Tangled Thing Called Love: Life and Love on the Lam (A Loveswept Contemporary Romance)

by Juliet Rosetti

  So I grabbed the big plastic shopping bag that held all my stuff and started to leave. That’s when a $50 bill fell out of the bag. It had oil blotches, like it was a bill that came from a greasy garage.

  I quick dumped out everything in the bag, but there was just the one bill. If the cop had searched my stuff he would have found it. I felt the whole room spinning around me. I thought maybe I really did steal that money but blanked out that I did it. After a while, though, I sort of came back to my senses and started thinking again.

  What I thought was: Bodelle. I could see it all in my mind—her calling the police, pretending the money had been stolen, then later today tiptoeing into the locker room and stuffing that greasy bill in my bag to make it look like I took it. I couldn’t believe a grown-up would do something like that! I knew Bodelle wanted her daughter to win—but to do something that could send me to jail?

  That’s when I decided I wasn’t going to quit. The other girls were all coming into the locker room then, looking at me funny, and I knew the news had already gotten around. I went into the toilet and tore the fifty into tiny shreds and flushed it. Then I got a couple of ice bags out of the P.E. teacher’s fridge and plastered them over my swollen eyes and sat in a stall for a few minutes, trying to calm down. When I finally came out and went to get dressed I saw what they’d done to my gown.

  There were half a dozen splotches of red food coloring on the back of the dress. Like I’d gotten my period and hadn’t used a Tampax. It would have been better if it had been blood, because blood comes out in cold water. Food coloring is forever.

  It took me a while, but I finally figured out what to do. They thought all Fanchons were crooks? Okay, fine—I’d put some of my Fanchon light-fingered skill to work. There was this big pot of wilted tulips in the school secretary’s office, left over from Easter. I ripped off the florist’s ribbon—two-inch-wide rose organza. It doesn’t look quite perfect with my dress color, but it’s close enough that it doesn’t look too stupid. I pinned it onto my dress—a big honkin’ butt bow with ribbons dangling down the back to hide the spots.

  Those snotty bitches think they spiked me. They thought I’d be too ashamed to go onstage wearing this dress. But I’m not quitting. I’m going to go on that stage and I’m going to win. Here’s my response to Bodelle Blumquist, the food coloring queens, and the cayenne pepper princesses:

  F U!!!!!!

  It was the last thing Fawn had ever written.

  “I love this girl,” Mazie said quietly.

  “Me too,” Ben said.

  “She wrote that last bit on a school computer, right? So how did her flash drive get from school back to her bedroom?”

  Ben absentmindedly tapped the iPad against his knee. “She must have put it in that bag, along with her clothes and underwear and stuff. I read a police report today that mentioned a bag of personal items being found in Fawn’s truck.”

  “The police reports didn’t mention the flash drive?”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t think anyone looked closely enough at the pendant to notice it was a flash drive. Those devices weren’t in general use thirteen or fourteen years ago. Probably the investigators would have been more interested in checking Fawn’s clothing, looking for signs of blood or semen. If it had been a murder case everything would probably have been scrutinized more thoroughly, but Fawn was considered a possible runaway.”

  “So we may be the only ones who ever saw Fawn’s diary,” Mazie said. “Do we have to turn it in to the police?”

  “Tough question. I’m not up to dealing with it right now.” Ben powered off his iPad, leaned in, kissed the side of Mazie’s mouth, and murmured, “I’m up for something else, though.” He pulled her against him, making it clear exactly what he was up for, his eyes dark, hot, hungry.

  Oh, but she was so up for it too! His hands on the small of her back and her shoulders were warm and rough and Mazie realized how desperately she’d missed the feeling of those hands on her body. His mouth found hers and it felt like coming home. This was where she belonged—locked in the solidness of Ben Labeck’s arms. Giving in to the desire that was sending electric tingles all over her body, Mazie slid her hand inside Ben’s shirt and stroked his chest. His body was hard, taut, responsive to the slightest touch. His breath became ragged and when he moved his hand beneath her skirt and up her thighs, she didn’t try to stop him. If sexual arousal could have been measured in amps, they could have powered the entire electrical grid of southwest Wisconsin. She moved her hand lower and his breath caught in his throat.

  “Aunt Mazie?”

