Chapter 9 .5
After directions and a filled prescription for the epi pen, I was on my way out the door with Tommy.
He clicked the button to unlock the door to his Jeep and we got in and he let out a big breath. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I told him, “Can you stop at the store?”
“Yeah, I was already planning to get something for us to eat. You want something in particular?” He pulled out of the hospital parking lot and onto the main road.
“Graham crackers and chocolate bars and marshmallows,” I told him. “Since you got me poisoned, you at least owe me some s’mores.”
He caressed my cheek and looked like he visibly relaxed.
“And worms,” I added with a big smile. “For more fishing.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’ve created a monster.”
“So…” I said after a moment of silence.
His jaw tightened. “Your father said a few things about his history with my father. And he’s got an ulterior motive giving me the information. I’ll give my PI the info.”
“And that information is…” I asked.
He shook his head. “No point bringing it up until I know if he’s bullshitting or not.”
He had a point. “Tommy, there’s something I didn’t tell you. You may know about this, but you may not.”
He pulled over to the soft shoulder with a squeal of the brakes, startling me.
“What?” he spat.
I grabbed my chest and I must’ve blanched because his hardened expression softened, marginally, and he motioned with his hands for me to speak.
“When I sorted through my things in your basement, I found a photograph of my mother with your father from when they were like teenagers in one of my albums. They looked like they might’ve been together.”
His expression was unreadable to me for a moment, then he said, “Anything else?”
I shook my head.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I didn’t know what the connection was, what the truth was, and I… didn’t trust you.”
“No more secrets,” he said and then he put the SUV into drive and merged back in with traffic.
“But you get to have secrets,” I mumbled.
He didn’t answer me. I didn’t push it. I didn’t feel strong enough to argue with him. He didn’t say anything until we stopped at a grocery store.
He grabbed a shopping cart. “Whatever you want for later and tomorrow morning before we head back,” he motioned to the empty cart and I nodded and he followed me up and down the aisles while I grabbed tea bags, instant coffee, sugar, milk, marshmallows, graham crackers, Hershey bars. Then I asked, “What’ll we do for dinner? Microwave food?” I made a face.
“I have a grill in the barn. I’ll bring it out,” he mumbled, clearly still in a foul mood.
“What’s with the farmhouse? Is there a usable kitchen?” I asked, thinking there may be appliances in it.
“Gutted,” he answered and picked up a bag of charcoal, putting it in the space under the basket of the shopping cart.
“Steak? Chicken?” I asked him when we got to the meat section.
He shrugged, “Whatever.”
I shook my head in frustration at these one-word answers I’d been getting, and tossed one of each in the cart and then stormed off to the vegetable section and left him behind.
When we got back to the Jeep and loaded the bags into the trunk I said, “Listen, you’re obviously not in the mood for this so if you’d rather just go back to the city, why don’t we just do that?”
He didn’t answer me. He got into the driver’s seat and turned the ignition. I got into the passenger seat and folded my arms across my chest. He leaned over and blazed a dirty look at me and fastened my seatbelt for me.
I didn’t want to be pissy with her. I was so relieved she was okay after that allergic reaction, and I felt like garbage because I let that happen to her. I brought her up here for safety and this shit happens. I wanted to pamper her, spoil her, make love to her non-stop for the next twenty-four hours before we had to go back to real life.
Everything was just getting on top of me right now. Seeing the Crenshaws and getting attitude from them, seeing O’Connor, and then talking to him and listening to the shit that came out of his mouth just pissed me off. I was tired and stiff from a long night trying to sleep in a chair. I wanted her away from all of them, all to myself. So, why couldn’t I let everything go so I could just enjoy the next twenty-four hours with her?
When we got back to the farm, she put the groceries away, so I got some grass cut out back with the old manual push mower to make an area for the barbeque and campfire. I looked up at the second story doors and decided it might be a good idea to build a deck up there. Maybe we’d come back before summer was over and spend a few days so I could work on that. Because I’d started off at fourteen working for my father’s construction company, I could build just about anything.
In a year or two maybe I’d start working on building a cradle. I couldn’t believe where my mind was going, imagining having babies with her when we’d only been together not even a few weeks and when she’d only agreed to try with me not forty-eight hours ago.
I took my frustrations out with my axe as I chopped enough firewood for more than a few campfires.
I put all the groceries away and then made a marinade for the steak and another one for the chicken. Then I chopped potatoes, mushrooms and onions and put them in a tin foil packet along with some butter and spices. I also spiced and wrapped corn cobs in foil. I made the bed and tidied up and then watched him out at the back busying himself. His muscled skin glistened in the sunlight as he chopped wood wearing just his jeans and his motorcycle boots was quite a sight.
After a little while of watching him chop wood, lost in thought – thoughts about him, about my life, about my dad, about my future, about the muscles on his body flexing (who knew how sexy a guy chopping wood could be to watch?), I decided to take my container of worms and my pink fishing pole and head down there. As I passed him, I put a bottle of beer on the log beside him, he looked sweaty, dirty, and thirsty. He mumbled thanks to me, but kept chopping wood.
