Authors: Eileen Goudge
She thought of Aubrey, and before she knew it, she was reaching for the phone. It had been more than a week since she’d seen him. He’d had a recording session in L.A., followed by a concert. Not that she minded his absences—just the opposite, in fact. Wasn’t it wonderful they both had their own lives, that neither of them had to sit home pining? Except now … well, right now she
needed
him—a need as profound as the relief that swept through her when he answered.
“Hello?” He sounded distracted.
“It’s me.” Was she interrupting something?
“Gerry.” His voice softened. “I was just thinking of you.”
She relaxed. “You were?”
“This very moment. You must have read my mind.”
“Good. If I’m a mind reader, I shouldn’t have any trouble finding another job.”
“What’s this? Don’t tell me you’ve been fired!” The concern in his voice was like a soothing balm.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” she told him. “Look, I don’t want to get into it over the phone. Can I see you?”
“I’m free tonight.”
“I was thinking more like right now.” She was quick to add, “If you’re not too busy, that is.”
“Aren’t you at work?”
“I could always play hooky.” God knew she was entitled. Hadn’t she given herself heart and soul to Blessed Bee, most days scarcely taking so much as a coffee break?
There was a pause at the other end, and her heart seemed to hover motionless between beats. Then came the answer she’d been hoping for. “Shall I pick you up?”
“No … thanks. I’m on my way.” She wasn’t so distraught she couldn’t drive, but bless Aubrey for wanting to saddle up his white charger.
Fifteen minutes later she was climbing Isla Verde’s steep, tree-lined drive in her car. She waved to old Guillermo, taking a break from the gardening, and he brought a finger to his lips to warn her not to say anything to Lupe about the cigarette he was enjoying. She smiled back, turning an invisible little key in the corner of her mouth the way she had with Sam when they were kids: His secret was safe with her.
She was pushing open the courtyard gate when Aubrey emerged from the house to greet her, dressed in a suit and tie as if she’d caught him on his way out the door. At once, she knew she had.
“You shouldn’t have canceled your plans for me,” she scolded lightly.
He kissed her on the mouth. He smelled faintly and deliciously of Lupe’s strong coffee laced with cocoa. “It wasn’t important—just lunch with Gregory.” His agent, she recalled. “I told him something had come up. He was most understanding.”
“Now I feel twice as guilty.”
“Don’t. I think we’re beyond that, don’t you?”
He studied her in the dappled green light filtering through the tall ferns, and she had the strangest sense of being stored away for future reference. She felt a sudden chill. Was he growing tired of her? If so, there was nothing to suggest it. More likely he felt as she did, that this wasn’t what they’d bargained on. Somewhere along the way it had crossed the line between intimate friendship and … something more.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the ladies,” she teased, but her heart wasn’t in it. What if Aubrey decided to end it? Once she might have been all right with it. But now …
“Only the pretty ones.” He flashed her a mock seductive smile, one eyebrow arched.
“Aren’t you going to ask me in?”
“I thought we’d take a drive instead. I had Lupe pack us a picnic lunch.”
“Sounds like heaven.” If anyone was a mind reader, it was Aubrey. A picnic was just what she felt like.
“Wait here. I won’t be a moment.”
He reappeared minutes later in khakis and an open-collared shirt, toting a wicker hamper. “It’s not exactly Fortnum and Mason,” he said. “But it’s as good as you’ll get on such short notice. Come, we’ll take my car.”
They strolled out onto the drive, their feet crunching over the drift of dried blossoms from the acacia tree overhead. More were scattered like tiny fallen stars over the hood of the Jaguar parked outside the garage. He escorted her around to the passenger side and held open the door. Gerry sank into the glove-leather seat with a sigh. She could easily get used to this, no doubt about it.
The morning’s tension began to drain away as they sped along the winding, tree-lined road. Aubrey drove too fast, hugging the curves, but for some reason it didn’t worry her. She sensed that he was in control.
Before long they were turning onto Schoolhouse Road, named after the town’s original one-room schoolhouse, now a dilapidated old wreck. In the fifties, it had enjoyed a brief second life in
Stranger in Paradise,
the movie that had put their valley on the map. She recalled how Sam’s mother used to enthrall them with the story of the day she’d visited the set as a guest of the director, a legendary ladies’ man, which had left Gerry and Sam to speculate endlessly. Sam insisted it was innocent; Gerry hadn’t been so sure.
