"Hey, everybody," Mike-the rat-bellowed as he ushered her onto the patio. "Look who's here!"
A hush fell. Mike and Jody's next-door neighbor, Cliff Dawson, was standing on a ladder, stringing a net of tiny lights. He sat down abruptly on the top step and stared at Maddy with his mouth open. His hammer clattered to the deck, and his wife, Lois, picked it up and hit him on the shin with it. He didn't even blink.
Mike gave Maddy a smug I-told-you-so grin and said, "Hah!"
Jody walked across the lawn toward her, beaming like a proud mother. "Amanda, that's perfect. Absolutely perfect. I didn't think you'd really do it, but let me tell you, you're going to be glad you did, I guarantee it. Wait till you see-no, no! Not there. That goes over there!" She dashed off to intercept two caterer's assistants loaded down with trays.
Maddy turned to Mike and muttered, "Where's that champagne? I think I need a drink." She was joking. She wasn't much of a drinker at any time, and Mike knew it.
"Sorry, no champagne until the grand opening. How 'bout a beer?"
"In this dress? Are you kidding? Where would I put it?"
Mike shook his head and breathed heavily. "Darlin", I do see your point."
Maddy was saved from having to think up a rebuttal to that as the Harbors' twin boys came clattering onto the patio, shouting in two-part harmony. "Maddy, Maddy, there you are! What took you so long? Mom said you were coming to play with us. Did you bring any puppets? Did you bring Bosley? Can I work him?"
"No, I get to work him!"
"It's my turn. You got to last time!"
"Did not!"
"Did too. It's my turn. Maddy!"
Maddy gazed down fondly at the two curly blond heads. The boys' cheeks were pink, their grins appealingly gap-toothed, their eyes wide. And they were totally unimpressed by the way she was dressed. Thank heaven for the kids. To them she was still just plain old Maddy, and that meant only one thing.
"Come on, Maddy-where are they? Which ones did you bring?"
She stared down at the two little boys now with a sense of shock. For probably the first time in her life, she'd forgotten all about her puppets!
"Hey, guess what?" she said. She took one small hand firmly in each of hers and thought fast. "I'm going to show you guys how to make a puppet of your own. Who's got a sweat sock?"
"I have!" both boys shouted.
"Clean?"
They grinned and lifted their shoulders in identical shrugs.
Maddy spent two delightful hours sitting cross-legged in the middle of the twins' bedroom floor, her lap full of felt and paper scraps, her fingers collecting a layer of glue and paint. When she heard Jody calling from downstairs, she brushed herself off with reluctance, kissed the boys, and silenced their protests by promising to bring Bosley soon. Then, with a fatalistic sigh, she left the room to face Jody and her latest victim.
She was already halfway down the stairs before it struck her that the man with his arm in Jody's clutches looked terribly familiar.
Nobody else in the world could have hair like that.
She thought about turning around and escaping back up the stairs, but her legs weren't up to it. And besides, it was already too late. He'd seen her.
"Oh, Maddy, there you are," Jody said. "I should have known. Look who's here. Isn't it marvelous? I know you two have met."
"Yes," Zack murmured. "We have. Hello, Maddy."
Eight
Maddy managed to croak "Zack," but that was all.
He just stood there with his hands in his pockets, scowling up at her. Jody looked from his face to Maddy's and seemed to conclude that, though her surprise wasn't producing quite the reaction she'd intended, this was infinitely more interesting. And then, because for all her blithe and sometimes thoughtless nature she really wasn't an insensitive person, she apparently decided to leave things to percolate naturally.
"Oh, look," she cried suddenly, "there are the Duncans. I'll leave it to Maddy to show you around, Zachary. Excuse me. Hilary, how wonderful you look! What a marvelous tan! Tell me all about Mazatlan…"
Her voice faded into background noise. Maddy cleared her throat. She couldn't think of anything to say, and Zack wasn't helping her out. Why was her throat so dry? Why did she have the feeling that if she let go of the banister, she'd sit down rather more abruptly than she would care to?
