Suddenly she saw the truck on the end of the row, the one farthest from the house, flash its headlights-once on and off, then once more. Her head went light with relief, and at the same time, confusingly, apprehension made a shivery star-burst in her belly. She moved quickly to the far truck and around to the passenger side, and was contemplating the step up to the cab, debating the best way to tackle it, when the door swung open and a hand reached down to her.

“Come on, give me that,” said a familiar masculine growl, and Eve’s heart gave a leap of pure, unadulterated joy.

“Which do you want?” she asked mildly, squinting up at him against the reflected glare of a late-afternoon sun. “The plate or the bottles?”

Jake grunted as he relieved her of both. “Hurry up-get in here. You want somebody to see us? What is this?” He was sniffing the foil-covered plate like a suspicious bloodhound.

“I brought you some dinner. Happy Thanksgiving.”

She was already hauling herself awkwardly up the steps and into the cab when Jake transferred the plate and bottles to the driver’s seat and reached down to help her. His hands, one warm and dry, the other cold and wet from the condensation on the beer bottles, grasped one of hers and enfolded it, and she felt a lurch in her middle.

“You sure nobody saw you?” Jake asked in his grave and gravelly voice once they were inside the truck and the door shut firmly behind them.

Eve rolled her eyes. “I can’t guarantee nobody saw me leave the house, but I know for sure nobody followed me out here. The guys are all sacked out in front of the TV set-”

“Cisneros?” He looked as if he found that hard to believe.

“Oh, yeah.” Her smile was off center. “He’s very busy being ‘one of the boys.’ Anyway, the women are, of course, cleaning up in the kitchen, Charly and the babies are napping upstairs, and the bigger kids have some sort of tag game going on the lawn, clear on the other side of the house.” She stopped, out of breath, to sweep her hair back from her face with both hands. It helped to quell her jitters somehow. “So-I’m pretty sure we’re in the clear. How ‘bout you? Have any trouble finding the place? Was the truck unlocked?”

“No problems…” Jake’s mumble was distracted as he scowled through the windshield, as intently as if he expected hostiles to pop up any minute out of the landscape of grassy hummocks and fire ant mounds.

“Where’s your backup?”

“Parked on a logging road on the other side of that stand of pines.” He threw her a look as he moved back between the seats. “If necessary, they can be here in three minutes.”

“Three?” Eve murmured, her tone faintly mocking. Had he timed it? she wondered. And she thought that a lot could happen in three minutes…

“We can talk in here,” Jake said tersely. He was poised in the entrance to the sleeper compartment, one knee on the bunk, one hand on the sliding curtain. “Doors are locked. If we pull this curtain, no one’ll ever be able to tell anyone’s inside.”

Eve scooped up the plate and bottles from the driver’s seat, then paused. “Oh, look,” she said, “this must be Jimmy Joe’s truck.” Clipped to the dashboard were two photographs-a school portrait of Jimmy Joe’s son, J.J., and a snapshot of Mirabella holding her baby, Amy Jo.

“Come on, hurry up.” Jake was gesturing urgently.

She nodded and eased herself between the seats to join him in the sleeper, at the same time looking around her, overcome by an unexpected sense of awe. She was thinking that this must be the very same truck, the very same sleeper in which Mirabella had given birth, with Jimmy Joe’s help, to a beautiful baby girl on a snowbound Texas interstate. On Christmas Day, that had been-almost two years ago.

Jake, watching her, asked as he pulled the curtain across the opening, “Never been in one of these before?”

“Nope,” she murmured, scooting herself backward onto the bed and pulling her legs up under her, Indian-style, “it’s a first.” She wanted to tell him about Mirabella’s Christmas miracle; it was part of her family’s folklore, a tale told and retold around dinner tables and at family gatherings. But for some reason it seemed too intimate a thing to share in these circumstances, the two of them closed in together in this tiny, womblike space. Instead, she said casually, “Nice digs. Are we bugged?” It had come to seem almost natural to her.

But Jake looked at her for a long, somber moment, then shook his head. “Not today.” He pulled the foil-covered plate toward him.

“You didn’t have to do this,” he mumbled as he peeled back the foil. He felt twinges of guilt when he thought about Birdie and Franco out there in the van, dining on fast-food burgers and fries, but then the smells of roasted turkey, sage stuffing, giblet gravy and candied sweet potatoes assailed him, and he went light-headed with pleasure. He’d read somewhere that the sense of smell was the most evocative of the senses. Right now he understood what that meant, because for one achingly poignant moment he was a child again, and back in his mother’s kitchen, cracking walnuts on the warped linoleum floor. He swallowed saliva along with the unexpected lump in his throat and said in a dazed voice, “I haven’t had a feast like this since…”

Eve was digging in the pockets of her jacket. She glanced at him as she drew out a set of silverware wrapped in a white linen napkin, another napkin bundle containing home-baked rolls, and a triangular-shaped, foil-wrapped package Jake devoutly hoped was pumpkin pie. “Go on, you can say it- since your divorce. Last time I looked, that’s not a four-letter word.”

He made a sound as he reached for the silverware, one she probably wouldn’t recognize as a chuckle. It was, though-he was profoundly glad for the distraction; sentimental at his core, the prospect of revealing such feelings dismayed him.

“How come?” Having taken his response for agreement, she was watching him with glittery-bright eyes and flushed cheeks above the rim of her collar, reminding him not so much of a titmouse now, but of the furred variety, peeking out of its hole, nose all aquiver with curiosity. “Don’t you have other family? What about your parents? Are they alive?”

“Yeah, they are. They live in Pittsburgh…” Fork poised above the heaped plate, he pondered the delicious choices.

“Really? Pittsburgh?”

