Still Waters

by Kathleen Creighton

  As Zack followed Maddy into the pool office he was experiencing a particularly frustrating and futile kind of rage. It was a feeling he'd only had once before in his life.

  "How do you take that, day in and day out?" He threw the question at her angrily, almost as an accusation. He found himself resenting her ability to "take it." Dammit, it seemed almost a kind of complicity. And it only enraged him further that she just looked at him with compassion in response to his rudeness, as if she understood how badly he needed to hit out at someone-anyone.

  "I'll make this report, if you like," she said in a low voice. "Your name doesn't even have to be on it."

  He stared at her. "What the hell do you mean? I want my name on it! I'd like to personally strangle with my bare hands whoever did that!"

  "You'd be surprised how many people either don't want to get involved at all or want the protection of anonymity." She'd reached the telephone ahead of him. She grabbed the receiver and held it in what looked like protective custody while she met his furious stare. "I know who to talk to," she told him gently, and began to dial. Zack expelled a frustrated breath and combed his hair back with his fingers.

  " Family Crisis Center -Dr. Larry Whitlaw, please," Maddy said into the phone, still watching him with a worried frown.

  Zack took two agitated paces to the left, four back to the right, and then, muttering under his breath, pivoted and stalked into the men's dressing rooms. He took his time showering and dressing, and even wasted some more time trying to instill discipline in his hair. That effort failed, but in the process some of the discipline must have managed to penetrate to his brain. He was calm when he went back out into the office.

  She was sitting on the corner of his desk, waiting for him. She was wearing a white sundress with a full skirt, and her long legs were crossed at the knee. She looked like the original snow queen. Incredible, he thought. The other day she'd been Marilyn at her sexiest and most vulnerable; today she was Grace Kelly. Who the hell was she really? And why did he want to know?

  "What happens now?" he asked harshly, jamming his hands into his pockets.

  Maddy took a deep breath. "The home environment will be thoroughly checked out. Counseling and other assistance services will be made available to the family-"

  "Family!" she sounded as if she were reading an information booklet aloud! "What about that poor little kid? Won't they get her out of there? Lock up whoever did that to her?"

  "They may remove her from the home temporarily, if the situation warrants," Maddy said carefully. "But permanent separation is usually a last resort."

  "Last resort? Whose?" He wanted to grab her and shake her out of that maddening professional calm. "What, does somebody have to get killed first?"

  "Zack." Her voice was very low and unusually hoarse. She had to clear her throat before she could go on. "These children love their parents, in spite of… everything. Breaking up a home is… well, it's very traumatic for the child. We try to help, not make things worse."

  Zack took a deep breath, held it while he glared helplessly at the ceiling, then released it in a long sigh. "I'm sorry. I just feel so… so damn…"

  She stood up and laid a hand on his arm. "You did the right thing. The right people are moving on it now. Something will be done, I promise you."

  But would it be the right thing? he wondered. And would it be enough? He took another deep breath, then realized his chest was aching in a way it hadn't in a very long time. He stared down at the hand on his arm, and she snatched it away. He reached out and caught it. "Hey, listen, are you doing anything right this minute?"

  She'd made a startled little gasp when he'd grabbed her hand, and was staring at him as if she thought he might explode. "N-now?"

  "Yeah. How about a cup of coffee or something? I don't know about you, but I need to get out of here. I'd like to talk about this a little more." He hesitated, then added, "Preferably someplace quiet."

  She was biting her lip, looking more like Marilyn now than Grace. After a moment she said, "Okay. How about my place?"

  It was unexpected, to say the least, but he didn't show how startled he was. He stood up and said crisply, "Your place it is. I'll follow you."

  As he drove behind her nondescript white sedan down a long, creepy lane completely overhung with avocado trees, it occurred to him to wonder, and not for the first time, just what kind of woman he was dealing with. The trouble was, she gave off contradictory signals. She looked like a showgirl. That was the only way to put it. She was leggy and statuesque and blond, the kind of blond whom gentlemen are said to prefer. And what was she? A social worker, for Pete's sake! A social worker who dealt with mistreated kids. Zack still had trouble believing it. It had him feeling strangely out-of-step. It would be interesting to see her place. Maybe there he'd find the clues that would help him fit her pieces together.

