Sizzling

by Susan Mallery

  All good ideas, she thought. “I don’t know of anything like that. I’ll ask my brothers, but I don’t hold out too much hope. There’s only one person who might know something and getting her to talk would take a miracle.”

  “They happen.”

  “Not in my world.”

  Gloria? Help her? Her brothers swore the old woman had changed, but was it enough? Gloria had made it clear she loathed Dani.

  “I don’t want to give her the pleasure of going to her and asking,” Dani said flatly. “She doesn’t deserve it.”

  “What do you deserve?” he asked. “If there’s a chance of getting what you want, isn’t that worth an awkward conversation?”

  She smiled. “Oh, sure. Be rational.”

  “I’m a math teacher. What did you expect?”

  She sighed. “I know you’re right. I just can’t stand the thought of going begging, which means you’re going to say then I obviously don’t care enough about finding my father.”

  She drank more of her coffee. “Maybe I’ll talk to Reid. He’s living in Gloria’s house and spending the most time with her. If he says she’s really willing to help, then I’ll ask.”

  “Now you have a plan.”

  She looked at him. “You think I should go face the dragon.”

  “Our fears get bigger than they should be if we don’t see them in the light of day.”

  “That would be the theology teacher speaking,” she said.

  “Maybe, and a little of the man.”

  “We never talk about your life very much,” she said, realizing she didn’t know that much about him. “You’re very good at asking questions.”

  “I’m very interested in your life,” he told her. “My days are often similar.”

  “And I’m living in the middle of a soap opera. I’m thrilled to know I can at least entertain my friends.”

  “We appreciate it,” he said lightly, then leaned toward her. “Dani, would you like to go to dinner with me sometime?”

  He was asking her out. She’d wondered if he would and how she would feel about the invitation. But now that it was here, there was no sense of panic or the need to avoid taking things to the next level. Gary was a great guy. She really liked him. He was kind and honest. The total lack of physical chemistry might be a good thing. She’d been burned by passion enough lately.

  “I would love to go to dinner with you,” she said.

  REID WAS FEELING LIKE pretty hot shit. It was sunny and relatively warm, he’d decided what to do with his life and last night he’d seduced the hell out of Lori. He hadn’t taken what was offered, he hadn’t gone along with what was easy. He’d planned the evening, reduced her to a puddle and then he’d made her scream.

  He liked knowing he could do that to her. He also liked that there was no pretending. He could read her body nearly as easily as he read his own and he knew exactly how to please her. Being with her made him feel good. He found himself wanting things he hadn’t thought about in a long time.

  The realization should have scared the crap out of him. Instead he found himself thinking about the future. Playing a serious round or two of “what if.”

  What if he didn’t walk away from Lori? What if things developed between them? What if she fell in love with him?

  He knew she liked him. Not just the crush she’d admitted to, but real liking. She wouldn’t have slept with him otherwise. He wanted to take credit for her physical transformation, but he knew it had very little to do with him. She’d used him as the excuse, but in truth she’d wanted to make a change for a long time. Lori wasn’t comfortable hiding anymore. It had just taken a while for her outsides to figure that out.

  But could she fall in love with him? Was she willing to take that ultimate risk? He knew that on the surface he was a great catch. Healthy, good-looking and rich. But what about on the inside? He’d never committed to a woman in his life. He’d only offered once. As Lori had pointed out, he’d then used that moment as an excuse to stop trying.

  That wouldn’t be enough for Lori. She had high standards and he wondered if he could measure up.

  He poured more coffee from the pot on the credenza, then turned back to the stack of letters on his desk. He’d pulled out the ones that bothered him the most and had gone over them again. He had to be able to do something for these kids.

  One caught his eye. The one from the boy whose twin brother had died. Reid had grown up close to Walker and Cal. His brothers, along with Dani, had meant everything to him. If something had happened to one of them…

  He picked up the phone and dialed the number on the letter. A woman answered.

  “Mrs. Baker?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good morning. My name is Reid Buchanan. I used to play baseball.”

  “What? Oh. Really? I know who you are. My son is a huge baseball fan. The sport and the players are his world. Even more so since…well, recently. He hated to see you retire. He talked about it for days.”

  If the kid knew Reid had screwed up his career himself, he would think a lot less of him.

  “Mrs. Baker, your son wrote me about your loss. I’m terribly sorry.”

  There was a moment of silence followed by a strangled, “Thank you. It’s been difficult.”

  “I can imagine. I was thinking about what I could do for Justin. To take his mind off of things for a little while. I have some friends on the Seattle Mariners and I’ve been talking to their general manager. How would you and Justin like to spend a long weekend with the team at spring training? You’d be flown down first-class, put up in a nice hotel. You’d have a car and a driver at your disposal, along with money for meals. The hotel has a spa. You’d have free use of the facilities. I’d make sure there was someone to keep an eye on Justin while you were relaxing.”

  He heard her breath catch. “I don’t know what to say,” she admitted. “Why would you do this?”

  “Because I can. You and Justin have already been through too much.”

