“He’ll cheat on you. Hell, he already has someone on the side.”
“Most likely,” she said in that calm, husky voice she was growing eerily used to. “But it won’t break my heart. That happened when Jimmy died, and nothing is ever going to hurt me like that again. It’s impossible. Neddie will make a good enough husband. He wants me because I’m pretty and because I’m an Abbott I suppose that sounds conceited but it’s not He doesn’t care about who I am, what I think about cate about He just wants me as a decoration.
“And that’s fine with me. I need to get out of this house, and there’s no way I can support myself. There aren’t any jobs for women right now, and you know it Too many GIs with families to support. So if I’m going to get out of here, and take Mary with me, I’m going to have to take my best offer, and that’s Neddie. And frankly, I don’t mind if he cheats on me. I’m hoping after the novelty of marriage wears off, he’ll pretty much leave me in peace.”
Jack stared at her in consternation. “That’s a hell of a future, Lou. Don’t you think you deserve better?”
“A lot of people deserve better than they get Jimmy didn’t deserve to die. But life isn’t fair.”
“Hell no, it isn’t fair,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to take a dive. I thought you were a fighter. I didn’t drink you’d let them beat you.”
It stung, his casual contempt Somehow in the last, uncharted time since she’d woken up in Tallulah Abbott’s body, she’d become Lou. She might not have Lou’s memory or familiarity with life in 1949, but she had Lou’s emotions, Lou’s longings and loyalties and slow, deep despair. She looked at Jack McGowan and knew she had Lou’s passion, as well. For the wrong man.
“Sometimes you get tired of fighting,” she said.
“Not the Lou Abbott I know. Not Jimmy’s Lou.”
“I’m not Jimmy’s Lou any longer!” she shot back, feeling dangerously close to tears.
He shook his head. “No,” he said. “You’re not You’re a coward, taking the easy way out. Well, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m not going to blow the whistle on Marsden. I don’t have enough to pin anything on him, and I don’t want to do something that might destroy you—your family.” She might have missed the slight slip, but she didn’t.
“Very noble,” she said drily, mocking him, angry and miserable and guilty.
“Not particularly.” Before she realized what he intended he’d taken a step toward her, sliding one hand beneath her tangle of wet hair to cup her neck. “Take care of yourself, kid,” he murmured. “’Cause I won’t be around to do it.”
She was frozen, staring up at him. He’d nicked himself shaving that morning, and his brown eyes were flecked with gold. She looked at him and felt a deep surge of longing race through her, sharp and painful and completely overwhelming.
“I don’t need looking after,” she said. Making no effort to break away.
“Like hell,” he muttered, and kissed her.
It was shockingly foreign and completely familiar, his hard, hot mouth against hers, pushing her lips open, tasting of coffee and toothpaste. She remembered his mouth, somewhere deep in some distant memory, and she remembered another mouth, another hot beat of longing that transcended common sense and even sanity.
She stopped thinking. She slid her arms around his waist, plastering her body against his, and she made a soft, moaning sound of surrender in foe back of her throat. She’d been so cold, and now she was blazing hot, her body on fire, tasting his tongue in her mouth, feeling foe strength of his hard body against hers, his hand closing over her breast, his leg nudging between her thighs.
She wouldn’t have pushed him away, she would have let him lay her down on foe flagstone terrace and take her there in full view of foe bedroom windows, when Hattie’s voice called out to her from foe kitchen.
“Yoo-hoo, Miss Tallulah! Telephone for you.”
Jack let go of her immediately, as if she were a hot potato, taking a step back as if to avoid further contamination. She forced herself to look at him. His breathing was ragged, his eyes almost black, his expression unreadable.
“Better go, Lou,” he said in a rough voice. “It’s probably your fiancé calling you. But remember one thing during your long, empty years. He’ll never give you what you need.”
The words stung, almost as much as her mouth. “And what are you offering, Jack?” she mocked him. “I haven’t heard you come up with any alternatives.” Say something, she thought. Ask me and I’ll come with you.
But he said nothing.
She wanted to slap him. Something childish, out of an old movie, she wanted to give him such a crack across the face that the sound of it echoed through the town of Matchfield.
But she didn’t. “Have a nice life, Jack,” she said carelessly. And she turned and ran up the stairs, back to the kitchen.
“My, my, Miss Lou!” Hattie greeted her. “Are you sure you ought to be doing that kind of thing the day before you’re getting married?” Oddly enough her brown eyes looked more sympathetic than condemning. “You’re just lucky your parents are sleeping in. What do you think would have happened if they woke up and happened to look out the window?”
“I don’t know,” she said listlessly.
“You’re marrying the wrong man, child,” Hattie said.
“I know,” Susan said. Or was she Lou? She didn’t know anymore. “But the right man didn’t ask me.”
