Cupid’s Confederates

stood in the doorway. Her spine was as taut as a violin string, and when she half turned again her eyes were tightly closed.

“Mom, I know the house has memories for you. Have you even asked Martha if she wanted to move in with you? Since her husband died, she’s had the same problem sleeping nights, hasn’t she?” Bett twisted the cord around and around her finger until her finger turned white from lack of circulation, then uncoiled it impatiently. “No, of course I’m not saying you should sell the house if you don’t want to. It’s just that if staying there is still making you unhappy after all this time…”

Zach set a glass of sun tea on the coffee table for Bett, and carried his own over to the fieldstone fireplace. He leaned back against the rough stone, staring outside at the last of the sunset.

Bett rubbed her temple with two fingers, denting the soft flesh and making white marks. “Mom. Please, please, just tell me what you want me to do! Do you want me to come for a couple of days? Do you want me to pack the things up and sell the house for you? I’ll do whatever you want; you must know that. You just have to tell me what you want. Mom, this has to stop-” Bett could feel her eyes filling up with ridiculous, overemotional tears.

Zach’s tea glass clattered down on the mantel. In four long strides, he reached her, untangled enough of the phone cord to claim the phone and all but jammed the receiver against his ear.

“Liz? This is Zach. Your daughter’s in trouble.” The words, however impromptu, were calculated to bring an instant cessation of feminine tears at the other end. They worked. Bett was staring up at him blankly, her lips parted in shock. He unwrapped the phone cord from around her and, with a brusque motion of his hand, urged her to sit on the couch. He kept on talking. “What would you say to coming to stay with us for a while? Bett’s got so much to do she’s running herself down… Yes, I know, but then she wouldn’t ask for help if she were sitting in the middle of a flood; we both know that… I don’t know. Does it matter? Why don’t you just pack a suitcase and close up the house, and we’ll worry about the how-long of it another time. No, Liz. We are not thinking about selling the farm and going sane again.”

He had to listen to something or other about the care of her dahlias before she agreed to come. Used to Elizabeth, he paid no attention. But when he hung up the phone, Bett was standing in the middle of the room with her arms wrapped around her chest. Her small spray of tears had dried. Zach sighed, calmly walking over to her and brushing back her silky hair with gentle fingers. “You’ve wanted your mother here for a long time now, haven’t you? But you were afraid to say anything. We’ve both gotten used to a very private lifestyle and neither of us really wants an intruder-and I should have figured out months ago that you needed me to make the offer, Bett. So if it’s tough going, it’s tough going. Families are still the only people you can count on in time of trouble. I ought to know; I hadn’t had any family for a long time until I met you. And I refuse to let you worry about Liz long-distance any longer.” Zach paused, a wry grin on his lips. “Am I the only one having this conversation?”

“No.” Bett smiled, trying to relax. It was so typical of Zach to take the bull by the horns. And it was typical of him to give willingly of himself to please her. Tiny knots were forming in the pit of her stomach at the thought of having her mother here, day in, day out, but she ignored them, a wave of love for Zach overtaking any lesser emotions.

She smiled again, slid her arms around his waist and hugged him. Zach smelled like sun and wind, an earthy, primitive scent that she loved. He rocked her close to him, his lips brushing her forehead.

“You weren’t really afraid I’d nix the idea of inviting her here?” he murmured against her ear. “Lord, Bett, you didn’t think I’d say no, just because we’d be a little inconvenienced for a time?”

“It wasn’t you, Zach.” Bett hesitated, staring at the hollow of his throat. “First, I felt…the thing is, Mom is still young; fifty-four is hardly ancient. I want to help her, yes, but she’s always depended on other people, Zach, and I felt she needed to…” Bett groped for the words “…get her life in order. For her sake. I was hoping that in time she’d make new friends on her own, come to some decisions, develop new interests. Her whole life’s been devoted to taking care of people, and I…”

Zach nudged her chin up, a small surprised frown on his forehead. “So she depends on us for a while. That’s not so terrible.”

