Undo Part 29

"Hah, boy's blind, too. I see a lady in there who looks at you with real fancy in her eye. She's standing by you strong, I know it."

Byron took his pipe from his mouth and looked thoughtfully into its bowl. "I'll give you something to think about, and you let it roll around in your head a bit." He sniffed. "Thing is, is I've been bored lately. Yeah, I love it here, and our home in Connecticut, and Gracie, and we've been talking about maybe traveling again this winter," he said, waving his pipe in the general direction of everywhere in the world, "but I've been feeling sort of itchy. Like I gotta do something. You ask me, I think there was a reason for us running into each other the way we did."

"How's that?"

"I don't know why. Not yet, anyway. I suspect it has something to do with our difference in thinking. I mean that in a good way. We come from different worlds, yet we we're not such different beings. If you and I put our heads together, I bet we could really show the rest of 'em a thing or two."

"Think so?"

Byron winked. "I know so," he said, patting Peter on the leg.

"Now come on," he said, rising to his feet. "Let's go get us a slice of that apple pie."

She set the dirty dishes in the sink, wrapped the leftovers in foil. On the counter, there sat a cranberry and apple crumble she had made for dessert. The bourbon sauce, which was to be warmed and drizzled over the piping dessert, sat in a saucepan on the stove, a gloppy mess. She dumped it down the drain and left the dishes in the sink for Marie to deal with in the morning.

Matthew was back in his office working, and Greta stood with the last of the wine in her gla.s.s gazing out the kitchen window at the valley beyond.

When was it going to end, she had asked him. But she knew the answer to that question. There were two answers, really. The first was that it was never going to end, and the second was that it already had. She had tried - for the last time? - to break through the wall he had over the years erected between them. But she knew now, after tonight's dinner, that the wall would only grow higher, thicker. After Matthew turned Wallaby into what he wanted, then sold it to ICP, it would be no different when he was promoted to a higher rank within ICP, perched atop his ever-growing blockade. Maybe they would stay in California, but probably they would have to go back to New York, to ICP's headquarters. Though she sometimes missed New York, the thought or returning held little appeal. There her friends were all wives of the other International Foods executives, and out here, regardless of all she had heard about the nice people in California, the women were still the same, robots who yessed their husbands at social occasions and dinner parties, while behind their backs they, and their husbands, engaged in extramarital affairs.

That wasn't how Greta wanted to end up living her life. But would she?

She finished her wine and set the gla.s.s on the counter - a little too firmly. The crystal base shattered into little bits with a high resonating tinkle, yet the bowl of the gla.s.s remained intact in her hand.

"s.h.i.t," she cried, the sound breaking a dam in her, releasing a flood of tears. She tossed the unbroken half into the sink, which echoed the same tinkling sounds, even louder this time. She held her breath, wondering if he had heard, wondering if would come to see if she had injured herself. She waited, holding on to this fragile hope with all of her breath.

If he had heard, he wasn't letting her know. She let out a great sigh. Jesus, was that her life with Matthew? Shattered, broken beyond repair? It was too much to consider at this moment. She needed to get out of the house for a little while, to go for a walk in the pretty night and clear her head.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed her windbreaker from the coat hook beside the door to the garage and stepped outside into the evening's coolness.

She wandered down the sloping hill to the high, solid gate. She stepped through the gateway and hiked down the trail to the edge of the pond with its narrow dirt path.

Eventually, if she followed it, the path would lead her to the horse stables. Sometimes she rode Mighty Boy along here, circling the entire pond and back around to the stable, pa.s.sing her own home on the way. Quickly and steadfastly she strode through the twisted, tree-lined path in the moonlight. The stables lay a half-mile ahead.

It was supposed to have been her night to celebrate the memories of her marriage, but now she found herself thinking about the scene that had taken place in Mighty Boy's stall the other day.

For better or worse, she had stopped him. She had admitted to him that she and Matthew were having problems, but they were still married, and even though she had desperately wanted him to go on, she said she could not let herself be with him. He had released her, and a.s.sured her that it would not happen again. Unless, he said, she came to him. Since that day she had not gone back to the ranch.

She slowed for a moment, then stopped. She absently stroked her left hand with her right hand as she examined her present state of mind. What was she going to do, just knock on the door of his cottage? She turned and looked back up the hill to her home. A few lights glowed - Matthew's office. She swallowed, and her left hand throbbed some more.

Yes, she decided, that was exactly what she was going to do.

She moved on, her pace quickening, her heart pumping. Shortly the stables came into view, illuminated by both the light of the moon and by the floodlights surrounding the property. Trailing along the border of light, just beyond its edge, she grew excited and reckless, like an inexperienced burglar. Her brisk walk had warmed her and she unzipped her jacket as she stealthily slipped around the stable.

She pa.s.sed the main house, where the ranch's owner lived alone.

Purple-blue light flickered from an upstairs window. About fifty yards from where she stood were two small cottages. She had pa.s.sed them many times while riding. Jean-Pierre lived in one of those cottages, and though she had never been invited inside, she knew which one was his because he had mentioned once that it afforded a beautiful view of the pond from his bedroom window, through which he could see her home and its rear upstairs light glowing late at night. Though her home was too high and far away for him to see inside, she was excited by the thought of him lying in his dark bedroom, fixated on her bedroom window. Had he ever glimpsed her pa.s.sing the window, closing the curtains?

The sound of a car engine starting suddenly broke through the quiet evening. A second later a swath of light beamed just a foot beside her and beyond, as far as she could see, into the woods.

