Love in Maine

by Connie Falconeri

  Jesus. Was he living in some sort of teenage hell? Going to the movies with his mother? “I don’t know, Mom. Why don’t you two have a girls’ night out?”

  Janet finished putting away a few cans of soup and folded the bags neatly and slipped them between the refrigerator and the wall. She faced Henry full-on. “Because we don’t want a girls’ night out. Right, Maddie? We want to go out with a big, handsome man.” Janet winked at Maddie, trying to get them all to get along. Maddie nearly died of embarrassment.

  “Right, Janet.” Maddie forced her smile to be tight, because what she really wanted to do was make that big, handsome man across the room blush with embarrassment. He was such an easy mark. “But I really have to shower and change.”

  “Me too,” Henry agreed, reaching for the handle on the back door, as if escape was within reach at last.

  “Okay,” Janet said, “this is great. Let’s all meet up at six, and we’ll go see that movie where they blow up the moon and everyone has to live in those weird pod-things.”

  Henry rolled his eyes. “That sounds realistic.”

  “It’s a movie, silly. It’s not supposed to be realistic!”

  Maddie smiled and looked at the floor. If she looked at Henry she wasn’t sure what she would do.

  “Okay, Mom. I’ll see you two back here at six,” he said.

  He couldn’t look at Maddie but at least he could say “you two” so she wasn’t completely invisible.

  “Off you go, then,” Janet said to Maddie as the back door slapped shut. “You look a fright after all that dishwashing. Go jump in the shower first, and I’ll use my bathroom in a half hour or so, so we’re not battling for the hot water.”

  “Oh.” Maddie looked up. “Okay. Thanks. I am pretty wiped. I’ll see you at six.” Maddie smiled at Janet and turned back through the living room and then walked steadily up the stairs. It took everything she had to keep her pace even, when all she really wanted to do was scream with delight at having just had the most ravishing kiss in the history of ravishing kisses. She made it to her room and turned on the shower to conceal the uncontrollable peal of delight. Maddie pressed her face into the pillow and screamed. Big, bad Henry Gilbertson had just kissed her. Hard.

  She caught her breath finally and rolled onto her back. She stared at the white ceiling and breathed deeply, kicking off her sneakers and feeling the memory of his lips on hers, the memory of his hands pushed against the column of her neck. The power of him. Maddie felt her body responding just to the idea of him; she could only begin to anticipate what the reality of Henry was going to be like. She shook herself, like she did after a hard rowing race, when her muscles would be quivering with exertion and she was physically unsure of herself. She peeled off her filthy black T-shirt and sweaty shorts and underwear, and stepped into the old-fashioned white tub and let the spray of the shower momentarily erase the physical memory of Henry from her body.

  Two hours later, Maddie was in a pair of linen pants and a T-shirt, sitting quietly in the living room reading one of the novels from Janet’s excellent library.

  Janet came downstairs a few minutes before six, wearing a pretty summer dress with big blue flowers against a white background, and her white Keds sneakers. “Isn’t this going to be fun?”

  Maddie looked up and nodded. “You look great. Yeah, I’m excited. Though I have to confess I doubt I’ll be able to underwrite all the first-paycheck celebrating with my paltry check.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous!” Janet threw her hand at Maddie. “I wouldn’t hear of that.” She lowered her voice in case Henry was outside already. “I’m just so grateful that I was finally able to get Henry to leave the house on a Friday night.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s probably to do with you,” Janet said with a suggestive lift to her eyebrows. “I think he’s been hearing around town about how cute and spunky you are and—”

  “What?” Maddie almost laughed. “I’m cute and spunky?”

  Janet sat down on the end of the sofa nearest Maddie’s chair. “Well, you are, you know. Just adorable. I wish Henry could look at a girl. He’d never look at a girl as pretty as you, of course.” Janet looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. “He just isn’t altogether happy anymore.” Then she looked directly at Maddie. “You know what I mean?”

  Maddie shook her head no, then nodded her head yes. “I mean, I don’t know him, Janet. So I just can’t say.”

