Mother, Please! (16 page)

M
EL FOUND
J
ASON
waiting on her porch, sitting on the top step, with a chocolate-brown Lab puppy asleep in his lap. “Hey,” she said, feeling all soft and mushy at just the sight of him.

“Hey, yourself.” Despite the clear tension in his long, rangy, beautiful body, his smile was slow and lazy and just for her.

“What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you.” Picking up the puppy and tucking it against his chest, he rose. “I’ve been waiting for you all my life, Mel.”

“Jason—”

“No, let me say this. I have to say this. Ever since my accident I’ve taken a what-the-hell attitude about life. Casual. Cavalier, even. Mostly because I knew exactly how short life could be, but also because nothing was worth stressing over if I could die any second.”

“Oh, Jason. I understand. I—”

“I was wrong, Melissa. I took it all wrong, and everything in my life, including my writing, suf
fered. Hell, I couldn’t even figure out that my hero’s problem was
my
problem.
I
couldn’t find my way home, and that didn’t make any sense because I was living in a house I’d known all my life. But it wasn’t about the damn house, it was about
me,
and what I did with my heart. Yeah, life’s short, but I need to live it, I need to live it every single day, even if it means getting hurt. Are you following me?”

“Yes. I agree with you. I…I went to Los Angeles to get the most out of my life.”

He looked grim. And, if she wasn’t mistaken, just a little vulnerable. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

She nodded, and his body tensed even further, but he let out a long breath and a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “I’m glad,” he said, then shook his head. “No, scratch that, I’m not glad, I’m—”

She put her fingers over his mouth, and stepped closer so that their bodies brushed together. The puppy mewled a little but stayed asleep. “I found that I don’t belong there anymore,” she said. “I belong here. With Rose trying to boss me around, with crazy patients coming in and out of my clinic, and…”

He tugged her hand loose from his mouth but kept her fingers tight in his. “And…?”

“And you.” She cupped his lean jaw and kissed him. Kissed both sides of his mouth before pulling back. “I belong here with the man who wanted me so badly he kept coming in with animals just to see me.”

He winced. “I’m so sorry—”

She kissed him. “I know,” she whispered against his mouth. “I get it now. You care. You all care. And God help me, but I care back. I missed you when I was gone, even though it was only one day. I missed you so much. And I came to understand something, Jason. I came to understand what I’ve been missing all these years.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Love.”

With his one available hand, he squeezed her so close the puppy mewled again and lifted its sleepy head.

“She’s adorable,” Melissa whispered. “Another of Rose’s?”

“No.” He tipped her chin up to see into her eyes. “Back to that love thing. Are you—”

“Yes.” She swallowed hard. “I’m saying that I’ve fallen in love with you. I know it’s silly, it’s such a short time, but I’m figuring we have lots more time to figure it all out.”

“Yeah.” He looked down. “I came here with a shameless bribe thinking I’d have to talk you into
letting me see you. I said it before, and I meant it. I love you, Mel.”

Her eyes filled. “Oh, Jason.” They kissed, sweet at first, but quickly heat and need jockeyed for position, until the puppy let out a surprisingly loud bark for such a little thing, right in their faces.

Jason grinned. “Melissa, meet your bribe. Sissy.”

“Sissy?”

The little puppy blinked and yawned wide, her eyes a dark, dark brown and filled with adoration.

“She’s a big sissy. She cried all last night. Please say you’ll take her.” He kissed her again. “I think a vet should have her very own pet, don’t you?”

She’d never had a pet before, never. She’d never had time, she’d never had space, she’d never—

She’d never wanted to open her heart. She took Sissy into her arms and melted when the puppy set her head on her chest and sighed as if she’d found home.

They’d all found home.

Alison Kent

To my daughters, Megan and Holly.

For living their own lives and allowing me to live mine.

I love you both.

Smoochies.

