4
“REI, HAVE YOU BEEN crying?” Candace Versa laid a hand on her arm and frowned in concern.
After leaving the courthouse, Rei had driven over to California Pacific Medical Center to meet her breast cancer support group. She didn’t know how she would have endured her last bout with the disease if not for P.J., Dr. Versa and these brave women.
She’d originally planned to come this evening to share her one-year triumph with the women who best understood. Instead, she would cast a specter of gloom over a group that tried their best to hold on to the light. If there were any people on the face of the earth she could share her situation with, it was the women in this hospital conference room.
The educated uncertainty made it worse this time, knowing as she did what was at stake and what would have to be done. Tears pierced the back of her eyes again. But Rei held back, not wanting to confront this new turn of events yet. She didn’t want to put her dread and fears into words and make them real.
So she forced a smile of reassurance onto her lips. “I’m fine, Candy. I just had a bad day at work.”
“Well, you know I’m here if you need to talk.”
“I know. Thanks. I’m okay, though.”
Dr. Versa patted her arm again before Rei slipped past her to take a seat among the others. There was a core unit, including Dr. Versa, a psychologist, as well as with other women who joined and left over time. Rei greeted her old friends and nodded a welcome at the new faces as everyone introduced themselves.
“Hi, Kerry Kensington, two years.” The petite redhead always brightened the meeting whenever she attended.
The quiet brunette next to her was new to the group. “I’m Heather Centrino, and um, it will be six months next week.”
“Alicia Rexam, I’m a three-year survivor.” Despite her silver white hair, she didn’t look old enough to have seven grandchildren.
“I’m Rei Davis and it’s been…one year.”
And so they went around the room. As they were finishing the introductions, the door opened behind her. Rei turned to see who had joined them and gasped softly at the sight of her friend Miriam.
“Sorry I’m late, ladies.” Miriam’s voice was breathy and she slowly made her way to the table.
Rei’s heart broke as she watched her friend gingerly lower herself into the chair. They had been born the same year, but now Miriam looked at least a decade older. There was a tightness around her mouth, as if she were in a great deal of pain, and her skin had a grayish pallor. Her brown eyes were dull and held a shadow of fear even as Miriam looked at her and winked.
Cold certainty crept over Rei. She may or may not be sick again, but there could be no doubt that Miriam was.
“It’s good to see you.” Dr. Versa smiled at her in welcome. “We were just about to share List accomplishments.”
Rei was frankly dreading this part of the meeting. She couldn’t tell them about her sexual encounter with a stranger in a nightclub. She’d have to settle for relaying her exotic fruit experiment, an accomplishment that sounded lame compared to Alicia finishing another quilt for her grandchildren or Kerry learning to ice skate.
“If you don’t mind—” Miriam paused, closing her eyes briefly with an audible pant. “If you don’t mind, Candy, I’d like to say goodbye first.”
Rei’s heart skipped, anticipating hearing the worst. No, not Miriam.
“I want to thank you all. For the camaraderie and tears, laughter and hugs. I can’t imagine how I would have gotten through this. Without my friends.” The sudden appearance of tears washed the dullness from her gaze. “But I won’t be coming back to the group.”
Murmurs of sadness and comfort echoed throughout the room.
“Honey, no.”
“Oh, Miriam.”
“Don’t, don’t feel sorry for me, girls.” She panted again, her smile now a little frayed around the edges. “Howard and I have been preparing for months. We’re finally taking our dream trip. France and Spain for as long as we can afford to stay.”
Rei laughed out loud to relieve some of the tension that had built in her chest. “You’re really going? That’s wonderful!”
The noise level in the room rose with excited chatter as Miriam gave details about her upcoming trip and the rest of the group shared the experiences they had recently checked off of their Life Lists. Rei listened absently to the conversation, lost in her own thoughts.
