by Unknown
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to grab Weezer’s leash and her wallet. The fi rst step she took made her teeth clench.
Jackie was out and around the car in seconds, wrapping her slender arms around Mel’s neck. The scent of her perfume made more tears sting Mel’s eyes. “Make sure you ice that toe— it’s broken. It’s broken because of that fuckly fucker,” she snarled.
“It’ll be fi ne. I’ve broken worse than a toe before.”
“Yeah, but now you’re old and fat. Takes longer to heal,” Jackie joked.
Mel gave her one more squeeze, forcing back the bitter fl ow of tears threatening to fall. “Thanks, Jackie. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come to check on me.”
Jackie leaned down and gave Weezer’s big head a scratch. “You take care of Mommy, ’kay, pal?” Then she whipped around, her fi nger pointed. “And you,” she yelled to a man, hovering in the departures area with a camera around his neck. “If you take that picture, you’ll fi nd out how yoga gives this woman a strong core.” Turning back to Mel, she said, “Hurry up and get out of here before I have to embarrass Frank all over Tinsel Town.”
Mel gave her a quick kiss. “I’ll call you.”
“You’d better.”
She gave Weezer’s leash a tug, hobbling behind him before turning one last time to wave goodbye to Jackie.
And every single thing in her life as she knew it.
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C H A P T E R T W O
Si x m on t h s lat er . . .
“Myriam Hernandez!” Mel skidded to a halt at the exit door of Leisure Village South’s rec center, wincing when her still- sore toe caught on one of the vacant chairs left at table number nine. Her breathing was irregular, and her heart beat a dance in her chest so harsh, she thought it might pound out of her.
She really needed to build her endurance back up— or maybe actually move occasionally. When a seventy- year- old could beat you in a sprint from one end of the room to the other, it was time to reevaluate your mattress time versus your upright and awake time.
Taking a gulp of air, she bellowed, “Myriam!”
Myriam’s silver head cocked at the sound of Mel’s voice for only a moment, clearly considering an escape route, then she made a break to pop open the door and fl ee her bad behavior.
But Mel was too quick for her. She planted herself in front of the steel door on a stumbling skid, crossing her arms over her chest, and cocking an eyebrow in inquiry.
Myriam gave her a brief guilty look, but her thinning, coral-glossed lips said she knew her sharp tongue was going to have to atone. She narrowed her dark eyes at Mel, preparing her defense.
“Who was it? Damn Nancys, the lot of them,” she grumbled.
“You mean who nearly knocked me over to tell me your latest madcap entry to the Pillage and Plunder Diaries?”
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Myriam grunted, her smile begrudgingly tinted with a hint of admiration. “You’re funny.”
“You’re work.” Mel blew a lock of her hair out of her face with a tired breath and fought a smile. Stern. She must not feed the beast in Myriam. If she let Myriam know her razor- sharp tongue and lightning- fast wit made Mel chuckle herself to sleep at night— she was doomed.
Myriam cackled, slapping her on her arm. “I like that you’re a
‘take no horseshit’ gal.”
“Good. Then you won’t mind giving me no horseshit. You know, sort of as a gift for all the prior horseshit you’ve given me?” Mel teased.
“C’mon,” Myriam cajoled. “Who was it?”
“Who do you think it was?”
Myriam shrugged with indifference, hoisting her prim shoulder bag with the butterfl ies on it to the front of her body in a defensive stance. “I don’t know. There’re at least a dozen stoolies in this place.
Bunch of namby- pambies, they are. Could have been anyone who ratted me out.”
Mel hid a smile, one of the fi rst genuine smiles she’d experienced since she’d come to Leisure Village. “So, what you’re saying is, you didn’t tell just one available male senior, but a dozen, they had wilted winkies and couldn’t handle the likes of all your womanliness?”
Her bottom lip curled with indignation. “I did not say ‘womanliness.’ I said ‘my feminine curves,’ and I’d bet my Celebrex it was that sissy Norm Peterson. He’s always talkin’ like it’s the size of a blue whale’ s— those are the biggest winkies on record, by the way”—she made a wide gesture with two hands—“but Mildred Stein says different.”
Mel sighed. She just wanted to go home and sit with her dad and Weezer and watch Yard Crashers. “So why do you antagonize? If you keep being so cantankerous, I’ve heard talk about a petition to ban 9780425245507_WaltzThisWay_TX_p1-344.indd 16
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you from all social activities. Tonight it’s senior speed dating— last week it was sunset shuffl eboard. You can’t just whack someone over the head with your shuffl eboard stick and expect to get away with it.
Do you know how many complaints I got in the suggestion box after that? In fact, it’s not even a suggestion box anymore— it’s the ‘What Myriam Did to Me Today’ box.”
“Bet no one put their name on the suggestions,” she sneered, cracking a sinister smile like she was head gangster senior and the resident seniors were all her gangster minions.
