Ms. Simon Says

by Mary McBride

  She put down the knife and turned to him with one of those you really don’t get it looks on her face. “Sam had to get married to somebody else, Harry. He got a girl pregnant in Georgia or wherever he was.”

  “Oh.” Harry shook his head in dismay. Sometimes it seemed he’d spent so much time at the office and in the courtroom that he’d missed half of what should have been his family life. Of course, now that he was retired and had all the time in the world, he still didn’t seem privy to the inner workings of his harem. “Am I the only one who doesn’t know that?” he asked.

  “No. Beth doesn’t know. Neither does Shelby. Sam’s mother, Terry, felt so bad about poor Bethie when it happened that she apologized to me. I thought it was best not to tell the girls. I mean, what could they have done about it?”

  “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Exactly. The marriage didn’t last that long, anyway. There were complications in the pregnancy, as I remember. Both the mother and baby died. It was so long ago.” She picked up her knife again and sliced a few more perfect, thin circles of onion. “I thought I’d told you, though, Harry. Are you sure I didn’t?”

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” he said. “Here’s your cucumber, Mrs. Simon.” He set the pale green vegetable on her cutting board.

  “Thank you.”

  Harry leaned his hip against the counter, gazing down at his wife’s lovely profile. “So, what else haven’t you told me, Beauty?”

  She smiled. “Not much, Mr. Simon. I think you know just about all of my secrets now.”

  “Do I, sweetheart?”

  Sometimes he wondered. Maybe keeping secrets was a way of protecting each other, he thought. After all, he hadn’t exactly rushed to tell his wife about their daughter’s current situation with the letter bombs, had he?

  As Linda had said herself, what could she do about it even if she knew?

  Shelby glanced at the clock beside her bed. It was a little after six o’clock. Her mother had said dinner would be at seven-thirty, and no, thank you, she didn’t need any help, so Shelby had gone upstairs to make as many cancellation calls as possible. Still annoyingly unable to log on at work, and irritatingly unable to contact her secretary, Sandy, by phone, Shelby had been forced to reconstruct most of her schedule for the next two weeks from her planner.

  First, and quite happily, she called her dentist’s office in Chicago to cancel her annual checkup. Then she canceled her appearance at the Women in Retailing convention in New Orleans. The specific woman in retailing to whom Shelby spoke didn’t sound all that disappointed by the fact that her keynote luncheon speaker was forced to bow out on such short notice. “Maybe next year,” the woman had said without warmth or conviction.

  Next she called the Better Business Bureau in Des Moines where no one seemed to be in the office, and she was forced to leave her regrets and profuse apologies on voice mail. Finally, the woman on the phone at the Chamber of Commerce in Phoenix actually sounded as if she might cry.

  “I really love your column, Ms. Simon,” she said. “You’re so much funnier than Ask Alice.” Just for that, Shelby took the woman’s name and address with the promise of an autographed eight-by-ten glossy and an autographed copy of her now out of print book, aptly named Ms. Simon Says.

  Maybe she should write another book, she thought after she hung up. God knows she had plenty of time right now. She could call it Ms. Simon Says More. Still, the way things were going now, a better title might be Ms. Simon Says Nothing. Nada. Zip. Closed until further notice.

  The final call she had made was to Derek McKay at the Daily Mirror, intending to leave her cell number on his voice mail in the hope that he’d call her from wherever he was in the East. Instead of voice mail, though, somebody picked up, and this time Shelby immediately recognized Kellie Carter’s voice on the other end of the line. What was that eager little beaver doing? Running from desk to desk, making herself a one-woman message center?

  Shelby wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, and she debated about hanging up for a second, but she really did want to talk to Derek.

  “Hi, Kellie. It’s Shelby. I need to speak to Derek.” “Oh, hi, Ms. Simon. Shelby. Derek’s not available.” “Any idea where I can reach him?”

  “Sorry, no. I’d be happy to give him a message, though.”

