“Well.”
Her hand went to her lips, which buzzed with electricity.
“So.”
“Right.”
“I better get home,” she said. “Work tomorrow morning.” That kiss. And his body beneath her hands. Never before—
“Me too. Work.”
She tried to shake off the tremor of him. “Um, so Camille—?”
He waved his hands in front of him. “Nothing. Oh, hell. No. I left with her so that Jack and your colleagues wouldn’t suspect. She just gave me a ride home and we had a beer and played some cards.”
Cecelia suddenly remembered the odd conversation she had with Maya ages ago, when Maya showed up at her work the very first time. Then, since he’s your True Lover, you can play cards . . . So you can get laid! The little girl must think that “getting laid” had something to do with cards. Finn never slept with Camille. Cecelia felt her whole body electrify again. “I believe you. It’s just that—” She stopped. Don’t ruin it. Just forget everything but him.
“What’s wrong?” His green eyes bore into her, their heat filling her every cell.
“Before we”—She took a deep breath. Just take him home—“get involved.” She had to do this right. If she was going to start with him, she couldn’t make the same mistakes and live a life of lies. God, those incredible eyes and that kiss. No. Calm. Truth. Shoulders. Deep breath. “Finn, there’s something you have to know.”
Methodically, tersely, like she was summarizing a complex case for first-year medical students, she started from the beginning. She explained how Amy had created the whole granny setup with Trudy in order to get him to come to Baltimore to meet his One True Love, and how Maya had gone along because she was worried about him and wanted a mommy. She got to the part where Maya jumped out of her closet when he seemed to understand what she was saying.
“Holy shit!” Finn jumped off his stool. “I have to get back to Maya. I can’t believe I left her with a con-woman stranger liar. I trusted that lady. I can’t believe that she—that your sister—that I. That you—” He shook his head as if maybe the truth were a small animal that he could dislodge.
“No. Not me—” She knew this moment so well. The moment where the conned finds out he’s been had. In this moment, everything that happened before would be changed. He’d spend hours, days, running every moment through his mind, wondering how he missed all the clues. She felt so sorry for him.
She felt so sorry for herself.
“I have to go. I’ll. I don’t know. Call you.” He was halfway up the stairs.
Cecelia still felt his lips on hers. “Okay,” she said.
But she said it to no one; he was gone.
That night Cecelia got home to find a message on her answering machine from Jack. He was staying another week in Ohio. He’d call when he got back. She felt something odd in her stomach—it was warm and full. It was happiness. She felt glad for him.
And sad for herself. Not because he was gone, but because she was alone.
There was another message too. A man from the co-op board. The preliminary meeting was this month. They needed her and Jack’s paperwork by Thursday. They were sure it wouldn’t be a problem.
No. No problem, she thought, a tear rolling down her cheek.
No problems here at all.
The next morning, Cecelia stood in front of the steep steps that led to Trudy’s, but she couldn’t move. What if Finn was still here? What if he wasn’t?
A breeze startled her. How long had she been standing here? She had to get back to the hospital. She had patients scheduled all afternoon. Do this quick, then go. In a rush of resolve, she darted up the steps and into the darkness.
She was blinded by the dimness. She made her way carefully into the narrow space. Her eyes adjusted, revealing the almost empty bar. A woman was behind the bar—Trudy. The shock of the past knocked the breath out of her. Karma. She recognized her now as the woman from their childhood pawnshop—only a hundred pounds heavier. No wonder she hadn’t recognized her on the ball field. Cecelia could almost hear the old woman’s heart abnormalities from where she stood.
In the back, a heavy man with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth played pinball.
This place was a cardiologist’s nightmare.
She made her way carefully to the bar and sat down.
“He ain’t here,” Trudy said, not looking up from the glasses she was drying with a grayish towel.
Cecelia was startled that Trudy recognized her too. Suddenly Cecelia remembered Trudy’s living room. How could she have ever seen Trudy’s living room? Then she remembered: Trudy had taken care of them. Babysat sometimes when their father was on another Jane Smith quest and their Granny Molly was on one of her extended trips abroad. Trudy had been—oh, hell—like a granny to them.
