A Soft Place to Fall

by Barbara Bretton

  He reached into the bag and produced another donut. "This one's strawberry."

  The temptation to indulge was powerful but she stayed strong.

  "I'd better not. Once I start I might not stop."

  He earned full marks for letting the straight line slide by without the easy double entendre but somehow the temperature in the room still managed to rise another degree.

  "You're not one of those lettuce-leaves-and-water types, are you?"

  "With these hips? I was issued a weight watchers' warning yesterday and I'm thinking Ceil just might be right."

  "This Ceil must have a problem with her eyesight." I know how you look beneath that red sweater, Annie Galloway. I know how you feel.

  "Ceil works register one at Yankee Shopper and she doesn't exactly mince words with her customers. She's right. I have put on a few pounds."

  He described Ceil down to the mole under her chin.

  "That's terrible," she said. "You shouldn't mention things like moles and wattles when you describe a woman."

  "Why not?" he asked. "It's not like she doesn't have both."

  "It's rude."

  "Rude? That woman knew more about me than the IRS does."

  "Ceil does keep a finger on the pulse of Shelter Rock."

  "You mean she keeps her eye to the keyhole."

  "Ceil is a little nosy."

  "I'm surprised she didn't ask who I'm sleeping with."

  "Good thing I'm not sleeping with anyone or --" Ohmigod, Annie, what have you done?

  "Good thing," he said, not missing a beat, "because I'm not either."

  Her entire body registered his words in one giant rush of almost ridiculous pleasure. Their eyes met and held above the bag of DeeDee's Donuts. If she didn't know better, she would swear she heard music somewhere in the distance.

  "Good thing," she repeated.

  A very good thing.

  Chapter Five

  Claudia was beside herself by the time Hall walked into Annie's Flowers and asked if Annie was around. He had seen her in various states of emotional anxiety before but this one was off the chart.

  "I haven't seen or heard from her all morning and it's almost ten o'clock," Claudia said, tugging the leaves off a perfectly good yellow rose. "She should have been in here by eight forty-five the latest."

  "She didn't call?" he asked, wondering where Claudia's diastolic pressure was right about now.

  "Not a word!" Her voice trembled. "And she doesn't even have phone service turned on yet in that ridiculous new house of hers. I told her she should keep the cellular service but she wouldn't listen to me."

  She can't afford it, Claudia. She's lucky she has a roof over her head.

  "I don't know what on earth Warren was thinking, selling her that miserable little place. I intend to give him a piece of my mind next time he shows his face around here."

  "Warren cut her a terrific deal," Hall said, editing much of what he really wanted to say. It was, after all, none of his business. "She seems happy to me."

  "She's made a terrible mistake," Claudia said in a tone heavy with foreboding. "She'll never be happy in that place." She ripped another leaf from the rose. "Never!"

  He was well acquainted with Claudia's occasion outbursts. He remembered them from his high school days when she could clear the basement of Susan's friends with one lift of her left eyebrow. Just the hint of an outburst was enough to send everyone running. She didn't unnerve him anymore. Mostly he felt sorry for her. She had lost her identity when John died. Everything she was had been tied up in being a wife and mother. She was at loose ends with half of her job description no longer valid and that often manifested itself in close scrutiny of her grown children's behavior. Needless to say, she considered Annie one of her own and watched over her with hawk-like intensity that had only increased since Kevin's death.

  Hall wasn't much in the mood for hawk-like intensity that morning.

  "Why don't I drive over and see if everything's all right?" he suggested, eager for an easy exit line. He still had a few free hours before he was due at the hospital, a rare occurrence for him, even on a Saturday.

  "Would you?" Claudia's face lit up with gratitude and he felt like a louse. Ulterior motives could do that to a man. "I would do it myself but somebody has to watch the store. We're expecting a huge shipment for the Sorenson-Machado wedding tomorrow and I'd better stay here and make sure everything's there."

  "My pleasure," he said, meaning every word. "She probably started unpacking and lost track of time."

