Surprise Me...

She lay back, listening to the tearing foil, smiling, relaxed, ready. This was all deliciously familiar now. She loved sex. Even when she couldn’t come, she loved the sensations, the joining, the broad expanse of a man’s back above her, the working of his butt muscles as he pushed inside her. She loved doggy style, missionary, her on top, or both of them in—

He would want to see her again, wouldn’t he?

Melanie blew out a silent breath of frustration. Not now. Plenty of time later for doubts and worries and—

He was back, hands exploring her more firmly this time, more insistently. His mouth on her breasts involved teeth as well as tongue. He was rougher in his touch, though patient, seeming to read her reactions and needs as if they were a map in front of him.

Incredibly, she responded, desire building again, breath stuttering, hands wandering over his broad masculine shape.

His thighs nudged hers farther apart; she felt the hard head of his erection at her opening and inhaled sharply. Did she say the moment before the first kiss was her favorite? She was changing her mind. This was her favorite, when the real fun was about to begin.

He breathed her name once more, with reverence that cut through her carnal anticipation and made her again uneasy. Only briefly, because he pushed inside her, dug his arms under and around her, and began to make love to her in a way that showed her the phrase wasn’t just a euphemism but a literal description, an experience she hadn’t known was possible.

Making love.

Afterward—yes, she could come twice within an hour—she lay in his arms, listening to their breathing return to normal, savoring the contact between them, the delicious skin-on-skin, muscle-pressed-to-muscle afterglow, his hands caressing her hair, her cheek, her shoulder.

“Melanie.”

“Not now.” She put a finger in the general vicinity of his lips, repositioned it when she hit his chin instead. She was so enveloped in the glow of this moment, so vulnerable to this man and what they’d just shared, that she couldn’t handle hearing anything discussed. Not that the sex was good, not that it was bad, not that she should leave now, not what he’d had for dinner, nothing. Because every second spent in conversation would bring them closer to the world of reality, and each word would bring them one word closer to when he let her know it was over. “Later. We’ll talk later. Please.”

“Okay,” he whispered, squeezing her tight, nuzzling a kiss into the sensitive side of her neck.

She sighed, peace spreading through her body, instead of that familiar urge to move on to the next thing, the next activity, the next anything. She was content just to be, in this bed with this man on this perfect, perfect night.

Which, like every other night of her crazy life’s adventure, was doomed shortly to end.

2

TRICIA HAWTHORNE SAT in the kitchen she grew up in. Even remodeled, it retained the flavor of her parents, Edith and Edwin Hawthorne. She could remember her mother baking cookies, her father hovering around, eagerly waiting for them to cool. She could remember family dinners around the old table. And she could remember tiptoeing out at midnight on her way to getting drunk. Tiptoeing home drunk at four in the morning, praying neither of her parents would hear her. Sneaking here, sneaking there, doing this, doing that, nothing they ever approved of, behavior that had bewildered and hurt them. Yet they’d loved her, supported her, picked up after her, believing she’d grow out of her wild behavior and settle down.

That only took her until the age of fifty. Good thing her parents were both alive to know their long wait was at an end.

The coffeemaker sputtered out its final drops. Four in the morning… She’d slept only a few hours, finally giving in and resignedly getting up. Tricia had never been a good sleeper, but too many nights were like this now. She’d tried herbal remedies, hypnosis, hot baths, meditation, tapes, relaxation exercises, and finally decided that insomnia was her punishment for a life poorly lived, and that it was just going to be that way until she settled her emotional debts and found inner peace.

She poured her coffee and added skim milk, wishing her waistline and cholesterol count would allow her the luxury of cream. Or one of the enormous bakery blueberry muffins in a plastic container on the counter. She and Melanie were supposed to have breakfast this morning before Melanie went to work, but she hadn’t come home last night. Now it was Tricia’s turn to worry about her daughter, as her parents and Melanie’s older sister, Alana, had been doing for far too long.

Coffee ready, muffins successfully avoided, she sat down on a stool and leaned her elbows on the fancy cream tile counter.

Breakfast with Melanie this morning seemed unlikely to happen now, but Tricia could visit Alana later on, maybe help her unpack boxes. Alana had moved out of this house and in with her boyfriend, Sawyer, the day after they committed to each other—which was also, not coincidentally, Tricia suspected, the day after Tricia had shown up unannounced in Milwaukee. Not that she blamed Alana for holding a grudge. The burden of Tricia’s squandered responsibility had fallen on Alana’s shoulders until age ten, when Edith and Edwin had taken the girls in, giving up on Tricia’s ability to mother them.

