“Only when it puts you in danger,” he told her. “Which I suspect is the real reason Trench Coat is stalking you. You were playing detective that night, weren’t you, Maddy? What I want to know is who hired you. Why were you sitting in front of Caress’s house that night?”
Still reluctant to give up her client, Madison remained insistent. “I told you, I was-”
“Star gazing.” Brash said the words with her, his tone weary. He watched her face closely. “And tonight?”
“The blue house over there belongs to Donny Howell.”
“And yet when I first drove up, you were looking directly into Caress’s house.”
“John-Paul Noble is still in town. I was star gazing.” Her voice held a flat, dejected note.
“For some reason, I actually believe you,” he murmured. “So why do you look so glum? Couldn’t see anything?” he guessed.
“Oh, I saw plenty.”
“Huh?”
Madison sighed. “Do you remember the show ‘Hatchet for Hire’?”
“Sure do. It was my favorite TV show, back in the day. Still watch the re-runs sometimes.”
“Along with every other girl in America, I had a huge crush on John-Paul Noble. I knew it was impossible—I knew it was just a foolish, impossible dream—but I used to imagine that I might meet him some day, and that he would be so enchanted with my sparkling personality and my wholesome good looks that he would put all those loose Hollywood vixens behind him and fall madly in love with me.” She crossed both hands over her heart, her voice filled with just the right touch of melodrama.
“It could happen.” His voice, deep and sexy, was much too believable.
She ignored his flirtations. “Some daydreams are so delicious,” she told him, “that even when you know they are impossible, it’s still fun to hold on to them, somewhere deep in your heart.”
“Hey, now’s your chance. You have the opportunity to meet him, up close and personal. And he’d be a fool not to choose you over any woman in Hollywood.”
She shook her head. “Never going to happen.”
“How do you know?” he challenged. “You’re a fine looking woman, Maddy.”
“I’m not his type. But he’s found someone who is.” Without further explanation, she handed him the binoculars.
It took Brash a moment to focus the lens and locate his subject. He finally zoomed in on the kitchen window.
“I can’t really see anything… He’s leaning down. Has something in his… Good Lord, Maddy, why didn’t you warn me!” Brash jumped back, dropping the binoculars in his haste. His eyes were round with shock. “That’s-That’s… He’s with a man!”
Her voice was resigned. “Yes, I know.”
“They’re right there on the kitchen counter! In full view!”
“I know that, too.”
Brash scrubbed his hands over his eyes, trying to scour the vision from his mind. He cursed beneath his breath. “You should have warned me!” he accused again.
“I’m still in shock.”
“Who-? Do you know who that was?”
“Oh, yes. That’s Derron Mullins.”
“Little pip-squeak Derron Mullins, the surveyor’s son?”
“The one and only.”
“How messed up is that? John-Paul was Caress’s ex-boyfriend. Now her best friend’s son is his… what? Boy-toy? This is straight off one of those soap operas they starred in!”
“John-Paul has a reputation of being a real lady’s man. I’ve never once heard about this!” She waved her hand in the vague direction of the house.
Brash shook his head, visibly trying to shake the memory free. The effort drew a moan and he put his hand to his head.
Belatedly, Madison noticed the white bandage peeking from beneath his cowboy hat. “How is your head? What did the doctors say?”
“Concussion. They said it was a good thing I had such a hard head, or they would have kept me overnight. Said I’ll be good as new in a couple of days. And you?”
“Sore. Every muscle in my body is in pain. Climbing straight up the side of a brick building will do that to you. Another twenty or so hot baths and I’ll probably live,” she predicted.
His voice dropped with a serious note that sounded suspiciously like an accusation. “I’ve tried calling you all day, Maddy.”
“Really?”
“Knock off the innocent act. You’ve been ignoring my calls. Why?” he asked her directly.
