FIRST KISS

by Marylin Pappano

  "What message?" Her only message to Margery in ten years had been short and direct: I'm shipping your belongings to you.

  "I came to sort through my things, to decide what I want and what you can keep."

  Holly took a breath for patience. "Your things aren't here. I shipped them to you. Remember? That was the message."

  "Oh?" With the wave of one hand, Margery dismissed her mistake. "Well, I needed a break from the city anyway. I'll stay a few days—"

  "Only a few days. All of our rooms are booked for the weekend. You'll have to leave Friday around noon?" It was only a small lie. One suite—Tom's—wasn't yet taken.

  "Unbook one of them?"

  "I can't do that."

  "Of course you can. You call the person, tell him a pipe burst or there was a fire or a damn meteor crashed through the roof and landed in the bed." On the last words Margery's voice turned brittle and hard. It was the voice Holly remembered most from her childhood, the voice that had screamed at her, cursed at her, and made her cry a thousand times. It was that voice, more than anything, that meant mother to her. "You can tell him whatever it damn well takes to get your mother a room to sleep in."

  Holly moved behind the counter and picked up the key to the suite. When Margery imperiously extended her hand, Holly laid the key on the counter. "Until noon Friday. Then you'll have to leave."

  Margery smiled sweetly, perfectly capable of being nice now that she'd gotten her way. "Thank you, sweetie. See that someone parks my car and brings up my luggage. Oh, and I'll need a little late-afternoon cocktail delivered immediately. You know what I like."

  Holly and Janice watched her sweep up the stairs, looking for all the world like some Hollywood star of the forties making a perfectly scripted grand exit. Once she was out of sight, Janice let out the breath she'd been holding. "I'm sorry, Holly. She said she was your mother, but … I couldn't let a stranger into your apartment on nothing but her say-so. I offered to rent her a room, but she refused to pay. She said— Well, never mind what she said?"

  Holly could well imagine. For a lady of breeding, as Margery liked to refer to herself, she could match curses and insults with the best. "I apologize for her, Janice. She's…" Self-centered. Demanding. Difficult. Amazingly vulgar. "…Not easy."

  "Want me to get her bags?"

  As Bree came out of the dining room with an armload of soiled linens, Holly shook her head. "Bree? Can you meet me outside after you drop those off?" Maybe she would break everything in them.

  The rental car was parked under the porte cochere, blocking the drive, which, of course, was inconsequential to Margery. The trunk was filled with luggage—three large suitcases and two smaller ones. Which ones held the breakables? she wondered as Bree came out the door.

  "I need you to take this luggage upstairs," she said as she began unloading bags.

  "Wow. How long is this guest staying?"

  "A couple of days. And she's not a guest. She's my mother."

  The bag she'd just handed Bree slipped to the ground, landing on its fabric side in the muddy drive. Hastily, the girl bent to pick it up. "I—I—"

  "It's okay. Just get the bags upstairs and leave them in the hall. I'll take them in."

  "I don't mind."

  Holly looked at her, so young and innocent, and smiled. "Honey, if she saw you drop one of her bags, she'd eat you alive. You'll have plenty of opportunities in the next two days to face the dragon. For now, just get these upstairs for me."

  She closed the trunk, then slid behind the wheel. The interior of the car smelled of Margery's perfume and, more faintly, of liquor. She supposed it was too much to hope that her mother had gained control of her drinking in the ten years since they'd last seen each other. She knew it was too much to hope that Margery would remain on her best genial-drunk behavior while she was there.

  What was that popular prayer? "God, grant me the serenity…?" After parking the car, then starting back to the inn in the cold, Holly offered her own version: God, grant me the strength to not kill her tonight…

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  « ^ »

  When Tom left the office Wednesday evening, a cold rain was falling. The car wipers swept back and forth as he waited at a red light—and was immediately distracted by the figure on the curb waiting to cross the street. There must be thousands of blondes in Buffalo, but he had little doubt who this particular blonde, with hair curling underneath a black knitted cap, was.

  He tapped the horn to get her attention, then rolled down the window. "You want a ride?"

