The locals know that the best Mexican restaurants are the ones that would make tourists raise their eyebrows. From the outside, they look seedy as hell, but these are the mom-and-pop establishments that dish out a Mexican plate how it’s supposed to be.
I took Maddie to my favorite hole-in-the-wall, and we sat at a tiny table for two right by the window. The décor of the tiny restaurant changes with the season, and that day they had a paper chain of bright colored birds draped from one end of the place to the other. I ordered a deluxe Mexican plate, which consists of two enchiladas, rice, beans, a taco and a chalupa, and homemade flour tortillas on the side. Maddie ordered a hamburger.
“A hamburger? I’ve eaten here a thousand times and not once have I ordered a hamburger,” I told her.
“Mexican restaurants always have good burgers.”
That was news to me, but sure enough, it looked pretty good when it came. I ate everything on my plate then sopped up the sauce with two homemade flour tortillas, while we discussed strategy for Maddie’s case.
It was obvious that her boss wasn’t going to go easy on her. Larry was an asshole, and that was all there was to it. I just hoped he didn’t turn out to be a dangerous asshole. From what I’d heard on the phone, he sounded like he could play dirty. And while I wasn’t worried about beating him in a courtroom, I didn’t want to have to worry about Maddie’s safety.
“Do you think he’d ever physically hurt you?”
“I don’t think so. He’s the worst control freak I’ve ever met. He doesn’t like his subordinates to talk to any of his superiors, even in casual conversation. Almost like he’s paranoid that we’re going over his head or something. He’s definitely weird . . . but I’m not scared of him, put it that way.”
I gave Maddie a micro-cassette recorder to take back to the office with her and told her to try to record any conversations when Larry came into her office like he had done that morning. She was in much better spirits when I dropped her back off at Datacare. I, on the other hand, was in no shape for work. Eat that much Mexican food for lunch and you realize why Mexicans take a mid-day siesta. Their food hits you like a sleeping pill. I decided to go home early and relax by my pool.
It was a beautiful day without a cloud in the sky, and I had just pulled into my driveway when Landra came across the street and met me at my car.
“Hi, Sam.” She was all dressed up in a black suit with a short skirt that showed off her legs and a matching jacket with a tight white shirt underneath. She had done something to her hair to make it look really full and it had this messy, sexy look, like bed-head. She looked damn good and I realized I had missed her.
“Where have you been?” I said, looking her up and down and motioning to her outfit.
“Working on funding for the shelter. Have you missed me?”
“Honestly? No.”
“You’re such a liar. I can tell by the smile on your face that you’re glad to see me.”
“You didn’t ask if I was glad to see you. You asked if I missed you.”
“Yeah, but you missed me and you’re glad to see me.”
“Don’t you have some place you need to be?” I started off towards my mailbox and Landra followed beside me.
“Yeah, but I’ve got a couple of minutes. Are we still on for tomorrow?”
I acted like I had no idea what she was talking about. “What do you mean? What’s tomorrow?”
She took my arm and pulled me to a stop. “The party! It’s tomorrow night. You said you’d take me!”
I let a couple of seconds tick off like I was trying to remember, then I started laughing. “Gotcha!”
She slugged me in the chest. “Jerk. What are you doing home so early, anyway?”
“I didn’t feel like working. What time should I pick you up tomorrow?”
“How about 7:00 o’clock?”
“Seven it is. I’m looking forward to it,” I told her.
Landra’s face lit up. “You are?”
I held my fingers about a millimeter apart. “Just a little.”
She laughed and I really wanted to kiss her again – and I didn’t want to wait until our date.
“Me too,” she said. She took my hand and squeezed it, then she leaned in and gave me a quick kiss on the lips. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I pulled her back to me and hooked my arm around her neck and kissed her again, and it turned into what I’ve come to refer to as the mailbox kiss. It was slow and intense, with neither of us making any effort to bring it to a conclusion. We were right out there by the street and Landra had her arms wrapped around my waist and her body was pressed up right against mine. I was totally engrossed in the kiss, unaware of anything going on around us.
Well, I guess she leaned against me a little too hard, and somehow I lost my balance. We fell back against the mailbox, and the damn thing came completely off its post and crashed into the street. The sound of the metal box hitting the asphalt was deafening, alerting the neighborhood that something was going down. I fell and landed on my butt in the grass and Landra landed on top of me, and within seconds, neighbors came running like ants from every direction.
I was laughing so hard I could barely talk. “Are you okay?” I asked Landra.
“Yeah, are you?”
“I’m fine. Damn you’re heavy!” She was still lying on top of me, laughing and making no effort to get off.
“I am not!” she said insulted. She rolled off and sat in the grass, and I sat up and started picking leaves and grass out of her hair. We were both still laughing when Mrs. Howard arrived with a worried expression on her face, followed shortly thereafter by Andy and Verna, and two neighbors I’d never met. I wondered how much of the show they’d caught.
“Are you two okay?” Andy called out.
“We’re fine,” I said, getting to my feet and helping Landra up. If she was embarrassed, she didn’t show it.
