CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Olivia
MY MOTHER IS MAKING HERSELF COMFORTABLE in the apartment. Her lacy bras and panties are hung up in the bathroom to dry, and a beauty case rests on the counter. Long strands of blond hair weave through the bristles of my brush.
I yank them out with a comb and toss them in the trash before dragging the brush through my own hair. I peer at myself in the mirror, pinching my cheeks to add color to them. I put on a green sheath dress and low heels, grab my purse, and go into the living room.
Crystal’s suitcase is open and overflowing with soft, pretty clothes. She’d told me she was going out for dinner—in the parlance of my childhood, that also meant “I’m going to find a club, maybe a man”—and I’m glad I don’t have to explain my own plans for the evening.
I stop at an Italian restaurant and get some takeout before going to the Wildwood Inn. The instant Dean opens the cottage door, my heart plummets. Tension coils through him like wire, and his expression is set with a combination of anger and frustration that sears me through the soul.
I attempt a smile and hold up the paper bag.
“Takeout manicotti and salad. Our second-date dinner.”
Dean takes the bag from me and sets up the containers on the table, though I’m not hungry. He doesn’t move to sit down and eat either. My skin prickles with foreboding. A longing to return to our private weekend hits me in the chest so hard that I almost can’t breathe.
Dean turns to face me. Restrained energy vibrates from him, his innate urge to do something stifled by the dictate that he can’t do anything.
“Is your mother gone?” he asks.
I shake my head. A current ripples between us. Dean narrows his gaze.
“What?” he asks.
“Don’t be mad.”
“Oh, shit, Liv… what?”
I take a breath. “I offered to let her stay with me.”
He stares at me. I approach and put my trembling hand on his chest. His heart is racing.
“Dean, I know it doesn’t make sense to you, that you won’t understand, but—”
“Why, because I’m such a caveman?” He shoves my hand away and stalks to the other side of the room. “What won’t I understand, Liv? That your mother is poison? That she hurt you? That you’ve spent your life struggling with everything you went through?”
“That I asked her to stay with me so that she won’t poison my life any more than she already has.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“If she didn’t stay with me, she’d end up at Max Lyons’s house.”
He blinks in disbelief. “When did Max Lyons become part of this?”
“He was at the café this morning. I know my mother, Dean. I know she’d end up with him.”
“So let her. Why does it matter to you?”
“I don’t want her getting involved with Allie’s father. I know it sounds strange, but I don’t want her insinuating her way into my circle of friends.”
His mouth compresses. “You’re right. I don’t get it.”
“I have a life that’s mine, not hers. I don’t want her to be part of it. And I don’t expect her to stay much longer anyway. She never stays in one place very long.”
Dean exhales a heavy breath. “I hate that she was the cause of everything you went through.”
“But everything I went through led me directly to you.”
And aside from my friends, I really don’t want my mother getting near my husband. I’m suddenly relieved that he’s leaving Mirror Lake again soon.
“Our marriage is what matters to me now, Dean.” I take off my coat and toss it over a chair. “I want this whole mess with the OJA cleared up, and I want you back home where you belong.”
He gazes at me for a moment before turning to pace across the room. Silence, tense with things unspoken, fills the space between us. Anxiety clutches my stomach.
Dean stops by the window and turns again, sliding his hands into his pockets. The sheer masculine beauty of him floods me with awe—the way his shirt stretches across his chest and shoulders, the swathe of hair falling across his forehead, those perceptive, intelligent eyes that conceal so many complex ideas.
“Liv.” He shakes his head. “I…”
His voice fades. I curl my hand around the back of the chair. I sense a sudden tangle of thoughts in him, his struggle to figure out what to say.
Professor Dean West always knows what to say.
A bolt of fear hits me.
“Hey.” I go to him again and put my hands around his waist. “Remember that fantastic make-out session we had a few weeks after we started dating?”
A smile tugs at his mouth. “I remember.”
“We could do that now, given that we’re dating again. Well, dating with benefits, anyway.”