“I-I haven’t really felt like talking much today. My tongue’s still swollen from where I banged my head on the window. I bit it pwetty hawd.” To prove her point, she stuck her tongue out at him.
“Funny, never heard it in your voice till just now,” he observed dryly. “Come on, Maddy, tell me what’s wrong. Why are you avoiding me? I had to come hunt you down. I’m not supposed to be driving yet, you know, but it’s the only way I could get you to talk to me.”
“Great, so if you pass out behind the wheel and have a wreck, you’re going to blame it on me!”
“So drive me home,” he suggested. “I’ll send someone back for the car. We can go to my house and have a nice long conversation.” He reached out and took her hand. “I might could even find a bottle of wine. How about it, Maddy? Drive me home?”
She pulled her hand free, averting her gaze. “Sorry, I’m working.”
“Really? I passed Donny in the car with his buddies when I turned down the street.”
“Oh? Well, good, I can go home now.” She began gathering up her equipment, still avoiding eye contact with him.
Brash made no move to get out of the car. “I get the distinct impression that you’re mad at me, but for the life of me, I can’t imagine why.” He studied her for a long moment before making a few guesses. “Is it because I mentioned the kiss you owe me in front of my men? Did you not want people knowing about us?”
“Us? Us, Brash? What us?” She fairly screamed the words at him. Real smooth, Maddy, she chided herself. Way to hide your true feelings. So much for her plans to remain aloof and unaffected.
His voice remained steady and low, and so beautifully sincere it brought the prick of tears to her eyes. “The us that knows there’s something here, Maddy, something real. The us that can’t sleep at night, between we keep thinking about that kiss that never seems to happen. The us that’s willing to wait for that kiss, because when it finally does happen, we want it to be perfect. We want it perfect because we both know that one kiss is going to change our lives.” His voice was pure velvet. “That us, Maddy.”
Madison bit her lip, willing herself not to melt, right then and there. Who knew the man was a poet?
“Talk to me,” he begged.
“They took me to the Clinic.” Her voice was small and tight, spoken around the tears gathered in her throat.
His brow puckered in confusion. “And that’s why you’re mad at me? Because I went to the hospital and you didn’t?”
“No, of course not! I insisted they take me there.”
“I’m lost here, Maddy. What does that have to do with you and me?”
“The nurse on duty was Margaret Chatham.”
He nodded in approval. “Good. I know she took excellent care of you. She’s a good nurse.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Brash?” she cried, turning an accusing glare upon him.
“Tell you what? That she worked there?”
“No, that you’re still dating her!”
His answer was simple. “Because I’m not.”
“You were eight weeks ago!”
“No I wasn’t.”
“Don’t even. Don’t you even dare try to sit there and lie to me, Brash deCordova!”
“I’m not lying, Maddy. Margaret and I haven’t dated in well over a year. Last I heard, she was seeing a Cardiologist from Waco.”
“I saw the bracelet, Brash, the one you gave her for Christmas! This Christmas, in case it slipped your mind.”
“And?”
“And
that proves you’re lying! Why else would you give her a Christmas present, if you weren’t still dating her? Especially something personal like a piece of jewelry!”
Brash rubbed his fingers over his aching forehead. His voice was resigned when he answered. “I didn’t think the bracelet was all that personal, since it had some nurse’s creed engraved on it and nothing to do with me. And I gave her a gift because I drew her name in our Sunday school class. We all exchanged presents at the church Christmas party, after the play.”
Madison was crushed. She felt horrible about having accused him, yet again, of lying to her.
“Oh, Brash. I-I’m so sorry,” she breathed in horror. “I’m so embarrassed. I-I-”
“- did it again,” he said for her.
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Why? Why, Maddy?” He turned to her with sorrow in his blue eyes. “Why do you have such a low opinion of me?”
“I don’t!”
“This is a high opinion? First you accuse me of being a married man and trying to kiss you behind my wife’s back. Now you think I’m lying about dating another woman. If this is a good opinion of a man, I’d hate to see the scoundrels that don’t make the mark!”
