Rachel Goddard 01 - The Heat of the Moon

Mother’s presence hovering and watching. I broke the kiss, breathless. At first I thought he wouldn’t let me go, then he reluctantly withdrew his arms so I could take a step back.
    A flush of color rode his cheekbones. “Zero to sixty in thirty seconds or less,” he said, then scrubbed a hand across his mouth and gave a short laugh. “I didn’t mean to come on so strong. It’s just that—” With his thumb he traced my moist lower lip. “In my imagination, we’ve already…”
    A shock of pleasure surged through me and heat flooded my face. I almost moved back into his arms.
    Instead, I managed a smile, smoothed down my hair with shaky hands, and said, “Maybe it’d be a good idea if we took this conversation out to the patio.”
    For a moment he stood with one hand braced on the counter, staring down at the floor. He looked up with a slow rueful grin, all his thoughts and desires playing across his face.
    “Okay,” he said. “Out to the patio.”
    ***
    We stayed on the patio into the afternoon, sitting in the sun and talking with the safety zone of the patio table between us. His visit stretched on so long that I began to worry about Mother and Michelle returning and finding him still there.
    When he said he had to check on a post-surgical patient, and rose to leave, the pang of disappointment I felt was mixed with relief. 
    At the front door, his jacket slung over his arm, he said, “Have dinner with me tonight. I’ll come back in a while and pick you up.”
    “Oh, I can’t, I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
    “Tomorrow? We can spend the day together.”
    “I promised Mother I’d go somewhere with her.”
    He sighed. “Okay. Soon, though?” He stroked his thumb across my lips. “Real soon. Maybe next time you can come visit me.”
    He slipped an arm around my waist and gave me a lingering goodbye kiss, but I held myself back, kept a slice of space between our bodies.
    I watched him drive away, then closed the front door and sagged against it, releasing a long breath. If we hadn’t been in Mother’s house, we might have ended up in bed. If I’d had dinner with him, we would have gone to his apartment afterward and ended up in bed. I imagined us in a tangle of sheets, bodies naked and moist.
    It would be wonderful. But he wanted far more than sex. He deserved more. I was tempted to take a chance, surrender to his openness and warmth and see where it led, but the stronger part of me was already in full retreat. Not only because he was my boss. He didn’t know me. We could talk forever about books and music and work, and he still wouldn’t know me. I was beginning to doubt that I knew myself.
    Silence hung over the house, as it often did even when Mother, Michelle and I were all at home. A house of secrets, of unspoken things.
    In Luke’s eyes my life here probably seemed a comfortable convenience that nevertheless robbed me of independence and privacy. But it had been unimaginable for me to live anywhere else after I came back to McLean. Mother would have been wounded and bewildered if I’d chosen to be alone in some tiny apartment, and I wouldn’t have been able to bear her stoic show of pretended understanding.
    I walked down the hall, intending to tidy what little mess was left from lunch. Erase any evidence of Luke’s visit.
    I stopped outside Mother’s study, across from the kitchen. Normally the door stood open, but she’d closed it the night before and left it closed. This was her way, I assumed, of letting me know she was still displeased by my invasion of her personal space. The thought made me feel like a punished child, ashamed and resentful.
    I doubted the room contained anything I would want to see, among the old case histories Mother consulted when writing papers.
    But while I had the chance I might as well take a quick look just to be sure. I’d already committed the worst offense, searching Mother’s closet and dresser drawers. This would be minor by comparison.
    I grasped the knob, tried to turn it. The door was locked.
    I jerked my hand back. She’d never locked her study before. Did she distrust me so much that she thought I’d rifle through confidential patient records?
    Or was she hiding something that she didn’t want me to find?
    I stared at the closed door. The clock on the living room mantel chimed five times. The psychology conference was ending about now.
    I was at the kitchen sink scrubbing tiny red potatoes for dinner when my mother and