ve been alone since I was sixteen,” she said softly. “Except for a few good friends, like Bella. That’s the way I like it.” Without taking her eyes from his, she leaned over and took the meat from his fingers, making sure her lips caressed his fingers before curving in a smile of seduction and challenge.
Bravado, he reminded himself. Pure bravado.
“How’d you do it?” he asked her in a casual way, focusing on the conversation with all his willpower as he doled out Bubba’s next portion. “Just out of curiosity. I mean. jeez-sixteen years old and just off the bus in California? Lots of kids do it, and I don’t think very many of ’em manage to grow up to be lawyers.”
“I had some money-my college fund. It was mine, so I took it. And I had a fake ID-everybody did, didn’t you? So we could buy booze and things like that? Anyway, that helped. I was able to get a job, and the police didn’t hassle me.”
She told him about it between bites, about how she’d found herself a room at the Y and a job in a fast-food restaurant, not enough to live on, but it made her college money last longer, long enough for her to find a job working as a live-in maid for the family of a Beverly Hills attorney who hadn’t been fussy about her documentation. And how, with the security of a safe place to live and enough food to eat she’d been able to go to school at night and earn her GED, then community college, all the while saving every penny she could toward the day when she would finally enroll in UCLA. And after that, law school, and with the recommendation of her former boss, a part- time job with a law firm.
She gave it all to him, the bare bones, anyway, while they reduced the chicken to the same condition-with the eager assistance of a big old Lab puppy. Troy had meant to make them some nice hefty sandwiches with the whole-grain bread and the mustard he’d brought, but somehow he just never got around to it. Instead they took turns feeding each other-and Bubba-little bits and pieces of that chicken, and talking, and licking the juices and the grease off of each other’s fingers, and they never even noticed that they were getting closer…and closer…and closer to each other, until there was hardly any room between them at all, and licking fingers got to seem like kind of a superfluous thing when there was something better right there handy.
He never did know who started it, or just whose slick and lemon-peppery lips first became too great a temptation for a questing tongue to ignore. Spicy breaths flowed together and became a warming sweetness, like sun-ripe fruit. Lips and tongues slid over and around and slipped between, tangling together with a joyful abandon that was like otters playing in sun-dappled water. Her skin felt warm on his fingers, as if it had just been kissed by the sun. When he spread his fingers across her cheek and pushed them into her hair, the sunlight came inside him, filling him up with heat and nourishment and light.
He brought her to him slowly, pressing her into him with the utmost gentleness, and as he sank into her mouth he felt himself rising, growing larger, becoming stronger, and her with him, as if some benevolent and approving god were lifting them up toward the light. Lifting them into the sun.
And that was when he knew. Exactly how and where and when it had happened, he didn’t know, but somehow, somewhere along the way, she had become
The realization shook him so that he tore himself away from her, reeling and disoriented, Icarus tumbling to earth.
He opened his eyes and was surprised to find that it was still night. “Time for veggies!” he said in an adolescent croak as he groped behind him for the package he’d set aside.
“I was hoping you’d forgotten,” Charly mumbled. The words sounded bumpy to him, as if she were shivering.
“I’ll just bet you were. Close your eyes,” he ordered.
“Why?”
“No questions. Just…trust me, now, okay?”
He heard a breathless and miserable “Okay.” Then and only then did he trust himself to look at her. She sat with her legs under her, hands clenched in her lap, shoulders hunched. Her head was high, though, and with her eyes closed her face wore the sad, noble expression of martyred saints. In the lantern light her skin had a cold, bluish look to it, so that what she reminded him of more than anything was a lovely sculpture made of ice. The images of sunshine seemed like a fading memory with no sensory reality to it, like looking at summer-vacation snapshots in the dead of winter.
“Okay,” he said softly, “open up, now-your mouth, not your eyes.”
A moment later she gave a little hiccup of surprise and pleasure. “Strawberries! But that’s not-”
He silenced her with a berry. “Sure they are. Chock-full of vitamins and fiber.”
“What? Well, okay, but how come there’s no hot fudge to dip them in? Or champagne?” But she was laughing when she said it.
“Shut up,” said Troy, laughing too. “Here-have another one-they’re good for you.”
“I will if you’ll share it with me.” Her eyes were shining with laughter and challenge.
What could he do? The laughter was so good to see, and he couldn’t bear for her to lose it. So he leaned across the space he’d put between them and took what she offered…first the fruit, then her mouth. Strawberry wine…
“Not a very original idea, I’m afraid,” she whispered after a while.
“Hard to beat a good cliche,” he replied, half-drunk on the taste of her.
But this time, like the older and wiser Daedalus, he knew better than to fly too near the sun; given a second chance, he managed to stay emotionally far enough away from her to keep them both from falling.
“I’d like to go back to the motel now,” said Charly. “Please.” The strawberries were all gone, and the laughter with them.
Troy was doing his best to gather up their trash while Bubba snored on his feet. His body ached all over from the strain of unconsummated passion. Charly was trembling, he imagined, for the same reason. And he almost- almost-gave in. God knows he wanted to. But in the end he took a deep breath and said gruffly. “Naw…thought we’d stay here a while longer.”
“Someone might come.” She blurted it out breathlessly, then cut herself off as if she regretted the impulse that had made her say it. After a moment she started again in an entirely different tone, lifeless and wooden, trying hard to sound as if she didn’t really care all that much. “That’s why, isn’t it? Why you wanted to do this. You don’t want-”
“Oh, I want, all right,” he said harshly, breaking in because he couldn’t bear the sadness in her voice another second. “I want you so bad I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stand it.”
“Well, you certainly have me.” Her whisper was slow and tentative. When he didn’t reply right away, she made an impatient sound and looked away. “I don’t know how I could possibly make that more obvious.”
For a minute or two Troy went on fiddling with the blanket, smoothing it out, making it neat, while his thoughts and feelings chased and tumbled around inside his head like squirrels playing in the woods, his heart going a mile a minute and a sweat coming on. How in the hell am I going to explain this? he thought.
He knew a lot of guys who were good talkers-sounded like TV soap operas, some of ’em-when it came to telling a woman the kinds of things they liked to hear. Troy hadn’t ever tried to be one of them. He’d always believed if he couldn’t tell a woman what she wanted to hear and have it be the truth, it was better to keep his mouth shut, and there’d been a few times he knew he’d caused a woman some disappointment and heartache because of that philosophy. In the long run he’d figured it probably saved both the woman and him a whole lot more grief than it
