“But the doctors aren’t making any promises,” Blue said quickly.
Dean shot Blue a hard look. “How do you know about this?”
How indeed? “I don’t think your mother meant to tell me, but she had sort of a…ini-breakdown up here.”
April took offense. “I didn’t have a breakdown. Mini or not. I just…dropped my defenses for a second.”
Blue regarded her sadly. “So brave.”
April shot her a lethal glare. “I don’t want to talk about this, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk about it, either.”
“I apologize for breaking your confidence, but it seemed cruel not to tell him.”
“It’s not his problem,” April shot back.
If Blue had harbored any hope that Dean would instantly take his mother in his arms and tell her the time had come to work out their differences, he quickly disillusioned her by stalking out the front door. As his footsteps faded, Blue fixed a chipper expression on her face. “I think that went well, don’t you? All things considered.”
April did everything but lunge for her throat. “You’re a lunatic!”
Blue took a quick step backward. “Yet you’re still here.”
April threw up her hands, bangles jingling, rings flashing. “You’ve made everything worse.”
“Frankly, it didn’t look like things could get much worse. But then, I’m not the one with a hotel reservation in Nashville tomorrow night, so I might be missing something.”
The Vanquish’s engine roared to life, and the tires spun in the gravel. Some of the fire left April. “He’s going out to celebrate. Free drinks for everybody in the bar.”
“And I thought I had a twisted relationship with my mother.”
April’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you, anyway?”
Blue hated questions like this. Virginia would have answered that she was a child of God, but Blue doubted the Almighty was all that anxious to claim Virginia’s daughter right now. And explaining about Monty and the beaver costume wouldn’t exactly be putting her best foot forward. Fortunately, April had come up with her own explanation.
“Never mind. My son’s effect on women is legendary.”
“I’m a painter.”
Her eyes swept from Blue’s untidy ponytail to her scuffed black motorcycle boots. “You’re not his usual type of girlfriend.”
“Once again, my three-digit IQ separates me from the pack.”
April sank down on the next to last step. “What the hell am I going to do now?”
“Maybe you could try to reconcile with your son while you wait for the results from your latest round of tests. Considering the amazing strides doctors have made treating heart disease, I’m fairly confident you’ll get good news.”
“It was a rhetorical question,” April said dryly.
“Only a suggestion.”
April set off for the tenant’s cottage shortly after, and Blue wandered through the quiet, dusty rooms. Even the home’s renovated kitchen couldn’t cheer her up. No matter how pure her motivation, she had no business indulging her fairy godmother fantasy when it came to other people’s family messes.
By nightfall, Dean still hadn’t returned. As darkness settled around the house, Blue made the unpleasant discovery that only the kitchen and bathrooms had any working light fixtures. She sincerely hoped Dean returned soon because the house, so cozy a few hours earlier, had grown eerie. The plastic hanging over the doorways crackled like dry bones. The old floors creaked. Since there were no doors, she didn’t have the option of locking herself in a bedroom, and with no car, she couldn’t even drive into town and hang out at a convenience store. She was stuck. There was nothing to do but go to sleep.
She wished she’d made up a bed while she could still see. She fumbled around in the dark, feeling her way along the dining room chair rail to get to the trouble light the carpenters had left coiled in the corner. Ominous shadows leaped up the dining room walls as she flicked it on. She unplugged it and crept upstairs, holding on to the banister while the long yellow power cord dragged behind her like a tail.
Five bedrooms opened off the hallway’s nooks and crannies, but only one had a private bath with a working light fixture. By the time she reached it, she was so jumpy from the grotesque shadows shooting across the walls that she couldn’t go any farther. True, only a few faint threads of illumination spilled from the bathroom, but it was better than nothing. She propped the trouble light in a corner and unpacked the linens stacked on the mattress. The new, queen-size sleigh bed had a curving cherry headboard but no footboard. The bed, along with a matching triple dresser, were the only pieces of furniture. Six bare windows watched her like staring eyes with a big stone fireplace forming a gaping mouth.
She pushed the stepladder the painter had left in the hallway in front of the door to let Dean know this room was already occupied for the night. The ladder would hardly keep him out if he decided he wanted to come in, but why should he? After the earthshaking news he’d received about his mother, he’d hardly be in the mood for seduction.
She carried the trouble light into the small bathroom and washed her face. Since Dean had driven off with her stuff, she had to brush her teeth with her finger. She pulled her bra through the armhole of her T-shirt and kicked off her boots but left everything else on in case she needed to flee the house screaming. She wasn’t a jumpy person when it came to dealing with urban boogeymen, but she was out of her element here, and she took the trouble light with her as she slipped into bed. Only after she’d settled in did she turn it off and stick it under the covers where she could get to it quickly.
A branch rubbed the side of the house. Something rustled in the chimney. She imagined bats lining up for a 5K through the house. Where was Dean? And why couldn’t this place have some doors?
She wished she’d gone to the cottage with April, but she hadn’t been invited. Maybe Blue had been a little heavy-handed, but at least she’d bought Dean’s mother some time, which was more than April had been able to do for herself. The helplessness of the naturally beautiful.