“I’m sorry, Brash, truly I am. I just… she said… and I thought…” She gave up trying to explain herself. None of it was making sense anyway, especially not this terrible pain in her heart.
Silence filled the car’s cabin. Tension grew thick and uncomfortable between them. The strain was almost tangible.
“I’m going to make this easy for you, Maddy.” When he spoke, Brash’s voice was low and raw. “I’m telling you right now, you’re the only woman I’m interested in. Yes, there have been women in my past, but right now, I’m only interested in my future. I want a future with you, Maddy. Don’t ask me how, but I know we would be good together. And I know it could be forever.” He stared at her long enough for her to see the beautiful sincerity in his words. Then he looked away again, and she heard the vulnerability in his voice. “To best honest, the thought scares me a little, but in a good way.”
She found her voice, tiny and small. “It scares me, too.”
“I don’t do half-way, Maddy.”
Even though his face was averted, she gave a tiny nod before tucking her head down.
“I know you’ve had a rough time of it recently. I know your marriage was falling apart, even before your husband died.”
Her head jerked up. “How do you-”
“Doesn’t matter how I know. All I need to know is that I’m not competing with a dead man’s memory.”
“You’re not.”
“Nick Vilardi?”
“What? No! Why would you- why would you even think that?”
“I saw the way you looked at each other.” He practically growled. “I felt it in the air. There was something between you.”
“Not-Not… this.” Nothing had ever been like this, not even with Gray.
“Then I’ll wait. I’ll give you the time you need to pull your life back together. But there’s one thing you need to know, Maddy.”
“Wh-What’s that?”
“As far as I’m concerned, if a relationship doesn’t have trust and respect, then it’s no relationship at all. The two go hand-in-hand, and it’s obvious that you don’t trust me.”
“It’s not you, Brash,” she insisted. On a whisper, she admitted, “It’s my own stupidity.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll compromise on a lot of things, but not this. Either you trust me, or you don’t. You believe in me and respect me, or you don’t. Simple as that.”
She had never heard such emotion in his voice. Such raw vulnerability. She was humbled, knowing she inspired that level of feeling in the man, but his next words almost broke her heart.
“I can’t be with someone who thinks so poorly of me,” he continued. “It doesn’t matter that it stems from your own insecurities. It reflects on me, on my integrity.”
“Brash.”
He ignored her whispered cry. “Get your life together, Maddy, and decide how you feel about me. Don’t come to me unless you know, without a doubt, that you trust me and respect me.”
“I do, Brash. I respect you more than any man I know.” If she doubted it before now, his heartfelt speech proved he was a man of integrity, a man worthy of love and respect.
“Like I said, I don’t do halfway. If I give you my heart, I give you everything I have, including that same level of respect, that same level of unconditional trust. I don’t give those things lightly, Madison.”
“Neither-Neither do I.”
He faced her then, and touched her bruised cheek with a tender caress. “Go home, Maddy. Get your life together. Your head together.”
She dropped her eyes. “I’m a mess, Brash,” she confessed lowly. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“When you trust me enough, you can tell me about it.”
“I-I don’t know…” Some things were too painful to share, even with him.
“Do you believe me when I say you’re the only woman I’m interested in?”
“I-I want to…”
She felt him stiffen at the uncertainty that lingered in her words. She suspected the sudden chill in the air deflected from him.
When he put his hand on the door, she cautioned, “You don’t need to be driving, remember?”
His voice raked across the ice in his heart, coming out frosty and cold. “You’ll never really trust me, Maddy. You still think poorly of me. Surely a car crash couldn’t hurt much worse than that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Mom, we’ve got to talk.” Blake wore a serious expression upon his face as he plunked down into the chair across from his mother the next afternoon.
Madison was at the dining room table, working on her appointment book. She kept thinking if she looked through the calendar enough times, new jobs would miraculously appear within the pages. So far, she wasn’t having much luck.
