Cool Shade Read online

  "The tape, Maddie. I want the tape."

  "Tape?" What was he talking about?

  "I went to get the tape and it was gone. Of course you'd know all about that."

  "You're accusing me of stealing?" She was wide awake now.

  "I want it, Maddie. Where is it?"

  Nobody accused Maddie Smith of theft. Unlike her sister Enid, Maddie had never lifted as much as a penny in her life. With both hands, she shoved at his chest. "Get out of here!"

  He didn't budge. "Not until you give me the tape."

  "I don't have any tape."

  "Did you sell it already?"

  He was mad. There was no mystery as to where the gasoline smell was coming from. "Have you been drinking unleaded?" she asked, trying to distract him.

  He cursed under his breath. "Tell me you didn't sell the tape." He moved away. Where's a damn light in this place?" He knocked against the bedside lamp, fumbled, then clicked it on.

  They both blinked against the brightness.

  Dark hair fell across a pale forehead. His eyes were intense, his lips outlined by the roughness of a day-old beard. A week ago, she would have gone all mushy over him. But now, because of her midnight caller, she had resolve.

  He sat beside her on the bed and grabbed her by both arms. "Where’s my tape? I know you took it."

  His eyes bore into hers, dark, haunted, needing to know the truth.

  "I don't have your tape," she said clearly, truthfully, hoping he would see that she meant it. "I didn't take it."

  He stared at her a long moment, let her go, and got to his feet.

  She rubbed her arms, where his hands had been. "I don't like being accused of theft."

  He stood there, staring into the distance, as if lost in thought.

  "Did you hear me? I don't like to be accused of theft."

  Her words pulled him back to the present, to the bedroom, gaudily decorated in black and pink satin.

  "Yeah, well. We've all got our badge of shit to wear."

  Whatever those words of wisdom meant.

  He left.

  Just like that.

  She watched him go, watched him leave the room. Listened to his footfalls on the steps. Heard the front door open.

  Waited for it to close.

  Didn't happen.

  The clock by the bed read almost twelve. Would her midnight caller be phoning the station? Would he be disappointed to know she wasn't there?

  She got out of bed and went downstairs to find Eddie standing in the open doorway, his back to her.

  "I thought you were leaving."

  "You know, I'd really like to do that. Making a good exit has always been a priority of mine."

  "So do it."

  "Can't."

  She couldn't see his face, but his voice sounded odd, kind of strained.

  "Just walk away. You guys are good at that."

  He let out an odd laugh, as if distracted, as if he couldn't fully concentrate on what she was saying. And now she noticed his hands, locked to the doorframe in a death grip, his knuckles white, his arms trembling.

  "Eddie?"

  "Don't look at me."

  But she couldn't look away.

  She watched as he tried to take a step, as he tried to make himself move. It seemed as if an invisible force held him frozen in place. Like someone poised in the open door of a skydiving plane trying to come up with the courage to jump, he finally acknowledged defeat and collapsed on the floor, back to the wall, face in his hands.

  His breathing was labored, his white T-shirt soaked with perspiration. She put a hand to his trembling arm.

  "Now you know," he mumbled into his hands.

  "Know what?"

  "I'm afraid."

  "Afraid? Of what?"

  "Things."

  She slowly closed the door. "What kind of things?"

  "Out there kind of things."

  No wonder he hadn't left his home in four years.

  He couldn't.

  "You're agoraphobic?"

  She tried to put everything together, knowing that it made sense, yet she found herself unable to absorb it completely. It was too new. Too sudden.

  He straightened, leaning his head against the wall, eyes closed. Light from upstairs cast shadows on his face, his chest. "It started out as fear of crowds," he said, not opening his eyes. "But then it grew into more. I never know what will trigger it."

  "It's nothing to be ashamed of," she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, failing.

  "Nothing to be ashamed of?" He let out a harsh laugh, opening his eyes.

  Despair.

  Self-loathing.

  "Don't you get it? I'm afraid of the world."

  He pulled up his legs and buried his face against his bent knees. "I thought I could do it," he said, his breathing rapid and shallow. "Dark. Nobody around. Thought I could handle it."

  It hurt to watch him. This was the man who had so impressed her with his inner strength. He'd seemed so calm, so together.

  She put a hand on his shoulder, half expecting him to shrug it away. Instead, he seemed to find comfort in her touch.

  She knelt beside him.

  He turned. His eyes, his beautiful poet eyes, were glazed with pain.

  He pulled her into his arms, his lips searching, finding hers.

  "Maddie," he moaned against her mouth. "You feel so good. So damn good."

  He needed her. Maddie hadn't been needed by another human being for a long time.

  "Make me forget," he said, his voice husky. "Make me forget.”

  Chapter 19

  Stay

  He wanted her. Maybe that's why he'd really ridden his dirt bike to town. Maybe it hadn't had much to do with finding the missing tape as much as his need to see Maddie, hold her, smell her, feel her, know her, have her.

  Her fingers were tangled in his hair, telling him that she wanted him, too.

  He pressed his lips to her throat, felt her pulse beating madly against his mouth, heard her quickly in-drawn breath, felt her tremble.

