CINDA AWOKE the next morning to the soft grays of curtain-filtered daylight. And to a soft whispering her sleep-fogged brain couldn’t identify. She lay still, not quite oriented to time and place, and frowned. Okay, she was not in her bed and was facing a wall. Aha. She was in the double bed in Trey’s old room at his mother’s house. And he’d slept with her. He’d more than slept with her. There’d been the car, the backyard…and the bed. Cinda smiled. Her senses told her he was not in the bed with her at this moment, but that was okay. He certainly had been in the bed last night. He’d held her close, they’d made love, and then they had gone to sleep like two spoons in a drawer, his arms around her, his knees bent to hers.
How wonderful that had been. And now it was Saturday, the Fourth of July. For some silly reason it felt like the first day of the rest of her life. Always before, that sappy saying had made her roll her eyes. But now, today, she really understood it. And love poetry. She now got that, too. All the yearnings and the hunger that the poets wrote about. The desperation to be together, to see your loved one’s face. To wax maudlin over the color of someone’s eyes, his hair. But best of all, she told herself, she now had a face to put to the love songs.
So today, couldn’t she begin marking time on a future brighter than it had been yesterday? Yes she could. A secret grin captured her mouth and Cinda stretched in what promised to be a luxurious loosening of love-sore muscles—
Then she heard it again, behind her, the whispering. She held still, listening. Low talking. Like love talk, only not love talk…like someone talking to a baby. Her mind put two and two together, and Cinda’s expression brightened. Ever so carefully, not wanting to disturb the scene she felt certain was playing out behind her, she rolled over in the bed. And was rewarded. The sight that greeted her melted her mother’s heart and brought tears to her eyes. She felt so silly, so emotional. After all, hadn’t she ever seen a man wearing only his pajama bottoms and sitting in a rocking chair and holding a baby before?
No. She hadn’t. Not in real life. And not this man with her baby. It struck Cinda then that Trey was the only man to hold Chelsi—one who could possibly qualify as a father figure, that is. Of course, her own father and Papa Rick and her brothers had held Chelsi. But they weren’t, well, her man, someone who could play a significant role in her daughter’s life as well as her own.
Wishing she could paint, could sculpt…heck, just wishing for a camera so she could preserve this scene forever, Cinda lay on her side and tucked her hands under her cheek. She couldn’t get enough of watching Trey with Chelsi. Holding the little girl under her arms, his fingers interlocking over the baby’s back, he had her in his lap, facing him. Dandelion-fluff baby hair stuck up all over Chelsi’s round head. Still in her little pajamas, she was cooing and flailing about happily and trying to stand on Trey’s knees. He was talking softly to her and chuckling at her antics. He then leaned forward and kissed the baby on the forehead. “Look at you. Such a big girl. So damn—uh, darned cute. Would you want to be my little girl? Would you like that?” he whispered.
Had there ever been a more poignant, heart-warming scene in the history of humanity? The bonding of a man with a child. It was beautiful.
Hot tears of strong emotion pricked at Cinda’s eyes. She spoke up almost before she realized she was going to. “I know I would. I’d like it very much for her to be your little girl.”
Trey looked up, meeting her gaze. His blue eyes were soft and bright with welcome. “Hi. You’re awake.”
“It would seem so.” Cinda smiled, wondering if he too was playing back in his head their funny, tender, and sweaty lovemaking scenes from last night. She ran her proprietary gaze up and down him, noting things like his bared chest, those broad shoulders. This morning she knew every masculine inch of him. She knew his kiss, what it felt like to run her hands over the crisp and curling hair on his chest, how his weight felt atop her, what it was like to sleep with him. She knew the scent of his skin, how he tasted, and the love sounds he made. Cinda let out a sigh of yearning and contentment.
Trey raised his eyebrows. “You sound like a contented cat.”
“I feel like a contented cat.”
His grin was cocky, sure of himself. “Can I take any credit for that?”
“You can take all the credit for that.”