"Well," she said at last. "I didn't know you knew Jody."
"I didn't," he said shortly, "until this afternoon."
"Oh."
"I'm here because she told me you would be. I'm not very big on parties."
"Oh," Maddy said, and took a deep breath. She wished he'd stop looking at her like that. He hadn't even seemed to notice her dress. Like Jody's boys, he didn't seem to find anything at all unusual about the way she looked. To her surprise, Maddy began to feel vaguely miffed. Darn it, the one time she'd ever really wanted a man to think she looked nice, she might just as well have been wearing sweats!
She shrugged, and began, with dignity, to descend the stairs. The discovery that she'd left her shoes on the twins' bedroom floor made dignity a little more difficult to manage, but she held her head high and did the best she could. "Well," she said with a wave of her hand, "now you see why I couldn't come for my lesson tonight. I'd have explained, but-"
"Baloney."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I said, baloney. You left that message with Dahlia at nine o'clock this morning. Jody didn't even tell you about the party until this afternoon."
"How do you know?" Beyond miffed and well along toward anger, Maddy paused on the bottom step, where she would have a height advantage even without her three-inch heels.
Zack took care of that simply enough. He put his hands on her waist and lifted her down beside him. "Because when Jody called me, she told me she'd just finished talking to you."
Maddy opened her mouth, closed it again, and muttered, "Thanks a lot, Jody."
Zack's smile was grim. "Never pays to lie, Maddy."
She stared at him in helpless fury, then whirled and stalked out to the patio. It was much harder to stalk impressively when barefoot.
The party had gotten well underway while she'd been hiding upstairs with the children. The christening ceremony had obviously already taken place, because there were glasses of champagne on the buffet tables, and the caterers were circulating with open bottles. Maddy snatched a plastic glass from the table and downed its contents in one gulp.
"Better take it easy," Zack murmured sardonically. "I think that stuffs supposed to be sipped, not gulped."
"You drink champagne your way," Maddy said furiously, "and I'll drink it my way." She didn't feel like telling him she wasn't accustomed to drinking champagne any way. Pointedly turning her back to him, she managed to snag a caterer with a bottle, and avidly watched him fill her glass to the brim.
"For your information," she informed Zack as she took a prim sip from her glass, "I was thirsty." She turned to pick up a second glass from the buffet table and waved it recklessly at him. "Here, have some."
He muttered, "No, thanks," and went on watching her through half-closed, shadowy eyes.
She shrugged, and took a sip from that glass to hide her fury. Who did he think he was, tracking her down like this, cornering her at her best friend's party? Just because she'd broken a little old appointment! He was acting as if he owned her! As if she owed him something! He'd offered to teach her to swim- she hadn't asked him! If she changed her mind, that was her business, not his! She didn't need him butting into her personal, private affairs. She didn't need him at all, and if she didn't want to tell him her life's story, that was her business too!
Inexplicably, the pressure in her chest surged up into her throat and threatened to escape in the form of humiliating tears. She ducked her head and desperately gulped champagne.
"Maddy…" Zack took the empty glass from her hand and set it on the table. When he tried to relieve her of the other glass as well, she eluded him, and muttered, "That'
s mine."
"Come on, Maddy."
Hah, she thought. He was beginning to sound frustrated. Good. He deserved it. He shouldn't have come here. It wasn't going to do any good. She wasn't going to get in that pool of his again. She wasn't going to go back to his place again, either. Not alone. Because if she did…
"Come on, that's enough champagne." He finally captured the now-empty glass and disposed of it, then caught her wrists.
She stared down at his hands, then said imperiously, "Let go, please."
He shook his head. "Not until you stop this nonsense and tell me why you bolted."
She stared at him, and wondered why her eyes had developed a tendency to cross. Maybe she needed glasses. "Bolted? What's that mean?"
"Why you quit-gave up-chickened out!"