  Sophy gave him a bright smile. "Yes, thank you." When she climbed into the car, she brought with her the cold fresh scent of rain, and immediately shivered. "This is kind of you, Mr. Flynn."

  "No, it's not," he disagreed. There was nothing kind about giving her a ride. It was just … decent. "Where are you going?"

  "To the grocery store up ahead."

  "You walk all the way over here from Flaherty to buy groceries?"

  "It's the closest store. The one your mother used to shop at closed years ago."

  Even that store had been a good walk from Flaherty, though not this far. He and his mother had made the trip every Saturday, sometimes carrying home enough food to last a week, sometimes not.

  When he pulled in front of the supermarket to let her out, she gave him a chiding look. "Be sociable. Come in with me." Before he could turn her down, she coaxed, "Oh, come on. I'll bet you can't even remember the last time you set foot in a grocery store."

  She was right. He couldn't. So he found a parking space and went inside with her.

  Ten feet inside the door was a garish display of red cardboard hearts filled with candy, heart-shaped balloons, and scraggly red silk roses in cheap vases. Sophy looked from it to him and smiled. "What are you doing for Valentine's Day? Spending it with the future Mrs. Flynn?"

  "What makes you think there's going to be a future Mrs. Flynn?" But he couldn't deny that her question immediately brought to mind an image of sleek auburn hair, hazel eyes, and a wickedly sexy smile.

  "You didn't deny it when I asked you Saturday night," she said as she pulled a shopping cart from the line.

  "I didn't confirm it, either."

  She waved one hand, as if that were of no consequence. "Seriously, what are you doing for her for Valentine's Day?"

  In truth, he didn't know. Holly was intelligent, reasonable, and, he was certain, above that hearts-and-flowers crap. But then sappy holidays had a way of turning even intelligent and reasonable women a bit goofy.

  "The least she deserves is a nice dinner. If you can drag yourself out of the office at a reasonable time, you could pick her up after work and take her to—"

  "She doesn't live here."

  "Oh. Where does she live?"

  "In Bethlehem. The one in the mountains, not the one south of Albany."

  "I know where Bethlehem is. Lovely little town." Her eyes brightened. "I bet they have a really special Valentine's Day celebration. Why don't you call her and ask?"

  The idea held more appeal than he wanted to admit. Since Sunday, he'd found himself wondering what excuse he could use to call Holly. After all, he couldn't put his marriage plans in motion without seeing her, talking to her, spending time with her. Besides, she wasn't a sure bet. If he couldn't convince her that she wanted him, then he would have to start all over again. That would throw him way behind schedule.

  "What's the matter? Are you afraid?"

  He scowled at her as they rounded the corner from produce to canned goods. "You know, Sophy, you are probably the nosiest and the pushiest woman I've ever met."

  "Thank you," she said with a smile. "I'm glad you noticed. Are you going to call her?"

  "None of your business."

  "Aha! That means you are. Be sweet to her. Don't sound all grumpy like this. No woman wants to spend an entire evening at a Valentine's Day dance with a grumpy man."

  She let the subject drop while she finished her shoppin
g. He couldn't let it go as easily. He kept remembering the Saturday-night dance with Holly in that incredible little green dress—kept thinking that a chance to dance with her again, to hold her like that again, just might be worth celebrating even a schmaltzy holiday like Valentine's Day.

  Sophy paid for her four bags of groceries with a handful of wadded bills, and he picked up two of them. "How would you have walked all the way back to Flaherty with all this?"

  She smiled confidently as he unlocked the car doors in the rain. "I would have managed. Things always work out, you know."

  "No, they don't. Things never just work out. You have to make them work. You live on Flaherty Street

  , and you haven't figured that out yet?"

  "If you have faith—"

  "In what?"

  She smiled cheerfully. "God. Your friends. Your neighbors. The kindness of strangers."

  He shook his head. "You can only count on yourself. Everyone else will let you down."

  "Your mother would be sorry to hear you say that."

  Rain dripped from his hair and ran down his neck, sending a chill through him. "What do you know about my mother?"

