Her body responded as it should, but it was an automatic reaction brought on by someone who was undeniably an expert on how to pleasure a woman. He plied all his tricks, and just when she thought it was over, he'd take her in his arms again and make her moan in spite of herself.
Only much later did Hayden speak. He pulled her up over him and did what he always did, traced her jaw line with the back of his finger. “So, little one. Do you believe me now when I say I love you?”
She nodded.
“Good. When you need reminding, I'll come back and we can do it all over again.”
She closed her eyes. He took her face in his hands and kissed her eyelids. “Say it.”
She stayed quiet.
“Say it.” He crushed his mouth against hers. When he finally let her go, she whispered, “I love you.”
“Oh, baby, that's better.”
He rolled her onto her back and took her again.
Ava left the room at two o'clock in the morning, barely remembering the drive home. She snuck in the house after finding the door open. A note on the table instructed her to “Lock up, please.” She did, and then climbed the stairs as quietly as she could. Rose was in Lola's bed. Off went Ava's clothes, on went her nightie, and under the covers she slipped, to fall into a dead sleep.
In the morning, she could hardly lift her head from the pillow. She ached, almost as if she had a hangover. On top of that, it looked about noon, judging from the splash of sunlight that fell across the bed.
“Oh God. I'm an idiot.” Ava slipped into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. Now she was a sore prune. She put on a bathrobe and went downstairs in search of strong coffee. Two of her sisters were in the kitchen. One was making a casserole of some kind and the other was ironing.
Ava shuffled into the pantry in search of a mug. “Morning. Sorry I slept in. Shouldn't you guys be at work?”
“Lucky for you, I'm back shift,” Rose said.
“I called in sick,” Maryette said unashamedly. “They can do without me for a day. There's a fresh pot of tea on the stove.”
“I need coffee this morning,” she croaked. She poured water into the coffee maker and added about ten scoops of ground java. Then she came back and sat on one of the kitchen chairs. “How's Ma this morning?”
“She's okay,” Rose said. “Had a bit of a rough night. I'm surprised we didn't wake you.”
“I didn't hear a thing.”
“What the hell time did you get home?” Maryette asked before she threw another shirt on the ironing board. “I called Rose at midnight and you still weren't in.”
“Sorry,” Ava sighed. “I lost track of time.”
“I can just bet,” Maryette smirked.
Ava looked at her. “What do you mean?”
Rose threw a can of tomatoes into her concoction. “What she means is it's all over town that you bumped into Seamus yesterday.”
Ava blinked a couple of times, trying to get her head around this information.
“You've been away too long, girl,” Maryette laughed. “Everyone knows your business in this town. Did you think you could keep it a secret?”
“It wasn't a secret. I bumped into him at Sobey's, which is about as romantic as cutting your toenails, so I don't understand why all you busybodies around here get off on it. And speaking of that, thanks a lot for not telling me his wife was dead. I felt like an idiot when I asked him how Sally was.” She jumped out of her chair and went into the pantry to wait for the coffee to drip through.
She was livid. Typical bloody small-town crap. She'd suffocate in a place like this. Gossip and untruths thrived like mosquitoes in this environment. For a few minutes she considered taking the car to the airport and jumping on the first available plane. But when she poured the coffee, her shoulders slumped. She couldn't run again. They'd never forgive her.
There was nothing for it. She emerged, coffee in hand, and sat back at the table. The other two didn't say a word. They looked sheepish and that was fine with Ava.
It was Rose who spoke first. “If you remember, when I told you Seamus was married you said in no uncertain terms that you didn't need a blow by blow of his life and then you hung up on me. So I never said another thing.”
“Surprisingly,” Ava muttered. She realized they were waiting for her to say something. “I wasn't with him last night, if that's what you think.”
Rose came and sat down at the table. “You weren't? What did he say to you, anyway?”
“Nothing. We said hi and he introduced me to his kids. That was all.”
Maryette turned off the iron and sat too. “That's it? I don't know why I thought there'd be more⦔
“Fireworks?” Rose volunteered.
