You Dropped a Blonde on Me

by Dakota Cassidy

  Fin knew once she’d wrapped her head around his infidelity, she’d freak. But he’d made sure her freak was nothing more than a whimper, and it was all perfectly legal. That he’d planned this so diabolically behind her back made it that much harder to swallow.

  “Connor knows you can’t afford a real lawyer, and that’s why you’re where you are—because that creepy shyster who has a basement office doesn’t know his arse from his Mr. Peabody. If you would just let me dip into the till, we could get you a real lawyer—”

  Maxine’s hand was instantly in the air, palm forward. “No, Mom. No more money. I have the lawyer I have because my credit card could only afford so much before it broke. I don’t even care about the money anymore. I just want out. Do you have any idea how much it’d cost to hire someone capable of handling Fin’s lawyers? A whole lot more than even you have. And if I didn’t get anything out of his tight ass so I could pay you back—then we’d really be screwed. So forget it. And before you get crazy, I have a confession to make. I discovered something today on the ride back from my interview. I’m where I am because I didn’t do anything to stop myself from getting here. I can’t totally blame Fin for this mess. I think it’s time for me to take some responsibility for this shitwreck.”

  That was the ugly truth of it. Not only had she trusted her lesser half blindly, but she’d listened to Fin’s SAHM bullshit about staying home with Connor and raising him the way a mother should, being party planner and all-round entertainer of the millennium. She should have insisted he let her go to school when the longing had hit her. But Fin had liked her at his disposal—until he’d disposed of her. Not that she’d pushed to go back to school. Pushing Fin was akin to walks along eggshell-lined streets. You had to take those strolls very carefully.

  Seeing Campbell Barker today had reminded her that somewhere between graduation and this very second, she hadn’t just lost twenty years of marriage, money, and some stupid-ass weekly trips to the day spa, she’d lost her cubes. Her opinion. Her desires. Max, as Campbell had called her, couldn’t have been talked out of anything she wanted way back when. In fact, that was how she’d ended up married to Finley to begin with.

  Her mother’s smile was bitter. “Yep, that’s partially true, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get some kind of severance for time served with that control freak. You raised a good boy, virtually on your own, while Fin swung from every female’s chandelier in the tri-state. Connor knows how you’ve suffered. And I’m not talking about suffering because you can’t slip on a fancy-schmancy designer dress or sit in the back of a chauffeur-driven car. I’m talking about the essentials here, kiddo. Food, shelter, a Goddamn cell phone. I’m seventy, and even I have a cell phone. Connor’s making a stand, and I’m proud of him. He’s sticking by his mama. Makes for a fine man.”

  “Yeah,” Connor agreed, pushing his way through the door and dropping his binder on the chipped Formica table. “I’m a fine man.”

  Mona whacked him playfully with her crocheting book. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, buster. You’re no man yet,” she teased, smiling when Connor leaned in to give her a quick pinch on her wrinkled cheek.

  “So how’s Geezer Village, er, I mean, Leisure Village treating you today, Grams?” Connor chuckled.

  Mona’s smile was warm, her pride in Connor evident. She didn’t let just anyone call the retirement village she lived in “geezer.” “Just fine, buddy. Got somebody back there right now, fixing my leaky pipes. And he ain’t no geezer.”

  Max decided to broach the subject of Fin with kid gloves. “Your dad called, honey.”

  Connor shrugged his broad, ever-widening shoulders deep in the door of her mother’s aging avocado refrigerator. “So? He can dial a phone.”

  Despite what Fin had done to her personally, Maxine made the effort to do the right thing where their son was concerned. Do what all the school psychologists and Divorce for Dummies books preached were healthy for children of marital woe. Keep the slander about the kind of bottom-feeding fuck Finley was to herself. But if Connor had inherited anything from the Henderson lineage, it was stubborn pride. “Don’t be that way, Connor. He’s still your dad, and he loves you.”