Pretty much from the second Alana was born, Tricia had been overwhelmed by what she now understood was practically nonexistent self-esteem due to years of rejecting everything sensible her parents stood for, and instead embracing users and idiots. She’d also been wallowing in the gradual dissolution of her unhealthy relationship with the girls’ father, Tom, who had left for good when she was pregnant with Melanie. Reeling from the pain, Tricia had continued to drown herself in alcohol, drugs and other men, telling herself the girls were okay, or, even worse, not considering them at all. She had wanted her next fix, her next sexual high, always the next thing. Any good that had developed in either daughter was thanks to their grandparents. All Tricia had contributed was damage.

Last year, after she’d been living in California more or less permanently with her men and her art, the death of a close friend’s daughter due to a drug overdose on the day Tricia turned fifty had shot home the obvious truth that she wasn’t going to have forever to get to know her own kids.

Depression followed, then therapy, various withdrawals, more depression, in the process driving away the latest man she’d shacked up with. Tricia had moved in with a friend—Dahlia, who deserved sainthood for putting up with her—and slowly and surely she’d pulled herself out of the muck of clueless oblivion, limb by limb washed herself with honesty, put on clean dry clothes of self-acceptance, sold everything she couldn’t fit in a suitcase except her art supplies, and bought a one-way ticket to Milwaukee.

Now she’d vowed, however long it took, to make amends, to be worthy of forgiveness. She was sober, drug-free, dateless, and determined for the first time in her adult life to be an adult. To live a life she and her daughters and her parents could be proud of. A huge and often terrifying goal.

One step at a time. One day at a time.

A key jiggled the back-door lock. The familiar sound catapulted Tricia back to memories of guilty predawn homecomings. The handle turning with a slight rattle. The door opening… Careful! The hinges squeaked if pushed too fast.

Soft footsteps, a hand carrying shoes, door closing, shh, don’t let Mom and Dad hear….

Except in this case, there was only Mom, no Dad; the mom was Tricia, while the child sneaking in was her twenty-six-year-old daughter. “Hi, Melanie.”

Melanie gasped; her hand flew to her chest, luckily not the one holding her strappy black high-heeled sandals or they would have flown up and smacked her in the head. “Mom. Oh, my gosh, you scared me. What are you doing up at this hour?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Oh.” She arranged her features into Cautious Liar Mode. Tricia nearly chuckled. Nothing Melanie could pull would be new to her. “I was out late with a girlfriend and—”

“How about the truth?” Tricia sipped her coffee, apparently unconcerned, inside probably ten times more nervous than Melanie. She was never comfortable with authority, and it had been years since she’d had to be a parent. “Saves time for both of us.”

Melanie blinked. Frowned. Thumped her shoes onto the floor and sidled up to the counter. “Any more coffee?’

Tricia jerked her head back toward the machine. “Help yourself.”

She did, this amazing beautiful woman Tricia knew so little about. Melanie had been a remarkably peaceful baby, a relief after Alana, who had screamed at anything and everything. Tricia had been living with their father for three years before he’d announced he was too young for a family. Instead of marrying her, he was going off to find himself in India.

Lose himself, more likely. She’d never heard from him again.

“Well.” Melanie perched on the stool opposite her mother at the counter. Her lips were swollen, chin pink from stubble burn, hair messed, eyes glowing. She could say whatever she wanted, but Tricia knew where she’d been. “Actually, I was with a guy.”

“No kidding.”

“What?” She touched her face. “How can you tell?”

“A mother always knows.” She got through the words with the appropriate deadpan expression, then couldn’t help it, let out a snort of laughter.

Melanie’s eyes grew rounder, if that were possible. “You do that just like Alana.”

“What?”

“That funny laugh.”

“Yeah?” She wouldn’t let on how it touched her, tortured her, too. How many of their shared family traits had she missed out on discovering? At least it wasn’t too late for that. “Is this a guy you’ve…been with before?”

“First time. He’s…amazing.” She sighed; her eyes softened. She might as well have had hearts popping out the top of her head.

Tricia’s chest ached. Oh, Melanie. The pain she’d continue to go through if she didn’t stop making men the keepers of her happiness. The latest entry on the long list of ways Tricia had let her daughters down, a list that would inevitably lengthen as she caught up on the years she hadn’t been around.

But she was ready. Primed. Strong. Focused. She’d do whatever it took. “If he was that amazing, why did you leave? You could have rescheduled breakfast with me. You know I would have understood.”

“Oh.” Melanie blushed, looked down at her bright pink mug, decorated with angels and hearts. A Valentine’s Day present? From whom? Tricia had missed so much. “I didn’t want to skip breakfast with you.”

Not entirely true. “And.?”