Trevor shook his head. “She left.” He looked from his uncle to Maddie. “You got more dead mice?”
“Not today. But I did get a cat and she’ll be old enough in a few months to kill them for me.”
“You have a cat?”
“Yeah. Her name is Snowball. She has different colored eyes and an overbite.”
Mick looked at her. “Seriously.”
“I’ll show you two boys.”
“What’s an overbite?” Travis asked as the three of them moved into the house.
Mick was home half an hour before his sister knocked on the door. She didn’t wait for him to answer.
“Travis told me he saw you kissing Maddie Dupree’s butt,” she said as she walked into the kitchen, where she found Mick fixing a sandwich before work.
He looked up. “Hello, Meg.”
“Is it true?”
“I wasn’t kissing her butt.” He’d been biting her thigh.
“Why were you there? Travis saw your boat at her dock. What is going on between the two of you?”
“I like her.” He sliced the ham sandwich and put it on a paper plate. “It’s not a big deal.”
“She’s writing a book about Mom and Dad.” She grabbed his wrist to get his attention. “She’s going to make us all look bad.”
“She says she’s not interested in making anyone look bad.”
“Bull. She’s digging up dirt to make money off our pain and suffering.”
He looked into his sister’s deep green eyes. “Unlike you, Meg, I don’t dwell on the past.”
“No.” She let go of his wrist. “You just choose to not think about it as if it didn’t happen.”
He picked up half the sandwich and took a bite. “I know what happened, but I don’t live it every day like you do.”
“I don’t live it every day.”
He swallowed and took a drink from a bottle of Sam Adams. “Maybe not every day, but every time I think you’ve finally moved on, something happens and it’s like you’re ten again.” He took another bite. “I’m going to live my life in the present, Meg.”
“You don’t think I want you to live your life? I do. I want you to find someone, you know I do, but not her.”
“You talked to her.” He was getting bored with the conversation. He liked Maddie. He liked everything about her, and he was going to keep seeing her.
“Only because I wanted her to hear that our mother wasn’t a crazy woman.”
He took another drink and set the bottle on the counter. “Mom was crazy.”
“No.” She shook her head and grabbed his shoulder to turn him toward her. “Don’t say that.”
“Why else would she kill two people and then herself? Why else would she leave her two children orphaned?”
“She didn’t mean to.”
“You say that, but if she’d just wanted to scare them, why did she load the .38?”
Meg dropped her hand. “I don’t know.”
He set his sandwich back on the plate and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you ever wonder if she gave us a thought?”
“She did.”
“Then why, Meg? Why was killing Dad and then herself more important than her children?”
Meg looked away. “She loved us, Mick. You don’t remember the good things. Just the bad. She loved us and she loved Dad too.”
He wasn’t the one with the faulty memory. He remembered the good and the bad. “I never said she didn’t. Just not enough, I guess. You can stick up for her for another twenty-nine years, but I’ll never understand why she felt her only option was to kill Dad and then herself.”
She glanced at her feet and said just above a whisper, “I never wanted you to know, but…” She returned her gaze to his. “Dad was leaving us.”
“What?”
“Dad was leaving us for that waitress.” She swallowed hard, as if the word were stuck in her throat. “I heard Mom talking about it on the telephone to one of her friends.” She laughed bitterly. “Presumably one of her friends who hadn’t slept with Dad.”
His father had planned to leave his mother. He knew he should feel something, anger and outrage, maybe, but he didn’t.
“She’d put up with so much from him,” Meg continued. “The humiliation of the whole town knowing about all the sordid affairs. Year after year.” Meg shook her head. “He was leaving her for a twenty-four-year-old cocktail waitress and she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t let him do that to her.”
He looked at his sister, with her pretty eyes and black hair. The same sister who’d protected him as he’d protected her. Or as much as they’d been able. “And you’ve known about this for all these years and you didn’t tell me?”
“You wouldn’t have understood.”
“What’s not to understand? I understand that she killed him rather than let him divorce her. I understand that she was sick.”
“She wasn’t sick! She was pushed too far. She loved him.”
“That isn’t love, Meg.” He grabbed his plate and beer and walked out of the kitchen.
“Like you would know.”
That stopped him, and he turned back and looked at her from the small dining room.
“Have you ever been in love, Mick? Have you ever loved someone so much that the thought of losing her ties your stomach up in knots?”
He thought of Maddie. Of her smile and her dry humor and the buckedtoothed kitten that she’d taken into her house even though she professed to hate cats. “I’m not sure, but I am sure of one thing. If I ever did love a woman like that, I wouldn’t hurt her, and I sure as hell wouldn’t hurt any children I had with her. I might not know a lot about love, but I do know that.”
“Mick.” Meg moved toward him with her hands palms up. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
He set his plate on the table. “Just forget it.”
“I want the best for you. I want you to get married and have a family because I know you’d be a good husband and father. I know you would because I know how much you love me and Travis.” She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “But even if you don’t ever find someone, you’ll always have me.”
Mick drew breath into his lungs even as he felt as if he were suffocating.