The road grew steeper, and soon they were rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned Horse Creek. They passed several designated picnic areas, then the turnoff for the Horse Creek Inn. Gradually the dense trees began to thin, giving way to rolling hills purled with grapevines. Far off in the distance she could see the turreted Horse Creek Winery, modeled after a French chateau.
Aubrey turned onto a dirt access road herringboned with tire tracks, and soon they were bumping along between rows of vines, dust boiling up around them.
“Aren’t we trespassing?” she asked.
“Theo and I are old friends,” he replied with a Gallic shrug. “He won’t mind.”
He was referring to Theodore Carrillo, of course, owner and current patriarch of the winery and a descendant of the
gente de razón.
“Is there anyone you
don’t
know?” she asked with a smile.
When she’d belonged to the country club, she’d occasionally seen Theo around. She recalled when Mike, who fancied himself quite the connoisseur, had gone out of his way to butter up the old man at one of the functions, and been politely, but summarily, snubbed.
“Theo throws a big party every year at harvesttime,” Aubrey told her. “There’s an enormous vat of grapes, and all the ladies take turns stomping them.”
“Sounds messy.” Gerry tried to picture herself, skirts held high, grapes squishing between her toes, but the only thing that came to mind was an episode of
I Love Lucy.
“It was Theo who convinced me to come here after”—he faltered—“when I decided to leave L.A.”
His wife. It always came back to that, didn’t it? Gerry realized to her dismay that she was jealous—of a dead woman.
They pulled to a stop before a windbreak and climbed out. The only things moving were the pale scarf of dust floating over the road down which they’d come and the leaves of the laurels overhead, rustling in the breeze. From somewhere off in the distance came the faint drone of a tractor, and closer by the hollow chuckle of water making its way along an irrigation pipe.
Aubrey spread the blanket over the soft grass beneath the trees, and Gerry kicked off her shoes, hesitating only a moment before muttering, “Oh, what the hell,” and lifting her skirt to shuck off her panty hose as well. She sank down, stretching out on her stomach with her chin propped on her hands. How long since she’d last played hooky? Not since she was in school. The only difference was that back then she hadn’t had anyone to gaze appreciatively at her legs.
Aubrey unpacked the hamper: roast chicken, potato salad, Brie, and a loaf of French bread. From a freezer pouch he produced a bottle of Chenin Blanc bearing the distinctive Horse Creek label. “It seemed only fitting,” he said, uncorking it and pouring them each a glass. He lifted his in toast, the sunlight catching on its rim and wheeling outward in a brilliant flash. “To a day that was salvaged after all.”
Gerry, surprised to find that she had an appetite, ate half the chicken, most of the potato salad, and several slices of bread slathered with cheese before collapsing onto her back with a groan. The sun had passed its zenith, leaving the sky the deep, crystalline blue of a mountain-fed lake. Gazing up at it, tipsy from the wine, she imagined them to be on a raft slowly drifting downstream.
She told him then: about the disastrous morning with Sister Clement, her trip to San Francisco with Claire, and Andie’s going to her father’s. When she’d run out of breath, he observed lightly, “It sounds as if you’ve been trying to please everyone and not doing a very good job of pleasing yourself.”
“Mothers don’t have that luxury.”
“Andie strikes me a sensible girl. She’ll come around.”
“What makes you so sure?”
He smiled. “Call it an educated guess.”
“How do I know she won’t be better off with her father?”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“I’m not even sure I’ll be employed.”
Aubrey brought a hand to her face, his fingertips like soft leaves brushing over her cheek. “I could find you one at double the salary just by picking up the phone.”
She sat up, fixing him with a stern look. “It’s not your job to fix my life.”
He shook his head, chuckling softly. “Believe me, I wouldn’t dare. You’d shoot any man who tried.”
What am I trying to prove?
Gerry wondered. That she didn’t need a man in her life? That she wasn’t in love with Aubrey? Did she think that if she said it enough times, in enough ways, it would become true?