  “Oh.” Janet waved one hand again. “Of course. But you will. And maybe you two will become friends. He’s not that much older than you, you know? He’s only twenty-eight. Already served ten years in the United States Army and he’s not even thirty. Isn’t that something?”

  “Yes. It really is.” It really was, Maddie thought. He was an intense, accomplished, powerful human being, and he wasn’t even thirty. Maddie agreed with the woman, but she was finding it hard to make small talk with her when she couldn’t forget that Janet was the man’s mother. The man who had just pushed her up against a refrigerator and kissed the living daylights out of her. And would he kiss her again? Would he try to paw her in the movie theater? Or would he sit on the opposite side of his mother, like a chauffeur or something?

  Janet nodded. “I am proud. I know. I’ll try to give it a rest.”

  “No, you don’t—” Maddie said too quickly. “I mean, you have every right to be proud. He’s a great guy.” Janet looked at her more closely. Maddie tried to recover. “I mean, I’m sure he’s a great guy.” Luckily, said “great guy” was walking up the back path and calling through the screen door.

  “You ladies still primping, or are you ready for a big night on the town?” He swept through the kitchen, and Maddie felt most of the air leave her lungs. He looked so fine. So clean, she thought stupidly.

  Both Janet and Maddie stood up at the same time. Maddie set the book down on the coffee table, carefully putting a piece of scrap paper into the fragile paperback to keep her place.

  “Uh-oh,” Hank muttered.

  Maddie looked up, worried. “What?”

  “Are you a book princess?”

  Janet started laughing.

  “A what?” Maddie asked, looking from mother to son.

  “A book princess,” Janet reiterated. “Hank and his father always made fun of me for how carefully I treated my books.”

  Maddie smiled. “Then, yes. I am a book princess. I never crack a spine if I can help it. Especially not on something that’s forty years old and in perfect condition.”

  “See?” Janet said. “I told you. Maddie is the perfect . . . renter.”

  A small silence hovered, then Maddie spoke to end the awkwardness. “So, let’s go have our night on the town, shall we?”

  Henry held the front door open for Janet to pass through first. When Maddie passed in front of him, he put his hand on her lower back and she turned her head to look at him. “Hey,” he said so only she could hear.

  She kept walking, but the goofy smile was unpreventable.

  “Let’s take your car, Henry.”

  “Okay, Mom. It’s open. Hop in.”

  Janet stood by the front door of the cab of the big pickup truck. It was superclean, and she gestured for Maddie to climb in. “You take the middle, sweetheart. I’m too old to be riding around like that.”

  “Oh. No, I’ll ride in the back—” Maddie peeked in and saw a pile of diving equipment on the seat where she’d offered to sit.

  “Do you want me to move that?” Hank asked across the hood of the car.

  “Of course not,” Janet said. “Maddie, sweetie, just hop in. It’s only a few minutes to the theater. He’s not going to bite.”

  Maddie looked at Henry for a split second, and it was a split second too long. He gave her a half-smile that pulled his cheeks up just enough to crinkle his eyes with the promise of all sorts of . . . biting.

  “Oh, all right. I don’t want to be difficult,” Maddie finally agreed. She didn’t think that Janet was trying to foist h
er on her dark and stormy son, but it was starting to feel like it.

  Henry got into the driver’s side of the cab and sat down, taking up more than his share of the seat. He was just too damn big. His shoulders were . . . ugh, Maddie stopped herself before she started to sound like she was making a laundry list of his stellar masculine attributes. Janet got in and pulled closer to Maddie as she reached around to get her seat belt. The movement pushed Maddie closer into Hank’s side, and he breathed slowly through his teeth, just this side of a hiss.

  “Off we go!” Janet cried.

  Henry almost growled. Maddie reached between her left thigh and Henry’s right to find the seat belt.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice full of impatience.

  “Looking for the seat belt,” Maddie said innocently, far more innocently than she felt. He was all freshly showered and smelled like something woodsy and male, and the khakis he was wearing were straining around his leg muscles. How was she supposed to not be hyperaware of him? Maddie finally managed to get the buckle into the receptacle and exhaled. “All set.” She smiled a wide fake smile for his benefit.

