A Place Called Home (41 page)

“Actually, he said you were still in love with Joel.”

With no hesitation, Thea repeated the same question. “Did you believe him?”

He didn’t say anything immediately. The pause was not dictated by a need to arrive at the right response, only the truthful one. As it happened, the truth surprised him. “I suppose I did,” he said finally. “I sure as hell reacted like I did.”

Thea rested her head in the curve of his neck and shoulder again. “Good answer,” she said softly. “Do you need to hear some sort of denial from me or can you work it out on your own?”

Mitch’s neurons weren’t exactly firing in sync, but this wasn’t differential calculus. The math was pretty simple. “Your daddy likes Joel Strahern and he doesn’t like me.”

“Close enough,” Thea said. “You do okay for someone plied with drinks all evening.”

He took another stab. “Your daddy dislikes Joel less than he dislikes me.”

“In a nutshell.” Thea rubbed Mitch’s chest lightly. “It’s not at all personal. He’s always been of the opinion that I should marry one of the Fosters. Cement the partnership. It seems vaguely incestuous, if you ask me. Hank is like an older brother. Annoying. Protective. Helpful. Familiar. It was a relief for both of us when he finally married. Evidently there was some pressure from his father as well. He has two brothers, neither of whom has any real interest in the agency—or me.” She sighed. “My father has convinced himself that he was warming up to Joel. It only required that I break the engagement and deep-six the wedding plans for him to have that epiphany. What did you say to him anyway? He wouldn’t have blurted out that I was still in love with Joel if he wasn’t provoked.”

Mitch shrugged. “Don’t remember exactly.”

Thea didn’t believe him but she let it pass. “He means well, Mitch. He really does. It’s another one of those things I’m beginning to understand. It never occurred to me in all the years that I’ve tried to win his approval, that he might have been trying to win mine.”

“That’s why he came back now, isn’t it?” Mitch asked. “In time for Father’s Day.”

She nodded. “I think so. I’m not sure I ever knew how much stock he put in the day.”

Mitch found Thea’s hand and slipped his fingers through hers. “Did you tell him you love him?”

Thea nodded again. “I wish he hadn’t been so surprised.” There was a small catch in her voice. “Both of us are late to the realization that there’s nothing about love that has to be earned.”

Mitch smiled. “Figured that out, did you?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Good.” He gave her hand a little squeeze. “Think you can help me to bed?”

“Sure.” She raised her head and kissed him on the corner of the mouth. “But you’re not getting laid.”

It was an involuntary shudder that brought Mitch to wakefulness. That he was deeply aroused came more slowly to his consciousness. He groaned softly, pressing his head back into the fullness of the pillow. His back arched. He drew one knee up and felt his inner thigh caress the soft skin of a bare shoulder. His heel dug into the mattress. There was no pause in the hot suck of her mouth.

His eyes opened to tiny slits. The blue-green glow of a night-light defined the perimeter of the bedroom, then the boundary of the bed. He looked down the length of his nose, then his chest. The pale sheet shifted over his thighs. A crown of dark and silky hair emerged. He brushed it with his fingertips.

“Thea.”

Now there was a pause. His cock was slowly, exquisitely released. “How did you know it was me?”

Mitch’s low growl was part laughter, part need. Thea bent her head again, taking him in her mouth, sucking, using her lips and teeth and tongue to caress and tease and pull another response from him. Her fingers massaged his swollen balls. Her hair brushed the inside of his thighs.

“God, Thea! I’m ...” He felt her swallow, taking him more deeply than she had before. She was so hot. Surrounding him with heat. Damp heat. Silky and wet and on fire. She stroked his thighs, his buttocks. The tiny noises she made at the back of her throat vibrated against his skin. Her tongue swirled, gently abrading, always arousing. His long frame jerked, stretched, and still he managed to contain himself in the taut confines of skin that no longer quite fit.

He caught her shoulder, then the tips of her hair. His hand curved around the back of her neck. Her name came to his lips as a soft, husky groan.

Thea lifted her head. Her eyes were dark, vaguely unfocused. “Hmmm?”

“Come here.”

Smiling, she slithered forward over his hard belly and harder cock. “You have something in mind?”

