"Yes," Maddie murmured. "You certainly do, after this afternoon. I'm sorry you heard everything that you did. I lost my temper and I said things that I never should have."
Tracey shrugged and, still staring somewhere past her mother, said, "I'm cool with it."
"Are you, honey? I don't see how you can be," Maddie admitted. "It's an awful lot for a kid to have to deal with. I guess what I'm saying is, I really, really want us to start over, beginning today, because Mr. Hawke is going to be a part of my life now. ..."
At the mention of his name, the look in Tracey's eyes became even more blank, if possible. She looked as if she'd been abducted into an alien cult.
Maddie had to force herself to stagger forward with the burden of her apology. "I loved him very much back when I was in college," she said softly, "and now I care for him again."
"Still, you mean!" Tracey said, flashing her mother a look of fury. But in a typical lightning shift of mood, she went back at once to being a zombie again.
"Okay, yes. Still," said Maddie, aware now that her daughter understood the distinction.
"Even though he did burn down a building," Tracey added venomously.
"He wasn't the one who started the fire," Maddie said, wondering when that bit of history had leaked out. She had a vague idea that her mother had shouted something about it during their argument, but the whole exchange was still a blur in her mind.
She said, "Mr. Hawke made a huge mistake in college, and he and I made a pretty dumb one last night. It just goes to show that you're never too old to use poor judgment. Anyway, I have a peace proposal. Would you like to hear it?"
Maddie saw a flicker of interest in Tracey as she turned her head a fractional amount in her direction.
"Okay, here goes. You think that I was being too hard on Kevin, and I think that you're not very inclined to like Mr. Hawke. Am I right?"
No answer, just a resounding snort.
"I'll take that as a yes," Maddie said dryly. "Okay. Suppose I agree to put you and Kevin on probation. He—and his brother, and Julie, whatever—can come here, or I'll drive you all to a show or the mall or an event we agree on. I'll be able to look him over a little more thoroughly, and we'll take it from there. In return, all I ask is—"
She wanted to say, "That you please not spit in Mr. Hawke's face when he shows up here," but she confined herself to saying, ' 'That you give Mr. Hawke the same chance that I give Kevin."
She was surprised when Tracey didn't jump up and down with joy. This was Kevin they were talking about.
"This isn't something I have to do, honey," she prompted. "After all, I'm still bigger than you are, plus don't forget I've got the law on my side," she added lightly.
She waited and watched as her daughter's gaze slowly re-focused from the lilac bush to her bare feet.
"Well ... okay," Tracey said, raking her dusky blonde hair away from her face. "If that's—no!" she cried, her voice going from thoughtful to shrill in a heartbeat. "No, that's not what I want!"
"Not what you want?" asked Maddie, blinking. "What do you want?"
"I don't know! I don't know!"
Immediately Maddie felt guilty of bribery. Had she done the wrong thing? Had she dangled Kevin like a bone before her daughter, trying to distract her while she indulged her own wild yearnings?
"Tracey, I was trying to be fair, that's all," Maddie said.
She was trying to be fair, damn it! But maybe the whole point of being a parent was that you couldn't be fair, shouldn't be fair. She just didn't know anymore.
Upset though she was, Tracey glanced at her watch. The gesture puzzled Maddie. "Oh dear, am I wrecking your schedule?" she asked with mild irony.
"No! No, I was just sitting here anyway. Okay, I'll do what you ... what you said. I'll give Mr. Hawke a chance." She seemed to be reading from a script that only she could see.
"Well ... good," Maddie said, still puzzled. "And we're both going to be on our best behavior. Agreed?"
"Uh-huh."
The girl seemed curiously detached from the conversation.
"Tracey? Is something else bothering you?"
"No, nothing."
"Because now would be a really good time to talk about it. I'm in a negotiating mood," Maddie said with a smile.
The smile that she got in return seemed a little preoccupied, which was understandable. Maddie had thrown a curve ball that had sailed right past her daughter's bat. It was time to leave Tracey alone so that she could think about all that her mother had said.