  "I'm sure that's it," Claudia agreed. "Anne is extremely punctual" A beat pause. "Most of the time. I'm sure there's a good reason."

  He turned to leave but a hand on his forearm stopped him.

  "You went to DeeDee's for us!" Claudia exclaimed, laying claim to the bag of still warm donuts. "Aren't you the sweetest thing?"

  #

  Since Annie didn't have a kitchen table or chairs yet, she and Sam carried their coffee and donuts out to the front porch where they could enjoy the morning sunshine. The ever-vigilant Max began dancing for donuts and Sam, obviously a pushover, rewarded him with a chunk torn from a glazed whole-wheat.

  "That will go well with the pizza I gave him for breakfast," Annie observed. "I don't know how you're going to reintroduce him to plain old dog food."

  "I already told him not to get used to pizza and donuts but I don't think he believed me."

  She sipped her coffee, savoring the sweet warmth against her tongue. Had there ever been a more perfect morning? Sam Butler was right. All she had needed to vanquish her champagne hangover was caffeine, sugar, and two thousand calories' worth of DeeDee's donuts.

  Max finished his whole-wheat then eyed her strawberry jelly with mournful desire.

  "Don't even think about it," she warned him. "You're as bad as George and Gracie."

  Sam glanced at her over his mug of black coffee. "George and Gracie?"

  "My cats. You must have seen them last night."

  He grimaced and gestured toward his right shin. "See them? I still have the scars."

  "They scratched you?"

  "Nothing serious," he said. "I don't think they appreciated sharing the bed with me."

  "They're a tad territorial."

  "Territorial." There was that great smile again. "And Max is just high-spirited."

  "Let me see."

  "It's just a scratch."

  "Cat scratches can be nasty. You should put some antiseptic on it."

  "Don't worry. I'm fine."

  "I have some Neosporin in the medicine cabinet. It'll only take a second."

  He put his coffee mug on the railing then lifted his right pants leg above the ankle. "See? No big deal." Nothing but a faint red line above his snowy white sock.

  "I'd still put something on it if I were you." Max sidled up to Annie and settled down with his head in her lap. "For a while there I thought you'd left Max behind as a housewarming present."

  "I tried to take him with me but he refused to leave. I think he's in love with you." I wanted to grab Max and get the hell out of here before it was too late.

  She scratched the dog behind the ear and Max's eyes closed in blissful enjoyment. "We've bonded," she said. "I think it was the pizza."

  He felt her touch along his nerve endings, same as Max. "Speaking of pizza, if you'll leave me your truck today, I'll take care of the cleanup."

  "You don't have to do that."

  "I can take care of it this morning after I fix your front door."

  "How will I get to work?"

  "You have to work today?"

  "Saturday's a big day in my business." Weddings, birthday parties, anniversary celebrations, all of which required mountains of beautiful blooms.

  "Take my truck."

  "Then you'll be stuck here."

  "We'll trade back when I'm finished."

  "You're not going to take no for an answer, are you?"

  "Not this time."

  "My tools ar
e stashed in the shed behind the house. I must have a half-dozen jars of nails and screws back there too. I was planning on fixing the door when I came home tonight."

  "You know your way around a ballpeen hammer?"

  She flexed a muscle and laughed. "Good thing, too, because my husband had no talent for home repairs."

  "That's how I met Warren Bancroft."

  She looked at him over the rim of her coffee mug. "Doing home repairs?"

  "Boat repairs," he said. "I was still in high school and working part-time at the marina near the old World's Fair grounds in Queens. I was your typical smartass city kid who thought he knew everything. Warren made it his business to prove me wrong."

  "So he took you under his wing, too." She told him about the Bancroft scholarship that had enabled her to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Bowdoin College down in Brunswick.

  "I'm surprised he never had kids," Sam said, polishing off the last donut in the bag.

  "He made up for it in wives," Annie said then laughed at the look of surprise on Sam's face. "Don't tell me you didn't know about the wives."