A
VERY
R
ICE TURNED
onto the street where she lived, just in time to see her mother’s white Toyota Camry back out of their shared driveway and head away from the three-story Victorian.

So much for their weekly ritual of coffee and croissants. And for the second weekend in a row, no less. Her mother was taking this business of moving on with her life too far. Especially as her plans obviously included leaving her daughter behind.

They’d shared Saturday-morning coffee and croissants—the croissants fresh from Avery’s bakery—since the death of Avery’s father five years before. For the past month, though, Suzannah Rice had been busy doing her own thing to the exclusion of the shared things that had been a big part of both of their lives for so long.

Avery wasn’t complaining, though a little voice whispering in her ear argued otherwise before going on to tell her to get over it already. She readily admitted her quasi-isolation and homebody tenden
cies were no one’s fault but her own. But she’d found a great comfort in safety—especially after the near disaster she’d barely escaped when she had taken a risk years ago.

Another three houses and she bumped her pickup into the driveway. The driver’s-side door was hit twice with a blast from the sprinkler dousing the front lawn—and spraying the front of the house, she realized. She’d have to use the back door into her mother’s kitchen rather than the main entrance that directly accessed the staircase to her second-story apartment in the converted triplex.

Of course, doing that meant making her way down the long narrow driveway and around the overgrown SUV that belonged to her mother’s third-floor tenant and the longtime bane of Avery’s existence, David Marks. David, the know-it-all who was constantly riding her about still living at home with her mother when she didn’t live at home with her mother at all. She only lived in the same house. Yes, it was the house she’d grown up in, but it was now very clearly a multitenant dwelling, which he should know since he lived here, too.

Wicker bread basket hooked over her elbow, Avery shut off the engine, climbed down from the truck and pocketed her keys. Slamming the door apparently drew David’s attention—though what he was doing in her mother’s kitchen, she didn’t have
a clue—because he was standing in the open doorway before she’d even climbed the first of the six back steps.

“Hey,” he said, wiping his hands on a workman’s knobby red rag and getting on her nerves by just standing there, wiping, silent now, his jeans slung way too low and his chambray shirt hanging open as if he’d just slipped it on. “What’s up?”

“Just me and the breakfast trying to stay dry.” She walked up one step, two, three.

“You just missed your mother.”

“So I saw.” Four steps. Five. She stopped there, leaving the sixth step between them because he hadn’t moved except to tuck the red rag into his front pocket. He’d been so much easier to take when she’d led cheers and he’d run around the Tatem, Texas, football-field sidelines wearing their high school mascot’s tornado costume.

A tornado she’d always thought looked more like an upside-down soft-serve cone than a threatening storm—even if later, she admitted, the threat had been real. For all she knew, it still was. He made her nervous—another admission she couldn’t afford not to make, just as she couldn’t afford not to keep her wits about her. Their history left her less than certain where she stood with him today.

He’d been just as maddening fifteen years ago as he was now, but from age eight to eighteen he’d
been nothing but a muddle of arms and legs and freckles who’d bugged the crap out of her and the rest of her friends with his stupid jokes and lame attempts to get her attention.

Now he was all broad chest and six-pack abs, with a disheveled head of thick, sandy-brown hair, fans of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, a short sexy goatee, and a really fine backside that…

“What are you doing?” she asked, pulling the basket of croissants away from his greedy, groping fingers.

“Looking for breakfast. I’m wasting away to nothing in here.” He wiggled both brows in a suggestive way that drove her nuts. “And you know how I feel about your buns.”

Oh, good grief.
“You have way too much meat on your bones to be starving,” she said, blushing as his eyes grew all sleepy looking when she knew he wasn’t the least bit tired. She pushed past him into the kitchen that would’ve been classified as sixties retro if it hadn’t been the original decor. With all the changes her mother was making these days, Avery wouldn’t be surprised to find a kitchen makeover next on the list.