Maddie stood up to leave, then impulsively bent over to give her daughter a quick hug, which she accepted with less than her usual squeamishness.
"Supper will be in half an hour," Maddie said, and then she left, sending the chimes on one last fling of merriment.
Back in the house, Claire had poured Maddie her tea and placed a saucer over the cup. "How'd it go?" she asked as Maddie sank into a chair across from her.
"Okay, I guess," Maddie said thoughtfully. "But somehow Tracey seemed to act, I don't know—guilty."
"She was just embarrassed."
"I suppose. Boy. That conversation would've been a heck of a lot easier ten years from now."
Claire laughed and said, "Ten years from now, you wouldn't have been guilty of a roll in the sand on the town beach."
"You're right," said Maddie, sipping her tea, now lukewarm. She decided to zap the brew in the microwave for a few seconds. "Actually," she said after she punched in the command, "you're not right. Ten years from now I could see us pulling the same stunt all over again."
"Maddie! Is it that serious between you?"
"Let me think about that," Maddie said with mock gravity as she pulled out her tea. "Uh-huh." She grinned and said, "Doesn't it show?"
The phone rang. Maddie looked around and said, "Who took the cordless?" and ended up answering the phone on the wall.
Dan's voice sounded sleep-filled and intimate and sent Maddie into an instant state of arousal. She felt her cheeks flush from the sheer pleasure of her reaction. "Hey-y," she said in a voice as low and intimate as his. "You're up."
"Up, standing, call it what you like," he quipped. "I saw you moving around at the window. How's everything in your neck of the woods?"
"Oh-h-h, you'd be surprised, I think."
"Can't talk?"
"Not about that. Oh, but I can tell you that Detective Bailey called. Why didn't you tell me you'd contacted him?" she asked.
"For one thing, I thought he might just blow off my suggestion," Dan admitted. "But he didn't; he actually ran the plates again and then called me back to thank me. I was impressed. He's a good man."
"Funny, I just heard that expression used about you," she murmured, twisting the phone cord absently around her finger. She wandered back to the window above the sink and gazed out at the lighthouse. So close. So far.
Dan's voice became huskier. "Maddie, I wanted you in my bed when I woke up just now. I wanted you big time. This is crazy. We should be together now. When can I see you? Find an excuse. Use the sugar excuse. That one works."
She laughed, giddy and confident and in love. She wanted to tease him, to talk dirty, to make him climb the walls of the lighthouse with frustration.
And only then show up with the empty sugarbowl in her hand. "That's not a bad idea. I may do it," she said cryptically. She glanced over her shoulder. Claire, considerate Claire, was trying to top off her tea and get out of the kitchen as fast as she could.
"Oh, hell!" Dan said suddenly. "I see Norah and Joan driving up to your house. Don't let 'em in, don't let 'em in; you'll never get rid of 'em. Oh, God, I can't believe this," he said with a groan. "I may as well be in love with the old woman who lived in a shoe."
Maddie skipped right over the old woman part of his sentence and homed in on the "in love with" part. "You haven't told me that lately," she murmured.
There was a pause.
"I haven't said I love you? There's something drastically screwed up about
this courtship, in that case. If we could just—I love you, dammit—if we could just get past all the friends and worthy causes and wounded creatures and mothers and daughters, not to mention the ex-husbands and dogged detectives and ... Maddie, this is nuts! I love you, for God's sake. I've loved you for twenty years. When do we get to go out on our first freaking date?''
Car horn beeping, doors slamming, Norah calling out hellos all over the place, Joan and Claire in happy talk about babies and big bellies—Rosedale had suddenly turned into a noisy madhouse and a perfect example of what Dan meant. And meanwhile Tracey was hiding in the garden, mulling over Maddie's explanation, and Sarah was hiding in Sudbury, hoping to avoid Maddie's explanation, and Maddie still didn't have a clue where the godforsaken address book was. Dan was right: Maddie did live in a shoe.
Still clutching the phone as Dan tried to nail down a time when they could meet, Maddie took the yellow bag of Domino sugar out of the cupboard above the stove and threw it in back of the one above the fridge, then emptied the sugar bowl into the garbage can and put the empty bowl on the table just in time to wave hi to Norah and Joan.
