by Jill Barnett
“My mother and your uncle are seeing each other, therefore you think we should do the same thing.”
“It seemed like a good argument at the airport. Sounded better in my head. Now it sounds stupid. Your whole theory is damned stupid.
We don’t meet many people in our lives that we truly want. Not the way I want you, Red.”
Dream words. The things she wished for, the thing she almost threw away.
“Look. This doesn’t happen to me.” He paced back and forth, while his voice grew louder. “I’m not some drip. I don’t look at women and fall in love, dammit!” he shouted at her.
“You think you are in love?” she shouted back. “What about the blonde?”
“I knew you’d bring that up. I went out with her to show myself that I could. That you were not important. That I could lose myself in someone else. And then there you were, sitting in that same restaurant as if the world were laughing at me. After that, when I looked across the table at her, I couldn’t see anything but you. I took her home right after the longest fucking meal of my life, then I ran on the beach for two hours. I couldn’t run away. I couldn’t run free.” He shook his head and laughed in disgust. “I tried.”
“So you ran here?”
“I’ve never done this before. I don’t know how it happened, just that I can’t take it anymore.”
She closed the distance between them. “Me either,” she said so quietly she wondered if he heard her. Then he was kissing her, his hands in her hair, her clothes, and on her body, and she wondered why she had ever said no. She pulled off his tie and shrugged out of her suit jacket, he unbuttoned his shirt and she pulled at his belt and pants.
Their mouths never lost contact, but it wasn’t enough. She wanted to crawl inside him. Their clothes flew everywhere. As if it were second nature, they fused together. She looked into his face, and saw exactly what she was feeling: that moment of mutual vulnerability undefined by gender, powerless and powerful, the deepest anyone can get inside this thing called love.
The board meeting in Denver dragged out for another day, then snow closed the airport, so Jud sat in the airport bar, waiting with other frustrated people, drinking warm beer and eating the only food left—popcorn and pretzels—until they finally began to call flights and a cheer went up in the bar.
A guy sat down on the seat next to him and grabbed a handful of popcorn. “You been here long?”
Jud checked his watch. “Six hours. How ’bout you?”
“The same. Where you headed?”
“LA.”
“I’m waiting for a Chicago flight, then on to Boston.”
Laurel was in Chicago now. Through another beer, he talked with the guy, who then stood and grabbed his laptop case. “There’s my flight. Good luck, buddy.”
Jud cupped his hands around his warm beer. The snowfall had slowed, the flakes still the size of popcorn, but he could see activity out on the runway, deicing trucks and lights. He was antsy, wanted to get home, although she wouldn’t be there. In a mere three days his life felt different, as if it had just begun. He’d talked to Laurel Monday night, heard she and her daughter had worked things out, but wondered what kind of reception he would get the next time he saw Annalisa King.
A long, long time ago, he had let Laurel get inside him and had lost his mind, or at least his common sense. She had passed through his life all those years ago and left everything broken and shattered in pieces he couldn’t seem to put back together, so he never tried again. He’d thought it wasn’t in him to love someone; it had been burned out of him long ago. But they met again and life felt different, as if it were starting all over again. Some things, some people, they just stayed with you forever. He and Laurel were different now. People changed, life changed, nothing was ever exactly the same again. His hair might have gray in it now, he wasn’t so naïve and eager, but what he was feeling was anything but old. Maybe, he thought, maybe, it would be better this time.
He paid his check, slung his garment bag over his shoulder, and headed for the gate. Another hour-long delay was posted on the board and there were no seats at the gate area, so he walked down the concourse. A woman’s voice announced the last call for Chicago flight 447. Jud went up to the desk. “I’d like to switch tickets. Is there any room on this flight?”
“We have seats open in first class.” She took his ticket. “You’re a platinum member. I can exchange it for you. What about the return?”
“Just leave it open.”
A few minutes later she handed him his boarding pass and Jud walked down the Jetway.
Laurel dropped the plastic hospital bag on the floor by her front door and knelt down and picked up a purring Henry. The sound came from deep in his chest as if his heart were working overtime. She flinched then and switched arms. Henry’s weight put pressure on the shunt in her arm that was slowly dispensing even doses of the antibiotic drug for a required number of days. In the kitchen she took a root beer and a glass of ice from the fridge, then went outside on the porch with the cat in her lap. Some kids with hard, tanned bodies played volleyball on the beach in front of her. A dog chased a Frisbee down near the water. People enjoying the sun and sand, and she wondered if any of them were listening to their hearts beat.
All around her were laughter and voices and the sound of music from radios on the beach, the distant rush of the waves. The sky was unnaturally blue. The air was still and warm. An alkaline ring from recent watering marred the clay plates beneath her pots. On impulse, she leaned over and pinched off a dead blossom from the impatiens in the deck planter, first one, then another, another, another. Soon she was moving from giant pot, to planter, to pot, pulling off dead flowers and leaves until she paused on a single pink and white blossom, the color of a baby’s skin. In the middle of the petal was a dirty brown spot, the beginning of the end and a sign it was going to die. She couldn’t pull it off. She couldn’t finish the job. It still had color and moisture and life. She pulled back and swept up the dead flowers into her shirttail, then dumped them in the trash.