Assuming she even still had the job with Boundaries like Genny claimed, it was scheduled to run out in another week; when she was done with surveillance for Murray Archer, she would be down to just the weekly drug-store runs for Miss Sybille.
Shoving aside the dismal book, Madison eyed her children warily. Bethani fell into the other chair and hunched her shoulders into a defensive stance. “Uh-oh. When the two of you gang up on me like this, I know it’s not going to be good.”
“You know we love Granny Bert,” Blake began.
“And she’s pretty cool and all, especially for someone her age,” his sister was quick to say.
“But something has got to change. Do you know what she did today?”
“I, uh, I’m afraid to even ask.”
“To begin with”—he made it plain there would be more—“she hung my underwear outside on the clothesline. I didn’t even know we had a clothesline, until I saw my whitey-tighties flying high out there on a breeze.”
“And my bra, Mom! She hung my bra out there, for all the world to see!” Bethani chimed in as she hid her face with her hands.
“Okay, first of all,” Madison defended her grandmother, “the backyard is relatively secluded. You can barely even see the yard, what with all the huge old trees and the rose bushes and that big motor home parked in the way. And second of all, how many times have I asked you both to do your own laundry? Granny Bert is not your personal maid.”
“There’s more,” Blake assured his mother. “You know that perfectly delicious stew you fixed for supper last night?”
“The one you ate three bowls of? I vaguely recall seeing it before you slurped it down. I even got a bite or two of it.”
Her sarcasm was lost on her son. Food, after all, was a serious subject to a fifteen-year-old boy. “I made sure I left enough for a mid-morning snack. I even hid it in the back of the refrigerator, behind the prune juice. Do you know what she did, Mom? She threw it in the blender and made it into one of her God-awful shakes!”
/> He looked so stricken, Madison did her best not to laugh. “That’s where you made your first mistake,” she advised. “Prune juice is the secret ingredient in most of her shakes. That, or Castor oil.” No longer so amused, Madison shivered at the memory of one or more of those shakes.
“It gets worse, Mom,” Bethani advised. “Tell her, Blake. Tell her what we saw today.”
The blond-haired youth put his hand across his chest in a solemn manner. In a voice overly grave, he kept his facial features drawn blank. “Something no teenager should ever be forced to witness.”
Madison rolled her eyes. “You’re not trying out for the drama club here, Blake. Just tell me what happened.”
“It’s Saturday. What does Granny Bert like to do on Saturday mornings?”
“She usually goes to her water aerobics class, but I heard the pool was still out of order at the Nursing Home.”
“Right. But since they hated to miss the class two weeks in a row, she and her friends decided to do their aerobics here,” Bethani explained.
“So? I doubt they made too much of a ruckus, given all of them are seventy-five or older.”
“They came in their exercise clothes, Mom. Their swimming suits!”
There was such horror in his voice, such shock in his eyes, that this time she could not hold the laughter in. Madison burst out laughing, even as both teens looked at her as if she were crazy.
“The things we saw, Mom,” Blake continued, shoulders shuddering. “I may be scarred for life.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to have so many wrinkles.” Bethani’s voice was a blend of horror and awe.
“And believe me, Mrs. Shanks should not be wearing a two-piece swimsuit!”
The more her children described the horrors they witnessed, the harder Madison laughed. Just the thought of seeing Wanda Shanks doing leg lifts in a bikini made her stomach curl, and she had no doubt Miss Sybille’s wrinkles all but swallowed her bathing suit up whole. But the twins were so comical in their rendition of the geriatric exercise class and what was considered suitable attire for such an occasion. She laughed until she cried, until her sides screamed in protest. Given the week’s events, the pain did not take long to set in. And given last night’s heart-crushing conversation with Brash, she deserved the pain as much as she needed the laughter.
When the Stars Fall (The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series Book 2) Page 21