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

by Juliet Rosetti

  Every passenger onboard was clustered at the stern, and the fact that the boat didn’t tilt over and sink under their combined weight was a maritime miracle. Elbowing her way to the rail, Mazie looked down into the cold, dark waters of the lake. “What happened?” she asked.

  The man next to her answered. “Someone fell overboard. A woman, I think.”

  Below, a head bobbed to the surface, someone with long, pale hair. It was Sophie Olson! Her dress appeared to be snagged on the slats of the paddle wheel. She struggled to free herself, but the rotating blades pulled her under once again. The paddle wheel was strictly cosmetic—it had no more effect on propelling the boat than a bobblehead dog on a dashboard has on steering a car. Still, even a purely decorative paddle wheel could bludgeon someone to death with its heavy wooden blades. Mazie felt the boat slowing as the captain cut the engines, but the wheel kept churning, white foam streaming out behind. The onlookers on the deck watched in helpless horror, hoping to see Sophie pop back up.

  Belatedly the boat’s crew swung into action, shoving through the crowd on the lower deck and tossing life preservers down into the water. A crewman stripped off shoes and shirt and poised at the edge of the deck, prepared to dive in, but when he saw Ben already in the water, swimming with powerful strokes toward Sophie, he halted, clearly reluctant to jump into the frigid lake unless forced to.

  It was raining harder now, the rain needling the water into choppy bubbles. Sophie popped up again, flailing and gasping, but now Ben was there, tugging her free from the paddle wheel. Grabbing one of the preservers in the water, he forced it down over Sophie, then began towing her toward the boat. The waiting crew reached down and hauled Sophie up onto the deck while Labeck—Mr. Macho—ignored the outstretched hands and hoisted himself onboard under his own power.

  Suddenly everyone was cheering and clapping. Mazie fought her way through the crowd and downstairs to the lowest deck. The boat captain was wrapping Sophie in a blanket and—visions of lawsuits reeling through his head—was rapping out orders to his crew: see if there was a doctor onboard, break out the first aid kit, steer immediately back to town, phone for an ambulance to be waiting at the dock.

  Sophie was shivering violently, eyes squeezed shut, teeth chattering. Mazie tried to get to Ben to see whether he was okay, but the deck was jammed with people who refused to budge; this was real-life drama and they weren’t about to miss a second of it.

  Sophie opened her eyes, heaved herself onto her elbows, turned to one side, and vomited up a considerable portion of Quail Lake. She coughed, vomited again, and wiped a long wet strand of hair out of her face.

  She inhaled sharply, then squeaked, “Someone pushed me.”

  Everyone stared at her. Sophie was perfectly white, as though she’d been dunked in a vat of bleach; her mascara had run so that her eyes stood out like skull eyes; and her blonde hair hung in sodden strands around her head and shoulders, dribbling water down her chest. Her Nordstrom evening gown—lavender with violet beading—was in tatters.

  Sophie’s voice came out raw-sounding, as though she’d gargled with sand. “I-I was up on the top deck, looking down. Somebody came up from behind and shoved me off the boat.”

  “Did you see who shoved you?” asked the captain, rubbing Sophie’s cold hands.

  “No—just all of a sudden I was in the water and these paddles were coming down on my head!” Sophie coughed again and the captain gently pounded her back. “The paddle thing shot me backwards, but my dress caught and I got dragged under the water.”

  “You’re certain you didn’t slip—you were pushed?” asked the captain, who probably hoped for a yes answer because if Sophie had fallen he could be sued for negligence, whereas pushed put the onus on his passengers.

  “I just told you,” Sophie said, sounding peevish, beginning to regain some of her color. “She pushed me—it was two pushes, real close together! The first one I kind of grabbed onto the railing, but the second one was so hard I toppled off.”

  The she brought a gasp from the crowd. Cell phone cameras were recording every moment of this. Nothing is sacred these days—people videotape births, deaths, and themselves having sex. A half-drowned girl was just grist for the mill.

  “You’re saying a woman pushed you?” The captain’s voice rose. “Did you see—”

  “No—but I caught a glimpse of a woman’s bare arm.”