  Popping a grape into his mouth, Connor snorted. “Not as much as he loves his money. If he really loved me, he’d stop trying to force me to choose him over you by taking all my stuff away from me. He thinks if he pushes hard enough, I’ll go crying back to him because I miss having a big-screen TV and surround sound in my bedroom. I bet he’ll want my car back soon, too. I’d sell it for the money and use it for us if he didn’t hold the title to it. At the last visitation hearing, the judge said I was old enough to make my own decisions, and I decided I don’t want to see Dad.”

  Such jaded words from such a young kid. Maxine’s heart clenched. Her mother was right. Fin was using his money and all of Connor’s “things” to woo him back home. That Connor hadn’t caved in eight months was a testament to how hard he’d dug his heels in.

  But if she knew how to do anything at all, she knew how to play nice. Christ knew she’d done that for a very long time. “Maybe you could just try, Connor. For your poor, tired, jobless mother. Your dad off my back about visitation would be huge. I get what you’re trying to prove, and it’s noble. I’m about as honored as if I’d been crowned Miss USA, but you have college to think of. Somehow, I get the feeling the pay at the Cluck-Cluck Palace isn’t going to make your collegiate dreams come true.”

  Her biggest fear at this point was that Fin would find some way to weasel out of paying for Connor’s education if their son didn’t bend to his will. The bastard had found every loophole known to man so far to keep her from getting anything he deemed his. He’d also managed to duck paying her much in child support, and the near future wasn’t going to require shades, from what her lawyer told her today. Fin had bloody, chum-loving sharks for attorneys. Whatever he was doling out to them per hour was paying off.

  Connor tipped his chestnut brown head in Maxine’s direction, a question in his thickly fringed eyes. “So you did get the job at the Cluck-Cluck Palace, Mom?”

  Oh, the degradation of having to tell your sixteen-year-old you were a Cluck-Cluck Palace reject. “No. It was just a figure of speech. Or basically what any salary I end up making will boil down to. I just meant that our horizons ain’t so pretty. I can’t afford to buy a six-pack of Pepsi—and college costs more than four ninety-eight.”

  Connor leaned his back against the fridge, his dark eyes, so much like Fin’s, gazing into hers. “So what you’re saying is I should let him blackmail me so his son can have a college degree?”

  Yep. That was what she was saying. Harsh. “I think I’m just saying that re-establishing your relationship with your father wouldn’t be a bad idea with graduation a year away. It’s a big time in your life, and he should share it with you.”

  “Yeah. Him and Laceeeeyy.”

  Maxine gripped the edge of the table before she spoke. This was where decency and holding your tongue were like getting a Brazilian wax. “I’m sure he’ll bring Lacey. She is going to be his wife. Don’t judge Lacey. You don’t even know her, and you could fix that if you’d just see your dad.”

  Connor’s eyes narrowed at her, his body language screaming “end convo.” They’d been down this road and it always ended at the same dead end. “I have to do my homework, and then I have to walk Mrs. O’Brien’s dog.” He grabbed his binder with a final dark glance in her general vicinity and headed to the guest bedroom where he slept.

  Maxine groaned, slipping off her heels to let them clunk beneath the table. “He’s gonna kill me, Ma. I don’t know what to do to get through to him.”

  “Let him be. Sometimes you have to let the little shits make their own choices and hope it all works out.”

  “Like you did with me when you told me marrying Fin was the stupidest thing you’d heard of since Paul Newman asked Joanne Woodward to marry him?”

  Mona raised a silvery eyebrow.
“Just like that.”

  “Do you want to hear me say I should’ve listened to you? That instead of marrying Fin I should have gone to college so that I’d have something of my own to fall back on in my time of need?” Because that was true, too. She’d let Fin handle everything, never thinking he’d leave her with absolutely nothing and tie everything else up for an eternity.

  Even when her marriage had faltered, when Fin had been the unfaithful piece of shit he was on two prior occasions, had she crawled out from under her cashmere blankets and maybe considered her marriage wasn’t going according to plan? Nay. Instead, she’d glossed over his wandering dick. She’d made promises to herself to be more attentive to his every need. To stay in shape, she’d worked the elliptical like a whore at a singles’ convention seven days a week. She’d gotten bigger hooters. She’d justified Fin’s cheating by blaming herself and her imperfections, for having the audacity to grow older.