Bett took a breath. “No,” she agreed hesitantly.

“Don’t tell me you really don’t want her here? That doesn’t sound like you, two bits.”

How could she be so ungenerous of spirit, when Zach was so very generous? What kind of inhuman, insensitive daughter wouldn’t do anything to help her mother through a bad time? “Of course I want her here,” Bett said vibrantly, and meant it. “Zach, it was so good of you to ask her…”

Zach drew back and kissed her on the nose. “Settled then?” he asked briskly.

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Come on.” He turned and pulled her toward the door. “We have a very serious problem on the back forty we need to take care of.”

“Pardon?”

***

Bett was still in a distracted mood until she realized where Zach was driving. The landscape around the pond disclosed no problem that she could see. Night had fallen on the farm like black silk. It was still tropically warm, but the hush of evening was soothing, a stillness one could almost breathe in. Crickets chirped in the cattails, and the fragrance of ripening peaches was a thick, sweet perfume that filled the air.

Zach turned off the ignition and just looked at her, his face half in shadow, his eyes fathomless and dark. “There’s a blanket in back.” He gave her no chance to respond to that, reaching for her swiftly, tugging her close to him in that sweet darkness. His tongue slowly traced her lower lip, then her upper one. He dried the faint moisture with his fingertip. His touch was very gentle, very soft, very slow.

Bett half closed her eyes, willing a dozen vague anxieties to disappear from her mind. She’d wanted to be with him, and she’d wanted him-like this-all day. Worries about her mother’s visit had sabotaged those feelings, yet the simple intimacy of just being held gradually melted that tension. When Zach’s mouth covered hers, a little more of that anxiety seemed to vanish. Zach, at times, could be very hard to resist. Zach, at times, could have some very strange powers over her. He could make her believe that there was nothing more important than this instant in time, nothing more important than the feel of his lips on hers. His kiss was hungry, very softly, sensually lustful. The last lingering tension ebbed away in slow motion. His lips seared hers in an intimate stamp of possession, and only when her body seemed to go limp did the pressure of his mouth slowly lessen.

He drew back, his finger seductively trailing the line of her jaw. “You have,” he whispered, “thirty-two seconds to get outside and take your clothes off.”

She wasted ten of those seconds getting out of the truck, and then dawdled away an awful lot of time watching him unfold the blanket. She was smiling as he spread the blanket on the tall grasses next to the pond. He loved that smile, would happily have done cartwheels to banish the pinched look around her eyes that had haunted her since her mother’s call. Bett was so rarely moody. Given any chance at all, she squeezed the joy from life, and shared it.

Whatever anxiety she was feeling, they would handle it. At the moment, he just wanted to see the mischievous spark back in her eyes. He wasn’t disappointed. He paused briefly to study his wife appreciatively. She was wearing an old yellow T-shirt of his; its shoulder seams flopped almost to her elbows, its hem barely covered her fanny, and not a bump of a breast showed in the folds of fabric. Her old jeans led down to bare feet. His lady was at her sexiest, nonetheless. Softness was the issue. The softness of silky yellow hair by moonlight, the soft pastel of the T-shirt, the softer glow of her skin.

He unbuttoned and pushed off her jeans himself, since she was being so damned slow. She raised her arms; he tugged off the T-shirt.

It was Bett’s turn to watch when she’d settled on the blanket. Zach’s profile was outlined against the night sky, and a shiver of anticipation raced down her spine. Zach was all dark gold, his chest smooth and sculpted, strength and control part of his body, part of his every movement. He tossed his shirt on the grass, then slowly slid his belt from its belt loops, facing her. When he unsnapped the single button on his jeans, the small sound seemed to echo crazily in the night. In a moment, he’d skimmed off the pants, and moved toward her in the darkness, naked and tall.

A primitive shudder trembled through her body and refused to stop. How could she ever have thought Zach