“Yeah, fireworks.”
Ava took a sip of her coffee so she wouldn't tear the face off her sister. She counted to ten in her head before she opened her mouth. “How do you think I felt, Maryette? I was in hell if you must know, and he was too. Then a bunch of kids came up clamoring for my autograph and they chased him away. It was horrible.”
Maryette looked away. “I'm sorry; I shouldn't have asked you that.” Ava put down her mug because it was suddenly too heavy to hold. “Don't be. Of course you'd want to know.” She sighed. “It was awful. He looked so good and he wanted to talk to me, I could tell, but his kids started to whine and then these stupid girls showed up. I wanted the earth to swallow me up.” She put her face in her hands.
Rose reached over and patted her arm. “We're sorry, pet. We had no idea.”
“God. This is terrible,” Maryette said. “We'll keep our mouths shut from now on.”
Ava looked up and shook her head. “It's okay. It actually helps to talk about him. I always feel as if I'm carrying him on my shoulders and everyone knows he's there and I can never put him down. I need to put him down.”
They nodded sympathetically. She regained her composure and took a big gulp of coffee before letting out another big sigh.
“So where were you last night?” Rose ventured, but quickly added, “If you don't want to say, that's okay.”
“It doesn't matter anymore. I went to bed with someone.”
Their mouths hung open. She went in for the kill. “Hayden Judd.” Rose and Maryette jumped up from their chairs and bounced around the kitchen, screaming. Ava started to laugh and couldn't stop. She laughed and laughed at her sisters in their near-hysteria.
This was the scene that greeted Lola as she walked through the door.
Ava was happy to have Lola back. She had missed her cheery sidekick, with her down-to-earth manner and comforting presence. The unhappiness that threatened to overwhelm her eased when Lola was around.
Lola assured her that things were fine at home, and for a moment Ava was confusedâshe never thought of the Malibu beach house as home. She lay awake that night thinking about it. What an eye-opener: living somewhere for eight years and never becoming attached to it. It was sad.
Happily, two days later Aunt Vi and Uncle Angus were brought home. Ava and Lola ran out to greet them, carrying blankets to make sure they didn't get cold on their way into the house.
Aunt Vi was unloaded first. “Lordy, lordy. How in the heck are you going to get me up those stairs? You'll need a forklift.”
“Don't worry, Mrs. MacIntosh,” one of the medics smiled. “We've never needed one yet.”
As they wheeled her towards the back door, Ava covered her aunt with the blanket. “We're so happy to have you back!” She kissed her even as they were moving.
“I'm happy to be back,” Aunt Vi confided. “If I had to endure one more day of that hospital food, I'd have gone crazy. Good thing my stomach is made of cast iron.”
There was no room for all of them on the back stairs, so Ava got out of the way, just in time to hear Uncle Angus moan about people driving over his tulip beds. Lola reassured him that the bulbs were perfectly safe underneath the frozen ground. Then Uncle Angus spied Ava. “I keep telling these people I'm perfectly capable of walking myself.”
Ava had to smile. The cast on her uncle's arm was at a ninety degree angle, jutting out and in the way of everyone and everything.
“This is for your own protection, Uncle Angus. We can't have you slipping on the ice.”
“I don't like being hauled around like an old bag of turnips,” he grumbled.
Ava and Lola grinned.
After much maneuvering and grunting, the gurneys were brought into the kitchen. Ava pointed towards the living room. “Aunt Vi, I've got two hospital beds set up in the living room, to save you and Uncle Angus from having to climb the stairs with casts and crutches and canes. It's only for a little while.”
“Goodness gracious! I'm going to be in my nightie in the parlor? My mother would roll over in her grave.”
“I'm sure she'd understand.” Ava nodded at the paramedics. “If you could you help her in, please, that would be great.”
They reached down to help Aunt Vi off the gurney and held on to her as she hobbled into the living room. All the furniture was pushed back to the walls except for a large end table, which was positioned between the beds.
