For the second time that day she left without saying goodbye.
* * *
Damn her. He wouldn’t have figured her as the type who excelled at dramatic exits, but then the last twenty-four hours had been filled with surprises. She knew he wouldn’t follow her again, not with Janna on alert out there in the waiting room. The Ellen Markowitz that Hall thought he knew was easygoing and laid-back, slow to anger and quick to forgive. This highly charged, passionate woman was a stranger to him.
He was neither spontaneous nor impulsive by nature. He made his decisions by following the rule of logic he had been following since childhood. Even his mistakes, and there had been many, were mistakes of the head as well as the heart. The women he had married were all bright, witty, well-educated women with high standards of excellence. That the marriages ended was his fault and his alone.
He knew that. He could follow the threads of logic back to the beginning and see where he had made his mistakes, identify the moment when he should have chosen another path. It all made a kind of emotional sense and that knowledge comforted him each time he found himself alone once again.
Last night with Ellen was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, and he was old enough, and experienced enough, to know it went far beyond great sex. Something deep inside his heart had cracked open when he touched her, elaborate defenses that had been part of his heart for so long he had forgotten they existed until they started to fall. Last night they all came tumbling down, and now he was left to sift through the wreckage.
Years ago, before responsibility in the form of four daughters came his way, he decided that jumping from an airplane sounded like a good idea. He showed up at the local airfield, took the necessary instruction, then stood there while they strapped and buckled him into the harness and loaded him into the small plane that would take him up. The higher they climbed, the less he felt like hurling himself through the open door into space, but when you’re nineteen and looking to impress your friends, you did it anyway. So when they pointed to him and said, “Go!” he did and fell face first into the sky. The split second the chute opened, jerking him up into the clouds, was the single most exhilarating, terrifying, life-affirming moment he had ever known until last night.
He never thought he would feel that same wild exhilaration again, never thought he would free fall without leaving the ground. Hope and despair and the sharp claws of desire: It was as heady a mix today as it had been when he was nineteen, and he still was at its mercy.
Chapter Six
“You found it?” the desk sergeant asked as Scott handed him an invoice.
“Have I ever let you down?”
“You’ve only been here a few months, Peretti. Give it time.”
“Next time try to mention a street name or two,” he said, nodding to the town assessor as she walked by. “Might help.”
“Gotta keep you on your toes.”
“Regular crime wave around here. Two grand-theft auto on the same weekend. What’s going on?”
“Prom night. Mayor Bourke’s kid borrowed the car, then forgot where he put it.”
“How’d it end up in Lincolnville?”
“Who the hell knows? Somebody walks by, sees the keys, next thing you know they’re doing eighty on the parkway. Good thing we found it. He’s supposed to sign us a pay raise next week. Gotta keep him happy.”
“I parked it next to your beater,” Scott said, waiting for the signed copy to take back to Jack at the garage. “Think you’ll be able to tell the difference?”
The sergeant, an old-timer named Bailey, gave one of those dry harrumphs that passed for a laugh Down East. “Ay-uh,” he said, scribbling his name on the bottom of the carbon set. “Not much chance of mistaking a Lexus for a Dodge.”
“Keep ’em coming,” Scott said, folding the signed paper and sticking it in his back pocket. “Beats hell out of rotating Jim DeTrano’s tires.”
A dog’s bark sounded from somewhere in the back of the station.
“Sweet Jesus,” Bailey said. “That damn dog won’t stop his caterwauling.”
It couldn’t be.
“You’re into arresting dogs these days?”
“Sounds like a dog, but I’m not convinced. You should see this thing. Looks like a linebacker for the Pats.”
“Stanley.”
“Yeah,” Bailey said. “You know him?”
“What the hell is he doing here?”
“Unlawful entry. The owner, not the dog.”
“Small, round, lots of red hair?”
“And the temper to go with it. Said she’s Dr. Ellen’s sister, but we weren’t buying it.”
“Is she?”
“Yep. The doctor’s on her way over to spring her.”
“Where’re you holding her?”
“Out back with the dog. Terry’s keeping an eye on her.”
The back door was closer to the parking lot. Why not save a few steps?
“Ouch!” a familiar voice yelped. “Don’t you look before you swing open a door?”
“Sorry.” He joined her on the landing. “It never occurred to you somebody might actually use the door?”
“A lot of things have never occurred to me.” She squinted up at him, shielding her eyes against the sun. “Getting arrested, for one.”
He leaned against the railing and watched as Stanley sniffed his way around Bailey’s parked car. “Did they really arrest you?”
“I think so. They read me my rights. For a second I thought I was auditioning for The Practice.”
“Better that than Six Feet Under.”
She didn’t laugh like a harp player. She laughed like a blues singer, full and rich and uninhibited. The sound surprised him. The fact that he noticed surprised him even more.
“I didn’t think you had a sense of humor,” she said as Stanley bounded over to see what was happening.
He tensed a little as Stanley nosed around his leg. Actually he tensed a lot. The dog hit one of those low notes deep in his throat that sounded like the last rites to him.
