Jennifer Greene - Cupid’s Confederates

Silver rain flooded through Bett. Her whole body convulsed, and her fingers clenched in his hair. “Come up here,” she said furiously.

Her husband was obviously trying to drive her mad. The morning sunlight was all around her, bathing her flesh, a warm weight on her eyes. She closed her eyes, aching inside. Her body felt like the hot, steady pulse of a summer rain. She was naked, and so close to the earth that her flesh felt part of it. Her heart was beating with a terrible thunder, but around her there was only sunshine. Sun and the peace of morning and shade and silence. Her breath, coming in harsh gasps, appalled her.

“Zach!”

Far too slowly, his lips trailed upward again. Her hands fumbled for his jeans, racing down the zipper. Her palms slid around and inside his jeans, curling over his flat male buttocks, pushing down the denim fabric that had separated them for far too long.

He had to stand to get his jeans off. Abandoned for those few seconds, she found herself staring at him, at his maleness, then at the look in his eyes as he came back down to her. His eyes were blue-silver with the first velvet thrust, blue-soft with the tenderness of loving, silver-sharp with a man’s drive to possess. So full he filled her, so unbelievably full.

“Burn for me, Bett,” he whispered. “Hurt with it. All of you.”

She tossed her head, wild with fever. All around her was the smell of dew, the smell of Zach, the smell of morning. She surged beneath him, exploding with need. The fierce rhythm of love rushed through her like a wanton silver river.

A stream of sunlight stole through the treetops in celebration of day, at the same time a different sunlight burst inside of her.

***

“We have,” Zach murmured, “a problem.”

Bett shook her head drowsily. “You may have a problem. I have no problems of any kind.” She curled her arms around his waist, snuggling closer to his bare, warm flesh. It seemed like a wonderful idea to stay just as they were. At least for the next hundred hours.

“You can be a disgracefully wanton woman, two bits.” He nuzzled at the delectable hollow in her shoulder.

“Thank you.”

“Insatiable.”

“Yes.”

“Uninhibited.”

She opened one sleepy eye. “Where are all these compliments leading?”

“You look like such an angel. Blond hair, blue eyes.” Zach shook his head in teasing puzzlement. “I’ll tell you, though, you’d never cut the chaste life playing a harp.”

She chuckled, lazily sitting up. At a motion from him, she raised her hands in the air. He slipped her nightgown on her, then her robe. Finally, Zach stood up to tug on his jeans.

“So. What are we going to do about your mother?”

The question seemed to come out of the blue. Bett, leaning over to fold up the blanket, shot her husband a startled glance.

“Kick her out when she’s doing so well? Obviously not. Have her continually lay stress on you? That’s not going to keep happening, either. So let’s talk choices, Bett.”

He swung an arm around her shoulders as they strolled back down the path toward the pond. Bett wanted to answer him, but she couldn’t get any words out. So Zach was aware of how unhappy she’d been-she’d done her best to hide it from him. She’d done her best to pretend even to herself that it didn’t matter. Regardless, she saw no choices. Her mother had been lonely and unhappy and grieving alone; Elizabeth was happy with them. If Bett found the continual pressure wearing, the old game of trying to please both her mother and herself impossible, she didn’t see that she had any choice.

Zach pushed aside a low-hanging branch so they could pass. “Well, talkative one?”

“Zach, I didn’t think you were…bothered,” Bett said quietly.

“How on earth could I be bothered? A cold drink’s waiting for me even before I want it, slippers laid out, a woman to ask my opinion on everything as if I were an oracle. You think I don’t like being spoiled?”

A small smile played on her lips. “You like the starched work shirts, do you?”

“About as much as I like having to abduct my wife and run off to the woods to make love to her in peace and privacy.”

Bett sighed. “It’s not as though she knocks on the door every night.”

“No. Just often enough that you’ve got half your attention on worrying every time we make love.”

They reached the truck, and both climbed in. The key had been left in the lock, but for the moment Zach didn’t turn on the engine. He leaned against the door, bemused for a moment by the sight of his wife in pale yellow, her hair whispering in soft dishevelment around her cheeks. The whole subject caused her distress; he could see it in her eyes, and he had the sudden urge to haul her right back into the woods and make it all go away.