"I didn't chicken out. I just…" She looked longingly at the champagne, but Zack was still holding her wrists. "I just…" She took a deep breath and frowned. If she started to cry here, in front of all these people, she'd never forgive him. Ever.
"Maddy, come with me. Now. Let's go back to my place and get to the bottom-"
"Can't go swimming," she declared. "I just curled my hair."
"No swimming. Well just talk, okay? Just talk to me, Maddy. Tell me what's making you so afraid. Please."
She shook her head. She could be just as stubborn as he could. She wasn't even sure why she was being stubborn. She only knew that Zack London scared her more than the water did. He was demanding things of her that she wasn't sure she was ready to give. Making her feel things she wasn't ready to feel. If she went with him now, she'd have to confront those emotions, and she had a notion that once she did, her life would never be the same again.
Zack took a deep breath and muttered, "Okay, Maddy, that's it. I came here to get you, because we have some unfinished business. Now, are you going to come with me, or do I have to carry you out of here?"
"Hah!" she crowed triumphantly. "I'd like to see you try it. It's one of the advantages of being as big as me-as I… am."
"Yeah?" His smile had a dangerous twist. Maddy saw that look and thought, Uh-oh. She'd gone too far.
Zack let go of her wrists and put his hands on her waist, measuring it judiciously, and measuring with his eyes the parts of her his hands couldn't. Maddy felt those parts begin to tingle and ache. "Sorry to have to disillusion you," he drawled. "You're tall, not big. As a guess, I'd say you don't weigh more than… one thirty. I routinely press a whole lot more than that, sweetheart. And you're forgetting. I carried you once before."
"Oh, yeah?" Maddy said with champagne belligerence. "Kicking and screaming?"
He lifted his eyebrows. "Oh, would you kick and scream? It's okay with me if you do, but I wouldn't have thought you'd relish being the center of so much attention."
She considered that. She was beginning to feel a little funny and light-headed. Maybe it wouldn't be altogether bad to be carried. She had sun-shot visions of Snow White in the arms of Prince Charming…
"Which will it be?" Zack asked stonily. "You can come with me on foot or over my shoulder."
She gazed at him in horror. "Are those the only two choices?"
He nodded. His jaw looked implacable.
She gulped, got a good grip on her pride, and said, "I believe I'll walk, thank you."
Zack's car was a Mercedes-one of the little two-seaters. Maddy wondered foggily how he could afford such a car, selling sporting goods. Then she remembered his house and Dahlia and the golf course, and muttered, "How come you told me you sell sporting goods?"
He snorted. "Because I do," he said, and opened the door to the passenger side. He waited while she got in, then slammed the door and went around to the other side. As he was getting in, she muttered something very witty about being kidnapped by Aquaman. He slammed his door and sat there looking at her without starting the motor.
"Maddy," he said finally, and dragged his hand through his hair. "Why are you being so childish about this?"
"I'm not childish!"
"All I want to do is help you accomplish what you set out to do in the first place, that day you showed up in my swimming class. Remember? But I can't help you if I can't get you to open up to me." His laugh was sharp and full of irony and frustration. "You know, it's really funny. You're acting just like those frightened kids you work with every day. Except you get through to them with your puppets, and I don't have anything to use to get through to you!"
"I'm not," she said in a tight, tense voice she didn't recognize. She suddenly felt cold and sick.
Zack had been staring out through the windshield. Now he slowly turned his head to look at her.
"I'm not like them. I'm not a child. And I've never been… been…"
"That's it, isn't it?" His voice was very soft. "I asked you if you'd been mistreated, and you denied it. But you're scared to death to talk about something that happened to you, something that happened when you were a child. I'd stake my life on it."
Maddy sat frozen, staring down at her clenched fists.
"You can't face it. You can't admit the fact that you were an abused-"
"I wasn't! I wasn't. My parents were just strict, that's all. I was their only child. They were very religious-they wouldn't do that. They wouldn't. They never harmed me. Never meant to harm me!"
