Chasing Shade

Me? his mind added. Thank God she couldn’t read his thoughts.

‘I’m good.’

She stepped out in faded Levi’s and tall laced boots that she’d clearly had for quite a while. They had that broken-in, well-loved, faded-leather look of beloved possessions. Her sweater was mustard-yellow with khaki patches on the elbows and shoulders. It should have been hideous on her. Oversized, clunky and boring colours. It wasn’t. It was spectacular. It hugged the right curves, hid others so he was tempted to use his hands to find them. The colours highlighted her eyes and her hair and her kewpie-doll mouth that he found himself suddenly fixated with.

It was a very kissable mouth.

She threw the bedroom door open and said, ‘Go on in and finish your tour if you like. I’m going to make myself an Earl Grey.’

‘Well, if you’re going to…’ He chuckled.

‘I was going to make you a cup whether you asked for it or not,’ she said. ‘I think Mr Booth – Charlie to his friends, by the way – can wait a few minutes to meet his new handyman.’

Her bedroom was very small but again, beyond charming. A queen-sized bed dominated, with just enough room around it to walk. Everything was built-in here as well. Drawers beneath the bed and shelves lining all but one wall. Her clothes were tucked here and there as were books – lots of books – and knicknacks. A laptop and a reading tablet occupied the shelf at the head of the bed. Baskets lined some of the highest shelves and he could tell she used them to store and disguise items. The only thing missing from the trailer was pictures. No pictures of family or friends. Which seemed odd for a girl like Betsey.

‘You get lost?’

‘No. Just marvelling at all your built-in work! It’s how this tiny place can be a real home, isn’t it? Did it come this way?’

‘My uncle…he did it for me. I had some…problems once upon a time. He did this for me. It was a gift. For a new life, if you will.’

Something inside him told Archie not to push her or ask questions. His intuition said loudly that he should just sort of let it go. At least for now. So he did. He spotted the only picture in the whole place. Betsey, in her hideous diner uniform, standing with a whole gaggle of people – customers, he assumed – at the diner counter. He recognised Mrs Kline. In it, she was smiling and happy and mugging for the camera.

‘They’re like family,’ she said quietly from the doorway.

He jumped as if guilty of something. ‘Well, it’s a great picture. You look very happy.’

‘It was my first Christmas working there,’ she said, pointing. ‘See the tree?’ She laughed as she pointed to the small aluminium tree on the far counter. It was decorated and lit up and quite festive.

‘I do see. It’s great.’

‘Come on. Tea’s ready,’ she said.

He followed her out. She was more distracting in the jeans than in the tight uniform.

‘So,’ she said, asking the dreaded question. ‘What’s your story? Why are you out here homeless and jobless and wandering?’

Archie took the offered mug and sighed. ‘Might as well get this over with,’ he said, settling on the sofa. She was in a small bentwood rocker under the window. The trailer was so small that if she’d stretched her legs out she could have put her feet in his lap. ‘I was married at one brief and horrible point…’

Chapter 5 (#uf73d4060-9cff-515c-a40a-e3eb279dec68)

It looked like it pained him to explain it and she sort of wished she hadn’t asked. It wasn’t really any of her business, was it? What if he’d pushed and asked why a twenty-something like her was living away from any family or friends in a pink trailer in the middle of nowhere?

Betsey realised she might tell him. But then again, she might be pissed.

She opened her mouth to tell him never mind. Even to apologise for being so damn nosy. But he held up a hand. A nice hand. A big hand, the fluttery part of her noticed.

‘I’d rather tell you,’ he said, reading her mind. ‘It might help me to get it out, if that’s OK.’

She nodded and said nothing. If he wanted to tell her, so be it. As long as he understood he didn’t have to.

‘I was married for a year. It was a total sham. She’d married me to get the wedding. I’d married her to get away from another relationship.’

Betsey cocked an eyebrow, sipped her tea and listened. More interesting than I thought…

‘Wow. That’s very General Hospital of you,’ she said, then bit her lip. ‘Sorry. Go on.’

He laughed, nodding. ‘No, you’re right. Hey, all the women when I was growing up watched that show. Even I…’ He cleared his throat. ‘Even I have some knowledge of Luke and Laura and Port Charles. Though those episodes were a little before my time, trust me, my mother filled me in.’

This tickled her to no end but she suppressed it. She wanted him to tell his tale so she had to keep her big mouth shut.

‘Anyway, I married Jessica to get away from Mary. We had a very…volatile relationship. Me and Mary. And I figured if I got married to someone I liked – I did like Jessica in the beginning, mind you – I could cut that tie once and for all.’

‘And it failed.’

‘It was like tossing a can of gas on a match to put it out. Everything just sort of exploded. Mary became more volatile and Jessica sank her claws in to hold on to what was hers. This false life we had created. Every day was a fucking – sorry – a damn nightmare.’

Betsey smiled. ‘If you think cussing bothers me you clearly haven’t been around me during a dinner rush.’ She winked at him.

He blushed a little and Betsey tried to recall anything more fetching in a man than that slight tinge of red. She couldn’t think of anything.

She had a sudden and very vivid mental image of insinuating herself between his thighs and just…kissing him. Kissing him until his hands were in her hair and he was laying her back on that sofa. She shook her head to ward off the image. The ache from her two years of abstinence beat like a steady drum in her torso and much, much lower.

‘So…?’

‘So, it ended a year and a half ago when she demanded a baby. That cleared my head. I could not bring a baby into that crazy farce of a relationship. I had built the nightmare, I had to end it. So I did.’

‘Mary?’

‘Mary ran off with a band.’ He snorted. ‘Good riddance. But the ironic part was she moved on once my thing with Jessica ended.’

‘And you were suddenly in the wind.’

‘I got a good lawyer, a friend of my late father’s. One good payout to Jessica and the year’s separation and I was done with marriage. Possibly for ever.’ He laughed bitterly. She saw his bright eyes grow a little cloudy.

There was more hurt in this story than he was letting on but she decided not to press that particular bruise. After all, they were practically strangers.

‘You don’t have to tell me the rest,’ she said, sipping her tea.

He cocked his head and then set his mug down. He groaned, scrubbing his face with his hands before looking her dead in the eye. ‘Would I seem like a big weirdo if I asked if I could tell the rest? Because it’s making me feel better? And you’re the first person I’ve actually wanted to talk about this to in…for ever?’

That pulse in her belly and much lower blossomed instantly into full-blown arousal. Now she felt her heartbeat in her pelvis. She was wet and she had an irrational stabbing fear that he would be able to look at her and tell. Or, worse, smell her arousal in the small confined space of her tiny, happy home.

Betsey pushed all that away and simply nodded. ‘Of course you can. Glad to help.’

He smiled and it made his eyes crinkle at the edges. ‘That was it for me and Jess. And I was OK with it. Then I arrived to work a week or so after the divorce was final and found that I was one of the four people being laid off due to my company’s downsizing.’

‘Ouch.’ She winced and it was authentic. He was such a nice guy that it seemed like one too many blows from the crap hammer in such a short span. ‘What happened to Mary, by the way?’