The Gazebo

by Kimberly Cates

  The answering machine buzzed. “Finn, this is Dee. I’m going to be later than I thought, so could you or Cade…” Deirdre thought of the Captain. He only answered the phone when he felt like it and could be listening. If he were, he’d set out across those flagstones. Deirdre had enough guilt. She didn’t need to add to it.

  “Just call me on my cell phone as soon as one of you gets back.” A jolt of memory shot through her, Finn’s most recent complaint about Will and Amy, the enterprising twins figuring out how to delete messages after their pre-school teacher threatened to call because Will had gotten in a fight when another kid had peeked under Amy’s dress.

  “Hey, kids, don’t delete this message before your mom or dad hears it, and I swear I’ll take you to the Whippy—” the beep alerted Deirdre the tape had shut off, but she had to finish anyway “—Dip.”

  Stone snorted in disgust. “And you griped about my expertise with kids. You’re bribing them over the phone, not to mention lying to your daughter when you damned well know you’re going to get caught.”

  “Drop it, Stone.”

  “Oh, yeah. All this because that poor kid might actually kiss the princess in the tower. But you’re not worried at all that Emma’s heading for New York in a few months. What do you think, that drama school has an army of nuns guarding the girls’ doors? There’ll be whole dorms full of boys trying to kiss your daughter, and you’d better get used to it. You’ll be half a country away.”

  “Emma will have her work. She’s far too serious about acting to—”

  “To what? Be curious about what goes on between a man and a woman? Get real, lady. She’s growing up and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. If that kid steals a kiss it won’t be the end of the world.”

  “Maybe not for the boy,” Deirdre snapped bitterly. “But for a girl—” She bit off the last words. No. She wasn’t going to tell Stone, wasn’t going to let him see…beyond her defenses, into her fears, past Emma to the girl Deirdre had been before….

  But the words plunged relentlessly on in her mind, the silence only serving to make them more terrifying.

  For a girl a kiss could change everything. Trick her into believing…what? That she was beautiful, that he loved her. Get her to trust…

  In one fatal night, to risk all her dreams.

  The way Stone talked, he’d probably help the kid carve Emma’s notch on his bedpost.

  No. Not her little girl. She wasn’t going to let Emma get hurt….

  The way you did? a voice whispered in her heart. Your mother would have been thrilled with Drew Lawson. Deirdre winced, remembering the brief time she’d actually had her own mother’s approval.

  The day when a tall, clean-cut high school senior had started hanging around the house on Linden Lane. And for a few precious weeks before Emmaline McDaniel had died, Deirdre staked everything on the blind hope that finally, she just might belong.

  PINK. THE HOUSE WAS PINK. Deirdre stared, aghast, as Stone whipped into a narrow driveway. Stone’s “best legs in Las Vegas” showgirl must’ve used one of her feather boas in designing this disaster. The modest little ranch-style house was as pink as an Easter bunny’s behind, with lime-green shutters and—Lord save us!—sunflower-yellow window boxes with a psychedelic nightmare of flowers rioting everywhere while a vintage Halloween-orange muscle car sat up on blocks outside the garage.

  In spite of how furious she was with Stone, Deirdre couldn’t suppress a smirk.

  “Whoa, I can see why you were so worried,” Deirdre jibed. “God knows what Trula Devine would paint next.”

  “If she’s playing one of her games, by God, I’m going to kill her.” Stone pinned Deirdre with a savage glare. “Stay in the car, damn it. I mean it.” He levered his big body out of the driver’s seat and slammed the door so hard it almost jumped right off its hinges.

  Deirdre choked out a laugh, then made a face at his back as he stalked around the corner. Not that she could blame him. God knew, if her lover lived in a house like this, Deirdre figured she’d be too embarrassed to go in the front door, too.

  But when it came to obeying orders, she wasn’t much better than the Captain. And who could resist seeing a woman named Trula Devine who lived in a pink house, anyway? Talk about a once-in-a-lifetime chance! Not to mention the opportunity to stick it to Mr. Are-You-Walking-Home Jake Stone.

  Deirdre slipped out the door, shut it quietly—no sense sneaking up on the guy if she was going to give him any warning. She traced his steps around the corner, heard Stone’s swearing drowned out by a feminine squeal of delight.

