Cupid’s Confederates

Chapter 6

“How about a little game of three-handed bridge?” Elizabeth suggested brightly.

Zach, stretched out on the couch, lifted his eyes from the farming journal in his hand. It was after ten. He’d just finished sixteen hours of work, give or take quick breaks for meals, and if he hadn’t needed to catch the latest weather report on the late news, he would already have been sacked out upstairs. “Thanks, but no, Elizabeth,” he said evenly.

“Brittany? Of course, we can’t play bridge with only two, but these are other card games…”

Bett was already rising from the opposite couch, rapidly swinging her feet to the floor. Her muscles ached from painting. Her head ached as well. In fact, everything ached. Spraying all morning, painting all afternoon, payroll until ten minutes ago… She forced herself to a standing position with a miraculously energetic smile for her mother. “I’ll play.”

“A good game of cards will relax us both,” Elizabeth announced.

“Yes.” Elizabeth looked as relaxed as a bouncing ball. Bett trailed her into the kitchen, stifling a yawn. “Maybe we could just play for a few minutes, Mom. I’m a little tired.”

Elizabeth glanced up from the card drawer with a hurt look. “If you really don’t want to play-”

“I do. Really.” Particularly if keeping her mother busy meant a few minutes of peace and quiet for Zach. After doing both his own work and half of hers for the past two weeks, Zach was understandably exhausted. Apart from tiredness, though, he wasn’t in the best of moods. If Bett hadn’t yet managed to claim a moment of privacy with him to explain about painting the room, the least she could do was ensure him some peace. At dinner, Elizabeth had chattered on and on.

Bett settled in a kitchen chair while her mother expertly shuffled the cards. “Canasta or poker?” Elizabeth questioned.

“Canasta.”

“I think poker. We haven’t played that in a long time.”

“Poker, then,” Bett agreed.

“On the other hand…”

They played canasta. After one game, Elizabeth got up to bring them both glasses of lemonade, and peeked into the living room. “Zach’s fallen asleep on the couch,” she said fondly.

They played a second game, and were halfway through the third when Elizabeth laid down her cards, perched her elbows delicately on the table and looked at her daughter. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you, honey.”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t you think that you two work together just a little…too much?”

Bett’s eyebrows arched. “What do you mean?”

“Well. You, going off on those tractors. Lifting bushels. Being around that…crew of men. Sweetheart, look at your nails.”

Bett dutifully looked at her nails. All ten were there, clipped very short. Her small hands didn’t fare well with physical work, which was why she constantly plied them with hand lotion. They were never going to pass for the hands of a lady of leisure, but she couldn’t see any actual deformities.

“See what I mean?” Elizabeth said gently.

“Not exactly.”

“Many, many women,” Elizabeth said obliquely, “make the terrible mistake of letting themselves go after they’ve been married awhile. Just a little. As if once you’ve caught the man, you don’t have to worry anymore about keeping him.”

Bett shuffled her cards back together, scooped up her mother’s and started putting them back in their cardboard box. “I’m almost positive Zach isn’t on the verge of divorcing me because of the state of my hands,” she said dryly.

“Now, don’t get defensive.”

“I’m not getting defensive.”

“I was married to your father for a long time, you know. We had a good marriage, a very good one. That took work on both sides, Brittany, don’t think it didn’t. The hunt and chase is very exciting before you’re married, but then a man suddenly realizes he doesn’t have to chase anymore, once the ring’s on her finger. Humdrum sets in. Don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about, because I’ve never met a woman yet who hasn’t gone through it. The man’s just not in as much of a hurry to pursue, so to speak.”

Bett cupped her chin in her palm. She’d been through a lot of these lectures with her chin cupped in her palm. For some strange reason, though, she had an odd stricken feeling inside. Humdrum didn’t apply to her and Zach. Luck, undoubtedly? Actually, it was Zach. But for the past two weeks, Zach really hadn’t seemed to mind that their lovemaking had been interrupted every time, nor that their touch-and-tease contacts throughout the day had been curtailed. Bett swallowed suddenly. “What is it you’re suggesting?” she asked quietly.

Elizabeth smiled in triumph. “Several things, really. Darling, don’t you think Zach could be tired of seeing you in jeans and work clothes every day? And what exactly do you think he feels when he notices grease under your fingernails?”

Bett didn’t know. It had never occurred to her before. She’d thought more along the lines of the pleasure of doing work together than the appearance of her hands before they were washed. Dirty fingernails were…rather disgusting. Which was why she was always careful to clean her hands thoroughly and use the apricot hand cream liberally, but she’d never really thought of how often Zach had seen her fresh-or not so fresh-from the fields.