She looked at his long legs stretched out on the blanket. He still had on the expensive calfskin loafers, now filmed with dust, that he’d worn with his suit. It seemed the perfect metaphor for Aubrey himself: a man living in two worlds who didn’t fully belong in either one.
She lifted her glass. “Here’s to friendship … and great sex. Not necessarily in that order.”
“Ah, a woman after my own heart.” He touched his glass to hers.
It was the kind of banter she’d once found sexy and at the same time safe—for it kept her from having to do more than skim the surface. But now she found herself hating it, while at the same time feeling helpless to change course.
Maybe it was for that reason, or maybe just the wine, but she blurted, “I’m sure you’ve known your share of the other kind—women who thought it their Christian duty to jump in and rescue you from the burning pyre.” She saw his expression darken, and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, Aubrey, I’m sorry. It just slipped out.”
“It’s all right.
Not
talking about her doesn’t make it any easier.” He placed a hand over hers. “I know you felt bad about what happened at the wedding, but the truth is, I rather think Isabelle would have liked her music being played on such a happy occasion.”
Gerry felt something flit over her heart. “She sounds like someone I would have liked.”
“Oh, she had her faults.” Usually, when speaking of his wife he appeared remote, as if in a place she had no way of reaching. But now he seemed to want to tell her about Isabelle.
“Such as?” Gerry was suddenly curious.
“She could be a prima donna at times.”
Gerry wondered if he saw her as just the opposite: steady and dependable. Good for a laugh and to service his sexual needs. “I suppose it goes with the territory.” Isabelle had been celebrated in her own right, after all.
“She was a bit of a hypochondriac as well. Always running to the doctor for one thing or another.” His voice was tender and he smiled at the irony of it—Isabelle couldn’t have known that what was in store for her would be far worse than any of the ailments she’d imagined.
She studied his strong Gallic profile. In the light filtering through the branches overhead, she could see darker strands amid the silver hair that fell over his collar. He looked relaxed and happy. As if he’d at last made peace with his wife’s death—or perhaps with the fact that such peace was unattainable.
Gerry felt relaxed as well. On this day when it had seemed nothing could go right, suddenly she could find no wrong. When he leaned close and touched his lips to hers, she tasted the wine on his breath, sweet and tantalizing. It had been a while since they’d made love, and with a teasing laugh, she wound her arms around his neck and rolled onto her back, pulling him with her.
It was crazy, she knew; someone might see them—once with Mike, on a hike, when they’d been fooling around in the woods, a young woman had come bursting into the clearing—but right now she didn’t care. The threat of discovery only made it more thrilling.
She took off her blouse. She was glad she was wearing her best lace bra and not one held together with a safety pin. (Not that Aubrey would have minded—he claimed to like her even in her rattiest old underwear.) She shivered as he removed it and traced each nipple with the tip of his tongue. Softly, oh so softly. Setting off an avalanche of sensation. She offered no protest when he reached under her skirt and pulled her panties down over her ankles, sending them sailing out where they snagged on a bush.
Aubrey slipped off his shoes and tossed his socks onto the bush alongside her panties. Moments later he was straddling her. His unbuttoned shirt caught the breeze, blowing out around him. She ran her fingers through the hair on his chest, which was dark and soft, like the pelt of some sleek, exotic animal.
He gazed down at her with a kind of reverence. “Christ, you’re beautiful. You have no idea.”
Aubrey bent down to cover her mouth with his. The sun was a molten glow behind her closed eyelids, and she had a sudden sense of falling upward. With a soft moan she lifted her legs, wrapping them about his hips, and felt him slide into her. This was how it had felt making babies, she thought in some distant, still-functioning part of her brain—an added dimension, a sense of something greater than just two people. Only with Aubrey there would be no babies. Perhaps no future, either.
Then she
was
falling. Spinning toward the sun like a planet cut loose from its orbit. She clutched hold of Aubrey, tightening her legs and burying her face in the crook of his neck as she cried out—a sharp cry, like someone in pain. Anyone looking on from afar might have mistaken it for a struggle, a woman fighting for her life, and they wouldn’t have been entirely wrong. For in the midst of her pleasure Gerry had the sense of something being wrenched from her against her will.