  He drove the car like he seemed to do everything else, slowly and carefully, but with that underlying power humming just beneath the surface. In about fifteen minutes they’d driven to a nearby town, and Henry had parked cautiously a few rows away from any other cars, ignoring the closer available spots by the front of the theater.

  “Here we are!” Janet proclaimed. She pulled on the door handle, but it was stuck for some reason, and out of habit Henry leaned across the front seat—and across Maddie—and pushed the door open for his mother. Maddie was frozen to the back of the leather seat, trying to control her breathing. “Jesus, Henry,” Maddie whispered.

  “Sorry,” he muttered under his breath, before stepping down from his side of the truck. Maddie took a deep breath and got out behind Janet.

  “You okay, honey?” the older woman asked. “You look a little rattled.”

  “Oh, fine,” Maddie lied. “Sometimes I get a little carsick.”

  “You do? How awful. Also, you haven’t had anything to eat in a couple of hours. You probably need some food. Let’s get you some nice buttery popcorn.”

  Great. Did Janet have to make it seem like Maddie was an animal at the zoo that needed to be fed at regular intervals? She looked up to see Henry smiling at his mother’s comment and then quickly looking away so he wouldn’t catch Maddie’s scowl.

  “I think I’ll survive on a bag of popcorn until my next feeding, Janet.”

  The three of them were walking across the parking lot. It was still almost broad daylight despite the late hour. These Maine summer days seemed endless. Janet looked mortified that she had insulted Maddie. “Oh, dear. That must have sounded awful. I’m so sorry. You have a healthy appetite, that’s all—”

  “Mom.” Henry patted her back. “You might want to quit while you’re ahead.”

  Maddie looked at the asphalt, then up at Henry. She shook her head at him. Why was he trying to make his mom feel bad about some stupid, offhand comment? It was almost like he was defending Maddie. Which made Maddie feel suddenly warm inside.

  “It was nothing,” Maddie said. “I’m sorry I was snippy . . . I’m probably hungry.” They all laughed, and Janet looked relieved and started talking about the movie, and how she wanted to treat the three of them and insisted on buying the tickets. All Maddie could think about was how much she hoped she got to sit next to Henry and to sneak the occasional touch of his forearm or shoulder.

  Henry was in hell. He had Janet sitting on his right, incessantly asking questions about every plot element, which were usually answered about four seconds after she had asked them, in a loud stage whisper. He remembered why he never went to the movies with his mother. He’d told her it was because dark, crowded places made him uncomfortable. Everything seemed nefarious. But the real reason was he couldn’t stand the constant yammering.

  To make matters a million times worse, Maddie Post was on his left, all freshly scrubbed, with her long, chestnut hair smelling like some lemony shampoo that made him want to rip her shirt off and attack her right there at the multiplex. His shoulders and neck were so tense from not touching her that he was probably going to cramp up at work on Monday. She made matters worse by letting her upper arm push into his when something funny or ridiculous happened on the screen. Not that Hank paid even half a mind to the plot of the inane summer blockbuster.

  Of course there was some absurd military element to the story, about how some Special Forces team had to swoop in and rescue some of the pod people. All very dramatic and life-and-death. Constant action. Men of action. It was only a movie, Henry reminded himself, but it still pissed him off. The overriding sentiment of his military experience had been a nearly incessant boredom, punctuated by moments of intense paranoia, and very infrequently, mortal violence.

  He tried not to be such a wet blanket and forced his shoulders to relax. Maddie immediately relaxed into him, leaning her shoulder gently into his and somehow snaking her left hand under her right arm so she could touch his exposed skin, where the short sleeve of his T-shirt ended.

  So much for relaxing his shoulders. He turned to face Maddie in the near darkness. Her eyes sparkled off the reflection of the screen.

  “What?” she mouthed. And the way the word framed her lips made him nuts. Just like a kiss.

  “Cut. It. Out.” He wasn’t joking.

  Maddie looked like he’d really hurt her feelings, then must have seen the heat in his eyes. She dipped her lashes, touched his arm one last time, and then whispered, “All right already. Sheesh.”