Chapter 15
Maddie sat on her sofa, Snowball curled up in her lap, and stared into the blank screen of her television. Her stomach ached and her chest was so tight it hurt to breathe. She was going to be sick. She thought about calling her friends and getting their advice, but she couldn’t. She was the strong, fearless one of the group, but at the moment she didn’t feel so strong or fearless. Far from it.
For the first time in a very long time, Maddie Jones was afraid. There was no denying it. She couldn’t call it apprehension and move on. It was too real. Too deep, and too terrifying. Worse than sitting across from a serial killer.
She’d always assumed that falling in love would be like getting slammed into a brick wall. That you’d just be going along as usual and you’d get knocked on your ass and think,
Gee, I guess I’m in love. But it hadn’t happened that way. It had just kind of snuck up on her before she’d realized it. It had happened one smile and one touch at a time. One look. One kiss. One pink cat collar. One pinch to the heart and one breathless anticipation after another until she was in so deep there was no denying it. No turning back before it was too late. No more lying about what she felt.
Maddie slid her hand down Snowball’s small back and didn’t care that the cat’s fur clung to her black shirt and the lap of her skirt. She’d always thought that she couldn’t lie to herself about anything. Apparently she’d gotten better at it.
She’d fallen in love with Mick Hennessy and the minute he found out who she really was, she would lose him. And she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about it.
Her doorbell rang and she looked at the clock sitting on a shelf above the television. It was eight-thirty.
Mick was at work and she didn’t expect to see him until sometime around one.
She set Snowball on the floor and moved to the door. The kitten chased after her and she scooped her up rather than step on her. She looked through the peephole and got that little heated flush she now recognized. Evidently Mick had skipped work.
He stood on her porch wearing jeans and his Mort’s polo. She opened the door and stared at him standing there with the first shadows of night bathing him in a light gray and making his eyes a vibrant blue. As he stared at her across the short distance, elation and despair collided in her heart and twisted her stomach.
“I needed to see you,” he said and stepped across the threshold. He wrapped one arm around Maddie’s waist and placed his free hand on the back of her head. His mouth swooped down and he kissed her. A long drugging kiss that made her want to attach herself to him and never let go.
He pulled back and looked into her face. “I was at work pulling beer and listening to the same old stories, and all I could think about was you and the night we had sex on the bar. I can’t get you out of my head. Put your cat down, Maddie.”
She bent down to set Snowball on the floor and he shut the door behind him. “I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to be here.”
She straightened and looked into his face. She’d never felt love like this in her life. Not really, not the stomach-lifting and skin-tingling kind of love. Not the kind that made her want to hold his hand forever. To leech herself into his body so she didn’t know where he stopped and she began. “I’m glad you came back.” But she had to tell him she was Maddie Jones. Now.
He pushed her hair behind her ear. “I can breathe here with you.”
At least one of them could. She rubbed her cheek into his hand, and before she told him who she was, before she lost him forever, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him one last time. She poured her heart and soul into it, her ache and joy, showing him without words what she felt inside. She kissed his mouth and jaw and the side of his throat. She ran her hands over him, touching and memorizing the feel of him beneath her hands.
Mick slid his warm palms to her behind and then the backs of her thighs. He lifted until she wrapped her legs around his waist. A deep groan vibrated through his chest as he returned her hungry kisses, and he carried her into the bedroom.
She would tell him. She would. In a minute. Her legs slid from his waist and he pulled her shirt over her head. She just wanted a few more minutes, but the more she poured her heart in each kiss, the more he wanted from her. The more he sucked the breath from her lungs and made her light-headed. He slid his hands all over her,
her shoulders and arms, her back and behind, until she was left wearing nothing but her bra, unhooked and open in the back.
Mick took a step back from the kiss and gasped. He looked at her through eyes so far gone, there was no thought to stopping him when he slowly pulled her bra straps and the blue satin cups slid down the slopes of her breasts, shimmered across her nipples, then fell down her arms to the floor.
“We’ve only known each other for a short time.” He lightly brushed the tips of his fingers across the tips of her breasts and her breathing became shallow. “Why does it feel longer?” He moved behind her and Maddie looked down at his big hands on her breasts, touching her, squeezing her puckered nipples. Her back arched and she raised her arms. Her hands cupped the sides of his face as she brought his mouth down to hers. She gave him a hot, greedy kiss as she tilted her hips and pressed her naked behind into his erection. He groaned deep within his chest as he played with her breasts. He still wore his jeans and his shirt, and the feeling of worn denim and soft cotton against her skin was erotic as hell. His mouth left hers and trailed hot little kisses down the side of her throat, and he slid one hand down her stomach. He placed one of his feet between hers, then he slipped his hand between her parted thighs, and he touched her. Her insides melted, pooling deep and low in her pelvis, and she let herself savor the touch of the only man she’d ever loved. She’d always wondered if there was a difference between sex and making love. And now she knew. Sex started with physical desire. Making love started in a person’s heart.