Which wasn’t totally off the mark. Myriam Hernandez struck fear in the hearts of all Leisure Village seniors. Mel was responsible for policing all of Elder- Landia, and Myriam didn’t make walking this beat easy.
“That’s because they’re all afraid of you.” Mel shook her fi nger under her most diffi cult senior’s nose. “Now, this can’t go on, Myriam. I have people to answer to if I have any hope of keeping this job, a job I can’t afford to lose.” She winced, fi ghting a tone of desperation.
Trying to keep her private life private was virtually impossible, not just in the Village, but in town— at the Krispy Kreme, at the diner, in the Stop & Shop. The list went on and on.
“Because you’re married to a crusty wiener.”
Her stomach turned. “Well, technically, I’m not married to him and his crusty wiener anymore.” It just felt like she was still married to him because the press wouldn’t let her not be married to him since he’d informed her they were getting divorced.
On television.
In an exclusive interview.
After he’d been caught in a picture taken by a random fan, kissing the fabulously rock- hard Yelena with no last name.
At a cheese fest.
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“Shoulda taken a cue from me and hit him with the shuffl eboard stick. Woulda served him and his Ring Dings right.”
Heat fl ushed Mel’s face. Yeah. His Ring Dings defi nitely needed checking. She’d spent many nights watching reruns of CSI in the hopes she’d fi nd the perfect way to kill Stan without getting caught.
“Violence isn’t the answer, Myriam.”
“It is if you want to win at checkers.”
“Yeah. Speaking of checkers— what’s this about you taking all of the red check
ers from the rec center, anyway?”
“Nobody would let me play.”
Mel gave Myriam’s arm a squeeze to soften the blow. “Nobody lets you play because you get angry and throw things. Now, enough’s enough. No more hijinks— no more hitting people with that suitcase you call a purse and absolutely no more mocking some man’s”—she leaned in to Myriam and whispered—“penis. Okay? How about we make a deal. You play nice for the next month— not a peep—and I’ll pretend I never saw the zillion suggestions to boot you to my boss lady Max. I’ll throw them all away.” She stuck her hand out, likely making a deal with the devil herself. “Deal?”
Myriam took it and gave it a fi rm shake. “Fine. But if Norm brags one more time, I’m gonna give it to him but good.”
Mel pushed open the door, ushering Myriam out into the warm August air. “No. You’re going to ignore him and smile secretly to yourself because you know he really doesn’t have a penis the size of a blue whale.”
“Really, who does have a penis the size of a blue whale these days? I hear it’s rare,” a man’s voice remarked with a hint of laughter in it from behind Myriam. “Aunt Myriam?”
Mel’s eyes moved from Myriam’s small frame upward to the larger one blocking out the fl oodlights of the rec center.
“Ah! There’s my boy!” Myriam, usually sour of face unless she was 9780425245507_WaltzThisWay_TX_p1-344.indd 18
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in the height of a prank, softened until she was almost unrecogniz-able. She introduced him like he was visiting royalty, there was such pride in her voice. “Mel, this is my nephew. Honey, meet Mel with the stupid last name and our part- time social director here at the Village. She’s helping Maxine. You know the lady who married that sweet piece of booty Campbell Barker?”
Mel covered her mouth with her forearm to keep her snort to herself.
A tall, broad- chested man with a navy blue T-shirt and faded jeans stuck out his hand after sending his aunt a look of warning.
“Nice to meet you, Mel with the stupid last name.”
Myriam snickered, latching on to her nephew’s thickly corded arm.
She gave him her hand. “Do you have a stupid fi rst name?” she inquired sweetly.
“I do.” He smiled then— a smile that was dashing. The white of his teeth gleamed, the bronze of his skin glowed. “It’s Drew. Drew McPhee.”
“A fi ne Irish name,” she commented, refusing to be awed by his thick, chocolaty hair with sun- kissed gold highlights and his light blue eyes in a shade so unusual they held her mesmerized.
“He’s only half Irish,” Myriam snorted. “The other half of him’s Puerto Rican— just like his aunt.”
He let go of Mel’s hand, and she realized her palm had become sweaty when the humid breeze hit it. “Aunt Myriam’s still holding a grudge that my mother married a McPhee instead of a Lopez or a Suarez. Any ez’ll do, right, Aunt Myriam?” he said on an indulgent chuckle, squeezing Myriam’s hand, then giving it an affectionate pat.
Myriam made a face up at her nephew. Clearly, her discontent with the male population at large extended to family, too. “Selena marrying your father is all- out war as far as I’m concerned. No good Puerto Rican wants to marry an Irishman. None.”
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“A war that’s lasted forty- four years now,” Drew said with a wink.
“C’mon, Aunt Myriam— Mom’s waiting for you to come over and help beat Dad up. It is Saturday night, the night when all good Irish-men get a beating from their Puerto Rican sisters-in-law. It’s fast becoming a sport.”
