by Ann McMan
“I thought I was doing that already.” Maddie slid her hand dangerously lower.
Ohmygod. Syd’s head lolled back against her shoulder for a moment before she forced herself to stand upright and turn around. Maddie’s eyes were teasing. She had an unmistakable smirk on her beautiful face.
Syd waved the spatula in front of her. “I’d threaten to spank you if you don’t knock it off, but something tells me you’d probably just enjoy it.”
Maddie snorted. “An interesting suggestion. Wanna try it out later?” Her blue eyes looked hopeful.
Syd raised an imperious eyebrow. “Toast?”
Maddie sighed. “Toast. Okay, I’ll make the toast.” She kissed Syd on the forehead before releasing her and walking across the kitchen to retrieve the butter from the refrigerator. “Hey, did we leave that wine outside?” She looked toward the living room and the glass doors that led to the patio.
Syd was dividing the eggs between their two plates. “I think so. But I confess that my mind was a little bit fuzzy at the time.”
“Oh, yeah? Mine, too. Must be contagious.” She set the butter down on Celine’s small kitchen table and walked toward the living room. “I’ll go out and get it.”
“You might want to put on some pants, first,” Syd quipped.
Maddie chuckled. “Nah. We’re in California, remember? Clothing is optional here.”
THEY FINISHED EATING and sat at the table, drinking the rest of the warm white wine.
“You know that I need to go back on Wednesday,” Syd said quietly. “I can’t keep the library closed any longer.”
“I know.” Maddie reached across the table to take her hand. “I’ve been trying not to think about it.” They laced their fingers together.
“How long do you think you’ll need to stay here with Celine?”
“I don’t know. At least a day or two after she’s settled in here. Laszlow will be available to help out with meals and any transportation issues that might arise until she can drive herself.”
Syd gave her a knowing look. “He certainly seems to be a special friend, doesn’t he?”
Maddie smiled. “Yeah. I noticed that, too.” She chuckled. “Who knew the old girl had it in her? Maybe she still has a heart lurking in there someplace.”
Syd squeezed her hand. “Maddie, she loves you. I’m sure of it. It was all over her face when she looked at you today.” She hesitated. “Yours, too.”
Maddie shrugged. “Maybe this whole owning-up-to-your-feelings thing is contagious, too.”
“Maybe so.” Syd stifled a yawn.
“Tired?”
Syd nodded, and then gave her a suggestive look. “But not that tired.”
Maddie shook her head. “What am I gonna do with you?”
“I have a few ideas.”
“I just bet you do. More gleanings from your research?”
“Wanna find out?”
Maddie narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure. Does any of it require a 220 line?”
Syd shrugged. “Not just yet, but all bets are off once we get back home.”
Maddie smiled. “I like the sound of that.”
“You do?” Syd was surprised.
“Home,” Maddie clarified. “I like hearing you talk about home.”
“Oh.” Syd smiled at her shyly. “Me, too.”
“And while we’re on the subject,” Maddie pushed her chair back and tugged at Syd’s hand until she stood up, then pulled her to sit on her lap. “Would you be willing to go back to my place and stay there until I get home?”
Syd worked her fingers into Maddie’s thick dark hair. “I dunno . . . What’s in it for me?”
“Let’s see.” Maddie leaned forward and nibbled at Syd’s throat. “I can offer room service.”
Syd tugged her closer. “Tempting, but I can get that at any hotel.”
“Not the kind of service I have in mind.” Maddie kissed her and ran her hands up under her shirt. Her palms were warm as they moved over her abdomen and covered her breasts.
Syd gasped and arched her back. “God . . . sold.”
Maddie lowered her lips to Syd’s open neckline and kissed her way down her chest. She kept her hands in motion, and soon, the cotton shirt opened to her waist.
Syd endured the sweet torture for as long as she could before she forced Maddie’s head back up and kissed her hungrily. “I’m feeling awfully naked,” she muttered against her lips.