  "Father Pat talks about her from time to time. He says she was a good woman, a good mother, and a good Catholic. He says she very well might have been the only person you ever loved."

  He didn't speak again until he reached the intersection where he'd first made her acquaintance. "Where to?"

  "Straight ahead three blocks."

  He didn't have to ask which building. There was only one that was even close to habitable. The one across from it had been condemned when he was a kid, and the one across the side street hadn't been fit for living in while he'd still lived in it.

  She offered to carry the bags herself, but for reasons he didn't understand, he insisted on taking two, on walking her inside and up two flights of dark stairs.

  It was all depressingly familiar. The wood floors, worn bare of varnish. The graffiti-covered walls. The broken bulbs in every light fixture along the hall. The smells of food, of poverty, of hopelessness, and despair.

  His breathing was shallow, forced into a quick, steady rhythm to keep in check the discomfort building inside him. When she stopped in front of a door, he was more than happy to hand over the bags, say good night, and head back to the stairs.

  Halfway there, he turned back. "This isn't a safe place to live."

  She pulled off her cap, combed her fingers through her hair. "It's not bad."

  "Pick an apartment in a better part of town. I'll pay for it."

  "I'd rather stay here." Then she smiled. "But I appreciate the generous offer."

  Again with the generous bit. He scowled at her. "If you change your mind, let me know. I'm sure I'll be seeing you around."

  "I'm sure you will."

  Her good humor made him scowl harder. He took the steps three at a time, burst out the door into the cold night, and breathed deeply to cleanse the smells from his nose.

  When he got home, he went to his office to work, but his attention kept wandering to that gaudy Valentine's Day display and the idea Sophy had planted of doing something with Holly. No doubt, Bethlehem did have some sort of Valentine's Day celebration. They celebrated everything, and sometimes nothing. But if they did, it was a sure bet that Holly had been asked weeks ago. She'd never suffered from a shortage of male attention, and she wasn't the sort to break off a date with one man because someone better had come along.

  Someone better? His snort echoed in the room. Who the hell did he think he was better than?

  He turned back to the computer, which was waiting patiently for a command, but he didn't give it. Instead, he looked up the number for the McBride Inn and sat there tapping his finger. What if she didn't have a date? What if, by some strange luck, she was available and willing to go out with him? A nice Valentine's celebration could go a long way toward achieving his goal of finding a wife.

  And if she was already spoken for? Hell, he'd been rejected before. It wouldn't kill him. Reaching for the phone, he dialed the number.

  "McBride Inn." The voice was familiar, husky, sexy as hell—a voice to dream about, whether asleep or awake.

  He settled back in his chair as the tension seeped from the taut muscles in his neck. "Holly, it's Tom. Tell me something. What does Bethlehem do about Valentine's Day?"

  * * *

  There'd been a time when the Sweethearts Dance was a formal event, with the women in gowns and the men in tuxes. As Holly got dressed Saturday evening, she half wished that was still the case. She hadn't worn a gown since the senior prom and thought it might be fun to do so again, but the real reason for the wish was Tom. She'd seen him in suits—standard attire for the men at the dance—dozens of times, and she thought he would do incredible justice to a tux.

  After his unexpected call Wednesday evening, she'd taken off Thursday to go shopping for the perfect dress, and she'd found it. The dress was a green so dark it was almost black, and was perfectly modest. It covered her from shoulders to knees, and the neckline bordered on chaste. It fit as if it had been sewn together on her could, but thanks to the miracle of modern fibers, she could still breathe. Paired with matching three-inch heels, a simple diamond teardrop on a platinum chain, and diamonds in her ears, she looked … elegant. Sexy. Perfectly nice, but more than a little naughty.

  From down the hall, she heard heels clicking in her direction. As she looked in the mirror, she saw the tension spreading, starting in her jaw and working its way into wrinkles across her forehead and a pulse that throbbed at the base of her throat.

