Maggie's Way

by Lee McKenzie

  Frantically she looked around for the access to the attic, relieved to see that it was in the hallway near the top of the stairs. He would have opened the hatch, looked inside and gone back downstairs. Nick didn’t seem the type to snoop, and he would have had no reason to go any farther.

  She returned to the office, gathered up the books and slipped the first one into place on the bookshelf.

  How had he reached the access to the attic?

  She went back into the hallway and took another look. He was tall but he wasn’t that tall. He hadn’t had a stepladder with him, which meant he must have stood on a chair.

  Her desk chair.

  Which meant he would have had to step right over the yearbooks to get it.

  Oh, Maggie. You are such an airhead.

  Everything that everyone had ever said about her was true. She rushed into things without thinking them through and she was flighty and impulsive. Of course, none of those things had anything to do with leaving the stupid yearbooks lying on the floor when she knew Nick was coming to inspect the house. That was beyond flighty. That was the dumbest thing she’d ever done.

  Okay, so making a pair of wings out of an old patio umbrella and trying to fly off the roof of Aunt Margaret’s garage had probably been the dumbest, but she’d only been eight years old. Now she was an adult.

  What must Nick have thought when he’d seen his entire high-school history spread out on her office floor?

  You’ve really done it this time.

  She cast a glance at the ceiling. “Aunt Margaret, I can’t believe you let me do this. You always used to tell me to put my things away when I was finished with them. Why didn’t you say something?”

  She shoved the other three yearbooks onto the shelf.

  Aunt Margaret’s laughter filled the room.

  “This is not funny.” Ugh. Dead people had such a sick sense of humor.

  Maggie looked around the room and tried to remember why she’d come up here, but all she could think about was what Nick might have been thinking.

  “I really want to go to that wedding with him. What if he changes his mind?” But if she expected an answer, she’d have to wait for Aunt Margaret to stop laughing first.

  As for Nick, she decided there was only one way to find out how he felt.

  Ask him.

  * * *

  NICK SAT AT the drafting table in his office, trying to focus on the floor plan and the list of materials he’d need, but concentrating on Maggie’s renovations was difficult when all he could think about was Maggie.

  Why on earth would she have been looking at those yearbooks?

  He tried to remember if he even owned copies. If he did, he hadn’t seen them in years.

  He definitely liked the idea that she’d been looking at them, though. It meant she had more than a passing interest in him.

  So?

  So...he didn’t know why that mattered but he still liked the idea. On the other hand, what if Allison had put her up to this? Was he really such a bad person that Allison Peters had to turn up and make his life miserable? Maybe he’d stored up a bunch of bad karma and now it was payback time.

  Right. That sounded like something Maggie would say.

  He knew how his family would react to him taking someone so unorthodox to the wedding. He indulged himself in a sly grin. Yes, sirree. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was actually looking forward to a family function. But would Maggie survive a formal encounter with the Durrance family? She could always tell them their horoscopes, he thought with amusement. That alone would be worth the price of admission.

  His conscience kicked him in the gut. Ticking off his family was not a good reason for asking a woman to go out with him. Especially Maggie.

  He didn’t know why but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But the sooner you finish this estimate, he reminded himself, the sooner you’ll get to see her again.

  He was busy punching numbers into his calculator when Brent Borden, his longtime friend and only employee, came in and tossed a roll of blueprints on the top of the filing cabinet. “Hey, boss. How’s it going?”

  “Good. I’m working up an estimate for Miss Meadowcroft’s remodeling job.”

  “Sure hope we get that one. She sounds like a hot little number, from what everyone’s saying.”

  “Yeah, well, she wants to turn her house into a spa, and there’s a very good chance that Durrance Construction will get the job.”

  “All right! We can use the work, and here’s hoping Miss Meadowcroft will be spending lots of time on the job with us.”

  Nick glared at him. “She lives there, so I think it’s safe to say that she’ll be around. And it’ll help to remember that she’s a client.”

  Brent’s eyes went wide, then he burst out laughing. “I see,” he drawled. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Man, you have never cared if someone hustled a pretty girl on the job site. I seem to recall that when we were hired to work at the massage parlor—”

  Nick should know by now that past mistakes always came back to bite him. “Maggie Meadowcroft isn’t running a massage parlor. Her house is in a respectable neighborhood and she’s a very nice woman—”

  Brent was still laughing. “You sly dog. You’ve already put the moves on her!” He held up a hand and Nick reluctantly met his friend’s high five.

  “Let me guess,” Brent speculated. “A little pizza. Romantic music—”

  “Hang on a minute. You got this all wrong.” He might as well spill it, since Brent would hear about it sooner or later. “I haven’t gone out with her. I just asked her to go to my sister’s wedding.”

  Brent let out a long, low whistle. “You invited her to meet your family? Man. Either she’s really special or you really have it in for her.”

  Nick sighed. “If I didn’t have a date, Leslie and Allison were going to line me up with one.”

  Brent stopped laughing. “Allison?”

  “Allison Peters,” Nick said. “From high school. Remember?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Brent made a face that pretty much summed up Nick’s feelings about that whole fiasco. “What about her?”

