by Shirley Jump
He scowled. “If I promise to put in some security, will you quit staying here?”
She thrust her fists on her hips. “And where am I going to stay? Grandma Kenner doesn’t have the room in her tiny little condo and it’s against the rules for her to have long-term visitors, anyway, not that I could pass for a senior citizen either way. Staying with Renee only gives her an excuse to keep Tony out. And Edward is back home in our apartment, which belongs to him, anyway. I wouldn’t go back to him if you paid me. I could rent a place, but I’m pouring most of my income into here.”
“Then stay with me. I have a huge house, and all that space is just going to waste. I’ve already asked you once. This offer is expiring quick.” He grinned, but the seriousness stayed in his gaze.
She shook her head. “Mack, we’ve been through this. I—”
He took a step closer, the air mattress dropping from his hands, landing on the floor and rolling away. “Not to mention, I have that pool. Think about it, Alex. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a nice way to end your day after working here? Taking a dip in that cool water?”
The pool. Mack in the pool. Half-naked, stroking through the water…“But—”
“And a real bed. With a good mattress. Which would be a hell of a sight better than that piece of crap.” He pointed at the roll of plastic that had stopped by the wall.
Mack in the morning. In a towel. Wet from the shower, hair curling against his chest. Skin glistening, just aching for her to taste—
What was wrong with her? Where were all these thoughts coming from?
She couldn’t forget living with Mack meant seeing Mack in his element. With other women. Women who might join him in that bed. In that shower. In that pool. Alex shook her head. “I shouldn’t—”
“You shouldn’t argue with me.” He moved closer. “This is the kind of thing friends are for, right?”
“Is that what we are, Mack? Friends?”
“Of course.”
“Then what was that a few minutes ago? Because friends…” Alex drew in a breath, one that trembled through her veins, and she had no clue why. “Friends don’t kiss each other like that, last I checked.”
“Well, maybe some friends do.” He paused. “Okay, most friends don’t.”
“None that I know of.”
“It was an anomaly. It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” But why did the word escape her lips and lose its impact? Why did disappointment sink like a stone into her stomach? Why did she want him to promise more of the same? She didn’t want him to kiss her. She didn’t want to get involved with Mack. She didn’t want to mess up a good thing. “It was a bad idea. It…complicates things.”
“That it does. And you know me,” Mack said. Still close, inches from her. A breath away from her touch. “I’m not good at complications.”
“No, you’re not.” Exactly why she’d never considered a relationship with him.
“So, will you stay with me?” he asked.
Stay with Mack. Swim with him in the pool. Stay down the hall from his bedroom. See him outside the shower, the kitchen, with the towel, and then that same towel dropping—
“Will you talk to Tony?” Alex asked, quickly, getting her mind onto something other than Mack without a towel. “Get him to move back home with Renee?”
“Are you blackmailing me?”
“Simply making a deal.”
He chuckled, then put out a hand. Alex slipped her palm into his much bigger, rougher one. His hand engulfed hers in a second. Warm, secure. “Sure.”
“And promise me you won’t give Tony your usual ‘marriage is the work of the Devil’ speech?”
“You know I only reserve that one for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “You are incorrigible.”
“I try my best,” Mack said. Then he leaned down, so close to her, he could have kissed her again with only a whisper of effort. Every ounce of Alex stilled, waiting, hoping, even as she told herself any kind of kiss with Mack was a bad idea. A very bad idea. “And maybe one of these days, you’ll let me corrupt you, too.”
And, oh, for one second, Alex wanted him to do that. Very, very much.
Hoo-boy. Had she just made the worst decision of her life?
Chapter Ten
Renee hid in the ladies’ room.
Okay, so it was the coward’s way out. Dodging the question from Bill Rhinehart about going to the Westin hotel this afternoon. The one afternoon she had free. Her middle child was going home with a friend after school, the oldest one had play rehearsal, the preschooler was in day care. Her boss was out at a meeting and wasn’t coming back, so slipping out of the office wouldn’t be a problem.
