Restless

He knew he shouldn’t have come. But over the past few months he’d turned down her every invitation to dinner at their place, preferring to meet them in public and avoid what he knew was a need for a showdown of sorts that had been brewing since last February. He’d known he’d have to accept at some point, and now was as good a time as any.

If only Kevin wasn’t slanting him looks that said he’d like nothing better than to pummel him to a pulp right there and then.

When Gauge had returned for Nina and Kevin’s wedding in August, his long absence had allowed for a lowering of defenses and he’d gladly taken the spot beside Kevin as his best man. But later that day at the reception, Gauge had pushed his luck when he’d asked for a dance with the bride…and found himself right back at square one with his one-time best friend.

Gauge focused on his surroundings now. He was familiar with the house. Kevin had inherited it from his late parents, and Gauge had been there no fewer than a couple of dozen times. Still, it had undergone such intensive renovations he barely recognized it.

“Place looks good,” he said, noticing that the wall between the kitchen and dining room had been knocked out, giving an airier feel. “Amazing what a woman’s touch will do.”

He purposely looked at Kevin, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. But the problem was that Nina had touched them both, in more ways than one.

Nina cleared her throat as she spooned gravy over the thin slices of brisket on his plate. “Actually, Kevin is the one who deserves complete credit.”

Gauge narrowed his gaze on her as the couple shared a glance.

“I tore the place up after…” Kevin began, then looked at Gauge pointedly.

Gauge picked up his fork. It seemed everything he said led back to that one night.

“I didn’t move in until after we married,” Nina said, taking the seat across from him and sliding her hand over Kevin’s. He sat at the head of the table between them. “Kevin wanted me to, but I preferred to wait until we got married.”

Gauge glanced into the living room, where the gift he’d bought them hung on the wall between the front windows and the door. An authentic dream catcher made by the Ojibwa Indians. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. It would be great if it could really filter out all the bad and leave only the good.

He forked the mashed potatoes and put a bite into his mouth. He’d been stupid to think he could just come back. That the three of them could take up where they’d left off before that fateful night when Nina had agreed to allow him and Kevin to fix her up with a blind date. More specifically they’d blindfolded her, and she hadn’t known which of the two she’d slept with.

The food tasted like sawdust in his mouth. He reached for his water glass to help wash it down.

“So, do you know when you might come back to work at BMC?” Nina asked.

Kevin’s fork screeched against his plate and Gauge looked at him. He got the distinct impression that his old friend would like nothing better than for Gauge to just walk out of town and never come back.

Of course, that’s not how he’d felt when Gauge had returned at Nina’s request for their August wedding. Kevin had hugged him like a long-lost brother. And in that one moment, he’d been glad he’d come back. Been reminded of the deep bond of friendship he’d shared with the other man.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing they’d shared.

He looked over at Nina.

God, but she was as beautiful as ever. Like a brilliant desert rose whose fragrance he could smell across the table. Her blond hair had grown out a bit from the way she’d once worn it, but it still hung in a shiny curtain around her pretty face. She had on a clingy red, long-sleeved shirt and black pants that hugged her curves in all the right places. It looked like she’d put on a few pounds, and they suited her. Her breasts were a little larger, her bottom high and shapely.

He picked up his knife and started to cut the meat. Only it refused to be cut.

All three of them appeared to be doing the same thing at once. And no one was having any luck.

“Sorry…the beef seems a little on the tough side,” Nina murmured.

He watched as Kevin folded a piece onto his fork. “I like big bites anyway.”

Gauge grinned, watching him put the food into his mouth and chew. And chew.

He followed suit, folding the slice of meat with the help of his knife and then putting it into his mouth.

It tasted like the belt that held up his jeans. Or what he imagined that must taste like.

The three of them chewed until finally Nina spit the contents of her mouth into her napkin, her cheeks turning an attractive shade of red.

“Mmm,” Kevin said. “It’s…delicious, honey.”

Gauge had to give him credit for swallowing what must have felt like an entire boot in one gulp. Since Kevin had already drained his glass of water, Gauge pushed his own mostly filled glass his way. His friend gave him a look of gratitude as he downed nearly the entire contents.

A sound came from Nina’s direction. Gauge and Kevin looked to see her eyes bright with tears. Gauge discreetly spit his own bite into his napkin and followed Kevin’s lead.

“It’s the best home-cooked meal I’ve had in a long time.”

Only it hadn’t been tears of exasperation that sparkled in her bright blue eyes; rather they were inspired by laughter.

Nina grinned. “That’s because you probably haven’t had a home-cooked meal in so long you’ve forgotten what it tastes like.”

