Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 4 (R)

Chapter Four

“Do you know that girl?” Linc asked Wil as he approached his brother and plopped his butt in a chair next to him and Sally.  Wil sat on a bench with his wife’s feet propped up in his lap, rubbing them while she dug into a plate of wedding cake and coconut chicken kabobs.  

Sally had only been about seven weeks along in her pregnancy when she started planning the menu for her wedding and not quite in the weird cravings stage yet, but it was honestly the oddest arrangement of foods Linc had ever laid eyes on.  There were fried cheese sticks clustered around a heap of candied walnuts.  There were the cucumber sandwiches paired with the cocktail wieners, the Hawaiian fruit salad and the glazed pork loin, and of course -- Linc’s favorite by far -- the actual wedding cake with a base layer of chocolate cake, a tier of sponge cake, a tier of half butter pecan, half lemon, and the top in fruit cake.  And it seemed Sally had all of them on her plate.

Everyone glanced at the side door where Linc jerked his head towards.  Amber pranced over to one of the other bridesmaids, a blonder version of herself, the one with the screaming baby...must be the sister.  

Sally hastily swallowed a clump of frosting.  “That’s Amber, Chloe’s sister,” she informed them.  “Chloe was helping her move up here for a new job this weekend, so I invited her at the last minute.”

A different blonde woman -- one of Sally’s bridesmaids, the one with the legs; Linc honestly couldn’t keep all these females straight -- joined them.  “Ya’ll talking about Chloe?”

Sally shook her head.  “Nope.  Amber.  Linc was asking.”

Linc groaned.  He didn’t really want to look interested in Amber on a personal level, but now everyone will think he did.  He’d already seen what her pretty, pink mouth looked like up close and personal.  He didn’t need to know much more than that.

“Oh, yeeaahh,” the new blonde drew out in teasing tone.  “Aren’t you too old for Amber?”

Linc turned to her.  “Which one are you?”

“I’m Eve,” she announced with a smile.  “Sally’s niece, and Chloe’s best friend.  We met earlier...you know?”

No, he didn’t know.  This whole week had been a vacant blur.  People coming in and out...names and faces of Sally’s family and friends that he didn’t know.  He attached himself to his parents when they arrived and kind of stayed the hell out of the way from everything else.  He was the Best Man.  He honestly didn’t think that meant he had to remember much more than the ring and his speech.

“Hey!” a third woman -- Emma? if he remembered correctly -- trilled as she curled an arm around Eve’s shoulders.  “I’m your best friend.”

Wil grinned at all the extra female company.  Linc just hoped they didn’t start talking about shoes and menstrual cycles next.  He looked around.  Where was the other one?  The redhead Sage, the Maid of Honor?  He only remembered her name because he had to walk her down the aisle that morning.

Ah...here she comes, Linc grunted to himself.  

“Okay, it’s official,” Sage said, “We’ve been abandoned.  All the guys are out in the driveway, getting drunk and talking baseball.”  She swiped a bite of cake from Sally before Sally could protect her plate, and then she turned to him and winked.  “Hey, Linc.  You’ve got some dirt on your shirt.  It’s funny, because Amber’s got dirt on her, too.”

All eyes swiveled to him...five very curious pairs.  Then they all looked at Amber.  The female in speculation turned at that moment and stared at them.  Blue ice chips spiked out of her eyes as her gaze landed on Linc.  

“Jesus, Linc,” Wil said when Amber turned back around.  “What did you do to the poor girl?”

Linc sat lower in his chair.  “I didn’t do nuthin’.”

No one believed him.  He needed an escape.  Where were his parents?  Then he got irritated with himself.  A grown man wanting to hide in his mommy’s skirts.

“That’s not what I saw,” Sage informed them all.  “I went up to the house to freshen up and I could see you two down by the pond.”  She giggled.  “You should have seen it.  Big, bad Linc Martin on his back while Amber nearly gouged out his jugular with her pinky toe.”

Everyone looked at him again.  Linc glowered.  “How would you know any of that?  You can’t see that from up here.”  

“I have impeccable eyesight,” Sage said with a grin.  Heads whipped from Linc to Sage to Linc again, like spectators at a tennis match.  Only, they gazed at Linc with accusing expressions.

“Hey!” he scoffed, “The chick stole one of my books and I caught her with it.  Things got a little heated after that.”

“I’ll say,” Sage replied, rolling her eyes.  “I think we should ask Amber what happened.”

“You can’t,” Linc muttered.  “She’s deaf.”

“But she can read lips,” Emma pointed out.  “And she keeps a notepad in that bag of hers to write on.”  Linc thought, That would have come in handy while she was bitching at him, and Emma pursed her lips.  “I kind of like that bag of hers.  I wonder where she got it.”

“Oh!” Eve said, bright-eyed.  “I saw one of those on TV.  They’ve become very popular.  I’d like one, too.  More convenient than a purse, but not god-awful like those fanny packs everyone used to wear.  You remember those?”