  What had the woman done? Met him at the door wearing some of that new colored Saran wrap? Something in a tasteful purple with pink polka dots?

  “Jacob, what a lovely surprise! Why, I had no idea you were stopping by!”

  “Damn it, Trula, why didn’t you pick up the phone! Do you know what you do to me? God, woman, you scared the hell out of me—”

  “I must have been taking a bubble bath,” that Bette Davis husky voice said, so breezily it was obvious Stone’s temper didn’t faze her.

  If she’d been soaking in the tub since they’d left Whitewater, Deirdre figured even the best legs in Vegas must be shriveled into two hot dog-length prunes.

  “You’re the sweetest boy in the whole world, worrying about me that way!”

  Deirdre crept to the door Stone had left open, peeped inside.

  She gasped. Maybe Trula Devine was obscured by Stone’s big body, but her arms twined joyously around Stone’s neck, a fluff of black ostrich feathers around her wrists, while her fire-engine-red lipstick smeared the man’s cheek. Whoa, Deirdre was tempted to say, get a room. But Stone had told her to stay in the car.

  Suddenly the woman peeled herself off Stone, her eyes lighting up as she gave Deirdre the shock of her life. The tall, still-voluptuous woman had to be sixtysomething years old! A well-preserved sixtysomething, but still—

  “You are Stone’s girlfriend?” Deirdre’s jaw all but hit the floor.

  Trula’s hand fluttered up to the most spectacularly dyed red hair Deirdre had ever seen. “Why, bless you for thinking so! Jacob, why didn’t you tell me you brought a friend?”

  “A client, Trula. A client,” Stone said. Good God, Deirdre marveled. Was Mr. Tough Guy blushing? “I thought I told you to stay in the car.”

  “Shame on you!” Trula said, smacking Stone on the arm. “All those years backstage in Vegas, I would’ve thought you’d learned how to treat a lady!”

  “Aw, Trula—”

  “I’m Jacob’s grandmother.”

  “His grandmother? What were you? Twelve when you gave birth to his…well, whichever of his parents?”

  “His mother,” Trula supplied. “Oh, my. I really do like this girl, Jacob! I’m seventy years old. And this is the real me, without a single plastic surgery. The love of a good man, that’s what my secret is. Well, several good men, actually.”

  Stone winced. “She outlived them all. Hell, she’ll probably outlive me.”

  “Yes, well, Jacob’s the only one left.” Trula tsked, her expression suddenly fraught with the tender resignation of mothers and grandmothers everywhere. “He’s a good boy, really. But he’s got far too many more important things to do than sit down for a visit.”

  “I do have a job, you know,” Jake grumbled.

  “Well, if you were bringing company, the least you could have done is said so on the answering machine.”

  “What answering machine? I thought you didn’t hear it.”

  “Well, maybe I did. But if I’d answered it, you wouldn’t be here, would you? And you wouldn’t have brought this lovely young lady along. Ms.—?”

  “Ah, Deirdre McDaniel,” Deirdre supplied, offering the older woman her hand. Trula ignored it, sweeping her into a big hug. She smelled of Chanel No. 5. Deirdre remembered when her own mother had opened a bottle at Christmas. She’d never worn it. And she’d never hugged like Trula did, freely, openly. No, Emmaline McDaniel’s
hugs had been careful ones, as if she were afraid not to hold something back.

  “Pleased to meet you, Deirdre.” Trula released her, flashing a smile. “Jacob doesn’t bring his friends over nearly often enough. Except that darling Tank Rizzo and his wife. Why, when the boys were on the police force together they’d stop here for lunch at least once a week.”

  “I’m not on the force anymore.”

  “I know that, dear, but I can’t help remembering how lovely it was when you were.” For the first time, a soft grief touched the old woman’s face.

  Deirdre wondered what this woman had thought when she heard the awful truth that her grandson had shot an unarmed man.

  “Jacob, why don’t you hurry into the kitchen and set another place at the table. I’ve got your favorite chicken and homemade dumplings on the stove, and Twinkies for dessert. Who would look at this big strapping man and guess he was a Twinkie addict?”

  Trula hustled them through a wide open door where Deirdre could see a small table, carefully set for two. “Looks like you were expecting Stone,” Deirdre couldn’t resist observing.

