He’d been trying to figure out how to ask her for a date she might be inclined to accept, and here was an opening. “How about coming out with me, then? Let’s take the kids to the park tomorrow morning. I’ll bring snacks.”
She shook her head. “I have to work. I really can’t afford to take time off like this.”
He’d been afraid she’d say that. He thought it over and came up with an idea. “You have a cell phone.” He’d seen her using it outside the community center. “Just forward your business calls, and if you have to work, I’ll watch the kids and you can go somewhere and talk with a free mind.”
He was a lot less than thrilled at the idea of her doing phone sex while they were out together, but he wasn’t about to admit that.
What right did he have to feel jealous of the men she dealt with?
He could see she was thinking over his suggestions and he tensed, waiting for her answer.
She sipped her coffee and, to his relief, at last she shrugged and agreed. "All right, but only for an hour.”
“Gotcha. One hour. Fantastic.”
It was. If he played it right, it was a new beginning.
Chapter Thirteen
“So you started up with him again? I can't believe this. Can you believe this, Edna?"
Polly had been out of the hospital ten days, and out of the wheelchair two. She’d bitched nonstop since the accident. She hated feeling weak, she loathed the cast on her leg, she was frustrated by how sore her armpits were after just two lousy days on the lousy crutches, and she was mad at the cable company. The connection she'd had installed for her laptop wasn’t working the way she thought it should.
“Staying here with you is the one thing about the whole fiasco that’s okay,” Polly had admitted grudgingly.
Polly had grown up with four brothers, and being with Maxine and Edna was like having the sisters she’d always longed for, she confided. And having Graham around twenty-four hours a day was aces.
“Maybe now you can really get to know Harry,” Edna told Maxine. They were sitting around the kitchen table, drinking tea and watching Maxine feed Graham.
Polly snorted. “Maybe now I should get one of the PIs from the office to run a security check on this dude. He’s probably a polygamist looking for yet another wife.”
Maxine spooned another mouthful of mashed peas into Graham’s mouth. "I’m meeting him for an hour at the park tomorrow, not marrying him, Pol.” She grinned at her prickly friend. “Did the good doctor call again today, by any chance?”
“Don’t bring him up when we’re eating, it makes me nauseous.” Polly’s face took on a mutinous expression.
Bruce Turner called Polly several times a day on her cell phone, which showed a great deal of perseverance on his part. Polly spent untold hours on the phone talking to her secretary, her colleagues, and her clients, so getting through to her took effort.
Maxine and Edna had quickly deduced that the calls weren’t for medical reasons. They also noticed that although Polly was exceptionally rude to the doctor, she didn’t hang up on him.
"Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. He could be the one doctor you’ll really like,” Edna advised her, munching on one of the raisin-oatmeal cookies she’d brought over.
“He seems nice, he’s funny, he’s got a good paying job, and he’s a hunk." She’d met Bruce Turner while visiting Polly at the hospital. "I wish someone like that would take a shine to me,” she said wistfully. "He spent a lot of time in your room, I thought."
“He’s a doctor," Polly said, as if that explained everything. “My father was a doctor; I know what that's like. They're never home, their family doesn’t get any of their attention because they give it all to patients, and when their wife gets past her prime, they trade her in for a bimbo nurse not much older than their oldest kid."
“You never told us that before,” Maxine said. Graham shut his eyes and mouth and shook his head. Maxine took it as a signal that he was finished with the peas and picked up the small jar of applesauce.
“I don’t think about it much.” Polly tried for nonchalance, but Maxine heard the resentment in her tone.
Polly reached for another cookie. “Anyway, I barely knew the man. I was only five when he jumped ship.”
"How old were your brothers?" Edna poured them all more tea.
"Darcy was seven, Rob nine, Matt twelve, and Kevin fourteen.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Y’know, I used to think that he left us because I was a girl. I thought if I’d been born a boy he might have stayed.”
“Do you ever see him?” Maxine thought of her own father and how long it had been since she’d even spoken to him.