Mitch rolled Thea onto her back and buried himself deep inside her. She accepted him without a murmur. The press of her fingers in his shoulders was the only outward sign that she felt anything at all. He found her silence oddly erotic. He kissed her mouth. Her lips were swollen and damp. She tasted of him.

He began to move inside her—slowly at first, then, because he could not do it any differently, faster and harder and with single-minded, selfish urgency. She embraced him, embraced his need. Her legs curved around him. She lifted, rocked. Her body contracted inside and out and each caress was both bold and somehow intimate. When he came she did not want to let him go. His body surged against hers and every line of tension that was in him became part of her. She watched him above her, his features taut, the muscles bunching across his back and upper arms. His mouth thinned; the jaw tightened. His entire body shuddered, then went slack.

Thea cushioned his fall. “No,” she whispered when she felt him stir. “Not yet. Don’t move.”

He rested his weight on his forearms but otherwise remained as he was. The muscles of her vagina clenched like a fist around him. His hips twitched and he let his head fall forward, grunting softly. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

Thea stopped. “Is it too much?”

“A little.”

She smiled. “You like it though.”

“Are you kidding? Being the personal trainer for a woman doing Kegel reps? It’s been a dream of mine.”

It was all Thea could do not to laugh. Concentrating, she repeated the contraction, only harder this time. The movement made her catch her breath and she drew in her lower lip.

“Aaah,” Mitch said softly. “Teetering on the edge, are we?”

“
I
am,” she said dryly. “You came.”

“Want some help?”

“Please.” The tiniest inflection gave it the lilt of a question.

Mitch grinned wickedly as he eased out of her. Thea’s protest was ignored and she forgot about it when his mouth hovered above her breast. “This oughta do it,” he said. Just as if she were going under for the third time, Thea gulped air and held it when Mitch’s lips closed over her nipple. He sucked hard, making her lift for him. His hand slipped between her open thighs; his fingers found her. With only a touch he closed the circuit. For Thea it felt as if every nerve ending in her body was part of an electric arc.

It was a perfectly lovely orgasm that rippled through her.

She lay quietly beside him for a while, unconcerned that he was watching her. The fact that he seemed to be inordinately proud of himself amused her. She gave him an arch look.
“ ‘This oughta do it? ’ ”
she asked, repeating his words with a wry twist. “ ‘
This oughta do it? ’
Did you think you were adjusting something under my hood?”

“I was ... kinda.”

Her hand snaked out around his neck and brought his head down. Laughter softened her kiss. “I think you must be very good for me, Mitch Baker.”

Which was exactly what he had said to her father.

It was a few minutes after three when Mitch woke and discovered he was alone in Thea’s bed. He listened for her in the adjoining bathroom but there was only silence. He got up, found his boxers on the floor and put them on, and then checked on the children before he headed downstairs.

Thea was sitting on an Adirondack chair on the back deck. From his vantage point in the dark kitchen, Mitch could watch unobserved. Her nightgown was almost as pale as her skin in the moonlight. It formed a tent over the legs she had drawn up to her chest. She was staring out over her knees, over the deck rail, in the direction of the woods and the horizon. In all the time he watched her, she never moved. He wished he could see her face. He did not think she would look so different than when she was sleeping, when her features were swept clear of every care, of others’ expectations, and she dreamed of things that were all her own.

Mitch slid the door aside. She didn’t stir, but it wasn’t because she hadn’t heard him, but because she had. “Come or go?” he asked.

“Come.”

He hitched a hip on the wide, flat arm of the chair and stretched one leg out to the side. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“I did for a little while. Sometimes I get like this. Restless. Unsettled. It helps to come out here. I used to take a handful of stuff for sleeping.” She shrugged. “Now I do this.”

Mitch noticed the phone lying on the opposite arm. “Were you talking to Rosie?”

Thea shook her head. “I thought I might call her. I found I didn’t need to.”

“Is it getting easier, Thea?”