  “Nope. I want to hear you say you’re not going to let that deadbeat whip your keister. Stop letting him intimidate you. He owes you, honey. Can’t change what’s done, Maxie. There’s no going back. But you can change what’s happening to you right now.”

  Right. Like she could ever change what she’d done.

  The heat, her anxiety, and her helplessness made her rise to the bait her mother dangled in her face each time she was rejected by a potential employer. “I’m not sure how else you’d like me to change what’s happening to us. I’ve applied for more jobs than all of us combined have fingers and toes. I’ve begged. I’ve pleaded. I’ve humiliated myself on more than one occasion—today being the mack daddy of ’em all. So, got any tidbits of inspirational change for me, Mom? I’m all ears.”

  Her mother’s crocheting hook clacked on the scarred tabletop when she made “the face” with the wave of an arthritically gnarled finger. “Don’t you get huffy with me, young lady. You remember who slaves over a hot stove to make you creamed tuna on toast. All I’m saying is, instead of leaving your fate in someone else’s hands, make your own.”

  Oh. Okay. Yeah. That was the answer. “You wait here while I get my magic wand, oh Guru of Fate.”

  Mona snorted. “You’re a real comedienne. Can the funny. I’ll say this one more time. You let that deadbeat intimidate you and take everything without so much as a puff of indignant air. You took care of all his needs for twenty years. You were at his beck and call while he made big deals and you hosted fancy dinner parties. But in the end you get nothing? There has to be some way around it. Stop pulling the covers up over your head and fight back, Maxie. Where’s your gumption? What kind of judge is going to declare that even if you don’t deserve something, my grandson doesn’t either? Bah! That’s garbage, and if you started threatening that walking penis instead of hiding from him, you’d find out he’s not so big and bad after all.”

  Maxine clenched her fists, and her jaw, throwing in her thighs for good measure. Admitting her mother was right, that she was indeed afraid of all of Finley’s money and connections, was the hardest thing she had to do every day when she looked at her reflection while she primped for another interview for a job she wouldn’t get. “No, here’s how it’ll go. If I start threatening, he’s going to whip out that damned prenup he had me sign. You remember the one, right, Mom? The one I didn’t even know I was signing that said I leave with what I came into the marriage with? Which was nothing more than some tiaras and a pair of pom-poms. So it does me no good to threaten the walking penis!” Of all the mistakes she’d made in her life, blindly signing something she didn’t even read made her a tard to the nth degree.

  “Whose penis walks?” Gail Lumley, one of her mother’s crew of four friends, asked from outside the screen door. Her shortly cropped hair, sharp onyx eyes, and quick step never failed to make Maxine remind herself this mob of women were all in their seventies.

  With an upward tilt of her eyes, Maxine rolled her neck on her shoulders, and gave Gail the warmest smile she could summon while pulling out a chair for her to sit in. “No one’s penis walks, Gail. Mom and I were discussing Fin. Again.”

  Gail let the door slam shut behind her and nodded affirmation, plunking down with a groan of the old vinyl seat. “Right. The Peckerhead.”

  Mona cackled, slapping Gail on her thigh. “That’s the one.”

  Her mother’s friends had dubbed Fin “The Peckerhead” one night at bingo, among other things. Since then, thinking up new and innovative nicknames for her wayward husband had become an endless source of amusement, all of them involving his nether parts—especially if they were drinking malt liquor. “Shhhhh, ladies. You’re like second graders who just found a new game,” Maxine scolded with a grin she fought. “Connor’ll hear you.”

  Gail leaned into her with a saucy smile. “I’m sure Connor knows Penis-less is a peckerhead.”

  Maxine’s mother, head thrown back, began to cackle. “Penis-less. You crack me up, Gail Lumley.”

  “Penis-less? Aw, girls, are you trash-talking me behind my back?”

  A shiver, long and thready, slithered up her spine.

  For the second time today, Maxine found herself silently calling upon the Lord’s help. Again she prayed. If He were a good and gracious God, He’ d never let that be the silken tones of Campbell Barker coming from behind her, sliding into her ear like melting vanilla ice cream over warm apple pie.