She ducked behind a small wooden utility shed stationed alongside the drive. White light pierced through the tiny cracks and seams of the shed. Cautiously she peeked around its edge. A car appeared from between the cottages, its light sweeping past the shed as it steered onto the drive. Greta flattened herself against the side of the small building and crept around the corner once the car had completely pa.s.sed.

Was he going out for the night? The sound of the engine grew distant, then came a high squealing noise when the car reached the end and turned onto the main road. Once more, the sounds of the night and her own pulse were all she could hear. She left her cover and pressed on.

No, she saw at once, it hadn't been Jean-Pierre because his MG was parked in front of the cottage. Avoiding the light cast by the lamp outside the front door, she circled around to the back of the small house. She peered into the bedroom window. The room was lit by a small lamp beside an empty bed with twisted sheets.

The sight caused her breath to catch. She rushed to the back stoop and halted before the door, flexed her hands a few times.

Feeling the night's coolness breezing through the silken material of her gloves, she absently wiped them on her dress and turned and faced the pond for a moment to collect her thoughts.

Could she really go through with this? Her eyes searched across the small shining lake, along to the narrow sh.o.r.e and the trail's edge, up the hill. Her home. She could see the very window where she had stood just minutes earlier, and she could see too the d.a.m.ned glow coming from Matthew's office, where, on their anniversary night, he was fondling his true love, Wallaby.

Yes, she could go through with this, and would. She turned and knocked three times on the Dutch door, so loudly that she startled herself. She heard the short, hollow tamp of footsteps, the clacking sound of the door latch. For an instant it felt as if her wedding band had tightened around her finger. Irrational.

The top half of the door swung open, and there he stood, wearing only jeans and wire-framed reading gla.s.ses. His expression bore no surprise. A knowing smile formed on his full lips. She started breathing again. Plumes of mist danced around her head as the warmth of the cottage bled outside into the chilly air. He removed his gla.s.ses and closed the top door for a moment, then the entire door opened and he stepped back, his arm extended. She quickly and nervously glanced around the room as she went inside, taking in at once its simple furnishings and his things. There were boots beside the front door, a black T-shirt tossed over the back of the couch, a beer bottle beneath the shaded lamp, a winegla.s.s beside the bottle, a pair of brown leather gloves beside the gla.s.s. She heard her own blood pulse in her ears, felt dizzy and a little buzzed by the wine, the rush of activity, and now the stillness.

Following her gaze, Jean-Pierre quickly stepped into the tiny living room. He picked up the gloves. They were women's gloves, she could see that now. Everything was happening so fast.

His shoulders sagged. "You saw them," he said.

Her eyes quickly jumped to the bottle, to the gla.s.s, to the gloves, back to the gla.s.s. She thought of the car that had just gone. She looked into his eyes. "What?" she said, her voice not sounding like her own.

He held the gloves out to her. "I wanted to wrap them and surprise you."

She blinked. "For me?"

"Of course."

She accepted the gloves in her right hand. There were a few small, barely noticeable scratches on them, but the st.i.tching was clean and new. She wanted to say something, but when she looked into his eyes again, whatever she had thought she wanted to say vanished, and in its place was desire, like what she had felt when he kissed her in the stall.

"Thank you," she managed as she absently watched him take back the gloves and carefully fold them over, then tuck them into her jacket pocket.

He took her by the shoulders and kissed her. Her eyes were still closed and lips slightly parted when he pulled his face away. She had come to him, and now she needed him to guide her.

He stepped aside and indicated the way to the bedroom. She moved and he trailed her holding one of her hands in his, the one she would let him hold. Had he figured it out yet, she wondered, about the other one. She stopped beside the bed, facing the pond.

He switched off the lamp and placed his hands on her shoulders.

She struggled to see clearly, but could not. He pressed his hard body against her back. The air was all made of his scent, musky, s.e.xy, alive. She wanted to be tumbled and spun in the tangled sheets that lay before her, to move her hands between their softness and his firmness, to flop into the pillows, his weight hard on her, his mouth on hers. She closed her eyes. Yes, his mouth, which was now gently kissing the back of her neck, his lips pulling the small hairs at the base of her skull. She twisted her head into the warmth of his hot and chilling breath.

A small sound escaped her as he slid her windbreaker from her shoulders. It fell to the ground with a soft rustle. She closed her eyes and reached her good hand to her left shoulder, placing it over his hand. She leaned back into his hardness and he pressed himself against her more firmly. The wine had helped to numb her feelings, and now the charged atmosphere of his bedroom melted her into yielding. Even her left hand felt normal.

I tried, G.o.d as my witness, I tried, she thought with a shudder as he wrapped his arms around her and across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. He held her until her trembling subsided, then he began to unzip her dress, very slowly. She opened her eyes. Her vision had adjusted to the silvery light, which now sharpened the edges of everything and cast ambiguous shadows.

And there, across the pond, she saw Matthew's lamp.

"No," she said, reaching behind for her zipper.

He gripped her wrist.

"Yes," he breathed hotly in her ear.

She challenged his hold. Unable to resist, she yielded, spun fiercely, and sought his lips. He held her head between his hands and kissed her, pushing against her so intensely she felt she would burst into flames. Her hands slid up his chest and across his shoulders, his broad back. This hardness, I want this on me, was all she could think, I have to have this in me.

But again, as if burning into her back, Matthew's library lamp broke her, mocked her. With a cry, she twisted around. "No. I can't. Not with him right there."