“Stanley!” She placed her hands under the dog’s muzzle and tilted his face toward her. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you recognize Scott the Mechanic?”
“Gotta go.” Scott the Mechanic was no fool. Better make a break for it while the woolly mammoth was occupied.
“Chicken!” she called out as he jogged across the parking lot toward the tow truck. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
The rich notes of her laughter seemed to follow him to the truck, and it was a long time before the sound faded away.
* * *
Ellen glanced at her watch as she raced up the front steps of the police station. Twenty minutes after twelve. That meant she had exactly forty minutes to bail her kid sister out of jail, deposit sister and Stanley the mystery dog at the condo for safekeeping, then race to the attorney’s office to close on the house. She probably shouldn’t have driven around the block twice before she parked her car, but the encounter with Hall had left her so flustered she needed time to pull herself together.
Cautious, careful Ellen Markowitz—what in hell was happening to her?
She greeted Bailey, who was gulping down a take-out lobster roll from Cappy’s.
“Please don’t tell me she’s in lockup,” she said as she signed the paperwork he slid toward her. “She’ll add it to her résumé.”
Bailey, whose wife had been one of her first patients, snorted. “She’s sitting out back with that giant dog of hers. Terry’s keeping an eye on her from the office window, but I didn’t think she was much of a flight risk.”
“Sorry for the trouble, Bailey. I should have told Mary to let her in if she showed up again. It’s my fault.”
“You didn’t threaten Casey and Rita with passive resistance.”
“Oh, God.” Her head started to pound with the beginnings of a migraine. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“Wish I could, Doc. She said if they didn’t let her take the
dog with her to the station, they’d have to carry her out.”
“So they let her take the dog?”
Bailey shrugged. “Rita’s pregnant and Casey has a bad back. They figured it was easier that way.”
Her first, selfish reaction was one of relief. Her sister’s almost-arrest would take everyone’s mind off the fact her car had been parked in front of Hall’s house all night. Wasn’t that what family was for?
She hurried down the hallway to the rear exit, pushed open the door, and let out a shriek of alarm as a solid wall of brown fur launched itself in her direction.
“Down, Stanley!” Deirdre’s voice sounded from behind the wall of fur. “You’re scaring Aunt Ellen.”
Aunt Ellen?
Stanley was clearly thrilled to meet her. He expressed his enthusiasm by placing a furry paw on each of her shoulders and proceeding to slobber all over her chin.
“Deirdre! Do something!” she said. It was hard to sound stern when you were laughing into a giant dog face.
“He loves you! I knew he would.”
“He’s slobbering all over my shirt.”
“Tell him he’s a good boy. That’s all he wants. Then he’ll calm down.”
“Good boy,” Ellen said, sagging under his weight. “Good Stanley!”
Darned if her sister wasn’t right. Stanley yipped twice, then galloped off down the steps as if he had an appointment with the nearest tree.
And speaking of her sister, there Deirdre was, all flowing hair and flowing skirt and big wide sunny smile, looking not a day over twenty-two.
“Dee!”
“Elly!”
Oh, how wonderful she felt. Soft and warm and smelling of lavender and Stanley. A rush of affection, unexpected and powerful, flooded her.
“How long has it been?” she asked, pushing away just the tiniest bit so she could see her sister’s face.
“Two years,” said Deirdre, her deep blue eyes twinkling with delight.
“It couldn’t be! We were in Boston. I had the conference and you—”
“Two years,” Deirdre said again, laughing. “That was the weekend I broke up with Antonio. You took me to the Ritz-Carlton and I cried into my champagne cocktail.”
“Antonio!” Her laughter mingled with Deirdre’s. “The poor little rich boy from Venezuela.”
“Except he wasn’t rich,” Deirdre said with a sigh. “Poor and gorgeous.”
“There are worse things.”
“Like poor and not gorgeous.”
“You haven’t changed a bit,” Ellen said. “Still looking for Prince Charming with the soul of a poet and a Bill Gates bank account.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Prince Charmings are in short supply. I’d settle for the bank account.”
“I thought you were the family romantic.” God knew she dressed the part with the pre-Raphaelite curls tumbling down her back, the off-the-shoulder blouse and long, flowing skirt.
“It’s the harp,” she said. “Fools ’em every time.”
“When did you start playing the harp? The last I heard you were still singing in blues clubs.”
“Like I said, it’s been a long time, Elly. A lot’s happened.”
“There’s an understatement for you.”
Deirdre’s face lit up. “Do I smell the unmistakable aroma of romantic turmoil?”
“No, no,” she said quickly. Probably too quickly. “It’s just been a crazy day. I have the closing in less than half an hour.”
“I don’t blame you for moving,” Deirdre said, linking her arm through Ellen’s. “That old bat next door is a horror show.”
“Mary’s wonderful. You just took her by surprise.”
“She called the cops on me.” Deirdre’s expressive voice was filled with indignation. “Can you imagine! All I was doing was waiting for my own sister, and she picks up the phone and calls the police.”
“Don’t blame Mary for that,” Ellen said. “I should have told her it was okay to let you in if you came back.”
