by Wendy Wax
“Are you OK with this?” Amanda finally asked.
“I’m better than OK,” Candace said. “I’m just a little offkilter. And these mood swings sneak up on me when I least expect them. But the nausea seems to be over, thank God.”
Still absorbing the news, Amanda pulled back on the road and headed toward Susie Simmons’s.
“Frankly,” Candace said, “I wouldn’t want to be Susie Simmons right now. Because if she doesn’t behave herself, I’m going to turn my hormones loose on her. And believe me, it won’t be pretty.”
“What do you want?” Susie stood in her doorway and glared at each of them individually. Her hair and makeup were flawlessly done. Her lipstick-covered mouth turned downward. “I’d think you’d be too embarrassed to show your faces here.”
Amanda didn’t wait to be invited in. She stepped forward, practically into Susie’s face. The other woman dropped back.
Candace and Brooke pressed into the foyer behind her. The door closed and the three of them formed a solid wall in front of Susie. “Obviously you thought wrong.” Amanda took another step forward, intentionally crowding the other woman. Candace and Brooke stepped up beside her. “About a lot of things.”
A look of panic washed over Susie’s face. There was a noise up on the landing.
“Are you all right, Mom?” Lucy Simmons’s voice quavered with uncertainty. “Should I call the police?”
“Why don’t we have her do that, Susie?” Amanda asked quietly. “And when they get here, we can ask them to search for the jewelry and money you claimed was missing.”
She stared Susie in the eye adding a silent challenge to the one she’d just issued.
“That’s, um, not necessary, Luce,” Susie finally said. “I’ll handle this.”
“Good move,” Candace muttered.
“I’ll say.” Brooke gave her a menacing look.
“Why don’t we continue this in your office?” Amanda took another step forward. “Unless you want Lucy to hear how you tried to set up your poor unsuspecting maids for something they never did.”
Susie fell back another step and then another. With a sigh of what Amanda thought might be resignation, she turned and walked into her office. Amanda, Candace, and Brooke followed.
Susie took a seat behind her desk. The three of them sank down on the sofa across from it.
Once again, silence reigned.
“So, what’s going on, Susie?” Amanda asked as calmly as she could. “What did Solange—or I—ever do to you?”
Susie stared back in silence. Every item on her desk was aligned at a perfect angle to something else. The books on the shelves formed perfectly straight rows, the bindings lined up according to height.
“All I’ve done is try to keep a roof over my children’s heads,” Amanda continued. “I didn’t do you any harm. Or attack you in any way. I cleaned your house, and I was happy to have the work.”
Susie flushed, but whether it was with embarrassment or disdain, Amanda didn’t know. “Your accusations are threatening my ability to take care of my children. As a mother, I’m sure you understand I can’t have that.”
Still Susie remained silent. Beside her, Candace took a breath as if to speak, but Amanda laid a hand on her arm to stop her.
“I’m not here to beg for your friendship, Susie. I have to make a living and Maid for You is the way I intend to do that. If you don’t want someone you know cleaning your house, that’s fine. But you have to clear my name.
“We all know that your things weren’t stolen. I expect you to take back the accusations and I want you to tell me, right now, why you made them.”
Still no response.
“Jesus, Susie.” Candace couldn’t take it anymore. “You walked away from your marriage with a sweet deal. Why behave so viciously to someone who didn’t?”
“Let’s go, Amanda.” Brooke stood. “It’s clear she isn’t going to…”
“My deal wasn’t so sweet,” Susie said. “In fact, there was no deal.”
The three of them froze where they were.
Susie studied the paperweight on her desk as if it held some sort of answer. Then she moved it several inches to the left. When she looked back up at them, her mask was gone. “I got screwed too.” Her mouth twisted in bitterness. “Worse than screwed.” She looked at Amanda. “Charles spent years hiding his assets before he finally divorced me. Fucking years, making sure I didn’t get anything.”