Miriam might be dying but she was also fully living at last. Her attitude and daring silently reminded Rei of how fortunate she’d been last time. Despite her depression and doubt that she might not be so lucky this time, she didn’t dare wallow in self-pity. Not when her friend was fighting so bravely.
Across the table, Miriam gave a breathy laugh in response to something Alicia said and Rei realized how much she would miss her. Her friend had always tried to look on the positive side, telling off-color jokes to make everyone laugh and baking a cake in tribute to each month of survival.
The best way for Rei to honor her friend’s legacy of courage would be to follow her example. Like Miriam with her trip to Europe, she needed to celebrate the good things in life and not wait for dreams to come true, but to make them happen. Starting right now.
HIS SISTER WAS RIGHT. There was definitely something strange about his mother.
Jeanna London had always been a constant in Chris’s life. She’d had the same job at the same accounting firm for years, lived at the same house in Lower Piedmont where he’d grown up, kept the same general routine. Like the air, she was just there and didn’t require much thinking about.
So when he walked through the bright blue front door of her white stucco house after work, what he saw took his breath away.
“Mom?”
He’d expected to find her curled up on the couch, wrapped in her favorite sweatpants and cardigan, watching the evening news. Instead, she was transferring her wallet and stuff into a little beaded purse. Her light-brown hair was streaked with golden blond highlights and cut to shoulder length. Her shoulders were bare except for the straps of a figure-hugging black dress.
He didn’t even know she had a figure.
“Mom?”
“Hi, sweetheart. This is a surprise.” She walked over to where he’d stopped dead in the hallway and air-kissed his cheek, careful not to smudge her dark pink lipstick.
“Not as surprised as I am.” Chris couldn’t get over how…how sexy his mother looked. Moms weren’t supposed to look that way! “What did you do?”
She glanced at the foyer mirror and smiled a little even as she took him to task. “Aren’t you the one who teaches men how to pay a compliment? You’re not exactly bowling me over here.”
He gave her a real kiss on the temple. “Sorry, Mom. You look fantastic.”
“That’s better.” She went back to emptying her everyday handbag.
Chris stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned against the stair rail. “What prompted the haircut and…Everything? Is there some charity benefit for work tonight?”
Her smile widened but she didn’t answer as she straightened her hem and fluffed her hair. The sort of last minute primping a woman does before going out on a date.
Chris’s chest tightened painfully at the thought. Over the years, his mom had gone to dinner with male colleagues or out with a group of friends, but she hadn’t dated. The pressure in his chest increased and he realized he was holding his breath, a stress-related habit. He flared his nostrils and forced air into his lungs, hoping he was jumping to conclusions.
“I came by to finish that yard work, but it’s all been done. You didn’t lift those heavy bags of mulch yourself, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” She moved to the hall closet then held a heavy black wool cloak toward him.
Chris frowned but helped her into her coat. “So, the Henderson kid came over?”
“No, he didn’t do it.” She grabbed the evening bag and her car keys from the hall console.
“Come on, Mom. What’s going on?”
When she turned to look at him, he saw the stubborn set of her jaw but also a bright gleam in her eyes. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
“Obviously you’re going out tonight and that’s great. I just want to know what you’re doing.”
The hint of tension in her posture belied the casual tone of her words. “I have a date, Christopher.”
Here he was an adult, yet all these years, neither of his parents had shown an interest in anyone else. All these years, he’d childishly wished they would somehow get back together.
Don’t think about it. Don’t let it hurt.
He forced his jaw to unclench and tried to match her nonchalance. “Give me the guy’s name so I can check him out.”
“I already know he’s a good man.”
Chris took her elbow as she opened the front door. “For Pete’s sake, Mom, you can’t know for sure—”
“Trust me.” She gently pulled out of his grasp. “I appreciate your concern, but you’ll just have to trust me.” She turned and stepped outside, walking down the three stairs while he closed the door.
