Because of Joe

by Because Of Joe [Contemporary Rom. ] (lit)

  "For you. I had mine already. I'll take Miss Rags' luggage upstairs, then I'm going to bed."

  "Leave it," said Tell. "I'll take it up. See you tomorrow."

  "'Night, Sam." Rags kissed his cheek before following Tell into the room she knew faced the Gulf. "He looks wonderful."

  "He is." Tell poured coffee for both of them, then passed her a platter of sandwiches. "He's a registered nurse now, and I'm trying to talk him into going to medical school. He wouldn't be the first to qualify when he was fifty. But he likes the nursing, says doctors lose touch with the reality of what patients need."

  "Yet he still works for your family." She didn't even try to keep the accusation out of her voice.

  "No," he said, "as a matter of fact, he doesn't. He's here because Mama asked him to come and care for Father. He's on leave from his job. He takes care of the rest of us because I haven't figured out a way to stop him."

  Rags felt herself flush guiltily. "I'm sorry."

  He sighed. "It's all right. You have more reason than most to always expect the worst from the Maguires. You say you talked to all the kids today?"

  That was good, she decided, steering the subject away from a controversy that had no resolution. "Uh-huh. The twins went back to school this morning. Ben called, sounding very much the genteel southern preacher." She hesitated fractionally, then went on, "Joe called later, shortly before your mother did."

  "He doing all right?"

  "He says he is."

  "Do you ever think that if it weren't for Joe we'd all still be together and this house would have towers and curly wood?" he asked.

  She stared at him, surprised by the pain that splintered like shards of glass from his blue eyes. "Tell," she said quietly, "you know better than that. Surely you don't blame him for anything that happened. He was twelve years old, for God's sake, and his mother had just died."

  "I know, and I love him as much as you do." He sighed and suddenly looked every day of the forty-four she knew him to be. "None of it was his fault-I know very well whose fault it was-but I also know all of our lives were changed for the worse because of Joe."

  Chapter Two

  She woke at dawn to the sound and scent of the sea and lay for a moment and relished the joy before remembering why she was here.

  Even the recollection couldn't fully quench the pleasure, and Rags rose quickly, brushing her teeth and throwing on shorts and a tank top. She wore a baseball cap in lieu of combing her hair and let herself out the French doors that led to the upper deck of the house. She ran down the sandy stairs and onto the beach, not stopping till the cold morning waves at the water's edge lapped eagerly over her feet.

  Oh, she had missed this. She had told herself over the years that other beaches were as beautiful as Pensacola, but telling and convincing were two different things. She walked along the water, her face lifted to feel the spray and the soft, constant breeze. Joggers met her from the front and passed her from behind. Rags exchanged smiles and greetings with them, but didn't feel the urge to increase the speed of her own gait.

  The beach wasn't a thing to be hurried. You needed to walk a while, then stop to look, then repeat the process. You squinted at the watercraft barely visible on the horizon and speculated about what they were doing there. You watched for silver flashes that meant the porpoises were putting on their morning show. You absorbed.

  When she approached the long row of hotels that fronted the beach, she turned back.

  Closer to the house, a solitary figure sat on the sand. He wore a baseball cap much like her own and sunglasses covered his eyes, but she knew it was Tell, had known all along he'd be out here waiting for her.

  Rags tried to quash down the flutter of excitement that rose in her, but it was useless. He's an attractive man. You'd have to be dead not to notice.

  But she had a habit of not noticing attractive men. When Marley and her friends mentioned that someone was drop dead gorgeous, Rags always said vaguely, "Really?" and went on not noticing. She'd been there, done that, and bought the tee shirt; she had no interest in going there again.

  Tell raised a hand in greeting, then held a cup toward her. She took it, sipped greedily, and sat near him. But not too near. She didn't want to know if the bare skin of his arm and leg still made her body seem to sizzle.

  She faced the water, squinting, and deliberately tried to conjure up the face of David Miles, the man she'd been seeing off and on for nearly a year. David was nice and funny and liked her children, all she required in a companion. He was considerate in bed, making sure she reached satisfaction before seeking his own, but she'd always known he'd make love to anyone else in exactly the same way.

