No Place Like Home by Barbara Samuel Read Free Book Online Page A

is a good feeling when you’re tall and hippy—and that his eyes were soft when they were sad. He smelled like the outdoors on a summer afternoon, like clothes just taken off the line, and I wondered in a distant way why he didn’t smell like sweat and exhaustion.
    It went on a little too long, and that initial zing I’d felt upon seeing him expanded into a roar. Lust. Deep and somehow clean, perfectly obvious for what it was. I wanted to see his chest. He tilted his head, quirked his mouth a little and his gaze flickered downward, and I suspected the same thought—a bared chest—was crossing his imagination.
    I dropped my hand from his arm. He was in the way and didn’t seem to notice for a minute, and then he grinned. “Sorry,” he said, and stepped back. I pushed by him, my shoulder bumping his bicep.
    In the hall, I backed away. “The faucet sometimes makes a loud noise when you turn on the hot water. Just turn it on a little more and it’ll stop.”
    “Hmm.” He held up a finger for me to wait, ducked into the bathroom, and turned on the water until he got the noise—a shuddering that seemed to shake the entire room. He came out. “Got a wrench? I can fix that in about three seconds.”
    “You don’t have to do that.”
    His wink was pure sex god. “I’m sure you can figure out a way to pay me back.”
    I rolled my eyes and went to find a wrench.

SYLVIA’S LOVE POWDER
    On Saint Anthony’s day, cut long branches of rue, collect the freshest flowers, and mix with the petals of the reddest rose in the garden. Dry in a secret place where they will be safe from the breath of others. When they are dry, grind them with a mortar and pestle to a fine powder, then pour it into a bag. Take the powder to the river on the Feast of Our Lady, think of your heart’s desire, and toss the herbs into the water and ask the Lady’s blessing on your love. If he is meant for you, he will come by the turn of the season. If he is not, your true love will appear.
    Chapter 4
    Not even the arrival of the delectable Malachi could keep me from my nap. It’s a lifelong habit, one my mother says kept me out of afternoon kindergarten. “She needs her sleep,” she’d tell my aunts, brushing hair off my forehead as I dozed on her lap in one of their living rooms. “Hasn’t missed her nap since the day she was born.”
    And I still try not to. The animals trailed me upstairs, taking their stations around the bed, Berlin at the foot, Giovanni the aloof tuxedo on the windowsill above the bed, the other two cats on each side of my body. I fell on my stomach, grabbed a pillow to throw an arm across, and closed my eyes. A breeze came through the open windows, sweeping over my face with the smell of summer water, making me think of Malachi’s white shirt flapping on a clothesline. I took the image with me into the dark, cool well of sleep.
    When I woke up, one cat had moved to slump over the small of my back, paws on either side of my body, and another was curled right at my nose. She squeaked at me when I stirred. By the thickness in my head and the sweat collected on the back of my neck, it had been a long nap. Deep gold light, colored by dust in the air, slanted through the windows to fall on the dresser and floor and wall. Pueblo has the same artistic light that has made Florence and Taos and southern France so famous, but its steel mill image somehow stunted any artist colony that might have developed. Lying there, waiting for my mind to come back from the wild world of dreams, I admired the quality of those rectangular bars of light, thinking maybe I wanted to try some butterscotch pie sometime soon. Maybe my auntie Gen had a recipe, or maybe Carol.
    The smell in the air brought me around fully. Michael was cooking. I turned over on my back, breathing it in with a smile, identifying the food by the notes in the air. Barbequed chicken wings, messy and sweet and tangy. He’d make a spinach and orange salad to go with them.