The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty
yes, was all she had time to think before her senses took over. This wasn’t passion as she knew it. There was no demand in the heat of his lips. His eyes had been clear and bright before they closed, not fogged by alcohol or some other mind-altering drug. Although his arms tightened as the kiss deepened, no hand pushed against her breast or thrust beneath the skirt of her dress. When his tongue sought entry into her mouth, she denied it, but he didn’t end the kiss in fury or disgust. He raised his head, smiled at her and lowered it again.
This time, when his tongue slid across the seam of her lips, she opened them. The age-old dance was slow and warm and tasted sweetly of wine and coffee and something else. She felt a sensation between her thighs that she hadn’t felt in—oh, so very long. Her breasts were sensitized, the soft cloth that covered them feeling scratchy even though it wasn’t.
“That wasn’t part of what my mama taught me,” he said when the kiss ended.
Chapter Four
Window Over the Sink, Taft Tribune: Trust is something you lose when you grow up, eroded by the hurts and betrayals that are part of everyone’s life from the time you find out your folks lied about Santa Claus. But every spring, when the green has made us forget the browns of winter and kites make colorful stars in the daytime sky, we learn once again to trust. We know Taft will clamor with the sounds of lawnmowers on Saturday afternoons, another class will be preparing to graduate from Taft High and everyone will be sweeping their porches just to have an excuse to be outside.
I said once that there is a price to be paid for spring, and there is, but that regaining of trust—even if it’s temporary—is worth the cost.
“Neighborhood watch, huh?” Micah lifted a hand to return Eli’s wave as his neighbor jogged toward Landy’s house. “Seems to me he only watches one house.”
The thought that he was sitting on his porch spying on people and talking to himself entered his mind, and he returned his attention to the golf clubs he was re-gripping.
He was wrapping tape around the shaft of the seven iron when a voice said, “You could at least offer me a beer,” and he raised his eyes to see Eli standing on the brick path that led to the River Walk.
“I could,” Micah agreed, and looked down at the roll of tape in his hand. “Or you could go in and get the beer and we could both have one.”
“Once a sixth man, always a sixth man,” Eli complained, walking past him and into the house.
Micah grinned at nothing, thinking Eli hadn’t stayed long at Landy’s house. Not that it was any of his business. It wasn’t. Really.
“Lindsey tells me you and Landy had a date.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Micah took the bottle Eli offered. “Did she also tell you I sang Beatles songs in church and little Colby Whatshisname peed all over me?”
“Oh, yes.” Eli sat down. “Lindsey’s very thorough. Her older siblings have threatened to clamp her lips together with Super Glue.”
“Did you stop by to tell me you don’t want me to see Landy anymore?” Micah asked bluntly.
Eli’s eyebrows shot up so high they disappeared under the dark blond hair that fell over his forehead. “Huh?” He set his beer on the porch floor with a little bang. “Why in the pocket of Joseph’s coat would I do that?”
Micah glared at him. “Well, because—why in the what?”
Eli looked abashed and ridiculously young. “For a minister,” he said, “I have an alarming tendency toward swearing. In order to keep their father employed and out of their hair, my two oldest children gave me a list of curse alternatives. Some of them stuck.” He picked up his beer. “But don’t change the subject. Why did you think I would mind you seeing Landy?”
“Well.” It was Micah’s turn to be embarrassed, and he was. “You go over there a lot, all times of the day and night. You walk in without knocking. You’re both single adults. I just thought….” He let his voice trail off.
Eli shook his head sadly. “A big-city reporter, award-winning, no less, and you jump to conclusions like you were still a running back on a high school football team. Lord, Lord,” he said prayerfully, looking up, “what is to become of this lamb of Yours? This black sheep, I mean. I understand that the Beatles songs in Your house were okay—You have John Lennon and George Harrison with You, after all—but couldn’t You just give him a little guidance down the path of common sense?” He waited, head cocked as though listening, then gave Micah a doleful look. “He says He did, but you went the wrong way. Again.”
“Elijah St. John, you are an unmitigated asshole.” But Micah was laughing.
“I try,” said Eli modestly.
“If you aren’t seeing Landy, why do you go over there all the time?” Micah demanded. So much for minding his own business, but there were limits, after all.
The smile stayed on Eli’s face, but dimmed in the green eyes. “We’re friends,” he said. “She’s gone through a rotten few years. A rotten many years, really.”
“I know.” When Eli didn’t continue, Micah was silent. He had been a reporter long enough to understand about confidentiality even when it was unspoken. He had, in the past, pushed people to the very limits of their discretion. Somewhere along the line, he’d lost his taste for that—at least in his personal life.
It was time to change the subject. But not necessarily to mind his own business.
“What about you?” he asked quietly. “Did you have some bad years, too? You’re a divorced minister with six kids. I doubt that was an easy thing to become.”
Sadness slid over Eli’s features like a mask. The expression was so out of place on the usually smiling face that Micah felt as if the sun had suddenly disappeared behind a cloud. He got to his feet. “Be right back,” he said, and went into the house.
When he came back out, carrying a bag of potato chips, Eli’s face was clear again, though there was a pensive look in his eyes.
“Remember,” he said, “how you used to call Landy the town debutante?”
Micah nodded, flinching. “I’ve also made that mistake in the past couple of weeks.”
“Well, I went to Princeton, remember, and I met a real one.” Eli shook his head. “White dress, curtseying, the whole bit. Dee was my roommate’s sister and I met her when I went home with him on some weekends. It was like being in a different world, you know, where people actually do dress for dinner, and she was the very best part of it.
“She really liked the idea of cultivating the country boy and we got married the week after I graduated. It wasn’t until we were on our honeymoon that she found out she couldn’t talk me out of being a minister. Still, it was okay as long as we lived in the Hamptons and had a big, social church. She was a good minister’s wife, generous with her time and money both. We had the first two kids—Max and Josh—and entered them in nursery school before they were even born. It was okay,” he repeated, looking down at the beer in his hand.
“What made it not okay anymore?”
“She got pregnant again, wanted an abortion, I said no. She agreed to have the child, finally—that’s Wendy—and loved her after she was born, but it changed something between us. I didn’t feel the same about Dee and she stayed angry. Then her brother—my old roommate—and his wife were killed in an accident. Dee was distraught, of course—her whole family was—but no one wanted their kids. We’d agreed to be their guardians without ever once thinking what that entailed. Dee wanted to allow some rich, childless couple to adopt them, but I couldn’t do that. Hence, I got Ben, Little Eli and Lindsey, but lost my marriage in the process.”
He looked up, smiling again. “I moved them all here to rebuild, and it’s worked out well.”
Micah sipped