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Blue remembered. They’d shown her pictures in books.
“The baby’s going to be born soon,” Olivia went on. “That means lots of things will be different now.”
Blue didn’t want them to be different. She wanted them to stay exactly the same. “Is the baby going to sleep in my room?” Blue finally had her very own room, and she didn’t want to share it.
Tom and Olivia exchanged glances before Olivia said, “No, Punkin’. Something better. You remember Norris, the lady who visited us last month, the weaver who started Artists for Peace? She told you all about her house in Albuquerque and her little boy, Kyle? We showed you where New Mexico was on the map. Do you remember how much you liked Norris?”
Blue nodded in blissful ignorance.
“Well, guess what?” Olivia said. “Your mom and Tom and I arranged for you to go live with Norris now.”
Blue didn’t understand. She gazed into their wide, fake smiles. Tom rubbed his chest through his flannel shirt and blinked his eyes like he might cry. “Olivia and I are going to miss you very much, but you’ll have a yard to play in.”
That’s when she got it. She started to gag. “No! I don’t want a yard. I want to stay here! You promised. You said I could live here forever!”
Olivia rushed her to the bathroom and steadied her head while she threw up. Tom slumped on the edge of the old, chipped bathtub. “We wanted you to stay, but…that was before we knew about the baby. Things have gotten complicated with money and everything. At Norris’s house, there’ll be another kid to play with. Won’t that be fun?”
“I’ll have a kid to play with here!” Blue had sobbed. “I’ll have the baby. Don’t make me go. Please! I’ll be good. I’ll be so good I won’t bother you ever.”
They’d all started to cry then, but in the end, Olivia and Tom had driven her to Albuquerque in their rusty blue van and sneaked away without saying good-bye.
Norris was fat and showed Blue how to weave. Nine-year-old Kyle taught her card games and played Star Wars with her. One month slipped into another. Gradually, Blue stopped thinking so much about Tom and Olivia and started to love Norris and Kyle. Kyle was her secret brother, Norris her secret mother, and she was going to stay with them forever.
Then Virginia Bailey, her real mother, came back from Central America and took her away. They went to Texas, where they stayed with a group of activist nuns and spent every spare minute together. She and her mother read books, did art projects, practiced Spanish, and had long talks about everything. A whole day would pass without Blue thinking about Norris and Kyle. Blue fell back in love with her gentle mother and was inconsolable when Virginia left.
Norris had gotten married again, so Blue couldn’t go back to Albuquerque. The nuns kept her until the school year ended, and Blue transferred her love to Sister Carolyn. Sister Carolyn drove Blue to Oregon, where Virginia had arranged for her to stay with an organic farmer named Blossom. Blue clung so desperately to Sister Carolyn when she tried to drive off that Blossom had to pull her away.
The cycle started all over again, except this time Blue held a little of herself back from Blossom, and when she had to leave, she discovered it wasn’t as painful as before. From then on, she was more careful. With each subsequent move, she distanced herself more from the people she stayed with until, finally, the leaving barely hurt at all.
Blue gazed toward the hotel room bed. Dean Robillard was horny, and he expected her to accommodate him, but he didn’t know how deep her aversion ran to casual hookups. In college, she’d watched her girlfriends, high on Sex and the City, sleep with whomever they wanted whenever they’d pleased. But instead of feeling empowered, most of them had ended up depressed. Blue had suffered from enough short-term relationships during her childhood, and she wasn’t adding to the list. If she didn’t count Monty, which she didn’t, she’d only had two lovers, both artistic, self-absorbed men happy to leave her in charge. It worked better that way.
The bathroom doorknob turned. She had to be careful how she dealt with Dean for fear he’d leave tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, tact wasn’t her forte.
He came out of the bathroom, a towel looped low around his hips. He looked like a Roman god taking a breather in the middle of an orgy while he waited for the next temple virgin to be sent his way. But as the light hit him, her fingers constricted around her sketchbook. This was no flawless, marble-carved Roman divinity. He had a warrior’s body—highly functional, powerfully built, and ready for battle.
He saw her taking in the trio of thin scars on his shoulder. “Pissedoff husband.”
She didn’t believe that for a minute. “The perils of sin.”
“Speaking of sin…” His lazy smile oozed seduction. “I’ve been thinking…Late night…two lonely strangers…a comfortable bed…I can’t come up with a better way to entertain ourselves than to make use of it.”
He’d abandoned subtlety to make a dash for the goal line. His gorgeous face and athletic fame gave him a sense of entitlement when it came to women. She understood tha
t. But not this woman. He moved closer. She smelled soap and sex. She considered bringing up the gay thing again, but, at this point, why bother? She could plead a headache and flee the room…or she could do what she always did and face up to the challenge. She uncurled from the chair. “Here’s the way it’s going to be, Boo. You don’t mind if I call you ‘Boo,’ do you?”
“As a matter of fact—”
“You’re gorgeous, sexy, and ripped. You’ve got more charm than any man should have. You have great taste in music, and you’re rich—huge bonus points there. You’re also very smart. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. But the thing is, you don’t turn me on.”
His eyebrows slammed together. “I…don’t turn you on?”
She tried to look apologetic. “It’s not you. It’s me.”
He blinked, more than a little stunned. She couldn’t blame him. He’d undoubtedly used that “It’s not you. It’s me” line a thousand times himself, and it must be disconcerting to have it thrown back in his face.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“The unvarnished truth is that I’m more comfortable with losers like Monty, not that I intend to make that mistake again. If I went to bed with you—and I’ve thought long and hard about this—”