"Nope.” Polly dipped her cookie in her tea and quickly transferred it to her mouth. "He moved to Hawaii after he remarried, and he stopped paying support for us. Mom was a secretary for an insurance firm, but it was rough going financially for a while. We had the heat and lights turned off a couple of times. Kevin quit school when he turned sixteen and got a job in construction, that helped a lot.” She realized that Maxine and Edna were listening with their mouths open. “No big deal. We survived. I have clients who’ve had it worse.”
"Where’s your mother now?” Graham had had enough of the applesauce. His eyes were closing; it was time for a nap.
“In a care home in Winnipeg,” Polly said. “She has Alzheimer’s, has had for five years now. She doesn’t recognize any of us. I go back and visit her as often as I can. All of my brothers still live around Winnipeg, and they keep an eye on her. There’s not really much any of us can do.”
As Maxine changed her son’s diapers and settled him in his crib, she thought over what Polly had revealed. It explained so much about her friend, Maxine thought as she smoothed the comforter over her son. What happened in childhood affected a person’s entire life. Her own childhood, spent fruitlessly trying to gain her father’s approval, had resulted in her falling in love with the first man who showed her some affection, and that was a stupid move if ever there was one.
But what she’d gained from the fiasco was worth every moment of heartache Ricky had caused. Graham was a gift, and she was thankful for him every single day.
She bent over and kissed his small, sweaty head. She wanted him to have the best, most normal childhood she could provide. It was sad that his natural father was not around, but she’d see to it that he had everything else a child needed.
She thought of Harold. Harry, she corrected. He seemed to be a man who took his responsibilities seriously, if the way he was with his daughter was any indication.
She liked his humor. She liked his shoulders. She liked his mouth. She liked the shivery way he made her feel when he looked at her as if he wanted to kiss her.
For God’s sake, forget sex, Maxine. She needed to know a lot more about him before she could trust him. All the same, she was looking forward to seeing him in the morning.
It was going to be tough getting Maxine to trust him.
Harry watched her walk toward him across the grass.
She was wearing shorts this morning, and his memory of her legs was dead on; they were long, slender, deliciously curvy below the hem of her modest blue cutoffs. He had a sudden mental image of those bare legs locked around his waist, and he silently and urgently willed his body to behave. This was going to be enough of a challenge without a permanent hard-on to contend with; he didn’t want her thinking he was like the men she dealt with on the phone.
He didn’t want to think about her dealing with those men on the phone.
“She brunged her baby, Daddy." Sadie sounded ecstatic and relieved. She’d fallen head over heels in love with Graham. She’d talked of nothing else yesterday after they’d come home from McDonald’s. How come he can’t talk? How come he wears diapers? How come he’s a boy? When will he learn to walk? How come we don’t have a baby for me to play with? Where could we buy one?
By the time he’d gotten her to bed last night, Harry was worn out. with explanations.
But when he made it to bed himself, he hadn’t been able to sleep for thinking of Maxine.
"Morning.” She gave him a wide smile that gladdened his heart as she reached the picnic bench where Harry had unloaded the thermos of coffee, the fresh pastries, the juice boxes, and the overflowing cardboard carton of toys that Sadie had insisted they bring for the baby.
“Isn’t it a fine day?” She squatted down and set Graham on the grass, and Harry stole a look at her ass.
It was every bit as intriguing as her legs.
Graham squealed with excitement and started to crawl away, and Sadie immediately chased after him.
“The weather’s just like I ordered, for once,” Harry said. "Want some coffee?” Pretending a nonchalance he was far from feeling, he poured two cups, added cream to hers, and handed it over.
"You remembered how I like my coffee.” She shot him a shy, appreciative glance.
"Yup.” He felt good about it and couldn’t resist adding, "I remember everything about you."
“How do you know I wasn’t just making up everything I said to you?” Like you were. The words were unspoken, but they were there.
“I'll tell you what I remember, and you can correct me if I’m wrong.”
