Ask Mariah

by Barbara Freethy

  "I don't want children," she said. "I don't need to be -- a mother."

  He looked deep into her eyes. "Are you sure?"

  "Absolutely, positively sure." She refused to let any doubts creep into her voice.

  He glanced down at the bracelet in his hand, fingering the tiny gold baby shoes. Finally, he set it back in the box and checked his watch. "What time are you meeting Mrs. Carstairs?''

  "Five-thirty at the bridal salon," she replied with a sigh.

  Raymond sent her a curious look. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing." She hesitated. "Don't you think it would be better to have a small, intimate wedding?"

  "How small would you suggest?"

  "You and me and two witnesses," she said hopefully,

  "Don't be silly. I have family, friends, business associates. I want to show you off. Every time I see you I thank God no one snatched you up before now."

  Lisa's heart stopped. She had to tell him. She'd been trying to for days, but the right moment had never arrived.

  "Raymond -- "

  She stopped as the intercom buzzed, feeling both relieved and annoyed by the interruption. She reached over and picked up the phone. "Yes?"

  "Maggie Scott on line one, Elisabeth," the receptionist said.

  Maggie Scott -- another voice from her past. Why were they all coining back now -- when she finally had her life under control? "Tell her I'll be with her in a minute."

  "Problems?" Raymond asked.

  "It's an old friend of mine, Maggie Scott. We grew up together in Solana Beach. We used to be best friends."

  "Used to be?"

  "She got married, had kids. I moved away." Lisa waved her hand in the air. "We drifted apart."

  "That happens."

  Lisa nodded, knowing they hadn't just drifted apart. She'd turned her back on Maggie, the same way she'd turned her back on her mother and ...

  "Stop by my office when you're done," Raymond said, turning toward the door, "We'll discuss our plans for the weekend. Monty Friedman has invited us to a party tomorrow afternoon. Everyone will be there. It will be a good opportunity for you to meet the key players."

  "Okay," Lisa replied, her mind more on Maggie than the upcoming party. She was suddenly filled with a sense of foreboding. The past was catching up to the present, and she wasn't ready yet.

  * * *

  Maggie Scott pulled the phone cord around the corner of the desk in the upstairs hall, searching for a quiet place to talk. She could hear her thirteen-year-old daughter, Roxanne, practicing cheerleading routines in the living room with three other giggling, adolescent girls. Her eight-year-old son, Dylan, was playing video games on the television in the family room, yelling "Victory!" every time he knocked out a warrior. Her five-year-old daughter, Mary Bea, was having a tantrum in her bedroom. Even with the door closed, Maggie could hear Mary Bea crying, her sobs intermixed with defiant shouts of "I don't like you, and I wish I had another mommy!"

  For a guilty moment she wished the same thing. Not that she didn't love her kids; they were just driving her stark raving mad. She had them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, without relief.

  Of course, that's the way she'd wanted it. After her husband, Keith, had died last year, she had proudly told her loving family she could handle things on her own. She could be a single mother. She could manage her house and her children.

  For ten months, she'd held it together. She'd smiled and laughed through her heartache. She'd learned how to fix the toilet, change an electrical fuse, and mow the lawn. She'd even bought a jockstrap for her son. Through it all, she'd pretended that Keith was coming home any minute, that he'd be proud of her accomplishments, and she'd finally have some help. But Keith wasn't coming home.

  Her stomach churned at the reminder. Her breath caught in her throat, and she felt claustrophobic, scared, anxious. The attacks of panic had begun two weeks earlier when a card had arrived in the mail addressed to Keith. The letter was signed Serena Hollingsworth. Maggie had never heard Keith mention a woman by that name, but the letter had suggested a personal relationship.

  Serena had asked why Keith hadn't contacted her as promised. She said she'd been traveling but had checked her messages faithfully, hoping to hear from him.

  The first thought that came into Maggie's mind was that her husband had had an affair. Then it occurred to her that Keith had been dead for almost a year and this woman knew nothing about it. How close could they have been?

  Maggie had thrown the card away, then dug it out of the wastebasket and stuck it in her "to do" pile, which never seemed to get done. She'd decided to simply notify the woman of Keith's death, only she hadn't gotten around to it. She hadn't wanted to confront the fact that Keith had had a friendship with a woman she knew nothing about. For the first time, she wondered what else she'd known nothing about. The memory of her loving husband, the foundation of her solid marriage, seemed suddenly unstable.