  “You’re being incredibly generous,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what to think.”

  “I would very much like you to let me do this for you. If you need a little time to think it over, then let me give you my phone number. You can call me back.”

  She gave a little laugh. “Mr. Buchanan, I might have trouble getting through the day, but I’m not totally crazy. Justin would love this and honestly, so would I. Of course we’ll go. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m going to have a travel agent call you in a couple of hours. She’ll make all the arrangements. But I want you to take my personal number as well. If you have any trouble, anything at all, you call me.”

  “This is amazing. Thank you.”

  “Just take your boy and have a good time.”

  “We will.”

  They hung up. Reid leaned back in his chair and stared down at the list of arrangements that had to be made. While the travel agent he’d spoken with had promised to stay on top of things, he knew he would be calling around and checking himself. He didn’t want another repeat of the no return tickets disaster.

  He pulled out a pad of paper and added to the ongoing list. If the foundation wasn’t going to have an in-house travel agent, then he wanted to make sure there was someone who would follow up on the arrangements made. There weren’t going to be any more screw-ups on his watch.

  LORI ARRIVED HOME shortly before five and saw a familiar car in the driveway. She pulled into the garage, closed the door behind her and walked into the kitchen. She could hear Madeline and her mother laughing in the living room and her stomach clenched.

  She didn’t mind that her sister invited people over—this was Madeline’s house, too—but why did it have to be their mother? No matter how the evening went, Lori always ended up feeling like the odd one out.

  “Hi, I’m home,” she called as she walked into the kitchen and set her purse on the counter.

  “We’re in the living room,” Madeline called. “Com
e join us.”

  Lori stood in the kitchen and wished for an excuse to escape to the quiet of her room. If only Reid had wanted to seduce her tonight. But he hadn’t been around when her shift had ended and she hadn’t been comfortable calling him on his cell to find out his plans. They might be physically involved, but she didn’t know or understand the parameters of their relationship. She had a feeling that answers were only a conversation away. But she was afraid to ask.

  Talk about dumb, she told herself. She should be willing to ask what he was thinking and explain her own needs and desires. She prided herself on being a take-charge person, and she was. Everywhere but with Reid and her mother.

  Evie walked into the kitchen and smiled at her. “Hi, Lori. Did you have a good day?”

  “Yes, thanks. Gloria is doing better and better. I’d been concerned about how she would heal, but she’s moving forward all the time. She should be back to her regular life in a couple of months.”

  “That’s good.”

  Her mother linked arms with her and dragged her into the living room, then forced her onto the sofa and settled next to her.

  “Your sister and I have a confession,” Evie said, then looked at Madeline and they both burst out laughing.

  Lori glanced between them, not getting the joke. “What happened?”

  Madeline waved her hand in the air. “It’s not a bad thing,” she said, barely able to speak between gasps of laughter. “Unless you’re the chicken.”

  That set them off again. Lori tried to be patient, even though she felt a powerful need to scream. What was so damn funny?

  “We were supposed to have chicken for dinner,” Evie said as she wiped at her eyes. “I came over to help Madeline get things started. We were seasoning the chicken. It was wet and slippery and it went flying across the room.”

  She started to laugh again and couldn’t stop. Lori could see how an unruly chicken could be humorous, but this was a little extreme.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “And?”

  Madeline pressed a hand to her chest. “I picked it up and when we were washing it off, it got away from us again. That chicken was determined not to go in the oven.”

  “It’s true,” her mother said. “We dropped it twice more, but we finally got it seasoned and in the pan. We put it in the oven and came in here to recover. Then about five minutes before you got home we realized—” She erupted in laughter.

  Madeline joined in, then gasped. “We forgot to turn on the oven.”

  This set them off again. Lori tried to figure out the humor of forgetting to turn on the oven. Apparently it was one of those moments that had to be experienced in real time.

  “The thing is,” her mother told her. “You would never have forgotten. That’s what I was telling Madeline when you came home. You were always the solid one, Lori. Not flaky like your sister and me.”

  Lori held back an automatic protest that her sister wasn’t flaky.

  Her mother’s laughter faded. “Oh, Lori, you were such a good little girl. I could depend on you to take care of things. In my sober moments, I used to think that wasn’t a good thing. Not that I blamed you. You’re the only reason we all survived. But with you around, I didn’t have to worry about what was happening at home. It was all taken care of.”

  Lori didn’t know what to say to that. Her recollections were similar but she’d never thought of them in the context of holding the family together. She’d done what needed to be done because her mother was always drunk and Madeline was busy with her life.

  “I remember Lori nagging me to eat,” Madeline said. “Or at least eat better than I was.”

  “She did the same with me,” Evie added. “I can see that sweet little girl, standing in the kitchen, holding a big pot and yelling that we were all going to sit down and eat together, even if she had to physically make us.”

  Lori felt a rush of memories, most of them bad. She pushed them away, as she always did, but her mother kept talking about how much Lori had done.

  “I would have been lost without you,” Evie said. “Have I told you that? It’s true.”