  “Oh, honestly, Sophie!” Bodelle Blumquist thrust her way between the crew members. Her gold lamé gown, encrusted with sequined vines, made her look as though she were wearing gilded intestines. She didn’t seem to be concerned about Sophie, merely irked that her cruise had been ruined. “Nobody pushed you, Sophie—you fell overboard.”

  “I didn’t fall. I was pushed.”

  “You were drunk as a skunk,” Bodelle shrilled. “I saw you—at the bar all evening, and you not old enough to legally drink.”

  “I had one lousy Rum and Coke!” Sophie flung off the blanket and wobbled to her feet, eyes blazing.

  “Ladies, please,” the captain pleaded.

  “All contestants were supposed to stay in the upstairs salon for the group photo,” Bodelle scolded. “Instead you staggered out to the deck—I watched you. You probably climbed up on the railing like that girl in the Titanic movie!”

  “I was pushed off the fuckin’ boat!” Sophie looked as though she were seconds away from doing the same thing to Bodelle.

  Bodelle’s lips pursed. “I expect the police will be waiting when we dock. I’ll ask them to take a blood alcohol sample.”

  “Mama.” Channing came up to Bodelle and pulled her away. “Mama, come on—let’s go in the salon and chill, okay?”

  Bodelle whirled on her. “Don’t you tell me what to do. This is all your—!”

  Bodelle clamped her mouth shut. Something urgent and unspoken passed between mother and daughter. Bodelle’s shoulders slumped. She sniffed. “I can see I’m not wanted here. The rest of you can cosset little Miss Underage Drinking. I’m used to not being appreciated. Does anyone ever bother to say thank you for everything I’ve done for this town, working my fingers to the bone, slaving and sacrificing? Of course not!”

  Face rigid, Bodelle shoved her way through the crowd and disappeared into the downstairs salon. Channing tried to put an arm around Sophie. “I’m sorry about that. You have to understand that my mom’s pretty stressed out right now—”

  “She’s stressed out?” Sophie wrenched away from Channing. “Well, somebody tried to kill me. I almost freaking d-drowned!” She started to cry. “I would have drowned if that big guy hadn’t jumped in and saved me.”

  Where was the big guy? How fickle and fleeting is glory—the cell phone sharks had been so focused on the beauty queen they’d forgotten about Ben. Mazie found him in the second-floor salon, sitting at the bar, still in his wet clothes but shrouded in a blanket, a tumbler of Scotch in front of him.

  “You were amazing,” Mazie said, coming up and kissing him lightly.

  “Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?” He smiled, looking pleased with himself. “Another day, another damsel in distress.”

  “You should get those wet clothes off.”

  “You first,” he said; obviously his libido hadn’t been drenched.

  Pulling her close, trapping her between his thighs, Ben kissed her, and between them they were producing so much heat that Ben’s clothes should have dried from the inside out. Maybe they could barricade the salon doors, Mazie thought wildly, just long enough to—

  But no. People began drifting into the salon. The captain made his way over, congratulated Ben on his quick thinking and successful rescue, and asked him to come down to the bottom deck, where he could take off his wet things and the crew would wash and dry them while Ben enjoyed drinks on the house.

  Twenty minutes later the boat docked in Quail Hollow. Sophie was carried off as soon as the gangplank was lowered and taken to a waiting ambulance. Her parents had already been notified and her mother ran up to Sophie,
sobbing. Having recovered from the initial shock, Sophie was now milking her near-drowning for all it was worth.

  People straggled off the boat, pulling up their hoods against the rain, which had become a steady downpour. Not wanting to cause a gangplank bottleneck in her Hindenburg of a dress, Mazie waited up on the second deck, watching the scene unfold below. The moment Bodelle set foot on the dock, Sophie’s mother marched up to her.

  “We’re pulling Sophie out,” Mrs. Olson snarled. “What kind of pageant are you running, allowing murderers to run around shoving girls off boats?!”

  Bodelle got right back into the woman’s face. “No one shoved your daughter. Your daughter got so drunk she fell off the boat.”

  “Sophie doesn’t drink,” her mother gritted out.

  “Oh, yes she does. I suggest that you supervise your daughter more closely.”