Well, it didn’t matter. Now she was a con woman and Finn was gone. That was what Cecelia had come to find out. Now she could go. Her heart constricted and she scolded it: stupid organ. He wasn’t right for her. He was, in fact, everything she never wanted in a man—a man from her old world.
She turned to go.
“He’s at work.” Trudy had scribbled an address on the back of a napkin. She pushed it toward Cecelia.
My perfect man is still here! Cecelia took the napkin as carelessly as she could manage. She glanced at it quickly but she didn’t recognize the street name. “Thanks.” She put the napkin in her purse. Her skin was already tingling at the idea of seeing him again.
Trudy was grinning at her like a toothless monkey. “Sexy man, huh?”
Cecelia blushed. Trudy always had been a bit of a mind reader. “You know who I am?”
“Of course. The smart one in that crazy family.” She smiled, as if to say, Who’s the smart one now? “Hear you’re a fancy doctor.”
“Hear you’re working with Amy.”
Trudy showed her gums. “Always a pleasure that one. And the little girl is something. I begged them to stay. But Finn was too mad. I’ll miss them until he comes around. I’m pretty sure he’ll come around. He’s too good to Maya to keep her from her granny—”
“You’re not her granny,” Cecelia reminded her.
“I wish I were,” Trudy said wistfully as she swiped at a decades-old stain on the counter. “And he is a fine-looking man. Ooh, if I had my molars—”
Cecelia tried not to let that image form. “Where is Maya?”
“Where else would she be? She’s with Amy. Helping her clean out an old house or something.”
Where else? Cecelia slid off the stool and made her way to the door. She pushed the door open and paused. Something felt so weird about this place. Then she looked up to the ceiling. The replica of the Sistine Chapel shone down on her.
“No one ever gets out the door without looking up,” Trudy said, laughing. “No one. Not even Dr. Cecelia Burns.”
Chapter 25
Cecelia told the cabdriver to pull up a block away from the address scrawled on the napkin. She paid, then walked cautiously up the street. She wished she had changed out of her work clothes. Her witchy clothes. Ahead, a group of men swarmed over a town house like ants—on the roof, the walls, in and out the front door. She recognized a few of the workers from the baseball team. When she got closer, she spotted Finn in front of the house, smoothing stucco on the front facade.
She stood on the pavement before Finn. She didn’t know what to say. She wanted to leap into his arms and scream, you stayed! But that might ruin his stucco job.
He looked up and saw her. He looked at her a long, hard moment. She willed him not to turn away.
He said, “Hey, Max. I’m taking ten,” without looking away from her.
A stout man with a clipboard nodded but didn’t look up.
Finn carefully wiped his trowel. He balanced it on the porch edge, came to the sidewalk, and said, “Wanna see something cool?”
“Sure.” She fell in beside him on the sidewalk. A sheen of white dust had settled over his hair,
his face, his ripped jeans, his work boots. He looked like a ghost beside her.
They were silent except for her black pumps clicking authoritatively along the sidewalk, echoing through the empty streets, reminding her how out of place she was by his side.
They turned a corner, then another. They walked halfway down a street of small formstone-covered houses, and then she saw it.
“My God!” Cecelia took in the tiny postage-stamp yard before her. It was stuffed with more lawn ornaments than she’d seen in her entire life. Six flamingos towered over an army of garden gnomes. Two windmills were surrounded by all sizes and species of woodland creatures. “How did you find this?” A plastic owl winked at her from its perch in a small, flowering magnolia.
“I like to walk.” There was a white scrolled bench in the center of the garden. A sign in front of it read, “Come in and Stay a While. All Welcome.” He opened the gate. “My office, madam.”
“We can’t.”