Blue tried to concentrate on being ill-used, but she wasn’t good at lying to herself. She’d interfered with something she should have left alone. On the bright side, dealing with other people’s troubles had distracted her from worrying about her own.
A floorboard creaked. The chimney moaned. She curled her fingers around the handle of the trouble light and stared at the gaping doorway.
Minutes ticked away.
Gradually, her fingers relaxed, and she fell into a restless sleep.
An ominously creaking floorboard jolted her awake. Her eyes shot open to see a menacing shape looming over her. Her hand convulsed around the trouble light. She yanked it from under the covers and swung.
“Shit!” A familiar masculine bellow pierced the night quiet.
Her fingers found the switch. Miraculously the bulb in the plastic cage hadn’t broken, and harsh light flooded the room. A very angry multimillionaire quarterback hovered above her. He was bare-chested, furious, and rubbing his arm just above the elbow. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She shot up in the pillows, trouble light clutched high. “Me? You creep in here—”
“It’s my house. I swear to God, if you screwed up my passing arm…”
“I had the door blocked! How could you sneak up on me like that?”
“Sneak? You had this place lit up like a frickin’ Christmas tree.”
She wasn’t stupid enough to mention the jumping shadows and staring windows. “Only two measly bathroom lights.”
“Plus the kitchen.” He whipped the trouble light from her hands. “Give me that and stop being a chickenshit.”
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t attacked when you were sound asleep.”
“I didn’t attack you.” He flicked off the light, plunging the room into darkness. The insensitive jerk had even turned off the bathroom light.
She heard the whoosh of slid
ing denim as he pulled off his jeans. She went up on her knees. “You’re not sleeping here.”
“It’s my room, and this is the only bed with sheets.”
“A bed I’m already occupying.”
“And now you have company.” He crawled in.
She took a deep breath and reminded herself he had too big an ego to attack her. If she scrambled around in the dark for another place to sleep, she’d look like a wuss. Show no weakness. “You stay on your side,” she warned him, “or you won’t like the consequences.”
“Going to hit me with your tuffet, Miss Muffet?”
She had no idea what he was talking about.
The smell of toothpaste, skin, and the leather upholstery of a very expensive car drifted toward her. He should have smelled like liquor. A grief-stricken man coming home at two o’clock in the morning should be drunk. His bare leg brushed her thigh. She stiffened.
“Why do you have your jeans on?” he said.
“Because my luggage was in your car.”
“Yeah, right. You kept them on because you were afraid the boogeyman would get you. What a chickenshit.”
“Sticks and stones.”
“That’s mature.”
“Like you’re not all about seventh grade,” she retorted.
“At least I don’t have to sleep with the lights on.”
“You might have second thoughts about that when the bats start flying out of the chimney.”
“Bats?” He grew still.
“A colony.”
“You’re a bat expert?”
“I heard them rustling around. Making bat noises.”
“I don’t believe you.” He was a crossways bed sleeper, and his knee poked her calf. Unaccountably, she’d begun to relax.
“I might as well sleep with a damn mummy,” he grumbled.
“They’re staying on.”
“Don’t think I couldn’t get them off you if I put my mind to it. Thirty seconds max, and they’d be gone. Unfortunately for you, I’m off my game tonight.”
He shouldn’t be thinking about sex when his mother was dying. Her opinion of him plummeted. “Shut up and go to sleep.”
“Your loss.”
The wind picked up outside. A friendly branch tapped at the window. As his breathing grew deep and regular, slivers of moonlight crept across the old wooden floors, and the chimney gave a contented sigh. He stayed on his side of the bed. She stayed on hers.
For a while…
In a house with almost no doors, a door banged. Blue’s eyes inched open, disturbing the most delicious, erotic dream. Threads of gray light had crept into the room, and she let her eyes slip shut again, trying to reclaim the feeling of long fingers curling around her breast…a hand nuzzling inside her jeans….
Another door banged. Something hard pressed against her hip. Her eyes sprang open. A gravely voice near her ear muttered an obscenity, a hand that didn’t belong to her cupped her breast, and another pressed inside her jeans. A rush of alarm brought her fully awake. This was no dream.
“The carpenters are here,” a woman said from not all that far away. “If you don’t want company, you’d better get up.”
Blue shoved at Dean’s arm, but he took his time extricating himself from her clothes. “What time is it?”
“Seven,” April replied.
Blue yanked her shirt down and buried her face in the pillow. This hadn’t been part of her plan to stay ahead of him.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he protested.
“Not for a construction crew,” April replied. “Good morning, Blue. Coffee and doughnuts downstairs.” Blue rolled over and gave a weak wave. April waved back and disappeared.
“This sucks,” he muttered. And then he yawned. Blue didn’t like that. The least he could do was express a little sexual frustration.
She realized she hadn’t entirely shaken off the aftereffects of her dream. “Pervert.” She threw herself out of bed. She absolutely couldn’t let herself be turned on by this man, not even in her sleep.
“You’re a liar,” he said from behind her.
She looked back. “What are you talking about?”
The covers fell to his waist as he sat up, and sunlight from the bare windows skipped across his biceps, gilding the hair on his chest. He rubbed his bad shoulder. “You told me you had, quote, ‘no boobs.’ Turns out, you were dead wrong about that.”
