Elizabeth pushed her hair off her forehead.
“What’s wrong?” Garik asked softly.
She rolled down her window and let the air wash over her face. The August day was warm, but that wasn’t why she felt sick. Aunt Sandy was right. Elizabeth didn’t have any sense at all, and now she was paying for it.
“Elizabeth?” Garik drove slowly, carefully, and glanced at her frequently. He wore a concerned frown and defiant green eyes. “Are you mad at me?”
She wanted to tell him he didn’t need to worry. She wasn’t mad that he’d evaded her question about his past. Right now, she was far too scared about her father to do more than sigh about Garik.
They hit a pothole deep enough to make her teeth snap together, and she burst out, “This road reminds me of my life. It’s going somewhere familiar, but every time I look up, there’s a new obstacle to jump, another hole to fall in.”
“Luckily, you don’t have to wait for the DOT to come in and repave you.”
She was not amused, and showed it with a quick glare and a hard sigh.
“Okay, okay!” Garik patted her bare knee. His touch lingered …
And she liked it.
His hand flexed, then as if he suddenly recalled the divorce, he took his hand away and put it back on the steering wheel. “You know what Dr. Frownfelter said. The second seizure wiped your father’s short-term memory. Forgetting is to be expected after a seizure. Your father has Alzheimer’s, which makes it doubly to be expected.”
“I know. But I was
listening
to my father. I was hearing him, believing him, and I felt as if he was telling my own history, as if what he said put me into context. Now, I don’t know if any of what he said was true.” Even to herself, she sounded whiny.
Garik pulled into the driveway that led into one of the state parks. The picnic area was empty, the restrooms demolished by three tall Douglas firs that had been uprooted and tossed like pick-up sticks. He turned off the motor, and the silence of the forest enveloped them. He faced her, his expression serious and intent. “You tell me. The pictures sure match the stories.”
“You’re right. They do.”
“You know your cousins. You know your aunt and uncle. Did what your father was saying sound real?”
“My uncle and that line about how he used to have a six-pack and now he has a keg—I’ve heard him say that a thousand times. My cousin Hope
is
a bully. She made me miserable. Aunt Sandy is always angry because Uncle Bill won’t push and get ahead in his job, and they live in the same tiny house Dad described. The table is round. There’s a ding in the Sheetrock that’s never been fixed.” Like the ding Frankie Winston had put in the wall when she shoved her chair back.
Garik nodded. “Nothing about the stories your father told seemed like fantasy, and everything was backed up by a photograph.”
“I don’t have a lot of photographs.”
“How many do you need for proof?” When she would have replied, Garik leaned across to console and put his fingers on her lips. “Let’s acquit your father of being devious enough to know which pictures you have and making up stories to go with them. To me, he is guileless, so there’s no criminal intent in his stories. Which makes the stories credible. Even now, he recognizes that he and your mother’s ages were very disparate. He’s not painting a pretty picture of himself. He is, though, painting a pretty picture of their lives … and their love.”
She pushed his hand away from her mouth.
It settled around the back of her neck.
That was okay, a chance to lean into the comfort offered by the man she had loved … did love. “Yes. It’s a relief to hear that they loved each other. Aunt Sandy made me doubt…”
“Honey, your aunt Sandy came out sounding good in your father’s story.”
“Aunt Sandy was angry about my mother’s death. Really angry.”
Garik’s eyes heated until amber coals glowed in the depths. “So she took it out on you … what a sweetheart.”
“Not deliberately, I don’t think. But she worked and she was always tired and they already had three kids … and I think she missed my mother.”
“If she missed Misty, she should have treated Misty’s daughter better.” Garik’s jaw looked like granite.
No use talking to Garik about it. He was a lawman, seeing life in black and white, and Elizabeth’s existence with her aunt and uncle was, in Garik’s eyes, definitely black.
Elizabeth liked his attitude. It helped make up for her cousins’ opinion that Elizabeth had taken family resources they rightly deserved, and so she should pay in blood, pain, and lunch money.
“Look,” Garik whispered.
They watched a doe lead a wary fawn across the park’s campground, the long-legged creatures picking their ways through the debris left by downed trees.