“And you doing rough-and-tumble work. Man’s work. Honey, do you think so much has changed over the generations? A man still likes to feel he’s bigger and stronger than his woman. All men like to protect, to believe they’re taking care of their wives. If you take that away from him, maybe he sees you less as a woman?”

“Mom.” Bett took a long, weary breath. The whole conversation was ridiculous, but a most undesirable flicker of doubt was suddenly preying on her already jangled nerves. When they were first married, she’d invariably come home from work in a dress or skirt. Zach had inevitably commented on her legs, the scent she wore. He was so damned impatient half the time that they’d skip dinner, or forget it. He’d always been…impatient. But the past couple of weeks, he hadn’t seemed to care at all that they’d been interrupted. Maybe…

Elizabeth pressed her advantage. “You used to wear padded bras to build up your figure. A little makeup, darling. And your hair, if we had it cut and permed-”

Bett’s eyebrows shot up in alarm. “I had ten thousand permanents as a child. They never worked.”

“Maybe this time-”

“No, Mom.”

Elizabeth sighed. “Well, makeup, then. You’re going to be thirty in a few years, Brittany; you must take care of your skin. You’re in the sun all the time, and you don’t want to get wrinkles, for heaven’s sake…”

Zach, yawning, shoved his hands in the back pockets of his jeans and wandered toward the bright light in the kitchen. The living-room clock said it was past midnight. He had evidently fallen asleep on the couch. Every one of his muscles was a mix of stiff and sleepy, but the murmurs from the kitchen announced that the two women were still up.

He paused in the doorway, blinking hard to adjust to the sudden dazzling illumination. Elizabeth was bending over her daughter, who sat in one of the kitchen chairs, and when she straightened up, he saw the array of tiny vials and bottles on the table, as well as his wife’s face. “Better,” Elizabeth announced critically.

He blinked again. Bett’s sun-golden complexion had turned ivory; the natural coral of her cheeks had turned pink. The shape of her mouth looked different, sort of a Cupid’s bow.

He glanced at the kitchen clock to verify that it was indeed after midnight. He stood there for a few seconds more, unnoticed by the two women, feeling a mixture of amusement and irritation. Not that this new look wasn’t very interesting, but where was Bett beneath all of it?

The thought echoed in his mind as he silently climbed the stairs. Where had his wife gone? Painting rooms in the middle of the harvest season, spending half her day inside, distracted all the time. He’d expected changes when Elizabeth came, but not that his wife would turn into a stranger.

Bett tossed her head, stuck her hands in her pockets and entered the cavernous darkness of the huge old barn. The beams stretched up for three stories, and from the top she could hear the low, melodious coos of the homing pigeons greeting her. Pulling open an old wooden door, she entered the shop.

The room was a stark change from the tall beams and mellow character of old barn siding. Zach had added modern lighting and a smooth cement floor to the shop three years before, and neat metal bins stored the spare parts and shop tools that had once been strewn every which way.

The John Deere was parked on the far side of the long room, and Zach was crouched over the engine, a wrench in his grease-stained hand. On a packing crate next to him was a sterling silver tea service. A thermos of coffee stood next to an alternate option of iced tea; next to that was an assortment of homemade cookies, still warm. Bett’s eyes traveled over her husband. His jeans were pressed with an impeccable crease these days. His work boots, underneath the day’s layer of dirt, had been freshly siliconed. His blue chambray shirt was starched. Well starched.

The incongruous touches of sterling and starch ordinarily would have made Bett chuckle. Zach was being spoiled, Elizabeth-style. But no smile crossed her features, because Zach, once upon a time, became extremely uptight if the least fuss were made over him. These days, he hadn’t said a word. Obviously, he didn’t much mind being spoiled; even enjoyed it, perhaps. Which was exactly what Elizabeth had been preaching to her.

Zach’s head swiveled around at the sound of her footsteps. He had the same oddly distant expression in his eyes that she’d seen all too often this past week.

“Caruso just called,” she told him. “The truck’ll be here any minute.”

Zach nodded. “Our last, you realize?”

“Our last,” she agreed, with a fleeting, sharing smile. The battle season was almost over. When the harvest was done, it didn’t mean an instant end to the work, but it did mean they could pay off their loan with a comfortable sum left over and begin to relax. Her fleeting smile widened irrepressibly, turning joyous. “Hey, Monroe? We’re actually making it. You realize that?”

Zach chuckled, tossed down his wrench and crooked a blackened finger in her direction.

“No, Zach. No. Behave-”

“I need a hug.” He caught up with her before she could reach the door, stretching both long arms around her shoulders to imprison her, his grease-darkened fingers splayed in midair behind her. Her eyes were very bright blue this morning, full of laughter. He hadn’t seen quite that look in her eyes in nearly a month, and he wasn’t about to let her go that quickly.

