Tangled Up in You

by Rachel Gibson

  Naked, she stepped into the tub and lowered herself into the warm scented water. “Ahh,” she sighed as she slid beneath the suds. She leaned back against the cool porcelain and closed her eyes. She owned every scent imaginable. Everything from roses to apples, espresso to cake, and years ago she’d made peace and learned how to live with her inner hedonist.

  There’d been a time in her life when she’d binged on almost anything that gave her pleasure. Men, dessert, and expensive lotions had featured high on her list. As a result of all that bingeing she’d developed a narrow view of men and a large behind. A very soft and smooth behind, but a big butt nonetheless. As a child, she’d been overweight and the horrors of once again hauling a wide load had forced her to change her life. The realization that she needed to change had happened on the morning of her thirtieth birthday when she’d woken up with a cheesecake hangover and a guy named Derrick. The cheesecake had been mediocre and Derrick a real disappointment.

  These days she was still a hedonist at heart, but she was a nonpracticing hedonist. She still overindulged on lotions and bath products, but she needed those to relax and destress and to stave off dry, flaky skin.

  She sank farther beneath the water and attempted to find a little peace for herself. Her body succumbed to the bubbles and warm water, but her mind wasn’t so easily quieted and continued to roam over the past few weeks. She was making real progress on her timeline and notes. She had a list of people mentioned in her mother’s last diary, the few friends she’d made in Truly and people with whom she’d worked. The county coroner from 1978 had died, but the sheriff still lived in Truly. He was retired, but Maddie was sure he could provide valuable information. She had newspaper accounts, police reports, the coroner’s find ings, and as much information on the Hennessy family as she could possibly dig up. Now all she had to do was talk to anyone connected to her mother’s life and death.

  She’d discovered that two women her mother had worked with still lived in town and she planned to start with them tomorrow morning. It was past time she talked to people in town and unearthed information.

  The warm water and scented bubbles slid over her stomach and the bottom swell of her breasts. Reading those diaries, she could almost hear her mother’s voice for the first time in twenty-nine years. Alice wrote about her fear at finding herself alone and pregnant and her excitement over Maddie’s birth. Reading about her hopes and dreams for herself and her baby had been heartbreaking and so bittersweet. But with the heartbreaking and bittersweet discoveries, she’d learned that her mother wasn’t the blond-haired, blue-eyed angel she’d created in her child’s head and heart. Alice had been the sort of woman who had to have a man in her life or she’d felt worthless. She’d been needy and naive and eternally optimistic. Maddie had never been needy, nor could she recall a time when she’d been naive or overly optimistic about anything. Not even as a child. Discovering that she had absolutely nothing in common with the woman who’d given her birth, nothing that tied her to her mother, left her empty inside.

  Early in life, Maddie had developed a hard shell around her soul. Her tough exterior had always been an asset while doing her job, but she didn’t feel so tough today. She felt raw and vulnerable. Vulnerable to what, she didn’t know, but she hated the feeling. It would be so much easier if she tossed the diaries and wrote about a psychopath by the name of Roddy Durban. She’d been writing about the nasty little bastard who’d killed more than twenty-three prostitutes right before she’d found the diaries. Writing about Roddy would be a hell of a lot easier than writing about her mother, but the night that Maddie had taken the diaries home and read them, she knew there was no turning back. Her career, while not always carefully calculated, had not been random. She was a true crime writer for a reason, and as she’d pored over her mother’s overly feminine handwriting, she knew the time had come to sit down and write about the crime that had left her mother dead.

  She turned off the water with her foot and reached for the body scrub on the side of the tub. She squirted the thick sugar scrub into her palm and the scent of chocolate cake filled her nose. With it came the unbidden memory of standing on a chair next to her mother and stirring chocolate pudding on the stove. She didn’t know how old she’d been or where they’d lived. The memory was as tangible as a wisp of smoke, but it managed to deliver a punch to the lonely place next to her heart.

