The hellion

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They had dipped into the pool and rinsed each other off, to emerge dripping and shivering. "Show me your bedroom. I'm tired of concrete."

She laughed and reached for his hand. "This way." And so simply was it decided he would stay the night.

The air had chilled their skin, bringing goose bumps and puckers as they ran for the house, two laughing specters with slapping feet. Inside, all was midnight shadows as they groped their way down a hall and found a linen closet, exchanging intermittent kisses, then swipes of thirsty towels. They paused for a heartier kiss, damp skin sealed by the residue of water warming between them, sending out a sharp smack as they drew apart.

He touched her face lovingly. "The bedroom," he reminded her, and again she led the way.

She stopped in the center of a darkened room where the only thing visible was the moon's silver reflection lilting across the surface of the pool beyond a set of sliding glass doors.

"Is this the room you shared with Owen?"

"Yes, but everything in it is brand-new."

He glanced at the shadowy bed. "Everything?"

"Yes." She turned into his arms. "Even me."

Their kiss was brief, but welling with rebirth. "So turn on the light and let me see." Immediately he sensed her reluctance, even before she spoke.

"But it's nothing special, just yellow carpet and wicker and bamb..."

He covered her lips with an index finger. "Turn on the light, Rachel," he commanded quietly.

She thought of her thinness, and the breasts that were so minuscule they hardly showed when she was dressed, and of course the scar on her stomach.

"But… but why?"

"Because we're not children anymore." His palms bracketed her neck, thumbs lightly pushing on her jaw. His voice became even softer. "Because I've made love to you more times than I can remember, but I've never seen you naked." Timidity intruded and she tried to drop her chin, only to have his thumbs press it upward unrelentingly. He kissed the corner of her mouth, whispering, "Please, Rachel. I'm forty-one, too, and I have my insecurities just like you do. But turn it on anyway… for me."

She crossed the room with the faint brushing of bare feet on carpet and clicked on a low bedside light, pausing with her hand beneath the shade to glance back over her shoulder, her eyes wide, dark, and exquisitely beautiful. At last she turned to face him.

The two of them studied each other. Tommy Lee's towel was draped about his neck. Rachel's was clutched against her stomach. His eyes traveled a slow path from her brown irises to her pink toenails, then back up. Hers moved lingeringly from parted lips to strong brown feet, then returned to rest within the rich, waiting depths of his gaze. How amazing that they should never before have seen each other this way. In her eyes he was unutterably perfect. The marks of age became only testimony she cherished.

"You have much more hair on your chest than you used to," she noted shakily.

"And most of it's gray."

"Gilding," she praised softly. Her heart lifted expectantly as he slowly moved toward her, sliding the towel from about his neck with singular lack of haste. He ran it down the shallow ravine between her breasts, where beads of moisture caught the light and sent it radiating like polished chips of amber. Their eyes clung while the towel skimmed her naked back. "You're beautiful, Rachel. Perfect. Too perfect for this world." Then Tommy Lee dropped to one knee and meticulously dried her legs. When he arose, his eyes locked with hers as he drew the towel from her fingers and tossed it aside with his own.

He stepped back. His eyes slid down her exposed body, but when they reached her stomach, the dark brows curled and he flashed her a questioning look.

"Rachel, what's this?" Automatically he reached out.

Automatically she shielded the scar. "Nothing… nothing."

He clasped her wrists and drew them to her hips, searching first her stomach, then her eyes again. "You had the baby by cesarean?"

"It doesn't matter," she reassured him.

"Doesn't matter?" He made a throaty sound as with one swipe he lifted Rachel and placed her diagonally across the bed, bending over her. Gingerly he touched the pale scar. "Everything about you matters. That's what this is from, isn't it?"

Tears shimmered on her eyelids, and her heart eased with the blessed relief of sharing it with him at last, after all these years. "They said I was too small to deliver it naturally."