  Good lord, when would this movie end? Henry wondered more than once over the following hour. The credits started to roll as the movie star marine pulled the Hollywood starlet into a sunset-framed kiss and the screen faded to black.

  “Whew,” Henry said so that only Maddie could hear, then stood up quickly.

  “Wasn’t that fun?” Janet said.

  “Thanks so much, Janet, it was great,” Maddie added.

  “Yeah, great, Mom.”

  “Oh, stop it, you big lug. It was just meant to be fun. Not everything is supposed to have some big meaning, you know.”

  Maddie looked up and teased Henry, giving him a small punch in his rock-hard bicep. “Yeah, Henry, not everything has to be a big deal.”

  He looked at Maddie as his mother bent down to collect her purse and popcorn container, his green eyes dancing with a combination of impatience and, Maddie had to call it what it was, raw lust. “Just because something is meant to be entertaining doesn’t mean it needs to lack . . . attention to detail.” His big body was blocking them from Janet’s view, and he reached his hand around and squeezed Maddie’s behind, right there in the movie theater. He pulled his hand away so quickly it was as though it hadn’t even happened.

  “Ach—” Maddie gasped.

  Janet’s head flew up from where she was rustling around on the floor to make sure she had collected everything. “What is it?!”

  “Oh,” Maddie said, “I almost slipped on some rancid soda spill or something. It just startled me for a second . . . I almost lost my balance.”

  Henry smiled in that provocative half-smirk and continued up the gentle slope of the carpeted aisle that led out of the theater.

  The three of them went for a few slices of pizza at the shop two doors down from the cineplex. Maddie and Henry split a huge, four-meat pie, and Janet ordered her four-cheese. They rolled into the driveway at Janet’s around ten.

  “That was just about the most fun I’ve had in years,” Janet sighed. “Thanks for hanging with the old lady, you two.”

  “Oh, Mom. Cut it out. You’re not that old.”

  Janet laughed. “Thanks for that that, Hank!” She tugged on the car door and was able to push it open this time. Maddie was wondering whether she’d been able to open it all along and had merely feigned weakness earlier so that Henry would have to
stretch across Maddie. “Do you want to come in for an iced tea?”

  Henry had locked the truck and was standing at the path that split right to his garage apartment and left to the main house. “No, but thanks, Mom. It was good to be out.” He leaned in and kissed his mother on the cheek. She smiled up at him and he realized he needed to be a little less of a hard-ass. It probably worried the hell out of her that he was always alone in his apartment or at work.

  “I’m so glad, honey.” Janet reached up and patted his cheek the way she always did. “Sleep well.”

  “Good-night, Hank.” Maddie tried to sound casual.

  “Yeah, see you soon, Maddie.” He turned and walked up the wooden steps that led to the upstairs apartment.

  CHAPTER 4

  See you soon? Was that an invitation? Did he want her to sneak over to his place after his mom fell asleep? Maddie followed Janet into the house and watched as she latched the lock on the back door. Damn it. That was going to make a noise if she let herself out later. After a week in the house, Maddie had a pretty good idea of where the tricky floorboards were that would announce her treachery, but she just didn’t feel right about actually unlocking that back door and sneaking out.

  Maddie collected her novel from the living room. “’Night, Janet. I’m wiped from work this week. I think I’ll turn in.”

  “I understand, honey. I’m just going to watch a show on the TV down here until I settle. You have a good sleep and enjoy your first day off tomorrow with a good lie-in, eh?”

  “Will do,” Maddie said. That was probably the biggest lie of all the white lies she’d told this week. The chances of Maddie sleeping a wink when the hottest, sexiest man she’d ever (briefly) had her hands on was about fourteen feet away as the crow flies. She chuckled to herself, picturing the two of them with a pair of soup cans and a string so they could talk to each other across the driveway.

  After brushing her teeth and washing her face, Maddie went back into her bedroom and gave the soup can idea a new think. She’d always been a blackout shade kind of sleeper and had kept the curtains and the horizontal blinds totally closed this entire week. The longest day of the year was in a few days, and even the middle of the night only felt like dusk.