“Good.” Then he suddenly looked unsure of himself, as if he didn’t know what came next in this scenario. He resorted to the baby. He turned Chelsi in his arms until she faced Cinda. “Look,” he said, putting his face next to the little girl’s, “Mama’s awake.”
“Hey, sweetie,” Cinda greeted her daughter. Chelsi caught sight of her and immediately began fussing for her breakfast. With a sigh for having to give up lying in her—their—rumpled love nest, Cinda dutifully sat up and arranged herself on the bed. “Bring her to me and I’ll nurse her.”
With the baby held securely in his arms, Trey got up and approached Cinda. “Good. It’s only fair. I had to change her morning diaper.”
“You poor, poor man.”
“It was awful.” He handed the baby over to Cinda.
She took her fretting daughter and settled her in place. “I can imagine,” she told Trey, looking up. “You’re very brave.”
He leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. “I do what I can.”
“And you do it so well.”
Cinda knew it was silly, inane even, this morning banter. Yet it was intimate somehow. Private. The language of couples. The building blocks of a relationship. A time and a scene not open to the public. Could it be that this whole morning was enchanted? And if it was, could it please last?
It did, for about twenty minutes of solitude. Then the door to the bedroom jerked open with a suddenness that had Trey whipping around and Cinda gasping. Chelsi even let go of her “breakfast” to see what was up. There, in the doorway, wearing a high-necked nightgown and with her tornado-resistant hairdo wrapped protectively in toilet paper and held in place with little metal clips, stood Cinda’s “mother-in-law.”
With a plastic flyswatter in her hand, and squinting through the thick lenses of her eyeglasses, the older woman took in their one-big-happy-family and highly domestic scene. “Trey, how come that old blanket I gave you to keep in the trunk of your car is all grassy and draped over the gazebo railing out back?”
The flames of embarrassment burned up Cinda’s cheeks, and she absolutely refused to look at Trey. Or to help him. Instead, and studiously, she focused on her darling tiny baby daughter, just fluffing the child’s hair and playing with her sweet little fingers…and leaving Trey to the wolves.
“Oh, never mind.” Dorinda Cooper sighed. “You never could keep up with your things. Besides, we’ve got us some serious trouble here this morning.”
Cinda looked up, exchanging a glance with Trey. Frowning, he’d come to attention and had his hands planted at his waist. “What do you mean, Mother?”
“Well, here I haven’t even had my coffee yet and there’s a gangster on the front doorstep.”
Not surprisingly, nobody said anything. All Cinda could do was squint back at the older woman and think You mean instead of a newspaper?
Chelsi, apparently unimpressed, glommed back on to her breakfast. Cinda divided her attention among her nursing daughter, Trey, and his mother. Just then, Mrs. Cooper waved the flyswatter in their direction. “I knew it, I knew it. Just look at y’all in here. You are really married.”
Trey finally found his voice. “We’re not, Mother. I keep telling you that. But what did you say about a gangster?”
“He’s on the front stoop. I guess you didn’t hear him knock. I peeked through the living room curtains and saw him out there. I’m not about to answer that door. But someone needs to go out there and talk to that man.” She used the flyswatter much like an orchestra’s conductor would his baton. “He has goons with him and a black stretch limo. Right out there in the driveway where all the neighbors and especially that nosy Lula Johnston can see. Scared me to death, the sight did, so I grabbed up this fly swatter for my own personal protection.”
Well, that explained the flyswatter, but not much else. Cinda looked to Trey when he spoke. “Goons, Mother? A black stretch limo? Are you sure?”
Dorinda Cooper pursed her lips. “I think I know goons and gangsters when I see them. I watch the daytime TV when I’m working at the bowling alley.”
Trey snatched up his T-shirt from the arm of the rocking chair and began pulling it on. “Then I know what this is. This is one of Bobby Jean’s tricks, a scare tactic. I’m going to—”
“I don’t think so, son.” Mrs. Cooper slowly shook her head. Given the white toilet paper wrapped around her hair, the older woman’s movements reminded Cinda of a revolving satellite dish, the kind that searched for signs of intelligent life in outer space. “By the looks of things outside,” she was saying, “I’d say there’s no Bobby Jean to it. I think it’s really her husband.”