Renee had no one expecting her to be anywhere until after five o’clock.
Her stomach churned. She clutched her gut, sure she was going to puke, then decided to face facts. She was no more cut out for having an affair than a walrus was for living in the tropics.
She turned on the tap, splashed some cold water on her face and refreshed her lipstick. Then she stared at the face in the mirror. A face she didn’t recognize. “What are you doing?” she whispered to her own reflection. “What the hell are you doing?”
She pressed her palms to her cheeks, meeting hot skin. Maybe she was getting sick. Or maybe she was just embarrassed to even think about cheating.
She’d grown up a good Catholic girl. The kind that went to Mass every weekend, had worn her First Communion dress with pride, sworn up and down she would follow every Commandment. Where had she gone off track?
Was cheating on her husband a sin if her husband had checked out of the marriage before it barely began? If they’d gotten married for all the wrong reasons, and stayed together because they’d thought they were doing the right thing?
And had only made it worse?
Renee swallowed and faced herself again. “Either shit or get off the pot, Renee. You can’t sit on the fence forever.” Then she grabbed her purse and exited the restroom.
“Renee.” Bill’s voice, soft, concerned, came up from behind her. He caught up to her in the corner of the hall, out of sight of the rest of the office. A large potted plant—something with huge leaves, Renee couldn’t have said what it was if her life depended on it—blocked them from prying eyes.
She bit back a laugh. How ridiculous they looked, behind a potted plant. Subterfuge. Affairs. At her age. She had three kids, for God’s sake. She drove a minivan. She brought snacks to soccer practice. She was a walking, talking, cliché—
And she was staring into a pair of brown eyes that looked at her and found her pretty, and being touched by a hand that wanted her, and wondering when the hell her own husband had stopped doing that.
“I can’t,” she said, the guilt so sharp, it twisted her gut again, knotting it as tight as a ball of yarn.
“I know,” he said. “I know this is hard for you. We don’t have to do anything. I just wanted to say I’m here for you, if you want to talk.” His hand rode up her arm, igniting that spark of fire that had left her. How long ago had it died? How long since Tony had touched her and she’d felt that heat? Felt wanted? Desired? His thumb traced a lazy circle around her shoulder. “Or anything else.”
Renee swallowed. Anything else.
Did she want anything else? Sort of like adding a dessert onto an already full plate. Bill’s eyes were kind, compassionate, but the patience in them had a thinner edge than they had three months ago when the two of them had first started going out to lunch. In the beginning, their afternoon meetings had been nothing. They’d talked about work, then drifted into conversations about music. Books. Renee had found herself dying to go to lunch, craving someone to listen to her, to find her interesting again, to look at her and notice she’d worn her hair down, or to say that blue shirt looked good with her eyes. Bill had attracted her mind first, and then her body had followed suit like a puppy trotting along behind a treat.
Then one day outside the diner, she’d stumbled, he
’d caught her, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he’d kissed her. She’d yielded into that kiss, needing it as much as she did the words, because the loneliness had become as much an appendage as her right arm, and when Bill had touched her, he’d made a dent in a bottomless hole.
She’d felt noticed. Like he knew it was her under those lips. Not some blow-up doll in bed. Somewhere along the way, Tony had stopped paying attention, stopped realizing she was even there. Their lovemaking had become a perfunctory play so often performed, it could have been Cats.
But was she ready to take that next irreversible step? She twisted her hands together, and when she did, her fingers struck the tiny diamond Tony had given her eleven years ago when they had no money but a lot of dreams. Once, she’d thought no other men existed except Tony. Couldn’t imagine ever loving anyone but him. Falling into anyone’s arms but his.
Tears pooled in the corner of Renee’s eyes. Her chest tightened and she knew a part of her still ached for that dream. Until that hope died, too, she couldn’t do this.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, Bill,” Renee said, then slipped past the plant and into the open. Before she did anything behind the leaves that she would regret.