What the hell was with all the secrecy? She’d always let him into her life. After his father left, he’d been the man of the house, making it his responsibility to be strong for his mother and older sisters. He’d thought he and his mom were close but all of a sudden she was shutting him out. Was this new man that damned important to her?
He allowed a little of his anger to color his words. “At least tell me where you’re going tonight so I’ll have a last location to give the police.”
“I’ll be fine. There’s no need to call out the Marines.”
He didn’t share her joke. “Just because I’m out of the Corps doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten my combat training. Where is he taking you?”
His mother just smiled wider and unlocked her car. “I love you, tough guy. I’m going to Palio d’Asti, okay?”
“Hunh. Somebody wants to make a good impression.”
She looked at him then, her gaze suddenly as serious as her tone. “Yes, I really think he does. People change, sweetheart. Remember that.”
The new Jeanna London gave him a quick hug before sliding into the driver’s seat. Chris stood in the driveway and watched her pull away, a frown tugging at his mouth. A band of tension reminded him he was holding his breath again and needed to lighten up.
As he walked back to his Dodge Dakota pickup truck, he reflected on the irony of the situation. His love life sucked. Here it was Friday night and the successful dating service owner was going home alone while his mom had a date.
SLOWLY FLIPPING the pages of her Life List, Rei reviewed some of the dreams, goals and aspirations she’d written over the past months.
Visit New York City during the holidays
Drink wine in an olive grove in Tuscany
See the Aurora Borealis
Drive a Mazerati
Swim with the dolphins
Try either hang gliding or skydiving
Snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef
Rei closed the book and flopped back against the bed pillows. Before she’d been diagnosed last year, career ambitions and fear of failure had kept her in a uncomfortable space, leaving her wary of stepping outside of her chosen box. Once the disease had gone into remission, though, she’d planned to embark on all kinds of great adventures.
But somehow, over too short a period of time, she’d slipped back into a similar box—this one just included a different job and more interesting fruit. Now, it was very possible that she was getting sick again and this time it could be terminal. Honestly, she didn’t want to know. Not yet.
Avoidance was a cowardly way to deal with the likelihood, but would a few days or even a week really make that much difference?
They might, if she put the time to good use. She vowed to adopt singer Tim McGraw’s lyrics about living like she was dying as her personal anthem. She would likely have to face another round of treatment soon enough. Before then, though, she wanted to cross as many things off her List as she could.
She now realized that she had followed the letter of the support group assignment, but not the spirit. Did goals have any real meaning if you never took steps toward achieving them?
She needed to stop daydreaming about out of the ordinary adventures—there was no way she could take off from work to hike the Grand Canyon or go whale watching in Alaska right now. Instead she would take the kind of small personal chances that added richness and depth to each day. Trying new varieties of fruit might not be life altering, but it had been fulfilling.
And then, whenever she could, she’d let go of her fears and excuses in order to take some bigger risks, like she had at the club last night. Seducing a stranger had actually been a pretty big item on her List. But had she really fulfilled her objective? She definitely didn’t feel fulfilled.
She got up from the bed, suddenly too restless to sit still, too aware of the mattress beneath her. Tossing the Life List on the comforter, she went to the window. She rested her forehead against the glass, looking over at the lights from the streets downtown. The cold against her temple did nothing to alleviate the heat coursing through her.
It was crazy to want a man so much, to imagine having sex with a virtual stranger. Crazy because, for all she knew, Chris was out there right now seducing some other woman in some other nightclub. It was stupid to think the sparks she’d felt had been mutual, that last night had been anything special. She’d better write the experience off as a once-in-a-lifetime fantasy partially accomplished and forget about him.
Except that forgetting him proved impossible.
Each time she closed her eyes, she experienced again the heat of his touch and the drugging taste of his kiss. She remembered how he’d made her feel, how quickly he’d taken her over the edge. She wanted to feel that way again without the barrier of clothing between them. She imagined having hot, primal, sweaty, earth-shakingly satisfying sex….