Why in the world Suzannah had ever rented the top-floor apartment to David was a bone of contention Avery hadn’t quit gnawing. Her mother claimed that David, now Suzannah’s colleague on
the faculty at Tatem High, deserved to feel at home, returning as he had to West Texas, to the town he’d left on the heels of scandal, to teach the high school’s one and only computer science class.

Avery agreed in theory. She couldn’t imagine a better mentor for the high school’s whiz kids than Tatem’s team mascot-cum-resident geek. But in practice…no. David did not deserve to feel at home when she was at the root of that old scandal and when the home in question was hers. Or at least above hers.

And when getting to his home meant sharing the same staircase and having to pass each other between the first and second floors. A staircase that really was much too narrow for a man as broad as David Marks.

He shut the kitchen door behind her, and a shiver of intuitive apprehension told her that walking through her mother’s living room of roses and mahogany and chintz and up the stairs to her own apartment before either of them said another word would be the smartest thing she could do. He made her uneasy in ways she hadn’t taken time to define since he’d moved in ten months ago, and she feared that lapse would prove to be her undoing.

Then he flipped the dead bolt, locking the back door. She lifted one brow in question and tried to
breezily add, “That’s really not necessary, you know.”

He shrugged, obviously not sharing her opinion. She further pled her case. “There hasn’t been an incident of breaking and entering in Tatem since Buck Ester climbed the trellis to propose and crashed through Yvette Lapp’s bedroom window.”

Long lashes sweeping slowly down then back up, David shrugged and headed toward her. “Better safe than sorry, I always say.”

See? This was why she didn’t like having him here. He said things like that to make her crazy. Now she wanted to ask about his years away but couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. She’d promised her mother that she wouldn’t bring up the past that had driven David away from Tatem in the first place and now, fifteen years later, had brought him back.

She set the bread basket on the white-and-gold-flecked Formica top of her mother’s old aluminum-legged kitchen table. David dropped to his back on the floor and wormed the upper half of his body up into the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.

“What are you doing here anyway?” she asked, though the answer was fairly obvious, and her question was actually more a case of wondering why.

“I ran into your mother this morning when I went out for the paper.” David’s voice was muffled and punctuated with the sound of metal tools on
metal pipes. “She was watering the flower beds and asked if I could take a look at her clog.”

“Weird.”

“What?”

“She hasn’t said a word about a plumbing problem.”

The banging and grunting stopped, and David blew out a long sigh. “Maybe she thought she could handle it.”

“It’s just that usually Buck Ester takes care of her home repairs. I would’ve called and scheduled him for this morning if I’d known she needed him to stop by.”

“Your mom’s a smart cookie, Avery.” David shifted on his hip, and drew up one knee. His jeans stretched tight in all the right places, hung loose in all the right others. “Give her some credit here for taking care of her own business. Shouldn’t be that hard for you to do. You know as well as I do that she’s more than capable.”

“True.” Avery hardly needed this man’s reminder of her mother’s growing independent streak. “Not that you know her
that
well.”

“She taught me English for most of four years. And now we’re on the same faculty.” Another grunt and David went back to his banging.

“She taught four years of English to everyone at Tatem High.”

“And I’ve lived and worked with her now for ten months.”

“You haven’t lived
with
her. You’ve rented living space
from
her.” She wasn’t sure why the distinction mattered, but it did. Especially with the way David seemed to be making himself at home.

“Believe what you want, Avery.”

The aluminum legs of her chair scraped the linoleum like nails on a chalkboard as she pulled it out to sit. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

David grumbled beneath his breath. “Whatever you want it to mean. Obviously you’re the expert here on your mother.” He paused, grew still, as if making sure he had her full attention before he added, “Bringing breakfast when she’s not even here and all that.”

And why wasn’t she here? Surely Suzannah had done no more than make a run to the grocery for sugar, butter or cream. Avery noted the gurgle and steam from the coffeemaker and the white ceramic mug sitting on the countertop. Oh, but she needed coffee. “So…she asked you to look at her sink, then just left you here?”