  Bubbles clung to her breasts as she sat up and lifted her feet over the side of the tub. Obviously, she’d failed to find the calm and comfort she usually found in her bath, and she quickly exfoliated her arms and legs. When she was through, she got out of the tub and dried off, then she rubbed chocolate-scented lotion into her skin.

  She tossed her clothes in the hamper and walked into her bedroom. Her three closest friends lived in Boise, and she missed meeting them for lunch or dinner or impromptu bitch sessions. Her friends Lucy, Clare, and Adele were the closest thing she had to a family, and the only people to whom she would consider giving a kidney or loaning money. She was fairly certain they would return the favor.

  Last year when her friend Clare had discovered her fiancй with another man, the other three friends had rushed to her house to talk her off the ledge. Out of the four women, Clare was the most kindhearted and easily hurt. She was also a romance writer who’d always believed in true love. For a time after her fiancй’s betrayal, she’d lost her faith in the happy-ever-after until a reporter by the name of Sebastian Vaughan came into her life and restored her faith. He was her very own romance hero, and the two were getting married in September. Maddie had to drive to Boise in a few days to be fitted for her bridesmaid dress.

  Once again she was allowing one of her friends to deck her out in a ridiculous dress and make her stand up at the front of a church. The year before she’d been a bridesmaid at Lucy’s wedding. Lucy was a mystery writer and had met her husband Quinn when he’d mistaken her for a serial killer. Long story short, he hadn’t let a little thing like homicide stand in the way of his pursuit of Lucy.

  Out of the four friends, that left herself and Adele still single. Maddie pulled on a pair of black cotton panties and tossed the towel on the bed. Adele wrote fantasy novels for a living, and although she had her own man troubles, Maddie figured it was a lot more likely that Adele would marry before she would herself.

  Maddie fit the large cups of her bra over her breasts and fastened it in back. In fact, she just didn’t see herself getting married. She wanted a kid about as much as she wanted a cat. The only time a man came in handy was when she needed someone to do some heavy lifting or when she desired a warm naked body next to hers. But she owned a sturdy hand truck and big Carlos, and when she had need of heavy lifting or sexual release she reached for one of them. Admittedly, neither was as good as the real thing, but the hand truck went back in the garage when she was through, and big Carlos got shoved back into her bedside table. Both of them stayed put and didn’t give her crap, play games with her heart, or cheat on her. Pretty much a win-win.

  She stepped into a pair of jeans and then shoved her arms through the sleeves of her most comfortable hooded sweatshirt. She just didn’t have the same burning desires, or instincts, or clocks that drove other women into matrimony and childbirth. Which wasn’t to say that she didn’t get lonely sometimes. She absolutely did.

  Shoving her feet into a pair of flip-flops, she moved from the bedroom, though the living room, to the kitchen. The noise from the neighbors’ party grew louder and she reached into the refrigerator. Voices floated in through her open windows as she pulled out a bottle of carb-reduced merlot.

  She was alone and lonely and apparently feeling quite sorry for herself too. Which really wasn’t like her. She never felt sorry for herself. There were too many people in the world with real problems.

  The shrill screech of at least a half dozen Piccolo Petes sliced through the air, and Maddie almost dropped the corkscrew. “Damn it,” she cursed and placed her free hand over her heart. Beyond the French
doors leading out to her deck, she could see the pale shadows of dusk and the darkening surface of the usually emerald-green lake. She poured red wine into a glass and carried it outside to the deck and set it on the railing. A dozen or so people stood on the neighbors’ deck and the beach below. Along the water’s edge three mortar tubes stuck out of the sand and pointed toward the sky. Several children held sparklers while men supervised, lit more Piccolo Petes and something that flashed like little strobe lights. Smoke from bombs of every color clouded the beach, and the children ran through the paisley haze like genies from a bottle.

  Against the smoke and chaos, Mick Hennessy stood in profile with a punk between his teeth like a long thin cigarette. She recognized his wide shoulders and black hair and the boy who stood gazing up at him. He handed his nephew a lit sparkler and Travis spun on one foot and waved it about. Mick took the punk from between his teeth, said something, and Travis immediately stopped and held the firework in front of him like a statue.