Unlike wine, his father’s mood did not improve with time or age.
“What is it going to take to get you to stop showing up on my doorstep?” Roy asked.
“You, helping me at that house.”
“I’m no longer in the construction industry.” Roy flipped out the footrest of his La-Z-Boy and turned on the television. Pat Sajak and Vanna White bloomed to life on the thirty-five-inch color screen. “I’m retired, in case you haven’t noticed, which means my days consist of nothing but sitting around on my ass.”
“And figuring out five-letter words for moron?”
Roy shot him a glare. “You’re welcome to pull up a chair and throw out a guess. Like idiot.”
Mack laughed, and noticed his father holding back a smile of his own. “Come on, you know you’re bored out of your skull. It wouldn’t hurt you to put in a couple hours here and there doing something constructive.”
Roy watched Vanna touch a couple of screens, turning the white boxes into letter Ns. “Like what? If you say some bullshit like art therapy, I’m throwing you out of here.”
“A house that needs some serious TLC.”
“I’ve done more than my fair share of those.”
“This one’s different.”
Roy snorted. Mack waited. Vanna touched a couple more boxes, and As appeared. The audience applauded like she’d just turned water into wine.
“Different how?” Roy asked.
“It’s Alex’s house. Where she grew up.”
“With Carolyn?”
“No. With her mother.”
That got his father’s attention. Roy shifted in the La-Z-Boy and faced Mack. “She had a house? I always assumed her and Alex lived…I don’t know. In a car or something.”
“Yeah, me, too. Alex didn’t talk about her childhood much. Except to say it sucked.”
The wheel spun in the background, click-clacking its way around the circle, the contestants clapping with wild abandon. Everyone rooting for that trip to Vancouver. “And how do you figure into this?”
“I’m helping her. The place is a dump and she’s in way over her head.”
Roy shook his head and turned back to Vanna and Pat. “You doing it for free?”
“Dad, she’s a reporter. She doesn’t make much.”
“Brangelina in Love, you idiot.”
“What?”
Roy pointed the remote toward the TV. “What the hell is wrong with these people? They keep wasting their money on vowels. Can’t they guess the puzzle already? Clue: People magazine. Look. All but one of the consonants have been guessed. A monkey could figure it out now. Why throw away your money on an O, for God’s sake?”
“I don’t even want to know why you’re so familiar with People magazine headlines.” Mack leaned forward and flicked the POWER button to OFF. “That alone is proof you’re spending way too much time at home.”
“Hey! I was watching that. Kenny was trying to win a boat.” Roy pointed the remote at the Magnavox, but Mack slid in front of the infrared sensor, blocking the magic eye.
“You do realize how ridiculous you sound, don’t you? Reading gossip magazines, getting hooked on Wheel? Come to the house. Help me out.”
Roy scowled. “I sold most of my tools.”
“Bullshit.”
His father shrugged. Wiggled the remote from side to side, thumbing the POWER button. “Will you move?”
Mack kept blocking the TV. “I’ll share my tools with you.”
“I’m retired.”
“You’re becoming a joke, Dad. You have to get out of—”
“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing!” Roy shouted, exploding out of the chair. “Not a goddamn thing, not until—” He cut himself off and let out a curse. “Just get the hell out of my house, will you?”
“Dad,” Mack said, his voice soft, his hand on his father’s arm. “It’s been over a year. She’s not—”
“Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”
Mack let the sentence go. But he held on to his father, refusing to give up. “Come help me, Dad. Just for a day or two. Nobody knows how to fix a house like you.”
“If I knew how to keep a house together,” Roy said, his voice scraping past his throat, “my own would still be standing.”
Then he shook his head, flung the remote toward the chair, spinning on his heel and leaving the room. The remote bounced off the La-Z-Boy. The big red POWER button hit the corner of the end table, blasting Vanna and Pat onto the screen again. Kenny was crying.
One spin too many and he’d gone bankrupt. No boat for him.
“I know how you feel, Kenny,” Mack said. “I’m drowning here, too.”
