Part 19 (1/2)

She wouldn't have suggested a green-card wedding, either. With a sense of tearing, she found herself forced to let go, to face the fact that, no matter how virtuous she'd been,Tim was never, ever going to come back.

With a cry, she sank to the bathroom floor and wept. Not tiny baby tears. Great, gulping, engulfing sobs. Her exhaustion and the sudden events of the past few days had made her vulnerable, but she recognized that was only the trigger. Seeing Tim's clothes on Alejandro, touching him, feeling again that richness of life in her arousal, her attraction, had brought home how very gone her husband was.

Gone.

She wept.

Alejandro let Molly retreat, recognizing the unsettling trueness of that kiss a kiss that had begun as a way to lighten the tension between them, make her smile, and had become ... something else.

He was in the kitchen, making coffee for himself, when he heard the sobs. The sound drew him, and he made his way down the hall in concern. He knew this sound. It was grief the kind that stole over a person and sucked out the breath, nearly stopped the heart. He'd known it only twice in his life, at the death of his parents and upon the death of his sister.

Standing outside the bathroom door, he hesitated. The shower was running and maybe she had hoped that it would drown the sound of her sorrow. And yet it had not. He could not bear to think of her so very, very sad and alone after all she'd given him and Josefina. He knocked, firmly, so she would hear over the shower.”Senora?”

A beat of silence, one broken by a strangled sound. ”I'm okay.”

”No, no.” He jiggled the door handle, to let her know he meant to come in. ”You do not need to be so alone when I am here to help you.”

”I'm okay,” she repeated.

He thought for a moment, and leaned against the door. ”Saint Molly, will you let me give back just this one thing?Porfavor? ”

Silence. Then the door opened, and she stood there looking small and impossibly frail in an oversize robe, her hair loose on her shoulders, her face ravaged and unbeautiful in grief. Her eyes burned an unholy color of silver in the midst of the red of weeping, and Alejandro did exactly what came to him: he moved forward, closed the door to prevent the heat and damp of the steam from leaving the room and enfolded her in his arms. He held her tightly, without hesitation, putting a hand on her head to encourage her tolie it in the cradle of his shoulder. She was stiff for a moment, resisting, then something broke free and she gripped him, buried her face, and he felt her shoulders shake. ”It's been four years,” she moaned. ”How can it still hurt like this, all at once, so I can't breathe?”

”It does, that's all.” His balance was precarious, and he braced himself against the door, stroking her hair, stroking, stroking.

”He's not coming back. Not ever.”

”No,” he said quietly. The shower ran and ran, and the steam was so thick in the room that his face was wet in moments. ”But hewas here. He lived. In these rooms, no?” He rubbed his cheek on her hair, not out of longing, but out of need to comfort. ”He wore this s.h.i.+rt. He loved you, and you loved him.”

She nodded, and more tears fell,a river of them, but these were somehow richer, less stricken.

”You will not forget him, Saint Molly. And now I will know him, too, by knowing you.

Any man you loved so well must have been very fine.”

”He was.” The words came out strangled, but he felt the difference in her. Moving gently, he settled her on the toilet and reached for the washcloth. He ran cold water on it and started to kneel before the a.s.sorted pains in him stopped that action.

Instead, he bent, putting one hand on her shoulder to bracehimself a little, and used the other to blot her hot, swollen face. She closed her eyes with a sigh and let him press the cold cloth to her eyelids. ”Thank you.”

”If my kiss made that come, I am sorry, Molly.”

She raised herface, put a hand to his wrist. ”It was just that it made me remember. It wasn't you.”

And with a fierceness that surprised him, he suddenly wanted to kiss her with all the pa.s.sion that lived in him. Wanted to tangle with her in a way that bruised and healed them both. It swelled in him, swift and biting, this l.u.s.t, and shocked him enough that he stepped back. ”The water will be cold,” he said, and put the washcloth in her hand.

After her shower, Molly fell into bed and slept for nearly four hours. It was the sleep of the dead, and she felt cleansed when she awakened. Her mind was sharp and clear as she dressed and drank some of Alejandro's extraordinary coffee. ”You really will have to show me how to make this,” she said, standing at the sink in the suns.h.i.+ne.

She had brought him fresh clothing, more things that had belonged to Tim, right down to the boxer shorts. He looked troubled when she carried them out of the bedroom. ”Are you sure,senora? I do not wish to cause you more pain.”

”He would kill me if I let those clothes sit there when someone could get some use out of them,” she said briskly, and meant it.

They did not, Molly admitted now, fit him particularly well. Alejandro was a little taller and a good twenty pounds lighter than Tim had been, so the sleeves and jeans were the smallest bit too short, and everything was baggy. He obviously knew this, too, for he plucked restlessly at the s.h.i.+rt collar, tried to smooth the b.u.t.ton placket as if to make it fit better. ”Don't worry about it,” Molly said now. ”We'll get some more clothes for you.”