  And then he wondered again why it mattered. He felt guilty for thinking about her, when he should have been thinking about that little girl. But dammit, Theresa was there all the time anyway, in the back of his mind, and had been for days. And now it was out of his hands. He'd done what he could, and the rest was up to the people who knew how to deal with that kind of sickness. He had to get the kid out of his mind. Forget her. He had a feeling Maddy Gordon could help him forget.

  It was quiet in the grove. He could hear the rustle of dry leaves under his tires, the call of a crow somewhere in the treetops. Ahead, fingers of sunlight slanted through openings in the trees, spotlighting an oddly-shaped weathered gray building with no windows. It looked like an enchanted cottage, isolated in a sunlit glade in the middle of a dark and mysterious forest. He kept expecting an ugly little old lady to come around the corner croaking, "Nibble, nibble like a mouse, who's been nibbling at my house?" Or seven fat little men to come marching down the lane singing, "Hi ho, hi ho, it's home from work we go!"

  But when Maddy unlocked the front door and stood aside to invite him inside the cottage, he realized he'd had the wrong story. "My Lord," he breathed after a moment's stunned silence. "It's Geppetto's workshop!"

  From every shelf and chair and tabletop, faces peered at him; purple faces, blue faces, green faces, bright orange and yellow faces; faces with big sad eyes, faces with bright shoe-button eyes, faces with sleeping eyes, long curling lashes lying against fuzzy cheeks; animal faces, people faces, and faces born of pure imagination; faces with ears, faces with horns, faces with tufts and billows of iridescent hair. Each face was attached to a body, and most of the bodies had arms. But except for the ones suspended by wires from the ceiling, very few of the bodies had legs.

  "Puppets," he said in wonder. "They're all… puppets." And then, with horrified disbelief, "My Lord-one's alive!''

  For in one particularly furry, gray-blue face a pair of round green eyes had, unmistakably and oh, so slowly, blinked.

  Maddy gave a delighted gurgle of laughter. "Incorrigible, you rascal, can the act and come down from there."

  The green eyes closed and a pink mouth opened in a wide, insolent feline yawn.

  Geez, Zack thought, is she a witch? It was becoming a matter of pride with him to appear unflappable around her, not to let her see how much she could surprise him. And so, to cover his shock and give himself a few seconds to regain his poise, he reached out and gathered up the big gray cat from his perch on a shelf full of puppets. The cat seemed momentarily nonplussed. It reared back its head to stare at him, then flattened its ears and squinted and sniffed at Zack's chin. And finally the cat went completely boneless in his arms, paws in the air, and began to purr.

  "That was a test, you know," Maddy said. She was standing beside a small table that held a phone and message machine. It seemed to be the only surface in the place that wasn't covered with puppets or puppet parts.

  Zack lifted one eyebrow. "Do I pass?"

  "Oh, with flying colors. You're the first, I think." She smiled wryly. "Most people tend to… freak out, as a friend of mine would say, when Corry goes int
o his act."

  "His act?"

  "Corry likes to impersonate a puppet, and then frighten people out of their wits by coming to life. He's a born showman, and has faultless timing. He only does it for first-time visitors, and always when they're still in shock just from seeing the place. After that, I guess he figures they've got his number."

  "Amazing," Zack murmured, and set the cat on the floor, much to its disgust. After a perfunctory wash designed to save face, Corry made his proud, unhurried exit.

  "Yes, I guess he is," Maddy said, smiling fondly after the waving plume of tail.

  "I wasn't talking about him." Zack gestured at the puppets and the magical stairways of sunlight that angled down from five skylights, then walked toward her. "I mean all of it. This house, the puppets… you."

  "Me?" She shook her head emphatically. "I'm not amazing." Her voice shook, and her eyes seemed to darken. He realized with another shock that she was afraid of him. He felt the desire he'd first felt the day she'd fainted in his arms in the pool, the desire to erase that fear from her eyes. To see her eyes grow luminous and soft, and finally close in complete trust and surrender…

  Very slowly, he reached out and touched the nose of the large pink dragon she had gathered into her arms. To his astonishment, the dragon sneezed, then rubbed its nose with its tail.

