“In so many words,” Cal confirmed. “Katie and I only caught the tail end of the conversation he had with Maddie, but he generously repeated some of it for Ty and Kyle’s benefit.”
“Damn him!” Helen repeated, this time with even more feeling. “I’m with Dana Sue. You need to go back in there and fight for what you want—I’m assuming that’s Maddie and the kids.” She scowled. “Or don’t you want them enough to fight for them?”
“I love them enough to give them a chance to figure out what’s best for them,” he said.
“If that isn’t a bunch of noble hogwash!” Dana Sue said with scorn. “Maddie needs to know you care enough to fight for her.”
“Maddie knows how much I care,” he said.
“How?” Dane Sue demanded. “Have you made a commitment to her? Have you told her you love her? Proposed? Done anything she can hold on to? Or is she going to have to weigh Bill’s concrete offer against your ambivalence?”
Cal thought of the ring he’d buried in her birthday cake. The kids knew just which slice to give to their mom. It was the only slice that had a lopsided, malformed rose on top. The ring was between the layers.
“You’ll have to trust me,” he told them. “Maddie knows how I feel, or she will before the evening’s over if they go ahead with the party.”
If some twist of fate put that slice on Bill Townsend’s plate, Cal hoped he’d break a tooth on that diamond.
“You’re making a mistake,” Dana Sue said, her tone dire. “Bill might be a jerk, but he can be very persuasive when he wants to be. How else do you suppose he got a beautiful young woman like Noreen, even if it all fell apart in the end?”
“Maddie’s not a naive twenty-four-year-old,” Cal reminded her.
“You think she’s going to stay with Bill, no matter what you do, don’t you?” Helen said. “That’s why you’re leaving.”
“I’m leaving because her ex-husband and the father of her children just announced he wanted a second chance. She needs to be able to consider that without me in her face.”
“Men and their stupid pride,” Dana Sue said with disgust. “Go home. Lick your wounds. That’s what you’re really doing. You don’t want a bunch of witnesses just in case she chooses Bill over you.”
Cal could hardly deny that. He had faith in what he and Maddie had. He just couldn’t be sure it would hold up against her sense of duty to her kids and the history she had with Bill.
“You’re right. I’d rather not force Maddie to make a choice with everyone she loves hanging on her every word. Come on, you know this is what I have to do. She needs time to think. She doesn’t need Bill and me in there haggling over her like she’s the last piece of prime rib in the butcher shop.”
“Well, it’s a good thing we don’t feel that way,” Dana Sue snapped. “I intend to go in there and stop her from making the second-worst mistake of her life.”
“What was the worst one?” Cal asked.
“Marrying Bill the first time,” Dana Sue said.
“Amen to that,” Helen said. She met Cal’s gaze. “And while I think you’re making a mistake to walk away right now, I understand and admire you for doing it. You and Maddie have me believing in love again. I hope to hell you don’t ruin that for me by carrying this damn nobility thing too far.”
Cal laughed at the annoyance in her voice. “To be perfectly honest, I hope so, too.” He glanced at Dana Sue, who was still seething. “You going to move your car out of my way?”
“No!” she snapped.
“Fair enough.” He considered trying to maneuver around it as Maddie’s mother had done a few weeks ago, but the rosebush was just now starting to recover. “I’ll walk.”
Dana Sue nodded. “Maybe that will get your blood circulating back to your brain.”
“Don’t mind her,” Helen said, giving him a commiserating look. “Come on, Dana Sue. Instead of berating Cal, let’s get inside and save the day before this whole mess spins out of control.”
“I can’t wait till Maddie’s mom gets here,” Dana Sue said. “I bet she’ll have plenty to say about this reconciliation.”
Cal didn’t envy any of them. From the look in Maddie’s eyes when he’d left, he had a hunch the chaos was already way past anybody’s attempts to save the day.
Bill was surrounded by a sea of hostile faces. He’d expected an uphill battle with Maddie, but he hadn’t counted on the arrival of Dana Sue, Helen and his former mother-in-law to make matters worse. Obviously his timing sucked. Even the kids had been very wary about, if not hostile to, his stated desire to come home, and indignant at being sent from the room when it became clear that a discussion about his relationship with their mother—and not a birthday celebration—was on the agenda.
“Maybe I should go,” he said eventually. “We can talk about this later, Maddie, after you’ve had time to consider what’s sensible.”
“Now, there’s a romantic thought.” Helen shook her head. “By all means, Maddie, do what’s sensible. Don’t listen to your heart.” She seared her best friend with a look. “And if you do, I promise you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
Bill tried to counter Helen’s remarks. “Look, sweetheart,” he said, “I’ve put all my cards on the table. I thought long and hard before doing it because I wanted to be sure it was the right thing. Now I’m trusting you to do the right thing, as well. You always have. Whenever you’re ready, we’ll talk.”
“She has nothing left to say to you,” Dana Sue declared. “You’re divorced, remember?”
Maddie cast a warning look at her best friend. “I can speak for myself.”
“I know,” Dana Sue said. “I’m just putting in my two cents’. Sue me.”
“If we’re all going to say what we think, I have a few things I’d like to get off my chest, too,” Paula said.