  "We never talked about personal stuff."

  "Male conversation," she said with a sigh. "Name, rank, and serial number."

  "You forgot baseball scores."

  "You do know you're living in his sister Ellie's old house, don't you?"

  "We managed to cover that."

  She gestured over her shoulder. "Did you know he grew up right here?"

  "In your house?"

  "Four rooms, eight Bancrofts. Boggles the imagination, doesn't it?"

  She told him about Warren's parents, first generation Irish who had moved up from Gloucester to fish the friendlier waters off Shelter Rock Cove. She wove the story of a family deeply rooted in tradition who didn't understand why their eldest son kept saying that there was a better way.

  He loved the sound of her low-pitched voice. She hit her consonants precisely then eluded her vowels like the true Yankee daughter she was. There was a musical rhythm to her speech that seemed to turn his brain into cotton candy. Her face came alive as she spoke of the sea, an odd mixture of love and sorrow. He tried to concentrate on Warren's history but it was her own that engaged his curiosity.

  She was around his age, too young to be a widow. He tried to imagine her as a young bride, a contented wife, a loving mother. Did she have children? He hadn't seen any evidence of them. No bronzed baby shoes or graduation pictures on the mantel over the fireplace. He knew that marriages were like fingerprints; there were no two alike. He wondered if hers had been close and companionable or volatile and sexually charged. Maybe they had been one of those couples who inhabited the same space but not the same lives. Had she been happy? She liked to laugh and did it better than most. He couldn't imagine her in a laughless marriage. He hoped her memories were all good ones.

  #

  A few minutes later a donutless Hall made the turn onto Bancroft Road toward Annie's house. What could he have said to Kevin's mother? Sorry the donuts aren't for you, Claudia, but I'm hoping to use them to seduce your former daughter-in-law.

  Seduce? The word actually made him laugh out loud. Hell, at this point he'd settle for a lobster roll and a movie with Annie Galloway.

  Annie's truck was parked down at the curb and he wondered why she hadn't bothered to pull it into the garage or at least park it in the driveway. He didn't notice the New York plates until he pulled in behind it. Had Sean Galloway driven up from Albany to help his sister-in-law with the move? That made sense. Sean was one of the good guys, the kind who would give up part of his Labor Day weekend to be there for family.

  Too bad that wasn't Sean sitting on the front porch with Annie, staring at her over a bag of DeeDee's damn donuts. A code blue alarm went off inside his chest when he realized she was staring right back at the guy, staring and leaning toward him with the kind of body language women used so well when the moment was right. Where had he seen that junker SUV before? That couldn't be the guy whose pizza-eating mutt trashed Annie's Trooper yesterday. There was something about the guy that seemed vaguely familiar but Hall couldn't quite place him.

  He pasted a fake smile on his face as he walked toward them but only the dog seemed to register his presence. Hall coughed discreetly.

  "Hall!" Annie leaped to her feet. She seemed startled, disoriented. Like a woman waking from a dream.

  "Sorry to drop by without calling." He used the upbeat, slightly impersonal tone he employed when he made rounds at the hospital with the residents in tow. "I stopped in at the store and Claudia was --."

  "Oh no!" Annie looked at the man's watch strapped to her left wrist. "The Sorenson flowers are due in and Claudia doesn't have a clue what to look for." She dusted pale flecks of powdered sugar from her sleek red sweater and black pants. She looked better than he had ever seen her before, glowing and radiant. "You don't know Claudia in a crisis."

  She gathered up her tote bag and other assorted carry-alls then turned toward the guy with the New York license plates. "Thanks for the donuts," she said. "I hate to run like this and leave you in the lurch."

  "I told you I'd take care of everything," he said. "Don't worry."

  The man rose to his feet and Hall noted that the guy was a good two inches shorter than he was. He wasn't above taking petty satisfaction in that fact.

  "Make sure George and Gracie don't escape," she said to Shorty. "You can use one of the white bowls by the sink if Max needs some water."