“Listen, Buster. If you get grease on this white sweatshirt, my mother-”

“Will have something to do besides starch my work shirts.” His lips closed on hers swiftly, and lingered until Bett’s hands slowly crept around his waist to hang on.

He liked the feel of her arms around him, and he liked the feel of her pelvis cradled directly between his thighs. He didn’t much like the feel of lip gloss over the smooth natural texture of Bett’s own lips. He drew back just a little to look at her. Bett’s skin was as soft as a baby’s, skin that begged to be touched. The eye makeup did sexy things for her eyes, but he just couldn’t understand why she wanted to hide her natural softness under a layer of…crud.

“You’re staring,” Bett murmured.

“Probably.”

“You don’t like what you see?” The question was teasing, but Bett suddenly looked as vulnerable as a kitten.

“I always like what I see.” To hell with it. He was hardly going to say the wrong thing and risk hurting her. It was her business, if she wanted to wear a little paint.

He was in the mood to wear Bett. To pull her on, tuck her in close and button her up inside of him. Quickies seemed to be all they had the time or energy for these past few weeks since Elizabeth had been there. And when they did catch a private moment in bed, his wife was always worrying that her mother would pop her insomniac head through the bedroom door. Bett’s willingness to make love was unchanged, but Zach could sense her distraction. He understood just fine…and for three minutes of real privacy with her, he would willingly have auctioned off portions of his soul. Cheap.

“Zach.” Bett tried to pull away. “There’s a truck due-”

“If you move even an inch, you’ll have greasy fingerprints all over your shirt,” he murmured.

True. Bett obediently stood still, offering up her most mischievous smile. She pressed closer to him, since that was obviously what he wanted, and then weaved her hips just a little, a motion she’d learned in the single belly-dancing class she’d conned the girls in the dorm into investing in, about a thousand years ago.

Zach sucked in his breath. His chin nudged aside her hair, exposing a spot on her neck for his lips to explore. Come to think of it, he’d always been partial to that vulnerable spot just below her ear. Probably because she inevitably shivered when he kissed her there.

Her arms tightened around him and she raised up on tiptoe, rubbing deliberately against him, teasing the tips of her breasts against his starched shirt. Inside the stiff collar of his work shirt-the so very stiff collar-she tested a puppy-soft tongue. Just a little lick. His skin was sun-warmed and faintly salty; she could smell the earth they both worked on and loved. The man-smell was underneath that. That certain musky scent and nakedness were inextricably linked in her mind. She lifted up on tiptoe again, arching against him, her hips suggesting a familiar rhythm.

She could sense more than see Zach’s hands lift to hold her, and hesitate. “Do that again,” he murmured next to her ear, “and watch how fast you get taken on the floor of the barn.”

Her sparkling eyes met his. “You think I’d object?”

“I think your fanny would.”

She peered over her shoulder at the subject under discussion. “It doesn’t object.”

The chuckle rumbled from his throat at the same time that his teeth nipped at the curve of her shoulder. “You just told me twice that Caruso was coming. Now, behave.”

“You’re not behaving. Why should I?”

“I don’t feel like behaving. I feel like…”

She got the message. The look in his eyes was X-rated. The next kiss was delicious. Zach kissed dry; she’d never liked wet lips. She liked smooth, warm, dry lips pressed directly on hers, followed by that sudden wet warmth when tongue touched tongue. “You’ve been in the honey,” he murmured, and went down to kiss her again.

When he surfaced for air, Bett was trembling and no longer smiling. It was ridiculous, really, after all this time to still feel the same wild reaction to the touch of him. The shudders didn’t actually touch her skin; it was all inside. A weak-kneed feeling that it was better to lie down, that it was really an ideal time to lie down and feel the warm, welcome weight of Zach on top of her. His devilish eyes were communicating the same message.

She drew back an inch. He drew back an inch.

“We could always meet on the floor of the barn about two hours from now,” he said vibrantly, releasing her.

She chuckled. “You want help loading the truck?”

“What I want is for you to visit China immediately so that I don’t have to be embarrassed when the truck driver gets here.”

She glanced down at his pants. “You’re blaming me for that?”

“A hundred percent.”

“Most unreasonable. All I did was innocently walk in here, and…Zach?” As she was about to go out the door, she turned to him, and hesitated suddenly. She hadn’t really come out here to tell him about the truck. She’d come out here just to…talk to him, but now the words seemed to jumble in her throat. “Everything’s…all right, isn’t it?”

He frowned slightly, cocking his head. “Like what?”