She wasn’t awake enough for a good comeback, so she glared at him and stalked into the bathroom, where she turned both faucets on full force for privacy. When she emerged, she found him standing in front of an expensive suitcase he’d set on the bed. He was wearing only a pair of navy knit boxers. She stumbled, silently cursed herself, then pretended she’d done it on purpose. “For the love of God, warn me next time. I think I’m having a heart attack.”
He glanced over his shoulder, blasting her with all his stubbled, rumpled glory. “From what?”
“You look like an ad for gay porn.”
“You look like a national disaster.”
“Exactly why I have dibs on that shower.” She headed for her grungy duffel, which he’d deposited in the corner. She unzipped it and rummaged for clean clothes. “I don’t suppose you’d stand guard in the hall while I clean up?”
“Why don’t I just go in there and keep you company?” It sounded more like a threat than a come-on.
“Amazing,” she said. “A superstar like you still willing to help out the little people.”
“Yeah, well, that’s the way I’m made.”
“Forget it.” She grabbed her clothes, a towel, and some toiletries and headed for the bathroom. Once she was absolutely sure he wouldn’t try to join her, she shampooed her hair and shaved her legs. Dean didn’t know his mother wasn’t really dying, but he seemed more belligerent than sorrowful. She didn’t care what April had done to him. That was cold.
She dressed in a pair of clean but faded black bike shorts, a roomy camouflage T-shirt, and flip-flops. After a quick blast with his hair dryer, she pulled her hair up with a red ponytail elastic. The shorter ends refused to cooperate and straggled down her neck. For April’s sake she’d have added lip gloss and mascara if they hadn’t both gone missing three days ago.
As she came downstairs, she saw an electrician perched on a ladder in the dining room wiring an antique chandelier. The plastic had been taken off the living room doorway, and Dean stood inside, talking to the carpenter repairing the crown molding. Dean must have showered in the other bathroom because his hair was damp and beginning to curl. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that matched his eyes.
The living room extended the depth of the house and had a stone fireplace larger than the one in the master bedroom. A new set of French doors opened onto what looked like a freshly poured concrete slab that jutted out from the back of the house. She headed for the kitchen.
Last night she’d been too unnerved to appreciate everything April had done here, but now she paused in the doorway to take it in. The vintage appliances, along with nostalgic white bead-board cabinets bearing cherry red ceramic knobs, made her feel as though she’d stepped back into the forties. She imagined a woman in a freshly ironed cotton dress, hair rolled neatly at the nape of her neck, peeling potatoes over the farmhouse sink while the Andrews Sisters harmonized in “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree” on the radio.
The fat white refrigerator with its rounded edges was probably a reproduction, but not the vintage white enamel gas stove, which had double ovens and a shallow, built-in metal shelf above the burners to hold salt and pepper shakers, canisters, maybe a Mason jar stuffed with wildflowers. The countertops hadn’t yet been installed, so she could see that the bead-board cabinets weren’t original but beautiful reproductions. The black-and-white checkerboard floor was also new. A paint sample taped to the wall announced the kitchen’s final color scheme: sunny yellow walls, white cupboards, bright red accents.
Don’t sit under the apple tree…
Light
flooded the room from two sources: a wide window over the sink and longer windows that had been added to the squared-off breakfast nook and still bore the manufacturer’s stickers. A clutter of doughnut boxes, abandoned Styrofoam cups, and papers sat on top of a chrome kitchen table with a cherry red Formica top.
April stood with one hand resting gracefully on the back of a bentwood chair, the other curled around a phone. She wore yesterday’s ripped jeans with a garnet baby doll top, silver earrings, and sage green snake charmer flats. “You were supposed be here at seven, Sanjay.” She nodded at Blue and gestured toward the coffeepot. “Then you’ll have to get another truck. These countertops need to be installed by the end of the day so the painters can get in here.”
Dean wandered in. His expression revealed nothing as he made his way to the doughnut box, but when he reached the table, the sunbeam dancing off his hair caught April’s, and Blue was struck with the crazy notion that God had created a special spotlight just to follow these two golden creatures around.
“We’re not holding up the installation,” April said. “You’d better be here in an hour.” She switched to another call, transferring the phone from her right ear to her left. “Oh, hi.” She lowered her voice and turned away from them. “I’ll call you back in ten minutes. Where are you?”
Dean drifted toward the breakfast nook windows and gazed out at the backyard. Blue found herself hoping he was trying to come to terms with April’s imminent demise.
April made another call. “Dave, it’s Susan O’Hara. Sanjay’s going to be late.”
The electrician who’d been wiring the dining room chandelier ambled in. “Susan, come look at this.”
She made a wait-a-minute gesture as she finished up her conversation, then flipped her phone shut. “What’s up?”
“I ran into more old wiring in the dining room.” The electrician’s eyes were all over her. “It’s going to have to be replaced.”
“Let me see.” She followed him out.
Blue dumped a teaspoon of sugar in her coffee and went over to examine the stove. “You’d be so screwed right now if she weren’t here.”
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