  "Gesundheit," Maddy said, watching Zack over the dragon's blue crest. She was smiling, her lips slightly parted, and her eyes held shimmers of laughter. "This is Bosley. Bosley, say hello to Zack."

  The dragon muttered, "Hello." It sounded like a sulky frog.

  "Bosley's nose is very ticklish," Maddy explained. "However, he does enjoy having his neck rubbed."

  "Oh, yeah?" Zack murmured, and wondered if Maddy did. Feeling only a little silly, he stroked the velvet underside of the dragon's chin. The dragon made a purring sound. Zack was captivated and amused to see that its eyes had closed.

  "My goodness," Maddy said, her voice sounding something like a purr as well. "I see you have a way with dragons as well as with cats and children. You must have a magic touch."

  Zack didn't answer. He just looked into her eyes and slowly and with deliberate sensuousness began to stroke the dragon's neck. The dragon made delighted Mae West noises and wound itself around Zack's forearm. It rubbed its cheek ecstatically against his biceps, then rested its head on his shoulder and gazed up at him with adoring eyes.

  "Hello, big fella," the dragon said in Mae West's sexiest voice.

  Maddy looked startled. "Boz! You never told me you were a girl!" Her cheeks were as pink as the dragon.

  "Honey," Bosley purred, "you never asked."

  "You're good," Zack said softly to Maddy. "You're very, very good."

  "Maybe," the dragon said, lowering her eyelashes demurely. But when I'm bad… I'm better."

  "Boz!" Maddy seemed genuinely scandalized.

  Zack laughed appreciatively, but even as he was doing so, he was battling intense frustration. She was good with that thing-too damn good. He knew exactly what she'd done, and knew that she'd done it deliberately. She'd used that puppet to hold him off, just as effectively as if it had been a third person-a roommate, say-instead of a toy made of velvet and papier-mache.

  But Zack hadn't forgotten for one moment that under the pink fabric and paint he had caressed a soft, shapely arm. And that the dragon's head, however uncannily lifelike Maddy's skill could make it seem, was a hand-Maddy's hand. And for a few moments it had stroked his arm and shoulder and rested warmly in the hollow of his neck. His skin still tingled with his awareness of her. It was a kind of awareness he hadn't felt in a long time-hadn't even wanted to feel. And right now he knew that he wanted her hands touching his skin without the interference of cloth and cardboard. In fact, he wanted her skin touching his skin, without interference from anything at all…

  But for the life of him, he didn't know how to get past her chaperones.

  Four

  Maddy saw that the smoky look was back in Zack's eyes and wondered if she'd gone too far. She couldn't imagine what had come over her, to use Bosley to flirt that way. Good heavens, a sensuous dragon! Who'd have thought she had it in her?

  She didn't have it in her-not really. It was just the darn puppets. She was so accustomed to interacting through them in highly charged emotional situations that they sometimes took on personalities all their own. She glared accusingly at Bosley, but the dragon only returned her look of reproach with one of sleepy-eyed innocence. With a small noise of helpless dismay, Maddy plunked the puppet back onto its stand.

  Now she felt naked and defenseless. Zack's presence in the huge, sunlit room made it seem too crowded, the air precious. Realizing that she was twisting her hands together in a childish manifestation of nervousness, she waved one in the general direction of the sofa and said, "Um… won't you sit down? Ill go fix some coffee-unless you'd prefer iced tea." She wondered for a moment if he needed something stronger after the shock of seeing Theresa, and was trying to remember whether she'd saved the bottle of rum Jody had brought to make eggnog last New Year's Day.

  "Do you suppose," Zack asked with a disarming flash of his famous smile, "that I could have a glass of milk?"

  A peculiar warmth flooded Maddy's chest. She found herself smiling back without her usual reserve. "Oh. You really do drink milk!"

  His smile slipped. "Yeah… a habit that stayed with me." His hand was resting flat against his belly, just above the waistband of his jeans. Through the thin knit of his white polo shirt Maddy could see the sculptured muscles. She had a sudden vivid recollection of that chest, smooth and tan and beaded with water droplets, and felt an unfamiliar squeezing sensation in her own midsection.

