“Aw, the kid likes me.”
“That’s why she tried to take a chomp out of you? Because she likes you?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that sweet?”
“It’s twisted, man. And so are you if think that rug rat is sweet. Right, Tyler?”
Looking around, Luke realized that Tyler had taken off for the kitchen with Angel. Smart man.
“You really don’t have to help,” Angel said as Tyler brought a load of glasses into the kitchen.
He just shrugged. So she said what she was really thinking, because since he’d first arrived, she’d sensed that he wasn’t there willingly. “You didn’t really want to be here, did you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“You do.”
“What did I do?”
“You didn’t say much.”
“I never do.”
“I realize that. But this time was different. Did my daughter talk you into coming?”
“No.”
“Are you telling me the truth?”
“I swear it on your bourbon salmon, which was delicious.”
Angel felt herself blushing for the first time in years. “You don’t have to say that.”
“I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“Most people do.”
“I’m not most people.”
“Neither am I.”
“Something we both have in common.”
“Yeah.”
They shared a look. His eyes were windows to his soul, but he often kept the shades tightly shut, not allowing anyone in. But now, she got a glimpse of the man inside, the man behind the pain. What she saw made her catch her breath like a teenager. Was that desire? Was he feeling the connection, too?
Tyler suddenly looked away, as if afraid he may have revealed too much. “Uh, I got you something.”
“You didn’t have to do that. The invitation wasn’t intended to make you feel you had to give me a gift. Just your presence is a gift to me. I like spending time with you. I hope you like spending time with me.”
“You’re a breath of fresh air for my soul.”
Her heart sang. “I feel the same way.”
“I’m not good for you,” he said abruptly. “There are things you don’t know . . .”
She placed her hand on his arm. His flannel shirt was soft beneath her fingertips, his muscles strong. “I know all I need to know. I’ve seen your aura, and that tells me you’re a man who’s experienced deep pain that left you questioning everything. But at the core, your heart is pure.”
“It’s not.”
“It is to me,” she said simply.
“Here.” Tyler shoved a small item wrapped in newspaper into her hands.
She opened it with the care of someone who’d received the most precious of gifts. It was a carved wooden llama.
“I do a little whittling in my spare time,” he said.
“This is beautiful. You’re very talented.” Tyler shook his head, but she put her hand on his arm again and firmly said, “Yes, you are. This is a wonderful piece.”
“I did two.” He gave her another awkwardly wrapped item. “Because you have two llamas.”
“Thank you so much. I really miss them, you know. Even though I visit them several times a week, I still miss them and I get all teary-eyed when I leave. Stupid, huh?”
“No. You’re a woman who feels things deeply. It’s one of the many things that makes you so special.”
“My oldest daughter doesn’t think so. She thinks I’m sappy and ditsy.”
“She’s wrong,” he said simply.
“I don’t know. There are a few times when I think it might be nice to have your emotions neatly under control instead of wearing your heart on your sleeve, right out there for the entire world to see.”
“Have you done anything about that secret you were talking about when we spoke last time?” Tyler asked.
“Not yet. But I plan to. Very soon.”
“I hope it goes well for you.”
“Thanks. Me, too.” Angel knew she’d need all the good karma she could get to make things go well.
An hour later Luke finally got Julia alone in kitchen. “I’m actually a pretty good cook,” she was saying. “Okay, maybe I don’t have a huge repertoire, but I really can make a mean dish of Moroccan chicken thighs.”
Luke was instantly consumed with thoughts of Julia’s thighs parting for him as he drove into her again and again. Her creamy, trembling thighs . . .
“And then I finish the meal off with an awesome champagne cherry sorbet,” she said.
He imagined pouring champagne over her luscious thighs and licking his way up to the sweetest cherry in the world.
“Stop . . . stop talking!” His voice was hoarse.
“Are you okay?” She studied him. “You sound funny. Are you sick? Do you think you have a fever?”