I sat down on a huge, flattened rock to fish from, but when I opened the lid of the worms and saw them squirm in dirt …ugh. I couldn’t imagine touching one let alone poking it with a hook, so I put the lid back on and just sat and stared out at the pond.
When I glanced in his direction, I thought he still looked pretty pissed off, broody, grouchy, and then I caught him stealing glances at me here and there, his expression softening. Finally, he stared at me as he drank from the bottle of beer and then he walked over and without saying anything to me he put the worm on my hook and passed the rod to me.
“Thank you,” I said and then cast out.
He walked back to the now massive wood pile, grabbed the neck of the beer bottle, downed the rest while watching me, then resumed chopping until the sun started to set when he started fiddling with the barbeque, so I headed back to the loft and washed my hands, tossed the salad, set the table, and started grabbing the steaks and the vegetables to bring down.
“That needs to heat a little still,” he said, “I’m grabbing a shower. Join me?” He pulled me against him and even though he was sweaty, he still gave me the tingles.
I squirmed against him, “You’re all sweaty and manly.” I guess his foul mood was over?
He let out a barbaric little growl against my throat, making me giggle, and then nibbled on my earlobe. We walked back up to the loft hand in hand and after I put the food back in the fridge, I turned to face him but he crouched, put a shoulder to my belly, and hauled me up over his shoulder.
“Rawr! This manly man want woman in shower!”
I giggled all the way there. Then when he put me down, my dress came right up over my head in a fluid motion. But there was hardness in his eyes, so my giggle faded to a hard gulp.
After shower time, which included some pretty spectacular getting-slammed-up-against-the-shower-wall sex, he promptly passed out cold on the bed, towel around his waist, still soaking wet, lying on his stomach. Evidently when Tommy Ferrano was pooped, shower sex put him over the edge.
In the shower, though, he’d looked me in the eyes while holding my face in his hands and said, “Any secrets I keep from you, baby, are so that you can sleep at night. You don’t need to lie there like I do wishing you didn’t know shit. Okay?”
I’d nodded.
I took a rest beside him for a bit but didn’t fall asleep. He was snoring. After a while I decided to check on the barbecue. I added more charcoal and got it going again and got dinner cooked for us, using his flashlight to aid me.
When all was done and the table was all set, I woke him up by tugging his towel away. He hadn’t moved at all and it’d been a few hours. His eyes stayed closed, but a smile spread across his face. Then I climbed onto his back and sat on his naked and very fantastic rear end and started massaging his shoulders and his arms. He had a hard, muscular body. It was gorgeous. I kissed his muscled back in between his shoulder blades,
“Dinner’s ready,” I murmured against his skin.
He twisted around onto his back and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and then caught my face between his hands and pulled me close to kiss him.
“Somebody’s awake,” I mused, feeling his erection hardening underneath me.
He groaned and tried to gyrate, grabbing my hips.
“Dinner will get cold and I worked hard. Let’s go, Mr. Sleepy.” I ruffled his hair, scooted off him, and he smiled lazily at me.
And she could cook. Fuck me. It was sweet that she’d done that while I slept, taking care of me like that, especially considering she’d spent last night in the hospital.
After dinner was finished, we cleaned up together, talking casually about things couples who were getting to know one another talked about: movies, music, video games. We didn’t have the same taste in most of it (her taste in music generally sucked) but she seemed open-minded enough and promised to watch old Bruce Lee movies with me if I promised to watch some Notebook movie with her. I had a feeling it was a chick flick. She shook her head when I muttered that but didn’t verbalize a no.
I built a campfire and once it was roaring, she proceeded to prepare and then demolish a bunch, maybe six, of her s’mores. I barely got one into me, trying to refuse it because I was stuffed from dinner, but relented and only because she insisted I eat “the best thing ever.” Talk about toothache on a graham cracker!
She was drowsy, yawning and staring sleepily at the fire, so I scooped her up and carried her back up to bed with thoughts of making love to her again. She acted all shy when I lifted her up but then the yawns and the moans as she held her belly from all the chocolate, crackers, and marshmallow led to me simply tucking her in and holding her until she fell asleep against me, her head on my chest, her leg hooked around me, and her fingertips slowly scrubbing the stubble on my chin. When her hand dropped as she finally dropped off, I kissed the top of her head and pulled her tighter to me.
I lay awake half the night holding her and thinking that I didn’t want to take her back to the house. I wanted to stay here with her, away from gunfire, seedy business dealings, and people who hated me enough to want to take out someone I loved. Being here, living a simple life where she cooked me dinner and I chopped wood and baited her hook… just us two… it had appeal.
Fuck the big house and the servants. Fuck the business. Fuck the truth. I just wanted to keep her here and forget everyone else existed. Keep her here and protect her, spend every minute making up for the shitty hand she got dealt when she ended up with O’Connor as a father and then wound up with me in her life.
Funny how I initially thought getting married was a means to getting more power, more autonomy, but now the idea of getting married got me thinking more about life with a wife than anything else, about the things and people I’d have to protect her from, about keeping my own demons at bay. I felt sick for a second when I imagined the fear I’d have one day when she carried my baby, the fear of someone taking her, hurting her, and my child.
A child. Shit. I also thought about the shit her father had told me, the shit Earl’d told me, and it all went round and round all fucking night long.