“But everyone said…”
Susie looked weary, as weary as Amanda felt. “Everyone repeated what I told them. I couldn’t stand for anyone to know what he’d done, how stupid I’d been.” She smiled, but it was tight and bitter. “So I pretended.” She aimed the smile at Amanda. “You dressed up in a disguise and cleaned houses. I pretended I had money I didn’t.”
“But, how did you live?” Brooke asked.
“My grandmother had left me money when she died. We lived off that for a while, but I couldn’t figure out how to scale back and maintain the fiction. The money’s almost gone now.” She dropped her gaze to the paperweight. “I was going to sell some of her jewelry, but you never really get what it’s worth. And it was all I had left of her.” Susie sighed and closed her eyes. “I needed the insurance money.”
They sat in stunned silence for a while.
“So, what do you want me to do,” Susie asked. “To prove that Solange and her cohorts are innocent?”
Amanda studied Susie Simmons. Without her mask of frightened arrogance, she looked much more like the woman Amanda had once known. Susie had lashed out at the very thing she’d been most afraid of, as if calling attention to Amanda’s misfortune would somehow keep people from guessing her own.
The truth was Susie Simmons had been every bit as much a victim as Amanda. And she had covered and protected her children in the only way she’d known how.
It wasn’t their place to try to punish her for it.
“Why don’t you just ‘find’ the missing things and let everyone know you were mistaken?” Amanda said. “That would work for me.”
“But…” Candace and Brooke began.
“I don’t know if you’ve given any thought to what you might do next.” Amanda gestured around the scarily immaculate office and then looked pointedly at Brooke and Candace. “But Maid for You is getting ready to expand.”
She waited several seconds for her partners’ reluctant nods. “I think the company could benefit from the services of an…anal-retentive of your magnitude.”
“Me? Cleaning houses?” Susie laughed, but this time with amusement rather than derision. “Would I have to dress up and develop an accent?”
“Nope,” Amanda replied. “There’ll be no more dressing up or pretending. And you don’t necessarily have to clean houses unless you want to. I, myself, have found it very therapeutic, but you could help with training if you prefer.”
Amanda considered Brooke and Candace who flanked her on either side and thought of all they’d been through together and how much still lay ahead. She might be single in suburbia, but she was not alone. Her life, and the opportunities that filled it, stretched in front of her, a veritable smorgasbord of possibility.
“I can promise you one thing,” Amanda said as she stood and prepared to leave, her friends at her side. “Whatever we do from here on out, we’re going to do it as ourselves.”
And that included her next stop.
After dropping her partners back at Candace’s, she drove the vacuummobile to Hunter James’s house. It was, Amanda reflected as she drove the peppy little Bug through the streets of east Cobb, a vehicle she could relate to; a much better fit than the sagging-seated Volvo she’d once left idling in the car lot of her life.
Confirming that his SUV was in the garage, Amanda walked up the front steps and rang the bell.
There was no bark from Fido, but she heard footsteps and then Hunter’s shadow appeared in the sidelight. The door opened. “Bonjour, Solange,” he said in beautifully accen
ted French. “Comment vas-tu?”
She blushed, which seemed to be a regular occurrence whenever he was around. “So, you heard?”
He smiled and there was no censure or judgment in it. “Amanda,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t exactly a revelation.”
He motioned her inside. A suitcase and laptop sat just inside the door.
“I recognized you the first time Solange sashayed into my house. Anyone who didn’t recognize you in her just wasn’t looking. I liked Solange right away. She’s feisty, a real fighter. Fido’s not the only one who knows a good thing when he sees it.”
Amanda blushed again remembering that Hunter James had had his face in her crotch too.
“I’m a little worried about her twins though.” He smiled. “Will somebody be looking after them?”
Amanda was still trying to absorb the fact that he’d known, not to mention how well he spoke French. The invitations she’d issued when she’d thought he couldn’t understand her rushed back to smite her. “But…”
“Amanda, I spent six years playing ball for Montreal.” His smile broadened. “You didn’t say anything in French that I wasn’t thrilled to hear.”
