by JoAnn Ross
“That’s the beauty of the idea,” he said, a bit of his former convincing tone creeping back into his voice. Whenever he pulled that out, she was in trouble. “You don’t have to go anywhere. You can stay wherever you are. Which would be?”
“I’m in Oregon.”
“Ah. I suspected that you would go home to the farm. If you give me your address, my attorney can FedEx the papers to you in the morning. If you send them right back, prepaid, of course, I’ll handle the rest by flying down to the Dominican Republic.”
“And will Katrin be traveling with you?”
There was a pause. “Yes.”
“Well, then. You’ll be able to pull off a divorce and a honeymoon in one easy trip. Now, that’s frugality for you.”
“I understand why you’d be upset—”
“No, Maxime,” Madeline broke in. “You’re wrong about that.” As he’d been about so many things. Then again, hadn’t she? Understanding what people meant when they suggested the breakup of a marriage was never entirely one-sided, she said, “What I am, actually, is grateful that Katrin is taking you off my hands. Since her pockets are ever so much deeper than mine could ever be.”
Which, as he’d explained, was the point.
“But here’s the deal. I have terms.”
“Terms?”
“You know what you said about funding my restaurant?”
“Yes.” He sounded hesitant. Wary. Making Madeline wonder how much of that earlier offer had been a bluff. Which, if it had, only went to show that he’d known her better than she’d known him.
“Well, I still don’t want it.”
“Ah.” His relief was more than a little evident.
“What I want, and insist on having, is being paid back every penny I invested in your various restaurants. Which I was led to believe was an investment in our marriage.”
There was a very long pause. Madeline thought she heard him cover the mouthpiece and speak to someone else.
“That sounds fair. But the problem is that I have no idea how much that would be.”
Of course not. He’d been like a damn sponge, soaking up her hard-earned funds like a haphazardly breaded eggplant soaking up olive oil.
“Well, fortunately for both of us, I do. I’ve kept records. Detailed records. Of every dime invested and where it went.”
Another pause. She could almost see the color blanching out of his face. “And how much would that be?”
She knew it to the penny, having studied the numbers she kept in an online file-storage site while stuck at the airport hotel.
“That much?” he asked, sounding honestly surprised when she told him.
“No one has ever accused you of not being high maintenance, Maxime.”
He covered—not well—the mouthpiece again. She could hear him relating the numbers to someone. Obviously Katrin. And possibly her lawyer. And accountant. And whatever other people she had taking care of her beer bucks.
“You can supply these numbers?”
“I can get you the spreadsheet right away. And copies of records. But, of course,” she added on her sweetest tone, “those might take several weeks to compile.”
“Done,” he said, apparently having been given the okay to accept that amount. “The papers will arrive tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry. Were you thinking that was my final offer?”
“Of course.” There were not many times she could remember Maxime Durand sounding anything but self-confident. This was one of the few times his veneer had slipped.
“Well, it’s not.” She took a breath. Then went for it. “I want double.”
“Double what?”
“Double what I’ve paid you. Because, in case it hasn’t occurred to you or your new wife-to-be, if I refuse to sign those papers you’re so eager to send me, and instead hire my own attorney to attach claims to each and every one of your restaurants, you could be tied up in court for a very long time. New York, after all, despite now allowing no-fault divorce, is not the easiest state to actually accomplish that.”
“The restaurants are teetering on bankruptcy, as you very well know.” A bit of bluster had returned. She imagined his complexion going from rice white to beet red. “You would end up with nothing but lawyer fees to pay.”
“Wrong again.” Oddly, she was beginning to almost enjoy this conversation. “I’d end up with the satisfaction of watching an empire fall. Sort of like Rome, after Nero spent too much time fiddling and not enough time tending to business. Double, Maxime. And all my things boxed up from the apartment and FedExed to me so they arrive before Katrin’s private jet clears New York airspace for the Caribbean.”
“Un moment, s’il vous plaît.”
Ha! She had him flustered. The only times he switched totally to French were when he lost his temper, was in full-out seduction mode, or seriously distressed.
So she gave him his moment.
Bet he chooses door number three.
She could hear the conversation in the background. The staccato female tones did not sound at all happy.
And then, finally, after she’d held for more than five minutes, he was back. “Madeline.” The cajoling French accent was gone. “You have a deal. My attorney will contact yours in the morning.”
“Make that afternoon.” She still had to find a lawyer. “I’ll e-mail you his name and phone number.”
His answering curse was French and crude. “Afternoon it will be.”
He did not bother with pleasantries, but merely cut off the call.
“Well. That’s that.”
And as she stood there at the edge of the continent, with the white-capped waves washing in and the sandpipers skittering along the edge of the surf and the gulls circling overhead, Madeline realized that it was, indeed, possible for a person to feel both relieved and sad at the same time.
31
Lucas was disappointed, but not surprised when Maddy canceled their afternoon meeting. Kara had already called to tell him that she thought their lunch had gone well. In fact, he’d been on the phone with her when Maddy’s call had come in, which is the only reason he’d missed it.