“I don’t know how to answer that. I can go days without thinking about using, then something happens—something small, something big—and I’m reminded that what I’m holding on to is a very slender thread. It’s humbling.” She lifted her head and looked up at him. “Today, for instance. My parents ...” Thea’s voice trailed off and she turned away again. “I should have done a better job protecting Emilie. What my mother said to her was unconscionably hurtful. Then I made it worse. Everything she said to the children felt like a criticism of
me.
”

“That’s pretty much the way I read it, too,” said Mitch. “I don’t think your perception’s so far off the mark.”

She glanced at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “Your dad’s in your corner, though. He doesn’t seem to know how to say it, but that was my impression.”

“Funny. It was mine, too. I should invite you and the kids to more Sunday dinners with my parents. At least I didn’t throw up after this one.”

“That’s what you usually did?”

“When I was Em’s age, almost every Sunday. I wasn’t bulimic, just nervous. I had to eat what was served and my stomach would be in knots and ...” She shrugged. “You get the picture.”

Mitch did. “But you got through today without any pills.”

Thea didn’t miss the small inflection that made it a question. She chose not to be resentful of Mitch for having doubts. It made him prudent, she supposed. Cautious. She had to balance the respect he showed for her addiction with his wary trust in her. It couldn’t be easy for him either. “Yesterday,” she said softly, raising her face to the moon in the southwestern sky. “It was yesterday, but yeah, I got through it without taking a thing.”

Mitch let his arm fall from the back of the chair to Thea’s shoulders. She leaned into him without any more encouragement than that. A warm breeze stirred her hair. Strands fluttered against his skin. “Then you did good,” Mitch said. “No one who didn’t use did it any better.”

Thea smiled. He knew the exact right thing to say.

In the morning the children found Mitch sleeping on the living room couch. They didn’t know he had only stretched out there a scant hour before and they would not have changed much about their behavior had they been aware. Their idea of respecting his sleep involved stealthy movements on tiptoes and communicating in breathy whispers. The effect was more noise than if they had walked and talked normally. When they saw Mitch pull a pillow over his face and heard him groan with gusto, they pounced and eventually wrestled him onto the floor.

Thea discovered them sprawled on the carpet in a tangle of bed linens. She stood over them, her head cocked to one side as she fastened a gold hoop in her ear. “Cereal’s in the cupboard above the microwave. OJ, milk, and bread is in the fridge. Butter’s out. No coffee, Mitch. Sorry. There are tea bags in a canister on the counter.”

Four heads lifted simultaneously and four pairs of eyes stared at her with laserlike intensity.

Thea patted her ear, making certain the hoop was in securely. “What? It’s Monday. I have to go to work.” Her words seemed to have no impact. They continued to stare at her. “I’m running late.” She realized she wasn’t getting through. “All right. I’ll eat breakfast with you.”

Case jumped up. “Waffles! Waffles!”

Emilie and Grant joined the chant.

Mitch merely smiled.

Thea caved.

Twenty-six minutes later they were sitting around the kitchen table, helping themselves to a warm stack of homemade waffles and bacon strips, sliding the syrup bottle back and forth like a hockey puck.

Mitch saw Thea glance at her watch. “You have a meeting?”

She nodded. “The Carver Chemical account. We’re putting the finishing touches on the campaign. If it’s as good as I think it’s going to be I’ll be trying to get a meeting with Carver in a couple of weeks.”

“You’re excited about this, aren’t you?”

“I am,” she admitted.

He studied her animated face. “It’s nice.”

Thea smiled. “It is.”

Mitch was distracted by Grant’s wildly waving fork. “Careful. You’re going to spill your juice.” He caught the glass in the nick of time and pushed it toward the center of the table. “For later,” he said. “When you’re done conducting.” As soon as Grant speared his waffle, Mitch turned back to Thea. “So tell me about this Carver connection. Your mother’s a Carver and I’m guessing Foster and Wyndham used to have the advertising account. What happened?”

“Nothing nefarious. Carver moved its corporate headquarters out of Pittsburgh in the seventies and took its advertising dollars to Madison Avenue. Except for voting by proxy and collecting dividends on her stock, my mother’s involvement and influence with the company is nil. She used to be active on the foundation’s board, but she lost interest in it after my father retired. There are only one or two Carvers left in key positions. Management’s been from the outside for years.”