Table for five

by Susan Wiggs

There were no groans from the spectators now; there were gasps of disbelief, even outrage.

  As Lily grabbed Charlie’s hand and surged with the crowd to the final green, they passed a commentator who was speaking in a low-toned, excited voice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is an incredible turn of events. Just incredible. It seems that, by wildly different techniques, the two contenders have found themselves in the exact same position. Now there’s a horse race to see who finishes second today.”

  Murdoch’s turn. He circled the sandy bunker like a lion around its prey. He bent down to study the position of his ball. He conferred with his caddie who, incidentally, was even younger and more beautiful than his wife. A moment later, Murdoch signaled for an official.

  “What’s he doing, Red?” Charlie asked.

  “Son of a bitch is going to try for a free drop,” Red growled.

  “That son of a bitch,” Charlie said.

  Lily was too tense to correct her. After an excruciating delay during which frazzled nerves frayed to the breaking point, it was ruled that an anthill next to the champion’s ball constituted an abnormal ground condition. Red confirmed that whether a groundhog or an ant, the rules were clear. A “burrowing animal” is an animal that makes a hole for habitation or shelter, such as a rabbit, mole, gopher, salamander—or even the lowly ant.

  Sure enough, the ploy worked. It was declared that Murdoch’s ball had encountered an obstruction. He was allowed to drop it.

  “He can drop that thing where the sun doesn’t shine,” Lily muttered, feeling decidedly vicious.

  “Yeah,” said Charlie. “Right in his ear.”

  “Golf is an unforgiving game,” the commentator murmured into his headset. “A player has to use every advantage he can find.”

  “Why doesn’t Sean take a free drop?” Lily demanded.

  “Too far from the anthill.” Red’s voice was taut with sarcasm.

  As Murdoch set himself up to hit the newly positioned ball, Lily tried her weasel curse on him again. This time, it didn’t seem to work. He chipped his ball neatly onto the green within striking distance of the hole.

  “He should just get it into the hole right now,” Charlie declared. “Right this very minute, in one stroke.”

  The nearby spectators sent Charlie fond, indulgent looks.

  Lily had never been able to tolerate it when people patronized children.

  “She’s right,” Lily agreed. “He’s got to hole out with this next stroke.”

  “Yeah, and I’ve got to win the lottery,” said a man in a jaded voice.

  Interestingly, Cameron appeared supremely confident as he handed Sean a club.

  Sean settled his stance as best he could in the situation. His ball lay on a slope, having driven itself into the sand. It was under a lip of earth, screening the pin from Sean so that he was hitting blind.

  Sean hit the ball. A flurry of sand obscured everything. Then the ball broke free, sailing up and over the brow of the bunker. The ball didn’t even touch the putting green but dropped right in with a hollow thunk, rattling around before settling home.

  There was a heartbeat of disbelieving silence. Then pandemonium started. Cheers and applause thundered from the gallery. This was what people came to see.

  Sean’s hand went straight up in the air, a gesture of supreme satisfaction.

  Lily remembered to breathe again as she watched Sean walk to the hole, lean down, pluck the ball from the cup and hold it aloft in his fist. Then he hugged Cameron and gave him a resounding kiss on the head. Cameron seemed too overjoyed to mind.

  Charlie screamed and jumped up and down, pigtails flying.

  Lily, on the other hand, didn’t make a sound. She stared at Sean in wonder, feeling absurdly happy for him. His posture was taut with triumph, his face lit by joy. Then he looked directly at her. When their gazes met, the world fell away, the crowd’s noise turning to an indistinct hum. She heard nothing but the rush of blood in her ears, saw nothing but his smile.

  She touched her hand to her heart. Although she knew he couldn’t hear her, she said, “I am so proud of you,” moving her lips distinctly as she spoke from the heart.

  He seemed to understand. His grin widened and his gaze held hers as he brought the golf ball to his lips and kissed it, just as Beau Murdoch missed his putt.

  chapter 44

  “Some say it was a love match,” said the ESPN commentator during that night’s national broadcast wrap-up. “A contender came out of nowhere to capture the hearts and minds of golf fans everywhere….”