  “All I have to do is ignore the phone and sure enough, he’ll show up on my doorstep.”

  “Because I think you’ve fallen down the steps, you crazy old woman!” Stone ran his hand through his hair in exasperation, but his eyes betrayed just how much the possibility had frightened him.

  “Bah. He thinks I’m old! Why, I still feel like I’m twenty. My, Deirdre, dear, you should have seen me then!” She did a few dance moves in her slippered feet, and for an instant, Deirdre could picture her turning men’s heads as she sparkled with sequins.

  “You should meet my father.” The words slipped out before Deirdre could alter them. Father? She didn’t even know how to think about the Captain anymore after all Norma Davenport had revealed. But Trula was obviously waiting for Deirdre to finish her thought. “The feeling-twenty thing. He’s the same way.”

  “Oh, well, I’ve still got it, don’t I?” Trula finished her dance demonstration with a flourish, her bright pink fingernails striking a picture frame on what looked to be a desk. The frame tipped over. Miraculously the vast assortment of other photographs and trophies teetered but didn’t fall.

  “Oh, dear! I almost wiped out my Jacob shrine!” Trula pressed her hand to her breast. “Just look at what a handsome boy he was!”

  “Trula, for cripe’s sake!” Stone moaned. “Deirdre doesn’t want to look at a bunch of idiotic pictures.”

  “Oh, Jacob, you’re so wrong,” Deirdre said so sweetly Stone shot her his blackest “you’ll pay for that later” glare, but Deirdre was having way too much fun to heed it. She could hear his nerves crackle as she picked up the nearest frame. “I’m dying to see—My God, Stone. You’re in tights!”

  “Perfect. Just perfect. Thanks a lot, Trula!” Stone arched his head back, closed his eyes. He looked as if he wanted to slink behind Trula’s Technicolor drapes.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a man who can dance!” Trula said. “And my Jacob is a wonderful dancer. The girls just flocked to my dance classes when they knew he’d be there to partner them.”

  “I’ll bet,” Deirdre said, giving Stone no quarter.

  “He’d race over to class as soon as his karate lessons or football practices were over and take every class he could.”

  “Who would have guessed?” Deirdre said.

  “Nobody, I hoped,” Stone muttered.

  “Jacob would never tell you this himself, but my dance school was struggling. A few parents found out I’d danced in Vegas and thought I’d been a prostitute.”

  “Trula, you can’t go around saying that!”

  “Well, it’s the truth, isn’t it?” his grandmother demanded, with wide-eyed innocence. “Deirdre’s too intelligent to think that a dancer and prostitute are the same thing.”

  Deirdre hoped Trula didn’t have her grandson’s gift for peering into people’s heads. She didn’t want the woman to know all the nasty things she’d been thinking about “the greatest legs in Vegas” when she’d thought they belonged to Stone’s bimbo girlfriend.

  “Anyway, my dance school was struggling, and Lord above, girl, I loved to dance! It was the only way I could keep doing what I loved when Tony—my second husband—dragged Jacob and me to the middle of Illinois.”

  “That’s a tired old story Deirdre doesn’t want to hear.” Stone looked as though he wanted to borrow the duct tape Deirdre had wanted to use on Emma the morning they went to Lagomarcinos.

  “No, I’m fascinated, Stone. It’s showing me a whole new side of you.”

  “Jacob knew how much I loved that silly little school. He’d hung up his tap shoes when he started on the football team. But once he knew the school was in trouble, he told all the girls he was taking class. Why, those girls were so crazy about my grandson, they were lining up to take dance from me, their parents’ objections be damned.”

  “They must have been disappointed when Football Jake didn’t show,” Deirdre couldn’t resist ribbing him.

  “Oh, he showed all right. He’d run all the way from practice. Didn’t even stop to take a shower. Just put on his tap shoes and hit the floor, still dripping sweat. The girls didn’t mind,” Trula said with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “They just wanted to see Jacob in his tights.”

  “You know what, Trula? Next time I think I’ll leave you at the bottom of the stairs,” Stone grumbled.

  “Of course you will, dear,” Trula said, patting him on the arm. “Deirdre, do you dance?”