Dean closes his hands on my shoulders, darkness shadowing his expression. I spread my palms over his lower back and tuck my fingers beneath his belt. I step closer, closing the scant distance between us and pressing my body to his. I almost moan at the contact of his chest against my breasts.
“Liv.” Restraint cords his forearms as he tightens his grip on me. “We need to talk.”
I don’t think that in the history of time anything good has followed those four words.
I move my hand to the back of his neck, spearing my fingers into his thick hair as I pull his mouth down to mine.
Our lips collide with sudden force, stopping his protest. Dean mutters something against my lips, his surrender swift as he slides his tongue into my mouth and pulls me even closer.
Longing and lust unfurl between us. I clutch his shirt, sinking into the whirlpool of pleasure evoked by the touch of our mouths. The world seems to right itself, settling into balance again. I skim my tongue against his, over his lower lip, my blood streaming with light.
“Sofa,” I whisper.
I grab his arms and walk backward to the sofa in front of the fireplace, keeping my mouth pressed to his until we sink against the cushions together, the delicious weight of his body over mine. Arousal billows inside me, shocking and delighting me with its intensity.
I grip the back of Dean’s neck and bite down on his lower lip in a way I know makes him hot. A groan rumbles in his chest. His erection presses heavy and thick against my hip. My body throbs in response.
I run my hands over his chest to the knot of his tie. With a few quick tugs, I pull it off and drop it to the floor then urge him back to me.
Our kiss eases into a lovely, teasing rhythm of lips and tongues. Gentle kisses, heated stroking. Dean curls his fingers into the material of my dress, a shudder of urgency vibrating through him. I force my mouth from his, our breathing hard.
“Take off my dress.” I fumble to reach the zipper at the back.
His eyes darken with that lustful anticipation I know so well. I manage to get the zipper down a little, and Dean reaches behind me to yank it the rest of the way. I squirm to get the dress off my shoulders and push it to my waist.
“Oh, fuck…” Dean’s eyes glaze over as he stares at my breasts.
“Nice, huh?” I look down at the emerald-green, push-up bra, which displays my cleavage to great advantage, the satin edge brushing my skin.
“I’m about to come already.” Dean spreads his hands over the bra, rubbing his thumbs across my taut nipples.
A shiver races down my spine. “There’s more.”
I wiggle my hips to indicate he should pull my dress off. His hands tremble as he grabs the material and tugs it down my legs to reveal the matching panties. Then he sits back and stares at me. My heart racing, I push up to my elbows as his gaze strokes the length of my body.
“You are so damn sexy,” he says.
The hoarse note in his voice makes me quiver. I sit up to unbutton his shirt and push it off, revealing the musculature of his shoulders and chest. I skim my hands over all those hard ridges, then move lower to take his erection in my palm.
“I want to make you come,” I whisper.
He groans and sits back against the cushions. I unfasten his belt and trousers, pushing them to the floor as his cock springs hot and heavy into my hand. I kneel beside him on the sofa and bend to swipe my tongue over the head of his erection, pushing my lower body upward.
Less than a second later, Dean strokes his hand over my bottom, which is covered tightly by emerald-green silk and lace. I gasp as the heat of his palm burns through the thin material. He edges his finger into the satin border at my thigh.
Urgency coils inside me, a desperation made all the sharper by the things left unspoken. I grasp the base of his cock and lower my head again to take him into my mouth. His breath escapes on a hiss, his other hand tangling in my hair.
The salty taste of him fills my mouth, his shaft throbbing against my tongue. My breasts press against his thigh, the material of my bra abrading my sensitive nipples. I sink my mouth lower over Dean’s cock, rocking my hips as his finger probes deeper beneath my panties.
I draw him in even farther and press my tongue to the smooth underside. Up, down, lick, stroke, kiss. His thighs tense, his hand tightening in my hair.
“Liv, I’m…”
I slide my mouth upward and to the head of his cock, squeezing his shaft just as an orgasm shudders through him. I take a breath and suck him deep, swallowing the semen pulsing into my mouth. When the vibrations ease from his body, I pull back and start to sit up.
