His Perfect Family

Many a mission, as Cutter had raced against the clock to hot-wire a jeep or set the delicate timing device on an explosive, he’d remember his father’s capable hands. Hands that turned a screwdriver with swift, deft strokes to repair a toaster, hands that fixed a bike’s slipped chain or banged in just the right spot to get the old furnace wheezing again. Big, strong hands that patiently teased slivers from grimy small-boy fingers. Caring, loving hands that had fixed Cutter’s world.

And all the time, as Cutter slunk through the alleys of those ancient capitals, he’d thought he was fixing something, too. He’d thought he was saving the world for democracy, making it a better place. The meat in his mouth turned dry, as tough and hard as he felt inside. His eyes flicked to his father’s gnarled fingers, the joints swollen and twisted, so tortured by arthritis they couldn’t even pick up a screwdriver, let alone use it. As useless in the end as Cutter and all those dark alleys.

“I’m just glad Cutter’s home where he belongs,” his mother said. “You know, sweetheart, your father and I aren’t getting any younger.”

“Speak for yourself, old woman. I’ve still got some kick in me yet” His father wagged his thick eyebrows at her. “In fact, I’ve got my eye on one of those exercise contraptions that’ll give you abs of steel in only six weeks. Oprah had a whole show on ’em. Abs of steel, that’s what it said.”

His mother sniffed. “That’s just what you need, all right.” She laid down her fork and steepled her fingers in that way she had. “But I wanted to talk to Cutter about...” She hesitated.

Cutter stopped eating with a strange sense of foreboding. “What is it, Mom?”

“It’s just things are getting to be a bit much for your father and me.”

“Now, Mary, this isn’t the time to be going into all that. Let the boy eat his meal in peace and quiet.”

“Take this house, for instance. The yard went to rack and ruin last year. I couldn’t seem to keep on top of it — that’s all I’m saying.”

“You know I’ll be glad to help out,” Cutter said. “Why don’t you write up a list of chores that are bothering you and I’ll get started on them this week?”

“That’s sweet of you, dear, but your father and I have been thinking about —”

“What’s for dessert?” his father interrupted with a joviality so forced Cutter wondered whom he thought he was fooling. “I’ve been smelling apple pie all afternoon.”

His mother’s smile was thin as she pushed back her chair. “Tom brought over some apples this morning that the store marked down. They had some bruises but were still nice and sweet.” She got up and moved toward the kitchen.

His father had obviously won this round. Now, if Cutter only knew what war he was in the middle of. He ate his pie, all the time watching his parents carefully, his unease growing. He didn’t like mysteries this close to home.

Adrianne had offered to run errands, and he took her up on it, sending her after parts the next morning — from a lumberyard on the other side of town. It would take her two hours to fight her way across the city and back, and he used that time to finish his search of her bedroom — before she started her cleaning frenzy in there.

He’d never seen anyone clean like she did, as if there was some dark purpose besides the cleaning. As if she was on a mission. It was unusual behavior, and anything out of the ordinary was automatically added to his mental file. It could be important in the end.

By the time he heard her minivan pull into the driveway shortly before noon, he’d sifted through every dust bunny and, except for a dime under the bed, hadn’t caught so much as a whiff of money.

“Brought you some lunch.” Adrianne stuck her head into the pantry. “Hey, you got the bathtub in! It looks great.”

“So does that,” he said, pointing to the sack she held, golden french fries sticking from the top. And so did she, he thought, liking the way her T-shirt fit tight and her cotton shorts fit even tighter. “Thanks.”

“No problem.”

She’d been extremely polite to him that morning, trying to be friendly, although it was obvious she was uncomfortable around him. She’d caught him by surprise yesterday, liberally, and he’d been gruff in his disgust with himself and his shock at how attractive he found her. But now he was steeled and ready. Beautiful women often made the best agents. You looked, you touched, you forgot all about why you were there. But he knew better. So he pasted on a smile and prepared to be friendly, the world’s friendliest carpenter. They would chat, she would tell him things, they’d be bosom buddies.

She divided up hamburgers and fries while he washed his hands in the kitchen sink.

“So,” she said with a smile as they scooted their chairs into the table a few moments later, “I’m really pleased with the way things are going. How long have you been a carpenter, anyway?”

Yup, best bosom buddies.

“Two years, since I retired from the military. But my dad was a builder, so I grew up in the trade.” Chat, chat, chat. He looked up to make some friendly eye contact and found himself fascinated as she dipped a fry in ketchup and brought it to her mouth. The oil glossed her lips, and little crystals of salt clung to them.

“What branch?”

He took a large bite of his hamburger, chewed determinedly, and swallowed. “Navy.”