  "Don't worry," Shorty said. "I'll be finished before you get to the store."

  The smile she gave him was the one Hall had spent most of his adult life dreaming of and the bastard took it as his due.

  She turned to Hall and became platonic friendship personified. "Thanks so much for driving over here," she said. "You have single-handedly saved the floral integrity of the Sorenson-Machado nuptials. I owe you one."

  "If that's the case then how about dinner tomorrow night." The words came out as easily as if they had been rehearsed and in a way they had. It had taken him almost two years to get up the nerve.

  She struggled not to glance over at the boy from New York City. "I really shouldn't -- "

  "You'll need a break from unpacking by then." He sounded smooth and self- assured, the direct opposite of how he was feeling. "We'll go to Cappy's for the fish fry. I'll get you back here early."

  Her hesitation stung like a slap in the face but it was his own damned fault for putting her on the spot like this in front of her new friend.

  "Listen," he said, taking a step back from the happy pair, "bad timing on my part. We can always make it some other --"

  "No," she said, looking flustered and embarrassed and lovely all at the same time, "Cappy's is a great idea. I can meet you there around seven."

  And there you had it. With one smooth move, she turned a date into something a whole lot less.

  One quick look at Shorty and she was gone.

  They both watched as she ran across the damp front yard and climbed into her aging SUV. They both waited until her car disappeared around the curve then turned to each other.

  "Sam Butler." Shorty put out his right hand.

  The guy not only looked familiar, he sounded familiar too. "Have we met before?"

  "I don't know," Shorty said, his hand still outstretched. "You tell me."

  It wasn't often that a stranger made Hall feel inadequate but Shorty managed it with six little words. Time to regroup and approach from a different angle.

  "Hall Talbot." Hall extended his own right hand. He waited until they clasped hands. "Doctor Hall Talbot."

  Sometimes a man had to play his best cards early in the game.

  #

  It took Sam all of ten seconds to peg the good doctor as the man he had seen with Annie in the parking lot yesterday. The same polished good looks, same regal bearing, same sense of entitlement that made Sam want to knock him down a peg or three. A knee-jerk reaction left over from his teenage years back in Queen
s when the gulf between the haves and have-nots had seemed impossible to bridge.

  "Don't stay on my account," Hall Talbot said with classic lock-jawed Yankee precision. "I'll close up for Annie."

  "Sounds great," Sam said. "After you fix the door, lock up and leave the key under the mat."

  He watched as the doctor's gaze finally landed on the kicked-in door. "What happened?"

  Good going, Columbo. Took you long enough.

  "Minor mishap," Sam said. "I told Annie last night that I'd fix it." He added a little extra spin to the words "last night." He sounded thirty-five going on fifteen.

  He had to hand it to the doctor. That fine old Yankee breeding was a wonder to behold. The man didn't betray any curiosity at all.

  "Then I'll leave you to it," Dr. Hall Talbot said with a slight nod of his head. "Good morning."

  Sam watched as the guy climbed behind the wheel of his $60,000 Land Rover and drove off.

  Max nudged him with his nose. He reached down and scratched the dog behind the ear.

  "I'm not impressed either, Max. I had a fancy car once and look where I ended up."

  Was that what Annie Galloway's husband had been like? A tony well-dressed WASP who never lost his cool unless he was playing a game of extreme croquet on the back lawn. Maybe he'd even been a doctor like the one who just got away, well-respected in town, the one they all looked up to, the kind of guy all women dreamed of marrying.

  He glanced back at the small cottage. Scratch that thesis. A doctor's wife wouldn't end up sharing eight hundred square feet of precious floor space with a giant bed, two cats, and little else.

  Then again people didn't always get what they expected out of this life or even what they deserved. Somewhere along the way her life must have taken a sharp turn off the beaten path and led her to this place and he couldn't help but wonder how she felt about that.

  He knew all about those sharp turns and where they took you. Who would've thought he would've ended up halfway through his life with nothing to show for the years.