  Belatedly realizing that she'd been staring at both the hand and the body beneath it for quite some time in tongue-tied silence, Maddy felt the heat from her chest surge upward into her cheeks. She didn't know what she mumbled as she turned and made a hasty retreat to the kitchen.

  Coward, she thought as she groped in a cupboard to find a glass. Idiot, she moaned inwardly as she opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk. What was the matter with her? He was only a man, and a very nice one, at that. Okay, so he was Zack London, but he wasn't Aquaman, or any other superhero. He was a perfectly ordinary, human man.

  Except that there wasn't any way her brain was ever going to convince the rest of her that this man was "ordinary." Even now, as she watched him through her kitchen's pass-through window, she could feel the rhythms of her body change in subtle but frightening ways. Not only her pulse and respiration, but all her senses and life forces had somehow intensified. Even from this distance she could see the way the hair grew on the back of his neck, longish, unruly, undisciplined. And for the space of one heartbeat, like a dream or a memory in which a whole range of events and emotions are telescoped into a single instant of awareness, she knew what it would feel like to weave her fingers through the crisp silk of that hair and touch the hard-muscled column of his neck. She could feel his skin, like warm satin beneath her fingertips; she could smell it, soap and sunshine and a faint tang of chlorine; she could taste it…

  Amanda, for heaven's sake!

  The sensual images collapsed under an avalanche of guilt. With a degree of care and concentration completely unwarranted by so simple a task, she poured a glass of milk and put the carton back in the refrigerator. Carrying the glass, and her body, like fragile crystal, she walked back into the cottage's main room.

  Zack hadn't accepted Maddy's invitation to sit down. He was prowling the perimeters of the room, examining the puppets that filled and overflowed every shelf and tabletop.

  "This is quite a hobby you have here," he said, turning as she moved toward him. Though his eyes were in shadow, making it impossible to see the expression in them, something about the stillness of his body as he watched her made her terribly self-conscious.

  "Oh, well," she murmured with a little shrug as she handed him the glass of milk, "it's actually a bit
more than a hobby."

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise as he took the glass with an effortless grace Maddy envied. "Really? Are you a professional entertainer?"

  "Professional, yes. Entertainer… not exactly." Now her hands were empty again. To fill them, she picked up a little-girl puppet with round pink cheeks and a head full of bobbing, corkscrew curls. In a prominent place above one bright blue eye, there was a large Band-Aid. "This is Didi," Maddy explained as she settled the puppet, using her free hand to poke an errant curl into place. "She's one of the puppets I use most often in my work."

  "Why does she have a Band-Aid?" Zack asked, smiling at Maddy as he touched it with a finger.

  She gazed steadily at him and didn't return the smile. "That's the first thing the children always ask too," she said softly. "It's amazing what an icebreaker it can be."

  "Icebreaker?"

  "Yes. I use the puppets in my work with children like Theresa. Even very frightened and confused children will tell a puppet things they would never tell a strange adult."

  Zack stared at her for a moment in tense silence. Then he muttered, "God," under his breath and turned away from her to set his glass of milk, untasted, on the coffee table. Keeping his back to her and spacing his words with precision, he said, "What I don't understand is how you can deal with this kind of thing all the time. I guess you must just get… hardened, huh?"

  "No," Maddy answered carefully. "Not hardened. You never get hardened. But insulated… maybe."

  He turned back around. "You learn not to care, is that it?"

  Wincing a little, but realizing that the anger in his voice wasn't really directed at her, Maddy spoke instead to the pain in his eyes. "Of course you care. But not… in a personal way." She fussed for a moment with the puppet, while she tried to think of a way to make him understand. "It's like a doctor," she said finally, touching the Band-Aid on the puppet's fuzzy brow. "Doctors care about their patients, but if they allowed themselves to become emotionally attached to them, they wouldn't be able to help them. They have to maintain a certain amount of distance- professional objectivity-in order to be effective. Do you understand? That's why doctors usually don't treat members of their own families."