Kevin coughed into his napkin. “Actually, that depends on what home you’re talking about. Because in this house, this is what a home-cooked meal tastes like.”

Laughter burst from the table and created a happy cloud around the three of them that had been sorely missing.

Gauge was glad for the change.

Nina stopped laughing first. “God, I’m sorry. I followed the recipe to a T. I don’t have a clue what happened.”

She picked up Kevin’s plate and forked the meat back into the serving dish.

“Don’t touch my mashed potatoes,” he said. “I love your mashed potatoes.”

Gauge felt suddenly like an outsider. Which was something he was getting used to when in the presence of his two friends. He could accept them being a married couple. But he still hadn’t figured out how to deal with it.

Especially since he couldn’t seem to stop himself from wanting what Kevin had. Namely, Nina.

“I should stick to café fare,” she said. “Soups and sandwiches I can handle.”

“Don’t forget baking,” Kevin reminded.

“Yeah. So long as you don’t mind living on bear claws, I suppose I’m your dream mate.” She rolled her eyes, but her warm smile belied her true feelings as she handed him back his plate. “I’m going to go order pizza. You two clear the table.”

An hour and a half later, Gauge picked up the empty pizza boxes while Kevin went to change the CD in the player in the living room. He took the boxes into the kitchen, where Nina was opening another bottle of wine.

“Thanks,” she said as he passed behind her on the way to the garbage bin.

“You want some help with that?”

She let out a long sigh. “I swear, I’ve never been any good at popping corks.”

Before he could weigh the wisdom of the move, he curved both of his arms around her, pressing his front against her soft, hot bottom. “It’s simple. You just have to remember to keep the corkscrew in perfect line with the bottle.”

Damn, but she smelled good. Like warm, summer sunshine. A field full of wildflowers. Like rain against a hot sidewalk.

With his help, she popped the cork.

“Oh!” she said, and he heard her swallow.

It satisfied him on a level he was loath to admit that his close proximity still affected her.

Suddenly she went stiff against him. Gauge looked up to find Kevin standing in the kitchen doorway, his fists looking like meat mallets on either side of his legs.

“Get the hell away from my wife.”

5

MERELY DRIVING UP to her parents’ house filled Lizzie with memories of the past, and bittersweet thoughts of the present. Her parents had been the family’s foundation, their rock. How could they even consider getting divorced now? After thirty years of marriage? It didn’t make sense.

Lizzie let herself in through the back door, much as she had for nearly the entire twenty-eight years of her life. The house was one of the first that her father had built after opening his own construction company before she was born. While he’d added on to it over the years to accommodate her mother’s wishes for a sunporch and her brother’s for a media room, much remained the same. Decor aside, of course. Her mother claimed that she’d been Martha Stewart before Martha even thought about making her first pinecone wreath. The house had undergone a complete makeover nearly every year, with a change in color schemes and throw rugs and artwork.

Now the living room walls were a soft, homey green, which went well with the upholstered furniture, a cream color festooned with tiny flowers of every color. The furniture had remained the same, chosen because it went with almost everything. Photos of the family, especially the three children, dotted the walls and mantel, documenting the various stages of their lives.

“Mom?” Lizzie called out, putting her purse on the kitchen table and shrugging out of her coat, much as she had countless times before. Only this time there was no answer.

She hadn’t checked the garage to see if either of their cars was there. It was usually a given at this time of night that her parents would both be home. It was just after dinner and right about now they normally would have been sitting at the kitchen table enjoying coffee and dessert or in the family room watching the news or reading.

The silence seemed to verify with deafening intensity that nothing was normal or usual anymore.

Lizzie sighed and looked around the kitchen. When she was growing up, there had always been something to eat. It was one of the many reasons neighborhood children had liked to hang out there. If there wasn’t a pot of something on the stove to sample, there were surely sandwich fixings and a bag of chips somewhere.

The sink was empty, the stove barren and not even the cookie jar held a crumb to lick off the pad of her finger. She opened the refrigerator. Bingo. She smiled as she popped the lid on a container of food and took out a slice of meat loaf.

She sputtered when an overdose of salt assaulted her taste buds.

She moved to the sink and coughed up the meat, running the water to wash it down the drain as she tripped the trash compactor.

“Damn,” she muttered under her breath, having forgotten the phone call of the night before.

She dumped the rest of the “poisoned” meat loaf into the garbage can and placed the container in the dishwasher.

She should have known the situation had deteriorated to this degree, but the absence of broken glass littering the floor had convinced her that things were as they always had been.

She opened the freezer and took out a fudge pop, visually verifying that no tampering had taken place. She hesitantly licked it, sighed with relief and then closed the freezer door. Do what you will with the meat loaf, she thought, but leave anything chocolate alone.