Trey said something that sounded like a curse, but his actual words were muffled by his shirt not being fully over his head. When he had it on, he turned to Cinda. “Rocco Diamante is here.”
Fear shot through Cinda, shredding her nerve endings. “Ohmigod,” she barely got out in a whisper, seeing herself last night at the potluck dinner and smacking—hello!—Mrs. Diamante in the kisser. Right now, Cinda figured, prison was the least of her worries, and perhaps one of her better options. She turned a pleading expression up to Trey. “What am I going to do?”
He looked so fierce standing there frowning and with his hands planted at his waist. Like a general. A man with a plan. Getting ready to direct his troops. “We. What are we going to do, Cinda? You’re not in this alone.”
That did it for her. The whole world seemed to recede, leaving Trey standing in the forefront. The man was a rock. Her hero. Staunch in the face of danger. Someone who would put her first, who would stand beside her, no matter what. Cinda’s fear fled. She would be okay as long as Trey was with her. If she hadn’t already suspected she loved him, she told herself, she would have after this. Her vision misted over as she stared at this wonderful man. “You are so good to me, Trey. I mean that. What are we going to do, then?”
“We’re not going to do anything,” he said emphatically. “I’m going to go out there and talk to this joker.”
As he headed for the bedroom door where his mother still stood, Cinda’s lofty heroic thoughts came to a screeching halt. Her love-misted eyes dried and her stomach plummeted. She felt sick. Instantly gone were Trey’s superhero cape and his special powers. “No you are not,” she called out, stopping him.
Trey turned to her, a surprised and questioning look on his face. “Well, I’m certainly not going to send my mother out there.”
“That’s for damned sure.” This was Dorinda Cooper.
“You’re not going out there, either, Cinda,” Trey said.
“Trey, he’s here because of me. I’ll go.” Brave words for a woman in her nightgown and with a nursing baby at her breast.
“You will not. And we don’t know he’s here because of you. Knowing Bobby Jean, he’s probably here for me.”
“Personally, I think he’s here for the both of you.” Again, Dorinda Cooper.
Trey turned to his mother, giving her an encouraging look full of affection. “Mom, honey, why don’t you go make that coffee. I think we can all use a cup.”
“And bullet-proof vests.” She didn’t budge from the doorway.
Exhaling sharply, the sound carrying a load of frustration, Trey turned to Cinda. “I have to go to the door. I’m the only one who can. Look at you there. You’re a small woman and you’re nursing a baby.”
“And look at you there, Trey.” Cinda couldn’t help the accusation in her voice, any more than she could the scared waver it held. “You’re only one man. And you’re acting just like Richard. All you need is a herd of yaks.”
“Yaks?” Dorinda Cooper weighed in.
“It’s a long story,” Trey told his mother as he turned again to Cinda. “How is my talking to this guy anything at all like Richard?”
“Who’s Richard?”
Again Trey turned to his mother. “Chelsi’s father.”
His words hung in the air like psychically suspended knives. Sharp ones. Exchanging a look with Trey, Cinda tried to silently communicate…Here we go.
Dorinda Cooper’s eyes rounded. “But you’re Chelsi’s father.”
Trey shook his head. “No I’m not. A man named Richard Cavanaugh is. Was. Cinda’s husband. Late husband. He was killed by yaks while hot-air ballooning in Tibet.”
Cinda wished he’d stop. He kept making it worse.
Dorinda Cooper’s gaze darted from her son to Cinda—sitting there, embarrassed now, in her son’s rumpled bed—and back to Trey. “You lied to me,” she said, waving her flyswatter about threateningly, as if she meant to spank Trey with it.
He chuckled but it wasn’t meant completely as humor. “No, Mother, I didn’t. Remember? I told you the truth, only you didn’t believe me.”