“Hi Andy, Verna,” Landra called out. I dusted her off in a couple of spots and picked some more leaves out of her hair. If the neighbors hadn’t been there, I would have picked up right where we’d left off.
“Did you see how she was all over me?” I asked the group.
Landra’s eyes got real big and she opened her mouth like she was going to say something, but she slugged me instead. The neighbors were all smiles. They were obviously happy about the prospect of a romance between the neighborhood darling and the new neighbor.
I picked the mailbox up out of the street and held it upside down, looking for the bolt that held it to the post, but it wasn’t there. I was looking on the ground close to where the mailbox had landed, when Landra tapped me on the shoulder. She took my hand and placed the bolt in it, then folded my fingers closed.
“Wanna screw?” she asked, with a big smile on her face.
“More than anything,” I told her.
Landra laughed. “I’ve got to get out of here before I lose my job,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“See ya tomorrow,” I said, still laughing.
I was keenly aware of the neighbors watching me watch her cross the street. She got in her car and backed into the street, and pulled up beside me with her window down.
“Bye, Sam.”
“Goodbye, Landra.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon being lazy. The truth was, I was having a hard time getting Landra out of my mind. I kept replaying the mailbox kiss in my head, and I could just imagine how it must have looked to the neighbors. Not that I cared one way or the other what they thought. If I’d witnessed something like that, I would have laughed my ass off. They were all way too polite to do that.
I had just come in from sitting by my pool when my doorbell rang and I opened the door to find Maddie, Oliver and the baby on my front porch.
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Maddie asked. She was still in her work clothes.
The baby was remarkably clean, so I invited them inside. “Can I get you something to drink?
”
She and Oliver spoke at the same time. “No, we’re fine,” Maddie said.
“I’m so thirsty,” Oliver said dramatically. “I’m 150 miles thirsty.”
“Wow. Then we better get you something to drink,” I told him. “You want a beer?”
Oliver laughed. “Kids don’t drink beer. May I have some milk please?”
I find that a kid’s manners say a lot about his parents, and the more time I spent with Oliver, the higher Maddie rose on my parent-rating scale. I poured him a glass of milk and handed it to him and he drank it down on the spot, then set his glass down by the sink.
“I’m really hungry too,” Oliver said, but this time Maddie protested.
“It’s okay,” I told her. I looked at Oliver, “What are you hungry for?”
He seemed to be thinking really hard about it. “What do you have?” he finally asked.
I walked him to my pantry but he was too short to see what was up there, so I picked him up to let him have a look. He draped his arm around my neck while he took his time and scoped everything out, then he pointed to the Oreos.
“Can I have some of those?”
“Grab em,” I told him.
He took the package and clutched them to his chest, then he cupped his little hand over my ear, and why he whispered I don’t know, but he said, “When I was little I had these crunched up on my birthday cake.”
I carried him to the back room and set him down at the table. He took four or five cookies out of the package and stacked them on the table, then he took the top one, pulled it apart, and scraped off the middle with his front teeth. He handed me the outside part when he was finished. “We can share these. You can have this part.”
“You licked all over it!”
“No I didn’t. I did it with my teeth.”
As much as I liked the kid, I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. “Let’s give it to your mom.”
“Gee, thanks,” Maddie said. She had let the baby down and he was crawling all over my back room. I turned on the TV for Oliver, and Maddie and I took a seat on the couch on the other side of the room.
“What’s up?” I asked her.
Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t think I can handle working there any more, but I can’t afford to quit.”
“Damn it, Maddie. You can’t cry every time something happens. Now take a deep breath and stop crying.”
She took a couple of deep breaths, and when her bottom lip finally quit quivering, I continued. “Did something happen after you got back from lunch today?”
“No.”
“Then what brought this on?”
“It’s just the whole thing. The comment about my husband’s accident really got to me.” She looked at me and I could tell she was fighting not to cry. “How long is it going to take the EEOC to investigate my charge?”
“I don’t know. It could take a while. We could agree to mediate if Datacare did, but I’d rather take them to court. I think you’d end up with a lot more money if we did that.”
“I don’t know how long I can take it.”
“Deal with it as long as you can, and if you’re forced to quit, we’ll allege it was a constructive discharge. If it comes to that, you can work for me, so you’re not going to be out on the street. You do know how to type, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” she said, attempting to smile.
“One more thing. You need to change your hairstyle.”
“I like my hairstyle.”
I shook my head. “It’s got to go, Maddie. It makes you look like a slut and we don’t want a jury thinking that you were asking for whatever you got. And don’t you dare start crying on me again,” I warned.
“I’m not!” She looked away and was quiet for a minute, then she looked back over at me. “If I didn’t know that you were trying to help me, I’d think you were a real prick.”
“I am real prick.” I pointed to her hair. “The sooner the better.”
The baby came crawling over and pulled himself up on my leg and I shooed him over to Maddie.
“Anything else?” I asked her.