Dean presses his hand to my lower back. “Don’t move.”
My heart jolts with excitement. I brace my hands on the other side of his lap and arch my back, moaning when he eases another finger into my damp cleft. The constriction of the panties heightens my tension.
I dig my hands into the sofa cushion and strain toward the exquisite release of pleasure. Dean touches my folds in the way I love, circling his forefinger around my clit as he reaches beneath me with his other hand to pull down the cups of my bra and fondle my breasts.
I come within seconds, bucking against him as sparks explode through my nerves. He eases every last sensation from me before I sink across his lap and try to catch my breath. He runs his hand over the length of my body, rubbing circles over my ass.
I roll onto my back and look up at him—my beautiful husband with his gold-flecked eyes still dark with arousal, his chest glistening with a sheen of sweat. I brush my palm over his torso as the lovely afterglow descends.
“How many of these do you have?” Dean runs his finger along the edge of my bra.
“About half a dozen. Maybe I’ll do a fashion show for you one day.”
“If you do, I’ll give you a really big tip.”
I wiggle against his cock and grin. “Yeah, I’ll bet you will.”
He returns my grin and helps me to a sitting position. Sliding a hand to the back of my neck, he pulls me in for a deep and thorough kiss that makes me tingle all over again.
After we part, I climb off the sofa, aware of his gaze on my rear end as I walk to the bathroom. I grab one of his T-shirts from his open suitcase and use the bathroom, then pull the shirt on over my head.
Pushing my hair away from my face, I return to the main room. Dean is zipping up his trousers, and the instant I look at him, my heart sinks. That air of somberness is back, hovering over him like a cloud.
I stop halfway to the sofa. Dean pulls his shirt over his shoulders. Against reason, my pulse kicks into gear again at the sight of him all disheveled and sweaty, his white shirt open to reveal his gorgeous chest.
I pick up my discarded dress and toss it over a chair. Dean watches me. A shutter descends over his features.
I sit down on the sofa, twisting the little ring Dean sent me from Italy around on my finger. I can’t think of a way to stop whatever it is he’s going to say.
“What?” I whisper.
“I need to talk to you about the meeting.”
“Okay. What… what happened?”
He sighs and drags a hand through his hair. “When I started teaching at King’s, Maggie Hamilton told me she wanted to write about Trotula of Salerno and women’s history. Since Trotula was a physician, the research included stuff about women’s sexuality. Now Maggie is saying I was the one who suggested it, that she wasn’t comfortable with the subject… that kind of shit.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah.” His jaw clenches. “And when I was gone, Ben Stafford looked into my past jobs and positions. He found out that you and I started dating when we were at the UW. So now he’s questioning the ethics of our relationship.”
Shock bolts through me. I sink back onto the sofa. “The ethics of it?”
“Professor and student, right?”
“But I wasn’t your student! We didn’t do anything against the rules.”
“Doesn’t seem to matter. You were a student, and I was a professor. Considering a student is making this claim… it doesn’t look good.”
A sick feeling rises into my throat. My early relationship with Dean is one of tangled, intense beauty. The idea that strangers could make it obscene because of a vindictive girl’s lies…
I press my hands to my eyes.
“What’s Stafford going to do?” I ask.
“I don’t know. But Edward Hamilton knows about it too, and he’s accusing me of having a history of getting involved with students. If he finds a way to use that against me, he will.”
My stomach tightens. No one knows about our early relationship, the secrets we told, the games we played, the talks we had, the desire we explored. No one except us. That’s the very reason it was both beautiful and dangerous, like a secret island where we were uncertain of rescue… until we saved each other.
Our island. Our love. Our marriage.
I hate the thought of strangers dissecting it all, probing for something immoral and wrong, with Dean and I forced to defend the very foundation of our relationship.
“Oh, Dean.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Twenty-four hours ago, I was so happy I would have whistled a merry tune, if I knew how to whistle. Now I’m all knotted up and blistering again.
We look at each other. We both feel it, the sharp invasion of the rest of the world into our space. He shoves his hands into his pockets. His shirt is still unbuttoned, his hair sticking damply to his forehead. Silence stretches taut between us. I search for and find a measure of courage.
