MAD DOG AND ANNIE

by Virginia Kantra

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  Fireworks.

  Maddox shuddered. He wasn't there, in that Atlanta schoolyard. He was in Cutler. It was the Fourth of July. And there were some stupid kids with fireworks behind the cover of the trees who were due to get the lesson of their lives.

  He strode over the littered ground, armpits drenched in sweat, relief burning like rage in his belly.

  There were eight of them, a dozen if he counted the hangers-on: boys, ranging from almost ten to pushing fifteen, laughing and squatting by the stream that bounded the park. Maybe he'd get lucky. Maybe they were launching their rockets over the water, and he wouldn't have to spend the rest of the afternoon tramping through the pines and poison ivy to search for smoldering fires.

  The gurgling water and the boys' own noise covered the sound of his approach.

  "My turn."

  "I got it."

  A tall kid in a baseball cap pushed away the boy at his elbow. "Watch out. I'm gonna light it."

  "Don't," Maddox ordered from the top of the bank. The older boy swore, and the circle rippled like water. The underbrush crackled as somebody bolted, and another child, all legs and a flash of white T-shirt, jumped for the opposite side of the stream.

  "Stay there," Maddox warned. "Police."

  The jumper froze and then turned, white-faced and defiant. Terrified. Nine-year-old Mitchell Cross.

  Aw, hell. That made everything just perfect. Maddox glared at the sullen circle from under his hat brim. "You boys know you're breaking the law?"

  The tall kid balancing in the stream straightened slowly, not sure what to do with his height or his eyes or the rocket in his hands.

  "My dad says fireworks are legal now," he said, trying for cool.

  "Not these. Not in North Carolina. Not on public property, and never unsupervised. Hand 'em over."

  "But my dad said—"

  Maddox raised his eyebrows. "You want to involve him in this discussion? Maybe make an announcement over the PA?"

  The kid fidgeted. Folded. "No," he muttered.

  "Right. Turn out your pockets, I'll take what you've got. Now," he barked, and flushed the stiff and staffing boys into action.

  He watched stuff bounce on the rocks and get lost in the weeds: rockets and cherry bombs, mortar tubes and strips of firecrackers… It would take forever to collect.

  "Fine. Now get out of here. Not you," he added as Mitchell prepared to slink off with the rest. "You can help me pick up."

  The boy said something to his shoes.

  "What was that?"

  Mitchell's chin jerked up. "I said, you can't tell me what to do."

  Maddox sighed. "I can, you know. I'm bigger than you. I'm older than you. And I'm a police officer." He started down the bank, feeling his way along the rocks and ferns, and pulled a sample bag from his belt. "Here."

  Grudgingly, the boy took the bag and reached for one of the yellow tubes lying on the ground. "That doesn't make it right," he whispered.

  There was a kicker. This kid had a lifetime of somebody bigger and older and in authority throwing his weight around.

  Maddox pushed back his hat with one hand. "So, you figure this shouldn't be my call?"

  Mitchell stooped for another firecracker. "I wasn't doing anything wrong."

  "You weren't doing anything smart, either." He regarded the boy's bent back for a minute. "Let's say I didn't come along. Let's say you got to choose. Don't you figure your mother's got enough to deal with right now without worrying about taking you to the emergency room?"

  Mitchell's small hands clenched the evidence bag. Satisfied he'd made his point, Maddox turned his attention to the cleanup. They worked in silence and in the heat until the last bright yellow wrapper was retrieved from the rocks. Maddox took back the bag.

  "Thanks." When the kid made no move to run, Maddox lifted an eyebrow. "What?"

  Mitchell swallowed. "Are you going to tell her?"

  "Hey, I'm a cop, not a snitch." But the boy didn't smile, just stood there, shifting from foot to foot, a desperate earnestness in his eyes. Maddox thought back to age nine, when everything he did was a disappointment to the grown-ups in his life.

  "No," he said gently. "We don't want to worry your mom, remember? Just don't set off any more rockets, okay?"

  The boy's head nodded jerkily. "We were supposed to go," be said.

  "Go where?"