  “Just ask him to call me, please.” Shelby rattled off her cell phone number.

  “Are you in Chicago?” Kellie asked.

  “No, I’m...Well, it doesn’t matter. Just give him the message, please.”

  After she hung up, Shelby felt bad about being so abrupt with the little intern. In the weeks that she’d been at the paper, Kellie Carter had proven herself to be not only enthusiastic, but smart as well. Even if it had turned out to be a case of nepotism on Hal Stabler’s part, Shelby couldn’t complain about the young woman’s abilities. She wasn’t hard to look at either with her long red hair and short little skirts. Derek had certainly noticed her.

  Shelby gave a tiny gasp. Could it be? Was she jealous of this latest sweet young thing? But as soon as the question formed in her brain, she dismissed it completely. In fact, she laughed out loud at the very idea. She and Derek were history, and ancient history at that. Besides, even when it had been good between them, it hadn’t been half as good as...

  Callahan.

  Shit. She’d been trying not to think of him for the past few hours. She didn’t want to think about him now, but she couldn’t help herself. That kiss had been incredible. And her physical response to it had been unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. It wasn’t like her at all to just go for the gusto. On the beach. In broad daylight.

  As she often wrote in her column, great sex was as much mental as it was physical. Get to know your partner first, Ms. Simon says. Don’t rush. Take your time. Use your head. Be smart. Above all else, be careful.

  That advice wasn’t merely a posture for the column’s sake. Shelby truly believed it, and she practiced what she preached. She’d never gone to bed with a man until she had a genuine sense of who he was. Well, not that there had been that many of them, truth to tell, but by the time they were horizontal, Shelby always knew far more than merely their names and occupations. She had at least an inkling, if not a solid handle on what made her lovers tick.

  As for Lieutenant Mick Callahan... Hell, she didn’t really even know his name, much less what made him tick, did she? Was Mick short for Michael, or was it his given name? Was he Irish? Catholic? Where was he born? How did his wife die? How long were they married? Were there any kids? Considering all the things she didn’t know about him, she wondered why she’d responded at all to such a stranger’s kiss.

  She looked at the clock again to discover it was almost time to go downstairs for dinner. If she knew her mother, Shelby would be seated not only next to Callahan, but elbow to elbow, hip to hip. She could already imagine the sparks generated between them. Hot little blue bolts of electricity zapping back and forth under the dining-room table. God. The tablecloth would probably go up in flames.

  A little groan escaped her lips. She’d come back home to feel safe. Now she wondered if, at the age of thirty-four, she was too old to run away.

  Mick managed to extend his afternoon walk until almost seven o’clock. He made two complete circuits of Heart Lake, one clockwise along its narrow strip of beach, the second counterclockwise along the wooded path that snaked behind the houses and cottages. Actually, there was only one honest-to-God house—the monster Victorian residence of the Simons. There were a couple of A-frames, but the rest of the places looked like typical jerry-built summer cottages, most of them single story with one or two bedrooms in back and big front windows offering views of the lake.

  Hardly any of the places appeared occupied now that summer was over. Aside from Sam Mendenhall’s log cabin on the north side of the lake, Mick counted only three other cottages where cars were parked to show at least some signs of life. Out on the lake, he counted only three boats during his four-h
our walk.

  He was heading back to the Simon place now, not wanting to be late for dinner. “Nothing fancy,” Linda Simon had said, sounding like an experienced and sincerely gracious hostess. “Just come as you are.” Which was a good thing because even if he had time to change now it would only be into a cleaner version of his current faded jeans and flannel shirt.

  They were nice people, the Simons. That was his first impression, at least. But Mick, who was used to making snap judgments on the street, wasn’t often wrong about people.

  Well... except for Shelby, maybe.

  He’d only known her for—what?—barely thirty-six hours, but every time he thought he had her figured out, she’d do the unexpected. The woman who lived in the fancy Canfield Towers didn’t bat an eye at the sight or smell of his crappy ghetto digs. The urbanite who resided in a boring sea of modern beige had brought him to an ancient, multicolored, frigging fairy-tale house deep in the rural woods, where the renowned giver of advice appeared baffled and tongue-tied in the presence of her very own family. And last, but hardly least, the professional paragon of female self-defense had melted like hot butter beneath his kiss this afternoon.

  That kiss. His body quickened again at just the thought. He hadn’t felt so out of control in years. Not since he and Julie were randy teens first exploring the hot, rich terrain of sex. From the look of surprise on Shelby’s face, he suspected she’d felt the same. If her mother hadn’t interrupted them, he had the feeling they would’ve progressed—at warp speed—to the obvious conclusion, neither one of them prepared for the act or its consequences or anything other than the white heat of the moment.

  Mick shook his head in amazement as he bent down to snatch up a weed. When he clamped it between his teeth, he flashed on a vivid memory of when he and his mother lived in Tennessee. He must’ve been seven or eight when they lived in that trailer at the edge of a field outside of Murpheysboro. It was summer, hot as hell, and he’d get up every morning to race across those acres of tall weeds behind the trailer, scaring up crickets and grasshoppers and the occasional stray cat as he flew. Only the big chain-link fence on the far side of the field could stop him. Then he’d pick a weed, stick it between his teeth, and take his time returning, kicking beer cans and broken bottles and rusty hubcaps and whatever else might be in his path.

  That was three decades ago, and he probably hadn’t chewed on a weed since then, Mick thought. Hell, who’d put anything in their mouth they’d picked from a vacant lot in Chicago?

  He usually only thought about his mother twice a year—on her birthday, June 15, and on New Year’s Eve, which was when a cousin finally tracked him down and gave him the news that Carrie Callahan had perished in a motel fire six months before. But right now the memories nearly overwhelmed him.

  He tried to remember how they’d gotten to that field in Murpheysboro in the first place, and then recalled that his mother had been a cocktail waitress at a Holiday Inn outside Baltimore when she hooked up with a country and western singer named Gary Gray. They’d followed him to his next gig in Tennessee and wound up stranded there for the next six months. And after that?

  Oh, yeah. Roswell, New Mexico. But was that the trucker or the medical supplies salesman? Christ, it could have been an extraterrestrial for all Mick knew. His mother was as crazy as she was beautiful. Maybe if she’d had more kids they would’ve nailed her down to a specific place. Or maybe if the one kid she did have had ever complained. But he never complained—not until the end, anyway—because his mother was always so happy and excited to be going someplace new with someone new.

  He swore harshly as he ripped the weed from his teeth. What was it about Shelby Simon that was making him dredge up all the things—the women—he’d been trying so damned hard to forget?

  Callahan was coming up the stairs, two at a time, while Shelby was descending.

  “How was your walk?” she asked, forcing a breezy lilt into her voice to counteract the sudden drumming of her heart.

  When he answered “Great,” she found herself looking at him from a wholly new perspective. No longer just a civil servant assigned to protect her, Mick Callahan was now a candidate for her bed. She must’ve been nuts, and the craziness must’ve shown in her expression, because he was staring up at her with a quizzical look on his face.

  “What’s your real name, anyway, Callahan?” she demanded.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Is it Mick? Michael? What?”

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked suspiciously. It probably went with being a cop.

  “Just curious.”

  “It’s Michael.”

  “Michael what?”

  “You mean my middle name?”

  Shelby nodded.

  “Forget it.” He started to pass her on the stairs, but Shelby blocked his path with an outstretched arm.

  “Come on. What is it?”

  “I said forget it.” He stepped up another stair, putting his chest in contact with the barrier of her arm.

  “Consider it a password,” Shelby said. “Tell me. Or do you want to stand here while I guess? James? David? John?”

  He shot her a look of utter disgust, then muttered something under his breath that she couldn’t quite understand. “Raymond?” she asked, thinking that was what it sounded like.