  She'd known that Margery wouldn't leave until she was ready. She had come to make Holly's life miserable for a certain number of days, and by God she wasn't going home until she'd succeeded. Twenty-four hours more just might be more than Holly could bear, now that Tom had checked into the suite and Margery had been moved into Holly's quarters. She'd claimed them as if they were her own, offering criticism and insults every step of the way.

  Margery stopped in the doorway of the closet/dressing room and leaned against the frame. "Oh, little girl, you look lovely," she murmured in her liquor-roughened voice.

  Six small words, with the power to sweep Holly more than twenty years into the past. It had been a Saturday night then, too, and she'd been standing in front of this same mirror in her old room upstairs, primping for her very first honest-to-God date. She'd been nervous and excited, and her mother had stood in the doorway and said those same words.

  The date, Holly remembered, had been a success. She'd learned an important lesson—that teenage boys would gladly give her, for a time at least, the affection she was missing at home, and all they wanted in return was sex. A fair enough trade, she'd thought at the time.

  These days she wasn't looking for affection. She liked sex for its own sake.

  Shaking off old memories, Holly gave Margery a long look. "You don't look so bad yourself."

  Her hair, once perfectly blond, was now perfectly champagne. Her skin was smooth and firm, cosmetic surgery having won the battle against unwanted lines. She'd always looked best in classic styles and subdued colors, and that was even truer now. She was a lovely woman.

  A lovely, sharp-tongued, bitter, alcoholic woman. "So you're off to the Sweethearts Dance. When are you going to find yourself a sweetheart?"

  "If I ever start looking for one, I'll let you know." Holly selected a handbag from the shelf, a small silver-mesh bag, and switched the essentials from her purse.

  "You're not getting any younger, you know. Another few years, and no man wanting a family is going to want you."

  "Good. Because I have no intention of having a family." She'd decided against having kids long ago, when she'd watched Margery tear through the house on her ten thousandth drunken rage, lamenting the terrible betrayal she'd suffered and the wonderful life she'd lost, thanks to Holly and her father. She'd taunted Holly that someday she would get what she deserved. She would get stuck with a whiny, sno
t-nosed kid who would ruin her life, and then she would pay for the torment she'd put her own mother through.

  "And do you have no intention of getting married?"

  "Why should I? So I can be miserable the rest of my life like you were?"

  "I loved your father."

  "Could have fooled me." Margery had fooled everyone in town. Holly didn't think a soul in Bethlehem had a clue of how miserable Margery had made both her and her father. If people did know, they'd had the courtesy to keep it to themselves.

  "I loved him," Margery repeated with a distant smile. "He was the handsomest, most charming man in the city. People vied for his attention. Women vied for his affection. But he chose me. We made a beautiful couple, and we were happy. Until…"

  Holly had heard the story a dozen times before. Until her grandfather had his first heart attack and Lewis had been called home to Bethlehem. His bride had thought they would live the rest of their lives in the city, partying, going to the theater, playing at working. She'd never dreamed she would wind up in a little burg like Bethlehem, with a husband who actually held a job, without much of a social life, with none of the glitter and glamour she thrived on. She'd certainly never dreamed she would be stuck raising a kid.

  "I never would have married him if I'd known…"

  Then maybe Lewis could have been happy, Holly thought. And maybe she, if she had ever come to be, would have some idea what a normal daughter was supposed to feel for her mother. Because all she felt was anger. Resentment. Bitterness.

  Holly picked up her bag, checked her reflection one last time, then eased past Margery.

  "Have a good time," Margery called after her.

  "As soon as you get out of my life," Holly whispered beneath her breath.

  She got her coat and made her way to the lobby. She'd arranged with Tom to meet there instead of her quarters, wanting no chance of Margery asking for an introduction. By the time she came through the kitchen, she'd pasted a smile on her face. The fake smile gave way to a real one, though, the instant she saw him.

  The first time she'd ever met him, she'd been unimpressed … for about two minutes. She'd thought he was rude, arrogant, and hardly worth her time except for the minor pleasure she'd found in annoying him. She'd been convinced that he wasn't her type, and vice versa, but she'd left their brief meeting with the awareness that she was willing to disregard types for him.