Inside her small garden cabinet was a box of fertilizer called Miracle-Gro, and for a stupid moment she wondered what would happen if she drank it. Feeding her plants was habit; holding her cat, walking on the beach, loving her daughter, and now, after so long, making love—all those were normal moments in a healthy life. She set down the watering can and stood there, the beach spread out like desert before her, her fear so real it was difficult to even breathe.
If the girl in the red bikini spikes the ball, I’ll fix pasta for dinner. If that seagull lights on the telephone pole, I’ll have white wine tonight. If that flower doesn’t die in the next two days, then neither will I.
Annalisa opened the hotel room door expecting the room service she’d ordered, and her father walked inside. “Daddy? What are you doing here?”
“Why do you think I am here? The restaurants have my name on them. I need to make certain the job is done right. Where is your mother?”
“She’s not here.” Annalisa could hear the bitterness in her voice.
“You mean you are here alone? What is that woman thinking? You cannot do this.” He shook his head. “It is a good thing I have come. Do not worry,” he said with such condescension Annalisa had to close her eyes for a second. “I am here, ma petite jeune.”
Matthew walked out from the bedroom dressed only in his slacks, his hair freshly damp from a shower, a towel slung around his shoulders. “I’m starved, Red.” He stopped the second he saw her father. “Beric? Mr. King.”
Annalisa stood there as silent as the two men in her life. She was too angry to speak.
Her father looked from Matt to her. He drew himself up and said, “Just what are you doing here with my daughter?”
“Daddy, please.”
“I care about Annalisa.” Matthew put his arm around her and her father’s look narrowed.
“That isn’t what I asked,” Beric said stubbornly. “You are sleeping with her?”
<
br /> “That’s none of your business, Daddy.”
“Yes, I’m sleeping with her,” Matthew answered at the same time.
“Are you going to marry her?” Her father spoke to Matt and ignored her.
She laughed caustically. “You sound like some actor from a bad period piece.”
“Shut up, Annalisa,” Matt said.
“What did you say to me?” She looked at Matt.
“I love your daughter.” Now Matt was ignoring her.
“I’m not asking what you feel. It’s my little girl I am worried about. You are having sex with her. Sex means commitment.”
“Only in 1950,” Annalisa said, but neither of them was listening. If her mother had heard that she’d have laughed herself silly before she chewed out her father for what he was doing and saying.
“What do you want from me, Beric?” Matt cut to the chase.
“I want to know you will marry her.”
“That’s it!” Annalisa stepped between them, waving her arms. “Do not answer that, Matthew. You don’t have to. And don’t ever tell me to shut up again.”
“She is just like her mother,” her father said over her head.
“Yes, I’m like Mother. Thank God, because if I were more like you, I’d be a jackass. When are you going to understand that what I do doesn’t reflect on you? I’m a grown woman. I can make my own choices and my own mistakes.”
“I know that.”
“Then why are you here?”
“You are ma petite jeune. I am here to help you,” he said simply.
“I am twenty-two years old. Just what is it about me that makes you assume that I cannot do anything without you?”
He didn’t answer.
“You don’t know, do you?”
He was still silent, but his mouth thinned and his expression was frustrated.
“I’ll tell you exactly what it is. Everything is always about you, Daddy. Well, this time it isn’t. What’s between Matthew and me is about us, not you. He’s someone I want to be with and I think we will be good together, but we don’t know yet. I’m happy, but you feel your pride is at stake. The great Beric King’s pride is more important, so to hell with his daughter’s happiness.”
“That is not true. I am protecting you. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“You are the one hurting me. You won’t let me go. You call me your little girl and you continue to treat me that way. You won’t listen. I am happy working with Mom. You don’t understand that I didn’t choose her over you.”
He stood stiffly. “You should be a chef. You are wasting your talent just like your mother.”
“Bull! This is what I want to do. And I’m damned good at it. But you don’t trust me. You don’t believe in me. You rush here to do the job because you assume I can’t. Well, I can. Sit down.”
“You are shouting and cursing at me, Annalisa. Daughters do not shout and curse their fathers.”
“I said, sit down, Daddy.” She gathered together the restaurant diagrams and plans and printouts she’d worked on so late every night, the specs and the product lines, everything to make the kitchens state-of-the-art. She moved to the seating area and shoved the plans at him. “Look at these.” She set her laptop on the table in front of him and pulled up the CADs. “Here’s the Tea House. Here’s the Diner. The Bistro, the Patio Club, and the Cliff House. Look at them, Daddy, and tell me I don’t know what I’m doing.”
A knock came from the door.
“I’ll get it,” Matthew said.
“That’s probably room service,” she said, then faced her father. “I’m tired of being treated like I have no mind, no pride of my own, no intelligence. I’m tired of you treating me as if I’m a stain on your clothing.”
“I do not do that.”
“You do.” She insisted. “You do.” She could see in his face what she’d just said finally made him think.
“Matthew? What are you doing here?” Jud Banning walked into the room, frowning, a garment bag slung over his shoulder. “Do I have the wrong room?”