  The thought once again sent adrenaline pulsing through her veins. In the past two weeks, she'd suffered several anxious moments when she felt her heart racing over something illogical, silly almost. She'd become afraid of so many things. She'd drive down the street and imagine how easily a car could swerve and hit her head-on. She'd get on an elevator and picture herself plunging to the basement in the express ride from hell.

  Yesterday she had let Dylan take a bus trip to the zoo and had worried all day that the bus would get in an accident, that Dylan would get lost, or the zoo would suddenly become the target of a terrorist attack.

  She was losing control. She felt as if her fingers were clinging to the edge of a cliff that was crumbling beneath her hand. The kids were suffering, too, and she couldn't help them. She yelled at them unnecessarily, making her fears their fears. By bedtime, all four of them were usually in tears. She wasn't being fair to them, and she had to do something soon before she destroyed what was left of her family.

  "Mom, can we have a snack?" Roxy yelled up the stairs.

  "I'm on the phone," she replied, walking around in circles, searching for a quiet place to sit. Her room was a mess, with a pile of laundry on the bed waiting to be sorted. The desk in the hall alcove was covered with bills she had yet to pay. Just looking at all those envelopes made her anxiety level rise yet again.

  She jumped to one side of the hall as Dylan and their golden retriever, Sally, ran up the stairs.

  "Sally found a dead bird in the backyard," Dylan said with excitement. The dog barked in delight. "Do you want to see it? It's in the kitchen."

  "No. I'm on the phone." Maggie sighed as Mary Bea marched out of her room with her backpack in one hand and her cherished blanket in the other. Her face was streaked with tears, her blond curls a mass of tangles. "Where do you think you're going, young lady?"

  "I'm running away unless you say you're sorry for yelling at me."

  "I'm on the phone," Maggie replied for the third time. "And if anyone is going to run away from home, it will be me."

  "Mom, we're starving." Roxy complained from the bottom of the stairs.

  "I'm on the phone," Maggie yelled back. "Can't anyone see I'm on the phone? Do you think this receiver is an earring?"

  Dylan and Mary Bea looked at her in bewilderment, then Mary Bea started to cry. "You're yelling again," she accused.

  Maggie opened the door to the hall closet and walked inside, shutting herself in among the coats, the umbrellas and the tennis rackets that hadn't been used in years. She sat down on the upturned end of a suitcase she'd meant to store in the basement, but like so many things in her life, it had gone undone.

  "Mom, why are you in the closet?" Dylan asked.

  "Are you playing hide-and-seek?" Mary Bea asked hopefully. "Can I play, too?"

  "She doesn't want to play with you," Dylan said.

  "Yes, she does."

  "No, she doesn't."

  "Go away," she yelled. "I'm on the phone."

  "Maggie?" Lisa's voice came over the receiver like an answer t
o a prayer.

  "Lisa. Thank God, you're there." Maggie took a deep breath. Eight years ago what she needed to say would have come easily. Now there were barriers between them, years when they hadn't seen much of each other, layers of grief and disillusionment that weighed heavily on their friendship, but Maggie had nowhere else to turn. "I need you." She closed her eyes, waiting for Lisa's response.

  Lisa stared blindly at her desktop, not seeing the work spread out before her, hearing only the anguish in Maggie's voice. I need you. Three short words that demanded so much, coming from a woman who had always asked for so little. They had been best friends forever. Maggie Maddux Scott with her golden hair, her big booming laugh and wide generous smile had befriended Lisa on her first day at a new middle school. She didn't care that Lisa was different, that she was too shy, too skinny, too nervous, too everything..

  Maggie's friendship had come like the sun after a long winter's storm. She'd introduced Lisa to the joy of laughter, to the secrets of best friends. With two older brothers, Maggie was dying for a sister, and Lisa fit the bill. They'd been inseparable for years, until... Lisa's gaze drifted to the opened box on the desk, to the bracelet that gleamed against the tissue paper.

  "Did you hear me?" Maggie asked.

  Lisa started. "Yes, of course. What's wrong? Is one of the kids -- "

  "No. It's me." Maggie's voice sounded edgy. "I'm losing it, Lisa. The walls are closing in on me. I can't breathe."

  "Are you in the closet again?" she demanded.

  "Yes, I'm in the closet. It's the only place where I won't be interrupted, where I can have two minutes to myself. It's not the closet that's making me crazy. It's everything else. I can't do this anymore. I can't fight with Roxy every morning about her clothes. I can't drive Dylan all over town so he can play these damn sports, and I can't take Mary Bea into Wal-Mart ever again, because my five-year-old stole two peanut butter cups and a giant-sized Hershey bar and I didn't even notice until I got home and found chocolate smeared across her chin."