She turned her back to them and whispered, "Dan? Ten minutes," then swung around, hung up the phone, and smiled radiantly at her impromptu visitors.
Norah, dressed in a black T-shirt and form-fitting pants and decked out in clunky gold jewelry, said, ''Joannie wanted to go out for supper and we decided to shanghai you into coming along. You too, Claire. Come on; it'll be fun to get away from George for a couple of hours."
But Joan lifted her nose and sniffed the air. "We're too late; their dinner's in the oven."
Norah said, "For goodness' sake, Joan, it's a roast, not a soufflé; it'll keep for sandwiches." "It might be an expensive cut," Joan argued.
"What difference does it make?" said Norah exasperatedly. "The point is to go out and have a good time."
"You're welcome to join us," said Claire. "There's plenty of food."
"Oh, but if they want to go out and have a good time. ..." Maddie argued.
"We can have a good time here," Joan said in an oddly poignant voice. "It's cozy. I like Maddie's kitchen."
"No, this is entirely too ... domestic," said Norah, looking around her with a visible shudder. She frowned fiercely at Maddie, apparently trying to send her a signal of some kind. "Besides, George will be here. He's a male. It alters the chemistry."
Claire explained that her husband wouldn't be back until the next day, at which point Tracey came in and was apprehended by Norah, who tried to make her join them too. Tracey seemed horrified by the thought, which prompted her Aunt Claire to begin nudging Maddie out the door with assurances that Tracey would be perfectly fine staying home with her. Tracey said quickly, "That's a good idea, Mom. You go." And Norah said, "Finally! It's all settled. Maddie, put on some lipstick. Are you wearing that dress?"
The plan was not going according to plan.
In desperation Maddie blurted, "Wait! We're out of sugar!" and grabbed the bowl from the table. "I'll just go borrow some and then I'll feel better about leaving poor Claire in the lurch. I'll be right back."
"Maddie, don't be silly. I don't need any—"
Too late. Maddie was out the door and in her car, fleeing like an escaped convict, feeling terrified and exhilarated at the same time.
She had to see him, had to. If she didn't see him, hold him, hear him, she would go absolutely mad. She was wild, she was crazy—she was compensating for a lifetime of doing the right thing.
I did it! she realized as the lighthouse hove into view. She brought the Taurus to a skidding halt and jumped out, leaving the engine running and the car door open.
Dan must have been watching her getaway attempt. He was standing in the open doorway with a look on his face that was half amused, half amazed.
"Inside, inside!" she urged him, waving the sugar bowl as she rushed past him. "I only have two minutes!"
Grinning, he closed the door behind them, then took the bowl out of her hand and slapped it down on the hall table. "Two should do it," he said, taking her in his arms and giving her a kiss that she felt down to her toes.
"Oh, criminy," she whimpered, "oh, I love you, Dan; I can't go without you anymore." She returned kiss for kiss, moan for moan: both of them were breathless, frustrated, hot.
"No need ... no need ... to go without, love," he muttered distractedly. He hiked her dress up over her waist and tore at her underpants. "Two minutes ... ye gods ..."
He glanced around and said, "Couch!"
"Yes!" she said, holding her dress up and making a run for it. She pulled off her pants, then lay on the sofa, feeling scratchy polyester under her buns as she waited the few quick seconds it took for Dan to shuck his trousers and shorts.
He dropped on top of her, slipping into her at the same time that he kissed her savagely. She lifted herself toward him in a fierce lunge, causing herself pain, reveling in the sheer brute rawness of it. No foreplay here; it was sex on the run, quick, fast, wet—an act of primal mating, over as soon as begun, and it left them both panting and stunned.
In a husky, breathless voice he said in her ear, "Next time ... a bed, by God."
"Yes, next time," she said, wiggling out from under him, still dizzy from her orgasm. He hopped out of her way and she slid her underpants back on, then shimmied her dress back down and raked her hands through her unstyled hair.
"How do I look?" she asked, aware that it couldn't be good.