“What do they think of the earthquake and the aftershocks?” Garik said.
“They think it’s all part of nature,” Elizabeth answered. “And they’re right.”
Garik massaged her neck. “Honey, you have to stop worrying about your father. You’re afraid you’re going to lose him too soon.”
What a great explanation. She should agree and let Garik think the best of her. Yet he always seemed to be the guy with the least expectation of exemplary behavior. That freed her to speak the truth. “No, I’m selfish. It’s that my father is so smart. Or was. If there’s one thing I’ve taken comfort in, it’s that he is a highly intelligent individual, like me. But look how fragile his mind is! I don’t want to know a mind can be so easily broken, or slip away silently in the night.”
Garik’s gaze grew sober.
“I know,” she said. “I’m selfish and illogical.”
Wrapping his hand around her neck, he pulled her close and put his forehead against hers. “I swear to God, if I hear you try to understand this stuff logically one more time, I’m going to—”
“Going to what?”
“Spank you.” He sounded half-humorous … and half not.
“That’s not logical,” she said.
He laughed and gave her a quick kiss.
She let him. When he drew back, she remained in place, her eyes closed, her lips parted, breathing him in, tasting him, knowing if he would, he could make her forget …
He leaned in again and gave her a slower kiss, deeper, warmer.
All of her apprehension melted away … for the moment. And to have it melt away for this moment was enough.
She slid her arms around his neck and her hands into his hair. She breathed his name against her lips. “Garik…” And tugged at him.
He gave a muffled curse, and suddenly he tasted of urgent need and total desperation. “Too soon,” he muttered.
“Hurry up,” she answered.
He did. He lowered the back of the seat. Pushed her away from the dash. Climbed over the console and knelt over her, his knees on either side of her hips. He held her head in his hands and kissed her … and kissed her.
He kissed her behind her ear, nuzzled the base of her skull and inhaled, and chuckled softly, as if she was a flower and her fragrance filled him with delight. Drawing back, he looked at her face, really looked at her, his gaze touching her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. He pressed his lips to her eyes and closed them.
Elizabeth placed her hand over his heart, and it beat for her, hard and fast, the rhythm of desire. “Garik…” Her soft voice stroked him from the inside out, slipping into his bloodstream, reminding him of the times they had fought, made up, made love, and fought again … until one day she wasn’t there to fight with, and his soul resided in silence and isolation.
She was here now, sighing in his ear, lightly sliding her hands down to his waist and over his thighs, touching him until his skin warmed and at the same time, goose bumps chilled his spine. She lifted her hips in a slow, voluptuous roll.
He slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, under her panties, into the warm, damp beckoning center of her body.
He had been there before. He knew her scent and how to touch her. He recognized her whimpers and her moans. Yet with him every time was new, real, glorious. Elizabeth always seemed unconquerable, and making her yield and grow wet against his fingers made him feel like the man who owned the world.
She moaned now, softly, then as he pressed firmly, and then deeply, her moan grew … and quavered.
He watched her face, at the way she tilted her head back against the rest and stretched into his touch. Inside, her body flexed against his fingers, inciting him with promises of a sensuality beyond recollection, beyond any previous encounter.
Then she convulsed, quick and hard, coming while he pressed the heel of his hand against her clit. Her fingers dug into his ribs. Her groans were deep, heartfelt, and glorious.
Now. Now he would strip off his jeans and rip off her panties and—
Out of the corners of his eyes, he caught sight of something—someone—moving outside the truck.
A fist slammed against the driver’s-side back window.
Elizabeth startled out of her sexual daze, pushed at Garik, and shoved her skirt down.
At the same time, Garik rose onto his knees, fists clenched, ready to fight for her.
Sheriff Foster—Sheriff Son-of-a-Bitch Foster—stepped up to the open front window. His green gaze swept them scornfully, observing their dishevelment, the way Garik protectively crouched over Elizabeth. “This is a public park,” he announced. “Zip up. Get dressed. No lewd behavior allowed.”