Again with the grumbling and grunting and banging—each one louder than the last. “Yeah. But she locked up her jewelry and extra cash first.”

“That’s not what I meant.” And it wasn’t, she thought, cringing. It was just that she’d had trouble
saying anything around David and making her meaning clear for ten months now.

No, that wasn’t true.

Since football season of their senior year at Tatem High and that night beneath the bleachers neither of them had spoken of since, she’d been unable to say anything to him without wondering what he expected of her…if he expected anything at all.

Not knowing bothered her. It bothered her a lot. “I just thought she might’ve mentioned where she was going. Or maybe when she’d be back?”

“Nope. Not a word.”

Avery sighed. She really felt out of sorts here. Over the past five years, she’d become quite used to her routine. A routine filled with work, church and time spent with her mother. A routine she told herself was part of a very good and comfortable life, one that made her happy. She sighed again.

“Coffee’s done. Would you like me to pour you a cup?” she asked, out of her chair now and on her way for one of her own. Years of observing her mother at work in Suzannah’s circle of friends had taught Avery that food and drink were the great equalizers when it came to discomfiting situations.

And no one had ever unbalanced Avery Rice more than David Marks. She had no explanation except chemistry, and being a baker, not a chemist,
limited her knowledge of chemical reactions to that of yeast.

He squirreled around and backed out from under the sink, staring up at her with lazy, sleepy eyes that sent her stomach tumbling. He gave her a wink and a grin and nodded. “I’d kill to have you pour me a cup,” he said, and she turned away before her stomach fell completely to her feet.

Behind her, he got up. She sensed rather than saw his movements as he washed his hands and rebuttoned his shirt, and she had to admit relief. It was impossible to think of him as the soft-serve tornado mascot when his body brought to mind all things…hard.

Chair legs squeaked as David sat, and she found creamer, sweetener and sugar to add to the tray bearing the two full mugs. She turned in time to see him lift the corner of the white linen napkin covering the bread basket and decided they might as well eat while the croissants were hot.

She turned to the refrigerator for the ever-present bowl of butter balls and a jar of her mother’s homemade peach jam, desperately thankful for the distraction and knowing she would only be able to get through this shared breakfast by avoiding his eyes.

David was pouring cream in his coffee when she returned to her chair. “You’re a good woman, Av
ery Rice. No matter how many times in the past I may have said otherwise.”

“The croissants won’t be good when they’re cold,” she said, refusing to rise to his bait. “That’s all.”

“Right,” he said, splitting a roll with his hands then stabbing a butter ball with the end of his knife. “Tell yourself that if it makes it easier.”

“Makes what easier?” she asked, slipping a knife through the layers of her croissant.

He lifted a brow as if the answer and not steam from her coffee rose to heat her face. “The truth.”

“And what truth might that be?” she asked, because she wasn’t going to allow him to win too easily.

He sat back, sighed, his hands at his sides holding to the chair’s aluminum tubing. “Why don’t you trust me alone in your mother’s house?”

Avery returned her croissant to her plate and twisted her hands into the napkin in her lap. She didn’t like her mother leaving him alone, but for none of the reasons he was probably thinking.

The simple explanation was that he’d surprised her, and she hadn’t had time to think, to process the scope of the situation. She realized that her mother would never have gone out had trust been an issue.

The more complicated version was that what she
was feeling was a long-dormant uncertainty about her history with David finally rising to the surface.

She glanced around the kitchen that had changed so little from her childhood and not at all since her father’s passing. It was the idea of David in this space that had always been her refuge causing her now to act out.

“I do trust you. I apologize for leading you to believe otherwise.” She breathed deeply. “It was just strange…and a bit…difficult to understand you being here.”

David leaned forward again, his forearms on the edge of the table, his hands held in loose fists. He’d buttoned his shirt wrong, she noticed, as her gaze slid away from his to the relative safety of his now-covered chest. “Avery?”