  They jumped violently apart. Joey was peering at them from the hallway.

  Labeck cursed under his breath.

  “What’re you guys doing?” Joey asked.

  “Uhh … Aunt Mazie had a mosquito bite where she couldn’t reach,” Ben said. “I was just helping her scratch the itch.”

  “Oh,” Joey said. Then, “I don’t feel so good.”

  “Where don’t you feel good?” Mazie asked.

  “Stomach.” He walked over to the sofa. Then he threw up. Kids: the most effective form of birth control ever invented.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mazie cleaned up Joey and put him back to bed. Shortly afterward Sam threw up. The upchucking seemed to be a result of the strawberry concoctions rather than stomach flu, but whatever it was came in Technicolor and 3-D. Scully slept through the whole thing, so it was Ben and Mazie who pressed cool towels to foreheads, fetched glasses of water, and changed sheets.

  Ben was much more patient with the boys than Mazie would have believed. She’d never found him sexier or more masculine than now. Watching him crouched beside the boys’ beds, rubbing their backs and talking in a low, soothing murmur, she felt something inside her melt. Telling herself she was over Ben? What a piece of fiction. She was never going to be over this man.

  But the romantic moment, the magic that Fawn’s diary had woven over both of them, had passed, and when the boys finally dropped off to sleep, Ben and Mazie crashed too. In their own separate beds.

  When Mazie staggered grumpily to the kitchen the next morning, it was to discover Sam and Joey already up, having breakfast, looking fully recovered.

  “Is your dad up?” Mazie asked, setting coffee on to perk.

  “Outside, doing chores,” Joey said.

  “Are you guys better?” she asked.

  “No prob,” Sam said. Mazie felt his forehead. Cool. Ditto for Sam. Both of them were bright-eyed and were eating enough for ten sets of twins. Definitely well enough to go to school, she decided.

  Upstairs, the shower began running. Ben was up. Picturing him under a shower made her smile. Every glorious bit of him exposed and wet, and she loved the way his hair looked when it was damp, and if the twins got off to school and Gran went to town for groceries, she and Ben might be able to resume where they’d been interrupted last night.

  “Can I have coffee?” Sam asked.

  “What?” she asked, shaking her head to clear the image of a naked, wet Labeck. Deep breath. Focus.

  “Can I have coffee?” Sam repeated.

  “No.”

  “Mom lets us drink coffee.”

  “Sure she does,” Mazie said. “Because otherwise you wouldn’t be hyperactive enough.”

  The boys giggled.

  “Was Muffin out yet this morning?”

  The boys shook their heads.

  Mazie opened the screen door and Muffin dashed out. Glancing outside, she noticed something in the shadows of the pine windbreak that edged the lawn.

  “Omigosh—is that a wild turkey?” she said.

  The twins gave big deal shrugs, but Mazie was excited. There had never been wild turkeys around when she’d been a kid.

  “I wouldn’t go near that thing if I was you,” Joey said.

  “I won’t scare it,” Mazie explained. “I just want to take its picture.”

  The twins shook their heads in an it’s-your-funeral manner. />
  Snatching Ben’s camera from the counter, Mazie scurried outside, being careful not to slam the screen door. She wanted to get as close as possible to the turkey before it ran away. The turkey seemed to be interested in the spilled seed beneath the bird feeder. It was about four feet tall, with a vulturelike neck, a red wattle slung jauntily under its beak, and a shiny dark gray body. Its tail was drab—nothing like the rainbow extravaganzas kids make for refrigerator art every Thanksgiving. It cocked its head, watching Mazie with alert, black eyes.

  Another turkey stepped out of the pine trees, closely followed by a third. Mazie couldn’t believe her luck! Three wild turkeys—how utterly, incredibly cool! Slowly she raised the camera. Turkey number one began to move toward her, bobbing its head up and down, making a kind of gargling noise. There was something predatory in the way it darted forward on its long legs, giving Mazie a chilling image of the raptors in Jurassic Park. Weren’t birds actually related to dinosaurs?

  If she hadn’t known better, she would have said the bird was stalking her.

  It was! Now it was darting toward her, angrily gobbling, with turkeys two and three close behind it.

  “Shoo!” Mazie waved her arms. Wild animals were supposed to be afraid of humans!