“What if I went to Ben Stafford and told him the truth?” I push off the sofa and pace to the windows. “Before either Maggie or Edward Hamilton can spread more lies?”
“No.” His refusal is fast and hard, tension stiffening his shoulders. “No way. You’re not getting anywhere near this.”
“But I could—”
“No, Liv. You stay out of it.”
I struggle with conflicting emotions of relief and irritation. No, I don’t want to talk to Ben Stafford about my relationship with Dean, but at the same time I would do anything to end this slander.
“Maybe it would help,” I persist. “I could tell Stafford how careful you were about ensuring you didn’t break any regulations, that you’ve always been completely professional with students and colleagues. Everything I’d say would vouch for your character, right? And no one knows you better than I do.”
“You know me as your husband. You don’t know me as a professor.”
I blink in surprise. “What does that mean?”
“You don’t know how I interact with my students.” Dean turns away, dragging a hand through his messy hair. “You don’t know if I could’ve said or done something wrong.”
“Of course you haven’t done anything wrong!”
“What was the subject of my last research paper?”
“What?”
“The last paper I submitted to the Journal of Medieval Architecture. What was the subject?”
“I—”
“You don’t know,” he says. “And you don’t know because it’s not important to you.”
Shame and irritation twist inside me. “You think your work isn’t important to me?”
“What was the subject of my last paper?” Dean repeats.
My heart does a strange descent into my stomach. He turns to face me, his expression unreadable.
“Look, I don’t care, all right?” he says. “It doesn’t matter to me that you don’t know I wrote about the chapels of the Notre-Dame Cathedral. There’s no reason it should be important to you. But that also means you don’t know what goes on in my lecture hall, in my office, during meetings…”
“I know how good you are at what you do. Isn’t that enough?”
“Liv, I don’t even know if I did something wrong! Maggie Hamilton is right, goddammit. I did suggest books on sexuality and female anatomy. That was her thesis topic. God knows I could’ve said a dozen things that anyone could interpret as harassment. I said things to her about views of sexuality, prostitution, and contraception in the Middle Ages. She probably still has emails from me. And if Stafford asks me that in a deposition, I have no defense.”
“You do have a defense. Your career and reputation are your defense. Everything I’d tell Stafford would just reiterate the fact that you’re honorable to the core.” I pause, aware of the rising shame again. “Even if I don’t know your theories on the Notre-Dame cathedral.”
“Liv, I don’t care about the damn cathedral.” Dean rubs his hands over his face. “I’m warning you it could all get so much worse. And you’re not going anywhere near Stafford because he could ask you questions you don’t have an answer for.”
“Dean, love of my life, he’s investigating us now, right? I’ll always have an answer about us.”
Dean gazes at me for a minute before approaching and settling his hands on my shoulders. I lean my forehead against his chest, feeling his tension.
“Please let me do this for you,” I tell him. “For us. I want to prove that I can.”
“You don’t have to prove anything to me, Liv. You never have.”
“But I want to prove it to myself.”
I ease back to look at him and hold up my left hand. He places his palm against mine, and our wedding bands click together before we entwine our fingers. We both hold on tight.
“Pie love you, professor,” I whisper. “Have faith in me, okay?”
“Ah, Liv.” He presses his lips to my forehead. “I don’t have faith in anyone but you.”
When I return to the apartment, my mother is in the living room, her head bent as she files her nails. A news program is on the TV, and the scent of coffee lingers in the air. She glances up when I enter.
“Where’ve you been?” she asks.
“With Dean. We had to talk.”
“Talk?” Her gaze sweeps over me in one movement, and my breath shortens. If anyone knows the signs of post-sex, it’s Crystal Winter.
I fight back the urge to blush. I had sex with my husband, not some random man I picked up at a grocery store while my daughter waited in the car.
Shit. A wave of old apprehension floods me. I drop my purse on a chair and head into the bathroom. I slam the door and get into the shower, hating the sense that I’m trying to wash the scent of Dean off my skin.
