like the sex, don’t you, darlin’?”
He wanted to snap at her not to call him darling. She hadn’t earned that right. But he didn’t say anything.
“It’s pretty obvious you like the sex, Rudd.” She sighed and shivered at a memory. “God, how you like it.”
She handed him a bowl of oatmeal. It was too runny but he shrugged it off and doused it with butter and sugar and cinnamon.
“You’re too young for me, Aloha—”
She turned away from him. “Eighteen is too young? Call a lawyer.”
He felt awkward. “It’s still very young.” She was eighteen? Except she hadn’t really said so. Did he really want to know?
“Again, your point being?”
“You’re younger than my daughter.”
“You got some sort of father-daughter hang up?”
“No, but it doesn’t seem right.”
“I like you a lot, Rudd. Do you like me?” Her eyes flashed brightly, alternating pure intelligence and sex.
“Plenty.” That’s the trouble, he thought, but could not say.
She moved behind him and began massaging his shoulders. “You’re tense. Let it go, darlin’. Let’s just enjoy.”
A last thought. “How about your parents? What do they think about us?”
“Who cares. I hate them. They named me Aloha.”
He didn’t know how to respond.
“They don’t care about me, they never have. I do anything I want.”
“Not here, not with me.”
Her smile was sly. “Oh?” She moved liquidly to the stove.
His face colored. “I have to fly to Birmingham and won’t return ‘til tomorrow and then Denise will be here for the weekend.”
“I can wait.” She ate oatmeal from the pan with a soup spoon.
“I don’t know if I can,” he said, pushing his chair back. “My resolve is dying.” He was surprised at himself for being honest—and vulnerable. He stood.
She came gently into his arms and he tilted his head and kissed her gingerly, licking a spot of oatmeal from her upper lip. She was inches short of his six one, but would grow three more inches in the next few years.
Her vest came open and he was late for his charter to Birmingham.
Rudd shook his head at the memory, checked his heading and the altitude controller. The trim wheel moved automatically.
He was staring himself in the soul. He had a growing realization that he cared deeply for Aloha Bonnie Blaze. Certainly, the sex was almost obsessive, but something deeper was beginning to emerge. Yet she was so goddamn young!
A game he enjoyed playing to himself: He’d imagine how a certain person would look and act in ten, twenty, thirty years. Aloha was not just interesting in those future terms, she was intriguing. He envisioned her at forty: The prime of her life, a knockout. And she’d be a Real Woman. Another game his mind played was to categorize people as a Real Man, a Real Woman, or not making the grade.
At forty, fifty, sixty, Aloha would be at the top of her game, a commanding presence, a woman with whom he’d love to be involved. Not a trophy, but a woman with her own agenda. Her future was bright—given the right opportunities. He could point the way for her, he realized.
At sixty, seventy, eighty, her hair would be more silver, her face smooth and classic, her quick wit and intellect still raging. This vision haunted him.
Long ago he’d made a pact with himself: Disregard what the woman looks like, it’s character which counts. But Rudd could not ignore Aloha’s regal beauty and her demanding presence. He had a gut-level, biological imperative for her. He was finding he had to be with her, not necessarily sex, but just be near her. He’d tried to tell her as much while dancing with her, but had become tongue-tied and decided silence was golden.
He landed in Tallahassee no closer to the answer.
Denise was already there when he got home.
After his shower, they settled in the family room, he with a gin and tonic, she with a glass of iced tea.
“Daddy, I’ve found blonde hair in my bathroom and a girl’s vest in the hall closet.”
“Champagne.”
“What?”
“Not blonde, but champagne.”
“Oh. I see. Well, we’ve always been frank between each other since you and Mother—”
“Tell me about Aloha Blaze.”
Denise sank back into the sofa. “Very frank. May the Lord have mercy upon our souls.”
“Our? Or just mine?” he asked.
“I was being diplomatic.”
“Who is she?”
“Just another kid in the group. Well, not really in the group. Part of it, but a loner. Gets along only with certain people. Not a part of the group-think, the teenage thing where they all want to be alike, but different. Deceptively smart. Very enterprising. She’s different. She doesn’t care what others think. Does her own thing.”
“Family?”
“She’s an only child. Her parents are what they call original hippies. They still have long, scraggly hair, wear beads, smoke dope, stuff like that.”
“Christ.” He remembered meeting them once or twice, just in passing.
“Daddy! Do not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
“Sorry. I can never get used to you being—”
“Born-again?”
“Yeah, that.”
She shook her head. “I’m not one for self-analysis. But you know full well it’s your fault.”
“Because of me and your mother?”
“Yep. You both drove me to it, probably in self-defense.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Denise took a sip of tea. “You will have to, one day. It’s something which needs purging—”
“Pop psychology, young lady.”
“I’ve some of Buddy’s combativeness,” she said grimacing. I’ve tried to channel it into my love for the Lord Jesus....”
“Buddy