His eyes seemed unable to pull away from the telltale line running from just below her navel into the black pubic hair. He traced it with four curious fingertips. Then his eyes darkened, glittered, and filled with the past as he opened a hand wide upon her stomach and uttered thickly, "Our baby… God, she was our baby. Think of the waste…"

His voice broke, and suddenly he bent to caress Rachel's stomach with his face, placing warm lips at the spot where the scar disappeared into the dark triangle, breathing on her while wondering at all she'd gone through because of the seed he'd planted within her, letting the hurt rush back and take him one last time.

He felt a sting behind his eyelids and slipped both arms around her hips, cradling his cheek against her warm stomach. "Rachel, I wanted to marry you so badly, and keep her. I wanted to take care of you and have other babies with you, and watch them grow, and get old with you."

It had taken Rachel years to get beyond self-pity and regret, but at the sound of Tommy Lee's emotional outpouring, sensing how close he was to tears, her own eyes blurred. "I know, darling, I know." She rolled to her side, coiling about his head and shoulders, caressing his warm skull while they let the anguished past in to be cleansed.

"What did she look like?"

She closed her eyes, remembering.

"She had a perfect cap of dark, dark hair, just like yours…" Her fingers knew again that hair, finding it crisp now at his temples, while she rued each wasted year that had grayed him and thinned her and kept them from knowing these changes daily. "And gray eyes in a face with the tiniest, most perfect mouth I'd ever seen. I only got to hold her once."

"Rachel… Rachel…" His tortured words were muffled against her, and she saw again the rosebud mouth of the child they had created together, while the pain billowed within them both. "Our baby…" he murmured-a prayer now. "I wanted her… took you both away from me… my Rachel… all these years…"

They had only one means of solace to offer each other, and as his mouth, hands, and body moved over her in recompense, her heart cried and sang at once. Their lovemaking was fierce this time, an attempt to dissolve a past that could never be dissolved, for when they came together in cataclysm, that past bound them more surely than vows.

The bedside clock read 3:18. The lamp glowed softly on two dark heads and across the yellow and white bamboo-designed sheets that covered Rachel's breasts as she lay tucked in the shelter of Tommy Lee's arm. He was propped against a cache of ruffled pillows, smoking, her temple pressed to his slow-thudding heart.

"And what happens now, Rachel?" he asked, staring at the surface of the pool beyond the open shades.

"I don't know."

He took a deep, thoughtful drag, and she heard the air enter his lungs beneath her ear. "Then I'll tell you. You marry me, the way you should have twenty-four years ago."

Her fingers stopped combing the coarse hair on his chest. How simple things became in the throes of passion; how complex upon reconsideration.

"Oh, Tommy Lee, how can I marry you?"

"Do you mean, what would people say?" His voice held a honed edge as he rested a wrist across an updrawn knee.

What would people say? She had pushed the question aside all night, but now it pressed for an answer. "Owen's only been dead for a few months."

"And the fact still remains that I've had three wives and a stable of lovers the whole county knows about, and I've spent a hell of a lot of years drinking like there was no tomorrow, and you're scared it set a pattern I can't break, is that right?"

She tried to sit up, but he held her fast.

"Rachel, don't run away. Did you think I kept after you for nothing more than a roll in the hay, and now that I've had it I'll let you walk out of my life again?"

"I didn't think that, I just..." Just what? Needed my sexual thirst slaked? Wanted to see if I could still bring Tommy Lee Gentry to heel? Am I so shallow that I'd use him, then toss him aside, knowing all along how vulnerable he is where I'm concerned? Slowly she pushed herself up. He let her go this time, watching her naked back curl and the side of one breast slip into view as she doubled her arms across her updrawn knees.

"You just what, Rachel?" His voice sounded brittle, hurt already.

Miserably she dropped her forehead onto her arms and shrugged.

"You don't have much faith in my reformation, do you?"

She felt small and guilty while silently admitting the truth.

"Well, you would if you could crawl inside my body and know what I've felt for you all these years. Without you nothing and nobody mattered. Now everything is possible. Don't you understand, Rachel? Even I matter now."