  Suddenly the largest turkey flew up into her face, buffeting her upper body with its powerful wings and raking her with spurred claws. Mazie shrieked, dropped the camera, and ran, the thug turkeys scuttling after her. She’d never make it back to the house before they caught her, Mazie realized, abruptly changing direction and sprinting for Labeck’s car. Wrenching open the door, she jumped in and slammed the door just as the birds launched an attack, pecking viciously at their own reflections in the chrome wheel rims and flying up to pummel the car with their wings. She knew they couldn’t get through the glass, but it was still terrifying. Honking the horn only sent the turkeys into new frenzies of aggression.

  Suddenly a small, whirling dervish flew at them, snarling and snapping. Muffin! The turkeys whirled around and turned on him. But Muffin, who lacked the mental capacity for fear, charged into the turkeys like a small, furry bolt of lightning, wanting only to sink his teeth into those warty necks.

  Those spurs could slit him open like a surgeon’s knife! Mazie flung open the car door to rescue Muffin, but Ben was suddenly there, swinging a snow shovel and bellowing at the top of his lungs. Scully ran up too, waving a pitchfork like a demented villager in a Frankenstein movie. The turkeys turned tail and fled, Muffin in hot pursuit.

  “Yeah, run, Hitler, you little coward,” Scully yelled. Ben chased down Muffin and scooped him up. He was snarling, working his jaws, and his feet were still going even though he was no longer on the ground.

  “Hitler?” Mazie asked.

  “Yeah. I already used Saddam Hussein and Genghis Khan on the barn cats.” Scully pointed to his sister’s scratched thigh. “Get that disinfected right away. No telling where Hitler’s feet have been.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Labeck ducked into the car and took out the first-aid kit he kept under the front seat. Taking Mazie by the hand, he led her toward the back porch, spread a rug on the top step, and had her sit down.

  Unwrapping a disinfectant pad, he began cleaning the turkey claw gouges in her left thigh, seeming to enjoy the job. Overwhelmed by the erotic sensation of his hands on her thighs, Mazie barely noticed the disinfectant’s sting.

  “I dropped your camera,” Mazie said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have taken it.” Ben had complete disregard for his clothing and didn’t mind his car getting dinged, but he treated his photography equipment as though it were lifesaving antivirus serum.

  “You can make it up to me.” He gazed at her, his eyes the color of root beer in the morning light, knowing exactly the effect he was having on her. “I have something I want to ask you.”

  “What?” The intensity of his gaze flustered her. Why was he kneeling below her on the steps? This couldn’t be the big question, could it? There wasn’t a ring hidden in that first-aid kit, was there?

  Sure there is, Mazie, you romantic cretin. Ben staged this whole thing, trained the turkeys to lurk in the bushes and then attack just so he could propose to you.

  She laughed. The idea was too absurd.

  “Would you be willing to play Fawn?” he asked. “I want to do a reenactment of her disappearance out at the swamp for the documentary. You’re about the same build as her—you even look a little similar. You’d be perfect.”

  “A reenactment? Like on the History Channel? Like when they reenacted Marie Antoinette’s death?”

  “Right. Only you wouldn’t actually get your head chopped off.”

  “I guess I could.” Actually, she was thrilled with the notion; she suspected she had a lot of ham actor entwined in her DNA.

  “Maybe you could wear a long dress, heels?”

  “My old pageant dress is somewhere up in the attic,” Mazie said, beginning to feel quite enthusiastic about the idea. “I’m planning to wear it Saturday, for the pageant parade. But it’s not light pink—it’s hot pink—”

  “You mean it was a hot dress or you looked hot in the dress?”

  Guys ought to carry around a male/female translation guide, Mazie thought. “It’s a color. Really bright pink. Not the same shade as Fawn’s dress.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’re just trying to create an impression. So if you’re okay with it, I’d like to do the filming tomorrow night, around sunset. I don’t have the equipment I need, though—I want to drive up to Madison today, see if I can scrounge some lights and stuff from the ABC affiliate there. Want to come?”

  “I’m supposed to do pageant stuff today,” Mazie said, embarrassed to admit it.

  “Oh.” Ben didn’t look happy to hear it. He squeezed glop from a tube onto her thigh.