"Maddy." Zack's hands, like his voice, were firm. He was holding her the way he'd held her that day in the pool. "Maddy, there's all kinds of abuse-you should know that better than anybody. There are all sorts of ways to harm a child. Some of the worst ways don't even show. Please… please tell me."
All of a sudden it seemed easier to tell him than to keep it all inside her. "He never meant to hurt me," she whispered. "He didn't-I know he didn't."
"I know," Zack murmured. "Tell me about it, Maddy."
"He only wanted me to learn how to swim. It was the way he'd learned. He took me to the pond… and he told me that all God's creatures were born knowing how to swim. It was natural. If I'd just let Him, God would take care of me. So he made me… he made me jump in the water. I tried, Zack. I tried to think about God. But there were things in the water. Moss, and slippery things that touched my legs. I guess I panicked, because I got water in my nose, and in my mouth, and then I couldn't keep… my head above the water. I couldn't breathe, and I couldn't see, and there was moss all over my face, and in my eyes, and…and-"
"It's all right, Maddy. It's okay." Zack's voice sounded ragged. "What finally happened?"
"I don't remember," she said dully. "Does it matter?"
"No," he breathed, and started the motor.
In those awful moments, listening to her talk, Zack had seen the child Maddy must have been: flaxen braids and soft gray eyes, and the endearing, long-legged awkwardness of a newborn colt. An exquisite and precious child.
Rage engulfed him-the same cold, overwhelming tide that had left him feeling so helpless and frustrated when he'd seen those bruises on Theresa's face. Dammit, every child was a rare and beautiful miracle. They were all supposed to be nourished and kept from harm, encouraged to grow and blossom…
An old grief replaced the rage, taking him by surprise. It swept through him and then receded, leaving him feeling calm, but more vulnerable than he'd been in a long time.
He pulled into his own driveway, switched off the motor, and turned to look at Maddy. In the dim light he could see her throat move, but she didn't say anything. She hadn't said a word since he'd started the car.
He got out and shut his door, then went around to open hers. "Maddy? Come on, we're here."
She didn't move. In a thin, careful whisper she said, "I don't feel very well."
Zack swore softly. The streets of San Ramon Estates were winding, and he had been driving pretty much on automatic pilot. He wasn't used to having a passenger to worry about. Belatedly contrite, he took her arm and helped her out of the car.
"Take deep breaths," he instructed her tersely. "And walk. Dammit, why didn't you tell me you were carsic
k? And you had all that champagne. Did you eat anything?"
She looked appalled at the very thought.
Muttering profanely under his breath, Zack slipped his arm around her waist and walked her to the front door. She leaned against the door while he tried it, then unlocked it. When he pushed it open he had to grab her to keep her from falling through. At least the locked door meant that Dahlia had already left, thank heaven. She usually spent Saturday nights at her sister's, so they could go to church together early in the morning.
"All right, Maddy, in you go. Do you want to lie down?" She shook her head. He frowned at her, feeling helpless. "You need something in your stomach besides champagne. You go lie down while I fix you something to eat. Some of that lasagne, maybe-"
Maddy's eyes got round and dark. Suddenly she clapped a hand over her mouth and bolted for the bathroom.
Zack uttered a short, ugly word and raked a hand through his hair. He was furious with himself, and with his own impatience. He hadn't meant to do this to her. He'd only meant-had really wanted-to help her. Where along the way had his desires become more important than her problems? His need to know more important than her feelings?
He was a rat, and he wouldn't blame her if she never spoke to him again.
With a sigh of pure frustration, he threw up his hands and stalked into the kitchen.
She came in while he was making toast. She looked pale and chastened, and a few wisps of hair had escaped the combs and were clinging damply to her face.
"Did you throw up?" he asked bluntly.
She nodded.
"You're better off without that champagne in your system."
She nodded again and cleared her throat. "I didn't have that much. Three glasses. I don't know-it must be nerves."
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