She lifted her head and stared at the wall, torn by his words. "We have to be honest with ourselves. Are you sure we aren't just… just searching for our lost youth in each other?"

He studied her naked rump, the delicate shadow disappearing down its center, the sheet caught in the fold of her hip. He drew deeply on his cigarette, forced his eyes away from her so he could think more clearly. "I can't answer for you, but I know how it is for me. If it had happened overnight I might suspect that was true. But I told you before, it's been going on for twenty-four years, every time I'd see you on the street or in your car or going into your daddy's bank."

At the mention of her daddy, Rachel's head swung around and their eyes clashed momentarily before she turned away again. He worked the edges of his teeth together, then studied the glowing tip of the cigarette while drawing circles with it on the bottom of the ashtray. "You're still scared of him, aren't you, Rachel?" he asked quietly.

Was she? She didn't want to think so, but she couldn't deny how much she hated the thought of all the strife there was bound to be if her father found out about tonight. And there was a facet of her misgivings that Rachel had been afraid to examine too closely up until now, because she didn't want to believe it might be true. But she could hold it inside no longer.

"By marrying me, you'd show them all, wouldn't you, Tommy Lee? You'd have your revenge for what they forced us to do all those years ago?" It was a thorn that had pricked each time he'd called, each time she'd seen him over the past several months. No, she didn't want to believe it, but wasn't it possible?

"Is that what you think, Rachel? That I'm only using you to get back at them?"

She covered her face with both hands and shook her head until her hair fluttered. "Oh, God, I don't know what to think. All of this would be so much simpler if you'd made your peace with your parents, and if they'd made their peace with mine. But everything's so… so complicated!"

His warm palm caressed her back, sending shivers around her ribs to the tips of her breasts. "There are some things I can't change. But those that I can, I have. I love you, Rachel… for yourself, and for no other reason. And that's why I want to marry you. You've got to believe that. You're the only thing I ever wanted… not other women, not… not liquor and fast cars and shiny boats and..." He broke off and dropped his head back wearily, letting his eyes slip closed and swallowing noisily. "Oh, God, Rachel, I'm so tired of being that way. I need you in my life to give me some peace at last."

A sob escaped her throat as she whirled and flung herself into his arms. He caressed her head, embracing her with a strength close to fury, shutting his eyes against the thought of facing more Rachel-less years, now that he'd come this close.

"Oh, Tommy Lee, I'm so mixed up. Sometimes I don't think I deserve you. You've been more faithful to me than a husband in a lot of ways, no matter how many women you've known."

"There haven't been any others since the day of Owen's funeral. Nobody but you, Rachel. I love you so much… do you really think I'd blow it all now that I stand a chance of having both you and Beth in my life again?"

There came a time when trust had to take its rightful place in a relationship. He had changed. Dramatically. And if he thought the changes were permanent, her belief in him could be all he'd need to make it true. She thought about all he'd said that first night he'd come to her house, the years of misery he'd suffered. She thought about the house he'd built, the hope that had spawned such a task-and there wasn't a doubt in her mind that he loved her. So wasn't it time she began believing in the wonders love could work?

His voice rumbled quietly beneath her ear again. "You said you love me. Is that true, Rachel?"

"Yes…" She squeezed him mightily. "Oh, God, yes. I'm falling in love with you harder than the first time, and it's the scariest thing I've ever gone through in my life."

"Then we'll have to face some things… some people. But it'll work out, you'll see," he promised, then set the ashtray on the bedside table and settled back against the pillows, cradling her again, catching his chin on top of her head. She let his confidence imbue her, and lay in his protective embrace while peace settled over them like a soothing palm.

The minutes slipped by, and his hand moved absently in her hair. "You know," he murmured, "she's old enough to have kids of her own already. Do you realize that? Somewhere in Michigan we might have grandchildren."

She chuckled tiredly against him. "Oh, Tommy Lee, I don't think I'm ready to be a grandma yet. I surely don't feel like one tonight."