“Okay, go." There was more than a little challenge in her tone.
“You were a shy little girl.”
“Did I tell you that? I don’t think I told you that.”
He shook his head. "Not in so many words, but you said that you were quiet in school, and you liked to read poetry, and play make-believe games by yourself in the woods.”
She nodded. “I did. What else?”
"You like rainy days, and you love to dance, and your favorite meal is breakfast. You like pasta with seafood sauce, and the color purple, and if you had all the money in the world, you’d use it first on food for hungry children and then on education, so they’d have a way out of poverty. And then you’d go to California and live like a movie star until the money ran out.”
There was surprise on her lovely face. “You have a good memory, Harold. Harry,” she corrected.
He thought of the detailed notes he’d scribbled while she talked to him, and guilt gnawed at his gut. He shoved it away; it was too nice a day for guilt. He’d deal with guilt later, on his own time.
"Oh, yeah, one more thing,” he added. "You wanted to get into broadcasting.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then she seemed to decide it was all right to confide in him after all. "I’ve enrolled in a broadcasting course at night school,” she admitted. "I start next week.” Her eyes glowed with excitement.
"Maxine, that’s fantastic.” He held up his cup in a toast. “Congratulations. With your voice, you’ll be tremendous. You’ll be a big star. I can see it all now: first local radio, then television news. . ..” He paused dramatically. "And then your own talk show."
“In your dreams.” She wrinkled her nose and laughed. “But then I could interview you, couldn’t I? You’ll be a Pulitzer prize-winning novelist by then.” She grew serious and looked straight into his eyes. "You were telling me the truth when you said you were writing a book, weren’t you, Harry? You said it was a mystery."
"Yeah." It wasn’t something he talked about easily; it was too close to his heart. “I hadn't worked on it much for a long time, but that night, after I told you about it, I got out my notes and started again. I've got six chapters done. I never would have started if we hadn’t had that conversation.”
She beamed at him. "Hey, I’m glad.”
“Me too.” He wondered if she had any idea how attractive she was when she got excited.
“What's it about, your book?" She cradled her hands around her cup and leaned toward him eagerly.
He didn’t glance at her breasts, but it was a real test of his self-control.
“It’s a cross between fiction and fact. Faction, I guess you’d call it. See, I interviewed Joe Murphy, the owner of Park Place, a week before he was murdered.” Park Place was a well-known Vancouver nightclub. "We had a long, boozy lunch, and he told me some stuff that I thought was just his imagination. But then he was gunned down a couple days later, and I realized maybe he'd been telling the truth. So I did a lot of research, and I’ve turned it into a mystery, part fiction, part fact."
"You're not afraid of whoever did it coming after you?" Her tip-tilted eyes were wide.
Harry shook his head. "I doubt it. The cops have already arrested the guys they think did it, but there’s more to it than they know. Also, a lot of what I’m writing is the background stuff, how Joe went from a nice Italian kid to a rich mobster.” He grimaced. “Sounds better when I write it than when I try to explain it.”
“It sounds great. I’ll look forward to reading it—”
“Daddy, come quick; that baby’s eating grass.” Sadie was horrified. She watched closely as Maxine extracted the gummy green wad from Graham’s mouth.
“Thank you for watching him for me,” Maxine told her, crouching down and smiling at the little girl. “You’re a very good babysitter, Sadie.”
Sadie nodded. “I really likes him, even if he does eat grass. I wish we had a baby, but my daddy says you gotta have a mommy to get babies.” She handed Graham a red plastic ball. “My mommy died, see, so we can’t get a baby.” She punctuated her words with expressive gestures of her hands.
“I see. That’s too bad.”
"Daddy says that’s life,” Sadie said with a Gallic shrug that made Maxine smile.
"Well, that’s a good way to look at it.”
She was still smiling as she got to her feet and walked back to the table.
Harry had been listening. He told Maxine about the dozens of questions he’d answered the night before about babies in general and Graham in particular.