Chapter Eleven
Tony had a three beer and one tequila shot lead by the time Mack got to O’Malley’s Bar late Monday night. Boomer sat beside him, a couple of empties to the side. The small, crowded sports bar was noisy, most of the patrons busy rooting for the Red Sox on the overhead widescreen TVs, even as their home team trailed six runs behind Chicago. Nevertheless, red-and-white pennants hung from every available nook and cranny, a visual testament to O’Malley’s undying support for his beloved baseball team.
“Mack!” Tony raised his shot glass in Mack’s direction. “The king of the bachelor posse! The only one smart enough to throw off the bonds of marriage! My hero!”
“Here, here,” Boomer said, raising his own beer. Kenny “Boomer” O’Brien had been friends with the two of them ever since high school, a third leg in the bar buddy triangle. “Gives me some hope I can keep on dodging that bullet, too.”
Mack ambled through the crowd and over to the bar. “Coors Light.” He nodded a greeting at Boomer.
“Don’t wimp out on us. Start like a man.” Tony slid his shot glass over to Mack. Had those words come out slurred? No, Tony decided. It was the music. Too damn loud. Made everything he said blend into the background.
“I can’t be doing shots, Tone. I have to work in the morning, and so do you. Boomer here is the only slacker.” Mack slid the squat, heavy glass away and toward Finn, the bartender.
“Hey, that’s a low blow.” Boomer shifted his stout frame on the stool. “I’m between careers right now. But I’m working on the job thing.”
Mack raised a brow. “Working how?”
“Every day I wake up at noon, get the paper off the porch and recycle it.” Boomer laughed. “Then I go looking for a woman who wants to take care of my needs. With this as part of my resume,” he patted his beer belly, “that’s hard work.”
“Now there’s a real full-time job,” Mack said, then shook his head. “You ever think about growing up?”
“Don’t do it, Boomer,” Tony said. “If you do who’s going to pass out on Mack’s lawn?”
Boomer tapped his
beer bottle against Tony’s shot glass. “Exactly. What’s our motto, boys?”
“‘Growing up is for wimps,’” the three of them said together, though Tony thought Mack didn’t sound as hearty as usual. Whatever. The guy had been moody lately. Probably wasn’t getting any. He went for his shot glass again.
Mack stopped him with a hand of caution. “Tony, seriously, lay off. You don’t normally drink this much. Plus, you have a job where you operate heavy machinery. The surgeon general has a warning about that, you know.” Mack let out a chuckle, which Boomer echoed.
“Yeah, that and smoking. The guy is a total party pooper,” Boomer scoffed.
“So, I’ll blow off work.” Tony shrugged off Mack’s touch, then grabbed the shot glass, the golden liquid inside spilling a little over the edge in his haste. He went to knock back the tequila when Mack grabbed his arm again and brought the glass back down, sloshing the liquor onto the laminate surface of the bar. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Stopping you from a bad hangover and an even worse decision. Slow down, man.”
Tony scowled. “You’re not my wife.”
“Good thing,” Boomer said. “Mack would look like shit in a dress.”
Mack laid his arms on the bar and leaned forward. “Speaking of Renee, why aren’t you home with her instead of out with us?”
Tony didn’t answer that question. Why wasn’t he home with his wife? Because his wife didn’t want him there. Hadn’t wanted him in months. Years. But how could he tell his friends that? Instead, he choked down the last of the tequila and signaled for another beer. “Let’s call some of the other guys and make the rounds tonight. Hit some of the regular haunts. Like old times.” Again, the words seemed to blend together in his ear, becoming a smushy soup of sounds, but Tony brushed it off. He wasn’t drunk. Not nearly drunk enough.
Not if it still hurt, and it sure as hell did. Why had he ever gotten married? The whole thing had been a mistake since the words “I do.” He’d rushed into it, rushed into kid number two, kid number three, as if he thought adding more and more to the marriage stew would make him feel like a husband.