  Maddie took a sip of her wine. Yesterday, seeing him at the hardware store had been a real shock. She’d been so intent on her box of poison that she hadn’t noticed him until he’d stood right next to her. Looking up into those blue eyes so close and so much like his father’s had forced a stunned “Christ almighty” out of her.

  She lowered the glass and set it on the railing as she watched Mick with his nephew. She really didn’t know what to think about him. Not that she knew enough to form an opinion or that it even mattered. The book she planned to write had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the love triangle between Loch, Rose, and Alice. Like Maddie, Mick had been just another innocent victim.

  Louie Allegrezza and two other men knelt close to the water and stuck bottle rockets into several soda bottles. They lit one fuse right after the other, and Maddie watched the rockets fly up high over the water and explode with soft pop-pop-pops.

  “Be careful with those around the kids,” Lisa called down to her husband.

  “These never hurt anyone,” he called back as he once again loaded up the bottles. Four of the rockets flew straight up, while the fifth flew straight at Maddie. She hit the deck as it whizzed past her head.

  “Shit!”

  The rocket landed behind her and exploded. With her heart pounding in her ears, she straightened to peer over the railing.

  “Sorry about that,” Louie called out.

  Through the light wash of gray night, Mick Hennessy looked up and stared at her for several seconds. His dark brows lifted as if surprised to see her. Then he rocked back on his heels and laughed like the whole thing was horribly funny. The dimples denting his cheeks and the amusement in his shining blue eyes gave the illusion that he was as trustworthy and harmless as a Boy Scout. But harmless Boy Scouts wore their beige shirts buttoned and tucked into their pants. A Boy Scout didn’t leave his shirt hanging open, showing off washboard abs and a lickable happy trail running down his sternum, circling his navel, and disappearing behind the waistband of his Levi’s. Not that she was in any danger of licking any part of him. But just because he was who he was and she was who she was didn’t mean she was blind.

  “Louie, warn us before you set those things off,” Lisa said above the noise. “Maddie, come over here. You’ll be safer.”

  Maddie tore her gaze from Mick’s chest and looked across the ten feet of yard at her neighbor. When it came to safety, trading her deck for theirs didn’t make a bit of sense, but since staring at Mick’s chest was the biggest thrill she’d had in weeks, she was obviously bored and sick of her own company.

  She stood, grabbed her glass, and walked the short distance. She was quickly introduced to Louie’s daughter Sofie and her friends who lived in Boise and attended BSU but were in Truly for the weekend. She met several neighbors from farther down the beach, Tanya King, a petite blonde who looked like she hung from her heels and did crunches all day, and Suzanne Porter, whose husband Glenn and teenage son Donald were on the beach setting off fireworks. After that, she lost track of names and couldn’t remember who was whom, where they lived, or how long they’d lived in town. They all blurred together except for Louie’s mother and his aunt Narcisa, who sat at a table wearing equally disarming scowls of disap proval and speaking to each other in rapid Basque. No way could she forget those women.

  “Would you like more wine?” Lisa asked. “I’ve got Basque Red and Chablis. Or you can have beer or a Coke.”

  “No, thanks.” She held up her half-full glass and looked at it. “I’m a cheap date tonight.” She needed to get up early and get to work, and wine tended to give her a headache.

  “Before I married Louie and had Pete, these Fourth of July barbeques were out of control. Lots of drunks and dangerous fireworks.”

  As far as Maddie could see, not a lot had changed.

  The last person she was introduced to was Lisa’s sister-in-law, Delaney, who looked about twelve months pregnant.

  “I’m not due until September,” Delaney said as if she’d read Maddie’s mind.

  “You’re joking.”

  “No.” Delaney laughed and her blond ponytail brushed her shoulder as she shook her head. “I’m having twin girls.” She pointed toward the beach. “That’s my husband, Nick, down there with Louie. He’s going to be a great dad.”

  As if on cue, the great dad-to-be turned and his gaze sought his wife. He was tall and unbeliev ably handsome, and the only other guy around who gave Mick Hennessy any competition whatsoever in the looks department. Then his intense gaze found his wife and the competition was over. There was just nothing sexier than a man who only had eyes for one woman. Especially when that woman looked like Buddha.