“Yeah, a fever for you,” he growled, pinning her against the fridge door and kissing her.
The old dependable Maytag fridge hummed against Julia’s bottom while hotheaded bad boy Luke throbbed against her front. His arousal was evident and became more so as he lifted her arms above her head and moved even closer.
Her breasts were pressed against his chest, but it wasn’t enough. For either of them. Muttering breathlessly, she freed her hand to reach for his shirt.
Great minds must think alike, because Luke released her to reach for the neckline of her wrap-around dress and slip his hand inside, cupping her breast in the palm of his hand, brushing his thumb over her satin-covered nipple.
He could create such intense pleasure so quickly it almost scared her, but the heated bliss was too all-consuming to really register anything else. Like the fact that they were making out in her kitchen with a bunch of people in the next room—one of whom walked in on them mid-caress.
“Never mind me,” Angel cheerfully stated. “I was just going to make some tea, but I’ll come back later.”
“There are too many people in your house,” Luke growled.
“You think?” Julia leaned her forehead on his shoulder and tried to regain control of her trembling legs.
“Moms are such a mood killer.” Luke’s rough voice reflected his extreme frustration.
“They don’t have to be,” Angel called from the living room. “You two go right on as you were. Pretend I’m not here.”
“Impossible.” Julia knew. She’d already tried. Many times. There was just no pretending her family wasn’t there. Or that she wasn’t in danger of falling for Luke big time.
“Orgasm is our most certain way of interfacing with the divine,” Angel stated as she and Skye and Julia gathered together on New Year’s Eve.
Julia knew she had too much wine when she heard herself saying, “If the fate of the world depended on you having sex with Tommy Lee or Ozzy Osbourne, would you do it?”
Skye laughed. “I would do it just for the comic relief.”
“What about Jerry Springer?” Julia asked.
“Sure, if the fate of the world depended on it.”
“Is there anyone
none
of us would do it with?” Julia demanded.
Skye shrugged. “I’m doing it with Jerry Springer and Tommy Lee. What does that say about me?”
“That you have no taste,” Julia retorted.
“I don’t like sweaty guys,” Angel admitted.
“I don’t mind sweaty if they smell good,” Skye said. “What about you, Julia? You started this.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” she muttered before pouring herself more wine.
“You were probably thinking about Luke, as you always are.”
“Not always.” Wine sloshed over the edge of Julia’s glass as she protested.
“No, not every second. Sometimes you’re reciting the Dewey Decimal System,” Skye mocked her.
“Not when you’re having an orgasm, though, right?” Angel said with a worried expression.
“Maybe she’s never had an orgasm,” Skye said.
Angel defended her oldest daughter. “Of course she has. Right?” She turned to Julia, who nodded and drank more wine.
“With a man?” Skye persisted. “Or just by yourself? Was a vibrator involved?”
Julia ignored her. “What about Bob Dylan?”
Angel blinked. “You had an orgasm with Bob Dylan?”
“No, would you do Bob Dylan?”
“You have to do Bob Dylan,” Angel claimed. “Just as an homage. I mean, he’s Bob Dylan.”
“So it’s true then?” Julia was definitely feeling a buzz now. More than that, she had to be edging toward downright drunk, or she’d never be continuing this conversation let alone start it in the first place. “There’s
no one
that
none
of us would do it with?”
Angel had to think a minute, her forehead furled in concentration, before saying, “Walt.”
“Walt,” Julia immediately agreed.
“Right, like you’d do it with anyone,” Skye said.
“And you’d do it with everyone,” Julia retorted.
“Except Walt,” Skye maintained. “I have my standards.”
“This from a woman who’d do Tommy Lee and Jerry Springer.”
“Only if the fate of the world depended on it.”
“I just love it when we get together and talk girl talk,” Angel said, hugging them both. “Female empowerment begins with sharing.”