He jiggled her a time or two and grinned down lovingly. "You sure's hell didn't act like one. Grandmas are supposed to bake gingerbread cookies and go to sewing circles."

"Remind me to join when I grow tired of this."

She felt his chest lift with silent chuckles. Again his fingers sifted idly through her hair. "Have you ever thought about trying to find our Beth?"

"Yes, I've thought about it. But never for long. It would be too hard to see her, possibly even talk to her, then walk away. And what good would it do? She has parents to love. If she learned about us it could be devastating for her, too. Does it bother you?"

He shrugged. "No, not like it used to. Especially since my other Beth has come to live with me."

They lay silent for some minutes, then Tommy Lee said the most startling thing.

"Rachel, suppose you're pregnant right now."

She snapped back and gaped into his dark, amused eyes. "But… but I can't be pregnant now!"

"Why not? You're only forty-one, and you're not on any kind of birth control." His brow wrinkled. "Are you?"

"But I'm allergic to sperm!"

"You were allergic to Owen's sperm, not mine. If we had one baby, why isn't it possible for us to have another?"

Suddenly Rachel burst out laughing. "Tommy Lee, you're crazy!"

He smiled crookedly. "Maybe. But it's fun thinking about it… 'cause then we'd have to get married." He settled her back where she'd been before. "Imagine the expressions on our parents' faces when we walked up those church steps together, and you pregnant out to here." His hand caressed her abdomen, and they laughed together, imagining it. Then Rachel fell serious.

"Forty-one is too old to become parents."

"Who says?"

"I do, for one." But her heart lurched at the thought, gave a little kick of independence, and left her feeling slightly giddy.

"I know I wasn't much of a father, but I always thought that if it had been you and me together I'd have been so much better at it, loving you the way I did. They say a child's security stems from the love of its parents for each other, so think about it, okay?" He reached out to snap off the light and knocked a few pillows onto the floor, then curled her tightly against his body. "With or without a pregnancy, we're both getting a second chance with Beth."

What a stunning and beautiful thought. Mulling it over, Rachel fell asleep.

They awakened to a butterscotch sun streaming through the bedroom. Tommy Lee stretched and quivered magnificently, then opened his eyes to find Rachel beside him, watching.

"Hi." He grinned with half his mouth.

"Hi." She thought he looked wonderful with his hair tousled and whiskers beginning to show.

"What're you grinning at?"

"What're you grinning at?"

"Rachel Talmadge, all messed up."

"Yeah, well, look who messed her."

"Tell me, Miss Talmadge, what do you think about morners?"

"I always kinda liked them myself. Tell me, Mr. Gentry, what do you think about morners?"

"They rate right up there with nooners and afternooners."

"In that case I don't suppose you'd care to indulge with a messed-up woman who just might be a grandma."

He reached out lazily and ran a knuckle across her lips. "Ohh, Grandma, what nice lips you have."

"The better to kiss you, my dear." And she made a pretense of gnawing his knuckle.

His hand moved down to cup one small breast.

"Ohh, Grandma, what nice breasts you have."

She gyrated the breast against his palm. "The better to entice you, my dear."

He came up slowly and turned her to her back while running a hand down to explore her sweet mysteries. "Ohh, Grandma, you ain't like no other grandma I ever come across in the woods."

She smiled and indulged in some sensuous writhing that felt positively wonderful. She nuzzled the silver hair on the side of his head, then bit his ear and asked seductively, "Isn't this the story where somebody's always eating up somebody else?"

"Oh, nasty, nasty Grandma," he said against her lips, then lowered his open mouth to her breast as they set about ushering in the morning properly.

A half-hour later Rachel was dressed in a floor-length robe of pink satin and coffee was perking as she wrung out Tommy Lee's shirt in the laundry basin.

"Rachel, can I use your brush?" he called from the bathroom.

"Sure. It's in the top left drawer of the vanity."

She heard the drawer open, tossed the shirt into the dryer and turned it on, then stepped into the kitchen.

When the rush of running water stopped at the far end of the house, she called, "Help yourself to towels." Then she cocked her head and asked, "Do you like bacon?"

"I love it, but it's fattening!" he called back.

She smiled as she laid several thick strips on the hot griddle. The bacon was sizzling and the buttons of the shirt were ticking noisily against the tumbling dryer, so she didn't hear the front door opening.

She wasn't aware of Everett's presence in the house until she turned the corner into the family room with a glass of juice in her hand.

At the sight of her father she came up short and her stomach seemed to tilt. He was standing in the middle of the family room, staring at the surface of the pool, where miscellaneous pieces of clothes were caught in the skimmer. Her eyes darted outside to find even her shoes visible, lying in the aquamarine depths of the shallow end. Everett's stormy gaze moved from the pool to scan her pink wrapper, pausing for the briefest second on the fabric shimmering unmistakably over bare nipples.

"Daddy," she gulped.

"I came to have coffee with you before you left for the store," he said acidly. But just at that moment Tommy Lee stepped out of the bathroom and entered the room from the opposite direction, dressed in nothing but trousers, toweling his wet hair. When his face emerged from beneath the towel he stopped dead in his tracks.

The suffocating moment seemed to stretch forever while Everett fired angry glances from one to the other and nobody said a word. His face turned stony while Rachel's began to redden.

"Well, well," he drawled after several interminable seconds. "What have we here?" Tommy Lee glanced helplessly at Rachel while Everett went on silkily. "But I guess it's obvious what we have here. The county's most notorious whoremonger, preying on one of its most vulnerable widows."

Tommy Lee and Rachel both spoke at once.

"Now just a minute!"

"Daddy, it's not that way!"

Everett pierced his daughter with malevolent eyes and pointed an outraged finger. "You shut up, girlie, I'll get to you later!" Then he spun on Gentry. "How dare you set foot in my daughter's house!"

"I didn't realize I had to ask permission to see a forty-one-year-old woman."

"See?" Talmadge hissed. "It appears you did more than see her! It isn't enough that you have every two-bit whore between here and Montgomery? Do you have to drag my daughter down with you?"

Tommy Lee's hands tightened into fists on the ends of the towel. "Your daughter is a lady, and my being here doesn't change that."

"Oh, doesn't it? I wonder if her neighbors agree with you!"

Suddenly Rachel came to life. "Daddy, stop it."

He whirled on her again. "Have you no respect for yourself, or for Owen? He hasn't been gone for..."

"Don't keep throwing Owen up in my face. I married him and gave you the kind of son-in-law you wanted, and I stuck with the marriage, no matter how dull and disastrous it was. But I will not keep revering a dead man at the cost of my own happiness!"

"No, instead you cheapen yourself with trash like him!" Everett thumbed over his shoulder, and Tommy Lee had all he could take. He stalked across the room and whirled Talmadge around by an elbow.

"I'm getting mighty damn sick of you thinking you can control our lives, so get this through your head." He nudged Talmadge in the chest with two strong fingers that set him back a step. "You're all through interfering!"

"Not when she's about to make the same mistake twice, I'm not!"

Tommy Lee's face was grim, his fists clenched at his sides while blue veins bulged up the length of his bare arms. "The mistake wasn't hers, it was yours! But you just can't admit it, can you, Talmadge? You took something away from her that you had no right taking away, and the disaster was doubled when you found out it could never be replaced. And now here I am, back in her life, bringing it all back for you to face. That's what you're fighting against!"

Talmadge's face was mottled and his jowls shook. "I love my daughter, but I won't stand..."

"Love her! Hah!" Tommy Lee glared, jamming his fists onto his hips. "If you love her you've got a damned strange way of showing it. You don't give a damn what she's feeling. All you care about is protecting yourself from having to admit that the decision you made twenty-four years ago made more people miserable than you'd care to count!"

"Don't go laying the blame on me, Gentry. You screwed up your life all by yourself. You didn't need any help from me!"

Exasperated, Tommy Lee rammed four fingers through his damp hair and shook his head. "How blind can you be, man? How long are you going to keep fighting what's right before your eyes? Rachel and I never should have been forced apart-never! We tried to tell you that twenty-four years ago, but you and my mama and daddy knew so much better than Rachel and me what was good for us, didn't you?"

"And if I hadn't, where would she have ended up? Married to a drunkard who couldn't be satisfied with one woman."

"She was the only one I ever wanted, and you know it," Tommy Lee growled dangerously.

"Well, you finally got her, didn't you? And you made sure the whole town knew it by leaving your car in front of her house all night long!"

Suddenly Rachel intervened. "What about me? You talk as if I had no choice in the matter. Daddy, I asked him here. I did not ask you. I should think, since you saw the car, you would have had the common decency to respect my privacy."

"Don't you go preaching to me about common decency, missy! Not when I walk in here and find your clothes floating on the top of the pool and him half naked at eight o'clock in the morning!"

"That's exactly what you did! You walked right in as if it were your God-given right. Well, it's not. I'm all grown up now, Daddy, and this is my house, and you have no right to walk into it unannounced and give me a lecture on how to live my life!"

Her fists were clenched, and the tendons in her neck stood out. Everett raised a hand in appeal. "Rachel, for God's sake, don't you care what people think?"

"No, not anymore. I've lived my whole life according to some nebulous code that you pushed down my throat. But there's no room in that code for mitigating circumstances, is there? Tommy Lee has changed. I've changed." She pressed her hands against her chest and leaned toward him supplicatingly. "Why can't you see that?"

"All I see is a daughter I have to be ashamed of. Lord, girl, I protected you from gossip all these years. What do you suppose it does to me to see you take up with him again?"

"Daddy, please, for once, could you think about my feelings instead of your own? Would you ask yourself why I'm with him again?"

His face grew hard and he pierced Tommy Lee with a venomous gaze that passed from his naked chest to his bare toes. "I believe that's altogether too obvious."

Rachel moved a step nearer Tommy Lee until her shoulderblades touched his chest. "No. You're seeing only what you want to see. Your own stubbornness is making you blind. Daddy, I love him. Can't you accept that and let us all try to forget the past?"

Everett's face turned scornful. "Love him! For God's sake, girl, don't delude yourself because I caught you red-handed."

Tommy Lee's hands came up to rest on Rachel's shoulders as he stated, "It's you who are deluding yourself, Talmadge. I have a feeling it's the only way you could have lived with the decision you made all those years ago."

The sight of Tommy Lee's hands resting possessively on Rachel's shoulders made Everett cringe. "Marshall would have..."

"No, Daddy." Rachel's eyes closed for a long moment, as if in finality. "You've chosen all the men for me you're ever going to. Marshall is a carbon body of Owen, and though it's taken me some soul-searching to admit it, Owen was not the kind of man I needed to make me happy. This time I'm doing the picking," she ended prophetically.

Her voice softened to an appealing note. "Daddy, Tommy Lee has asked me to marry him. If I do, will we have to fight you every step of the way, just like before? Would you do that to us… again?"

Everett's shock was complete. He gaped from Rachel to the man behind her, and to his daughter again. "You can't mean it. Rachel, you've never had a vindictive bone in your body, but if you're doing this just to get back at me for-was

"No, Daddy. I told you. I love him." On her shoulders, Tommy Lee's hands tightened reassuringly.

Everett sensed himself losing ground and blustered, "You love some… some teenage fantasy. But we're talking about real life here. We're talking about a man with three ex-wives!"

To Tommy Lee's surprise, she smiled and squeezed his fingers, which still rested on her collarbone. "Then I'd better watch my p's and q's, hadn't I?"

Everett was stupefied. "Rachel, for the love of God..."

But she calmly stepped forward and cut him off. "Daddy, as I said earlier, I didn't invite you here." She led the way toward the foyer without turning to see if he followed, but when she reached it, he was right on her heels, hoping to talk some sense into her. He didn't get the chance. She opened the door and stood waiting for him to walk through it. "In the future when you come to see me, I'd appreciate your knocking before you come in."

When she had closed the door behind his angrily stalking form, she turned to find Tommy Lee waiting in the archway. He opened his arms and she walked into them and clung, her cheek pressed against the silky hair on his chest, and his arms circling her shoulder tenaciously. "Darling, I'm so sorry," he said gruffly.

She was trembling uncontrollably as she shook her head against his chest. "No, it's not your fault. Oh, Tommy Lee, how could he just… just come in here like that and start shouting at you?"

He rubbed her shoulder and kissed the top of her hair. "He's desperate, Rachel. He's clung to his self-righteousness for a long time. Imagine how frightening it is to a man like him to have to admit he was wrong."

"But he's so bullheaded! Would it hurt him for once to say, okay, Rachel, go ahead and love Tommy Lee, and be happy?"

Tommy Lee's warm palm rubbed her spine. "Did you ever stop to think that maybe he's a little jealous, too? He's had you to himself for quite a while."

She pulled back and gaped up at him in surprise. "Jealous? But he was never jealous of Owen or… or Marshall."

"He didn't need to be. He could control them."

She sighed wearily and fell against him. "Oh, I'm so tired of it all. All I want is for everyone to see how foolish all this hostility has been, and settle it once and for all so we can get on with our lives." He folded her close to him again and rocked her gently. After several minutes she murmured plaintively, "Oh, Tommy Lee, remember how it used to be? When we were young and our mothers would be having iced tea on the lawn and you and I would come charging out of the house with our tennis rackets? They'd smile and wave, and tell us to have a good time. I've often wondered, if my mother had lived, would it have made a difference? She was so different from Daddy."

She heard Tommy Lee swallow against her temple. "They were like second parents to me."

She rubbed her hands along his back, feeling his steady heartbeat against her breast, wondering again if love was powerful enough to overcome such long-standing enmities. Loving him, even marrying him, would never be enough. Until the hostilities were over, the two of them could never know complete serenity.

"Tommy Lee?"

"H'm?"

"I want to make a bargain with you."

He drew back, tilting his head to see her face. "A bargain?"

She looked up with eloquent brown eyes, hoping what she was doing was right.

"A bargain."

"What kind of bargain?"

"You… you still want to marry me?"

He released a breathy, rueful laugh that said it all, and she went on, fixing him with her steady eyes. "I'll promise to marry you if you'll promise to go see your mama and daddy and make peace with them."

She felt him begin to stiffen and quickly framed his jaws with both hands, holding him where he was. "Please, hear me out. When you pull away and get that look on your face you remind me of Daddy. In your own way you're as stubborn as he is, don't you see?"

Tommy Lee didn't appreciate being compared to Everett. He gave an ironic sniff, but she forced him to listen to reason.

"The only way it'll work for us is if we make every attempt at forgiving," she went on. "You've just said my daddy is frightened of admitting he's been wrong all these years. Well, aren't you, too? So where do we start putting an end to it all?" When he tried to pull away again she held him, continuing persuasively, "Oh, Tommy Lee, I saw the look on your mama's face-and your daddy's, too-when they saw you walk up those church steps last Sunday. They love you and they miss you terribly, and whether you want to admit it or not, you miss them, too. You're their only son, and Beth is their granddaughter. Isn't it time you became a family again?"

Beneath her palms she felt his tense muscles and quivering nerves, and made small, soothing circles with her thumbs on his cheeks. "I want to tell you something that I've never told you before," she said in an equally soothing voice, studying his deep, dark eyes. "Your mother and father were against sending me away. My mother told me before she died. She was never happy with the estrangement between the two couples, but there was little she could do, given my father's stubbornness. He's very strong-willed, and he talked your parents and my mother into agreeing with him about giving the baby up for adoption. I spent years blaming all of them equally, but it was really my father who forced the issue. If I can forgive him, can't you forgive your parents, too?"