  Just as she'd always known Tell would not.

  She looked at his big hands wrapped around his coffee cup and couldn't envision David Miles at all. Not his smaller, paler hands, nor his nice brown eyes. She tried to remember the touch of David's skin against hers and couldn't, tried to recall the warm feel of his lips and couldn't, tried to wish he was here beside her instead of Tell. And couldn't.

  A few years after the divorce, when the worst of the emotional bleeding had stopped, she'd come here with the children. She planned the trip for a time she knew Tell would be away, rented a condominium and a car, and flew into Pensacola with the children in tow and not a drop of white wine for courage. On the first morning, she made coffee and walked the beach alone, then came back to the silent condo and called Ellis Ann. Her hands shook so much she could scarcely hold the telephone, and she began to cry as soon as she heard her mother-in-law's voice.

  "I can't do this," she said. "Will you come out here and spend the week with the kids?"

  Ellis Ann would, and Rags flew back to Indiana on the pretext of business, spending half the flight and all the layover in Memphis in tears.

  "Pensacola Beach and Tell Maguire go together," she told Linda, her friend and partner. "When I divorced Tell, he got custody of the beach." She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. "I've cried more over him in the last two days than I have in two years. It's over. I'm not doing it any more."

  And she hadn't. Not unless you counted the times she woke with tears on her cheeks and her arm stretched fruitlessly across the empty half of her bed. And Rags didn't count those times. No, sirree.

  Now, sitting not-too-close to him on the cool white sand, Rags was forced to admit her statement about the beach had been entirely accurate. There was a rightness to being with Tell here that neither the divorce nor all that had led to it could lessen. They were, she realized, still connected in a way that time seemed to have done little to alter.

  All that damn crying hadn't altered it, either, nor had the long dry years that followed.

  She tried to regret that connection, but found she couldn't. It had been so long since she'd felt...felt what? Alive? Complete? Neither word was right, nor were they entirely wrong. An ache started deep in her chest when she thought of severing that connection when she left Florida, of going back to that lukewarm exchange of Christmas cards and smiles over their children's accomplishments.

  So she decided not to think about it. Not now, anyway. Scarlett O'Hara had nothing on Rags Maguire when it came to evading issues until they ran over her. Even though she knew it was all well and good to swear, Scarlett-like, that she'd never be hungry again, she knew she would. She knew no one else filled the other half of her bed like Tell did, nor the gaping holes in her heart or the silences in her soul. But she didn't have to think about it.

  "Did your mother have a good night?" she asked.

  He shrugged.

  "It's hard for you, isn't it?" she asked. "Having me here."

  His laugh was a harsh sound, driven by the same splinters of pain she'd seen in his eyes. "No, not really, old lady."

  Why had he called her that? In the beginning, Rags had warned Tell that referring to her as his "old lady" would gain him a lifetime of celibacy. He had responded by calling her that at the most intimate of times, and she had come to che
rish the pet name.

  But that was then. He had no right to call her that now. She opened her mouth to tell him so.

  "Rags? Is that you, dear?"

  The sweet voice, with its unaccustomed quaver, floated down to her from the lower deck, and Rags jumped to her feet. She had to grasp Tell's shoulder for balance, but she broke the connection before she had a chance to feel the warmth. Almost, anyway. "Mama?" she called, and sprinted toward the house.

  Tell twisted on the sand and watched Rags run to meet his mother, that ludicrous cap flying off and landing in the sand behind her as she stepped onto the deck. Ellis Ann had shrunk enough that they were the same height now, and she clung to Rags with what looked like desperation.

  It felt so right, having his ex-wife here in the ice-cream-colored house he'd known all along she'd love. The beach felt like home for the first time in twelve long years.

  He wondered if she felt the electricity that zinged between them. He thought she probably did; she'd been very careful not to sit too close to him on the sand. He reached up, touching the spot on his shoulder she'd clutched for balance. It still felt warm.