“She acted like she didn’t know you even had sisters.”
“Listen,” Ellen said with a showy glance at her watch. “Let me get the closing out of the way and then we can catch up with each other. I signed all the paperwork inside, so you’re free to leave. Why don’t you and the—Stanley go over to the condo and wait for me there.”
“Great idea,” Deirdre said, “but no car, remember?”
“You rode the dog here from Boston?”
“Love that New York humor. The car broke down near the doughnut shop. A woman named Annie Butler rescued me. She took Stanley and me into her shop and called for a tow truck.”
“You were in good hands,” Ellen said, pushing thoughts of the night before away. “Annie’s a terrific woman.”
“I left one of my bags with her. Do you think we could—”
Ellen took another, closer look at her watch. “Dee, we can’t anything. It looks like you and Stanley are going to have to come with me to the closing.”
“Sounds terrific!” Deirdre said. “Just one adventure after another today.”
She didn’t know the half of it.
* * *
Across town Claudia leaned forward to peer at Susan’s watch.
“It’s not like Dr. Markowitz to be late,” she said.
“She is an obstetrician,” her daughter reminded her, “and we both know babies don’t follow timetables.”
“She should have asked that nice Janna to call and let us know.”
“I didn’t say she’s delivering a baby. I just reminded you that things happen.”
“You distinctly said—”
“Ma, it’s only three minutes after one. Cut her a little slack, will you? The lawyers aren’t even here yet.”
“Perhaps she changed her mind about the house. She seemed a little iffy this morning.”
“This morning?” Suddenly she had her daughter’s full attention. “You saw Ellen this morning?”
In for a penny, in for a pound. “At the house. I wanted to say goodbye.”
Susan’s cheeks reddened just enough for a mother to notice. “I would have taken you over if you’d asked.”
“I didn’t want you to take me over,” she said. “This was something I wanted to take care of on my own.”
“There aren’t any surprises coming at closing, are there? I mean, you didn’t try to raise the price on her, did you?”
“She said that?”
“No. She didn’t even mention she’d seen you. Then again she probably had other—” Susan’s lips clamped down on the end of the sentence.
“I hope you weren’t going to bring up that nonsense about Dr. Ellen and Hall again. I mentioned it to her, and let me tell you, she put me in my place in no uncertain terms.”
Susan groaned louder than she had when she was in labor. “Ma, have you entirely lost it? Why on earth would you mention Hall to Ellen?”
“Be that as it may, the point I’m trying to make is that you were wrong. She isn’t seeing Hall. Certainly not the way you implied on the telephone this morning.”
Susan leaned forward and banged her forehead against the tabletop three times in rapid succession.
“Really, Susan. You were more mature when you were six.”
“I thought your generation was uptight about sex,” Susan said. “You sure as hell never talked about it with me.”
“It’s a different world,” Claudia said, trying very hard not to let her oldest daughter prod her into a full-blown battle. “Women marry later, if they marry at all. It’s unrealistic to imagine they’ll go to their graves as virgins.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Susan fanned herself with the printout of the title search. “Why weren’t you this progressive when I was seventeen?”
“I’m glad you’re finding this so amusing, Susan. You should be thanking me for providing you with the true story so you can nip any vicious gossip in the bud.”
“And the true story is?”
/> Claudia hesitated, then regrouped. “That there is nothing of a romantic nature between Dr. Ellen and Hall.”
“I don’t know how to break it to you, Ma, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t screw each other’s brains out last night.”
“I’m too old to be shocked, Susan, if that was your intention.”
Susan drew in a long breath. “So how do you know what didn’t go on between them last night?”
“She told me.”
“You mean, she walked up to you and said, ‘Oh, by the way, Claudia, Hall and I didn’t—let me edit myself—make love last night.’”
“In a manner of speaking, that’s exactly what she did.”
“With no prodding from you.”
“Really, Susan, you’re too young for these senior moments. She commented on the size of the house, and I simply mentioned that now that she and Hall were seeing each other, it might not seem that large much longer.”
“You really said that?”
“I was making conversation with her.”
“Ma, you have bigger cojones than the entire batting order of the Red Sox combined.”
“Thank you,” Claudia said as she powdered her nose.
* * *
Susan had a hard time keeping her mind on the proceedings. Jack was going to have a field day when she told him what she had done. Once again she had gone out of her way to make sure her mother knew exactly what had happened between Hall and Ellen last night. The fact that she wasn’t one hundred percent certain herself hadn’t slowed her down any. No, she had been determined to make sure her mother believed Hall and Ellen were sleeping together.
Her gaze kept wandering to Ellen, who was busy signing her name to a mountain of official documents and checks.
She looked different. No doubt about it. More womanly, somehow. The slender angles of her body seemed softer, as if the edges had been rounded off. Susan wasn’t sure if it was the look in her eyes or the half-smile on her lips as she read the mortgage agreement, but that wasn’t the same woman she had chatted with yesterday afternoon at the christening party.
Girls of Summer (Shelter Rock Cove - Book #2) Page 7