  The TV in the clubhouse bar suddenly commanded everyone’s attention. Lily sat with Sean as the clips showed his progress, hole by hole. After all the post-game hoopla, Red had taken charge of the kids while Sean and Lily went to the bar for a drink—and for more hoopla, of course. Lily didn’t mind. She felt as though she was among friends tonight. So did Sean, laughing at the good-natured ribbing of the other players. He looked relaxed and natural, a man in his element. “This was a big win for Maguire,” one of the commentators said. “He played so well, it makes you wonder why he stayed away so long.”

  “Well, Chad,” the female commentator said with phony sincerity, “as you know, Sean Maguire has endured a major upheaval in his personal life. The sudden death of his brother, top-rated champion Derek Holloway, has dovetailed with Maguire’s comeback.”

  Lily touched Sean’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  He shook his head and focused on the TV. People nearby shifted uncomfortably in their seats.

  “Jan, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of speculation about Maguire’s performance in the wake of a tragedy,” said the commentator called Chad. “There was so much riding on his performance and he dealt with enormous pressure. Some will wonder if this is a fluke, or if he’s really back in the game.”

  “And just why it is he didn’t show up on the radar until after his brother was out of the picture.” Jan gave her colleague a smarmily knowing look.

  “I’ve heard enough,” Lily said, imagining steam coming out her ears.

  “Take it easy,” Sean advised her. “You have to treat this stuff like a fart in church. Hold your breath for a few minutes and the stink goes away.”

  Sure enough, the recap shifted back to more replays of the action, and she felt Sean let out his breath. There was an endearing close-up of Cameron’s face as he and Sean conferred about a shot. It felt slightly surreal, seeing them on the screen.

  “You look wonderful together,” she said.

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” he replied, directing her attention back to the wide-screen TV.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “Please, no.”

  Red and the sponsor’s media coach had warned them all to assume they were in the camera’s eye every moment. At the very end of the round, she had completely forgotten the warning.

  The camera focused tightly on her so that she looked larger than life. Every gesture and nuance seemed impossibly dramatic. The hand coming up to her heart. The words meant only for Sean: I am so proud of you.

  Then the picture cut to Sean, looking at her and then kissing the ball.

  “…with that kind of devotion, can love be far behind?” the commentator concluded with a sly inflection and a completely straight face.

  “All right,” Lily said, her cheeks flaming as she pushed back from the bar. “I have to go now.”

  “Where?” asked Sean.

  “I have to go hide under a rock, okay?”

  She felt every eye in the bar on her as she stumbled, blind with humiliation, for the exit. She was horrified. The camera hadn’t lied. It had told the truth she’d been running from ever since they had left Comfort, Oregon, in her sister’s Winnebago.

  Any fool could see that she was completely and ill-advisedly in love with this man. It was too embarrassing. How could she face the world now?

  “Lily, wait.” Sean caught up with her on the patio of the clubhouse. “Where are you going?”

 
She offered a slightly bitter laugh. “I don’t have a lot of options here.” It was painfully true. She couldn’t drive off by herself, couldn’t hide out at home with a pint of Cherry Garcia, couldn’t escape a situation that terrified her even though her instincts screamed at her to run.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said. “Let’s go somewhere private.” He took her hand in an easy gesture. “That’s something we’ve never had in this relationship—privacy.”

  Lily’s mouth went dry. The R-word. He’d just said the R-word.

  “But the kids—”

  “Red’s in charge of the kids tonight.” He paused, then offered his trademark aw-shucks grin, the one that melted her bones. “I asked him to do it. I asked him to keep them until late. Until really, really late.”

  “Sean, I—”

  “Hey, Mr. Underdog,” called an overly hearty voice. Beau Murdoch and his wife strolled arm in arm across the parking lot.

  “It’s the big dog himself,” Sean said. He shook hands with Beau’s wife, Barbara, and introduced her to Lily.

  “Nice job today,” Murdoch said. “I would’ve told you sooner but you got mobbed.”

  And you had to go sulk, Lily recalled, but she didn’t say so. She watched them go. “I can tell the two of you are going to be great friends.”

  “Right.”

  The Murdochs put their arms around each other like high school sweethearts, and for some reason, that made her self-conscious. “You’re sure the kids are all right with Red?” she asked.

  “Absolutely. I heard something about another swim in his hotel pool, and he’ll probably teach them to play blackjack.”

  “Oh, dear—”

  “Oh, nothing. Blackjack is a life skill.”

  “It’s not in my curriculum.”

  “Believe me, I use blackjack a lot more than I do long division.”

  “You know what?” she said. “I’m not going to let you annoy me tonight. Today was an incredible day and I don’t feel like being annoyed.”

  “I never annoy you,” he protested.

  “Right. Never. Got it.” She stuck her hands in the pockets of her Wonder Bread hooded sweatshirt. “You should ask me what was so incredible about today.”

  “My round.”

  It’s all about you, she thought, desperate to find fault with him. “Besides that.”

  “All right, what else?”

  “Charlie read an article in the paper this morning,” she told him, eager to avoid the topic of the R-word. “I’d have to give her a score of a hundred percent for comprehension.”

  A grin broke over his face. “Yeah?”

  “She’s really improving. At this rate, she’ll be ready for fourth grade by the end of summer.”

  “You’re really something, Miss Lily Robinson.”

  “Charlie is really something.” She paused, thinking about the little girl’s unforced comprehension. “I think she’s been holding out on us. She’s been capable of reading the whole time and simply refused or let herself be blocked.”

  “Why would she do that? For the attention?”

  Lily frowned, puzzling that. The stealing last April—that had been a classic bid for attention. Willfully avoiding reading, now, that was more complex. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I need to work on this. I should have volunteered to help her ages ago. If I had—” She bit her lip, unable to finish.

  “Now, honey.” His hand found the small of her back, a perfectly natural gesture that nearly unraveled her. “Don’t go thinking that way or you’ll make yourself nuts.”

  “It’s not so nuts. If I’d helped Charlie sooner, maybe I never would have asked Crystal and Derek to come to the conference that day last April. And then they never would have—”

  “Damn it, Lily, stop,” Sean said. “You’re blaming yourself for them, same as you’ve spent your whole life blaming yourself for your brother. It doesn’t work that way. You’re not that important. It rains on the just and the unjust, don’t you know that?”

  “That’s from the Bible.”

  “Don’t look so surprised. I’m a dumb jock, but I know my catechism. Listen, you’ve worn the hair shirt about Crystal and Derek long enough. Get over yourself. Quit thinking you’re responsible for the state of the universe.”

  She stared at him, stunned. He had never spoken to her with such cutting anger.

  The anger appeared to startle him, as well. He seemed to conquer it right away, though, a grin easing across his face. “I guess what I’m saying is, it’s time to take off your shirt.”

  She tried not to let his humor or the gleam in his eye affect her. “I’d freeze to death.” She moved away from him, sticking her hands in her pockets and walking along the dimly lit trail. “And how about Cameron today? He was amazing.”

  “Oh, I get it, change of subject.”

  “Well, he was amazing.” She refused to swerve. “Red got a call about him from Teen People magazine. I can see the headline now, ‘From Vandal to Victor.’” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “One media star in the family is enough.”

  “So you think I’m a media star?”

  “The media thinks so.”

  “I hope they report that my round today belonged to him. He’s the best caddie I’ve ever had.”

  “I think you made him sweat a little on that last hole.”

  “Hey, I made me sweat.”

  “You’re the one who decided to shoot for the green. Cameron wanted you to take two strokes to get there.”

  “Sometimes you just have to give yourself a kick in the ass.”

  “Cameron definitely figured that out. He had total confidence in you.” She felt like touching him but didn’t let herself. “He’s different since the Winnebago incident, don’t you think?” She slipped into the familiar routine of discussing the kids with him. This was their relationship and she meant to keep it that way. “I meant to tell you, I think you handled it well. Initially, I didn’t believe humor was the way to deal with it, but now I see that was the perfect response.”

  “Good, because I couldn’t help myself. I look at Cameron and I see Derek and me as boys. We were idiots sometimes, just like he is.”

  “That’s the key, then, treating him like the kid he is.” She sighed. “That’s what I want for all three of them, Sean. I want them to remember their parents without being frozen or stuck in grief or guilt.”

  “Ever notice how we always talk about the kids?” he asked suddenly.

  Notice? She did it on purpose. “Is that a problem?”

  “We should talk about us.”

  “The only reason there’s an us is that we’ve got these three kids—”

  “Bullshit, Lily.” He grabbed her then, giving her no chance to get away or make excuses, and he kissed her, hard and long, openmouthed, his tongue doing things that made her forget what they were arguing about or if they were even arguing at all.

  That was the thing about Sean. He made her forget. He made her forget all of the things she trained herself to remember—that going to bed early and getting up early made a person productive. That a proper diet and exercise regimen were crucial to good health. That love was always a precursor to hurt. He was making her forget that, and suddenly she was kissing him back with a hunger and intensity she’d never felt before.

  By the time he ended the kiss and gently lifted his mouth from hers, she could barely remember her own name.

  “We should get drunk and celebrate,” he said.

  Feeling reckless, she said, “I know something I want more than to get drunk.”

  “Miss Robinson,” he whispered, his thumb outlining the shape of her jaw, “you are full of surprises.”

  She slipped her hand into his, lacing their fingers together. She felt reckless and bold, not like herself at all. “You’d be even more surprised if you knew what I’d like to do right now.”

  He laughed, the sound as soft and smooth as a caress. “Then I’m not letting you go until you tell me.”
/>   chapter 45

  Back in the RV, Sean couldn’t take his eyes off Lily. Her hands shook as she moistened her lips and then parted them, artlessly tantalizing as she lifted the fresh, dark Devil Dog to her mouth. He watched her teeth sink into the tender flesh of it, watched her lips close around the soft inner filling. She shut her eyes and gave the sort of moan he usually only heard from a woman when she was flat on her back.

  She chewed slowly, ecstatically, and swallowed. Under the table, Babe thumped her tail. Then at last Lily’s eyes drifted open. “That…was…incredible,” she said breathlessly. “My teeth are singing.”

  He pushed a steaming cup across the table to her. “Coffee?”

  She sipped the freshly brewed coffee he’d made to go with the Devil Dogs. “I missed my calling,” she confessed. “I should get a job with Drake’s.”

  “The caffeine might keep you up all night.”

  “Fine with me. We’ve got all these Devil Dogs to eat.”

  He helped himself to one and she to another. “You’re really something, Lily Robinson.”

  She licked a bit of white cream from the corner of her mouth. “Really? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Something.”

  “A puzzle wrapped in an enigma?”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth. You’re just not like most women I’ve known.”

  “What, boobs too small? Brain too big?”

  “You really think a lot of me, don’t you?” This was the way it always was with him and women. If Lily was like the others, she’d leave him eventually. That’s what women did. They left him. He didn’t seem to know how to make them stay or how to make himself want them to.

  “All right,” Lily said, “you tell me. How am I different?”

  He shoved away the troubling thoughts. “Usually before I sleep with a girl, we drink champagne or do tequila shots. Not coffee and Devil Dogs.”

  She licked the cream from her fingers, one by one, taking her time as though she knew what it was doing to him. “What makes you think I’m going to sleep with you?”

  “Well.” He reached across the table and very gently removed her glasses, setting them aside. “It’s actually just a manner of speaking.” He reached again, this time taking apart her ponytail, watching her hair spring free. Goodbye, Marian the Librarian, he thought.