  "Slow down," she said. "I don't think Wal-Mart will toss you into jail over a couple of candy bars."

  "I'm supposed to be okay, you know. It's been almost a year. I should be getting over this by now."

  "Honey, he was your husband. And you've been in love with him forever. You married him right out of high school. You might never get over him."

  "I know, but I'm so angry, Lisa. He had to die and leave me with all this. It was Keith's idea to buy this big, stupid house, you know. I never wanted this elephant of a mortgage, and it was his idea to have three kids; I would have stopped at two. It was his idea to go into the lab that night..." Her voice faltered. "If he hadn't gone to his office, he wouldn't have been there when the lab exploded," Maggie sobbed, as her emotions spilled out. "I told him to wait until the next morning ..."

  Maggie's sobs tore at Lisa's heart. "Please don't cry."

  "He wouldn't listen," Maggie said with a sniff. "He never listened to me."

  Every word Maggie uttered reminded Lisa of her own guilt, her own anger. And it was so pointless. "Maggie, you have to stop torturing yourself."

  "Why? I'm torturing everyone else."

  "You're not."

  "I am. I need you, Lisa. I'm desperate."

  "Me? What about -- your brothers?" God, she was pathetic. She couldn't even say his name out loud.

  "I can't reach Nick. He might be away for the weekend, Joe moved up to Monterey last year, remember? And his wife is expecting a baby any day now. My parents are finally taking their second honeymoon. I can't ask them to come home,"

  "What do you want me to do?"

  "Watch my kids for the weekend. I know I shouldn't ask. You're getting married in a month, and you must be busy, but I could use a friend right now." Her voice tightened. "And -- and you owe me, Lisa. There, I said it. I've felt it for a long time, and now I've said it. You didn't even come for Keith's funeral. I still can't believe you didn't come."

  Her stomach turned over at the anger and bitterness in Maggie's voice. Maggie was right. Lisa had been a lousy friend. "I came down the week after," she protested.

  "So you wouldn't have to see Nick and my parents and my kids. Your feelings came before mine."

  "You're right. I was scared." Lisa twisted the phone cord between her fingers. She'd felt guilty for weeks. She still did. "I should have been there for you. If you don't want to be my friend, I won't blame you."

  "You're not getting out of it that easily. I need you now, Lisa. You have to come. You just have to."

  '"I'll be down as soon as I can, a couple of hours." Lisa mentally ran through the list of what she was supposed to accomplish that weekend. Raymond wouldn't be happy. Neither would Mrs. Carstairs, but Maggie was right. Lisa owed her this. Heck, she owed her a lot more than this.

  "Really?" Maggie's voice filled with hope. "I know you hate it here, all the memories and Nick..."

  "I can handle the memories; it's your children I'm concerned about. Are you sure you want to leave them with me?"

  "I wouldn't trust anyone else," Maggie said softly.

  Her gaze dropped to the charm bracelet once again. Someone else had trusted her, and she had let her down. "Are you sure?''

  "It's the only thing I am sure about, Lisa?"

  "What?"

  "Hurry."

  She hung up the phone, worried more than ever by the note of panic in Maggie's voice. Maggie had always been the cool one, sensible, reasonable, dependable -- nothing like her older brother, Nick. Her heart raced at the thought of him. But just because she was going back to San Diego didn't mean she had to see Nick. She'd managed to avoid him for almost eight years. Surely, she could make it through one more weekend.

  Buy One True Love

  ASK MARIAH

  @ Barbara Freethy 2011

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  For further information, email barbara@barbarafreethy.com

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Barbara Freethy is the award-winning, bestselling author of 28 novels ranging from contemporary romance to romantic suspense and women's fiction. Her books have won numerous awards - she is a four time finalist for the RITA for best contemporary romance from Romance Writers of America and her book Daniel's Gift won the honor and was also optioned for a television movie.

  Known for her emotional and compelling stories of love, family and romance, Barbara enjoys writing about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary adventures. She is currently writing a contemporary series for Pocket books, entitled ANGEL'S BAY, set along the fictional coast of California. The latest book in the series, GARDEN OF SECRETS will be released in September 2011.

  Barbara has lived all over the state of California and currently resides in Northern California where she draws much of her inspiration from the beautiful bay area. Barbara loves to hear from readers so please feel free to write her.

  For a complete listing of books, as well as excerpts and contests:

  Visit Barbara's Website

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  Table des matières

  ASK MARIAH

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fiftee
n

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  DANIEL'S GIFT

  GOLDEN LIES

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter One

  ONE TRUE LOVE

  Chapter One

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR