Carla Cassidy - Anything for Danny

“Uh…would you mind leaving it off until we get out of this rush-hour traffic?” she asked politely.

“Okay,” he agreed reluctantly. He turned it off, remembering that she’d never liked to drive with the radio playing.

He was aware of Danny returning from the back and sitting down in the chair just behind him. Danny leaned forward and placed a hand on Luke’s arm, and his other hand on Sherri’s shoulder. “This is gonna be so much fun,” he exclaimed with all the excitement a nine-year-old could generate. “We’re going to have the greatest time in the world, aren’t we?” His words were met with silence. “Aren’t we?” he prompted, squeezing Luke’s arm.

“Sure, the greatest,” Luke replied faintly.

“The best,” Sherri added. She looked at Luke, and in her eyes he saw the same dull dread he knew was in his own.

He smiled weakly, then turned his gaze out the window. Yes, this was definitely going to be the trip from hell.

Sherri feigned sleep and studied Luke beneath her lowered lashes. She’d spent the last six hours driving and after they’d stopped for lunch, had relinquished control of the vehicle to him.

She’d spent the past five years trying not to really look at him whenever they happened to run into each other. She now took the opportunity to examine the man she had once been married to, the man she had once loved above all else.

Luke had always been handsome. Sherri was honest enough to know that it had been his intense good looks that had initially attracted her to him.

He was still sinfully attractive. The passage of time had merely intensified his bold features. His chin was square and strong, his nose a Roman feature. He’s wearing his dark hair longer, she observed. She liked it. She decided it gave him a rakish look that complemented his devil-may-care personality.

He’d taken off the leather bomber jacket he’d been wearing this morning and was clad in a short-sleeved T-shirt that exposed his firmly muscled, tanned arms. He had the body of a man who worked out, but she knew Luke was too undisciplined to follow any regular workout regimen.

She looked at his hands, gripping the steering wheel competently. She’d always loved his hands. They were artist hands, slender and long-fingered, yet masculine with the dark curly hair that dotted each knuckle.

He talked with his hands, gesturing often as if they were an extension of his thought processes. They used to laugh about it. She’d teased that if his hands were tied behind his back, he would be completely tongue-tied.

“Sherri?”

His voice caused her to squeeze her eyes more tightly closed. She didn’t want him to know that she’d been looking at him. She kept her breathing even and rhythmic, feigning deep slumber.

“I know you aren’t sleeping, Sherri.” His voice was softly indulgent and she could hear the smile in it.

She cracked an eyelid. “How do you know I’m not?” she asked, suddenly irritable.

“Because you always sleep with your mouth hanging open,” he observed.

She sat up straighter in the seat. “I most certainly do not,” she replied stiffly.

He smiled, a smirking, knowing grin that instantly fueled her unreasonable aggravation with him. “For the five years we were married, you never, ever slept with your mouth closed.”

“Well, it’s been a long time since you’ve slept with me and nobody else has ever complained,” she snapped. She groaned inwardly. Now why had she said that? In the years since her divorce from Luke, there had been no opportunity for anyone to complain about her sleeping habits. Other than the occasional night when Danny had a nightmare and had needed some assurance, she’d slept alone.

“We need to talk,” he said, not taking his gaze off the highway they traveled.

“Talk about what?” She sat up in the seat and eyed him curiously.

“About the silence we’ve suffered through for the last six hours.”

“It hasn’t been silent…Danny has been chattering.” Sherri turned around in her seat, looking for her son.

“Don’t worry,” Luke said. “He went back a little while ago to take a nap. He can’t hear us.” He looked at her for a moment, then redirected his gaze to the road. “Sherri, I don’t know about you, but so far this trip has been damned uncomfortable. The tension between us is so ripe, Danny can’t help but feel it. We can’t have the whole trip like this.”

Sherri thought about those six hours. She had driven, Luke had stared out the window and Danny had talked. It had been the inane chatter of a kid who sensed tension and was attempting to dispel it. “So, what do you suggest?” she asked.

“I don’t know. All I do know is that we’ve got three weeks of close contact, intimate togetherness and a Christmas holiday to get through. For the sake of that kid back there, we’d better be able to put our past behind us and act like reasonable adults.”

“I can do whatever it takes to make Danny happy,” she answered.

Luke grinned. “I think it would make Danny happy if you tried to be nice to me.”

Sherri glared at him in outrage. Was he somehow trying to take advantage of this whole situation? It would be just like him to do that. She instantly steadied herself. Of course he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be with her any more than she wanted to be with him. He was merely thinking of Danny. And she would do the same. “I can be nice to you…for Danny’s sake.”

“Okay, then it’s agreed. For Danny’s sake, we’ll act like we really like each other.”

Sherri grimaced. “I don’t know if I’m that talented an actress,” she muttered.

“You are, I can still remember all those times you acted like you enjoyed my lovemaking.”

“Oh!” Sherri gasped at his temerity. She sputtered for a moment, opening and closing her mouth in an effort to find effectively scathing words. When nothing strong enough came to mind, she turned around in the seat, staring out the passenger window and studiously ignoring the soft chuckle he emitted.

Why did he have to mention that? she thought. Of all the things that had happened between them, of all the memories both good and bad she had entertained in the past, their lovemaking was something she’d never looked back on. That had been one particular set of memories she’d refused to acknowledge, refused to indulge herself in remembering.

But now the memories exploded in her mind, reminding her of the intensity, the wonder of sexual fulfillment she had always found in his arms. He’d been her first…her only. Sex had been their common ground, the only thing they had really done well together. It was what had kept their marriage alive much longer than it should have been.

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, refusing to give those vivid memories any substance, shoving the disturbing visions firmly out of her mind.

As the motor home traveled onward, she allowed the motion to lull her to sleep.

Luke glanced over at Sherri and realized this time she really was sound asleep. A small smile curved his lips upward as he saw that her mouth hung slightly agape. Yes, she was definitely asleep.

He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and reached over and flipped on the radio, turning it up so he could hear it, but not so loud it would intrude on Sherri’s slumber. The last thing he wanted to do was wake her up. One thing he remembered quite well, a tired Sherri was a cranky Sherri. His grin widened. The first thing he’d learned about her after marriage was that when she was tired her nose itched, and when he saw her scratching the tip of her pert little nose, he knew to watch out and give her a wide berth.

He eyed her again, humming along to Elvis’s crooning ‘Love Me Tender.’ He didn’t know why he had thrown out that comment about their lovemaking, but somehow he knew it had been because of a perverse wish to shake her up, watch her blush.