Myriam reached up and pinched his lean cheek. “You were always funny. Hey, you know, why don’t we invite Mel over, too? She’s got nothin’ better to do on a Saturday night, bein’ divorced and all. She might have to wait forever to get a date because she’s so old, and I’m sure she’d love some of your father’s crappy corned beef and ‘fart all night long’ cabbage. Whaddya say, Mel?”
Mel refused to let slip a horrifi ed gasp and instead lobbed the ball back at the feisty senior. “How do you know I don’t have a date, Myriam? Maybe I have some hot stud just waiting on the edge of his seat for me to leave senior speed dating and join him for our secret ren-dezvous.” She fl uttered her lashes.
Myriam guffawed as though Mel had just told her she had a date with Robert Pattison. “You don’t, either. You hole up at your dad’s and lick your wounds every night. You know it. I know it. Every senior from here to eternity in the Village knows it. So instead of crying in your beer, you should just date my Drew,” she decided.
Mel dragged the door of the rec center shut and chuckled with a shake of her head. “Oh, I don’t think so, Myriam. What if we got married? Then you wouldn’t just have a half- Irish, half– Puerto Rican nephew, but a half- Italian, half- Polish, divorced- from-a-Russian niece.
I think the world would collapse under all those countries, foreign and otherwise. Besides, I have a hot date with my dad tonight, and Weezer needs to be walked. No one wants Weezer to potty in the house, especially me.”
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your cranky old father, and I’ll go home with my handsome nephew without you. See if I ever impose you on any of my family again.” She threw up a hand to wave a dismissive goodbye before heading off into the darkness toward the parking lot.
Drew rocked back on his heels, crossing his tanned forearms, which had a thick dusting of hair, over his chest. “So if I said she was a handful and we all try to keep her in line but she’s like corralling greased cats, would that make whatever she’s done tonight better?”
Drew asked with an amused grin that left deep grooves on either side of his mouth.
“What makes you think she’s done something?”
“My Aunt Myriam’s always doing something, and it’s usually not nice.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “I like her spirit.”
“We’d like it more if it didn’t always involve hand-to-hand combat.”
Mel found herself with her second genuine smile of the night on her face. “Okay, that would probably make my job a lot easier, but even with the shuffl eboard showdown and tonight’s wholly embarrassing poke at the size of Norm Peterson’s, ahem, man parts during senior speed dating, she’s pretty funny.”
“She’s a terror.”
“That’s a fair adjective,” she responded, forcing a bland expression. His bigness made her uncomfortably aware— of everything.
The way he smelled. The way his jeans molded against the muscles of his thighs before giving way to long calves. The way his eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled. The way he towered over her, making her fi ve- foot- two frame feel very small. Mel swept around him, making her way down the rec center’s entryway.
“Let me walk you to your car.”
Mel smiled then frowned at the shiver his voice created. That’d 9780425245507_WaltzThisWay_TX_p1-344.indd 21
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be nice. To be walked to her car by someone as deliciously fi ne-looking as Drew. But you had to have a car to be walked to. “I’m fi ne, thanks. I walked.”
“You live here?”
Among the scent of mothballs and liniment. Oh, y
es, at the ripe, old age of forty, she lived at home. In a retirement village. Like the crazy cat lady, sans cats. “For the moment. With my dad,” was her cool reply.
“And Weezer.”
“Right. Weezer, too.” His steps echoed hers, moving in heavy clunks toward the parking lot.
“How about we give you a lift home?”
“But then you’d be late for corned beef and ‘fart all night long’
cabbage. Really, I’m fi ne. I could use the exercise.” The moment she said it, she realized she’d given him permission to scan her goodies—which were aplenty— to discover if she really needed crunches.
“Said who?”
Her ex-husband. The tabloids. Every show from here to Ellen.
“My scale,” she remarked dryly.
His eyebrow, a darker brown than his hair, cocked upward.
“You’re scale is as stupid as your last name— which I didn’t get, by the way.”
Mel stopped at the end of the sidewalk and looked up at big, handsome, smiling Drew. “It’s a mouthful.”
“A mouthful’s plenty, if you ask me.”
Mel blushed hot red. “Cherkasov.” She waited while he made the connection between her and Stan.
Yet, he surprised her when he said, “So, Mel Cherkasov, since Myriam can’t convince you to come have some dinner with almost total strangers and I can’t talk you into a lift back home, will I see you around the Village? I do a lot of shuffl ing back and forth with Aunt 9780425245507_WaltzThisWay_TX_p1-344.indd 22
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Myriam. She’s the driver from hell— so we avoid letting her do it, if we can.”
He’d see her only if it meant there was money to be had in leaving her father’s house. It was the only thing that could remotely motivate her to breathe outdoor air or, for that matter, get involved in anything other than a can of chocolate frosting with sprinkles and some salt-and- pepper kettle chips. “Anything can happen.”
“Good to know. I hope anything happens again soon.” He grinned before taking long strides toward his truck.