“Oh my,” Aunt Vi said. “You didn't have to go to all this trouble.” They helped her into bed. “It was no trouble,” Ava said. Then it was Uncle Angus who was escorted in. Lola pointed. “Uncle Angus, this is your bed.”
He sat on the end of it and looked around before picking up the television remote with his good hand and turning on the TV. “Now ain't this something. We can watch our shows and lie in bed, Vi!”
“Looks like that's all we can do, seeing as how we can't make whoopee. Geranium will be spying on us through the curtains.”
The others tried to keep straight faces. The idea of the two of them in a clinch with their heavy, awkward casts was too funny.
Once the gurneys were taken away, the downstairs didn't look quite so claustrophobic. Luckily Uncle Angus converted an old closet off the main hall into a powder room a couple of years before. They'd have to endure a few weeks of sponge baths, but they'd manage the inconvenience.
It turned out to be a lot of work having three patients in the house. Ava and Lola ran up and down stairs all day. If Ava thought she'd neglected her family all these years, she certainly made up for it in the weeks that followed. It was a wonderful opportunity to help these much-loved elders of the clan. But if she were honest, it wasn't the only reason why she kept moving. Ava needed to stop thinking about Seamus, a man who with one look could blot out everything and everyone else in her world.
For the next two weeks, Seamus did his best to put Libby right out of his mind. He had no intention of upsetting his kids, which is exactly what he did the day he bumped into her at the grocery store and the morning after. Both of them cried that night when he told them he wasn't reading two more books. “Knock it off and go to bed!” he said in a tone angrier than usual. They cried when he left them at daycare the next day because he forgot to kiss them goodbye.
When he picked them up that evening, they didn't run out to meet him and that's when he knew he had to get his act together and forget all about her. It wasn't fair to them. They were innocent victims and their welfare came first, he reminded himself.
He filled his days with all the fun things he could think of. He took them to the park after work. They went to the movies, even though Sarah was a little young to be in the theatre. But it turned out she really liked it. She sat quite content with a big bag of popcorn and yelled, “Yeah,” every time Shrek came on the screen.
The trips to the movies stopped the day Libby suddenly filled the screen one afternoon during the previews. Jack grabbed his sleeve. “Daddy, isn't that the lady from the store?”
Seamus was hardly aware that Jack spoke, because his entire body was rigid with longing. The trailer showed her in period costume, a long dress with a bonnet tied under the chin. Flashes of her walking down a cobbled street being kissed by some Hollywood star was bad enough but worse was a shot of her running along a shoreline, laughing, her hair cascading down her back as a man galloped towards her with a horse. He scooped her up and they rode off together towards the horizon. The last shot was of her in a wedding dress, running down the steps of a church.
Seamus continued to struggle with remaining focused on his kids when all he thought of was her. He needed to cut loose, so one Friday night when Roger suggested they go to the Steel City Tavern and have a few brews, he accepted. His sister offered to pick up the kids at daycare and have them spend the night with her. He knew the kids would welcome the chance to spend some time with their older cousins.
Seamus, Roger, and a couple of other cops gathered after work and had a steak along with their beer. They laughed and joked around, and before he knew it, Seamus was drunk. He didn't care.
Some women came into the bar and more drinks were ordered. One of the women took a liking to Seamus, practically throwing herself in his lap. He didn't care about that either. After a while she asked him if he wanted to go home with her. He said he didn't care.
She pulled him outside, though Roger came after him and said he'd drive him home. Seamus smirked and told him to go babysit someone else and stop worrying. The woman told Roger to bugger off. In the end, he had no choice but to leave them alone.
She drove him back to her place, a rundown apartment in Whitney Pier. “My roommate's gone for the night. We have the place to ourselves.”
“Ya gotta drink?” he slurred.
“Sure baby. I've got just the thing.” She took out a bottle of rum and mixed it with diet Coke. It was flat and warm. Seamus took a gulp, spilling most of it on the floor.
“Hey, sorry.”
She pushed him onto the living room couch. “Never mind. I know how you can make it up to me.” She straddled him and started to unbutton his shirt. “I need some lovin'.”