“I’m not sharing Tommy Lee,” Skye said before looking down at her oversized watch. “I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late for the party in Rock Creek.” She was gone a moment later. Nobody made faster exits than Skye.
Angel took another gulp of wine before speaking. “I vowed there was something I was going to do before this year ended. It’s not an easy thing for me, and I’ve been putting it off much too long as it is. But I really thought I was doing the right thing. Now I’m not so sure.”
Julia tried to keep up. “Is this about the llamas? I’m sure they’re doing well in their new digs.”
“They are doing well, but this isn’t about Ricky and Lucy. It’s about you.”
“Me?”
Angel nodded.
“What about me?”
“I thought I’d have a good way to say it by now,” Angel fretted. “I kept waiting for spiritual illumination, but it never really came.”
“If this is about my eating habits . . .” Julia began.
“It’s not.”
“My lifestyle . . .”
Angel waved her hand. “Not that either.”
“Then what?”
“Your father.”
Julia blinked. “What about him?”
“He’s not dead.”
“What are you talking about? You told me they found his body and buried it in the jungle of Colombia.”
“That’s what happened. He died fighting for what he believed in.”
“Then I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here.”
“Well, the thing is . . . you see . . . the truth is . . . uh . . . he . . . uh . . . he wasn’t actually your biological father.”
Chapter Twelve
Julia
heard Angel’s words, but she couldn’t make sense out of them. She watched her mother’s mouth move, but she couldn’t really process what Angel was saying. Julia’s mind had suddenly turned into Teflon. Nothing was sticking.
A chill swept over her, erasing the warmth the wine had provided. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she scrambled to regain control.
Note to self: Focus, focus, focus.
Finally she found some words. “Not . . . not my biological father?”
Angel shook her head.
She summoned up anger. The emotional heat felt better than the arctic neverland she’d been zapped into seconds earlier. “Is this some kind of a joke?”
“Of course not!”
“You’re telling me that you lied to me all these years? That the man you told me was my father never really was?”
Angel slowly nodded.
“Why? I don’t understand.” The more Julia spoke, the more upset she got. “Why would you lie to me all these years? You, of all people! A person who always claimed to base their life on the truth!”
Angel reached out to touch her, but Julia pulled away. “I did it for you.”
“Did what for me? Lie? Why? What’s wrong with my real father? Was he a drug dealer? Is he in jail?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what’s wrong with him? Is he still alive?”
“Yes, he’s alive, and he’s a corporate capitalist pig.”
“Then why did you get together with him in the first place?”
“I didn’t know who he was at first. We were at a party—”
“Great,” Julia interrupted. “So you had sex with some stranger you just picked up one night at a party? How do you know I’m his and not someone else’s?”
“There was no one else.”
“How long were you two together?”
“A month or so. We shared an Ethics class as UCLA.”
“Who is he?”
Angel nervously plucked at the fuzzy red sweater she was wearing. “His name was Adam.”
“Adam what?”
“That’s all you need to know.”
“Does he know about me?”
Angel shook her head.
“Why not?” Julia demanded.
“I never told him.”
Julia felt curiously numb. The disbelieving chill and the heated anger had both vanished. Now it all felt surreal.
Up and down the block people were preparing for the New Year, their televisions tuned to the impending Times Square celebration. But here . . . inside her home . . . her carefully created sanctuary . . . Julia sat on her comfy couch, disintegrating into tiny pieces.
She remembered a scene in her kitchen with Skye saying,
I can’t believe we’re sisters.
If Angel was telling the truth, then Skye was Julia’s half sister. They shared the same mother but different fathers.
How could her mother have lied to her? The woman who based her life on the cosmic truth had perpetrated the largest lie possible. Julia’s stomach clenched.
“Talk to me, Julia. Tell me what you’re feeling,” Angel begged. “Don’t keep it all bottled up inside.”
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because the guilt was too much for me to continue.”
“So you did it to make yourself feel better. Nice of you to think how I might feel about it.” Julia’s sarcasm was clear.