  Again, he muttered, this time through clenched teeth, and Shelby heard something closer to Ramon. “Ramon?”

  “Rainbow,” he yelled. “Are you happy now?”

  Oh, God! Was she happy? She didn’t know, but laughter was roaring up her throat, threatening to explode. Rainbow!

  He pushed her arm out of his way with a gruff “I’ve got to clean up before dinner” and then stomped up the rest of the stairs while Shelby kind of collapsed onto her own stair, sinking her teeth into the back of her index finger, trying to hold back a Vesuvius of laughter.

  Michael Rainbow Callahan! Who knew? Who would ever have guessed? And he’d accused her of having a dumb name.

  “What’s so funny?” her mother asked when Shelby walked into the kitchen. “I haven’t heard you laugh like that since you and Bethie were little.”

  “Oh, something just struck me as funny,” she replied, suppressing another round of the giggles. “Shall I set the table?”

  “Your father’s already done it. He should be bringing in the steaks any minute.”

  Shelby plucked a piece of romaine out of the salad her mother was tossing, popped it into her mouth, and then asked casually, “Anything I ought to know about you and Dad, Mom?”

  There was a moment of near silence when the only sound was the soft collision of bits of lettuce and cucumbers and onions before her mother said, “No, Shelby, there’s not a thing you ought to know. Thank you for asking, though.”

  Speaking of cucumbers, Shelby thought, her mother’s tone was even cooler. “Mother, I just mean...”

  The big wooden fork and spoon clacked against each other. “I know what you mean, honey, but I don’t want to discuss it now. All right?” She fashioned one of those strained smiles that always translated as I love you, but shut up.

  “Well, when?”

  “I don’t know,” her mother said irritably. “Slide those salad plates closer, will you? I don’t want to drop this all over the counter.”

  Shelby picked up a plate and held it close to the big bowl while her mother loaded it with salad. After that, she held a second plate for her, and then the others, all the while taking note of the small, but distinct tremor in the agile and oh-so-talented hands of Linda Purl.

  How the hell was she supposed to help if nobody would explain what was going on?

  Before she could think of a different way to wheedle the information out of her mother, her father called “Here come the steaks” through the screen door just before he came in. Ah, God. He looked so handsome and happy just then that Shelby almost wanted to cry. Well, damn. Between laughing and crying and a burning tablecloth, she didn’t know how she was going to make it
through this meal.

  As it turned out, Shelby had been wrong about the seating arrangement. Contrary to her expectations, her mother put her across the table from Callahan rather than adjacent to him, which was probably worse because now Shelby had to look at his infinitely appealing face instead of just brushing elbows. He had not only changed into a clean flannel shirt, but he’d also shaved and perhaps even showered. His hair had that slicked back, wet look that she always found devilishly attractive.

  “Wine, Shelby?” her father asked, the bottle poised over her glass. She was sorely tempted to grab it all for herself and let the others do with water.

  “Yes, please.”

  While he filled the other glasses, Shelby looked around the dining room. Beth had outdone herself in here with the dark and heavily patterned William Morris wall-paper. It looked as if she’d lightened the color of the woodwork, too, in order to perfectly match a particular beige in the paper. Little wonder it took her over a year to finish her renovations.

  Her mother arrived from the kitchen a little out of breath, but still looking like the consummate hostess, and when her father pulled out her chair and gently touched her shoulder while seating her, Linda Simon didn’t seem to mind. That was good, Shelby thought. A dinner here, a dinner there, and maybe soon they’d be back together again.

  Her mother raised her wineglass. “Here’s to Shelby and Mick.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” her father said.

  Oh, Lord. Shelby glanced at Callahan over the rim of her glass to see his reaction to the toast. If it embarrassed him, nothing in his expression gave that away. He looked—well—almost happy, a far cry from his usual end-of-the-world demeanor. Or end-of-the-rainbow, she reminded herself, trying not to laugh.

  After that, no sooner had everyone begun to dig into their steaks than the phone sounded a shrill note from the kitchen.