Dan just stood there, with an odd, strained look on his face.
"That bad?" she asked, embarrassed.
"Oh, my darling," he said, coming close and cradling her face in the palms of his hands. "Like a dream version of my recurring dream. I love you so very much."
He kissed her in a gentle, touching way, sending new shivers all through her, or maybe just keeping the old ones going. The desire to stay with him was so strong that Maddie scarcely heard the blaring horn of Norah's Mercedes, urging her back to Rosedale.
"I have to go," she moaned.
"Tell your family about us, then; tell them," he said as they walked to the front door together. He opened it and she stepped outside.
"It turns out I won't have to tell them," she admitted, trying to sound offhand about it. "The lady with the two terriers? She turned out to be Lillian Lebonowicz, a countess, no less, and a friend of my mother's. We've been outed."
She saw the frustration in his eyes turn to something else. Relief? "Oh boy. What did your mother say about that?"
"Not a whole lot. She's in Sudbury now, giving me the Amish treatment."
He shook his head and said, "That's too bad. What about the rest of your family?"
"Well, George was more than willing to drive my mother back to Sudbury. I'm taking that as a nay vote. As for Claire—Claire's like Switzerland. She sympathizes, but would never take a stand one way or the other."
"Tracey?''
Maddie winced and said, "I might be making some progress there, but it doesn't feel quite right. Well, thanks for the—"
"Shit! The sugar!" he said, grabbing the bowl and handing it to her.
Between them, she was the one with the presence of mind to notice that the bowl was still empty.
"Oh, geez," he said, taking it back from her. "Pray no one's watching this fiasco," he said on his way to the kitchen.
"Trust me, they're watching," she yelled after him.
He came back, after a too-long absence, with the bowl only a quarter full. "I had to empty some packets of Equal I found in the cupboard. I think my sister left them here, so they shouldn't be too old."
Maddie rolled her eyes and said, "This'd be funny if it weren't so pathetic."
"We're pathetic, Maddie," he said, his cheeks flushing with the realization. "Maybe I should just have it out once and for all with your family."
"Don't do that," she said quickly. "I'd be so humiliated. I'm not a child, Dan; you have to let me handle this. One way or another, they now understand what you
mean to me. And if my mother and brother don't accept that—so be it," she said stoically.
She searched his face for understanding. Except for a sister, he had no family of his own. Did he grasp what she was prepared to give up for him? Christmases and Easters and birthdays and babies, and all the joys and sorrows and history that bound a family together?
"I know," he whispered, answering her thoughts. "I know, and I love you the more for it. Call me when you can. I love you, Maddie. Keep me in your heart this time."
It was a plea, a scolding, a threat—it was all those things, and more. She gave him a sad, sweet smile and said, "This time, I will."
She turned and ran back to her car, its door wide open, its engine still running.
****
For all her reluctance, Maddie was glad she'd followed Norah's signal and let herself be hauled off to the restaurant, because as it turned out, Norah had found Joan in a deep melancholy when she dropped in on her that afternoon. Getting Joan out of the house had been the only solution that Norah could think of, but having her spend the evening in Maddie's cozy, sweet kitchen didn't seem like the right antidote.
So, voila: dinner at the Pink Fancy, a New England restaurant with a funky Caribbean decor. You couldn't help but smile at the over-the-top decorations, and that had been Norah's brilliant intention from the start. Fake palms, dried coconuts, fishing nets strung across the ceiling, posters of Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff, stuffed parrots, tanks of live tropical fish for viewing and live lobsters for eating, and a steel-drum band that insisted on playing "Yellow Bird" every third song, gave the place a charmingly hokey air. Not only that, but the food was supposed to be good.
They had settled in with their drinks when Joan excused herself to go to the ladies' room.
"I don't get it," Maddie said as soon as Joan was out of earshot. "She was in a fine mood when I saw her last."
"She's sick of being alone, that's all," said Norah with a shrug. "Personally, I think she should adopt."
"That's one solution," Maddie said, taken aback.
"Or maybe she just needs more sex."
"And there's another."
A Charmed Place Page 21