  "To see the fireworks. At the fairgrounds in Raleigh? Dad said we'd go."

  "So, are you?" Maddox asked, already feeling the answer in his gut.

  "No. I told Mom I didn't want to. We wouldn't get back till late, and she has to be at work in the morning."

  "That was real considerate of you."

  Mitchell looked at his shoes.

  Maddox tried again. "You're taking good care of your mother."

  It was a damn shame there was no one around to take care of the pair of them.

  * * *

  Ann sat in her backyard, watching the stars and the flames of the citronella candles she'd set around the porch, wishing she could coax Mitchell from his room. He was reading Droid Zone 12: The Undefended. It was a lousy end to a disappointing day, but her son insisted he was fine.

  Fine. She sighed. She wanted better than "fine" for Mitchell. She wanted better for herself. She felt itchy and restless in her own skin tonight, and it was more than the humidity or the mosquitoes.

  She raised her wet glass of tea to the broken moon. "Happy Independence Day," she whispered.

  The doorbell clunked from the front of the house, and her hand jerked and the tea jumped in the glass. Maybe Rob had changed his mind? But it was late, too late for the promised trip to Raleigh.

  She hurried through the back door and down the hall before Mitchell could come down from his room. She flipped on the porch light, glanced through the peephole, and felt her heart slam into her ribs.

  Maddox.

  She had watched him that afternoon at the park, looking hot and dark and competent in his uniform. He was showered now, and wearing a plain-necked T-shirt and shorts. His calves were thicker and hairier than they had been in high school. No socks. She felt a little prick inside her and looked away.

  Unhooking the chain, she opened the door. "What are you doing here?"

  His half smile faded at her abrupt tone. He held up a paper sack. "I brought something for Mitchell. Can I see him?"

  "He's upstairs. Reading."

  "Can you call him?"

  Ann frowned. It was late. She felt vulnerable in her quiet house, in her restless skin. But maybe a distraction was just what Mitchell needed.

  "All right." She moved to the bottom of the stairs. "Mitchell! You have a visitor."

  She stepped back awkwardly to admit him, feeling the narrow hall close around them. She was very conscious of his size and his legs and his eyes on her face until Mitchell thumped down the stairs.

  Her son stopped on the landing like a squirrel that had been marked by a hound. Ann bristled in defense.

  And then Maddox looked up, and some unspoken reassurance flowed between them, and Mitchell's shoulders relaxed. Ann relaxed, too.

  "You still up for fireworks?" Maddox said, speaking directly to the boy.

  Longing lit the nine-year-old's face, but he shook his head. "I can't go. It's too late."

  "Yeah. I just got off duty myself. But it's the Fourth. Got to have fireworks." Maddox dangled the bag.

  Ann felt a qualm. "Oh, I don't think—"

  "You said they were illegal," Mitchell interrupted.

  "When did you say that?" Ann asked.

  "Some kids got a little too patriotic at the park this afternoon," Maddox said easily. His look warned her to drop it there. "And it's true, they shouldn't have been shooting off rockets. Or mortars or firecrackers or anything that flies through the air and goes boom. But what we've got here are handheld and ground-based sparkling devices of no more than seventy-five grams of chemical compound. Perfectly legal."

  "But
aren't they still dangerous?" Ann protested.

  "Sometimes dangerous is fun," Maddox said deliberately. "You just need to take precautions."

  He held her gaze with his hooded eyes until her breath rushed out She was pretty sure he wasn't talking about fireworks anymore.

  But he did take precautions.

  He wet a patch of grass with the hose and put out a bucket of water. He told Ann where to sit, and Mitchell where to stand. And then he set off whistling, crackling explosions of color, shimmering fountains of light. Mitchell whooped with excitement as sparks flew up and rained down, dazzling, twinkling. Magic.

  Maddox lit wire sparklers, blue and green and gold, for them to hold, and the soft showers flowed over Ann's hand and never burned her at all. She leaned back on her elbows, watching her son dance and Maddox move, a black shadow against the glare. He set off showers and smoke snakes until the backyard was a blur of light and fog and Mitchell glowed.