Bill knew there’d be nothing pleasant coming out of her mouth. “I think I can guess where you stand.”
“Really?” Paula said. “Maybe I just wanted to say that Maddie needs to remember that you’re the father of her children.”
Bill didn’t think for a second that she was going to let it go at that. “And?”
Paula gave him an approving look. “You’re smarter than I remembered. I was also going to say that that is not a good enough reason for her to take you back. The way you treated her was deplorable. That’s the bottom line. And while I will live with and support whatever decision Maddie makes, there’s only one I will truly respect.”
“You can’t even consider the possibility that I’ve learned from my mistakes?” Bill asked, stung by her comment, even though he’d been expecting something very much along those lines. He knew he deserved her wrath, but it cut just the same. Until he’d gotten involved with Noreen, he thought he’d been a good husband and father. Paula seemed to have forgotten about all those years when he’d been devoted to her daughter and their family.
“No, I can’t consider that possibility,” Paula said, her expression unrelenting. “It’s been my observation that men who treat their marriage and their family in such a cavalier manner don’t learn from their mistakes. They repeat them.”
“I won’t,” he said.
“And Maddie should believe that because?” Dana Sue demanded.
“Okay, enough,” Maddie said. “As much as I appreciate all the advice and moral support, ultimately this is my decision.”
“Agreed,” her mother said.
“And you need time to think about it, consider all the ramifications of what you decide,” Bill said.
“No,” she said, her gaze lifting to his. “I don’t.”
Bill swallowed hard at the certainty in her voice. This wasn’t going the way he’d hoped. He could see it in the pitying look in her eyes.
He forced himself to say it before she could. “It’s Cal, isn’t it?”
Maddie nodded. Her gaze went from her mother to Dana Sue and Helen before coming back to him. “I know all of you thought I didn’t
know my own mind, that I’d put the kids ahead of what I want and need, and in some ways you were justified in thinking that. My kids are the most important things in my life and I would do just about anything for them.”
“But—” her mother began.
Maddie didn’t allow her to finish. She held up her hand. “I would do anything except make myself miserable. I won’t turn myself into a martyr for the sake of my children.” When she met Bill’s gaze, her expression was sad. “I couldn’t marry you again, Bill. You’re not the man I married and I’m not the woman I was when I was married to you. It would never work.”
“How can you be sure if you won’t even give us a chance?” he asked, hating the pleading note in his voice. He realized how much he’d counted on being able to win her over. From the minute Noreen had walked out the door of their apartment, he’d been obsessed with winning Maddie back. He’d considered every angle, debated all the right arguments to make it happen. But it hadn’t been enough.
“I’m sure,” Maddie replied, “because I love someone else, someone who values who I am now, not someone who values the way I was. Because my heart races when I see him, because he makes me and my children happy.” She glanced at her mother and smiled. “Because Cal is my soul mate, Bill. It’s taken me a long time to realize it, but you never were.”
He saw the conviction in her eyes and knew he’d lost. Maybe their marriage would have ended someday anyway, but it had happened now because of his stupidity and recklessness. He had no choice but to concede defeat graciously.
Ignoring the other women in the room, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Maddie’s brow. “Be happy, then. Cal’s a lucky man.”
She smiled at him in a totally confident way. He recognized that self-confidence because for a while, because of him, she’d lost it. His heart ached.
“Yeah,” she said happily. “He really is.”
It was after midnight when Maddie let herself into Cal’s apartment, shed her clothes and slipped into bed beside him. As if he’d been waiting for her, he sighed and folded her close so she could hear the steady beating of his heart.
“Who’s with the kids?” he murmured.
“My mother. She said since it was for a good cause she’d break all her rules and babysit for the whole night.”
“A good cause?”
“You and me.”
“I wasn’t sure there would be a you and me after this afternoon,” he admitted, then drew his head back to look deep into her eyes. “I guess since you’re here in my bed, I was wrong.”
“You were,” she agreed. “There was never a doubt in my mind. I would have told you that, if you’d stuck around.” She tweaked a hair on his chest. “Finding the engagement ring in the birthday cake pretty much clinched it. It was just what I needed to risk coming over here and climbing into bed with you.”
She could feel his smile against her cheek. “You found it, huh? How come you cut the cake?”
“Actually the kids insisted,” she told him. “They seemed to have an idea that Bill showing up would give you cold feet, so they decided to do the asking for you.”
“Did you give them an answer?”
“Nope. I saved that for you.”
“And? Should I assume that your presence here in my bed is the answer?”
“Nope. This is the birthday present I’m giving myself,” she teased. “By the way, are you certain you weren’t sure of the outcome from the beginning?”
“Absolutely not, why?”
“You left the door unlocked.”
“This is Serenity,” he reminded her.
“And we have thieves, the same as anyplace else.”
“I don’t want to believe that. I like thinking this town is perfect, just the way I know you’re perfect.”
Maddie laughed. “Definitely delusional,” she assessed. “Maybe I should reconsider my decision.”
“Which decision would that be? Not going back to Bill or coming over here?”