  “Maybe you ought to supervise yours—if half of what I hear is true!”

  Sophie’s dad came up and dragged his wife away and Channing tugged Bodelle away. The Olsons drove off behind the ambulance and the Blumquists drove off in the opposite direction. Most of the passengers had debarked by now and Mazie decided that it was safe for her to leave too. She planned to hike over to the garage and retrieve Scully’s truck, then drive back here to pick up Ben, whose things ought to be dry by then. After that they’d head home and finish the evening in his bedroom.

  “Mazie?” someone called.

  She looked over the balcony. Tabitha Tritt-Shimmel stood on the deck below, gazing up at her with icy eyes. “We need you down in the first-floor salon.”

  Curious, Mazie made her way down to the salon, where the remaining beauty queens stood. There was a chilly vibe in the air and Mazie didn’t like the way the other women eyed her when she entered.

  Ashley Dorfmann spoke up. “We want to know where you were when Sophie was shoved off the boat.”

  Mazie stared around at the assembled queens. “You really think she was shoved?”

  “I for one believe Sophie,” said Gretchen Wuntz.

  “Me too,” said Ashley.

  “All of us were accounted for except you,” Tabitha said, her red sequined dress pulsing light like a disco ball. “Where were you when the group photo was being taken? Channing went off to find you, then Sophie ran out on the deck because she had to puke.”

  “So she was drunk,” Mazie said.

  “Shitfaced,” Rosie Martinez said.

  “Toasted as a marshmallow.” Darlene Krumke shook her head. “I would have made Sophie stop if I’d known she was getting hammered, but by the time I realized what was happening she was already pretty far gone.”

  “Never mind about that,” Tabitha snapped. “What I want to know, Maguire, is whether you were the one who pushed Sophie.” She poked a finger in Mazie’s chest. On the toasted marshmallow scale, Tabitha herself was at the blackened-and-about-to-fall-off-the-stick-into-the-fire level.

  Tabitha jabbed her again. “You and Sophie were tied for first place. I think you decided you’d eliminate the competition.”

  “You think I tried to drown Sophie so I could win the stupid pageant?”

  “Yeah.” Poke. “I do.” Poke.

  Mazie hated being poked. In prison you stopped pokers by dislocating their fingers. All it took was a simple twist, and the poker never poked you again. Mazie was so-o-o tempted. But she restrained herself, merely knocking Tabitha’s hand away.

  Holly darted between them. “Mazie didn’t do it.”

  “How do you know?” demanded Ashley, who would probably grow up to have a satisfying career as the person who pulls the switch on the electric chair. “She’s a criminal. Human life means nothing to her!”

  “The rules,” Gretchen Wuntz shrilled. “The rules say you have to participate in the group photo. Mazie ought to be disqualified on that basis alone—”

  “Be quiet, Gretchen,” snapped Tabitha. “So where were you, Maguire?”

  This was one of those times when a pantomime was worth a thousand words. “Holly,” Mazie said. “Do me a favor? Stand over by that table with your back to me, okay? Lean over, like you’re at a railing.”

  “Gotcha.” Holly assumed the position. Mazie tiptoed up behind her. Her skirt rustled, her pantalettes made a papery noise, and the yellow zeppelin bumped the back of Holly’s legs while Mazie was still three feet away from her.

  Holly giggled. “Mazie couldn’t sneak up on anybody in that thing. That dress is like those bells lepers used to have to ring.”

  “Mazie was with me,” said Ben Labeck, emerging from the men’s head.

  Eyes popped, mouths fell open, hands flew to hearts. Ben was bare-chested, his hair was wet and spiky, and he was wearing only a Coulee Queen blanket sarong style around his waist. The raw-looking scar on his forehead only emphasized his masculinity. Here was a buccaneer who’d just boarded the ship and was hunting for women to plunder.

  “We were in the life jacket locker,” Labeck said. “Canoodling,” he added with a piratical smile.

  “Canoodling,” Darlene Krumke breathed, waving an imaginary fan across her chest. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  Ben waggled his eyebrows. “Yes, it does. And Mazie is a world-class canoodler.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  How was it that all those women in Gone with the Wind ran around with half-naked bosoms and didn’t catch their deaths of pneumonia? Mazie wondered. She was freezing as she hurried along in the drizzly dark under the shelter of her weenie parasol, which was as much use as a snow shovel in an avalanche.