  When, half an hour later, Ann came down from tucking her son into bed, she was glowing, too.

  "Thank you," she said sincerely. "He was really looking forward to— He really enjoyed the fireworks."

  "Why the hell didn't his father take him?" Maddox asked, and a little of her pleasure went out, like the sparks on the damp grass.

  "Rob was annoyed with me," she confessed. "This morning he offered to give me a lift to some dance at the club, and when I said no, he—"

  "Took it out on the kid," Maddox finished grimly.

  She shrugged. It was true. "Anyway, it was nice of you to make it up to him."

  He sat on her porch steps, solid and warm, like a rock breathing absorbed heat into the night. His legs took up a lot of room. "It wasn't much."

  She skirted his knees to sit down gingerly beside him. "It was wonderful. And thoughtful."

  He made a disgusted sound. "Jeez, you're easy."

  She stiffened with offense. "Excuse me?"

  "You're too trusting. You ever think maybe I didn't stop by just to light sparklers for the kid?"

  "Then why did you come?"

  His deep voice reverberated, making her shiver. "Maybe I want to see if I can light you up, too."

  Her heart thumped. She twisted her hands together in her lap. "Are you talking about…?"

  "Sex. Yeah."

  She wrenched her head to glance at the upstairs windows, as if their words could somehow penetrate her son's curtained, closed and darkened bedroom.

  "Well, I'm not," she said crossly. "I don't talk about sex."

  "Okay. Why don't we do it instead?"

  She snickered before she could feel shocked, and then she felt guilty. "No."

  He didn't say anything, didn't pressure her. It was almost disappointing.

  "I'm no good at it," she explained desperately to the dark.

  And the dark answered back, "Maybe you are. Maybe old Robbo wasn't any good."

  The possibility was too frightening to think about. She didn't want sex. She couldn't. "You sound like my therapist," she muttered.

  "My mistake."

  "Anyway, I never was any good at it. Remember?"

  "I remember I was terrible." He turned his head, and his dark, hooded gaze trapped hers. "I've improved some."

  All the air left her lungs. "I'm sure," she said dryly, when she could breathe again.

  "You don't believe me."

  "I don't believe we're having this discussion."

  "I think," Maddox said deliberately, "you should give me a chance to prove it."

  The heat must have gotten into her blood. Or the fireworks. Or the moon. She was sitting on her back porch talking about having sex with Maddox Palmer as if she were a fifteen-year-old virgin arguing with her boyfriend about getting to second base. It was ridiculous. It was appealing.

  She blushed in the darkness. "What kind of chance?"

  Maddox went, if possible, even more still. "You could let me kiss you."

  Oh, yes, her blood demanded.

  Oh, no. "I told you, I can't afford to get involved."

  "This isn't involvement. This is sex."

  It sounded wicked. It sounded … fun.

  "Just a kiss?" she asked uncertainly.

  His smile gleamed like the crooked moon. "Of course. What kind of a man do you think I am?"

  "I don't know."

  "Why don't you come over here and find out?" he invited.

  Her head spun. She couldn't possibly … could she?

  Balancing herself with one hand on his chest, she leaned over. Cautiously, with her eyes open to see what he would do, she pressed her lips to his. His lips were warm. His eyelashes were thick and short. He didn't do anything.

  She drew back.

  "Well?" he asked hoarsely. His heart pounded under her hand.

  "I think you're very nice," she said solemnly.

  "I think I'm out of my mind."

  She almost giggled. "Can I do it again?"

  He leaned back on his elbows, so that she tipped into him a little. His legs stretched over the steps. He had very long thighs, she noticed. "Be my guest."

  She drew a deep breath and leaned forward.

  "Maybe you should try it with your eyes closed this time," he suggested.

  Her pulse thrummed. "All right."

  She tucked her hair behind her ear, angled her head, and closed her eyes. The night breathed around them.

  "You okay?" Maddox asked finally.

  "I'm sort of afraid to do this," she confessed, opening her eyes again.

  "Then don't."

  "I'm more afraid I'll miss my chance."