“You have the right room.” Matt closed the door behind him.
“I need to talk to Laurel.” Jud looked at Annalisa. “Hello, Annalisa. Where’s your mother?”
“She’s not here.”
He dropped his garment bag. “Okay, I’ll wait. Beric.” He crossed over and shook her father’s hand. “It’s good to see you again.”
“Laurel’s not here,” Matt told him.
“I said, I’ll wait.” Jud dropped into an easy chair and crossed his feet on a stool.
“My mother isn’t here, in Chicago. She stayed home.”
Jud swore under his breath, then rubbed a hand over his face and gave a short derisive laugh. “I haven’t talked to her since Monday, when she said she’d be here for the show. I flew here straight from Denver.”
“There was some problem at home,” Annalisa explained. “Something with the job site.”
Jud looked at Matt. “Then what are you doing here?”
“Sleeping with my daughter.”
Matt swore.
Jud looked from Beric to Annalisa to Matt. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“You’re going out with her mother.”
“He’s sleeping with my mother.”
Beric shot Jud an odd look, sizing him up. “You’re sleeping with my wife?”
“Ex-wife,” Annalisa said.
Matt walked to the minibar. “Does anyone else want a drink?”
“Jack and Coke,” Annalisa said. “Strong.”
“Anything but beer,” Jud said.
“I’ll have a vodka straight. Absolut.” Beric turned to Jud. “Have you seen these plans? Look at this kitchen. It is better than Camaroon.” He opened the Cliff House plans. “Look here. My Annalisa did these.”
“I’m not surprised.” Jud took his drink from Matt while looking over the sketches. “I’ve heard nothing but praise from everyone on the job, all the subs, and especially from Matthew. But that was before I knew there were personal complications.”
“Nothing is complicated,” Matthew said. “You can’t criticize me when you’re doing the same thing.”
“I’m older and have more experience.”
“Apparently not,” Matt said. “You’re here and Laurel isn’t.”
“What I do with my personal life is my business,” Jud said pointedly.
“Ditto.” Matt shot an annoyed glance at Annalisa. She knew exactly what he wanted to say. And she thought perhaps Jud was a lot like her father. She merely smiled encouragingly, a look she hoped said that she understood.
Matt shook his head a little, then winked at her and headed for the bedroom. “I’m going to go put on a shirt.”
Her father studied Jud with new interest. “So you are one of the brothers. Which one are you?”
“The oldest.”
Beric nodded, then silently sipped his drink. He was quiet, and Annalisa wondered what he was thinking, what exactly he knew, and how he felt about Jud and her mother. If he was really hurt, she was certain she would have seen it. Her father looked at her for a speculative moment, then held up his glass and gave her a silent toast. “To Jud,” he said, “It is good you know my daughter is so talented. Together, we are going to make your resort restaurants the best on the West Coast.”
Annalisa drank half her drink to keep from laughing out loud and was going to say something when someone knocked on the door.
Matt came out of the bedroom buttoning his shirt. The knock came again and he glanced from the door to her, his expression uneasy.
She shook her head and held up her hand. “Whatever you do, don’t answer it.”
33
Laurel sat on the overstuffed linen chair by her bedroom window, her feet on the ottoman and Henry wedged between her and the chair, snoring. The crystal vase Jud had given her was filled with clean white spider mums, even whiter lilies, and frost green eucalyptus. She’d bought them that morning when she wen
t out for the Sunday paper. The flowers were signs of life, the box of warm Krispy Kremes was pure what-the-hell, and the envelope of photographs and investigative reports was her past chasing her down.
One look at the front page of the Sunday paper with its side headline about the Wardwell trial in Seattle, and she’d swung by the office before she drove back home. Greg O’Hanlon was quoted repeatedly in the article, his name, the things he said, how he said them. Her curiosity had started in the hospital, when the trial was on the news constantly. Now as her mortality hung heavily on her back, she questioned the choice she’d made so long ago.
The doorbell caught her off-guard, and she quickly shoved the photos back in the envelope and stuck it under the table skirt. From halfway down the stairs, the tall silhouette visible through the frosted glass warned her it was Jud. Of course, in that way life could thumb its nose at you, she opened the door to Cale.
“Good morning.” He held a box of Krispy Kremes and the same morning paper tucked under one arm.
She burst out laughing. “Great minds, Doctor. Come in.”
“What’s so funny?”
“I have a box of those doughnuts upstairs. I was already drowning myself in fat, sugar, and white flour instead of egg whites, dry toast, and skim milk.”
He raised the box. “These are the only way to spend a Sunday morning.”
“So says the heart surgeon.”
“I took a chance and I looked up your address in the files,” he admitted as he followed her into the kitchen. “Nice house.” He set down the box and paper on the island and planted himself on a counter stool. Cale and his ease. He never looked uncomfortable no matter where he was. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” she said too brightly. “You want some coffee?”
“Sure.” He opened the doughnuts and ate one with his coffee. He reached for another doughnut. “What kind of decaf is this?”
“Decaf takes the whole point out of the drink. I can’t swallow it. Like a few cups of caffeine here and there actually do any damage.”