  “She lives next door to Maggie, and she’s my sister’s bridesmaid and she just happened to drop by Maggie’s this morning with the news that Candice Bentley-Ferguson is newly divorced and once again on the prowl. Oh, and did I mention, also one of my sister’s bridesmaids? What was I supposed to do? Let myself get lassoed into taking her?”

  “Quite the dilemma. Which you resolved by asking the new ‘client’ to go with you?”

  Smart aleck. It’s not as though Brent never got himself into a jam. “Okay,” he agreed. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But you know my family. And Allison. What I was I supposed to do? Let them set me up with Candice?”

  “Uh, no. You could have said, ‘Thanks for the offer, but I already have a date.’ End of story.”

  Nick sighed again, heavier this time. “Yeah, well, I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

  “No kidding.” Brent put on that annoying squinty-eyed expression every time he thought deeply about something. “Unless you really wanted to ask Maggie all along.”

  Best to let that comment slide, Nick thought.

  Brent seemed to have other ideas. “So? Did you want to?”

  “Maybe.” Although after the trouble with the masseuse, he should have learned his lesson. Never mix business with pleasure.

  Brent grinned. A huge, oh-man-I-can’t-believe-you-finally-fell-for-somebody grin. “This woman’s really that special?”

  “Sort of. No. I don’t know.” He thought about her zany hair and the rejuvenating face gunk. The crazy talk about ghosts and horoscopes. The makeover business. The yearbooks. Special wasn’t exactly the right word. “I don’t think so.”

  Brent rolled his eyes. “Very convincing.”

  Nick really wanted this conversation to end
. “Since when did you become Mr. Analytical? I asked her to the wedding. She accepted. We’re going. End of story. It’ll be fine.”

  “Fine? Since when is it ‘fine’ to take a makeup artist to a Durrance family function?”

  Nick sighed. “I don’t know. Allison didn’t like the idea. My family really won’t like it, but what can I say? What’s done is done.”

  “Freud would have had a field day with your family.”

  “Freud wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with those women.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAGGIE WAS ON the seventh trial of a new moisturizer when Nick dropped off his estimate. She’d spent all day concocting an explanation for the yearbook fiasco, which she’d intended to deliver the moment she saw him again. Problem was, she hadn’t allowed for his arrival coinciding with her having a generous coating of peaches slathered all over her face.

  Nick laughed and handed her an envelope. “Hard at work, I see.”

  Her timer buzzed. “Go on into the kitchen. It’ll just take me a minute to wash this off.”

  She found him in the kitchen, sniffing the container of moisturizer.

  “This stuff smells good enough to eat.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s the essential oils that make it smell so good but they’re probably not the best thing to ingest. My strawberry facial mask is edible, though. Quite delicious, actually.”

  He gave her an odd look. “Interesting.”

  She pulled a pencil out of her hair, scribbled a few notes in her coil-bound notebook and stabbed the pencil back in place. “I haven’t quite worked out the right proportions for this one.”

  “Sounds pretty scientific.” But he was grinning so broadly that she couldn’t tell if he was serious or if he was seriously making fun of her.

  “Something funny?” She ran both hands over her face, thinking perhaps she’d missed some of the cream.

  “You remind me of Wilma Flintstone.”

  “I hope you don’t use that line very often. Most women don’t like to imagine themselves as the cartoon wife of a prehistoric caveman.”

  He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind the pencil. “You should be flattered. That was one of the best TV shows ever made.”

  Maggie wondered if Wilma had felt all wobbly and breathless when Fred touched her hair. “It didn’t seem very realistic.”

  “I don’t know about that. Poor old Fred was really just a regular guy trying to figure out how to make his wife happy.”

  “And did he? Figure it out?” she asked.

  “No, and he’s not alone. Women are complicated. Take Wilma’s hair, for example. I always wondered why she had those bones sticking out of it.”

  “She wore her hair up, didn’t she? I’m guessing the bones held it in place.”

  “I see. So not the same as using it as a place to store pencils?”

  “Not the same thing at all. Pencil hair means a woman is working. Bone hair is strictly for effect.”

  “See? What did I tell you? Complicated.”

  She enjoyed the banter. “We’re trained that way, you know, from birth. We have classes and everything.”

  He gave her a long, steady look that must have lasted a full fifteen seconds. “There isn’t a man alive who would doubt that.” Then the creases at the corners of his eyes deepened a little as he smiled. “I guess that’s why we’re always trying to perfect our game.”

  “It works both ways, you know. Women have a hard time understanding men, too.”

  “What’s to understand? Men are the simplest creatures alive. Feed them, flatter them and they’re pretty much at your mercy.”

  “Is that what Wilma did for Fred?”

  “Let’s just say she had him figured out.”

  “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

  “You never watched The Flintstones?”

  She shook her head. “My parents thought television was the great corrupter of young minds, so we never had one.”

  “Really? That’s...different.”

  Ha! He didn’t know the half of it. From what Allison had told her about Nick’s family, he’d grown up with all the material advantages that her parents had shunned. But while she’d been showered with affection, Nick had either been criticized or ignored. The urge to touch him, to reassure him that it was okay to be different, was overwhelming. But it was too soon for that.