“Sure we can. I do all the time. In fact, I fixed Mrs. Sawatsky’s front porch railing last week.” He motioned toward the porch. “We’re buddies.” He led the way and she strolled around the garden in awe. Three plaster squirrels begged her for seeds. The windmills spun. Cecelia felt as if they were the only people on earth. Well, the only nonplastic people.
They worked their way down the side yard, which was equally stuffed with oddities. Finally she managed, “So?”
“So.” He petted a plaster deer. “I told Trudy and Maya that I knew about the scam. They admitted everything. Not that they were the least bit sorry. Well, maybe Maya was a little sorry, in a self-righteous, eight-year-old sort of way.”
“Turns out Amy came down to Florida after a detective had found me and a psychic agreed that I was the one.” He sidestepped a plastic pooch that began barking “Jingle Bells” when they passed. “Amy pounced on Maya in a diner I used to let her go to for her chocolate milk shakes every Tuesday after school. I knew I shouldn’t have let her drink those things.” He shook his head ruefully. “Anyway, after a couple of weeks they became friends.” He paused at the irony of the word. “They cooked up the granny scheme just like you said they did. But, Cecelia, you didn’t tell me that Trudy cared about you. She said she knew you, took care of you, wanted you to be happy and to find True Love. It all sounded sort of fun and harmless.”
“She thinks whiskey at 10:00 A.M. with a couple of cigars is fun and harmless.” Cecelia wandered around the side of the house, halting at the stunning array of bunnies. Maybe the plastic ones multiplied too.
“Funny thing was, I knew something was wrong. Deep down. But I just wouldn’t let myself see it.”
“The person getting conned always knows. That’s why the con works. The person wants to believe so badly, they go along even though they know.” They moved into the backyard, which was just as small as the front. It was filled with knee-high plastic houses, an astonishing number of multicolored mushrooms, and one normal-sized shed pushed up against the fence. The shed looked like a castle next to its tiny yard-mates. Stone paths of alarming neon colors meandered through the chaos.
“I wanted Maya to have a woman in her life. Someone who’d love her unconditionally like her mom did. Someone who could make a damn ponytail.”
Cecelia felt a tingle of excitement. I could make a ponytail.
“Maya and I moved out of Trudy’s place. Maya wanted to stay but I said no. I said she could still see Granny—I mean Trudy—if she promised to keep everything honest. No lies. We got a room on the twentieth floor of the Belvedere. We’re leaving just as soon as I get my next paycheck and get some kind of camp arranged back home.”
“How’s Maya taking all this?” They were at the center of the garden on a three-foot bridge that arched over a nonexistent stream. Giant plastic koi goldfish frolicked in the grass below them.
“Pretty good.” He paused. “Actually, she blames you.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. I assured her that I won’t have anything to do with you.”
“What!”
He punched her lightly on the shoulder. “Kidding. Sort of.” He paused. “Not really.”
Cecelia blanched. Amy had said Finn would do anything for his kid and she wondered how true that was. “Heard you got a new babysitter.” She strolled off the bridge and under a tree. At least the tree was real.
“I figure Amy owes me big time.”
“Finn.” Cecelia turned to him. “Last night—”
“I know.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. “It was kind of sudden. I’m sorry.”
She felt him fading away from her. “I’m sorry you’re leaving.”
“Yeah, well I’m sorry too. I was starting to like it here. But we can’t stay in a hotel. Payday is Friday, and then we catch the first train out.”
It was Tuesday. “Right. Well. I don’t blame you.” She bent down and patted a duck in a raincoat. Damn the truth. No. She had to keep on telling the truth. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll kind of miss you too.” He looked at her long and hard. “A good-bye kiss?”
She pulled back. “The baby woodchucks!”
“Oh, I’ll keep it Disney.” He leaned in and kissed her gently on the cheek. “How could I not in this place?”
Damn the woodchucks. Even Snow White got kissed on the lips. She corrected his kiss so that it found its mark. He was leaving. Damn him. She pulled him closer. The warmth of him spread to the tips of her toes. She couldn’t let him go. Not when he kissed like this. Touched her soul. Every cell of her. She felt her whole being meld with his. Closer. Warmer.