“And now I’m supposed to believe a story about balloons and yaks? On the Fourth of July with gangsters at my door?”
Trey turned to Cinda. “Tell her.”
Cinda exhaled her breath and faced the older woman. “It’s true. My husband was killed by yaks. Trey is not my baby’s father. And we are not married.”
“You’re both lying,” Dorinda Cooper said without hesitation. “You’re married and that’s your baby. She looks just like you, Trey. And the two of you have on matching wedding bands. Explain that.”
Cinda pointed to Trey, who said, “We did that to fool Bobby Jean.”
And that was when, collectively Cinda joined Trey and his mother in remembering Mr. Bobby Jean still stood on the stoop outside—with goons…no doubt, armed and impatient ones.
Trey took charge. “Okay, we’ll talk about this later. Right now I’m going to go out there and—”
“No you’re not.”
“Cinda, this is where I came in,” Trey warned, his chin edging up a stubborn notch.
“That might be.” Cinda’s anger got the better of her. “But I will not sit here helpless while you rush right into danger without a thought to anyone else who loves you or how your actions might affect them, Trey Cooper. I have had my fill of that. So you mark my words, I will take this baby and go home if you so much as leave this room right now.”
“You tell him, sister.” Dorinda Cooper was all but crowing.
This was insane, was Cinda’s thought. Just then, obviously now full as a little tick, Chelsi popped herself off her mother’s breast and clutched at Cinda’s gown, wanting to right herself. Cinda pulled at her gown, restoring her modesty. She sat her daughter up, kissed the little cherub’s cheek, and turned her to face Trey. She rubbed Chelsi’s back. The baby burped. Then the two females, mother and daughter, presented a united front to Trey.
“Oh, y’all are so married.” Dorinda Cooper leaned against the doorjamb and crossed her arms over her chest. In her fist, the flyswatter waved about like a scepter.
“We are not,” Trey denied, turning his attention back to Cinda and softening his voice as well as his stance. “What is really wrong here, Cinda? What are you afraid of? And I don’t mean the guy at the door.”
“Neither do I. The truth is I think I’m suffering flashback emotions having to do with Richard. How he wasn’t reliable. How I couldn’t count on him in any crisis. Not when my father had his heart attack or my brother was running for office. I think I’m afraid, Trey, that you’ll go do something silly and get yourself killed and leave me here alone.” She heard how that sounded and hung her head. “I’m sorry. I think I slipped back into some old behaviors. I was putting things on you that I shouldn’t have.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Cinda saw Trey moving toward the bed. He sat on the side of it, facing her and being careful of the baby, who contented herself with a slightly spastic, if not thoroughly delightful, round of pat-a-cake. Trey smoothed Cinda’s hair back from her face. “It’s okay, honey.” She met his sympathetic, blue-eyed gaze. “Look, I’m not Richard, and I’m not going to do anything dumb or rash here. I’m just going to go talk to the man. That’s all.”
Cinda sniffed back her tears. “What if he’s not here just to talk, Trey?”
“Well, I won’t know until I go out there and see, now will I?”
“No. But I want to go out there with you.” She could see that Trey’s protest was coming, so she spoke quickly. “I need to do this, Trey. I’ll feel better if we face this together.” He was shaking his head but Cinda rushed on. “With Richard, I would never face anything with him. I see that now. I don’t want to make that mistake with you. It’s hard for me to say this, but it is different with you, Trey. I care about you in ways I don’t think I did with Richard. And I don’t want to make old mistakes again.”
Trey’s gaze roved over her face. He seemed to be considering what she’d said. But still, when he opened his mouth to speak, Cinda put her fingers over his lips. “Please? I need to do this with you. No matter the outcome here, it will be a big step for me toward trusting again. I swear it will.”
There. That was what she’d wanted to say. Cinda lowered her hand from Trey’s mouth and watched his eyes. She knew the moment he gave in because he slumped and then smiled, like a man resigned to his fate. “You know that I hate this, don’t you? My every instinct is to protect you.”