  “My childhood might have been different, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

  “Then you’re very lucky.”

  “Yes, I am.” She picked up her notebook and started to clear the table.

  “What do you record in that lab manual of yours?”

  “I keep track of the proportions of ingredients I use and make a note about the texture and feel of it. Eventually I find one or two that feel right, then I do more detailed tests.”

  “But no animal testing?”

  She laughed at that. “No, but if I did, none of my products would be harmful to them. Everything I use is safe and natural. And organic.”

  “So how do you do a more detailed test?”

  “I start experimenting. Today I’m working on a peaches-and-cream moisturizer. I’ll try a few more variations, then narrow them down to the two or three I like best. Then I apply all three at once, to different parts of my face, and see how they feel. And Allison has been letting me use her as a guinea pig.”

  Mentioning Allison reminded her about the yearbooks. She really did have to say something about those and now would be as good a time as any. “Listen, about the other day—”

  There was a knock at the front door, followed by Allison’s characteristic “Hello-o?” Either this woman had really lousy timing, or she deliberately arranged her visits to coincide with the appearance of Nick’s truck.

  “This is really starting to get old,” Nick said.

  Maggie shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since the last time you were here. Maybe it’s you she wants to see.”

  She could hear Allison’s footsteps cross the foyer. “Maggie? Are you home?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  Allison wore a tailored shirt, a slim-fitting, knee-length skirt and a pair of sandals that were probably Italian and very expensive. Was this for Nick’s benefit?

  Whatever the reason for her glamorous neighbor’s appearance, Maggie felt very badly put together. Her denim shorts and lavender T-shirt had become stained with peaches, thanks to a minor mishap with the food processor.

  “Oh! Hello, Nick.”

  Oh, please, Maggie thought. Why bother to pretend she hadn’t known Nick was here?

  “I didn’t expect to see you here. I came over to invite Maggie to our Fourth of July barbecue on Sunday. You will come, won’t you?”

  “Um, sure. Would you like me to bring something?”

  “Just yourself. And Nick, of course.” She directed a sugary smile at the man who had once been the love of her life. The thought made Maggie uncomfortable, even though it was none of her business.

  “You’ll come to the party, too, won’t you, Nick? John says he’d love to reconnect.”

  Nick didn’t seem to buy that. “Sorry. I already have plans.”

  His refusal made Maggie regret her speedy acceptance.

  “Oh, too bad,” Allison said.

  Maggie thought so, too. Going to the barbecue with Nick would have been fun. Kind of a casual predate before his sister’s wedding. Unless, of course, the yearbook fiasco had made him change his mind about that.

  Allison gave Maggie a conspiratorial wink. “It’s just as well that Nick won’t be there. Leslie and our friend Candice are coming and we’ll have lots of time for girl talk.” She actually giggled before she lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “We’ll tell you all about when I dated Nick in high school.”

  Nick did not look amused. He looked as though his head might explode. “Did you mean this Sunday?”

  “Of course. This Sunday is the Fourth of July.”
<
br />   “Just so happens that this Sunday I’m free. Looks like I can make it after all.”

  “Well, good. See you then.” Allison glanced at the designer watch on her slender wrist. “Look at the time! I have a million things to do before the party, and John wants me to treat myself to a new outfit for Sunday night. Isn’t that sweet?” She strode to the door as though Maggie’s kitchen was the red carpet, then turned and struck a pose. “See you both on Sunday. Sixish?” she said before she breezed out of the room.

  Maggie exchanged glances with Nick and for a minute they stood there, speechless.

  “Did Fred and Wilma ever have a Fourth of July barbecue?” she asked.

  Nick’s laughter broke the tension. “Are you sure you never saw that show?”

  “Positive. And about the party. I hope you didn’t agree to go on my account. I would have been fine on my own.”

  “You think she wasn’t serious about filling your head with wild stories about my past?”

  “I’m pretty sure she wasn’t serious.” Besides, her head wasn’t like a sponge that soaked up every tidbit of gossip that came along. She’d listen carefully to anything she heard about Nick, but she wouldn’t necessarily believe it.

  “Trust me. When it comes to telling tales out of school, she’s dead serious.”

  “Well, I’m not in the habit of believing everything I hear. And, um, while we’re on the subject of school...” She took a deep breath and plunged in. “I have a confession to make.” She could tell from the way he looked at her that he already knew what she was going to say.

  “Remember the other day when you went upstairs to check the insulation in the attic? You probably noticed that I’d been looking at Aunt Margaret’s old yearbooks from your high school.”

  She tried to read his expression, but he wasn’t giving anything away. “Yeah,” he said. “I noticed. Please tell me that Allison didn’t put you up to it.”

  Although it was tempting to let him think that, it wasn’t the truth. “As far as I know, Allison doesn’t even know the yearbooks are here. But she’d said...she said that when you were in high school, you broke the heart of every woman...girl...who tried to refor—” Watch what you say, Maggie. “Every girl you dated. I was curious.”