“Really?” Maddie ran her hands over Syd’s bare breasts again, rubbing and caressing the soft skin. “There’s nothing awful about it from where I’m sitting.”
Syd pushed herself against Maddie’s hands. She was starting to lose focus. She licked and pecked at Maddie’s lips. “Maybe you need to make a more thorough examination, Doctor.”
Maddie moaned against her mouth. “You think?”
They kissed deeply.
“Oh, I think so.” Syd kissed along the side of Maddie’s face. She sucked an earlobe into her mouth. “I think I should lie down to make it easier for you,” she whispered as she moved her hands over Maddie’s body.
Maddie tipped her head back as Syd continued to feast on her neck. “I’ll need some kind of co-pay first,” she said in a husky voice.
Syd smiled against her neck. “Okay. Will this do?” She quickly found a creative way to demonstrate her good faith. Maddie gasped and moaned against her shoulder, and Syd backed off and slowly withdrew her hand.
Maddie lifted her head and looked up at her with a glazed expression. “Why’d you stop?”
“Stop?” Syd kissed her gently. “I’ve barely gotten started.” She slid off her lap and stood up, pulling Maddie along with her. “Think you can make it to the bedroom?” She tugged at the sides of her open shirt and pulled it off. “Great will be your reward,” she said, turning and trailing the garment behind her as she walked out of the room.
Maddie nodded and meekly followed her out of the kitchen.
AN HOUR LATER, they got up and showered. Syd tidied the kitchen while Maddie called the hospital to check on Celine. Then they remade the bed, climbed back under the covers, and snuggled together in a happy state of exhaustion.
Syd burrowed her nose into Maddie’s neck. “I love you.”
Maddie chuckled. “I’d say ‘prove it,’ but you probably would, and it just might kill me.”
Syd smiled and tightened her arms around her. “How is Celine?”
Maddie yawned. “She’s fine. Actually ate a little bit of solid food. She’s asleep now. They’re talking about discharging her on Thursday.”
“Wow. That’s wonderful news.”
“It is. I’ll still go to the service for Diego in Santa Monica that morning, then head back to the hospital to get her and bring her here.”
“Do you want me to stay? I can try to work something out. Maybe Roma Jean—” Maddie laid a finger on her lips.
“Honey, no. Go back on Wednesday like you planned. I’ll be just fine. I don’t want you to disrupt your work life any more than you have already.” She smiled at her. “I’ll be back before you know it, and then we can really start complicating things.”
“We can?”
“Count on it.”
Syd sighed. “How are we going to handle this?”
“Probably no differently than we’ve handled our friendship up to this point.” She chuckled. “Well, with one minor alteration.”
Syd slid her hand down from its resting place on Maddie’s shoulder and snaked it inside her shirt to stroke a bare breast. “Minor?”
Maddie stifled a gasp. Even in her exhausted state, she felt an unmistakable prick of arousal. “Okay, maybe not minor.”
Syd stilled her hand, but did not remove it. Maddie’s pulse began to return to normal. “I think our biggest hurdle will be finding ways to manage . . . um, sleepovers.”
Syd lifted her head. “Sleepovers?”
Maddie looked at her shyly. “Yeah, you know? Your place . . . my place—the logistics of all
of that. Finding ways to be together without compromising your virtue or giving poor Roma Jean a brain hemorrhage.”
Syd laughed. “We can save discussions about my virtue for another day, but are you telling me that you finally got a clue about poor Roma Jean?”
“Well, it was kind of hard not to figure out that something was going on with her after the first ten or twelve times she fell down right in front of me.”
“Oh, so you noticed that?” Syd began running her fingers back and forth across Maddie’s breast again.
“I notice many things,” Maddie replied with a strained voice. “For example, if you keep doing what you’re doing with your hand, we’re never going to get any sleep tonight.”
Syd nuzzled the skin at the base of her neck and slowly moved her hand down to rest on safer territory. “Okay, Doctor. But you’re mine tomorrow night.”