Garik could barely control himself. He wanted to leap across the console, over the steering wheel, and through the window to grab Foster by the throat and choke him. Instead he stared at Foster while the red tide of fury rose from his gut to wash over his face, and the fires of hell kindled in his eyes.
He’d been told he was a fearsome sight while in a rage.
Foster proved it when he stepped back, broke eye contact, and said, “Just doing my job. Thought you might be stranded here. Shouldn’t be, um … teenagers might see and get the wrong idea.”
“Get. Out.” Garik’s voice was soft and lethal.
Foster got. Out.
Garik watched through the rearview mirror as the sheriff climbed in his cruiser, put it in reverse, and drove in the opposite direction from town. The opposite direction from where they were going. “Damned good thing,” Garik muttered. Then he glanced down at Elizabeth.
She sat with her eyes closed, her head bowed, a disgusted moue on her lips.
Garik sank back down on top of her. He slid one arm around her waist and one under her shoulders.
Her head fell back; she opened her eyes and looked at him. “In my whole life I have never been caught making out in a car. I am twenty-seven years old and now, with you, in the middle of a forest in the middle of an earthquake zone … I’m busted.” She wasn’t livid. She wasn’t swearing at him for humiliating her.
Which for some reason made it okay for Garik to explode. “That worthless piece-of-shit sheriff bastard cocksucker.”
“Who am I to argue?” she said.
“How dare he … teenagers, my ass. Nobody’s out here except us people who have places to go and the gas to get there. Teenagers … like we’re the damn corrupters of America’s damn youth who already know more from the Internet than I knew when I was twenty-damned-five.” Garik was raging. He knew he was raging. But damn it! If they’d had another fifteen minutes, just fifteen minutes—less!—he would have been cured of his perpetual hard-on.
Elizabeth petted his cheek. “We couldn’t have done it in here anyway. The space is very constricted.”
“Are you challenging me? Because I assure you, I have done it in a lot smaller vehicles than this. I’ll have you know the first time I got laid was in a girl’s Volkswagen Bug, not one of the later models, either. It was her father’s classic Volkswagen Bug, and it didn’t even have sealed headlights.”
Elizabeth laughed. “I’ll bet you didn’t have sealed headlights, either.”
Okay. She thought he was being stupid. He
was
being stupid. He didn’t care. “I did, too. Carried the headlight cover around in my wallet for two years before I got to use it. Between my body heat and my fierce desire to put it on, it’s a miracle it didn’t disintegrate when I pulled it out of the foil packet.”
Elizabeth started really laughing now, laughing hard enough to weep, so he gave her his handkerchief and let her wipe her eyes.
He liked the sound, liked the way her breasts bounced, liked the rosy color returning to her cheeks. “I was really hoping to put that handkerchief to a different use,” he said wistfully.
Which made her laugh more. “Come on.” She lightly punched his shoulder. “We’ve got to go.”
“You’re right. God damn it.”
The moment had vanished. He had stuff he wanted—needed—to do, and it wasn’t sex with Elizabeth. So he climbed back into the driver’s side, helped her adjust her seat into the upright position, watched her buckle her seatbelt, buckled his and winced at the pressure on his lingering erection, and headed to town.
He hit the potholes a little too hard, and pretended Foster’s balls were under the tires.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Elizabeth looked around Virtue Falls’ streets in wonder. “It is amazing to me that in three and a half days, the town has managed to gain some semblance of normalcy.”
“The place never changes.” Garik barely glanced around, and he did not sound complimentary.
“No, really, Garik. It’s even more amazing when you consider that aftershocks still shake the region, communications with the outside world are mostly limited to emergency and law enforcement agencies, and road travel is almost nil.” A group of four people, locals, stood talking on the sidewalk. She didn’t know their names, but she recognized them, so she smiled and waved.
They stared at her and Garik in the cab of the truck, feebly waved back, then leaned their heads together.
Pleased that she had elicited a courteous response, Elizabeth sat up straighter. “How often in the height of the tourist season do we see the streets so empty?”
“All we need is one good storm, rain coming through the roofs, everybody jam-packed into the emergency shelters, and the whole town will go into meltdown.” He glared at the gossips. “They’re quivering with frustration already.”