  Lori felt incredibly uncomfortable. She and her mother didn’t get along. Bonding wasn’t allowed. “I didn’t do that much.”

  “Of course you did. Part of recovery is acknowledging what the alcohol did to your family. In your case, Lori, my drinking forced you to grow up too soon. You became the mom. I never wanted that.”

  Lori squirmed in her seat. “It’s fine,” she murmured, wishing they could talk about something else. She didn’t want to hear any of this.

  “It’s not fine,” her mother said. “I wish things had been different.” She frowned. “Where are your glasses? Did you get contacts?”

  “She had Lasik surgery,” Madeline said, sounding smug. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  “She’ll never be as pretty as you,” her mother said.

  The comment made Madeline grimace, but helped put Lori’s world back in perspective.

  “Eye surgery?” Evie asked. “I didn’t think you’d want to do something like that.”

  “I can’t wear contacts,” Lori said. “I tried and there’s just no way. Now I don’t have to worry about glasses.”

  “Is there a man?” her mother asked bluntly. “Women always do stupid things for a man.”

  Lori distinctly remembered wishing for a change in topic. Now that it was here, she was having second thoughts.

  “I didn’t do it for a man,” Lori said firmly. “I like being able to see without glasses.”

  Her mother looked unimpressed.

  Lori hated sounding like she’d changed herself for Reid. He’d been the catalyst but not the reason. “Okay, fine. I am kind of seeing someone. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing,” Madeline said. “It’s fabulous and so is he. Remember Reid Buchanan? He’s that hunky baseball player who blew out his shoulder last year and had to retire.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Evie told her. “But wasn’t there a mean article about him in the paper recently? Something about him not being…” Her mother’s voice trailed off.

  Lori didn’t know what to say. This was a true definition of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. “It wasn’t true,” she said at last. “Not any of it.”

  “I see.”

  Evie and Madeline exchanged a look. Lori didn’t want to know what either of them were thinking.

  “He’s great,” Madeline said. “He adores Lori.”

  “I’m glad.” Evie smiled. “It’s time you found someone.”

  Lori supposed life was never all one way and neither were people. Evie was trying. Failing, but trying.

  Chapter Sixteen

  LORI SCOOPED some orange chicken onto her plate. “This is really good,” she said. “Where’s the takeout place?”

  “A couple of streets down. I’ll show you. It doesn’t look like much on the outside, but the food is great.”

  She and Reid sat on the floor, backs against the sofa in his living room in Gloria’s house. The coffee table was covered with open takeout containers. Reid had provided dinner and a chilled bottle of Chardonnay. While Lori was confident they would move into the bedroom later, it felt good just to hang out. More normal, maybe.

  “It was strange last night with my mother,” she said, returning to their previous topic of conversation. “I know she’s trying to reach out and I’m beginning to believe she feels badly for what happened all those years she was drinking. I know forgiving her is the right thing to do.”

  Reid looked at her. “You will when you’re ready.”

  “Maybe.”

  Sometimes she wanted to forgive all and get close to her mother and sometimes she was so angry, she wanted the other woman punished forever.

  She still remembered being ten years old and breaking her mother’s favorite glass. It had been tall and slender, perfect for mixing drinks without too much ice getting in the way of the alcohol.

  Lori had bee
n washing the dishes and the glass had slipped, breaking into dozens of sharp shards. Her mother had been drunk and angry. When Lori had confessed, Evie had started screaming.

  “You’re useless,” she’d yelled. “I’m sorry you were born. You’re nothing but an accident. An accident I didn’t want. I have one perfect daughter—why would I want a horrible girl like you?”

  The pain still cut as easily as those pieces of the broken glass.

  “I know when Madeline’s gone, she’ll be the only family I have left. That should mean something. I keep thinking if I tried harder, I could get over everything.”

  “No one is saying you have to,” he told her.

  “I know, but I feel guilty for not accepting her changes and moving on. It’s weird. We were talking about the past. I realized we all remember different situations or the same incident, but in a different way. I guess that’s about perspective. I saw what mattered to me, Madeline saw what mattered to her.”

  “Maybe everyone has a piece of the truth,” he said. “You can remember the parts you want to remember and let the rest go.”

  “I wish I could.”

  He put down his fork. “I want to go public with Madeline’s illness. I want to get the story out there so people think about donating. You said she was a rare blood type. I’ve been doing the research and the odds of finding a donor for her aren’t great. I think we can change that.”

  Lori didn’t understand. “Go public as in…”

  “Talk to the press. Hold interviews. Talk about the importance of donating. Do you know that here, in the States, you have to opt in to a donation program. That the assumption is you’re not interested in donating unless you say otherwise. But in Europe, it’s the opposite. The assumption is people want to donate. If you aren’t interested, you have to opt out. That makes a whole lot more sense to me. I’ve been talking to some donation centers. They’re willing to help coordinate the process with me. With us.” He paused and glanced at her. “Did I get too ahead of myself? Are you pissed?”

  Pissed? She leaned over and kissed him. Her eyes burned and she figured the tears weren’t all that far behind.