  Ben hadn’t wanted her to leave the boat without him. “It could be dangerous,” he’d said. Which was ridiculous. This was her hometown, for goodness sake, not the rougher side of Milwaukee. The only danger she was in was having the wind pick her up by the hoops and sail her over the rooftops like a big yellow box kite. It would only take her ten minutes to run over to the garage, retrieve the truck, and then return to the boat to pluck Ben out of the beauty queens’ clutches before they started asking him for personal canoodling lessons.

  Waiting until Ben was distracted, Mazie had slipped off the boat. But she hadn’t realized that the familiar streets would be so empty, the shops would all be closed down, and the rain would be coming down in torrents. By the time she got to the garage she was soaked to the bone. It was hours past closing time and the building was dark and deserted. She hoped Buzzy had remembered to leave the back door unlocked. He had! Staggering inside, she wrung water out of her skirt, shook rain off her parasol, then furled the useless thing and hooked it to the little loop at the gown’s waist.

  “Hello?” Mazie called, her voice echoing eerily in the huge, dome-ceilinged space. Creepy. She couldn’t wait to get out of here. Where was Scully’s truck? As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she could pick out the vehicles, dim light gleaming on their metal surfaces. She groped along the wall for a light switch. But—funny thing about light switches—you could never find them in the dark.

  A sound came from close by, a faint voice. It made her jump—she’d thought she was alone here. Trying to lock in on it, Mazie took a few cautious steps, her soaked shoes sclupping on the floor like suction-tipped darts.

  The voice was more distinct now. Edging around a corner, she saw that the sound was coming from the Winnebago camper trailer parked near the garage office. It was about fifteen feet long, toaster-shaped, with rounded corners and shiny aluminum walls, probably dating from the 1950s. It was small and cute and looked like a character in a Disney cartoon: Winnie the Winnebago Has an Adventure! This must be the camper purchased to serve as living quarters for Buzzy, Mazie recalled—the one Channing and Derek had turned into their personal party room.

  She figured someone was in there now, because flickering light showed through the closed window blinds and it was obvious that the voice—which was now singing—was coming from a TV set. The trailer’s door was open, spilling out a rectangle of light, and as she moved closer, Mazie could see inside. Th
ere was a cramped kitchen containing a hobbit-sized sink, a hot plate, and a minifridge. A foldout table sat between two upholstered benches way too narrow to accommodate modern-day butts. Everything looked chipped, dingy, and flyspecked. A jar of marshmallow spread, a container of peanut butter, and a loaf of bread sat out on the counter, along with a mug of what smelled like cocoa. Comfort food. For whose comfort? Suddenly Mazie’s stomach made a noise like a rooting piglet. She hadn’t eaten on the cruise boat and she was starving.

  Which made her not responsible for what happened next. Cocoa was Mazie’s kryptonite. Against her will, the cocoa fumes pulled her into the trailer. Her skirt snagged in the doorway, but she squashed down the hoops and shoved through, feeling like Goldilocks invading the three bears’ cottage. She wasn’t going to eat anything; she just wanted to breathe in the aroma of the chocolate.

  After one glorious inhalation, Mazie turned to survey the rest of the trailer. Everything was cunningly constructed to make maximum use of every square inch. A built-in sofa doubled as a bed, a built-in coffee table had cutouts for cups, and a bathroom no bigger than an airplane toilet was squeezed into the rear. What little space remained was taken up by a high-backed Queen Anne chair that obviously wasn’t part of the trailer’s original equipment.

  The chair faced toward a TV set, an older, pre-plasma model that was tuned to a reality show. At first she thought it was one of those American Idol knockoffs. A woman was standing onstage, singing “I Will Always Love You.” Ticket to Clichésville, Mazie thought, waiting for her to get hooted off. The performer was tall and pretty, with long blonde hair. She wore a glittery gown with a plunging neckline. She looked familiar, and for a second Mazie thought she was some pop star whose face was always plastered across the tabloids. Then she recognized the singer.