She didn’t know what would happen after this, after she told him who she was, but perhaps it wouldn’t matter. She turned and looked up at him as her hands drifted down his stomach to the end of his polo shirt. She pulled the stretchy cotton from the waistband of his pants and Mick raised his arms. She yanked it over his head and tossed it aside. Maddie lowered her gaze from his passion-filled eyes to his strong chest. The tips of her breasts touched him a few inches below his flat brown nipples. A trail of fine hair ran down his chest, between her cleavage, to his waistband.
His voice was husky with lust when he said, “Why did I ever think I would get enough of you?”
Maddie pulled at his button fly and slipped her hands inside his jeans and cupped him through his boxer briefs. “I’ll never get enough of you, Mick. Whatever happens, I’ll always want you.”
She closed her eyes and kissed the side of his throat. “Always,” she whispered.
His breath whooshed from his lungs as she slipped her hand inside his underwear and wrapped her palm around his hot shaft. He grabbed his wallet out of his pants and tossed it on the bed.
“I’ll never get enough of the way you feel in my hand,” she whispered. “Hard and smooth at the same time. I will never forget what it feels like to touch you like this.”
“Who says you have to forget?” He walked her to the side of the bed and pushed her shoulders until she sat.
Who? He would. She laid down and watched him quickly undress until he stood completely naked in front of her, a tall, beautiful man who made her heart and soul ache. She raised a hand to him and pulled him on top of her. The voluptuous head of his hot penis touched between her legs. “I’ve loved being together,” she whispered as she sucked his earlobe and rubbed against his warm body. She delivered little nibbling bites to his neck and shoulder.
Mick pushed her onto her back. “We have a lot more time to be together.” He kissed her chin and throat. “A lot more.” He sucked her nipple into his warm mouth while his other hand slid down her stomach to touch her with his fingers. As she watched him kiss her breast, raw emotion pumped through her veins. This was Mick, the man who could make her feel beautiful and desired. The man she loved and would probably lose.
Mick raised his head and the cool night air brushed across her breasts where his mouth had left her wet and shining. He reached into his wallet and pulled out a condom, but Maddie took it from his hands and stretched the thin latex down the length of him. She could feel his pulse in her hand, strong and steady. She pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips. His lids lowered over his eyes and the breath left his body as he watched her lower herself and take him inside her.
“You look good up there,” he said, his voice low, rough. His hands grasped her waist. “Feel good too.” He slid his hands up her sides to her breasts.
Maddie rocked her pelvis as she raised a little and slid back down. The head of his penis stroked her inside and she moaned deep in her throat. Up and down she moved, tilting her hips as she rode him. Tingling heat flowed outward from where his body touched hers. “Mick. Oh, God.” He moved with her, matching her with powerful thrusts, until the sensations swamped her completely and her head fell back as a hot liquid orgasm washed through her, starting at her pelvis and spreading to her fingers and toes. “Mick. I love you,” she said as new emotions wrapped around her pounding heart, squeezing her chest in its fiery grasp.
Just as the climax ended, Mick wrapped an arm around her back and bottom, and turned with her so that she lay on the bed looking up at him. He was still buried deep inside her and she automatically wrapped her legs around his waist as she knew he liked. She brought his mouth down to her and gave him wet wild kisses as he withdrew and thrust deep inside her again. She clung to him as he drove into her over and over. His chest heaved and he pl
aced his hands on the bed beside her face. With each stroke, he pushed her toward a second climax, and she cried out as her body milked him hard for a second time.
Mick’s eyes drifted shut, and his breath hissed between his teeth. “Holy shit,” he swore, then groaned his satisfaction. He dove into her one last time, then collapsed on top of her.
His weight pushed down on her, heavy and welcome. His face rested on the pillow next to hers and he kissed her shoulder.
“Maddie?” he asked, breathless.
“Yeah?” She slid her hands across his back.
He raised onto his elbows and looked into her face, his breathing still heavy. “I don’t know what was different this time, but that was the hottest sex I’ve ever had.”
She knew what was different. She loved him. Her face got hot and she shoved at his shoulders. She loved him and she’d told him so too.
He rolled off her and lay on his back.
“I need some water,” she said as she crawled off the bed and stood. Her ears were ringing from embarrassment and she moved to her closet and grabbed her robe.
“Where’s your cat?” he asked.
“Probably on my office chair.” She looked down at her shaking hands as she tied the terrycloth around her waist.
“If she attacks me, I’m getting her some G13.”
Maddie had no idea what he was talking about. “Okay,” she called from the closet.
“I have more condoms in my pants pocket,” he said, all chipper as he walked to the bathroom. “But you’re going to have to give me some time to get up to speed again.”
While Mick used the bathroom, Maddie walked to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Diet Coke. She placed it against her burning cheeks and closed her eyes. Maybe he hadn’t heard her. He’d told her on the way to Redfish that sometimes he didn’t understand everything she said during sex. Perhaps she hadn’t spoken as clearly as she’d thought.
She unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. She hoped like hell it had been one of those times, which only took care of one problem. The bigger problem loomed ahead, black and devastating and unavoidable.
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