  "I want you," he said.

  "Eddie, I don't know, I don't think—"

  He pressed his mouth to hers, drowning her protest.

  He felt her hands, small and hot, working their way under his T-shirt, felt them moving up his ribcage.

  "Don't think," he whispered. "Forget everything else out there. It's just you. And me."

  Maddie heard his words, but her mind was more on not forgetting. Her memory of last time was so hazy that she sometimes wondered if it had really happened at all. And now it was going to happen again. She wanted it to happen again. This time, she would remember.

  "Upstairs," she whispered. "Let's go upstairs."

  They made it three steps.

  And then he was kissing her again.

  The kissing and touching made her legs go weak. She collapsed on the carpeted steps, Eddie stumbling with her.

  Somehow he managed to get out of his damp shirt. Then came his boots and jeans.

  No underwear.

  He wasn't wearing underwear.

  Her sleep shirt came next. That was followed by her panties.

  "Here." He put one of her hands on the railing above her head. "Hang on."

  She didn't understand.

  Eddie looming above her, kneeling between her thighs, the carpet soft against her bottom.

  "Are we going to do something kinky?"

  He laughed, genuinely amused. "Wait and see."

  There was no time to wonder. No time to worry.

  With one hand braced on the step near her head, the other lifting her to him, his eyes locked to hers, he entered her.

  Just like that.

  She knew she should close her eyes, but she couldn't. There was some kind of mind-body connection between them, some kind of merging of body and spirit she didn't understand that both frightened and amazed her. She stared hypnotically as he pulled himself away, then slowly filled her again, watched as his breathing quickened, as h
is pupils darkened.

  "Y-you're afraid," he said, surprising her with his intuition. "Why are you afraid?" His voice was both tender and hot—passion held in check.

  "Y-you're taking something from me."

  She tried to remember her midnight caller, tried to think of the love she'd felt for him, but he seemed far away. She didn't know anything about sex. There was more going on here than she understood. Or knew how to handle.

  His eyes, his dark, passionate eyes delved deeply into hers, as if trying to pull something from her, a confession, a truth.

  "What am I taking from you, Maddie?"

  Much tenderness there. More than she could deal with. "I—I don't know."

  His hard stomach pressed to hers. She could feel him inside her, hot and big.

  She felt a dampness gather behind her lids. She blinked. And blinked again. "My soul," she whispered shamefully, truthfully. "You're taking my soul."

  A slow kind of agony seeped into his features. "Ah, Maddie."

  She had the strangest feeling that he was seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time. And it was more than he could bear.

  She didn't know how, but she understood that he needed to keep people at a distance, that he didn't want to know them, or see them, not really see them. Somewhere along the line, he'd been hurt. Deeply. And he was going to make sure it didn't happen again.

  "I'm sorry. I thought you wanted—"

  He started to move away.

  "No!" She clutched him, afraid he would stop touching her. "Don't let go. You can't let go."

  "Okay, okay."

  The male equivalent to, there, there.

  "Shhh."

  Better.

  Watching him, her legs wrapped tightly around his hips, she lifted herself to him, imitating his earlier movement. And then it happened almost exactly the way it had before. A kind of mindless wonder.

  Grinding.

  Gasping.

  Groping that was over way too soon, that left her spent and weak, trying to remember what had just occurred.

  "When it's over, I can hardly remember it."

  She spoke with her mouth against his shoulder, tasting his salty flesh.

  "You really know how to compliment a guy."

  "No, I mean… I can't explain it. It's so, I don't know. Fleeting. Ephemeral."

  "You're analyzing sex?"

  He sounded amused.

  "Why not?"

  “Women analyze to death. Sometimes it's better not to think about things too deeply."

  She thought about her midnight caller and felt a pang of regret, a little pain deep in her heart for something that would never be. Her midnight caller thought about things. Thought deeply about things. "Is that the way you get through life? By not thinking?" she asked.

  "Works for me."

  She couldn't imagine living like that. Just existing. For her, life was analyzing things. Life was reactions. And emotions.

  She shivered.

  He misread her body language and thought she was cold. "Come on. Let's get in bed."

  Soon they were tucked in bed together like two people who knew each other, Maddie with the covers up to her chin, thinking, how strange everything was. At the same time, she couldn't help but feel sad about his admission of a studied shallowness, a penchant for the one-dimensional. It made her long all the more for her midnight man.

  Eddie reached past her to turn off the light, then he pulled her close, one arm wrapped around her waist.

  She couldn't get comfortable. Everything was wrong, everything was awkward. She didn't know where to put her hands, her legs, her head.

  "Put your head here. Like this." He shifted her around, so that her head was against his shoulder, kind of under his chin, one of her legs between his.

  "Better?" he asked.

  She nodded, feeling naive, yet relishing being wrapped around him.

  "That's why you quit the music business?" she asked, hell-bent on making him admit to something, anything. "Fear of crowds?"

  "It was part of it. For me, it had always been the music. I'd never even been sure I wanted to be a manager. The word manager has a kind of stigma I wanted no part of."

  Now they were getting somewhere.