  His chest expanded as he inhaled, a sharp, quick breath. And then he let it out slowly. "Take your time." He lay back on the hard planks of the porch, crossing his arms beneath his head. "I'm not going anywhere."

  Well.

  Impelled by curiosity and yearning, she flattened her palm on his chest. The knit shirt was soft, the body beneath it warm and hard. She flexed her fingers and felt his muscles tighten, but he didn't grab at her. He didn't even move.

  Encouraged, she dipped her head and kissed his wide, firm mouth. It was nice. It was very nice. He must have shaved before he came over, because his jaw was smooth and he smelled all clean. She parted her lips a little, tasting him, and he opened his mouth, but he didn't stab at her with his tongue. He didn't hold her down with hard, cold hands and open her up with unforgiving fingers…

  She pushed the thought away, kissing him, kissing Maddox, concentrating on the textures and the warmth of his mouth, the slick inside of his lip, his strong, smooth teeth. She kissed the dent in his chin, like the careless imprint of a sculptor's thumb, and eased closer, enjoying the solid support of his chest and the way her breasts felt flattened against him.

  She wanted … something. She kept kissing him, because that was almost it, that was almost enough, and it just got better and better and warmer and moister, and she didn't have to worry at all because he kept his strong arms anchored behind his head on the porch. She let herself fall into him, fall into his mouth and his kiss and his hot, broad body.

  She wriggled against him, trying to get closer, and then cried out in pleasure, in protest, as his hands swept lower and clamped on her hips and dragged her over him. He was burning up. He was completely aroused. And she was straddling him, her knees on either side of his hard thighs and her fanny sticking up in the air.

  Ann moaned and pulled back.

  The hand on her butt tightened and then slowly relaxed. The hard arms fell away. Maddox dropped his head. She winced at the sound of his skull hitting the porch.

  "I'm sorry," she blurted. "I can't do this."

  His face gleamed with sweat. His eyes were nearly black. "Okay," he said through his teeth.

  She struggled to sit up. "I'm sorry."

  "I said it's okay." He gulped in air. "I was too rough."

  "No."

  "Yeah, I was. I scared you."

  "No." She twisted her hands together. I am responsible for my own life, she
recited silently. I can decide for myself what is best for me. "I scared me."

  He rubbed his face with his hand. "Look, it's all right. You didn't want to."

  "I did." she practically shouted at him, frustrated by his patience and his total lack of understanding. "That's what scares me. I can't make that kind of mistake again."

  He shook his head, curling up effortlessly from the floor. "You lost me."

  "I'm just getting out of one bad marriage. I can't afford to get carried away."

  He gave her his hooded look. "Darlin', I'm not saying something didn't come up between us, but I don't remember marriage being raised."

  Her cheeks burned. Something had "come up," all right. "I'm just saying the two aren't necessarily separate issues."

  "They are for me."

  "Well, not for me," Ann snapped. "I got married once because I got pregnant, and I'm not going to risk it again!"

  * * *

  Chapter 8

  «^»

  Dear Lord. She'd told him. Of course, most of the town knew or guessed. What else could you expect from a Barclay? She covered her mouth with her hands.

  "Pregnant," Maddox repeated. He sounded poleaxed. Ann nodded. She couldn't even look at him. "Mitchell?"

  She nodded again.

  His breath whistled out. "That explains a lot."

  She put her chin up against the familiar accusation. "Why Rob would marry me, you mean."

  "No. Why you would marry him."

  Without anger to brace them, her shoulders slumped. "Oh."

  He rubbed his jaw with the back of his hand. "And why you're not big on unprotected sex with me."

  Really, he was being nice about this. The thought only depressed her further. Even with a nice man, she didn't have any luck.

  She sighed. "So, here we are, back where we were thirteen years ago."

  "Not quite," Maddox drawled. "You're not a fifteen-year-old virgin anymore."

  Not that nice, she thought, startled. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

  "Well, it makes me feel better," he said frankly. "I won't have to run myself in for statutory rape."

  She bit her lip to keep from smiling.

  He reached out his big hand. She sat very still as he smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear. His touch was light, but it reached down deep inside her.