  “Ouch! What is that stuff?”

  “Wound sealant.” He bent and kissed her knee, just above the gooey stuff.

  If he added tongue, Mazie thought, she was going to climax right here atop Gran’s old rag rug.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ben borrowed Scully’s pickup because he’d need a large vehicle to haul the rented equipment back, leaving Mazie with his car for the day. The boys had missed the school bus, so she drove them to school. Her phone rang as she was pulling out of the school’s drop-off zone.

  It was Holly. “Fawn’s diary,” she said. “Do you believe those little bitches?”

  “Bloodcurdling. I take it you finished the whole thing?”

  “I stayed up until midnight reading it.”

  “Do you still think Gil killed her?”

  Holly heaved a my-theory-is-shot-to-hell sigh. “I think that if he’d been molesting Fawn, she’d have mentioned it in her diary. Or possibly turned him in. Fawn was too tough to let Gil get away with—hey, don’t feed your cereal to the dog!”

  “What?”

  “Sorry,” Holly said. “I was yelling at Charlie. Back to business. We have to shop for swimsuits.”

  “No-o.”

  “We’ve got to do this, Mazie—otherwise the terrorists will have won. The mommy van is in the shop today. Do you have a car—or as Fawn would say, wheeeeeels?”

  “How does a Jetta sound?”

  “Ecologically responsible. Pick me up in a half hour—it’ll take that long to find a sitter gullible enough to take the kids. But we can’t go anywhere too far away. Shopko okay?”

  “Sure. My Bergdorf’s card is maxed out, anyway.”

  As Mazie was about to pull out onto the street, she spotted something that made her jam on the brakes. There, parked at the edge of the high school parking lot, was a white van. Its license plate was smeared with mud, but she was almost certain it was the van that had run her off the road two days ago.

  Hastily parking a few slots away, she got out and walked over to inspect the vehicle. It was a panel van with double doors in the back. It looked as though it had been in an off-road mudding event and was in dire need of a wash. Mazie wipe
d off the rear license plate with a tissue, then used her cell phone camera to snap a photo. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, she tried the van’s doors. All locked. She peered inside through a dirt-smeared window. The interior was a giant tossed-junk salad of crumpled beer cans, old socks, fishing gear, molding food, a disassembled shotgun, porn mags, soda bottles, spare tires, a car jack, a stepladder, a chain saw … and that was just the top layer! Was this the van of a person who would run a bicyclist off the road for kicks? Not to stereotype—but hell, yeah.

  She could do a stakeout, wait around until the van’s driver came out. She could ask Johnny Hoolihan to trace the plate. But why waste time going through official channels when she could stage the Mazie Maguire Malarkey and Moonshine Show?

  Hurrying into the building, she found the office she wanted, told the summer school secretary about the van in the lot with its lights on, and supplied the plate number. A sweet, fluttery, white-haired woman who looked as though she’d been dragged out of retirement for the summer, the secretary made an announcement over the school’s public-address system.

  “Thank you for being such a caring person,” the secretary told Mazie, beaming.

  “No problem,” Mazie muttered, trying to stifle her guilt pangs.

  Returning to the parking lot, she concealed herself behind the bulky pickup truck parked next to the white van. A minute or so passed, and then she heard rapid footsteps. They stopped in front of the van.

  “What the fuck?” came a male voice.

  Cautiously Mazie peered around the corner of the pickup. A man wearing a hard hat and a green fluorescent vest stood in front of the van, eyeballing the headlights and appearing puzzled. She raised the cell phone, held it in a trembling hand, and prepared to snap. But the man abruptly moved, strode to the driver’s door, unlocked it, and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from the front seat. He shook one out, lit it, and stuck it in his mouth. She’d waited too long; the guy was much too close now. If she pressed the “take” button, he might hear the click.

  He was a tall, wiry man in his midthirties, with scorpion tattoos on his arms and a tan that was startlingly dark against his sandy, shoulder-length hair. Narrowing his eyes against the smoke, he brought the cigarette to his lips, revealing a hand speckled with pinprick scabs, as though he’d scratched mosquito bites until they’d gotten infected. They weren’t bites, though, Mazie thought; she’d seen enough scabbed women in prison to recognize meth sores.