Tiny Little Thing: Secrets, scandal and forbidden love. Beatriz Williams
“Aha. So you’re hungry, too, only you won’t admit it. Reducing for the wedding?”
“I’m not reducing.”
“When’s the big day?”
“June.” She said it reluctantly, as if she were worried he’d use the information against her.
“Oh, really? Right around the corner, then. My cousin’s getting married in June.”
“How lovely.”
“He’s a lucky man, your fiancé.”
“I like to think so.”
Across the room, the toddler was wailing now, down on the floor with his arms and legs waving. Want more syrup! Want more syrup! And the mother hushing, flushing, red-faced, helpless, trying to peel his boneless body off the linoleum.
Cap tapped the corner of his mouth with his finger. “You’ve got a bit of apricot jam, there.”
The tip of her tongue flashed out, remembered its manners, and disappeared. She picked up her napkin and dabbed instead.
“Nope, the other corner. Here, I’ve got it.” Before she could react, he reached across and swept away the dot from Tiny’s mouth. Her lip was softer than he expected. He licked the sweet jam from his finger and smiled at her shocked expression. “You look as if you’ve never been on a date with a man before.”
“This isn’t a date!” she gasped, and touched her ring with her thumb.
“Hey,” he said gently, losing the wicked smile. “Relax. I’m just playing with you a bit. Tiny.” He tried out her name on his tongue, and it tasted good. “Come on. You’ve seen me every day for a month. Just an ordinary guy, eating his eggs. You can relax, all right? Just relax. Not going to bite, I swear.”
Her brow worried. Her lips parted, and then squeezed back into that tense pink line.
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If I were going to make a move on you, I’d have done it last week, when you were wearing that pink number, the one with the …” He gestured to his neck.
“Lace.” She exhaled audibly, a whoosh of apricot air. And she smiled. And holy God, that smile, like she’d just swallowed the sun. Where had she been hiding that smile?
He smiled back. “You see? One of the good guys.”
“All right, Caspian.” She held out her hand. “Let’s start again.”
He set down his cup and reached for the handshake that would start things all over again, down the road he wanted to take her. But in the instant before his fingers touched hers, the bells jangled furiously, like they meant business this time, and a man in a dark suit walked through the door, drew a gun from his pocket, and stepped to the register at the front.
“Hands in the air! Everyone!”
The little boy stopped crying midwail.
Caspian Harrison holds my outstretched hand. “Thanks. You can call me Caspian. Or just Cap, like the rest of the family.”
He looks the same. Of course he does. Men like him aren’t made for changing. The taut face, the pale green eyes with the serious creases at the corners. The dark hair shorn to a bristle, emphasizing the bones of his face.
Except for the scar. Though my eyes remain locked politely with his, I still see it at the periphery, long and thick, pink against his tan. (Where had he found a tan like that, after all those months in the hospital? Or has the sun of Southeast Asia burned permanently into his subderma?)
The thing about faces, though, is that when your emotions are tangled up in a person, your memory can’t quite draw up a picture of him. You can’t remember exactly what he looks like. It’s a scientific fact; I read it somewhere. Something to do with the neural connections of the brain. So as Caspian stands before me, two years later, the very familiarity of his image shocks me. It’s you! says the startled jump of my pulse, remembering, and yet the absolute warrior rawness of his beauty still shaves my breath, as if I’m observing him for the first time, that very first time I walked into Boylan’s Coffee Shop, all innocent and unsuspecting, clutching my pocketbook, and there he sat in a booth in the corner, exotic and feral, eating his eggs.
I remember the photograph now sitting in an envelope at the bottom of my underwear drawer. Not the wisest place to hide something like that, I realize now. My fingers grip the sides of the glass. For an instant, his face blurs in front of me, as if the resentment and anger have formed a film atop my eyeballs.
And then he comes back into focus.
“Caspian. Of course. Come in. You didn’t need to ring the doorbell.”
“I thought I should. It’s been a while.”
I motion in the direction of the library. “Would you like a drink? Frank’s father is standing by. You’re the first to arrive.”
“Sorry. Army habit.”
“Yes, of course.”
We stand there suspended for an instant, not quite sure what to say. I’m afraid I’ll burst out with some question about the photograph. I’m afraid I won’t, that I’ll just let this awful thing dangle unspoken between us.
Well, maybe I should. Maybe if I ignore it long enough, leave it in its drawer upstairs, untouched, unspoken, it will disappear. It will never have existed to begin with.
A hand falls on my shoulder. Caspian’s eyes shift to the right.
“Cap! You’re early!” says my husband, Frank.
“I’m on time, actually. Which is early, in this crowd.”
“You can take the boy out of the army …” Frank shakes his head and applies a kiss to my cheek. “I see you’ve finally met my lovely wife.”
Caspian’s gaze travels from my cheek to Frank’s hand on my shoulder, and finally to Frank himself. He smiles. Not a happy smile. “The pleasure was mine.”
I raise the glass to my lips for a sip that turns into a gulp. My nose bumps against the olive. I’ll say, I think.
“Wow,” says Frank. “Did I miss something?”
I realize I’ve said it aloud.
“I’ll have that drink now, if you don’t mind,” Caspian says quietly.
His voice is the same, too, formal and easy at the same time, rumbling naturally from his throat. Two years ago, dizzy with the newness of infatuation, I had adored that voice. What wouldn’t you confess, to a voice like that? What wouldn’t you reveal of yourself? No, I can’t blame that old Tiny, that young Tiny, two years younger, two years fresher and so damply naïve.
I turn for the library. “Of course. Right through here.”
I leave Caspian in the library with my father-in-law, drink safely in hand, talking about Vietnam and the politics of war by proxy, and by this time the house is filling up at last. Frank pulls me aside and wraps his hand around my elbow.
“What was that all about?” he asks.
“What was what all about?”
“Between you and Cap. Did he try something?”
We’re standing in a shadowed corner, so it’s hard to see Frank’s expression. His brows are down low over his blue eyes, which doesn’t happen often. I put on my cheerful face. “Why, no. Just the usual hello.”
“Because he can be a bit funny sometimes. He’s been away awhile, and—well, you know.” He delivers the you know