“Fine,” she replied. “So you knew. Then where have you been? Hasn’t anyone told you it’s not nice to sleep with a woman, even if you know she’s your maid, and then not call her again?”
“I left you a note and the key to my house.”
She rolled her eyes.
“And I did get that one call through to your house despite the most unreliable cell phone service I’ve ever encountered. I spoke to Wyatt.” He noted her look of surprise. “Whom I take it failed to mention that I called?”
She nodded, wishing she’d known.
“I was sent to look at a prospect in the Dominican Republic. The Phillies were after him, too, and we were afraid he was going to sign. I barely had time to stash Fido and the girls at their grandparents’. I just got back from the airport; I haven’t even gone to pick them up yet.”
He smiled and the glint of amusement was back in his eyes. “I can promise you if I’d known you were going to go and get yourself arrested while I was gone, I would have left you an emergency contact number.”
They were both smiling now and whatever language they were thinking it in, she could tell they were thinking the same thing. “Viens ici,” he said. Come here. He reached out and pulled her close. “Je veux te faire l’amour.” I want to make love to you.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bedroom. And then he told her in flawless French exactly what he intended to do to her.
Epilogue
H unter flipped burgers and hot dogs on the grill on Amanda’s deck while Dan Donovan and Hap Mackenzie tipped back their beers and gave him pointers. It was late September and the leaves were just beginning their turn to yellow and gold.
Wyatt, Tyler, Drew, and Julie threw baseballs to each other in the backyard, debating the Mudhens’ recent tryouts and the four new players they’d taken on. Every five seconds they demanded to know when the food would be done.
“Do you think your dad will be our pitching coach next year?” Wyatt asked Julie, who he’d already admitted threw really well “for a girl.”
Meghan and Samantha lounged in chaises, a bowl of potato chips between them, their noses buried in the latest issue of Teen People; Rose Red and Rose White dishing over the relative merits of the latest teen heartthrobs.
In the kitchen, Amanda, Brooke, and Candace did their own dishing while they prepared the side salads and set the table for dinner.
“God, I wish I could have some of that.” Candace eyed their glasses of Merlot. “I wasn’t that much of a drinker, but now that I can’t have any, I’m craving it big-time.” Her hand rested on the swell of her belly. Despite her complaints, her face glowed.
“Yeah, you look completely miserable,” Amanda said. “Dan’s in here fussing over you every other minute, you’re CEO of one of the fastest-growing residential cleaning companies in Georgia, and”—Amanda held up Candace’s hand with the gleaming diamond solitaire—“you’re about to be married to the world’s nicest, and evidently most virile, guy.”
“Too true.” Candace beamed. “Today when I tried to tell him my thoughts about our honeymoon, he told me not to worry about it; he’d already booked an island getaway.”
“Which makes him romantic and persuasive.” Amanda smiled. “He’s definitely my hero.”
“I know.” Candace rubbed her stomach again and stared out the kitchen window at the man who’d so surprised her. “He’s even got Hurricane Hannah coming around.” She turned away from the window to eye the bottle of wine. “You know our grandmothers’ generation drank all the way through their pregnancies.”
“Forget about it.” Amanda took the bottle and moved it out of Candace’s line of sight then helped Brooke put large serving spoons in the bowls of potato salad and coleslaw. Together they pulled condiments out of the fridge.
“Hap and I are going to visit my mother next week. He’s offered to move her up here.” She, too, smiled with happiness. Her beauty remained, but it glowed more softly now—not an asset to be cultivated and clung to, just part of who she was. “I can’t wait to tell her I’m in the cleaning business. Maybe we can make her a consultant or something.”
Amanda concurred. “All I know is putting Susie Simmons in charge of the new recruits was a stroke of genius. She’s put a whole manual together—and she makes all of them memorize it.”