  "Or at least I didn't think I wanted any part of it." One of his hands began to roam as he talked. "Until the band played live at a sold-out show and one of the girls in the front row took off her blouse. At that moment, I thought, this might not be too bad."

  How shallow was that?

  She was attracted to two men, two men who were total opposites. One was intellectual. He stimulated her mind. The other stimulated her body. She didn't want to be one of those women who went for the muscles instead of the brain.

  "I couldn't handle the crowds or the noise. People kept telling me I'd get used to it. That pretty soon it wouldn't bother me. Pretty soon, I'd become addicted to the circus."

  His fingers kneaded her nipple, making it hard. Then he cupped her breast against his hot palm, his touching her seeming almost absentminded on his part, totally erotic on hers.

  "That never happened," he told her. "I never got used to the constant sensory overload. It screwed up my head. Got to the point where I could hardly function. People said it was because of drugs, but I was never into that kind of thing. That was part of the music industry I made it a point to avoid."

  "Why did you—" Her words ended in a gasp as his hand moved from her breast to her hip. Her stroked her skin, moving his rough palm across her hip bone. She struggled to focus. "Why did you start in the first place?"

  "The music. It was always the music." He took a deep breath. "But now, even that's gone."

  "It's still there, when you're ready for it."

  "It might still be there, but I'm not."

  Hand moving, stroking.

  "You can pick up where you left off."

  He pressed a kiss to her neck, an open-mouthed, wet kiss.

  Hot, hot, hot. She was burning up.

  "The passion is gone," he whispered. "I don't like music anymore. It's hard when something you love turns into something you hate."

  "You hate it?"

  "Not hate exactly, just see it for what it is. A money machine."

  His open hand pressed against her abdomen. "Maddie, let's quit talking about this."

  She had to stay focused just a little longer before her mind went spinning away. They were getting somewhere. She couldn't just let it drop.

  "Rick Beck was able to make money because his words touched so many people, so many lives. Is that so wrong?"

  "Maybe not. I don't know. I'm not sure about anything like that anymore. All I know is that part of my life is over."

  "You could always manage another band."

  "I'm too jaded."

  "What was on the tape you were looking for? Something Rick had been working on?"

  His hand stopped its exploration of her body. Maddie instantly regretted the question, regretted distracting him.

  "It isn't important."

  In other words, none of her business.

  "You know what I think? I think if there are some unpublished songs out there that Rick Beck wrote, the public has a right to hear them."

  "To hell with the public."

  "The public made him a star."

  "The public made him a junkie. The public killed him."

  She could argue that, but she didn't want to, didn't feel like it. "Are we fighting? I don't want to fight."

  "I'm just saying that things appear a helluva lot different from the outside. It's like looking in a candy store window that's decorated for Christmas. The lights are glowing, all pretty and white. But down there on the floor in the dark the rats are running around shitting on everything."

  "Thanks for that little glimpse into the world of David Lynch. I'll be sure to remember it next time I buy a box of chocolates."

  "Remember who told it to you." His voice became light, teasing. "And what we were doing at the time."
<
br />   He shifted so that she was lying on her back, his body above her. He skimmed his knuckles down her middle, starting between her breast to her belly button. He kissed her, touched her, stroked her. "You will remember doing this with me, won't you?" he whispered, pushing her leg aside, moving between her thighs.

  He slid down her body so that his head was lying on her abdomen, his hands cupping her bottom. And her heart just kind of dropped to her feet. His feet.

  It was hard to believe he was the same man who had sat curled on the floor, face in his hands.

  "Maddie?"

  Did he want to know if what he had planned was okay? Or did he want to know if she'd remember it this time?

  She bent her knee, an invitation. "Mmm?" The word was an exhale of air.

  "I won't forget you," he said seductively. "I won't forget the way you tricked me and locked me in the bathroom."

  She bent her other leg, the soles of her feet against the coolness of the sheets.

  She remembered, too. Holding him, almost losing her resolve, almost forgetting she'd planned to escape at all.

  He pressed his lips to her abdomen. "I remember the way you touched me."

  He moved lower. With callused thumbs, he spread her overheated flesh, then pressed his lips there.

  She gasped, her hands gripping the sheets.

  "I remember the way you taste."

  His tongue slipped inside her, wet and hot and knowing. He found her clitoris, circling it with the tip of his tongue, stimulating, tormenting, licking, until she was writhing under him.

  She felt sweak.

  He paused. "Will you remember this?" His breath was hot against her wet, overheated flesh.

  She wrung the sheet in her tight fists. What was he doing? Torturing her? "Yes.”

  He pressed his lips to her. She felt his hair against her inner thighs, felt the roughness of his unshaven face abrading her flesh.

  She bucked against him and cried out, an orgasm shuddering through her, until she lay there, weak and spent.

  Too tired to move a muscle.

  Gradually she became aware of Eddie readjusting their positions until he held her in his arms, her back against his chest. Nestled in the cleft of her buttocks was something hot and hard and insistent.

  Her arm trembling, she managed to slip her hand between her legs, touching him.

  She slid her other hand down. He was huge. Hot. Throbbing.