  “Are you okay?” Nick Allegrezza called out.

  “For goodness’ sake,” Delaney grumbled, then yelled, “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Nick suggested.

  She spread her arms. “I’m fine.”

  Maddie’s gaze slid to Mick, who knelt on one knee as he helped Travis light a flashing strobe. She wondered if he had ever looked that way at any one woman, or if he was more like his father and had eyes for a lot of women.

  “Fire in the hole,” Louie yelled, and Maddie’s gaze flew to the bottle rockets whizzing upward. This time none of the rockets buzzed Maddie’s head and instead exploded above the lake. Relief calmed her beating heart. A few years ago, she’d volunteered to be Tasered in one of her self-defense classes. She wasn’t a chicken, but those flying missiles worried her.

  “Last week I started to have a few contractions, and the doctor said the babies are probably going to come early,” Delaney said, drawing Maddie’s attention. “Nick’s totally freaking out about it, but I’m not worried. We’ve been through hell to have these girls. The hard part is over and everything else will be fine.”

  Maddie had spent her adult life trying not to get pregnant and wondered what Delaney had been through, but she didn’t know her well enough to ask.

  “You two did go through hell.” Lisa rubbed her sister-in-law’s belly, then dropped her hands to her sides. “But I have a feeling that having two thirteen-year-old girls in the same house at the same time is going to give new meaning to the word hell.”

  “Not a problem. Nick’s not going to let the girls out of his sight until they’re twenty-one for fear they’ll run into boys like him.”

  Suzanne raised a glass of white wine and laughed. “I never thought Nick would settle down and get married. Growing up, he was as wild as Louie was crazy.”

  “Louie wasn’t crazy,” Lisa defended her husband, and her brows lowered over her blue eyes.

  “Everyone called him Crazy Louie for a reason,” Delaney reminded her sister-in-law. “He stole his first car when he was, what? Ten?”

  “Yeah, well, Nick was right there in the passenger seat with Louie.” Lisa sniffed. “And he really didn’t steal cars. He just borrowed them for a few hours.”

  Delaney’s brows lowered. “Are you listening to yourself?”

>   Lisa shrugged. “It’s true. Besides, Nick came up with lots of bad ideas all on his own. Remember those horrid snowball fights?”

  “Of course, but Nick doesn’t have to throw things at me to get my attention these days.” Delaney smiled and rested her hands on top of her big belly. “He’s still a little wild sometimes, but nothing like he was in school.”

  “Every class had at least one bad boy. Class of 1990 it was Mick Hennessy,” Suzanne said. “He was always in trouble. In the eighth grade, he punched Mr. Shockey in the face.”

  Maddie casually took a sip of her wine as if her ears hadn’t perked up.

  “I’m sure Mr. Shockey deserved it,” Lisa defended Mick. “He used to make us run track even when we had period cramps. Sadistic bastard.”

  “Lisa, you were always having cramps,” Delaney reminded Lisa. “Even in the first grade. And I swear you’d defend the devil.”

  Lisa shrugged. “All I’m saying is that considering what Mick had to deal with growing up, he turned out pretty good.”

  Maddie didn’t know what Mick had dealt with as a child, but she could guess.

  “I didn’t know Mick growing up, but I’ve heard the stories.” Tanya raised her glass and took a drink. “And he turned out real good.” Behind the glass, one corner of Tanya’s lips lifted, leaving little doubt that she knew just how “real good” Mick was.

  “Be careful, Tanya, Mick is like his daddy,” Suzanne warned. “He isn’t the kind of guy to stay with one woman. Last year Cinda Larson thought she had him all to herself, but he was seeing a few other women at the same time.”

  The difference being, Maddie thought, Mick wasn’t married like his daddy had been.

  “I just got divorced last year.” Tanya wore a strapless sundress on her tiny body, and she shrugged one bare shoulder. “I’m not looking for an exclusive relationship.”