“Like…things.” Bett hooked her fingertips in her pockets, staring at a spot just past his shoulders. “Look, I know I haven’t been pulling my weight since Mom’s been here…” Haven’t you missed me working next to you? Haven’t you needed me next to you? “And the house, everything’s so different. I know you must be bothered by certain changes, and I…” Maybe it wasn’t driving him crazy to the extent that it was her, but surely he was annoyed by the starched shirts and the salmon? “We’ve barely had time together.” She bit her lip. “And my mother…”

Zach was beside her in three long strides, pressing a kiss on her forehead. “Don’t be foolish,” he said roughly. “None of that matters. I’m not complaining, two bits. Have you heard me say one word?”

“No,” she admitted with a little laugh.

The laugh was hollow, not what he was expecting, and Zach frowned as she turned away. He knew she was making a massive effort to keep her mother’s mind off Chet; she was doing a terrific job of it. Bett had a priority in her life that for a time had to partially exclude him; he understood that. He’d wanted very much to reassure her…but the smile he’d expected to light up her face wasn’t there. That instant before she’d turned away, Bett had suddenly looked terribly unhappy. It didn’t make sense.

Zach banged three times on Grady’s dilapidated screen door, then let himself in, taking the three steps up into the old farm kitchen.

“Who is it?” called Grady’s gruff voice.

“Zach.”

“Be with you in a minute.”

Zach tossed his cap onto the old oak table and dropped into a chair, stretching out his legs. His eyes scanned the room, from the mound of unwashed dishes in the sink to the row of hats piled on the far counter. The place was far from spotless, and very comfortable. A place where a man didn’t feel like he’d committed a mortal sin for having dusty work boots.

“What’s new?” Grady loped through the doorway, hitching up his trousers as he glanced around for his pipe.

“Nothing.”

“Want some coffee?”

“Have you got a beer?”

Grady’s bushy eyebrows lifted just a little, but he opened the refrigerator and brought out a can of beer. He set it in front of Zach, who picked it up but left it unopened.

“I’ve spent the entire lunch hour,” Zach remarked, “listening to the story of Mildred Riley’s life.”

“Who the hell is Mildred Riley?”

“Damned if I know.” Zach rolled his eyes in exasperation.

Grady slid into the chair across from him and raised both legs to prop his feet on an empty chair. “You’re not having a little trouble, having two women in the same house, are you?” he asked wryly, and peered out the window. “Where’s the truck?”

“Hiding behind your barn.”

Grady nodded, as if that were a perfectly logical answer. After a minute or two of silence, he rose and got himself a beer, popping the top noisily as he settled back down.

“She’s driving me nuts,” Zach said finally. “Plastic flowers all over the place. Salmon. Every time I try to start a conversation with Bett, she jumps in. You ever worked up a sweat in a starched shirt?”

Grady smothered a grin. “Can’t say I have.”

“Don’t.”

“I won’t.”

“I walk in and she’s got a drink waiting for me, ice-cold. She chases me down when I’m out in the field with homemade cookies and lemonade. She’s so damned nice.”

Grady took a long slug of beer and wiped his mouth with the side of his wrist. “You told Bett how you feel?”

“Of course I haven’t told Bett how I feel,” Zach said irritably. “Bett’s got enough on her plate. A few months ago, Elizabeth couldn’t get through a day without crying; Bett’s turned that around so fast it makes my head spin to think of it. I’m proud of her.” Zach turned the cold can in his hand. “I’ve backed her up as much as I can, being out of the house so much. Tried hard to let her think none of it’s bothering me.”

Grady fixed Zach with an even stare. “Seems to me Bett just might be even more upset than you are.”

Zach shook his head. “Just the opposite. In fact, for the first time since I can remember, they’re actually getting along together.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

Grady shrugged. “Maybe. I didn’t get any smile when I drove by the last time. The times I’ve seen your wife without a smile on her face I can count on one hand. As in lately. I think you’ve got just one too many women in that house.”

“Well, there isn’t any question that Bett wants her mother there.” Zach sighed.

“Actually,” Grady said slowly, “I don’t much care what she wants. I’m telling you I expect a smile when I ride by your place, and lately I’m just not getting it. Women,” he added, “are strange.”

Zach gave him a wry look.

“Excepting your Bett. She’s not like most. Now, I wouldn’t go so far as taking all the trouble of trying to understand any of them, but it does seem to me…” Grady stood up, hitching up his trousers. “There’s nothing more fragile than a peach. You have to handle them real careful or they bruise. And sometimes a bruise starts on the inside.”

Zach stood up, sighed and frowned at the still unopened beer can in his hand as if he’d never seen it before. Setting it down on the table, he stalked toward the door.

“Want another?” Grady asked blandly. “Seeing as how you’ve taken up drinking in the middle of the day?”

With a faint chuckle, Zach pushed open the screen door and went back out to work.