If she stepped outside her sensual cage, there would be no going back. Her safe little world would be irrevocably altered. And she wanted it to be. Rei lifted the phone and forced herself to dial before she lost her nerve. Right now she didn’t care if this was crazy.
Because, no matter what logic her mind tried to enforce, her body knew exactly what it wanted. And what could be more life affirming than making love?
CHRIS REACHED INSIDE the doorway of his loft in Oakland and flipped the switch. Simulated daylight filled every corner from one end of the 850-foot space to the other. He hated the early evening gloom of mid spring, the way the rains swept in from the Pacific as evening overtook the city.
The singer who’d left his heart in San Francisco had probably never spent April here.
Chris laid the pepperoni and bacon pizza on the breakfast bar as he passed the open kitchen and headed for his office to drop his briefcase. His oldest sister, Andrea, was an interior decorator. She liked to use his condo as a testing ground for new ideas and the result was a different design style in each section of his home. Right now his office area looked like the inside of a ship, all done in gleaming teak and brass.
And it was occupied.
“Hey, how’d you get in here?”
The fourteen-year-old boy sitting at his computer firing arrows and spells at the Uruk-hai advancing on Helm’s Deep didn’t take his eyes off the computer screen. “Hi, Uncle Chris. I, uh, caught a couple of Muni buses then walked the rest of the way.”
He arched his brow at the incomplete answer. “How’d you get into my apartment, smart guy?”
Gabriel finally looked at him, both pride and anxiety in his deep brown eyes. “I talked my way past the doorman with a sob story and then used an extra key.”
Chris decided not to bother asking when or how he’d gotten a key made. “Do your parents know where you are?”
With a sullen expression, Gabe turned back to the video game. “Like they care.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” He reached for the phone on the desk.
“Aw, come on, Uncle Chris—”
He spoke quietly, but firmly, in his best I’m-the-adult voice. “They need to know you’re okay.”
“Whatever.”
“I’ll let you share my pizza while you’re waiting for somebody to pick you up.”
“Whatever.” Gabe seemed to be concentrating on the game, but then he slid Chris a sideways glance as his stomach rumbled. “What kind of pizza?”
He reached down to tousle the kid’s dark-blond hair as his sister answered her cell phone. “Hi, Diana. How are you?”
“Busy. I just finished showing three houses and now I have to get across the city for a settlement. Is this important?”
Chris ignored the agitation in her voice. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking. Gabriel’s fine, too.”
“Gabriel?”
“Yeah, you know. Your son?”
The boy muttered darkly, the words too soft for him to make out, but things were blowing up all over the computer screen.
Diana didn’t have a sense of humor at the best of times, and right now he could hear her cursing the slow moving drivers around her. “I know who he is. What about him?”
“He’s here at my place.” The silence that followed told him that Di hadn’t even realized Gabe was missing. “I’m calling because I figured you’d be worried.”
“Thanks, Chris. Damn it, watch the road! Look, I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to come across the bridge to get him. Can you call Michael? I’ve got to go.”
Gabriel avoided his eye as Chris set the phone down but the tension emanating from him was palpable. Suppressing a sigh and a whole lot of things he’d like to say about his sister, Chris dialed Mike’s number. He got a similar “I’ve got other things to do” attitude from his brother-in-law, who was still at the office, and so offered to drive Gabe home himself.
Chris laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the tight muscles beneath the Bay Academy school T-shirt and hurting for him without knowing how to make it better. “Why don’t you shut down the game and we’ll go eat.”
He led Gabe back to the kitchen, a large open space that resembled a particular Italian chain restaurant. It had a brick oven he’d never used, a forty-eight-inch programmable six-burner gas stove he didn’t know how to use and an empty deep freezer that he only used for bags of ice when he threw a party.
Chris grabbed a couple beers from the French door refrigerator—root beer for Gabe and a real one for himself—then joined his nephew at the breakfast bar. Forgoing plates, they ate the pizza straight out of the box. He killed time on idle small talk about work and classes, waiting until they were on their third slices before asking about the unexpected visit.