Then all the women began chattering about clothes.  Great.  It wasn’t shoes, but it was just as bad.  Linc tuned them out and watched Amber taking the crying baby into her arms, relieving her sister of the burden for a while.  Amber’s face softened sweetly as she leaned her cheek on the boy’s downy head, and Linc felt his insides tighten.  She looked just like an angel, standing there with that baby against her chest, smiling tenderly as though the unhappy cries did nothing to lessen her affection for the child.  

Then she left, carrying the baby outside with her, the whole reception seemed to sigh with relief, and Linc almost got up to follow after her, mesmerized by the sincerity and sweetness in her expression.  More of that unsettling yearning washed over him.  

He didn’t like it.

Eve suddenly said, “Let’s ask Chloe where she got her bag,” and waved across the room.  “Chloe!  Come here!”  Linc shook off his confusing vibes Amber gave him and focused on the persons near him.

“What’s going on?” Chloe asked warily, seeing everyone gathered around the bride.  “You okay, Sally?”

“Oh, I’m perfect,” Sally replied, stuffing her face with cake again.  Wil grinned at her and kissed her big toe.  Eww.  It was a good thing they were already married.  Married people could get away with gross affections like that.  Linc crossed his arms over his chest and shuddered.

“They want to know where Amber got her leather pouch thingy, and Linc wants the spill on your sister.”

Chloe said, “I gave it to her for Christmas...some online store.  I don’t remember.”  And then she directed her gaze to him, scanning him from head to boot with narrow eyes.  “Why do you want to know about Amber?”

“Apparently, they’ve been rolling in the dirt together,” Sage said with another giggle.  Chloe’s face hardened.

“Is that so?” she asked.

Linc rubbed the side of his nose.  “Nothing happened.  I took a little nap out under my tree and when I woke up, she was there, reading one my books, which she did not have permission to get.  We had a bit of a fight about it.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed a fraction more.  “Let me guess...you wondered off on a pity-party because you couldn’t stand to see your brother happy and in love, passed out cold because you’d been drinking yourself into a stupor all afternoon, and then decided to have it out with my sister for borrowing a book?”

Whoa, who the hell pissed in her cornflakes?  Talk about letting loose some postpartum hormones.  The blonde fireball was about ready to bite his head off.  He was kind of glad it had been her sister down there by the pond.  Chloe had too much pent-up frustration.  A cranky baby, a husband out by the trucks, drinking and talking baseball instead of helping with the cranky baby.  Maybe she should get laid more often.  She obviously needed some kind of release.

However, all that didn’t stop him from defending himself.  Linc stood up abruptly.  “Hey!  I’m not the one going around taking things that don’t belong to me.”

Chloe’s blue eyes -- Amber’s eyes -- darkened to almost black and she stepped dangerously in front of him, and he backed up a step, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.  He was tall enough to see clear over her head and big enough to lift three of her off the ground.  She didn’t scare him.   “If you had just asked her,” she hissed, “she would have told you why she borrowed your book.”

“I did ask her, and she didn’t say anything,” he returned with tight control.

“That’s because she’s deaf, you jerk!”

“Yeah, I figured that out pretty quickly, though it didn’t stop her from calling me an asshole in sign language.”

“You probably deserved it!”

Linc clamped his jaw shut.  He’d already been attacked by one female today.  He didn’t plan to repeat that anytime soon.  And he had Wil and Sally to think about.  Starting a brawl with the bridesmaids in the middle of their reception would surely erase him from their Christmas card list.  He glanced at his brother and sister-in-law.  They were both grinning...and so was Eve and Emma and Sage.

He glanced around at the rest of the guests.  Some were still dancing, others were snacking off the buffet table, and one old guy was snoozing at a corner table with his mouth open, catching flies.  His parents were speaking to the minister.  No help there.  Not that it mattered.  He still wasn’t going to run away to them.  Taking deep breath, he calmed his ire.  “Okay, fine.  Maybe you can tell me why she chose to borrow something that she’d not been given permission to borrow.”

Chloe inhaled heavily, too.  “She probably forgot to bring one of her own,” she explained in a more patient voice.  “Reading is her escape.  I’m sure she only meant to borrow it to pass the time, and then she would have put it back.”

Yeah, she’ll put it back...only because now he knew she had it, and he’d be looking for it later.  Linc grunted.  She’d better put it back...right where she got it from.  Borrow,  my ass.  

Eve stole a piece of cake from Sally’s plate, nearly getting her hand stabbed, and said, “She got a job at the library here, didn’t she?”

Chloe, seeming to think Linc wasn’t a threat any longer, sat next to the bride.  “She did.  She’s an archival specialist.  It’s her first job, and her first apartment, and she’ll be so far away from all her friends and family...I hope she can handle it.”

Linc froze.  Not the library.  Anyplace but the library.  

When his horse ranch went belly-up and he had to sell off most of the acreage and livestock, he originally planned to start a side business with his share of the sale.  But so far, he’d not been able to motivate himself in that direction.  Managing a ranch was all he really knew how to do, with the exception of training horses, but he’d been doing that for so long, it had lost it’s appeal.  He couldn’t think of anything else he’d rather invest in.  However, he found out quickly that he had to do something with his time, or go insane, so he spent many of his spare moments in the library...just reading.  He read at home, too, but there was just something about the smell of a whole building full of books.