“I worry about her growing up with just me to pattern herself on,” he admitted. “It doesn’t seem the ideal way for a little girl to learn how to be a woman.”
“She’ll be okay," Maxine assured him. There was silence for a few moments as they watched the two children play with the ball.
"How old was she when your wife died?” The question was tentative.
"Six months.” He dropped his voice so there was no possibility of Sadie overhearing. He wanted Maxine to know the facts about his marriage. “Cheryl was out with the guy she was living with. She hadn’t seen Sadie since the day I took her home from the hospital. We were divorcing."
Maxine gave him a shocked look. “She didn’t want her own baby?”
Harry shook his head. “Nope. She was totally honest with me, right from the beginning. She wanted an abortion. I bargained with her to have Sadie. She wanted to go to France and take training at some art school there, and I told her if she had the baby I’d give her the money she needed and pay for the divorce." He met Maxine’s curious gaze and shrugged. “I’d never thought much about having a family, but when I found out she was pregnant, I realized I really wanted my kid.”
Maxine nodded. Her eyes were still full of questions, and he tried his best to explain before she had to ask.
“I fell hard for Cheryl when I met her. She was a talented artist who was hired by the same ad firm I worked for.” He did his best to recall exactly the way it had been. “She was unpredictable and smart and pretty, in an offbeat way. Sadie has her hair, the shape of her face. We eloped a few weeks after we met, before I had a chance to really get to know her, or her me, for that matter. She’d been a foster kid all her life. She never wanted kids, which I didn't think to ask about.” He paused, and then added, “I wasn’t exactly thinking with my head at that point. She was a sexy lady. I just wanted to take her to bed.”
Not as much as I want to take you there, though. He didn't say it. It wasn’t the time or place.
Maxine was watching Sadie and Graham. Harry heaved a sigh and said, "Looking back on it, I think Cheryl was so scared, she couldn’t be a good mother that she couldn’t bring herself even to try with Sadie.”
He watc
hed Maxine digesting what he’d said. “Did she decide not to go to France after all?” "She got a commission for a piece of art, and she was finishing it when the accident happened. She’d have left the following week.”
"Do. . .” Maxine cleared her throat and stared down at the picnic table, her cheeks pink. “Do you ever miss her, Harry?”
It was a question he’d asked himself many times over the years. He thought he had it figured out, and he did his best to put it into words. “I miss having someone to share Sadie with,” he admitted. "I miss the parts of marriage that were good.” The sex had been good, there was no doubt he missed that. "I found much to my surprise that I liked being married.”
He reached out impulsively and took her hand in his, relieved when she didn’t pull away. "But I don’t miss Cheryl,” he said in a positive tone. "We made a mistake, both of us. But out of that came my Sadie, so how could I regret it?” He spread her fingers and laced his own between them, and his treacherous mind wished it were her legs instead that he was spreading.
"Can I take Graham over to the swings?” Sadie directed her question at Maxine, but Harry answered.
“Let’s all go.” He scooped Sadie up and plopped her on his shoulders. At least it would take his mind off sex.
Sadie giggled and looped her fingers in his hair. “Give me a horsey ride, Daddy. Graham too."
Maxine had already picked Graham up, but when Harry held out his arms, the baby went readily to him, and both children giggled and squealed as Harry did his best to impersonate a spirited racehorse.
Maxine walked along behind, watching them. Harry was strong. He easily trotted along carrying both children. He lunged and bounced and had no reservations about making horse noises through his nose, rearing and snorting.
Sadie clung to his hair and his ears, laughing uncontrollably, and Graham was chortling, his chubby hands gripping Harry’s shirt.
It was the first time a man had ever really played with Graham, she reflected with a pang. In fact, the only men he came in contact with at all were his pediatrician, Dr. Hawkins, and Leonard, the lecherous produce manager at Safeway. Leonard always made a huge fuss over Graham while leering at Maxine’s breasts.
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT? (Running Wild) Page 11