Danger, Sweetheart Read Free Page B

put it in a way most people could grasp: Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
    Mr. Frost probably meant well, but his father had died when the poet was eleven and his mother when he was in his twenties. His sister and daughter had been institutionalized and the family was plagued with mental illness, mostly depression. Of course a man with that background thought home was a mythical place both magical and beautiful, stuffed with forgiving loved ones who were always happy to see you and never dropped hints about when you should leave again. The man’s entire career was a love letter to the power of wishful thinking and a denial of his sorrowful life.
    Shannah preferred Stephen King’s take on the poem about a dying handyman and his grudge-holding employer: Home was the place where, when you have to go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.
    Even if you’re the thing in the dark.
    So she would crawl, but not back to Sweetheart. She would start pulling every shift she could; she would become a most helpful, charming cocktail waitress. She would cultivate her acquaintances into friends—she could do that, could force charm and warmth when she had to. She would make friends and find a decent obstetrician and call in favors and keep Benjamin Tarbell’s contact information handy. She would do these things and be a mother—good or bad remained to be seen—and if nothing else she would do a better job than her parents.
    â€œMaybe set the bar a bit higher,” she murmured, and started for the elevator. She glanced through the wallet she had palmed and big surprise: no library card and not one but two Hooters gift cards.
    â€œOh, boys. Or girls. Or one of each.” She sighed with another pat to her stomach, and stepped into the empty elevator.

 
    One
    Blake Tarbell rolled onto his side and eyed the long, lovely naked back beside him. He could tell by her breathing that she was awake, and ran a finger from the top of her spine to the last bit of it just above her fossae lumbales laterals, the Dimples of Venus.
    â€œGod,” she groaned into her pillow. “You know that gives me the shivers.”
    â€œMore effective, perhaps, than an alarm.”
    â€œForget it.” She flopped over and jackknifed into a sitting position so abruptly, he put out a hand, thinking she was going to tumble off the edge of the bed. “I’ve gotta get back, so just holster the morning wood already.”
    He chuckled and let his hand drop. “Holster it where?”
    â€œDunno. It’s a guy thing; you figure it out.” She bounded from the bed like a gymnast on crack and he fought down a shudder. Morning people, dear God in Heaven. He liked Ava’s company, and last night she was as she always is: energetic and hungry in bed. It had been fast and urgent and delicious; they didn’t get together for long tender interludes.
    They’d met in the lobby for drinks, never dinner.
    (“Don’t ask me out. Don’t buy flowers. That’s not what this is.”
    â€œWhat is it, then?” he’d asked, amused. They’d met at McCarran four months ago; she was a pilot for Southwestern; his flight had been delayed. Drinks at the club had turned into a delicious sweaty tumble back at the hotel.
    â€œThis is me enjoying my divorce. This is you being the sexual equivalent of a Fun Run. Less talking, Blake, and a lot more stripping.”)
    The evening had ended as it always did, with both of them agreeably sweaty and out of breath. Ava called him whenever she was in Vegas longer than three hours. If he was free, they met for drinks. If he wasn’t, Blake imagined she called someone else. He was bothered by how that didn’t bother him.
    â€œâ€”the run to Boston,” she was saying. She’d done her usual efficient cleanup in the bathroom and was now wriggling back into her clothes. “God, sometimes