Oh, God. A kiss like this—
He released her just enough to murmur, “I can’t believe I’m gonna leave without ever properly running my hands through your hair.”
She pulled him to her lips again, then reached back and yanked out the clip that held her hair to the back of her head. Her hair tumbled past her shoulders. Hell, if he was leaving, what was the harm? She didn’t have to worry about who he was. He was just a make-believe handsome prince in an enchanted garden.
She felt the corner of his mouth raise half a centimeter as he pulled his fingers through her hair, catching the ends in his fist like a drowning man.
“You’re gonna leave before I get to do this?” She pulled his hand to her lips and kissed it. He tasted like sweat and plaster and man.
He released her hair and cupped her chin in his hand and she nuzzled against it. “I’m gonna go just as soon as—” He found her mouth again and took her lower lip between his teeth.
“Sure. Right after—” She put her arms up and down the length of him, feeling the powerful muscles in his back respond to her touch.
His lips were against her neck. Biting her ear. Nibbling her hair. She was desperate for him. He couldn’t leave before—no, that was impossible.
He pulled back and met her eyes. Then he nodded toward the shed.
All seven of the dwarfs watched them, grinning. Well, except for Grumpy, but what did Grumpy know about needing someone so bad that you’d swallow all the poison apples in the forest to feel his kiss one last time even if you were already drowning in the fact that you’d never see him again? She followed him to the shed. The door was unlocked. “Mrs. Sawatsky—?”
“She plays bridge at the community center on Tuesday mornings.”
“I love that woman.” She pulled him into the shed.
“Sorry, guys,” he said to the dwarfs as he shut the door behind them. “Keep your eye out for the wicked witch.”
Inside the shed was tiny furniture. A child’s table with toddler chairs. A small bed big enough for a few dolls. They crashed through the useless furniture, giants oblivious of their destruction, ending up against the far wall of the doll-like house. The cold metal of the wall behind Cecelia made the hard warmth of him in front of her even more desperately necessary.
He kissed her neck feverishly, tearing her out of her suit jacket. Out of her shirt. Her pants. Her panti
es hit the floor and there was no turning back. She clawed off his clothes in a frenzy, not aware of anything but the pure expanses of skin exposed. She ran her hands down his back, pulling him closer, closer. She needed him closer.
He pressed her against the wall with his full length, pinning her hands to her sides. “I want to make love to you.”
“Yes.”
He spun around, so that his back was against the wall. He pulled her onto him, wrapping her legs around his waist, supporting her easily, cupping one hand under her, the other behind her back.
She was floating, lost, nowhere. She felt him push inside her and she gasped with the shock of it. The perfection of it. Closer. Closer. She pushed into him and let her head fall back. This was crazy. It was impossible. It was—she let out a cry as her body rocked with his—it was too fast. He filled her in a way no man had ever filled her.
She muffled her cry on his shoulder and collapsed into him. Her breasts against his chest, her arms limp around his shoulders. He rocked into her, and she felt him climax with a final thrust.
They stood that way, together, not moving, not sure what it was, exactly, that they had done.
Ten minutes later, they crept out of the shed, slightly disheveled and grinning. Now he knew why all those gnomes looked so happy. They know what goes on in this place. Cecelia’s grin matched the gnomes’ and Finn considered taking her right back in there so that her smile would never wear off.
He checked his watch. No. The only place he was going back to was work. He was going to have his pay docked if he didn’t get back to the site—and he needed that pay. Plus, he had to figure out what the hell he had just done. He promised Maya they were going back to Florida. He promised Maya (and made her promise him) that they weren’t going to have anything else to do with Cecelia and Trudy. And as soon as he didn’t need Amy for babysitting, he’d be done with her too. Then, he was going to get himself and Maya as far away from this crazy family as possible.
At least, that was the plan before she blew his mind in that shed. Hell, that was cataclysmic. And they had been standing in a shed surrounded by children’s furniture. Just imagine—
Make Me a Match Page 18