When I go back into the bedroom, Crystal is sitting on the bed cross-legged, one elbow resting on her knee.
“It’s okay, Liv,” she says. “Plenty of people have problems in their marriage. I did.”
“I’m not having problems in my marriage, not that it would be your business if I were,” I tell her. “I’m tired. I need some sleep.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“He’s not gone.” I grab a brush and drag it through my wet hair. “He left in February to work on an archeological dig in Italy. He’s back for a few days to take care of some stuff and is staying in a hotel for personal reasons. He’s leaving again on Monday. That’s all there is to it.”
“Well, I’m sorry he’s leaving again,” Crystal says, “but you can leave too, you know.”
“I don’t want to leave.”
“I was thinking I should go to Phoenix soon, see about my mother’s house and whatnot,” she says. “You should come with me. A road trip, like old times.”
God in heaven. Just the suggestion has my heart sinking and my brain flashing with images of hot, vinyl car seats, crumpled fast-food containers, the sun glinting off the windshield. A black strip of highway behind us. A strip of highway before us.
This is exactly the same thing Crystal wanted from me years ago. I’d been a senior in high school, still living with Aunt Stella in Castleford, when Crystal came to visit and asked me to go on the road with her again. I’d had a perfect excuse to decline—I needed to stay in Castleford and graduate because I was going to Fieldbrook College on a full merit scholarship the following fall.
And though that accomplishment had ended up shattering like glass around me, I know my answer to my mother will never change.
“I… I can’t go with you.” Not to Phoenix. Not anywhere. “I have work here.”
“You’re also separated from your husband.”
“Dean and I are not separated.”
She rolls her eyes. “This is why I never got married, Liv. Too much trouble. I refuse to let a man control me or my life. And maybe if you were on your own again, you’d figure that out too.”
“Crystal.” I take a breath and try to control the anger scorching my chest. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
“Is it because he won’t let you?”
“No! This has nothing to do with Dean. I won’t go with you because I don’t want to. I hated being on the road with you, Crystal. That’s why I left. Why would I ever want to go back?”
“You will,” she replies tartly. “When you realize you’re delusional to think that marriage is better than freedom.”
Crystal gets off the bed, her footsteps soundless across the carpet as she returns to the living room. I close the bedroom door and crawl under the covers, pushing her words out of my mind. I sink into a shallow and restless sleep before waking at dawn.
Crystal is still asleep when I get up to make coffee and start to put breakfast things out. For an hour, it’s peaceful and quiet as I think about what we need to accomplish at the café today.
I hear Crystal rustling around as she wakes and goes into the bathroom. I pour a cup of coffee and put it on the table along with a pitcher of milk.
“Morning.”
I turn to glance at my mother and stop. She’s holding a pink box that makes my heart twist.
“Where… where did you get that?” I stammer.
“Bathroom cabinet. I was looking for tampons.” She examines the pregnancy testing kit. “Are you pregnant?”
“No.” A wave of dizziness hits me as I remember the reason Dean and I needed a test kit in the first place. “No… I… I just had a pregnancy scare a few months ago. Nothing happened.”
“You’re sure?” An odd stillness surrounds her.
“Of course I’m sure.” I can feel her looking at my waistline. I think of the two newborn hats, soft as a cloud, one pink and one blue, both wrapped in a yellow-striped box beneath our bed. My throat constricts.
“Are you trying to have a baby?” Crystal asks.
I concentrate on unwrapping a loaf of bread. I don’t know how to answer her question.
“I… maybe one day,” I say.
She’s still watching me. She knows. I can feel it, as if she has some maternal instinct about me now that she never had when I was younger.
“It was more than a scare, wasn’t it?” she asks. “How far along were you?”
How does she know? How can she tell?
I can’t lie, not about this. Not even to her. And what would be the point, anyway?
“Ten weeks,” I tell her.
“When did it happen?”
“End of January.”
“And your husband left right afterward?” Crystal asks.
“No, he did not leave right afterward.” I crack an egg into a hot pan and watch it sizzle. “I really don’t want to talk about this, Crystal.”
She pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down. We’re both silent as I bring my plate to the table. The air between us feels as fragile as a soap bubble.
With the overhead light on, Crystal’s eyelashes make half-moon shadows on her cheekbones. She still has a sprinkle of freckles across her nose, which has always added to her youthful, wholesome beauty. I realize that my eyes are shaped like hers, just brown instead of blue. She meets my gaze.
The invisible soap bubble seems to pop, the current between us breaking.
“I know she left you a lot of money,” Crystal says.
I poke at my toast. I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do.
“How did you find out?” I ask.
“I asked the lawyer for a copy of her will,” she says. “My mother left me nothing, and she left you thousands of dollars. I’m sure she had a good laugh over that.”
I can feel her watching me. We share a surname, Elizabeth, Crystal, and Olivia, all of us Winter women. Crystal had given me her last name rather than my father’s because she’d wanted me to belong only to her.
“You didn’t tell me about the inheritance,” she says. “Why?”
“It didn’t seem necessary.”
“Did you think I’d be upset?”
“I don’t know, Crystal. I’ve barely seen you in the past sixteen years. I didn’t even know your mother. I get this letter that she’s died and left me all this money, and then out of nowhere you show up on my doorstep… what should I think?”
“You shouldn’t think what you obviously do.” Her voice is getting chilly. “You think I want the money she left you.”
“You’ve asked me for money before,” I point out.
“I’ve asked you for help,” she replies. “And I don’t want her money. Not after what she did to both of us.”
I wonder if that means she wants my money, not that I have much to give her.
“It doesn’t matter, in any case,” I say. “I’ve already invested most of it in the café, and the rest is set aside for working capital. It’s all spoken for.”
“Sounds like you put it to good use.”
“And I don’t have much else. I don’t have access to Dean’s money.” Which is a lie, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Keeps you on a tight leash, does he?”
“No. I’m just telling you I don’t have much money right now.”
“I didn’t come here to ask you for money, Liv.”
“Why did you come here, then?”
“Because I wanted to see you. I thought we could… never mind.”
We both fall silent. And beneath my frustration blooms the tiny hope that has been buried inside me for over fifteen years.
The hope that one day, Crystal Winter would be the kind of mother I’d always longed for. All those years I lived with Aunt Stella, battling the humiliation of what happened at Fieldbrook, struggling to start again, to get back on my feet… it was always there, this kernel of hope that Crystal would contact me, want to see me, apologize, ask to start again, confess that she missed me.
Again I feel her looking at me. Strange that her gaze is like a touch.
“Remember the Grand Canyon?” she asks.
The Grand Canyon. I search my mind. It’s there, buried like a seed. A good memory. Bright. Warm. Peaceful.
We’d never been to the Grand Canyon before. It took us two days to get there from LA. We arrived at midnight and slept in a seedy motel room. Crystal woke me up when it was still dark outside.
“Dress warm,” she said.
“What…”
“Come on.”
I stumbled out of bed, figuring we were getting on the road again before rush hour started. I splashed water on my face, then dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a heavy jacket. Crystal was waiting in the car when I emerged. She parked in one of the Canyon lots and got out. I followed without asking questions. I’d gotten used to that.
The sky was starting to lighten as we approached one of the ridges overlooking the canyon. Vast shadows coated the rocks. A few other jacket-clad tourists milled around with cameras and binoculars. I huddled on a bench, yawning and irritable.
Then the sun peeked over the horizon and the gray pallor of the canyon began to surrender to the light. I peered at the sky for a moment and went to join Crystal, who was standing at the edge of the rocks.
We stood together and watched the brilliant light paint the canyon. We watched color dance with the silhouettes. We watched rocks warm with gold, trees and shrubs reaching out to capture the crimson. We watched the sky and clouds burst with streaks of yellow and red and blue.
Neither of us spoke. We stood there for an hour. Just us and a sunrise.
“I went there once with my parents when I was a kid,” Crystal tells me. “You were about ten when I took you. You’ve probably forgotten.”
“No. I remember.”