“Zach,” Bett said unhappily, “all she wants is to care for and take care of. And there’s no one but us to make her feel needed.”

“Exactly,” he said softly. He straightened in the seat, turned the key, and started the engine. “Number one, two bits, we’re about to share the stress. You keep something like that bottled up inside again and I’ll have to beat you.”

“Like you do so often?”

He cast her a severe look. “Just once, you could show a little fear.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Number two. If you don’t mind starting with the total inconsequentials. This isn’t a criticism, honey, it’s just a question. Is there some reason why, after all this time, you’re suddenly wearing makeup?”

Bett sighed. “Mother’s afraid I’ve been ‘letting myself go.’”

“You certainly have,” Zach agreed fervently. “A very few minutes ago, you were one hot little-”

“Zach!”

“What else?” His tone had turned serious, almost angry.

She took a breath. She could have drowned in all the little doubts that had been raised in the past month. Did a clean house actually matter to him? It wasn’t that she wanted to turn into a hausfrau; she doubted she was capable of it, but his values were involved, too. She’d never questioned him. Maybe he found it more restful to sit at the kitchen table and use silverware and china than their old habit of paper plates on the floor in the living room. Stupid, yes?

“But it’s details that make up every day, Zach. I push the toothpaste tube from the middle, leave my shoes where you stumble over them at the door. Maybe-privately-you were annoyed. The thing is, I never thought to ask you.” Maybe working together so closely wore on him from time to time; maybe when he continually saw her ramming around on a tractor in jeans and sweatshirt he saw her as less feminine than he once had-

Between the peach orchard and the plum trees, Zach jammed on the brakes and turned off the engine again. The groove between his brows boded ill. “How the hell could you have let her do this to you?”

Bett gnawed on her lip. “Mother? She isn’t doing anything to me.”

“Four weeks in the house and she’s turned my confident, sassy wife into a worrywart. What is this? If I’d wanted a wife obsessed with ring around the collar, I would have married one. I happen to be a big boy with strong vocal cords, two bits, and I’m more than capable of telling you if I’m unhappy with how we’ve set up our life. I’m not. Now, if you are, we’ll work on it. If you’ve really suddenly decided you need the floor under the refrigerator waxed, we’ll hire someone to do it. You sure as hell aren’t going to devote a second to it. You happen to bloom best in fresh air, and I happen to get a kick out of watching you, tiny as a minute, ramming around inside the cab of a tractor ten times bigger than you are. It makes me feel protective, and proud of you, and good inside to know we’re sharing the same goals. Generally, it also makes me want to go up and whip you out of there and take you in the middle of a field, but that’s neither here nor there.” His frown leveled out, a wicked smile taking its place. “I’m used to that reaction, whenever you’re within a two-mile radius.”

Bett, for some strange reason, had tears in her eyes. Was he shouting? He reached out and tugged her close, drawing her onto his lap, irritated at the limitations imposed by the steering wheel.

“Have we got that stuff clear now?” he grumbled.

“Yes.” Very clear, Bett thought. Zach should shout at her more often. All the mindless anxieties that had been haunting her had abruptly fled.

“And in the meantime, there’s an answer for your mother.” Zach shifted her next to him, very close, as he started the truck again. “She likes to take care of people. She is never going to survive well alone. She needs to feel needed. Heaven knows, she’s into waiting on a man-”

Bett slapped his thigh. “Don’t get too used to it.”

“She’s still relatively young,” Zach continued absently. “Not unattractive. She’s got this rather crazy side and she talks continually and there’s that insomnia of hers, but maybe we could keep that kind of thing secret for a while.”

“Pardon?” Her husband was talking Greek.

He shot her a mischievous smile. “Are you ready for the campaign?”

“What campaign?” Bett asked bewilderedly.

“We’re about to get your mother married off, two bits. It’s the only answer.”

Bett set down The Beekeeper’s Annual and glanced outside. The library at Silver Oaks was relatively new, with huge windows looking out on the main street of the town. Their small burg had one of everything-one grocer, one bookstore, one druggist, one department store; the single exception being, naturally, seven agricultural implements dealers. Kalamazoo and even Chicago weren’t that far to go for real shopping; but as it was, the community was small and exactly to Bett’s liking, a friendly, intimate, know-everyone type of place where it was perfectly safe to walk the streets at night.