“Timing,” he told Scout, who was sprawled on the sofa, head on the arm, watching him pace the plank floor, “is everything.”
He could just go over to the farm. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have an excuse. He’d given a lot of thought to the farmhouse remodel during the drives back and forth from Portland. Everyone always complained about contractors not showing up.
“So how could anyone complain about one who actually did?” he asked the dog, who barked in what seemed to be full agreement.
Lucas had never considered himself an impatient man. He’d been known to lie on his belly for hours, even days, if it need be, scoping out a valley, waiting for a target to appear. Patience had been drilled into him from the first day at BUD/S training. In fact, from what he’d been able to tell from his class, more guys rang out of training due to impatience than lack of guts or strength.
You learned to choose not just your target, but your time. And although he wanted to go over to the farm and drag her back here by her long black curls, like some Neanderthal cave guy, he’d gained enough knowledge of women to realize that would be the last thing she needed.
Then again, if he just sat back and bided his time, she could be back on a plane to New York before he’d gotten a fair chance.
Because he decided to give her this time to process whatever Kara had told her, he snagged an oyster po’boy Sax had sent home from Bon Temps and a bottle of beer from the fridge and went over to the window wall, where the telescope his father had bought him for his eighth birthday stood on a tripod.
A white, waxing moon was rising, lighting up the waves in a silvery trail that made it look as if you could just walk out to the horizon and over the edge of the earth. In the distance, the jagged pillars of sea stacks—land that had broken away from the continent—stood like ghostly sentinels, draped in shawls of fog.
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br /> He was looking through the telescope when, in the flash of the enormous prism of light from the Shelter Bay lighthouse, several hundred yards off shore, he spotted geysers of water—monumental clouds of spray and foamlike explosions. A moment later, a pod of whales breached in unison, leaping into the air and crashing back into the sea.
They were, he realized, literally playing in the waves. Several of them began sailing, enormous tails held aloft above the surface as they approached the shore. Just when Lucas feared they’d beach themselves on the treacherous rocks, they’d turn around, heading back to sea for another sail.
Although it was difficult to tell with the dimming light, most appeared to be California grays, on their annual six-thousand-mile migratory spring trek up the Pacific coast from their mating and birthing grounds off the Baja coast, back to the Bering Sea.
He sharpened the lens’s focus, catching sight of a few humpback whales, which were relatively rare in these waters, though a few pods were spotted every season. This was the first time in several years he’d been fortunate enough to see them himself.
As the whales moved on beneath the water, he idly scanned the beach while drinking his beer. Which was when he spotted Maddy. All alone, perched atop a huge driftwood log.
Drinking from what appeared to be a bottle of champagne.
Which, depending on what Kara told her, and how she’d taken it, could be good. Or bad. Whichever, it could definitely end up dangerous.
“Come on,” he told Scout. “Looks like we’ve got another rescue mission on our hands.”
32
As luck would have it, there was a market not far from the beach. Still wired on adrenaline from her conversation with her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Maddy bought a bottle of chilled champagne and six plastic glasses. Not that she was planning to invite anyone to her party, but they only came in a set.
Then she drove down the curving road to the beach not far from Lucas’ cottage. Though she had no desire to see him, he just happened to live above one of the best stretches of coastline around.
She made her way down the wooden steps, belatedly realizing that she should have taken off the heels. Which she did, leaving them next to a pile of driftwood logs.
Then, barefoot, she walked across the sand, opened the small robin’s-egg blue box she’d been carrying around in her purse since leaving for the airport from the apartment, took out her wedding ring, and flung it as far as she could into the water.
There was a flash; then, after it disappeared beneath the waves, she walked back up to the logs, brushed the blown sand off one of the lower ones, sat down, popped the cork, and poured the sparkling wine into one of the stemmed plastic glasses. As the past ten years of her life drifted through her mind, like a documentary on some mental video screen, she began making inroads on the champagne.
The moon rose as Madeline drank. And remembered.
“There comes a time in every woman’s life,” she quoted her favorite-ever movie actress, “when the only thing that helps is a glass of champagne.”
She took another drink. When the bubbles didn’t feel quite as sparkly, she wondered if her tongue was becoming a bit numb, and held the dark green bottle up to the moonlight to judge the level of champagne remaining.
“Bette Davis. In Now, Voyager…No. That’s not right.”
She shook her head.
“Old Acquaintance. 1943. Davis said it to Miriam Hopkins. When at the end of the movie, after all those years of feuding, they’re left with just each other.”
She nodded her satisfaction at having remembered. Forties movies were not just her favorites; they were her forte, having spent so many late nights in her teens watching them on television with her grandmother.
Toasting the actress and herself for recalling the line, she tossed back the champagne. “It was probably for the best. Because it if has tires or a penis, it’s just bound to cause you trouble.”
“The tide’s going to be coming in soon,” a familiar deep voice warned.
Speaking of penises…
“That’s what it does.” She took another drink. “It comes in. Then goes back out again.…In. Out. In. Out. Which is probably one of the few things—hell—maybe the only predictable thing in life.” She looked up at Lucas. “What are you doing here? And didn’t your father ever teach you that stalking a woman isn’t the best way to win her over?”