  He could hear them talking from where he still sat. His mother's voice already sounded stronger, as though Rags' presence had buoyed it. Or maybe it was because the old man was gone. Ellis Ann was one of the last of the true stand-by-your-man-even-when-he's-wrong southern women, and she had allowed her own identity to be swallowed up by Harlan's forceful personality.

  He picked up the cap as he moved to join the two women on the lower deck, and handed it to Rags without meeting her gaze.

  He thought of his own children, tried to imagine their responses if he attempted to interfere in their lives the way his father had in his. The image made him grin, and he turned the expression on Rags. She'd given them that independence, by example, and he was grateful to her for it even though he hated what it had done to his own life. She'd been of the stand-by-your-man-up-to-a-point variety, something Harlan had blamed on her Midwestern upbringing, and Ellis Ann had supported behind her husband's back.

  Rags put on the cap and tucked her hair into it. She met his gaze, her fog-colored eyes irresistible in the shade of that ridiculous cap.

  "What?" she said, and he realized he was still grinning at her.

  He opened the door that led inside, wondering what she'd say if he told her what he'd been thinking. "Nothing."

  ~*~

  "You mean you haven't called them?" Rags looked at Tell from her stance at the stove. "They would catch the first plane if you asked."

  He poured orange juice into five glasses. "Would they? I've asked them before. They come down here, of course. They stay with me and see their grandmother and drive Sam crazy, but they wouldn't see the old man." He took the glasses into the breakfast room and came back. "Because of how he treated Joe."

  "Good for them," she said quietly.

  She expected him to argue that point, to say that family ties extended beyond those of siblings, but he merely said, "Amen," and lifted his cup in mock salute.

  "Check on those biscuits, will you?" she asked, scraping fried potatoes into a serving bowl.

  When she returned to the kitchen, a black woman whose Junoesque proportions made Rags instantly resentful of her own mediocre stature, stood in front of the oven taking out the cookie sheet covered with golden brown biscuits.

  "Uh," said Rags, wishing she'd combed her hair at some point during the morning. At least she wasn't wearing the Indianapolis Indians hat any more.

  "Good morning." The smile was as bright and beautiful as she was. "I'm Joyce August, and Tell would have let these get too brown."

  "Oh, well, thank you for catching them." Did this gorgeous hunk of humanity belong to Tell? Rags found the thought profoundly depressing.

  "Joyce is the family doctor," Tell explained, bringing a basket down from an upper cabinet and laying a dish towel in it. "And she sleeps with Sam."

  Joyce set the cookie sheet on top of the stove and extended a hand toward Rags. "He forgets to tell you Sam and I are married, though I suppose I'd sleep with him anyway. Are you Miss Rags?"

  "I'm just Rags. Sam tacks on that Miss to make me sound less like a homely mutt from the pound." Impossibly cheered, Rags shook the proffered hand and said, "You're far too tall and beautiful to live among the rest of us. What on earth did you see in Sam?"

  A burly arm came around her neck from behind. "Hush up, Miss Rags. I've been telling her for ten years how lucky she is to have met up with such a fine, upstanding person as me when she spent most of her time hanging out with doctors." Sam, still holding her around the neck, leaned to kiss his wife. "I see you've met the kids' mother, darlin'. Now you know why Marley has such a fresh mouth."

  "Marley's a joy," Joyce argued, then grinned at Rags. "Who happens to have a fresh mouth."

  "Is this food near ready?" Sam whined. "Miss Ellis Ann's feeling faint in there. I kept telling her Yankee cooking won't be any good anyway, but she told me to be polite and not say anything."

  Rags slapped the bowl of potatoes into his hands. "Go on with you. 'Yankee cooking,' indeed."

  When they were seated at the table, and Sam was doing vigorous justice to whatever the cooking was, Joyce said, "I have to know. Why Rags? It's not your given name, is it?"

  Tell snorted laughter into his napkin, unsuccessfully trying to turn it into a cough.