  “Nope.” Deirdre picked up another frame, this one holding a montage of scenes from various high school musicals, starring none other than her least-favorite P.I. “I’ve got three left feet.” She really did try not to laugh at a much younger, but still rivetingly sexy, Stone playing the lead in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

  “Ah, Joseph,” Trula sighed at the memory. “The dungeon scene where Jacob was dressed in a loincloth drove all those tittering little cheerleaders to swoons.”

  Stone choked, and Trula pounded him on the back. Deirdre almost felt sorry for him.

  “My daughter Emma dances fairly well. She hasn’t taken any lessons, but she’s a theater kid and picks choreography up pretty quick. She may be leaving for drama school in New York at New Year’s.”

  “But she hasn’t had dance class?” Trula made it sound like Deirdre had let the kid bungee jump without a safety harness or something. “Why, if your Emma wants to succeed in theater, she needs to be a triple threat.”

  “Isn’t that some kind of baseball term?” Deirdre asked, perplexed.

  Trula laughed. “Theater people use it, too. Tell her what it means, Jacob.”

  “A triple threat can act, dance and sing,” Stone looked for all the world like a surly kid reciting multiplication tables. “It makes them the strongest contenders when it comes to getting cast.”

  “Your Emma must have dance lessons!” Trula enthused. “Why, I could teach her!”

  “Bad idea,” Stone objected. “It’s a three-hour drive from Whitewater. Besides, you’re not as steady on your feet as you once were. I don’t like the idea of you sliding around in tap shoes.”

  Trula gave him a black look. “I was giving Ginger Rogers competition before you were even a twinkle in your father’s eye, young man. And I dance. I don’t slide.”

  “Emma would probably love it,” Deirdre said, suddenly wondering if Trula was some sort of gift from God. The perfect antidote to keep Emma from getting too lost in either the role of Juliet or the Orlando Bloom look in Drew Lawson’s eyes. “She has school and play rehearsal, and works part-time at the library. But you might be just the thing she needs to keep her eyes on her dreams.”

  “Emma’s playing Juliet, and Romeo’s hot for her.”

  Deirdre’s eyes widened. She couldn’t believe even Stone would talk to his grandmother that way.

  But Trula was as earthy as she was warm, and terms like hot for her had pr
obably been a staple of the diet backstage in Las Vegas.

  “Oh, my, young love!” Trula said, scrawling her phone number on a scrap of paper and handing it to Deirdre. “You have your Emma call me,” the older woman insisted. “Just hearing about her carries me back. I remember when I played Juliet. What magic! I lost my virginity closing night.”

  “Trula!” Stone looked ready to die.

  “What?” Trula raised thin, heavily penciled brows, honestly bewildered. She turned to Deirdre. “Between you and me, I always thought Romeo was a twit. And anyway, in this performance Mercutio was at least six inches taller and had a body to die for.”

  “Why the hell didn’t you just stay in the car,” Stone accused Deirdre.

  “If you’re going to turn into a prude at this late date, Jacob, you can go sit in the car yourself while Deirdre and I have a lovely lunch.”

  But Trula’s tale of losing her virginity to Shakespearean magic had jolted Deirdre back to her greatest fear. She glanced at her watch, trying to gauge whether or not she could get back to March Winds before the star-crossed lovers got home from school.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t stay. I’ve got to get home. Emma…well, she and this boy are going to rehearse and I need to be there.”

  Stone wasn’t one to take all her jibes lying down. “She’s afraid the kid might cop a feel.”

  “I certainly hope so!” Trula said. “Life should imitate art. Surely Deirdre remembers when she was sixteen!”

  That was the problem, Deirdre thought, fear leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. Deirdre pocketed Trula’s phone number and said a hasty goodbye as Trula dumped the soup into a Tupperware bowl, and shoved it into Stone’s hands.

  “Do you have enough money?” Stone asked his grandmother quietly, obviously trying not to let Deirdre hear him. “You got the check I sent you?”

  “The mortgage is all paid. Tony’s retirement check must’ve gotten lost in the mail. I’ll pay you back—”

  “Keep it. Buy yourself some new sequins.”

  Trula blinked eyes heavy with mascara, then smeared the rest of her lipstick across Stone’s other cheek in a kiss so warm and filled with love Deirdre’s heart felt sore. Damn Stone, anyway, the man set the bowl down so he could give his grandmother a rib-crusher of a hug, showing the world how precious the old woman was to him.