“It might be nothing, but I overheard Larry talking to his supervisor today . . . something about a tape. When I walked in the room, they stopped talking and I got the feeling they had been talking about me.”
“Do you think it was about the tape recorder I gave you?”
“I don’t see how they’d know about it.”
I could tell something was gnawing at her. “Tell me what you’re thinking, Maddie.”
She lowered her voice. “What if he has it on tape. The time we had sex.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. They just looked guilty when I walked in today. It’s just a gut feeling.”
“I think you’re reading too much into it, and I think you’re worrying about nothing.”
“You’re probably right.” Maddie got up off the couch and picked up the baby, then walked over to where Oliver was watching TV. “Let’s go home baby.”
An Oreo-faced Oliver looked at Maddie. “Mom, your face looks like this,” he said, and he made his lips into a thin line that looked exactly like Maddie’s.
Maddie smiled at him. “Mommy’s a little upset sweetie, but not at you.”
“Okay,” Oliver said happily. He came over and took my hand and held it as I walked them to the door.
When we got outside I pulled him aside and knelt down so that we were eye level. “You have a really nice mom. You be extra nice to her, okay?” I told him.
“Okay, Samuel,” he said smiling. He wrapped his arms around my neck and hugged me, then he ran off and joined Maddie.
“Thanks, Samuel,” Maddie said.
“Don’t thank me yet. I haven’t done anything.”
Chapter 4
It was no coincidence that Mrs. Howard and the Johnses were standing out by Mrs. Howard’s mailbox chatting when I left to pick up Landra for our date. I swear, they had been out there just waiting for me to leave. And not only did all three of them stare openly from the minute I stepped out my door, but they made no attempt to hide the fact that they were talking about me. If they had pointed and laughed, it wouldn’t have been more obvious. But then, after the mailbox kiss, who could blame them. It was probably as much excitement as the neighborhood had seen in years. I waved without speaking, and they all smiled and called out hello, then went back to talking about me.
I arrived at Landra’s house promptly at 7:00 o’clock, and she met me at the door before I had a chance to knock.
“Sara called and told me you were on your way.”
“You’re kidding!” I said in disbelief.
Landra laughed. “Don’t be mad. She doesn’t have a lot of excitement in her life. Let her enjoy herself.” She turned her back to me in the doorway. “Can you do this button?”
The dress was backless and one little button at the neck had sole responsibility of holding up the top. It was a little rhinestone button shaped like a rose, nestled in an antique-looking setting. It was more like a piece of jewelry than a button, like a work of art, but the buttonhole was too small and it was a bitch to get the damn thing fastened. I buttoned her up and stepped inside in the light and checked out Landra in her evening attire and forgot all about my nosy neighbors. “Damn,” I said involuntarily. She looked like a goddess. She was wearing a slim-fitting, long, sleeveless black dress, slit high up the middle in the front. Her 4-inch heels brought her within a couple of inches from my six feet so we were practically eye level. She was wearing make-up and she had lined her eyes in black, and her hair was a cascade of these long, loose, ringlet curls all over the place. The effect was so stunning that I couldn’t help myself and I had to reach out and touch her hair. It was so soft. I pulled on a curl and when I let go it bounced right back into shape like a little spring.
“Awesome hair!” I stood back and looked her over from head to toe. There was no way I’d be able to keep my hands off of her with h
er looking like that. Shit, I wanted to bite her neck just looking at her. And she smelled good too. “Damn you look good, Landra.”
“Thanks.” She hugged me, which only made matters worse. “You look great, Sam.” She checked me out in that way that she had. “Come in. I want to show you my house.” She took my hand and led me through her house to her living room. “This is what I want to do to your back room.”
I looked around the room. She had painted big stones on all four walls and it looked incredible. “You did this?”
“Yeah. Do you like it?”
“Hell yes! When can you do mine?”
Landra clapped her hands like a little kid. “Maybe I could start on Sunday,” she said smiling. We were standing there right next to each other and I knew I needed to get out of there before we ended up kissing again. She must have read my mind.
“I’d love to kiss you right now, but I’m afraid where it might lead,” she said.
On the contrary, she didn’t look like she was afraid of anything. She was staring into my eyes, just daring me to kiss her.
“Oh, I can tell you exactly where it would lead. And it wouldn’t be to your party.” I was keeping my hands to myself, trying not to tempt fate, but she was so close and she smelled so good. I’d been wanting to run my hand down her back since I’d walked in the door and finally the temptation got to be too much. I reached my hand behind her and ran my fingers across her bare skin and immediately I knew I’d gone too far. She’d been just waiting to ambush me. She moved closer and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her body up against mine and she brought her mouth to mine and kissed me really softly. She was playing with me again. It was a cat and mouse game, and I was definitely the mouse.
She pulled back from me and looked me in the eye and smiled. “You’re gonna break my heart, aren’t you?”
There it was again. Just when I thought I had her pegged, she’d come out with an outrageous comment just like that one. Suddenly she seemed vulnerable when a second earlier she was a predator.
Advice of Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 1) Page 5