Maddie kissed her on the forehead. “Tomorrow night, and every night after that.”
Syd snuggled closer and closed her eyes. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, sweetheart. Goodnight.”
“G’night.”
Maddie could feel Syd’s breathing deepen and even out as she quickly drifted off into sleep. In the final moments before she joined her in slumber, she marveled at the sequence of events that led her to be here—in her old bedroom at Celine’s house in California—wrapped in the sweet cocoon of a love she never thought she would have.
Chapter 20
The improvement in Celine was incredible. When Maddie and Syd arrived on Tuesday morning, she was sitting up in bed reading the newspaper. Every available surface in her small room was rapidly filling up with get-well cards and brightly-colored arrangements of flowers.
“Wow,” Maddie said, taking in the Technicolor display. “It looks like Gladys Pitzer exploded in here.”
Celine stifled a laugh. “Funny you should mention her. She actually sent something . . . interesting.”
“Really?” Maddie was surprised. News certainly traveled fast.
“Yes. See that basket over there on the windowsill, nearest the corner?”
Maddie walked across the room and picked up the arrangement in question so she could read the small card. “This one?” Celine nodded.
Syd went to stand next to Maddie. “Blue and gold carnations? How on earth?”
“I think she was going for the UCLA school colors,” Celine explained. “It’s certainly . . . inventive.”
Maddie shook her head as she placed the basket back on the sill. “I wonder how she found a florist out here who was willing to torture innocent flowers like that?”
“There’s also a slightly more genteel vase of cut flowers from Phoebe and David—with a very sweet note.” Celine sounded thoughtful. “It occurs to me that I’ve had more contact with people from Jericho in the last seventy-two hours than I’ve had in over twenty years.”
Maddie pulled up a chair and sat near the foot of her bed. “Yeah. Nothing like a near-death experience to bring people together.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. “I’m sorry, Celine,” she added quickly. “I didn’t mean that to sound so flippant.”
Celine seemed unfazed by the remark. “I know.”
Maddie smiled at her shyly. “Old habits die hard.”
Her mother nodded. “Yes, they do.” She carefully refolded her newspaper—a task made more difficult by the cast on her left arm. “I have asked the nurses to take the flowers and share them with other patients. They should be coming to get them all shortly.”
“That’s very generous of you,” Syd commented.
Celine smiled at her. “Not really. One or two vases of flowers I can deal with, but this many?” She waved her free hand to encompass them all. “This is just a tad too funereal. I don’t really need any more reminders of my mortality just now.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“Thank you for allowing me to stay in your home.” Syd sat down in the room’s only other guest chair. “It’s lovely. Stunning artwork.”
“Thank you. Although I have to confess that most of it came from my parents—they were the real collectors. I have added one or two pieces over the years.”
“I’ll say,” Maddie cut in. “There’s one six-footer that’s especially impressive.”
Celine seemed embarrassed. “I take it, you noticed the piano?”
“Um hmm,” Maddie said. “Kind of hard to miss. When did you get it?”
“About two years ago.” She hesitated. “One Saturday, I was listening to a Met Opera broadcast on satellite radio. It was Massenet—Thaïs. The music touched me in a way it hadn’t for years—almost like I could hear what was behind the sounds.” She slowly shook her head. “By the time the ‘Meditation’ played in the middle of Act II, I was sitting on the floor in tears.”
Maddie sat forward, stunned by her mother’s explanation. She had never known Celine to be so self-revealing. “My god.”
Celine met her eyes. “You don’t know the half of it. When the broadcast ended, I realized that I had been listening to a vintage recording—your grandmother was the violinist.”
Syd’s gasp was the only sound in the room.
Maddie quickly ran a hand beneath her eyes and tried to regain her composure. “Why didn’t you ask Dad for Oma’s piano?” she asked, softly. “You know he would have sent it to you.”