“Yeah. And I have a sister who lives in Philly.” He stabbed the side of the mashed potato crater, allowing the pool of gravy to pour into the stuffing, then scooped up a huge forkful of all three and put it in his mouth. The combination of flavors almost sent him into ecstasy. He closed his eyes as he chewed, and made soft, guttural sounds of pleasure.

He opened his eyes and found her watching him hungrily. “You want some of this?” he offered, nudging the plate slightly toward her. “There’s plenty-more’n I can eat.” Which was an out-and-out lie, and he was relieved when she shook her head.

“No, thanks-I’m stuffed.” But she belied that as soon as she’d spoken, claiming one of the rolls.

He watched her as she broke it open, slathered it liberally with cranberry sauce, closed it up again and took a generous bite that left a small blob of sauce clinging to her upper lip. Instantly, without thinking, he reached over to wipe it away with a corner of the white linen napkin.

Her tiny, almost inaudible gasp woke him to himself and what he’d done. For a few moments he stared at her over the napkin, frozen… half in embarrassment, half in fearful anticipation, like someone who’d stepped on a squeaky stair tread and now waited to see if he’d given himself away.

Chapter 12

Jake cleared his throat and searched his mind frantically for the thread of the conversation. What had they been talking about? Oh yes-his parents. And Pittsburgh.

“They like it there,” he said. She was dabbing self consciously at her lips now. He averted his eyes like a polite stranger. Staring down at the plate before him, he felt again that peculiar sensation of mouthwatering hunger he knew no amount of food would ever assuage. “Actually, you know, Pittsburgh is a very elder-friendly town. Plus, they’d lived there pretty much all their lives, except for a brief stint in the service before I was born. So when they retired-”

Eve interrupted with a small, interested sound. “So, you grew up in Pittsburgh?”

His mouth full, Jake nodded. “Yeah, I did. My dad was a cop, the first in his family to escape the mines and the mills.”

“Really? No kidding? My pop was a cop, too!”

“Yeah?” He didn’t tell her he was already privy to that information, as well as quite a few other tidbits about her she’d probably rather he didn’t know.

Unable to nod, she bobbed eagerly. “Chief of police of Desert Palms, California. How ‘bout your mom?”

“Strictly a homemaker-like every other mom I knew.” He shrugged without looking up. “That’s the way it was then. I didn’t know anybody whose mother worked outside the home.”

“Yeah,” said Eve, “me, too.” She paused, and when he glanced at her he saw that she was looking into space, smiling and remembering. “It seemed like she was always busy, though. And I don’t mean housework. She was into so many things-our schools, community organizations, charities and churches-I don’t know what all. And when she was home, she was always into something-gardening, redecorating, remodeling, you name it. Didn’t leave much time for us kids. And since Pop’s job had him gone most of the time, we were on our own most of the time. I guess that’s why we were so close…” Her voice trailed off. Jake, glancing up, just caught her fleeting look of wistfulness.

He said gruffly, “My dad was gone most of the time, too, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t really notice. It was sort of like…that was the way things were supposed to be. You know what I mean? A clear division of labor and responsibility. I think my mom must have raised us to expect it My sister and I always just took it for granted that Dad was working out there, and Mom was here, with us. I never once heard my mom ask anything more, or utter a word of complaint. I took her for granted,” he muttered, staring at his plate.

But he was thinking, not of his mother, but of the woman he’d married, and how unhappy he’d made her. Thinking that his mother wasn’t the only person he’d taken for granted.

Eve picked up one of the bottles of beer and unscrewed the top, bringing him out of the mire of past regrets. She offered it to him, but he shook his head and gestured at his half-empty plate. “Maybe later. Don’t want to ruin a good thing.”

So she tipped the bottle to her own lips, and with the notion of taking people for granted fresh on his conscience, it occurred to him how awkward it must be for her, wearing that collar, to do a simple thing like that-tilt her head back and swallow. He motioned toward her with his head, and thinking that she wouldn’t even be able to do that much, said in a voice made gruff with guilt, “Why don’t you take that thing off? If somebody catches us together, we’re busted anyway. Might as well be comfortable while you can.”

She gave a funny little feline growl as she anchored the beer bottle between her crisscrossed legs, a sound that reminded him of the actress-he couldn’t think of her name now-who used to play Catwoman on the old Batman television series. He wondered if she had any idea how sexy it was, as she laughed softly and murmured, “You make it sound like an assignation.”

She lifted her hands to the straps that fastened the collar together. Already in the act of reaching out to help, Jake paused, then decided to ignore the warning bells and claxons of every pitch and tone that were sounding inside his head. She moved her hands out of the way, giving over the task to him. The fastenings were simple-why were his fingers so clumsy?

“Tell me, Jake,” she said softly, watching him across the narrow chasm between them, her eyes full of laughter and a strange, dark glow. “What does it take to make you laugh?”

He hesitated for a long time, vibrating like a high-tension wire and fighting to hang on to his self-control, before he replied solemnly, “You make me laugh.”

“Oh, yeah…” Her voice was husky. “I can see that.”

“I’m laughing on the inside,” he said, absolutely deadpan.

Mercifully, at that moment, the two halves of the collar separated in his hands. He eased them and himself gently away from her, leaned back and laid them aside.

But if he’d expected the retreat to a safer distance to ease the strain on his willpower, he was out of luck. If anything, the wider perspective only made things worse. He was struck, for example, by the naked vulnerability of her bared neck, like the stalk of some delicate Sower-a buttercup, maybe, or a wild primrose. He thought it seemed too fragile to support her head and the jaunty, childlike tousle of her straw-colored hair. Yet he knew there was nothing fragile about her body. He remembered the graceful arrangement of muscles in her back…the silky-firm resilience of her flesh beneath his fingertips…