  Gail snickered. “Nobody’d ever say a thing like that about you, Campbell Barker.”

  Okay, so today God wasn’t feeling particularly good or gracious.

  Clearly, she’d used her quota of pardons.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Note from Maxine Cambridge to all ex-trophy wives on the art of sucking it up, Princess: No job is too menial when you’re broke. When someone offers you money for services rendered and you’re broke—despite the fact that the service you’ll provide sucks testicles that are big and hairy—don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Princess. Set aside your inflated opinion of what’s beneath you, and run like hell for that light at the end of the tunnel. Colored paper awaits you. The green kind. You know, the kind you haven’t seen since you were relieved of your wifely duties? Even if it smells like dog poop and mothballs. Money’s money. Suck it up. This is your new life. Welcome.

  A sun-browned hand came to rest on her shoulder, warm and delicious. The comfort it brought made her close her eyes for a moment and inhale before even realizing she had. “Max Henderson twice in one day. It’s like Christmas without the annoying blinking lights,” Campbell joked, making Maxine’s mother giggle and Gail cluck her tongue with a wink.

  God really did have a hard-on for her today. Maxine straightened in her chair, her spine stiff, her lips compressed. “Yeah, imagine your crazy luck. So what are you doing in my mother’s house?”

  He held up a wrench that gleamed silver in the bright afternoon sun spilling from the window above her mother’s kitchen sink. “Fixing her leaky faucet, and FYI, I didn’t make the connection. I didn’t know Mona was your mother.”

  Campbell Barker plumbed leaky faucets? Not the whiz she’d known in high school. But who was she to pound the gavel of judgment? That meant at least one of them had an honest to God, paying job. She swung around on the rollers of her mother’s dining room chair to face him. “You’re a plumber? I thought you’d gone off to college to get a business degree—or something.”

  He nodded with a grin that left deep grooves on either side of his lean cheeks. “Yep, but I decided a business degree was boring and way beneath me. So I bought a plunger and some PVC pipe. Look at me now, huh?”

  “Campbell is Garner’s son. He works helping his dad now, Maxie. He’s a good boy,” her mother said with a doting smile in Campbell’s direction.

  “He’s a good-lookin’ boy, too,” Gail added with a devilish glint in her eyes. Because stating the obvious was so essential. “Don’t you think so, Maxine?”

  She cringed.

  “Yeah, don’t you think so, Max?” Campbell encouraged w
ith a chuckle and a nudge.

  Yeah. She thought so. After eight months of not finding anyone or anything remotely interesting while she rode the train to poverty, today she suddenly thought Campbell Barker was good-looking. Funny that.

  Thankfully, her mother’s phone rang, saving her from having to answer Campbell’s smug question. Maxine lunged for it, following the ear-splitting jingle her mother’d set on the highest volume, digging beneath a pile of Good Housekeeping magazines to get to it. Looking at the caller ID, she didn’t recognize the number.

  She’d hoped it was Lenore. The one and only friend Maxine had left on planet Earth, seeing as the still employed trophy wives didn’t much commune with the commoner she’d recently become. Len didn’t give a shit that she wasn’t rich anymore. She didn’t give a flying fuck that the women they’d once socialized with stuck their surgically tweaked pert noses up at her. She didn’t even care that practically all of her close-knit family wasn’t speaking to her because she’d defended Maxine.

  Instead of her little sister.

  Lacey.

  Pressing the “talk” button, she ignored the pang of regret that it wasn’t Lenore calling to let her live vicariously through her, and answered the phone. “Hello?”

  “Maxine Cambridge?”

  “Speaking.”

  “This is Joe Hodge. I got one of your fliers today over at the rec center. You still walkin’ dogs?”

  She’d walk saber-toothed tigers if cash were the reward. Her heart began to race. It was Connor’s idea to place fliers all around the village, advertising dog walking. When they’d done it, the original intent was for him to offer his services, noting how many of the elderly had pets but in some cases were semi-homebound by the occasional aches and pains, leaving them unable to take their dogs on long walks or bathe them. Desperate times and the fact that she was supposed to support her kid, not the other way around, made her decide she’d give it a shot.