“I’m not stalking you. You’re on my beach.”
“Ha! Wrong answer.” She held up an index finger. Or was it two? “I may have been away for a while, but I happen to know that beaches in Oregon are public. So you have no right to claim this one, Lucas Chaffee.” Damn. Her tongue really was getting thick.
“You got me. But it’s the beach below my house, which is how I spotted you. And did it ever occur to you that walking out on a public beach alone late at night can get you into trouble? Why don’t you just send out an invitation to the Green River Killer while you’re at it?”
“He’s in prison. I saw him on one of those TV newsmagazines a few years ago. He claimed his career was killing people. He may not be legally insane, but I gotta tell you, he’s definitely crazy.”
She shook her head. “Then again, maybe we’re all crazy. In our own way.”
She polished off another glass and reached for the bottle she’d stuck into the sand.
Lucas was quicker, scooping it up. “You’re drunk.”
“You think?” She considered that for a moment. “Maybe just a little.” She held out her glass, inviting him to fill it again. “But not enough. Not yet.”
“What happened?”
“Shelter Bay is not a war zone. And I’m not a terrorist. So it seems to me that I should be able to celebrate without being interrogated by a Navy SEAL.”
“Former SEAL. And it was merely a question. So, what are we celebrating?”
“Independence Day.”
“Sounds good to me. You’re not talking about the Fourth of July kind of Independence Day with parades, flags, and fireworks, though, are you?”
“No. Though fireworks might be in order.”
Then she thought of his poor, sweet, three-legged dog who’d followed him down and was now sitting alert at his feet, seeming to be watching for any seagulls that might dare try to land. “On the other hand, probably not…I’m getting a divorce.”
“I thought we’d already determined that.”
“True.” She nodded. Slowly. Solemnly. “But today made it official.”
“You don’t waste any time.” He sat down beside her.
“My husband and his lover are in a hurry. Enough so that he was willing to pay me back all I put into his restaurants.”
“Good for you.”
“It gets better. I held out for more.”
She could see the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. The mouth that she was suddenly wishing was on hers. That idea made her head spin. Or, more likely, it was the champagne.
“Even better.”
“I’ve discovered lately that I’m a very good negotiator. Better than good. Excellent. Maybe even world-class…
“So, now that I have enough money for the restaurant and school, I decided to throw my wedding ring into the ocean so some poor, unsuspecting woman won’t buy it on Craigslist and end up with bad-luck vibes and a lying, cheating husband.”
She waved her hand toward the moon-gilded surf. “It was a combination engagement and wedding ring. Two carats. Marquis cut. Surrounded by another two carats of pavé diamonds. From Tiffany’s.” She pointed down at the blue box she’d dropped on the sand. “Though I never wore it on TV, so you wouldn’t have ever seen it, being such a huge fan of the Cooking Network as you profess to be. It was, let me tell you, very, very flashy.” She was having to concentrate not to slur her words. “Blindingly so.”
“Which isn’t at all you.”
She bestowed her sweetest smile on him. “You know me so well, Lucas. Which, although I hate to admit it, is making it more and mo
re difficult for me to hate you.”
In fact, it was odd, she thought, through the cloud hazing her mind. Ever since she’d run into him in her grandmother’s kitchen, Lucas had stirred her up, tangling her emotions. But for some reason, his sitting here beside her, while bringing back memories, also calmed her down. And felt surprisingly right.
“I’m glad to hear that. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Are you going to pour me some champagne or not?”
He shrugged. Seemed to give up.
“You’re a grown woman. If you want to get trashed because some jerk’s too stupid to realize that he had a gem far more precious than some overpriced hunk of crystallized carbon, far be it for me to stop you,” he muttered, pouring a few more inches into the glass.
When she continued to hold it out, he cursed beneath his breath and filled it to the plastic rim.
“I’m not getting drunk because of Maxime. Not really. I’m getting drunk because…well, because I never have before.”
“Ever?”
Although he’d known her for only five summers, from when she’d first arrived in Shelter Bay at thirteen to that summer after her high school graduation, she’d always been a straight arrow. Which is why, although he’d walked around with a near-perpetual hard-on, he’d been so hesitant to be the one who took the virginity she’d suddenly been so eager to give up. He’d known sex was a serious thing to her.
What he hadn’t foreseen was that she’d been willing to toss away all her plans for her life once he’d given in.
“Never.” Her mist-dampened curls fanned out as she shook her head. “Ever. So, it seemed like a good idea tonight.” Her brow furrowed. “But thank you for saying that about me being a gem. That’s sweet. Very, very sweet.”
She smiled up at him, her eyes gleaming seductive silver. Although Lucas knew it was his imagination, he could’ve sworn he heard the sultry songs of sirens singing out beyond the breakers.
“It’s true.”
“It’s still sweet. Why don’t you have some champagne? I hate to drink alone.” She frowned. “I left the other glasses up in the car.”