Anything for Danny

“I know you aren’t sleeping, Sherri.” His voice was softly indulgent and she could hear the smile in it.

She cracked an eyelid. “How do you know I’m not?” she asked, suddenly irritable.

“Because you always sleep with your mouth hanging open,” he observed.

She sat up straighter in the seat. “I most certainly do not,” she replied stiffly.

He smiled, a smirking, knowing grin that instantly fueled her unreasonable aggravation with him. “For the five years we were married, you never, ever slept with your mouth closed.”

“Well, it’s been a long time since you’ve slept with me and nobody else has ever complained,” she snapped. She groaned inwardly. Now why had she said that? In the years since her divorce from Luke, there had been no opportunity for anyone to complain about her sleeping habits. Other than the occasional night when Danny had a nightmare and had needed some assurance, she’d slept alone.

“We need to talk,” he said, not taking his gaze off the highway they traveled.

“Talk about what?” She sat up in the seat and eyed him curiously.

“About the silence we’ve suffered through for the last six hours.”

“It hasn’t been silent…Danny has been chattering.” Sherri turned around in her seat, looking for her son.

“Don’t worry,” Luke said. “He went back a little while ago to take a nap. He can’t hear us.” He looked at her for a moment, then redirected his gaze to the road. “Sherri, I don’t know about you, but so far this trip has been damned uncomfortable. The tension between us is so ripe, Danny can’t help but feel it. We can’t have the whole trip like this.”

Sherri thought about those six hours. She had driven, Luke had stared out the window and Danny had talked. It had been the inane chatter of a kid who sensed tension and was attempting to dispel it. “So, what do you suggest?” she asked.

“I don’t know. All I do know is that we’ve got three weeks of close contact, intimate togetherness and a Christmas holiday to get through. For the sake of that kid back there, we’d better be able to put our past behind us and act like reasonable adults.”

“I can do whatever it takes to make Danny happy,” she answered.

Luke grinned. “I think it would make Danny happy if you tried to be nice to me.”

Sherri glared at him in outrage. Was he somehow trying to take advantage of this whole situation? It would be just like him to do that. She instantly steadied herself. Of course he wasn’t. He didn’t want to be with her any more than she wanted to be with him. He was merely thinking of Danny. And she would do the same. “I can be nice to you…for Danny’s sake.”

“Okay, then it’s agreed. For Danny’s sake, we’ll act like we really like each other.”

Sherri grimaced. “I don’t know if I’m that talented an actress,” she muttered.

“You are, I can still remember all those times you acted like you enjoyed my lovemaking.”

“Oh!” Sherri gasped at his temerity. She sputtered for a moment, opening and closing her mouth in an effort to find effectively scathing words. When nothing strong enough came to mind, she turned around in the seat, staring out the passenger window and studiously ignoring the soft chuckle he emitted.

Why did he have to mention that? she thought. Of all the things that had happened between them, of all the memories both good and bad she had entertained in the past, their lovemaking was something she’d never looked back on. That had been one particular set of memories she’d refused to acknowledge, refused to indulge herself in remembering.

But now the memories exploded in her mind, reminding her of the intensity, the wonder of sexual fulfillment she had always found in his arms. He’d been her first…her only. Sex had been their common ground, the only thing they had really done well together. It was what had kept their marriage alive much longer than it should have been.

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed, refusing to give those vivid memories any substance, shoving the disturbing visions firmly out of her mind.

As the motor home traveled onward, she allowed the motion to lull her to sleep.

Luke glanced over at Sherri and realized this time she really was sound asleep. A small smile curved his lips upward as he saw that her mouth hung slightly agape. Yes, she was definitely asleep.

He relaxed his grip on the steering wheel and reached over and flipped on the radio, turning it up so he could hear it, but not so loud it would intrude on Sherri’s slumber. The last thing he wanted to do was wake her up. One thing he remembered quite well, a tired Sherri was a cranky Sherri. His grin widened. The first thing he’d learned about her after marriage was that when she was tired her nose itched, and when he saw her scratching the tip of her pert little nose, he knew to watch out and give her a wide berth.

He eyed her again, humming along to Elvis’s crooning ‘Love Me Tender.’ He didn’t know why he had thrown out that comment about their lovemaking, but somehow he knew it had been because of a perverse wish to shake her up, watch her blush.

She’d always been so damned tight, so rigid. She’d come to him with a full structured set of ideals on love and marriage, ideals that no man would have been able to live up to…especially him.

He’d wondered how many others had tried. No complaints, she’d said and he’d been surprised to feel a swift, strong shaft of jealousy sweep through him. He’d thought he’d gotten beyond that particular emotion long ago where she was concerned.

He shook his head ruefully. He hadn’t exactly been a monk since their divorce. He’d just never thought about Sherri’s being with somebody else. He’d never contemplated the thought of her breathing her sweet sighs of passion into the hollow of another man’s neck. He’d never considered that another man’s hands might stroke the smoothness of her shapely legs, caress the satiny texture of her breasts. He now realized it had been the height of conceit to assume that Sherri would never love another…never make love to another man.

He looked at her again, this time studying her in her vulnerable state of sleep. She’d done something different to her hair. Although she still wore it long, below her shoulders, the rich darkness was now shot through with strands of lighter shades. He liked it, he decided. It gave her a softer, more stylish look.

He could smell her, a curious mingling of floral perfume and that indefinable scent that had always belonged to her alone. He’d often boasted that in a roomful of women, blindfolded he would be able to pick out Sherri by her scent. It had always turned him on. He was shocked to realize it was having that same kind of effect on him now.

With an edge of irritation, he cracked open the window, allowing in the cold December air, needing it to banish the heat that suddenly flooded through his veins.

He jumped as Danny touched him on the shoulder. “Hi, sport, have a good nap?” he asked, relieved for the distraction from his crazy thoughts.

Danny nodded. “How long has Mom been asleep?” he asked.

“Not long,” Luke answered, then grinned. “I see she still sleeps with her mouth open.”

Danny laughed. “Yeah, last Easter Sunday I woke her up by dropping a black jelly bean between her lips. Boy, did she get mad.”

“I can imagine,” Luke replied. “She always did hate black licorice,” he added, making Danny laugh again.

“Where are we?” Danny asked, peering out the side window.

“About an hour from our first campsite. According to your mother’s schedule, we’re stopping at a place just outside Akron, Ohio, for tonight.”

“Cool, I’ve never been to Ohio before,” Danny observed.

“You’ve never been out of Connecticut before,” Luke reminded his son. “Are you getting hungry?”

“Not really. What about you?”

“Yes, I’m starting to get hungry,” Luke replied.

“Mom made out menus for each night. Hang on and I’ll tell you what she’s cooking tonight.” Danny scurried out of his seat and rummaged around in one of the drawers.

Menus. Of course, Sherri would make menus, Luke thought. And lists. There was probably a list detailing all the lists she had made for the trip.

“Steaks and baked potatoes. Sounds good, huh,” Danny exclaimed, sitting back down behind Luke.

“Sounds terrific,” Luke agreed.

“You think we’ll be able to have a camp fire and cook the steaks outside?” Danny asked.

“We’ll have to wait and see what sort of campsite we stop at,” Luke explained. “If it’s too cold out and we can’t have a fire, then we’ll be eating in.”