“I told them I’d met a friend, okay? I didn’t want to go to Washington.” She started to shift away, but his arm tightened around her.
“Don’t withdraw. We can do more than make love, can’t we?”
“If you want to talk, we can talk about other stuff.” She loathed the idea of describing her strained relationship with her brothers because it would lead to the past, which would lead to her mother and the way Red had affected each of their lives. Lucky both loved and hated her mother, and trying to sift through those conflicting emotions was too painful. Especially with Mike, who saw only her mother’s bad side, who could never understand the complexities of loving a mother like Red.
“Other stuff?” he repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Like the weather? We can talk about that, right? How ’bout the progress of the repairs? Is that superficial enough?”
Pushing away, she sat up. “What’s gotten into you?”
“I just need to understand some things.”
She glared at him. “What things?”
He regarded her evenly, the seriousness of his expression plainly visible in the silver moonlight falling gently through the window. She’d thought the edge in her voice might make him back off, but he only seemed more determined. “I want to know why you’ve hung on to this old place, for one. I also want to know what you did during the six years you were gone, what you plan to do with the next six. And I want to know why you’ve never been with another man and can’t trust anyone enough to lose the wariness that insulates you from everyone and everything.”
Whoa, this was more than she’d expected. Panic welled up inside her. She was in love with Mike. She knew that, had always known on some level, probably because she’d been in love with him almost as long as she could remember. But he was asking too much. In order to survive the inevitable, when loyalty to his family overcame his interest in her, she needed to keep her most tender self—her thoughts and feelings and painful memories—from him. “Tonight’s been fun, but I think it’s time for you to go,” she said.
He didn’t move. “You can’t manage it, huh?”
The challenge he tossed out provoked her, but she couldn’t answer. Tears began to blur her vision. Why wouldn’t he accept what they had right here, right now, and let the rest go? It had been so peaceful in the aftermath of their lovemaking….
“I’d like to hear how you felt about Morris,” he said softly. “Why you didn’t come to his funeral.”
At the mention of Morris’s name, a mutinous tear slipped down Lucky’s cheek. Cursing her own weakness, she prayed Mike wouldn’t see it, but she knew he had when he reached up and wiped it away.
“Come on, Lucky,” he coaxed. “Open up.”
She struggled to remain defiant and unbending. But her emotions were getting the best of her. And Mike was pulling her to him, putting his arms around her, kissing her temple, making it that much harder to hold everything inside.
“It’s okay,” he said as her tears dropped onto his chest. “It’s just the two of us.”
She listened to his heartbeat. She could take Mike into her bed because making love with him was simply the physical expression of what she’d always felt. Talking about the past, bringing up issues and feelings that hurt to even think about, was much more difficult.
He was waiting, letting the power of his expectation work on her….
Fine, she decided. If he wanted to see the ugly truth, she’d show it to him.
Drawing a deep breath, she started talking. “I remember hearing the bed banging against the wall in my mother’s room. I hated that sound. I used to turn the television up so loud it echoed through the whole house.”
The hand that had been stroking her stilled. “When your mother was with my grandfather, you mean?”
She chuckled humorlessly. “No. I think Morris was impotent by then. At least my mother screamed that at me once during one of our arguments.”
Mike’s muscles went rigid. “I knew she wasn’t faithful, but you’re saying Red slept with other men, right here, in my grandfather’s house?”
Lucky nodded, oddly satisfied that her words stung him as badly as they stung her. “One day when I knew my mother was with someone in the bedroom and…and the TV was blaring and I was wishing I was miles away, the phone rang.” She cringed, remembering. “It was Morris. ‘How’s my girl? Finished your homework? Where’s your mother?’”
She paused but Mike didn’t say anything.
“I lied,” she went on. “I told him she was getting her hair done.”
“If you really hated what your mother was doing, why didn’t you try to stop it? Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”
The gruffness of Mike’s voice told her how much it bothered him that a man he loved had been made into such a fool. But Mike didn’t understand Lucky’s position, because he’d never felt so frightened or so helpless.
“I couldn’t,” she said. “I was sick inside, terrified. If Morris found out, if he was forced to acknowledge what was happening, he’d—” her voice broke but she made herself continue “—he’d leave us.”
Several seconds passed. “Were you afraid of being thrown out on the street? Or of going back to your previous life?”
“I was afraid of losing the only person who’d ever truly loved me.” That statement laid her soul bare, and she knew it, but there it was. He’d wanted to know why she was the way she was and she’d more or less told him.
“You loved Morris.”
She couldn’t respond.
“Why didn’t you come back when he died?”
“Because I didn’t want to see my mother. And I knew my presence would only upset your family, which would bring my mother into the situation again and turn Morris’s funeral into a circus.”
Silence fell as he continued to knead her back.
“Was it a good service?” she asked.
“It was.” He put a finger under her chin and raised her face toward him. “Who were the men your mother slept with? Do I know them?”
“I won’t tell you that. It’ll only make you hate them.”
“Some of them are probably my friends.”
“Maybe not friends but certainly acquaintances.”
When he cursed, Lucky sat up and dashed an impatient hand across her wet cheeks. “You’re the one who wanted to know,” she said accusingly and started to get up. “I’ll help you find your clothes.”