Going there helped him relax, and it fostered his reading habit, giving him something else to do other than sleeping under his tree every night and drowning his pain and sorrow.  It had become his rock.  And he’d be damned if he had to peek over his shoulder constantly while there, in case Amber decided to demonstrate more of her ninja skills on him.  All because one little girl thought he was an asshole for protecting his stuff.

Wil frowned as he obviously put two and two together.  “The library?  In Kansas City?  Hey, Linc...you spend a lot of time there, right?”

Shit.  The last thing he needed was for all of them to add more speculation to his and Amber’s supposed relationship.

Chloe looked at him again, only this time in an assessing gaze, as though to judge his merit...as though she was surprised he actually entered a library on purpose, not just stumble upon it while looking for the nearest honky-tonk.  “You do?”

“I do,” he admitted stoically.  "Us, dumb cowboys, know how to read."

Something calculating and thoughtful entered Chloe’s face  as she ignored his snide remark.  “Do you ever happen to go down into the archives?”

Linc nodded hesitantly, but he didn’t like where this inquisition was going.  Either she was still worried about him showing too much interest in Amber -- which would never happen in a million years -- or...

More uncomfortable glints of scrutiny entered the blonde’s eyes.  “And you’re Wil’s brother, who is a very capable, trustful person,” she mused.  “And you live here...outside of Kansas City...very close to her...”

Linc figured out her thought process and hurriedly shook his head.  “No...no, no, no.  I am not babysitting your deaf sister.”

“You don’t have to babysit her...just keep an eye on her.  She’s never been away from home before,” Chloe explained.

Linc rolled his eyes.  “Just how old is your sister?”  Probably no more than the average college graduate...twenty-three-ish.

“Twenty-eight.”

Linc almost choked on his own spit.  “Twenty-eight?”  She didn’t look twenty-eight.  “And she’s lived with her mommy and daddy this whole time?”

Chloe got angry again.  “Hey, buster,” she said, pointing a finger at him.  “She’s deaf.  She wasn’t born deaf, but she is now, so back off.  Mom and Dad have just been a little over-protective with her.”

Linc turned that bit of info over in his head.  “Not born deaf?”

“No, she turned deaf when she was three from a bunch of really bad ear infections that the doctors couldn’t figure out how to stop,” Chloe informed him angrily.  “Not that it’s any of your business.”

“So, she was already talking.  Is that why she’s able to speak?”

“You really don’t have a clue, do you?”

“Hey, you don’t have to bite my head off,” he retorted.  “I’m just asking.”

Amber’s sister sighed with annoyance.  “Even those people who are born deaf can learn to speak.  Not being able to hear doesn’t hinder you from making sounds.”

“Well, I’m not asking about those people, now am I?”

Chloe leaned forward and pierced him with a glare much like Amber had done just before she left the stable with the baby.  Linc grunted.  Yeah...peas in a pod, these two.  “No,” she practically spit, “you’re asking about my sister...the kindest, gentlest creature any of us will ever be blessed to meet.  And I don’t like your tone when you do speak of her.”

Linc edge forward as well, getting right in her face.  “Your kind, gentle sister stole from me. I don’t care if she is deaf, or how pampered she’s been--”

This time, it was Chloe’s palms that hit his chest, and he toppled backward in his chair, landing with a solid thunk.  Sweet Jesus, these women!  How the hell did he manage to get bushwhacked by two females in one day?  In the same freaking hour?  It must be a talent, that was for sure.  Damn sisters!

As soon as his lungs refilled, he surged to his feet, but so did Wil.  “Alright, that’s enough, Linc,” Wil said sternly.  Chloe had come out of her chair with her claws bared.  The other bridesmaids stood behind her, ready to jump in.  Wil put both his hands out, keeping Linc and Chloe away from each other. “You guys are going to upset Sally.  She’s in a very delicate state right now.”

Sally snorted and stuffed another piece of cake in her mouth.  “Actually, I’m good,” she said, swallowing.  “I’m finally married, I still fit in this dress, and this cake is fabulous.”  In went another chunk, this one full of frosting.  Sally moaned and closed her eyes.

The bridesmaids -- not Chloe; she was glaring at Linc -- laughed.  Wil faced his brother.  “I’m sure Amber didn’t mean to steal anything.  She seems like a really nice person, if you’d give her half a chance.”

Linc shifted his stance.  If Sally was good, then so was he.  “The hell with it,” he growled.  “All I wanted to know was who she really was.”  And why I forget about Macie when she’s around.

“Well, now you know,” Chloe said.  “She’s my little sister, she’s deaf, and she’s out of your league.”

“You know nothing about my league,” he shot back and stomped to get out of the stable.  At the door, he turned and gave his final parting remark, “And I’m not babysitting anyone, so forget it.”