Jennifer Crusie - The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

‘They’re not getting married.’ Mare sighed. ‘So tell me more about the bike business.’

They sat in the moonlight and finished off their ice cream while he told her about the business and the bikes and his partner Leo and Leo’s wife Amelie and their baby and the little house he owned there – ‘Does it have a red tile roof?’ she asked, and when he said, ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Oh,’ and he couldn’t tell if that was good or bad – and the sun and the heat and the thousand things he loved about it, and when he was done, they put their cups down for Py to lick and then sat silent in the moonlight. Beneath them, the roof throbbed as if music were playing below, something with a strong bass, but it was quiet down there, just a silent pulsing with a drift of purple smoke around the windows every now and then that Mare said came up from the river, which didn’t make sense. Crash didn’t care, although the throb under him made it hard to concentrate on Italy and almost impossible not to touch Mare.

‘So what are your other choices?’ Crash said when she’d been silent for a while.

‘Hmmm? Oh. New York. Jude offered me a job in New York City.’

‘Oh.’ He shifted on the roof. ‘Jude’s the guy in the suit at the video store.’

‘Yep.’

‘You might like New York,’ he said, trying to be fair. ‘I’d love New York,’ Mare said. ‘But I can’t go there, either’

You’re twenty-three, he wanted to say, you can go anywhere you want, but he wanted her in Tuscany, not New York, so he didn’t say it. ‘And the third one nobody’s offered you?’

‘My Aunt Xan,’ Mare said. ‘My mother’s sister. I’d kind of like to learn some stuff from her. The only problem is I don’t know where she is, and Dee hates her so I can’t go looking for her.’

‘Maybe your aunt would like Italy.’

Mare turned to him in the dark. ‘Are you telling me that you’re going to support me and my aunt?’

Crash sighed. ‘No. I’m just trying to find a way to make this work.’

Mare shook her head. ‘Crash, you don’t know me. At all. You think you do because you knew a little bit about me five years ago but-’

‘I know, there are secrets. I got real damn tired of those secrets, of getting shut out, of feeling like the guy you called around when you wanted a good time and then sent home.’ He stopped because he was getting mad again, and getting mad was what had kept him out of Salem’s Fork for five years, that ‘If I’m not good enough to come in the house, the hell with you’ feeling that he was old enough now to know was a lot more about pain than it was about anger, not that that made it any damn better. ‘What I’m trying to tell you is that you don’t need to keep secrets anymore because what I know about you is that it felt right to be with you then, and it’s felt wrong to be without you for the past five years, and now that I’m back, it feels right again, and I’m ready to make this permanent, so I don’t care what your secrets are, I’m for you.’

‘Oh,’ Mare said, a little breathless. ‘Oh. Well. Well, you don’t know my aunt at all. She’s a real piece of work.’

‘I’m good with little old ladies.’

Mare snorted. ‘Xan is not a little old lady. Xan is Vampira and Elvira, Queen of the Night and the Dragon Lady and Morticia Addams with a little bit of Jackie Kennedy thrown in to make things interesting.’

‘That’s everybody you ever dressed up as for Halloween,’ Crash said, his mind flipping through images of the past, each of them hotter than the last, each of them cooling his anger considerably, along with Mare pressed up against him again.

‘She’s kind of a role model,’ Mare said. ‘But the important thing is, Xan would have you for lunch. She’s ruthless and dangerous and Dee’s probably right that I should stay away from her, but she knows things that I need to know. And she’s always been very good to me.’

‘Her favorite little niece?’ Crash grinned at her in the darkness. ‘I bet you were a cute kid.’

‘Not really,’ Mare said thoughtfully. ‘Dee was the beauty and Lizzie was the fairy child. I kind of clumped. I was the Amazon kid. I don’t know why she paid the most attention to me. Maybe because I’m the youngest. The dumbest.’

‘You’re not dumb,’ Crash said, surprised.

‘I’m dumb compared to Dee and Liz,’ Mare said, sitting up straighter. ‘I wonder if that’s it. She’s the one who told me I was the Queen of the Universe. Maybe she has me marked as the weakest link.’

‘Weakest link in what?’ The roof beneath them began to throb harder, and Crash put his hand on it, distracted. ‘What is that?’

‘Lizzie’s working.’ Mare began to gather up the cups.

‘Well, I’ve got another long day tomorrow…’

She was leaving. Without thinking, he blurted, ‘How about if I moved back here?’

Mare jerked back. ‘Here? To Salem’s Fork? You just got finished telling me how much you love Italy. And your business there, everything about it. You’re happy there.’

He was a little stunned himself. ‘Yeah, but you’re not there.’ Now that he’d said it, it began to seem like a possibility. ‘Maybe we could open an American branch. Be international.’

Mare stared at him, looking hopeless. ‘You can’t give up your life for me. You don’t know me.’

‘Well, come to Italy and we’ll get to know each other again,’ he said, exasperated. ‘I’ll get you a round-trip ticket. You don’t like it, you can come home. What’s the worst that can happen? You get a vacation in Italy.’ He leaned closer. And what’s the best that can happen? Us, that’s what. Have you missed me at all?’

She looked at him with her heart in her eyes, and he knew that she had missed him, knew she still cared, and the last of his anger evaporated, and then the roof trembled under them, and she looked away and Crash said, ‘What the hell?’

‘You know Lizzie,’ Mare said. ‘Something probably exploded.’

She was too far away, but he’d seen the look in her eyes, so he put his arm around her, and when she sighed and put her forehead on his arm, he said, ‘Listen, but if it’s New York, you’ll be amazing there, too. You can do anything, Mare. You don’t need your sisters or your aunt Xan or anybody else. You really are Queen of the Universe.’

She turned her face up to him and said, ‘I love you,’ and he kissed her, dizzy with wanting her, loving her, and tasted heat and hot fudge and Mare. He fell into her, felt her yield under him, needing to taste all of her, drink her in, and then she broke the kiss and pulled back, breathing fast, hot and real under his hands, inches away from him, too far away from him. He held on to her, jerking his head toward her bedroom window. ‘We’re going to fall off this roof,’ he said, breathless, ‘how about you finally show me your room?’ and Mare stiffened.

He tightened his grip on her. ‘Sorry, too fast-’

‘The mountain,’ Mare said.

He stopped as thunder rolled in the distance.

‘Let’s go to the mountain. Like we used to.’ Mare stood up, pulling his hands with her, and Py stretched to his feet beside her.

The mountain again. ‘Mare, it was always great on the mountain, but it’s going to storm-’

‘Not until Sunday,’ she said. ‘Not until Beltane. And even if it does, I want to make love with you on the mountain again.’ She held on to him in the dark, tugging gently on his hand. ‘Just like we used to. I want you so much.’

The wind blew her silky black hair across her face, and the moon silhouetted her, tall and round and strong in the darkness, and he wanted her anywhere, any way, always, just because she was Mare and he loved her.