Of course, her father didn’t like chocolate.

Sucking on the sweet, she left the kitchen, walking through the hall toward the foyer. She immediately spotted her mother’s purse on the table near the door.

Huh?

“Dad?”

She stepped down the connecting hall toward the guest room that had once been a den and then a guest room again and rapped lightly on the closed door. No answer. She peeked inside to see the sofa bed open, the sheets and blanket unmade, and then closed the door again.

So her father wasn’t there. But her mother?

A sound from the second floor.

Maybe her mother was taking a bath with her headphones on and hadn’t heard her.

While the Gilbreds weren’t immodest, rare were the times when a bathroom door was locked. Lizzie had spent many a time sitting on the closed commode talking to her mother while Bonnie was immersed in a tub full of bubbles.

Of course, when those same bubbles started to dissipate, she was the first to give her mother privacy…and to spare herself from viewing something that might ruin her for life.

She climbed the stairs, licking her frozen treat as she went. She supposed she could grab a sandwich on the way home. Or see if the Chinese place on Oak Street was still open.

She looked first in the master bedroom to find everything perfectly in its place, the bed made, the connecting bath empty.

Okay…

Had her mother left her purse behind? Was she even now eating out somewhere and reaching for her wallet, only to find she’d left it at home on the foyer table? That was so unlike her mother as to be scary.

Scarier still was the fact that both her parents constantly requested that she act as their attorney. She was grateful she wasn’t a family attorney and was only too quick to point that out whenever the topic raised its ugly head. Which was much too often for her liking.

She checked out the main bathroom just to make sure her mother wasn’t in there, then shrugged and headed to her old room. Bonnie had kept all the kids’ bedrooms decorated the same way as when they’d lived at home, the wallpaper a little harder to change than the color of paint. Lizzie sometimes liked to go into her old room and lie across her white canopy bed, remembering happier times.

Another sound.

Lizzie’s footsteps slowed. If she wasn’t mistaken, it had come from her old room.

She slowly opened the door and then gasped, standing rooted to the spot. Lying across her old bed was her mother, naked, her hands tied above her head to the canopy posts. Her father was kneeling at the edge, an extra large feather held aloft as he swung his head to look at her.

And the sound? The headboard hitting the wall.

Lizzie screamed and ran from the room. So much for leaving a scene before it ruined her for life. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to go into her old bedroom again.

A COUPLE HOURS LATER, Lizzie sat on the leather couch in her family room, flipping through channels on the television, purposely ignoring her vibrating cell phone. Her mother had called no fewer than five times since Lizzie had bolted from the house as if the floor had been covered with burning coals. Much of what had happened since the moment she’d caught her parents playing Pin the Princess on her bed—her childhood bed in her childhood room—had passed in a blur. She couldn’t even remember what she’d done with the fudge pop.

And at this point, she didn’t care, either. She half hoped she’d dropped the melting chocolate on the white carpet of her old room so her mother would have to clean it up…among other things.

Ugh.

Well, she supposed there was one good thing to come out of the situation. Her parents appeared to have reconciled.

She stuck her chopsticks into the rice container and put both down on the coffee table, pulling the chenille throw across her lap up to her chin.

Her cell vibrated and she turned the display so she could read the caller ID. Her sister, Annie.

She answered.

“Okay, what’s up? Mom’s going out of her mind with worry because you aren’t taking her calls.” Leave it to Annie to cut straight to the chase.

Younger than Lizzie by a year, her sister usually managed to keep up the front that her life was all sunshine and roses. But Lizzie knew it was more like dirty diapers and teething rings. The last time she’d talked to Annie, her sister had been a scant inch removed from running away from her family altogether. Which didn’t make any sense to Lizzie, because so far as she could tell, her sister had gotten everything she’d ever wanted out of life. A great husband. A marvelous house. Two beautiful children and another on the way.

Not that little Jasmine and Mason were angels. Far from it. They were loud and smelly and needed constant supervision. And somewhere in there, Annie had to fit in love, as well. Which wasn’t always easy.

So Lizzie and Annie had spent a lot of time on the phone lately. The approach suited Lizzie fine. Since she worked such long hours, she wasn’t physically able to step in to help her sister out much. The issue of children in her own future still hung like a swaying question mark. Not because she’d had any bad experiences or her sister’s situation had turned her off kids. She’d simply been so busy she hadn’t had a chance to think about them.

That, and she had yet to meet a man she loved enough to consider sharing another human being with.

Even Jerry.

So Lizzie paid back her sister’s brevity with a concise rundown of the evening’s events.

A silent pause stretched after she finished. Then, finally, Annie’s laughter filled her ear.

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