“I had ten new inquiries this week,” Candace said. “The fact that our force is so thoroughly trained really appeals. All the side services we’ve added put us in a whole other league. We’re going to have to add some more cleaning squads.”
The three of them were still happily talking business when Hunter backed through the kitchen door with the tray of burgers and hot dogs in his hands. Fido followed at his heels.
Hunter set the tray in the center of the table and leaned over to drop a kiss on the top of Amanda’s head. “The hungry hordes are about to descend. Do you think we have enough meat?”
She waggled her eyebrows at him and smiled as saucily as she knew how.
Of all the good things that had happened, he was way up there. Their physical attraction remained so strong that it surprised her at times, but it was his easygoing acceptance of her and what she was that made him such a keeper.
The fact that Wyatt worshipped him and Meghan considered Samantha her long lost sister made things that much sweeter.
They chowed down around her kitchen table then sat talking late into the night. The mountains just two hours north of Atlanta were about to burst into full color and plans were afoot for a long weekend at Dan Donovan’s cabin. It would be a glorious time, Amanda knew, but so was this one. She wished this moment, and this evening, could go on forever.
It was after eleven when everyone left. Dan and Candace took all the boys to Dan’s for a sleepover. Brooke and Hap offered to drop the girls at Hunter’s on their way home so that Hunter could stay and help her clean up.
They’d just finished the last of the dishes and wiped down the counter when Hunter came up behind her. He slipped his arms around her waist and pressed against her. His lips were warm on the side of her neck.
“You know,” he said as he nibbled on her ear, “I’m kind of missing Solange tonight. Those swingy silver earrings and the way she used to bend over and show me her ass were a real turn-on.”
Amanda turned in his arms, pressing up against all that fabulous male hardness. “She did no such thing. Why all that poor girl could think about was making enough money to take care of those precious twin sons of hers.”
He kissed her again and then trailed his lips back down the side of her neck. “She was definitely coming on to me. She was hot for my form.”
He reached down to unbutton her blouse and dropped another kiss on the hollow at her throat. “I used to fantasize about making it with her in my laundry room. Or when she was d
own on her hands and knees scrubbing the floor.”
A wave of lust rippled through her. “She used to fantasize about you too.” A smile tugged at Amanda’s lips. “But there were those who thought her a bit flamboyant.”
Their lips met and their tongues followed suit. She was startled, as she always was, by just how much she wanted him.
“Do you want to go upstairs?” she asked, her voice turning husky. “I’ve still got the wig and earrings and that extra sexy polyester uniform.”
He smiled and the movement of his lips tickled her skin.
“Just speak French to me, mon amour,” he said as he bent her back over his arm like Gomez Addams used to do to Morticia. “You know it drives me wild.”
“Whatever you say, monsieur,” she whispered as he lifted her in his arms and began to carry her toward the bedroom. “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir? Voulez-vous couchez avec moi?” Do you want to sleep with me this evening? Do you want to sleep with me? She delivered the lyrics of Patti LaBelle’s immortal song “Lady Marmalade” with a straight face and a seductively raised eyebrow as if she were composing them on the spot.
He did stumble halfway up the stairs, clearly biting back his laughter, when she got to “coochi, coochi, yaya, dada. Coochi, coochi, yaya, here.”
When he laid her on her bed, she very sensibly shut her mouth so that he could kiss her.
But her coeur—her heart—beat very, very fast.
About the Author
Wendy lives with her husband and two sons in a testosterone-laden home in the suburbs of Atlanta. When not at one ballpark or another, she spends her time either writing or attempting to invent an automatic toilet seat-dropping device.
Readers can contact her through her website at www.authorwendywax.com.
Also by Wendy Wax
7 Days & 7 Nights
Leave It to Cleavage
Hostile Makeover
SINGLE IN SUBURBIA
A Bantam Book / July 2006
Published by Bantam Dell
