Homeport

help you.” More than willing to assist, he picked up the soap, sniffed it, then began to rub it over her back. It was, he thought, a very excellent back.
    “I mastered the art of the shower years ago. I can do it solo.”
    “Why?” Because her voice had been delightfully prim, he turned her around, snuggling her wet, slippery body against his.
    “Because it’s . . .” She could feel her color rise and hated it. “It’s personal.”
    “Oh, I see,” he said, tongue planted in cheek. “And the sex wasn’t personal?”
    “It’s different.”
    “Okay.” With his eyes laughing into hers, he skimmed his soap-slicked hands over her breasts. “We’ll compromise and combine the two.”
    It was far from the brisk and basic hygiene she’d had in mind.
    When she was gulping in steam and quaking from the aftershocks, he nuzzled at her throat. “That,” he said, “was personal.” Then he sighed. “I have to go to Mass.”
    “What?” She shook her head, sure there was water in her ears. “Did you say you had to go to Mass?”
    “Easter Sunday.”
    “Yes, yes, it is.” Struggling to keep up with him, she shoved dripping hair out of her eyes. “It seems like an odd line of thought, under the circumstances.”
    “They might not have had the benefit of indoor plumbing in biblical times, but they had plenty of sex.”
    She supposed he had a point, but it still made her vaguely uncomfortable to think of religion when his wet hands were sliding over her wet butt.
    “You’re Catholic.” At his lifted brow she shook her head. “Yes, I know, Irish and Italian, what else could you do? I didn’t realize you practiced.”
    “Mostly I’m lapsed.” He stepped out of the shower, handed her a towel and got one for himself. “And if you tell my mother I said that, I’ll swear you’re a dirty, rotten liar. But it’s Easter Sunday.” He gave his hair a quick rub, then draped the towel around his hips. “If I don’t go to Mass, my mother will kill me.”
    “I see. I feel obliged to point out that your mother isn’t here.”
    “She’ll know.” He said it mournfully. “She always knows, and I’ll go straight to hell because she’ll see to it.” He watched her align the ends of the towel, wrap, then neatly tuck them between her breasts. The efficiency of the gesture did nothing to detract from the sexiness of it. The room smelled of her—clean soap with woodsy overtones. Abruptly, he didn’t want to leave her, not even for an hour.
    The realization had him rolling his shoulders as if he needed to displace a sudden and uncomfortable weight.
    “Why don’t you come with me? You can wear your Easter bonnet.”
    “Not only don’t I own a bonnet, of any kind, but I have to get my thoughts in order.” She took a portable hair dryer from the cabinet beside the sink. “And I need to talk to Andrew.”
    He’d been toying with the idea of afternoon Mass so he could slip the knot on her towel. But he put that aside now. “What do you intend to tell him?”
    “Not very much.” And it shamed her. “Under the circumstances, as long as he’s . . . I hate that he’s drinking like this. I hate it.” It shamed her too that when she drew in a breath it was shaky. “And for a minute last night, I hated him. He’s all I’ve ever had, and I hated him.”
    “No you didn’t. You hated what he’s doing.”
    “Yes, you’re right.” But she knew what had bloomed inside her when she looked up and saw him weaving at the top of the steps. “In any case, I have to talk to him. I’ll have to tell him something. I’ve never lied to him before, not about anything.”
    There was nothing Ryan understood more than family ties, or the knots they could tie themselves into. “Until he deals with his drinking, he’s not the man you know, or one you can trust.”
    “I know.” It was eating at her heart.
     
    In the bathroom in the next wing, where the smell of stale vomit still hung in the air, Andrew leaned on the sink and forced himself to study the face in his mirror.
    It was gray, the eyes bloodshot, the skin pasty. His left eye was a sunburst of bruising and above that was a shallow cut perhaps an inch in length. It ached like a fever.
    He couldn’t remember more than pieces from the evening before, but what did swim back into his mind made his raw stomach clench again.
    He saw the image of himself, standing at the top of the stairs, waving a nearly empty bottle and shouting down, slopping the