“A career man, huh?”

“Twenty years.” His eyes followed her tongue as it slid across her bottom lip, catching a drop of ketchup at the corner of her mouth. He swallowed twice more, hard.

“Well, that certainly explains the posture.”

“And the haircut,” he ageed.

Adrianne smiled in response to the mocking curve of his lips. He seemed more approachable today, and she relaxed a little. This wouldn’t be so bad after all. Now that he mentioned it, he definitely looked ex-military. Tough and hard and very, very competent. To last twenty years in the service, he’d need to be. Bosnia, Somalia, the Gulf... She paused with a fry halfway to her mouth. “Vietnam?”

He froze for a brief moment, then calmly reached for his drink. “Just missed it.”

“Not a very popular move, I bet, enlisting right after the war.”

“No.”

She waited, but he didn’t say anything else, just finished his hamburger in three more efficient bites and wiped his fingers with a paper napkin. He looked too big sitting there at her kitchen table, too male, too... She didn’t know what, but whatever it was it made her shift uncomfortably in her chair. She wasn’t used to testosterone, if that’s what was soaking into her air. Any pheromones she encountered in the course of her day were safely cloaked in dark suits and wrapped in ties, camouflaged with aftershave, sanitized by a wedding ring and photos of kids on the desk. He must have felt her stare because his dark eyes lifted to hers — cool again, emotionless, as detached as that predatory cat’s.

“Intelligence.” She voiced her thought without thinking.

His thick brows rose. “Now and then.”

That initial spark of approachability was fading fast. It was back to name, rank and serial number, she thought, exasperated. She was trying to make polite conversation, for goodness’ sake, not pry state secrets out of him. She still had half her burger to go — they had to talk about something. “That must have been an exciting time,” she continued, “being in the service at the end of the cold war, knowing you played a part in tearing down the Berlin Wall —”

“Nobody needed to tear it down.” His fingers tightened on the napkin, wadding it into a ball. “It would have crumbled into ruins in a few more years anyway, just like the rest of the Soviet bloc.”

“But —”

“Failing factories and ancient farm equipment brought it down, not naval intelligence. All we had to do was wait for the rust.” He stood abruptly, stuffing his wrapper and napkin into the paper sack. “I better get to work. Thanks for lunch.”

Well! She stood, too, and took the sack he held out to her. Her fingers brushed his, and she started at the tiny current that sizzled the length of her arm. Completely unexpected. Completely unwanted.

Completely arousing.

Her gaze flew to his face, her fingers still touching the back of his as if pressed there by a magnetic field, unable to withdraw. She was aware first of his hand’s warmth, then of its thickness and strength, so large compared to hers, then of an excruciating embarrassment at the thought that he might sense her reaction to him. But he returned her startled look with no sign he was affected in the least.

She jerked the sack from him, breaking the contact that could be measured in milliseconds, yet had felt like aeons. “I think I’ll get some lasagna ready for supper and bake a cake for Lisa. She likes a sweet after school” She flashed her best polite smile, trying to keep the edges from cracking, a thank-you-for-stopping-by smile, but he simply nodded and turned toward the pantry.

Cutter flexed his fingers, massaging away the residual heat left by her soft touch. Big mistake, touching was. Big mistake. There’d be no more of that, he warned himself. Friendly didn’t mean stupid. And the feelings her touch had set off in him were the kind that led men to do stupid, stupid things.

He heard cupboards banging in the kitchen as Adrianne prepared Lisa’s “sweet.” The last thing that girl needed after school was a piece of cake, he thought caustically as he levered himself through the hole in the floor into the cool, dark crawl space. A couple of times around the block would do her a hell of a lot more good. Obviously Adrianne didn’t see the connection between meeting her daughter at the door with a full platter and the size of the girl’s thighs.

Not his problem, he reminded himself as he lay on his back in a fine layer of dirt and began to connect the bathtub to the existing drainpipe. None of his business. He flexed his fingers again. Definitely none of his business. Besides, it wasn’t like he had any answers. If he’d learned one thing in his twenty years in the service, it was that he was not one to fix things. He’d learned that the hard way.

He remembered how proud his parents had been when he’d enlisted that summer day the week after he’d graduated. His father had been in the navy and recollected his two-year stint with a hazy fondness. Cutter was going to follow in his footsteps. Change the world. Well, in twenty years, the world had changed, all right, he thought as he gave a fierce twist to a piece of pipe, but it had nothing to do with him. Communism had crumpled with barely a whimper, and he and all his cohorts had stood there in their wrinkled trench coats with their suddenly obsolete codes and just as obsolete lives.