“So, G-man, what’s going on?” The answer he got was a shrug. “Something must have prompted you to spend ninety minutes on public transportation to get over here.”
Gabe seemed fascinated by the strips of bacon on his pizza. “I called Nana, but she said she was going out.”
Chris grimaced. “Yeah, she’s got a date.”
“Get out! Who’s the dude?” His brow wrinkled in disbelief.
Not wanting to admit he didn’t know, Chris turned back to the topic at hand. “Guys aren’t usually big on talking about their feelings, but the rules are different when beer and pizza are involved.”
Gabe dropped his fifth slice back into the box, apparently not hungry anymore. His narrow frame seemed to shrink as he slumped in his chair and fought to control his expression. His voice quavered when he finally spoke.
“Mom and Dad are never home these days. When they are, they’re fighting. About money, their jobs and stuff, about me getting in trouble at school. I’m worried, I mean, I think they’re serious this time. They keep yelling about a divorce.”
Damn. It seemed Michael and Diana had been building towards this for a while. Chris wished he could say he was surprised, but none of the three London kids had done well in their relationships. Neither his parents nor Gabe’s seemed to realize how deeply their decisions left invisible scars.
He reached over to wrap an arm around Gabe’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I don’t know what to say. But I’ll tell you this much—been there, done that and lived to tell the tale.”
Gabe leaned toward him, accepting the comfort for a brief moment, before shrugging off Chris’s arm and moving away. “Got anything for dessert?”
A half gallon of chocolate almond vanilla ice cream later, Chris sat near Gabe on the couch, not really watching TV so much as just being there. When Mike called to say he was home, Chris drove Gabe back to Richmond in a silence that intensified the closer they got to the house.
“I know you don’t believe this, G-man. But, whatever happens, you’re going to be okay.”
“I guess.”
On impulse, Chris grabbed his nephew around the neck and planted a kiss on his forehead before Gabe got out of the truck and walked up to the door.
NINE O’CLOCK and he had the long stretch of a night alone ahead of him.
As he got closer to home, Chris drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, his eyes on the road visible in his headlights but his mind on his empty condo. It was late to get together with friends and he wasn’t in the mood to sit at a bar or go to a club….
Inevitably his thoughts turned to Jade, the exotic temptress with the sultry eyes, the memory of whose sinuous movements and incredible sensuality had dominated his daydreams. Dreams of holding her on his lap while she rubbed against him, moaning in that breathy way of hers.
He reached down and adjusted his aching erection. What was wrong with him? It wasn’t as if he’d never been with a beautiful, sexy woman before. He’d dated some real lookers, slept with some total knockouts. But none of them had affected him like Jade. He wanted to kiss her again. For about a week. Then he wanted to strip her bare and kiss every inch of her delectable little body. Then he wanted more, much more….
The quick chirp of his cell phone interrupted his fantasy. The ringing continued as he lowered the window to let the cool air blow against his face. He picked up the phone and flipped it open, his voice raspy as he answered.
“Um, hi, Chris. This is—Jade.”
“Jade?” His brain took a few seconds to process the reality of hearing her voice.
“Yes, from Divas!”
Wow. Fantasies came true? The next thing he knew, cash would rain from the sky and his pickup truck would transform into a vintage Corvette. His face split into a wide smile, but he tried to keep his voice casual.
“How could I forget? This is just kind of a surprise.”
“Is it?” Her tone implied the call had been inevitable. And as he remembered the electric instant they first touched, maybe it had been.
What should he say? Something about the previous evening? Something about being unable to forget her? Something about being glad she called? Something about wanting her so badly it hurt? Whatever he said, it had to be smooth.
“So…How are you?”
There was a brief hesitation before he heard her take a breath. “Last night you said that what we’d shared was just an appetizer. Well, tonight I’m hungry, Chris. Very hungry.”