  Rags gave him a withering look. "My name, the one they gave me at the orphanage where I was left when I was little," she said, "is Clarissa Aloysius Ragsdale. I was four, or at least everyone thought I was judging by my size and communication level. I don't remember anything from before that time, and I think whoever was in charge of naming foundlings had a romantic streak. From kindergarten on, it seemed easier to bow to the inevitable and just be Rags. Tell has always found something perversely funny about the name Aloysius, when I assure you there's nothing the least bit humorous about it. Unlike Telluride, which is a funny name. Sorry, Mama, but it is."

  Ellis Ann patted her mouth delicately with her napkin. "What do you expect from a woman named after an obscure grand-uncle who was in the Confederate army and died of something romantic like dysentery?"

  "Good Lord, Marley's middle name is Ellis. Do you mean she's named after a Confederate with Montezuma's Revenge?" Rags tried to look horrified, but knew she failed when her mother-in-law grinned at her. The smile eased the grief that lined the woman's face.

  "You have the wrong war," said Tell.

  "But the right disease." Joyce defended. "I must say, this Yankee food is pretty good."

  Rags lifted a brow at her. "Pretty good?"

  The meal served to lessen the tension between Tell and herself, and Rags thought they just might be able to pull this off. They could avoid painful subjects and find laughter in inane things. It would work. Maybe.

  After breakfast, she left Sam and Tell loading the dishwasher under Ellis Ann's dubious direction and went upstairs. The room Tell had given her was at the end of the hall, decorated in pastels she might have chosen herself.

  After a long shower, she put on a yellow cotton robe and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching for the telephone.

  She called her business partner first.

  "They want the whole chain." Linda's voice was exultant. "They met our price and conditions. We can, my dear partner, best friend, and sister of my heart, retire at will."

  "All the stores? They even want the one in Peru?"

  "The Glad Rags error of the millennium? Yes, even that one. They're keeping the name-you won't be able to use it again if you decide you want to go back into the business."

  Rags was silent. This was what she wanted, wasn't it? She was ready to not work sixty-hour weeks, to stop pretending she was interested in clothes, to never don another pair of high heels or another business suit.

  "Rags?" Linda sounded worried. "This is okay with you, isn't it? Have you changed your mind? We can always back out, you know. The papers haven't been-"
>
  "No." Rags interrupted her with a shaky laugh. "You remember how scared I was when we went into business together. Well, I'm just as scared to go out. That's all it is. I'm thrilled to death."

  "If you're sure." Linda sounded relieved.

  "I'm sure. You make those reservations for the European tour Jake's been promising you. Send me tons of postcards. Thing is, I'm not sure just when I'll be back. Can you fax or express mail the paperwork?"

  There was a light tap at the door. She called, "Come in," and looked up at Tell when he appeared. Her breath hitched in her chest, and she had to look away. God, how unfair that just the sight of him could do that to her.

  ~*~

  Over the years, Tell had seen several women right after they came out of their morning showers. He had even, on occasion, shared their morning showers with them. None of those women had, at any time, taken his breath away as Rags did.

  Her light wrapper did not reach her knees where she sat on the edge of the bed, and the halves of the front separated, baring one tan thigh. The robe divided at the top, too, so he was able to see the fine lines and sprinkle of freckles on the skin between her small breasts.

  "Did you call the kids?" he asked when she hung up.

  "Not yet. I still think you should. He was your father, after all, and you're theirs."

  In the end, they both talked to the children, Tell bringing a cordless phone into the room. Micah and Marley agreed to fly in on Friday night. Ben said he'd drive down, arriving in Pensacola in time to pick up the twins at the airport.

  "Just till Sunday," he said. "I have a friend I'd like for you to meet. Can I bring her?"

  "Of course," said Tell, even though Rags shook her head. "Your mother brought all your naked-baby pictures with her and she's looking for a reason to haul them out."

  "Thanks, Dad. I needed that." Ben hesitated, and Tell could almost see the question forming in his son's eyes before he heard the words. "What about Joe?"

  "He wasn't in. We left a message."

  "How are you and Mom getting along?"