“Marrying you. I was all set to say yes…”
For an instant he looked genuinely stunned. “You mean it?”
Maddie laughed. “Don’t look so shocked. I’m not letting you take it back now.”
He held her tighter. “Never.”
She reached for her blouse and pulled the simple diamond ring out of a pocket and held it out to him. “I rinsed the icing off,” she told him.
“Then you won’t object if I slip it on your finger?”
She frowned. “That’s it? That’s your idea of a proposal?”
Cal grinned. “I’m naked. Do you really want me out of this bed and down on one knee?”
Maddie laughed. “I think I do.”
“Okay, then,” he said, throwing back the sheets and climbing out of the bed.
Maddie sucked in a deep breath at the sight of all those muscles—and an impressive arousal. “Maybe the proposal can wait,” she said, beckoning him back to bed and settling into the comfortable intimacy that was so much better than anything she’d ever imagined.
“You know what this feels like?” Cal asked eventually, holding up her hand and sliding the diamond ring onto her finger, then pressing a kiss on top of it.
“What?”
“Stealing home.”
Maddie rested her head on his chest and noticed that his heart was still beating rapidly. “Thanks to my son, I know exactly what you mean. Bottom of the ninth, with the game on the line and a win just ninety feet away.”
“Exactly,” he confirmed.
“I figure I owe Ty for a whole lot more than teaching me baseball terminology,” she told Cal.
“Oh?”
“If it weren’t for him getting into so much trouble a few months ago, I might never have known just what an incredible man his coach is.”
Cal smiled. “Just a word to the wise,” he cautioned. “Don’t tell him that.”
“Why not?”
“If he thinks he gets the credit for bringing us together, he’s liable to use it against us.”
“How?”
“He’s a teenager. He’ll find a way.”
“I’m not worried,” Maddie said. “I happen to be in love with a man who knows just about everything there is to know about teenage boys.”
Cal laughed. “Boys, yes, but when Katie hits her teens, you’re on your own, darlin’. If it were up to me, she’d never leave the house.”
“I guess we’ll just have to do the best we can to get them all grown up and on their own.”
Cal tucked a finger under her chin. “How would you feel about adding one more to the mix before we call it quits?”
Maddie sat straight up in bed, stunned by the question and the hint of longing she’d heard in his voice. “Excuse me? I’m forty-one years old.”
“A very sexy, healthy forty-one. We could do this.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “I’m—”
“Don’t you dare say you’re too old,” he told her. “I’ve read all the literature. A pregnancy wouldn’t be without some potential risks and complications, but it’s possible. Will you at least think about it? Talk to your doctor?”
Maddie studied him, nervously fingering the ring that already felt as if it belonged on her hand. “Is this a deal breaker for you?”
He regarded her incredulously. “Absolutely not. I don’t have to see a kid with my genes running around to be happy. If it turns out that you hate the idea or the doctor says it’s unwise, that’s that. We can always consider adoption. I love kids, Maddie. Yours, ours, a kid who needs a home. And no matter what, we’ll make this decision together.”
She studied him with wonder. “More kids? I never even considered such a thing, but you know what? It feels right. We have a lot to offer, don’t we?”
His expression turned serious. “And just in case it crossed your mind, you’ll have all the help you need so you can work and raise our family at the same time, okay? This isn’t some sort of either/or situation. I know how important The
Corner Spa’s success is to you.”
“You’re amazing. Where were you twenty years ago?” she asked, then held up a hand. “Wait! Please don’t answer that.”
A grin spread across Cal’s face. “Okay, but just so you know, I was already imagining that one day I’d meet a woman just like you.”
“Oh, you were not. You were ten,” she protested.
“A very precocious ten,” he replied. “Want me to demonstrate a few of the moves I was already considering?”
She smiled. “Why, yes,” she said, already filled with anticipation. “I believe a demonstration would be the perfect way for this evening to end.”
Cal grinned. “If I do it right, this evening isn’t going to end. It’s going to be just the beginning.”
And so it was.
24
When word of the engagement leaked out, along with news that it would be a very short one, the town of Serenity embraced Maddie’s marriage to Cal as if everyone had been for the relationship all along. If Maddie had had her way, they would have had a quiet ceremony at the end of summer with just family and friends present, but Helen and Dana Sue arranged one of their margarita nights in early July specifically to press her to make it big and splashy, something for folks to remember.
“You don’t want one single person to think you’re still questioning whether you and Cal are right for each other, do you?” Dana Sue demanded, then grinned as she urged some more of her guacamole on Maddie, then put a second margarita into her hand. “Besides, you need to stake your claim in the most public way possible, so those women who were fantasizing about Cal don’t get any ideas about stealing him from you.”
“Cal and I don’t need to prove anything to anyone,” Maddie protested.
“Okay, if you won’t do it to make every female in town envious, do it for us?” Dana Sue pleaded. “Helen and I need a chance to catch a bouquet.”
“I could toss two of them, even at a small reception,” Maddie suggested, wondering if her head was spinning because of the change in plans, the stifling summer heat or the margaritas.
“It doesn’t count if it’s a setup. We have to grab those bouquets fair and square against real competition,” Dana Sue argued.
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