“Let me,” she said.
The sound of her voice pulled him fully awake with a jerk that nearly dislocated his fifth, sixth, and seventh vertebrae. “What the hell?”
“No, let me,” she said, sliding both hands inside his open fly and bending down. Her mouth was wet, warm, and eager.
He grabbed her arms and pushed her off him, ignoring her protest. He rolled off the bed and staggered to the light switch next to the door. When the overhead light went on it revealed Karen Tompkins, looking much more like a cat than a kitten now, one who was in lapping distance of the cream. Her hip-huggers were unsnapped and the zipper halfway down over a taut, smooth belly. Her sweater was pushed up over her breasts. Her eyes were heavy, and she smiled. She sprawled on her back, her legs spread, and she slid a hand between them and up, crooking a finger, beckoning him back to the bed.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this hard without Wy in the room. He caught sight of himself in the vanity mirror, his shirt unbuttoned, his pants unzipped, the head of his cock peeping out of the top of his shorts, still wet from her mouth. The fact that he was in uniform, or rather, almost out of it, was as shameful as the fact that he’d almost cheated on Wy. He stuffed everything back in and zipped up again with some difficulty.
Karen pouted. She had a lower lip a man could suck on until next Tuesday. Her mother had had the same lip, he remembered. He avoided looking straight at it. “Could you zip up, please?” When she stretched instead, giving a soft little moan while she was at it, he said, “Just put it all together again, Karen, okay?”
She sighed and slid off the bed, walking to within arm’s reach. Everything got pulled down and refastened, although it seemed to take her forever and she pouted the whole time. When she was done and giving him that patented come-hither, up-from-under look that she’d been working on since high school, he said, “What the hell do you think you were doing?”
She shrugged, and one side of the wide-necked sweater slid down a shoulder. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?” she said, and smiled a long, slow, seductive smile.
In that moment, she looked so much like her mother that it was difficult not to meld the two women in his mind. “It’s not your bed; it’s your mother’s.”
She shrugged again. The sweater slipped a little more. “It’s not my fault if you choose to snooze in Mom’s bed. Let’s just say you were a temptation too strong to resist.” She backed up a step and gave the mattress a testing shove. “Mmmm,” she said, and smiled at him. “I’ve always liked this bed. And God knows Mom got enough use out of it. You sure?”
“I’m sure,” he said grimly.
And he was.
Her breasts pushed at the sweater in a sigh.
Wasn’t he?
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she said, wandering over to the vanity and picking up the perfume bottles one at a time.
He was a grown man, with adolescence far in the past. He no longer thought with his cock. If she was going to take things coolly, he was going to be even cooler. “I didn’t have time to go over the place as thoroughly as I wanted this afternoon.”
“Hmm.” She uncapped a bottle and sprayed an infinitesimal amount on the inside of her wrist. She held it out to him. “What do you think?”
“Very nice,” he said without leaning forward to smell.
“ ‘Very nice,’ ” she said, mocking. “Is that the best you can do? A woman wants her perfume to be irresistible.”
“I looked at your mom’s files,” he said. “She was pretty well-off.”
She shrugged an indifferent shoulder. “Dad was a good fisherman, and they saved their money.”
“I didn’t find a copy of a will. Was there one, do you know?”
She shrugged again. The sweater slipped all the way off her shoulder and halfway down her arm. She skimmed a finger down and pulled it back up very slowly, watching him all the while, one speculative brow raised, her mouth curved in a smug smile. “I guess. Mom said there was.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did your mom have an attorney?”
“Probably Ed Kaufman. He’s pretty much everyone’s lawyer around these parts.”
“Do you know who inherits your mother’s estate?”
“It’s divided three ways.”
“Three?”
“Me, Betsy and Ted.”
“Jerry doesn’t get any?”
“Dad said he’d just piss away whatever he got left. The way he left things, when Jerry got too down and out Mom was supposed to help him. Now that Mom’s dead, we’re supposed to.”
She wasn’t exactly overcome with grief, Liam noted, and with tremendous relief felt that knowledge reach his shorts. “Who were your mother’s friends around town?”
“Well, there was us.”
His stare was patient, and he waited.
She pouted, what she obviously considered to be her very best thing, and when that didn’t work pouted harder. “She had a book club that met once a month. They used to meet once a year in Anchorage or somewhere, too. I guess they’d know her best.”
“Who were they?” He wrote down their names. “Okay, that’s all, I think.” He closed his notebook and pocketed it.
She followed him to the door. “Y’all come back now, you hear?” she called after him.
The Blazer was doing seventy-two on the unpaved surface of the River Road, ice, ruts, potholes, washouts, rock slides, snow drifts and all, in ninety seconds flat.
December 8, 1941
The news about Pearl Harbor came over the radio. The CO stood us down to listen. Sounds like the guys in Pearl really got it in the neck. Pearl was our main base in the Pacific. Whats to stop the Japs now? Im so thankful Helens back in Birmingham. They cant get to her there. The CO says we have to expect an attack and put everybody on alert. Were standing one in four watches on the aircraft in case of sabotage. March is bitching but then March is always bitching. I think he’s got a girl in town, he’s always off base when we arnt in the air. Im not sure Roepke really knows were at war hes always got his nose stuck in a book and when I asked him what he thought about Pearl he said, the barley, the onion, or the oyster?
Peters worried about family he’s got at home. The way the brass talks they’re expecting an invasion of Jap forces any minute and for sure the people in the islands and on the coast will get hit first. He wants to send money home and he asked me if I know anyone whos flying to Russia. He really harps on this Russia thing.
NINE
By ten o’clock Liam still wasn’t home, and Wy was restless, the conversation with Jo replaying in her head. Was Jo right? Was Wy so untrusting that she was afraid to make a commitment? If so, was that something she could live with, or something she had to change? Did she want to change it? Which, when it came down to it, meant one thing: Was she ready to commit the rest of her life to Liam Campbell?
One thing seemed sure: Men left her. Men came into her life, made her love them, and left. Her father, Bob DeCreft, Liam.
She could get really angry about that if she wanted to. She could let herself get royally pissed off.
The conversation she’d had with Tim that evening came back.Sooner or later you have to accept what happened to make you angry, acknowledge it and move on.
Her father had given her life. Bob had given her wings. Liam had taught her to love. Would she change any of it, just to spare herself pain?
No. She would not.
There. It was amazing how much relief one unequivocal answer provided.
There were other questions she needed answers to. Would Liam stay in Newenham or return to Anchorage? If he stayed, was she willing to make him a permanent part of her life? If he went, would she go with him? Would Tim?
She went out on the deck. It was crisp and cold, with frost already forming underfoot. The stars burned white-hot holes in the night sky and were reflected in the river below. They called it the Nushugak but really, it should have been called Bristol Bay Route 1. It carried boats up and down its one-hundred-fifty-mile length all summer long, and then it froze over and turned into a highway for snow machines, lasting until breakup. The river was the breath of life for Newenham and the hundred villages and homesteads and fish camps along its length. Wy liked living next to it. Sooner or later, everyone you knew floated or drove by.