Celine nodded. “I know. But I needed to reconnect with this part of myself on my own terms, not my mother’s. It was only when I finally realized that I could separate the music from the memories, that I was able to let its beauty touch my life again.” Her eyes glistened. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Maddie bit her lower lip as she nodded slowly, understanding all that her mother was saying, and much of what she was not saying.
“Besides,” Celine looked at Syd, “you’ve got someone in your life now who can make good use of the Bösendorfer.”
Syd looked back at her with a startled expression.
Celine smiled. “Phoebe’s note contained more than her best wishes for my speedy recovery. She was raving about the newest addition to her community orchestra.”
An orderly entered the room, pushing a large metal cart. “Good morning, Dr. Heller. They told me to come in here and get these flowers.”
“Yes, thank you. You can take all of those over on that side of the room. I’ll just keep the cards.”
Maddie belatedly got to her feet and helped the tall man remove the cards and load the flower arrangements onto his cart. When they finished, only two arrangements remained: a vase of cut flowers from Laszlow Kramer, and a small basket of red peonies from the family of Diego Vaz Peña.
“Thank you, Dr. Heller.” The orderly slowly backed his cart toward the door. “The folks who are here all alone with no family will really appreciate these flowers.”
Maddie looked at Syd and Celine and felt a curious twinge of well-being. For the first time since her father’s death, she realized she didn’t feel alone.
THAT EVENING, MADDIE and Syd stopped at a Whole Foods Market on San Vicente in Brentwood and picked out a variety of deli foods and confections for their dinner. They also bought two bottles of Spencer-Roloson Napa Valley Red—one of Maddie’s favorite wines. When they arrived back at Celine’s house, they quickly changed into more comfortable clothes and took their food items and a bottle of the wine outside to sit on the patio.
It was a pleasant evening and not yet dark. The air was thick with the scent of dark blue Ceanothus, which meandered along the back wall of Celine’s garden. The hearty California lilacs were interspersed with desert willow and slender stalks of white sage. Maddie recalled helping her mother plant the white sage not long after they had moved to Brentwood and remembered the stories Celine told her about how the plants were sacred to Native Americans for their curative properties and their efficacy in warding off evil spirits.
For years, Maddie kept several smudge sticks of white sage tied up an
d hanging from a hook in the back of her closet, hoping the mystical properties of the sweet-smelling incense would push back the darkness that had taken hold of her mother’s heart. Tonight, as she sat with Syd and gazed out across the lawn at the row of now mature plants, she wondered if, finally, the magic had worked.
“You’re very quiet.” Syd’s voice was soft and tentative.
Maddie looked at her. She was lovely. Her blonde hair seemed to glow in the fading light.
“You’re beautiful. You know that?”
Syd looked at her quizzically. “Thank you, but I think you might be a tad biased.”
Maddie shook her head. “No. You are. I noticed it the first time I saw you. There’s a wonderful wholesomeness about you. It’s captivating.”
Syd arched a blonde eyebrow. “Wholesomeness? You’re not dredging up that whole Sandra Dee business again, are you?”
Maddie laughed. “Not this time.” She thought back to the first time she had made that comparison—the night after their first dinner together at the Inn. She could tell by Syd’s expression that she was remembering it, too. “I wanted to kiss you that night. I damn near did.”
Syd’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding me? I spent the rest of that evening kicking myself because I nearly kissed you.” She sighed. “What a pair we are. To think that we could’ve saved ourselves all those months of uncertainty.”
Maddie reached across the table and took Syd’s hand. “I’m not complaining. We’re together now, and that’s all that matters.”
“It’s going to kill me to leave you tomorrow.” Syd’s voice was a near whisper.
“I know.” Maddie linked their fingers together. “I’ll be home soon.”
Syd nodded and sat back, clearly trying to compose herself. “How did your conversation with Lizzy go?”
Maddie released her hand and took another one of the smoked cheese and green salsa taquitos. “Fine. It sounds like everything is under control—no emergencies.”