Cinda nodded. “I know. But I happen to feel the same way about you. If you’ll remember, it’s what got us into this mess with the goons at the door.”
Trey chuckled and shook his head. “Can’t argue with you there. Okay. Give me Chelsi and pull yourself together. I’ll wait for you, and we’ll go to the door together.” He stood up and took Chelsi from Cinda’s lap. “Come here, sweetie. Let’s go see your Grandma Cooper.”
Grandma Cooper jumped on that. “See there? That proves it. If I’m the grandma, y’all are married.”
“All right, Mother,” Trey said. “Have it your way. We’re married. But take this baby and go into the kitchen, okay? And stay there until I come to get you.”
Trey’s mother raised an eyebrow at her son and then turned to Cinda. “I didn’t raise him to act this bossy. Don’t you let him get away with that.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Cinda said, ever obedient.
Apparently satisfied with that, and looking for all the world like a British general handling a riding crop, Dorinda Cooper stuffed her flyswatter under her arm and took the baby from her son. “Come here, punkin, come to Grandma. These silly old parents of yours are trying to tell me you’re not my grandbaby.” Chelsi cooed and gurgled. “That’s right. You are. I knew that. You look just like a Cooper.” With that she turned around, apparently heading for the kitchen.
Cinda had straightened her garments while Trey had dealt with his mother and Chelsi. She now scooted off the bed and stood, tugging her knee-length gown around her. Wordlessly, Trey handed her the matching robe to her silky set and she put it on, belting the waist. She couldn’t help feeling like a knight putting on protective armor. Right now she wished she had protective armor. Two suits of it, one for each of them. And those long lances. Weapons of any sort. And lots of people on their side. Help.
She said none of this and hoped it didn’t show on her face. The lesson, however, was brought home to her: deliberate bravery was a lot scarier than the spur-of-the-moment stuff, the kind where you could randomly poke someone in the mouth. But when you knew beforehand that you were putting yourself in harm’s way and had time to think about it, it was like yikes. Cinda grabbed Trey’s hand with both of hers to keep herself from climbing out of a window and bolting for the highway.
“Ready?” Trey asked, his eyebrows raised, his expression saying she could back out if she wanted.
Cinda took a deep breath. “Ready.”
Trey squeezed her hand. “Okay. Then let’s go, slugger.”
With that, they set off, walking down the short hallway, past an array of pictures that showed Trey as a baby, a toddler, a kid, an adolescent, a teenager, and finally the man he was today. That took them into the living room, where the draperies were still drawn against the morning light. Trey stopped in front of the door and looked down at Cinda. “I just want to tell you now, in case I can’t later, that I think I love you.”
“I think I love you, too,” Cinda blurted.
“Good.” Trey inhaled, squeezed her hand, stepped in front of her—and opened the door with a vengeance. “Yes? Can I help—” Silence. Then, “What the hell?”
Cinda peeked out, feeling the morning sunshine on her face. She squinted against its brightness and suddenly realized that no one was there. The front stoop was empty. The only cars in the driveway were Trey’s and his mother’s. No goons. No limos. No Mafia dons dressed in black. Nobody. Cinda exchanged a glance with Trey. He looked as befuddled by their lack of visitors as she felt.
“I don’t think my mother made them up,” he said, stepping off the stoop and walking barefoot through the grass to look up and down the tree-shaded neighborhood street.
Cinda was right behind him. “Neither do I.” The dewy grass was cold and tickled her feet as she tugged Trey back with her to the dubious protection of the porch. “Could you be a bigger target, Trey? They could be anywhere. I think they just thought no one was home and left.”
“I agree. But they could come back at any minute. That’s what worries me.”
“Ohmigod, you’re right. It was better when we knew where they were. This is awful. Now what?”
“We come up with a plan,” he said very simply, as if every day he waged war on the mob. Indeed, his gaze was focused on the near distance.
Cinda whimpered. “Oh, Trey, it is the Fourth of July and we’re all going to die.”