She could see his defenses weakening and rushed on. "I'll help you. I'll go with you if you want. You and I together have a chance to show them how to forgive. Maybe… just maybe, if we take the first step, they'll follow suit." She smiled at the idea. "Imagine it-we could set off a whole chain reaction."

But Tommy Lee remained unconvinced. "You're so idealistic. What if they throw me out?"

Behind his words she sensed a vulnerability that touched her heart. "They won't. You know they won't. All it'll take is for one of you to make the first move."

"And you really think if we can patch things up with them they'll suddenly soften toward Everett?"

"It's worth a chance, isn't it?"

"And what about this newest fracas? Are you forgetting you just threw your daddy out of your house? I'd say that leaves you and him with some patching up of your own to do."

She dropped her hands from his face, but captured the two ends of the towel that hung around his neck. "We've fought before. But in the end we always seem to realize that we're the only family left. You leave him up to me for the time being. When he sees me happily married to you, he's bound to soften." She smiled up at him. "There's something you have to realize about my daddy. Underneath all that bluster he has a grudging respect for anybody who'll stand up to him." She tugged on the towel and drew him down for a short kiss. "So what do you say?"

"You drive a hard bargain, Rachel."

Suddenly she saw through the idealist's eyes he accused her of having and slipped her hands beneath the towel, locking her fingers behind his neck while meeting his brown eyes intensely. "I want it to be the way it used to be."

"It'll never be the way it used to be."

"It could be better." She squeezed his neck for emphasis. "It could be… you know it could. You, me, your parents, my father… and Beth. What about her? You're cheating her out of her own grandparents by carrying this grudge."

"I know." He sighed wearily and drew her into his arms, resting his chin on top of her head. "I know."

"Grandparents can be a wonderful influence on young people, and vice versa. And besides"-she kissed his Adam's apple-"I thought I was the woman you'd do anything in the world for."

Somewhere in the house, bacon was burning and the buttons of a shirt sang out against the metal tumbler of a dryer. Tommy Lee folded Rachel against his heart and buried his face in the flower-scented skin of her neck, realizing that if things went right he had within his grasp the chance of gaining back everything he'd once had taken from him.

Rachel was very wise, knowing even better than he how badly his old wounds needed to be cauterized. "You'll really do it, Rachel? You'll marry me?" he asked hoarsely.

"Don't you think it's time?" came her trembling reply.

He drew back to look into her dark eyes, and his own traversed her face, cataloging it feature by feature while his thumbs brushed the crests of her cheekbones. Her lips were slightly parted, her hair in disarray, and the expression in her eyes was one he'd dreamed of seeing there during the endless years when nothing and no one else could quite fill the empty spot in his heart.

"Oh, Rachel… my Rachel." He dropped his forehead against hers, letting his eyes sink shut, capturing the essence of the moment to carry within him as a talisman during the days ahead. "How I love you."

She swallowed back the tears in her throat. "I love you, too… so much."

Then their mouths were joined and emotions billowed. They clung together in an ardent kiss, pressing their bodies close, hands wandering impatiently now that the decision was made.

Abruptly Tommy Lee drew back, holding her head with both hands. "When?" Without giving her time to answer, he rushed on, "Right away, as soon as we can get a license and find somebody to do it. I want us to have a honeymoon, so you'll have to make arrangements at the store, and afterward… which house do you want to live at? I'd live here if you asked me to, but… oh, Rachel, say you'll move into my house on the lake. God, it'll be like a dream..."

"Hold on." She couldn't resist chuckling at his impetuousness. "Aren't you forgetting something?"

He frowned in puzzlement. "What?"

"Beth. Shouldn't I meet her first? Don't you think we should get her approval, since she's going to be part of the family, too?"

"Oh, Beth." He wrapped Rachel loosely in his arms and rocked her. "Beth is going to love you."

He said it with such thoughtless conviction there seemed no other way it could be.